War of Nerves

Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, like a trained seal playing tunes on a battery of peep-peep horns, bobbed from one brassy note to another, burping warnings. The German Elite Guards with "new arms" had marched through Paris in "a westerly direction." An invasion of Europe was "bound to have disastrous results for the U.S. and England. It threatens dire calamity to the Anglo-American conduct of the war." In Vichyfrance, Pierre Laval chimed in, proclaimed to Frenchmen that any aid to invaders would be drastically dealt with.

A war of nerves, more intense than anything since August 1939, had Europe tight-strung. The Nazi Bruesseler Zeitung angrily reported that Belgians who gathered in the streets to spread stories of invasion would be punished for rumormongering. Inside the Reich the Frankfurter Zeitung declared tensely: "We are in this affair deeper than ever. We feel the moment of decision is nearer than ever."

At week's end the British Broadcasting Corp., in its French-language message to Europe, warned listeners against rumors of landings and predictions of landings, which "are spread by the enemy to create discouragement." Added BBC, giving nerves a final twitch: "The success of a military operation depends on the secrecy that surrounds it. This secret is jealously kept by the Allied General Staff."

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