The Southland Times SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1940. Europe Under the Nazis

Southland Times, Issue 24273, 2 November 1940, Page 4

The Southland Times SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1940. Europe Under the Nazis

FIGURES issued by the Ministry of Economic Warfare, printed yesterday, showed that the Germans are plundering France with a renewed recklessness. Much livestock has been removed to Germany, large quantities of stored wheat have been seized, and the entire Bordeaux grape harvest has been requisitioned. These facts are •significant, for they show that the Nazis are being driven to use extreme measures which seem to clash with the spurious moderation of their political tactics. Although the theory of the master-race remains the basis of Hitler’s European economy, it is being put into practice with a number of local variations. The main reason for such a policy is simply a recognition of the fact that the war has not been won. While the issue remains in doubt, the Nazis cannot afford to have restless and angry peoples simmering with revolt in the western regions that lie closest to Britain. Attempts have been made to preserve a semblance of local autonomy. In Denmark, for instance, the King and the Stauning Government are allowed to direct the country’s affairs within limits imposed by the Germans. No serious oppression has been reported from Norway, Holland and Belgium. In France the setting up of the Petain regime was cleverly designed to soothe the national pride, and at the same time to allow the anti-British elements to seize control of the country. It should not be imagined, of course, that the Nazis are adopting moderation as the beginning of a long-term policy. They are handling Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Norwegians with a shrewd carefulness which would be quickly replaced by a naked repression if the war went against Britain. To discover what fate is reserved for subject races it is only necessary to look at Czechoslovakia and Poland. Economic Necessity The deliberate oppression of the Poles is one of the blackest chapters of history. Locked away in their eastern plains, far from, the armies of liberation now gathering in Britain, the Poles have been made the victims of the ugliest impulses of the German temperament. Their potential leaders among the intellectuals have been ruthlessly executed. Universities and schools have been closed; forced labour for starvation wages has been thrust upon the workers; and there have been wholesale expulsions from ancestral lands to make room for German colonists. According to figures quoted by The Economist, war and exposure have caused about 4,000,— 000 deaths in Poland since the beginning of the struggle. Famine and disease will reduce the population still further, and there have been reliable reports of a “compulsory sterilization on a wide scale as an insurance against the future of a race whose fertility has been proved to be greater than that of the Germans.” The Czechs have been less harshly treated; but they, too, have seen their priests, politicians and trade union leaders imprisoned or shot. Their universities are closed, and education is being degraded to a level scarcely beyond literacy. But although the Nazis have tried to make a distinction between their treatment of Poles and their treatment of the Western nations, economic necessities are being felt with an equal severity in all territories that have known the invaders. No tricks of inflation can disguise the effects of the forced inclusion of economies, framed to maintain high standards of living, within a system which exists only to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the German war machine. Everywhere the same symptoms are appearing: soaring prices, food shortages, and a stricter rationing. The dislocation of industry is creating a widespread unemployment and forcing the Nazis to interfere more directly with internal policy. Reports are reaching England from the Low Countries and Scandinavia of a reviving national spirit and of a rebellious mood which will break into violence when the opportunity occurs. Hitler is learning that victory in battle is not enough. Local independence and a cultural autonomy are the necessary conditions for the absorption of small nations within a larger political system. But Hitler, who has denied these gifts to his own people, can offer nothing better than empty promises to the victims of his insane ambitions. And all the time the British bombers are announcing to enslaved Europe the approach of. a real freedom.