Bombing 0f Germany

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 16 October 1941, Page 3

Bombing 0f Germany

EFFECT ON MORALE Siinr iln- Ih -inning of the Herniaii-Ku-iaii war :i ml I lie simultaneous inoi'o:is«* in iln- intensity of British bomnin.:-., 1 1 -i• morale of Iho Herman Innno fronl has milisl an I i:i l!j weakened. u« li is ilio uimnimoii.s com iolion oC n|i j«-t• ii \ o .1 1 mI (|ii;i liliod observers in Si"okliolin. This oonviolion inis .crown from nnuv or 10-s reliable rumours, j indications and riivimisiaiitial or oven iliro. i o\ iiloiioo loathing Iln* Swedish ! t a pi! aI, said Bernard Valery in the j "Now York Timo'." of Sopiomhor 7. Details of il .• r-iiuatiou are oxlrenioly diliioiill lo ohiain hooauso Iho Hermans i have surrounded I heir people with ini j effeetive "I'hiiiose wall." and in the j lasi ihri'o inonlhs especially il has hooonio more anil more <lillieul( for noudireel ooiiiaol with il-. 1 population. Discontent Seen The discontent of the population in the British "target areas" - Hamburg. Bremen, Mannheim, the Rhineland and other regions has recently boon foilfirmed indirectly hy several Herman newspapers, which have expressed their sympathy with the people of these areas and warned them that worse times are yet to come. A trustworthy eye witness who just arrived in Stockholm from Bremen, where he had stayed for a year, declared: "The Hermans cannot take it, particularly the really heavy raids, which we Were having roughly every four weeks. Women grew hysterical, complained at the inefficiency of the anti-aircraft defences. I heard a worker who was standing beside his whimpering wife in an air-raid shelter call Hoering ‘a damned fat liar.’ "Last year they tried to show luave faces and convince each other that it. j was just an accident tlvat tin* British got through the barrage, but now they j are sun* it will go on and get worse. | They are not resigned to it. Effect In Berlin "It is not so had yet outside of the ! ‘target area,’ in Berlin, but it is evi- | dent that it will soon be. 1 am eon- j vin cod thar continuous day and night British raids are capable of cracking the morale of the population. lH*spite all propaganda, they are not convinced that thev are lighting for their homes and their lives, as the British and KusTiie effect Of the Russian war is more complex and for the time being "Never has a war mot with <o little enl htisiasm as this one,’’ the usually reliable Berldi correspondent of "Hagens Nyheier" wroie recently, "Nobody celebrates the victory communiques. "The passivi’.v of Hie Herman people toward this war lias been revealed by an illuminating order of the Berman authorities, saying that when the restaurant loudspeakers broadcast the High Command communiques [he guests must cense eating and chatting and the personnel cease serving. Also ; Herman newspaiiers have published articles complaining that moviegoers j managed to escape the war newsreels by coming in too late or leaving too j early." Communists Stirring The war ai-m unleashed the subler- j ranean work of the Herman Commuii- ! sts. One must uot forget that in the ast relatively free Presidential elec- i * ion in Hennany in 1032 the Commun- l! 4s obtained more than 5.000.000 rotes, c in nine years this mass could not have ; c lisappeared from tlie* surface of the I : earth, and it Las not disappeared. r Reports say that in a Herman inInstrial centre the walls are covered r every night with anti-lliller and pro- j r •Stalin inscriptions. The furious ! t Nazis, tired of wiping off tlie inscrip- r tions, wrote one day on the same walls, "Why don’t you do it in broad j daylight, you cowards?" The answer , came promptly the next night: ‘‘Sorry, hut in the daytime we are too busy parading with you fellows.!’’ Since the art tack on Russia tills Com- c munist activity is said to have been ! greatly intensified. Reports of almost 0 daily Gestapo round-ups of Communist 5 suspects, of workers in a munitions b factory finding tbeir machines covered with "sabotage your work" inscriptions t and of defeatist leaflets being found everywhere in Germany—these are received in Stockholm too frequently to l lie all invented. Naturally, the most important cause of the weakening of German morale j a is the unexpected difficulty of the lius- a sfian campaign. The same reliable hl * i s formant from Bremen said: “At first c the population was told that all would j s be over in four weeks, then in six n weeks, and later by the middle of October." a Preparations For Winter o But at the same time visible prepara- j v tions for a winter campaign are made throughout Germany. Trainloads of wounded continue to pour in. Death t announcements in the newspapers Increase in number. Recently the women who have largely replaced men as postmen went on strike in Vienna because they were overworked by the tremendous number of letters from the War Olliee announcing the casualties, and also because j by the painful scenes the delivery of these letters provoked among the recipients. Despite all these signs of the weakening of civilian morale it would be . futile to expect a rapid break of the,; German home front. For one thing, the Germans still have food enough, though of poor quality and in uot | I Quite sufficient quantity. But the war already has created an, fl Je!°and°if * the Russians continue j to resist and the British to bomb ever B more heavily, many observers tool the | collapse in one form or another is bound g to come with dramatic suddenness. | The; average young, man does not | attain his full height until he is twenty- I five years of age; blit the rate of increase during the five preceding years is only one-fifth of an inch a year. ,