Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1940 TRAGEDY OF NAZI VICTIMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 216, 10 August 1940, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1940 TRAGEDY OF NAZI VICTIMS.

The plight of countries which have become harnessed to the Nazi yoke through acts of aggression, or fear of it, awakens the sympathetic interest of all free peoples. They are suffering that Germany shall be permitted to live freely and Hitlerism flourish in all its evil ways'; With the overthrowing of freedom on the Continent there has followed a revolutionary change in their economics, and in the words of a neutral correspondent, whose review of this subject has been published in a New York journal, the greatest tragedy is that of the countries whose geographical position, mineral resources, or other advantages drew them into the belligerent zone against their will. Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries were valuable to Hitler and had to be subjugated either peacefully or by force of arms. France has .given him more strategic advantages and problems, for in each of these countries there are “millions of persons who must continue to live, who must find food, who must earn their living, who must patch up as best they can the complicated economic and commercial machinery so quickly disrupted by the mere fact they are now included in the German economic sphere.” Their problem, after they have rebuilt their shattered homes and factories, is to “rebuild the less tangible yet far more vital structure of their nation’s economic life and readjust themselves and it to new conditions.” This, of course, must last so long as the war continues. On its duration depends the problem of-feeding-these people. The fear of war caused Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland to lay in stores of grain and other commodities, but the Nazi is a ruthless spoliator and takes everythin £>• he wants regardless of a people’s suffering. Germany’s economic plans are traced by this correspondent. In Boland they are working to build the country’s resources on an entirely new basis for complete, permanent economic anschluss. Apparently the fate of the Scandinavian and Low Countries has yet to be fully decided, but economically they must contribute their resources to the German war machine so long as the war lasts. These are agricultural products and industrial manufactures and steel and iron ore. At the same time Britain is deprived of these imports—the Nazis boast freely of this fact-—and must look to neutral countries and her own Empire to make up the deficiencies. It is Germany’s intention that these States will adjust their economies to the Reich’s and to do this they must, by necessity, give iip many products they formerly drew from the mo rid market which are vitally, necessary for the maintenance of their production standards. -Agricultural Denmark provides an extreme example, for lacking the imports she formerly obtained she will have to slaughter most of her livestock and seriously limit herself in many ways until in the end she

lias complete dependence on the Reich., The position- to-day in the Balkans is no less serious. Hitler regards the whole of the States there as purveyors of their products to the Reich, and they must be reorganised as livingroom for Germans, with control exercised from Berlin. Their own immediate welfare does not concern Hitler. Such are the problems Germany is creating, but the end of the war will give to these freedom-loving people the rights they , formerly held and which, properly used, will again restore to them their correct place in the world’s economic sphere.