NAZI CAPTAIN’S SACRIFICE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 77, 23 December 1939, Page 11

NAZI CAPTAIN’S SACRIFICE

Evidence Of Cleavage

GERMAN OFFICERS AND POLITICIANS

Moral Drawn From Suicide

(British Official Wireless.) (Received December 22, 7.5 p.m.)

RUGBY, December 21

The news of the suicide of Captain Langsdorff, of the Admiral Graf Spee, has been received in London with feelings which show respect for the personal tragedy of an enemy whose individual behaviour, as distinct from the orders which he acted upon, appears to have been always in accord with the best traditions common to the naval services of all nations.

The final " sacrifice of Captain Langsdorff after the humiliation of scuttling his ship on orders from Berlin is taken by many commentators here as conclusive evidence of the cleavage between the instincts of the officers in the older German services and the commands of the Nazi politicians now in control of Germany. The German commander would have found particularly bitter the advertisement to the world which he was compelled to give that Herr Hitler himself already realized that he had lost the war. That is the moral almost universally drawn from the incident, not only in the British Press, but in extracts from the neutral Press reaching London. This defeatist interpretation is dwelt on at some length by the Boston “Herald,” which considers that the decision to scuttle the Admiral Graf Spee indicates more clearly what is in the minds of the Nazi leaders than Herr Hitler’s boast about preparations for a long conflict and the certainty of German victory. Nazi Commands. The “Yorkshire Post” expresses the view almost universally held in Britain that the reason of the German commander’s act was that, as a naval officer of the old school, he could not endure behaviour forced upon him from Berlin, and it adds: “It may also set people wondering how many other regular officers in the German navy and army are not altogether happy in obeying the Nazi commands.”

Several writers see the drama at Buenos Aires as a symbol. The “Daily Herald,” for example, says:— “Adolf Hitler found Germany a great nation, proud and free. In seven short years he has reduced it to a suicide club—a crowd of desperate human beings rushing to destruction without honour and without hope.” In similar vein, the “News Chronicle” observes: “Hitler was going to make Germany great. Instead, through this war which he provoked, he is destroying her possessions and draining away her -wealth. He is scuttling not merely his ships, but his country. Hitler, the scuttier, will be his name.” *

.Justification of this verdict is supplied by other newspapers, which recall that the 32,00t)-ton liner Columbus, scuttled so soon after the destruction of the Admiral Graf Spec, comes on top of at least 23 other German ships ordered out to sea in the last few weeks to sink themselves. In the face of Allied naval superiority, which renders German ships impotent, many observers see Hitler acting like a sulky, disappointed schoolboy, who is determined to destroy things rather than that others should have the benefit of them. Hitler’s personal guilt is much insisted upon. Hitler’s Guilt.

“The Times” writes: “The guilt of this brave officer’s death rests upon Adolf Hitler, though he is not of the temper that will ever understand why. Captain Langsdorff, in dying, has appealed over the head of this despotism to the spirit of an older, a nobier, and, we may hope, a more enduring Germany. We -who are at war with Hitlerism cling to the belief that this Germany lives on, though deprived of its voice. Unhappily, the Nazi system of government makes it impossible to distinguish those Germans who preserve the values of chivalry and civilization from the perjured and murderous faction which usurps their name. No man living in Germany can keep his private honour untarnished by Nazi mud.”

The sacrifice of Captaigi Langsdorff to the swastika, as “The Times” calls it, and the reckless scuttling of German ships on orders from Berlin, is linked by other commentators with the desperate tactics of the air bombardment and machine-gunning of fishing trawlers in the North Sea. On this

the “Daily Telegraph” avers: “Not by such fighting do the forces of a nation maintain their efficiency, still less weaken a resolute adversary. They harden the invincible determination to defeat the worst that they can do.”