If the car had not come soon, they would have stoned us seriously. During the first few weeks we were treated quite well, but then suddenly the attitude of the prisoner officials changed completely and overnight. From their behavior and their conversation, the meaning of which was clear to me though I could not understand what they aid, I gathered that they wanted to “finish me off.” I was given only the smallest piece of bread, and less than a spoonful of thin soup. I was no longer given a second helping, although almost every day there was food left over which was divided among the inmates of the adjoining cells. If an official wanted to unlock my door, he was immediately whistled back. It was here that I became acquainted with the power of prisoners in position of authority over their fellows. They ran everything. They provided irrefutable proof of my contentions concerning the immense and often evil power which those prisoners with official positions exercise over different categories of guards.
If the public prosecutor’s office had not intervened, it would have been the end of me, not only physically but first of all from a psychological point of view. They had nearly driven me to the end of my tether.
It was not a question of feeble hysteria. I can stand up to a lot, and had taken plenty of hard knocks during my life. The mental torture inflicted by the three devils was too much for me. And I was not the only one to be persecuted in this way. Some of the Polish prisoners were severely maltreated by them as well. They have long since departed, and a welcome quiet now reigns.
I must admit that I had never expected such decent and considerate treatment as I received in Polish custody, once the public prosecutor had intervened.
What are my opinions today concerning the Third Reich?
What do I think of Himmler and his SS, the concentration camps, and the Security Police? How do I feel about all that was done in this sphere, and through which I passed?
I remain, as I have always been, a convinced National Socialist in my attitude to life. When a man has adhered to a belief and an attitude for nigh on twenty-five years, has grown up with it and become bound to it body and soul, he cannot simply throw it aside because the embodiments of this ideal, the Nationalist Socialist State, and its leaders have used their powers wrongly and even criminally, and because as a result of this failure and misdirection his world has collapsed and the entire German people been plunged for decades into untold misery. I, at least, cannot.
From the documents published and from the Nuremberg trials I can see that the leaders of the Third Reich, because of their policy of force, Avère guilty of causing this vast war and all its consequences. I see that these leaders, by means of exceptionally effective propaganda and of limitless terrorism, were able to make the whole German people so docile and submissive that they were ready, with very few exceptions, to go wherever they were led, without voicing a word of criticism.
In my opinion the necessary extension of living space for the German people could have been obtained by peaceful means. However, I am convinced that wars can never be prevented, and that others will occur in the future.
In order to disguise a policy of force it is necessary to use propaganda so that a clever distortion of all the facts, the policies, and measures of the rulers of the state can be made palatable. Terrorism must be used from the outset, to stifle all doubt and opposition.
In my view, real opponents can be overcome by presenting the better alternative.
Himmler was the crudest representative of the leadership principle. Every German had to subordinate himself un-questioningly and uncritically to the leaders of the state, who alone were in a position to understand the real needs of the people and to direct them along the right path.
Anyone who did not submit to this principle must be eliminated from public life. With this purpose in mind Himmler trained and formed his SS, and created the concentration camps, the German police, and the Reich Security Head Office.
In Himmler’s view, Germany was the one state in Europe that had the right to exercise supremacy. All the other countries were second-rate. The predominantly Nordic races were to be favorably treated, with the aim of incorporating them into Germany. The Eastern races were to be split up, to be made insignificant, and to become slaves.
The concentration camps before the war had to be depositories in which to segregate opponents of the state. The fact that they incidentally became re-education centers for asocials of every kind, and in this performed valuable service to the country as a whole, was a consequence of the cleaning-up process.
Similarly, they were necessary for the preventive war on crime.
When war came, they were turned into centers for the extermination, by direct or indirect means, of those elements in the conquered countries which continued to oppose their conquerors and oppressors.
I have already repeatedly expressed my attitude regarding the “enemies of the state.”
But the extermination of those population elements which remained hostile was in any case a mistake. If the peoples of the occupied territories had been treated with decency and common sense, their resistance movements could have been reduced to insignificance. There would then have been few serious opponents left.
I also see now that the extermination of the Jews was fundamentally wrong. Precisely because of these mass exterminations, Germany has drawn upon herself the hatred of the entire world. It in no way served the cause of anti-Semitism, but on the contrary brought the Jews far closer to their ultimate objective.
The Reich Security Head Office was only the executive, the long arm, of Himmler the police chief. The Reich Security Head Office and the concentration camps were only the tools that were used to carry out the wishes of Himmler, or the intentions of Adolf Hitler, as the case might be.
In these pages, and also in my sketches of the leading personalities concerned,[105] I have sufficiently explained how the horrors of the concentration camps could come about.
I for my part never sanctioned them. I myself never maltreated a prisoner, far less killed one. Nor have I ever tolerated maltreatment by my subordinates.
When during the course of this investigation I have had to listen to descriptions of the fearful tortures that were enacted in Auschwitz and also in other camps, my blood runs cold. I knew very well that prisoners in Auschwitz were ill-treated by the SS, by their civilian employers, and not least of all by their fellow prisoners. I used every means at my disposal to stop this. But I could not. The commandants of other camps, who had a similar outlook to mine, but whose camps were far smaller and far easier to supervise, found themselves equally impotent in this respect.
Nothing can prevail against the malignancy, wickedness, and brutality of the individual guard, except keeping him constantly under one’s personal supervision. And the worse the guards and supervisory personnel, the more they oppress the prisoners. The truth of this has been abundantly confirmed to me during my present imprisonment.
In the British Zone I had plenty of opportunity to study the three categories of guards at very close quarters. At Nuremberg maltreatment by individual guards was impossible, since there all the prisoners were under the permanent supervision of the prison duty officers. Even while changing planes in Berlin I only met with ill-treatment from strangers encountered by chance in the lavatory.
In the Warsaw prison, which, so far as I was able to observe and judge from the confines of my cell, was conducted on strict and exact lines, there was one supervisor, and only one who, as soon as he came on duty, ran from cell to cell, wherever there were Germans, and proceeded to beat them up indiscriminately. Apart from von Burgsdorff, who had his face slapped on several occasions, every German got a taste of his fists. He was a young man of eighteen or twenty, whose eyes gleamed with a fanatical hatred. He said he was a Polish Jew, though he did not look like one. He certainly never grew tired of beating us. His activities were only interrupted by signals from his colleagues warning him of the approach of a stranger. I am certain that none of the higher officials nor the warden of the prison approved of his behavior. I was occasionally asked by visiting officials how I was treated, but I always kept quiet about this, because he was the only man who acted in this way. The other supervisors were more or less strict and unfriendly, but none of them laid a hand on me. So it can be seen that even in a small prison the warden is unable to prevent such behavior; how much more difficult was it in a concentration camp the size of Auschwitz!