Tapping Hitler's Generals

When Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma arrived at Trent Park in November 1942, the only other inmate was Ludwig Crüwell, captured five months previously. Both were of about the same age, highly decorated and each had commanded a panzer division on the Eastern Front and in 1942 with the Afrika Korps. The first evening they sat up talking until 2 a.m. Further long conversations followed in the next few days. After a week the first differences of opinion made themselves felt. Crüwell accused Thoma of being ‘negative’. ‘Frankly,’ Crüwell said, ‘talking to you, one gets the impression that you accept all the criticisms of Greater Germany, and that if it had been left to you from the very beginning, everything would have been done so much better.’[78] From the outset, Thoma had condemned the overall situation because the economic resources of the Allies were increasing while those of the Axis powers were diminishing. He had criticised the decision to attack the Soviet Union,[79] denigrated Hitler and the Party,[80] described in drastic terms dreadful German war crimes committed in Russia (Document 83) and reported on the programme by which the Jews were to have been removed from Europe by the end of 1942. It was a ‘tragedy of obedience’[81] that German soldiers had gone along with the National Socialist regime. They had let too much go unchallenged, said von Thoma. Of course, no general could simply rebel by himself but the three C-in-Cs could have acted jointly against the outgrowth of the National Socialist State, particularly at the time of the Fritsch affair.[82]

Crüwell however had another opinion. He was proud that the Army generals of the Third Reich had served so loyally.[83] He emphasised that he had not gone through life blinkered, but considered it impossible that a German soldier could commit a foul deed.[84] It was obvious to him that the war could last very much longer yet,[85] but in the final analysis it had to be won, for otherwise it would be ‘Finis Germaniae’.[86] Crüwell was thinking of his four children and their uncertain future,[87] but also of the hundreds of thousands of Germans who would have fallen in vain should the war be lost.[88]

How did these two generals, whose military careers at first sight ran such similar courses, manage to develop such divergent points of view? A closer look at their lives may provide the clue.

Thoma ended World War I as Oberleutnant in No. 3. Bavarian Infantry Regiment. On the Eastern Front during the Brossilov offensive in 1916 he won the Military Order of Max Josef, the highest Bavarian decoration for an officer. The award brought with it a title. Between 1936 and 1939 he led the Legion Condor ground forces in the Spanish Civil War. In the Polish campaign he commanded a panzer regiment; from March 1940 to July 1941 he served as General der Schnellen Truppen (motorised units). During this latter appointment at OKH he obtained a comprehensive overview of the general war situation and associated with the most senior military commanders.[89] Thoma met Hitler on numerous occasions and got on very well with him, since they conversed in the same Bavarian dialect. Thoma’s assertion that he knew Hitler in the Great War cannot be confirmed, but seems unlikely.[90]

Thoma commanded a panzer division from July 1941 and received the Knight’s Cross for his efforts during the Soviet winter offensive. At Rommel’s request he arrived in Egypt in September 1942 as CO, Deutsches Afrika Korps. Bachelor Thoma was a military man through and through, personally brave and always to be found in the front line.[91] Wounded on numerous occasions, he was undoubtedly an inspired soldier. British military theoretician Liddell Hart described him as a tough but loveable character, an enthusiast who loved battle for its own sake, who fought without hate and respected all his enemies. In middle age he had found contentment as a knight-errant. His critical mind enabled him to see beyond his own backyard and to analyse politics and strategy.[92] As a result of his analysis of tactical experiences during the Polish campaign, in November 1939 he warned that it had not yet been proved that panzer divisions could reach their objectives against a modern well-equipped and well-led enemy in the absence of air supremacy.[93]

At a commanders’ conference on the Eastern Front on 21 March 1942 when General Friedrich Materna reported Hitler as saying recently that Britian was taking giant strides towards its Bolshevisation, Thoma countered immediately, ‘We will be ripe for bolshevisation ten times sooner than the British.’[94]

The memoirs of Generalleutnant Theodor von Sponeck, CO, 90th Light Division in North Africa and an inmate at Trent Park with Thoma, mention a meeting on 2 October 1942 on the El Alamein front:

Thoma’s front-line experience was forged not only from German victories, but also by the catastrophe before Moscow in the winter of 1941 and the oppressive material superiority of the British at El Alamein. Nevertheless his critical assessment of the war situation was based not only on these major reverses. When Thoma was captured on 4 November 1942 during the hard fighting for a hill in the Egyptian desert,[96] the Wehrmacht held most of the Caucasus and the Volga, while all of Libya and half of Egypt were in German hands. Very few Wehrmacht commanding generals of the time can have had such a pessimistic and – as we now know – realistic vision as Thoma who, according to his own admission while at OKH, was denounced as a defeatist.[97] He thus had the capability to analyse the general situation shrewdly, and this explains his efforts in August 1942 to resist his transfer to Egypt, where he considered the situation unpromising.[98]

From the time preceding his capture there is unfortunately little material on Thoma. A 16-page memorandum to Army C-in-C (ObdH) von Brauchitsch composed in October 1940 and in which he ‘foresaw the whole thing’ (Document 14) can be found neither in the rudimentary files of General der Schnellen Truppen nor those of the ObdH. Similarly, the two-page letter to OKW in which Thoma allegedly protested against the mass shootings in White Russia (Document 84) also appears not to have survived.[99]

In his pocket calendar, Thoma made notes daily. For 1941–42 one finds no entries about politics or the war situation. Most notes are about the weather and describe where he is.[100] Only in captivity did he become more expansive. Here he noted in his diary that he had ‘a bad feeling’ when the preparations for the Russian campaign began in October 1940 – a sentiment in which he was not alone.

Apparently the preparations to attack the Soviet Union ignited in Thoma a process of reflection which culminated over the next two years in the certainty that the war was lost. Captivity played no part in his ‘awakening’. The notes in his diary made at Trent Park coincide precisely with the CSDIC protocols. Thoma noted on 17 January 1943:

Three days later he wrote,

Crüwell’s military career began in the Prussian Army, and at first sight it is similar to that of von Thoma. Crüwell also ended World War I as an Oberleutnant, but from then until September 1939 ascended more speedily. Both in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht it had been his ambition to become a Staff Officer, but he was only at OKH in 1936 and 1939, and then never more than a few months. From October 1939 he was Senior Quartermaster, 16 Armee, in August 1940 he took command of 11 Panzer Division, with which he experienced the conquest of Belgrade and penetrated deep into the Ukraine in the first seven weeks of the Russian campaign. He arrived in North Africa on 15 August 1941 and was captured there on 29 May 1942. Unlike Thoma he was never long a senior military commander. After fighting at the front in Russia only during the lightning advances of the opening weeks, he was then part of the North African ‘sideshow’ from August 1941. When captured, German and Italian troops were on the verge of overrunning the British defences at Gazala near Tobruk and ejecting the British 8th Army from Libya.

Crüwell’s war was a war of German victories, favourable promotions and high decorations (Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves). He had had no experiences resembling those of Thoma at OKH, neither the ‘Napoleon Winter’ at the gates of Moscow, nor the struggle for supplies at El Alamein. Although reports from the front gave him worries and doubts, he did not infer from them that the war was lost (Document 8).[104] Even after Stalingrad he believed in a German victory and comforted himself in the face of Thoma’s many complaints with observations such as ‘The German Army is still the best in the world.’[105]

His political convictions can be seen more clearly from earlier in his career. Of the murder of General Kurt von Schleicher in 1934 he wrote in 1958 that it remained for him ‘incomprehensible and always shameful that the senior generals of the time accepted this murder… on that day Hitler lost his respect for the Wehrmacht.’[106] He told Thoma in their first conversation at Trent Park that he had become resigned after the Röhm-Putsch. He had never been a supporter of the system and had not been able to emulate Blomberg’s fast turn-around to accommodate the Third Reich. Being unable to change anything, from then on he had attended to his military duties only.[107] His indignation at the murder of Schleicher did not lead to his adopting an attitude of reservation towards the Third Reich, however, nor to condemn Hitler as being responsible for injustices and murders.[108]

Crüwell remained constant in his loyalty to the regime. In his Trent Park notes his closeness to National Socialist thinking is often apparent. On 2 July 1942 he gave the following advice to his four children born in the 1930s:

He wrote of the philosopher Schopenhauer that his theory of the preservation of the sub-species inherited from nature had ‘very much in it’.

From here the leap to the world political view of the Third Reich is not a large one.[110] From Oswald Spengler’s Preussentum und Sozialismus (published in 1920), he noted that he had not been aware of the menace of Bolshevism, but ‘it fostered the grand idea of the Third Reich. The thinking is partly timeless, correct and definitely very interesting.’[111]

His positive attitude to National Socialist geopolitics and racial theory is also frequently evident in his entries. The smallness of the Reich was in his opinion responsible for the rise of National Socialism,[112] a high spiritual and cultural standard for Volk and family could only be attained through closeness to Nature, simplicity of life, adversity and struggle,[113] and racial equality was ‘not the right path’. He believed that it would come to ‘a definite battle of the races’.[114] Sacrifice had an especial significance for Crüwell: from the proclamation by the Führer of 9 November 1944 he jotted down ‘that life only acknowledges the highest worth in him who is willing and ready to sacrifice his life in order to preserve it’.[115]

The protocols confirm the sketch created by Crüwell’s notes. If anybody attempted to lambast the Führer, he would spring to his defence even though he admitted that ultimately Hitler was the man responsible for everything, including the military disasters.[116] Undoubtedly Crüwell had succumbed to Hitler’s aura, and he reported as if spellbound on his two meetings with him (Document 3). Even in 1958 he identified 1 September 1941, the day when he received from Hitler’s hand the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross, as the ‘culminating moment of my life as a soldier’.[117] He evaluated ‘the Führer as higher’ than Roosevelt. Hitler would be received by history in a different light, ‘there is no doubt about it’, he said in autumn 1942.[118] His thoughts while in the American camp for generals at Clinton prove that he never really understood Hitler’s intentions. On 3 September 1945 Crüwell wrote:

By burying his head in the sand, Crüwell ignored the painful realities which would have called his world picture fundamentally into question. Crüwell kept up the attitude of not wanting to know during all his captivity in England and also later in the United States. His differences of opinion with Thoma, who considered him a good soldier but ‘not spiritually strong enough’ to remain independent, therefore never changed.[120] Since both, with the exception of a few other prisoners, were alone together at Trent Park until May 1943, Crüwell was apparently prepared to tolerate Thoma beyond normal limits even though he ‘hated’ him.[121] Occasionally the pair even discovered points of mutual agreement. Both considered Goebbels’s speech of 18 February 1943 at the Sportpalast as ‘negative’ (Document 6), and both were at a loss to understand why Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad. Crüwell remarked, ‘I would have put a bullet through my head. So, I am bitterly disappointed!’ Thoma concurred and said that it was a dreadful thing that so many generals had been captured at Stalingrad.[122]

The Structure of the Groups

The semi-tolerable life changed abruptly when Army Group Africa prisoners began to arrive at Trent Park from mid-May 1943. By 1 July 1943, 20 senior officers and three adjutants had been added. Initially their thoughts were focused on the defeat in Tunisia and the question of whether they had been responsible for it. After a few days they concluded that the disaster was not their fault.[123] Some blamed the Italians, who had kept their fleet at anchor, others doubted the strategic sense of having defended Tunisia for so long. Arnim even believed that his reports on the catastrophic situation had never been placed before Hitler. After about a week these conversations dissipated and the new arrivals began to group into the respective camps around Crüwell and Thoma so that their personal smouldering conflict now developed its own ‘group-dynamic explosive potential’.

Arraigned on Thoma’s side were von Broich, von Sponeck, von Liebenstein, Cramer, Luftwaffe generals Neuffer and Bassenge, and colonels Reimann, Schmidt, Drange and Heym. Köhncke and Ernst Wolters could also be counted as members of the ‘Thoma group’. Thoma himself was astonished that so many Luftwaffe officers – besides Neuffer and Bassenge, also Schmidt, Drange and Köhncke – spoke out critically against the regime and the course the war was taking.

Crüwell sought allies, for Thoma’s ‘eternal griping’ was ‘getting on his nerves’ and he was determined to stick by ‘the Prussian point of view’, defending Fatherland and Führer against all comers (Document 10). He found supporters in von Hülsen, Frantz,[124] Buhse and in Konteradmiral Meixner,[125] who was deeply disappointed at the lack of military bearing of the Trent Park officers. ‘Our generals are for the most part broken men. It is appalling what small people they are’ he noted in his diary on 7 August 1943 (there are similar entries on 6 July and 17 November 1943). The adjutants also divided: von Glasow inclined towards Thoma, while Boes and Hubbuch were apparently convinced National Socialists. Both were still of the opinion in 1993 that Thoma was a military disgrace and believed that he had gone over to the British in North Africa in 1942.[126] Most of the NCO valets took no sides and remained loyal to their general. When offered paid work in the Trent Park vegetable gardens they refused tenaciously because nothing would make them support the British war effort, no matter how small.[127] Finally Bassenge’s intervention put an end to this farce.

It can be summarised that while the ‘Thoma group’ considered the war lost, condemned the atrocities in the East and spoke detrimentally about Hitler and Nazism, the ‘Crüwell people’, though critical of the war situation, considered it by no means hopeless,[128] attempted to justify war crimes either by minimising their scale or doubting whether they had ever happened at all, and additionally defended Nazism. The groups were not organisations but rather a loose association of independent characters whose views on many matters coincided. Only a few shared Thoma’s radical outlook. Few spoke as openly as Thoma did. Some changed their opinions in time and others drifted between the groups, or eventually preferred to spend the time in other activities such as painting.[129] Graf Sponeck made such a good copy of Rembrandt’s ‘Man in a Golden Helmet’ that it was hung in the dining room.[130] Whereas the differences in opinion did not have the same significance as they did for Thoma and Crüwell, from the beginning they impregnated decisively the climate at Trent Park.

Crüwell urged Generaloberst von Arnim as Senior German Officer into action against the ‘evil spirit’ of von Thoma in order to stop ‘defeatism’.[131] On 9 July 1943 Arnim urged the prisoners to discontinue all ‘conversations which are in any way harmful to colleagues’. Looking on the dark side would not help bear captivity. Additionally it was one’s duty to the homeland to exude confidence and so help the people at home (Document 12). Arnim was therefore working to preserve fortitude in the camp and bolster the ‘rather shaky’ morale.[132] His talk did not have the desired effect and deepened the divisions.[133]

After Arnim’s intervention, literature critical of National Socialism such as Otto Braun’s Von Weimar zu Hitler was no longer read only secretly.[134] Many inmates enjoyed the free access to books, periodicals and radio broadcasts. Only Crüwell, Hülsen and Lt Hubbuch continued to read the Völkischer Beobachter,[135] and were anxious to prevent other prisoners listening to the BBC German Service news bulletins. Crüwell, Franz and also Arnim were infuriated that Thoma, Broich and others tuned in to this propaganda, but Arnim did not have the personal authority to forbid it.[136]

In another call to reason to the Thoma group, Arnim addressed the inmates again on 15 and 16 August 1943, demanding that they refrain from ‘defeatist talk’: in the propaganda war, the British should not be given ‘the means and the weapons’. He was unaware of course that recordings of conversations had given the British a richer fund of propaganda material than ever he could have dreamed. Besides, Arnim said, he wanted to ‘safeguard’ officers in the event of the German victory, he would not want to see officers being court-martialled for their behaviour in captivity.[137] Probably aware that Arnim’s words were directed primarily at him, Thoma responded, ‘To think it right that we should accept your laborious assessment of the situation as gospel – No! […] It has been our misfortune at home that full-grown generals, enchanted by Hitler, let themselves be told off like snotty-nosed schoolboys. It doesn’t change me, absolutely not.’[138]

Undoubtedly too much was asked of von Arnim in his role as Senior German Officer (SGO). Even as he arrived at Trent Park, most generals did not think of him too highly. Some held him responsible for the disaster in Tunisia and considered him no better than a good divisional commander. He lacked the charisma to arbitrate on differences and strengthen the cohesion. Even the group around Crüwell was estranged from Arnim, for whom as SGO he never succeeded in banning the BBC German Service. Finally, at a loss, he would take charge of the wireless and re-tune it to a German station, thus making himself look completely ridiculous. From then on he was an outcast, so unloved that nobody would accompany him when he wanted to take a ramble, and finally Crüwell saw himself obliged to order somebody to walk with him.[139] Arnim spent most of his time alone in his room staring at nothing for hours, making appearances ever more rarely in the officers’ mess.[140]

Arnim’s political opinions were not without their ambiguities. General Cramer soon came to the conclusion that although Arnim thought he was obliged to defend the National Socialist regime outwardly, his personal opinion about it was different.[141] The protocols confirm this picture. He made adverse references to the war situation, the National Socialist system[142] and German war crimes (Document 96). He often conversed freely with Lord Aberfeldy, thus ignoring his maxim that one should always remain silent in the presence of the British.[143]

The smouldering conflicts at Trent Park continued into the subsequent months.[144] Crüwell protested at Thoma’s glee over German defeats[145] while Thoma took Arnim and Crüwell ever less seriously. They were like the three monkeys: ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’.[146] On 12 September 1943 Thoma observed to Oberst Rudolf Buhse that he regretted ‘every bomb, every scrap of material and every human life that is still being wasted in this senseless war. The only gain that the war will bring us is the end of ten years of gangster rule’ (Document 14). ‘For that reason I am seen by others as a criminal,’ he said, adding that one ‘should put Adolf Hitler in a padded cell.’ He was clear, of course, that his open rejection of Nazism and his firm belief in the defeat of Germany was not shared by many of his prisoner colleagues who, as a rule, expressed their criticisms in a more moderate manner. Officers like Crüwell and Meixner were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war if it succeeded in fighting off the invasion. (Paul Meixner, diary, 31 March and 18 April 1944)

‘One can only wonder,’ Thoma wrote in his diary on 17 February 1944, that

Despite all differences of opinion the Trent Park community remained intact in some respects. At Christmas 1943 all prisoners sat together for an excellent dinner with plum pudding and red wine before re-uniting in their small groups to spend Christmas Night in silent contemplation.[148]

Even on Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1944 no such scene as feared by Crüwell eventually occurred. He expected that Thoma would not raise his glass to toast the Führer and was anxious to have acting-SGO Bassenge ejected from the officer corps in case he deliberately avoided making any preparations for the special day. The ‘defeatists’ abstained from making trouble, however. A toast to the Führer was proposed – to Crüwell’s disgust in British beer – after which Arnim made a short speech to the generals in the valets’ dining room.[149]

Crüwell’s situation at Trent Park became intolerable after he failed to unseat Bassenge as acting-SGO and was not approached to nominate the Head Valet, appointed for all kinds of important organisational tasks. Besides his political tussles, Crüwell found captivity in itself an especially heavy burden. In June 1942 he wrote in his diary, a few days after his capture:

On dark days his mood alternated between depression and rage ‘that I am no longer there to fight.’[151] From summer 1943 he became increasingly nervy and tired. He gave up physical activities and concentrated on learning English. On 10 August 1943 he wrote:

Finally in mid-January 1944 he asked Lord Aberfeldy if it would not be possible to be interned in Sweden on his word of honour.[153] When this was rejected he took cold baths and scratched the eczema on his legs in an attempt to obtain repatriation on medical grounds. This was also unsuccessful.[154] On 22 February 1944, however, General Hans Cramer, who had severe asthma, and 34 German soldiers from other camps, were repatriated.[155] Cramer became important since it seemed likely that he would be closely questioned in Germany about the events in North Africa and in captivity. Crüwell then asked him to suggest to Hitler’s Wehrmacht ADC Schmundt that he should be exchanged for General Richard O’Connor who had been captured in North Africa in 1941. Since O’Connor had escaped in September 1943, Crüwell’s idea had no prospect of success from the beginning (SRGG 761, 14.1.1944, TNA, WO 208/5625). Arnim tried to present himself to Cramer in the best possible light as well. Arnim was certainly only the scapegoat for Rommel: ultimately he was merely a desk general who had made a fool of himself in North Africa, according to Cramer. Whether he achieved his stated aim of telling Hitler ‘the Truth’ about Arnim is not known.

Before his departure Cramer thanked the British Commandant at Trent Park for the excellent treatment. Whenever he had seen the alert sentries from his window he had been proud of his British blood (he had an English grandmother, Emma Dalton). Lord Aberfeldy returned to him his ‘Afrika’ cuff-band as a gesture of thanks. Cramer returned home from captivity doubtless bereft of any illusions about the hopeless war situation. He was even anxious to put his Wehrsold savings into a British bank before he left. A few days before his journeyed home, he also requested that should he die before being repatriated, his coffin should not be draped with the Nazi flag.[156]

Cramer left England for Algiers aboard the hospital ship Atlantis and arrived in Barcelona from there with the Swedish ship Gipsholm. A special OKW aircraft flew him to Berlin, where he arrived on 12 May 1944.

Although the exact details of what Cramer reported on his return are not known, he did at least retain a critical outlook. ‘It was also not easy,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘to re-engage in the German morale and outlook on the war. I had lived through too much, I knew too much from the other side. In Germany they spoke of total war […] over there it had been a fact for some time.’

Surprisingly after his return nobody wanted to know about Cramer. Only with great perseverance did he finally obtain an invitation for discussions at Führer-HQ, Berchtesgaden. The half-hour personal talk with Hitler and Schmundt went off ‘very disappointingly’, as Cramer wrote, ‘and I could not disabuse myself of the impression that I had been written out of the war.’ There followed a short reception with Ribbentrop and Goebbels, who had little understanding for ‘my concern which stemmed from my knowledge of the enemy and the view I had of our Fatherland from the outside. They didn’t want to hear the truth.’ Keitel and Jodl, as OKW and Wehrmacht Command Staff chiefs respectively, and as such responsible for the disaster in Africa, did not wish to meet Cramer. At the beginning of June he travelled to France where he met Rommel, who treated him ‘initially with reservation but then became very comradely’.[157]

They spoke about the war in Tunisia and the imminent invasion. In the Army Group B files one finds an entry that even General Cramer expected the main thrust of the Allied landings to be either side of the Somme Estuary (BA/MA, RH 19 IX/93, 4.6.44). After the war it was always maintained that Cramer had been deliberately used by the British to spread disinformation (see Ose, Entscheidung im Westen, p. 90), but there is no proof, of course.

In June Cramer returned home to Krampnitz near Berlin where he met Claus von Stauffenberg on several occasions. He knew him from the Kavallerie-Schule at Hanover and from his time at the General Staff. They had also met in Tunisia in 1943. It was through Stauffenberg that Cramer was put in contact with General Olbricht, who let him into the secret of the assassination plot. Cramer agreed that should the plot succeed he would ensure that local troops occupied the area around the Victory Column. On the morning of 20 July he went to the panzer training school and ensured that the troops were ready as planned and were occupying the correct areas. After the failure of the plot Cramer quickly came under Gestapo scrutiny. He was interrogated for the first time on 23 July, was arrested on 26 July and taken to the Gestapo prison on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. He was accused of being a liaison man between the Resistance and the British. The flame of suspicion was fanned when his son, a Leutnant in Normandy, disappeared on 26 July (he had been seriously wounded). The interrogations lasted 10 days. Finally Cramer was brought to the Security Police School at Fürstenberg north of Berlin as an ‘arrestee against honour’ since there was nothing else to be found against him. He was discharged from the Wehrmacht in September 1944 on the grounds of his asthma and hospitalised at the Berlin Charité. He was sent home on Christmas Eve 1944 and remained there under house arrest until the end of hostilities.[158]

At Trent Park he had assured Lord Aberfeldy in the course of his repatriation that he would do everything possible to discover what plans there were for a coup, which would have his full support.[159] He had kept his promise.

‘Now it Should be Brought to an End, it is Simply Madness’ Reflection on the Final Battles, 1944–45

When the Allies landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944 and began the closing phase of World War II in Europe, the camp community at Trent Park had remained little changed for a year. In August 1943, four officers had been transferred out to the United States, and General Cramer had been repatriated in February 1944. In January 1944 Oberstleutnant Wilfried von Müller-Rienzburg[160] had arrived. The invasion undermined the monotonous and semi-monastic existence fundamentally: from the end of May to the end of September 1944, most ‘Afrikaner’ were transferred to America, only the two seniors, Thoma and Bassenge, shop manager Reimann, and the generals Broich and Neuffer remained behind to greet the stream of new prisoners from France.

The first new arrival was Oberst Hans Krug. His regimental HQ had been overrun by British troops on 7 June 1944. At the end of the month the defenders of Cherbourg arrived, at the beginning of August those overwhelmed by the American offensive west of St Lô, and finally the survivors of the Falaise pocket. They came from surrendered fortifications or had simply fallen into enemy hands during Wehrmacht retreats gone awry. By the end of 1944, 32 generals and at least 14 colonels had been settled at Trent Park.[161] Many of the newcomers would be transferred out after a period ranging from a few days to several months. By the year’s end, the five ‘Afrikaner’ had been joined at Trent Park by 20 further high-ranking prisoners.

Despite the new personnel, the basic conflicts remained unmellowed. Some lacked interest in politics and strategy or distanced themselves in varying degrees from Hitler, Nazism and the war crimes, recognising that the war was lost and hoping for a quick end to the now senseless fighting. The BBC German Service conflict flared up from time to time (Document 43).[162] General Menny was relieved to be transferred to the United States after a four-week stay at Trent Park. ‘The spirit in the Generals’ Camp (Clinton) is excellent, and morale exudes confidence despite our difficult situation. Above all conduct here is respectful and decent. Unlike Trent Park one does not have to get all worked up over worthless generals, who kow-tow to the British and worship everything English and drag everything German through the mud. I remember with reluctance the foul, hate-filled atmosphere which prevailed at Trent Park under the leadership of the characterless General Thoma.’[163]

The constant comings and goings brought fresh information and impressions to the centre.[164] Most officers were troubled by the oppressive material superiority of the Allies: they had looked on helplessly as their units were crushed by the enemy war machine, watched the old cultural landscape of northern France collapse in ruins as thousands of German soldiers died in it. The collapse on all the fronts now seemed unstoppable; Germany had lost the war. Most were agreed on this fact (Document 26).[165] Only Konteradmiral Kähler, who had been captured by the Americans at Brest, said that he still believed in final victory (Document 41).[166] When in autumn 1944 the Wehrmacht sprang a surprise by holding the Allied advance at the German frontier, it generated a seed of hope within a number of generals that the enemy coalition might break asunder, and there could be, as in 1762, another ‘miracle of the Brandenburg Dynasty’.[167]

Generalleutnant Menny noted in his diary:

Generalleutnant von Heyking now saw room to manoeuvre for negotiations. One had to hold out, he said in December 1944, for ‘the Americans have no idea what they are fighting for.’ If they suffered very heavy casualties, one could get them to the negotiating table – or the enemy coalition would break up (Document 51).[169] The Ardennes offensive had fuelled these hopes (Document 52),[170] but General Ramcke was alone in his belief that the German divisions could drive the Allies back across France and into the sea. A negotiated peace seemed to many a possibility as the result of such a successful offensive, however (Document 75).

The optimists held on to their hopes for a happy outcome to the war while the realists were of the opinion that it was already decided long ago, and Germany’s only possibility was unconditional surrender. ‘We entered the New Year with awful morale’ wrote Generalmajor Paul von Felbert in his diary. ‘That Germany was totally beaten was totally clear to all of us with exception of the incorrigibles such as Ramcke and cronies’ (Felbert, diary, p. 71). The differences came clearly into the light in a long conversation between General Heinrich Eberbach and his son Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Eberbach on 20 and 21 September 1944 (Document 37). The 23-year-old U-boat commander was still convinced that ‘miracle weapons’ would turn the tide while his father considered the whole thing ‘hopeless’. He had reached the final stage of a long process of acceptance. In December 1943, the general was still believing it possible to ‘crush the Russians’, and in June 1944 he still would not admit that the war was lost. After beating off the invasion ‘we will have our heads above water,’ he hoped (Document 64).[171]

Once it had proved impossible to halt the Allied divisions, not to mention repel them, ‘there was no more point to it’, General Eberbach said in February 1945. Extracts from his letters from Normandy show this: ‘How can it go on without the V-2 or other miracle weapons?’ he asked on 11 July. Five days later he wrote: ‘Heavy fighting – spearhead not large – questions in the eyes of my soldiers – we still lack the great decision.’ And on 20 July: ‘Hold out! Hold out! 116 Panzer Div. not for another five days! No way out.’ Shortly afterwards the US 3rd Army broke through the German lines west of St Lo and near Avranches, and on 3 August 1944 broke out from the hard-fought bridgehead. The German defences were at the end of their strength, and now Hitler ordered an extravagant counter-attack which plunged the Western Army into catastrophe. On 5 August Eberbach wrote home: ‘Situation remains extremely tense. All commanders exhausted. I often think of Bismarck’s greatness.’ Finally, on the 17th: ‘No great decision. I can no longer see a way out.’[172]

Eberbach therefore had his road-to-Damascus experience at Normandy in the high summer of 1944.[173] By 1942 Thoma had had no illusions about the situation, other – perhaps not all – Afrika Korps generals followed in 1943. Even those prisoners with knowledge of strategy were obliged to acknowledge after the failure of the Ardennes offensive and the push into Reich territory by the Allied armies in January and February 1945 that the war was lost. In the early spring nobody believed in final victory or even a negotiated peace. Nevertheless the inferences drawn varied. Should one capitulate or fight to the bitter end? Even far from the tentacles of the regime the deeply anchored concept of military honour remained firm. The comparatively critical Generalmajor Wahle observed in February 1945 that ‘the most elementary military honour’ demanded that one should keep fighting (Document 64).[174] The German people must lose the war honourably by fighting to the last gasp, General Choltitz said in March 1945. The honourable struggle would prevent the people going under and having their spirit broken (Document 66). Ramcke, paratroop general and a convinced National Socialist, admitted it to be his heartfelt wish that the German people would have the strength to defend every bridge, every hill-ridge, every town, to the last. The victorious powers could then allow the Germans to quietly die out, but they would at least have gone down fighting (Document 38). In September 1944 Ramcke had defended the French port of Brest until out of ammunition, and his stubborn resistance must be the model for the Battle for Germany. That he had previously taken steps to ensure that he would be the only man to escape from Brest by air demonstrates the deceptiveness of such images of Götterdämmerung. That Ramcke actually believed the Allies were intent upon the biological extermination of the German people can be assumed. This kind of propaganda was mouthed by other pro-Nazi generals such as SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer and Luftwaffe-Generalleutnant Heyking (Document 51).

At Clinton Camp, USA, there was an internal court martial of Generalmajor Botho Elster for surrendering to the Americans with 20,000 men,[175] but he was able to get the charge dropped. Generalmajor Paul von Felbert was sentenced to death in his absence on 3 January 1945 for capitulating in a parallel situation in September 1944. His family was arrested. ‘Nevertheless I am shocked’, Generalleutnant Menny noted in his diary at the end of 1944,

Not until the Allies had crossed the Rhine on a broad front did the majority think again about the ‘honourable’ struggle to the end. ‘I always used to consider it wrong to surrender, our people might have cracked badly and that might perhaps have proved disastrous in the future. But now we must give in, it’s simply madness,’ Ferdinand Heim acknowledged in March 1945 (Document 69). Two weeks previously he had received news that his wife and youngest son had been killed at Ulm on 17 December 1944 during a British air raid.[177] New arrivals provided the Trent Park community with ever-gloomier reports about the fighting, and reinforced the pessimists. ‘The bloody stupidity surrounding the German defeat is revealing itself as ever more grotesque and miserable,’ noted Eberhard Wildermuth in his diary on 18 May 1945 after listening to Generalleutnant Holste’s account of the fighting on the Elbe.[178]

General Kirchheim, who arrived in mid-March (Document 77), provided some interesting ideas on laying down arms. General Höhne had confided to him in the spring of 1945 that he considered all further resistance useless. Since the German people did not have a clear picture of the causes of the defeat, it was necessary to fight on to prevent another ‘stab in the back’ legend taking root – only in that way would the scale of the defeat and the failure of the National Socialist system become blatantly obvious to most Germans.[179]

Whatever insight they may have had into the approaching defeat, or lack of enthusiasm for a fight to the last, nevertheless the pro-Nazi generals maintained their morale. In mid-March 1945 several of them expressed indignation at a report by Oberstleutnant Kogler describing the devastating course of the air war and especially the defence of the Reich. As Wing Commander JG6, Kogler knew what he was talking about, but an Oberstleutnant did not have the competence to deliver such a wide-ranging criticism, or so Ramcke, Vaterrodt and Kittel believed.[180]

After listening to Goebbels’s speech on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1945, one of the officers rose to his feet halfway through the playing of the national anthem and switched off the radio. Generalleutnant Kittel was outraged: how could one sink so low as not to stand for the national anthem, and leave the room while it was playing? They were riff-raff and cowards, he told the assembly. It was better to fall at the front than finish up at Trent Park.[181] Eight days previously he had considered it essential to report to Germany by secret code ‘how these people such as Bassenge, Thoma and Co. behave. I think the admirals [Schirmer and Kähler] have done something like that already’ (Extract from SR Draft 3137/45 (GG), 12.4.1945, TNA WO 208/5622).

One of the valets was appalled to see the generals drinking wine on 8 May 1945 as if celebrating their own funerals. This was not the German spirit, it was a disgrace, and it merely proved, as General Bodenschatz remarked,[182] that the Führer was quite right when he described the generals as a ‘pack of filthy swine’.[183]

Whilst a number of the Trent Park inmates, at least until the spring of 1945, were in favour of fighting to the last bullet, and remained loyal to Hitler, another group condemned any further bloodshed as senseless from the outset. ‘Something has to happen, one simply cannot fight to the last soldier,’ Generalleutnant von Schlieben said on 3 July 1944. The eradication of the German people by National Socialism must eventually be stopped, Oberst Wildermuth declared. The ‘Afrikaners’ at Trent Park were of the opinion that it was time to surrender. For Hitler, however, capitulation was unthinkable; it was all or nothing, and he was ready to accept the consequences. His willingness to drag Germany down into the abyss was the consequence of people upsetting his world view. If Hitler as Head of State could not see the writing on the wall after the defeat in Normandy, nor when the Ardennes offensive collapsed, nor even when the Allies had crossed the Rhine, how was the bloodshed to be brought to an end? Calls for responsible action by the commanders-in-chief, from a man like von Rundstedt for example, were heard repeatedly at Trent Park from the summer of 1944 onwards. The front in the West should be parted or – less striking – ‘a man like von Rundstedt’ had to transfer 20 divisions to the Eastern Front and so hasten the occupation of Western Germany (Document 64). Eberbach was of the opinion in February 1945 that the moment had come when Army commanders in the West had to convince themselves to lay down their arms for the common good. ‘I should spend the whole time thinking: “What can I do to bring about the fall of the Hitler clique? […] What can I do […] to bring about, somehow, the entry of the Western Powers in?”’ (Document 66). Eberbach spoke as a widely respected and known C-in-C – but what should a ranking general do? Broich suggested that as divisional commander one could simply leave gaps and so enable the Western Allies to break through along the front.

The protocols reveal that most generals declined such tactics on the basis that it did not accord with military honour: ‘that couldn’t be reconciled with their honour […] If I, as CO of a “Division” say to my men “tomorrow we surrender”, they’ll say the old boy has gone crazy overnight; he’s overworked; he’s ill.”’ Generalmajor Bruhn reflected in January 1945 (Document 56). Generalmajor Hans Schaefer agreed: ‘You can’t persuade an officer simply to say: “we’ll arrange with the Americans: ‘You attack and we won’t fire.’”’ (Document 57). Although he considered the war to be lost as commander of the Marseilles fortifications, he had not given in: he would not fight to the last round but resisted until orderly defence collapsed.[184]

As front commanders, Broich and Eberbach might have acted as they claimed they would from the security of captivity, but a glance at how the final battles were fought suggests it was mere dreaming. Responsible steps taken against Hitler’s orders were practically non-existent amongst the Army Group and Army C-in-Cs, except for isolated cases in the very last days of the war.

As regards the lower-ranking commanders of towns, battle groups or divisions, the failure to stick to the letter of instructions was a major exception. Generalleutnant Graf von Schwerin was the first general to have refused to participate in ‘an artificially lengthened war on German soil […] which would only destroy Germany’.[185] He returned from Aachen, was discharged immediately from the Wehrmacht but was not court-martialled because of his reputation and was later found reemployment. Oberst Wilck followed in Schwerin’s footsteps. As the old Kaiser town descended into chaos and destruction, he defended it until orderly resistance collapsed and then – as did Schaefer at Marseilles – sent out some heroic radio messages before accepting captivity.[186]

The example of Aachen shows that a number of factors were required to undermine Hitler’s final struggle fantasies: the correct assessment of the situation by the military commander of the district, the prudence of the Allied forces and often the courageous intervention of prominent civilian dignitaries. Withe the help of Swiss Consul-General Franz-Rudolph von Weiss and acting Bürgermeister Heinrich Ditz, Generalleutnant Richard Schimpf, CO 3 Fallschirmjäger-Division, succeeded in surrendering Bad Godesberg to the Americans on 8 March 1945 without a fight. This was done knowing it was contrary to the orders of Feldmarschall Model. Schimpf created a situation in which Army Group B could neither remove him nor take counter-measures.[187]

Such initiatives never came from the highest levels, however, and even the involvement of divisional commanders was a rare exception. It was mostly junior officers and even simple soldiers who would ignore orders from above to prevent the greater ill. ‘The troops are not insubordinate but they carry out what you might term “sit down strikes”,’ General Edwin Graf von Rothkirch and Trach reported in March 1945 (Document 67).

In all this the generals faced only a comparatively slight personal risk to themselves[188] while their orders to the men under their command meant death for thousands. In 1945, 1.2 million German soldiers fell – more than in 1942 and 1943 combined. Only very few generals were prepared to follow their troops to death or, as SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer nicely put it, ‘to peg out with the Führer’.[189] Model was one of the highest-ranking commanders to take his own life: Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf (Hitler’s Wehrmacht ADC) and Hans Krebs shot themselves on 1 May 1945 in the Führer bunker in Berlin, Generaladmiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg and Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter von Greim followed them a few weeks after the capitulation. Yet this attitude remained exceptional, and most preferred captivity to suicide.

The picture we have of the highest generals in the closing weeks and months of the war is not a flattering one: to avoid falling victim to a flying court martial for the premature laying down of arms, or not obeying orders to hold out (Document 76) was for many generals the foremost consideration in their planning. They would rather sacrifice their men than endanger their own lives by disobeying orders from the Führer. Oberstleutnant Josef Ross’s description of the fighting on the Wesel in March 1945 (Document 72) speaks a clear language in this regard.

‘However highly we may esteem bravery and steadfastness in war, there is however a point beyond which holding-out in warfare can only be described as the madness of despair, and can therefore never be approved,’ Clausewitz wrote in Vom Kriege.[190] The German generals of World War II rejected the Prussian military theoretician in favour of Hitler.

Complicity? Thoughts on Politics, Ideology and Personal Responsibility

In the quiet and seclusion of Trent Park the captured generals also reflected on general political questions. Even if this theme was not central to their conversations, the differing attitudes to the Third Reich, the role of the military in the State and the problems of personal responsibility can be clearly seen in the protocols. In retrospect, Crüwell saw no negative side to Hitler’s political system. It had been the aim of the Führer to seize mastery of the independent states of Europe and so save Western culture (Document 2). The war had been necessary for Germany to recognise itself as the most important State on the continent. Crüwell was certain in addition that the Germans were the most human of the races, the few SS atrocities being only the ‘outpourings of the concerned’. These remarks from 1942 are obviously set against a quite different background to those expressed by other generals in 1944–45. Whether Crüwell changed his opinion following the military collapse and the reports about the death camps is not known, but during his stay at Trent Park until his departure in June 1944 he did not depart from his pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi position.[191]

Many others went through a purification process at Trent Park, however, and confessed their fault: ‘Of course, we let ourselves be taken in, too, there’s no doubt about that […] During the time that I was laying alone in hospital, a lot of things became clear to me,’ Oberst Kessler agreed (Document 28). Some prisoners admitted freely to having been pro-Nazi in the past or to have seen the system as ‘ideal’ (e.g. Ludwig Krug, Walter Köhn). It had, after all, ‘done some good, lifted us up out of the mud and also got rid of the scourge of unemployment. Moreover the State had made us officers what we are. Correspondingly, one had to remain loyal to it. Irregularities had been dismissed per the maxim “You cannot plane a plank without shavings falling.”’ ‘It had not been so bad in 1933–34,’ Oberst Müller-Römer said: after a decent beginning, however, the whole movement had degenerated. ‘It was rotten at the core, they had evil intentions,’ Oberst Reimann concluded (Document 28).

Hitler’s central role in the Nazi Movement had not always been recognised. Generalmajor Gerhard Franz, long active in the General Staff and assessed by the British as highly intelligent, saw injustice and crime as originating from within Hitler’s entourage rather than from Hitler himself (Document 79). The image of Hitler as the victim of his advisers was not shared by many at Trent Park. Thoma doubtless spoke the harshest words against Hitler: he was inwardly simply evil, a Mephistopheles who belonged in a padded cell. Johannes Bruhn admitted, ‘One must shake one’s head in disbelief that we all followed this madness’ (Document 73).[192]

Yet if Hitler was so transparently a criminal, as Generalleutnant von Schlieben thought, why did the Wehrmacht buckle under him? The High Command, so it is widely held, had failed completely, and its complacent dealings had led to the ‘inner slide’[193] of the Wehrmacht. The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine C-in-Cs, the Army Groups and the Chief of the Army General Staff should have kept Hitler in check (Document 60).[194] Another widely held belief was that Hitler could have been controlled by warnings from a clear consensus of the senior generals challenging his war plans (Köhn, Müller-Römer). This merely goes to show how little about Hitler’s personality many officers were able to understand.

It is scarcely surprising that the responsibility for Germany’s military defeat should be blamed on the Party and the spineless OKW generals who had executed the Führer’s absurd orders. Thoma noted in his diary on 11 February 1945: ‘And what will history say of the immense cowardice of the accomplices and hangers-on?’.[195] Even if one distanced himself from the generals, there was still a united front to reject the accusation by Hitler and the National Socialist leaders, expressed ever more vehemently with time, that the generals had failed, and sabotaged the war (e.g. Documents 30, 148).[196]

In the open atmosphere of Trent Park, a few generals did admit to their personal responsibility. ‘There is not one of us, who is not to blame for this human tragedy. This time for thought which I have enjoyed here was very necessary for me. The Bible, Sophocles, Goethe, Shakespeare, they all helped. And nature, too’ wrote General Heinz Eberbach in a letter to his wife in July 1945 (TNA, DEFE 1/343). General von Choltitz even confessed, that he had misled his men into believing ‘this shit’ and had motivated people who still saw the officer corps as ‘something worthy’ to go along with the regime unthinkingly. ‘I feel thoroughly ashamed!’ he said, ‘Maybe we are far more to blame from those uneducated cattle who in any case never hear anything else at all.’ (Document 44). Of course, such self-criticism never found its way into a general’s memoirs, including Choltitz’s. Despite his remarkable statement, Choltitz did not go so far as to align himself with Thoma, whose verdict was that the German people and Army had lost their honour. Here Thoma was out on a limb.

Finis Germaniae? The Inmates of Trent Park Reflect on the Future

When the prisoners at Trent Park considered the future, their main concerns were about themselves and their families. Rumours about how long captivity would last, forcible transfer to the Soviet Union or the threat of war crimes tribunals featured prominently.[197] Others lamented the loss of property. General Holste complained: ‘I was a man who had three estates, all of that is now gone. I have nothing but the shirt I stand up in.’[198] Similar observations do not recur frequently in the protocols, and one assumes that it was preferred to confide them to diaries and letters.[199] All prisoners shared a primitive fear that Germany could turn Communist, either because the German people would take refuge in it willingly in the chaos and collapse of National Socialism, or because the Red Army would occupy the Reich before the Allies did so. Using the style of Nazi propaganda, Ramcke compared the ‘Red Peril’ to the threat to the West presented by Genghis Khan.[200] Even if all did not quite see it so bluntly, it was held unanimously that Communism would mean slavery, oppression and death. A few would have been happy to make common cause with Britain against Bolshevism.[201] Only Georg Neuffer, and to some extent Müller-Römer, thought about the Russians in a more positive way. Neuffer was the only inmate at Trent Park who could read and speak Russian and frequently remarked that the propaganda picture of the primitive, retarded Soviet was not a true one.[202]

Apparently little thought was given to the medium- or long-term future of Europe. The overwhelming events of recent years were too difficult for military minds to assimilate and so see a way forward for Europe and Germany in the future. One of the few exceptions was Eberhard Wildermuth, who had been active politically pre-war. At the end ‘of our Thirty Years’ War’ he said,

Thoma, too, was thinking in concrete terms about postwar Europe. Many of his ideas were nebulous and not well thought through, but on some points he saw developments astoundingly clearly: there would be no reparations, German industry would work for the Allies. He doubted if Britain would succeed in building a new Poland because the Soviet Union was leaning heavily towards the West. This antagonism ‘had the seeds of World War Three in it’. It could happen that, shoulder to shoulder with British and French forces, even German formations might be ‘let loose’ against the Russians.[204]