What’s going on behind the German defenses?
Hitler and aides base post-war hopes on plan to split U.S., Britain, Russia
Nazi Party still in the saddle in Germany
By Nat A. Barrows
How tough an opposition will our invading forces encounter when they land in Western Europe? What is really going on behind Hitler’s Atlantic Wall? From his observation post in neighboring Sweden, Nat Barrows has been collecting closely guarded information about Germany’s ability and willingness to cope with the titanic forces assembled in England for Allied victory. In a most important series of articles, of which the following is the fifth, Mr. Barrows reveals many hitherto unknown facts about the men directing the German war effort, Germany’s heavy industry, and other hitherto undisclosed information about the German war machine.
Stockholm, Sweden –
Nazi Party leaders – Hitler, Göring, Himmler, Bormann and the rest of that cunning, merciless band – are making their own post-war plans against the inevitable day when their crackpot empire tumbles about them like Allied bombs on Berlin.
Secretly they are exploring the chances for banking their own personal loot in neutral countries and for finding avenues of escape if necessary. They know that the game is nearly up and now they are trying to save their own necks and, at the same time, are busy devising fiendish plots to win the peace, even when they lost the actual war.
One of their secret plots is the development of their own brand of “underground” which will foster trouble between America and Britain, on the one hand, and Russian on the other. They hope that this movement, under one name or another, will one day return the defeated Nazis to power.
Both ends against middle
The Nazi Party chief are also following a policy predicated on the hope that the Allied invasion will be repulsed and the German Army can then smash Russia in the East and make a compromise peace with the Allies in the West.
It is a negative but consistent policy – and an excellent indication of how Hitler is trying to play both ends against the middle. Briefly, this wishful policy can be defined thus:
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Countries in Europe should join together to defend the “European idea” against Asiatic Communism.
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Germany is the chief persecutor of this European culture against Russian and American – and to a somewhat lesser decree – British savagery.
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Russia is a land of barbarism; America is politically bankrupt and has nothing better to offer the German people than they already have, and Britain is only to be pitied as it trots at the heels of one ally or another trying to salvage crumbs.
This is not idle rumor. It is the type of thinking that Hitler and his fellow criminals are following. It is their great dream – a war between the British and Americans and Russia, with both sides trying to woo Germany’s support.
No surrender expected
The Nazis have succeeded all too well in making the German people believe that they face certain extermination unless they fight on to the bitter end. They are weary, and some of them in the mire of defeatist psychology, but the vast majority has no thought of surrender thanks to the insidious propaganda that surrender means extermination.
All this is written after months of careful, precise checking. More importantly, it is written following consultation with a nongermane observer who left Berlin only three days ago after five years inside Germany.
He believes that revolution will never come to Nazi Germany until military collapse is already an accomplished fact. He sees the Nazi Party today like a house of cards, standing upright only by a combination of Hitler’s power and the fact that the war still continues. If either collapses, the house then falls in ruins.
Sudden military defeat, he thinks, is the best solution for the troubles of the German people.
Hitler still in saddle
But if the Allied invasion in the West should become a long, dreary war of attrition, then it is his opinion that the Nazi system will disintegrate suddenly into what will be the “bloodiest chaos the world has ever seen, and I doubt if any occupying power, even the Allies, could succeed in putting the pieces together again.”
Any talk of Hitler’s losing his grip on Germany is incorrect. Certainly, his popularity has decreased since Stalingrad, and he has lost something of his “God-like” character for the German people. But he is still the supreme boss of Germany and firmly in the saddle at Army High Command headquarters.
The various factions in the Nazi Party fully realize that Hitler, and Hitler alone, is able to maintain the unity which is their only strength.
No matter what rumors have been spread abroad, Hitler has not handed over military power to his generals, nor in reality is there any potent opposition in a political sense among the generals. The German generals will not trespass beyond certain limits their tradition of discipline, obedience and loyalty.
Thus, at the moment the army remains in the background, lurking a political factor of great potentialities but with no actual political power today. The Nazi Party still has its monopolistic state control over Germany.
Factions within party
The Nazi Party itself is divided into the factions led by Hangman Heinrich Himmler, dreaded Gestapo chief, and Martin Bormann, successor to Rudolf Hess and the real power behind the Nazi throne.
Both men are hated and despised by the German people but they are able to keep the Nazi Party itself united as never before.
Himmler’s own method of preventing dissention is reaching incredible proportions. In the past year he has ordered more than 10,000 persons executed for defeatist talk or activities against the Nazi Party. Only five weeks ago, he caused five aged civil clerks to be stood against a wall in Liebenwalder Strasse, Berlin, and shot, for singing a vulgar drunken song about Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s matrimonial relations.
Thus, in a mixture of terror and blind, sheeplike stupidity, the Germans grope along, fanatically determined not to surrender – while Hitler retains as much practical power as ever and make his plans to win the peace regardless of what happens inside the Atlantic Wall, after the Allied D-Day.
It is something to which to give deep thought as we look ahead into the future.
TOMORROW: German people, tired and overworked, still fear to voice discouragement.
