GERMANY: Never, Never, Never!

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Terror, if not disaffection, seethed even beyond the German frontiers. One day last week Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, veteran German Ambassador to the Vatican, was reported to have had a long, earnest talk with Pope Pius XII, then repudiated the Nazis. Next day the Embassy repudiated his repudiation. Disaffection was also reported spreading from Russia. A leading Nazi pointed his finger at General Walther von Seidlitz and his Moscow German Officers' Union. Cried garrulous Austrian Gauleiter August Eigruber: Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben had connections with the Moscow Germans. Witzleben was reported to have led the July 20 Putsch against the Nazis, was rumored to be in jail or executed.

More Ranting. At week's end Hitler summoned his sub-Führers to an emergency Party meeting. In breast-beating prose he took up the theme of his old poem:

"I am not afraid to wage battle against outside enemies. . . . But I must have certainty that in the rear there is absolute security, loyal confidence and faithful cooperation. . . . The criminal saboteurs [of July 20] are eliminated. . . . We shall master all difficulties by harnessing the entire military and inner strength of the nation. ... I believe that I am necessary to the nation, that it needs a man who will under no circumstances capitulate. . . . No one else would do that better than I."