Don’t you think that our ‘Armeeführer’ or our ‘Heeresgruppen-kommandeure’, when reporting about us to KEITEL and RUNDSTEDT said: ‘A last point I have to mention is those massacres in SOUTH POLAND – shouldn’t we protect our officer corps against being blamed for such actions?’ Do you think discussions on those matters took place? What did they do about it?
FELBERT: You can see for yourself.
BRUHN: They’ve probably given them money and an estate, and tied their hands in that way.[301] Or else the people have got annoyed and said: ‘That’s nothing to do with me; leave me in peace!’
FELBERT: You see it in the case of BLASKOWITZ. They simply got rid of him.[302]
BRUHN: Did he actually bring a thing like that up? With whom?
FELBERT: He brought it up in the OKW, I believe. As a result the man was simply sacked; he went immediately.
BRUHN: Then we who are regular officers must advocate that men be shot who are themselves wearing our uniform.
FELBERT: Naturally you must.
BRUHN: We must even disassociate ourselves from our own superiors, who are also regular officers.
FELBERT: Yes, because they knew. They knew about it without any doubt.
BRUHN: Well, give me a motive.
FELBERT: What do those people call a motive?
BRUHN: To get promotion? That makes it even worse. To get a decoration? That makes it worse still. They were so well off that they lacked for nothing – they were even better off than that.
FELBERT: Those people all miscalculated. They all said to themselves: ‘The war is nearly over anyway.’
BRUHN: Yes, but surely I can’t miscalculate on questions of honour?
FELBERT: Oh, those people have no honour.
BRUHN: But they must have. We’ve always preached it; after all we were ‘Bataillon’ and ‘Regimentskommandeure.’
FELBERT: We have no honour either. We have ambition, filthy ambition, filthiest ambition, but nothing more.
BRUHN: Do you believe then, that, not with individuals but with the mass of people, their ambition is so great that even if they are regular officers – I’m speaking only of those and not of the SS – they shrink from no measures whatever, just to serve their ambition?
FELBERT: I don’t know what was behind it all. Of course, it’s also possible that pressure was brought to bear on them.
BRUHN: But there was always the possibility of simulating illness and saying: ‘I can’t do it any more.’ Do you really think they soberly said to themselves: ‘Might is Right’ and ‘we’ll win the war and then no one will worry about that.’ But in that case those people can have no conscience at all.
FELBERT: They haven’t.
Document 124
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 260
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 14–15 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
WAHLE: Once, in 1941, we liquidated a Russian Commissar[303] who had been captured on his way back to the East in the company of another Russian. He had quickly managed to throw away his map and all kinds of things. He appeared as a handsome, immaculately dressed officer who first of all feigned innocence, saying he’d lost his way when looking for supply vehicles and stating he was an officer. I had seen the map and noticed it had indications of how they intended by-passing us; during the night also something had occurred: some cavalry had broken through in the rear. Whilst my adjutant and I were examining his maps and papers he continued his tale in an extremely self-assured manner. Suddenly… passed me a slip of paper and whispered: ‘Here is a Commissar’s identity card.’ The man broke down on the spot; he knew his fate was sealed. We packed up the things and sent him back to the ‘Division’, where he was then put to death… It happened at the time the Russians were dropping those pamphlets containing that CLAUSEWITZ quotation which had been got up very well, and which said: ‘It is impossible either to hold or to conquer RUSSIA’, in November 1941.
ELFELDT: In what area did it happen?
WAHLE: It occurred near PRTEMOVSK;[304] do you know the place, it’s near BACHMUT. The town used to be called BACHMUT and lies between ROSTOV and KHARKOV.
Document 125
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 264
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 24–6 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
KITTEL: I forbade that at DVINSK and the immediate result was that it stopped at once. I didn’t have any say in the matter at STALINO, that’s to say the tragedy had already taken place, and it had also already taken place at ROSTOV; the people had already been killed there, but it was put down to my account. I shall certainly be named as a war criminal. 18,000 Jews were killed at ROSTOV. Of course I had nothing to do with the whole affair! But it is down on my account because I was the only known ‘General’ there.[305]
EBERBACH: Who is really responsible for the affair? There’s no doubt at all that the FÜHRER knew all about this massacre of the Jews.
KITTEL: Well, those Jews were the pest of the east! They should have been driven into one area and employed on some useful occupation. By the way I’m going to hold my tongue about what I do know of these things, until such time as they pick me out. After the fall of ROSTOV the Russians accused me, in a great official solemn declaration on the radio, of having poisoned 18,000 Russians. As regards that I can only say: until then I knew nothing whatsoever about the whole affair in which so many people were killed, and was actually not under the impression either that so many people had been removed from there. They were probably carried off. I don’t know. Anyhow I’m certainly one of the best nominees for a war criminal – although there are quite a number of them – WILDERMUTH (PW) also told me in the strictest secrecy that he has signed about forty sentences of death in his official capacity as ‘Feldkommandant’.[306] Yes, I have some anxiety on that score!
I deprived the Security Services people of every possibility of maltreating the population, but I could not overcome the fact that my own superiors made arrangements with the Police General which simply knocked me off my feet. I said to General von ROTHKIRCH who played a part down there in the defence of the DNIEPER line in the winter of 1941/43:[307] ‘Well, Sir, with the signing of this agreement with the police you are handing over all your executive power, and we are responsible for it!’[308] And now this is what happens! I wrote that quite clearly to the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces too. This government by HIMMLER and his men who received personal instructions, is intolerable. Just look at FRANK,[309] one of the personalities who does not have a very good press, he is stationed at CRACOW and has an SS-Obergruppenführer in charge of the German police in POLAND. The whole of POLAND forms a completely autonomous government under FRANK. Now comes the strange part of it. I went to FRANK and said to him: ‘We will have to make some changes in the distribution of labour forces.’ So he said: ‘I’m not authorised to do that. Hasn’t the Secretary of State told you that already?’ I said: ‘Who is in charge of that in POLAND then?’ He said: ‘I have an administrative job! You go and see SS-Obergruppenführer KOPPE, and see to it that you reach an agreement with him!’[310]
303
There is no document proving the shooting of Commissars by Wahle’s Inf.Reg.267/94.Inf.Div. for November 1941. See Activity Report by Ic, 94.Inf.Div, 29.6.1941–12.12.1941. The only such incident within the Division’s jurisdiction is a liquidation on 2.9.1941, Ic morning report, Gruppe Schwedler (IV.Armeekorps) to 17.Armee, 2.9.1941, BA/MA RH20-17/278.
305
Kittel apparently came to Dvinsk in his capacity as Oberst, Army Group North Führer-Reserve, and witnessed the murder of Jews there. Around 14,000 Jews were killed at Dvinsk in three phases in July, August and November 1941. In Document 119, Kittel himself reports having protested against the time and place of the shootings, but not against the deed. ‘Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Vol. 1, p. 375.’ The 3,000 or so Jews living in Stalino were murdered between December 1941 and April 1942. After that, numerous Jews from outlying communities were brought to the city and murdered. Kittel was city commandant from 15.5.1942 to 20.9.1942. The 2,000 Jews remaining behind in Rostov were killed off between 11 and 12.8.1942, a date before Kittel’s appointment as commandant of Rostov on 20.9.1942. For the murder of Jews there see Angrick, ‘Besatzungspolitik’, pp. 320–2, 560–4. Later Kittel admitted having signed a death warrant at Rostov condemning five persons to be shot under martial law. ‘One death sentence which I carried out I still regret today because it was a Russian who had shot at two Rumanian soldiers stealing his chickens.’ SRGG 1089, 27.12.1944, TNA WO 208/4169.
306
Wildermuth was never a Feldkommandant. Possibly his service as a regimental commander in Serbia or as fortress commandant at Le Havre is meant, or he is being confused with Generalmajor Felbert.
307
Edwin Graf Rothkirch und Trach commanded 330.Inf.Div. from 5.1.1942. It was deployed the following month at Demidov, north of Smolensk, and also north of the Dnieper during the Soviet winter offensive.
308
In the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, on whose territory Rothkirch’s Oberfeldkommandantur 365 had its HQ at Lvov, total power was vested in the hands of the HSSPF Russia South, Hans-Adolf Prützmann. In the ‘Wagner – Heydrich Agreement’ of 28.4.1941, the Wehrmacht had given the SS a free hand to root out ‘anti-State and anti-Reich movements’. Ueberschär/Wette, ‘Überfall’, p. 249f. Nothing is known of a special local arrangement between Rothkirch as Oberfeldkommandant 365 or as CO, 330.Inf.Div., and the police.