COLLAPSE FEARED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 284, 30 November 1944, Page 8

COLLAPSE FEARED

A NAZI DOCUMENT APPEALS AND THREATS MIXED CHICAGO. The German High Command is trying to explain away the non-stop Allied advance to the gates of the Reich by quoting a Prussian militarist who 100 years ago made a profound statement, to wit: "In war things usually happen in a different way than planned." Grabbing at straws in an effort to maintain the Wehrmacht's morale in the face of disaster, an official policy issued last month for officers to use "as material for company discussion" picture the hopeless, back-to-the-wall fight of the St. Malo defenders as a model for the entire German nation and protested plaintively against complaint of any sort. Clausowita Invoked Documents which I found lying on the street of a French town unmistakably betrayed fears of the Nazi leaders of inevitable collapse, says the Chicago Times' special correspondent in France. "Many German units have gone through hard weeks and months and know full well the coming weeks won't be any easier," it said. "In heaviest battles often accompanied by heavy losses, the most severe demands have been made upon them and there have been many situations when the war looked bad." It then went on with a quotation from "War," the book written a century ago by General Carl von Clausewitz, saying: "The soldier is exposed to hundreds of thousands of impressions, most of which look bad, and only a few carrying encouraging features. Therefore, steadfastness is a very necessary counterweight." Effrontery and Threat Speaking glumly of the war "against a world of enemies," the document urged troops at home and on the front to remember St. Malo and to look for strength from such examples of "exemplary fortitude." Nowhere in the entire document, which bore the title, "Report to Troops," was there a single reference to eventual victory. With remarkable effrontery the document urged German soldiers to write their wives and daughters to do more for the war effort, to cease complaints and to obey the recent series of last-ditch decrees, which raised the labour draft age of women to 50, outlawed slackers and tightened still further the restrictions on non-essential industries.

Then it added this threat: "Should there still be soldiers stupid enough not, to see the necessity of total mobilisation at home, we will become very impatient and will have to make clear to them what kind of game is being played." In other words, the Nazi High Command has stooped officially to the point of asking German soldiers in the front lines to spy upon one another's personal affairs. It has become illegal in the German Army to worry about your wife's welfare. Even the German soldier should be smart enough to resent that.