During the Autumn of 1944, when the great momentum was with the Allies and the German Army was in rapid retreat, the SS newspaper Das Schwartz Korps declared that an Allied-occupied Germany would not be a placid land:
"The Allied soldiers shall find no peace. Death will lurk behind every corner. They might establish a civilian administration, but its leaders would not live a month. Nobody could execute the enemy's orders without digging his own grave. No judge could pronounce sentences dictated by the enemy without being crucified in his own window frame in the dead of night."
This article goes into great detail concerning how the SS intended to make good on these words. Even as early as 1937, the dark clouds of war could be seen on the horizon. The U.S. Congress still smarted from the last world war and did not want to be lured in to newest installment. Six months after this article was first read the Neutrality Act of 1937 would be passed - this column explains much of the thought that went into it. This is a great article, penned by an American correspondent who had actually sat face-to-face with Hitler on numerous occasions. He tells the reader many of his observations concerning the man's personality, expressions and what he has observed regarding the German people:
"I have presented [in this article] the essential psychological and material factors in Hitler's conviction that he will still win the war. There were signs even while I was still in Germany that the German people have given up the dream of a 'total victory' to follow their total war."
More about Adolf Hitler can be read here...
"The dilemma before Hitler is that he must marshall all his air strength to crush Russia. He cannot do so without weakening his air units in France or the Mediterranean. Such a move would threaten him either with an Allied invasion of the Continent or the disruption of the Axis supply lines to Africa... The Luftwaffe had lost 15,000 planes in Russia - and with them the hope of regaining air superiority in Russian skies."
Click here to read about the German concept of Blitzkrieg.
By the Autumn of 1943 it was becoming apparent to both parties that the Allies were coming into their own. The Axis was discovering to their surprise that they were not the only ones who knew how to fight - they'd been routed from North Africa, creamed at Stalingrad and bloodied at the Bismarck Sea:
"On every front in this global war Axis strategy is definitely on the defensive."
Similar articles can be read here and here...
One year later, this article would appear... "The long-awaited climax of the great Allied air offensive against Germany came like a thunderclap last week. It was the opening of the Battle of Berlin... According to the [British Ministry of Economic Warfare], the Germans have evacuated nonessential civilians (children, invalids and the aged) just as the British had from London three years before. But all evidence indicated that government officials and essential workers still remained in the German capital."
Berlin police counted 5,680 dead.
More on the bombing of Germany can be read here...
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