The Nuremberg Interviews (51 page)

What do you mean? Afraid I don’t follow you completely. “Look at the whole setup. I don’t know the American or English people. Look at the East — a force that can’t be beat, if the Russians and Chinese face us. A few little nations in Europe. Take a look at the Balkans and Greece and other little countries — it’s the same all over.

“If the U.S. and England had given us a little help, Hitler wouldn’t have been needed.” Do you recall that the U.S. was in a depression? “Yes, but before that. Giving the Saar region to France, the Polish Corridor, southern Tirol to Austria, et cetera. How can there be peace with people pressed together for want of land? Hitler took the bad points of the Versailles Treaty and used them to his own advantage. People were hungry, would run after anyone who promised food and clothing.”

Dietrich says he was in the army until 1927, when he was obliged to leave and enter the tobacco business. He remained in that business until 1930. He was a customs official with an Austrian tobacco monopoly. He handled 1.5 to 2 million pounds of tobacco and made six hundred marks per month.

In 1930 he returned to Nazi Party politics, as Nazi representative to the Reichstag from Schwabia. He had no “political mandate” until 1933, when he was given the organization of the SS Bodyguard regiment. He received a salary of 780 marks or 1,100 marks per month, with taxes taken off the former figure. He laughs wryly at this Dietrich humor.

He was Hitler’s personal choice to lead the Bodyguard regiment. “Originally, it was seven hundred men. At the end, it was twenty-one thousand men. Of these, in 1942, about thirty-two were still alive. What came after that is just a name — not the real thing. I gave up command of the Bodyguard regiment in March 1943.” He was with the SS from the beginning — in Poland, France, Greece, the western front, Russia, and again the western front. He became army commander in September 1944. Did you know General Anton Dostler?
²
“No.” Hear about him? “Yes.” What do you think of his trial? “A prisoner is a prisoner and shouldn’t be shot. As far as I know, Dostler’s orders came from other orders by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. For example, from Normandy, where seven Canadians were shot. Colonel General Kurt Meyer was convicted for the shooting.
³
He claimed he did not know who gave the orders. In my own army at Malmédy, I heard, after I was captured, that 164 people were shot. I was general of the Sixth Panzer Army, but nobody had reported anything about it to me.
⁴

“In all the armies in the West, we observed the Geneva Convention.” How about in the East? “No. There was no Geneva Convention. But we didn’t shoot Russians either.
⁵
Where would we get 3 million prisoners if we shot all the Russians? Propaganda! You can’t open your mouth, even in the biggest democracy. Do you think it’s so nice to sit in prison after ten years of war for the Fatherland? If I would be God, I would do it differently!”

What are your views on religion? “I never left the church.” Do you know the Catholic chaplain? “Yes, a very decent fellow.” What do you think of the crimes against the Jews? “The biggest nonsense they could do. They could have told the Jews, if they didn’t want them, they could get out. The Germans could have given them three to four hundred millions and let them go somewhere. Personally, I was never anti-Semitic. In childhood, I lived next door to some Jewish people and never even knew it.” Did you believe Streicher, Rosenberg, et al.? “I never read Streicher! Rosenberg I never could understand — too complicated.” Hitler was also against the Jews. “He seldom spoke about it. In 1943, I read a letter
from my wife [in Greece] that the Jews were all brought together. I went up to Himmler and asked him. Himmler said it was not true. Himmler said he would bring them together to work because they weren’t too good to work. But that was at a time when the Jewish people didn’t live anymore. I never learned as much as here in prison now. You should talk to Wilhelm Hoettl and Schellenberg; they were Himmler’s second men.”

Franz Halder
1884–1972

Franz Halder, colonel general, was chief of the army general staff from 1938 to 1942, and dismissed on September 24, 1942, because of a dispute with Hitler over the German offensive against Stalingrad. After the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944, he was sent to a concentration camp, and liberated by the Americans at the end of the war.

There was a short interview with Franz Halder today, devoted to discussion of his family life and experience in the concentration camp after the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Hitler’s life.

“I lived a simple soldier’s life from my youth on. I was married very young, at the age of twenty-three. I was twenty-one when I became engaged. I had the good luck to marry the woman I loved. I can say now at the close of my life that my home and family was the foundation of my strength. My wife was not wealthy; we lived simply and very happy. We did not participate in social functions, which neither of us cared for. We have three daughters and fourteen grandchildren. Each daughter has one daughter herself, and the rest sons.”

Halder is completely shook up emotionally at this point and is frankly weeping. After several moments he said, “To see daughters grow up is one of the most beautiful things in life. For a father to have daughters is the finest experience. A scientist who wrote about heredity science claimed that daughters resemble the father and sons the mother.” I believe that depends on the situation and the parents. “Yes, of course.” General Halder’s daughters were born in 1909, 1913, and 1914. They
married in the order of their ages, each when she was between nineteen and twenty.

We discussed the personalities of his daughters. “They vary quite a bit. The oldest one doesn’t show much similarity to either me or my wife — but you find that frequently in the firstborn. In my middle daughter and youngest daughter there is a greater resemblance to my side of the family. The middle one has taken the best from my wife’s family and from mine. The youngest resembles my family almost exclusively.”

Which is your favorite daughter? Halder smiled and again becomes emotionally labile. “I love all of them and they love me, too. The oldest lives with my wife, the youngest lives in upper Bavaria, the middle one lives in Schleswig. I hear from the oldest and the youngest frequently because the postal service is good, but the service from Schleswig is poor. My greatest aggravation here is that I cannot write a decent letter to my loved ones. This telegram style of letter on these POW blanks, that is the worst that I have to experience. I cannot give any of myself in these letters. In Hitler’s prison I could write to my family as much as I wanted, although I couldn’t write to my wife or to my oldest daughter, who were also imprisoned. They did that to make me suffer. I was not even supposed to know that she was in prison.

“My wife was in Ravensbrück concentration camp during two months of my stay there. I was not supposed to know that she was there.” Did they treat your wife fairly in Ravensbrück? “She was not mistreated, but that is the best one can say for it.” What was the routine in Ravensbrück? “It was a prison. I was allowed to go outside once a day in the air alone for a half hour. I was in solitary and the door was locked. It was not open like here, where I am allowed to walk about at least inside. After I had been at Ravensbrück for some time they asked me if I wanted to do some work, such as making lists, et cetera, to just pass the time away. There were no other advantages. During the day one could hear the yelling of people who were being clubbed. At night one could hear shots, people being shot. When the window of my cell was open, the cell would be filled with smoke from the crematory. There was contact between internees from window to window, and I heard in a short time what was happening.”

How far was the crematory from your billet? “It was a distance about twice as long as this room; then there was a wall, and just beyond it the crematory. When the wind blew in at the south I got smoke in my cell. It
was a fat smoke, big flakes of smoke — human smoke. I don’t know who invented the crematory, Hitler, Himmler, or some other criminal, but I know that they stink.”

Halder went on to describe how he remained in Ravensbrück for two months, then he was sent to RSHA prison in Berlin, where he was in solitary custody and never given any fresh air. “That was the worst. There was no real light in the room, and day and night they had light-bulbs burning. I only left the cell for interrogations and whenever I had to go to the toilet. There was no toilet in the room. In this way they could torture you because sometimes they didn’t open the door for twenty-four hours, so that you suffered greatly if you had to go to the toilet. This they did consciously, but otherwise I was not tortured.”

Who interrogated you there? “I wrote it all out so that I could remember it all. I was interrogated once by Heinrich Mueller, the chief of the Gestapo, and another time by some representative of Mueller’s. That whole black bank of Kaltenbrunner and Schellenberg I had never heard of at that time.”
¹

What sort of person was Mueller? “He lacked personality, made no impression.”

Halder went on to describe how in the beginning of February 1945 the RSHA buildings were bombed out and for a few days he and other internees sat in the basement ruins. Then he was brought along with several others to Flossenbürg, in Upper Palatinate, near the Bohemian border. This was a concentration camp similar to Ravensbrück. Halder said that Ravensbrück seemed to be a women’s camp generally, whereas Flossenbürg was a camp for men. He remained at the latter place through February and March and was liberated by the American troops on April 9, 1945.

“In Flossenbürg you noticed things more; you had to notice every day so many people hanged in the courtyard. People were brought to their execution completely naked. They were driven into the courtyard and I could hear the noise of naked feet on the court ground right outside my window. Stretchers with corpses were carried past the doors of our cells. If by chance the peek holes were open, one could see them going by. In the courtyard where you took a walk, they had gallows arranged in such a way that you were obliged to look at them.

“About half the group that were brought with me from Berlin were hanged. This included Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Hans
Oster.
²
They were hanged at Flossenbürg. I learned about it when I was transported away. I went to Flossenbürg with Canaris and Oster, and when I left they were absent.”
³

At this point, Mr. Triest, the interpreter, mentioned that a letter had been received that was addressed to General Halder from an officer named Oster. I recalled that it was a pamphlet entitled, more or less,
In Memoriam to the German Army
. Halder said that this must have been a communication from the son of General Oster, who as far as Halder knows was a major in the army.

What kind of man was Canaris? “Extremely hard to describe. He was very clever and it was difficult to see through him. He came from a Greek family and he possessed many characteristics which were strange to one who had grown up in German schools. I had no real close connection with him; it was only through our mutual enmity to Hitler that we came closer together. I knew him during my whole fight with Hitler. Canaris worked with my predecessor, Ludwig Beck, and then with me. He was a lively man, an admiral.

“I knew General Oster better than Canaris. Oster and I grew up together. He was very lively, clever, temperamental, but in my opinion, somewhat superficial. But he was a decent man and opposed to Hitler.”

Why did they hang Canaris and Oster? “They must have had something definite on them. I know the Gestapo found a diary written by Canaris. Canaris was absolutely unpolitical, just like Oster and myself, and he fought against Hitler only because of his idealistic ideas. None of the officers who fought with me against Hitler had any political aims. It was a matter of possessing a different worldview. It was to liberate the German people from the Hitler regime, and then the German people could find a new government themselves.

“There was nobody in Germany who could liberate the German people except the military. In the later years we had the aid of some nonmilitary persons, such as the German ambassador to Rome and the finance minister, Schacht, although neither of them was very active. As a matter of fact, I myself could not participate actively in 1943 and 1944 because I was closely guarded by the Gestapo. I warned everyone not to get in touch with me but I always heard indirectly what was going on.”

Did you know of July 20 prior to its occurrence? “No. I felt that something like this would happen. I disapproved of the idea of an assassination. I don’t think political murder is a good basis for reform. Because
things were becoming increasingly difficult in 1943–44, civilian members took up connections with the SD, and the trade unions, and resistance groups all over the country. Several of these people were in Ravensbrück with me and they were all hanged.”