INSIDE GERMANY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24757, 3 December 1943, Page 4

INSIDE GERMANY

BY GUNNAR T. PIHL, Swedish journalist who lived in Berlin until recently.

HOME FKONT CONTROL HIMMLER AND BORMANN AMAZING SPY ORGANISATION

No. V. Two men rule Germany to-day. They are spectacled, schoolmasterish Heinrich Himmler, Minister of the Interior, Chief of Police and the Gestapo, and Martin Bormann, 43-year-old successor of Rudolf Hess as chief of the Nazi ['arty Chancellery. Himmler, with his amazing organisation of spies and police terrorists, has direct physical control of the home front. Bormann, his intimate friend, as the Nazi closest to Hitler, can decide exactly what shall and shall not be brought to the Fuehrer's ear. Yet this powerful intriguer is so little known abroad that one has difficulty in remembering that 110 law in Germany is valid unless countersigned by Martin Bormann. These two are the only men in Germany who could overthrow Hitler, but they are unlikely to do so except in the final extreme. There is a brotherhood of fear as well as of the gutter, and although they realise that "der Fuehrer" froze to death in the ruins of Stalingrad, "Herr Hitler" is still a useful scapegoat for their misdemeanours. 0110 must never forget, in dealing with these men, that they are condottieri, soldiers of fortune of the modern world actuated only by two sirr,pla motives: persona] comfort and personal power. An Impossible Task Compared with Himmler and Bormann, other figures of the Nazi Party have little importance, but since some of them play their part in dragooning the home front of Germany they deserve brief mention. ' Dr. Josef Goebbels —whom we in Berlin knew as ''the billy goat of Babelsberg" (Germany's Hollj-wood) on account of his amours with young Nazi film stars. The doctor, who ranked Number Three in the £sazi hierarchy, has done a brilliant job on the impossible task of convincing the German people that victory is just around the corner. Joachim von Ribbontrop ranks No. 4 on the list. He is the most unpopular Nazi in Germany where fantastic tales of his and his wife's extravagances have given him the nickname "Champagne Joe." He retains a measure of power in foreign.- affairs by staying most of the time at Hitler's side at headquart- | ers. flattering him whenever possible. Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering.— He is head of the four-year plan and officially designated as successor to 1 Hitler. Keep an eye on Goering. His ' Nazi sympathies are growing shallower every day. It is common gossip in Berlin . that he has already made contact with the Allies through Switzerland, and the von Rosen family in Stockholm, and intends, if possible, to emerge from this war on top. For the Allies he may prove useful ; as a "Barloglio," but my advice is to jettison him the moment his period of usefulness is at an end; he is as big a gangster as any of the others. Personally he is extravagant and bomhas- - tic. but this "playboy of the party" commands a certain popularity among the people. A Joke on Ley I do not know whether he plans a future as a restaurateur —with his figure he would be a superb night club manager—but he has already bought Maxim's in Paris, the Three Hussars in Vienna, and big restaurants in Amsterdam, The Hague, Riga and Prague. Dr. Robert Ley • -famous as the party's biggest drunkard, officially ; Labour Minister, but nowadays more concerned with the problems of housing for evacuees from* bombed cities to think about much else. His love of publicity, his doglike devotion to the Fuehrer and his abysmal stupidity have combined with his partiality to liquor to make him ihe greatest figure of fun in German public life. After the R.A.F. raid on Wuppertal on "June 24 he made a speech to the workers amid the still smoking ruins of their city, and told them stoutly that 110 damage of the slightest military importance had been done. At this a burly labourer at the back of the hall shouted: "Haven't you heard. Robert, they got the brewery as well?" Albert Speer, Minister of Munitions and Armaments. —Perhaps the best man Nazi Germany has. Originally an architect who built Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin, he lived a simple life in a two-room flat in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald. He is noted for his energy and brusrraeness with the military chiefs, with whom he has to deal on questions of new weapons. Rivalries Between Ministers The tale is told of a conference at the War Ministry where Speer interrupted a speech by a high-ranking general. He sprang to his feet and declared: "lour figures are wrong, Herr General, your plans are wrong, everything is wrong. Good-night', gentlemen, I must find others who understand their job better." I have Jeft Hitler last, so as to •explain his own peculiar policy in deali"g. with his lieutenants, a policy which has led to frequent rumours abroad of rivalries between Nazi Ministers. These rivalries, which do exist personally and politically, are assiduously fostered by Hitler for his own purposes, while periods of political "exile" serve to prevent any one man rising to a position of power in which he would be capable of intriguing against the Fuehrer. Thus Ley is Minister of Labour, vet the former sea captain Sauckel, Gauleiter of Thuringia, is in charge of all 12,000,000 or 13,000,000 foreign workers in Germany. Goering is chief of the four-year plan for industry, but Speer controls armaments and munitions. Jacob Werlin, of the Auto Union works, was further appointed as controller of everything to do with automobiles and inotorengines, but has not been heard of lately. . "lie tried to teach the Fuehrer to drive an automobile, but forgot to show him where the brake was," said an irreverent official in Berlin, with illconcealed relish, when 1 asked the reason for this disappearance. No Organised Opposition Hitler, a finn believer in maintaining a nice balance of power among his followers, has only allowed one man's power to overshadow the others —once again we return to Himmler. These, then, are the men who control the destiny or the German people, and to them there is 110 organised opposition throughout the length and breadth of Greater Germany. 1 will not suggest that opposition to the Nazis does not exist —it is simmering very near the surface and will come ! to boiling point immediately military : defeat in the field leads to the collapse of morale at home and at the front. , But the fact is that resistance to ] Nazidom in Gestapo-controlled Germany ' is a physical impossibility. Just think of Gestapo-uniformed Black Guards, civilian-clad Sicherheitsdienst. or "security service" agents , provocateurs of the police—hundreds and thousands of them. They censor post and telephones, they have representatives in every Ministry, every army command, German 'Legation, factory and village where the Swastika , flies. Their chiefs are Heinrich Himmler, Austrian-born Ernst Kaltenbrunner, successor to Hevdrich, relentless men ( who do not hesitate to strike down even the highest at the first sign of suspicious conduct. Then realise how impossible it is to start a widespread anti-Nazi movement in Germany. I (To be continued) fi