Tapping Hitler's Generals

The partisans didn’t make propaganda among our troops. Not whilst I was there, which was until 1942. Later on when we suffered those heavy collapses, they made more use of it. They didn’t do so until then. I met a very interesting man, General POPATOFF(?). He was commander of the 5th Russian Army[192] which was facing us in the KIEV region. He was one of the former–he called himself a MOSCOW labourer and probably came from the working classes but changed over to a military career at the age of 17. He will have been between 35 and 40 years of age. His answers to interrogation were very clever; we asked his opinion of the Russian and German artillery. Finally he was asked: ‘What do you think is the reason we have managed to reach KIEV?’ He thought for a moment and said: ‘It’s not surprising as a matter of fact. You had the initiative–we hadn’t.’ A very clever and accurate answer. Not because of the difference in arms or because one or the other had rather more but it depended on the initiative. That became apparent the moment the initiative went over to the Russians.

Two of HITLER’s sayings were circulated with a purpose at the time. First: ‘The bubble which I shall prick’, and secondly: ‘the colossus with feet of clay’. Both sayings proved to be quite wrong. Now one can ask: could that mistake have been avoided? If you wage war you must try and put everything you can into it; I have no doubt about that. I know General KÖSTERING who was military attaché. He was a German, born at LENINGRAD and practically at home in RUSSIA; Russian was his mother tongue, and he was highly esteemed there and in our innermost hearts we said: ‘No!’[193] even if we didn’t realise the extent of it; but we all knew that things were different from what HITLER imagined them to be. HITLER didn’t sense it as he has the remarkable peculiarity of always having preconceived ideas about everything. Once he said: ‘I don’t give a damn for intellect, intuition, instinct is the thing.’[194] He had a certain instinct–Heaven only knows where he got it–and he put greater faith in that instinct than in any intellect. It is psychologically quite comprehensible that as he believed his intuition was right, he distrusted all figures which seemed to contradict his intuition and rejected them. A twirp like RIBBENTROP, who was only a jobbing assistant of course knew it would all miscarry. I’m also convinced that KÖSTERING and that lot were entirely in the picture as to what was happening in the background. However, one might have known it wasn’t a mere soap bubble. The man responsible for making decisions either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. And that, as CHURCHILL recently said quite rightly, was ‘the great act of folly of a tyrant’.[195] From then on all sensible people realised the war was lost.

The Russians were very clever pupils. However it was apparently known before, that the Russians were not great industrial inventors but very receptive learners. It was very interesting: in 1927 and 1928 we had various military institutions in RUSSIA, air-training schools, tank-training schools, everything which was forbidden by the Treaty of VERSAILLES.[196] We had people over there–for instance I myself had several friends–who anyway had been to RUSSIA. If you asked them: ‘What is RUSSIA really like?’ they always produced two categories of people according to how they let themselves be influenced. Some said: ‘It’s a great big swindle!’ Others said: ‘RUSSIA will prove an immense danger! Don’t let us close our eyes to that!”