Tapping Hitler's Generals

SATTLER: Was that in peace-time?

SPONECK: It wasn’t in peace-time; it was during the war before WARSAW.

SATTLER: Yes, that’s just what I mean. The SS intervened and said: ‘No.’ KÜCHLER had stopped in, too. In 1939 those fellows were shooting like mad and the higher authorities, like KÜCHLER, for example–he had a row, too–stepped in and wanted to condemn the fellows to death, but the SS came along and said: ‘No, we have our own courts; that’s out of the question.’ Thereupon, in spite of the fact that the SS came under the armed forces, and in war-time was actually a part of the armed forces, the SS suddenly got its special courts. Instead of getting shot, those fellows got promotion and that was the end of the matter.

NEUFFER: In 1941 the FÜHRER issued an order to the effect that as few Russian prisoners as possible were to be left alive and as many as possible killed.[253]

REIMANN: What barbarism!

NEUFFER: That transporting of the Russians to the rear from VYASMA[254] was a ghastly business!

REIMANN: It was really gruesome. I was present when they were being transported from KOROSTEN to just outside LVOV. They were driven like cattle from the trucks to the drinking troughs and bludgeoned to keep their ranks. There were troughs at the stations; they rushed to them and drank like beasts; after that they were given just a bit of something to eat. Then they were again driven into the wagons; there were sixty or seventy men in one cattle truck! Each time the train halted ten of them were taken out dead: they had suffocated for lack of oxygen. I was in the train with the camp guard and I heard it from the ‘Feldwebel’, a student, a man with spectacles, an intellectual, whom I asked: ‘How long has this been going on?’–‘Well, I have been doing this for four weeks; I’ll not be able to stand it much longer, I must get away; I can’t stick it any more!’ At the stations the prisoners peered out of the narrow openings and shouted in Russian to the Russians standing there: ‘Bread! and God will bless you,’ etc. They threw out their old shirts, their last pairs of stockings and shoes from the trucks and children came up and brought them pumpkins to eat. They threw the pumpkins in, and then all you heard was a terrific din like the roaring of wild animals in the trucks. They were probably killing each other. That finished me. I sat back in a corner and pulled my coat up over my ears. I asked the ‘Feldwebel’: ‘Haven’t you any food at all?’ He answered: ‘Sir, how could we have anything, nothing has been prepared!’

NEUFFER: No, really, all that was incredibly gruesome. Just to see that column of PW after the twin battle of VYASMA–BRIANSK, when the PW were taken to the rear on foot, far beyond SMOLENSK. I often travelled along that route–the ditches by the side of the roads were full of shot Russians. Cars had driven in to them; it was really ghastly!

Document 101

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 173

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 13–14 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]

SPANG: These fellows in the French Patriot movement! It will be my fate to be handed over to those people later.

KRUG: Why?

SPANG: Well, it stands to reason. You can well imagine that, as ‘Divisionkommandeur’ I signed so-and-so many death warrants.

KRUG: Oh, well–

SPANG: I had to sign a certain number of death warrants against Terrorists. My sector in BRITTANY was the one where there was the heaviest terrorist fighting and moreover some very ugly incidents happened where I was. There were hundreds of Maquis, etc. there–I had a certain number of losses every day, one loss after the other. They seized my officers from Staff headquarters. They simply took out one ‘Bataillonskommandeur’, Hauptmann NISKER(?), three terrorists went in… gone! They made surprise attacks–previously I had gone out every day, but it was no longer possible for me to drive out so often–I drove out two or three times–behind every wall, behind every wood–

I said: ‘I have only one request, and that is for you to shoot me. Give me that opportunity. I was taken prisoner by American troops–shoot me. I don’t want to be handed over to that French resistance movement.’ Then the IO said: ‘There is no question of that.’

KRUG: I agree with him.

SPANG: It will come. They will go now and examine the documents. Then there’ll be the interrogation–my troops have been taken prisoner, etc.–then they’ll say: ‘The “Divisionskommandeur” issued the following instructions, to carry on with ruthless severity, etc.’, which of course, for me–quite obvious–‘so-and-so many men have been killed.’

KRUG: I don’t think that the French will have much say in it here.

SPANG: That’s where you are mistaken! That will be my fate–I know that already. I have already considered whether I couldn’t procure some sort of poison. I wouldn’t take it now, but just when I am being taken away. But how could I do it? I have no weapons.

KRUG: But in my opinion it is absolutely out of the question.