Tapping Hitler's Generals

ELFELDT: I spoke to GRAEVENITZ in the spring of 1942 when the greater part of the prisoners was being brought in. On that occasion he told me: ‘The majority of them are in such a miserable condition as you wouldn’t believe could be possible.’ A greater number of them died afterwards in GERMANY as as a result of complete exhaustion. Those immense losses occurred when that mass of PW was suddenly transported from the front to the German PW camps, right at the beginning too, and, of course, when they were suddenly put into PW camps which hadn’t adequate accommodation. Subsequently all efforts were made to right matters but as a result of those weeks of undernourishment–

WILDERMUTH: Probably to some extent the thing was unavoidable.

ELFELDT: At BRIANSK later on there was a commandant who managed to put the PW to work in the fields and by the spring conditions had become bearable. But it is indescribable how many of them perished during the winter up to that period. If a capable commandant had been on the spot in the autumn and had had the fields reaped, then it wouldn’t have been…

WILDERMUTH: You can’t feed them properly if you keep them on the march; they’d eat too much. Some of the deaths are a direct consequence of the war and we can’t be held responsible for them.[288]

Document 119

CSDIC (UK), SR Report SRGG 1086(C) [TNA, WO 208/4196]

Generalleutnant SCHAEFER (Commander, 244 Infantry Division)–Captured 28 Aug. 44 in Marseilles

Generalmajor VON FELBERT (Commandant of Feldkommandatur 560 Besançon)–Captured 5 Sept. 44 in Landresse.

Generalmajor BRUHN (Commander, 553 Volksgrenadier Division)–Captured 22 Nov. 44 in Zabern.

Generalleutnant KITTEL (Commandant, Metz and Commander, 462 Volksgrenadier Division)–Captured 22 Nov. 44 in Metz.

Information received: 28 Dec. 44

KITTEL: (re administration in RUSSIA) I quarrelled with every Security Service chief, because I would brook no… in my affairs. I had the sentences prepared for me, then I had them brought to me and signed them personally from the very beginning, from a certain level of severity upwards. That’s to say I wasn’t interested in two years’ imprisonment; the people could demand that themselves, but ten years’ hard labour or six years’ penal servitude or a death sentence–I said: ‘I’m going to sign those myself,’ having regard alone to the political consequences. I had town majors who have straight away hanged a Russian for the theft of a piece of soap. The very first thing I did if I arrived somewhere and got a town major’s office under my control was just to say to my operations officer: ‘Please issue order No. so-and-so.’ That set out what sentences he could inflict and what he could not inflict and stated that I reserve for myself the right of confirmation of all death sentences and that they were to be confirmed by me.

? BRUHN: But surely those ‘Wehrmachtskommandanten’ were always army officers–

KITTEL: Yes.

? BRUHN: Reserve officers, or were they SS officers?

KITTEL: They were a great many regular officers among them.

? FELBERT: Can the officers be classified by saying that the very young ones who went through the Hitler Youth Movement and became ‘Bannführer’ etc. were particularly strict?

KITTEL: No. The people in control there were nothing but old crocks. There were some queer fish among them. I’ll just pick out one case: I had one town major who was at MACHAJEWKA(?)[289] near STALINO. MACHAJEWKA(?) was a fairly large place, with 300,0000 inhabitants. He was a regular officer and had now finally been discharged with the rank of ‘Oberstleutnant’.

? FELBERT: But didn’t have anything at all to do with politics?

KITTEL: He had nothing to do with politics. When he was in ordinary uniform he looked tolerable. He had had a summer tunic made out of drill, evidently to his own specifications, and one day a few soldiers came to the town major’s office at MACHAJEWKA(?) and presented in front of my desk a man they were holding by the scruff of the neck. ‘I’ve got a Russian spy here.’ (laughs) It was the town major himself! He had asked a few soldiers where they came from and where they were going, so they had seized him by the scruff of the neck and marched him into his own office. And that swine had hanged more than anybody else. I put an end to his activity then. He was an Austrian, funnily enough, for the Austrians were extraordinarily lenient otherwise. I always said I was glad if I didn’t have a fire-eater as town major, who always thinks that everyone is a bandit and is bound to get the wrong man in the end. A charming Austrian like that, who occasionally drank a vodka with them and got on very well with the major, and in that way slowly collected people he could trust; one like that has… far better service than one who bangs on the table and says: ‘Eight horses were stolen tonight; I’m going to burn down this village.’ They did that, too.