TRUTH AT LAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24413, 26 September 1940, Page 8

TRUTH AT LAST

AIRCRAFT LOSSES GERMAN ADMISSION THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE (British Official' Wireless) RUGBY, Sept. 24. (Received Sept. 25, at 7 p.m.) A new note has been detected in German communiques which for the first time on Friday admitted that their plane losses were greater than the British. Friday’s communique stated that only one British machine was brought down, whereas three German planes failed to return. Again on Monday a communique admitted the loss of one plane, while stating that no British machine had been shot down. It would appear that German propagandists are becoming anxious about the lack of credence given even at home to their figures, and have taken the opportunity afforded by the lull in operations, when the losses on -either side are insignificant, to try in a small way to restore their damaged reputation for veracity. A further motive for this sudden access of modesty, it is suggested here, may be a belated recollection of Hitler’s own precepts in Mein Kampf—“ It was a fundamental mistake to ridicule the worth of the enenr-y. Once the German soldier came to realise what a tough" enemv he had to fight he felt he had been deceived by the manufacturers of the information given to him. He therefore lost heart.” Goebbels has been making precisely the same mistake. Sneers at London defences, making denials of the true figures of German losses, and boasts of England’s occupation by Germany stimulated the German people on the initial effort, but that phase is oast and as the falsity of prior claims is revealed by the continued absence of German victory the danger for German morale cannot apparently be neglected.