This March 1955 issue of The National Police Gazette is beat all to hell, but then again so are the Gazette’s stories about Adolf Hitler. In a previous post we showed you nine Hitler covers from the 1950s and 1960s, and we know of at least a dozen more. As it happens, the story inside this particular issue isn’t only about Hitler, but about his naval commander Karl Dönitz. Dönitz was due to be released from prison in 1956 and Gazette writer George McGrath sounds the alarm that, once sprung, the admiral planned to revive the Nazi empire. Dönitz had indeed been specifically mentioned in Hitler’s last will and testament as a successor, but a lost war, a discredited movement, and ten years behind bars will tend to have a detrimental effect on even an admiral’s ambitions. After his release Dönitz settled in the village of Aumühle and lived out the rest of his life in tranquility. He wrote two books, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage (Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days), and Mein wechselvolles Leben (My Ever-Changing Life), and corresponded with memorabilia collectors, but basically stayed out of the limelight. He died in December 1980 aged eighty-nine and was buried without military honors, having made no attempt to conquer the world. So the Gazette got that one wrong. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.
