Tapping Hitler's Generals

Well, anyhow, finally I was there at five o’clock and was given tea and some small sandwiches by BRAUCHITSCH in the anteroom, and there I met that arch-fool of the GAF, Generaloberst LOERZER,[114] who is so stupid that the geese bite him and is so lazy–(laughter)–he is now ‘head of the recruitment and national education of the GAF’; that’s what he calls himself; that’s his latest job, with the rank of ‘Generaloberst’. Apart from that, he’s too lazy to sign his own name (laughter). Well, there he was, sitting there, and my adjutant was there too and I had to pay my respects to LOERZER. A conversation was begun and I spoke my mind to him, first of all about personnel difficulties in the paratroops and the faulty selection of men and so on. So it went on; we had plenty of time and still we weren’t called in. He said: ‘Does the chief know that? You must tell all that to the chief’. Well, to cut a long story short, it was finally getting on towards seven o’clock and then they said that the art experts were there and my turn would not come until a little later; the art experts are there all day long, morning, noon and night, showing off some new Gobelin tapestry or a new picture or a new statue or a new painting which they have found in some corner of EUROPE; and then the most important service decisions are left in abeyance until the design for the new tapestry and so on has been properly settled. Well, I was in a towering rage and there I was dressed in my paratroop trousers, in field uniform!

Finally I was asked to go in. I must show you (peals of laughter): I came in like this, here was a long library, perhaps 18 m long, and at the side it was all filled with magnificent volumes; here was a bookcase and there some bookshelves, a globe–in the middle there was a table and here a cosy corner and there a nook for reading and there more bookshelves, and then again there was a huge great oil painting–in fact it was a magnificent library. As I was coming in, who should come in through the other door, very quietly and cautiously like a servant, but LOERZER. He didn’t come in like a ‘Generaloberst’, but like a lackey. Then I had another look and there were two little girls playing there, KARIN and her friend.[115] Here I saw a lighted lamp and a seat, with someone sitting there–something fat was sitting under the lamp–and I came in (struts across the room) like this and said: ‘Generalleutnant RAMCKE, commander of the Second Paratroop “Division”, reports present and ready for duty.’ Below a rather rosily shaded lamp, a figure rose and emerged from a wonderful seat with a book–a breviary, bound in red morocco with gold tooling, very handsome, with a wonderful bookplate in it–there the figure stood and I thought: is it NERO II or is it a Chinese mandarin? (laughter). He stood up and it was HERMANN, dressed in a large coat down to his ankles, wide and voluminous, in silky green plush, stamped with gold emblems, the sleeves gathered into many tucks, tied with a golden girdle and bound with a golden hem, and with gold tassels hanging down, with patent-leather pumps on his feet, his hair waved like this and his face rosy and shiny–not powdered white–and ‘beautiful’; you could recognise the work of the hairdresser, I believe you could clearly recognise the fingerprints of the fashionable coiffeur. A cloud of all the perfumes of the orient and occident met you half-way exuding over his fat cheeks… ‘Well, RAMCKE, how are you?’ With that, he slumped back into his large chair and took up the little book again with a weary, careless, nonchalant movement of his hand and looked into it again to see how far he had read. Meanwhile LOERZER sat down–I sat down in a chair–LOERZER remained on the edge of his chair the whole time, about three-quarters of an hour (general laughter) and was addressed as ‘du’ by HERMANN, although I never heard him use ‘du’ in return. I sat like this (demonstrating).

Then it began. I had a closer look and thought: ‘Good Heavens, surely I know that coat. I’ve got it at home on a lampshade!’ That was it all right–and I couldn’t help smiling to myself and thinking: ‘HERMANN, old man, I know exactly where you got that silk plush coat with the printed emblems!’ It was like this: At TAORMINA first the ‘Fliegerkorps’ and then immediately afterwards ‘Luftflotte 2’, LOERZER, set up their headquarters,[116] and that place TAORMINA was originally an old Norman castle of the ‘Hohenstaufen’ period. The former monastery, which was still standing, had been turned into a first-class foreign tourist haunt, the Hotel Domenico. That is the favourite resort of all Americans, who like to bask in the sun of ancient European culture and so on. There they are fitted out by those good business men, the Italians, with the latest wardrobes in the old European style and so on. Making the most of their opportunity, a couple of sexual perverts had settled there, Germans, and had opened one of those shops there too, a large art salon where they held exhibitions. One of them was a painter and the other was a dress designer. They had a shop in the town and I got a lamp shade there; it was printed silk stuck on a sort of parchment. It looks very pretty when the light shines through it. There are ships on it here, and then all round it stylised trees and an emperor or king mounted on horseback, with a falcon on his wrist, followed by a noble lady, also carrying a falcon on her wrist, then a falconer and a few more noble ladies scattered around, and then the whole thing repeated again. These designs which I had on my lamp, HERMANN had all down his coat–