LESS BLATANT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 256, 26 September 1940, Page 7

LESS BLATANT.

NAZI PROPAGANDA

REASON INDICATED,

(British Official AVireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 24. A new note is detected in the German communique which for the first time on. Friday admitted that German plane losses were greater than the British. Friday’s communique stated that only one British machine was brought down, whereas three German planes failed to return. Again on Monday the communique admitted the loss of one. plane while stating that no British machine had been shot down. It would appear that German propagandists are becoming anxious about the lack of credence given even at home to their figures and have taken the opportunity afforded by the lull in operations when the losses on cither side are insignificant to try in a small way to restore their damaged reputation for veracity. A further motive for t'his sudden access of modesty, it is suggested here, may be a belated recollection of Hitler’s own precepts in “Mein Kampf” —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 light he felt that he. had been deceived by the manufacturers of the information given to him. He therefore lost 'heart. Dr. Goebbels has been making precisely the same mistake. Sneers at London’s defences, making denials of the true figures of German losses, and boasts of England’s occupation by Germany stimulated the German people to the initial effort, but that phase is past and as the falsity of the priorclaims is revealed by the continued absence of a German victory the, danger to the German morale cannot apparently be neglected.