GERMANY: Blitz-Peace?

Blitzkrieg, Blitz-peace and Blitz-prosperity seemed to be the Nazi schedule for Hitler-Europe last week as Germany began preparations for exploiting current and anticipated conquests. Flushed with confidence of an early and complete victory, Nazi economic experts proclaimed the dethroning of gold and announced the future domination of world trade by a centrally controlled Kontinental-Mittel-europäischer-Wirtschaftsraum (Continental-Central-European Economic Space), extending from Gibraltar to the Vistula and from the Norwegian coast to Sicily. With equal assurance, German steel companies offered steel to South American countries at prices considerably lower than U. S. quotations with a cash guarantee of delivery by October, and Hamburg shipping firms advised Ecuadorian cotton mills to have extensive orders of cotton ready for shipment to Germany on German vessels by September.

Other signs of German conviction that peace is just around the corner were the preparations in German tourist offices throughout the world for a late summer season. Brand-new “Visit Heidelberg and the Rhineland” posters appeared in their windows and leaflets were circulated announcing that the Bayreuth Wagnerian Festival would be held this year as usual, featuring Wagner’s Parsifal, one of the few German operas extolling peace.

For Germans who have been confined behind guarded frontiers since 1933 it was reported that mileage tickets are to be issued shortly by the German Railway so that without waiting for fare adjustments following the war they can gratify long-harbored desires to visit Paris and the Riviera. Chief object of interest, however, was the Maginot Line, now in occupied territory, and boulevard gossip in Berlin indicated that it would soon become the world’s most elaborate and expensive tourist attraction.