Tapping Hitler's Generals

Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45

Sönke Neitzel

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848327153
• eBook ISBN: 9781783830558
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

These transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Nazi officers reveal "a fascinating—and chilling—insight into the German view of the war" ( Financial Times).
 
Between 1939 and 1942, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence created a number of POW interrogation camps in and around London where they secretly recorded private conversations between senior German staff officers. In this extraordinary work, historian Sonke Neitzel examines these transcripts in depth and presents the private thoughts, opinions, and secrets of Nazi officers during the Second World War.
 
These transcripts address important questions regarding the officers' attitudes towards the German leadership and Nazi policies: How did the German generals judge the overall war situation? From what date did they consider it lost? How did they react to the attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944? What knowledge did they have of the atrocities? By turns insightful and horrifying, this unprecedented research is a must for any serious scholar of the period.
 
"A goldmine of information about what the German High Command privately thought of the war, Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and each other." — Daily Mail

THE DOCUMENTS

I.

Politics, Strategy and the Different Camps at Trent Park

Document 1

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1140 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

CRÜWELL: If I were asked to meet HESS,¹ I should decline. Please remember, I am a man who was taken prisoner honourably and I would not (associate) with a man who–who–he is a traitor!

KRAUSE: Has the matter been clear up?

CRÜWELL: It’s quite clear to me. It was officially announced at the time ‘against the FÜHRER’; the adjutants were put under arrest because they allowed him to fly.

KRAUSE: Where I was it was always said that he was a hundred per cent true, that the good of the Fatherland was his sole consideration, and that he said: ‘I don’t believe in this Russian business; I must try to get to ENGLAND in order to save GERMANY by arranging a peace with the British in some way or other.’

CRÜWELL: I don’t deny HESS’s good faith in that respect but that is not my official point of view. No one but his superior officer, the FÜHRER, can decide about that. If the FÜHRER repudiates him, I also repudiate him. That’s that! I am convinced of his moral sincerity in that he wanted to do good, but that does not prevent my regarding him here, in enemy country, in war time, as a traitor. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

Document 2

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1160 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

CRÜWELL: The FÜHRER’s ideas are quite sound. If the BALKAN STATES start quarrelling among themselves the FÜHRER will decide. KRAUSE: But CZECHOSLOVAKIA is quite a different problem.

CRÜWELL: The question of BOHEMIA and MORAVIA is difficult because that’s a different race. These people will have to be transplanted, either to RUSSIA or else to the BALKANS. They hate us fanatically. We can’t proclaim them an independent state. We can’t allow that from a geographical point of view. But when the war is over and ten years have elapsed, everything will be settled. Even if the war ends the way I think it will, with a clear victory, these problems will not cease to exist, but I’ll never live to see the day. But that’s fate, and we have been born in times of violent change, like the unfortunate people at the time of the Thirty Years’ War. The FÜHRER envisages a EUROPE under (our) absolute control, with a lot of entirely self-independent states like FRANCE, RUSSIA etc., and small states. I am firmly convinced that that is the only possible way in which Western civilisation can be saved; GREECE belongs essentially to the MEDITERRANEAN, and ITALY can look after her. For all I care, GREECE can go to rack and ruin–it’s a filthy country.

I was six weeks in ROUMANIA with my division and four weeks in BULGARIA.² My division was stationed near CONSTANZ, where the bridge crosses the DANUBE, that is, in a broad strip of the DOBRUDJA. You can’t imagine the appalling state their agriculture is in. The Roumanians are rotten to the core. I’ve seen the corruption that there is, and I can give you an instance to prove it: my ‘Intendant’ had the right to pay out bribes up to a large sum to the railway company. Normally the German State doesn’t do that sort of thing. He said: ‘Sir, if I pay so-and-so much, the truck will get through.’ The country is rotten with corruption. For instance at–I can’t remember the name of the damned place, my armoured regiment was stationed there–they told me how when the men were sitting in the inn drinking wine or beer on Sunday afternoon, girls walked through without a stitch on. I mean to say, that’s a bit unusual to say the least of it! And in every tiny village there was a brothel. Wherever you looked, brothel, brothel, brothel, and so on. What a lot of swine! They stole like jackdaws; they stole everything you didn’t keep your hands on. [. . .]

Document 3

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1167 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

CRÜWELL: I consider a hereditary monarchy the best form of government there is. Only in my opinion it is finished as far as GERMANY is concerned and could only rise again if we were to lose the was completely, and I set no store by that.

KRAUSE: If we lose the war, all the FÜHRER’s achievements will be forgotten.

CRÜWELL: Some things will remain for ever. They will last for hundreds of years. Not the roads–they are unimportant. But what will last is the way in which the state has been organised, particularly the inclusion of the working man as part of the state. He really has made a place for the working man in the state and no one has ever done that before. Quite apart from the fact that I am sure we shan’t lose the war, supposing we were to lose it and again suffered great internal unrest, then later on the threads would always be picked up again where he (HITLER) left off. This principle of everyone working for the common cause, the idea that the industrialist is really the trustee for the capital represented by German labour and for the other capital, all sounds so easy, but no one managed it before.

I am convinced that a great part of the FÜHRER’s success as Party Leader is accounted for by pure mass suggestion. It’s bound up with a kind of hypnotism, and he can exercise this on a great many people. I know people who are undoubtedly superior to him mentally and who yet fall under this spell. I cannot explain why it doesn’t affect me. I mean, I know perfectly well that he carries a superhuman burden of responsibility; what he said to me about AFRICA was astonishing, but I can’t say that (I was influenced). One quite outstanding thing is his hands–he has beautiful hands–you don’t notice it in photographs. He has the hands of an artist. I always looked at his hands; they are beautiful hands, and there is nothing common about them–they are aristocratic hands. In his whole manner, there is nothing of the little man about him. What surprised me so much–I thought he would fix me with an eagle eye–I don’t mean I expected a long speech but . . . ‘Allow me to present you with the Oak Leaves,’ in a quiet voice, you understand. I had pictured that quite differently.³

KRAUSE: All his sections are prompted by his feelings. [. . .]

Document 4

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1230 [TNA, WO 208/4161]

LUDWIG CRÜWELL–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 29 May 42 in North Africa.

KRAUSE–Oberleutnant (fighter pilot Fw190)–Captured 2 Sept. 42.

Information received: 21 Oct. 42

CRÜWELL: [. . .] It was impossible for us, without going to war, to give effect to the idea that GERMANY was the most important country on the continent of EUROPE.

KRAUSE: Do you think, Sir, that it would have been possible for us to gain concessions from ENGLAND, AMERICA and FRANCE, if we’d still had a man like NEURATH, one of the old regime, as Foreign Minister?⁴

CRÜWELL: I don’t believe so.

KRAUSE: But why is it that GERMANY always has been hated by all the rest of the world?

CRÜWELL: That’s owing to our infernal system of small states, which people still believe in even today. If we had been a united country two hundred years ago, we would have, so to speak, knocked off each other’s rough edges and would have had our national requirements, which we are now proclaiming a hundred years too late, all cut-and-dried; that would have been that, and we’d have had nothing more to ask of the world. That seems clear to me. I have no use for the type of German–he’s now become a comparative rarity –who goes abroad dressed in a green coat (Lodenmantel) and carrying a ruck-sack. When you see the English walking about COLOGNE, that doesn’t make a good . . . they look like butchers, cobblers, and no matter what. Nobody can deny that we are the most humane people in the world. Even if you consider those abortions in the S.S. . . . they are merely the product of a suffering people. The things people have accused us of! I mean, we’ve been bled white. Don’t forget that in the first place we were swindled by those miserable Fourteen Points.

Document 5

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1537 [TNA, WO 208/4162]

THOMA–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 4 Nov. 42 in North Africa.

BURCKHARDT–Major (G.C. 1 Paratroop Battalion)–Captured 5 Nov. 42 in North Africa.

Information received: 26 Jan. 43

[. . .]

THOMA: I can tell you, you can’t expect anything from the General Staff. Ninety-nine per cent of them are spineless creatures. They’ve always been ‘yes’-men. They’ve never been commanders, but only ‘assistants’ of the commander. That is why most of them are spineless creatures. Their upbringing and so on makes them so. You can expect nothing from them.⁵

BURCKHARDT: If the Germans succeeded in overthrowing the National Socialist Government now and then fought on, would they manage to achieve peace?

THOMA: It’s not as easy as all that.

Document 6

CSDIC (UK), SRX 1587 [TNA, WO 208/4169]

WILHELM RITTER VON THOMA–General der Panzertruppe–Captured 4 Nov. 42 in North Africa.

HANS DIETRICH TIESENHAUSEN–Kapitänleutnant (Lieut. Cmdr in command of U-331)–Captured 17 Nov. 42.

Information received: 15 Feb. 43

THOMA: HITLER imagined he could break his word time and again, if you examine his political career, it has been nothing but breaches of faith. One always forgets that. The written agreements with CHAMBERLAIN⁶ and all that sort of thing were all broken, so that the world has no faith in him! People shouldn’t be surprised if they now say quite definitely: ‘It doesn’t matter what it is, right to the end, to the complete and unconditional surrender and even the least vestige of such a system must disappear,’–that’s quite understandable. Of course the others are hypocrites, one should realise that clearly, because ROOSEVELT is just as much of an autocrat as HITLER⁷ or CHURCHILL, but it isn’t brought home to them quite so much. [. . .]

The KAISER was as gentle as a nun in comparison with ADOLF HITLER. The former did at least let you speak your mind–the latter won’t let you open your mouth. I’ve seen it myself, but I didn’t give way, I should still be ashamed today if I had given way to HITLER. If there’s any dirty business afoot I won’t take part, I shouldn’t dream of it. How could I bring myself to do it? How could I order my men to commit murder? I wouldn’t dream of it. None of my superiors has the right to order me to do his dirty work, let him do it himself! I’ve said so straight out. I can swear a solemn oath that not a single man has been shot by my people,⁸ but men were often brought before me. I remember once there were two or three commissars, they thought that now they would be shot. I said: ‘No, take off your badges, it’s better and don’t let anyone else know that you are commissars.’ They realised at once what was up. They took them off, too. I remember that last spring in the conferences with HQ, the army commanders were there and they told us about conversations they had had with the FÜHRER, ‘THE FÜHRER is personally firmly convinced that the country in EUROPE which is nearest to communism is ENGLAND.’ He actuall...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• THE DOCUMENTS
• SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
• ABBREVIATIONS
• ENDNOTES
• LIST OF DOCUMENTS
• SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INDEX