?: No, no, …Greek(?) villages.
?: But did the order come from the Army…
?: Yes.
Document 97
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 815 [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: 2 Feb. 44
NEUFFER: The Russians haven’t reached the spot yet where those large-scale mass murders took place.
BASSENGE: Were they on such a large scale?
NEUFFER: Yes, Russian and Polish Jews. That was what I was telling you about, how they did away with thousands of them, with all sorts of accompanying horrors. KATYN was child’s play in comparison.
BASSENGE: Oh, were the numbers so much higher?
NEUFFER: Yes, of course. That is not even counting the German Jews. That hasn’t all been brought to light yet. I mean to say, they sometimes talk about it in their propaganda, but—. For instance, for fun they would drive train-loads of Jews out – in the winter – and in a wooded country – I know it from V. BROICH (PW), you can ask him yourself – OPPENHEIM,[245] that famous FRANKFURT Jew, who had those racing stables, they stopped the train, made him and the others get out and chased them into the woods in the bitter cold. I mean to say, when all that is found out. The trouble is that unfortunately it is nearly all true. On the contrary, they (Allies) have no idea of what really happened.
BASSENGE: That OPPENHEIM was the man who, during the Great War, established one of the largest military reserve-hospitals we had in GERMANY, at FRANKFURT; I happen to know that.
NEUFFER: That makes no difference.
BASSENGE: His wife is an ‘Aryan’ and she is a school-friend of my mother’s. She and my mother went to school together at FRANKFURT.
NEUFFER: I don’t suppose she is alive now, is she?
BASSENGE: Well, I never heard of her again.
NEUFFER: Their pretext in the case of the Polish and Russian Jews – and undoubtedly it was to some extent justified – was that the Jews would have assisted the partisans or had done so already. Good Heavens, for one thing the Jews are afraid, and for another thing you can’t blame them for working against us. But things are always like that with us; sheer mass murder.[246] Our Luftgau hadn’t much room at SMOLENSK; therefore two-thirds of them were stationed at MINSK, among others also all the workshops, tailors, shoemakers and so on. All the craftsmen there were Jews, and sometimes they failed to appear – they had been shot by the Gestapo. As a result, those people didn’t want to leave their workshops any more.
BASSENGE: And couldn’t your Luftgau commander have kept some craftsmen for himself?
NEUFFER: Well, FISCHER[247] was a perfect fool in that respect. I have nothing against him otherwise, but that man hasn’t the faintest idea of military matters. Then he was so stupid in the things he said, he told his driver when they encountered large crowds of people at SMOLENSK: ‘Oh, just drive on at full speed, it doesn’t matter if you run over a few of them.’ etc. He had no conscience in that respect.
Document 98
CSDIC (UK) SR REPORT, SRGG 839 [TNA, WO 208/4168]
HANS CRAMER – General der Panzertruppe (GOC German Afrika Korps) – Captured 12 May 43 in Tunisia.
KURT KÖHNCKE – Oberstleutnant (Commander, 372 Heavy Flak Battery) – Captured 8 May 43 in Tunisia.
Information received: 15 Feb. 44
CRAMER (re GERMANY’s war guilt): The worst thing is that we are very much to blame for the way things have gone.
KÖHNCKE: Yes, of course.
CRAMER: In the Great War we could say: we were the decent ones and were dragged into it, and cheated, and deceived,[248] and we fought decently; but in this war it’s all the other way round. We are the attackers, the blusterers, we started everything, we have behaved like beasts.
KÖHNCKE: That’s the depressing thing, Sir!
Document 99
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 153
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 3 July 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
[…]
SCHLIEBEN: You have some remarkable experiences with these young ‘Leutnants’ who come from the Hitler Youth![249] During the Yugoslavian campaign I had a few Serbian officers in the vicinity of my battle HQ who were PW. They were standing about; there were carts there so I said: ‘Let them sit down.’ Suddenly one of my staff officers, a fanatical Nazi, a GSC I (Ops) actually came up and said: ‘Sir’ – I was an ‘Oberstleutnant’ at the time – ‘shall I shoot them?’ It’s crazy! They had learnt those methods in POLAND. Once, in RUSSIA, I was woken up one night by an extraordinary sound of firing; it was my ‘Adjutant’ who, with the clerk or somebody, had suddenly shot about seven Russians in the night. We were quartered in a sort of school and I thought – I suddenly heard a sound of tommy-guns and afterwards I found out that they’d shot these people. They were civilians… The number of people they killed in POLAND alone!
SATTLER: I heard that, too!
SCHLIEBEN: They have become completely brutalised. I remember once visiting a ‘Batterie’ in RUSSIA as ‘Regimentskommandeur’; the ‘Batterie’ was in my immediate neighbourhood. A Russian soldier who had just been taken prisoner was standing there. I said: ‘What’s up with him?’ ‘Well, we’re just about to shoot him.’ I asked why. ‘Well, he fired at us.’ ‘But he is a soldier and has every right to shoot.’ If I hadn’t turned up that man would probably have been dead two minutes later.[250]
Document 100
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 169
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 2–4 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
SATTLER: Yes, we have shot people. That began in POLAND back in 1939. The SS is said to have wreaked terrible havoc.
? SCHLIEBEN: That was probably the reason why BLASKOWITZ was dismissed.
SATTLER: Yes, of course, and KÜCHLER, too, because he severely punished a few SS men who had murdered people. Thereupon there was the hell of a row and after that the SS got their special court, that is, SS men could be had up only before SS courts martial, not ordinary service ones, whereas up to then the SS was supposed to come under the armed forces. That followed on the disgraceful behaviour of the SS in POLAND, because the military authorities said: ‘This dirty scoundrel goes around shooting women and children; it’s the death sentence for him.’ Then HIMMLER came along and said: ‘That’s out of the question.’ I had actual experience of that myself.[251]
SPONECK: But even before that business we were not allowed to take proceedings against them. I know the case of the Director of Music of the ‘Leibstandarte’ whom we dragged off his band-wagon, because he had shot so many Jews in a mad lust for blood. We had him brought before HOTH’s court martial. The man was immediately taken out of HOTH’s jurisdiction, sent to BERLIN and came back again, still as Director of Music.[252]
SATTLER: Was that in peace-time?
245
Neuffer’s version has a few inaccuracies. The leading German private stud farm at Schlenderhan was founded by Eduard Oppenheim (1831–1909) in 1869 and passed later into the possession of the Jewish banking family. Simon Alfred Oppenheim (1864–1932) ran the racetrack. His wife Florence ‘Flossy’ née Mathews Hutchins was – as Neuffer says – not Jewish and attended school at Frankfurt am Main. Since Simon Oppenheim died in 1932, he was not the person mishandled. His two sons Waldemar (1894–1952) and Friedrich Carl (1900–78) were classified ‘Mixed Race, 2nd Degree’, by the Gestapo and were merely monitored until their arrest following 20.7.1944. As the name Oppenheim was common in Frankfurt, Neuffer confused the events told to him by Broich as pertaining to Simon Alfred Oppenheim. Stürmer et al., ‘Wiegen und Wägen’.
247
General der Flieger Veit Fischer (18.5.1890–30.10.1966), 23.10.1941–31.3.1943 Cmmdg Gen. and CO, Luftgau Moskau; 1941–45 Luftwaffe Cdr, May 1945–7.10.1955 Soviet PoW.
248
Imperial Germany of World War I was guilty of numerous breaches of international law although the scale obviously did not approach that of WWII. Neitzel, ‘Kriegsausbruch’; also Henkel, ‘Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen’.
249
Oberst Hauck, 362.Inf.Div., PoW in Italy from 24.5.1944, expressed the same sentiment. ‘The worst ranks are the officers from Leutnant to Hauptmann inclusive. I used not to converse with my Leutnants because there was such a gap that no basis existed at all.’ GRGG 147, 16/17.6.1944, TNA WO 208/4363.
250
Unfortunately none of the files of Schützen-Reg.108/14.Pz.Div., commanded by Schlieben in Yugoslavia and at the beginning of the Russian campaign, which could throw light on his political and military outlook, have survived.
251
Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz (see note 77 above), October 1939 – May 1940 C-in-C East, and in this capacity protested vociferously against SS murders. In the Polish campaign, Sattler was CO, Inf.Reg.176/61.Inf.Div., which remained in Poland as occupation troops until November 1939 when transferred to the West. He probably had only hearsay knowledge of Blaskowitz’s protests. Clark, ‘Blaskowitz’. The later Feldmarschall Georg von Küchler (30.5.1881–25.5.1968) commanded 3.Armee in Poland and complained frequently at the mistreatment of Polish civilians. When a court martial sentenced a private of the SS-Verfügungstruppe Artillerie Reg. who had been involved in the murder of 50 Jews, to one year’s imprisonment, he refused to confirm the sentence on the grounds that it was too mild. This led to a violent quarrel with the Gauleiter of East Prussia and Himmler. Küchler could do nothing to prevent the sentence being quashed altogether when the Waffen-SS received its own rules of justice in October 1939. Despite his own feelings, however, in July 1940 in the West he prohibited any criticism by his own 18.Armee soldiers of the brutal repressive measures against civilians in occupied Poland, ‘…I emphasise the need to ensure that all soldiers of the Army, especially the officers, withhold all criticism of the struggle against the population in the General-Gouvernement, for example the treatment of the Polish minority, the Jews and Church affairs. The final racial solution to this struggle, which has raged for centuries on the eastern borders [of the Reich] demands particularly strong measures. Certain units of Party and State are entrusted with the carrying out of the racial struggle in the east. The soldier must stay clear of these duties of other units. This means that he must not criticise that operation.’ McCannon, ‘Küchler’; Stein, ‘Geschichte der Waffen-SS’, p. 244.
252
Generalmajor Joachim Lemelsen (26.6.1888–30.3.1954) had SS-Obermusikmeister Müller-Jon of the SS-Leibstandarte arrested for the murder of 15 Jewish civilians and demanded that he be tried by Army Group. See Thun-Hohenstein, ‘Verschwörer’, p. 184. Between 21 and 28.9.1939 the LAH fought alongside 29.Inf.Div./XV.Armeekorps under General Hoth north of Warsaw around the Modlin fortifications. Sponeck was Hoth’s Ia, and his account therefore has a high degree of plausibility. For the general context see Cüppers, ‘…auf eine so saubere und anständige SS-mässige Art: Die Waffen-SS in Polen, 1939–1941’.