THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, August 28, 1944. GERMANY WITHIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25625, 28 August 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, August 28, 1944. GERMANY WITHIN

Hard on the heels of the abortive revolt of the Prussian army leaders against Hitler and the murderous reprisals that resulted from it, have come reports of a rift between the Fuhrer and his chief Nazis which has caused “ acute tension,” with the prospect of “ sensational events ” to follow. The Swiss sources from which this information originates are close enough to Germany to be wellinformed, and they name Himmler, Goebbels and Goering as the leaders of an opposition group within the Nazi Party which is attempting to force Hitler’s resignation. The idea of the Nazi gangsters falling out among themselves is less fantastic than might be thought on a first consideration of it. Hitler has become the target for the enmity of the Junkers, the acknowledged and traditional military caste of Germany; and their conviction of his military incompetence may, under the relentless pressure of events, be at last communicating- itself to the rank and file of the party and through them to the fear-ridden mass.of the German people. The name of Hitler, moreover, must have become associated, in the average German mind, with the sombre thought of Allied retribution to be exacted for the uncountable bloody crimes committed in his name since the Nazis grasped power. It will be dangerous for any German to have had a known direct association with Hitler and his organisation when the vengeance of the oppressed peoples is turned against Germany in the near future. It is not apparent how either Himmler or Goering or Goebbels, or any other of the Nazi criminals may hope to elude the fate that is overtaking them. But it is at least intelligible that panic fears may be driving them to incalculable extremes of conduct as the nearness of defeat and disaster impresses itself. And if, as may be assumed from accumulating signs, the Hitler party contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, what of the Germans as a whole—“ the great stupid flock of our sheep-hearted people,” as Hitler himself referred to them in “Mein Kampf”? There will be nothing to be gained from further appeals to fanaticism if the German masses are given cause to suspect that solidarity is draining from the party, which the Fuhrer brought into being. In his last reported speech Hitler’s desperate call to Germans was for more fanaticism, more loyalty, more faith t in his leadership. Have they any more to give, or even the will to give, while catastrophe races unchecked towards the frontiers of the Reich? A correspondent of The Times, in a recent article, answers in the negative. The German people, he says, are no longer capable of rising above events, but are being merely herded along by them. Theirs, he says, is an apathy “ which comes from many causes —tiredness, engrossment with the daily job of living, the habit of unquestioning obedience, fear, superstitious belief in miracles to redeem them, dogged patriotism, and a general sense of being caught up in forces too strong fdr them. It is for the most part a state of dull despairing; but it is not desperation, not a determination to break the train of events at all costs. . . -. Some of them still cling to a blind hope rather than sink into utter hopelessness.” That is an appalling picture, fatal in its implications. For it suggests that Germans who have been the willing tools of the party in the past are now spiritless, browbeaten, and blindly led, virtually incapable of lifting, a finger to stay the forces that are impelling them to their doom. The Times’s correspondent says there is still great fear of the Gestapo, but he believes that even the Gestapo would be of little avail “ against a general popular desire to end the war or against a widespread slackening, of will.” He seems, however, to hold out small hope of such conditions asserting themselves, because of the existence still of a unifying force rooted in fear of defeat and of what may follow defeat. The army leaders made their attempt to end the war by ridding the country of the chief agents—for Hitler would not have been their only victim—of the political war party. Theirs was merely the cunning of Ludendorff in 1918, who- Said that as soon as that war became „a game of chance he advised his Government to stop it. “ The fate of the German people was too high a stake for me to hazard,” he commented. Hitler and his clique have ho such expedient scruples. They know what their fate is to be in the event of failure; and they seem bent on making the fate of the German people, drugged by lethargy and despair, and perhaps by a consciousness of guilt shared, subsidiary to their own.