South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 14 August 1943

Twilight of the Dictators

With the Red Army grimly prising the Germans from their hard won grip on Russian soil, with the Anglo-American expeditionary force at the very gates of the Italian mainland, with the U-boats fighting a losing battle, and Italy already doubly proved an ally of straw Hitler probably begins to realise that the game is up. Events which are moving within the Reich suggest that there is a limit even to the blind, patient trust of the German people. Less and less is heard of Hitler, more and more leaks out concerning open manifestations of discontent with the Nazi regime. A Wagnerian twilight begins to descend upon the Fuehrer, for even his most fanatical adherents must see at last the way things are shaping.

Goebbels’ great lie-machine has for some time eschewed the most magniloquent untruths, and is mainly engaged in coating the pill with sugar in a bid to hold together the creaking Nazi edifice. The argument now is that Germany may as well fight on rather than submit to a peace such as she was given in 1918, and that if she can keep going long enough the Allies may grow tired of the struggle and correspondingly more accommodating in their peace terms. Undoubtedly the Nazis have a much firmer grip upon Germany than the Fascists had on Italy. They are a callous, unrepentant gang who have burned their boats and are bound to sink or swim with the system which they have fastened on to their country with such inhuman bonds. Hamburg and other cities of the Reich may stand as mute and tragic testimony of the country’s need for peace, but these ruffians are too deeply dyed in villainy to grant that release.

The stock of the Nazis can hardly have been lower within Germany than it is at present. A long sequence of setbacks, and the cruel punishment taken internally at the hands of the R.A.F. would surely seem to be sufficient to make the very name of National Socialism stink in the nostrils of any reasonably minded German. Hitler’s reaction to this situation appears to be an attempt to re-insure his own and his party’s position by making overt concessions to the more conservative elements such as are represented in the Army, while covertly keeping as tight a hold as ever on the key controls of government. So far, at any rate, there is no indication that Germany will be able to shake off the Nazis as easily as Italy shook off Mussolini. The Old Man of the Sea never clung so tightly to his victim as Hitler and his party to their seat on the neck of Germany.

Mr. Churchill’s latest trans-oceanic conference will doubtless have interesting sequels pertinent to this problem. It is probably to the liking of the leaders of the United Nations that the Nazis should seal their own doom in this way. We are sworn to exterminate them and the further they push their defiance the more surely and thoroughly will this be done. It will be well to show the world once and for all that this glorified gangsterdom does not pay.