Number Three

Inside the dirty red brick fortress of Spandau in the British sector of Berlin, behind a maze of walls, electric fences and steel doors guarded by the machine guns and soldiers of four nations, Prisoner No. 3, an old man of 81, was dying. Once,

Baron Konstantin von Neurath, fluent linguist and brilliant diplomatist, had suavely served the Weimar Republic as Foreign Minister, then without apparent twinge of conscience served Hitler. In 1941 he finally resigned as Hitler's "Protector" of Bohemia-Moravia, but by then he had gone too far; the verdict at Nuernberg in 1946 was: "For carrying out and assuming responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy of the Nazi conspirators, and authorizing, directing and taking part in war crimes and crimes against humanity--fifteen years' imprisonment."

Now, after eight years and one month of his sentence, No. 3 could barely see because of the cataracts in his eyes. Afternoons he worked in the prison gardens where occasionally his angina pectoris would grip his chest so that he would cry out and sink stiffly to the ground. A waiting guard would rush forward, break a Trinitrin capsule under his nose and the old man would get up and go back to work.

Six in the Audience. He was the only one of the war criminals in Spandau who got along with all six of his companions. Albert Speer, No. 5, Hitler's production genius, said: "If we didn't have Von Neurath, we would all go crazy." They were an ill-assorted lot: fat, bald, obscene Walter Funk (No. 6); rich, young, suicidal Baldur von Schirach (No. 1); dangerous, unrepentant ex-Admiral Karl Doenitz (No. 2); weird, half-sane Rudolf Hess (No. 7): arthritic, pious ex-Admiral Erich Raeder (No. 4). Von Neurath would recall for them the glittering days when he was his country's envoy to the Kings of Italy and Great Britain. He had been a childhood friend of Britain's Queen Mary, who called him "Little Konstantin," and once he saved her from being burned to death in her bedroom.

In Spandau, with his unloved and unloving mates, he was always courteous and rarely complained, as they did. But to his wife, the baroness, he wrote: "I don't think I can stand it much longer." Repeatedly, Britain, France and the U.S. suggested to Russia (which shares in the running of Spandau) that old Baron von Neurath be let out of prison to die. Each time the Russians said no. Sir Winston Churchill confessed in the House of Commons: "Von Neurath has my sympathy."

Four in Agreement. Last week to everyone's surprise, Soviet High Commissioner Georgi Pushkin suddenly proposed Von Neurath's "premature" release. The Russians obviously hoped thereby to gain a little favor with nationalistic Germany. "Tactical humanitarianism," snorted the Mannheimer Morgen, but the allies sent identical replies to the Soviets: "My government agrees . . ."

At 11:50 one morning last week, the hollow-faced old aristocrat hobbled out of the prison on a cane, smiled briefly, and with his daughter at his side rode to freedom in a hired automobile. Nothing he owned at war's end fitted him now, and he wore corduroy trousers, a checked shirt, a green tie, and a cheap jacket, from which his jailers only the night before had removed the large numeral 3.

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