Even after the German armies capitulated in World War II, a fanatic Wehrmacht general, commanding a force of last-ditch Nazis, held out against the Russians in a Bohemian mountain redoubt. Field Marshal Ferdinand Schorner, 62, had been named by Hitler to succeed him as commander-in-chief of the German army; in the Fuhrer's last testament his name ranked sixth.* In pursuance of the dead Fuhrer's wishes, Schorner went on fighting, ruthlessly killing hundreds of his own men who resisted the futile slaughter. He finally deserted his outfit disguised as a Tyrolean peasant, gave himself up to the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division. The Americans turned him over to the Russians, who, it was assumed, hanged him.
Last week Schörner came back from the dead. Released from a brainwashing camp somewhere in the Soviet Union, he arrived in East Germany to take over "a military post." When the Communists formally recognize their "People's Police" as a full-fledged East German army, West Germans now expect that "the Devil's General," as they call Schörner, will become either its No. 1 or No. 2 man.
* After Grand Admiral Doenitz (now in Berlin's Spandau jail), Goebbels (who shot himself), Martin Bormann (still missing, presumed alive), Seyss-Inquart (hanged at Nürnberg), and Gauleiter Paul Giesler (killed in 1945).