The Admiral's HQ

In a corner of northwestern Germany the German war spirit still throve. Around the red brick Marine & Signal School in Flensburg milled armed German soldiers and sailors. Sometimes they drilled stiffly, sometimes they sang Wir Fahren Gegen Engeland and the Horst Wessel Lied.

Their garrison commander, Captain Lut, ramrod-stiff and shaven-pated U-boat skipper, boasted openly of his high score--110,000 tons of Allied shipping--and usually added: "The next time I will do better."

Inside the school were Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, "the last Reichsfuehrer," and his ill-assorted but determined ministers--Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, acting premier, foreign minister and minister of finance; Franz Seldte, labor minister; Herbert Backe, agriculture; Julius Dorpmueller, transportation; and Albert Speer, Hitler's master of production. All but Dorpmueller were hyperactive Nazis.

A mile away, on the rusty old German liner Patria, moored in Flensburger Forde, a SHAEF mission had set up shop. One direct wire linked the Patria with General Eisenhower's headquarters at Reims. Another ran from the Patria to the Marine & Signal School.

A correspondent who wished to interview Doenitz asked the SHAEF general on the Patria for help. The general said that he did not care to ask Doenitz' permission for the interview, but wished the correspondent luck. The correspondent and a German captain, who spoke English, then made their way to the headquarters gate but got no further. German guards sprang to attention, rifles at the ready.

An Allied cameraman got a picture, released last week by the British, of Doenitz and a naval aide walking past a German guard at the door (see cut). Another correspondent talked his way in. He failed to see Doenitz but found Krosigk more amenable.

"My colleagues and I," said Krosigk, "feel that we cannot abandon the German people in this dark hour ... if there is to" be no central organization by the Allied occupying powers in which we as experts could help, I greatly fear for the future. There will be hunger . . . chaos ... a big political swing either to left or right. . . . Neither could be a good thing for Germany."

Prime Minister Churchill left the gate open: he told the aroused House of Commons that he preferred to think of the Doenitz regime as an "administration rather than a government." For the long term, he added, Germans should administer Germany under Allied supervision (see below).

The same day, a correspondent sat SHAEF was told that the men of Flensburg had been put on a "seize and freeze" basis. Another SHAEF account said that they were under arrest. In other words, Doenitz and his henchmen faced incarceration and, possibly, punishment as war criminals. Meanwhile, at least until the Allies could find other administrators, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz remained, in the eyes of defeated Germans, and to the alarm of Russia, the acknowledged governor of Germany.

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