GERMANY: Weariness in Munich

The deep voice, weary, almost with a touch of resignation, boomed out of the loudspeakers in millions of German homes, was carried by short wave beyond the Reich’s borders and across the seas:

“Meine Deutschen Volksgenossen und Genossinen. . . .”

Germans heard the Führer begin to speak, and wondered. By a timely coincidence, the radio had told them only a few hours before of Americans landing in force on the coast of French Northwest Africa, the first major attack of the great enemy whom they had learned to fear 25 years ago and whose coming they had dreaded in World War II. What would the Führer say?

If they expected clear-cut, reassuring statements, they were disappointed. Adolf Hitler’s brightest predictions, as he spoke from Munich’s Lowenbrdukeller on the 19th anniversary of his first abortive Putsch, were that Germany would hold her lines and some day strike back. His most fervent injunction to the people was that they pray for the Reich’s survival “in this war for the existence or destruction of our nation.”

Hitler had one concrete assurance: Germany would fight the war to “unmitigated success” without the “slightest thought of compromise.” But in his assurance he dropped a few words that may have sent a cold chill down the spines of the German people, who remember well and bitterly the end of the last war—when German generals appealed for peace while the Kaiser abandoned Germany to her fate. Said Hitler: “This Army is becoming more and more National-Socialist. . . . More and more differences are being eliminated. . . . In me [our enemies] have an adversary who does not even think of capitulation. At the head of this nation today there does not stand a man who would ever think of going abroad in critical times . . . but one who has always known only one principle: to strike, strike and strike again.” Probably Hitler had not yet thought seriously of capitulation or of flight, but he had thought enough about both to deny thinking of them. Other remarks:

A.E.F. in Africa: “When Roosevelt today carries out his attack on North Africa with the remark that he wants to protect it from Germany and Italy, I don’t have to reply to this phrase of the lying old scoundrel. But the decisive and last word will certainly not be spoken by Herr Roosevelt. We will prepare our blows, thoroughly as usual, and we have always arrived at the right time so far.”

Strategy: “We cannot hope from week to week for big victories. That is impossible. The decisive thing is to fortify and hold the position taken. You may believe that what we have we hold so fast that nobody will ever take it away from us.”

Bombings: “If the enemy thinks he can wear us down, he errs. And I assure you the hour will come when I will strike back with compound interest. They will learn over there that German inventive genius has not been idle and they will get an answer which will knock them deaf and blind.”*

Winter: “Even if this winter is as severe as the last one, all that happened last winter will not happen again.”

Noticeable in this speech was the Führer’s frequent coughing. Also noticeable was the reiteration (TIME, Oct. 12) that defensive warfare is now the Fuhrer’s choice. Hitler had always said that the initiative is the key to final victory.

* Some thought this might refer to gas. The Nazis, however, have hitherto held that gas warfare is unpractical, would harm them as much as the enemy.