Germany tonight abandoned all pretence regarding her claims on Poland and launched with full force an intensive propaganda campaign apparently designed to weaken the morale of potential enemies and achieve her aims without fighting. The drive coincided with the Italian invasion of Albania, which received full official support here.
The German demands on Poland, as revealed by the Voelkischer Beobachter, Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s newspaper, are the return of Danzig to the Reich and the granting of the right to build a highway under German sovereignty through the Polish corridor to East Prussia.
High Nazi circles openly warned Poland that she is threatened with the fate of Austria and Czechoslovakia, and in the same manner. Informed political sources did not believe there would be an immediate demonstration of force against Poland. Germany’s tactics, it was pointed out, consists of wearing down the nerves of its adversaries.
“We haven’t mobilized,” said one Nazi spokesman. “Let others mobilize. It will cost them so much in a few months that England will get tired of paying the expenses. We know how to wait for the moment when exhaustion comes.” Meanwhile, he added, German propaganda will not remain inactive. “The moment will come when the enemy, doubtful of its own forces and support abroad, will itself ask to be placed under our protection.”
Italy’s invasion of Albania, it was held here, should demonstrate to the small “satellite states” — that is the small nations Britain is trying to line up in a front against German aggression — that they have been abandoned by the rest of the world and must settle with the Rome-Berlin axis powers.
However violent the attacks on Poland in the German press and despite all threats, the present campaign is still believed to be only “the first period of intimidation.” This impression is stressed in Berlin by the absolute calm with which political sources here affect to see Marshal Hermann Goering going to Libya and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels on a trip which has just taken him to Hungary, Greece and Egypt. Easter leaves have also been given profusely in the army.
In effect, Germany appears to be trying to show that she is strong enough to wait.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
