Tapping Hitler's Generals

ELFELDT: I’d be the last person to deny the weaknesses in the system but I don’t agree with the people here who repudiate everything. You can’t say: ‘ENGLAND is good, GERMANY is bad’–that’s impossible. There was such a lot that was so good at home.

MENNY: If only we hadn’t started this tomfool war, which wasn’t necessary–After we had got CZECHOSLOVAKIA we should have stopped; everything was marvellous and we could have ordered things in peace. We could even have managed it afterwards, because I think the worst mistake we made in this war was not to invade ENGLAND after we had completed the French campaign. Even if it had meant 100,000 casualties. The Russian campaign cost us a million killed and more.

ELFELDT: The first time I heard about the Russian campaign; I think it was November–

BADINSKY: It made me quite sick.

MENNY: After all he wrote in ‘Mein Kampf’ about not waging a war on two fronts–

BADINSKY: ‘Mein Kampf’ also says that a man is either a politician or the founder of a religion; that’s probably why he gave ROSENBERG[66] carte blanche. He’s an ape who has ruined our people’s religion. There is hardly anything we haven’t attacked; we attacked the past, our religion, the Jews, FRANCE, ENGLAND, AMERICA, RUSSIA. Besides we have attacked anyone who hadn’t the same political standpoint as we had–we did it in a stupid, brutal way.

Document 32

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 183

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 29 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]

MENNY: Four weeks ago at a course in BERLIN, BURGDORF[67] told the people quite frankly how desperate our position looked, how completely mismanaged–AVRANCHES(?) and so on had not happened then, it was shortly before that–and how things looked very bad for us and at the moment one could really believe that we should not pull through. He said that quite openly. But if we succeeded in holding out until September, then all the indication showed that we should manage it, because then all those things would come into action. Those were the V-2, the flying torpedoes and the U-boats and so on. So it would all depend on getting over those four weeks.

[…]

SCHLIEBEN: We are a thorn in their flesh.

CHOLTITZ: HITLER hates us.

SCHLIEBEN: Yes, he hates us! For how long did HITLER harangue you when you reported to him?

CHOLTITZ: Three-quarters of an hour.

SCHLIEBEN: Was he sitting at a large table, or how?

CHOLTITZ: He was standing.

SCHLIEBEN: And then they introduced the Nazi salute as a substitute for the lacking GAF, didn’t they?[68]

CHOLTITZ: Yes.

CHOLTITZ: I saw HITLER four weeks ago when he nabbed me for PARIS.

BASSENGE: What kind of an impression does he make?

CHOLTITZ: Well, it was just shortly after the assassination attempt and he was still rather jaded.

BASSENGE: Is he still injured?

CHOLTITZ: He was more worn out than anything. He has put on 17 lbs!

THOMA: Mentally, he is ill, very ill.

CHOLTITZ: I went there and HITLER made me a speech for three-quarters of an hour, as though I were a public meeting.[69] He gets drunk with his own speeches! I went into the room and there he stood, a fat, broken-down old man with festering hands… they had been scratched a bit as a result of the attempt on his life and all the ‘Gauleiter’, whom he had greeted shortly afterwards, in order to gain fresh courage, all shook hands with him so enthusiastically and trustingly that he got badly festering sores. When I gave him my hand, I gave it to him very carefully, I was really almost sorry for him because he looked horrible.

THOMA: Has he got fat?

CHOLTITZ: Yes, sort of bloated.

?: He has put on 17 lbs.

?: You say he looks bloated and broken down?