"In this Fateful Hour"

GERMANY

"In this Fateful Hour"

Mammoth banners wavered over German stadiums. The Reich's annual sport contests went off on schedule. Hitler Youths and Hitler Maidens displayed their prowess and affirmed their faith. The radio said that there would be no invasion now because Moscow did not want one.

Then it happened.

The first reaction was elation. The papers said that the Anglo-Saxons had stirred up a hornet's nest. Their spearhead would be broken and the Wehrmacht would be free at last to teach the Russians the futility of further efforts to advance. The fond dream of a negotiated peace began to come alive. Quislings sent brave greetings to the Fiihrer--duly published-- and the people recalled the devastating powers of mysterious secret weapons.

Second Thoughts. Next day a fear began to gnaw. General Kurt Dittmar, No. 1 military commentator, went on the air. "The Atlantic Wall never became an inflexible structure of steel and concrete," he patiently explained. Defense in depth was the Wehrmacht's plan, he added reassuringly. The Volkischer Beobachter shouted: "In this fateful hour, the German nation is rallying around the Fiahrer. . . . Success for the Allies would simply mean the end." The forgetful radio declared that the invasion had come because Moscow wanted it now.

Men of 65 to 80 were told to register for emergency labor service. The unbombed were urged to give their extra clothing to the bombed-out. "The war will be decided in the next few months; it is no longer necessary to hoard reserves," the solicitors explained. Agile little Joseph Goebbels told the hungry: "If you haven't enough vegetables, get' stinging nettles from the meadows."

Long Thoughts. An escaped prisoner who recently traveled through part of Germany found the people tired of war, dulled by bombings and hardships, but held relentlessly to their war labors by the Gestapo, the military, the ordinary police, the Nazi Party. No vestige of a German underground exists; no German yet dares to raise voice or hand against Adolf Hitler and his men. Furthermore, the Nazi radio was not all empty clangor in German ears. Ordinary Germans might be weary of much that Naziism had brought, but they had not lost their fierce love for the Vaterland, still wanted to believe that it could be saved.

Through Switzerland came reports that Hitler still ranked first in German affections. The oft-repeated statement that the Fuhrer would know precisely when to order a crushing counteroffensive still had power to persuade. The invaders in the west, the Russian armies in the east still had to break into the Germans' last fortress, their will to survive.

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