WAHLE: That’s different, that’s quite another matter. Would you be prepared to offer your powers of leadership to the full, and your own person?
EBERBACH: Yes, of course.
WAHLE: Everything else is, in my opinion, purely theoretical.
EBERBACH: But all the time I would be thinking: wouldn’t it perhaps be better if I, together with my neighbouring army commander, were to come to some sort of terms now? I should have to consider, of course, whether it could be done and what the effects might be. Particularly as regards the Western Powers; not the Russians, there’s no choice there.
WAHLE: I asked, because at table THOMA said that we couldn’t understand what people like HALDER etc. could be thinking of to carry on fighting! I said: ‘What else can they do?’ They have to. The most elementary military honour demands that. Nobody in the front line, not even the C-in-C, can even consider whether or not he should carry on fighting.
EBERBACH: Yes, he can, now is the time for that.
WAHLE: No. You said yourself that, as regards the Russians, it’s a matter of course.
EBERBACH: But I should spend the whole time thinking: ‘What can I do to bring about the fall of the HITLER clique? Have I any possibilities in that line? What can I do, as soon as I’m in the West, to bring about, somehow, the entry of the Western Powers?’
WAHLE: You would be so wound up in the whole business—
EBERBACH: All the same I already found time for thoughts like these while I was in the West. But it was like this: I was in command of the 5th ‘Panzerarmee’, or ‘Panzergruppe West’, as it was next called, for a bare four weeks. Then I commanded for a fortnight or three weeks that ‘Panzergruppe EBERBACH’, quite different units again. Then I commanded the 7th ‘Armee’ for a week. One didn’t have time to do anything about it. But despite that I allowed myself to think all those treacherous thoughts and I discussed them with some of the GOCs. It had got as far as that already. We Swabians are revolutionaries. For instance, I’m convinced that someone like GERSDORF,[144] who’s an eminently clever and brave man, would never think about such things. It would be out of the question for him. He’s a Prussian. Obeying orders is the only thing which matters to him, whereas we inclined far more to such rebellious thoughts. In BERLIN, however, such thoughts seldom came to me.
WAHLE: But to put it into practice! Think it, yes!
EBERBACH: In BERLIN one always said to oneself: ‘First the invasion must come; if we repulse that then the tide has turned.’ As long as the invasion hadn’t started the war hadn’t yet been lost. But the moment the invasion succeeded, the only way one could judge the situation was to say to oneself: ‘There’s no further point in it now.’
I am convinced that if THOMA were at the front now he would swear like a trooper, but he would do his job honourably and bravely.
WAHLE: Then my fears are set at rest.
Document 65
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 262
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 18–20 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
CHOLTITZ: Isn’t it a typical sign of a declining world that they are governed by a man who can’t even walk properly?
MEYER (reporting a conversation with EBERDING): I said: ‘If the Bolshevists succeed in conquering GERMANY, then it means the extinction of our people.’ He replied: ‘That’s nonsense! We have lost so many wars; we lost in 1918, we lost against NAPOLEON and so on.’
ULLERSPERGER: There’s no comparison at all!
MEYER: I said: ‘What you are saying is senseless. That was an alteration in system, but nothing more than that. If Bolshevism triumphs today, then it will be a question of the biological annihilation of our people.’ He can’t see that.
ULLERSPERGER: Obviously, because only a convinced National Socialist can understand that.
MEYER: Afterwards he said: ‘I can’t refute what you told me; I don’t know where you learnt it—’ The fact is, there’s one thing I must say. Mistrust of our Generals is in my opinion, and I realise it more and more – in some ways by no means entirely groundless, because they have not accepted National Socialism as a religion, as we have, but only as a system of government obtaining for the moment.
ULLERSPERGER: Yes, of course.
MEYER: For instance, he said to me: ‘It is the third system which I have experienced.’ That’s wrong, a man can only give himself once; I have breathed in National Socialism as a religion, as my life, no matter whether it is called National Socialism or has some other designation. I have realised that that is the only right life for our people, that otherwise our culture would go to the devil. This National Socialism stands for the conditions of life and for the things which are essential for our people for the preservation of our race, our people and our culture. He said: ‘What do you mean by culture?’
Document 66
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 267
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 2–3 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
CHOLTITZ: ‘We shall not go under!’ But you know, any decent nation may lose a war, that means that it has been led in a stupid manner or has been put in a totally crazy political situation; they can’t, however, lose the war if they fight on to the end honourably. That is what the enemy is afraid of!
ELFELDT: If the Allies had gone on to BERLIN in one fell swoop after NORMANDY—
CHOLTITZ: Our spirit would have been broken!
ELFELDT: Yes. Actually the military fame of the German Army cannot be destroyed, whatever defeats they may yet suffer, this nation can only go down with honour.
CHOLTITZ: Lose the war with honour. It will never go under!
BRUHN: Now that the bombs are raining down the simple worker, the ordinary ‘Regierungsrat’, the ‘Major’, the German housewife etc. take it as the proof of what HITLER and GOEBBELS have always said: i.e. That you with devilish baseness want to destroy everything German, no matter whether woman or child. It’s a lie and a complete distortion of the facts.
BAO: Do you think this hatred will continue after the war when we’re occupying Germany?
BRUHN: No, we must see to that; it will be a difficult task. I don’t think so, although there is a danger. It’ll have to be tackled with great strictness but also with a great deal of understanding for this tortured people. You can’t hang everyone; that is impossible as you’d be sowing the seeds of further massacres. The younger generation will have to be watched very carefully and we’ll have to take a firm stand with them. All that is well and good once we have fuel and the possibility of providing sufficient food for the population, so that they won’t steal, murder and pillage and take everything they find.
CHOLTITZ: We no longer know the meaning of the word ‘national’. There’s no mention at all of it being a matter of honour. It has become a matter of plunder! These damned criminals!
RAMCKE: I only know that stealing went on in the RHINELAND in 1922.[145]
CHOLTITZ: You don’t know anything at all about it: you’ve merely read that in the ‘Völkischer Beobachter’. How do you know about it?
RAMCKE: Leutnant HAMM lived in the RUHR district. One night there came a knock at the door and his parents were told that they had to clear the house, it was requisitioned. Leutnant HAMM arrived home on return from ENGLAND and wanted to go into his house; a French sentry stood in front of it. All the silver was missing.
144
Generalmajor Rudolph-Christoff Freiherr von Gersdorff (27.3.1905–26.1.1980). Eberbach was apparently unaware that Gersdorff had been part of Henning von Tresckow’s resistance group and active in the coup plans while at Army Group Centre (20.4.1941–1.2.1944). Gersdorff is said to have rigged a bomb inside his uniform to kill Hitler and himself at a Berlin exhibition on 21.3.1943. From 29.7.1944 he was Chief of Staff, 7.Armee, of which Eberbach was C-in-C. Gersdorff, ‘Soldat im Untergang’.
145
For crimes committed by French troops during the occupation of the Ruhr from 11.1.1923 see Jeannesson, ‘Übergriffe’.