The Sound of Doom

Somewhere in Valhalla an unseen hand struck a mighty cymbal note, and the sound of doom was heard across Germany.

All week long its clangor rang in Adolf Hitler's ears:

> In Sicily, resistance crumbling.

> In Italy, progressive collapse.

> In Russia, ominous summertime defeat.

> From Sweden, a blow that hurt as much as defeat in battle (see p. 25).

> From the bomb-shambles that once was Hamburg, civilian jitters spreading through the Reich--making it necessary to evacuate Berlin, sending a million homeless Germans shuffling down roads to nowhere, rousing scared German workers to strike, stirring imported foreign labor to clamor for repatriation.

> In all the conquered countries, ugly intimations that men thought the day of reckoning was close--a general strike in Salonika, daylight attacks on Nazi soldiers in Paris, new guerrilla outbreaks in Greece and Yugoslavia.

First Moves. How much longer would it be before the masters of Germany caught the contagion? Before they themselves believed the game was up? Doubtless they half believed it now, were groping for a way to silence the music, to halt the players, to darken the house, to pay off the audience, to rewrite Germany's destiny.

A Berlin dispatch announced the German Government in &#quot;permanent session&#quot; at Adolf Hitler's field headquarters. Present: Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Munitions Minister Speer, Chief of Staff Keitel, Grand Admiral Doenitz, Air Marshal Milch, Generals Zeitzler and Jodl of the General Staff. (Notable absentee: General Walther von Brauchitsch, former CINC of the Wehrmacht, who disappeared from the Russian front last January. Might he become Germany's Badoglio?)

Spanish correspondents in Berlin, reporting the meeting, said that "powers of enormous magnitude" had been given to Hermann Goering; that a triumvirate of Goering, Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel and Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz was now the "real head of Germany." Allied capitals were skeptical.

From the meeting Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and General Keitel reportedly hurried to Verona to talk with Italy's new Foreign Minister, Raffaele Guariglia. The Chief of the Italian General Staff, General Vittorio Ambrosio, joined them, "on the germans' invitation," in "important discussions." From the German point of view these discussions had only two objects: maximum, to hold the Badoglio Government to its Axis alliance for war and/or peace; minimum, to keep Italy in the war long enough for Germany to get forces and materiel down through the Brenner to hold a de fensive line south of the Po. But German broadcasts stopped using the word "Axis."

Which Way to Turn? For those who run _ trialists, Germany -- Junkers -- Nazis, the summer militarists, of indus 1943 posed one paramount problem: now that military defeat is growing closer, now that psychological defeat is imminent, could Germany still gain victory in the peace? There were two possibilities: 1) conditional surrender to Britain and America; 2) making terms with Russia.

If the way out of the dilemma was agreement with the west, the Germans' object would be to get an agreement that would save them from Soviet Russia. From London, Correspondent Frederick Kuh of the Chicago Sun cabled a plausible outline for such an Axis proposal: "Italy has intimated reluctance to conclude a separate peace and is urging a general peace settlement which will include Germany. ... The Italian suggestion has been made through Turkey. The feeler is reported to have come directly from Foreign Minister Guariglia. Germany's Papan is busy in Ankara . . . insinuating to anyone willing to listen that if the United Nations try to impose merciless terms upon Italy which might be a precedent against Germany, then Hitler might seek peace with Russia. . . .

"Information that Guariglia is aiming at a general peace including Germany came to London from responsible Spanish and Portuguese as well as Turkish sources. Guariglia is said to have recognized in private conversation that such a climax is bound to involve the overthrow of Hitlerism and to have added that 'Russia will have to stay within her proper boundaries.' Furthermore, Guariglia is said to be receiving Vatican encouragement. . . ."

Last week the Pope (see p. 55) asked Catholics everywhere to pray for peace. And a Vatican spokesman, referring to the intense diplomatic activity in and around Europe, said: "It is a self-evident fact that the Holy See cannot remain indifferently inactive in the face of the possibility, however remote, of reaching a solution of the present international situation." But these things did not prove that the Pope would promote such a plan.

If Germany chose to try for peace with Russia, the object would be to avoid another possible Versailles. Germany might get such a peace by ousting the Nazis and on fairly easy terms if Stalin would accept the kind of democratic-capitalist regime urged by the Free German Committee in Moscow (TIME, Aug. 2). A peace allowing the German State to retain an army and to rebuild its economy, a peace along the endless, abrasive eastern front, would be by no means unattractive to millions of Germans, even to some conservatives and some of the military. To the Nazis and to those tarred with Naziism, such a peace offered no hope. The question of how much it would offer to others would depend on what concrete terms Stalin would accept.

"Whatever May Happen." The two ways out of the dilemma in which big Germans found themselves--east and west --were open to them only if the Allies split.

To their domestic audiences Nazi political commentators appealed for "conndence" with the assurance that conflict among Washington, London and Moscow was unavoidable. Said one commentator: "We Germans are much better politicians than the Allied statesmen, and therefore we are going to win the peace -- whatever may happen." This was now the German game. If it fails somewhere in Valhalla the unseen hand will strike a mightier note.

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