EBERBACH: Therefore it is very significant that the responsibility for that business on the Western Front was borne by the home forces only; the home forces had only enquired whether they ‘Feldmarschälle’ would participate or what attitude they would take.
BASSENGE: Is that actually so? What did the front-line troops say to that?
EBERBACH: I got it from ROMMEL himself who discussed the matter quite frankly with me; he said he agreed and would take part. Even ROMMEL said at the time: ‘We can’t start it, we can’t start a revolution against HITLER at the front as that would cause our front to collapse. You must first pull off something at home and then we’ll declare ourselves on your side.’ Obviously, all except those who turned it down categorically, like MANSTEIN, took that view, including RUNDSTEDT.
Document 164
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 263
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 21–3 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
[…]
HEIM: It is incredible cheek to shoo these people for that reason. One can only repeat that if an army and an officers’ corps puts up with a thing like that—
BASSENGE: HEIM, you have always refused to countenance revolt on the part of the officers.
HEIM: I say, if we had been there, of course we would not have revolted, but history will one day establish as a fact, that an army which puts up with things of that kind is doomed to ruin.
BASSENGE: We ought to have revolted, at the latest, at the time of the FRITSCH affair.
HEYDTE: He didn’t interfere at the front, but he must be causing terrific trouble in our army at home.
HEIM: Is he killing everyone off there?
HEYDTE: Yes. Altogether most peculiar conditions across in the home army, after 20 July. I visited a friend of mine who was a recruit at the time as I was, and who is director of the ‘Foreign Armies Section’, and when I asked him how things were he simply replied: ‘I haven’t been shot yet, but it happens here that someone suddenly disappears and is gone, nobody knows where!’
BROICH: The only safe place is here in ENGLAND. (Laughter.)
[…]
Document 165
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 286
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 19–21 Feb. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
SCHLIEBEN: Where were you actually taken from?
PFUHLSTEIN: It was done in the meanest way. I had that head wound and remained another four or five days with the ‘Division’. I then went home to WERTHEIM and then I was sent for and suddenly appointed commandant of the fortified area HOHENSTEIN-ORTELSBURGER WALD – it was considered a light job – which was about 180 km in breadth, and with the help of a few other people I was supposed to fortify it. I myself lived with a small staff at ALLENSTEIN. During the night of 31 August/1 September there was a tremendous knocking on my door and in came the commandant of ALLENSTEIN, a ‘Generalleutnant’ who was formerly in command of the IR 7 or 8,[466] followed by an SS man, a detective. So I, in my nightshirt, said: ‘What’s this?’ ‘I have an order from the FÜHRER to arrest you.’ He added – and it was a mean trick on his part – ‘Arresting a comrade is the worst job I’ve ever had in my life. I really can’t bear to watch it. You must dress. Please dress quickly, I want to get the job finished. Hurry up, be quick!’ He was complaining the whole time about having to rush around in ALLENSTEIN at half-past one in the morning and forced me to hurry in a disgusting way. If he had been friendly he would have said: ‘Take a change of linen and so on with you.’ I was only able to dress, and when I was dressed this detective came up and manacled me. Twenty minutes after he’d told me that, I was standing in the street in the uniform of a ‘General’ wearing the Knight’s Cross, and with manacled hands.
I was taken, manacled, in an ordinary passenger train to BERLIN, I arrived in the evening, when it was dark, and said to him: ‘Listen, take off the manacles, I swear I won’t run away. I will hold on to your trouser leg.’ We went through BERLIN, the manacles were removed – we crossed over the Potsdamer Platz in the dark and then went inside. They took my uniform away, put me in an awful suit of drills, manacled me again, and threw me into the cell, where they left me for a week without any sort of trial. I said: ‘Is one interrogated here, or is one simply hanged or shot without being interrogated, or what happens? Make an end of it! Does one remain lying here till one dies?’
I have been wounded twice in my left forearm here and I was able to pull off the left manacle – they were handcuffs. I had to try to get the handcuff on again. I could risk that when I lay in the bed, under the cover. A fellow looked through the peephole every ten minutes. I was always afraid I should drop off to sleep and that a hand would suddenly be hanging out underneath the cover.
When the air-raid warning went those condemned to death were not taken to the shelter but were chained hand and foot and thrown into bed.
ELFELDT: Tell that to KITTEL some time. He maintained that it was all just propaganda.
PFUHLSTEIN: I’d rather not, it’s not particularly pleasant for me either. That was an indication to me as to who was and who wasn’t condemned to death, old SCHULENBURG, the ambassador, for instance.[467]
SCHLIEBEN: How much did you say at your interrogation?
PFUHLSTEIN: I had decided on a definite limit. I admitted without any hesitation: ‘I had orders to occupy a western part of BERLIN and to put out of action the SS artillery school near JÜTERBOG.’ The basis of the plan was KLUGE’s and BECK’s intention of setting up a ‘Reichsgeneral-stabschef’ under HITLER and creating a new army C-in-C and ‘Reichsgeneralstab’ and they intended to take the whole matter up with the FÜHRER and tell him that they were of the opinion that this plan simply must be carried out and that should the FÜHRER be unwilling to agree to the proposal it was then intended to get FELLGIEBEL to cut his lines of communication and by surround his HQ to exert pressure on the FÜHRER to accept the proposal. As far as this I had to – OSTER had given all that away.
EBERBACH: Was that read out to you?
PFUHLSTEIN: Yes. I was fetched from my cell and dragged into the washroom where I had three minutes in which to wash myself. There, standing naked in front of the wash-stand, I saw OSTER, as white as the wall. He looked at me, a look which told me everything – he had admitted all that he knew.[468]
EBERBACH: Did they torture you?
PFUHLSTEIN: Not me. That one look was sufficient to tell me that I would have to admit everything OSTER knew about me. The bearing of that man told everything.
SCHLIEBEN: What was OSTER?
PFUHLSTEIN: CANARIS’S Chief of Staff.
In my opinion the people released from KÜSTRIN were those who were still comparatively young and fresh. On 30th January they felt the Russians would be in BERLIN in two days. The defence of BERLIN was organised on the spur of the moment, and for that they suddenly needed hundreds of officers again. So they quickly picked out all the people who were still hale and hearty. They took SPEIDEL, KLUGE(?), the brother FELBERT, the son… HOEPNER and a few others.[469] In my opinion they left there all the older people over 50, of whom they couldn’t expect much physically.
SCHLIEBEN: Didn’t STÜLPNAGEL tell you where he was before in November?
PFUHLSTEIN: I believe he was in FÜRSTENBERG, together with Joachim(?) von STÜLPNAGEL.[470] I believe they released him again too.
466
Generalleutnant Paul Gerhard (20.4.1881–12.10.1953), from 1.8.1940 to 19.1.1945 Wehrersatz-Inspecteur, Allenstein. He had been CO, Inf.Reg.7 in 1931.
467
Freidrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg (20.11.1875–10.11.1944), from 1934 to 1941 German ambassador to Moscow, joined the Goerdeler circle of resistance workers and was to have been Foreign Secretary had the coup been successful. Executed at Berlin-Plötzensee.
468
In a 1953 report, Pfuhlstein stated that Canaris had also been present, ‘Canaris and Oster were standing together naked at the washbasin, Oster with a toothbrush in his mouth, completely numbed, gazing at me with a look of total horror. Canaris, who seemed a broken man physically, also stared at me in horror. He was holding the washbasin with both hands so as not to sink to his knees.’ Quoted from Höhne, ‘Canaris’, p. 548. Generalmajor Hans Oster (9.8.1888–9.4.1945), from 1939 Head of OKW Abwehr Overseas Office at HQ, was one of the leading figures of the resistance movement; expelled from the Wehrmacht, 16.3.1943. The conspirators planned for him to be President of the Reich Military Court in the event of a successful coup. Found guilty of treason by SS tribunal at Flossenbürg concentration camp 8.4.1945 and executed illegally the following day. The Gestapo found a letter on Oster addressed to Canaris in which Pfuhlstein was described as a reliable man ‘for the envisaged task’. GRGG 285(c), TNA, WO 208/4177. In his interrogation by the British, Pfuhlstein was very critical of Admiral Canaris, calling him a ‘desk general’. Höhne, ‘Canaris’, pp. 547–51; ‘Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Bericht’ pp. 370f, 405–8.
469
At Küstrin, Pfuhlstein met the following: General der Panzertruppe von Esebeck, Chief of Wehrkreis Command XVII (Vienna); Generalleutnant Sinzinger, City Commandant, Vienna; Generalmajor Siegfried von Stülpnagel, City Commandant, Stettin; Generalleutnant Speidel, Chief of Staff, Army Group B; Major Johann von Hassel, son of ambassador Ulrich von Hassel; Oberstleutnant von Kluge, son of the field marshal; Major Hoepner, son of Generaloberst Erich Hoepner; Major Fellgiebel, brother of General Erich Fellgiebel; Krieggerichtsrat Dr Kayser; Hauptmann Paulus, son of the field marshal; and Oberst von Cannstein, formerly of the Kavallerie-Schule, Blomberg. GRGG 285(c), TNA, WO 208/4177.
470
General der Infanterie Joachim von Stülpnagel (5.3.1880–15.7.1968), ended World War I as head of OHL Organisations-Abt. Between the wars he was a close colleague of General Hans von Seeckt. Pensioned-off 31.12.1931. After 20.7.1944 arrested as a ‘politically unreliable’ general and held for several months, including a stay at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Siegfried von Stülpnagel was a brother of Joachim and was detained between 5.8.1944 and 22.4.1945.