Allies face hard fight for months following defeat of Germany
Himmler has suicidal desperadoes, including big force of snipers, set to harass victors
By Nat A. Barrows
Fourth of a series
Stockholm, Sweden –
Allied military occupation of Nazi Germany will not enable our soldiers to lay down their weapons peacefully. Instead, we will face continued resistance from fanatical Nazis cunningly entrenched underground. It will take weeks, perhaps months, to mop up these guerrillas.
Beyond any doubt, Heinrich Himmler, the real boss of Germany today, has laid down careful and exacting plans for taking his Gestapo agents, SS soldiers, and other fanatics into hiding after the formal military collapse. They will fight on in the ruins of bombed cities, in mountain retreats, and worst of all, in sheep’s clothing as ostensibly subdued civilians.
No attempt at peering “inside Germany” today can be complete without realizing that this state of affairs lurks just under the surface of the Nazi façade. The Hitler-Himmler gang will not give up until they actually are caught – and after that they have laid plans for carrying on their Nazified political ideas.
This is not fanciful drama, but hard, cold fact. Our military leaders have long had sufficient evidence to appreciate the seriousness of these preparations for continued Nazi resistance under4ground. They know that special units of fanatical young Nazis have been given concentrated training in guerrilla warfare. They know that stores of food, ammunition and fuel have been earmarked for post-armistice fighting, and are hidden away at strategic points.
Face army of snipers
Additional information reaching Stockholm only serves to bear out the fact that we have got to deal with suicidal desperadoes operating underground and willing to accept any risk or hardship if it pleases Der Führer – and Himmler. Some estimates from pro-Allied sources place the number of these potential snipers at 500,000.
What other choice have the Nazi bosses? They have become involved too deeply in their own shares of murder and brutality; they have got themselves too fully compromised.
And beyond planning every devious scheme for saying their own scalps, they hope somehow to leave enough of Nazi foundations lingering underground for future revival, for future budding into another attempt at domination 29 years or so hence.
Watch for tricks!
Meanwhile, they will utilize every trick to confuse and soothe us.
Rumors of false peace demonstrations will be spread abroad. False deaths of Nazi leaders will be announced so these leaders can disappear quietly, both to escape punishment and to carry out Nazi post-armistice plans. They will even pretend to disband the National Socialist Party. There will be loud talk, pretty talk, and soft talk from minor war criminals trying to say, “Really, fellows, we were only carrying out orders from above. We had to do it or we would have been shot.”
They will overlook not the slightest opportunity to embarrass and provoke our occupying troops. Youthful martyrs will gladly throw their lives away to create incidents. Nazi agents disguised as simple townspeople will attempt to mingle among Allied soldiers, spreading gossip, and trying to invoke sympathy for Germany.
Urged to be tough
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order forbidding American soldiers even to speak with German civilians without written permission is based on a sound and realistic appreciation of this future campaign aimed at upsetting morale. Anything else than an utterly realistic approach to Nazi designs and cunning, means future trouble – and plenty of it.
A recent Austrian deserter from the German Army summed it up for me thus:
You have got to be tough in every way with the Germans; tough, tough, tough. You can’t kill them all, which is unfortunate, so you have got to handle them in the only way they will understand. That means the strictest discipline, absolute obedience to your orders, constant watchfulness for tricks.
Treat them fairly, if you like, but be tough. Otherwise–