The Times FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 1941. Our Secret Allies

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 187, 8 August 1941, Page 4

The Times FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 1941. Our Secret Allies

Tlie extent of passive resistance which the Nazi authorities have to cope with in the occupied territories in Europe has been the subject of many reports during the past year. More has been published in the United States about this aspect of Hitler’s conquests than in Great Britain. This is explained in part by the fact that American newspaper correspondents have continued to have at least limited opportunity of maintaining contact with the Continental countries.

There is also another explanation, that while the British Government is no doubt accurately informed as to the unrest existing in the subject territories, it is not believed that the war can be won by the disorganised, unarmed and impoverished peoples under the Nazi heel; and wishful thinking is not to be encouraged. It is reasonable to hope, nevertheless, that the conquered nations will, in due time, have the opportunity of contributing materially to an Allied victory.

Messages which have been printed this week indicate in striking terms the nature of the resistance that is being encountered by the Axis armies of occupation at every turn, in every one of the countries which are nominally subject to the Reich or to Italy, and which, by sanguine Berlin report, are gladly co-operating in the “New Order’’ in Europe. Every kind of subterranean intrigue is being made a weapon by the defeated but never vanquished peoples of the Continent.

Shells from Czechoslovakian armament factories fail to explode, while Nazi munition dumps in the Netherlands mysteriously do so; the notorious Yugoslavian terrorist organisations that have been a thorn in the flesh of every previous authority are become a scourge for the Nazi invaders; the Greeks greet an R.A.F. raid as an occasion for public rejoicing, and the Bulgarian people, who had no part in inviting the Germans into their country, are indicating quite plainly by acts of sabotage that they do not appreciate their presence.

In Norway, where opposition has always been on a wellorganised and widespread scale—so much so that the Quisling Government had recently to concede every real vestige of authority to the Nazis—the position is now so difficult that a state of emergency has been proclaimed.

Even in Rumania, it is stated, and in Denmark, two countries which appeared to have vanished into Hitler’s maw without a struggle, the Fuhrer’s deputies are unable to preserve sweet orderliness. While the Nazis throw all the resources at their command into the war against the Soviet, this secret warfare is being waged at their backs, all over the Europe they thought to have subjugated.

It would be a mistake to attach present major importance to these manifestations of discontent as portending a general rising. But they are to be noted as providing intimations for the future that Great Britain has many hundreds of thousands of potential allies who can ultimately be employed in the banishment of Hitlerism from the world and the restoration of freedom and peace in Europe.