HANS REIMANN – Oberst (Commander, Panzer Grenadier Regiment 86) – KURT KÖHNCKE – Oberstleutnant (Commander, 372 Heavy Flak Battery) – Captured 8 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 19 Dec. 43
REIMANN (re atrocities in RUSSIA): It’s true this time. Tell me one thing, in the 1914–18 war did you ever believe in your own mind that a German soldier was capable of doing things like that?
KÖHNCKE: Never.
REIMANN: Never – do you really believe it now?
KÖHNCKE: I have heard so much about it, that I have to believe it. I myself haven’t been there so I can’t pass an opinion.
REIMANN: A senior police official actually told me about it in the train, that they had shot thousands of Jewish men, women and children at BERDICHEV and ZHITOMIR[236] – he actually told me about it without my asking and he gave such a horrid and vivid description of it that I brought out a bottle of vodka from my bag on the rack and changed the conversation to something else and drank with the fellow. And I’ve also heard about it from other people. He told me about it with the businesslike calm of a professional murderer.
Document 94
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 676 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
GEORG NEUFFER – Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE – Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences Tunis/Bizerta) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 19 Dec. 43
BASSENGE (re BBC midnight news in German[237]): They dished up the mass executions of Jews in POLAND. They estimate here that altogether five million Jews – Polish, Bulgarian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian – have been massacred.
NEUFFER: Really? Not counting the German ones?
BASSENGE: Including the German Jews, during the whole time. They furnished evidence that an enormous number from camp so-and-so between such-and-such a date, fifteen thousand here, eighteen thousand there, twelve thousand there, six thousand and so on – I must say that if 10 per cent of it is correct, then one ought to—
NEUFFER: I should have thought about three million.
BASSENGE: You know, it really is a disgrace.
NEUFFER: This trial, which has been going on at CHARKOV is really very unpleasant for HITLER too.[238]
BASSENGE: Yes, The Generaloberst[239] (PW) was talking today about the SEYDLITZ people.[240] He said that we must understand that it was only human that those people, who have been through it, should now try to find the reasons and the people responsible for it. If they, in their state of mental depression, adopt that attitude, we mustn’t judge them too harshly, even though one is bound to condemn it. He was trying to gloss it over.
NEUFFER: He is frightfully uncertain.
BASSENGE: The first man here to join the SEYDLITZ… will be von BROICH (PW). That’s dead certain. He said today: ‘I would join them at once.’
Document 95
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 681 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
WILHELM RITTER VON THOMA – General der Panzertruppe – Captured 4 Nov. 42 in North Africa.
GEORG NEUFFER – Generalmajor (GOC, 20th Flak Division) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE – Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences Tunis/Bizerta) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 20 Dec. 43
THOMA: In ATHENS two years ago, Sepp DIETRICH told me personally – I have known him for twenty years. I said to him: ‘That’s a nice business! Civilians are simply shot, are they? It’s the same psychosis as we… in 1914 when everyone was just shot – people seeing spies everywhere and so on’; He said: ‘I don’t care; once they’ve been shot, I shall be left in peace.’[241] ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that is a very dangerous solution, particularly for those who order it.’ He replied: ‘That doesn’t worry me, I’m keeping the last bullet for myself.’ He himself is a remarkably energetic man. I hardly think that he would let himself be taken alive. If they captured him, it would only be by accident – and he’ll take good care to prevent that. But it is a dreadful thing when one thinks that the men in (military) uniform are ordering things like that.
NEUFFER: I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that the army has anything to do with it. It is all propaganda…
THOMA: It is propaganda too, but, of course – firstly there are the notices, signed by the town major. They know here who the town major is, they know it is so-and-so and there they have it. But it is a scandalous business. There are no end of cases.
NEUFFER: Yesterday evening we reckoned that, according to all reports, five million Jews must have been killed by us up to date.
THOMA: I mean, it’s a psychological disease which has spread throughout the Party, not the Army, that everything Jewish must be exterminated – they have orders to do it. I remember in the spring of 1942, when their airmen were always dropping that ‘Freedom Pamphlet’ with a facsimile in it of the order signed by HITLER about shooting of Commissars, etc. I wasn’t there – I asked the GSO I, Ops: ‘Have we still got the order?’ He replied: ‘No, we had to destroy it.’[242]
Document 96
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 739 [TNA, WO 208/4167]
FRITZ KRAUSE – Chief Artillery Officer (German Army Group Africa) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
FRIEDRICH FREIMERR VON BROICH (GOC 10th Panzer Division) – Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.
FREIHERR KURT VON LIEBENSTEIN – Generalmajor (GOC, 164th Division) – Captured 13 May 43 in Tunisia.
GERHARD BASSENGE – Generalmajor (GOC, Air Defences Tunis/Bizerta) – Captured 9 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 1 Jan. 44
? BROICH: In this war I once had to have men shot. They were two men who were arrested as spies and active ones at that, according to statements of the inhabitants, and so we said: ‘All right, they must be shot.’… these men (the firing squad) were fine honest people, some of them were fairly experienced Gefreite and they were pale as death, the job was so hateful to them. Then the adjutant came up and said he was all in for that day, he was running about in circles and was almost crazy because it had got on his nerves so much.[243]
? KRAUSE: …often attacked the DRs on these long roads between SALONIKA and SOFIA and when that happened the neighbouring(?) villages were immediately razed to the ground and everybody, men, women and children were herded together and slaughtered. The ‘Regiment’ commander, BRÜCKELMANN told me about it too. He told me once how horrible it was. They were driven into a pen and then the order was given: ‘Fire on them.’ Of course there was a terrible screaming as they fell – the children too – and of course they weren’t killed outright. Then an officer had to go along and put a bullet through their heads. Another time they dragged them all into the church and took them out singly. They always shot them in threes. The ones inside could hear this and they barricaded themselves in and put up resistance; then they had to burn the church down because they couldn’t get in. He said this massacring was horrible, although…[244]
?: There were others there too…
236
In Berditschev, Ukraine, on 4.9.1941 1,500 Jews, on 15.9.1941 18,600, and on 3.11.1941 another 2,000 were shot dead by German and Ukrainian police. In Zhitomir, these police shot dead 5,000 Jews in July and August 1941, and on 18.9.1941 another 3,145 Jews. ‘Enzyklopädie des Holocaust’, Vol. 1, p. 185, Vol. 3., p. 1308. The identity of the senior police official mentioned here is unknown. All that can be confirmed is that the last Jewish survivors of Berditschev were executed in July 1942 by the local Sipo head, Alois Hülsdünker; Mazov, ‘Berditschew’. During his captivity Reimann spoke out about his front experiences in Russia mainly to stress the enormous losses suffered by German units during the 1941 advance. SRGG 736, 3.1.1944, SRGG 745, 6.1.1944, both TNA WO 208/4167, and SRGG 820, 7.2.1944, TNA WO 208/4168.
237
Most recorded texts of the BBC German Service were destroyed after the war. Therefore the material broadcast on the evening of 19.12.1943 cannot be reconstructed. Balfour, ‘Der deutsche Dienst der BBC’, p. 141. BBC News brought daily reports about the war crimes trial in Kharkov. BBC Written Archive Centre, letter dated 24.10.2002 to this author.
238
The first trial of German military personnel was held at Kharkov between 15 and 18.12.1943. Hauptmann Wilhelm Langheld (Military Abwehr), SS-Untersturmführer Hans Ritz, Reinhard Retzlaff (Secret Field Police) and a Russian collaborator were accused of the murder of Russian prisoners and civilians by the use of a mobile gassing truck. The accused were all condemned to death and hanged publicly. The trial was public, film cameras being allowed and a stenographed transcript was made available in several languages. Zeidler, ‘Stalinjustiz contra NS-Verbrechen’, p. 25ff; Streim, ‘Behandlung’, p. 251ff.
240
General der Artillerie Walther von Seydlitz Kurzbach (22.8.1888–28.4.1976) was Chairman of the anti-Nazi ‘Bund Deutscher Offiziere’ and Vice-President, ‘Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland’. Captured at Stalingrad 31.1.1943 as Commdg Gen. LI.Armeekorps, he pleaded for Hitler to be overthrown and an end to the war. Ueberschar, ‘Nationalkomitee’; older material, Frieser, ‘Krieg hinter Stacheldraht’. On Seydlitz, see Reschin, ‘General zwischen den Fronten’; Carnes, ‘General zwischen Hitler und Stalin’.
241
Nothing is known of shootings by the SS-Leibstandarte in Greece in 1941. The exact circumstances in which Thoma and Dietrich knew each other from the 1920s is also unknown. From 1920 Thoma was active in 7.Bavarian (mot.)/7.Bav.Reichswehr-Div.; Dietrich was a member of Reichsbund Oberland and claimed to have taken part in the Hitler putsch, and so they were both in Bavaria. The conversation between Thoma and Dietrich can only have been held on 3.5.1941: Thoma was on an inspection tour in Greece from 28.4.1941 to 8.5.1941 and took part in the victory parade in Athens on 3.5.1941. Sepp Dietrich led the SS-Leibstandarte in the same parade. See Thoma Diary, 3.5.1941, BA/MA N2/2; Lehmann, ‘Die Leibstandarte’, Vol. 1, p. 425f. It also seems that Thoma and Dietrich met just after the French campaign. Thoma reported of this reunion, ‘I can only repeat what Sepp Dietrich said to me towards the end of the French campaign in Normandy, “Look here, Herr General – you know what I was; I am an able soldier, I won’t let anyone deny that, but a leader – that I am not.”’ SRGG 953, 11.7.1944, TNA WO 208/4168.
242
What Thoma says is incorrect. The Commissar Order of 6.6.1941 was an OKW guideline signed by Warlimont by virtue of his office. It had come from OKH and been given two additional paragraphs of limitations. It was distributed in this form to the Army Groups and Armies. Hitler never signed any order regarding Commissars. Transmission of the Order below Army Group/Army level was never envisaged. The Commissar Order is reproduced in Streim, ‘Behandlung’, p. 350f; see also ‘Das deutsche Reich im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Vol. 4, p. 437f. The inspiration for the Order came from Hitler and was adopted willingly by both OKH and OKW. Although the extent to which it was enforced is not known in detail because of the paucity of source material, it was the rule rather than the exception to carry it out. See Römer, ‘Besondere Massnahmen’, and ‘Das deutsche Reich im Zeiten Weltkrieg’, Vol. 4, pp. 440–7. Even if the idea and the instructions to exterminate European Jewry did not originate with the Wehrmacht, it was in many ways implicated in the extermination programme. German soldiers had not only guilty knowledge of the acts but were also involved as active partners. Besides the mass murders in Russia in this connection, attention is drawn to the murder of the Jewish male population of Serbia. For the Wehrmacht involvement in National Socialist State crimes see R-D. Müller/Volkmann, ‘Die Wehrmacht’, pp. 739–966; and Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist judenfrei’.
243
It is not known when and where Broich had these friendly troops shot, neither in the files of Kav.Reg.21, 22 and 1, nor 1.Kav.Div., 24.Pz.Div. and 10.Pz.Div. It is also not known if Broich ever took part in shooting Commissars. 1.Kav.Div. War Diary records the shooting of a single Commissar on 16.7.1941, the exact circumstances and the names of those involved are omitted. BA/MA RH 29-1/4.
244
Krause refers in his account to German reprisals in October 1941 when units of Inf.Reg.382 of 164.Inf.Div. burnt down the villages of Kato and Ano Kerzilion and murdered over 200 civilians after partisans had sabotaged the Saloniki – Serres railway line. In October 1941 a total of 488 Greek civilians were murdered by German soldiers. The harsh reprisals led to the premature collapse of the partisan movement here, as had occurred in Serbia. Mazower, ‘Inside Hitler’s Greece’, p. 87f; Fleischer, ‘Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte’, p. 130; and ‘Schuld ohne Sühne’. Fritz Krause was Artillery Cdr 142 in Greece from 15.12.1941 to 31.8.1942 and knew Oberst Helmuth Beukemann (9.5.1894–13.7.1981), CO, Inf.Reg.382 there, who informed him of the massacres. Beukemann commanded the regiment from 13.1.1941 to 18.8.1942, and as CO, 75.Inf.Div., which fought on the southern sector of the Eastern Front, rose to the rank of Generalleutnant. He was transferred to OKH Personnel-Reserve on 10.7.1944 and not used again.