"Lille Goebbels"

To Gulbrand Lunde, Propaganda Minister and second in command of Vidkun Quisling's Government in Norway, Joseph Goebbels was a man to be admired. In mannerisms, gestures and work, the small, blue-eyed Norwegian tried to emulate his Nazi friend. First of the Quisling Cabinet to get a uniform, he copied his so closely from Goebbels' that in photographs it was hard to tell Lunde from Goebbels. Norwegians nicknamed Lunde "lille Goebbels," and knew him as a vain, ambitious, foolish man who had been an outstanding research chemist when he joined the Quisling Party in 1933.

Last week Norwegians heard their Propaganda Minister no longer. The last to see him were the villagers of Vage, a tiny hamlet on the Norwegian coast. In the dark of a Sunday evening, Lunde, with his wife and a district party leader, arrived in Vage to take the little ferryboat that went across the fjord to Andalsnes. The chauffeur drove the limousine out on the slip, got out and strolled aboard the ferry. An instant later, slip and ferry parted. The car teetered, plunged into the icy water.

On the crest of a gigantic air bubble bobbed the head of the party leader. Lunde and his wife stayed down. The Norwegian skipper of the ferry dived into the fjord, came up gasping, dived again. But it was not until 7 o'clock the next morning that the bodies were hauled up with the car.

In their homes Norwegians heard of the Propaganda Minister's death from the German-controlled Oslo radio. Their grim jest: the ferryboat skipper had "made those dives to be sure the car doors were locked."

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