Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1841 ENEMY MORALE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 24 October 1941, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1841 ENEMY MORALE

j IN the last war Allied propaganda I was very eager to show that there ■ was intense hunger, misery and im- , minence of large-scale revolt in Germany long before the sudden break ; [came in 1918. This time we have not made the mistake of trying to buoy up the people with false hopes by stories which, to say the least of them, were exaggerated. It' anything, the position now is the other way round. Little encouragement is given in official quarters to reports that' the Germans are not behind Hitler, that there are signs of collapse in the Third Reich or prospects of early ' large-scale rebellions in occupied territories. While Britain would wel- ' come them and is probably working J hard to encourage them she is not counting on them as the main i weapons for defeating Hitler and I Nazism. Reports of hunger, unrest ; and incipient revolt which reach us need to be balanced one against the other and the reader will then get a fair indication of how far the shoe is 1 beginning to pinch in Germany and in other Axis countries. Broadly speaking these reports can be said! to be founded on fact or personal : impressions rather than on official inspiration. When trying to form an estimate! of internal conditions in enemy coun- ; tries after more than two years of 1 war it is necessary to remember that; no individual sees the whole picture. | If a trained observer and recorder. I such as a journalist, travels through j New Zealand he is at liberty to see i much more for himself than he could j in Germany and to ask and have j answered many more questions. He would beware of judging the food situation, for example, by the menus j at the best hotels and, by going among the people unobtrusively, he would be able to gauge fairly accurately whether the nation as a whole was adequately nourished. But, at the end of his tour, he would probably be unable to give an absolute judgment on, say, whether New Zealand people favoured Gov- j eminent or doctors in the recent! controversy, or whether they ap- i proved or disapproved of the Labour' Party’s refusal to form an all-Party National Government for the conduct j of the war. The same limits to ob- i servation and deduction apply to the j neutral observer who is fortunate enough to get uncensored dispatches! out of enemy countries. A further consideration is that l enemy morale cannot be judged en; bloc. It is necessary to distinguish between the situation—so far as it is] revealed—as it exists in occupied j territory (and in different parts of) it), in Italy and in Germany itself.] There is no need to argue the fact! that few if any of the nations which ! have fallen beneath the Nazi heel,! whether by force or intrigue, do not j stay under it because they choose to. j The hope in the breasts of all of] them therefore is for deliverance. Fire of revolt smoulders among them i' l varying intensity. In Czecho- j Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland and Nor- ! j way it burns fiercely arid leaps to' : the surface intermittently. The French ; ! and Belgians are beginning to wield ! the dual weapons of sabotage and ! assassination with deadly effect.! ; Throughout occupied territory there are hopeful signs of non-co-operation,' and active and effective if spasmodic' resistance, but no evidence of an impending general uprising among the | oppressed peoples to throw off their[ yoke. The Gestapo is too watchful! for that. Conquered territories have! not yet become unmanageable for the Germans though we may believe, that there is a constant and connected effort to make them so when time is [ ripe for united action. In Italy both morale and living standards are at a low ebb. The Italians are hungry, tired and' dispirited. They see II Duce reduced [ to a gauleiter of the Reich. If they! could quit themselves of the war and Germany they probably would. Dr. Funk’s rosy picture of Italy’s future

I in trade will not bring much solace for their present condition of subservience. II appears that the Italians are genuinely afraid that the Nazi tiger which poses as their friend will .wallow them up. To-day Germany is practically the Axis and it is conditions there that ; count most when assessing enemy i morale. The people may not be enthusiastic about the war or even less about the Russian venture but there is no reason to believe that they are not prepared to stand behind Hitler. If we try to visualise the position through German eyes we see that they have no alternative but to do so., Hitler, they believe, may pull them through to a glittering future but [ no one else ean and what is the alternative? Food resources there are hard to assess, but, for the anti-Hitler nations, one of the most hopeful and most definite trends in Nazi economy i: revealed by Dr. Funk’s own warning in a German paper to those Germans who are doubting the value of their money. Inflation resulting in depreciation and finally worthlessness ; j of a country’s war currency is a silent; worker but it is one of the most powerful agents known for spreading unrest and breaking the morale of the common people. Germans cannot have forgotten what happened internally, in the last war.