KRUG: I shan’t don this uniform again…
REIMANN: Let’s hope the moment is soon here when we can tear off this damned Swastika thing. Everything is cracking up now. If someone had told us that a little time ago, we’d have asked if he’d drunk a bottle of brandy.
KRUG: Why should they shoot SPONECK’s cousin, when he is a prisoner in GEROLSHEIM?[398]
REIMANN: No one knows. They’ve also shot Graf STAUFFENBERG’s brother, the university professor.[399]
KRUG: And GUDERIAN lends himself to that!
SCHLIEBEN: I don’t know what we are to do after the war. The best thing would be to buy a rope and hang oneself.
BROICH: I’d hang a few others first! Then I should have a certain feeling of satisfaction. We must see how things go, but I’m in favour of forming a ‘Division’ or ‘Regimenter’ from the PW and marching with the English against GERMANY. Now they will exterminate all officer class.
SCHLIEBEN: They still need them. They can’t exterminate them at present. I hope this ‘REICH that was to last a thousand years’ will soon come to an end and that they will then disband these ‘Ordensjunker’ too. I wonder whether the stiff resistance which is being offered now in FRANCE is really the right thing?
BROICH: What is the good of it if we hold one in FRANCE and the Russians are on the ODER?
SCHLIEBEN: That’s just it.
Document 148
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 171
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 5–8 Aug. 44 [TNA, WO 208/4383]
[…]
BROICH: That speech of the FÜHRER’s was disgusting and TERBOVEN’s still more.
SATTLER: Did the FÜHRER make a speech?
BROICH: We, the Army, had continuously sabotaged his plans ever since 1931.
BASSENGE: Let the idiot babble![400]
BORCHERDT: Funny that those traitors, who always carried on the sabotage, had all been decorated with the Knight’s Cross and the Oak Leaves, etc.!
[…]
KRUG: One thing is unique in history – German ‘General feldmarschälle’ are being kicked out of the Army, the people, who were received with such acclamation… In the whole history of the world there’s never been anything like it. I mean, there is no one in GERMANY who can – who is there in GERMANY to say: ‘This is the end, peace now.’ Who? He would be shot immediately!
KÖHN: They are merely fighting for their lives now, and nothing else.
KRUG: Naturally, and look, another General, STEGMANN[401] has already been killed. There’s nothing else to do but die, for if you go back you are shot and die anyway… There can be no way out other than death. For if they are not killed up at the front then they will be exterminated at home.
KRUG: KEITEL won’t know another moment’s peace. He is a disgrace to every decent-thinking member of the Officer Corps.
REIMANN: You, as a decent fellow, wouldn’t find rest, but they, Hermann GOERING and KEITEL, remain quite unperturbed.
KRUG: But KEITEL will go down in the history of the German Officer Corps dishonoured and disgraced.
REIMANN: Dishonoured and disgraced, yes. They are a bunch of swine, those rascals! KEITEL always says: ‘Yes, my FÜHRER’ to everything.
KRUG: He ought to put on an SS uniform. That’s where he belongs.
THOMA: RUNDSTEDT was forced into it.[402] That is the devilish part of HITLER. The whole world knows that RUNDSTEDT’s heart is on the other side. There is no secret about it. HITLER more or less forced him into it and said: ‘Well, if he refuses I’ll get him too.’ Because so far RUNDSTEDT had always been so clever and had always acted in such a way that he could never be caught out. He kept his tongue well under control, but everybody knew his feelings. But he wasn’t to be caught. Then HITLER, who is devilishly revolting in cases like that – he is an out-and-out swine.
ROHRBACH: I believe that they only included RUNDSTEDT so as to pin him down, to goad him, on the one hand, and so as once again publicly to save their face, in order to proclaim to the world: ‘You see how objective we are, we even include on this Court of Honour a man who we well know is against us.’
HERMANN: Yes.
ROHRBACH: That’s how I see it.
[…]
SPONECK: This is a unique occurrence in the history of the world.
THOMA: In the whole of history I don’t know of a Field Marshal’s being shot.
BROICH: Even in the French Revolution they didn’t hang Field Marshals.
SPONECK: They had the guillotine then. I think that beheading is still a more honourable death.[403]
SATTLER: As common criminals, apparently.
SPONECK: Even though they didn’t handle the weapon themselves.
BROICH: It would be different if it were the man who actually carried out the attempt.
THOMA: Those were actually treated better; they were at least shot.
SPONECK: Yes, but he (HITLER) is a ‘God’. It is a crime against ‘God’.
SCHLIEBEN: Have you heard that they have hanged eight Generals, including HOEPNER? They were hanged two hours after the People’s Court passed its sentence.[404] A nice crowd! It’s crazy. Fancy hanging a ‘Generalfeldmarschall’! It’s unprecedented in history! When a man like STREICHER[405] is guilty of fraud time and time again, the matter is hushed up. No, you wouldn’t believe it possible! The whole show is beginning to collapse; there is no alternative, but public opinion all over the world will say: ‘Why couldn’t GERMANY out of her own strength… these people?’
Document 149
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 969 [TNA, WO 208/4168]
The following conversation took place between: CS/145 – Generalleutnant SPANG – Divisional Commander 266 ID – Captured 8 Aug. 44 near Brest – a British Army Officer and an American Army Officer.
BAO: Did you hear of von WITZLEBEN in FRANCE?[406]
SPANG: He’s a very good friend of mine.
BAO: You know what’s happened to him?
SPANG: No.
BAO: He and eight others have been hanged by HITLER.[407]
SPANG: Is that really true?
BAO: It was announced on the German radio.
SPANG: No, really? Generalfeldmarschall von WITZLEBEN was my superior officer before the war. I was in COLOGNE and built the so-called ‘Führer’ line. He used to fly over to visit me and always expressed his appreciation. I was ‘General’ in the 1st ‘Armee’ during the war.[408] Generalfeldmarschall von WITZLEBEN is one of our most correct, finest, most impeccable Generals; extremely honourable and correct in his ideas and very much loved by his men and even more by his staff. We held him in very great respect. I heard something about Generaloberst BECK, too.[409]
398
Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck (12.2.1888–23.7.1944), a cousin of Theodor Graf von Sponeck; CO, 22.Inf.Div., Poland, France and USSR; 22.10.1941 Leader, XXXXII.Armeekorps. Without reference to FHQ, on 29.12.1941 he abandoned the Kertsch Peninsula in the Crimea and was relieved of command two days later. Condemned to death by court martial on 23.1.1942 for ‘negligent disobedience in the field’, the sentence was commuted on 22.2.1942 to six years’ stockade at Germersheim. A petition for remission of the sentence by von Manstein on 20.6.1943 was refused by Hitler. Following 20.7.1944, he was murdered on Himmler’s order.
399
Reimann was confusing the twin older brothers of Stauffenberg, Alexander and Berthold. The former (15.3.1905–27.1.1964) graduated in Ancient History in 1931 and was Professor Extraordinary at Würzburg from 1936. He was Ordinarius in Ancient History at Strasbourg for a short while in 1942 before his recall to the front. On 20.7.1944 he was serving in Athens as Leutnant (Reserve) with LXVIII.Armeekorps. He had no knowledge of his brother’s activities. Taken into
400
Hitler spoke on 4.8.1944 at FHQ Wolfsschanze to a gathering of Reichsleiters and Gauleiters. The official communiqué of 5.8.1944 stated that the traitors had not only been active in sabotaging the efforts and struggles of the nation since 1941, but since the very seizure of power itself. Domarus, ‘Hitler’, Vol. 2, p. 2138. The text of the speech by Reichs-Commissar in Norway Josef Terboven (23.5.1898–11.5.1945) is not recorded.
401
Generalleutnant Rudolf Stegmann (6.8.1894–18.6.1944) fell at Briebeque, Normandy as CO, 77.Inf.Div., which he had led since 1.5.1944.
403
From 1794 in the French Revolution three marshals were guillotined: Augustin-Joseph de Mailly (b. 1708), Philippe de Noailles, Duc de Mouchy (b. 1715) and Nicolas Luckner (b. 1722), a native of the Oberpfalz.
405
Julius Streicher (12.2.1885–16.10.1946) was one of the earliest NSDAP members and founded the violently anti-Jewish weekly newspaper ‘Der Stürmer’ in 1923. From 1929 he was Gauleiter of Central Franconia (Mittelfranken). His rise to riches led to a Party inquiry that deprived him of his offices in 1940. He continued to publish the newspaper. He was condemned to death at Nuremberg and hanged.
406
Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben (4.2.1881–8.8.1944), from 2.10.1938 C-in-C, Gruppenkommando, Frankfurt am Main; 1.9.1939 C-in-C, 1.Armee; 26.10.1940–28.2.1942 C-in-C West. Steinbach, ‘Zwischen Gefolgschaft, Gehorsam und Widerstand’.
407
On 8.8.1944 the following eight officers involved in the 20 July plot were hanged at Berlin Plötzensee prison: Robert Bernardis, Albrecht von Hagen, Paul von Hase, Erich Hoepner, Friedrich Karl Klausing, Hellmuth Stieff, Erwin von Witzleben, Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. Fest, ‘Staatsstreich’, pp. 300–4.
408
From 1.4.1939 Spang was CO, Lower Rhine Fortifications and as such was subordinate to von Witzleben (see note 406 above). Between 16.9 and 15.11.1940 Spang was Chief of Staff, 1.Armee and worked alongside von Witzleben.
409
Generaloberst Ludwig von Beck (29.6.1880–20.7.1944), from 1.7.1935 to 8.8.1938 Chief of the Army General Staff.