which again and again contributed to influencing the armed forces, and I can well say that we officers were always fighting a continuous battle against the influences of the party gaining power over our soldiers, by which the soldierly element which we represented would have been moved a side. Then the third reason is that our plan under Hitler would have been out of the question. If anyone would make any plan, it was Hitler alone, and below him no one was allowed to make plans. Quite apart from that, in the political and practical life of the third Reich one sector never knew what the other was doing, what the tasks were they had. There again, uniformity is quite out of the question. There was, therefore, a lack of all the necessary prerequisites of such a uniform plan.
Q What was the capacity you have in the General Staff of the Army? I was from 1929 to 1932 employed as a first general staff officer, shall we say, when I worked in the first department. Then in 1935 I became the chief of the operation of the army, and in 1936 I became headquartermaster Number 1. That is to say, deputy of the chief of the general staff of the army. under your command?
A Yes, the operational department came under my orders. So did the occupational department and various ether ones. had to deal with the employment of troops in the event of war? of rearmament? the seizure of power, was the most primitive security against an unprovoked attacked on the part of even one of our neighbors. After all, since all our neighbors had certain designs on German territories, we had to suspect such a possibility at all times. We were perfectly aware of the fact that at best we could stand up to such an attack for a few weeks and put up resistance, but that we did want to achieve. In order to prevent that, for instance, in the event of an attack by Poland, the occupation of Upper Silesia would create a Fait Accomplit.
We wanted to make sure we could go on fighting until the League of Nations would interfere. Practically speaking, we were relying upon the League of Nations, and we could only do that if we ourselves would under no circumstances whatsoever be called the attackers. We knew at all timrs, therefore, that we had to avoid everything which might be considered a violation of the Treaty of Versailles or a provocation. For that reason we in the first department had formed a special group of officers who had the right -- whenever the OKH were issuing orders, they had to make sure that no such violations were contained therein or took place. chief quartermaster No. 1?
A Yes. The first mobilization plan we had on the first of April, 1930, when it became valid. It was the transformation of the army of 100,000 men into a state of war. That was the plan for that. That mobilization was then dealt with annually after 1930.
Q Until then?
Q were there plans for a march? and until 1935. In 1935 the first plan for forming up was being dealt with, the so-called "red" forming up, which was the forming up along the Rhine. That is western frontier, and the defense or forming up of the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders. And then there was a second forming up plan, called "green" which was being worked on in 1937 that -
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, by "forming up" do you mean deployment? what do you call a forming up plan? You mean deployment?
THE WITNESS: By a "forming up plan" I understand a plan according to which troops, in the event of the threat of a war, were being got ready along the frontiers, a plan, therefore, for the event of a political concentration being threatened, whether it would be to war -- whether this accumulation might be the basis's from which a war might be started, that isn't actually contained in the forming up plan. The forming up plan merely states where the troops are to be accumulated, where and for what, and in the event of war what would be the first tasks for army groups.
BY DR. LATERNSER:
Q Were those all the forming up plans, those you have just described? had experienced. The forming up plan white, which was Poland, was not worked on during my time. It must have been worked on in 1939.
Q Then did you leave the OKH as chief quartermaster No. 1? General von Fritsch was removed. existence?
A No. Only the forming up plan red existed, which was a defensive securing of the Polish borders in the event of war. reference to the reestablishment of Germany's position in 1935? At that time you were in the OKH?
A No. I was chief of the Internal staff, but I know from my knowledge of the general staff that that declaration surprised all of us completely at the time. I personally, and my commanding general in Berlin, only heard of it over the radio. The general staff, had it been asked, would have considered 21 divisions as the size of an army which we considered suitable and advisable for that time. The question of 36 divisions was due to a spontaneous decision made by Hitler. it planned to be in preparation for a war?
A No. We didn't demand the military occupation. First of all, we didn't consider -- we didn't plan it for a preparation for a war. To the contrary, at the time the occupation was carried out it was the chief of the department and I myself who had to draft the orders for that organization. Since we were completely surprised by the decisions, I had only one afternoon to do it, because the following morning the generals in question were already arriving to receive their orders. I know that at that time the Reichminister of War and Colonel General von Fritsch were stating their objections, because they warned Hitler against the one-sided solution of such a question. That warning is the first source, in my opinion, for the distrust which the Fuehrer increasingly had for the various generals.
On one occasion, a conference between us two, he himself admitted to me once that that was so. And particularly Blomberg at that time when France was mobilizing thirteen divisions, already had suggested that the three battalions which we had pushed across the Rhine to the western bank should be withdrawn again. The intentions we had for the fortification of the Rhineland afterwards were purely defensive. The western wall was planned, just as was the Maginot line, as a wall, if possible, insurmountable in the event of attack. Austria? Surely you are wellinformed about that. Fuehrer together with General Book, the chief of the general staff. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning. Hitler announced that he had decided that the Austrian question was to be solved on the basis of the plebiscite, the result of which -- the intentions for a plebiscite had been announced on the part of Schuschnigg the day before. He demanded arbitration and our suggestions regarding our march into Austria, should this be necessary. The chief of the general staff thereupon suggested that the course which we need for the march would be complete mobilization on Bavaria, and the Panzer division would have to be mobilized first, but that such a mobilization, in fact, such a measure altogether was in no way prepared, since the political loaders had never given even as much as a hint that such instructions might be received. It would be necessary, therefore, to improvise everything.
but then he realized that if he wanted to march in at all, troops would have to be mobilized, and he granted the point, and he said that the following Saturday -- the day before the planned plebiscite -- he would have to march in if he wanted to march in at all and that the order for the mobilization of those corps had to be givens till on that same day if the mobilization of the forces on the border was to be completed in good order.
The conference started at about 11 o'clock in the morning and went on until about one o'clock, and in the afternoon at six o'clock the orders had to be ready to go out. They came out twenty minutes late, and I had to draft the orders for the forming-up myself, so that I had four or five hours altogether to do it in. Before that, such a thing had not been thought of at all. The so-called Case Otto has nothing at all to do with this entire affair. to the troops in that case, had just a few fours from the moment when you know nothing until the moment you had to issue the order? of war, know anything at all about the conference which Hitler held on 7 November 1935?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser, the Tribunal would like to know what you are saying the Plan Otto was for. What was the plan made for?
A We in the army did not have a completed plan called Otto. I only know that that was a code word for some measures of the OKW for the event of a restoration attempt on the part of the Hapsburgs in Austria in connection with Italy. That possibility was always pending, and I want to supplement my statement by saying that at the time when Hitler gave us the orders for Austria it had been his chief worry, not so much that there might be interference on the part of the Western Powers, but only the worry as to how Italy would behave, because Italy was always under the same roof with Austria and the Hapsburgs, it appeared.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, are you telling the Tribunal that you do not know whether the Plan Otto was a plan for the German army or part of it to march into Austria? me when I read the interrogation record of Jodl. The question of a plan of march into Austria, such a plan did not exist in the OKH because I had to prepare these orders within a few hours after the conference with Hitler.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but if the Plan Otto was not a plan for the march into Austria, what was it for? on the part of the OKW connected with the question of the restoration of the Hapsburgs in Austria, but we ourselves did not introduce any measures as far as I can remember that were connected with it. I do not even know whether I myself was familiar and occupied myself with the code name at the time at all. It may be so, but I do not know now.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on. BY DR. LATERNSER: What was the purpose of that conference? What ware the contents?
A That conference was something quite unusual. The Fuehrer had ordered to appear before him the chiefs of those armies which, in the event of a march into Czechoslovakia, would have to march up along the border, but he did not order the Supreme Commanders to appear, as would have been natural -only, shall we say, the younger generation of chiefs. Possibly he knew from the memorandum of Colonel General Beck and its submission by Colonel General Brauchitsch that the commanding generals were turning down any type of policy which might lead to a war and that was why he ordered us to come along, in order to convince us of the necessity and the correctness of his decision. questions and discussion afterwards. He had been mistaken insofar as the chiefs of the General Staff, too, were raising objections regarding the possibility of interference on the part of the Western Powers and of a war that might arise from it. It was one of the most unpleasant and serious clashes between the Fuehrer and General von Beckelstein with reference to that question.
After that, whenever such meetings took place, there was not a single occasion when questions or discussions were permitted by him. rehearsals, militarily speaking, for a war? mobilized, and the mobilization of those corps on the occasion of the march into Austria was demonstrating to us that nothing had advanced sufficiently to carry out a reasonable mobilization, and if a war had occurred, neither our western border nor our Polish border could have been effectively defended by us, and, no doubt, if Czechoslovakia had defended itself, we would have got stuck in the fortifications, so that in practice we did not have the means to break through. A military rehearsal is certainly out of the question. It was a question of trying the political nerves, yes. did you have the impression that an aggressive was was being planned? South when the plans for the Polish campaign were drawn up. When I received the plans for the forming-up, that was definitely a forming up for an attack, but there were various important points which indicated that there was not an intention of aggression. there suddenly started the strongest fortifications of the eastern border. Not only thousands of workers, but entire divisions were employed to build these fortifications, and the entire material from the Czech fortifications was dragged over there and used up. Part of the most fertile land in Silesia was taken up by those fortifications, and that, of course, would indicate anything but an aggressive intention. on an entirely peacetime basis. I myself, while I was divisional commander at the time, remained on the parade square with my division in the exercise ground on the Luder -- far away, therefore, from that part of the country where my division would have to be drawn up.
in which he assured the Poles of assistance, and since Hitler, on every occasion during the time I was in the OKH, always and repeatedly stated that he would never allow a war on two fronts to happen, one could not possibly consider that, in view of that promise, he would indulge in a policy of risk. effect --information which was confirmed by practice afterwards -- that the Poles in the Province of Posen were proposing to draw up their troops for an advance toward Galicia. We failed to understand the entire situation, but in fact that was the way the Poles drew up their troops at a later stage. The probability of a war might be listed therefore, and most probably, due to the possibility that the Poles could look to Britain for assistance and if the political negotiations should reach a crisis, the Poles might on their part do something careless and attack themselves, and then, of course, a war would have happened quite certainly. that Hitler would initiate an aggressive war against Poland. The conference at Obersalzburg, for instance, on 22 August did not give me the impression, cither, that unconditionally a war would start -- an impression that my supreme commander, Field Marshal von Runstedt, and I had until 31 August or 1 September of that year, since an order to march in given on the 25th had been withdrawn
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 1000 hours, 10 August 1946.)
BY DR. LATERNSER (Counsel for the General Staff and the OKW): west? was obviously no longer possible, there was no other way out than an offensive in the West in order to end the war in that way. Yugoslavia?
A No. Of the starting of these campaigns I only heard over the radio.
Q How did you as a military leader regard the war against Russia? part. In my opinion, there was, in fact, no other way out for Hitler -- no other way out of the situation into which he had brought Germany. After having not dared to invade Britain in the autumn of 1940, he knew, in my opinion, that the Soviet Union was a very great threat in 1940 and 1941 -a threat which would become real as soon as we would finally tie our forces in the fight against Britain. The only chance of extricating, ourselves from that situation would have been a landing in England in the autumn of 1940 but that was a risk which Hitler did not want to take. Supreme Commander of the General Staff of the Army, in the most important military decisions such as, for instance, a war against the Soviet Union, was by-passed by Hitler?
A In my opinion the explanation the following: Politically we generals had not had any say for a Long time, because the political objections raised by the generals on the occasion, for instance, of the Rhineland and the march into Czechoslovakia, had turned out to be immaterial and Hitler had been right.
Hence, he no longer listened to the political opinions expressed by the OKH. opinion that the offensive in the West, from the point of view of the soldier, was absolutely inevitable. The OKH was of a different opinion. On that score, the OKH, in my opinion, adopted the wrong military attitude. There again Hitler turned out to be right, and it became quite apparent from his behavior that after that he thought that he knew more than the soldiers, so that on the decisive questions concerning the fight against the Soviet Union he would no longer listen to the OKH.
Q You have heard of the Commissar Order, have you not?
Q What attitude did you adopt with reference to that order? between my soldierly conceptions and my duty to obey. Actually, I ought to obeyed, but I told myself that as a soldier I could not possible cooperate in a thing like that, and I told both the commander of the army group under which came at the time, as well as the commander of the armored group that I would not carry out such an order, which was against the honor of a soldier. In practice, the order was, in fact, not carried out. My divisional commanders, who had received the order independently from me in the Reich, shared my view, and, apart from that, the Commissars, as good fighters, defended themselves to the last and often shot themselves before being taken prisoner or removed their badges of rank and could not be identified by the troops. The troops, who within themselves disliked the order intensely, certainly did not look for Commissars amongst the prisoners. and the commander of the armored group. Who were they? Who were these general and commanding the armored group was Colonel General Hoeppner.
Q And what was their attitude with reference to these orders?
order as my superior by putting it on record; in other words, he silently approved. Colonel General Hoeppner, with whom another commanding general, Reinhardt, has also raised objections, promised that he would object against the order by approaching the OKH, but he was unsuccessful.
case with your conception of the military duty to obey? ditional, but at all times there were cases during wars where higher military leaders did not obey an order or carried it out differently. That is contained in the higher military leader is burdened. No army leader can be expected to join a battle when he knows that he is bound to lose. tions, there is in practice some sort of right which, however, must be confirmed by success, the right to deviate from orders which have been given. In the German army particularly, that independence of lower ranking leaders has always been particularly emphasized. which deal with actions on the part of all soldiers. In such cases, disobedience on the port of a small man may be compensated in its consequences by means of punishment. If the higher leader, however, disobeyed orders in such cases, then he would shake not only his own authority but the discipline altogether, and he would thus endanger the military success. In such cases, therefore, the higher leader is more duty-bound than the soldier and the lower ranking loader, because he, the higher man, should be an example. dermine discipline? troop corresponded to my thoughts. In other words, the feelings which we had inoculated into our troops opposed, in this case, the political will imposed upon them by Hitler. Apart from that, we were able to refer them to the order issued by the such Commander of the Army, to the effect that the maintenance of manly discipline would take preference over everything else.
army in accordance with the order from the supreme commanders of the army that discipline was to be observed strictly? to the conception which we had because of our training, in other words, lawful and right and according to a decent soldier's life. death sentences with which I had to deal were imposed at the beginning of the Russian campaign against two German soldiers in my corps because of the rape of Russian women, and it was the same everywhere. say about the treatment of prisoners of war? as far as it came under our jurisdiction, I shall have to first of all say in principal that we as soldiers respected every brave opponent, and secondly that we know very well from the first World War that everything one might do to enemy prisoners of war would finally have repercussions upon one's own soldiers. As a matter of principle, therefore, we treated prisoners of war in the manner which we had been taught as soldiers, and which we had to adopt, that is to say, in accordance with the international regulations. have you stopped any such violations yourself? of prisoner of war transports, and when they were on their way, I never saw a prisoner of war who had been shot. Upon one occasion, when I was the supreme commander of the army group, I saw a German soldier hitting a prisoner with a club in order to clear the way for my motor car which was trying to pass the column. I stopped at once and took the man's name, and on the following day I had his commander appear be fore me and gave him an order to punish the men, and I told him myself that the next time he would face a court martial if any such excesses were permitted amongst his troops.
ties amongst Russian prisoners of war during that first winter ? to 150,000 prisoners, and it is of course, always difficult to find the necessary food and accommodations for such large numbers. As far as my army was concerned, we managed to do that. We gave permission to the population, for instance, to bring food into the camps for the prisoners and to make their situation easier that way. in the Army Group Center and near Kiev, where many hundred thousands were concerned, the situation was somewhat different. First of all, the Russian soldiers came from these valleys in which they had defended themselves to the last when they were already half-starved, and then, an army with its transportation space cannot possibly bring along the necessary goods to suddenly food 500,000 prisoners. Then, you can't even accommodate them in central Russia. After all, the same conditions arose in Germany after the capitulation, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers spent weeks in the open and couldn't be fed properly either. sible for prisoners of war ? they were in the area of our armies, that is to soy, until they were handed over to transient camps.
Q So that was an entirely temporary state of affairs? in the army area. the army or armies, how were they treated ?
were required to support the work we had to do, and for that reason they were, of course, decently treated. After all, we had about 100,000--sometimes more--prisoners whom we employed as so-called auxiliary volunteers. Those auxiliary volunteers remained faithful to us even during our retreats, and came along, and that certainly wouldn't have been the case had we treated then badly.
I should like to quote one example. When I was the Supreme Commander of the Army Group South, after Rosch Kask, I had no personnel for guarding, and there for about eight or ten days I had a prisoner in my house to guard me, and after all, had we treated the prisoners badly, they would have bumped me off. Reich. Who was in charge of camp commandants ? districts came under the General for Prisoners of War, and he in turn was under the Commander of the Reserve Army.
Q who was the Commander of the Reserve Army? Colonel General Fromm, and after the 20th of July, it was Heinrich Himmler. der Himmler ?
A Yes, I don't know the exact date, but I do know that the total system of prisoners of war was expressly, emphatically put under Himmler's command. the areas of your army? considerable destruction which we found, however, to a very considerable extent, when we got there in 1941. All railway lines had been destroyed so that in 1943 waterworks were still not capable of working; all communications and telephone exchanges had been destroyed; many industrial plants had been destroyed; the largo dam at Porosche, the works at Kharkov, the large iron works, and the oil industry at Miakov in the Caucasus.
tions went on to the extent they did ? ed destruction known in previous wars is due to the tactics employed in this last war. In 1941, Stalin, quite justified from his point of view, ordered his army to fight for every foot of ground. Hitler adopted that same system, and if you force armies to fight for every foot of ground, you are lost and the villages and the towns are bound to go up in flames in the process. months was used as a fortress, and finally the town itself was defended. Take Stalingrad. For weeks one house after another was fought for. Take Rostov; take Kharkov. we took them twice and the Soviet Army took them twice during heavy battle. Kiev and Rovno were taken once, and Odessa was taken by the Rumanian armies during an attack which lasted for weeks. Of course, all of these towns were destroyed in that fighting. That was unavoidable.
Q And wasn't there planned destruction too? areas by order of Hitler. There was planned destruction to a considerable degree. It had been Hitler's order that the territories at Dnieper should be made useless for the Russians. Those orders went into great detail when they came from him. that question absolutely in the affirmative. The situation was that if we could not bring the Soviet Army to a halt at Dnieper, if they continued to break through and to continue their pressure, the war was lost if Dnieper had not been fortified. The work only just begun. Sufficient troops at the front to hold the Dnieper line were not available. That was further reason for bringing up reserves to the front line especially since the Russian attack did not stop. It was assumed, in the autumn of 1943, that the southern part of the eastern front would be invaded and the war in the east, then, would have ended unfavorably for us. In such cases only the highest leaders could decide on what to achieve when seen operationally. The lower leaders cannot judge in that connection -- he can only see the necessities of his sector and therefore he cannot have the right to turn down such decisions.
Q And then these orders to revert to destruction were carried out?
A Certainly. Nearly every Army leader tried to keep this destruction down as much as possible, particularly in our part of the Ukrainian area where we, the soldiers, had a very excellent relationship with the population. That, after all, is the problem of the individual leader -- whether or not he decides that his goal can be achieved with a minimum of destruction. There was a difference, a difference in attitude toward the destruction of accommodations, of billets. In the winter the possibility of fighting in the east depended to a very considerable extent on the possibility of accommodating the troops during the night. In the winter, therefore, the destruction of billets could be absolutely decisive. In the Summer, of course, it was not quite so important.
monuments preserved. A large portion in the Krimm, the Southern Sector, for instance was already found destroyed, but then, we preserved other monuments such as the Czarist castles very, very carefully. Leningrad in order to prepare an attack Which was not carried out. There saw several castles, Oranienbaum and others. They were destroyed but they were within the range of Russian artillery and I myself was under artillery fire. The castle was burned out but they were not burnt by our troops. Did you gain any knowledge of the fact that the partisan warfare was concerned with the extermination of Jews and Slavs? be taken during the partisan fighting. handing over of a certain person to the SD? such a person and then quit probably, send him to some camp. We also know that German soldiers who were picked up for desertion had to be turned over to the SD because there was a regulation enforced that lengthy penalties during war were not to be carried out unless the people in question, in order to utilize their working capabilities, had to be kept out of prison walls, and these people, these prisoners, were to be sent to concentration camps for the duration of the war. That is to say, that the turning over of a prisoner to the SD for any other purposes was on of the question.
Q Did you know anything about conditions in the concentration camps?
A No. I know as little about that at the time as the German nation, or possibly, even less, because when you were 1,000 kilometers away, in battle, you naturally did not know or hear about things like that. I know from prewar days that there were two concentration camps, Oranienburg and Dachau, and an officer, upon the invitation of the SS visited the camp and told me that it was simply the most wonderful collection of criminal prisoners and political prisoners who, according to what he had seen, were being treated strictly but correctly. which the Prosecution has described as crimes against humanity committed by the German war leaders? shall we say, fought from two points of view. The first was the military conduct of the war which we, the soldiers, were carrying through, and the other was -- incidentally on both sides -- the ideological conduct of the war which we soldiers were not carrying out but which was carried out by the others.
Q You just said 1941? the campaigns in Norway and in the Balkans were still carried out in a purely military manner as long as the fighting was going on. This other part, that is to say, the ideological part of the war, did not start until the campaign against, the Soviet Union started, and it was then, in effect, transferred to the other territories by the elements who conducted the war.
Q But then, who was conducting the ideological part of the war?
A We soldiers did not conduct the ideological part of the war. It was conducted by Hitler, and, in my opinion, by some of his closest collaborators, and also, a limited number of participants.
Q How is it that this war was not conducted by soldiers? "gallant conception of warfare" did not do things like that. He defined his view very clearly in the speech he made after the Polish campaign. From this point of view of his I know that the armed forces would have to be kept out of this sector, out of the ideological part of the war, and everything that was done was removed from our influence or even from our knowledge.
Q And by what means did Hitler remove this part of the war? The bulk of the occupied territories were removed from the influence of the supreme commander, that is, the commissariat, the Reich Commissariat in the East, and the remaining countries. Apart from that he also took away from us the actual spheres of influence on the strength of which this fight went on from the point of view of fate. In fact, we had very little to say. All police measures were put into force by Himmler under his own responsibility as it is contained in the well-known Barbarossa order.
The economic exploitation was a matter for Goering; the obtaining of labor was Sauckel's affair; art treasures were handled by Rosenberg for registration and sorting out; legal matters with reference to the civilians had expressly been taken away from our military court-martials. In other words, all we were left with was the running of the fighting at the front, the military sector, and the creation of a local administration as well as the setting up of agriculture and business.