Tapping Hitler's Generals

LIEBENSTEIN: Did you hear any more about the attempt on HITLER’s life, whether it was an actual fact or just a bogus job?

MENNY: The English and Americans here maintain that it probably was just a put-up job. In my opinion that is quite out of the question. We received a WT message saying no orders from WITZLEBEN,… FROMM, HALDER, STAUFFENBERG or OLBRICHT were to be executed, those were the six names mentioned. That happened immediately after the attempt; that WT message came through roughly 10 hrs after it happened. I mean the fact that FROMM and HALDER were mentioned[417] goes to prove that it wasn’t just a put-up job.

[…]

ELFELDT: What do you say to the hanging of German marshalls?

RADINSKY: I was… that by all the Americans…

ELFELDT: It’s true.

RADINSKY: My answer was always: ‘What do you think of German officers raising their hand against their supreme commander for the first time in German history?’ The whole thing is abnormal.

MENNY: People here are indignant too. It isn’t nice to be hanged. However, you shouldn’t play with murder. They could have imprisoned HITLER; assassination isn’t the right way. Taking everything into consideration, you must admit that the National Socialists brought about their revolution without reverting to violence. They didn’t murder anyone at the time–the RÖHM affair? He was among their own ranks.

ELFELDT: The thing I can’t understand about the STAUFFENBERG ‘Putsch’ is why they didn’t secure a prominent Party leader. For that HELLDORF is a nincompoop, he hasn’t any influence on the people.[418]

MENNY: Did he also take part?

ELFELDT: He has also been shot.

MENNY: Really!

ELFELDT: I’ve seen it in black and white.

Document 151

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 180 [TNA, WO 208/4363]

Provisional report on information obtained from CS/211–General der Infantrie

Dietrich VON CHOLTITZ–Army Commander of Greater Paris–Captured 25 Aug. 44.

[…]

AAO: May I as a personal question? From the way you talk I could almost think that you were mixed up in it. For what reason did you not take part?

CHOLTITZ: We were in the war all the time, so how could we take part? They are all friends of mine. STAUFFENBERG once told me that I ought to take over a post.[419] I said: ‘I am being hounded into action the whole time.’ Whenever there was any trouble, I had to go there.

The situation with regard to the attack on HITLER’s life was this: the general atmosphere among the leaders tended towards bringing about a change and there wasn’t a single General who did not want it, because all of them realised that things could not go on as they were. Consequently there was no great excitement even on the day when it happened, because we were expecting it all. I said to an ‘SS-Führer’: ‘It’s a fine state of affairs at home, isn’t it!’ All the ‘SS-Führer’ said was: ‘He’s not quite all there.’[420] Well, I must say that’s a harmless way of looking at it. We were not so frightfully moved by it.

AAO: You are not expecting a repetition of this attempt, are you?

CHOLTITZ: I could almost swear to it. I would put my hand in the fire–I look at such things, I might almost say, from the point of view of fate. Fate must will this man to go on to the end, to the bitter end, and I am dreadfully sorry that the German people will be involved in it, with endless losses, but nothing else is possible–down to the smallest boy in the Hitler Youth.

Document 152

CSDIC (UK), SR REPORT SRM 837 from 26 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4139]

Major i.G. BECK (IA, LVIII Panzer Korps)–Captured 16 Aug. 44 in Sairies. Major i.G. VIEBIG (LXXXIV Panzer Korps)–Captured 21 Aug. 44 in St Lambert.

VIEBIG: Throughout the whole war I have conducted myself as a National Socialist, and at home too, not as a politician but mainly as a soldier. I have always held the view that as a soldier one is bound to obey one’s supreme commander under all circumstances; I held, and still hold, the same view with regard to that revolt on the 20th, i.e. under no circumstances should a thing of that sort be done.

BECK: That’s my opinion, too.

VIEBIG: For me to revolt against my supreme commander would be something that I could not reconcile with my honour. That has nothing whatever to do with my political views.