Tapping Hitler's Generals

Membership of either group bore no relationship to age, rank, arm of service, regional origins or religion. In both of these loose associations one finds a great breadth of military socialising from the young Oberstleutnant with several years’ front-line experience to the ‘old’ general in supply. Decisive for the group towards which the Trent Park prisoners revolved was the capacity for reflection on the part of the individual and his front-line experience. Immediate experience of military disaster played a central role in developing wide-ranging insight into politics, strategy and the nature of the Nazi system. The fighting in Normandy led Heinrich Eberbach to see the National Socialist state and its leaders in a more critical light than hitherto. With others the experiences at the front confirmed a pre-existing dubious outlook, as with von Thoma. The composition was decided individually in every case but always consisted of the two factors of ability to reflect and the front-line experience.

Although Trent Park inmates had different views of the Nazi state, its prospects in the war and its war crimes, the front-line officers at least were unanimous on one point: their concept of military honour prevented them from laying down their arms prematurely. Thus pro-Nazi paratroop General Ramcke and the former bank director and reserve officer Wildermuth, later a minister in the Adenauer Cabinet, were both similarly impregnated with the idea of fighting to the last bullet.[254]

Although Wildermuth in his summer 1944 notes considered that the July 1944 plot had been ‘our last chance’, he was still prepared, in September 1944, to offer resistance to the last at Le Havre. That the British could break this resistance down within two days is another matter. It was of great importance for him that he had fought ‘honourably’ and was not taken prisoner until wounded when British tanks encircled his command post.[255] In reality the vaunted ‘heroic struggle to the last shell’ was often a matter of interpreting ‘heroic’. Decisive was the officer’s belief that he had done his duty. The question arises here how men with higher levels of reflection would have acted if fighting on German soil in 1945. One assumes that both von Thoma and Wildermuth would have kept fighting to the war’s end and never have abandoned the fight prematurely, even though they called upon others to do so when at Trent Park.

The judgment upon the German generals is confirmed by the protocols. Irrespective of the differences in their military and political dealings it is unmistakable that–with a few exceptions–they lacked the courage to do justice to the special demands of the era, to abandon ideas of military honour and, for the sake of nation and people, weigh in against a criminal state leadership. This overall judgment does not replace a differentiated and considered analysis of the individual case, for which this volume presents a wealth of material.

THE DOCUMENTS

I. Politics, Strategy and the Different Camps at Trent Park

Document 1

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1140 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

CRÜWELL: If I were asked to meet HESS,[1] I should decline. Please remember, I am a man who was taken prisoner honourably and I would not (associate) with a man who–who–he is a traitor!

KRAUSE: Has the matter been clear up?

CRÜWELL: It’s quite clear to me. It was officially announced at the time ‘against the FÜHRER’; the adjutants were put under arrest because they allowed him to fly.

KRAUSE: Where I was it was always said that he was a hundred per cent true, that the good of the Fatherland was his sole consideration, and that he said: ‘I don’t believe in this Russian business; I must try to get to ENGLAND in order to save GERMANY by arranging a peace with the British in some way or other.’

CRÜWELL: I don’t deny HESS’s good faith in that respect but that is not my official point of view. No one but his superior officer, the FÜHRER, can decide about that. If the FÜHRER repudiates him, I also repudiate him. That’s that! I am convinced of his moral sincerity in that he wanted to do good, but that does not prevent my regarding him here, in enemy country, in war time, as a traitor. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

Document 2

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1160 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

CRÜWELL: The FÜHRER’s ideas are quite sound. If the BALKAN STATES start quarrelling among themselves the FÜHRER will decide. KRAUSE: But CZECHOSLOVAKIA is quite a different problem.