The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1936 “UNDERGROUND FIRES” IN GERMANY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20513, 3 September 1936, Page 8

The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1936 “UNDERGROUND FIRES” IN GERMANY.

Some weeks ago a well-informed writer in The English Investors’ Review declared that Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini ‘‘have reduced their peoples to such desperate straits that revolutions are inevitable unless they can stage some spectacular external diversion.” Italy, on her part, finds no difficulty in creating more or less fearsome yet fantastic bogies upon which Signor Mussolini can pour out the vials of wrath in making emotional appeals to the people to prepare to defend themselves against their foes within and without. But in the case of Germany, Herr Hitler has not found the task easy, because of the fires of opposition to Nazism that have been smouldering for years within his own gates. The cable messages yesterday drew back the curtain a little to reveal something of Herr Hitler’s unnerving and everpresent dilemma. The Berlin correspondent of The Times now tells us: “Whereas a few days ago Germany was loudly blaming the “Bolshevik menace" as the sole reason for her own two-year military service decision, the blame is now being placed more on France’s link with Russia. The “Bolshevik menace" does not seem to have been sufficiently convincing. There is a smell of war in the atmosphere, for which suspicion is dawning in Germany that her own policy can at least be blamed. Moreover, Herr Hitler apparently has been convinced that the two-year service and the following tax increases are producing a mood more hostile to the Nazi regime than the German people have before displayed.” Hitherto, in the outside world, opinions have been largely formed by cunningly designed propaganda depicting a triumphant German people solidly united behind Herr Hitler. Thus, to the outside world the Nazi regime appears to be so secure that no opponent dare lift a finger against the national leader. But no Nazi purge can extinguish the fires that burn underground in the principal centres: Political organisations opposing the Nazi regime have officially been disbanded, and any attempt to maintain their existence or to influence the masses by the publication of written matter is punishable by death. But the Socialist and Communist organisations of Germany were too large and too powerful to be abolished by a stroke of the pen, even when that stroke was followed by many more with the truncheon. These organisations have merely gone to ground, and are being carried on with the same clandestine energy as espionage in wartime. These observations are drawn from one of the most, shattering indictments that have ever been voiced against any regime; indeed, Heinz Leipmann in his remarkable book “Fires Underground,” presents a most terrible and devastating exposure of the terrors of Nazism: The story is told of the terrible struggles of a little band of anti-Nazis to maintain their organisation and elude the ban on free newspapers, reads almost like a -wartime spy story, but it is even more terrible. One by one they are tracked down, betrayed to the secret police, and revoltingly murdered. With no other prospect than death, the remaining members continue their work, producing newspapers with printing presses hidden in cells, distributing them between the covers of magazines, circulating propagandist gramophone records beginning with a few bars of music, or forging passports for suspected members to flee the country. According to this account, the Nazi secret police (the Geheime Staatspolizei), which is entrusted with the work of destroying opposition to the National Socialist party has acquired a reputation comparable to that of the Okhrana, or its successor, the Cheka, in Russia. One moment’s contemplation of the moving story told by this German author should serve to convey an accurate idea of the influences Herr Hitler is compelled to take into account when he thinks of permitting Germany to become embroiled in war. It is admitted, of course, that a large section of German people have not yet felt the lash of the Nazi terrorism, but there are moving beneath the surface—and it is this element Herr Hitler fears —strong political currents largely in sympathy with the ruling regime in France and the Soviet, and certainly in tune with the Popular Front in Spain, that would strike hard and ruthlessly at Nazism if ever it became engaged in a fight for its existence.