Tapping Hitler's Generals

KITTEL: ‘We can’t do anything about it; it’s nothing to do with us.’ It’s a matter of organisation. In the POLAND that remains there is the Generalgouverneur Dr FRANK,[296] who is personally a right-thinking man, and he said to me quite clearly–although I’m actually of the opposite school of thought: ‘If what I want to do here is carried out, there will be no bands in POLAND. My powers have a certain limit which you yourself know.’ It is like this: the Generalgouverneur at the present moment has Obergruppenführer KOPPE, with the rank of a GOC, in the position of a Secretary of State, with unlimited police authority at the same time.[297] So I said to myself that KOPPE has creative power in the whole of POLAND under FRANK. Some stupid question about competence cropped up. I went to KOPPE and said: ‘I have a case which comes under your jurisdiction and that of the Generalgouverneur.’ So he said: ‘The Generalgouverneur is not the competent authority for that, but Herr HIMMLER in BERLIN. I only come under the Generalgouverneur to the extent that he has the right to give me directions but I come under HIMMLER.’ KOPPE was appointed as successor to Obergruppenführer KRÜGER,[298] and he (KRÜGER) did everything he could to annoy FRANK. If FRANK considered it necessary to take some sort of governmental measures, then KRÜGER, via HIMMLER, would simply muck it up for him through official police channels. He was continually throwing a spanner into the works.

BRUHN: Then HIMMLER must be the man responsible.

KITTEL: He is the man. There is no other man in GERMANY who has a word to say on questions of executive powers to a man in the Security Service, in the Police, the Traffic Police, the Gestapo–

BRUHN: And the Waffen-SS–

KITTEL: Well, the position in the Waffen-SS may be a little different.

FELBERT: Only HIMMLER’s organisations have any say.

KITTEL: Yes. One can name umpteen cases. Someone may be acquitted by the court, and on leaving the court is arrested for being a public danger, and then doesn’t get out.

BRUHN: Yes, one simply doesn’t know about all that.

KITTEL: But you must know it. I once wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice, GÜRTNER, who once commanded a ‘Bataillon’ of mine, about a case like that in which someone was acquitted by the court and–

FELBERT: Then arrested again in spite of that.

KITTEL: The prison sentence which the prosecution had demanded was then simply carried out by the six months’ imprisonment which had been demanded being–

BRUHN: Turned into six months’ protective custody!

KITTEL: Six months’ protective custody.

BRUHN: But that is no longer the rule of law.

KITTEL: Oh, you must surely have realised that.

SCHAEFFER: We should know that, but we have been carefully kept in ignorance. […]

? BRUHN: Yes, but then, suppose we win the war tomorrow, there would be a catastrophe!

KITTEL: It wouldn’t be a catastrophe, but–

? BRUHN: Because we represent a different standard of honesty, we shall be disposed of sooner or later anyhow. Things will reach such a pitch that when they no longer have any Jews left to shoot, they will probably shoot the relations of the officers.

SCHAEFFER: That’s why it will be a catastrophe if we win.

BRUHN: For–whoever has once started that bloodshed, it becomes as much of a necessity to him as our lunch to us; he won’t be able to stop it–or he will go crazy.

KITTEL: Oberst BIERKAMP(?) the head of the Security Service at CRACOW told me that when he sees that a man enjoys shooting others, he gets rid of him.

BRUHN: Does he shoot him himself?

KITTEL: No, he doesn’t do that–he transfers him to another job.

BRUHN: In other words–one can see it from dozens of examples–it’s their orders which turn the men into sadists.

KITTEL: Of course. Tell me, will it never be possible to get such things in GERMANY right again?

BRUHN: You mean a return to decency? That can only come about by our losing the war, i.e., only by scrapping this whole system of government.

FELBERT: We should never get things right again after a victorious war.

SCHAEFFER: You are amazed that we don’t know all that. Do you think HITLER knows it? And he is our supreme commander.

KITTEL: No. Those things are not passed on to HITLER.

SCHAEFFER: But HIMMLER knows it, doesn’t he?

KITTEL: HIMMLER knows all right.

Document 120

CSDIC (UK), SR Report, SRGG 1093 (C) [TNA, WO 208/4169]

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

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

Information received: 28 Dec. 44

SCHAEFER: After the stories you’ve told me one might think one was really no longer bound to the FÜHRER.

KITTEL: We can’t think that.

SCHAEFER: I mean in our hearts; when one goes over all the crimes that have been committed, it makes one’s hair stand on end.

KITTEL: 18,000 people were shot in ROSTOV, there are about 60,000 people in mass graves near LUBLIN.[299]