The Russians were very clever pupils. However it was apparently known before, that the Russians were not great industrial inventors but very receptive learners. It was very interesting: in 1927 and 1928 we had various military institutions in RUSSIA, air-training schools, tank-training schools, everything which was forbidden by the Treaty of VERSAILLES.[196] We had people over there – for instance I myself had several friends – who anyway had been to RUSSIA. If you asked them: ‘What is RUSSIA really like?’ they always produced two categories of people according to how they let themselves be influenced. Some said: ‘It’s a great big swindle!’ Others said: ‘RUSSIA will prove an immense danger! Don’t let us close our eyes to that!”
I can tell you how PW were treated; they were usually set to work at the front straight away. One thing is certain. My documents contained a huge number of cases, confirmed by numerous witnesses, of excessive cruelty at the moment of capture.[197] That is partly due to the Slav character which doesn’t fear death but is afraid of torture. The following happened: at KIEV where we were stationed a long time[198] the Russians had agents consisting of men and women in civilian clothes who roamed the streets allegedly on a visit to some aunt of theirs. Some of these people were taken and discovered to be agents; they were to find out military secrets. These people were interrogated not by the SS according to SS methods but by my intelligence men as is the proper military way. If they refused to talk we threatened to beat them. Then they talked. If you said: ‘You’ll be shot!’ they didn’t say a word. But if you hinted there were other methods besides shooting etc. – that we had learnt a lot from the Russians in that respect! A completely different way of looking at things. For instance, eyes put out, cut off noses, ears and genitals – it was difficult to tell whether this took place before or after death – but a great number of thus mutilated corpses were found. Now comes a peculiar fact: Russian PW were well behaved and quiet, they didn’t grumble – that’s typically Slav too. When they get excited, become angry, also in the fury of battle, they become cruel. When they are conquered or when they are left in peace and you don’t want anything from them they are the most reliable, useful and placid people I know. Undoubtedly we Western Europeans are up against a mentality foreign to us. In retrospect, when looking back at BUCHENWALD etc., we must come to the conclusion that HITLER didn’t respect and even envy STALIN for nothing. They had something in common, with the difference that on the one side it was the actual expression of a completely different national character and with us just something pathological.
II. ‘We Have Tried to Exterminate Whole Communities.’ War Crimes in Trent Park Conversations
Document 83
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRM 145 [TNA, WO 208/4165]
LUDWIG CRÜWELL – General der Panzertruppe – Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.
WILHEIM RITTER VON THOMA – General der Panzertruppe – Captured 4 Nov. 42 in North Africa.
Information received: 5 Dec. 42
THOMA: In November or December the order came down from the Army Group HQ that the (Russian) Regimental Commissars were to be taken prisoner.[199] Of course that very soon became known and therefore everyone was after these Commissars and they got to know about it too, they were absolute fanatics – they said: ‘Then I shall hold out to the last and drive my men on, because I shall be killed in any case.’ I had one who had been in BERLIN in TUKHACHEVSKI’s time.[200] He called himself liaison officer between the encircled Army Group, the Corps which we had there, and the man in command of the partisans, that was General BELOW(?),[201] and this particular colonel was the liaison officer. He spoke a little German and I said to him: ‘You’ve been in GERMANY, do you really believe that we kill people? Look out of the window’ – a crowd of Russians happened to be going past at that moment – we had Russian workmen, whom we treated well and they worked hard. I said: ‘Take a look out of the window, those men aren’t at all badly off.’[202] Then he said: ‘Yes, that may be, you need them for labour, but you shoot the Commissars, we’ve got some of your orders.’ I denied it, or course, and said: ‘You’re wrong there.’ He said: ‘No, we can’t be wrong there, because a number of such orders have been found.’[203] Then I said: ‘But we haven’t got any Commissars.’ ‘Yes, your officers and Commissars are one and the same,’ he said. I reported it at the time. Then a few weeks later we lost two captains, both splendid leaders who had advanced too far from an excess of zeal and had been captured. And we didn’t retake this village until some weeks later, it was near VLASITCHI(?),[204] and we asked the peasants about them immediately and they said they had been taken to the next village. We sent the interpreter to make enquiries in the next village: ‘Yes, they were brought here by sledge and were shot here behind the barn.’ And then they uncovered the grave and there they were in it, they had all been shot in the back. ‘Yes,’ he said calmly, ‘your officers are also Commissars.’ I know that HALDER, BRAUCHITSCH and everyone were absolutely opposed to that order.[205]
CRÜWELL: You must have been at the FÜHRER’s Headquarters at that time?
THOMA: Yes, just at that time.[206] The matter was discussed for a long time – those are the famous FÜHRER’s orders. Those are the things for which I blame Field Marshal KEITEL above all. He should have said: ‘My FÜHRER, let’s sleep on that till tomorrow morning,’ because those are only spontaneous ideas of his. ‘If we do this, our people will be treated in the same way and then on grounds of discipline – our men will become “rowdies”.’ If it had been put to him in that way he might have been convinced, even if against his will. But as it is they simply obey. And the orders that came through latterly were enough to make you sick and they were all signed ‘KEITEL, Field Marshal’.
CRÜWELL: And what were they?
THOMA: For example, there is the order that a man can only get further promotion, if it has been thoroughly investigated whether he is a 150 per cent true National Socialist, and there has to be this thorough investigation and he has to furnish proof. How is a soldier to produce proof? And our ‘First Soldier’ issues orders like that! That caused very bad feeling especially among the older officers.[207]
197
Between 90 and 95 per cent of German soldiers in Red Army captivity in 1941 failed to survive. Probably most were murdered fairly soon after capture. Böhme, ‘Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand’, p. 110. Atrocities against German prisoners occurred in the jurisdiction of 6.Armee, where Ferdinand Heim was Chief of Staff, particularly at the outset of the campaign. In the appendices to 6.Armee War Diary, Ia, some cases of crimes against German prisoners are documented in detail, some with an autopsy report and photographs. This material does not substantiate claims of ‘innumerable cases’. Evidence of Soviet breaches of international law occur for example in the following files: -LI Armeekorps, Ic, Activity Report No. 1, 19.6.1941–31.7.1941 (BA/MA RH 24-51/54) (mutilated German corpses at Skomorochy, also mentioned at BA/MA RH 20-6, AOK 6, Ic/03, evening report, 1.7.1941, folio 41); 56.Inf.Div., Ic, Activity Report, 22.6.1941–1.8.1941 (BA/MA RH26-56/18) (Report on ‘Bitterness’ at Soviet war crimes); 99.(Light) Inf.Div., Ic, to Gen.Kdo XVII.Armeekorps, Ic, Breaches of international law by Red troops, 2.7.1941 (BA/MA RH26-99 /21) (Reprisals ordered in response to Soviet war crimes); and 168.Inf.Div., Ic, Activity Report, 22–30.6.1941 (BA/MA RH26-168/40) (from 24.6.1941 several cases of serious mistreatment of German soldiers behind their own lines, responsibility not unequivocally clear).
198
6.Armee Staff was never at Kiev, a fact that Heim was at pains to emphasise after the war to support his assertion that he knew nothing about the mass murder at Babi Yar. The Army Staff was at Zhitomir to 13.9.1941 and moved from Ivankov to Prjevejasslav and Lubny to Poltava on 19.10.1941, where it remained until the spring of 1942. Details at BA/MA RH20-6/711.
199
Thoma presumably refers here to an OKH instruction at the end of August 1941 to execute not only the Commissars, but also the political leaders (Politruks) competent from regimental level downwards. A special order regarding ‘Regiment-Kommissars’ of November/December 1941 is unknown. See ‘Das Deutsche Reich und Der Zweite Weltkrieg’, Vol. 4, p. 1067f. The Army soon recognised that the Commissar Order bolstered the resistance of the Red Army. See also ibid., p. 1068.
200
Michail Tuchatshevsky (16.2.1893–11.6.1937) was Chief of the Red Army General Staff from 1925 to 1928, and from 1931 Head of Ordnance. In connection with the collaboration over armaments there had been bilateral visits to field manoeuvres and tours of inspection from 1925. Thus in 1928/29 five Soviet commanders of the third Assistant Commanding Officers’ course stayed in Berlin for up to a year. Zeidler, ‘Reichswehr und Rote Armee’, pp. 224–7, Gorlow, ‘Geheimsache Moskau-Berlin’, p. 156.
201
Major-General Pawel Below commanded a 20,000-strong battle group formed from elements of 1.Guard-Cavalry Corps, airborne troops and partisans, which became encircled behind the German lines in the Smolensk/Kirov area during the Soviet winter offensive. Thoma’s 2.Pz.Div. set about wiping out this battle group from March 1942 onwards, and had succeeded by the beginning of June 1942. The partisan units were assembled in independent ‘divisions’ of which the unknown colonel mentioned here was apparently the partisans’ liaison man to Below’s staff. ‘Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg’, Vol. 6, p. 865f. For the organisation of Below’s units, see Armstrong, ‘Soviet Partisans’, p. 177f; Hinze, ‘Hitze’, pp. 124–8.
202
From the summer of 1941 numerous Russian so-called ‘volunteers’ were attached to German units and performed valuable service, particularly in supply. In May 1943 they numbered about 600,000. J. Hoffmann, ‘Wlassow-Armee’, p. 14.
203
The Commissar Order itself was not likely to have fallen into Red Army hands since the document was only circulated at Armee command level. It is quite possible that the Russians captured files that had been compiled at divisional level and which made reference to the Commissar Order. ‘Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg’, Vol. 4, p. 438.
204
A placename resembling ‘Vlasitchi’ cannot be found in a gazeteer of Russian localities.
205
Brauchitsch and Halder definitely did not refuse the Commissar Order. After Hitler’s address to the generals on 30.3.1941, Halder even ordered the first draft prepared. This was then passed from OKH to OKW, where it was put into its final textual form ready for signature. Brauchitsch’s explanatory notes of 8.6.1941 did not attempt to transform the order in any way, but merely aimed to prevent Army units from committing excesses. That some Army commanders watered down the Commissar Order, or ignored it, is documented. The extent to which the order was enforced has given rise to controversy in the past. Felix Römer’s Kiel dissertation ‘Besondere Massnahmen’ was based on a review of all available German archive material and proved that in more than 80 per cent of all German divisions commissars were liquidated, although the final total of commissars and politruks executed cannot be determined exactly because of the poor documentation on hand. Römer estimates it at ‘a high four-digit figure’, but ‘never 10,000’. ‘Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg’, Vol. 4, pp. 435–40, 1069f; Rohde, ‘Politishe Indoktrination’, Hartmann, ‘Halder’ pp. 241–54.
206
As General der Schnellen Truppen, von Thoma rarely left OKH HQ at Zossen until July 1941, and then only for short tours of inspection. He may therefore have been party to the internal debates about the Commissar Order, although his pocket diary has no entries to that effect. BA/MA N2/2.
207
To which OKW order von Thoma is referring here is unknown. Not until the structural change in the officer corps in the autumn of 1942 did it become obligatory for generals commanding troop units to endorse whole-heartedly ‘the National Socialist worldview’. Thoma, taken prisoner in North Africa at the beginning of November 1942, may not have been aware of this change. Förster, ‘Führerheer’, p. 318.