Foreign Shortwave Message of Senator Harry S. Truman

SENATOR TRUMAN SENT: FOREIGN SHORTWAVE, SEPTEMBER 27 The smoke=screen of words with which the German military seeks to conceal their defeats deceives no one, not even the German civilian population. German civilians either listen to Allied radio for the correct news or make futile protests to German officials for the release of facts. The Swedish newspaper 'Nya Dagligt Allehanda¹ pointed out last Friday that, as the news becomes worse for Germany, all reports show that there has been a considerable increase in the German peaples' listening to news from United Nations sources. The paper added that the Nazi Government was considering confiscating all private radio sets in Germany. A recent dispatch from Berlin to the Stockholm 'Tidningen' calls attention to the growing concern within Germany when it says: "A great psychological problem arises from the retreat in the East in that the German public is following it with enormous tension and probably also with great unreat." The misleading and sometimes comic terminology of German communiques retains little appeal for the German who has relatives on the battlefronts. A German family whose father was left behind by Rommel in his 1500=mile retreat across North Africa could scareely be enthusiastic over this debacle as an instance of elastic warfare". A German mother whose son had surrendered in Tunisia would be somewhat skeptical when she heard that defeat called "a brilliant delaying action". The German wife whose husband fell at Messina would hardly belivve the German flight from Sicily to be "a glorious déed". German defensive communiques have always been noted for their word-painting applied with the delicacy of Hitler's pre-war whitewash brush. But, it has TRUMAN (c) NARA remained for the present Russian campaign to bring out the more striking phraseologyo