I know you guys discount testimonies in general, but what about secret recordings?
"Between 1939 and 1942, a division of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence created a number of PoW interrogation camps in and around London. Sophisticated tapping equipment was installed and secret gramophone recording were made of private conversations between senior German staff officers.
In this extraordinary work Professor Neitzel examines these transcripts in depth for the first time. His findings are truly revealing and address important questions regarding the officers’ attitudes towards the German leadership and Nazi policies: How did the German generals judge the overall war situation? From what date did they consider it lost? How did they react to the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944? What knowledge did they have of the atrocities?"
The evidence here is pretty damning IMO, unless these transcriptions are fabricated. They were transcribed, so technically they would be easy to fabricate, but its still unlikely. If they contained blatant untruths, wouldn't these have seen the light much earlier than they did?
Interestingly enough, you can see they are well aware of allied propaganda, but note how easily many of them seem to accept this information, all while remaining at least partially sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
I went through the first 100 documents for references of Jews, included below:
The book is here for your own perusal
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/3316468/fcfdd5
Document 13
CSDIC (UK), SR REPORT, SRGG 342 [TNA, WO 208/4166]
LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in
North Africa.
GOTTHART FRANTZ–Generalleutnant (GOC 19th Flak Division)–
Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 12 Aug. 43
CRÜWELL: If no decision has been reached next year–and I see in that our
greatest hope–the Americans will get out of the European war. After all,
what do they want here? What interest have they in ITALY? What has
GERMANY done to them? They’ve made a mass of money as usual –
they’ve no love for the English–and above all, they recognise the Jewish
poison at work among their people and realise how they are blackmailing
their leaders. We see the Jewish poison in this heavy attack on
HAMBURG.29 It is the Jews who want to destroy us down to the last
man. They know that the National Socialist doctrine will spread all over
the world and they want to save themselves by hook or by crook from
their inevitable extinction. [. . .]
Document 17
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 139
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 3 June 44
[TNA, WO 208/4363]
NEUFFER: You can say what you like, but the highest Generals did take
part in that whole business, from 1941 onwards. There were certainly
plenty of Generals at the FÜHRER’s headquarters, who said: ‘Certainly,
my FÜHRER,’ JODL37 and KEITEL for a start. You can’t say that they
did not share the responsibility from the way in which they let FRITSCH
be treated,38 in 1934, when BREDOW was shot and SCHLEICHER.39
Those were serious things. That was their last opportunity, in my opinion,
Isn’t that so?
KREIPE: Yes.
NEUFFER: If you look at it historically, everything points of course to the
fact that at any rate in a Western European state–which we, after all, are–
that form of dictatorship, which is pure terrorism, is impossible in the
long run.
KREIPE: I consider too that all those ways which have been found of
killing off the Jews are disgraceful. [. . .]
Document 37
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 197
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 20–1 Sept.
44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
[Conversation between General HEINZ EBERBACH and his son Oblt. z.S.
HEINZ EUGEN EBERBACH]
FATHER: No, no, we are . . . by a certain lack of humanity and decency
which one must have, because otherwise the pendulum of history swings
against you. I told you that once before, in connection with that history
book I always carried about with me, that that is one of the things I have
learned from history. In my opinion, one can even go so far as to say that
the killing of those million Jews or however many it was, was necessary
in the interests of our people. But to kill the women and children wasn’t
necessary. That is going too far.
SON: Well, if you are going to kill off the Jews, then kill the women and
children too, or the children at least. There is no need to do it publicly,
but what good does it do me to kill off the old people?
FATHER: Well, simply that it is contrary to humanity, in the end it hits back
at you, simply because it instils a certain brutality into the people –and
there are some incidents that I have just learned about from the officers
here who witnessed them themselves–the numbers of Poles we have
killed, at least a million, the numbers we have killed in YUGOSLAVIA–I
never knew that either, nor did I ever take part in it. The tens of
thousands of Russians we have killed, not only Poles!
SON: Yes, but even if that’s true, they were people who conducted guerrilla
warfare against us, so there again it wasn’t without justification
Document 94
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 676 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
GEORG NEUFFER–Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division)–Captured 9
May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE–Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences
Tunis/Bizerta)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 19 Dec. 43
BASSENGE (re BBC midnight news in German237): They dished up the
mass executions of Jews in POLAND. They estimate here that altogether
five million Jews–Polish, Bulgarian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian–have
been massacred.
NEUFFER: Really? Not counting the German ones?
BASSENGE: Including the German Jews, during the whole time. They
furnished evidence that an enormous number from camp so-and-so
between such-and-such a date, fifteen thousand here, eighteen thousand
there, twelve thousand there, six thousand and so on–I must say that if 10
per cent of it is correct, then one ought to–
NEUFFER: I should have thought about three million.
BASSENGE: You know, it really is a disgrace.
NEUFFER: This trial, which has been going on at CHARKOV is really
very unpleasant for HITLER too.238
BASSENGE: Yes, The Generaloberst239 (PW) was talking today about the
SEYDLITZ people.240 He said that we must understand that it was only
human that those people, who have been through it, should now try to
find the reasons and the people responsible for it. If they, in their state of
mental depression, adopt that attitude, we mustn’t judge them too
harshly, even though one is bound to condemn it. He was trying to gloss
it over.
NEUFFER: He is frightfully uncertain.
BASSENGE: The first man here to join the SEYDLITZ . . . will be von
BROICH (PW). That’s dead certain. He said today: ‘I would join them at
once.’
Document 40
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 204
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 27–9 Oct. 44
[TNA, WO 208/4364]
REIMANN: The business with the Jews in GERMANY was quite right,
only it should have been done quietly. Anyway, I’m very pleased that the
English suffered a real blow at ARNHEM.98
[. . .]
CHOLTITZ: Have you read CHURCHILL’s speech? Appalling, beyond all
words! A Jewish brigade to go to GERMANY! Then the French will take
the West and the Poles the East. The hate in that speech! I am completely
shattered.99
NEUFFER: Don’t forget that the man was probably still somewhat worked
up about the ARNHEM business.
SCHLIEBEN: Well, we’ve known for a long time that the enemy won’t
present us with any bouquets.
Document 85
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRM 175 [TNA, WO 208/4165]
LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in
North Africa.
WILHEIM RITTER VON THOMA–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 4
Nov. 42 in North Africa.
Information received: 14 Feb. 43
THOMA: A Staatsanwalt from MINSK came to see me in March; he was
really a BERLIN Staatsanwalt. He was a man in the forties and he
begged me to do everything in my power to enable him to join up as a
soldier in any capacity–he was a NCO on the reserve. He said: ‘I can’t
stand the things that are going on here any longer.’ Then he told me the
kind of thing that happened. I know myself that there were actually
savage, brutalised louts there, who trampled on the bellies of pregnant
women, and that sort of thing.
CRÜWELL: Yes, but those are very isolated cases for which even the SS
can’t be blamed. I can’t believe that Germans would do such a thing!
THOMA: I don’t think I should have believed it either, if I hadn’t actually
seen it. I made two written reports about it. I feel that no one can accuse
me of having been in any way responsible for it.
CRÜWELL: What did you report in writing?
THOMA: The atrocities perpetrated by the SS and the shootings and the
mass executions at PSKIP(?) and at MINSK–two pages of typescript
which I sent to the OKW.
211
I received no reply. I established that no
soldiers were ever involved, only a special detachment of the SS. They
introduced the name ‘Rollkommando.’ It’s no good denying it. Of course,
these people have become completely brutalised by months of such
conduct.
CRÜWELL: I am the last to want to defend such atrocities but, taking the
broad view, you must admit that we were bound to take the most
incredibly severe measures to combat the illegal guerrilla warfare in
those vast territories.
THOMA: Yes, but the women had nothing whatever to do with it. Orders
were actually given that all Jews were (to be cleared out of) the occupied
territories–that is the great idea, but, of course, there are so many in the
east that you don’t know where to start.212
Document 89
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 495 [TNA, WO 208/4166]
FRIEDRICH FREIMERR VON BROICH (GOC 10th Panzer Division)–
Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.
EGERSDORF–Oberst (Commander, TUNIS)–Captured 8 May 43 in
Tunisia. ULRICH BOES–Major (Staff Officer to Generalleutnant von
SPONECK (PW))–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 21 Oct. 43
?: We can’t complain if they ever stand on German soil and simply raze . . .
completely to the ground, or deport the people into concentration camps
and make them work. We have done exactly the same sort of thing.
?: If anyone had any doubts about it, he was enlightened in no uncertain
manner by our behaviour in all the occupied territories–I witnessed it in
GREECE too.224
?: The soldiers . . . the best propaganda for the THIRD REICH that you
could possible imagine. These people in FRANCE and in the BALKANS
whom I met were enthusiastic about the discipline of the Germany army.
And the very moment the Party and the SS took over the control, even the
most harmless citizens became fanatics–against us. I mean, is that wise
or is it part of the creed? If that were really a part of National Socialism,
then National Socialism would be the greatest crime there is. But it isn’t
so by any means–National Socialism is actually a wonderful creed. The
people who are at present playing first fiddle aren’t National Socialists at
all; they are criminals.
?: If GERMANY is destroyed in this war, so that even our private lives
cease to be our own, do you think that generations to come will curse
these people?
?: I have to admit that mistakes have been made.
?: That is quite beside the point. Mistakes have been made in every age by
every nation. The point is that the men in authority are bad characters of
a low type; that is the criminal part of it. That is vastly different from
‘making mistakes’.
?: I don’t want to accuse the government, but I think the manner in which
we have behaved towards the rest of the world is so shameless that even
our children will blush. In my opinion no greater outrage to civilisation
than this mass murder of innocent people who have done nothing beyond
the fact that perhaps they had been circumcised or had belonged to some
other race . . . Are there any pure races left now?
?: BAYERLEIN once told me about the ghettos in WARSAW;
225 he was
taken round at the time. He said it makes him shudder to think of it.
Twenty-four people living in one room, and the bread ration so calculated
that 1 per cent and 2 per cent were bound to die every week.
?: In the long run we owe the fact that we got out of the mess again entirely
to National Socialism. Nobody else brought it off; we tried all ways–with
Herr BRÜNING and Herr–
?: But after all we too witnessed it; if it hadn’t been the FÜHRER it would
have been someone else, who might have done it in a different way.
?: You can’t say that. We can only say that he was the one–all the rest is
theory.
?: Of course everything else is theory, but what you are saying isn’t entirely
devoid of theory either; because, if he hadn’t turned up, it would
probably have developed more slowly and a slow steady development is
often better than a blow-up of that sort. I should feel happier at any rate
and the German people too, I feel sure.
?: At any rate I don’t believe that a hundred years hence history will say:
‘We have the FÜHRER to thank for our resurrection after 1918’; but it
will unfortunately have to say: ‘We have him to thank for the loss of our
independence.’ That will be the final judgment.
?: Yes, and above all it will . . . as a step back into the darkest ages . . .
?: Yes–barbarity.
?: There has never been anything like it except the Thirty Years’ War. In the
Thirty Years’ War it wasn’t so conspicuous because conditions were
different then, but nowadays it is damned conspicuous.
?: We have shown clearly that we are completely incapable of ruling other
people.
?: Yes, such a ‘ruling class’ . . .
?: How could a thing like that last? And quite apart from states further
away, just think of BOHEMIA and MORAVIA alone–do you think that
could have gone on for a few more years?
?: POLAND–they would continually have killed off our local leaders.
?: We can’t compare ourselves with ENGLAND in the slightest degree. Ask
the people in South-West (AFRICA). They think they’re very well off
under English rule.
?: I mean, at the beginning ENGLAND used quite different means when
establishing her world empire, from those she uses now.
?: Yes, we wanted to establish a world empire only four years after we had
introduced general conscription!
?: No, this is how I look at it. Owing to the war there is no doubt that
measures have become more severe–but they had to.
?: Well, nobody objects to the fact that everybody plays his part in the war
and so on, but I am convinced that no educated, thinking person
considers it right the way we have behaved towards the Jews, the Poles
and the Czechs and towards the people of opposite views in the
concentration camps.
?: But that German-speaking Germans at DANZIG should be forbidden to
join GERMANY simply because some arrogant English government
forbids it–that they feel unhappy there and–
?: Quite right, but that is very different from trying to exterminate whole
peoples.
?: Well, I don’t think that was our intention.
?: Well, perhaps we didn’t intend it, but we have done it. When somebody
tells me that at LODZ or the devil knows where, eighteen thousand Jews
have been killed in one morning–
?: Well, say its eighteen hundred. Do you think that’s right–or even onehundred-and-eighty? Even if it’s eighteen, if they haven’t committed any
crime! What right have we to indignation about the massacres of
KATYN? Heaven forbid, if the Russians ever open these mass-graves!
They are now claiming–of course it can’t be checked up–that we killed
seventeen thousand at KIEV alone.226 The Russians are thirsting for
revenge.
?: Well, at any rate the Russians who are in our service consider themselves
well off, because they are treated decently, as human beings.227
?: The Germans are decent fellows; that’s the tragic part of it. The
unfortunate thing is that the Germans show themselves to others in quite
a different light and not as they really are. Quite the contrary, make
enquiries in the former occupied territories that we held in the years
1914–18. The people there still hold the German soldiers in high esteem,
as I was able to prove time and time again when we were there this time.
But I shouldn’t like to go twenty years hence to the districts which have
been . . . by the SS and the SA. These press-gangs–oh, no! A tragedy to
live to see such things!
BOES: On the other hand you only need to ask our people in the
RHINELAND how they were treated.
?: But that’s quite different! I admit they shot SCHLAGETER, because he
carried out sabotage on the railway but he’s the only one we can
produce.228
?: Yes, but there are sure to have been others who weren’t executed but . . .
in prisons.
?: Good God, but we’ve massacred people in their thousands. There’s no
comparison. At least there were proper courts, before which they
appeared. In my opinion, if hundreds or thousands had been shot, we
should certainly know about it, they would be . . . as martyrs. Those six
or seven or twelve martyrs of the movement!229
BOES: The point is that one is the struggle for a new order in EUROPE–
opposing it stands a world empire, that won this world empire for itself
perhaps hundreds of years ago. The one has still to win its empire; that
costs sacrifices; while the other one has already passed that stage.
?: We shall never win it by these means; on the contrary, by these means we
have shown that if it’s possible for anyone to have the leadership in
EUROPE, it must in no circumstances be us. Then the whole of
EUROPE would rise as one man against us as far as they have any
feelings of decency left–that is what we have achieved. For that is what
they are without any doubt, EUROPE’s birth-pangs–whether the child
will be still-born, we do not yet know; this uniting of great areas into a
single empire–that is in process of creation and will come one way or the
other. Who will predominate is not yet known. I am afraid that we have
shown, unfortunately that we could never exert a predominance like that
because we are simply not morally in a position to do so–no longer in a
position, because everything which used to be admired in a German has
been changed to the opposite in the course of the last fourteen, or rather
ten years. There is no longer any justice, there is no longer any decency;
there is nothing but force and brutal suppression of opinion and of the
right to live and think and so on. A tyranny such as ours has hardly ever
existed before, and I am convinced that, however the war had ended, the
next generation, at least would, figuratively speaking, have gone about
with daggers in their pockets. The young people would not have put up
with it in the long run either, for no country has ever had a tyranny like
this. To modify it–that can’t be done, because that is the curse of the
wicked deed–they could no longer do that because by then there would
be many too many who wanted to avenge themselves.
BOES: Have you experienced this tyranny yourself, Sir, or your family?
?: Well, comparatively little, because I am a soldier and they have not dared
to come near us. In one small case I have experienced it, where such
difficulties and scenes were made for an officer’s wife, simply because
she had unwittingly bought a few glasses from a Jewish household, and
was then denounced by a maid. She was said also to have criticised the
regime at home, while in fact she was an ardent National Socialist–she
won’t be one any longer.
?: We soldiers are by far the best off in this respect. From what I have heard
from my friends who have not enjoyed the protection of being a soldier,
their treatment is very different. Even now, I am still a good National
Socialist, but in the . . . sense. Those are no National Socialists.
?: The FÜHRER’s greatest fault is that he does not think like normal people
do.
Document 91
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 647 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
HANS CRAMER–General der Panzertruppe (GOC German Afrika Korps)–
Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.
KLAUS HUBBUCH–Leutnant (ADC to Generalmajor BOROWIETZ
(PW)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 10 Dec. 43
HUBBUCH (re executions in POLAND and RUSSIA): They are these
bands that are taken prisoner and are then put beside their graves and
shot–and moreover all of them. None of them are taken prisoner and
treated as soldiers, but they are shot.
CRAMER: Yes, that’s what I always say too. Outrages have certainly been
committed, so-and-so many Jews have been killed and Heaven only
knows what, but so far I have never found anyone who has admitted to
me that he has witnessed it in person. I am firmly convinced that terrible
atrocities . . . but at present I haven’t any proof of it.
Document 93
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 666 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
HANS REIMANN–Oberst (Commander, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 86)–
KURT KÖHNCKE–Oberstleutnant (Commander, 372 Heavy Flak
Battery)–Captured 8 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 19 Dec. 43
REIMANN (re atrocities in RUSSIA): It’s true this time. Tell me one thing,
in the 1914–18 war did you ever believe in your own mind that a German
soldier was capable of doing things like that?
KÖHNCKE: Never.
REIMANN: Never–do you really believe it now?
KÖHNCKE: I have heard so much about it, that I have to believe it. I
myself haven’t been there so I can’t pass an opinion.
REIMANN: A senior police official actually told me about it in the train,
that they had shot thousands of Jewish men, women and children at
BERDICHEV and ZHITOMIR236–he actually told me about it without
my asking and he gave such a horrid and vivid description of it that I
brought out a bottle of vodka from my bag on the rack and changed the
conversation to something else and drank with the fellow. And I’ve also
heard about it from other people. He told me about it with the
businesslike calm of a professional murderer.
Document 94
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 676 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
GEORG NEUFFER–Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division)–Captured 9
May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE–Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences
Tunis/Bizerta)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 19 Dec. 43
BASSENGE (re BBC midnight news in German237): They dished up the
mass executions of Jews in POLAND. They estimate here that altogether
five million Jews–Polish, Bulgarian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian–have
been massacred.
NEUFFER: Really? Not counting the German ones?
BASSENGE: Including the German Jews, during the whole time. They
furnished evidence that an enormous number from camp so-and-so
between such-and-such a date, fifteen thousand here, eighteen thousand
there, twelve thousand there, six thousand and so on–I must say that if 10
per cent of it is correct, then one ought to–
NEUFFER: I should have thought about three million.
BASSENGE: You know, it really is a disgrace.
NEUFFER: This trial, which has been going on at CHARKOV is really
very unpleasant for HITLER too.238
BASSENGE: Yes, The Generaloberst239 (PW) was talking today about the
SEYDLITZ people.240 He said that we must understand that it was only
human that those people, who have been through it, should now try to
find the reasons and the people responsible for it. If they, in their state of
mental depression, adopt that attitude, we mustn’t judge them too
harshly, even though one is bound to condemn it. He was trying to gloss
it over.
NEUFFER: He is frightfully uncertain.
BASSENGE: The first man here to join the SEYDLITZ . . . will be von
BROICH (PW). That’s dead certain. He said today: ‘I would join them at
once.’
GERHARD BASSENGE–Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences
Tunis/Bizerta)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 20 Dec. 43
THOMA: In ATHENS two years ago, Sepp DIETRICH told me personally–
I have known him for twenty years. I said to him: ‘That’s a nice business!
Civilians are simply shot, are they? It’s the same psychosis as we . . . in
1914 when everyone was just shot–people seeing spies everywhere and
so on’; He said: ‘I don’t care; once they’ve been shot, I shall be left in
peace.’241 ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that is a very dangerous solution, particularly
for those who order it.’ He replied: ‘That doesn’t worry me, I’m keeping
the last bullet for myself.’ He himself is a remarkably energetic man. I
hardly think that he would let himself be taken alive. If they captured
him, it would only be by accident–and he’ll take good care to prevent
that. But it is a dreadful thing when one thinks that the men in (military)
uniform are ordering things like that.
NEUFFER: I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that the army has anything to
do with it. It is all propaganda . . .
THOMA: It is propaganda too, but, of course–firstly there are the notices,
signed by the town major. They know here who the town major is, they
know it is so-and-so and there they have it. But it is a scandalous
business. There are no end of cases.
NEUFFER: Yesterday evening we reckoned that, according to all reports,
five million Jews must have been killed by us up to date.
THOMA: I mean, it’s a psychological disease which has spread throughout
the Party, not the Army, that everything Jewish must be exterminated –
they have orders to do it. I remember in the spring of 1942, when their
airmen were always dropping that ‘Freedom Pamphlet’ with a facsimile
in it of the order signed by HITLER about shooting of Commissars, etc. I
wasn’t there–I asked the GSO I, Ops: ‘Have we still got the order?’ He
replied: ‘No, we had to destroy it.’
Document 97
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 815 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
GEORG NEUFFER–Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division)–Captured 9
May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE–Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences
Tunis/Bizerta)–Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 2 Feb. 44
NEUFFER: The Russians haven’t reached the spot yet where those largescale mass murders took place.
BASSENGE: Were they on such a large scale?
NEUFFER: Yes, Russian and Polish Jews. That was what I was telling you
about, how they did away with thousands of them, with all sorts of
accompanying horrors. KATYN was child’s play in comparison.
BASSENGE: Oh, were the numbers so much higher?
NEUFFER: Yes, of course. That is not even counting the German Jews.
That hasn’t all been brought to light yet. I mean to say, they sometimes
talk about it in their propaganda, but–. For instance, for fun they would
drive train-loads of Jews out–in the winter–and in a wooded country–I
know it from V. BROICH (PW), you can ask him yourself–
OPPENHEIM,245 that famous FRANKFURT Jew, who had those racing
stables, they stopped the train, made him and the others get out and
chased them into the woods in the bitter cold. I mean to say, when all that
is found out. The trouble is that unfortunately it is nearly all true. On the
contrary, they (Allies) have no idea of what really happened.
BASSENGE: That OPPENHEIM was the man who, during the Great War,
established one of the largest military reserve-hospitals we had in
GERMANY, at FRANKFURT; I happen to know that.
NEUFFER: That makes no difference.
BASSENGE: His wife is an ‘Aryan’ and she is a school-friend of my
mother’s. She and my mother went to school together at FRANKFURT.
NEUFFER: I don’t suppose she is alive now, is she?
BASSENGE: Well, I never heard of her again.
NEUFFER: Their pretext in the case of the Polish and Russian Jews–and
undoubtedly it was to some extent justified–was that the Jews would
have assisted the partisans or had done so already. Good Heavens, for
one thing the Jews are afraid, and for another thing you can’t blame them
for working against us. But things are always like that with us; sheer
mass murder.
246 Our Luftgau hadn’t much room at SMOLENSK;
therefore two-thirds of them were stationed at MINSK, among others
also all the workshops, tailors, shoemakers and so on. All the craftsmen
there were Jews, and sometimes they failed to appear–they had been shot
by the Gestapo. As a result, those people didn’t want to leave their
workshops any more.
BASSENGE: And couldn’t your Luftgau commander have kept some
craftsmen for himself?
NEUFFER: Well, FISCHER247 was a perfect fool in that respect. I have
nothing against him otherwise, but that man hasn’t the faintest idea of
military matters. Then he was so stupid in the things he said, he told his
driver when they encountered large crowds of people at SMOLENSK:
‘Oh, just drive on at full speed, it doesn’t matter if you run over a few of
them.’ etc. He had no conscience in that respect.
Document 102
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 176
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 19–21 Aug.
44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
HELLWIG: I am not of the opinion that the FÜHRER is a criminal and that
his intentions were evil.
KLENK: No, let’s put it like this: the ideas are all right and the ideas are all
you can wish for but the executive organs are definitely criminal.
HELLWIG: Yes, that’s true enough.
KLENK: I mean to say that their methods, for instance, are criminal.
HELLWIG: Yes, their behaviour towards the Jews and the Poles.
KLENK: We didn’t know any figures, but my God, when you hear the
approximate figure! Gosh! Of course the enemy will have a right to say:
‘Men who condone such things must be evil.’ A very simple formula. A
world order exists and we have sinned against it.
HELLWIG: Well, our world order is really based on faith, on religion.
KLENK: We have all repudiated that!
HELLWIG: That is stupid; I mean to say that it makes no difference which
religion it is, whether it’s Roman Catholicism or the Evangelical faith;
they are all based on faith, belief, goodness etc.
KLENK: In the last resort this is the foundation of any world order;
whoever goes against these laws of world order will be held responsible
by a world tribunal. That behaviour of ours towards English officers was
dreadful too.
HELLWIG: Have you ever spoken to Americans? I never knew they could
be as cordial.
KLENK: Yes, they’re ready to help any good fellow. You can’t say they’ve
any hatred.
HELLWIG: No hate at all! How badly we’ve been brought up! Hatred! The
manner in which we treated the Jews was wrong.
KLENK: Those methods were quite wrong.
HELLWIG: They should have been allowed to leave the country with all
their money.
KLENK: Why not? Send them out of the country; get rid of them in a
decent way, but not . . .
HELLWIG: Children have been shot!
KLENK: The numbers must have been colossal.
HELLWIG: I was at GOMEL . . . at RYECHITSA; there is a wood with
sand dunes where hundreds of Jewish men, women and children lay
buried. I wouldn’t believe it; it was behind our lines in RUSSIA. I
thought it was an exaggeration until I myself saw children of four or five,
girls of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen . . .256
KLENK: It’s shattering!
HELLWIG: One thing strikes me: The individual counts for nothing in
National Socialism. You never hear a friendly word spoken; you never
hear our losses mentioned; everything is just thrown in ruthlessly as a
matter of course by the higher commander and the most ruthless
commander gets the Knight’s Cross, the ‘Oak Leaves’ and the ‘Swords’.
It’s dreadful! I breathed a sign of relief after being with the Americans;
they’re human beings.
Document 106
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 189
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 29 Aug. 44
[TNA, WO 208/4364]
CHOLTITZ: The worst job I ever carried out–which however I carried out
with great consistency–was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this
order down to the very last detail.265
THOMA: The whole thing is done on HITLER’s orders. EBERBACH said
yesterday again: ‘HITLER has no idea that the people have been
hanged.’ Ha! Ha! Ha! It’s a good thing that you can now produce such
unimpeachable proofs.
