POWER CONSOLIDATED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21977, 12 June 1933, Page 7

POWER CONSOLIDATED

NAZIS ON BETTER FOOTING i LONG REGIME PROBABLE. LONDON, May 27. The Hitler regime gives the impression of a dictatorship steadily consolidating its power, writes a special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian from Berlin. Opposition has been crushed and trampled underfoot, and the prospect of the Nationalists acting as a brake on their Nazi allies is fading daily. The final organisation of the new German State on the basis of a one-party dictatorship seems to be only a question of time. Terror remains the basic Nazi method of government, but it is becoming more organised and regulated. Beatings and murders in the notorious “ brown houses ” still occur, wholesale raids in the working-class districts take place almost daily, and grim tales of brutality emanate from concentration camps, in which the number of “suicides” is suspiciously high. It is reported that prisoners are frequently beaten, and that ropes are conveniently left in cells for the benefit of those wishing to commit suicide. The atmosphere of secrecy and repression continues in Berlin, most people being afraid to discuss the atrocities because, apart from the terror inspired by the Storm Troopers, the courts daily impose heavy sentences on Germans overheard describing them. The terror, however, is not the chief explanation of the admitted stability of Hitlerism, for roughly half the population—largely armed and organised — supports the regime. The remainder, unarmed and cowed, are helpless and hopeless. The consensus of opinion among German and foreign observers in Berlin is that Hitlerism has every prospect of continuing for a long time, barring an unsuccessful wgr, which is unlikely in the near future, because Hitler’s extravagant nationalism and rearmament projects have restored Anglo-French solidarity in the West, and his antiBolshevik policy has antagonised Russia in the East, and it would be madness for Germany to initiate a war under these conditions.