INSIDE GERMANY TO-DAY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13624, 23 April 1942, Page 6

INSIDE GERMANY TO-DAY

PRIVATION, APATHY AND DEJECTION

MISERY INVESTED IN VICTORY

i BERLIN SHOPS LIT IT IX BLACK-OUT

A Swedish-American newspaper correspondent who was in Berlin recently details the privation, apathy and dejection inside Germany today. He also gives the opinion: '•The Germans will not crack before 1944. They have invested all

the misery they can stomach on

overwhelming victory." His story, which was sent to the Overseas Daily Mail on January 2 6 from a special correspondent in Stockholm appears below.

The people of Germany have invested all the misery they can stomach in a complete victory, from which they hope to reap an overwhelming dividend, and the masses are fatalistically prepared to stand cr fall by their investment.

That summing-up of the situation inside Germany to-day was given me by George Axelson, New York Times correspondent, who has just reached Stockholm from Berlin. Being a Swedish subject, he was allowed by the Nazis to move about fairly freely un;il last week.

Despite the. misery and drabness of the German people's lives, the shortages of essentials, and the banishment of luxuries, they will not crack properly, in Axelson's view, for another two years. Germany has been martialled 100 per cent, for victory. Nothing except" non-essentials has been left private individuals. Luxuries are completely a thing of the past. Thus, if Germany is beaten, she will be beaten on her merits. These are the facts as Axelson gave them to me to-day:

You can tell at a glance where German women's boy friends are stationed abroad. Those with red or silver fox furs, or red-white-and blue knitted gloves, scarves, jumpers, or socklets are getting parcels from Norway. Women with rare and costly furs, with saucy hats and. perhaps, silk stockings, have boy 3 in France, women smoking good cigarettes friends in the Balkans. Women with nothing at all have all their menfolk in—Russia. So far the women have received no spoils of the great Victories in the East, and there is considerable comment in Berlin on the fact that no news reels have been received from Russia since mid-December. The people are sceptical of the official explanation that it is impossible to work a cine-camera in temperatures below zero. As for the Balkan cigarettes, tobacco and trouble are all the Germans expect to get from the Balkans, which they have written off as a bad job.

Once the man in th.e street expected those territories to produce (a) food and (b) a stringboard against Britain in the Mediterranean. But now the Balkans are abandoned to stew in their own juice

f r ith^ium estrai^Ni qUOr he^S |p^t° Mhe | fo/a muf J^-: j thls and the i ack J : m SM clubs are (K ;: . ! As the women j^^ l • **ar dresses ;■- . ul tra-respectah!e. -!.. its popularity. Soap and Vashla , 3til l acutely short a' , ma «y- Such obj, ;; :; as the Adlon. tfce Eden have very ' Their staffs. alI f 1 cliiterent and offhand ? : and waiters are Italians who cannot Z; and show complete ■- both their employers'"':' their customers. i In restaurants v OI , ~., Half the meat your Co - i Ordinary restaura-- I enough food to feed'-'■•"/ wants to eat. And at«-*•-" (' Places as Horchers and hi diplomats. Nazi leader- ■■'.' ' of high rank have a caJ ting a seat. For thousands of r, e - , is nc place where thej, ;: side their homes. • Since Christmas slop;'.. I lit until 7 p.m.-tho- i course, the street?. jv ; , j workers can thus get boo er comfort. This was thought to N temporary Christmas cons. ■ j it has been extended in cc;-- { set the gloom of the rev::, 1 Eastern Front. Tl-? wearing of mourn::: . ly on the increase. des:>iu •: {' standing ban on it. Or, \ ' one sees women in vr .. i' between full mourning :.::. | black armband. Men, wearing black. No restrictions on eitki . or obitu'arv notices ca: • : I mourning movement. I estimate that a minka 3,000,000 Germans have I-: ed in Russia. In the V Beobachter one still reaches "proudly mourning."'. j Deutsche Allgemeine Zeir.:: | the Borseu-Zeitung, which. I scribed to by the aristocracyIplay such a big role iaftefe I Army—the obituaries gin facts without direct or iafet knowledgment of belief in tie: ite programme. As Axelson's train steals 1-9 saw thousands of W- ■- men at the stations join::- , ours and bearing testing drain of war on German jc:'A Wilhelmstrasse o£«- • Axelson that there were&i Britons at large in Cera* best-known pair are Mr a:: G. Wodehouse, who are Si at the Adlon. When Hitler appeared K---cony of the Reich Chance-'-. ■ declaring war against instates, Mrs Wodehouse e,:-y way through a crowd U « iug her Pekinese aloft JJ» in English: "Come on,» must see Hitler." And nobody objected. Berlin has pa* apathetic. When the dared war on the would have expected cro'--.. papers from newsboys i--_ Instead the sales of remained the same as j Berlin is full of from the Iberian P en1 .'...,. Balkans and Eastern k the Orient. But B«®« interested. . ...,.■ The Nazi out of their way » correspondents.