Tapping Hitler's Generals

KITTEL: FRANK merely had the right to give instructions, and KOPPE got his orders from BERLIN. It turned out from that mess that the police did what they liked and FRANK was over them in administrative matters. So just what a State needs, namely a legislative power and an executive power, was lacking, and that was lacking in the whole of the east, and that’s the secret of our whole failure. When I think of that ‘Don Quixote’ we had at ROSTOV, General HENNECKE(?), Chief of the Police of WEIMAR, and then subsequently Chief of Police at ROSTOV,[311] although admittedly he only used his authority very little–then one can only say that this man with his pushing ways: ‘This is the SS, this is Heinrich HIMMLER, room will be made here; this house will be a Police Station, and later there will be a leaders’ headquarters here.’ That was set up first of all. He brought a completely separate electric power station from GERMANY, electric stoves, huge radios and everything. I said to him: ‘If you take over the executive power here I shall have to submit to the orders of my superiors; the police are here–800 Russian police with whom we have so far kept the town in order; there is no German policeman over them, but it is done on a certain basis of trust; the people have such-and-such weapons.’ ‘What, they have weapons, that’s unheard of, that’s contrary to all the FÜHRER’s orders.’ The first thing was that they disarmed the police–trouble started from that day. Then they disbanded the police and picked people out from the rabble. All that work of the last five months was completely undone and destroyed in one month. Then one affair occurred–the SS shot all the prisoners in the civil prison at ROSTOV. They set fire to the prison and it didn’t burn. The Russians captured it in that state, and can put it all down to my account, because at first I had the executive power in my hands.

Document 126

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 265

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 7 Feb.–1 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]