Tapping Hitler's Generals

Not until after his great foreign policy successes early on did he (Hitler) lose the right course and, disappointed that Britain would not go along with his proposals, then began slowly and gradually more swiftly to depart from his originally cherished plans for peace and finally jettisoned them on 1 September 1939. But even then he was determined and convinced that the war with Poland could be contained.[119]

By burying his head in the sand, Crüwell ignored the painful realities which would have called his world picture fundamentally into question. Crüwell kept up the attitude of not wanting to know during all his captivity in England and also later in the United States. His differences of opinion with Thoma, who considered him a good soldier but ‘not spiritually strong enough’ to remain independent, therefore never changed.[120] Since both, with the exception of a few other prisoners, were alone together at Trent Park until May 1943, Crüwell was apparently prepared to tolerate Thoma beyond normal limits even though he ‘hated’ him.[121] Occasionally the pair even discovered points of mutual agreement. Both considered Goebbels’s speech of 18 February 1943 at the Sportpalast as ‘negative’ (Document 6), and both were at a loss to understand why Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad. Crüwell remarked, ‘I would have put a bullet through my head. So, I am bitterly disappointed!’ Thoma concurred and said that it was a dreadful thing that so many generals had been captured at Stalingrad.[122]

The Structure of the Groups

The semi-tolerable life changed abruptly when Army Group Africa prisoners began to arrive at Trent Park from mid-May 1943. By 1 July 1943, 20 senior officers and three adjutants had been added. Initially their thoughts were focused on the defeat in Tunisia and the question of whether they had been responsible for it. After a few days they concluded that the disaster was not their fault.[123] Some blamed the Italians, who had kept their fleet at anchor, others doubted the strategic sense of having defended Tunisia for so long. Arnim even believed that his reports on the catastrophic situation had never been placed before Hitler. After about a week these conversations dissipated and the new arrivals began to group into the respective camps around Crüwell and Thoma so that their personal smouldering conflict now developed its own ‘group-dynamic explosive potential’.

Arraigned on Thoma’s side were von Broich, von Sponeck, von Liebenstein, Cramer, Luftwaffe generals Neuffer and Bassenge, and colonels Reimann, Schmidt, Drange and Heym. Köhncke and Ernst Wolters could also be counted as members of the ‘Thoma group’. Thoma himself was astonished that so many Luftwaffe officers–besides Neuffer and Bassenge, also Schmidt, Drange and Köhncke–spoke out critically against the regime and the course the war was taking.

^{Inmates of Trent Park, November 1943: (standing, left to right) von Glasow, Boes, Hubbuch, Buhse, Schmidt, Borcherdt: (seated, left to right) Egersdorff, Crüwell, von Arnim, Meixner, von Hülsen}

Crüwell sought allies, for Thoma’s ‘eternal griping’ was ‘getting on his nerves’ and he was determined to stick by ‘the Prussian point of view’, defending Fatherland and Führer against all comers (Document 10). He found supporters in von Hülsen, Frantz,[124] Buhse and in Konteradmiral Meixner,[125] who was deeply disappointed at the lack of military bearing of the Trent Park officers. ‘Our generals are for the most part broken men. It is appalling what small people they are’ he noted in his diary on 7 August 1943 (there are similar entries on 6 July and 17 November 1943). The adjutants also divided: von Glasow inclined towards Thoma, while Boes and Hubbuch were apparently convinced National Socialists. Both were still of the opinion in 1993 that Thoma was a military disgrace and believed that he had gone over to the British in North Africa in 1942.[126] Most of the NCO valets took no sides and remained loyal to their general. When offered paid work in the Trent Park vegetable gardens they refused tenaciously because nothing would make them support the British war effort, no matter how small.[127] Finally Bassenge’s intervention put an end to this farce.