Tapping Hitler's Generals

BROICH: It was sheer cowardice on his part to pretend to be an Army ‘Oberst’. Suddenly the Army is good enough for him.[281]

WILCK: Yes, all of a sudden.

[…]

MEYER: Do you know that our education has resulted in a certain amount of brutality, which is partly quite unconscious to us–for instance, the execution of those involved in the 20 July ‘Putsch’, and above all, the liquidation of their families.

EBERBACH: Were you present?

MEYER: No, I only heard about it recently.

EBERBACH: Were you present at that RÖHM business, those executions as LICHTERFELDE, etc.?

MEYER: I was present in MUNICH but took no part in the shooting. That business was clean though. They were shot like soldiers, but the majority of those who performed the executions at the time are no longer alive. Only Sepp DIETRICH is still alive and… the others have all been killed.[282] It puzzles me today. The next-of-kin of those shot on 30 June 1934 have been excellently cared for; their wives and children etc. were given plenty of money. They came under the FÜHRER’s protection etc. I don’t know what happened afterwards–whilst this time they even shot pregnant women. If I imagine my wife stood up against the wall with her children by her side… bumped off![283]

EBERBACH: Yes, what a dreadful life!

MEYER: Yes. We have gained our personal strength and endurance from our faith in the purity of our ideas… from our belief in our race, from our belief in a healthy, clean family-life and now suddenly! The fact which depresses me so much is that we are represented as being swine. You are told to your face the exact opposite of what you were fighting for and what you have striven for.

EBERBACH: Chin up!

Document 116

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 227

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 22–3 Nov. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4364]

MEYER: I must say that I heard about large-scale massacres of the Jews for the first time at COMPIÈGNE and after that LUBLIN business was made public.[284]

EBERDING: I just heard tales about it too. I don’t know anything positive. CHOLTITZ (PW) was present at the capture of SEBASTOPOL and one of the officers of his ‘Regiment’ was actually invited to be present when thirty thousand Jews were shot.[285]

MEYER (incredulously): Thirty thousand?

Document 117

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 232

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 8–11 Dec. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4364]

WILDERMUTH: If only ours were a young immature people, but they have been infected to the depth of their moral fibre. I must tell you that I have considered this question really seriously; a nation which has accepted such a rule of lies, brute force and crime, in the main without raising any objection, is simply not a people; a people in which the murder of mental defectives was possible and where intelligent people could still say: ‘That wasn’t at all a bad idea of theirs’ should be liquidated. Such bestiality has never been seen in the world before. One might just as well get rid of all consumptives or all suffering from cancer.[286]

WAHLE: I wanted to hear your opinion about the following: if one accept as a premise that the Germans are the most immature people in the world, that they were forced by BISMARCK into unity and that after BISMARCK, came that crazy fellow ADOLF and wanted to force them into–

WILDERMUTH: Into mastery over EUROPE.

WAHLE: Yes, into becoming a world power, do you think that an intelligent or redeeming deed could be performed now by anyone who has been infected by this National Socialist poison? I don’t think so.

WILDERMUTH: Well, it depends to what extent he has been infected: RUNDSTEDT has perhaps not been infected to such an extent; I don’t know him.

WAHLE: All the same, he sat in that court and condemned a large number of innocent men along with that group. RUNDSTEDT and SPECHT. He condemned innocent men like WITZLEBEN and BECK.[287]

Document 118

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 237

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 21–2 Dec. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4364]

WILDERMUTH: Hans von GRAEVENITZ was head of PW welfare. He told me GOEBBELS had to speak so that the people should stop agitating that the Russians should be left to perish as second-rate human beings and he actually hinted to me that one-and-half million PW were left to perish, partly whilst being transported and partly later on in GERMANY.