?: The very man for the job.
CHOLTITZ: (With disgust) Such a common commercial traveller, such a vulgar, horrible fellow! He always used to come on to the platform: ‘Heil HITLER’ – dead silence in the hall – whereupon everyone said: ‘Morning’, whereupon he said: ‘I ought to say a few words about that!’ – and that to the Commanders-in-Chief of our army! ‘Anyone who doesn’t say “Heil HITLER” is an outsider.’ That was the gist of his speech. The next day I came down to breakfast and stood there – there were nothing but Generals all round the table – and said: ‘Heil HITLER’, whereupon they all began to laugh. I said: ‘Gentlemen, you are on the wrong side. So is the General over there.’ That was REINECKE, who had not said ‘Heil HITLER’ either. (General laughter). A really common, horrible fellow.
THOMA: Didn’t anyone from the Party come then, GOEBBELS or anyone?
CHOLTITZ: That’s possible. Then the best thing was a fellow from the Party, whose name I have forgotten, who came from the Party Chancellery and had the impudence to stand there and read something out for three-and-a-half hours in a completely toneless voice, just talking down to us. There was a fat brown-shirted, stupid fellow sitting on one of those narrow theatre chairs beside me and he said: ‘It’s intolerable, who the hell is he?’ ‘I wouldn’t speak so loudly,’ I said, ‘or you will be had up there.’ (Laughter) I said: ‘Who are you then?’ ‘I am the “Gauleiter”.’ ‘Oh, hell!’ I said.
Then we all drove out from POSEN to see HITLER. This is what the lunch with Adolf HITLER was like: obviously they couldn’t have two-hundred-and-fifty Generals all sitting down to table together, so half of them were there. I was among those told to come to lunch and I sat next to SCHMUNDT.[72] Adolf HITLER came into the room – looked round – dug MANSTEIN[73] in the paunch with his elbow, without saying: ‘Good morning’ to him. The two ‘Feldmarschälle’ were not seated beside him. He sat down at the table and looked round quite nervously, thinking he was going to be stabbed in the back any moment and was happy only when he had sat down and his SS waiter was behind him. I watched him closely and the man didn’t say a word for seven minutes, he didn’t speak, he just drank and incidentally ate a great deal. He had four different things to drink, including cold tea and rum (sic). I said to the fellow near me: ‘The atmosphere here is unbearable. The fellow comes in without greeting anybody. What’s the matter with him, he’s so ill-tempered?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Then he spoke very shortly and jumped up after ten minutes and ran away out of the room, breathing fire, scared and shaking. He didn’t say a word to anyone and that was what we had hurried out from POSEN for. Then came that famous speech. (Giggling) Adolf HITLER stood up in front of the stand and delivered a lecture – you must remember it was to two-hundred-and-fifty Generals who had all been rushed by air from the front. MANSTEIN and HOLLIDT[74] had only just arrived beforehand; they had had their lunch. As is usual with men of our age, everyone likes to have a moment’s rest after a meal. Unfortunately, that clashed with Adolf HITLER’s speech. We were in a barn, which was the HQ ‘Quartiermeister’s’ Mess and the outer room where the orderlies wash the dishes, and they’d overheated the room beyond all description. We sat in that barn in the sweltering heat and Adolf HITLER talked and talked; after about seven minutes 40 per cent of the Generals were snoring. (General laughter). I thought, if the man’s in his right mind at all he ought to say: ‘Let’s go out for a few physical jerks.’ (Laughter all round). But, as usual, once he’s worked up, he notices nothing.
THOMA: Well, what did he say, still the same old things?
CHOLTITZ: Except for one moment, when he said (imitating Adolf HITLER): ‘In principle, it ought to be like this, the “Feldmarschälle” should protect my person with their sabres. In front of the “Feldmarschälle” should be the Generals, in front of them the “Divisionäre” and in front of them the “Regiments-Kommandeure” with their “Regimenter”, forming an impenetrable wall.’ MANSTEIN said: ‘It’ll probably come to that, my FÜHRER.’ Whereupon Adolf HITLER, filled with hate, looked at us and said ‘Feldmarschall von MANSTEIN, I accept your declaration with satisfaction. But unfortunately I must tell you that it isn’t so. You need only look at RUSSIA. It’s tragic, but there it is.’ Actually, what with SEYDLITZ and so on, he’d…[75]
Document 33
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 185
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 3 Sept. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
MÜLLER-RÖMER: I spent the entire war in RUSSIA, until last November. I can only say: it needn’t be as bad as all that. The Russians may change quite suddenly; they are blossoming forth as Western Europeans.
HENNECKE: But you started to say that your family in SILESIA, if the Russians come there—
MÜLLER-RÖMER: If I had the choice between Russians on the one hand and English and Americans on the other, of course I should choose the people here because I know what it is like here and I am doubtful what it is like over there. Of course, it may be ghastly, but I should think that the Russians do things in an orderly manner like the Americans and English do. I don’t think they’ll send over Kirgizes either, because they’ll want to prove to the Western European powers that they are a civilised state. They may use quite different tactics.
HENNECKE: I can only say that all repressions, everything lying dormant in people will break out the moment the war tension ends and people will be able to do as they like and no one will say anything. That’s the danger. DE GAULLE is impatiently waiting to occupy the RHINELAND.[76] Whether he’ll be allowed to is a different question. But revenge – that’s what it will be. I am convinced that our Gestapo did dreadful things there.
MÜLLER-RÖMER: It passes all imagination what those fellows – it’s not surprising if we… our Gestapo competed with the Russians in their bestial actions. I know the ghastly atrocities committed in POLAND since 1939, when those fellows started there!
HENNECKE: Didn’t anyone oppose them?
MÜLLER-RÖMER: Yes. BLASKOWITZ did at the time but it didn’t do him any good![77] The ‘Wehrmacht’ had no say in those matters. ‘That comes under civil administration and is no business of yours.’
HENNECKE: That’s the trouble; if only all senior Army leaders had unanimously said: ‘We won’t participate in that dirty work! It is dragging the name of GERMANY in the mud.’
MÜLLER-RÖMER: It didn’t do the few who did say that any good.
HENNECKE: If they had all done it, in good time! The fact that such things were possible will puzzle world historians!
MÜLLER-RÖMER: History will hold the German Generals responsible for not having unanimously stopped all that dirty work which started at the outbreak of war, by simply protesting and laying down their arms – or something of the sort.
HENNECKE: All the Generals are protesting. I used to say to them: ‘If you knew all that, I can’t understand why any of you, or the entire body of Generals, didn’t protest.’ They all said: ‘I don’t want to play with fire.’
MÜLLER-RÖMER: The Generals we now have in… are all quite young fellows who couldn’t have been more than ‘Regimentskommandeure’ at the time.
72
General der Infanterie Rudolf Schmundt (13.8.1896–1.10.1944) was Chief Wehrmacht adjutant to Hitler, 28.1.1938 to his death and from 1.10.1942 head of the Army Personnel Bureau.
73
Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Lewinski known as von Manstein (24.11.1887–10.6.1973) was C-in-C, Army Group South in January 1944.
74
Generaloberst Karl Adolf Hollidt (24.4.1891–1.6.1973) was C-in-C, 6.Armee in January 1944.
75
No itinerary for senior commanders of all Wehrmacht branches at Posen exists, either as a detailed programme or as a list of those attending. It probably lasted two, and not the four days suggested by Choltitz. On 26.1.1944 Himmler addressed the assembled generals on the extermination of the Jews. If the memoirs of Freiherr von Gersdorff are believed, Choltitz was one of the few present who understood the enormity of Himmler’s words. The conference at FHQ Rastenburg followed on 27.1.1944. Förster, ‘Geistige Kriegführung’; Gersdorff, ‘Soldat im Untergang’, p. 145. Graf Rothkirch was also present at the Posen session. See his account, especially Hitler’s address at SRGG 1135(c), 9.3.1945, TNA WO 208/4169, and also the version of Generalleutnant Richard Veith at SRGG 1149, 24.4.1945, TNA WO 208/4169.
77
For a concise summary of the protests by Johannes Blaskowitz (10.7.1883–5.2.1948) against crimes by SS and police units in Poland, see Clark, ‘Blaskowitz’. Because of his criticisms, Blaskowitz never made Feldmarschall and received only second-class appointments. In a letter dated 6.2.1940 as C-in-C East he wrote, ‘The feelings of the Army towards the SS and Polizei vary between abhorrence and loathing, and every soldier feels disgusted and revolted by their crimes. In this connection one must not forget, however, that the Wehrmacht was also involved in the crimes in Poland’. Böhler, ‘Tragische Verstrickung’.