Sönke Neitzel TAPPING HITLER’S GENERALS - Transcripts of Secret Conversations 1942–45 - speaking of the Volkssturm
Document 55
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 242
Report on the reaction of Senior Officers (PW) in Camp no. 11 to Hitler and Goebbels’s New Year speeches, 31 Dec. 44/1 Jan. 45.
[TNA, WO 208/4364]
THOMA: He was remarkably quiet today; he didn’t shout once.[126]
BASSENGE: One may be biased–I hardly like to put it into words, but was [it] really HITLER?
WAHLE: Oh, yes, definitely.
BASSENGE: Everything can be faked, even his voice.
WILCK: It keeps cropping up, in fact it’s become a settled there with him: ‘We survive as many things: such a People and such a Leader, who has patently been preserved by Providence, can never perish.’
WILDERMUTH: Yes, that’s the straw to which he clings.
WILCK: Of course, and so do the others.
WILDERMUTH: All the same one can say that our present position looks exactly like our downfall.
WILCK: That’s true enough. And when he speaks of ‘thousands of “
Volkssturmbataillone”’–
WILDERMUTH: Of raising new ‘Divisionen’ out of nothing–he’d have done better to bring the old ones up to strength instead.
WILCK: Yes. Incompletely armed, equipped and trained. It means spilling the last life drops of the German people. And as for ‘sweeping away
the old society and system, and (preserving) the ultimate Truth, the People’–
WILDERMUTH: The people, which he holds in rein with concentration camp, torture and prison!
THOMA: He didn’t speak once of the soldiers in his army: it was the people all the time.
WAHLE: The German People’s State, with the middle class eliminated, destroyed and exterminated–
THOMA: That’s the bait to catch the people. But not a word about the fighting men.
WAHLE: Or at most one about the armchair generals.
THOMA: Yes, but otherwise he really hadn’t a word of thanks for the Wehrmacht.
WAHLE: He didn’t even mention them.
THOMA: It’s really rather remarkable, for there’s no doubt he produced some well-turned phrases.
BASSENGE: The speech was well thought out.
WAHLE: Well, after all, he’s had plenty of time for that.
WAHLE: Don’t you agree that these attempts of GOEBBELS to strike the ingratiating note arise from some degree of sentimentality? A sentimental mood. There was the hope of striking a responsive note from the enemy through this offensive started for political reasons. But a victorious
enemy, only five minutes off success, will, of course, never treat with him. He knows that himself now, so there’s nothing left to say but
‘at any rate we shall never capitulate’. The National Socialists never will capitulate, either. And Heaven help anyone else who does!
I conclude that the whole thing is a sign of our great weakness after all.
Strong terms are used to lead the people on: ‘hundreds of “Volkssturmbataillone” or “Volkswehrbataillone” are being formed.’
THOMA:
‘Thousands of “Bataillone”.’
WAHLE: It all bears the stamp of exaggeration. Besides that, the old belief is still there that the Allies will fall out among themselves; it’s the
same old belief in a miracle.
CHOLTITZ: All lies and deceit!
RAMCKE: But the speech will have a terrific effect all the same. The effect of GOEBBELS’s speech will also be very great.
[
Konteradmiral Otto Kähler was the only prisoner at Trent Park who commented positively on Himmler’s speech of 18.10.1944
proclaiming the setting up of the Volkssturm.]
Document 67
CSDIC (UK), GRGG 270
Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 9 Mar. 45 [TNA, WO 208/4177]
ROTHKIRCH: I’ve had practical experience of it. It was at TREVES and it simply turned tail and ran. And the men in the ‘
Volkssturm’! I had some of them in my village. I was living with a priest. There were two members of the ‘
Volkssturm’ there, they got up at 0800 or 0830
hours and shaved until 0930 hours. Then I asked them what they were going to do that day. They replied that they were going to chop wood for
the priest. Then they were told to dig a few positions. They said no, they couldn’t do that. They had received different orders from their ‘
Bataillonskommandeur’, they couldn’t do that.
Then I wanted to have some of the ‘
Volkssturm’ on the KYLL. There are very steep hills there and positions had been dug in them. I said:
‘Now let us put a ‘
Volkssturmbataillon’ here. The Americans won’t notice whether it’s a member of the ‘
Volkssturm’ there or not.
The main thing is that they think that this stretch is manned.’ But that wasn’t possible either.
CHOLTITZ: Who gives the orders then?
ROTHKIRCH:
The ‘Volkssturm’ come under the ‘Gauleiter’.
CHOLTITZ: Don’t they come under any military direction whatever?
ROTHKIRCH: You will never believe the funniest thing of all: when I left BOLITHA(?) I was sent up to EAST PRUSSIA[151] and my orders were to guard against the possibility of a Russian break-through via TAURAGE. I got the orders from Gauleiter KOCH! That’s not an exaggeration, it’s absolute fact.
ROTHKIRCH (re guerrilla warfare ): We will set it in motion. I know that for a fact, because I was in command of a guerrilla school in RUSSIA where men were trained by us in guerrilla warfare. They have been taken over now and they are now training partisans themselves. That is how I know.
HEIM: Do you think it will really help at all?
ROTHKIRCH: Yes, they are already staying behind now. There were some in my villages. They were SS men who, after the third cognac, told my intelligence officer exactly what they were supposed to do. Of course, they weren’t suppose to do that. But they told him just the same. They were there and were supposed to spy out everything. Most important of all, they were supposed to enlist other supporters. These SS men said that it was exceedingly difficult as there were no volunteers. Besides which–like us all–though they had explosives, they had no fuses. That was why they approached my intelligence officer.[152]
HEYDTE: So it was really more for purposes of sabotage?
ROTHKIRCH: Yes, just like the guerrillas do. But it’s a scourge for the civilian population.
HEIM: So these SS men were very pessimistic, were they?
ROTHKIRCH: The civilian population will hand them over at once.
HEIM: If they don’t hang them themselves.
BASSENGE: In addition to which every stranger in the locality is shadowed as soon as there’s an L of C commandant there, etc.
ROTHKIRCH: Your view is quite correct. But that again is overshadowed by yet another factor. There are the many badly bombed towns. Naturally enormous numbers of people have fled from the towns into the villages. Then, of course, they have to decide: who is a partisan? The evacuees blur the picture badly.
HEIM: Then there is also the question whether the population will participate.
ROTHKIRCH: I don’t think they will west of the RHINE. But I believe that there may perhaps be more wild, fanatical people east of the RHINE.
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