GERMANY: The Defeated & the Fanatics

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Death rattled in the throat of the Nazi Reich. And as the Caliban State, which Hitler had prophesied would last a thousand years, threshed and trembled in its last agonies, 80,000,000 Germans were cast into chaos.

Across the shrinking Nazi realm writhed columns of civilian refugees, hungry, pan icky, desperate. Remnants of the Wehrmacht, cut off, cut up, were dissolving into a hopeless, fugitive mob. Great centers like Frankfurt (see below) and Mannheim had become ghost cities, stark in their architectured wreckage, starker in their human disintegration. The few Germans left behind were unheroic, impenitent, apathetic, sullen, unable or unwilling to believe what had happened. The diehards were mostly adolescent gangs, leftovers of Hitler Youth, who fought street battles between themselves, spied on Allied authorities and sometimes flung grenades into Allied trucks.

Beyond Credulity. The German radio filled in the canvas of confusion. Hungry Berliners were told to plant potatoes in their flower pots, in order to ease the burden on the strained food supply system. Sailors on the Baltic were ordered to scuttle their ships should there be danger of capture by the enemy. Bank clerks read the Swiss quotation for the Reichsmark: 2,500 to the dollar. Every German could hear the shocking official broadcast :

"Iron discipline and courts-martial are no longer of any avail. . . ."

The German people might well be beyond fear and past credulity. Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels could stamp his clubfoot in impotent rage. Uncontrolled rumor had replaced controlled news. The Germans heard such rumors as these:

¶ Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring had wept bitterly over his jewels and looted paintings, then shot himself.

¶ German generals had seen Churchill and Eden a fortnight ago, had agreed to fall back on the western front in return for assurances that the Russians would be barred from further advances into Germany.

¶ After a hectic meeting with his generals, the Führer had agreed to request an armistice.

¶ Mutinies had occurred in the Baltic Fleet, and in many garrison cities.

¶ Hitler, Goebbels and Gestapoboss Heinrich Himmler had retired to Berchtesgaden for a Wagnerian finale.

Underground. Whether or not there were to be heroics on high, it was clear that there was to be Naziism underground. Allied officials said they had solid evidence of a Nazi plan to carry on from secret arsenals and secret cells until the Allied coalition split and a new, triumphant Reich could arise. Other sources added details.

The Nazi plan: