Front or Back?

Front or Back

The one man in Germany who consistently dared to oppose Adolf Hitler was Colonel General Werner von Fritsch, onetime Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Son of a Kaiserlich Junker General and a devout Protestant mother, he grew up in the aristocratic Army tradition and had only one thing in common .with the corporal who became Germany's Fuehrer;: both loved the Fatherland.

In 1936, when Hitler was about to order German troops into the Rhineland, Fritsch led a clique of officers who opposed the move, and Hitler's reputed pledge to commit suicide if the bluff failed was said to have been given him. Next tiff between the two occurred when good Protestant Fritsch hotly defended Pastor Martin Niembller, who was being hounded by the Nazis.* In 1938 it was Fritsch who carried straight to Hitler himself the class-conscious Army's protest against Minister of War Marshal Werner von Blomberg's marriageto his stenographer. In the purge that followed both Blomberg and Fritsch lost their jobs, but after the Army's mechanical breakdown during the invasion of Austria, Fritsch was reinstated to the extent that he was given honorary command of the 12th Artillery Regiment.

When Germany marched into Poland last month the United Press reported that Colonel General Fritsch was with the Army advancing on Warsaw from East Prussia. The story out of Berlin then was that if he made good he would get a bigger Army job. But subsequently the Army officially denied that he was even in Poland, said he had applied for active duty, been refused. He was not listed among the top six Generals in Poland, although he outranked all of them but Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces Brauchitsch.

Last week the Associated Press reported from Berlin that the Army again denied Fritsch was in Poland. Twenty-four hours later came an official German communique, datelined "Fuehrer Headquarters." It announced: "Colonel General von Fritsch was killed the 22nd of September in battle before Warsaw. . . . The Fuehrer ordered a military and state funeral."

How General Fritsch got into action before Warsaw so quickly was just one mystery surrounding his death. How a top-ranking General happened to be leading a reconnaissance party--as military headquarters announced he was--was another. Some clue to the possible fate of General Fritsch was contained in reports that Great Britain by offering to negotiate with "any honorable Government in Germany," had focused attention on the one element which could seize power from the Nazis--the powerful old Junker Reichswehr, whose leader had been Werner von Fritsch. The most, important question in the strange death of Fritsch seemed to be: was he shot from front or back?

*And who last week was reported to have volunteered from his concentration camp to return to the post he held during World War I, as submarine commander.

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