NAZI LEADERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22786, 10 January 1944, Page 6

NAZI LEADERS

Plans To Pass Underground

HITLER ONLY A FIGUREHEAD

(8.20 p.m.) NEW YORK. Jan. 9. Well-informed Berlin circles state that the Nazi leaders have already arranged for the party to pass underground as soon as it becomes necessary, says the Stockholm correspondent of the “New York Times.” A vast number of the Hitler Youth Party, as well as potential legions of critics of whatever conditions defeat would impose on Germany, would be sufficient to establish a new organisation which, working from below, would become a factor of unrest and trouble in post-war Germany.

Many recent statements by prominent Nazis make it plain that the idea of disaster has occurred to them as something more than a remote possibility. It is clear that so long as the Nazis remain in power and until the last shots are fired, the party will not acknowledge defeat any more than will the military hierarchy. Both factions are working hand and glove with Himmler, and the Wilhelmstrasse blandly envisages that even generals will be thrown on their own if the eastern front splits under the weight of the Soviet onslaughts.

With the nerve centre of Berlin systematically hammered by air blows, the Nazi staff is already cut up into sections working independently with administrative offices scattered in dozens of different directions. This disruption naturally gives the dictator plenty of time for loafing and is making his office more or less superfluous, a fact which Hitler probably realises. In any case his public appearances are steadily becoming rarer and evidently the only use the party has for him is as a figurehead.