LAST DAYS OF HITLER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26354, 8 January 1947, Page 6

LAST DAYS OF HITLER

Satellites of the Nazi Court

Special to the Daily Times [World Copyright Reserved]

The year 1941 marks the beginning of a change within the Nazi Government, the change from a Cabinet to a court. The ascerfdancy of Hitler remained unchallenged within the party till the end. But if he should die, who among his eager flatterers could hope to succeed to that vertiginous position?

At first the succession had been vested, by a decree of September 1, 1939, in Goering, who though politically a coward, was still an able and Important functionary—the founder of the Luftwaffe, the architect of the Four-year Plan, head of the Hermann Goering Werke, originator of the Gestapo and concentration camps—a man who had assumed responsibility for bloodshed before which even Hitler had quailed. After Goering, the next in succession, by the same decree, was Rudolf Hess, a harmless, simple-minded crank, unstable in his decisions and absurd in his beliefs. But in 1941 Hess had flown to Scotland on his crank-brained mission, and the question of the succession had to be reconsidered. He was already a back number in the Fuehrer’s entourage, from which he was gradually being ousted by the persistent Bormann. (Bormann was originally a financial administrator responsible to Hess.) Tnis mole-like creature, who seemed to avoid the glare of daylight and publicity and to despise the rewards and trimmings, was nevertheless insatiable in his appetite for the reality of power; by his invariable presence he gradually became indispensable to Hitler; and by his well-timed insinuations he sue-' ceeded ultimately in removing all rivals about his master’s throne. On the flight of Hess, Bormann was a powerful candidate for his position as head of the Party Chancery. Goering, sensing a rival, and personally detesting Bormann, warned Hitler against him, but in vain. A fortnight later, on opening his morning paper, he read that Bormann had been appointed to the vacant post. To the greater position, of second in succession to the Fuehrer, he could not yet aspire. By a decree of June 29, 1941, the succession was vested in Goering alone, and no other heir was mentioned. From now on Goering was Bormann’s greatest enemy, his next-intended victim, in the Byzantine palace-politics of Berlin, Berchtesgaden and the mobile Fuehrer’s Headquarters. The Decline of Goering The corruption of power and the complacency of the arriviste had begun to consume the once vigorous abilities of that formidable character uhtil, at the - end, Goering was popularly re-, garded as a mere voluntary, a scented Nero fiddling while Rome burned. He was Grand Vizier; he was Reich Marshal; enormously rich; and contented. The war (it was agreed) was won; there was no need of further effort. So Goering began to take his ease among his flatterers.

The Luftwafle failed, the bombers came through. German industry creaked, but Goering -came only rarely to Berlin. He was in Karinhall, his vast country palace in the Schorfheide, dressed (says an eye-witness) now like the Maharaja of Kapurthala, now in a light-blue uniform with a bejewelled baton of pure gold and ivory, now in white silk, like a Doge of Venice, only studded with jewels, with the emblematic stag of St. Hubertus on his head, and a swastika of gleaming pearls set between the antlers. There, in scenes of Roman luxury, he feasted and hunted and entertained. Whatever pose he may have been able to strike at Nuremberg he was, by the end of the war, a totally discredited figure. Under defeat in the East and bombing in the West, and a

To-dav the Daily Times begins the publication of a series of extracts from a forthcoming book by the officer charged by the British Intelligence Bureau in Germany with investigations into Hitler’s death.

Mr Trevor-Roper is now student of Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford, and obtained permission, after demobilisation from the Intelligence Service, to embody the results of his researches in this book, which will be published by Macmillan. This instalment is a vivid portrayal of the personalities, records and ambitions of the chief officials of Hitler’s court—Goering, Bormann, Goebbels and Himmler.

universal mental perplexity, the brief unity of party, army and people began to decompose; and other figures rose to prominence in place of the too-soon contented Reich Marshal. To resolve the mental doubts, to refute the whispered heresies, the voice of the prophet Goebbels was once more raised after a long silence. Joseph Goebbels was the intellectual of the Nazi Party, perhaps its only intellectual. The prize pupil of a Jesuit seminary, he retained to the end the distinctive character of his education; he could always prove what he wanted.

Goebbels’s position did not depend solely on his propaganda. He was respected for his intelligence, his administrative efficiency and his personal integrity; he neither believed palpaable nonsense nor performed ludicrous antics, nor exhibited indecent opullence; he wielded no engines of terror or oppression; and he was a radical, who preached not only total war but

total mobilisation, which those (like Goering) who prized their privileged standard of living would never advocate. On Hitler's other side the sinister figure of Himmler grew daily in stature. In the public imagination Himmler is a real and.terrible figure, a coldblooded, inhuman ogre, ruthlessly exterminating millions of helpless prisoners by every refinement of sadistic torture. . Himmler’s Strange Character But Himmler was not a sadist. There was nothing terrible or volcanic in his character. His very coldness was a negative element, not glacial, but bloodless. He did not delight in cruelty, he was indifferent to it; and the scruples of others were to him not contemptible, but unintelligible. “ But they are animals,” or “ criminals,” he would say, with ingenous deprecation, when foreign ambassadors, or even his own subordinates, sometimes remonstrated at some particularly savage holocaust. In this monster there were many curious qualities, which have made him to some an incredible enigmatical figure. He was extraoridnarily ignoant and naive. The man who, after

such a career, culminating in total defeat, still regarded himself as a fit negotiator to meet the Allied commanders, and hoped to be continued in office by their permission, cannot have been a man of diabolical subtlety. He was also beloved by all of his subordinates—men of neuter conscience ini deed, but in other respects apparently of only normal weakness. “ Brutality? ” his subordinates exclaim in naive chorus. “ there were no signs of brutality in his private nature; hesitation seemed to be his most obvious characteristic. Himmler himself could never understand the reputation which he had acquired. In the end he despaired of understanding it; it was some strange foible of foreigners, he concluded; and he satisfied himself with making little jokes about it in his private circle.” Nevertheless, the character of Himmler is not as mytserious as these facts may suggest to those unfamiliar with the variety of human mind. In a civilised world, it is true, such men are seldom tolerated; but if we look back at the cataclysmic periods of society, at periods of revolution and violent social change, his prototype is there. It is the Grand Inquisitor, the mystic in politics, the man who is prepared to sacrifice humanity to an abstract ideal. To Hitler the doctrines of Nazism, that great system of Teutonic nonsense, were only a weapon of politics; "he criticised and ridiculed the ideology of the 5.5.,” says Speer; but to Himmler they were, every iota of them, the pure Aryan truth. With such a narrow pedantry, with such black-letter antiquarianism, did Himmler study the details of this sad rubbish that many have supposed, but wrongly, that he had been a schoolmaster. During the war, while Goebbelswas demanding total mobilisation, Himmler was employing thousands of men and millions of marks in the projects of a religious maniac. In one department of his foreign intelligence service, a school of eager researchers studied such important matters as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, the symblism of the suppression of the harp in Ulster, and the occult significance of Gothic pinnacles and top hats at Eton. An explorer was sent to Tibet to discover traces of a pure Germanic race believed to preserve the ancient Nordic mysteries in those unvisited mountains. Throughout Europe excavators sought for relics of authentic German Kultur. . Of course if Himmler had been only a crank, we should have heard less of him. He was also, in an executive capacity, very efficient; and he had a capacity for choosing useful subordinates. This dual character of Himmler, his impersonal efficiency as an executor, and his oceanic credulity as a thinker, is, I believe, the key to his fantastic career. Animated by an unconditional loyalty to Hitler, to whom, as he often protested, he owed everything, and inspiring, as such simple characters do, a similar loyalty among his own followers toward himself, both competent to execute and too unoriginal to conspire, he was, as long as this harmony continued, an ideal chief of police to a revolutionary leader. (To be continued.)