Tapping Hitler's Generals

THOMA: The atrocities perpetrated by the SS and the shootings and the mass executions at PSKIP(?) and at MINSK–two pages of typescript which I sent to the OKW.[211] I received no reply. I established that no soldiers were ever involved, only a special detachment of the SS. They introduced the name ‘Rollkommando.’ It’s no good denying it. Of course, these people have become completely brutalised by months of such conduct.

CRÜWELL: I am the last to want to defend such atrocities but, taking the broad view, you must admit that we were bound to take the most incredibly severe measures to combat the illegal guerrilla warfare in those vast territories.

THOMA: Yes, but the women had nothing whatever to do with it. Orders were actually given that all Jews were (to be cleared out of) the occupied territories–that is the great idea, but, of course, there are so many in the east that you don’t know where to start.[212]

Document 86

CSDIC (UK) SR-REPORT, SRGG 209 [TNA, WO 208/4165]

GEORG NEUFFER–Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.

GERHARD BASSENGE–Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences Tunis/Bizerta)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.

Information received: 10 July 43

NEUFFER: What will they say when they find our graves in POLAND? The OGPU[213] can’t have done anything worse than that. I myself have seen a convey at LUDOWICE(?)[214] near MINSK; I must say it was frightful, a horrible sight. There were lorries full of men, women and children–quite small children. It is ghastly, this picture. The women, the little children who were, of course, absolutely unsuspecting–frightful! Of course, I didn’t watch while they were being murdered. German police stood about with tommy-guns, and–do you know what they had there? Lithuanians, or fellows like that, in the brown uniform,[215] did it. The German Jews were also sent to the MINSK district, and were gradually killed off, so far as they survived the other treatment. By treatment I mean housing and food and so on. It was done like this: when Jews were taken away from FRANKFURT–they were only notified immediately beforehand–they were allowed to take only a little with them, a hundred marks, otherwise nothing, and then the hundred marks would be demanded from them at the station to pay the fare.[216] But these things are so well known–if that ever gets known in the world at large–that’s why I was so surprised that we got so frightfully worked up over the KATYN case![217]

BASSENGE: Yes.

NEUFFER: For that’s a trifle in comparison to what we have done there.

Document 87

CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 303 [TNA, WO 208/4166]

KURT KÖHNCKE–Oberstleutnant (Commander, 372 Heavy Flak Battery)–Captured 8 May 43 in Tunisia–and a number of German Senior Officers (PW) one of whom may be:

HANS REIMANN–Oberst (Commander, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 86)–Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.

Information received: 12 Aug. 43

KÖHNCKE: Oberst HEYM (PW)[218] says: ‘If I were commander of the German troops I would set alight every village and every town in ITALY and withdraw slowly to the BRENNER, as a reply to the fact that the Italians have now apparently sent divisions to the BRENNER in order to guard the railway there.’ That’s a fine idea, completely senseless, but just like us.

?: Yes. (laughing)

KÖHNCKE: Just like us: ‘I am going to destroy everything now and withdraw.’

?: That’s the old Vandal spirit.

? REIMANN: If we do that, these people will promptly declare war on us.

?: Just like in the campaign in the west the Württemberg engineers said: ‘Shall we just set the village on fire a little, Sir, or shall we destroy it completely?’ (laughter)[219]

?: I keep thinking of the people at REGGIO when we were there how they hated giving up quarters to us–that finished me off.

?: Then when we were in ITALY proper the attitude of everyone was altogether against us.

?: It was divided into three parts throughout ITALY.

KÖHNCKE: Fascism?

?: Yes, and the Fascists were not the best of the bunch.

KÖHNCKE: No, Fascism and the Church…

?: The Fascists were just people who had nothing to lose.

?: Anyhow, the royalists were very decent people, they didn’t want to have anything to do with that crowd. ‘We must hold our tongues and we quite like you, but why are you at war? We don’t want any war, our people want to have their families, they want to live for their children, they are very modest in their demands.’

?: We don’t want war either; I didn’t want it and I wasn’t asked either.

?: The feeling in GERMANY at the beginning of the war was: anxious, but determined.

?: Anxious, but determined–we must be honest about it.

Document 88

CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 422 [TNA, WO 208/4166]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

HANS-JÜRGEN VON ARNIM–Generaloberst (GOC Army Group Africa)–Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.

Information received: 15 Sept. 43