NAZI “BENEFITS”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 212, 6 August 1940, Page 2

NAZI “BENEFITS”

HOW GERMANY SUFFERS. GUNS BEFORE BUTTER. (United Press Association— By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, Aug. 5. In his broadcast during the weekend the 51inister of Information (Mr Duff Cooper) said that a great many people tvere inclined to exaggerate the efficiency of the Germans. Just because their army had been so successful during the last ll months people were inclined to think that they did everything better than the British did, that they were incapable of making the mistakes Britain made, anu that they had succeeded in solving the problenis that continued to puzzle Britain. That was not true.,

The German army in the last w r ar, he said, scored a series of astounding successes. They swept through Belgium and succeeded in getting within a few utiles of Paris, while at the same time holding up tho attack of the whole Russian Empire on the Eastern Front. They swallowed Serbia, and they swr’lowed Rumania, but in spite of all these successes they were soundly defeated on the battlefield in.the end. Nor were they any more efficient than Britain in other matters. There were people who without any affection for Hitler nevertheless believed that he had done good for his own country in spite of the misery he had inflicted on the rest of the world, Mr Duff Cooper continued. That was not the case. Before the war began, seven years of the Nazi regime had aireadv done great harm to the people of Germany FACTS REVEALED.

A book had recently been published called “Heil Hunger,” which stated tho facts, and every fact was based on German official records which were quoted. The Germans were a very methodical people—that must he granted—and while Hitler, Goering and Goebbels had been marching round boasting and declaiming, the oldfashioned German civil servant had been sitting at his desk peering with weak eyes through strong spectacles, and scratching his closely-shaven head over long rows of figures to produce tho annual reports on the condition of the people. These reports were com - piled with relentless accuracy. The leaders of the Nazi Party were too busily occupied to know what their civil servants were doing. Now that they had found out. the civil servants would not be allowed to do it any longer. They would probably find their activities in future carried on from a concentration camp. The Minister said that he would not give a lot of figures, but the hare facts. The population of Germany had been decreasing during/ ihose seven years in Spite of all the efforts made to increase it. There bad been a great increase in the disease of rickets which created such havoc among children. GROAVTH OF CRISIE.

“We have often been told,” Mr Duff Cooper said, “that law and ord,er are upheld in Germany irrespective of how merciless may be the means to uphold them, but if we read the figures: all given from German sources in the book we find that the convictions of youthful criminals were more than doubled between the years 1934 and 1937. There lias been a steady increase in the number of suicides and lunatics and of those suffering from tuberculosis.

“These are some of the ‘benefits’ which the Nazi regime has conferred on Germany. This is partly, no doubt, owing to the principle laid down by Marshal Goering that it is better to spend money on guns than butter. Let that statement be remembered, because it was that policy which produced increased hunger in Germany and will shortly produce starvation in Europe. We shall be blamed for it; wo are blamed for every thing, but it is the Nazi policy of guns rather than butter that is responsible. Destruction and devastation march in the vanguard of Nazism, and famine lies behind.” Mr Duff Cooper said that there was a beautiful incident of Nazi stupidity and inefficiency in the last few days in the pamphlets dropped over England. It was astounding —four full pages with three columns in each, containing word for word the long, dull speech which Hitler delivered in Germany on July 19 and which was very adequately reported in the British Press on the following morning. Anybody who wanted to could have read it then. Now that it was a fortnight old nobody would be likely to want to read it again. LEAFLET FOLLY. It was really remarkable that the Germans were so ignorant and so foolish that they believed 'that the British Government could want to prevent people from reading “this tedious, bombastic, boring balderdash,” about two and a half columns of which was taken up in a list of the names of generals whom Hitler had promoted—generals whose names the world had never heard of before and devoutly hoped it might never hear again. Yet the Germans thought this sort of thing was going to influence public opinion and persuade the population, of Great Britain to rise up against their Government and make peace with Germany. “I have seen my own name all too often in the papers lately, but I must confess to a feeling of satisfaction when I found that it had not been omitted from Hitler’s speech,” said Mr Duff Cooper. “He still remembers me and denounces me as one of the greatest of criminals. I would not have it otherwise.-I have always hated him. and I 6hall go on hating him till the end. He has proved himself a curse in Europe, and he remains a menace to the world. Even in the glorious hour of our victory I shall not find it easy to forgive him, for I shall not bo able to forget that in the whole long history of mankind no single individual has been responsible for so much human suffering' and misery.” ,