A few months later General BADER asked me: ‘Why didn’t you carry out that order?’ I told him that no one could order me to do something opposed to my honour as an officer and beside, that that order was frightfully stupid as it caused every Serbian to take up arms. That was our difficulty: we received orders which made us feel morally obliged to oppose. The ethical principle is quite obvious. Take an extreme case: you are ordered to torture your mother. You should rather die than carry that out. That’s obvious. Just as when you are ordered to shoot a hundred innocent Serbs, which is just as stupid and dirty; it’s a question of ethics. If I, because I passed that order on – or possibly one of my ‘Bataillonskommandeure’ may have carried it out, and the Allies charge me on that account and say: ‘You passed that order on.’ I’ll answer: ‘Well, I had to, otherwise I’d have been shot.’ That is my defence, but it doesn’t excuse me morally.
HEIM: The only question is: what shall be our attitude when we are put before one of those Courts of Inquiry? In my opinion our conduct must be uniform, we must uphold the principle of only having carried out orders. I don’t know what I should have done in your case. I should probably have acted in the same way. Today, however, I think we must stick to that principle if we are to create a uniform basis which would provide us with a more or less effective defence and, above all, prevent the Allies from playing us off against each other in the worst possible manner. There are soldiers too, among those holding the Court of Inquiry. When they retire for the verdict, they’ll say: ‘There’s nothing you can say against that point of view.’
WILDERMUTH: They certainly won’t say that because they go by completely different standards from ours.[330]
HEIM: They may say it in very serious cases like that one, for instance.
WILDERMUTH: That field order was valid for the whole of SERBIA. Now it becomes interesting: when BADER heard about that incident at BELGRADE, he wanted to go for that commander.[331] The ‘Division’ shielded him, by saying: ‘Excuse me, those were orders, which he carried out. Think before you issue orders.’ Then everything petered out in the usual way, apart from some minor repercussions, just as if the order had never been issued.
HEIM: You can’t even imagine all the examples which occurred in practice.
WILDERMUTH: I’ll tell you of another instance in which I intervened. It concerned the well-known order issued in 1942, regarding activities by saboteurs and commandos, who were to be shot immediately. I read that order when in hospital at home. After I got out again, the order was mentioned during an officers’ conference in the 43rd ‘Regiment’,[332] and I said it naturally only concerned people not in uniform, although it was quite obvious that the order had a different intention.
HEIM: At the time HITLER at any rate, thought those terror measures would frighten his opponents.
HEYDTE: I quite agree with you, Sir.
HEIM: We ought to discuss these matters at a larger gathering in order to create a basis of defence, and a fairly sound one at that.
WILDERMUTH: Then there were things which hadn’t been ordered, but which gradually became customary. At LE HAVRE I once had thirty people, including some who had collaborated with us, arrested. There they were in prison. A terrific air raid took place.[333] We couldn’t very well leave them there and I didn’t know what to do with them. One of my staff suggested: ‘Let’s shoot them!’ Whereupon I said: let them go and join the resistance movement outside the town. Thirty people make no difference. But at other places other measures were adopted.
HEIM: You must give different examples to the English, because they and especially the Americans do not think along the same purely military lines as we do.
WILDERMUTH: I meant to warn you against that. The Allies are much fussier in some matters than we were. I remember that from the last war. They shot many more men for refusing to obey orders and deserting than we did.
HEIM: Don’t you think that during the Boer War many a British officer received an order which he didn’t consider fair.
Document 134
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 278
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 30 Mar.–2 Apr. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
BROICH: I visited DACHAU once in 1937. We were taken round everywhere. At that time there were 5,000 people there, 35,000 had passed through.[334] They said enormous buildings were going to be put up. Things were to be such that about 30,000 could pass through each year. They said ‘Some come here with a ticket “Never to be released”. Some remain three months, they are harmless birds of passage, who are simply to be sand-papered down a bit, and with some it’s a question of! Well, if they’re all right in a year or two and have been properly broken, they can come out. The ‘Oberst’ told us all that.’[335]
BRUHN: Was that a conducted tour for Army officers?
BROICH: No, it was quite private. I was in MUNICH for the ‘Brauner Ball’ festivities and… said to me: ‘WALDECK’ – that’s the ‘Obergruppenführer’, the old fellow, the hereditary prince, an utter fool – ‘asked me today if I wouldn’t like to go along there. It’s too gruesome going alone and I don’t like that kind of thing.’ He said: ‘It’s quite amusing.’ I said: ‘It doesn’t attract me very much, on the other hand, it’s quite interesting to go once.’ So we went, there was HASSE…, myself and WALDECK.[336] In civilian clothes. WALDECK was in SS uniform.
REIMANN: LEX[337] said recently that ULLERSPERGER had made the following remark: ‘What do I care about Good Friday? Because a filthy old Jew was hanged umpteen years ago?’
Document 135
CSDIC (UK), GG REPORT, SRGG 1158(C) [TNA, WO 208/4170]
Generalmajor BRUNS (Heeres-Waffenmeisterschule 1, Berlin) – Captured 8 Apr. 45 in Göttingen – and other Senior Officers (PW) whose voices could not be identified.
Information received: 25 Apr. 45
BRUNS: As soon as I heard those Jews were to be shot on Friday I went to a 21-year-old boy and said that they had made themselves very useful in the area under my command, besides which the Army MT park had employed 1,500 and the ‘Heeresgruppe’ 800 women to make underclothes of the stores we captured in RIGA; besides which about 1,200 women in the neighbourhood of RIGA were turning millions of captured sheepskins into articles we urgently required: ear-protectors, fur caps, fur waistcoat, etc. Nothing had been provided, as of course the Russian campaign was known to have come to a victorious end in October 1941! In short, all those women were employed in a useful capacity. I tried to save them. I told that fellow ALTENMEYER(?)[338] whose name I shall always remember and who will be added to the list of war criminals: ‘Listen to me, they represent valuable man-power!’ ‘Do you call Jews valuable human beings, Sir?’ I said: ‘Listen to me properly, I said “valuable man-power”. I didn’t mention their value as human beings.’ He said: ‘Well, they’re to be shot in accordance with the FÜHRER’s orders!’ I said ‘FÜHRER’s orders?’ ‘Yes’, whereupon he showed me his orders. This happened at SKIOTAWA(?),[339] 8 km from RIGA, between SIAULAI and JELGAVA, where 5,000 BERLIN Jews were suddenly taken off the train and shot. I didn’t see that myself, but what happened at SKIOTAWA(?)[340] – to cut a long story short, I argued with the fellow and telephoned to the General at HQ, to JAKOBS[341] and ABERGER(?),[342] and to a Dr SCHULTZ[343] who was attached to the Engineer General, on behalf of these people; I told him: ‘Granting that the Jews have committed a crime against the other peoples of the world, at least let them do the drudgery; send them to throw earth on the roads to prevent our heavy lorries skidding.’ ‘Then I’d have to feed them!’ I said: ‘The little amount of food they receive, let’s assume 2 million Jews – they got 125 gr of bread a day – if we can’t manage that, the sooner we end the war the better.’ Then I telephoned, thinking it would take some time. At any rate on Sunday morning I heard that they had already started on it. The Ghetto was cleared and they were told: ‘You’re being transferred; take along your most essential things.’ Incidentally it was a happy release for those people, as their life in the Ghetto was a martyrdom. I wouldn’t believe it and drove there, to have a look.
330
In World War I, 48 German soldiers were executed for desertion, cowardice, etc. The British executed 291 of their own soldiers, To these must be added the executions of more than 750 Italian, 18 Belgian and 35 US soldiers (between April 1917 and June 1919). In France the courts martial handed down 2,400 death sentences to Army personnel of which about 500 were carried out. Beckett, ‘The Great War’, p. 227f; Bach, ‘Fusillés pour l’exemple’.
331
The protest of General der Artillerie Paul Bader (20.7.1883–28.2.1971), Cmmdg Gen. of Higher Command LXV, Belgrade cannot be found in the archives.
332
On 18.10.1942 Hitler ordered that all commandos were to be executed without exception even if they wore uniform. This was as a reprisal for the British commando raid on the Channel Island of Sark on 4.10.1942 when German prisoners had been bound in such a way that they strangled themselves if they attempted to struggle free. No pardons were to be allowed. Individual commandos were to be handed over to the SD. The Order was first enforced on 11.12.1942 when two ‘Cockleshell Heroes’, members of an SBS canoe operation to attack shipping at Bordeaux, were executed. The original of the Order is at BA/MA RW41/v.606. For the application of the Order, see Friedrich, ‘Das Gesetz des Krieges’, pp. 295–306; Messerschmitt, ‘Kommandobefehl und Völkerrechtsdenken’.
333
On 14.6.1944 a force of 243 RAF bombers attacked Le Havre, sinking numerous German warships and destroying large areas of the town and its docks. French casualties at 75 dead and 150 injured were light as the result of the dock area having been evacuated. For the attack see Hümmelchen, ‘Die deutschen Schnellboote’, p. 175f; and Tent, ‘E-boat Alert’, pp. 146–82.
334
By the end of 1937, 13,260 inmates had been registered at Dachau concentration camp. That year the camp had an average population of 2,535. This figure increased to 5,068 persons in 1938 after the camp was enlarged. That year 18,681 new prisoners passed through its gates. Kimmel, ‘Konzentrationslager Dachau’, p. 371; Drobisch/Wieland, ‘System der Konzentrationslager’, pp. 288, 303.
335
Commandant of Dachau camp in 1937 was SS-Oberführer Hans Loritz (12.12.1895–13.1.1946).
336
It is uncertain which person named Hasse is meant here. Possibly Broich was speaking of the later General der Infanterie Wilhelm Hasse (24.11.1895–13.1.1946) who, like Broich, was an Oberstleutnant in 1937. For Josias Erbprinz zu Waldeck und Pyrmont see note 356 below. Thoma, a native of Dachau, also visited Dachau camp before the war. SRXX 1580, 12.2.1943, TNA WO 208/4162.
337
Oberst Franz August Maria Lex, from 1944 CO, Art.Reg.170; PoW 7.11.1944 Middelburg, Walcheren (Netherlands); Trent Park from 7.12.1944.
340
On 30.11.1944, 1,035 Berlin Jews were executed on the edge of woodland near Rumbula. On 1.8.1941 and 9.12.1941 25,000–28,000 Jews, the entire population of the Riga ghetto, were murdered at Rumbula. ‘Enzyklopädie des Holocaust’, Vol. 2, p. 1230. For the massacres and Bruns’s statement see also Jersak, ‘Entscheidungen zu Mord und Lüge’, pp. 333–7.
341
General der Pioniere Alfred Jacob (1.4.1883–13.11.1963), from 1938 Inspector of Army Engineers and Fortifications.