Tapping Hitler's Generals

RAMCKE: One day history will say the FÜHRER was right in recognising this great Jewish danger threatening all nations and in realising the Jewish communist threat to EUROPE from the east.[129] At one time it was GENGHIS KHAN and at another ATTILA. This time it is Jewish Bolshevism spreading over EUROPE from the Asiatic steppes, a tide we had to stem. Perhaps future history will say that we of the small Western European countries were so short-sighted that we did not realise it and that FRANCE, BELGIUM and GERMANY quarelled among themselves, with ENGLAND at the back of it all because of their petty opposing interests, on account of a ridiculous little CZECHOSLOVAKIA and SUDETENLAND and a lousy DANZIG CORRIDOR and such rubbish, and that we failed to realise the threat from the east. All this will show that we failed to realise the threat from the east. All this will show that the FÜHRER’s general outline of policy was absolutely…

SCHLIEBEN: But he did it so stupidly.

RAMCKE: To think that we’ve been the fools, that after we saw we couldn’t persuade the others to join the anti-comintern front in the fight against Bolshevism, we had to be the fools who were the first to rush in. That’s the stupid part of it. The others refused to join in and suddenly we found ourselves forced to fight on two fronts.

SCHLIEBEN: We’re picking the chestnuts out of the fire for them and have probably landed ourselves with ten million wounded.[130]

RAMCKE: It’ll happen like this: I believe resistance may flicker up in the east now and again–

SCHLIEBEN: I have waged war against the Russians long enough. In my opinion all is up; the men can’t carry on any longer.

RAMCKE: No, they can’t and they don’t want to, otherwise the Russians wouldn’t have advanced so quickly. The men are exhausted. They have no reserves left, no fuel and they are not adequately equipped for the winter. They can’t man the positions in sufficient numbers. The whole show is over. The men realise and know for certain that the offensive on the Western Front, of which they’ve been told to expect so much, has been a flop. So this is the end.

BAO: The German government must realise that all is lost. They must think of the people.

FELBERT: No. They have never considered the people.

BRUHN: The dreadful thing is that the people believe in them. We remained in the front line until we were captured; we too were dazzled and thought that others were decent too–we loved our country as a child loves its mother. But there are no decent people in the government: that has become obvious now. If at least they’d grab a grenade and themselves try and stop the Russians; instead of that they send children and old people to face the tanks. It is a criminal fight to preserve their own lives. They know that not a soul in the world would accept as much as a piece of bread from them; they have nowhere to live and now they’re just prolonging their existences instead of shooting themselves. Fighting has lost all its chivalry. No one will negotiate with our government in whose hands are all the means of pressure, the wireless and the Press. The people all believe they’ll be killed and violated.

FELBERT: First of all you have to realise all that has been done. We had no idea of the dirty business, done by our people and others, the Security Service and SS. In two wars no prisoner was ever as much as beaten in my presence; I never saw a Russian prisoner of mine shot; I never once saw a child, woman or man shot.[131]

BAO: German propaganda made HITLER into a sort of God, and now the people expect a miracle.

FELBERT: That’s just the trouble.

BAO: They expected wonders from the V-1 and V-2 and now they’re expecting them from these atom bombs and all that. They believe all that sort of thing.

FELBERT: It’s all no good at all.

NEUFFER: If you judge the situation objectively and from a distance, it is as follows: they can do what they like, they are coming from the west and east as deliverers from the HITLER regime. They are the only ones who can rid us of the fellow.

THOMA: That’s the great tragedy in our history, that we need such a terrible, lost war as this, in order to throw out the gang at home.

NEUFFER: But that is really what always follows dictatorships.

Document 62

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 254

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 28–31 Jan. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4365]

BRUHN: The things he said! He more or less attacked our families this evening.[132]

FELBERT: Yes.

BRUHN: Do you know what that scandalous fellow said: he said that tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands are being wiped out, he found no expression other than ‘are being wiped out in the East at present’. But all that doesn’t count. Another forty million can be wiped out so long as he is still there at the end, and he will see to it all right that chaos follows.

FELBERT: He will certainly see to that.