GERMAN ANGER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 7 December 1940, Page 5

GERMAN ANGER

SWISS PRESS REPORT EFFECT OF AIR RAIDS ON BRITAIN CORRESPONDENT’S VISITS TO BOMBED TOWNS [British Official Wireless] RUGBY, sth December. Wha.t is regarded in London a m significant evidence that the Germans are not so satisfied with the effects of their night raids on British provincial cities as their propaganda suggests is the fury with which the Goebbels machine ha* greeted objective reports of these raids in the Swiss Press, and parcularly the outburst against those from the London correspondent of the “Neue Zurcher Zeitung.’*

“I must affirm,” wrote the correspondent, after a visit to Coventry, where, he says, he was allowed to go where he liked and see everything, “that as in the case of London the German attack was aimed not so much at military objectives, such as factories, but far more at terrorisation. The centre of the town, which is partly levelled to the ground, contained practically no factories, but only shops and dwellings. Coventry’s productive capacity was more interfered with by interruption of water and other services—which was temporary and is now largely regained—than by direct damage to factories.”

Of Birmingham, he said, also after visiting it: “In relation to a large number of factories in the enormous industrial region round Birmingham, those industrial objectives demolished or damaged represent only a modest proportion,” and of Bristol, “the damage seems to be even more limited.**

He concludes: “Why the Luftwaffe has adopted once more civilian terrorisation tactics after they had so completely failed in London is inexplicable. The result in Coventry, too, as I convinced myself in talks with people of every class, has only deepei>ed the bitter determination to go on with the war.” BITTER GERMAN ATTACKS The controlled Nazi Press bitterly attacks these observations. “In pay of England” and “Switzerland in Churchill’s Service” are typical headlines. “The croaking of these frogs becomes unbearable,” writes the “Boersen Zeitung.” “This bribed correspondent committed more than a crime of stupidity,” says the “Volkischer Beobachter,” and adds dark insinuations of what the Nazis will do to revenge themselves on a free Press which dares still to exist within reach of German power.

The note struck by the “Frankfurter Zeitung” is a curious illustration of how easily the blatant boastfulness and bullying typical of the Nazi in the ascendency will switch back to the whining of an aggrieved victim which is a characteristic technique of the Nazi in difficulty. Across its front page this paper writes: “A nation of 80,000.000 fighting for bare existence finds itself attacked, insulted and slandered by newspapers of a tiny State whose Government claims to be neutral. The nature of this report is an earnest of the infamy of the correspondent who wrote it, the newspaper that printed it, and the Swiss public that tolerate such things.”

It is thought in London that such extravagance of attack can only serve to enhance the already high reputation for objectivity and veracity which the Swiss Press has long enjoyed.