Tapping Hitler's Generals

HEYDTE: I was also told that the Jews are simply gassed in a gas-chamber there. They gassed mental defectives too.

WILDERMUTH: Yes, I know. I got to know that for a fact in the case of NUREMBERG; my brother is doctor at an institution there. I’ve seen one of those transports myself. The people knew where they were being taken.

HEYDTE: Yes, and then they’ve also done it with old people.

WILDERMUTH: Not with old people!

HEYDTE: Homes for old people! Yes, that is so.

Document 131

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 275

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 24 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

[…]

ROTHKIRCH: Look how brutalised we’ve become: I drove through a small Polish place where students were being shot merely because they were students, and Polish nobility and estate owners were all being shot: it was not out in the fields, it was in the town, in front of the Town Hall, you could still see the bullet marks on the thing. I went to BOCKELBERG (VOLLARD-BOCKELBERG?)[327] and told him about it. He said: ‘Listen, we can’t do anything else, it has to be done, because students are the most dangerous people of all, they must all go, and as for the nobility, they will always work against us. Anyway, don’t get so worked up about it, if we win the war, it won’t matter.’ I replied: ‘Sir, that may be, but new principles like that take some getting used to.’

Document 132

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 276

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 25 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

DASER: I tried to restrict it all the time and as a result the number of shootings decreased considerably, not only in my area but in the entire area

THOMA: Well, who ordered those shootings?

DASER: FALKENHAUSEN. I protested against it very successfully as those mistakes had been made before–they shot two or three at LILLE; an officer and civil servant were shot in the street by civilians at BRUSSELS. They used to throw hand grenades at the crowds streaming out of cinemas. They shot either a ‘Hauptmann’ or a ‘Major’, besides a uniformed official and a paymaster. Whereupon three or four hostages were shot.

THOMA: Who were the hostages?

DASER: People who had been handed over to us for working against us; people we could lay hands on, who were in possession of arms, although that was forbidden, or people who had made attempts to sabotage railways. If they were caught red-handed they were shot on the spot anyway. I was able to achieve two things: firstly I managed to prevent five or six hostages from being shot immediately the next day whenever one of our men was shot; I ordered them to wait a fortnight or three weeks in case the perpetrator was found, as on some occasion three or four hostages were shot because one of our men had been killed and a week later we caught the culprit. I never signed a death-warrant ; they always went up to BRUSSELS. I became well known on that account with the 15th Armee, who reported to FALKENHAUSEN that the troops were being molested and cables were being cut. They asked him to have more hostages executed. He called us to a conference where I objected against those measures. I said: ‘It’s no use, we are only creating martyrs. The way it has been done up to now is wrong.’ He then said: ‘All right, I agree with your ideas and your argument.’[328]

Document 133

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 277

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 28–9 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

WILDERMUTH: In SERBIA I too was given orders to have a hundred people shot for every German killed and fifty for every German wounded. However, I never carried out these orders. One ‘Kommandant’ of some Serbian place, after a skirmish 10 or 20 km away in the mountains, during which two Germans had been killed and three wounded, used to have three hundred and fifty Serbs shot, two hundred for the two Germans killed and a hundred and fifty for the three wounded. About two thousand four hundred people were shot there. The reaction came when he had six hundred people from an aircraft factory shot in one day, including the German foreman. These are things which shouldn’t happen. I never even dreamt of carrying out that order.[329]