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No Order. Actually the "New Order" is not a plan but a chaotic attempt to rule 150,000,000 people by terror, hunger and propaganda. German propaganda promises a unified Europe; there is nothing Germany wants less. She treats every captive nation differently: Danes the best, Poles the worst, Polish Jews worst of all. This prevents the captives from having any common ground to stand on. Germany is at the center of the web, but there are few cross-threads from nation to nation.
The meaning of the German phrase Neue Ordnung is closer to "new ordering" than it is to "new order." At any one place the Neue Ordnung is simply a series of orders, adapted to local and day-to-day expedients, often countermanded by higher authority. There is no law, no system of penalties and rewards. And, everywhere in Occupied Europe, Nazi officialdom is honeycombed with corruption—which seeps into the petty officialdom of the occupied countries. In Paris anything from a pound of butter to an exit permit can be had for a price. (Price of an exit permit to Unoccupied France: 1,500 francs.)
Against the Grain. Against this orderless order Europe fought back last week with one elbow and one knee.
The captives could not ease their material lot by sabotage and slowdowns in factories, by blowing up railroads, bridges, fuel stores and munitions dumps, by ambushing German soldiers. On the contrary, rebellion meant certain punishment—if not for the rebels, then for someone else. But everywhere in Occupied Europe there were people who could not stand the humiliation of the New Order, who had to fight back to keep their souls intact. They also fought to weaken the German war effort in the hope of that eventual help from outside which Winston Churchill recently promised, in high and hopeful words.
¶In France attacks on German personnel and property amounted to a terror against the terror. A sentry was mauled in Tours, bombs were hurled in Rouen and Paris. Punishment: mass executions.
¶In Norway, whose shipyard and factory workers are masters of the invisible slowdown, hate erupted like hot lava when Vidkun Quisling was installed as puppet Premier. Ready for action stood German troops with fixed bayonets, German tanks with troops inside. Nevertheless, two railway stations and the National Theater in Oslo were set on fire, bombs were tossed into a university building and into the House of Parliament. When arch-quisling Quisling stepped toward a balcony to receive the crowd's plaudits, the searchlights went out. Someone had cut the cables. Thirty-three friends of King Haakon were taken as hostages, including the King's physician and a onetime foreign minister.
¶In Czecho-Slovakia a workman called "Old Vacek" ran a crane at the great Skoda munitions works at Pilsen. One day a big ladle of molten lead being carried on Vacek's crane suddenly flipped over. It happened that a posse of German Army commissioners were passing beneath: 14 of them were burned to death. Old Vacek did not try to pretend accident. He dived out of his cab, 60 feet head first to the concrete floor.