The Nuremberg Interviews (64 page)

What about concentration camps? I asked him. “I told you when we first met that I was beaten up by a British general because I denied knowledge of a small camp he took me through. I repeat that I knew of only two camps, Oranienburg and Dachau, and no others. The SD knew about these things. They were kept from the average German and certainly from a person like myself who had nothing to do with such affairs.
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Once I visited Dachau just to see what sort of things were happening because I had heard rumors — it was 1935, I believe, but everything I saw was in order.”

I asked him what he thought of Hitler personally. “I knew him but slightly. He was always correct when I saw him. But later on he became impossible, and could not be approached. I think personally he was the greatest tragedy for Germany.”

As far as National Socialism is concerned, Milch said, “I never voted for it and never approved it. I was invited to build up the air force for defensive purposes and I did so. I never approved of the racial theories or other trappings of Nazism. There was no personal liberty. Everyone felt spied on. One could not listen to enemy radio broadcasts. There was no free press. No wonder things could go on as they did and only a small group of people knew anything about it.”

I tried to draw him out more on Goering’s personality and his relationship to him. “Not everything he did I approved of,” was all I could get.

Milch has been on the stand in Goering’s behalf for two days. He presented a picture of Germany as being unprepared for a war in 1939 from
the air force standpoint. He actually said little about Goering personally during his testimony. His cross-examination by Justice Jackson had yielded little except that he had received a gift from Hitler of 250,000 marks in 1940 on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.

I asked Milch about that gift. He treated it with equanimity. “What was wrong with such a gift? It was a birthday present. It was not a bribe.” He went on to say that others received similar gifts, some larger than his own, and that in a way it was unfair for Jackson to have brought it up because it might give the German people the wrong impression about him — that he was personally growing rich on the war. “That is not the truth. In private enterprise, which I gave up when I entered the army in 1933, I could have earned a thousand times as much as I did. The impression that might leave on the German people is false.”

I asked him what he meant by trying to convince the court that Germany was unprepared for war in 1939. I reminded him of Jackson’s asking him how long it took Germany to conquer Poland, to drive English troops off the continent, to conquer France. The answers Milch had given were eighteen days, six weeks, and two months, respectively. Later, when Jackson pinned Milch down to how an unprepared nation could conduct blitzkriegs, Milch had amended what he said to a statement about Germany being prepared for a war against Poland but not against the world.

Milch said to me, with eyes slightly narrowed, “Justice Jackson was very clever. But I never disagreed with a word he said. I said Germany was rearming. The only point of disagreement was in the extent.” I remarked that this was a crucial point.

What about Milch’s statement that Poland and France were better prepared for war than Germany, because Germany had only five years in which to prepare? “The facts speak for themselves. By that I meant exactly what I said. That Germany beat these countries was due to better planning and not better preparedness.”

In the course of his cross-examination, Jackson had mentioned an interrogation by Milch in which he had said he warned Hitler to get rid of Ribbentrop or there would be trouble with England. I asked him if he had any comments to make on Ribbentrop. “Need one comment on that fool? He is not a foreign minister but a blind adherent of Hitler. He is also personally disagreeable and vain.”

What about the statement Jackson extracted regarding everyone’s
fear of Himmler and the SS, from the Reich marshal on down? I inquired. “As I said in court, it is true. And I could say much more. Himmler was the most feared man in Germany by everyone, including the most loyal German. It was a bad system and I am the first to admit it. But what could I do about it?”

In the course of his cross-examination by Jackson, Milch had been reminded that he considered Hitler “abnormal” after March 1943. As a psychiatrist I was interested in this, I said; did he have anything more to add? “Hitler was progressively self-centered as time went on. That he was mentally abnormal there is no doubt. If the court received the impression, as Jackson cleverly pointed out, that Goering as number two man was continuing his fidelity to a mentally abnormal Hitler, he is correct. I didn’t disagree in court.” Milch almost chuckled.

“It’s surprising how little I disagreed with your Mr. Jackson. I wanted those things that I thought about Hitler to come out, but there was no place for it until Mr. Jackson produced them from previous interrogations.”

I asked Milch why it was that he was testifying for Goering if he was really quite opposed to him, as seemed obvious. “In the first place, I am not opposed to Goering, except in certain details. Goering was an early and fanatic Nazi. That I did not agree with. I only joined the party after its rise to power, as Jackson brought out, in 1933. Then I soon became in charge of the aviation end of things. My intentions were to build an industrial air force, not a war machine. I was convinced that we needed aerial parity with other nations in the matter of bombers, fighters, and so on. By 1938 I could see the direction Hitler was taking, and as was brought out in court, that was well known. It was impossible to quit by then.”

Jackson had hinted that Milch’s father, or at least his mother’s husband, was Jewish. Goering had steps taken to “Aryanize” Milch in some way. Jackson had referred to Milch’s “alleged father” as having been Jewish. Milch had said that was a matter that had been cleared up in 1933. In court it had been rather mysterious. Just what is the truth? I asked Milch. “I had applied for admission to the National Socialist Party in March 1933, I believe. There was some question about my father’s father because his papers could not be found. So I had to make an affidavit, which Goering signed, that I was fully German. My father was, as far as I know, not Jewish, as Jackson mentioned. It is possible he was partially Jewish, but of that I am not ashamed.”

I said that I had heard a rumor he had declared that he was born out of wedlock and that his mother’s husband was not really his father. “That is not true. Definitely.”

When I asked him for details about his family history he was evasive and I did not pursue the subject. I was more interested at this time in obtaining his views on the cross-examination.

I passed on to Jackson’s question about Milch’s having taken measures to accelerate the procuring of Russian POWs from the camps for laboring purposes. 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 asked Milch whether he felt that he was morally or ethically wrong in his suggestions for the use of Russian labor. “No. If we had lost territory to the Russians they would have done the same thing. Besides, the Russians had plenty of manpower and we were short.”

I said that was begging the question, from a moral standpoint, but I was merely interested in his attitudes and that it was clear he had no regrets regarding his actions. He said again that the British general had struck him over the head shortly after he was captured and taken through the concentration camp for an inspection of it; as a result his memory was faulty and he could not really tell whether some of the things he was accused of having said were true or not.

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 Frenchmen 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 farther 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?”

I did not reply to this rhetorical and cynical question. I asked him if he
had anything further to say regarding his part in fostering slave labor. “It was not fostering slave labor. Not at all. It was strategic economic policy. Besides, not all of what I am purported to have said can be interpreted literally. Much was never put into practice. Perhaps if it had been, it would have been a different story and I would not be sitting here in a cell.”

I went on to rehash Jackson’s quoting Milch that he, Milch, would personally see to it that German foremen physically assaulted foreign slave workers who protested. Milch had reportedly replied that he would not tolerate any foreigner saying to a German foreman, “I will cut your throat.” I went on with the Jackson quotations about Milch saying he had personally ordered two Russian airmen who had attempted to escape to be hanged or shot and that this was done by the SS the very next day. It was done in the factory, where others could see it. Milch had denied it. He still denied it but quite feebly, as he had done in court. I said that it seemed unlikely that such stuff should appear in minutes of a German meeting if it were untrue. Milch said that minutes could be false.

Milch looked washed out. It was curious because he had not seemed that way in court the other day. I remarked on this.

“I did not want to take the stand. Goering insisted on it. I thought I would be able to testify about Goering and that would be the end of it. But instead they drag in all these things I am reported to have said. It’s probably all groundless. Things taken out of context sound so much worse. Besides, we were at war.”

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.

Rudolf Mildner
(1902–1951)

Rudolf Mildner was a senior official of the Gestapo, including head of the Gestapo in Chemnitz and later in Kattowitz, Poland, and thus responsible for sending thousands of Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz, which was in Kattowitz. In September 1943 Mildner became commander of the Sipo and SD in Denmark, just before the Nazis began an “action” to deport the Jews in that country. He testified for the prosecution at Nuremberg and remained in custody until 1949.

Interviewed Rudolf Mildner with the aid of Gilbert, who translated. Mildner was chief of police in Kattowitz.
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A couple of days ago he was officially interrogated, and broke down and was depressed thereafter when some of his underlings testified as to how many Poles he had ordered to be executed. He would not eat, vomited occasionally, wept, and showed other evidences of agitated reactive depression. The interrogation was on the business of Mildner’s part in the executions at Auschwitz while he was a presiding member of the court that sentenced to death, he says, between five hundred and six hundred Poles.

Last night he was amiable, friendly, mild-mannered, ingratiating. He told us that he was police chief and a puppet in Silesia; that though he sat in the court and handed the sentences to the convicted Poles, the trials were formalities; and that the sentences and convictions were prearranged without his being consulted by the party district administrator. He and other officials just had to obey orders.

He is a big-boned, forty-three-year-old man, with beginning baldness. He could be a policeman anywhere.

He said the number of Poles he had executed for minor misdeeds, like stealing, was not more than five or six hundred. He absolves himself from any blame in the matter, saying the order came from party district administrator Fritz Bracht. Furthermore, he said, “Suppose you Americans were in Germany fighting Russia, and some Germans sabotaged you, or shot your soldiers, or stole. You’d hang them. And rightly so. So to preserve order and prevent sabotage, the Germans in Poland and Silesia had to do that, too.”