Tapping Hitler's Generals

The protocols provide new information about the German Resistance Movement.[235] The close links between General Choltitz and the conspirators was not known previously (Documents 151, 153). The most important are undoubtedly those statements about Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel. Researchers continue the debate on whether Rommel knew about the planned assassination and whether he considered the murder necessary. David Irving, David Fraser and latterly Ralf Georg Reuth share the view that Rommel was not a party to the plans of the conspirators nor did he advocate killing Hitler, since he was opposed to political assassination. Although they vary on the details, all three agree that Rommel’s aim was an armistice in the West in pursuit of which he was prepared if necessary to abandon his duty and throw open the Western Front.[236] Maurice Remy argues to the contrary in his book that Cäsar Hofacker informed Rommel on 9.7.1944 about the intended asassination and that Rommel was in agreement with it.[237] This conversation doubtless had a key function in the assessment of Rommel’s knowledge and conduct with regard to 20 July, yet the transmission is problematic and leaves no unequivocal conclusion. The British protocols (Documents 37, 155 and 157), ignored until the present, supply indications but no final proof, although they tend to support Remy. General Heinrich Eberbach mentioned on several occasions in captivity his conversations with Rommel on the 16th, and in particular on 17 July 1944 when the latter came out strongly against Hitler and said in conclusion that the Führer had to be ‘umgelegt’. The separable verb ‘umlegen’ has several meanings, e.g. transferred, re-allocated etc., but is often a euphemism for ‘killed’.[238]

After the war, Eberbach referred frequently to this conversation but toned down the verb.[239] What he said at Trent Park is more authentic: he was speaking only weeks after the event. His remarks about Rommel are confirmed from other documents: on 30 January 1945 von Thoma wrote in his diary a long passage about Rommel’s citicisms of Hitler and the way the war was going. He mentioned that Rommel had said ‘The Führer must be beseitigt.’[240] The verb beseitigen can mean ‘eliminate’, ‘dispose of’ but also ‘remove’ and ‘set aside’, a way of putting things which must have come from Eberbach, with whom Thoma shared very long conversations at Trent Park. Thoma’s version seems to indicate that Rommel preferred that Hitler be assassinated rather than arrested. A further indication is found in the memoirs of Ferdinand Heim, completed in May 1945, in which the author quotes Eberbach as saying that Rommel knew of the planned assassination.[241]

Even Feldmarschall von Rundstedt appears in a new light in the protocols. As the most senior of Hitler’s generals he had always been thought of as the best man to lead the peace negotiations.[242] Broich stated that Rundstedt confided to him as early as May 1942 that a German victory was out of the question.[243] Eberbach had been of the opinion that Rundstedt intended to conclude an armistice with the Western Allies (Document 37). Since it appears unlikely that Eberbach and Rundstedt could have met in Normandy, the statement is probably hearsay. Moreover it seems improbable that the 69-year-old field marshal, a lack-lustre personality to judge by the source material, wanted the job of bringing the war to an end all by himself. Eberbach’s observations suggest of Rundstedt an attitude much more critical than that assumed hitherto. It now seems possible that his reported answer to Keitel’s question, what else should one do besides hold the front–‘Give up the war, you idiots’–was actually what he said.[244]

In addition to the new information about Choltitz, Rommel and Rundstedt, the great value of the protocols is that from a cross-section of generals meeting again more or less by chance in a British PoW institution, it is possible to glean more about their private attitudes to the Resistance Movement, an area of interest which has suffered to date from a poor documentary source.

The events of 20 July 1944 took the British Government by surprise and at first no exact picture of the occurrence could be formed. CSDIC (UK) therefore presented the generals at Trent Park with news of the bomb plot immediately and paid careful attention to their reactions to radio and press reports. Most generals had come up through the Reichswehr officer corps, a relatively small elite circle where everybody knew everybody else well.[245] Useful targets for the British eavesdroppers were Broich and von Thoma in particular, who knew Stauffenberg personally. Broich revealed his exchange of ideas with Stauffenberg in Tunisia in 1943: the latter had been unsuccessful in winning over senior generals for a coup; in particular, Manstein had refused (Document 146).