Tapping Hitler's Generals

BROICH: After the last war it was said: ‘If GERMANY wins the war, the Hohenzollern system will remain and life will be impossible.’ Now we say: ‘If GERMANY wins the war, the National Socialist system will remain and life will be impossible.’ Our position is hopeless, there is no sense in carrying on the war any longer. It’s just the same wherever we attack, we can no longer advance, and we win nothing. The quality of our troops in RUSSIA is not what it was at the beginning of the offensive. What has been lost is irreplaceable. Even if they do push forward somewhere today–drive in a deep wedge, then they are there and say to themselves: ‘Our fate will be just the same as all the others; we shall be left in the lurch when things get a bit worse.’[25] […]

Document 10

CSDIC (UK), SR REPORT, SRGG 156 [TNA, WO 208/4165]

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

HEINRICH-HERMANN VON HÜLSEN–Oberst (OC 21st Panzer Division)–Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.

Information received: 26 June 43

CRÜWELL: I believe ARNIM (PW) is frightfully well-meaning, frightfully nice. I haven’t said anything to him yet, but I certainly must speak to him, he really ought to realise it for himself–but to me this eternal grumbling is terrible.

HÜLSEN: I’ve made up my mind, too, that if it happens again I shall have something to say about it.

CRÜWELL: Well, we can put it like this: either one says to oneself, ‘Hullo, things are going wrong,’ then it is not the right thing to throw all the blame on the FÜHRER, especially for those people who always used to cheer him the loudest.

HÜLSEN: And who have got the most to thank him for, because if a man jumps from Oberst to General der Panzertruppen in a single year, then he ought to mind his step; but I mean indulging in nothing but negative criticism and malicious grins–[26]

CRÜWELL: I mean, what happens if one adopts the attitude, as we have done, of saying that we are bound to believe in victory? I find it so unseemly to paint everything in its worst colours now. The worst one can say is that we are pursuing an ostrich policy.

HÜLSEN: Yes, of course that’s what they do say, but things haven’t gone as far as that yet.

CRÜWELL: It isn’t like that, and besides, if things turn out differently, I shan’t care a damn, but it would be shameful for me, as a General, if I had thrown in the sponge and started grumbling.

HÜLSEN: Before, when they were still there, they talked in quite a different way. I should just like to know whether those people who talk the loudest really acted according to their principles when they were in a tight corner–or whether they didn’t just carry out their orders and say, ‘My superiors can take the responsibility for that.’

CRÜWELL: I so often think about that at night; in the first place I don’t think that things are as serious or as desperate as all that, and secondly I consider it so completely unsoldierly and unworthy.

HÜLSEN: Above all there’s one thing which we must not forget, that we have given our oath. After all, he is my ‘FÜHRER’. And here they are every day sitting down and pulling him to pieces.

CRÜWELL: I won’t do that. I won’t do that–whatever they say. But today everything now happening–

HÜLSEN: ‘It’s the fault of the German Reich,’ … ‘the English are all charming fellows.’ There’s one thing I should like to say, Sir, that, if the pessimists here are not controlled in time, we shall get two factions here. Then they will always be digging at one another, and one clique will be formed here and another clique there. In my opinion it is the Generaloberst’s job to stop that, before the matter has gone past repair. It’s only natural that a thing like that can gather momentum very quickly.

CRÜWELL: It would be my business to tell him, if I saw that the situation had become so serious. I have already spoken to him about it.

HÜLSEN: I believe that in general it is not so serious yet. We must try first of all to curb that among our friends, and I have decided to speak to some of them privately. Next time I’m with BROICH (PW) I shall say to him: ‘Listen, BROICH, all this running down of the FÜHRER and all that won’t make the slightest difference to our fate. If we adopt that attitude, then in time we shall become great friends of ENGLAND and enemies of GERMANY and after all that is our Fatherland!’ CRAMER (PW) also adopts the attitude of negative criticism.

CRÜWELL: We must do something about that. Let us stick together.

HÜLSEN: Yes.

CRÜWELL: That is the only right thing to do–that is the Prussian attitude–the attitude of gentlemen. […]

Document 11

CSDIC (UK), SR REPORT, SRGG 161 [TNA, WO 208/4165]

DR PAUL MEIXNER–Kapitän (N.O. i/c LA GOULETTE, TUNIS)–Captured 11 May 43 in Tunis.

GOTTHART FRANTZ–Generalleutnant (GOC 19th Flak Division)–Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.

Information received: 27 June 43