Tapping Hitler's Generals

CRÜWELL: The question of BOHEMIA and MORAVIA is difficult because that’s a different race. These people will have to be transplanted, either to RUSSIA or else to the BALKANS. They hate us fanatically. We can’t proclaim them an independent state. We can’t allow that from a geographical point of view. But when the war is over and ten years have elapsed, everything will be settled. Even if the war ends the way I think it will, with a clear victory, these problems will not cease to exist, but I’ll never live to see the day. But that’s fate, and we have been born in times of violent change, like the unfortunate people at the time of the Thirty Years’ War. The FÜHRER envisages a EUROPE under (our) absolute control, with a lot of entirely self-independent states like FRANCE, RUSSIA etc., and small states. I am firmly convinced that that is the only possible way in which Western civilisation can be saved; GREECE belongs essentially to the MEDITERRANEAN, and ITALY can look after her. For all I care, GREECE can go to rack and ruin–it’s a filthy country.

I was six weeks in ROUMANIA with my division and four weeks in BULGARIA.[2] My division was stationed near CONSTANZ, where the bridge crosses the DANUBE, that is, in a broad strip of the DOBRUDJA. You can’t imagine the appalling state their agriculture is in. The Roumanians are rotten to the core. I’ve seen the corruption that there is, and I can give you an instance to prove it: my ‘Intendant’ had the right to pay out bribes up to a large sum to the railway company. Normally the German State doesn’t do that sort of thing. He said: ‘Sir, if I pay so-and-so much, the truck will get through.’ The country is rotten with corruption. For instance at–I can’t remember the name of the damned place, my armoured regiment was stationed there–they told me how when the men were sitting in the inn drinking wine or beer on Sunday afternoon, girls walked through without a stitch on. I mean to say, that’s a bit unusual to say the least of it! And in every tiny village there was a brothel. Wherever you looked, brothel, brothel, brothel, and so on. What a lot of swine! They stole like jackdaws; they stole everything you didn’t keep your hands on. […]

Document 3

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1167 [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: I consider a hereditary monarchy the best form of government there is. Only in my opinion it is finished as far as GERMANY is concerned and could only rise again if we were to lose the was completely, and I set no store by that.

KRAUSE: If we lose the war, all the FÜHRER’s achievements will be forgotten.

CRÜWELL: Some things will remain for ever. They will last for hundreds of years. Not the roads–they are unimportant. But what will last is the way in which the state has been organised, particularly the inclusion of the working man as part of the state. He really has made a place for the working man in the state and no one has ever done that before. Quite apart from the fact that I am sure we shan’t lose the war, supposing we were to lose it and again suffered great internal unrest, then later on the threads would always be picked up again where he (HITLER) left off. This principle of everyone working for the common cause, the idea that the industrialist is really the trustee for the capital represented by German labour and for the other capital, all sounds so easy, but no one managed it before.