Where Are They Now?

Walther von Brauchitsch was the son of Junker General Bernhard von Brauchitsch and socialite Elizabeth von Karstedt. The boy found his way to the Imperial Guards and the fashionable Elizabeth's Guard Grenadiers. Throughout World War I he was on the General Staff; in the postwar token Reichswehr he got a highly essential, secret job: Chief of the Department for Army Expansion.

In 1933 he took command of the First Army District, became a pillar of conservatism in the East Prussian Junker milieu, a loyal follower of archconservative General Werner von Fritsch. General von Brauchitsch did not oppose the Nazis; he snubbed them as upstarts. But to appease the old-line Army caste, Hitler made him Commander in Chief with Cabinet Minister rank.

When Fritsch was killed in Poland, probably shot in the back by the Gestapo, Brauchitsch made the funeral speech: "The unshakable loyalty with which this best soldier of the German Army served his unbreakable principles of honor, in good and in bad times, make him an example, the only example for every German soldier."

Brauchitsch opposed the Russian campaign unless Great Britain and the U.S. supported Germany. In 1941, reports said, he argued against Hitler's strategy of striking simultaneously at Moscow and the Ukraine. By 1942, Brauchitsch was so much at odds with Hitler's intuitive strategy that he either resigned or was booted into retirement. In 1943, Field Marshal General Walther von Brauchitsch was said to be the candidate of Wehrmacht leaders to replace Hitler, seemed to have excellent chances of becoming the German Badoglio. In late August, Russia's Tass news agency, quoting "Berlin military circles," reported Brauchitsch poisoned. By last week, rumors grew that he was dead.

Latest reports on the whereabouts of other erstwhile newsworthies:

Still uncaptured last week was the Isle of Capri, in Naples Bay, with a possible prize of doubtful value--Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, former Nazi War Minister and Wehrmacht Chief who mar ried his secretary. He retired to Capri when Hitler took control of the armed forces in 1938.

The Austrian Chancellor who talked back to Hitler, Kurt von Schuschnigg, after Anschluss was placed under fortress arrest near the village of Noerdlingen in Bavaria. Six months ago he was removed to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, at Oranienburg. No word since.

Outspoken Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller is still in Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Last year the Gestapo put him in a cell with two Catholic priests, hoping they could convert one another to formation of a German na tional church. That failed; now Niemoeller is back in solitary confinement, well treated, given any books he wants to read.

Leader of the German Communist Party, Ernst Thalmann, works on a prison farm outside Hanover, is healthy, is still a Communist. On his last birthday he received thousands of letters.

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