SHARPENING THE OLD WEAPON

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 42, 19 February 1943, Page 2

SHARPENING THE OLD WEAPON

OYER and over again we have been told that Germany is waging a "total war"- and this is the time to remember it. This is the time to realise afresh that Germany fights not with military weapons alone, but also with the weapons of propaganda and diplomacy. Before the German Army marched these weapons of propaganda and diplomacy had well prepared the ground for it. By sowing and forcing the growth of confusion and dissension, not only between but within the nations marked out for attack, German propaganda and diplomacy had in effect won several campaigns before they were launched. Then, for a time, the swift and apparently decisive victories won in the field furnished the best propaganda; and the machine directed by Goebbels had a subsidiary, though still an extremely important, role. Its part was to impress on the countries which then remained unconquered the futility of offering resistance to the German Army, and the vital importance, in their own interests, of voluntary participation in Hitler's "new order." True, Goebbels had some awkward explanations to make, particularly after the Luftwaffe's failure to subdue the British, and when Hitler attacked Russia, but he was able to surmount his difficulties. The continuing victories of the German Army in the field helped him. But now, in the greatest campaign of the war, the German Army is not winning victories; it is being beaten. What will the Germans do now? It is easy to say what they will do, for they are aheady beginning to do it. They will bring into full play, once again, their well-tried weapons of propaganda and diplomacy, and with the same purpose, to sow confusion and dissension not only between, but within, the Allied nations. In Ankara which, with Stockholm, has been a favourite place for flying German propaganda kites and putting out German diplomatic "feelers " there is i*eported to have been launched a campaign with the object of persuading Britain and America that a Soviet victoiy would mean danger for them." Simultaneously, in Italy, one of the foremost propagandists has been talking about a "compromise peace with Britain and America, but not with Russia. We need have no doubt that; not only in Ankara and Rome, but in many other capitals, in Europe and beyond Europe, and under many disguises and through many strange mouthpieces, Axis propaganda from now on will do its utmost to "sell" these ideas to the Western Allies. This is Germany waging war, as unmistakably as she wages war with panzers and divebombers. This is another weapon of war, and no less dangerous than the productions of German munition works. For what does Germany fear now? What does she wish most to avert? It is the opening by Britain and the United States of a major "second front" in Europe, which would divide German forces at the time when she desperately needs freedom to concentrate them against Russia. To avert that calamity von Arnim is fighting hard in Tunisia and Doenitz is intensifying the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic. But their efforts alone will not be sufficient; they must be backed up by Goebbels and Ribbentrop. Hence the "Soviet menace" propaganda, and the talk of a "peace by compromise." That the Allied leaders will not be deceived is quite certain, for at Casablanca they announced that they would be satisfied with nothing less than "unconditional surrender." Nor will the Allied peoples be deceived, for if they were' inclined to pay heed to the propaganda of Germany now, now" that she fears she is losing, they have only to remember her propaganda—and her actions— when she thought she was winning.