WHITEWASH?
Sia,—What on earth has come over Miss Quigly? 'Doesn't anyone still feel,' she wrote last week, re- viewing the naval war film Under Ten Flags, 'that those who fought for Hitler . . . were responsible for what he did and couldn't (except in the hollowest sense) be human beings at all?' (my italics). To find this sort of anti-racial rubbish in, of all places, the Spectator, is stupefying. The short answer to the question is no, people don't feel this and thank God they don't, and why in heaven should Miss Quigly want them to?
Rather more serious arc Miss Quigly's accusa- tions against Captain (now Admiral) Rogge, the central character of the film in question. Miss Quigly describes him as a 'Nazi captain' who 'made his efficient contribution to keeping the gas-chambers filled.' 'My own information about Admiral Rogge
is that he was never a member of the Nazi. Party at all: indeed tlicre is some evidence that at the beginning of the war his religious beliefs brought him into conflict with the Nazi Gauleiter of Schleswig-,Holstein. Between March, 1940, and November, 1941, he commanded the raidcr. Atlantis on a cruise in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. The Atlantis sank twenty ships, the 'crews of which were taken on board her or one of her prizes and treated in a humane manner. On return to Germany Captain Rogge was engaged in the training of naval officers, and I understand that immediately after the war he was employed by the British Occupation Authorities as Administrative Head of a county.
In view of all this I hope that Miss Quigly will give rather more precise information as to Admiral Rogge's contribution towards keeping the gas- chambers filled.—Yours faithfully,
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