Tapping Hitler's Generals

On dark days his mood alternated between depression and rage ‘that I am no longer there to fight.’[151] From summer 1943 he became increasingly nervy and tired. He gave up physical activities and concentrated on learning English. On 10 August 1943 he wrote:

I have lost a lot of weight. In May 1943 I weighed 71 kilos after being 83 kilos in March. I am now conserving my energy, the best way to handle the lack of food. I think of myself as a horse in winter, getting a lot of hay and not much oats and therefore cannot do much work. But one can handle it, the spiritual burden of captivity is more onerous.[152]

Finally in mid-January 1944 he asked Lord Aberfeldy if it would not be possible to be interned in Sweden on his word of honour.[153] When this was rejected he took cold baths and scratched the eczema on his legs in an attempt to obtain repatriation on medical grounds. This was also unsuccessful.[154] On 22 February 1944, however, General Hans Cramer, who had severe asthma, and 34 German soldiers from other camps, were repatriated.[155] Cramer became important since it seemed likely that he would be closely questioned in Germany about the events in North Africa and in captivity. Crüwell then asked him to suggest to Hitler’s Wehrmacht ADC Schmundt that he should be exchanged for General Richard O’Connor who had been captured in North Africa in 1941. Since O’Connor had escaped in September 1943, Crüwell’s idea had no prospect of success from the beginning (SRGG 761, 14.1.1944, TNA, WO 208/5625). Arnim tried to present himself to Cramer in the best possible light as well. Arnim was certainly only the scapegoat for Rommel: ultimately he was merely a desk general who had made a fool of himself in North Africa, according to Cramer. Whether he achieved his stated aim of telling Hitler ‘the Truth’ about Arnim is not known.

Before his departure Cramer thanked the British Commandant at Trent Park for the excellent treatment. Whenever he had seen the alert sentries from his window he had been proud of his British blood (he had an English grandmother, Emma Dalton). Lord Aberfeldy returned to him his ‘Afrika’ cuff-band as a gesture of thanks. Cramer returned home from captivity doubtless bereft of any illusions about the hopeless war situation. He was even anxious to put his Wehrsold savings into a British bank before he left. A few days before his journeyed home, he also requested that should he die before being repatriated, his coffin should not be draped with the Nazi flag.[156]

Cramer left England for Algiers aboard the hospital ship Atlantis and arrived in Barcelona from there with the Swedish ship Gipsholm. A special OKW aircraft flew him to Berlin, where he arrived on 12 May 1944.

Although the exact details of what Cramer reported on his return are not known, he did at least retain a critical outlook. ‘It was also not easy,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘to re-engage in the German morale and outlook on the war. I had lived through too much, I knew too much from the other side. In Germany they spoke of total war […] over there it had been a fact for some time.’

Surprisingly after his return nobody wanted to know about Cramer. Only with great perseverance did he finally obtain an invitation for discussions at Führer-HQ, Berchtesgaden. The half-hour personal talk with Hitler and Schmundt went off ‘very disappointingly’, as Cramer wrote, ‘and I could not disabuse myself of the impression that I had been written out of the war.’ There followed a short reception with Ribbentrop and Goebbels, who had little understanding for ‘my concern which stemmed from my knowledge of the enemy and the view I had of our Fatherland from the outside. They didn’t want to hear the truth.’ Keitel and Jodl, as OKW and Wehrmacht Command Staff chiefs respectively, and as such responsible for the disaster in Africa, did not wish to meet Cramer. At the beginning of June he travelled to France where he met Rommel,who treated him ‘initially with reservation but then became very comradely’.[157]

^{Hans Cramer, the third commander of the Afrika Korps to be captured by the British and brought to Trent Park}