Tapping Hitler's Generals

SCHAEFER: One can only say that if GERMANY is destroyed it is justice and nothing else. It is a tragedy that so many millions of decent people should be wiped out, and towns too, for the sake of men who are leading a gangster existence–there’s no other way of describing it. I simply cannot swallow it.

KITTEL: In UPPER SILESIA they simply slaughtered the people systematically. They were gassed in a big hall.[300]

SCHAEFER: When was that done?

KITTEL: Up till the spring, then it was stopped.

SCHAEFER: Who are the people concerned?

KITTEL: I don’t know. There’s the greatest secrecy about all those things.

SCHAEFER: One can hardly believe that such a thing could happen in the world.

[…]

Document 121

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 245

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 5–7 Jan. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4364]

WILDERMUTH: I’m thinking of something which I only came to realise fully here, that is those famous GERMAN atrocities. People didn’t know about them. Most of the officers here just can’t understand the most well-known ones. They didn’t know about them. They said: ‘Oh, well, that is atrocity propaganda, things like that don’t really happen!’ People in foreign countries can hardly believe them. I can only say: they did take place. There’s that famous story about the mentally deficient; I know about it because my brother was a doctor in a lunatic asylum. Thank God he is in charge of a military hospital during the war and is not involved in that business. Through him I know exactly what happened. When I told my colleagues at the bank in BERLIN, it must have been in 1941, they laughed at me and said: ‘What you say is nonsense, things like that don’t happen, that isn’t possible.’

Document 122

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 254

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 28–31 Jan. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4364]

KITTEL: I told the American IO: ‘Our first response to what you intend doing with GERMANY will be to massacre whatever Jews remain.’ Eight hundred thousand out of the nine hundred thousand are still sure to be alive. We had a Jewish concentration camp at CRACOW–it was grotesque but we had one there. A camp containing five thousand men and five thousand women, kept strictly separated; the discipline here was incredible; they had a department for criminals. I often had Jews to dig trenches; I asked for two thousand Jews for trench-digging.

RAMCKE: What sort of an impression did they make in those concentration camps? Did they partly administer themselves; or what?

KITTEL: The camp authorities lived inside the camp which is a sign they felt secure. Of course it was strongly guarded outside; it was even guarded by live wire, but on the whole you did not get the impression that the inmates were in such a bad way.

RAMCKE: I don’t believe that Jews will dare to show themselves openly in GERMANY in business or as tools under the protection of the Americans and British in the future.

KITTEL: I hope not.

Document 123

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 256

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 3–5 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

BRUHN: I must assume, after all I have read about the FÜHRER, that he knew all about it.

FELBERT: Of course he knew about it. He’s the man who is responsible. He even discussed it with HIMMLER.

BRUHN: Yes, that man doesn’t care a hoot if your relatives are annihilated.

FELBERT: That man doesn’t care a damn.

BRUHN: They distribute their ‘Oak Leaves’ and decorations and whatever else they have, solely according to who can guarantee them their lives longest. He is directing the resistance fight in such a manner that he causes chaos and will be able to say afterwards that it’s the Western democracies who’ve caused chaos in GERMANY. In reality cause and effect will be mistaken for each other. And we’re to put up with that kind of thing! I never saw through it; I don’t mind if they shoot me, but they can only shoot me for stupidity, not for any dirty business. Nevertheless they must grant me extenuating circumstances, inasmuch as I acted in good faith. You must usually believe what official representatives tell you. No one would have imagined it possible for a criminal to get into the government.

Don’t you think that our ‘Armeeführer’ or our ‘Heeresgruppen-kommandeure’, when reporting about us to KEITEL and RUNDSTEDT said: ‘A last point I have to mention is those massacres in SOUTH POLAND–shouldn’t we protect our officer corps against being blamed for such actions?’ Do you think discussions on those matters took place? What did they do about it?

FELBERT: You can see for yourself.