Days of the Double N

Germany's rulers turned their thoughts to the days of the Double N: Nach der Niederlage (after the defeat).

"Permanent Fight." From Stockholm came the details of a weird Nazi plan to save Naziism after the war is lost. Count Anton von Knyphausen, for years a German correspondent in Helsinki, said that he had decided to quit the Nazi cause, would gladly tell the Allied world what he knew.

The Nazis, said Knyphausen, are preparing to use selected military units to form "islands of resistance," chiefly in the mountain regions. They mean to emulate the Partisans. Headquarters will be near Berchtesgaden, where Hitler, Mussolini, selected quislings and lesser German dignitaries can defy the Allies from the Wagnerian Berghof. Arms, supplies and lavish radio equipment are already being gathered. The radio will be used to guide a vast network of underground fanatics, enrolled under the slogan: "Join the permanent fight for European freedom."

But before this scheme goes into operation, every German soldier must fight to the bitter end. Count Anton added. The Goetterdaemmerung, which Hitler hopes will be a brief one, should not begin too soon.

Permanent Division? From London came a shrewd guess at another phase of these plans. The astute Observer added up the signs that Adolf Hitler proposes to fight for months, that he has utterly destroyed every source of democratic or leftist resistance, that even the Junkers, industrialists and generals are neither able nor anxious to throw him out and shorten the war, that the Nazis actually do have plans to go underground at the end.

One outcome of all this, said the Observer, would be to rip up the Reich, throw Germany back into the chaos of little states which Bismarck made a nation, and thus wreck the victors' plans for a united but weakened Germany. In the confusion, the underground Nazis would do their damndest to make life impossible for the occupying troops, keep "a ruthless grip on a cowed population." Concluded the Observer:

"What then? Each occupying army would be compelled to cooperate with such local forces as can be found. . . . The United Nations would probably prefer and would certainly consent to deal with Germany as one. But the almost inevitable result of Hitler's own present 'last-ditch' policy, if carried through to the end, would be that the Union of Germany, which has been a determining factor of Europe's destiny for three-quarters of a century, would pass away. The next chapter would be a new one for Europe as well as for the Germans."

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