Tapping Hitler's Generals

CHOLTITZ: I’m not talking about what gets smashed up, I’m saying that we steal! We collect the stuff up into stores, like proper robbers, in guarded stores, that’s the frightful part of it. This revolting business of engaging in organised robbery of private property.

RAMCKE: Where has that happened?

CHOLTITZ: Throughout the whole of FRANCE. The damned GAF has taken away whole train-loads, that man, that HIMMLER. Whole train-loads of the most beautiful antique furniture from private houses! It’s frightful; it’s an indescribable disgrace! Any people can lose a war; that’s no disgrace, it’s just political folly to lead a capable and brave people into such a situation. But to cover ourselves with the shame of carrying out organised robbery under the supervision and help and encouragement of the state, no, my dear fellow, that’s a different matter! It’s ridiculous for an army suddenly to drive away a train full of furniture in peace-time. You have seen the destruction wrought by the soldiers; they all do that. No, this stealing just because the other poor unfortunate people have been conquered; the so-called victorious state goes in and robs! No, my dear fellow, we are steeped in materialism, we have ceased to wage war as idealists.[147]

Document 67

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 270

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 9 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

BASSENGE: The attitude of the troops to the officers is quite different from what it was in 1918, or has that changed, too?

ROTHKIRCH: In 1918 we experienced more open revolutionary tendencies. As the end drew near, the men were already behaving in a very insolent fashion.[148] They don’t do that now. On the other hand one must take into account the fact that the Party is carrying out terrific propaganda against us, especially against the Generals. The troops are not insubordinate but they carry out what you might term ‘sit down strikes’. They don’t act against the officers, as they used to in the last war, but, as commanders are now reporting, when one leaves them alone on sentry duty or on piquet one part will cross over to the other side, all 25 of them; or else they just sit there and do nothing when the Americans arrive.

THOMA: Yes, that is just a physical collapse.

ROTHKIRCH: Yes, but it’s not a revolution. But the civilians, they call us ‘strike-breakers’, ‘war prolongers’, etc. The civilians dig up the mines and cut the wires behind our backs. You see that in official reports. I read in a report which my ‘Armee’ passed on that the civilians yelled ‘prolongers of the war’ and dug up mines. The civilian population in the RHINELAND, west of the RHINE, is saying: ‘It’s all quite useless now, so why do they heap these additional unpleasantnesses on us, why blow up the bridges and dig tank traps and so on?’ They won’t lend a helping hand. And some of the bridges didn’t blow up either, the TREVES bridge didn’t blow up,[149] then there are RHINE bridges–

[…]

ROTHKIRCH: I’ve had practical experience of it. It was at TREVES and it simply turned tail and ran. And the men in the ‘Volkssturm’! I had some of them in my village. I was living with a priest. There were two members of the ‘Volkssturm’ there, they got up at 0800 or 0830 hours and shaved until 0930 hours. Then I asked them what they were going to do that day. They replied that they were going to chop wood for the priest. Then they were told to dig a few positions. They said no, they couldn’t do that. They had received different orders from their ‘Bataillonskommandeur’, they couldn’t do that.

Then I wanted to have some of the ‘Volkssturm’ on the KYLL.[150] There are very steep hills there and positions had been dug in them. I said: ‘Now let us put a ‘Volkssturmbataillon’ here. The Americans won’t notice whether it’s a member of the ‘Volkssturm’ there or not. The main thing is that they think that this stretch is manned.’ But that wasn’t possible either.

CHOLTITZ: Who gives the orders then?

ROTHKIRCH: The ‘Volkssturm’ come under the ‘Gauleiter’.

CHOLTITZ: Don’t they come under any military direction whatever?

ROTHKIRCH: You will never believe the funniest thing of all: when I left BOLITHA(?) I was sent up to EAST PRUSSIA[151] and my orders were to guard against the possibility of a Russian break-through via TAURAGE. I got the orders from Gauleiter KOCH! That’s not an exaggeration, it’s absolute fact.