The Nuremberg Interviews (63 page)

I remarked that it was my understanding that Hitler himself had given most of the orders regarding army strategy at that time. Manstein said, “Yes, but I had many military controversies with Hitler and it was my impression that he was undoubtedly influenced by Goering and Himmler against me.”

What was Manstein’s general feeling about Hitler? “He was an extraordinary personality. He had a tremendously high intelligence and an exceptional willpower.” Was this willpower directed toward good, or evil? “It’s hard to say. He always put through his will. I suppose at the time it can be said that his willpower served both bad and good purposes.”

At the present time, what did Manstein think about Hitler? “Apparently as time went on Hitler lost all moral scruples. However, this is a recognition I have made in retrospect, but which I did not have at the time.” When did Manstein first believe that Hitler had no moral scruples? “After the war was over. After I heard about all the things that had happened. The first sight of Hitler’s lack of morality was his behavior after July 20, 1944, with the subsequent trials, hangings, et cetera. And later when I heard all about the annihilation of the Jews.”

These annihilations of the Jews began earlier. Did Manstein mean that he previously had no inkling of such events? “I know that it began much earlier, probably in 1940 or 1941, but I didn’t know about it. I was a soldier and occupied with winning a war.” Did Manstein not know about the great actions against the Jews of November 1938? He replied
without much feeling, “Yes, naturally. We all considered it an unfortunate thing but we looked on it as part of a revolutionary movement.”

Did Manstein have no idea of the many concentration camps within Germany? “In peacetime I heard of Oranienburg and Dachau. I remember that a younger general staff officer once visited Oranienburg and he later told me that there were two or three thousand men interned there, but that for the most part these internees were professional criminals with a small sprinkling of political prisoners. This officer of mine also told me that the internees there were treated correctly. That was in 1939 — or maybe before that. During the war, however, I was on the front all the time, and I never heard any more about concentration camps, atrocities, or other things that didn’t concern me.”

I remarked that he must have heard of the
Einsatzkommandos
(action commandos) and the
Einsatzgruppen
(action groups) in the Crimea. Manstein looked slightly uncomfortable but remained cool and indifferent. “Ohlendorf’s
Einsatzgruppe
was in my district. I heard that here for the first time. As field marshal in charge of all activities in that district, I naturally heard that there were such commandos operating in the area. But we were told that these SS formations had purely police functions. What they did, I never knew. They were active in the territories of other army groups, too.”

Then, if I understood him correctly, Manstein must have known about them. Manstein replied, “Well, there might have been somebody occasionally who told me that something was happening which was bad, around September, when I first arrived, but I was sent as a military commander and most of my time I spent at the front. I never personally saw or reliably heard of the shooting of Jews en masse by these
Einsatzkommandos
. Such installations were not under my command and in reality I could not do anything about them.”

Erhard Milch
1892–1972

Erhard Milch, general field marshal and armaments chief of the air force, was tried in 1947 by the military tribunal at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1951 his sentence was commuted to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Later amnestied, he was released from prison on June 4, 1954.

Lengthy conversation with Erhard Milch, field marshal of the air force, next to Goering as power behind the building of that machine. He is a shrewd, Napoleonic, short man, who is very affable, but as poisonous as hell with his affability. There will naturally be a war between Russia and the U.S.A. England is no longer a major power. Allied atrocities are just as bad as German ones. When captured, he himself was beaten up by an English general. It was inconceivable, he said, that a field marshal could be beaten. Why was he beaten up? I asked. Because the English had just captured a German concentration camp and he was made to ride through it and see the horrors. Then he was accused of saying, “The Russians are not human beings.” He denies ever saying a word. He knew nothing of all that. He had heard of concentration camps but was never interested in them, never saw one before.

He never read accounts of atrocities in foreign papers, nor did he listen to foreign broadcasts. This was against German law, as listening to foreign stations was forbidden. He, being field marshal, had to set an example for his men, so he never violated that law.

Mistreatment of Jews? He knew nothing about it until after the war. It was the “nonsense” on top, namely Hitler and Himmler, and some others
who are conveniently dead now, who must have given the orders. Did Goering, after all, next in command to Hitler, know of these things? Milch couldn’t say except that he rarely spoke to Goering, as they did not get along well. But Goering is the kind of man who “lives and lets live,” and has no racial prejudices, judges men by his own methods.

He and the German general staff had nothing to do with it. Besides, aren’t Allied war crimes just as bad? For instance, his own case, the beating up of a field marshal! It’s against the Geneva Convention. And he just read in the paper that Robert Patterson, our assistant secretary of war, came to Europe and said all German POWs are being treated in accord with the Geneva Convention. Not in one case is that so, not in a single instance. Milch became quite vociferous about it. He’d heard that German soldiers, noncommissioned officers, and officers, were being sent to Belgium and France and auctioned off for three, four, and five marks apiece for slave labor. It was indisputable; he heard it from an American officer himself. And in the reeducation camp for Nazis at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a camp run by the American army, the methods of reeducating the Nazis is by beating and starvation. He knows because he asked an American officer if it were true and the American officer said it was so, and that he was ashamed of it himself.

Milch feels that he has done no wrong. Quite the contrary, he fancies himself a pioneer in aviation and a benefactor of mankind. He is fifty-four years old, has two children alive, and two grandchildren by a married daughter. This daughter’s husband was an air corps officer who is a POW in Canada. Milch appears forty, hale and hearty. He has been a flier for thirty-one years, he says. He was the head of Lufthansa and also of the air force. He hopes after these trials are over to become German representative for Pan American Airways, because someone in that concern is an old buddy of his.

Wasn’t Milch a Nazi? Sure, but so what? You had to be a Nazi. Persecution of Nazis would have to stop because it’s the same as persecuting Republicans, Democrats, socialists, or Catholics. He had heard of persecution of Jews but it was not his work, he said.

Today Milch was working on some notes when I entered the cell. He smiled pleasantly and invited me to have a seat at the table. I sat on the cot and told him to keep his seat.

I remarked that I had heard from others in the prison here that were
it not for him, Milch, Germany’s air force would not have developed so greatly. Milch replied noncommittally, “I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.” He went on to elaborate on how through his years of experience he knew all about air transportation mainly, having been a civilian director of aviation for years before the war.

In the First World War he was a captain in the air force, although originally he had been an artillery commander. From 1920, when he retired from the air force, he occupied himself with civil aeronautic and commercial flying. In 1933, at the beginning of the Hitler regime, he became general inspector for the air force. I asked him concerning his relationship to Goering. “I had little to do with him. He was more in contact with Hitler than I was. I am essentially a businessman. I did not agree with many of Goering’s ideas. But essentially, Goering was the leading figure, and if the building of the air force can be credited to any single individual, it is Goering, not me.”

I asked him what he was working on. “I shall probably testify early in Goering’s case. I don’t know what about, but whatever I am asked.”

He said that the essence of his testimony was to break down the accusation that he or Goering had planned an aggressive war by building a large air force. “That is not in accord with the facts. After Germany left the Disarmament Convention in 1933 we decided to rearm to be on an equal footing with our neighbor states. As far as the air force was concerned, my responsibility was to build, from nothing, a defense in the air. Our activities were known to the English, French, Belgians, and Swedes because they visited Germany and I personally visited their air industries. There were no secrets.”

I said that I thought there were many secrets in Germany during Hitler’s time, since nobody seemed to know what the other fellow was doing or had done. For example, I said, nobody but Himmler and Ohlendorf seemed to know about the mass murders of Jews. Milch looked serious but composed. “That is true. And it applies to me also. There was a policy by Hitler that nobody should inquire into anyone else’s business and each should limit himself to his own field of activity.”

I asked Milch what the main line of his testimony might be, if he had no objections to telling me. “Not at all. The main thing I shall say is that I did not expect or want war. As far as Goering is concerned, I can give only my impressions. That is true for the Polish war as well as for the Russian war. One thing I will say, I tried to dissuade Hitler from a two-front war. I believe Goering did, too. But I failed.”

He was looking through some notes, obviously trying to locate something. I asked him what he was looking for. “There is another thing which I should like to explain before the tribunal, and that is my signature on a letter to the SS regarding medical experiments. The prosecution has a letter from SS general Wolff addressed to me, regarding medical experiments conducted for the air force. There is evidence that these experiments were criminal. I want to point out that I knew nothing about these things and merely signed a polite note to Wolff, Himmler’s adjutant, in which I expressed approval because the medical inspector had assured me there was nothing to these experiments. Goering was advised of the matter by me, but he knew no more about it than I did. Goering was no more fond of Himmler than I was, but we had to be polite about it. To this day I don’t know what happened as a result of those experiments, but I have heard that criminal things were perpetrated.”

In speaking of this last business, Milch seemed personally concerned. He refused to elaborate on the experiments or anything else connected with them, except that he and Goering had no knowledge of them, other than to have received a letter from Himmler’s adjutant Wolff regarding such experiments. He knew they were to be done on “criminals” he said, but had been assured by his own medical inspector that everything was “in order.”

We dropped this line of discussion. I asked him whether in his official function as field marshal of the air force he had anything to do with any of the other defendants. “Yes, but only slightly. With Speer, the armaments minister, of course, in the last years of the war, I had greater contact.”

What did he think of Speer? “Personally I know little about him. I think he was honest. I know he told me in late 1944 that we should not follow Hitler’s ideas of scorched earth policy. Speer, as well as myself, was interested in saving as much as possible for the German people so that after defeat there would be something to fall back on. By this I mean food stores, housing, and prevention of destruction of factories that might produce goods for the German people.”

I asked him what he thought of the Führer principle. “False.” That was his total answer. And what about the concept of “living space”? “Well, the German people did need more room. But Hitler exaggerated as he always did.” What about the ideology of master race, in his opinion? “Ridiculous. I have never subscribed to racial theory.” I asked him if he
ever did anything to prevent its practice in Nazi Germany. “What could one do? Nothing.” Did Hitler or National Socialism have any real concern for the people, despite slogans about the
Volk
, in his opinion? “I thought originally when Hitler came to power that he was thoughtful about the people’s welfare and wanted a greater Germany for nationalistic reasons with which I agreed. But soon it became obvious that Hitler cared about nothing except more and more personal victories.”

I asked him the usual question concerning why he did not resign if he saw Hitler for what he was. His response was the stereotyped “One could not resign in wartime, and before that I did not know he was aiming at war.”