GERMAN VERACITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 76, 26 September 1940, Page 10

GERMAN VERACITY

A SUDDEN CHANGE

GREATER LOSSES ADMITTED

THAN BRITISH

(British Official Wireless.) (Received September 26, 9 a.m.) RUGBY, September 25. A new note is detected in the German communiques, which for the fii-st time on Friday admitted losses of planes greater than the British. Friday's communique stated that only one British machine was brought down, whereas three German planes faile^d to return. Again, on Monday a communique admitted the loss of one plane, while stating that no British machine h3d been shot down. i It would appear that the German j propagandists are becoming anxious about the lack of credence given even at home to their figures and have taken the opportunity afforded by a lull in the operations when the losses on either side are insignificant to try in a small way to restox-e their damaged reputation for veracity. °A further motive for this sudden access of modesty, it is suggested here, may be a belated recollection of Hitler's own precepts in "Mem Kampf'*—that "it was a fundamental mistake to ridicule the worth of the enemy. Once the German soldier came to realise what a tough enemy he had to fight he felt lie had been deceived by the manufacturers of the information given him. He therefore lost heart." Dr. Goebbels has been making precisely the same mistake. Sneers at the London defences, denials of the true figures of German losses, and. boasts of England's occupation by Germany stimulated the German people Ito their initial effort. But that phase 'has passed and as the falsity of the prior claims is revealed by the continued absence .of German victory the danger for the German morale cannot apparently be neglected.