Hitler Realises He Has Lost War

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 302, 22 December 1939, Page 7

Hitler Realises He Has Lost War

LESSON OF CAPTAIN’S SUICIDE (British Official Wireless.) Received Thursday, 9.20 p.m. RUGBY, Dec. 20. Tho news of tho suicide of Captain Langsdorff has been received in London with feelings which show respect for the personal tragedy of an enemy whose individual behaviour as distinct from the orders which he acted upon appears to have been always in accord with the best traditions common to tho naval services of all nations. The final sacrifice of Captain Langsdorff after the humiliation of the scuttling of his ship on orders from Berlin is taken by many commentators here as conclusive evidence of the cleavage between the instincts of the officers in the older German services and the command of Nazi politicians now in control of Germany. The German commander would have found it a particularly bitter advertisement to rhe world which he was compelled to give that Hitler himself already realised ho had lost the war. That is the moral almost universally drawn from the incident not only in the British rrcss but in extracts from the neutral press reaching London. This defeatist interpretation is dwtlt on at some length by the Boston Herald, which considers the decision to scuttle the Graf Spee indicates more clearly what is in the minds of the Nazi leaders than Hitler’s boast about preparations for a long conflict and the certainty of German victory.