Panzer Leader

by Heinz Guderian

  Such was our situation when Heinrici arrived on a visit to Zossen preparatory to taking up his new appointment as commander of Army Group Vistula. His first task was to be the relief of the little fortress of Küstrin which the Russians had encircled. Hitler wished him to do this by making an attack with five divisions from the small bridgehead we still held across the Oder near Frankfurt-on-Oder. I felt that such an attack was pointless and proposed that our first step must be the elimination of the Russian bridgehead near Kiistrin and the re-establishment of direct contact with the besieged garrison. This difference of opinion had led to repeated arguments between Hitler and myself. The commandant of the fortress, the construction of which dated from the time of Frederick the Great, was the police general Reinefarth, who had made a name for himself at Warsaw; he was a good policeman but no general.

  But before describing this counter-attack I must revert to the Chancellery and an event of a political nature that now took place there. On March 21st, in accordance with the decision taken by Dr. Barandon and myself, I went to see Himmler with the purpose of urging him that he use his official contacts in neutral countries to arrange for an armistice. I found him in the Chancellery garden, taking a stroll with Hitler among the rubble. Hitler saw me and called out, asking what it was I wanted. I replied that I was desirous of talking with Himmler. So Hitler walked away and I had the National SS Leader to myself. I told him bluntly what he had already known for a long time: ‘The war can no longer be won. The only problem now is how most quickly to put an end to the senseless slaughter and bombing. Apart from Ribbentrop you are the only man who still possesses contacts in neutral countries. Since the Foreign Minister nas proved reluctant to propose to Hitler that negotiations be begun, I must ask you to make use of your contacts and to go with me to Hitler and urge him that he arrange an armistice.’ Himmler replied: ‘My dear Colonel-General, it is still too early for that.’ I said: ‘I don’t understand you. It is not now five minutes to twelve but five minutes past twelve. If we don’t negotiate now we shall never be able to do so at all. Don’t you realise how pitiful our situation has become?’ Our conversation continued in this inconclusive vein for some time, but without result. There was nothing to be done with the man. He was afraid of Hitler.

  That evening, after the briefing, Hitler signalled me to stay behind. He said to me: ‘I notice that your heart trouble has taken a turn for the worse. You must immediately take four weeks’ convalescent leave.’ This would have provided a very welcome solution to my personal problems, but on account of the state of my staff I could not accept the offer. I therefore replied: ‘At the moment I cannot leave my post because I have no deputy. Wenck has not recovered from his injuries. Krebs was severely wounded in the enemy air raid of March 15th and is not capable of returning to work. The Operations Department, as a result of the imprisonments that you ordered after the Warsaw affair, is even now not yet fully competent. I shall attempt to find a deputy as quickly as I can and shall then go on leave.’ While we were talking a man came in and informed Hitler that Speer wished to see him. Hitler replied that he could not receive him that night. And once again I had to listen to his now almost stereotyped outburst, ‘Always when any man asks to see me alone it is because he has something unpleasant to say to me. I cannot stand any more of these Job’s comforters. His memoranda begin with the words: “The war is lost!” And that’s what he wants to tell me again now. I always just lock his memoranda away in the safe, unread.’ Speer was instructed to return in three days’ time.

  During this difficult month of March many conversations took place which are sufficiently interesting to be worth preserving. Thus one evening Hitler lost his temper at the high prisoner-of-war claims that were being issued by the Western Allies. He said: ‘The soldiers on the Eastern Front fight far better. The reason they give in so easily in the West is simply the fault of that stupid Geneva convention which promises them good treatment as prisoners. We must scrap the idiotic thing.’ Jodl contradicted this wild and senseless proposal with great energy and, with my support, succeeded in persuading Hitler to postpone taking any such step. Jodl also prevented Hitler from appointing as commander of an army group a general who had recently been punished for gross irregularity of conduct and dismissed the Service. By this time Jodl had come to agree that the General Staff Corps must be under unified control and had recognised that his former attitude towards this problem was incorrect. Now that the end was approaching he seemed to possess greater clarity of vision than before and even appeared to shake off the lethargy in which he had been sunk since the Stalingrad disaster.

  On March 23rd the Western Powers reached the upper and central Rhine along its whole length, and north of the mouth of the Ruhr crossed the lower Rhine on a broad front. On the same day the Russians broke through near Oppeln in Upper Silesia.

  On the 24th the Americans crossed the upper Rhine and advanced towards Darmstadt and Frankfurt. In the East the heavy fighting around Danzig continued. The Russians attacked at Küstrin.

  On March 26th the Russians launched a fresh offensive in Hungary. Our attempt to re-establish contact with the defenders of Küstrin failed.

  On March 27th Patton’s tanks entered the outskirts of Frankfurt-on-Main. Heavy fighting developed around Aschaffenburg.

  On this day, during the noon conference, Hitler became very excited about the failure of our counter-attack at Küstrin. His accusations were directed principally at the commander of the Ninth Army, General Busse. He had expended too little ammunition in the artillery preparation preceding the attack. In the First World War, in Flanders, it was customary to fire off ten times as many shells before an operation of this sort. I pointed out to him that Busse had had no more ammunition to hand and therefore was not in a position to fire more shells than he had in fact done. ‘Then you should have arranged for him to have more!’ he shouted at me. I showed him the figures for the total quantity that had been allotted me and proved to him that this had all been given to Busse. ‘In that case the troops let us down!’ I gave him the figures of the very heavy casualties suffered by the divisions involved, which only sufficed to prove that the troops had performed their duty with the greatest self-sacrifice. The conference ended in an atmosphere of profound ill-feeling. Back at Zossen I checked up once again on the figures for the ammunition employed, the casualties suffered and the performance of the troops engaged and wrote a straightforward report for Hitler, which I asked General Krebs to submit to him during the evening briefing, since I was in no mood for further futile arguments. Krebs was also told to arrange that I be allowed to visit the front at the Frankfurt bridgehead on the following day. I wanted personally to decide whether Hitler’s intention to launch a five-division attack east of the Oder from this narrow bridgehead for the purpose of relieving Küstrin was, in fact, a practical proposition. Up to now my arguments against this plan of Hitler’s had availed nothing.

  Late that night Krebs returned to Zossen from Berlin. He informed me that Hitler had forbidden my visit to the front and had ordered that both General Busse and I appear at his noon briefing on March 28th. Hitler had been annoyed by my report which he had regarded as an attempt to correct him. The conference promised to be a stormy one.

  On March 28th, 1945, at 14.00 hrs., the usual group met in the constricted shelter at the Chancellery. General Busse was also present. Hitler appeared and Busse was told to make his report. After a few sentences Hitler interrupted the general and made the same accusations of negligence which I had thought to quash on the previous day. After listening to two or three sentences I became angry. It was my turn now to interrupt Hitler and I drew his attention to my spoken and written reports of March 27th. I said: Permit me to interrupt you. I explained to you yesterday thoroughly—both verbally and in writing—that General Busse is not to blame for the failure of the Küstrin attack. Ninth Army used the ammunition that had been allotted it. The troops did their duty. The unusually high casualty figures prove that. I therefore ask y
ou not to make any accusations against General Busse.’ Hitler then said: ‘I must ask all you gentlemen to leave the room with the exception of the Field-Marshal and the Colonel-General.’ As soon as the large gathering had withdrawn into the ante-room Hitler said to me, briefly: ‘Colonel-General Guderian, your physical health requires that you immediately take six weeks’ convalescent leave.’ I raised my right hand. ‘I shall go,’ I said, and I turned toward the door. I had the door-knob in my hand when Hitler called me back, saying: ‘Please remain here until the end of the conference.’ I sat down again in silence. The others taking part in the conference were summoned back into the room and the meeting went on as though nothing had occurred. All the same, Hitler did refrain from levelling any further accusations at Busse. Two or three times I was briefly asked for my opinion, and then—after several interminable hours—the conference was over. Those who attended it left the shelter. Keitel, Jodl, Burgdorf and I were summoned to remain behind. Hitler said to me: ‘Please do your best to get your health back. In six weeks the situation will be very critical. Then I shall need you urgently. Where do you think you will go?’ Keitel advised me to visit Bad Liebenstein. It was very beautiful there. I replied that it was already occupied by the Americans. ‘Well then, what about Bad Sachsa in the Harz?’ asked the solicitous Field-Marshal. I thanked him for his kindly interest and remarked that I intended to choose my place of residence for myself and that I planned to pick a locality which would not be overrun by the enemy within the next forty-eight hours. Once again I raised my right hand and then, accompanied by Keitel, left the Chancellery shelter for ever. On the way to the car park Keitel assured me that I had been right not to oppose Hitler’s wishes again. Besides, what else could I have said at this stage? Any word of opposition would have been excessive.

  That evening I arrived back at Zossen. My wife greeted me with the words: ‘It lasted a terribly long time today.’ I replied: ‘Yes, and that is the last one. I have been dismissed.’ We fell into each other’s arms. It was a relief for both of us.

  On March 29th I said farewell to my colleagues, handed over my duties to Krebs and packed up my few possessions. On March 30th my wife and I left Zossen by train and headed south. I had originally intended to go to a hunting lodge near Oberhof in the Thuringian Mountains, but the rapid advance of the Americans made this impossible. We therefore decided to visit the Ebenhausen sanatorium near Munich where I could undergo a course of treatment for my heart. There, on April 1st, I found accommodation and excellent treatment from that outstanding heart specialist, Dr. Zimmermann. A friendly warning that I was likely to be supervised by the Gestapo enabled me to prevent this by arranging that I be guarded by two members of the Field Police.

  On May 1st I took my wife to Dietramszell, where Frau von Schilcher offered her most friendly hospitality. I myself went to the Tyrol, where the staff of the Inspectorate-General of Armoured Troops had been transferred, and there I sat down and waited for the end of the war. After the unconditional surrender of May 10th I accompanied this staff into American captivity.

  The only information I received concerning events subsequent to March 28th came from the wireless. I shall therefore not attempt to discuss them here.

  13. LEADING PERSONALITIES OF THE THIRD REICH

  My career brought me into contact with a number of people who exerted a greater or lesser degree of influence on the course of my country’s history. I therefore regard it as my duty to describe the impressions I formed of these men at first hand. I am, of course, aware that such impressions can only be subjective in nature; but they are those of a soldier and not of a politician, and must in consequence be in many respects different from those that political men will have formed from their particular point of view; their value is that they are based on the military correctitude and concept of honour which have always been traditional in the German Army; they will require amplification by the observations and judgments of other men, so that finally from the comparison of many sources a more or less definitive picture may be made of the characters of those people on whose activities or whose negligence the course of that historical period depended. It was an unfortunate time for us and one that culminated in an unparalleled collapse.

  Up to now I have attempted to describe my own experiences and impressions as they occurred at the time and without making use of the hindsight derived from subsequent knowledge. From now on, in these closing pages, I shall follow a different method and shall avail myself of what I have learned since our defeat, whether from conversations or from published material.

  Hitler

  At the central point of that circle of personalities which ruled our fate stood the figure of Adolf Hitler.

  Of humble origin, limited schooling, and with insufficient training in the home, coarse in speech and in manner, he stands before us as a man of the people who was most at ease among an intimate group from his own part of the country. To begin with, he did not feel awkward in the company of persons of a higher cultural background, particularly when the conversation dealt with art or music or similar matters. Later on, certain elements of his closest entourage, persons themselves of low culture, deliberately awakened in him a strong dislike for those people of a more spiritual nature and with a socially superior background with whom he had previously been able to get on; they did this with the conscious purpose of bringing him into conflict with those classes and thus of destroying what influence they still possessed. In this attempt they were very successful, and for two reasons: first, because in Hitler resentment still slumbered as a relic of his difficult and humble early years; secondly, because he believed himself to be a great revolutionary and thought that the representatives of older traditions would hinder him in, and perhaps even deflect him from, the fulfilment of his destiny.

  This provides one key to Hitler’s psychology. From this complex of emotions sprang his increasing dislike of princes and noblemen, scholars and aristocrats, officials and officers. Shortly after his seizure of power he certainly tried hard to behave in a manner acceptable to good company and in international society; once war had broken out he finally abandoned any such attempt.

  He had an unusually clever brain and was equipped with remarkable powers of memory, particularly for historical data, technical figures and economic statistics; he read everything that was put before him and thus filled in the gaps in his education. He was continually amazing people by his ability to quote relevant passages from what he had read or had heard at conferences. ‘Six weeks ago you said something quite different,’ was a favourite and much-dreaded remark of the man who became Chancellor and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. And there was no arguing with him about this, for he would have the stenographer’s record of the conversation in question immediately available.

  He possessed a talent for casting his ideas into an easily assimilated form, which he would then hammer into his listeners’ minds by means of endless repetition. Almost all his speeches and expositions, whether for audiences of thousands or to a small group of individuals, began with the words: ‘When in the year 1919 I decided to become a politician …’ and his political talks and exhortations ended invariably with: ‘I shall not give in and I shall never surrender.’

  He possessed natural oratorical talents of an unusually high order, the effects of which never failed so far as the masses were concerned and which also worked on educated people. He understood brilliantly how to adjust his manner of speech according to the mentality of his audience. His style varied according to whether he was addressing industrialists or soldiers, devout Party comrades or sceptics, Gauleiters, or minor functionaries.

  His most outstanding quality was his will power. By the exercise of his will he compelled men to follow him. This power of his worked by means of suggestion and, indeed, its effect on many men was almost hypnotic. I have frequently observed such cases. At the OKW almost nobody contradicted him; the men there were either in a state of permanent hypnosis, like Keitel, or of resigned ac
quiescence, like Jodl. Even self-confident individuals, men who had proved their bravery in the face of the enemy, would surrender to Hitler’s oratory and would fall silent when confronted by his logic, which it was so hard to refute. When speaking in a small circle he would observe his listeners one by one and would see exactly what effect his words were having on each man present. If he noticed that one or the other was not giving in to his powers of suggestion, that he was not a ‘medium,’ then he would address his words directly to this resisting spirit until such time as he believed he had achieved his aim. But if the anticipated reaction was even then not manifested the independence thus shown vexed the hypnotist: ‘I haven’t convinced that man!’ His immediate reaction was to get rid of such persons. The more successful he was the less tolerant he became.

  It has been deduced from Hitler’s great power over the masses that the Germans are an unusually suggestible race. But in all countries and at all times men have succumbed to the suggestive powers of unusual personalities, even if the wielders of those powers were not always good men in the Christian sense. A fine example from recent history is offered by the leading men of the French revolutionary period, followed immediately by the personality of Napoleon. The French followed the great Corsican into complete disaster, even though they must long have been aware that the course he was pursuing could only lead to defeat. In both the World Wars, and despite their love of peace, the people of the United States proved suggestible to the influence of the two presidents who were leading them to war. The Italians followed their Mussolini. To say nothing of Russia, where a gigantic nation, contrary to its original convictions, turned bolshevist through the force of Lenin’s ideas. But in this case we, as contemporaries, know that Lenin sowed his revolutionary seed on fertile ground, for the economic incompetence of the Czarist regime, with the resultant widespread dissatisfaction and impoverishment of the mass of the people, had made that nation eager to listen to any promise of improvement.