Tapping Hitler's Generals

Apparently little thought was given to the medium- or long-term future of Europe. The overwhelming events of recent years were too difficult for military minds to assimilate and so see a way forward for Europe and Germany in the future. One of the few exceptions was Eberhard Wildermuth, who had been active politically pre-war. At the end ‘of our Thirty Years’ War’ he said,

we have not only lost the war and our independence as a State, but our self-respect and honour. We will be under foreign masters for the foreseeable future. These masters will split Germany into several parts–but the worst is that for years the great dividing line between East and West will run through Germany. It may be a permanent division. Before these major questions there are others, more urgent, more in the present: how many millions will starve to death? How will it be possible to rebuild agriculture, industry and transport communications? How are we to rebuild a political structure with self-administration and accountability? Schools? Universities? It seems that the German administration will not be uniform under the various victors–it seems to me doubtful then that the problem can be solved at all.[203]

Thoma, too, was thinking in concrete terms about postwar Europe. Many of his ideas were nebulous and not well thought through, but on some points he saw developments astoundingly clearly: there would be no reparations, German industry would work for the Allies. He doubted if Britain would succeed in building a new Poland because the Soviet Union was leaning heavily towards the West. This antagonism ‘had the seeds of World War Three in it’. It could happen that, shoulder to shoulder with British and French forces, even German formations might be ‘let loose’ against the Russians.[204]

3.2 ‘We Have Tried to Exterminate Whole Communities’. War Crimes in Trent Park Conversations

The protocols document a number of German war crimes: the deportation and internment of Jews in ghettoes, the murder of Jews in concentration camps and by mass shootings in the East, euthanasia, the shooting of hostages in Belgium, Serbia and Greece, the mass deaths of Russian PoWs, the liquidation of the Political Commissars, the shooting of German soldiers after quick court martials at the front and very occasionally rape.[205] At first sight it may be surprising to find that atrocities were given such coverage in the conversations.

The prisoners at Trent Park had been captured by the Allies exclusively in North Africa, France and finally in Germany, therefore in the theatres of war where the fewest infringements of international law were committed and utterly different from the way things had been done in Poland, the Soviet Union and the Balkans. Most generals fought on most of the fronts, especially in the East. Their knowledge of the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the National Socialist regime were comprehensive–the relevant protocols prove it. Naturally one must differentiate here betweeen who knew what and who was personally involved in which crimes.

Several generals reported having borne personal witness to war crimes: in words which have lost nothing of their horror after sixty years, Walter Bruns and Heinrich Kittel described the mass shooting of Jews at Riga and Däugavapil (formerly Dvinsk) (Documents 119, 135). Thoma, Neuffer and von Broich had also seen similar massacres on the Eastern Front.[206] Others saw the deaths of multitudes of Soviet prisoners (Neuffer, Reimann). Of death camps equipped with gas chambers, Kittel, Rothkirch and Trach, von der Heydte and Thoma[207] knew from reliable sources. It is noticeable that many crimes had been made known by acquaintances or relatives. Oberst Reimann was told of the Berditschev massacre in Ukraine by a police officer (Document 93). Eberhard Wildermuth learned of the euthanasia programme from his brother, a doctor at an asylum.