Tapping Hitler's Generals

VATERRODT: I can well imagine, too, that they are interested in allowing us at least some pension on which we could live, if not the pension which would be due to us in the normal way. I am not too pessimistic about that. At any rate, even if they don’t give us that, they must find some sort of occupation for us, where we can do something for the Fatherland.[142]

CHOLTITZ: Well, of course, some of us will be sent to RUSSIA.[143]

VATERRODT: We don’t know that; where does it say that?

CHOLTITZ: They have announced it: the war criminals will immediately be brought to justice.

VATERRODT: Who is a war criminal?

CHOLTITZ: The governments are deciding that.

VATERRODT: Where does it say that every General is a war criminal?

CHOLTITZ: No, not every one, but they will demand those they want.

VATERRODT: They can only be quite isolated cases, those who have behaved particularly badly.

CHOLTITZ: I have never had a town burnt down or anything like that, but suppose I had given orders to my ‘Korps’ that such-and-such a place was to be burnt down, so that the Russians should not get in, I should then be a war criminal.

VATERRODT: Would they know that General so-and-so did it?

CHOLTITZ: Yes, because they have the order. They have got all the ‘Korps’ orders.

[…]

Document 64

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 260

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 14–15 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

BROICH: If we got another treaty of VERSAILLES today we’d jump for joy.

WAHLE: If you were a GOC at the front today, and hadn’t been here, would you fight or not?

EBERBACH: I would fight, but I would do everything in my power to influence all those with whom I came into contact to get the thing finished.

WAHLE: That’s different, that’s quite another matter. Would you be prepared to offer your powers of leadership to the full, and your own person?

EBERBACH: Yes, of course.

WAHLE: Everything else is, in my opinion, purely theoretical.

EBERBACH: But all the time I would be thinking: wouldn’t it perhaps be better if I, together with my neighbouring army commander, were to come to some sort of terms now? I should have to consider, of course, whether it could be done and what the effects might be. Particularly as regards the Western Powers; not the Russians, there’s no choice there.

WAHLE: I asked, because at table THOMA said that we couldn’t understand what people like HALDER etc. could be thinking of to carry on fighting! I said: ‘What else can they do?’ They have to. The most elementary military honour demands that. Nobody in the front line, not even the C-in-C, can even consider whether or not he should carry on fighting.

EBERBACH: Yes, he can, now is the time for that.

WAHLE: No. You said yourself that, as regards the Russians, it’s a matter of course.

EBERBACH: But I should spend the whole time thinking: ‘What can I do to bring about the fall of the HITLER clique? Have I any possibilities in that line? What can I do, as soon as I’m in the West, to bring about, somehow, the entry of the Western Powers?’

WAHLE: You would be so wound up in the whole business–

EBERBACH: All the same I already found time for thoughts like these while I was in the West. But it was like this: I was in command of the 5th ‘Panzerarmee’, or ‘Panzergruppe West’, as it was next called, for a bare four weeks. Then I commanded for a fortnight or three weeks that ‘Panzergruppe EBERBACH’, quite different units again. Then I commanded the 7th ‘Armee’ for a week. One didn’t have time to do anything about it. But despite that I allowed myself to think all those treacherous thoughts and I discussed them with some of the GOCs. It had got as far as that already. We Swabians are revolutionaries. For instance, I’m convinced that someone like GERSDORF,[144] who’s an eminently clever and brave man, would never think about such things. It would be out of the question for him. He’s a Prussian. Obeying orders is the only thing which matters to him, whereas we inclined far more to such rebellious thoughts. In BERLIN, however, such thoughts seldom came to me.

WAHLE: But to put it into practice! Think it, yes!

EBERBACH: In BERLIN one always said to oneself: ‘First the invasion must come; if we repulse that then the tide has turned.’ As long as the invasion hadn’t started the war hadn’t yet been lost. But the moment the invasion succeeded, the only way one could judge the situation was to say to oneself: ‘There’s no further point in it now.’

I am convinced that if THOMA were at the front now he would swear like a trooper, but he would do his job honourably and bravely.

WAHLE: Then my fears are set at rest.

Document 65

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 262

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 18–20 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

CHOLTITZ: Isn’t it a typical sign of a declining world that they are governed by a man who can’t even walk properly?