The "Sozialistische Warte," a monthly publication of the illegal Social-Democratic Party of Germany, in its issue publishes a letter from one of its correspondents in Berlin describing the state of mind of the average non-Party German at the present moment, after the Nazi victories in Belgium, Holland' and Northern France. The correspondent has travelled extensively throughout Germany and he gives an eye-witness account of what he saw.
The streets of Berlin resound with the shouts of newspaper boys calling out "Victory! Victory!—Extra edition" People buy the papers and walk away in silence. There is no sign of jubilation, pleasure, or even of eagerness. The average man just scans the headlines and gives no indication of his feelings.
But when one speaks intimately with friends who trust one, they all agree that the Nazi victories have not produced the outbursts of enthusiasm and joy one might have expected. The chief reason is that the average German fears that these great Nazi victories only mean more and bigger wars, and there is nothing that the average non-Party German now wishes more ardently than a stoppage of the war. The average German knows, however, that if he will voice any of these sentiments in the Spen, he will be sure to land in a concentration camp, and he therefore prefers to remain silent and to keep his own counsel.
The same correspondent travelled through other parts of Germany, such as Pommerania. Baden, Wuertemburg, and everywhere he me the same dumb, ardent desire for peace. The victories have not brought the people nearer to the Nazis. The feeling of difference between the Nazis and the great mass of the German people is now stronger than ever. Most people realise that the war was started by the Nazis and that there could be peace but for them. The Nazi propaganda about the Plutocratic Demo-crocies has not penetrated deeply into the peoples minds. In many places the correspondent was asked: "Do you know why we are vaging this war?"
Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that there is a strong organized movement against ihe Nazi regime in Germany at the present moment. The average German is cowed by the Gestapo whose efficiency he even exaggerates. People are afraid to take the slightest risk. Generally, it can be said that the average German is resigned to his fate; he feels that he is just a figure on the chess-board of the State and that he can do nothing but obey what he is told to do.
A typical street scene in an agricultural town in Wuertemburg is described in a letter from another correspondent in the same "Soz. Warte."
The Gestapo agents have brought a group of Polish workers to the market place for the local farmers to choose labourers, in accordance with the notorious Nazi slave-labour system. The Poles, men, women and orphaned children, are grouped together; they cannot speak German and there are no interpreters for them. The farmers go among them and choose them as one chooses cattle chiefly because of their muscular strength, Sometimes it happens that a farmer will choose a worker who is married, and another farmer will choose this man's wife. The Po make frantic attempts to explain to the farm their relationship and they plead desperately that their families should not be separated. The farmers are often moved by the inarticulate appeal, and they are willing to choose other labourers, but the Gestapo agents in charge of the group do not allow that. Most pitiful scenes, reminiscent of the worst times of ancient slavery when brothers, husbands, wives and sisters were separated at the will of the slave owner, are enacted.
According to the Nazi law, the Polish slave workers are not allowed to eat at the same table with the German farmers, who employ them nor even to drink a glass /of beer at the same bar. One often sees, therefore, outside German public houses groups of dejected Poles standing like dogs in front of the entrances to the public houses, waiting for their masters to come out.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.