The Topic of the Week: Is it Peace or War-Hitler?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19578, 26 August 1933, Page 12

The Topic of the Week: Is it Peace or War-Hitler?

“ War Propaganda in Qermany is Ceaseless and Systematic” Review by Robert Bernays M.P., in “The News-Chronicle.”

“War Propaganda in Germany is ceaseless and systematic.” Review by Robert Bernays M.P., in “The News- I Chronicle.” Uniforms everywhere, the continuous tramp of marching men, the shouting of patriotic songs, a general atmosphere in the streets of smartness and swagger—that Is the dominant impression that I have brought back from a three weeks’ round tour of the New Germany. What does it all mean? Is Germany preparing to do battle for her lost frontiers? I will try and set down the factors in the situation as carefully and unhysterically as I can. First of all, what is the political military strength of Germany? Of regular troops Germany possesses only the 100,000 provided under the treaty. It was laid down at Versailles that the term of recruitment should be for 12 years. , They have thu3 been put through a period of training more gruelling than in any other country and are hi consequence probably the finest standing army in the world. But there are only 100,000 of them. Alone they could not stand up for a week against the troops of any of their neighbours. The Unofficial Armies. But they do not stdhd alone. The alarming factors in the situation are the . unofficial armies—the Steel Helmets and the S.A. and S.S. detachments of the Nazi movement. The Steel Helmets are the ex-service men. They formed themselves after the war into a:i organisation somewhat analogous to the British Legion, except that it is semi-military and definitely political. Later in origin, but more formidable in temper and numbers, are the Nazis, the creation of Herr Hitler. Ostensibly they were formed as an auxiliary police force to aid the State in its struggle against Communism. They called thmselves National Socialists, but as the years have passed their Nationalism has strengthened at the expense of their Socialism. They regard themselves as the symbol of the regeneration of Germany after defeat and the thraldom of what they allege to have been a government of the Jews for the Jews by the Jews. They care nothing for the Kaiser. They are the middle classes and they remember how little part they played in the pageants of the pre-war Empire.

remember seeing a parade of them at Nuremberg. A troop of Boy Scouts from an English slum city would have been more impressive in appearance. But taken as a whole—and I have studied them all over Germany—they cannot be lightly dismissed. In the first place they really enjoy military training. The ordinary German boy likes nothing better than giving orders or being ordered about. The meaningless manoeuvres of a parade ground, against which the English schoolboy frets and fumes in his Public School 0.T.C., are one long thrill to the German. They give him a sense of discipline and order and comradeship that nothing else can. Above all they are an excuse for wearing a uniform, and for that the German in his leisure moments from shop counter or office desk hungers as much as an Englishman does for flannel trousers and an open-necked shirt. Instead of Week-end Tennis. So the week-end that in England is spent on the river or the tennis court or in the cinema, or, where there is no pocket money, happily mouching at the street corner, is in Germany dedicated to military training. Every open space on a Sunday afternoon nowadays is an open-air drill hall. Admittedly they have no weapons. The Nazi carries a bayonet, but he is not allowed a rifle. As far as I could estimate the situation the provisions of the Versailles treaty are being fairly faithfully observed. There is a certain amount of clandestine manufacture of small arms, but the big gun factories are silent. The reason is obvious. The working class is in far too disgruntled a mood for it to be safe to begin armament making without the secret escaping to France. Of bombing aeroplanes there are none, and the speed with which the passenger aeroplane can be converted into a bomber in time of need is much exaggerated. It is more difficult to generalise about poison gas, but fortunately the chemists were Jews, and persecution has turned them into vindictive exiles. The situation may be summed up thus. Germany has troops, but not the wherewithal to make them effective. But even that is not a position that can be viewed with complacancy. A man who knows his drill is half-way through his soldier’s training. Germany has now already over a million half-trained men. Youth Will Not Listen. What is more, her youth have a rankling sense of injustice. A Nazi undergraduate at Berlin University showed me his room. There was only one decoration on the walls —a map of post-war Europe with the lost German provinces marked in red. In one corner of the room there was a hiker’s equipment, in another a duelling outfit. Beyond a table and a hard-backed chair there was no other furniture. It was typical of the austerity of the new Germany. It does not merely endure hardness; it enjoys it. Young Ger-

many thinks Young England soft. It is the same tragic mistake that led to the invasion of Belgium in 1914 and the occupation of the Rhine four years later.

It is only fair to add that that view is shared only by a minority in Germany. There are the working classes —or the large section of them that has not gone Nazi—silent, sullen, broken in spirit, it is true, now, but not promising material for cannon fodder. There are the older men who remember the Somme and the sliding duckboards of the Passchendaele slaughter house. “They are boys; they do not know what war is,” whispered one of them to me during a Nazi march-past. “I try and tell my son, but it is no good; he will not listen.” There is a section of youth, liberal minded in its widest sense, still outside the concentration camps, who loathe the new regime with the intensity of a Cavour or a Gariwhere I stand,” said a young writer baldi. “They can shoot me here to me. “I will not fight.” It is to these men that I look for salvation from catastrophe rather than to Hitler's Reichstag speech, however pacific in words. Hitler is a realist. He knows that war now would be be fatal to himself and Germany. The Inculcation of War. Ido not doubt that. It would be just a race between the Poles and the French to see who reached Berlin first. It would mean overwhelming defeat and a Communist revolution. But a Germany re-armed is a very different proposition. I have no faith in the statements made to me by every Nazi leader with whom I spoke that Germany will only fight in a defensive war. There sno war that cannot be regarded as defensive. All the old persecution complex has come back. Germany regards herself as surrounded by hungry enemies. There are horrific pictures in ship windows ol the relative armaments of Germany ir comparison with the rest of the world Appeals are made to take classes in the elements of protection against gas attack. Gas masks are sold in the shops side by side with soft hats. War propaganda is ceaseless anc systematic. On the anniversary oj Jutland, for instance, a special typewritten lesson was circulated to al elementary schools explaining hov splendid and smashing was the German victory. A leading professor ir Frankfurt University tells the assembled students that it is more important to learn the mechanism of a gun thar a chemistry text book. Organised bodies of students are touring tht Polish frontier to have their nationalism inflamed by the stories of injustices. In addition the Press ii completely muzzled so that any story however fantastic, of foreign cupidity and cunning can be put across th< German people.

Their god is the Reich and Hitler is its prophet. Most of them are young men who have never seen a shot fired except in a street battle. Their pride in their brown shirts has something of the grandeur of fanaticism. They would bare their breasts to machineguns if Hitler gave the order. Their strength is estimated at nearly a million.

With such a propaganda going on it is not unreasonable to suggest that Hitler talkes peace, not because he really believes in it,, but because for the next five or ten years there is no other course.

There are many observers who ridicule the potential fighting strength of these troops. Certainly the blocade and inflation have taken their toll. I