GERMANY: Rump Reich

The Third Reich was ending in political rubble and rabble. But even death demands an undertaker. To head the rump Reich appeared a rump Führer—Grand Admiral Ivarl Doenitz, a fanatical Nazi, and Hitler’s master planner of submarine warfare. Seconding him was Albert Speer, also a fanatical Nazi, and Hitler’s brilliant Minister of War Production.

The pair were like snakes within a narrowing circle of fatal fire. From Hamburg Doenitz broadcast his only policy: “It is my first task to save the German people from destruction by the Bolsheviks…. As long as the British and Americans hamper us from reaching this end, we shall fight and defend ourselves.” Doenitz moved to Denmark. He had dismissed from his rump Government (the personnel of which was not disclosed) Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. As rump Foreign Minister he named mild-mannered, Oxford-educated Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, 58, Hitler’s back-seat Minister of Finance, Krosigk echoed his Führer: peace for Germany but no surrender to the “Bolshevik terror.”

This week the Government of Admiral Doenitz did the most important thing it will ever have to do: surrendered to the Allies unconditionally.