GERMAN MORALE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 229, 29 September 1942, Page 1

GERMAN MORALE

HOW IT WILL CRACK. TWO WINTERS OFF YET. Unless Hitler can smash Russia and carry out a successful invasion of the British Isles this summer and autumn. Germany—and together with it most of Continental Europe—faces another winter grimmer and more terrible than the last, which was the worst it has passed through since 1918. Thus wrote at the end of June the Chief of the Berlin Bureau of the United Press of America after 35 years in Germany, which he left toward the end of May. War-weariness, nervous strain, and grumbling are increasing on the home front. And the German workers, who already put in a 12-to-14-hours day, are constantly being driven by the Nazis to a neven more intensive effort to step-up production of war materials. Eevn so, there are no indications that Germany is on the verge of cracking un either internally or militarily. Hitler's grip on the country is absolute. And the hard-driven German people’s capacity for absorbing punishment has not yet reached breaking-point. This is the belief of the most competent foreign observers in Germany up to the time I left, says the writer. When the crack-up does come it is most likely to do so through a putsch by the armed forces rather than through a popular revolt. There Is: good evidence of the existence already j of a powerful group, reaching very l high up in some Quarters, readv tn take over in case “something should happen to Hitler.” Armies and Casualties. It is estimated that Germany to-day has approximately 12.000,000 men all told under arms. Casualties have been high and are mounting. Nearly every hotel in every little spa throughout Germany has been turned into a military hospital. Wounded men are even being sent to private houses owing to lack of hospital room. The most seriously mutilated cases are kept away out of sight in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France. It is difficult to give any accurate estimate of German casualties, but the most widely-accepted estimate 'among foreign experts in Germany from the beginning of the war up to last Christmas was 750,000 killed and about twice that number wounded and taken prisoner. This would give an all-over total of between 2,000,000 and: 2,500,000 casualties. “No Rations” Threat. Hitler early this year found himself compelled to appoint Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel as Reich Labour Dictator with absolute powers to obtain workers for German industry and agriculture. When Sauckel took over there already were more than 2,500,000 foreign workers and 1,600,000 war prisoners employed in Germany. He started a drastic comb-out which produced only a few tens of thousands of women and white-collar workers. He finally was compelled to resort to conscripting slave-labourers in the occupied Russian territories. These workers are told if they do not “volunteer" to go to work in Germany, they and their families will receive no ration cards. They are herded together in camps behind barbed wire and under armed guard. In Germany they are compelled to work in ■ igs of not fewer than 25. They recc./ed 25 per cent, less wages than German workers. The Plane Lag.

Aeroplane production in Germany is not keeping up with the mounting tempo of British and United States output and is causing serious anxiety to the Nazi leaders. Apparently the Nazis had hoped to win the war in a few blitz-campaigns with the same plane types with which they had begun it. They found, however, that the Messerschmitts 109 and other German types would not stand up to the newest British and American models in battle. They were forced to bring out a number of new types recently, which severely cut down production rates. . . Under favourable conditions Germany to-day, according to the best available estimates in Berlin, produces an average of 2500 planes a month. When the new types were just beginning to roll off the assembly lines, production probably dropped as low as 1100 a month. In Winter of 1943-44.

Life in Germany becomes grimmer and more cheerless as the war drags on. Hitler’s bombastic promises of victory have become desperate pleas to the German people to struggle for “victory at any price.” “Struggle for existence" has become the watchword of Nazi propaganda. Yet the best-qualified foreign observers who were in Germany up to a month ago are convinced that—barring unforeseen occurrences—the crack-up will not come next winter At the earliest they believe it will come in the winter of 1943-44. The German Army is still a powerful and dangerous adversary. Only when it begins to reel heavily under defeats on the battlefields is the whole structure of Hitler’s Third Reich likely to topple and collapse.