BRUHN: And the Waffen-SS—
KITTEL: Well, the position in the Waffen-SS may be a little different.
FELBERT: Only HIMMLER’s organisations have any say.
KITTEL: Yes. One can name umpteen cases. Someone may be acquitted by the court, and on leaving the court is arrested for being a public danger, and then doesn’t get out.
BRUHN: Yes, one simply doesn’t know about all that.
KITTEL: But you must know it. I once wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice, GÜRTNER, who once commanded a ‘Bataillon’ of mine, about a case like that in which someone was acquitted by the court and—
FELBERT: Then arrested again in spite of that.
KITTEL: The prison sentence which the prosecution had demanded was then simply carried out by the six months’ imprisonment which had been demanded being—
BRUHN: Turned into six months’ protective custody!
KITTEL: Six months’ protective custody.
BRUHN: But that is no longer the rule of law.
KITTEL: Oh, you must surely have realised that.
SCHAEFFER: We should know that, but we have been carefully kept in ignorance. […]
? BRUHN: Yes, but then, suppose we win the war tomorrow, there would be a catastrophe!
KITTEL: It wouldn’t be a catastrophe, but—
? BRUHN: Because we represent a different standard of honesty, we shall be disposed of sooner or later anyhow. Things will reach such a pitch that when they no longer have any Jews left to shoot, they will probably shoot the relations of the officers.
SCHAEFFER: That’s why it will be a catastrophe if we win.
BRUHN: For – whoever has once started that bloodshed, it becomes as much of a necessity to him as our lunch to us; he won’t be able to stop it – or he will go crazy.
KITTEL: Oberst BIERKAMP(?) the head of the Security Service at CRACOW told me that when he sees that a man enjoys shooting others, he gets rid of him.
BRUHN: Does he shoot him himself?
KITTEL: No, he doesn’t do that – he transfers him to another job.
BRUHN: In other words – one can see it from dozens of examples – it’s their orders which turn the men into sadists.
KITTEL: Of course. Tell me, will it never be possible to get such things in GERMANY right again?
BRUHN: You mean a return to decency? That can only come about by our losing the war, i.e., only by scrapping this whole system of government.
FELBERT: We should never get things right again after a victorious war.
SCHAEFFER: You are amazed that we don’t know all that. Do you think HITLER knows it? And he is our supreme commander.
KITTEL: No. Those things are not passed on to HITLER.
SCHAEFFER: But HIMMLER knows it, doesn’t he?
KITTEL: HIMMLER knows all right.
Document 120
CSDIC (UK), SR Report, SRGG 1093 (C) [TNA, WO 208/4169]
Generalleutnant SCHAEFER (Commander, 244 Infantry Division) – Captured 28 Aug. 44 in Marseilles
Generalleutnant KITTEL (Commandant, Metz and Commander, 462 Volksgrenadier Division) – Captured 22 Nov. 44 in Metz.
Information received: 28 Dec. 44
SCHAEFER: After the stories you’ve told me one might think one was really no longer bound to the FÜHRER.
KITTEL: We can’t think that.
SCHAEFER: I mean in our hearts; when one goes over all the crimes that have been committed, it makes one’s hair stand on end.
KITTEL: 18,000 people were shot in ROSTOV, there are about 60,000 people in mass graves near LUBLIN.[299]
SCHAEFER: One can only say that if GERMANY is destroyed it is justice and nothing else. It is a tragedy that so many millions of decent people should be wiped out, and towns too, for the sake of men who are leading a gangster existence – there’s no other way of describing it. I simply cannot swallow it.
KITTEL: In UPPER SILESIA they simply slaughtered the people systematically. They were gassed in a big hall.[300]
SCHAEFER: When was that done?
KITTEL: Up till the spring, then it was stopped.
SCHAEFER: Who are the people concerned?
KITTEL: I don’t know. There’s the greatest secrecy about all those things.
SCHAEFER: One can hardly believe that such a thing could happen in the world.
[…]
Document 121
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 245
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 5–7 Jan. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4364]
WILDERMUTH: I’m thinking of something which I only came to realise fully here, that is those famous GERMAN atrocities. People didn’t know about them. Most of the officers here just can’t understand the most well-known ones. They didn’t know about them. They said: ‘Oh, well, that is atrocity propaganda, things like that don’t really happen!’ People in foreign countries can hardly believe them. I can only say: they did take place. There’s that famous story about the mentally deficient; I know about it because my brother was a doctor in a lunatic asylum. Thank God he is in charge of a military hospital during the war and is not involved in that business. Through him I know exactly what happened. When I told my colleagues at the bank in BERLIN, it must have been in 1941, they laughed at me and said: ‘What you say is nonsense, things like that don’t happen, that isn’t possible.’
Document 122
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 254
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 28–31 Jan. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4364]
KITTEL: I told the American IO: ‘Our first response to what you intend doing with GERMANY will be to massacre whatever Jews remain.’ Eight hundred thousand out of the nine hundred thousand are still sure to be alive. We had a Jewish concentration camp at CRACOW – it was grotesque but we had one there. A camp containing five thousand men and five thousand women, kept strictly separated; the discipline here was incredible; they had a department for criminals. I often had Jews to dig trenches; I asked for two thousand Jews for trench-digging.
RAMCKE: What sort of an impression did they make in those concentration camps? Did they partly administer themselves; or what?
KITTEL: The camp authorities lived inside the camp which is a sign they felt secure. Of course it was strongly guarded outside; it was even guarded by live wire, but on the whole you did not get the impression that the inmates were in such a bad way.
RAMCKE: I don’t believe that Jews will dare to show themselves openly in GERMANY in business or as tools under the protection of the Americans and British in the future.
KITTEL: I hope not.
Document 123
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 256
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 3–5 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
BRUHN: I must assume, after all I have read about the FÜHRER, that he knew all about it.
FELBERT: Of course he knew about it. He’s the man who is responsible. He even discussed it with HIMMLER.
BRUHN: Yes, that man doesn’t care a hoot if your relatives are annihilated.
FELBERT: That man doesn’t care a damn.
BRUHN: They distribute their ‘Oak Leaves’ and decorations and whatever else they have, solely according to who can guarantee them their lives longest. He is directing the resistance fight in such a manner that he causes chaos and will be able to say afterwards that it’s the Western democracies who’ve caused chaos in GERMANY. In reality cause and effect will be mistaken for each other. And we’re to put up with that kind of thing! I never saw through it; I don’t mind if they shoot me, but they can only shoot me for stupidity, not for any dirty business. Nevertheless they must grant me extenuating circumstances, inasmuch as I acted in good faith. You must usually believe what official representatives tell you. No one would have imagined it possible for a criminal to get into the government.