The Nuremberg Interviews (60 page)

Again Kleist smiled whimsically and remarked, “It’s interesting to me because you know not all of us generals and field marshals present here were of the same military and political faiths. On the question, however, of the preservation of the general staff, we are all united. It is an interesting phenomenon and indicative of the real unity of the German national spirit to observe how we stick together in this hour of crisis despite our differences of opinion previously. I think it is a noble thing. Our main effort is to disprove that a conspiracy existed. I personally am a frank and straightforward man and I will tell you that a conspiracy is so much
Quatsch
. As to whether a conspiracy existed among the politicians, that’s another matter. I have no opinion about that except to state that I personally hardly believe it.

“You see, the ridiculous aspect of the conspiracy charge is most clearly brought forward when you consider that there were officers in 1939 who were simple colonels or even lieutenant colonels and by 1945 they ended up as generals. How could any of these small officers have been involved in a conspiracy to make aggressive war? I have the viewpoint that no party dictatorship would suffer another organization rivaling
it, such as the general staff. For example, take Mussolini with his Black Shirts and the purge he found necessary among his army people. Or another example is Stalin, who shot Tukhachevsky and so many other generals just to prevent their becoming too strong and turning on him. So the indictment is ridiculous.”

Did Kleist feel that the indictments against the other organizations, such as the SS, SD, and SA, were likewise unwarranted? “That’s a different thing. In the first place, I am not particularly interested in those other organizations. It is the army and the general staff — the tradition and backbone of Germany — which must be preserved. But if you ask me about the SS and SA and so forth, I must say, too, that I don’t think the indictments are completely fair since there must have been some harmless people within those organizations. My impression of the SS and SA is that they were like unions, and that people were forced to join them, or did so voluntarily, because of expediency.” I remarked that I was sure that there was some truth in what he said but that the indictment was aimed at the leadership and not directed toward prosecuting a stenographer, for example, who happened to be a member of one of the organizations. Furthermore, I said, Justice Jackson had emphasized in his opening address on the subject of the organizations that it was not the intention of the Allies to prosecute every member of such an organization, but rather to try cases individually, utilizing the criteria of whether the individual involved had committed or had been a party to a war crime. “Then I must admit that the indictment against the SS, the SD, the SA, the Gestapo is correct — that the leaders of these organizations were criminal and not of the same high gentlemanly character as the leaders of the general staff, is well known. I would rather not say anything about this, however, and I wish you wouldn’t quote me. As a German, I feel that I could say this to a German court but not to a foreign tribunal. You can take my answer as a hint. You are a psychiatrist and I don’t have to say too much for you to understand what my feelings are. You can take a hint. I was always an opponent of Himmler and Heydrich.”

Would Kleist tell me more about Himmler and Heydrich? “I believe that Heydrich was the worst criminal of them all. I myself saw him and he looked with such a glance of hatred that I shall never forget it. In Silesia I had a hard battle against the SS and SA. We called it, jokingly, the ‘Fourth Silesia War.’ Three of the Silesian Wars were led by Frederick the Great and the other one was led by me against the SS and the SA.
My main battle was against the methods used by such party organizations by which they tried to get control and power.”

Did Kleist have any relatives or close friends who belonged to the Nazi Party? “No, just a brother-in-law and a small nephew.”

I asked him about his career and position in 1933 at the time of the Nazi accession to power. “I was a division commander in Silesia. At that time I was against the Nazi Party. In fact, all of us old army generals were against the party except for one or two, like General Walter von Reichenau, who was for it. On the other hand, Hitler came to power quite constitutionally because his was the strongest party. Yet in retrospect it wasn’t quite constitutional, because Hitler was unable to select his own ministers because of the fact that Hindenburg appointed many of the early ministers who served under Hitler at the beginning. For example, from the old Hindenburg cabinet came Schleicher, Neurath, and Papen.”

The interviewing of Kleist continued today. I had seen him a few times in the interim between June 12 and today, but never for any prolonged period. He has remained a hearty, youngish-appearing man despite his chronological age, and life in prison has not particularly affected him.

We began to talk in greater detail about his military career. He said that he joined an artillery-cavalry unit in 1900. He liked to ride horses and the military life in general was most agreeable to him. “I liked to command men and to have them obey orders.” In 1907 he attended the military riding institute at Hanover. There he participated in horse racing, tournaments of various sorts, and high fence jumping with horses. “Horses were my whole life at that time — my entire passion was horses.” He stayed at this institute for riding for three years. In 1910, he became a senior lieutenant, after having been a first lieutenant since 1901. From 1910 to 1913 he attended the War Academy, after which he went to join a regiment of hussars in Danzig. In 1914 he became a captain of cavalry and a squadron leader.

During the First World War, until 1917 he served at the front, as captain of his squadron. In 1917 he was ordered to the general staff with a division of guard cavalry in the field. In 1918 when the war ended, he served in the Ruhr, at Münster, in Westphalia, until May 1920. “I helped quell the revolution which took place in 1918 and 1919.”
¹

In 1922 he was promoted to major and returned to Hanover, where he commanded a squadron in the 100,000-man army. In 1924 he was transferred to the cavalry school as an instructor. In 1924 he became chief of the general staff of the Second Cavalry Division in Silesia. In 1927 or 1928 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1931 he commanded Infantry Regiment Number Nine in Potsdam. “I became an infantry commander at that time and have been an infantrist more or less ever since. I prefer horses.” On January 1, 1932, he was promoted to colonel and assumed command of the Second Cavalry Division in Breslau as the successor of Rundstedt.

In October 1932 he was promoted to major general, and in 1934 became lieutenant general. In 1936 he became the commanding general of all forces in Silesia and was promoted to the rank of general of cavalry.

I asked him whether he considered his promotions and rise in rank as quite rapid or not unusual. “I was a competent soldier and I would not say that my promotions in rank were unusual. I deserved to be promoted, in my own estimation. Furthermore, I have been a soldier since 1900 and have thus been an officer for over forty-five years.” I asked him why he had been called to the general staff. Had he been particularly outstanding in any military field? “It’s hard to say. I was a good frontline soldier and a practical man. Perhaps that accounts for my success in military life. There are too many shrewd politicians among us military folk and too few plain, practical soldiers with a knowledge of how to fight. For example, I never wrote any military books. I once wrote three lines in a cavalry newspaper about something or other. Essentially I was a frontline general and my interests were in achieving a military victory and not in writing theoretical tracts.”

I mentioned to Kleist that Field Marshal Leeb had told me about having written a book on the art of defense. Kleist said that he had never heard of Leeb’s book and that it was the first time he had ever heard it mentioned. I said that Leeb claimed that his book ranks with the military classic of Clausewitz. Kleist said smilingly, “Is that so? To tell you the truth, I never read Clausewitz either. I don’t know enough about Clausewitz to be able to tell you what his theories are. I know that the Russians must have read Clausewitz a good deal and perhaps it’s too bad I didn’t read it.”
²

As he had told me the other day, on February 5, 1938, he retired from
active duty along with Colonel General Fritsch, but was recalled to active duty at the end of August 1939, to serve in the war against Poland. 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 was 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 as Kleist groups. “This was in May 1940, and I began organizing this small army, which bore my name, in the territory behind Düsseldorf. 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.”
³

Why had Hitler ordered this? “Hitler thought it 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 it 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 many 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.

“I told General Giraud that I was worried to have to greet a famous French general in such a commonplace way. We were on very good terms and I can assure you that I treated him with as much respect as I would any German general.

“In the second part of the French campaign I crossed the front near Amiens, and broke through the so-called Weygand position across the Oise River. Again I was successful and took an enormous number of prisoners, traversing a large area. In the third part of the French campaign I crossed the Marne at Château-Thierry and pressed my way down to Lyons and the Swiss border. In the last part of the French campaign I occupied the Atlantic coast from the English Channel down to the Pyrenees.”
⁴

I remarked that it seemed to me that he must have been one of the most active army commanders in France. Kleist agreed eagerly. “Without being unduly modest I can assert that I was
the
most active army commander in France and that I shortened the French campaign by many months by my panzer actions. You know there is a great deal said about the French soldiers lacking fighting spirit. I think that is exaggerated. They fought quite bravely until the situation was made hopeless by our powerful German elements, and the French were completely surrounded. Perhaps there is a difference between a French and a German soldier: as soon as a Frenchman is surrounded he gives up. Later on in
this war we German soldiers were in much worse and more hopeless situations and we continued to fight with our true German spirit.

“The same thing can be said in a different sense about the Russian fighting spirit. The Russians are so primitive that they won’t give up even when they are surrounded by a dozen machine guns. I would say it is a difference between German bravery and Russian bravery in the sense that the former is logical and the latter brutal. The French, on the other hand, lack push. Probably one of the reasons for this French weakness was that they did not have anyone in whom they believed at that time. At least I gathered such an impression because during my months in France whenever I entered a French house, I never found pictures of leading French statesmen or generals or even of Napoleon. In other words, the French did not think of their leaders as important. Anyway, that was my impression at the time, and whether it was correct or not, I don’t know.”