Graf Schwerin von Krosigk: The Last Days of the Reich Government
[Der Weg 1948-10] An original translation of "Die letzten Tage der Reichsregierung"
Title: The Last Days of the Reich Government [de: Die letzten Tage der Reichsregierung]
Author: Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 02, Issue 10 (October 1948)
Page(s): 699-709
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1948 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
Der Weg Editor’s Note:
This report draws on the accounts of Reich Minister Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, who served as Foreign Minister in the final Reich Government under Dönitz—a government that took shape on May 30, 1945, in the Schleswig region, between Eutin and Flensburg.
Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, born into the ancient Upper Saxon noble lineage of von Krosigk, came into the world on August 22, 1882, in Rathmannsdorf, Anhalt. By 1929, he had climbed to the rank of Ministerial Director in the Finance Ministry; then, in June 1932, he stepped into the role of Reich Finance Minister, a position that also placed him in the first Reich Cabinet of Hitler’s regime.
The Last Days of the Reich Government
Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
In April 1945, confusion and uncertainty gripped Berlin’s Führer Bunker. Amid the war’s escalating chaos and the looming catastrophe, opinions clashed: Goebbels insisted on holding fast in Berlin—a stance that fit his roles as Gauleiter and Reich Defense Commissioner—while Bormann pushed for a retreat south to the so-called “Alpine Redoubt.” American broadcasts from Switzerland had already dubbed Tyrol the “Alpine Fortress,” a supposed stronghold where the Nazis would wage their last stand and carve out a vast refuge and defensive bastion. Yet, in truth, no such fortress had been built.
Panic swirled back and forth. Orders contradicted one another; telephone directives only deepened the disarray. On the night of April 20-21, five bombing raids hammered Berlin, piling chaos upon chaos. At last, Reich Minister Graf Schwerin von Krosigk secured a clear, written command: the Reich Government must withdraw to Eutin, in the north. On April 21, the first Russian shells raked Berlin. The people sank into apathy and fear. By April 22, Schwerin von Krosigk reached Eutin.
That same day, the Führer faltered—collapsing for the first time during a briefing in the Führer Bunker, calling the situation hopeless. Goebbels urged him on: Help was near, he claimed, from General Wenck’s strike force! By the next day, the Führer rallied, standing firm to the bitter end. His resolve hardened: stay in Berlin, await Wenck’s army—everything would turn out fine! Meanwhile, right after the Führer’s breakdown on April 22, and before he’d pulled himself together, General Noller relayed the news to Göring in the south. Göring, named Hitler’s successor at the war’s outset should anything befall the Führer, now saw Hitler as incapacitated. He judged an emergency at hand—one that, under succession rules, forced him to act. Loyal to the core, Göring radioed Hitler: unless he heard otherwise by a tight deadline, he’d assume the Führer’s mantle. Göring’s case stands clear—no lawless grab, no disloyalty, no treason tainted his move. Hitler’s reaction stemmed from Berlin’s crisis and the bunker’s stifling air. Three radioed orders shot back: Göring must shed all titles and posts, face expulsion from the Party, and submit to arrest. Bormann went further, ordering his elimination. Göring, steadfast in his devotion, chalked it up to a mix-up. He drafted two messages to Hitler and passed them to Bormann’s aide for relay—but they never made it through.
Himmler, too, got word of the Führer’s collapse on April 22, straightaway. Stationed in the north, he’d just met Sweden’s Count Bernadotte, a Red Cross envoy, on April 21, opening talks to free Nordic prisoners from Germany’s concentration camps. Pushed from every side, Himmler now shared the view that Hitler’s hands were tied. With the military crumbling and the Bolshevik shadow lengthening, he deemed talks with the Western Allies for a western surrender unavoidable. An English journalist’s slip let this leak on the radio by April 28—too soon. On April 29, Hitler’s fury struck Himmler too. Feeling betrayed and forsaken, he demanded ruthless action against the “traitors” north and south. No question lingered: by the letter, Himmler’s acts spelled treason against the Führer. Yet, don’t some moments thrust upon us that awful, weighty, tragic choice—loyalty to the people over loyalty to the leader?1 For months, that dilemma had gnawed at Himmler.
A question emerges: how did it reach this end? How could Hitler let his nation stagger into this abyss? Why didn’t the Reich ministers step in?
The Führer of spring 1945 bore little resemblance to the Hitler of pre-1933 days, or the leader of 1933-39 and the war’s early years. Something had shifted. Aged beyond his years, he stooped low; his arm shook—a scar from the July 20 assassination attempt. His mind and spirit had changed too. Was it sickness, or exhaustion that finally broke even him? Schwerin von Krosigk sidesteps Rudolf Hess’s charge—voiced without doubt at Nuremberg—that Hitler’s doctor, Morell, poisoned him for the Soviets. Still, a shift was undeniable. This man, once a master of escape and endless answers, dazzling in his prime, now seemed blinkered. A narrowing, a stiffening, had taken hold; he tuned out everything. Most jarring of all: his memory stayed flawless to the last, his mind razor-sharp, spotting the right move instantly, his sway over others unbroken.
Take his meetings with the Duce and Marshal Antonescu as proof. They arrived heavy-hearted, set on baring their souls and laying it all out. “We’ll let it rip,” they thought—but after two or three hours with the Führer, they left spellbound, buoyed, and brimming with hope. Their cares crept back only later. Kaltenbrunner, cool and clear-headed as he was, fared no different. In early January 1945, he approached Hitler, resolved to pour out plain truth. At a meeting with others, the Führer sensed Kaltenbrunner’s burden right off, called him out, and drew him aside. There—in January 1945!—he spun out Linz’s rebuilding plan, Kaltenbrunner’s birthplace, for an hour and a half, then pressed:
“Do you think, Kaltenbrunner, I’d spin these peacetime dreams if I weren’t dead certain of victory?”
Kaltenbrunner walked away awestruck, his worries and plans buried. Seyss-Inquart got the same steamroll treatment. The Gauleiters, too, felt it in February 1945—their final huddle with the Führer. They came crushed, their strength spent. He shuffled in, bent and trembling, still reeling from the assassination’s toll, and spoke seated for the first time. His talk split three ways: first, a philosophical bent—history proves victory comes to those who hold faith in the darkest hours; second, the how—a clash of East and West loomed sure as fate; third, the clincher—we’d tip the scales. Militarily, we still had pull: new weapons, submarines, jet fighters. At the close, this fate-battered man pointed to his quaking hand:
“This tremor might reach my head someday, but the heart in my chest will never falter!”
The Gauleiters left gripped by that hour’s spell. So his magic held them all, right to the end.
Add to this: the Führer kept everyone’s cards hidden from each other. Politicians bet on a military win—those “wonder weapons”—while the brass banked on politics, murmuring, “the Führer’s always right there.” Hopes hung on diplomatic finesse. His rule was ironclad: no peeking across sectors. Each side figured the other held a game-changing ace.
Moreover, the immense significance of the July 20, 1944, plot emerged with resounding force. A miracle had unfolded: the bomb had detonated mere feet from the Führer, yet he emerged unscathed. The hand of providence had revealed itself plainly, the Führer unmistakably its chosen vessel. This conviction pulsed through the Führer’s heart—and through the entire German nation alongside him. From this, he deduced that providence had entrusted him with a sacred mission: to obliterate Bolshevism. He clung to this belief with unwavering devotion until his final breath, a faith bolstered when fate, on April 12, struck down President Roosevelt, one of his fiercest adversaries. In that moment, the Führer called for Dr. Goebbels and, pointing to these fateful twists, declared:
“Providence has spared me and removed Roosevelt—my purpose stands clear before me!”
Thus, the Führer seemed locked in this belief, rigid and unyielding as if carved in stone. This faith had drifted far beyond the realm of reason; yet, when one tries to relive it in earnest, any swift judgment collapses under its own weight.
The Führer grew ever more relentless, his creed resounding:
“Whoever negotiates deserves the noose!”
Were there none, then, who could withstand his spellbinding pull? It was evident: any effort to shift the tide could only succeed by dismantling this immovable barrier—and that meant standing against him. Herein lay the tragedy of a figure like Himmler. Time and again, others pressed him, insisting that with all power concentrated in his grasp, he should speak plainly and act. Himmler maintained he could not turn against the Führer. Yet, at times, he’d muster his resolve, proclaiming he’d take action within four weeks. But his conduct soon faltered, revealing not a steady course but restless indecision; and when the Führer’s collapse on April 22 seemed to clear a path, it was already too late. Was there ever a moment when something could still have been done? Until spring 1945, the Führer held the steadfast trust of much of the German people; any move against him risked plunging the nation into bloody civil war—just as it would have if the July 20 Plot had succeeded. And after the Yalta Conference, where the Allies vowed to seek peace only as one, was any door left ajar? The Führer would never have yielded.
On April 22, 1945, Dönitz and Schwerin von Krosigk reached the northern sector. At Dönitz’s side stood Gauleiter Wegener of Bremen, while in the south, Kesselring was paired with Gauleiter Hofer.
Two urgent questions gripped the Reich Cabinet: the plight of the refugee throngs fleeing westward from beyond the Elbe, driven north by the advancing Russians, and the quandary of how to respond to the Führer’s command to destroy all supplies. In early April, the Führer had ordered the annihilation of every facility—gas, water, electricity included. Speer stood opposed, vowing to thwart the directive by any means. This sparked a fierce clash with the Führer, where Speer’s very life hung in the balance. He wrestled with a tormenting dilemma: securing the German people’s future while bound by loyalty to the Führer. The Führer’s reply cut sharp:
“If we don’t claim victory, the German people don’t deserve to live!”
Speer held firm against the destruction, yet he was the last to brave a flight into Russian-encircled Berlin to bid the Führer farewell—an act Hanna Reitsch affirmed as the Führer’s final great joy.
This jars with Speer’s claim at the Nuremberg Trials of plotting the Führer’s assassination—a riddle Schwerin von Krosigk confesses he cannot unravel.
Meanwhile, at the Reich Government’s seat in Eutin, a question loomed: What happens when the Führer dies? Who takes his place? Himmler was absent, represented only by State Secretary Stukkart. This prompted a proposed meeting between Dönitz and Himmler. Perhaps Himmler’s succession—whether by law or sheer might—could come into play. The meeting happened, and both resolved to honor Hitler’s choice, whatever it might be. By a third meeting with Himmler on April 29, a Berlin order demanded the purge of all traitors across north and south. Word had also spread of Himmler’s talks with Bernadotte the day prior. Pressed by Dönitz for clarity, Himmler denied pursuing surrender. Yet this clashes with Count Bernadotte’s newly published book, with SS Brigadeführer Schellenberg’s accounts—then Himmler’s envoy in Stockholm, linking to the Western Allies—and with Himmler’s dispatch of an aide to General Manteuffel’s Eastern Front headquarters. That aide declared:
“Himmler has struck out on his own.”
He added that all hinged on holding the Oder front, as Himmler sought surrender in the West to ally with them against the East.
On April 30, word first broke that Grand Admiral Dönitz was named Hitler’s successor—a twist few found shocking. Göring and Himmler had fallen from contention. The looming defeat and surrender demanded a soldier’s hand. Among the top brass, only Dönitz, the navy’s helm, stood ready—and he bore the Führer’s deep trust besides. On May 1, three radio messages crackled through: the first confirmed Dönitz as successor, though it was to stay hushed for now. The second announced the Führer’s death at 3:30 p.m. on April 30, affirmed Dönitz’s role, and noted Hitler’s will arriving with Martin Bormann. The third designated Dönitz Reich President, Goebbels Reich Chancellor, and Bormann Party Minister. The Grand Admiral’s radio pleas to the German people about the Führer’s passing, paired with the stark, solemn funeral broadcast, linger in memory still.
As the new order’s first act, Dönitz sacked Ribbentrop, installing Schwerin von Krosigk as Reich Foreign Minister.
That same day, Himmler phoned, seeking a talk. A jarring evening awaited Schwerin von Krosigk at Himmler’s headquarters. A cheerful circle greeted him, sipping red wine, silent on the fallen Führer. Himmler himself seemed lost in a dreamy haze, far from reality’s grip. He mused: the present chaos would hold for three months; then East and West would collide.
“We’ll tip the scales,” he said. “We’ll still have our part to play and reach our aim.”
Here, the Urals slipped into talk. Himmler urged Schwerin von Krosigk to take the Foreign Ministry, noting wryly that few had stepped into such a post with grander horizons. He reckoned a half-hour chat with Eisenhower and Montgomery would sweep all doubts away. This stemmed from Schellenberg’s Stockholm dispatches, feeding hopes Himmler could deal with the West. That’s why he hid, evading capture—each day expecting Schellenberg’s word of a meeting with Eisenhower.
Schwerin von Krosigk took the Foreign Minister role after Dönitz admitted the task was bleak. Yet he demanded Bormann’s instant arrest—a term Dönitz met. Dönitz then asked his take on Bormann’s three radio messages. Von Krosigk was sure Bormann had twisted them. But to what end? Was it Goebbels’ wild dream of echoing Bismarck, if only for an hour before the end?
Schwerin von Krosigk holds that Bormann ranked among the vilest scourges. Even at the close, he aimed to poison the well and spin a fresh myth: pinning surrender on Dönitz, then claiming Hitler’s vision diverged.
On April 29, the Führer issues an order to the new Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief, Greim: fly out of Berlin and launch a final bombing raid against an impending Soviet attack, striking from Russian staging positions in the city. On April 30, under enemy fire, Hanna Reitsch takes off from Charlottenburger Chaussee with Commander-in-Chief Greim and safely escapes Berlin. The planned German airstrike on the Russian positions in Berlin goes ahead, shattering the Soviet assault. Then, on the same day, a call comes from Field Marshal Keitel, informing the Führer that the German relief attack by Army Yenk has failed. Upon this news, the Führer takes his own life.
The Russian offensive stalls. From the Führerbunker, General Krebs sets out to negotiate with the Soviets. His return is delayed. At last—on the afternoon of May 1—he comes back: hostilities in Berlin are to cease.
In the night of May 1 to 2, Bormann, Neumann, and Kempka attempt a breakout from Berlin, shielded by a tank, heading north via Friedrichstraße. Beyond Friedrichstraße Station, the tank carrying Bormann and Neumann takes a direct hit up front. Kempka, trailing in a second vehicle, sees the fireball. He doubts anyone survived.
On May 2, 1945, the new government faces the heavy burden of orchestrating Germany’s surrender. The first question looms: should the capitulation be declared from a central authority, or should a vacuum be left, letting individual units and armies handle it? Dönitz would have walked away any day, a soldier loath to surrender or sign it himself.
“His stance won my heart!”
Schwerin von Krosigk later remarked.
What if we hadn’t surrendered? The last cities untouched by war would have been reduced to rubble, more precious lives lost—yet defeat would still have been inevitable. Thus, the chief reason for a centrally managed surrender was to save as much of the German people as possible and keep what we could from the Russians. That’s why the surrender policy had to be unified. The first meeting of the Dönitz-Schwerin Cabinet tackled this crisis. Enemy armies were closing in along the Elbe. Only Schörner’s Army Group, in the Czechoslovak-Austrian region, still held a deep bulge eastward. At Yalta, the Americans had agreed to a line west of Prague for their eastward advance. Jodl explained that Schörner’s forces had supplies for several weeks. Schörner himself favored fighting on. This risked his flank being turned and encircled—a second, even greater Stalingrad. So Dönitz resolved to summon Schörner or his chief of staff, von Natzmer, for talks.
Meanwhile, on the evening of May 2, Admiral General Friedeburg secured a partial surrender with Montgomery. Admirals and Generals Wagner and Kienz arrived at the British lines to hash out details and were received with camaraderie and honor. Montgomery sent a British liaison officer to Dönitz’s headquarters, urging that as many people as possible be pulled back from the Russian front. They managed to extract 287,000 men from the Baltics and the broader East—transport ships sometimes making two runs, though only one was permitted.
On May 3, commanders from Denmark, Norway, and Czechoslovakia arrived in Mürwik for discussions with Dönitz. Telling of the commanders’ spirit—and the chaotic, chance-driven state of affairs—was the meeting with Denmark’s commander, Generaloberst von Lindemann. He reported that all was well in Denmark. His army group would move into prepared positions in Jutland. The Reich government could relocate there, he said, and he’d fight the war’s last decent battle. Some argued Denmark and Norway were our final bargaining chips. But to Schwerin von Krosigk, this was senseless, foolish, criminal—proof that unified leadership was essential.
How easily grave missteps could arise showed in a late-night call to Dönitz’s adjutant: in Copenhagen, German forces had arrested Reich Commissioner Best, and on Lindemann’s orders, he was to be shot. The backstory? Best, as Reich Commissioner, had resigned under pressure when an SS guard was assigned to him, reverting to his role as German envoy in Copenhagen. As such, Danish police granted him diplomatic protection. But with some police tied to the Danish resistance, Germans jumped to the near-fatal conclusion that Best was colluding with them and had to be eliminated.
Denmark was then folded into Dönitz’s surrender talks, greatly aiding efforts to house the flood of refugees from the East and North.
Negotiations with Schörner and Natzmer over their withdrawal pressed on. Schörner asked for time until May 11. This date was set as the baseline for talks with Montgomery. By then, Kesselring’s surrender in the South had occurred. Now, an attempt began to arrange a full Western surrender with Eisenhower, to take effect once our eastern troops were in reach. Admiral General Friedeburg was dispatched to Eisenhower, who rejected a partial deal.
To buy time for Schörner’s armies, Friedeburg broke off talks, claiming “no authority.” Then Jodl flew to Eisenhower, laying out the eastern situation. In talks with Jodl and Chief of Staff Bedell Smith, a four-day window for total surrender was proposed. Eisenhower refused, settling on a two-day compromise—May 9. Schörner couldn’t complete his retreat by then. Still, half his forces—about three and a half million people—were pulled into the Western sphere at the last moment. This, Dönitz’s stance justified best.
At the ensuing Berlin surrender talks, Field Marshal Keitel represented the new government. Marshal Zhukov had Keitel’s credentials scrutinized for hours before deeming them valid. Dönitz had issued them as supreme commander of all German forces, a role tied to his position as head of state—thus recognized by the enemy. This acknowledgment was key to the talks’ legitimacy. The question was: was the new Reich government legal? If not, the negotiations were worthless.
On May 3, Dönitz and Schwerin von Krosigk weighed whether to aim solely for military surrender or pursue a political, legal act too. They opted for both, clear that centralized control was vital in critical areas—food, transport, economy, finance—or chaos would reign. A caretaker Reich government had to be formed and enemy-recognized. Thus emerged the caretaker government under von Krosigk’s lead, with Backe on food, Dorpmüller on transport, Seldte on economy, and von Krosigk on finance.
During this time, a multi-day talk unfolded with the Reichsführer-SS, who sought to be the government’s number two. This was untenable for the enemy. Dönitz himself held firm:
“Once a traitor, always a traitor!”
In talks with Himmler, he repeatedly asked von Krosigk,
“What becomes of me?”
Options were debated. At their final meeting on May 5, Dönitz told Himmler there was no role for him. Again, Himmler pressed von Krosigk,
“What becomes of me?”
Von Krosigk argued that going underground only worked if Himmler’s hoped-for quick shift materialized—which it wouldn’t. Suicide was raised too. Von Krosigk understood a desperate act like Gleim’s, unable to bear the fatherland’s shame. But for Himmler, it was different. Given his rank and responsibility, von Krosigk said, he should live, face the enemy, and own it all. He advised Himmler to go to Montgomery and surrender. Himmler agreed in principle but wanted to wait for Schellenberg’s call from Stockholm, hoping for a breakthrough—a meeting with Eisenhower, a joint stand against Bolshevism. So he waited for Schellenberg’s decisive word. On May 9, Himmler spoke to Schellenberg one last time. Soon after, captured, he died—by poison or a British soldier’s blow, a riddle never solved.
An American-British commission arrived in Mürvik, where the Reich government was in constant session at the naval academy along the Flensburg Fjord. This group, under Eisenhower’s directive, approached their task with a no-nonsense, businesslike air. Schwerin von Krosigk and Backe presented them with memoranda, making a compelling case for a centralized administration; their efforts paid off when Backe flew to Eisenhower’s headquarters in mid-May to push the negotiations forward and seal the deal. But Backe didn’t return—word eventually reached us that he’d been interned in Reims. Meanwhile, Dorpmüller, a vigorous 74-year-old who bulldozed over everyone despite his illness, vowed that transportation would be humming again in six weeks. In his talks with the enemy, though, he laid down firm conditions: no meddling in his plans, and no one—not even party comrades—was to be taken away. Dorpmüller, too, headed to Reims, continuing his discussions in a chateau near Paris. Tasked with getting transportation running in the Anglo-American zone, he was struck by a sudden, severe illness during his negotiations in France and died soon after in Sielen.
“Later on, we found out,” von Krosigk continued, “that the British were all in favor—quite deliberately—while the Americans, more cautiously, backed a central German administration and saw a Dönitz government as tolerable for the time being. This came through clearly when an American general proposed that Dönitz appoint General von Schwerin as commander-in-chief of the German army—a move that further signaled recognition of the Dönitz government.”
Then came a sharp turn in how the Allies viewed the Dönitz Reich government, sparked by Russian propaganda and a feverish clamor in the Western nations for someone to blame. We can pin it down exactly: on May 17, Eisenhower and Montgomery were summoned to Churchill. That meeting seems to mark the shift. All of a sudden, Field Marshal Busch, stationed with Montgomery, was treated like a lowly servant—an indignity that threw many on the German side into utter confusion. Among the young officers around Dönitz, sentiment flipped overnight; the prevailing thought became,
“If England betrays us again, then it’s off to the Russians!”
Fueling this was the cunning Russian propaganda blaring from Berlin’s airwaves, paired with Churchill’s claim that no wedge was meant to split East from West. That’s when Dönitz confronted the British and Americans:
“If you want to turn Germans into Bolsheviks, you’re doing it right. You’re on a dangerous, ruinous path that’s bound to breed radicalism.”
Here, Schwerin von Krosigk paused to reflect on Germany’s future, pointing to the deep wound in its national spirit. To him, Germany’s tomorrow could only take shape within a grander vision: a United States of Europe.
After the May 9 surrender, calls grew louder for the Dönitz government to step aside. Speer pressed this view on Dönitz too, urging him to outmaneuver the enemy’s moves and dodge a slide toward the left. But von Krosigk and Backe pushed back hard, arguing that the Reich government stood as the last emblem of a united Germany—we had to keep the flag flying. Dönitz wavered. Yet when von Krosigk warned that the German youth would never grasp such a retreat, Dönitz agreed to hold his ground. From then on, at his insistence, the subject was dropped.
Then came an incident hinting that the “concentration camp horrors” screamed about in enemy papers—reports Admiral General Friedeburg had picked up at Montgomery’s headquarters—might hold some truth. This prompted Schwerin to draft a bill to prosecute all alleged camp crimes, submitted to Eisenhower with a pledge that the Reich Court would judge fairly and squarely. Eisenhower didn’t even respond.
On May 20, a Russian warship steamed into Flensburg harbor, anchoring beside the Patria, home to the British and American delegates. Those delegates kept a hawk-like watch on every move the Germans made around the Russians. Sure enough, binoculars glinted at every porthole of the Anglo-American ship, tracking each German visit to the Russian vessel with sharp-eyed suspicion.
As state secretaries, generals, and admirals met in Flensburg-Mürvik, a British armored brigade threw a wide ring around the Flensburg-Glücksburg area. Then, at 10 a.m., fifteen British military police, submachine guns in hand, stormed the Reich government’s meeting room, led by a man who clearly wasn’t British by birth. State Secretary Zintsch, posted by the door, took a fist to the face—teeth knocked out—while a policeman jeered,
“What, you a grand admiral too?”
The ministers, secretaries, and military brass there were forced to line up, faces to the wall. Amid the chaos, Schwerin von Krosigk recognized the BBC’s head, a familiar face who looked away, sheepish, and later sent a British officer to apologize. Von Krosigk brushed it off:
“These insults don’t even graze me, but I pity the British nation for the shame its representatives heap on it.”
This shameless raid on the German government stretched on for hours; the British didn’t hesitate to strip the ministers, generals, and admirals bare—robbed of everything—and snap photos of them naked.
After that, the battered and looted group was herded onto trucks, flanked by six British tanks ahead and six behind. They were hauled to a police lockup, slated for a later flight to Mondorf in Luxembourg.
In the end, Schwerin von Krosigk reflected that those three weeks were the toughest he’d ever faced, yet also the finest:
“The sacrifice, selflessness, and camaraderie I saw brought back my faith in the German people—a faith I’d nearly lost.”
On the Sublime
Friedrich Schiller
Hinweg mit dem Schlaffen, verzärtelten Geschmack, der über das ernste Angesicht der Notwendigkeit einen Schleier wirft und Harmonie lügt, wovon sich in der wirklichen Welt keine Spuren zeigen. Stirne gegen Stirne zeige sich uns das böse Verhängnis. Nicht in der Unwissenheit der uns umlagernden Gefahren — denn diese muß doch endlich aufhören — nur in der Bekanntschaft mit denselben ist Heil für uns.
Let us cast aside the languid, pampered taste that veils the stern face of necessity and fabricates a harmony unseen in the real world. Let us confront malignant destiny head-on. Our salvation lies not in ignorance of the dangers that beset us—for such ignorance must eventually end—but in knowing them intimately.
An audience member inquired: “Has there not been an effort to justify the actions of the July 20 conspirators against Hitler in a similar fashion?”