Tapping Hitler's Generals

KITTEL: I didn’t bother about that. I only found that they did become more reasonable. At least they had concentration camps for the Jews at CRACOW.[294] At any rate, from the moment I had chosen a safe place and I built the concentration camp, things became quite reasonable. They certainly had to work hard. The women question is a very shady chapter.

FELBERT: If people were killed simply because their carpets and furniture were needed, I can well imagine that if there is a pretty daughter who looks Aryan, she would simply be sent somewhere as a maid-servant.

KITTEL: You’ve no idea what mean and stupid things are done. You can’t get at the people concerned. If you go for a fellow like that, he’ll hang a political… on you. I have politically a… because I have made trouble about various things.

FELBERT: What happens to the people who complain?

KITTEL: They are simply undermined. They can’t maintain their position. Some dirty work is started, an anonymous letter is written ‘Semper aliquid haeret’. Now and again you are compelled to take drastic measures to catch one of those fellows. At every attack which you make upon a certain class in our State administration, you get in return three or four unfounded, either anonymous or somehow raked together, counter-blows.

I had an Oberst BIERKAMP(?)[295] as head of the Security Services at CRACOW.

BRUHN: What sort of people are they?

KITTEL: They are Party members and civilians; they are Security Service people. When HIMMLER formed his state within the state, the Security Service was founded like this: they took 50 per cent good police officials who were not politically tainted, and added to them 50 per cent criminals. That’s how the Security Service arose. (Laughter) There’s one man in the criminal department in BERLIN, in that famous ‘Z’ section whom I frequently used when espionage cases were being held by us in the Ordnance Branch; and the question then arose of nationality and of whether they had not already got a file, whether the man had not cropped up somewhere before. There is the so-called ‘Z’ section for foreigners. I don’t know what ‘Z’ means. It was called ‘Z’ section ‘K’. After 1933 he said to me: ‘We have been sifted through now. The politically tainted officials of the State Police have been got rid of and have either been pensioned off or put into positions where they can no longer do any harm. The sound nucleus of police officials, which every State needs, is now intermingled with people from the underworld of BERLIN, who, however, made themselves prominent in the movement at the right time. They have now been put to work with the others.’ He said straight out: ‘50 per cent of us are decent people and 50 per cent are criminals.’

SCHAEFER: I think, if such conditions are permitted in a modern State, one can only say that the sooner this pack of swine disappear, the better.

KITTEL: We fools have just watched all these things going on. Did you never know that HIMMLER is a state within the state?

SCHAEFER & BRUHN: No.

KITTEL: I’ve often sat up all night discussing with people how the THIRD REICH came into existence. I had pangs of conscience as to whether I should in those circumstances remain in the Army at all.

FELBERT: It wasn’t possible to remain in the Army in this State of ours; one was compelled to take measures against it.

SCHAEFER: At the time when you saw those murders at DVINSK, surely you had someone in authority over you?

KITTEL: The ‘Heeresgruppe’.

SCHAEFER: You must have gone to official lectures about the construction of field works, etc.–was not a position like yours important enough for you to report the murders and add an expression of your horror?

KITTEL: I told the people that.

SCHAEFER: How do our C-in-Cs react to that?