Tapping Hitler's Generals

Such initiatives never came from the highest levels, however, and even the involvement of divisional commanders was a rare exception. It was mostly junior officers and even simple soldiers who would ignore orders from above to prevent the greater ill. ‘The troops are not insubordinate but they carry out what you might term “sit down strikes”,’ General Edwin Graf von Rothkirch and Trach reported in March 1945 (Document 67).

In all this the generals faced only a comparatively slight personal risk to themselves[188] while their orders to the men under their command meant death for thousands. In 1945, 1.2 million German soldiers fell–more than in 1942 and 1943 combined. Only very few generals were prepared to follow their troops to death or, as SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer nicely put it, ‘to peg out with the Führer’.[189] Model was one of the highest-ranking commanders to take his own life: Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf (Hitler’s Wehrmacht ADC) and Hans Krebs shot themselves on 1 May 1945 in the Führer bunker in Berlin, Generaladmiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg and Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter von Greim followed them a few weeks after the capitulation. Yet this attitude remained exceptional, and most preferred captivity to suicide.

The picture we have of the highest generals in the closing weeks and months of the war is not a flattering one: to avoid falling victim to a flying court martial for the premature laying down of arms, or not obeying orders to hold out (Document 76) was for many generals the foremost consideration in their planning. They would rather sacrifice their men than endanger their own lives by disobeying orders from the Führer. Oberstleutnant Josef Ross’s description of the fighting on the Wesel in March 1945 (Document 72) speaks a clear language in this regard.

‘However highly we may esteem bravery and steadfastness in war, there is however a point beyond which holding-out in warfare can only be described as the madness of despair, and can therefore never be approved,’ Clausewitz wrote in Vom Kriege.[190] The German generals of World War II rejected the Prussian military theoretician in favour of Hitler.

Complicity? Thoughts on Politics, Ideology and Personal Responsibility

In the quiet and seclusion of Trent Park the captured generals also reflected on general political questions. Even if this theme was not central to their conversations, the differing attitudes to the Third Reich, the role of the military in the State and the problems of personal responsibility can be clearly seen in the protocols. In retrospect, Crüwell saw no negative side to Hitler’s political system. It had been the aim of the Führer to seize mastery of the independent states of Europe and so save Western culture (Document 2). The war had been necessary for Germany to recognise itself as the most important State on the continent. Crüwell was certain in addition that the Germans were the most human of the races, the few SS atrocities being only the ‘outpourings of the concerned’. These remarks from 1942 are obviously set against a quite different background to those expressed by other generals in 1944–45. Whether Crüwell changed his opinion following the military collapse and the reports about the death camps is not known, but during his stay at Trent Park until his departure in June 1944 he did not depart from his pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi position.[191]

Many others went through a purification process at Trent Park, however, and confessed their fault: ‘Of course, we let ourselves be taken in, too, there’s no doubt about that […] During the time that I was laying alone in hospital, a lot of things became clear to me,’ Oberst Kessler agreed (Document 28). Some prisoners admitted freely to having been pro-Nazi in the past or to have seen the system as ‘ideal’ (e.g. Ludwig Krug, Walter Köhn). It had, after all, ‘done some good, lifted us up out of the mud and also got rid of the scourge of unemployment. Moreover the State had made us officers what we are. Correspondingly, one had to remain loyal to it. Irregularities had been dismissed per the maxim “You cannot plane a plank without shavings falling.”’ ‘It had not been so bad in 1933–34,’ Oberst Müller-Römer said: after a decent beginning, however, the whole movement had degenerated. ‘It was rotten at the core, they had evil intentions,’ Oberst Reimann concluded (Document 28).