Winter in Europe

To most of the 130,000,000 U. S. citizens mid-December is a time to make themselves comfortable for the winter: a time to muffle up in warmer clothing, to eat more warming food, to use more fuel, to read more and listen more to the radio, to look out for colds, and (for 25,000,000 of them) to put anti-freeze in the radiator of the car. Many U. S. citizens go traveling at this time of year, on warm trains across State and national borders; a few of them even go to warmer countries, with no more papers than passports and certificates of health. Even the underprivileged third-of-the-nation has a modicum of heat, light, food and clothing.

In Europe this winter no ordinary citizen will travel far in his own country except toward war or exile: coal is scarce. Few will have enough heat. Fewer still will eat enough food, for Europe's food supply is reduced 15% by blockade, another 15% by poor harvests. Not one in a thousand will drive his own car when and where he pleases or read uncensored news or listen to unpropagandized broadcasts. Comfortable clothing will be a luxury. Many will die of influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus or cholera. Of Europe's 525,000,000 people, some millions, probably never to be counted, will starve. In this second year of World War II Europe will live in the Dark Ages: in bleak despair from dawn to dusk, in blackness from dusk to dawn.

Joys of the Victors. Germany will fare better than most of the rest of the continent, chiefly because Germany has systematically stripped conquered countries of food and other resources, paying with occupation marks of little value. German soldiers get double rations. But even with all the food taken from Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries and France, the average German eats what in the U. S. would not be considered good prison fare. Sample menu: for breakfast, ersatz coffee and bread; for lunch, soup, a hot dish, meat three days a week; for supper, open sandwiches. Last week, German fishermen were ordered to attend to business, to fish the streams and lakes leased by the Reich's Amateur Fishermen's Association with nets and eel baskets instead of with rod and fly.

In Germany gasoline is allowed only to persons with important business; taxis are not permitted to take passengers on pleasure missions. Berlin's shop windows are full of beautiful goods marked "Not for Sale." Berliners have money, but cannot buy many things they want, such as bicycles, precision instruments, gold objects, cameras, radios, gasoline, clothing. (Each German man is allowed one overcoat, must turn in his old one when buying the new.) And so they buy theatre and concert tickets, books, champagne, and the handsome ladies who frequent the Taverne and Jockey Clubs.

The average worker in Germany works ten hours a day for six days a week. He makes 130 marks a month ($52), spends half of it for taxes, rent, lottery chances and the automobile he has been promised some day. He drinks beer, sometimes made out of barley or sugar beets. He worships Hitler. But last week from some where in Germany was broadcast a mes sage to the Italian people: "You have the revolutionary arms in your hands.

Use them against the Hitler system and thereby for the deliverance of Europe."

Grief of the Ally. Italians last week rode to cold homes in dark, jampacked busses. The grapevine added details to succinct communiques reporting the setbacks in Albania and the shake-up in the High Command (see p. 28). There were uncon firmed reports of rioting. In Rome there was grumbling over ever-increasing prices and the severe rationing of already frugal meals. Spaghetti, flour and rice were added to the list of rationed foods. Any farmer withholding his crops from compulsory storage was ordered imprisoned for a year.

The blockade had cut off more than 80% of Italian imports, 90% of imports of oil and fats. The cotton reserve would be exhausted by the end of 1940, rubber and wool shortly thereafter. The price charged by Germany for coal hauled across the Alps made heat a luxury.

The Italians, a humorous people, got a wry pleasure out of tipping their hats. In a country where the proper salute is an upraised hand word passed quietly that hat-tipping was an expression of the yearn ing for peace. Many hats were tipped on the streets. Humor of another kind was furnished to a fashionable audience largely of women in Rome by Major Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the futurist school of Italian poetry. After telling his audience that "the Italian is hated by the masculine world, but adored by the feminine world," and proposing the formation of a corporation for the exportation of Italian love, Futurist Marinetti produced a few of his "Aero-Poems." The Aero-Song of the Bombing Plane said:

"Women don't love silent, gentle little aeroplanes that don't know how to bomb."

The Aero-Song of Gasoline: "Thousands desire thee, 0 Pipeline, but to me alone thou givest thy gasoline kisses."

Sorrows of the Vanquished. Last week Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler summoned a conference of staff officers from Germany's armies of occupation to consider measures for dealing with unrest.

That meeting was the best evidence of Europe's state this winter.

Belgium was grim because the country had been looted of foodstuffs, because 50,000 workers had been deported to Germany, because there was no real leadership in the nation, with its Government in exile in London and King Leopold stead fastly refusing to become a puppet. When Jews in Antwerp were ordered to wear armbands a few weeks ago, masses of gentiles appeared on the streets with identical armbands.

The Netherlands was grimmer. Dutchmen refused to sell their cattle, and there was such a meat shortage that authorities had to confiscate bootlegged dogmeat sausages. The Dutch got sly satisfaction out of changing signposts along their roads to confuse the Germans. More than 2,000 Netherlander were -in German prisons for acts of resistance. Many German soldiers have been found dead along roads, in fields and canals. Because the Germans force Dutch fishermen to return to port before dark there was a shortage of fish. Tobacco was scarce, although Dutch possessions are rich in it. Steel, iron and wood were so hard to get that the work of rebuilding Rotterdam had come to a standstill. Schools and universities were closed; at least one professor was jailed for the mention of "our beloved Queen." Said a former Cabinet Minister: "Do not expect of us that for the sake of national unity we should drive out of our public life that which is to us most holy."

Denmark, where the Germans have tried to run a model occupation, found unrest growing. Once rich in food, Denmark felt the pinch of looting, camouflaged behind trade agreements. Livestock was slaughtered because of lack of fodder; the pig and cattle population decreased 300,000 in six weeks. Pigs were reported to have become so undernourished that they broke their legs walking to slaughter. Danish farmers paid unprecedented taxes, and seafaring men, their trade cut off, were driven to take laborers' jobs in Germany. This week loyal subjects of King Christian jeered Danish Nazis who had been jailed for disturbing the peace.

Norway suffered from lack of coal.

Food reserves, which had been plentiful, are being used up by the Army of Occupation and by transfer to Germany. Most foods are rationed, but the shortage had not become grave by last week. The Norwegians gave the Germans even more trouble than the Dutch. Whistling in public was banned because natives whistled derisively at passing German soldiers. In cinemas it is customary to sing the national anthem whenever German newsreels are shown. Many German soldiers have been shot by snipers and in brawls, in spite of severe reprisals. Fortnight ago a bomb exploded near Major Vidkun Quisling in Fredrikstad and rumors grew that Fiihrer Quisling would be ousted for incompetence. Labor practiced general sabotage, and financiers refused to bid on Oslo's bond issues.

Poland found life hardest of all. By mass exchanges of populations, by the building of walled ghettos, Germany sought to Germanize the west of Poland, to segregate Poles and Jews. Mass executions were adding to the estimated 3,000,000 Poles already killed in the invasion and occupation. Thousands died of starvation and cold last winter. Conditions this winter will be worse. But Poles have been too terrorized to practice widespread sabotage.

Bohemia, on the other hand, has had repeated fires and explosions in armament and munitions plants. Last month 200 workers were arrested in Pilsen alone. The Germans tried replacing Czechs with Po lish and Jewish workers, but sabotage continued. The latest labor law requires all Czech men between 16 and 70 to work where their employers send them. Some 80,000 have been sent to Germany. There are no native universities running in Bohemia. The building of Czech schools has been forbidden. Under a decree issued last September, heating has been forbidden in all private houses, business offices, hotels, restaurants, schools and prisons. All food is rationed. Recently in a Prague cinema house was shown a trailer of a picture called The 1,000-Year Reich. The last caption read: "Here for one week, ending Thursday." Audiences flocked to the thea tre to cheer the caption.

France, occupied and unoccupied, looked forward only to cold, hunger and disease. Meat, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, coffee and chocolate are hard or impossible to get. Most of the French have so far been able to get enough to eat, but severe penalties for wasting bread were decreed by Vichy last week. Idleness haunts the French and the work of reconstruction lags for lack of money. Sabotage and law lessness are increasing. Last week Vichy revealed that four people were wounded and 123 arrested in Armistice Day riots in Paris. Sixteen German guards have been killed or badly wounded in the past four weeks in the Basque country alone.

The Starvation of Prisoners. Last week the Germans shoveled 3,000,000 dead rats out of the Maginot Line. Prisoners of war did the work. The Germans still hold 1,500,000 French prisoners of war as hos tages, feed them on bread and soup. The soup is so thin that as long as there was grass the prisoners in some camps made their own soup out of it. British prisoners are better fed because the British hold many German prisoners. British prisoners in Germany are well housed, given good medical care, but there is a shortage of warm clothing and food. Sample menu:

bread and coffee for breakfast, soup and potatoes for lunch, soup and potatoes and maybe bread for supper. Sometimes there is sausage. In Poland prisoners in concentration camps get little to eat, work 16 hours a day. Last week there were reports of cholera in Polish concentration camps.

The Lucky Ones. Switzerland has enough food, but fuel is short. Sweden is moderately well off. Spain has been on the verge of starvation so long that pellagra is a common disease, but Spain may fare better this winter (see p. 39). In the Balkans, where food is usually plentiful, it will not be so plentiful this winter be cause of German demands.

In Russia alone of all the nations in Europe people live a little better than they used to live. Last month one of TIME'S correspondents who crossed the U. S. S. R. returning to the U. S. wrote: "Moscow was very much as it used to be. I smelled that the moment our plane had wheeled into the spacious airport. . . . The whole country has a distinct, fetid odor of its own. . . . People looked better fed than a few years ago, better clad (especially with regard to overcoats and footwear), and they seem to be a little better housed too. There were fewer queues outside the food stores, shops and warehouses appeared better stocked than in 1932, and street begging had considerably decreased. However, people in rags, with indescribably dirty hands and faces, often covered with pocks and scars, are far from uncommon.

"Street traffic in Moscow has improved tremendously. ... I was amazed at the number and excellence of taxicabs and private motor cars which circulate now in the Soviet metropolis. . . .

"I did not notice any change whatever in the expression of people's faces. . . . Whether their faces were stolid or keen, arrogant or subdued, not one of them looked happy. Those radiant, laughing faces which you see exhibited in so many Soviet propaganda pamphlets are sheer humbug. The people of Russia don't look like that. They look uniformly disgruntled and unhappy. It is plainly written on their faces that they lead joyless lives."

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