Tapping Hitler's Generals

BRUHN: The same class of people as those involved in 20 July will appear again. The man is crazy.

FELBERT: If his aim had been to build up a decent German state, then I could have understood it. But that wasn’t his aim. It has been built up by lying and cheating, that is the damnable part of it.

WAHLE: These are still the same old phrases, and apart from that, absolutely illogical. I could make exactly the same speech myself.

BASSENGE: So far as I can remember, this of all his speeches hangs together least, and everything is completely confused, and, apart from that, there was nothing in it.

WAHLE: It was perhaps the last.

BASSENGE: I hope so.

WAHLE: It is all just bluff, and also by this time he should leave prophesying alone–he has so often proved wrong. Now he is prophesying again about ENGLAND.

BASSENGE: ‘This plebeian Jewish plutocratic–’

WAHLE: The well-known phrases. They don’t become any more credible through everlasting repetition.

CHOLTITZ: I must say that speech is most significant for GERMANY. Those few who have any hope left at all can’t see any other hope except in him. Eighty per cent of GERMANY does not believe any longer; the other 20 per cent–and that includes the fighting youth–believes only in him, because it can’t see anything else. Of course he is crazy. We have known that for a long time now.

SCHLIEBEN: Fourteen years, one wouldn’t think it possible.

SCHLIEBEN: The speech said comparatively little. It began again with the fourteen years, and I must say, in such a situation a drowning man clutching at a straw. I think that it will have some effect only on those people who are still sitting in a safe place, but the masses who are now in flight will be furious. Those who are still in safety will say: ‘Well, it will turn out all right somehow.’ That’s how I judge the speech.

WAHLE: In my opinion, what you say about clutching at a straw is absolutely true. He believes that he has been chosen by Providence. That is his last hope, and I must admit that he really believes it honestly. That is the straw by which it all hangs, and all the others who can still raise any faith in this belief, clutch at it with him. The refugees from the East, they don’t believe in it any longer.

SCHLIEBEN: No, no, after all they have seen the whole mess-up, and then the cold–it all has its effect on them. He can’t imagine what it’s like because he’s never been with the troops.

ULLERSPERGER: The whole point of the speech was to show the people at home and foreign countries that we shall fight to the end. Moreover, one thing is clear, and he’s quite right over that. Whatever the outcome of the war, the English will be torn to pieces by the Bolshevists. It makes no odds whether it’s now or in the next ten years. They will come to grief over their social problems.

EBERBACH: I can just imagine that my wife will act in accordance with this speech and will give her last ounce of energy, and ruin herself for the rest of her life, and my fifteen-year old-boy–[133]

HEIM: Because those people just can’t see the sadness of it.

EBERBACH: Since the time of NORMANDY I’ve always tried to make it quite clear to her from here that HITLER has been completely mistaken in several things. I’ve tried to send hints to her by writing ‘I am of exactly the same opinion as General VON GEYR’;[134] she knows what I mean.

WILDERMUTH: The basis of it is honest this time. He says: ‘I have been chosen by Providence and therefore all I can do is to stick it’. On that basis the speech is honest, and for that reason will have a better effect than others of his.

EBERBACH: But only those can see it through with him who also believe that he is the instrument of Providence. Perhaps he is, but in quite a different sense.

WILDERMUTH: He is our retribution for SADOWA[135] (laughter).

BROICH: I’m convinced that as a result of this war we shall lose altogether fifteen or eighteen millions.[136] That would do away with our twenty million surplus inhabitants.

EBERBACH: I’m practically certain the Russians will wipe out all their prisoners beforehand, while they’re still on the roads.

BROICH: If the figures given are approximately correct, those two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand men, then they have–we have killed a great number too, and the people said they sometimes had orders to do so. Take our ‘Division’, ‘Gross Deutschland’ that time at KURSK–they murdered everyone wholesale.[137] We said: ‘That’s madness!’ ‘Well, what can we do with the PW,’ they said. ‘They only hinder our advance.’ It’s true, sometimes we didn’t bother much about them; we just said: ‘There, beat it!’ They went away quite calmly but then they–we said: ‘Guerrilla warfare is everywhere.’ They said: ‘Those we leave behind will become partisans in the Russian way, therefore the tank troops will shoot in the front line, all those we can’t transport away from here.’

EBERBACH: I don’t think the Russians are doing it just because we did, but simply because they have a desire for revenge.