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This and other British reports in the same vein did not entirely check with the experience of U.S. observers, who found tough, well-equipped German units in central Tunisia, and advised Washington to prepare for a prolonged and difficult African campaign. But, whoever was right, a parallel with the German position in 1918 was discernible. Until the last months of World War I, the German armies at the fronts were formidably strong. Yet the seeds of German defeat were working in their ranks and at home in the Reich, and the outward signs in 1918 were much the same as those which are visible in 1943.
Mourning. At home, German citizens tore the newspapers from the vendors' hands. In the black type they read the unbelievable story: "Fighting at Stalingrad has ceased." With bowed heads they heard it read over the radio, not to the blare of the Nazi Horst Wessel march, but to the strains of the tragic old German folk song: Ich Hatt' Einen Kameraden (I Had A Comrade). They did not know that some 115,000 officers and men had laid down their arms. But they knew that Stalingrad had been lost, and that it was one of the worst defeats suffered by any German army in history; they knew also that other strongholds would have to be given up before their armies reached the line on which they would defend the "Fortress Europe."