AT MANOEUVRES

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 103, 28 October 1936, Page 8

AT MANOEUVRES

NEW GERMAN.-ARMY

GREATEST SINCE 1914

The big autumn military manoeuvres of the German land and air forces have opened in the presence of Herr Hitler in the neighbourhood of Bad Nauheim, in Upper Hesse, reported th-j Berlin correspondent of "The Times" on September 21. »They are the culminating "grand manoeuvres" of this year and the largest in scale that have been held in Germany since before the war.

Following a series of corps exercises in all the twelve corps command areas, in which there has usually been a division on each side,'these ar,e group manoeuvres, involving an army corps on each side. The group concerned is the second, with headquarters at Kassel, and the. operations are being supervised by General yon Leeb, the group commander, and his staff.

. The opposing forces are the V Corps, under General Geyer (Red), and "the IX Corps, under General Dollmann (Blue). The two corps staffs are conducting the' operations, although the forces are made up of various units, not all belonging to those corps, and there are three .divisions oir one side .and two on the'other. .Every part oi the new German army is being brought into action, and popular attention is naturally concentrated largely upon the tanks and other mechanised' units, the co-operating air arm, and the antiaircraft batteries, which showed at the recent display at Nuremberg something of the progress they had made in twelve months. GROUP OPERATIONS. The group manoeuvres are to last five days, and are being attended by a number of prominent members of the National-Socialist regime, including Herr Himmler, the S.S. 'leader and Police Commander; Herr Lutze, chief of staff of the S.A.; Herr Huhnlein, commander of the National-Socialist Motor Corps, "and many officers of the old army and. the superseded Reichswehr, among them General yon Seeckt. The military and air attaches of many countries, including Great Britain, have been invited. The corps exercises held hitherto have led to the characterisation of this year's operations as training exercises for the troops rather than problem manoeuvres designed to rehearse specific plans in the defence system. The somewhat rigid time-table scheme of the programme and the publicity accorded them suggest that the group manoeuvres are likely to be of similar character. They may be regarded as a demonstration to the world of Germany's military progress, and an encouraging spectacle for the German people. ... .•■■■' Not that the army in Germany needs popularising. There, may be a certain amount of grumbling at the introduction of two years* service, but the outstanding principle' remains .unshaken; that it is an honour to serve and a misfortune to be unable, for any reason, to do so. ' This spirit; thougn stimulated perhaps under the Nazt, regime, was strong enough, in spite of all that is said today, under the Wetmar Republic. The long-service Reichswehr never lacked for keen recruits, nor. was any difficulty experienced in finding more than enough volunteers, in the stages of transition to the present conscript army. RECRUITING "FAILURE." It is consequently with a hint of contemptuous wonder that the German Press has recorded in big headlines, on the strength of the information published in "The Times," the "failure" of recruiting for the new British Supplementary Reserve. "Instead of 17,000 only 286 recruits" is the somewhat sweeping, if fundamentally indicative, form in which the news was conveyed in many German newspapers. To the German mind this result in a month and a half is inconceivable, even under a genuinely voluntary system. Germany also fails to understand the idea that in these days of air warfare and "totalitarian war" a najion should only come up to the -scratch when danger is upon it, and when it" may be too late, with the most, willing material in the. world, to train a "Kitchener army" as in 1914. Leaving aside what may be regarded as the nationalistic exaggerations of present-day Germany, the results here of a similar appeal, or an appeal under British Territorial conditions, would be incomparably greater under a voluntary system. For one thing the service, while hard, would be made to appeal more effectively to the self-respect of recruits, and any idea that the wearing of the national uniform -was a sort of eccentricity would receive short shrift,