The Charlotte News
Friday, September 15, 1939
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: "Prisoners" provides insight into how Hitler enslaved and overran countries, here as example, the former state of Slovakia, to force their armies and their peoples into supply conduits and cannon fodder for his broader pursuits, the lebensraum afforded by all of Europe, the geopolitical goal to control all of the mineral and agricultural wealth of Europe and North Africa with the pluperfect Aryan occupying the perfectly well-suited "Heartland" of it, Germany. This a theory of Sir Walford J. Macklinder of Great Britain, taken up and promoted in Germany by Karl Haushofer, a German geographer and professor of Rudolf Hess. Hess introduced Herr Haushofer to Herr Hitler and "My Struggle" was born--so that all perfect Aryans could cry in their milk about the old glorious days of the Fatherland before treacherous Versailles stripped her of her finery and silk. A dream of conquest over the rights of the other and denial of the humanity of the other, the despoliation of the pleasure of the other, the infliction of pain upon the other with the concomitant administration or not of a band-aid afterward, so that the pleasure of the conquistador may be advanced the more and regardless of who or how many are destroyed in that process. In short, unbridled offensive aggression was the hallmark of Nazi philosophy and it is that which always burns bridges.
Precedent
The Germans Hastily Burn Their Bridges Behind Them
It is a little puzzling to know how the German censor came to pass such an eyewitness story as that of Mr. Whiteleather, the Associated Press reporter stationed at Berlin, as to what the German armies have done to western Poland in their passage through it. Perhaps, that curious square-headed quality which the Germans exhibit when it comes to estimating the psychological reaction of other peoples, led him (the censor) to think it would serve to intimidate the world.
In any case, it is manifest that the Germans have been making the most terrible sort of war in their advance--a war on civilians as well as armies--a war which has turned the towns into ruins and left the countryside a blackened mass of ashes. And now comes an official confirmation in the shape of the German Army announcement that all open villages, neighborhoods, etc., in which snipers appear will be treated as military objectives and dealt with without discrimination between guilty and unguilty.
It is an ominous beginning for a war. And not the least ominous for Germany. Untouched by the enemy's torch and sword since Napoleon, she seems utterly to discount the fact that she also stands to be invaded. Yet already a French army is on her soil, and there is every prospect that, as the war goes on, this and other armies will cut deeper and deeper into her. And if so--then she has perilously burned her bridges, and set a fearful precedent for her armies to act upon.
As yet the Allies are still avoiding headlong hate, but as war proceeds the law of retaliation invariably comes into the ascendancy. And the French have not forgotten that they have much to revenge for 1870 and 1914-18.
Slovaks Must Fight For Tyrants And Traitors
The Slovak Minister to Poland days ago broadcast an appeal to his countrymen from a Polish radio station not to fight for Germany and to come to the aid of Poland.
At the same time, however, War Minister Csatios of Slovakia told Slovakia's army of 300,000 that Slovak interests had "become allied to the German Army and in hostile relationship to Poland."
It is easily credible that War Minister Csatios wants that to be true. He is a member of the cabinet of the traitorous priest, Tiso, who labored for Nazism for years before he finally betrayed Slovakia into Hitler's hands. And moreover, he is of course a mere puppet of the German Army, the "independence" of Slovakia being a crude fiction which the Germans find convenient still to maintain.
But it is incredible that the Slovaks can sympathize with him, that they do not in fact sympathize with the minister in Poland, who can speak up freely as long as he is out from under the German yoke. Quite apart from questions of independence and patriotism, the Slovaks, mainly peasants and small merchants, must feed the German Army of 400,000 men, and receive pay for only half of what they hand over--in addition must accept German money at twice the true exchange value. Nothing could be better calculated to enrage peasants and small merchants. Worse still, it is said that the food supply of Slovakia will be exhausted after two months of this program--that whether the armies stay there or not, the whole population faces hunger and starvation at the end of the period.
Yet the dispatches report that the lives of the Slovak armies are being placed between the first and second lines of the Germans so that they cannot desert and must fight for Germany under penalty of being mercilessly slaughtered between two fires.
It is an appallingly hard fate--to have to fight for tyrants who are carrying away your belongings without paying for them and eating up your bread to leave you starving--to have to do that with men of your own blood and country telling you brazenly that it is all the for your own good!
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.