EBERBACH: I don’t think the Russians are doing it just because we did, but simply because they have a desire for revenge.
BROICH: Yes, a desire for revenge and fear of partisans of course.
EBERBACH: The ‘Sunday Times’ says that the Russians already report the use of hand grenades by civilians and therefore they are forced to wipe out everyone.[138] What they so bitterly resented when we did it is now being done by them as a matter of course.
BROICH: Besides they maintain that we wiped out great numbers too.
EBERBACH: Any day now you can expect someone to say of his own accord: ‘I won’t carry on any more, we must finish it.’ Any armistice would be better than this destruction.
BROICH: You must remember that, on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are very afraid they’ll be hanged immediately.
EBERBACH: That’s just it.
BROICH: They don’t listen to the news as much as we do, but nevertheless, if the German wireless broadcasts: ‘BEUTHEN has been evacuated, there is fighting to the north of BRESLAU’ – if they announce that, everyone must realise what’s up.
EBERBACH: It is very difficult—
BROICH: To know where to start; it could be done by the ‘Korps’ if the divisional commander agrees; every divisional commander will need to have a regimental commander in his ‘Division’ who is utterly in agreement with him, so that he could do it by issuing false orders; it isn’t as difficult as all that.
EBERBACH: The English and Americans should be made to get a move on.
BROICH: If we don’t do anything else: either we must surrender or, as divisional commander, I should place my reserves at a wrong point and then when the Allies attack at that point I could always say I had made a mistake.
EBERBACH: RUNDSTEDT can do quite a lot on his own; he can say: ‘I can let you have twenty ‘Divisionen’ for the East – I’ll tie down the enemy in the West.’
BROICH: Yes. ‘I’ll guarantee to hold the front’, etc. All he has to do then is to move his troops to the wrong place and all is up. I can’t understand why they don’t set about it.
[…]
HEIM: It isn’t true that all our leaders are spineless.
EBERBACH: No!
HEIM: Who creep and crawl to him the moment they come before him, as one likes to picture it, but on the contrary he has a remarkable hypnotic power.
EBERBACH: Yes, that’s it. Incidentally it must have been similar with NAPOLEON and people like that.[139]
HEIM: Does he obtain this influence consciously or is it always there, or partly one, partly the other?
EBERBACH: Partly one, partly the other.
HEIM: He knows it and makes full use of it. He probably doesn’t quite know wherein it lies, but he is conscious of it and uses it. Do you think that there are some people who do not come under his hypnotic influence?
EBERBACH: Yes, there are.
HEIM: I didn’t actually take that man Thomale[140] particularly seriously, he is so extraordinarily obliging, but I only knew him at the school at DRESDEN.
EBERBACH: (Laughing) A man who has had the face to make jokes about the FÜHRER, all premeditated, in order to win him over on to his side. He has tremendous powers of deliberation, a free and independent man. In some respects they are perhaps similar. THOMALE is another of those people who won’t let anyone else get a word in, he’s enormously effervescent, of tremendous vitality and it is a question of vitality against hypnotic influence and a man like that is not easy to get the better of!
HEIM: But GUDERIAN is effervescent too.
EBERBACH: GUDERIAN is older, he is not a person who has that inner vitality.
HEIM: In my opinion, as soldiers and comrades of GUDERIAN,[141] there’s one thing we must keep saying: GUDERIAN is not spineless, GUDERIAN is no fool, on the contrary, there are other forces at work here.
EBERBACH: Well, I don’t think GUDERIAN should have agreed to the offensive in the West, which drew off quite considerable forces from his front.
HEIM: I don’t believe he was asked, he had the Eastern front, and it’s a principle of HITLER’s who saw this problem coming – of choosing either the East or the West – to say: “I won’t have anyone here who is to have any say beside me in these matters, so I shall send GUDERIAN to the East.”
EBERBACH: But GUDERIAN has the East and was bound to say: “I can’t spare one ‘Division’ here, on the contrary, I must have additional ‘Divisionen’, because the Russian offensive will start, and we know what that looks like.”
HEIM: Do you know for certain that he didn’t say that? We don’t know!
Document 63
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 259
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 11–13 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
CHOLTITZ: How do you picture your life in the future?
VATERRODT: I have no idea at all at the moment. After all, they can’t turn all the officers out on to the street! That’s impossible! Because the Americans – and the English – have at least an interest in seeing that they are not all idling on the streets.
CHOLTITZ: The civil service has to a large extent been Nazified. It must be replaced in some form or other. I should not be surprised at all if they used at least some of us for minor posts.
VATERRODT: I can well imagine, too, that they are interested in allowing us at least some pension on which we could live, if not the pension which would be due to us in the normal way. I am not too pessimistic about that. At any rate, even if they don’t give us that, they must find some sort of occupation for us, where we can do something for the Fatherland.[142]
CHOLTITZ: Well, of course, some of us will be sent to RUSSIA.[143]
VATERRODT: We don’t know that; where does it say that?
CHOLTITZ: They have announced it: the war criminals will immediately be brought to justice.
VATERRODT: Who is a war criminal?
CHOLTITZ: The governments are deciding that.
VATERRODT: Where does it say that every General is a war criminal?
CHOLTITZ: No, not every one, but they will demand those they want.
VATERRODT: They can only be quite isolated cases, those who have behaved particularly badly.
CHOLTITZ: I have never had a town burnt down or anything like that, but suppose I had given orders to my ‘Korps’ that such-and-such a place was to be burnt down, so that the Russians should not get in, I should then be a war criminal.
VATERRODT: Would they know that General so-and-so did it?
CHOLTITZ: Yes, because they have the order. They have got all the ‘Korps’ orders.
[…]
Document 64
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 260
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 14–15 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
BROICH: If we got another treaty of VERSAILLES today we’d jump for joy.
WAHLE: If you were a GOC at the front today, and hadn’t been here, would you fight or not?
EBERBACH: I would fight, but I would do everything in my power to influence all those with whom I came into contact to get the thing finished.
138
The ‘Sunday Times’ article referred to by Eberbach remains unidentified. The four editions of January 1945 contain no mention of such reports by the Russians.
140
Generalleutnant Wolfgang Thomale (25.2.1900–20.10.1978). From 1.6.1938–14.5.1941 Staff, OKH Inspekteur der Panzertruppen; 15.5.1941 CO, III.Pz.Reg.25; 5.8.1941, CO, Pz.Reg.27; 1.4.1942 OKH liaison officer between Chief of Army Ordnance and CO, Ersatzheer, Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm and Armaments Minister Speer; 1.3.1943 Chief of Staff, Insp. Gen. der Panzertruppen.
141
Generaloberst Heinz Guderian (17.6.1888–14.5.1954) was the founder of the German panzer force and a highly successful commander of panzer formations in Poland, France and Russia. He was highly decorated (Knight’s Cross, 27.10.1939, Oak Leaves 17.7.1941), Hitler relieved him of command on 26.12.1941, and he was not re-employed until 1.3.1943, as Insp. Gen der Panzertruppen. After the coup attempt of 20.7.1944 Hitler made him chargé d’affaires for the Chief of the Army General Staff. After violent arguments with Hitler he was retired on 28.3.1945 and spent the period from 10.5.1945 to 17.6.1948 in US captivity. In recent publications his role, particularly as Chief of the Army General Staff, has been viewed critically. Wilhelm, ‘Guderian’.
143
None of the German generals at Trent Park was handed over to the Soviets. As a rule the Western Allies tried in their own tribunals those generals accused of war crimes committed in the East. The only exceptions were field marshals von Kleist and Schörner, who were in British and US captivity respectively at the war’s end, and were given over to the Soviets.