Gustav Siegfried Eins is a "secret" radio station which supposedly speaks for some of the Wehrmacht's Prussian commanders. Apparently immune from the Gestapo and possibly beyond its reach, the station persistently criticizes Adolf Hitler's conduct of the war and gives the impression that Hitler and his Junkers are fighting each other for control of the Army.
Two months ago, with cold disapproval, Gustav Siegfried Eins reported that Hitler had fired the Bavarian chief of the Wehrmacht's General Staff, Colonel General Franz Haider, who largely planned the invasions of Poland, France, the Balkans and Russia. Stockholm correspondents reported that Hitler had, summoned Haider before the assembled staff and barked: "I am under the impression that your achievements do not keep up with my demands and you are unable to follow my intentions. I thank you for your work hitherto. You may go!"
Last week the official Berlin radio confirmed the report that Haider had been replaced and identified his successor: non-Junker, 47-year-old General Kurt Zeitzler, long a friend and protege of the Gestapo's Heinrich Himmler, for whom the Army Prussians have no love. Gustav Siegfried Eins, still broadcasting reports which would normally bring quick extermination to any station in Germany, growled that General Haider was "confined" at his home.
Hitler took a liking to black-eyed, paunchy Kurt Zeitzler during the Polish campaign when the Führer reviewed one of Himmler's 55 regiments. Zeitzler quickly rose from colonel to general, served in Poland, the Balkans and the Caucasus as a Panzer staff officer and, despite his Gestapo connections, won the grudging respect of the Wehrmacht's Junkers.
London correspondents concluded that open war was on between Hitler and the Wehrmacht Prussians and that the Gestapo's Himmler was extending his control to the army. An official Berlin announcement seemed to bolster this interpretation: By order of Hitler, Gestapo district Gauleiters in Germany were designated defense commissioners, responsible for military measures within their areas—which may have been only an indication of growing unrest in Germany. London even revived the report, also current in the U.S., that some of the army Prussians were deliberately "isolating" Hitler, against the day when complete disaster in Russia might enable them to overthrow the Fuhrer and arrange a militarists' peace.