Tapping Hitler's Generals

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 276

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 25–7 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

HEIM: I always used to consider it wrong to surrender, our people might have cracked badly and that might perhaps have proved disastrous in the future. But now we must give in; it’s simply madness.

SCHLIEBEN: It’s sheer suicide.

HEIM: The absolute suicide of a race of millions, such as has never before occured in history, because it is in the hand of a madman, a criminal.

Document 70

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 278

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 30 Mar.–2 Apr. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

HEIM: The German people deserve no better–this business of ‘Werewolves’ is absolute madness.[154]

WILDERMUTH: In the first place it’s simply a repetition of the ‘Patriotic Formations’ after the last war, secondly the people are standing with their backs to the wall. It’s not the people who are doing it but the Party members and the fanatical youth. I had certainly reckoned with it, but I’m amazed that they’ve started so soon; from experiences in the BALKANS I had counted on it starting six months after the occupation. But they are starting at once. It’s just their madness again. But I am convinced that there are people who really believe in it.

HEIM: It’s impossible to say. But it serves the German people right. It’s unbelievable.

WILDERMUTH: It will, of course, reduce everything to ruins and rubble and will lead, after a short space of time, to barbaric counter-measures on the part of the others.

HEIM: The Allies will have to set up a counter-movement.

WILDERMUTH: That’s been one of my ideas for a long time, but that is not to say, of course, that a vague possibility will become a reality. One can only suppress guerrilla warfare with strong units formed from the population of the country. After a year or two they will be forced to arm us themselves. It’s dreadful, of course, another civil war.

Document 71

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 280

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 7 Apr. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

HEYKING: I can’t imagine it lasting much longer.

JÖSTING: Out of the question–a fortnight or three weeks maybe. It’s amazing! The whole front line must be bent all over the place.

HEYKING: Oh well, strong armoured spear-heads have broken through everywhere and fighting continues in the rear. Wherever resistance is shown they destroy everything, as they did at EISENACH yesterday.[155] They’ll do the same to all the towns.

JÖSTING: Yes, they said the same to me too, when I was captured, i.e.: ‘If we hadn’t got MAINZ today, six hundred aircraft would have attacked it, and then the requisite number of tanks.’ We hadn’t got anything. Our ‘Panzerfäuste’! The need a man who has handled them ten or twelve times before.

HEYKING: Yes, otherwise he’s afraid.

JÖSTING: I had a hundred ‘Panzerfäuste’. I was never allowed to fire more than twenty-four of them.

HEYKING: Oh well, we haven’t enough to practise with!

JÖSTING: Yes, and you need young and efficient men to handle them, not the old creatures I had. They were willing but incapable! They were 45–47-year-olds from the ‘Flak’ and the searchlights. They scraped everyone together and threw them into the fight.

Document 72

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 282

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 10–13 Apr. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]

ROSS: Before I was captured everyone realised that it would be madness to continue the war but none of the higher authorities had the courage to take a firm stand.

BRUHN: But they didn’t know how many people have been shot and what has gone on in concentration camps. We have sinned, not you and I personally, but all of us as representatives of this system which has broken every moral code in the world. If you admit life is ruled by a great moral code you must condemn yourself.

ROSS: I hold the view, which is perhaps very strict, that people in leading positions who did know about it must be blamed for failing to oppose the Party. Even if you merely consider the last phase of this struggle at WESEL,[156] all from the highest to the lowest, always said ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ to everything, because their convictions were outweighed by the thought: ‘My own neck is at stake.’ No one said: ‘I’d rather go to the dogs if it helps the people at large.’ All they did was to say ‘yes’ to everything.

[…]

DASER: In contrast with the army of occupation which you experienced–when we regarded them as an enemy power–the Germans today give them an enthusiastic reception; they don’t only hang out white flags but welcome them and say: ‘You’re a thousand times preferable to the Nazis, to our own people.’

ROSS: Quite right.

?: ‘Please help us to kill off the Nazi bosses.’

ROSS: Quite right. Only with the great difference, over which we must not have the least doubt, that this enthusiasm and all those things are the swing from one condition to another, but once this war is over–