KÖHN: That is possible, but ENGLAND has no policy of her own to formulate any longer. Her policy is formulated by the Americans.[43]
Document 21
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 154
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 4 July 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
HENNECKE: The frightful thing is that the confidence of those brave people, who have accepted one misfortune after the other, is such that they still believe— Because for a year and a half they have kept burbling about the stupendous effect of our reprisals, the nation is now clamouring for it too in their distress.
BASSENGE: When KREIPE (PW) came here I asked him: ‘What are the people talking about in GERMANY?’ He said: ‘There is only one topic of conversation in GERMANY and that is the reprisal weapon.’
HENNECKE: It was like that a year ago, then they put an end to the talk. The reprisal weapon has come, and it’s no damned good.
THOMA: Naturally, it isn’t pleasant for the English, with bombs falling somewhere or other at any moment, but it isn’t actually—
HENNECKE: It doesn’t really count, using methods of that sort. But just think what was said about it: ‘Wherever one of these things land, not a bird nor a leaf in the trees will be left alive within a radius of 6 km.’[44]
THOMA: It is our great tragedy that this German midget GOEBBELS is our military spokesman. He talks about strategic targets—
HENNECKE: Yes, he talks a great deal too much.
THOMA: He is the only one for whom I have any particular dislike, because he is crafty enough to know that he is lying. The others don’t know it.
Document 22
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 156
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 8, 9, 10 July 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
KÖHN: The Bolshevists will destroy and smash everything in the path in GERMANY.
HENNECKE: Oh, I don’t think they will destroy the towns.
KÖHN: They will shoot everyone. They did that in LITHUANIA and wherever else they’ve been.[45] Anyone who speaks his mind now will be shot immediately.
HENNECKE: Yes, if someone were to say: ‘There’s no point in it any more.’
KÖHN: No one says that.
HENNECKE: It’s dreadful.
KÖHN: The moment that man took on ZEITZLER[46] things started to go badly. Anything more crazy – the few capable men still left to him he sends packing.
HENNECKE: They are still sending a few flying bombs over here, but they are not really doing ENGLAND any harm. When one sees what a powerful country can put up with – and ENGLAND is large too – … I mean, those things are mere pinpricks. It’s just a pinprick compared with a single air raid of a thousand bombers.
KÖHN: Yes, if only we could send a thousand flying bombs to LONDON!
HENNECKE: A thousand isn’t enough either – when you consider that just before the invasion two thousand bombs alone were dropped on the ‘Batterie’ on MARCOUF, in that small area.[47] Now picture the size of LONDON – thirty, forty thousand would have to fall on it. I honestly don’t know what the future holds. There will probably be the most dreadful starvation; the Russians will take everything and eat everything up, that’s the least they will do. They are insatiable, those fellows. No, it’s absolutely dreadful. The best thing would be to cease hostilities in the West and join with the English in fighting the Russians.
KÖHN: Of course, but the English won’t permit that, they want to march in right after us. But not in any way against the Russians; they will say: ‘That’s all right’ – that is the false game those people are playing at and that is why I’m surprised at these poor fools who believe—
HENNECKE: You mean, they won’t allow that?
KÖHN: Not the English.
HENNECKE: Well, I mean, suppose we were now to say we will cease hostilities in the West.
KÖHN: Yes, of course, if we were to suggest that; but the Western Allies don’t want to. They’d say at once: ‘We shall, of course, occupy the territory up to the RHINE but certainly not against the Russians. Or they’d occupy as far as BERLIN – ‘We’ll leave the East for the Russians.’ That is the gist of what they’re saying. I can’t understand how the fellows here won’t realise it.
HENNECKE: Yes. I recently saw a map in the ‘Illustrated London News’, more or less showing the old GERMANY – there was a hint of what GERMANY’s boundaries will be like after the war.
KÖHN: Do they want GERMANY to be what she formerly was?
HENNECKE: Yes. I mean it was shown – of course, without CZECHOSLOVAKIA, and POLAND had been slightly enlarged.
KÖHN: The Russians won’t form a ‘POLAND’; they’ll make it into a ‘Ukranian State of POLAND’, which will extend up to the ODER.
HENNECKE: My God, what a future!
KÖHN: It will all become part of POLAND. The Allies are mad.
HENNECKE: It’s ghastly.
KÖHN: We are here and our families are over there. What will happen to our families?
HENNECKE: That’s just it.
KÖHN: I am convinced that the English won’t oppose their victorious ally at this point – they’re not dreaming of doing so.
HENNECKE: The question is what political agreement did they reach at TEHERAN; did they really set a limit to the Russians’ advance?[48] The question is: will they adhere to it?
KÖHN: The Russians won’t stick to it, that’s out of the question. Besides, I don’t think that they will have tied themselves down to any definite agreement at TEHERAN. […]
KÖHN: In my opinion things will collapse within the next few weeks.
HENNECKE: Yes, I think so too. […]
KÖHN: I still won’t change my opinion. Our first mistake was the war against RUSSIA.
HENNECKE: Yes.
KÖHN: I am still convinced that the Russians wouldn’t have attacked.
HENNECKE: That is what we all say.
Document 24
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 159
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) [TNA, WO 208/4363]
HENNECKE: It can’t go on like this. Just imagine it, in three days there have been three thousand bombers over MUNICH and so on, just imagine the damage that is being done there and how it is increasing the chaos that will come later.[49]
KRUG: That’s what I say too. What did the FÜHRER say? ‘And if they smash up the whole of GERMANY then we shall just live underground!’[50]
ROHRBACH: I heard that too!
HENNECKE: It’s madness!
ROHRBACH: It certainly is!
HENNECKE: We didn’t look at it in a tragic light then, and now everybody sees it in all its tragedy.
It says here in the newspaper that they have recently captured men on the ORNE front, who were no longer capable of working their guns, they had had practically no sleep for three weeks. It’s obvious, my dear fellow, that they are bombarding the whole night through, just as they did to us at OCTEVILLE.[51] The men get no rest, they try to attack during the day, and that goes on for weeks on end. We haven’t got the necessary reserves in order to withdraw the men, and they can’t stand up to it. REITER[52] (Oberst, Arfü CHERBOURG) said quite rightly: ‘In my opinion, a wise politician calls a halt when he sees that it is nothing but an affliction on the people; it won’t gain them anything!’
43
In 1944/45 the United States carried more political weight than Great Britain. Ovendale, ‘Anglo-American Relations’ pp. 50–70; Dobson, ‘Anglo-American Relations’, pp. 72–100; Hathaway, ‘Great Britain and the United States’, pp. 9–15.
44
A number of Trent Park inmates were visibly disappointed that the damage to London caused by the V-1 and V-2 campaign was less than expected. See Otto Elfeldt, SRGG 988, 24.8.1944, TNA WO 208/4168, and Erwin Menny, diary notes BA/MA, N267/4. Further reaction to the first wave of projectiles are reproduced in GRGG 146, 11–16.6.1944, TNA WO 208/4363, and for expectations of the V-2 see SRGG 980, 24.8.1944, TNA WO 208/4168. For V-weapons propaganda following the defeat at Stalingrad see Hölsken, ‘V-Waffen’, pp. 93–114. Between 12.6.1944 and March 1945 the Germans fired 5,822 V-1 flying bombs and 1,054 V-2 rockets on Britain; 8,938 persons were killed, 24,504 injured; 31,600 buildings were destroyed, 1.42 million damaged. These effects were too slight to influence the course of the war. Ibid., p. 200f.
45
Soviet policy in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia from the summer of 1940, and Eastern Poland from 17.9.1939 was directed towards deportations, not mass killings. The most recent estimates show that the Soviets deported 315,300 to 340,000 persons from Eastern Poland up to June 1941. Applebaum, ‘Gulag’, puts the number of Balts deported in 1940/41 at 160,000. For Estonia see Laar, ‘Estland und der Kommunismus’. In Poland, however, the Russians murdered 14,587 Polish PoWs and 7,285 civilians. For additional data see Musial, ‘Schlachtfeld’; and Häufele, ‘Zwangsumsiedlungen’.
46
Kurt Zeitzler (9.6.1895–25.9.1963) was Chief of the Army General Staff 24.9.1942–20.7.1944.
47
The naval coastal battery ‘Marcouf’, equipped with three 21-cm guns, was the heaviest in Normandy. It lay behind ‘Utah’ beachhead and was subjected to heavy Allied bombardment from April 1944. On the night of 5.6.1944, 101 Lancaster bombers dropped 598 tonnes of bombs on the battery. Nowadays it is a popular tourist attraction. Harnier, ‘Artillerie im Küstenkampf’, pp. 92–7.
48
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin discussed military and strategic questions at the Teheran Conference, 28.11–1.12.1943, with the aim of coordinating efforts. The Anglo-American landings in France were agreed for May 1944, while the three leaders agreed that the borders of Poland would be shifted westwards and East Prussia annexed to the Soviet Union. Most questions remained unfinalised for lack of preparation and the short period of the conference. No agreement as to the territorial extent of the Russian advance westwards was reached either at Teheran or Yalta. Eubank, ‘Summit at Teheran’.
49
Hennecke refers to the three heavy daylight raids on Munich on 11, 12, and 13.7.1944 in which 2,807 B-17 bombers of the 8th USAAF dropped 5,783 tonnes of bombs and inflicted great damage on the city; 1,613 persons lost their lives, 3,955 were injured as the result of the attacks. Permooser, ‘Luftkrieg im Raum München’, pp. 321–41.
51
A locality at the southern end of Cherbourg town where a command post had been engineered into a mountain, and where Hennecke and Schlieben were captured.