Hitler on the Future
Hitler's New Year proclamation can have been scarcely more reassuring to his German audience than the recent gloomy utterances of official propaganda. For some time past his role has been that of injured innocence, the protagonist of a Germany which is defend- ing the historic culture of Europe against Bolshevik barbarism. Britain is castigated as the Power whose machinations started the war, but at the same time she is represented as being the dupe and ultimate victim of Russia. The statement is full of self-contra- dictions. It confidently promises that a German victory will restore their possessions to the dispossessed, and in another sentence says that there can be no victors and vanquished, but only survivors and annihilated. In one sentence it belittles Allied achievements in the Mediterranean, and in another admits that their consequence, the defection of Italy, was one of the heaviest setbacks, and necessi- tated a re-arrangement of German forces and influenced the whole course of the war. Hitler is never at his best except when he can boast, and he boasts still, though it is hard to do so effectively when the theme is not that of brilliant conquest but of fighting in the last ditch in a hopeless struggle'. Goebbels does better than this.
