The Nuremberg Interviews (49 page)

“After my Warsaw accomplishment, I became the SS commander of Budapest, but I was relieved after five days because I refused to liquidate the Jews there.”

Why did you join the SS in the first place? “I don’t want to say I joined because of idealistic motives. Firstly, I believed in the ‘stab in the back’ legend.
⁸
The generals said that after the last war, Germany had been sold out from the inside. Now, of course, I don’t believe it anymore, but as a young lieutenant, I believed that Germany was not beaten actually on the battlefield in the first war, but had been sold out from the inside.

“There were other things. The Poles had the corridor. Parts of my family lived in Poland.

“Another factor is that the Ludendorff movement was more anti-Semitic than the Hitler movement. I thought that Hitler would drop most of his anti-Semitic ideas. I was impressed by the Nazi election victory in 1930. I lost a job with a Jewish firm. I liked the profession of soldier and I talked with my Jewish brothers-in-law, and both of them agreed that it would be best for me to drift with the stream instead of opposing it, and thus get more out of it by joining the party rather than opposing it.

“My wife’s cousin was married to a Jewish banker in Berlin. He was a member of the National Union of Jewish Students, and in the last war, he was a captain of the reserve. We were very intimate friends. This man financed the Baltic undertaking against Riga by General von Goltz. In other words, the Jewish banker had nationalistic feelings. He
told me to join up with the Nazis and that after a few years, things would quiet down and there would be good times among the ruling classes.

“After that, my career was fast and my rise was rapid — too rapid — so that I could not quit without endangering my family.

“Even today, looking back, when I ask myself what I should have done, I must answer that it was for the best that a few decent fellows like myself were influential in the SS and thus staved off bad things.”

Bach-Zelewski looks particularly smug and hypocritical as he makes this latter statement. I asked him quite directly what he had ever “staved off.” He said, “In Warsaw alone I saved a thousand people at least in 1944. And I told you about at least ten thousand Jews that I saved by sending them to the Pripet Marshes.”

I have heard from many people here in this prison that you were one of the most severe and influential SS generals and that many mass executions took place under your direct supervision. “I know some of these people whom I have spoken against will say that, but all I can do is testify to the truth. I saved a thousand lives in Warsaw — known Jews, I mean — in 1944, and ten thousand Jews by sending them to the marshes.” And therefore, you feel that it was worthwhile for you to be a member of the SS, of which Himmler was chief, because you saved, or claimed that you saved, ten thousand Jews, when the SS has admittedly exterminated between 5 and 6 million Jews? “Yes, but I was just a small man, and ten thousand Jews saved is ten thousand. What more could one man do?” Well, you seem to blame one man, namely Himmler, for the death of the remaining 5 million Jews and the murder of many innocent Poles and Russians. “Yes, but Himmler was a man who had much more power than I did. Besides, I didn’t say that Himmler alone was responsible. The whole crowd — Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Frank, Rosenberg, just to mention those who were responsible in the East alone — have blood on their hands. But I have none.

“The reason Goering calls me a traitor is that I have said these things in interrogations and before the tribunal. And I say again that I know personally that Himmler planned the systematic extermination — the cold-blooded murder — of 30 million Slavs. That is the reason Goering calls me a traitor. If I had stayed in Silesia, the Jews there would still be alive.” Why didn’t you stay in Silesia? “I was ordered out.” Well, what good did you do when you were there? “I have told you repeatedly that I saved a thousand women and children who were ordered to be shot in
Warsaw, that I saved many Jews in Russia, and I could give you other examples, for example, how I saved Bialystok.”

Therefore, you feel justified in becoming a Nazi SS man? “No. I must be responsible for everything I did in my life. This doesn’t excuse my deep guilt for joining the party.” Yes, but a moment ago you said that in retrospect you thought it was a good idea for a few decent fellows like yourself to be in the party and in the SS. “No, what I meant is that one can’t compare me with the rest of them. What I mean is that in retrospect — in trying to look backward over the past — fate and the act of God made me join the SS and the party.”

Do you think it was fate and the act of God, or do you think that it was your own decision, which, as you told me a few minutes ago, was carefully thought out and discussed with your brothers-in-law at the time you decided to “drift with the stream”? “God is over all. I don’t mean to say that it was not my own free will. But all the free will of people is influenced by God.”

Do you mean that anything that happens in this world, good or evil, can be excused on the basis that God so wanted it? “Yes, yes, I believe so much in God.” Then you believe that God wanted 5 or 6 million Jews killed in gas chambers and in pits? “No, that I don’t believe God wanted. That I believe was the devil, who was fighting against God and who temporarily got the upper hand, using such people as Himmler and Hitler and the SS — including such good influences as myself and a few others within the SS. I believe so much in God — and it is proven by the way in which the war ended. If Germany had won, it would have been the victory of the will of the devil.

“If I ever get out of here, and I want to help people, I will write a book about my experiences as an SS leader and the name of the book will be
Lucifer’s Angel
.” Do you mean in your book that you are an angel? “No, only by comparison. Hitler and Himmler were fallen angels, that is, they were devils. Lucifer’s angel would be the SS. In the Catholic religion, Lucifer’s angel wanted to be like God and was cursed by God.

“Looking at it from a religious viewpoint and summing up all of the lives that this war lost — Jews, Germans, Allies — if this is the last war, if the Allies now succeed in bringing about eternal peace, then it is worthwhile. But if it is not the last war, it is not worthwhile.”

During all of this time Bach-Zelewski has the pious, pompous bearing of a preacher or well-fed schoolteacher who has a rather platitudinous idea which he believes to be of great depth.

Do you think that this has been the last war? “I believe it is the last war because if it isn’t, it means the end of humanity. If this has not been the last war, I would just as soon have seen Himmler gas me and my family some time ago.

“I have regretted my step a hundred times. I have seen my children gassed and done away with in my imagination, and I have lived through horrible times. Right now, I feel almost in Paradise because I know that the kind Americans won’t hurt my family. In the Bible, there is only one man who is ready to give his son to God, and that was Abraham.”

Family History:
Father died at fifty-two of rheumatism when the subject was ten years of age. The father was an insurance agent who had a small income of about a hundred marks a month. He was always in poor circumstances.

Mother:
Died in 1935 at the age of seventy-one after her daughter had emigrated to South America. She died of cancer.

Siblings:
The subject is the fifth of seven children. He has four sisters and two brothers: (1) Carola, who is married to a teacher in East Prussia; (2) sister in Rio de Janeiro, married to a Jew; (3) another sister, also in Rio for the same reason; (4) brother Kurt, also in Rio; (5) the subject; (6) Eva, married in Leipzig, where her husband is a barber (How did it happen that your sister should make such a lowly marriage? “We were always very poor, and the ‘von’ in front of my name doesn’t mean that we are rich”); (7) Victor, the youngest brother, whose fate was mentioned above.

After your father’s death, how did your mother earn a living? “She was supported by my older sisters and later by me. Our home was in Berlin, where my mother lived until her death.”

Can you tell me something about your early family life and your childhood? “Well I was brought up by another family from the age of six to ten years. After that, from the age of ten to fifteen, I lived in the gymnasium that I attended. I never really had a family life. It was only after I married that I found a home with my wife and children.” Why were you brought up by another family and why did you spend so little time with your own people as a child? On this point, Bach-Zelewski was definitely evasive and answered in generalizations, which seemed to be evasions. “We were poor and my father died when I was ten, and the other family that brought me up took a liking to me.”

Marital History:
He states that he was married at the age of twenty-two,
at which time he was a lieutenant, to a girl one year his junior. He states that his marriage has been happy, although of necessity during the last six years of war he has not had as much time with his wife and children as he would have liked. He has six children. The oldest is a girl of twenty, who recently married in Vienna. The other children are a girl of seventeen, another of twelve, another of seven, and two boys, ages eight and six years. Regarding his wife’s personality, he resorts to the cliché that she was always quiet, good-natured, a faithful wife and devoted mother.

Religion and Religious Education:
In view of the subject’s frequent references to God and his pious attitude, I inquired as to his religion and religious education. He said, “Of course, during the time of my being in the SS, from 1930 or thereabouts, until the end of the war in 1945, I could not practice my religion. I have to admit I did a thing which was morally not very good. What I did was write a certificate and present it to the SS when I joined, which stated that I had left the Lutheran Church. My wife is a Lutheran, but you see it was a trick because I was a Catholic, and although I did not practice my religion for several years before, I had actually never left the church.”

Did you become religious here, or before coming here? “As an SS leader I had to deny religion. If I went to mass, I could go only secretly, that is, anonymously, and in civilian clothes. It was absolutely impossible for me to attend church in my SS uniform, which I had to wear on all occasions because I was an active general. For example, when I was stationed in Breslau, I could not go to church. I have found out here in this prison from the Catholic chaplain that I am still a Catholic and have always been a Catholic officially. The Catholic Church only recognizes leaving the church if one requests it of his priest. And I have never requested it. This is confidential, and I only tell it to you. I don’t want to bring it up to the court — as far as the church is concerned, the Catholic chaplain tells me that I am a good Catholic. In the eyes of the state, I had left the church. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, I find I had not left it.” If Germany had won the war, would you be back in the Catholic Church now? “That goes much deeper. Germany could not win this war because it was in league with the devil. This war would not have ended without revolution.”

Kurt Daluege
1897–1946

Kurt Daluege was SS colonel general and colonel general of the police. In 1942 he succeeded Reinhard Heydrich as Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Brought to trial in Czechoslovakia and condemned to death, he was hanged in 1946.

Kurt Daluege, who was chief of the regular uniformed police of Germany, is in solitary.
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He is a big fellow, with hooked nose, beady eyes, somber, piqued facial expression, in his forties. He is polite in a restrained way, talks easily, but says little of anything revelatory of emotional or factual content. He is apparently fastidious, keeps his cell in barren order, a description that might apply as well to his face. When I knocked the ashes from my pipe several times into his cardboard ashtray, inadvertently spilling a few flecks on the table, he invariably, and automatically it seemed, blew the ashes from the table. He is composing some kind of autobiographical account of his early years for Colonel Schroeder, who he says asked him to do so. The sheets containing this material lay neatly on his writing table. They superficially gave the impression of having been turned out by a printing machine. He is doing it by hand, each letter printed, marvelously uniform and neat. The context of his early life, he said, is as follows: He was brought up to live in the outdoors, was a member of an organization of nature lovers called the Wandervogel, which taught him to hike, rely on himself in the woods, build fires for cooking in the open, and in general have manly objectives.
That fine, neat printing, he said, was done because his longhand script is “not so good.” He was born in Upper Silesia (1897). His father was a small government official, having something to do with land assessments.