KLENK: No, not so ruthlessly as we were treated. It’s appalling to think of the lives being sacrificed there.
HELLWIG: The GOCs considered it criminal – criminal to continue fighting when there’s no hope of success. That’s my view too. A whole race can’t end heroically.
KLENK: For what idea? The finest elements are being sacrificed. Most of the officers here realise fairly clearly—
HELLWIG: Yes, they all think it crazy.
KLENK: I mean, they disassociate themselves from it entirely?
HELLWIG: Completely, they call them criminals.
KLENK: They recognise no allegiance?
HELLWIG: Not an atom. SPANG may differ slightly, but he too says: ‘It’s criminal to continue the sacrifice.’
Document 31
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 180
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 25–6 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
ELFELDT: I’d be the last person to deny the weaknesses in the system but I don’t agree with the people here who repudiate everything. You can’t say: ‘ENGLAND is good, GERMANY is bad’ – that’s impossible. There was such a lot that was so good at home.
MENNY: If only we hadn’t started this tomfool war, which wasn’t necessary – After we had got CZECHOSLOVAKIA we should have stopped; everything was marvellous and we could have ordered things in peace. We could even have managed it afterwards, because I think the worst mistake we made in this war was not to invade ENGLAND after we had completed the French campaign. Even if it had meant 100,000 casualties. The Russian campaign cost us a million killed and more.
ELFELDT: The first time I heard about the Russian campaign; I think it was November—
BADINSKY: It made me quite sick.
MENNY: After all he wrote in ‘Mein Kampf’ about not waging a war on two fronts—
BADINSKY: ‘Mein Kampf’ also says that a man is either a politician or the founder of a religion; that’s probably why he gave ROSENBERG[66] carte blanche. He’s an ape who has ruined our people’s religion. There is hardly anything we haven’t attacked; we attacked the past, our religion, the Jews, FRANCE, ENGLAND, AMERICA, RUSSIA. Besides we have attacked anyone who hadn’t the same political standpoint as we had – we did it in a stupid, brutal way.
Document 32
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 183
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 29 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
MENNY: Four weeks ago at a course in BERLIN, BURGDORF[67] told the people quite frankly how desperate our position looked, how completely mismanaged – AVRANCHES(?) and so on had not happened then, it was shortly before that – and how things looked very bad for us and at the moment one could really believe that we should not pull through. He said that quite openly. But if we succeeded in holding out until September, then all the indication showed that we should manage it, because then all those things would come into action. Those were the V-2, the flying torpedoes and the U-boats and so on. So it would all depend on getting over those four weeks.
[…]
SCHLIEBEN: We are a thorn in their flesh.
CHOLTITZ: HITLER hates us.
SCHLIEBEN: Yes, he hates us! For how long did HITLER harangue you when you reported to him?
CHOLTITZ: Three-quarters of an hour.
SCHLIEBEN: Was he sitting at a large table, or how?
CHOLTITZ: He was standing.
SCHLIEBEN: And then they introduced the Nazi salute as a substitute for the lacking GAF, didn’t they?[68]
CHOLTITZ: Yes.
CHOLTITZ: I saw HITLER four weeks ago when he nabbed me for PARIS.
BASSENGE: What kind of an impression does he make?
CHOLTITZ: Well, it was just shortly after the assassination attempt and he was still rather jaded.
BASSENGE: Is he still injured?
CHOLTITZ: He was more worn out than anything. He has put on 17 lbs!
THOMA: Mentally, he is ill, very ill.
CHOLTITZ: I went there and HITLER made me a speech for three-quarters of an hour, as though I were a public meeting.[69] He gets drunk with his own speeches! I went into the room and there he stood, a fat, broken-down old man with festering hands… they had been scratched a bit as a result of the attempt on his life and all the ‘Gauleiter’, whom he had greeted shortly afterwards, in order to gain fresh courage, all shook hands with him so enthusiastically and trustingly that he got badly festering sores. When I gave him my hand, I gave it to him very carefully, I was really almost sorry for him because he looked horrible.
THOMA: Has he got fat?
CHOLTITZ: Yes, sort of bloated.
?: He has put on 17 lbs.
?: You say he looks bloated and broken down?
CHOLTITZ: Yes. He said (imitating HITLER): ‘Does the General know what it’s about?’ and BURGDORF(?) replied: ‘Yes, my FÜHRER.’ Thereupon he began reeling off a gramophone record like a man stung by a tarantula and spoke for three-quarters of an hour! With difficulty I succeeded in interrupting him three times. He spoke just as loud as I am speaking now in a room that was about as large as this one, only rather longer – it was in his dug-out, because the air-raid warning had just been given outside. (Imitating HITLER) ‘A people which does not surrender can never be defeated, such a thing has never happened in history.’ Then he began talking about the Party and how he had struggled for fourteen years. (With sarcasm) He said some words which I seemed vaguely to remember having heard before. (General laughter) He trotted out all that old nonsense, so that I actually had to bite my tongue hard three times, to keep myself from bursting out. His left eye dropped a bit to the left, his right one was fixed very suspiciously on me all the time, because he hates us all like the plague. I noticed that when we – I have been commanding a ‘Korps’ since December 1942[70] and, in order o check up on me, I was sent again at Christmas to a course for GOCs – they have got that too, now! At the end of this course, we were all put into a marvellous train and sent to POSEN, where we were lodged for four days in an hotel, where we were actually very well off – good food and good drink – and where we were allowed to listen to speeches by prominent people on ‘the greatest man of GERMANY’ for four days on end. (General laughter).
?: SPANG was there too, wasn’t he?
CHOLTITZ: SPANG was there, among others. He just accepted all these things with startled resignation. I was delighted to see that such people still exist, who are living mentally two-thirds and physically one-third on the moon. He was like a little child and always used to listen in complete wonder.
?: You will see him here, too.
CHOLTITZ: He was also the only one who took notes. (General amusement ). He took notes!
There was a terrible man there, who is a disgrace to the German Army, General REINECKE.[71]
?: Who is he?
THOMA: He was a member of the People’s Court.
CHOLTITZ: I heard say that he was at the Clothing Department for a long time. (General laughter).
66
Alfred Rosenberg (12.1.1893–16.10.1946), from 17.6.1941 to 30.4.1945 Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories. For his life see Ernst Piper, ‘Rosenberg’.
67
Chief of the Army Personnel Bureau, Generalleutnant (1.11.1944 General der Infanterie) Wilhelm Burgdorf (15.2.1895–1.5.1945) addressed the course for senior adjutants on 3.8.1944 regarding the events of 20 July 1944. ‘Tätigkeitsbericht Schmundt’, p. 192.
69
Choltitz gives more details of his conversation with Hitler here than in his memoirs, but both accounts say much the same thing. Choltitz, ‘Soldat unter Soldaten’, p. 222f. and ‘Brennt Paris?’, pp. 6–11.
71
General der Infanterie Hermann Reinecke (14.2.1888–10.10.1973), 1938 Chief of Bureaux, General Wehrmacht Affairs, from which the General Wehrmacht Bureau was created in 1939, and of which he remained head to the war’s end. From 1.1.1944 he was also Chief of the National Socialist Command Staff at OKW. 28.10.1948 sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg, October 1954 released. Streit, ‘Reinecke’. For his activity in the field of military education see Förster, ‘Geistige Kriegführung’.