Tapping Hitler's Generals

This edition shows for the first time the extent of British military eavesdropping practice. At enormous expense CSDIC (UK) succeeded in tapping the knowledge of their German captives. Despite all warnings, neither the Staff officers nor their NCOs and men were aware that their conversations were being overheard systematically. Involuntarily for the most part they became one of the most important sources of information for the British secret service: the lower ranks mainly for tactical and technical details, the generals above all for their political and strategic assessments of military situations.

The sources in this volume are 64 generals and 14 colonels who attained their respective ranks primarily between 1939 and 1943. Even if the conversations of this group are not representative of all the generals, they provide a broad and convincing spectrum of opinion for the intermediate layer of the Wehrmacht elite, embracing front-line and administration officers as well as men of general rank and equivalent of the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and Waffen-SS.

The transcripts reproduced here originate almost exclusively from the Special Camp at Trent Park for high-ranking German prisoners. They felt themselves to be ‘as if in an enchanted mountain cut off from real life’, wrote Eberhard Wildermuth.[249] While the war raged on the continent, the generals took walks through the old woods of the park, chatted with their comrades and had plenty of time to relax with a book or newspaper. They found themselves in the unique situation of spending a long period of time with many men of equal rank and similar experience of life. Many of the senior Staff officers at first had difficulty in coming to terms with the circumstances of their captivity. General Hans Cramer wrote defiantly in the first letter from Trent Park to his mother: ‘I left Africa erect and proud, for there is nothing else you can do with the sea at your back.’[250] But to many, their military careers were destroyed: ‘Not only had we lost our freedom for a long time,’ Generalleutnant Menny noted in his diary at the end of August 1944, two days after his capture, ‘but one’s own future was lost for ever too. All hopes–the imminent appointment to Commanding General, the Oak Leaves–vanished like soap bubbles. At least I can look forward to the life of a pensioned-off general after the war, providing nothing worse comes.’[251]

Most faced up to the reality of the situation after a few weeks. Rank, uniform, decorations lost their importance and from behind the former military structure the personality emerged more distinctly. Some found it difficult to adjust. General Ludwig Crüwell complained in a letter to his brother at the end of 1943: ‘This waiting and inactivity is sometimes scarcely bearable’.[252] A post-capture decoration or promotion was decisive for many to preserve their self-respect.

Soon after capture, the inmates of Trent Park began to reflect on their memoirs, the war and the future. They thought more freely than before: their bond to a Third Reich condemned to defeat had for many dissolved visibly, while others realised the nature of the war fully in captivity. A reorientation lay ahead but undiscovered. After the capitulation on 8 May 1945, the war crimes trials, public persecution and the worry about how one was to reintegrate into West German society bred in the generals a defensive attitude which overshadowed further reflections of their personal role in the Third Reich.[253] It is thus fortunate for the historian that the British documented the conversations of the generals in the singular interim phase of their captivity at Trent Park.

The protocols give an idea of their thought patterns in three major areas: the wide field of politics and strategy, war crimes and the 20 July plot. They showed clearly how diversely the generals reacted to extremely difficult political amd military situations, and how wide was the cross-section of conclusions they drew from comparable experiences. At least some of the Trent Park inmates knew the criminal nature of the war and political system. The group centred around von Thoma referred repeatedly to the criminality of the National Socialist State, welcomed the assassination attempt on Hitler and were even ready to collaborate with the British under certain conditions. Even if only a few acknowledged their personal guilt, this circle was more disposed to self-criticism that the Crüwell clique, which refused stubbornly to recognise any substantially negative side to the system and its leadership, and harshly condemned the conspirators against Hitler.