GERMAN DEFIANCES.

Evening Star, Issue 25300, 7 October 1944, Page 6

GERMAN DEFIANCES.

The spirits of the German people are more likely to be depressed than raised by the efforts of their rulers to keep up their morale. Tlia, desperate plight of Dr Goebbels, forced to continue in that role, is shown pathetically when ho has to enlist the arch-enemy, Mr Churchill, and the silent sadist, Himmler, whose thoughts are more apt to be of graves, as his assistants. "We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, lauding grounds, in fields and on the hills; we shall never surrender," said Mr Churchill, when the Nazis thought that Britain's last hour had come. It is proposed that that now should be made the slogan of Germany. Since invasion is the prospect, " every house will be a fortress and a wall of bodies will rise to halt the hated enemies." The German people—so they are told—will never obey some " upstart " American general, " but only the "—longdescended—" Adolf Hitler."

Will they or will they not? If they do cling to the last moment to the Fulner's guidance it can be only upon the principle that "you got us into this fix; it is for you now to get us out." But the " intuition" of Hitler has been so tragically inept that it would be a crazy people who would put any confidence in that hope. At the moment he does not pretend to have a plan of his own. In his last speech ho was reduced to the inanity that " Germany must conquer, because otherwise tho 'Reich will go under. Germany can conquer. Germany will conquer." And he might have added for emphasis, like the Bellman in ' The Hunting of the Snark ': " "What I tell you three times is true." That, however, would not have helped the effect. 1 Things that Hitler has said three times—and three hundred times—have been so confounded by the developments of tho war that it might well he, as tho Czechs allege, treason for a Gel-man to recall them now. Viewing, a little earlier, the most cheerless prospect that confronts his Reich, the only concrete hope tho Fuhrer could summon up was in new devilries of invention for which tho time grows Into. Conditions have indeed changed since ho was proudlv boasting to his people of how he had spread his armies all oyer Europe, and every nation was suffering more, from their' war than they were themselves. Mr Churchill's defiance was hurled in the first phase of the conflict. It is a different thing for Germany to repeat it after five years o£

struggle, drawing increasingly on her heart's blood, against air forces greater than the creators of tho Luftwaffe ever imagined and land forces in proportion, all assailing her from three sides. That their rulers do not trust Germans to fight to the last ditch voluntarily is shown by tho precautions of the Gestapo to prevent them exercising wills of their own. And, if the Allies do not watch every cranny of escape, long before the last ditch is reached the rulers and .loudest speech-mafcers of an earlier day will have deserted their dupes.