German POWs, secretly recorded by British intelligence, admitted to mass shootings;
https://www.thejc.com/news/secret-recor ... d-vgbt31l1
"Nazi prisoners describe how Jews were forced to dig their own mass graves before firing squads would arrive and shoot them"
Senior Nazis were secretly recorded at Trent Park.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti ... caust.html
"Yet these unguarded, seemingly-private conversations do not protect the honour of the German officer corps, since it is obvious that almost all of them knew of the Holocaust, right to the top of the High Command.
General Von Thoma, who commanded a panzer division in Russia before being captured at El Alamein, told the pro-Nazi General Ludwig Cruwell in January 1943: "I am actually ashamed to be an officer."
He related how he had spoken to the Army Chief of Staff, General Franz Halder, about the atrocities, only to be told: "That's a political matter, that's nothing to do with me."
So he put his protests in writing to Army commanderin-chief General Walther von Brauchitz, who said: "Do you want me to take it further? If you want me to take it further, anything might happen."
Thoma said of those who believed the Fuhrer was ignorant of what was happening: "Of course, he knows all about it. Secretly, he's delighted. Of course, people can't make a row - they would simply be arrested and beaten if they did."
The kind of things that were happening to Poles, Russians and especially Jews were common currency in the 'private' conversations at Trent Park.
In December 1944, Generalleutnant Heinrich Kittel, commander of 462 Volksgrenadier division, told General-major Paul von Felbert, commandant of Feldkommandantur 560: "The things I've experienced! In Latvia, near Dvinsk, there were mass executions of Jews carried out by the SS.
"There were about 15 SS men and perhaps 60 Latvians, known to be the most brutal people in the world. I was lying in bed one Sunday morning when I kept hearing two salvos followed by small-arms fire."
On investigating, Kittel found "men, women and children - they were counted off and stripped naked. The executioners first laid all the clothes in one pile. Then 20 women had to take up their position - naked - on the edge of the trench. They were shot and fell down into it."
"How was it done?" asked Felbert.
"They faced the trench," Kittel replied. "And then 20 Latvians came up behind and simply fired once through the back of their heads, and they fell down forwards into the trench like ninepins."
Kittel gave an order forbidding such executions from taking place "outside, where people can look on. If you shoot people in the wood or somewhere where no one can see," he told the SS men, "that's your own affair. But I absolutely forbid another day's shooting here. We draw our drinking water from deep springs; we're getting nothing but corpse water there."
"What did they do to the children?" asked Felbert. Kittel - who sounded "very excited" at this point, according to the transcriber - answered: "They seized three-year-old children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol and then threw them in. I saw that for myself. One could watch it."
Another general, General-leutnant Hans Schaeffer, commander of the 244 Infantry division, asked Kittel: "Did they weep? Have the people any idea what's in store for them?"
"They know perfectly well," replied Kittel. "They are apathetic. I'm not sensitive myself, but such things turn my stomach."
Later on, however, Kittel mused: "If one were to destroy all the Jews of the world simultaneously, there wouldn't remain a single accuser," and "Those Jews are the pest of the east!"
"What happened to the young, pretty girls?" asked Felbert, when the subject turned to concentration camps. "Were they formed into a harem?"
"I didn't bother about that," Kittel answered. "I only found that they did become more reasonable. The women question is a very shady chapter. You've no idea what mean and stupid things are done."
In another conversation later that same day, Kittel told Schaefer about Auschwitz: "In Upper Silesia, they simply slaughtered the people systematically. They were gassed in a big hall. There's the greatest secrecy about all those things."
Later still, he said: "I'm going to hold my tongue about what I do know of these things." He little suspected that his every word was being recorded, transcribed and translated.
The following February, General major Johannes Bruhn, Commander of the 533 Volksgrenadier Division, discussed the Holocaust with Felbert, saying: "I must assume, after all I have read about the Fuhrer, that he knew all about it."
"Of course he knew all about it," replied Felbert. "He's the man who is responsible. He even discussed it with Himmler."
"Yes," said Bruhn. "That man doesn't care a hoot if your relatives are annihilated."
"That man doesn't care a damn," agreed Felbert.
The following month, Bruhn - one of the few generals to emerge with credit from these conversations - said he believed that Germany did not deserve victory any longer, "after the amount of human blood we've shed knowingly and as a result of our delusions and blood lust. We've deserved our fate."
In reply, General-leutnant Fritz von Broich said: "We shot women as if they had been cattle. There was a large quarry where 10,000 men, women and children were shot. They were still lying in the quarry. We drove out on purpose to see it. It was the most bestial thing I ever saw."
It was then that General von Choltitz, the "saviour" of Paris, spoke of the time he was in the Crimea and was told by the CO of the airfield from where he was flying: "Good Lord, I'm not supposed to tell, but they've been shooting Jews here for days now." Choltitz estimated that 36,000 Jews from Sebastapol alone were shot.
"Let me tell you," General Count Edwin von Rothkirch und Trach told General Bernhard Ramcke on March 13, 1945, "the gassings are by no means the worst."
"What happened?" asked Ramke. "To start with, people dug their own graves, then the firing squad arrived with tommy-guns and shot them down. Many of them weren't dead, and a layer of earth was shovelled in between. They had packers there who packed the bodies in, because they fell in too soon. The SS did that.
"I knew an SS leader there quite well, and he said: 'Would you like to photograph a shooting? They are always shot in the morning - but if you like, we still have some and we can shoot them in the afternoon sometime.'"
Three days later, at Trent Park, Colonel Dr Friedrich Von der Heydte told Colonel Eberhard Wildermuth about the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia: "Half a million people have been put to death there for certain. I know that all the Jews from Bavaria were taken there. Yet the camp never became over-crowded. They gassed mental defectives, too."
"Yes, I know," replied Wildermuth. "I got to know that for a fact in the case of Nuremberg - my brother is a doctor at an institution there. The people knew where they were being taken."
"We must uphold the principle of only having carried out orders," suggested General-leutnant Ferdinand Heim. "We must stick to that principle if we are to create a more or less effective defence."
As the war progressed, the Trent Park internees divided between Nazis and anti-Nazis. Some of the Nazis' fanaticism was undimmed by the way the war was going.
"What do I care about Good Friday?" asked General-major Wilhelm Ullersperger, who had been captured during the Ardennes offensive in the last days of 1944. "Because a filthy Jew was hanged umpteen years ago?"
General-major Walther Bruns recalled the attitude of the members of the firing squad who killed thousands of Jews in Riga: "All those cynical remarks! If only I had seen those tommy-gunners, who were relieved every hour because of over-exertion, carry out their task with distaste, but not with nasty remarks like: 'Here comes a Jewish beauty!'
"I can still see it all in my memory - a pretty woman in a flame-coloured chemise. Talk about keeping the race pure. At Riga, they first slept with them and then shot them to prevent them from talking."
Meanwhile, Colonel Erwin Josting of the Luftwaffe recalled an Austrian friend being asked by a lieutenant: "Would you like to watch? An amusing show is going on down here; umpteen Jews are being killed off."
Josting continued: "The barn was full of women and children. Petrol was poured over them and they were burned alive. You can't imagine what their screams were like."