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Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23053, 22 June 1940, Page 14

ol e Mr John de Courcy’s Searchlight “1 e on Europe (Eyre and Spottiswoode. oJ y 328 pp. 7/6 net.) is based on many st I, reports, over a long period, by ob- si servers for the Imperial Policy a* d Group. The result is an elaborately la ‘t detailed but generally undocuh rnented account of the process and yi e methods by which the Nazi pro- AV gramme has been carried out, tod gether with interpretative comment t S for which Mr de Courcy is person- i r lS ally responsible. Two points may S be selected from a fascinating study, o: First, this book makes. unusually P clear the formidable thoroughness ci with which the Germans have prer pared to control or conquer their £ e victims. No possible measure of t( hj Nazi infiltration, or corruption, or tj r, terrorisation has been neglected or d has been adopted at random. Sec- n •- ond, Mr de Courcy’s characterisation d of Hitler, like Mr R. C. K. Ensor’s, si d corrects old and fallacious notions tl that his is a merely demagogic si 3 power, used by colder and better ,s brains. Mr de Courcy has no doubt 3 that Hitler is Fuehrer in fact as well ) as title, that policy is in his hands, v and that his leadership is, in truth, e the head and front of -he Nazi dans ger. There is a singularly impres- j-, s sive portrait, here, of a man whose n ,'l fits of dullness and lethargy are sue- s - c_eded by accessions of tremendous tJ i, energy and inspiration, in which he c plans and decides and in which he n • energises and transforms his fol- “ i’ lowers. Mr de Courcy’s confidence E i the Allied cause survives a very hj t careful and candid examination of q German resources. hj