Notes on The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn

Posted: October 30th, 2010 | Author: danny | Filed under: Book Notes | No Comments »

The introduction provides an excellent critique of the concept of war crimes. Particularly of the first two indictments. For instance, how were Stalin and other Russian leaders not indicted for crimes against peace since they were just as guilty as Germany was for the start of the war.

Page ix

Over dinner on November 29, Stalin suggested in passing that if at the end of the war about fifty thousand leaders of the German armed forced were rounded up and liquidated, then Germany's military might would be ended once and for all. Churchill was taken aback by the scale of the liquidations envisioned by Stalin. He said simply that the British Parliament and public would never accept such mass executions. But Roosevelt responded to Stalin more warmly, and when Churchill became upset (or so Churchill recalled), FDR said that the Allies should execute not fifty thousand, but "only 49,000. " Elliott Roosevelt, the president's son, who happened to be present, chimed in to say he was sure the United States Army "would support it."

Page xxiii

The defendants generally tried to get away with everything they could, and as one of them suggested, they sometimes succeeded. That claim was made by Hitler's architect Speer, often regarded as the shrewdest observer among the defendants. He was not pleased at the end of the trial when he saw that Fritzsche, Papen, and Schacht got off, while he was given twenty years. He noted in his diary that their "lies, smokescreens, and dissembling statements had paid off after all." Speer resented not being exonerated by the court, but it was certainly not because he had failed to lie or to cover up the truth. Speer and no doubt other defendants resented people like Goldensohn and Gilbert. So far as we can tell, Speer gave Goldensohn no more than a brief and tersely worded statement (included in this volume). He accused Gilbert of being "always eager to add to his psychological knowledge." In answer to Gilbert's question about his sentence, speer lied when he said the twenty years he got "was fair enough. They couldn't have given me a lighter sentence, considering the facts, and I can't complain." By his own later admission, Speer was not telling the truth, for in fact he felt unjustly traded by the court.

Page 29/30

[Hans Frank] "I met my wife in 1924. The relationship was one of a chance happening and was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I certainly don't want to say anything against the character of my wife, but she is too old - five years older than I am -- and I am of the opinion that it's just to bad.

Page 43

[Wilhelm Frick] Asked if he had any comment to offer on the Reichstag fire, Frick replied: "It can be argued both ways. At the trial some Communists were convicted. There is the rumor that Goering and the SA started it. But I don't know." What is your own opinion? "The only thing I can say is based on the viewpoint of gained what. If the Communists had done it, they were stupid because they were prohibited thereafter. If Goering and the SA did it, I'm unable to say. So far it has not come up in this trial." At the time, what was your opinion? "I had no reason to be suspicious, though rumors, of course, existed at that time, too."

Page 59/60/61/67

[Hans Fritzsche] Propaganda is always done by bringing the attention of the people to one side and taking the attention from the other side. Thus, propaganda is always one-sided, be it for good or for bad. Now during the past year and a half I have been thinking of the propaganda I broadcasted. I can say that I did not try to bring the attention of people to something bad, but to something one-sided - and I did that during all those ten years of my activity. I painted only in black-and-white - no in-between colors. Your country and other Allies did the same thing."

...

"Speaking for myself, I did not believe what the Allies said, though I had opportunity to always listen to Allied stations. The reasons for my not believing it was that it had been drummed into us that the Allies were telling lies in the form of propaganda. The tragedy of it all is that what these Allied broadcasting stations said was literally true. I must have said at least a hundred times during the war, whenever the Allied broadcasting stations talked about cruelties and atrocities, that the same type of Allied propaganda went on in the last war. I would say to my friends that in the last war the Allies talked about Germans chopping off the hands of Belgian children and that after the First World War it was admitted by the Allies that such allegations were false and merely propagandistic. I will say even today, that at the beginning of this war, hundreds of lies about Nazism were spread over the Allied stations. They even broadcast things about me personally -- things that could be proven false. Therefore, that is what I mean by saying that the guilt lies on both sides, because propaganda, whether it be evil or good, tends to make one doubt it. If one refers to the many false statements made by Allied broadcasters at the beginning of the war, then one's belief in foreign broadcasts would necessarily be minimized.

...

This is the satanic triumph of propaganda. It simply closes one's ears to what is right or what is wrong.

....

The only reason for my not believing these statements was that I had heard so much false propaganda and lies from the very same broadcasting stations.

Page ~68 - ~123

[Some good stuff on propaganda]

Page 124

[Hermann Goering] I said that Schirach also told me that Hess was said to have had a pendulum in his office, which he used to detect whether the letters he received were worthy of answering or not - whether the writer was a friend or enemy. If the pendulum swung in one direction, the letter was all right; if it swung another way, the letter was a bad one. Did Goering know anything as the validity of this tale?

"Sure. I saw Hess's pendulum and he used it. I never paid any attention to his strange ideas. he was quiet and bother nobody. I knew a great surgeon who believed in a similar pendulum, using it the same way Hess did. Apparently it's a common superstition." Goering went on to say that obviously it was not Hitler's idea that Hess fly to England, because it was too stupid. "There were many other means to negotiate a peace with England if Hitler wanted that. We could use our representatives in Sweden or Switzerland."

Page 131

I asked him to give me further reflections or impressions about the trials as far as his opinion was concerned. Goering seemed wary and not too inclined to speak at length. he did say, however, "Frankly, it is my intention to make this trial a mockery. I feel that a foreign country has no right tot try the government of a sovereign state. I have desisted from making any critical remarks about my codefendants. Yet they are a mixed-up, unrepresentative group. Some of them are so unimportant, I never even heard of them. I'll admit they are right in including me among the big Nazis who ran Germany. But why include Fritzsche? He was one of many section chiefs in the Propaganda Ministry. And then they try a man like Funk, who is guilty of nothing. He followed orders, and they were my orders. And then they try a fellow like Keitel, who, although he was called a field marshal, was a small person who did whatever Hitler instructed. Of all the defendants, the only ones who are big enough to merit being tried are me, Schacht, Ribbentrop perhaps, although he was a weak echo of Hitler, Frick, who proposed the Nuremberg Laws, and maybe a few others, like Rosenberg and Seyss-Inquart. The rest of them were followers and showed little initiative.

"Then there is the farce of the case against the general staff. These military men were not a part of any conspiracy to wage war but simply accepted orders and obeyed them as any German soldier or officer would do. If there was a conspiracy, it lay among those who are dead or missing - i mean Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, and naturally, Hitler. I always felt that Bormann was a primitive criminal type and I never trusted Himmler. I would have dismissed them." Goering smiled knowingly and added, "You know, you can get rid of a man in many subtle ways. For example, you can dismiss a man suddenly, but that is less effective if that individual has some power and backing than by slowly diminishing his power by giving him more and more meaningless titles. In the case of Himmler, I would have promoted him on paper and made him chief of this and chief of that, but in the end his power would be gone. I would have taken away from him the police power first, and later I would have assumed control of the SS myself. In this way there would have been no such thing as mass murders. For all that Hitler was a genius and a strong character, he nevertheless was suggestible, and Himmler and Goebbels or both must have influenced him to go ahead with such an idiotic scheme as gas chambers and crematoriums to eliminate millions of people.

Page 132

I don't believe in the Bible or in a lot of things which religious people think. But I revere women and I think it unsportsmanlike to kill children.

...

For myself I feel quite free of responsibility for the mass murders. Certainly as second man in the state under Hitler, I heard rumors about mass killings of Jews, but I could do nothing about it and I knew that it was useless to investigate these rumors and to find out about them accurately, which would not have been too hard, but I was busy with other things, and if I had found out what was going on regarding the mass murders , it would simply have made me feel bad and I could do very little to prevent it anyway."

Page 136

On his desk Hess had written certain words in German, which seemed to be rules for keeping in good health whih he had probably jotted down in order to facilitate his memory. Mr Triest took down notes, which in translation are as follows:

Eat little. Don't take any sleeping pills. They will only lose the effect in case that you should really need them. Also take little other medicine [analgesics]. Instead of egg, ask for marmalade and bread. Don't eat or drink in the morning in order not to get tired. Ask the doctor for orange or lemon juice once in a while. Don't eat salty food. Otherwise the cramps may become more frequent.

Page 147

[Earnst Kaltenbrunner]
"Hitler had an excellent memory for numbers and he knew exactly the tonnage of each warship any nation possessed. He knew this even better than the naval and finance experts. Hitler believed that America had to find a place to get rid of its investments in lend-lease, armaments, et cetera, and that it had to realize the money it had invested over her. That was Hitler's idea. Any attempt to talk peacefully or negotiate a peace with America was unsuccessful because Hitler felt that Germany could not offer America this financial settlement which it desired. Thus Hitler thought that the war with the United States was not an ideological war but one that stemmed purely from economic reasons.

Page 151

Earnst Kaltenbrunner]
"The Hague Convention does not mention a preventive war because owing to modern weapons, preventive war had not yet existed. The quicker humanity advances, the more important it is to be the one who deals the first blow. It was still possible in times of old-fashioned warfare to put up an ultimatum, but with all the new and modern weapons, tanks, and especially the atom bomb, this is impossible."

Page 155/156

The neutrality of Turkey was guaranteed by several countries so that it could perform that job. Any historian will recognize that this is the same as the capture of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. In other words, the English-Russian route through the Mediterranean is not being endangered by Russian boats. Therefore , the neutrality of Turkey, as seen by England, is only an armed neutrality which favors the British Empire.

On the other hand, German foreign policy in Turkey was, of course, conditioned by these things. Turkey only in the first line had to be afraid of Russia. for its neutrality Turkey was paid by England, with money and armaments; and at the same time Turkey was paid by Germany through commercial treaties and armaments. At the very moment when Germany was weakest, Turkey turned to England. As long as Germany was strong, Turkish neutrality was tremendously friendly to Germany. Those are the basic principles of Turkish policy.

One has to add that the Russian interests were exactly the opposite because Russia wanted free access to the Mediterranean either by having possession of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles or by having hem opened by international agreement. Secondly, Turkey is the thinnest-populated country in Europe and western Asia, with only twelve inhabitants to the square kilometer. Therefore, it is an open invitation for southern Russia to spread and place its population. this can be seen y two demands of Russia for Turkish lands: one, Russia demanded souther Turkey, the Black Sea, which would mean the destruction of the whole Turkish commerce, and , two , Russia demanded Armenian territories, very cleverly using long-standing, bitter fights between Armenians and Turks.

...

From the time of Bismark, Germany always kept away from Turkey and gave many assurances to England that it should not be afraid, that it was English territory and would remain as such. The same neutrality was always promised by Hitler and respected by him constantly.

Page 198/199

[Alfred Rosenberg]
The Jewish question was one which required a knowledge of history, philosophy, the Greeks, a study of races, music, art, and so forth. This is not literal but a summation of the generalities and quasi-learned arguments he propounded. The cause of the Jewish question was, of course, the Jews themselves. The Jews are a nation, and like very nation, have a nationalistic spirit. That's all very well, but they should be in their own homeland. Now there were several places for Jews proposed in 1936 by the English (I believe he said the French and Germans, too - implying that a joint proposal was made that the Jews turned down). These places were Alaska, Guiana (didn't say which of the islands), Madagascar, and Uganda.

Why couldn't the Jews be allowed to remain where they were, in other lands? That would have been all right if they didn't do bad things, but they did. What did the Jew do? They spat at German culture. How? They controlled the theater, publishing, the stores, and so on. Of course, Jews have a two-thousand-year-old culture, too, but it is not the German culture, which is so different.

...

Every doctor knows that there are different types of blood, various classes, Rosenberg said at one point, in discussing the differences between races. Would, for example, a blood transfusion from a Negro cause any character differences to ensue if given to an Aryan? Rosenberg said quite seriously, with his "philosophic" smile, he didn't know. That would be a brutal experiment such as was done in the concentration camps. He smiled as if he had scored a triumph of reasoning. We pressed the point though for his opinion; suppose a Nazi soldier were injured and given some Jewish blood, or Negro blood. Would character changes occur? It wasn't proven, he said. Negroes beget Negroes, Jews Jews, so it must be that blood will tell.

...

What was Rosenberg's main objection to Bolshevism? He seemed surprised at that question, as if it were a subject which needed no explanation. After a few moments he said vehemently, "Bolshevism wants to destroy by power a very sensitive state culture without any consideration for the history of the nation. Secondly, Bolshevism wants to do this for the benefit of a single class of the population. Thirdly, Bolshevism fights principally against private property. It creates a collectives among the farmers and destroys the agricultural system. it works against the principles upon which more or less all states are based.

"The Communist Party is under the control of a central office. This central office is in Moscow. Therefor, Communism in various countries is in the making of the individual state or an expression of nationalism. This international Communistic Bolshevism gathers its support from a strong state - Russia. Communism not only makes its policy in Russia but it prescribes the policy of Bolsheviks all over the world."

Page 201

I can mention men like Averell Harriman and Curle, the may of Boston. [who were against the Versailles treaty]

Page 204/205

[Fritz Sauckel]
the main stream of thought which he presented today consisted of the following currents:

• National Socialism did a good job in Germany until the latter years of the war, when too many enemies of Germany banded against her.
• The excesses, atrocities, exterminations within and without the concentration camps were unknown to honorable men like himself, and could be attributed to Himmler, who apparently was not a good man.
• The causes of the war lay in the Versailles Treaty and the economic depression within Germany ever since the end of the last war, augmented by the failure of other countries to buy German products in exchange for wheat, without which Germany would starve. There was a virtual boycott of Germany.
• Anti-Semitism was not Sauckel's department, and the specialists in that were Streicher and Rosenberg, who had devoted almost their entire lives to the subject; but he, Sauckel, believed it was brought on because there was too high a percentage of Jews in positions of prominence in Germany, in state offices, professions, the stage, radio, and so forth. Sauckel stated that the Jews were not really persecuted until late in the war, 1942 perhaps, and then it was part of the general "war psychology" and not really known to him or other Germans, but again the work of Himmler. Sauckel's conscience was clear, and he would do anything he had done over again because it all had been honorable.

Page 209

I asked him what he knew of the reports of the mistreatment of slave labor, of families being cruelly separated in occupied countries and the able ones brought as workers to Germany, and of people having been seized in theaters and public places and shipped without notice as workers to Germany. His reply was evasive. "What would you do if your country's welfare depend on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain."

Page 218

[Hjalmar Schact]
Schact repeated his indignation "that a man who has never been associated with anything but high finance for forty years, and who was never a soldier and never did anything to hurt anyone, should be locked up and tried as a common war criminal." Again he repeated that he did nothing but live on his farm since 1939 , and besides, he was a party to the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

It becomes obvious in talking to Schact that he is attempting to devise two distinctly paradoxical pictures of himself: the one , that he was a harmless old man who had been inactive since 1939; the other, a picture of a great national German patriot who worked ceaselessly for Hitler's downfall and frustration, and was actively a participant in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. Clinically, it is obvious that Schact has tremendous energy and vitality for a man of his years.

Page 222/223

"Now what did the Treaty of Versailles do to us? It took away from Germany all of the private assets of Germans. do you realize what this means, Dr. Goldensohn? It liquidated the private assets of German citizens, a thing which has not been done since medieval times. By this, they destroyed one of the foundations of our life. For example, if we had an import or export house in Rio de Janeiro or new York, they took away our license and put us out of business. Such losses amounted to $11 billion, aside from reparations. By doing this the Allies destroyed not only a half-billion-dollar income, but also spoiled our whole sales organization. Then, furthermore, after Versailles, they imposed reparation payments on Germany, and as we had no foreign assets anymore, we could only pay by new exports. How could we pay the Allies otherwise? Therefore, the need for export trade became more urgent since we needed foreign money in order to pay for food and raw material, as well as reparations. The reparations amounted to $50 billion in cash! Can you imagine that? That means fifty thousand million dollars.

"Now, of course, Germany could not do that. An annual amount of money and reparation payment was fixed at about a billion dollars a year, and we could not afford that. And then, you must recall that after the First World War we had for the most part socialist governments, and these socialists followed a very lighthearted policy. they borrowed money from the outside, and with that money they paid for reparations. mostly, the money came from America, and so Germany contracted many foreign debts. During the six years 1924-29, our foreign debts were not less than 8 billion. That is exactly as much as the United States borrowed before the First world war over a period of four decades. And then came the movement when foreign creditors said that they couldn't go on, and not only stopped lending but withdrew all short credits at maturity. This led to a financial crash of frightful proportions in the summer of 1931.

"Immediately after these credits were stopped, the economic situation of Germany became worse and worse. the Bruening government of the middle-class parties, the so-called bourgeois government, followed a deflationary policy. They cut wages and salaries so much that many industries collapsed; and at the same time, the Allied countries had raised customs tariffs. Finally, we arrived at a situation of more than 6 million unemployed. Now if you take into consideration the fact that the farmer is never unemployed, but that only industrial folk are, it means that every third family suffered from unemployment. Therefore, people lost confidence in the socialists as well as in the middle-class parties and wen to the extremes.

"There was only the choice between Communism and Hitler, and I will tell you why Hitler won. People will not give up religion, rights, freedom of personality, the opportunity to develop by individual effort - which includes private property. And the other reason for Hitlers' winning is that if a whole people is treated as the Germans were, everyone will say, 'Are we worse people than others? Are we of a minor race?' Just as every single individual needs and must have self-respect, just as every family is proud of decent traditions s, so every nation want s to maintain her individual manner, culture, language, and customs.

Page 232

I was never a soldier. I detest uniforms because they make one unfree. There is an old quotation that goes something like this: 'Your mind will be trained will, but confined to Spanish boots.' That quotation is very apt. It signifies how narrow the military mind becomes."

Page 245

[Baldur von Schirach]
But in retrospect, and realizing where we have come to, I am absolutely sure that a real system of government must prevent one man or twenty or thirty men from getting all the power of the state into their hands. Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corrupter of mankind.

"Some of the defendant say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil."

Page 255

[Julius Streicher]
As usual, Streicher had no rational explanation for what he called this devilish procedure, but made some inconsequential remarks about how, if circumcision was Jewish, it should not be inflicted on non-Jews. It was clear that he considered circumcision as something which had no medical or surgical import, but merely a racial custom.

...

Pinning Streicher down to any particular subject was most difficult because his ability to discuss anything logically was quite limited.

Page 258

For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress.

Page 295

[Rudolf Hoess]
Why didn't you give yourself up before? I queried. "I thought I could get away with it."

Page 296

The general Government of Poland was under my supervision, bu concentration camps farther on in Russia itself came under the aegis of SS generals.

"I was commandant at Auschwitz for four years, from May 1940 until the first of December, 1943." I asked how many people were executed at Auschwitz during his time. "The exact umber cannot be determined. I estimate about 2.5 million Jews." Only Jews? "Yes." Women and children as well? "Yes."

What do you think of it? Hoess looked blank and apathetic. I repeated my question and asked him whether he approved of what went on at Auschwitz. "I had my personal orders from Himmler." Did you ever protest? "I couldn't do that The reasons Himmler gave me Ii had to accept." In other words, you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children? "Not justified - but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews."

How could the Jews exterminate the Germans? "I don't know, that is what Himmler said. Himmler didn't explain." Don't you have a mind or opinion of your own? "Yes, but when Himmler told us something, it was so correct and so natural we just blindly obeyed it." Do you have any feelings of guilt for this? "Yes, now naturally it makes me think that it was not right."

Page 298

Hoess said that while he was commandant of Auschwitz, soap was not manufactured from human fat. "We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, where it was woven into special fittings for gaskets." Was this hair also from men and children? "No, in 1943 I received the first orders to do it. We cut the hair only from women and only after they were dead." Did you supervise gas chamber murders? "Yes, I had the whole supervision of that business. I was often, but not always, present when the gas chambers were being used." You must be a hard man. "You become hard when you carry out such orders." It seems to me you must be hard to begin with. "Well, you certainly can't have soft feelings, whether it is shooting of people or killing them in gas chambers."

People were shot at Auschwitz also? "Not Jews, but Poles of the resistance movement were shot. This was done under orders of Rudolf Mildner." Were you a friend of Mildner? "He often came to Auschwitz." Did he have his court at Auschwitz? "After the Poles were sentenced, after the party district administrator signed the death sentences, then they came to Auschwitz to Mildner's court and were told that they were sentenced to death. This amounted to about sixty or seventy men per month." How many months was Mildner there? "Mildner came in 1941 and left in 1943. I would estimate about 1,500 men were sentenced to death by Mildner's court."

Page 300

"In the summer of 1941, I was called to Berlin to see Himmler. I was given the order to erect extermination camps. I can almost give you Himmler's actual words, which were to the effect: 'The Fuhrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date.'

"That was Himmler's explanation. Then he explained to me why he selected Auschwitz. There were extermination camps already in the East bu they were incapable of carrying out a large-scale action of extermination. Himmler could not give me the exact number, but he said that at the proper time Eichmann would get in touch with me and tell me more about it. He would keep me informed about incoming transports and like matters.

"I was ordered by Himmler to submit precise plans as to my ideas on how the extermination program should be executed in Auschwitz. I was supposed to inspect a camp in the East, namely Treblinka, and to learn from the mistakes committed there.

"A few weeks later, Eichmann visited me in Auschwitz and told me that the first transports from the General Government and Slovakia were to be expected. he added that this action should not be delayed in any way so that no technical difficulties would arise and that the schedules of transports should be maintained at all costs.

Page 301/302/303

How many people at a time were exterminated in each farmhouse? Hoess stared at the floor and thought for several moments. He shifted his eyes from me to the floor to Mr. Triest, and finally after about thirty seconds of silence, said: "In each farmhouse eighteen hundred to two thousand persons could be gassed at one time. The two farmhouses were separated by a distance of six hundred to eight hundred meters. They were completely closed off from the outside by woods and fences."

How often were these buildings used? "Well, it was like this. These transports didn't come daily; sometimes two or three trains arrived on a single day, every train containing two thousand people, but there were periods when no transports arrived for three to six weeks." How long were these people kept at Auschwitz? "No time at all. A side track went to Birkenau and unloaded, and there the selection was made. Those who were able to work were sifted from those unable to work." What criteria for selection were used? "Well, we had two SS doctors and they sat at tables, and the people from the transports got off the train and walked by these doctors. These people were fully clothed; they just walked by and the doctors judged by their looks, age, and strength."

Out of the transport of two thousand, approximately how many were saved for work? "In all of those years, I figured an average of twenty to thirty percent of the people were able to work." And then what happened? "Those not able to work were marched to the farmhouses. These were a good kilometer from the side track. There they were made to undress. At first they had to undress in he open, where we had erected walls made of straw and branches of trees that kept them from onlookers. After a while we built barracks. We had big signs, all of which read 'To Disinfection' or 'Baths.' That was in order to give the people the impression that they would merely receive a bath or be disinfected, in order to not have any technical difficulty in the extermination process.

"And the internees whom we used as interpreters and general helpers in those stations instructed the people that they should take care of their clothing when they laid it on the ground in neat piles so that they should be able to find their clothe when the came out of the bath or disinfecting room. These internees helped quiet all of the people by answering their questions in a reassuring manner and telling them they would only be bathed in those houses.

" Then the people were brought to the chambers and the internees who accompanied them went along with the people into the extermination chambers so that the people would be quiet, since they saw the attendants go inside themselves It was so done that all of the chambers were filled up at the same time. At the last moment, when the chambers were filled, the internees who worked for us slipped out, the doors were jammed shut, and the Zyklon B gas was thrown through small openings." Was there any panic among the people prior to their murder? "Yes, sometimes, but we worked it smoothly, more smoothly as time went on. The men were always exterminated in a separate chamber, and the women an children together in the same chamber." At what age for example, did you distinguish between a child and a grown-up, that is between a boy and a man? "I can't say. We judged by the looks of the boys - you know, some are grown-up at fifteen years, others at seventeen. We judged mainly by stature."

Page 306/307

From the time you left Auschwitz until the end of the war, how many people were exterminated there? "The figure 2.5 million takes care of 1944" Were there any exterminated in 1945? "No, at the end of 1944 the whole thing stopped. It was forbidden by Himmler." What happened to the transports that arrive in 1945? "Hardly any transports arrived in 1945, and the only people who came were those able to work." Why did the exterminations stop? Was it because there were no more Jews to exterminate? "In November 1944 I was with Eichmann in Budapest and he told me that there were negotiations going on between Himmler and representatives of the Jews in Switzerland through various middlemen and that from then on exterminations would have to stop immediately."

Page 309

Who invented the gas chambers? "They developed out of the situation. the courts brought in a lot of people who had to be shot. I aways objected to having to use the same men for firing squadrons over and over again. During that period one day my camp leader, Karl Fritzsch, came to me and asked me whether I could try to execute people with Zyklon B gas. Until that time Zyklon B was used only to disinfect barracks which were full of insects, fleas, et cetera. I tried it out on some people sentenced to death in the cell prison and that is how it developed. I didn't want any more shootins, so we used gas chambers instead."

How many concentration camps in Germany or outside of it had gas chambers? "Mauthausen, Dachau, Auschwitz, and in the east, Treblinka; in Russia, they used gas wagons." What about Majdanek? "They had temporary gas chambers but that camp came under the Security Polic - the Einsatzkommando and Security Police. In Lublin there was a concentration camp which came under our inspection and supervision but it was not an extermination camp. Majdanek was near the city of Lublin and was an extermination camp under the direction of Lieutenant General Globocnik, who was the SS and political leader of Lublin.

Page 314/315

I asked him whether he subscribed to any religious belief. "I left the church in 1922 and my wife left it in 1935." Why did you leave the church? "During my experiences at the front in Iraq and Palestine I thought that there was a lot of humbug connected with the so-called holy places and that things were not done right, especially by the Catholic Church, of which I was a member. And that diverted me from my formerly rigid, strict Catholicism. Just what humbug did you did you see and what in particular was wrong with Catholic religion as you found it in Palestine and Iraq? "I don't know, it is a long time ago and I was so busy since then I have had no time for thinking about religion, but all of this money that wen to the church, well, it seemed to me that it was humbug."

...

Does the fact that you put the phenomenal number of 2. 5 million men, women, and children to death, not to mention your supervision of exterminations and excursions in all of the other camps that you supervised since 1943 - does that fact not upset you a little at times? "I thought I was doing the right thing, I was obeying orders, and now, of course, I see that it was unnecessary and wrong. But I don't know what you mean by being upset about these things because I didn't personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program in Auschwitz. I twas Hitler who ordered it through Himmler and it was Eichmann who gave me the order regarding transports." Do you ever have any thoughts of these executions, gassings, or burning of corpses - in other words, do such thoughts come upon you at times and in any way haunt you? "No. I have not such fantasies."

...

That's an interesting observation: you murdered 2.5 million Jews but you disapprove of Der Sturmer. "Oh yes, all people with any sense disapproved of Der Sturmer."

Page 323

[Albert Kesselring]
Do you think your father would approve of National Socialism? "I think that as a Freemason, he would have opposed it. But aside from his own Freemasonry, everyone to his own liking, I don't think he would have opposed it. Father was an absolute German man, and his belonging to the Freemasons was not against that." What was Hitler's objection to Freemasonry? "Because it was international. A cousin of mine was a member of a lodge in Bayreuth and was looked on askance. Understanding of other nations does no mean a feeling against your own country. That's the whole trouble with Germans. They can see only their own country, the local church steeples only. If only German youth could go abroad, and youth from other countries come to Germany. You always have to have criticism if you with sot become better."

Page 326/327

[Keitel's order of December 16, 1942 to Kesselring]

The furher has ordered that the enemy employs in partisan warfare Communist-trained fanatics who do not hesitate to commit any atrocity. It is more than ever a question of life and death. This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans in the East, as well as in the Balkans, is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success. Any consideration for the partisans is a crime against the German people.

Kesselring remembered the order. He was then confronted with his own order of June 17, 1944, which read:

The partisan situation in the Italian theater, particularly central Italy, had deteriorated to such an extent that it constitutes a serious danger to troops, supply lines, war industry and economic potential. The fight against the partisans must be carried out with all means at our disposal and with utmost severity. i will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the choice of severity of methods he adopts against partisans. In this connection the older principle applies that a mistake in the choice of methods in executing one's orders is better than failure or neglect to act.

Kesselring admitted having issued that order. Furthermore, three days later he issued another "top secret" order saying:

It is the duty of all troops and police in my command to adopt the severest measures. Every act of violence committed by partisans must be punished immediately. Reports submitted must also give details of countermeasures taken. Wherever there is evidence of a considerable number of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence being committed these men will be shot.

Kesselring was reminded of two instances of how his words were carried out. A Colonel von Gablentz was captured by bandits. The entire male populate of the villages on the stretch of road concerned were arrested. As reprisal for the capture of this colonel, 660 persons, including 250 men, were arrested. Maxwell Fyfe asked him if taking 410 women and children into custody was what was meant by his order of "steps necessary to deal with partisan warfare." Kesselring answered equivocally that it was unnecessary.

Page 342/343

[Ewald von Kleist]
he then led a panzer army corps, which consisted of about two divisions and attached troops, in the blitz against Poland. "I was very successful in this operation because I able to use cavalry tactics. I was in Poland for only sixteen days in all. Then I left Poland and got together with the Russians for the first time, on friendly terms. That was the time of the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact, and there was a division of Poland between Germany and Russia. My impression of the Russians then was that they were exceedingly good troops, advanced in military technique, motorized to a surprising extent, and very correct in their behavior."

He then assumed command of three panzer corps which were known to as Kleist groups. "This was in may 1940, and I began organizing this small army, which bore my name, in the territory behind Dusseldor. We then went to the West and if I say so myself, it was my army which is largely responsible for the rapid victory in France. I broke through the Sedan and Maginot Lines and I reached the coast of France within seven days near Abbeville. In the course of my victories I took the towns of Bastogne and Calais and it was the Kleist groups that attacked Dunkirk from the west. This was during the tremendous British disaster which occurred there.

"I must say that the English managed to escape that trap in Dunkirk, which I had so carefully laid, only with the personal help of Hitler. There was a channel from Arras to Dunkirk. I had already crossed this channel and my troops occupied the heights which jutted out over Flanders. Therefore, my panzer group had complete control of Dunkirk and the area in which the British were trapped. The fact of the matter is that the English would have been unable to get into Dunkirk because I had them covered. then Hitler personally ordered that I should withdraw my troops from these heights."

Why had Hitler ordered this? "Hitler thought tit was too risky. It was nonsense - those orders of Hitler's in those days. We could have wiped out the British army completely or taken the whole army as captive if weren't for the stupid order of Hitler. The proof of it is that three days later the English occupied the heights and I was obliged to attack them again to take them back. The masses of English troops, however, had already reached Dunkirk and were escaping in small boats. The sad part of it is that I could have captured the whole English army, or such a great part of it, at any rate, that an invasion of England would have been a simple affair. I did capture man French soldiers, including General Henri Giraud.

"Altogether I captured 1 million prisoners of war on all fronts. I think I did pretty well. Giraud's capture was very amusing. An intelligence officer conveyed an English radio message that the French front had been torn open through tank attacks. My intelligence officer said that the English radio had broadcasted, 'The French general, the beloved General Giraud, would take over command of the French front and restore the situation.' Now the amusing thing about it is that as I was reading this intelligence report, the door opened and in walked a good looking French general who turned out to be Giraud. He had been very brave but was a little mistaken about the situation. He had taken a reconnaissance car and driven into our territory searching for his troops but instead he found mine, and had been taken prisoner by a couple of enlisted men." Kleist chuckled.

Page 346

I asked Kleist what occasioned his retirement at that time. "Well, on December 1, 1943, I told Hitler to give up his supreme command. On March 29, 1944, I again had a very severe argument with Hitler and I had the impression that it was more the people around Hitler than Hitler himself who said that I was an inconvenient subordinate. Hitler himself told me when I said good-bye to him that he could find no fault with me as a soldier. Hitler said many friendly things to me. He said that he had very few people who were capable of leading an operational war. He advised me to take a rest because I had worked so hard and he implied that I would be asked to serve again. I really think that the reason for my going home at that time was that I always told Hitler my frank opinions."

* Page 350 *

"Planned economy is used in Germany at present by he occupying powers. It is done in all countries with the exception of the United States, and sooner or later your country will get around to it. For example, there are the questions of wheat, gold, silver. If the U.S.A wants to sell two hundred pounds of wheat for five marks, and Russia will sell the same amount of wheat for three marks, then you can easily see that free economies cannot exist. It would take only a few such instances and the entire stock exchange would break down."

Page 365

[Erhard Milch]
I also asked him about his statements obtained from records of minutes of meetings of the Central Planning Board, of which he was a member, that Russian labor should be supplied to work the mines and that Russian women should be enlisted in agricultural work. Milch was as evasive as he was in court. He looked more uncomfortable than he had managed to appear in court two days ago, however, and said that "many things were said in the heat of a war, and not all were calculated to be read back to you later."

...

I inquired: What about the statement you are reported to have made regarding the draining off of French young men to work in Germany, so that in the event of an attack of the mainland by the Allies, these Frenchman could not act as partisans? Milch said he gathered that the interpretation put on his words regarding clearing France, and Italy for that matter, of partisans or possible partisans was that he was in favor of forced labor. "Nothing could be further from the truth! But our Fatherland was threatened by defeat from these bands of Maquis and other wild groups, and what else could be done by a loyal German anxious to achieve a victory for his Fatherland?"

Page 366

But Milch looked worried and harried. It was the first time I had seen this little compact man, who looks younger than his fifty-six years, in any way ruffled. I said in parting that his testimony for Goering had incriminated him, in my opinion. he replied, "No. Let them try me. I shall have plenty to say about the Allies. I have some very good friends among the Americans and English, and the French industrialists, too. i have done nothing of which I am ashamed."

It was true enough, he did not appear ashamed - merely worried about his own immunity from trial as a war criminal.

Page 375/376/377

[Rudolf Mildner]
"On September 17, 1943, I got to Denmark. I carried an oder with me from Mueller, to arrest Niels Bohr, a famous atomic physicist. He was a Jew or half Jew. That was the reason for the order." Mildner said he imagined his work was to be different because he had known many Danes in the past fifteen years, including Danish girls. he didn't know actual Danish conditions, he said. "I knew there might be some resistance but I didn't want to mix into Danish affairs any more than I had to. Bohr was a Danish citizen and I didn't like the order Mueller gave me. I was not in Denmark long, but during that time I received an order from Himmler through Best. I had already established a central office of the Security Police in Denmark in the five larger cities. The telegram said that "the evacuation of Danish Jews was to start at once. There were six thousand Jews in Denmark."

These Jews, said Mildner, were people who had fled Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and lived in Denmark for hundreds of years. "I was very distressed. I went to Best and asked why the Jews should be evacuated. They kept quiet and did no harm. They were Danish citizens and Denmark was a sovereign state. Best explained that Ribbentrop had spoken to Hitler and said he thought it was best to have the Jews evacuated from Denmark. Ribbentrop was afraid he might be called on the carpet for not having taken any action against the Jews in Denmark." in other words, Ribbentrop anticipated Hitler's wishes in this regard. "Yes. That was what Best said. I can say that the reason for the deportation of Jews from Denmark is Ribbentrop. Whether it would have been ordered later by Hitler, I don't know." Do you know of any documents int hat regard? "No. Best told me. All of us were distressed, Best as well as my coworkers."

"I immediately sent a telegram to Mueller with recommendations that deportation of Jews of Denmark would cause many misgivings. First because the Jews were quiet politically, and did not appear in any way disturbing. Second, the deportation would have serious consequences for the German-Danish relationship, because Danish agriculture sent food to Germany and Danish industry also worked for Germany. Then there were the repercussions it would have on the Scandinavians and in North America. I added that all the Danish people object to it. i said in the telegram, too, that it would result in more sabotage and unrest. I requested that the order for deportation be canceled."

In a few days the order came from Himmler to best, informing him to proceed with the given order. "Desperate about it, I wen tot the airport and flew to Berlin. I wanted to see Kaltenbrunner. I actually saw Mueller. I again told Mueller all the misgivings, although I had to omit the humane reasons - I had to use other arguments." Mueller called his secretary, in Mildner's presence, and dictated a telegram to Himmler. He wrote all that Mildner told him. "I flew back although Mueller said the cable wouldn't do much good. I still had some hope. Paul Kanstein was assigned for liaison between Best and the Danish government. Kanstein knew Denmark well. He was very friendly with all the Danish ministers. A meeting was called with Kanstein, Best, and myself present and we decided that all Jews should be warned. If the order had to be carried out, I had no interest that any Jews should fall into our hands. A few days later another cable came from Himmler - to deport the Jews at once. A representative of Eichmann came with two ships and a detachment from Oslo consisting of a battalion of Ordinary Police. One night, October 1, I think, the action began. I spent that evening with Kanstein. In all they seized four to five hundred Jews. They were put on a ship, and I believe went via Oslo to Stettin to Theresiensadt [Czechoslovakia]. The other Jews, who were warned, were hidden by Danes and by night fled to Sweden. There was very lively traffic. One could
go by rowboat - the distance was only three kilometers. That was the whole action.

...

"In addition, I didn't arrest Niels Bohr because I didn't want to arrest Danish scientists. Bohr fled to Sweden. That was long after the Jewish deportation. From Sweden Bohr went to England, was received by Churchill, and Radio London announced that Bohr decided to his work to the Allies.

Page 378

"I told Mueller that it would be useless to use countersabotage - that it was just murder." What did countersabotage mean? "That I shall explain in a moment. It's very interesting. Whenever a Danish or German businessman who did business with the Germans was murdered, an important Dane should be murdered - at first unofficially; later it became quite official. Or if a Danish factory working for Germany was blown up by sabotage, another factory working only for the Danes should be destroyed." A crazy idea. "Yes. It was Hitler's idea, not Himmler's, I can prove it. And if such was the case, the work of the Security Police in Denmark was finished because there would be continuous murderous activity, blowing up of businesses, and giving the Reich a bad name.

Page 387/388/389/390/391/392

[Otto Ohlendorf]
There were a large number of Jews who held more favorable positions than they should have, according to their percentage of the population. Germans should have held those positions. This accounted for the 1938 action of Goebbels against the Jews." Therefore, all Jews were dispossessed? "No that was the November 1938 action of Goebbels against the Jews without the consent of Hitler. That was in reprisal for the murder of a Paris Nazi official by the Jew Herschel Grynszpan." Do you believe that? "No. Goebbels was just looking for an excuse." did you know Goebbels personally? "Yes." What sort of person was he? "I met him several times. He was clever, fanatic, having a clubfoot he might have suffered a minority inferiority complex, knowing that because of his physical appearance, he knew he never could reach leadership. he was unscrupulous in his propaganda. I always oppose Goebbels. I always tried to have people educated on a broad basis, while Goebbels tried to supply them with knowledge for the moment. Goebbels considered humans as objects to be used for political purposes - for the moment."

Did you do anything concretely against Goebbels? "My reports in the SD always referred to these facts." Anything else about Goebbels? "I always had the feeling that Goebbels didn't respect people as a whole. He was reckless in his contacts in his own office. He had no consideration for anyone. He was only concerned about governing. He took his way of governing from the Catholic hierarchy. As far as I know, Goebbels attended a Catholic school and was brought up in a cloister." He seems to have turned against the Catholics. "Yes. But it did not hinder him from agreeing with authoritarian methods of governing. Goebbels kept faith only with himself."

...

He spent one year in Italy and studied fascism - in 1931. It was an academic exchange service. "I returned as a fanatic antifascist."

...

Were you still in the NSDAP? "Yes." How could you be in a fascist party and be a fanatic antifascist? "It's regrettable that you think they are the same. There is much difference. Fascism is a purely stately principle. Mussolini said in 1932, 'The first thing is the state - and from the state are derived the rights and fate of the people. Humans come second.' In National Socialism, it was the opposite. People and humans come first, and the state is secondary."

Do you believe that? "I did. The bad thing was that Hitler hated the state so much, the government never functioned." Do you think Hitler really liked people? "Oh, yes. The fault I see in Hitler is that he left his original base, his liking of the people, and sought the recognition of other nations by waging wars." Do you think Hitler really liked people if he ordered millions of Jews destroyed? "In this was Hitler's downfall." But do you think Hitler liked people? "In 1933 - 1939, Hitler did tremendous things for the German people." Do you think Hitler liked people in general, or only a concept known as the Volk? "I can't answer it generally." Be as specific as you care to be. "Well, he liked the German people." Any other people? "I don't know." Do you think Hitler liked people when he ordered men, women, and children killed regardless of race, color, or creed, in cold blood, not in battle against a town, or air raids, but in files near ditches, as you know the process better than I do? "I can't answer the questions generally or specifically. I don't know the psychological reasons which brought Hitler to do this."

What do you think of it yourself? "One can't generalize, looking at it from a German point of view. Just how many people were shot because of race or creed, I don't know. not many Germans were shot. Hitler believed in having it done for the good of the German people." How could Hitler love people and shot others? "Hitler did it for his people. Hitler didn't believe it would end this way." What do you think? "Hitler didn't expect world war." The whole world seemed to expect war. "I don' think such questions can be answered simply." What is your own idea? "I didn't say he was a wonderful man - we started out with a discussion on the definition of fascism and Nazism." As it worked out, was there any difference? "The chief of state in Germany adopted imperialistic beliefs. The extermination of the Jews goes back to the campaigns of Streicher, Goebbels, and Ley, who continually stressed the fact that Jews were enemies of the German people." how did you figure a six-month-old Jewish infant must be killed - was it an enemy? "In the child we see the grown-up. I see the problem differently." How? "I saw the Jewish question in 1933-34 in this way: Give the Jews a region where they would have a base and they could have minorities in other countries. Nothing particular happened - and then came the Goebbels action in 1938. Until 1938 there was no plan to exclude Jews from economic life. the econoic experts never agreed with it."

What was you testimony in court? "I described how an Einsatzgruppe received an order to liquidate Jews in Russia. This was not an anti-Semitc order; rather the Jews in Russia were said to be the main carrier of Bolshevism there. It was against my will that I was ordered to an Einsatzgruppe in Russia. There were five hundred men. Mostly Ordinary Police and armed SS. The region included Odessa and from Nikolaiev to Rostov and Crimea." Did you know what your function was to be? "Yes. I knew the orders. Einsatzkommandos in the charge of colonels general executed the orders." And you were a lieutenant general in charge of the Einsatzgruppe? "No. I was only a brigadier general at the time. It was 1941-42." What did your Einsatzgruppe do/ "The Jews were shot in a military manner in a cordon. There were fifteen-men firing squads. One bullet per Jew. In other words, one firing squad of fifteen executed fifteen Jews at a time." Did you supervise or witness? "O was there twice, for short periods. " Were the victims men, women, and children? "Yes." Were the children shot? "Yes." Was Uman in your territory? "No. Uman is in Ukraine." How many Jews were killed by your group? "Ninety thousand reported. I figure actually only sixty to seventy thousand were shot." Any records kept? "Not individual names." Where did these Jews who were shot come from? "From Russian towns."

Did you fell that you were doing the right thing? "I myself didn't have to do it." Didn't you direct it? "Yes. But orders were given to the Einsatzkommandos leaders. All I had to do was see to it that it was done as humanely as possible." Would you do it again? "I didn't do anything." Would you direct it again or obey such an order again? "I don't think such a question is right. I think you can save that question. I suffered enough for years. Many people had to carry out orders they disapproved of. I rejected the order twice, but had to obey it the third time. The order came from Heydrich." Was your appetite or sleep disturbed? "Of course. And I had to relieve people who had nervous breakdowns." Many? "A few." Any sadists among the executioners or on your staff? "No. These people were ordered to do i - they were not selected. They were ordered to do it , and so they did it."

At this point, Ohlendorf is glumly reminiscent. He has shifted the burden of the mass murder onto Heydrich. He feels no remorse now except nominally. he looks like a burned-out ghoul, and his conscience, if t can be called such, is clean as a whistle and empty. There is a dearth of affect, but nothing clinically remarkable. His attitude is "Why blame me? I didn't do anything"

...

Then why did you shoot ninety thousand Jews? "First, I didn't shoot them. Firing squads did that. Secondly, I didn't approve of it."

Then why did you go through with it? "What else could I do?" If you disapproved of it, you could have protested and refused, it seems to me. "Where could I desert to? I was under oath to Hitler." Under oath to commit mass murder? "Under oath." For what? What did the oath state? "I could not have prevented it if I had killed myself. It would still have gone off according to schedule. These orders were given to the Einsatzkommandos in Berlin before they joined my group." Does the commando leader have more power than the group leader - is that what you mean? "No. I too received orders from Berlin."

...

"I told you how I spent sleepless nights, how it upset my inner self." But you went right on working for the Nazis and reached the rank of lieutenant general? Ohlendorf does not answer this, just sits tight-lipped and rather hostile. None of the questions were expressed in a hostile manner.

Did your wife know of this business of the Einsatzgruppe? "No." Have you seen her since 1941-42? "I saw her, but never talked to her about those things. I didn't think it was good conversation for a woman."

But it's all right to shoot women, not all right to talk to them about shootings? "In the first place, I didn't shoot women. I merely supervised."

...

Who is responsible for these crimes? "The Fuhrer and Himmler."

Page 407

[Oswald Pohl]
I asked Pohl if he considered himself in any way responsible or guilty, as an accomplice or a direct participant, in the murder of the 5 million Jews in the concentration camps, and he the countless other thousands of internees who perished through disease, neglect, starvation, beatings, hangings, and shootings. By this time, Pohl looked anxious and no longer the composed practical businessman talking about stocks and bond. That he could still not visualize his own importance in the criminal world of the Nazis was clear, but he was beginning to get an inkling at least of one individual's view of his activities. He replied, "In no way am I responsible or guilty for the murder of the 5 million Jews or the deaths of others in the concentration camps. About the murder of the 5 million Jews, I had nothing whatever to do with it. The fact that I was in charge of all the concentration camps in Germany from 1942 until the end is beside the point. I have explained and explained again that I sent Gluecks, one of my subordinates, to take charge of this program, and that I stayed out of it. Now, as far as the others who died in concentration camps or who were punished because of bad behavior or who might have been executed because of the hostage system - the reprisal system - that too is not my responsibility, but was ordered by the local party district administrator, or police functionary, or Himmler and the Gestapo, and it was a bad policy. I was just an administrator.

Page 420/421

[Walter Schellenberg]
"Himmler hated Russia but I had him convinced that Russia could not be defeated." Was Himmler convinced? "At first Himmler hated me for it but then he began to think about it because of my documentary evidence." It's fantastic. "Yes, but I did it. In 1943 I began to astrology with Himmler. I needed it as an instrument to get more influence with Himmler because he believed in astrology. In my horoscope of Hitler I predicted the Attentat against Hitler in February 1944; as you know it actually took place on July 20, 1944. When the Attentat began, Himmler was very much convinced. Although Himmler himself played a small part in the Attentat, he was convinced. I also predicted Hitler would not survive April 1945. When Hitler did kill himself, Himmler was more than ever convinced."

That was rather late in the game, was it not? "But not too late. I purposely told Himmler that he was supposed to be the successor to Hitler - to be a reformer, and that then he himself must step down."

Himmler a reformer, the man who ordered 5 million Jews murdered, and who according to Bach-Zeleski wanted 3 million Slavs exterminated? "Himmler believed there would be chaos, and I strengthened in him that belief - I used him as a political tool for my own political purposes. i told him that he had to make good all the bad things - that he had to release all political prisoners. Jews were to be released." What Jews? Hoettl said that in August 1944 Eichmann told him between 4 and 5 million of them had been killed to that time. " I didn't know that. In October 1944 I had a conference with jean-Marie Musy, former president of Switzerland, with Himmler present, and later Himmler and Musy had a conference alone. I learned at a later date that Himmler gave positive orders on the treatment of the Jews, showing that my ideas had taken root in him."

Peculiar, because when Allied troops moved into Germany, concentration camps were burned and the inmates burned alive or shot. "I know. I was allowed to take 1,200 Jews into Switzerland. That began in January 1945. Every two weeks a train with 1,200 Jews could leave Germany for Switzerland. It only happened once because Kaltenbrunner went up to Hitler and had the whole ting stopped.

Was Kaltenbrunner then, in your opinion, worse than Himmler? "Yes. Especially during the last phase of the war. Kaltenbrunner had more influence with Hitler - in practice Kalentbrunner was worse than Himmler.

Page 440

[Paul O. Schmidt]
"Therefore, I was opposed to these treaty-breaking methods. I was in opposition both privately and personally. I had a taste of the darker aspects of militarism when I was a corporal in the First World War. I don't believe in the educational value of military training. I felt that military training as practiced in Germany or elsewhere was bad. I disliked the caste system, and bullies. From this general point of view, I was against the reintroduction of compulsory military service. Compulsory military service began again in Germany in 1936. It was a decision taken by Germany in violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty."

Page 442/443

"In September 1938, there was a meeting at Berchtesgarden between Hitler and Chamberlain. Hitler put forth Germany's claim to the Sudeten territories. Chamberlain did not agree. There were no Czech representatives. The Czechs were not even invited and were hardly informed. One ally quietly signed away territory belonging to another ally. It was a terrible encouragement to Hitler, who saw the weakness of the Allied situation. France was an ally of Czechoslovakia but also ceded Czech territory through the French prime minister, Daladier.

"There was a meeting at Bad Godesberg seven to ten days after the one at Berchtesgaden. Chaberlain and Hitler met without any other parties present, except myself. The famous Munich Conference of September 29-30, 1938, took place two week after Bad Godesberg. The parties met on the basis of the proposition put forth by Mussolini to the French. Mussolini made the initial Munich draft. he saw things more realistically than my own people. That was always so. The Mediterraneans are always greater realists than the people of the north. The fact that war was avoided in 1938 was as much due to Mussolini as to Chamberlain. We Germans had no part in it. Hitler was quite prepared to to go war.

"At Berchtesgaden feelings were strained. The atmosphere improved a little at the Godesberg meeting. At Munich the personal relationships were again strained. But once the agreement had been reached and the famous 'no more war' agreement was arranged between Britain and Germany, the atmosphere was better. I though Chamberlain was very happy to have Hitler sin the paper he had typed and brought along with him from England. Chamberlain was warmly welcomed at Munich. He was the hero of the German people in Munich - not Hitler. the German masses gave flowers to Chamberlain. One could see on their faces that they thanked Chamberlain for saving the peace of Europe despite Hitler.

"Hitler didn't like this show at all. He feared that it would give the impression that the German people were pacifists, which, of course, would be unpardonable in the eyes of the Nazis. Therefore, the Nazis didn't like this Munich show at all."

Page 444

[October 1940]
Franco and Hitler talked together for a long time. Between the lines of the conversation Gibraltar was discussed. It was our idea to conquer Gibraltar. Special troops were being trained in fortress warfare. Specialists in taking fortified places were trained near Liege in Belgium. There were new methods of approach and attack, studied with a view to an assault on Gibraltar. Of course, it was necessary to obtain Franco's consent. As I said, this was one of the subjects of discussion between the lines. The meeting didn't go well at all.

"In the first place, Franco was hesitating, uncertain; he is of weak character. He obviously played for time. WE wanted to precipitate matters as usual. We thought that getting Franco's consent for the attack on Gibraltar would be a matter of one afternoon and that would be enough - but it wasn't. Hitler and Franco separated without achieving anything. Hitler was disappointed and so was Franco.

Page 447

Had Schmidt any impression of Sauckel? "That man who is responsible for slave labor in Germany does not have my sympathy. I did not like the whole idea of what he did. After ll, there are limits to what one can do with foreign populations in the forced labor business. In the first place, the whole idea is completely unproductive. One needs three or four men to watch one compulsory worker. Sauckel deserves the severest punishment. You can see that there were no strong characters surrounding Hitler. There were only weaklings like Ribbentrop, Funk, and so forth. Hitler wanted a silent audience. Even Goering, who superficially gives the appearance of a strong man, was in reality childlike, weak character who was known as a dope addict in the inner circles."

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