HEYDTE: I can only say that, though I can’t approve of it, I can understand it.
EBERBACH: I understood it, too, at that moment, when the whole lot was fighting desperately, but I did not approve of it, though I did not start any court martial proceedings against the CO of the ‘Kompanie’.
4. The same speakers held a general discussion of the duties and obligations of a witness, v.d. HEYDTE pointing out that a witness gave evidence under oath; he gave a negative reply to EBERBACH’s question whether it would be in order for him to shake hands with any of the accused whom he knew. WILDERMUTH advised EBERBACH ‘not to remember’ if he was in doubt as to the implications of any given answer.
5. In conversation with Oberstleutnant v.d. HEYDTE, Generalleutnant ELFELDT repeated the opinion expressed in the past that all senior officers would be tried by the Allies in due course. The speakers agreed in believing that the British and Americans wanted to annihilate the German military and academic classes. They also agreed in condemning the German use of gas chambers, but stated that in their view the Germans had already been sufficiently punished. In a conversation between ELFELDT and Generalleutnant HEIM it was stated that too much fuss was made about German maltreatment of Jews: ‘after all, many more Germans died in this war than Jews died in gas chambers’.
6. […]
III. The Insurrection of Conscience. Reactions to 20 July 1944
Document 145
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 161 [TNA, WO 208/4363]
ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF HITLER AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. This report deals with the reaction of Senior Officers (PW) in Camp No. II to the news of the above events, which they had learnt of from the radio and British newspapers.
SPONECK: Nobody was really wounded. That seems suspicious to me, I mean if it had been a real attempt on HITLER’s life none of them would still be alive.
THOMA: If they had a mine in there – an ordinary anti-tank mine—
SPONECK: A hand grenade—
THOMA: It seems fishy to me.
BASSENGE: Whether it was a serious attempt on his life or only a fake, in either case it is a bad sign.
THOMA: It is supposed to have been a revolt by the generals. Graf STAUFFENBERG – I know about him – he was with me at the headquarters – he was always keenly opposed to the (Party) business; above all, he was very cool-headed and clear-thinking – an excellent fellow – really a most estimable and a very capable General Staff… is the man who threw the bomb. Now that a start has been made it will go on. There is a possibility that… very quickly, especially in the south. I could well imagine STAUFFENBERG’s doing it. In the first place he had access to him, because he was there a long time.
I am shaken to the core about GUDERIAN. He knows what the end will be. If anyone thinks differently now, one can only say that he isn’t quite right in the head.
KRUG: STUMPFF has the handling of the GAF at home.[362]
THOMA: If it has already started in the GAF then the fun is going to wax fast and furious. That is typical too: the Navy steps in immediately and so does HERMANN.
GUDERIAN is a decent fellow in himself. I have known him since he was a ‘Hauptmann’. He was very keenly opposed to the Nazis and always spoke of them as ‘stupid sheep’. Then the Nazis came into power and he suddenly swung over. Then after those winter campaigns in RUSSIA, he allowed HITLER to treat him like a street urchin. He swore at him and kicked him out. I was told by GUDERIAN himself that he asked for an enquiry to be made, but it was refused; he asked to be relieved of his command – it was all refused. He remained at home in BERLIN for one year and eight months as a nonentity. Before I went to AFRICA, I visited him. He told me himself: ‘I am ashamed to go to the barber’s because they say: “What are you doing here?”’ That’s the man who later emerges and lets that sloppy job be foisted on him, negotiating with industry and that sort of thing, and who lets HITLER present him with an estate in the WARTHEGAU, in spite of the way in which he has been treated![363]
KRUG: But, Sir, after all those people are not normal. If someone shouts at me and treats me badly, then I don’t have anything to do with him, I don’t let him make me a present of anything.
SATTLER: But your point of view is not quite correct, KRUG. We are soldiers and if we have done anything wrong in the eyes of our superiors, our superior officer has the right to tell us so as plainly as he likes. I should say: ‘I won’t have that, Herr KRUG; I require you to command your regiment according to my orders!’
THOMA: Then the other man can say politely: ‘I don’t agree; I will go!’
SATTLER: No, there I… opinion, Sir. That’s what my superior officer is there for, to tell me a thing like that.
THOMA: But I wouldn’t allow myself to be ordered about by a fool. GUDERIAN, who was always against the Nazis, now lets himself be bought, and isn’t ashamed – which is a sign that, clever though he was before, he must now have completely deteriorated mentally – ashamed to act as Chief of Staff to HIMMLER, in a situation where everyone knows where things are heading.
KRUG: Yes, indeed.
THOMA: SCHMUNDT[364] is a good, decent fellow, but, when he says quite naturally to the officers at a conference: ‘I have had the blessing of spending the last two years in very close contact with the FÜHRER’, can you consider him normal?
(?) SATTLER: What was it he said about six months ago at an adjutants’ conference at the OKH? An adjutant who was present there told me that he said: ‘The worst people are the Generals; if they are not promoted or given accelerated promotion and awarded the Knight’s Cross, they are discontented.’ What do you think of that, that’s what SCHMUNDT says.
THOMA: Well, it’s a terrible business. HITLER has so much weighing on his mind that he simply doesn’t know where to turn. His whole outlook breeds fear in him. I know what his cars were like, they had bullet-proof glass as thick as this. They were armour-plated all over and then he always used to drive like mad in order to avoid any chance of being hit. HIMMLER said to me: ‘The KAISER’ – although he was very nervous too – ‘didn’t have a third as many people to protect him as HITLER has.’ The OBERSALZBERG is covered with huge fences… a perimeter of 15 km.[365]
HENNECKE: Well, that’s the beginning of the end.
KRUG: That may… revolution in GERMANY, but in HITLER’s hands.
HENNECKE: Yes, that’s obvious.
KRUG: How could GUDERIAN allow himself to be made HIMMLER’s Chief of Staff?
HENNECKE: They’re playing their last card, that’s obvious.
KÖHN: But imagine the effect that will have on the front? The thing is finished.
KRUG: Well, you gentlemen know me, don’t you? I mean you know what I think. Let’s admit we’d rather bring about an end today than tomorrow.
HENNECKE: Yes, I’ve said that for a long time. General von THOMA (PW) said: ‘There’s no longer any point in it; they’re wiping out our towns.’ And one’s seen it, too. MUNICH has vanished from the face of the earth.[366] It’s senseless, and we shall lose in any case. I’m firmly convinced of that.
363
On 20.12.1941 during a five-hour talk with Hitler, Guderian attempted to convince him to rescind his order of 16.12.1941 to halt. On 25.12.1941 Guderian was relieved of command after retreating without authority. Reinhardt, ‘Die Wende vor Mosakau’, pp. 225, 228. In his memoirs Guderian provided a much less dramatic version of the conversation than Thoma does here. Guderian, ‘Erinnerungen eines Soldaten’, pp. 240–6. Thoma stayed in Berlin from 1 to 7.8.1942 to accept his promotion to Generalleutnant, and visited Guderian on the morning of 5.8.1942. Diary 1942, BA/MA N2/2 and note 393 below.
364
General der Infanterie Rudolf Schmundt (13.8.1896–1.10.1944) had been Chief Wehrmacht Adjutant to Hitler from 28.1.1938, and from 1.10.1942 Head of the Army Personnel Bureau. He saw it as his mission to bind the Army to Hitler and National Socialism. Schmundt was not free of idealism and spared no effort to assist the commanders at the front. As an ardent admirer of Hitler he would not allow any kind of criticism of the Führer. See Stumpf, ‘Rudolf Schmundt’, and also short biography in ‘Tätigkeitsbericht Schmundt’, pp. 15–22.
365
Also Peter Hoffmann, ‘Die Sicherheit des Diktators’; Seidler/Zeigert, ‘Führerhauptquartiere’, pp. 97–110, provide an overview of Hitler’s burgeoning self-protective measures.