The Nuremberg Interviews (74 page)

Aside from the Norwegians and Danes just mentioned, about how many people did you have released from concentration camps? “About one hundred, with their families.” Innocent or guilty people? “Innocent.” Then you knew that innocent people were in concentration camps? “I knew it only from those cases. I didn’t pay much attention to other cases.”

You didn’t care very much, perhaps? “I have to agree that I didn’t care because I was from day to day actively engaged in my work. I cannot be accused of having anything to do with it.

“Knowing and believing are two different things. I knew many innocent people were in concentration camps and used for forced labor, but I saw in the thing only another bad point in the whole system, and another reason to fight against the system.”

What do you think of Bach-Zelewski? “He is a complicated character. Many of my personal enemies picture me as a cold type — a person who acts according to a certain line, a calculating type.” And you feel you are not? “Not as my enemies mean it. My enemies don’t know my inner emotional life. But to go back to Bach-Zelewski — I think Bach-Zelewski has the kind of personality that can’t differentiate between the truth and lies. He gets himself so much into the whole thing he can’t differentiate. He convinces himself and believes he has gone so far that he has to die for the cause. Originally it was not the truth, but he so convinces himself — he’s ready to die for it.”

He’s trying not to die but to live, I guess. “Yes. I’m telling you this in confidence.”

Schellenberg greeted me with his usual aplomb this afternoon, seemed quite pleased to have another interview.

Family. Father:
“Yesterday I received the first news that he is alive. It was more than a year since I heard.” He is eighty. He was a piano manufacturer.
The firm was founded by subject’s great-grandfather. A musical aptitude runs in the family. “I played the cello. Father plays the piano and violin. Grandfather plays the organ and violin. I began taking cello lessons at the age of eight.”

He went on to say that his favorite composer was Edvard Grieg. He ceased playing cello after he fell from a horse at age twenty-three and fractured bones on both hands. He displayed scars and deformities of both hands to me. He said that when he plays the cello for five or ten minutes he gets cramps in the hands, so that it was impossible for him to continue playing. He said that other favorite compositions were Beethoven’s Third and Ninth Symphonies, and some of Mozart, though he feels that the latter is “harder to appreciate and understand than Beethoven. My sister always says that the only real music is Mozart.”

Asked if he cared for any of the Russian composers, he said he did not know much about them, but liked
The Sleigh Ride
by Mussorgsky. He wanted to know whether Tchaikovsky was a Pole or Russian. He was puzzled. Anyway, he did not know any of his compositions. “I heard of a new Russian composer — read about him since I’ve been in prison.” He could not recall the name, but when I mentioned Dmitry Shostakovich, said it was he.

He also mentioned Paul Hindemith, who was, he said, a pupil of Tchaikovsky, he believed. Hindemith was “hard to appreciate” because he was “atonal.” He has never heard any Stravinsky because it was banned during the Hitler regime. Aleksandr Borodin he believes he heard prior to 1933, but not during Hitler’s time. “My sister plays Rachmaninoff, but he too was not played during the war.” How about before the war? “I don’t recall hearing his work in concerts.” I asked why Hindemith left Germany and he said he did not know.

What is your opinion of suppressing music because of political or national or racial reasons? “I think it is a sign of weakness.” Yet you were a part of Himmler’s organization that suppressed it. “Yes. But in the early days I lacked political mental development. Later I tried to develop. I wanted to use my own power in my job and develop along new lines.” What sort of lines? “A full end of the regime. I went so far as to talk with Himmler about the murder of Hitler.” Was Himmler liberal, or more liberal than Hitler? “I believe Himmler knew he was not liberal but saw himself as a facilitator of a temporary system.” What was your idea of the ultimate system that should prevail in Germany? “I realized
at an early date that our system was nothing but a latent living appearance of inner revolution that had been suffocated at its beginning. And because of this, they wanted war. In my opinion a war between England and Germany was a war between brothers. In my inner self I admired the English government and political system.

“I must say today that — after all I saw — I’m glad England won the war, because Germany with its corrupt system and false selection of people in the government would never have been able to give the continent what the continent needed. I told this to a Swedish friend in 1944, who told it to the English ambassador in Sweden.” What were you doing in Sweden in 1944? “I tried to seek peace on my own responsibility.” Did Himmler know? “I could not tell Himmler everything because he was too false and two-faced.

“The English ambassador said that negotiations with the German system at that time were impossible” and suggested that Schellenberg “do away with Hitler.

“But I didn’t dare take this last step because of my family, which was still in Germany, and I didn’t dare move them out. Therefore, I tried to stir up Himmler against Hitler by astrology.

“It’s interesting that in March 1945 Kaltenbrunner informed Himmler that I had brought my wife to Switzerland. This was untrue, of course, but Himmler had it investigated.”

Did Himmler trust anyone? “No one. That was the difficulty of my position. Any day something might happen to me. Himmler told me at the end of April 1945, after I had held a conference with the Zionist leader in Sweden, that he felt sorry for what he had done in his life, regretted his sneakiness toward other people, and excused himself for that. He said, to quote Himmler from my memory: ‘If I had only listened to you, Schellenberg, in 1943, there still would have been time to do something for the German people.’ I always had the impression that Himmler was under the influence of Hitler. Himmler was suggestible — could easily have been under the influence of Hitler. Himmler conspired with me too much for it to be true that Hitler was under Himmler’s influence. Himmler and I plotted against Hitler too much for that. Toward the end of 1943 Himmler actually talked with me about killing Hitler. That was the danger in my position. Should someone change his mind, it would be the end of me. It became even more obvious after the
Attentat
of July 20, 1944, when Kaltenbrunner worked
more and more closely with Hitler. Kaltenbrunner conspired against Himmler.”

Asked about Himmler’s personality, Schellenberg replied: “He was a schoolmaster type outwardly, and that was as far as his foreign political horizon went. Therefore, in the field of foreign affairs I had an easy time convincing him. As far as other things are concerned, Himmler was a sphinx, hard to understand. He was a coward, not a brave man.” For instance? “He tried to evade all difficulties. When I had difficulties with Ribbentrop, Himmler wouldn’t stand up for me.

“This cowardice was the reason Himmler agreed to everything the powerful, suggestive Hitler said to him.”

Whose idea was it to execute the 5 million Jews? “It must have been Hitler’s, because Himmler did not have the courage of a soldier, the ability to make a courageous decision.”

So the decision to kill 5 million Jews, exterminate that race, was a courageous one in your opinion? “I’m not saying it was right. I was against it. But what I mean is not so much courage as decisiveness.” As a psychiatrist, it seems to me to require more sadism than courage or decisiveness. “Himmler may have been a sadist, but Hitler was more so. Hitler was the devil of the whole thing — more sadistic than Himmler.” A sadist is not only the man who breaks the bones of babies and enjoys the work, but the one who orders it, or knows about it and is undisturbed. “If you define a sadist so, yes, Himmler was a sadist.” Do you feel you have any sadistic tendencies? “I was deeply moved when Himmler had a conference with the Zionist leader from Sweden, in 1945. Up to that time I thought that Jews were only in concentration camps and industrial camps.”

Did you hear of any sadism within the concentration camps? “No.” Ever in a concentration camp? “I inspected one camp once — but it was all right. Whether they showed me everything I don’t know, but what I saw was good.” What camp? “Oranienburg.” What did you observe there? “I saw medical installations there that were certainly better than charity institutions. That was in 1943.”

How did you happen to visit Oranienburg? “I was asked to go by another high official.” How many people in Oranienburg? “When I visited, I was told there were eight thousand.” Rather small compared to Dachau. “I don’t know how many were in those camps, later or even then. That’s the figure I was told.

“To return for a moment to sadistic tendencies, doesn’t each war have sadistic tendencies?” Yes. But for instance? “For instance, in one night, didn’t Dresden have sixty thousand people burned?
¹⁰
I also know a case of a relative of mine who was pregnant and was fleeing down a road when she was strafed by low-flying aircraft.” What nation did this aircraft come from? “I don’t know.” Could it have been German? “Hardly.”

“I know from my own experience on country roads, English and American planes would swoop down and shoot every farmer and refugee on the road.” I guess there were irresponsible pilots on either side. “Yes.” He smiled broadly.

But we had no people on the Allied side who killed and lined up in trenches, gas chambers, and crematoria, infants, children, women, and men — in an organized manner. “I understood the whole aerial warfare to be sadistic.”

And is the point you are making, that this accounts for German atrocities, the murder of 5 million Jews, the gassing of people and shooting of hostages, the other things that have been brought out in court? “No. But what could I do? What could the German people do? Sure, they knew bad things were going on in those camps. If they lived nearby, they couldn’t help knowing, just as I knew. But what of it? We despised those happenings, but what could we do about it? I could have gone abroad as I told you yesterday, but I thought it best to stay at my job and try to change the government. In view of today’s political situation I think my work was more correct than going abroad and writing articles about it from abroad. I mention this because of all the people who come back to Germany now, and say they worked against Hitler. Of those who left Germany, how many can say they liberated a Jew from a concentration camp? Not one.”

Did you ever do so? “Many.” For instance? “A family Notebaum. And a family Rosenbaum in 1944.” In what way did you help? “I always pretended that they were political people, and that for political reasons they should be released.” What did you do with them? “Sent them to Switzerland.”

“Toward the end, about April 28, 1945, I saved Ravensbrück camp and two thousand French, two thousand Polish, and two thousand Jewish women from death. I evacuated them to Sweden by the Red Cross toward the last of April 1945. There was an order in the camp that all inmates of the camp were to be shot when the front broke.” Whose order? “Kaltenbrunner.
¹¹

“And the decision to send Swedish cars there for evacuation of these women of Ravensbrück was on my own instigation and responsibility.” Any proof of that? “It’s all in the court.”

Father:
“Free from political beliefs, always made a good living. Prior to World War I was a very rich man. His factories in Saarbrücken were closed but he still had branches operating in Luxembourg and Trier (on the Moselle).

During the last few years he lived in Luxembourg, but since the end of the war has been evacuated to Germany.” Father now lives with one of his daughters.

Mother:
Died in 1941 at age sixty-one from liver cancer, had been ill two years. Died following second operation. Personality of mother? “A very good, beloved person. Perhaps too good a mother.” What do you mean? “She always stood up for the children, whereas Father was very strict. She worried excessively perhaps about us. I was the favorite child of my mother’s — and the youngest. Possibly it was caused by the fact that my brother was six years older, so that the span of difference in our ages made my mother favor me.” Why? “Well, I suppose six years is a long span between children.

“Maybe that was the reason I was the favorite [laughs], and also my father always told me I wasn’t expected.” Were you also your father’s favorite? “Yes, although he didn’t expect another child when I was born.”

Personality of the father? “A very strict and stern man. Father was a very emotional man who lived only for the music and his profession.” For example? “He was an idealistic man — therefore a poor businessman. He didn’t know how to speculate. He had too much confidence in people.” Do you think confidence in people is one of your weaknesses? “No. I have a realistic approach.”

What did your father think of your activities? “At first I wanted to study medicine, but Father didn’t want that. He wanted me to become a lawyer. But of my activities in the party, he had no idea or conception as to what they were.” Think he had a concept today? “He knows I was employed by the secret service but no details.

“Father felt he had given me a professional education and that now I was old enough to get along in life.” When was the last time you saw your father? “When mother died, in 1941. “Why not since? “Couldn’t get away from Berlin because I was so busy.”

How often did you see your mother before she died? “Once in 1937, 1938, and 1940. In 1940 I spent two weeks in Luxembourg.”

Siblings:
Three brothers and three sisters. 1. Sister fifty, married, has twins, age eleven years. “She married late, at twenty-eight. She had children several years later. Her husband is very ill, a heart ailment. He was a bank director and then employed by the city of Saarbrücken. He has been unable to work for the past two years.” She has been evacuated to a smaller town. He has recently heard through his wife that she is in contact with this sister.