SECRET ARMIES
156
heavily
armed men
within her
own
all this
before France awoke to the treason
borders.
strategy pursued by the Fifth Column in different coun
tries falls into like patterns. In Austria, before it was swallowed,
The
Nazi agents first established propaganda organizations as the
bases from which to work. When, after the abortive attempt to
seize the Austrian Government, the Nazis were made illegal,
they went underground but continued to get aid from Germany.
Eventually Berlin ordered Standarte II organized as a specific
body prepared to provoke disturbances. When the Austrian
police
quelled
protest that
them,
German
the
citizens
provocations enabled Germany to
were being attacked and mistreated.
The
activities of Standarte II, directed by the Gestapo, con
tinued with increasing intensity until the unfortunate country
was absorbed.
In Czechoslovakia the same strategy was followed:
first
the
establishment of propaganda centers to which Nazis and Nazi
sympathizers could gravitate under the cloak of bodies seeking
improve relations between the Sudeten Germans and the
Czech Government; then the utilization of propaganda head
to
quarters and branches as centers for espionage. Shortly before
the Munich Pact, Standarte II again came into being, creating
disorders which, when Czech police tried to suppress them,
enabled Germany to raise the cry that Czech subjects of German
blood were being cruelly mistreated.
Invariably the aggressor nation raises a moral issue to cover
up proposed
acts of aggression.
Italy
wanted
to
"civilize
the
bombs on defenseless women and
Ethiopians" by dropping
children. Germany and Italy openly sent aid to Franco
keep
"to
Spain from being Bolshevized." And so on. The broad "moral
issue" on the international field to cover
up aggressions by the
axis is "Communism." The axis, announced
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
as having been formed
exchange information about Com
"to
munism,"
is
really a military alliance
now
generally recog-