MORALE STILL STRONG

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 19, 23 January 1943, Page 5

MORALE STILL STRONG

NAZIS WILLING TO FIGHT

LONDON, .'January 21. In a report from Moscow, the "News Chronicle" correspondent describes interviews he has had } with German prisoners which 1 throw some light on the state of ! morale in the German army. ! The first interview he mentions was with a pilot of the Luftwaffe, a typical tall, blond, blue-eyed officer of the young Nazi type, who had been piloting a Junkers 92 with supplies for the encircled army before Stalingrad. He had been shot down by a Russian fighter. This German did not appear to be worried by the course of events recently. "We retreated last year," he said, "and we shall take it all back in the spring." Asked if he knew that Hitler had pledged the capture of Stalingrad, he said that the fighting strength of the Red Army had been underestimated. The correspondent asked the pilot if the opening of a second front in Europe would affect Germany. "There can be no second front," was his reply. "The whole- coast of Europe is too strongly fortified, and Britain has not got enough shipping." He admitted, however, that if a second front was opened it would have a very bad effect in Germany. The second interview was with a depressed young sergeant who, it appeared, had absorbed the statements of Germany's propaganda to its soldiers that Russians shot all its prisoners. "But you haven't been shot," remarked the correspondent. "Not yet." the sergeant replied. He did not know why Germany was fighting Russia, he admitted. His view of when the war would end was when every German had been killed, and that was what he thought would happen. He shrugged his shoulders