by Rudolf Hoess
After her flight, Frau Thomsen, who had been our children’s governess at Auschwitz, had gone to live with her mother at St. Michaelisdonn in Holstein. I now brought my family there. I had no idea at that time where we, the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, were to go. I took my eldest child along, as he wanted to stay with me, and we still hoped we might have some active role to play, even in the last unoccupied patch of Germany and in the final hours.
We reported for the last time at Flensburg, where the Reichsführer SS had withdrawn with other members of the government. There was no more talk of fighting. Every man for himself was now the order of the day. I shall never forget my last meeting with the Reichsführer SS. He was beaming and in the best of spirits; yet the world, our world, had crumbled beneath our feet. He said: “Well, gentlemen, this is the end. You know what you now have to do.” So far I understood him, since these words were in accordance with what he had been preaching to the SS for years. Self-sacrifice for the ideal. But then he gave us his last order: hide in the, army!
Such was our farewell message from the man to whom I had looked up so respectfully, in whom I had had such implicit trust, whose orders and utterances had been gospel to me.
Maurer and I looked at each other in dumb astonishment. Our thoughts were identical. We were both veteran Nazis and SS officers, and had grown up in our ideals. Had we been alone, we would have committed some act of despair. But we had to look after our department chiefs, the officers and men of our staff, and our poor families.
Glücks was already half dead. We carried him to the naval hospital under another name. Gebhardt took charge of the women and children with the intention of getting them to Denmark.[99]
The rest of the departmental staff were issued with false papers that would enable them to vanish into the navy. I myself, under the name of boatswain’s mate Franz Lang, went to the island of Sylt, with orders to report to the Naval Intelligence School there. I sent my son back to my wife, along with my driver and car.
Since I knew a certain amount about naval life, I was able to make myself inconspicuous. There was not much work to be done, so I had time to ponder deeply on what had happened.
By chance I heard one day, on the radio, the news of Himmler’s arrest and his death by poison. I, too, had my vial of poison always with me. But I decided to wait on events.
The Naval Intelligence School was removed to the internment district between the Kiel Canal and the Schlei. The British moved the SS men from their zone to the School, and concentrated them on the Friesian Islands. So I was quite close to my family, whom I was able to see quite often. My eldest boy visited me every few days. Since my profession was given as farmer, I was soon released. I passed through all the British control points without difficulty, and was sent by the labor office to work on a farm near Flensburg. I liked the work and I was completely independent, for the farmer was still being held by the Americans. I worked there for eight months. With the help of my wife’s brother, who worked in Flensburg, I was able to keep in touch with my wife.
I learned through my brother-in-law that I was being hunted for by the British Field Security Police. I also heard that they were keeping a close watch on my family, and repeatedly searched the house.
I was arrested on March 11, 1946.
My vial of poison had been broken two days before.
When I was aroused from sleep, I thought at first I was being attacked by robbers, for many robberies were taking place at that time. That was how they managed to arrest me.
I was maltreated by the Field Security Police.
I was taken to Heide where I was put in those very barracks from which I had been released by the British eight months earlier.
At my first interrogation, evidence was obtained by beating me. I do not know what is in the record, although I signed it.[100]
Alcohol and the whip were too much for me. The whip was my own, which by chance had got into my wife’s luggage. It had hardly ever touched my horse, far less the prisoners. Nevertheless, one of my interrogators was convinced that I had perpetually used it for flogging the prisoners.
After some days I was taken to Minden-on-the-Weser, the main interrogation center in the British Zone. There I received further rough treatment at the hands of the English public prosecutor, a major.[101]
The conditions in the prison accorded with this behavior.
After three weeks, to my surprise, I was shaved and had my hair cut and I was allowed to wash. My handcuffs had not previously been removed since my arrest.
On the next day I was taken by truck to Nuremberg, together with a prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a witness in Fritsche’s defense.[102]
My imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal was a rest cure compared to what I had been through before. I was accommodated in the same building as the principal accused, and was able to see them daily as they were taken to the court. Almost every day we were visited by representatives of all the Allied nations. I was always pointed out as an especially interesting animal.
I was in Nuremberg because Kaltenbrunner’s counsel had demanded me as a witness for his defense. I have never been able to grasp, and it is still not clear to me, how I of all people could have helped to exonerate Kaltenbrunner. Although the conditions in prison were, in every respect, good—I read whenever I had the time, and there was a well-stocked library available—the interrogations were extremely unpleasant, not so much physically, but far more because of their strong psychological effect. I cannot really blame the interrogators— they were all Jews.
Psychologically I was almost cut in pieces. They wanted to know all about everything, and this was also done by Jews. They left me in no doubt whatever as to the fate that was in store for me.
On May 25, my wedding anniversary as it happened, I was driven with von Burgsdorff and Bühler to the airport and there handed over to Polish officers.[103]
We flew in an American plane via Berlin to Warsaw. Although we were treated very politely during our journey, I feared the worst when I remembered my experiences in the British Zone and the tales I had heard about the way people were being treated in the East. Also the expressions and gestures of the spectators at the airfield on our arrival were not exactly reassuring. In prison several of the officials immediately came at me, and showed me their Auschwitz tattoo numbers. I could not understand them, but it was obvious that they were not extending friendly greetings toward me. Nevertheless I was not beaten. My imprisonment was very strict and completely isolated. I was frequently interrogated. I was kept there for nine weeks. The time weighed heavily on me, for I had absolutely no distractions, not being allowed either to read or to write.
On July 30 I was taken to Cracow with seven other Germans. We had to wait for some time in the station there until the car had arrived. Quite a large crowd collected, and the people hurled insults at us. Göth was recognized at once.[104]
If the car had not come soon, they would have stoned us seriously. During the first few weeks we were treated quite well, but then suddenly the attitude of the prisoner officials changed completely and overnight. From their behavior and their conversation, the meaning of which was clear to me though I could not understand what they aid, I gathered that they wanted to “finish me off.” I was given only the smallest piece of bread, and less than a spoonful of thin soup. I was no longer given a second helping, although almost every day there was food left over which was divided among the inmates of the adjoining cells. If an official wanted to unlock my door, he was immediately whistled back. It was here that I became acquainted with the power of prisoners in position of authority over their fellows. They ran everything. They provided irrefutable proof of my contentions concerning the immense and often evil power which those prisoners with official positions exercise over different categories of guards.
If the public prosecutor’s office had not intervened, it would have been the end of me, not only physically but first of all from a psychological
point of view. They had nearly driven me to the end of my tether.
It was not a question of feeble hysteria. I can stand up to a lot, and had taken plenty of hard knocks during my life. The mental torture inflicted by the three devils was too much for me. And I was not the only one to be persecuted in this way. Some of the Polish prisoners were severely maltreated by them as well. They have long since departed, and a welcome quiet now reigns.
I must admit that I had never expected such decent and considerate treatment as I received in Polish custody, once the public prosecutor had intervened.
What are my opinions today concerning the Third Reich?
What do I think of Himmler and his SS, the concentration camps, and the Security Police? How do I feel about all that was done in this sphere, and through which I passed?
I remain, as I have always been, a convinced National Socialist in my attitude to life. When a man has adhered to a belief and an attitude for nigh on twenty-five years, has grown up with it and become bound to it body and soul, he cannot simply throw it aside because the embodiments of this ideal, the Nationalist Socialist State, and its leaders have used their powers wrongly and even criminally, and because as a result of this failure and misdirection his world has collapsed and the entire German people been plunged for decades into untold misery. I, at least, cannot.
From the documents published and from the Nuremberg trials I can see that the leaders of the Third Reich, because of their policy of force, Avère guilty of causing this vast war and all its consequences. I see that these leaders, by means of exceptionally effective propaganda and of limitless terrorism, were able to make the whole German people so docile and submissive that they were ready, with very few exceptions, to go wherever they were led, without voicing a word of criticism.
In my opinion the necessary extension of living space for the German people could have been obtained by peaceful means. However, I am convinced that wars can never be prevented, and that others will occur in the future.
In order to disguise a policy of force it is necessary to use propaganda so that a clever distortion of all the facts, the policies, and measures of the rulers of the state can be made palatable. Terrorism must be used from the outset, to stifle all doubt and opposition.
In my view, real opponents can be overcome by presenting the better alternative.
Himmler was the crudest representative of the leadership principle. Every German had to subordinate himself un-questioningly and uncritically to the leaders of the state, who alone were in a position to understand the real needs of the people and to direct them along the right path.
Anyone who did not submit to this principle must be eliminated from public life. With this purpose in mind Himmler trained and formed his SS, and created the concentration camps, the German police, and the Reich Security Head Office.
In Himmler’s view, Germany was the one state in Europe that had the right to exercise supremacy. All the other countries were second-rate. The predominantly Nordic races were to be favorably treated, with the aim of incorporating them into Germany. The Eastern races were to be split up, to be made insignificant, and to become slaves.
The concentration camps before the war had to be depositories in which to segregate opponents of the state. The fact that they incidentally became re-education centers for asocials of every kind, and in this performed valuable service to the country as a whole, was a consequence of the cleaning-up process.
Similarly, they were necessary for the preventive war on crime.
When war came, they were turned into centers for the extermination, by direct or indirect means, of those elements in the conquered countries which continued to oppose their conquerors and oppressors.
I have already repeatedly expressed my attitude regarding the “enemies of the state.”
But the extermination of those population elements which remained hostile was in any case a mistake. If the peoples of the occupied territories had been treated with decency and common sense, their resistance movements could have been reduced to insignificance. There would then have been few serious opponents left.
I also see now that the extermination of the Jews was fundamentally wrong. Precisely because of these mass exterminations, Germany has drawn upon herself the hatred of the entire world. It in no way served the cause of anti-Semitism, but on the contrary brought the Jews far closer to their ultimate objective.
The Reich Security Head Office was only the executive, the long arm, of Himmler the police chief. The Reich Security Head Office and the concentration camps were only the tools that were used to carry out the wishes of Himmler, or the intentions of Adolf Hitler, as the case might be.
In these pages, and also in my sketches of the leading personalities concerned,[105] I have sufficiently explained how the horrors of the concentration camps could come about.
I for my part never sanctioned them. I myself never maltreated a prisoner, far less killed one. Nor have I ever tolerated maltreatment by my subordinates.
When during the course of this investigation I have had to listen to descriptions of the fearful tortures that were enacted in Auschwitz and also in other camps, my blood runs cold. I knew very well that prisoners in Auschwitz were ill-treated by the SS, by their civilian employers, and not least of all by their fellow prisoners. I used every means at my disposal to stop this. But I could not. The commandants of other camps, who had a similar outlook to mine, but whose camps were far smaller and far easier to supervise, found themselves equally impotent in this respect.
Nothing can prevail against the malignancy, wickedness, and brutality of the individual guard, except keeping him constantly under one’s personal supervision. And the worse the guards and supervisory personnel, the more they oppress the prisoners. The truth of this has been abundantly confirmed to me during my present imprisonment.
In the British Zone I had plenty of opportunity to study the three categories of guards at very close quarters. At Nuremberg maltreatment by individual guards was impossible, since there all the prisoners were under the permanent supervision of the prison duty officers. Even while changing planes in Berlin I only met with ill-treatment from strangers encountered by chance in the lavatory.
In the Warsaw prison, which, so far as I was able to observe and judge from the confines of my cell, was conducted on strict and exact lines, there was one supervisor, and only one who, as soon as he came on duty, ran from cell to cell, wherever there were Germans, and proceeded to beat them up indiscriminately. Apart from von Burgsdorff, who had his face slapped on several occasions, every German got a taste of his fists. He was a young man of eighteen or twenty, whose eyes gleamed with a fanatical hatred. He said he was a Polish Jew, though he did not look like one. He certainly never grew tired of beating us. His activities were only interrupted by signals from his colleagues warning him of the approach of a stranger. I am certain that none of the higher officials nor the warden of the prison approved of his behavior. I was occasionally asked by visiting officials how I was treated, but I always kept quiet about this, because he was the only man who acted in this way. The other supervisors were more or less strict and unfriendly, but none of them laid a hand on me. So it can be seen that even in a small prison the warden is unable to prevent such behavior; how much more difficult was it in a concentration camp the size of Auschwitz!
I was certainly severe and strict. Often perhaps, when I look at it now, too severe and too strict.
In my disgust at the errors and abuses that I discovered, I may have spoken many hard words that I should have kept to myself. But I was never cruel, and I have never maltreated anyone, even in a fit of temper. A great deal happened in Auschwitz that was done ostensibly in my name, under my authority and on my orders, which I neither knew about nor sanctioned. But all these things happened in Auschwitz and so I am responsible. For the camp regulations say: the camp commandant is fully responsible for everything that happens in his sphere.
My life is now nearly at its end. I
have given an account here of everything that was important in that life, of all those things that impressed me most strongly and which affected me most deeply. It is the absolute truth, as I saw it and experienced it. I have omitted much that is irrelevant, and much I have forgotten, and much I can no longer remember very clearly.
I am no writer and I have never been particularly skilled with the pen. I am sure that I must have frequently repeated myself, and perhaps I have not always made myself sufficiently clear.
I have also lacked the calm and mental balance required for a task of this nature.
I have written down what came to my mind, often not in sequence, but nothing is invented.
I have described myself as I was and as I am.
I have led a full and varied life. I have followed my star wherever it led me. Life has given me some hard and rough knocks, but I have always managed to get along. I have never given in.
Since returning from the war to which I went as a youngster and from which I came back a man, I have had two lights to guide me: my fatherland and, later, my family. My unalterable love for my country brought me into the NSDAP and the SS.
I regarded the National Socialist attitude to the world as the only one suited to the German people. I believed that the SS was the most energetic champion of this attitude and that the SS alone was capable of gradually bringing the German people back to its proper way of life.
My second worship was my family. To them I was securely anchored. My thoughts were always with their future, and our farm was to become their permanent home. In our children both my wife and I saw our aim in life. To bring them up so that they could play their part in the world, and to give them all a stable home, was our one task in life.
So now my thoughts turn chiefly to my family. What will become of them?
It is this uncertainty concerning my family’s future that makes my imprisonment so hard to bear.