Tapping Hitler's Generals

HEILMANN: I took several Russian PW along with me; they were shoemakers and tailors. I had them at the airfield at MAGDEBURG. When we went on operations, we couldn’t take them along. On that occasion the CO of the airfield told me: ‘We can arrange matters. There is such a number of them here; occasionally they go and bathe and just collapse and die.’ There were so many of them–they were given very little food. That was the great crime. They’re human beings–good God, Russians are human beings too. Then they keep on talking about Asiatics–

FISCHER: What was our behaviour like?

HEILMANN: Even if they are Asiatics. But every human being has the right to live.

FISCHER: We have behaved like savages, not like civilised people.

HEILMANN: We have deserved the name of Huns for all time. Since BUCHENWALD–good Lord, those photographs are ghastly. It really makes you feel ashamed.

FISCHER: Then we talked about KATYN, about those 11,000 officers–how many have we put to death![352]

Document 139

CSDIC (UK), SR REPORT SRGG 1203(C) [TNA, WO 208/4170]

Generalleutnant SIRY (Commander, 347 Infantry Division)–Captured 10 Apr. 44 in Friedrichsroda.

Generalstabsintendant PAUER[353] (formerly of the OKH)–Captured 7 Apr. 44 in Kleinrinderfeld.

Information received: 6 May 45

SIRY: One mustn’t admit it openly, but we were far too soft. All these horrors have landed us in the soup now. But if we’d carried them through to the hilt, made the people disappear completely–no one would say a thing. These half measures are always wrong.

In the East I suggested once to the ‘Korps’–thousands of PW were coming back, without anyone guarding them, because there were no people there to do it. It went quite well in FRANCE, because the Frenchman is so degenerate that if you said to him: ‘You will report to the PW collecting point in the rear’ the stupid idiot really did go along there. But in RUSSIA there was a space of 50–80 km, that is to say a 2 to 3 days’ march, between the armoured spear-heads and the following close formations. No Russians went to the rear; they lagged behind and then took to the woods left and right, where they could live all right. So I said: ‘That’s no good, we must simply cut off one of their legs, or break a leg, or the right forearm, so that they won’t be able to fight in the next four weeks and so that we can round them up.’ There was an outcry when I said one must simply smash their legs with a club. At the time, of course, I didn’t really condone it either, but now I think it’s quite right. We’ve seen that we cannot conduct a war because we’re not hard enough, not barbaric enough. The Russians are that all right.

Document 140

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 300

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 16–17 May 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

HABERMEHL: […] FELBERT (PW) told me he had been ‘Kommandant’ of BESANÇON; people who were found in possession of arms had to be condemned to death. They were condemned to death by the Military Court, the sentence was confirmed in PARIS, went back, and then he was the man responsible for carrying out the sentence, and he said that in this way, while he was in charge, forty people were shot. He said he couldn’t do anything about it, but he is sure that action will be taken against him.[354]

Document 141

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 301

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 18–19 May 45 [TNA, WO 208/4178]

DITTMAR (re concentration camps): What did we know about them?

SCHLIEBEN: Everybody knew that dreadful things happened in them–not exactly what, but just that dreadful things happened–every one of us know that as far back as ’35.

DITTMAR: To Germans?

BROICH: Primarily to Germans.