Noteworthy in evaluating these British character studies are the German Army evaluations of specific prisoners’ political orientations, conducted prior to their capture. German historian Sönke Neitzel discounts these assessments as “not particularly useful,” citing a criticism by Major General Rudolf Schmundt, head of the German Army High Command Personnel Office in 1943 about the overuse of vague expressions like “he stands on National Socialist ground.” Undoubtedly, evaluations like that of General Schnarrenberger as possessing a “positive attitude toward National Socialism” fall into this useless category. However, a few comments may be more illustrative of the difficulty of adequately assessing the generals’ real political views. For example, General von Liebenstein, whom both the British and Americans came to greatly admire, had been described by his German superiors in October 1942 as an officer who “epitomizes the greater ideals of National Socialism” and “communicates this body of thought to others.”37
Perhaps von Liebenstein’s superior officer simply chose to embellish in an effort to win the baron favor with the German High Command. Perhaps von Liebenstein intentionally chose to communicate the greater ideals of National Socialism to his superiors in an effort to gain promotion. It is also not inconceivable that von Liebenstein may have seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, by 1943 and have begun to change his political stripes. Regardless, by the 1950s von Liebenstein must have come to epitomize the greater ideals of representative democracy because he obtained a position as major general in the Bundeswehr with the blessings of the U.S. government.
Despite this inability to adequately determine the prisoners’ political orientations, the British took a keen interest in the generals’ views of the postwar balance of power. A report prepared by the British officers at Trent Park in January 1944 stated the importance of the generals’ comments in shaping British postwar policy. In some ways, British intelligence officers admired the German generals. They remarked on the Germans’ “strong sense of duty,” praised them as “good leaders of men with a feeling of responsibility for the welfare of those under their command,” and acknowledged their widespread condemnation of Nazi brutality, sincere or otherwise. Yet CSDIC cautioned that despite their “superficial quarrels and personal animosities” the generals were united in one fundamental belief: “the greatness of the German Reich.” What made the generals potentially dangerous, as the British saw it, was their ability to inspire this belief in generations of Germans to come. British intelligence recognized that the German officer corps as a whole had for generations been “the most influential body of men in Germany, representing one of the few cohesive traditions of leadership in the country.” The generals’ influential status, coupled with their grandiose aims, made it imperative that something be done to prevent yet another reemergence of German militarism like that which had occurred after the First World War. The British report of January 1944 placed the generals at the forefront of British postwar concerns by declaring that it was “impossible to read this series of conversations without feeling that the question of how to handle these men in such a way as to prevent them from leading yet another attempt at world domination [was] one of the most important of those to be faced after the war.”38
Clearly, the British had no intention of allowing the general officers to play substantial roles in the postwar reconstruction of Germany. Because of the long-term observations of the German generals in their custody, the British realized as early as January 1944 that allowing any of these men to obtain positions of leadership, or allowing Germany to extricate itself from the war without an unconditional surrender, was out of the question. CSDIC observed that “however defeatist the talk of the prisoners may appear, however hopeless about the outcome of the war and angry and even ashamed at the actions of the Nazis they may be, [the generals] are still thinking of the next war and how to prepare for it.” In this regard, British intelligence placed von Arnim and von Thoma, who seemingly represented opposite ends of the political spectrum, in the same category. Both hoped that Germany could achieve a stalemate or armistice arrangement, similar to the one that had ended the First World War, as opposed to being forced into unconditional surrender and foreign occupation. This would allow Germany to maintain some kind of foundation upon which to rebuild.39
A group picture of the German generals at Trent Park, November 1943. Note: Although a few of the generals are recognizable, the Bundesarchiv caption for this photo does not identify specific individuals. (German Federal Archive [Bundesarchiv], Bild 146-2005-0133 / Photographer: Unknown)
Their observations of the generals certainly recognized what the British saw as the senior officers’ pragmatism. Both von Arnim and von Thoma, as well as most of their fellow generals, founded their concerns about preserving Germany’s influential political position on their fear of the Soviet Union. The British report observed that discussions of the Russian threat were the “most persistent theme of the [generals’] conversations.” The German generals at Camp No. 11 feared, somewhat presciently, that if the Allies agreed to allow the Soviets to establish control over part of Germany the Russians would “never let go.” The German generals foresaw the coming Cold War struggle between communist Russia and Western capitalism and believed that Germany’s greatest chance of retaining its influential position in the world, and the only hope of survival for the German officer class, was to support the West.40
British intelligence clearly realized that most of the German prisoner-ofwar generals based their political views more in pragmatic concerns than in ideological adherence. By the time analysts compiled the report in January 1944, the British observed that there seemed to be “an almost unanimous anti-Nazi feeling among the generals.” But they believed that this anti-Nazism sprang from wartime frustration, not from any real ideological opposition. As with von Arnim, the animosity most of the generals felt for Hitler and the Nazis could be attributed solely to the regime’s handling of the war and, consequently, Germany’s impending defeat. General von Broich summed up the feelings of most of the generals in, once again, placing the blame squarely on Hitler and the Nazis. He stated that by the spring of 1942 the German Army “realized that Germany could not win and should endeavor to negotiate, but [Hitler] and the Party would not hear of it.”41
By early 1944, the German general officers in British custody already harbored thoughts of allying themselves in some capacity with the Western Allies. Given the opportunity, the German officers of course preferred rebuilding the Fatherland and reoccupying a prominent position on the global stage. Yet, if faced with the prospect of Soviet domination at the end of the war, the “Nazi” generals indicated that they were already prepared to throw in their lot with the British and Americans well over a year before the war in Europe had ended.
American military authorities, who would soon inherit a significant number of these general officer prisoners, might have done well to consult more closely with their British allies in this regard. By eavesdropping on the generals at Trent Park, the British realized the importance of combating any resurgent postwar German militarism by January 1944. American authorities would struggle to reach a similar conclusion over a year later and only after repeating a great deal of the same work the British had already completed.
For the British, detailed observation of the prisoners at Camp No. 11 became more difficult as their numbers grew following the Allied invasion of northwest France in June 1944. An influx of new prisoners in the months following D-Day and continuing throughout the remainder of the war necessitated the departure of many of the existing internees, who, by this point, had been in British custody for over a year. On D-Day, ten German generals resided at Trent Park. By the end of 1944, the camp had become home to twenty-six more generals, five admirals, and twenty-one of their aid-es-decamp.42 Eventually, CSDIC had more occupants than it could accommodate at Trent Park, and a second camp, Grizedale Hall, was established a short distance away.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Britis
h noted a significant difference between their first group of general officer prisoners, the so-called Afrikaner—those captured in North Africa—and the Französen—the officers taken in Western Europe after D-Day. The majority of the Afrikaner Wehrmacht generals had long and distinguished careers in the German military prior to the rise of the Nazi regime. Moreover, the Allies captured them at a time when German fortunes had not yet sunk to an abysmal level. By contrast, Hitler had rapidly promoted some of the Französen generals out of necessity, and many of these men had less impressive credentials. Indeed, CSDIC operatives observed that “those recently captured are not such good types, physically or mentally, and have by no means the same degree of culture. None of them is what has become known as the German officer type.”43
However, British operatives continued eavesdropping on their guests, despite, or perhaps because of, the changing faces at Trent Park. Replacing many of the original occupants of Trent Park were senior officers captured at Cherbourg in the early days of the Allied invasion. The first of this new crop of senior German officers was Rear Admiral Walter Hennecke, the commander of German naval forces in Normandy, and Brigadier General Robert Sattler, the second in command at Fortress Cherbourg.44 A sense of impending German defeat seemed to accompany these Französen generals to Trent Park. British camp personnel observed how the Allied invasion weighed heavily on their prisoners of war and “led to considerable pessimistic talk during these days.” This defeatist attitude became characteristic of the prisoners, who largely seemed to believe by the fall of 1944 that Germany’s war had been lost.45
Generalmajor Robert Sattler (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
The flood of senior officers who poured into Trent Park in the late summer and fall of 1944 only added to the prisoners’ growing malaise. On August 8, the American First Army captured Major General Karl Spang, commanding officer of the 266th Infantry Division, near Brest. His capture marked the first of a flurry of general officers taken prisoner during August and September as the Allies advanced east from the Normandy coast into the French interior. One week later, Brigadier General Ludwig Bieringer surrendered. Bieringer had spent most of his career in the supply branch of the German Army. By mid-1944, he was serving as field commander of the military administration headquarters at Draguignan in southern France, about twenty miles from the Mediterranean coast. After receiving word of the approach of French partisans early on the morning of August 15, Bieringer and his staff barricaded themselves into the headquarters villa. They held off the resistance forces until the following day. But, fearing that the French were “out for blood,” Bieringer quickly abandoned his original order to fight to the last bullet and instructed a member of his staff to immediately surrender at the first sight of American troops.46
On the same day, the French partisans had also driven Lieutenant General Ferdinand Neuling, commander of the Sixty-Second Reserve Corps, out of Draguignan into the hills north of town. American airborne troops surrounded Neuling’s headquarters early on August 17 and cut off all communications to his subordinate units. At eight in the morning, as a show of good faith to his American captors, General Bieringer arrived in the company of an American officer, informed Neuling of his own surrender the previous day, and advised the latter to follow suit. Neuling “wildly proclaimed his intention to hold out and then kill himself with his last bullet.” Even after American artillery shelled his position, he still refused to capitulate. But by the next morning, with all of his ammunition exhausted and an American tank advancing on the house in which he was holed up, Neuling finally relented. “I knew that my position was hopeless,” he explained to his American captors, “but I had orders to hold all positions to the last cartridge. One must do one’s duty. Besides, a general who does not obey such orders nowadays is shot out of hand, so I simply had to hold on until all my ammunition was gone.”47
Generalleutnant Curt Badinski (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
During the next three days, three more senior Wehrmacht officers, Brigadier General Hans Schuberth and Major Generals Curt Badinski and Erwin Menny, joined Neuling and Bieringer as Allied prisoners of war. Schuberth commanded Feldkommandatur (field command) 792 in southern France and surrendered in Digne, about an hour’s drive north of Draguignan. Badinski commanded the 276th Infantry Division holding a small sector of northwest France, and Erwin Menny, in command of the 84th Infantry Division, was captured at Magny in northwest France on August 21, 1944.48
Notably, Menny was one of the few residents of Camp No. 11 who had had direct contact with General Seydlitz and the Free Germany Movement in Russia. At one point during his service on the Eastern Front, Soviet forces encircled Menny’s unit. Captured German soldiers arrived under a flag of truce and delivered a handwritten letter from General Seydlitz. The letter read, “Dear Menny, you must realize yourself that it’s no use. You know the Russians are already in your rear; tomorrow you’ll be cut off and no one from your ‘division’ will escape. Surrender. The whole war is senseless and should be brought to an end as soon as possible to enable us to spare a great number of people’s lives.” Perhaps because of his fear of the Russians, Menny was unfazed by Seydlitz’s pleas for surrender. Amazingly, Menny escaped, but he was the only person from his division who did.49
The capture of Bieringer, Neuling, Schuberth, Badinski, and Menny highlighted a noteworthy change in Allied procedure regarding high-ranking Wehrmacht officers. After D-Day, CSDIC in England no longer took the primary role in interrogating captured general officers as it had done in the past. American and British intelligence now cooperated on the effort through a joint operation in France labeled “CSDIC West.” Important military intelligence could be immediately gleaned from these prisoners while they were still at the front where the information was most needed. While Mother continued listening to the generals’ conversations at Trent Park, prisoners now arrived there having already been interrogated by combined Allied personnel. Moreover, as part of the new Allied POW procedures, Bieringer, Neuling, and Schuberth immediately departed for the United States, while Badinski and Menny joined their colleagues in England.50
At the time of the capture of Badinski and Menny in August 1944, the Allies had almost reached Paris. The commander of Allied forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his staff originally planned to skirt the city and continue their eastward advance, forcing the capital’s German occupiers to continue providing food and fuel for its French residents. At the last minute, however, Eisenhower opted to retake Paris after all, both because of an uprising by French resistance forces within the city and because of the actions of the German military governor of Paris, General der Infanterie Dietrich von Choltitz.
General Wilhelm Burgdorf, the chief of personnel of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), had personally recommended von Choltitz to Hitler as the man best able to take command of Paris because he was “an officer who had never questioned an order no matter how harsh it was.” As a lieutenant colonel in May 1940, von Choltitz had been responsible for the destruction of the Dutch city of Rotterdam. After seizing control of the city’s essential bridges, he tried to encourage the city’s military commander to surrender by sending Dutch civilians in to persuade him. When the commander could not be found, von Choltitz grew impatient and ordered a large-scale bombing attack. The Germans virtually obliterated the heart of the city, killing over seven hundred people and leaving almost eighty thousand civilians wounded, homeless, or both.51
Two years later, in July 1942, von Choltitz had taken the Russian city of Sevastopol with similar destructiveness. Afterward, he reputedly bragged about the humor he found in requiring Russian prisoners of war to load the cannons that were used to destroy their own homes. Even after German fortunes on the Russian Front turned against them in 1943, von Choltitz observed that it was his fate “to cover the retreat of our armies and to destroy the cities behind them.” Subsequently, von Choltitz took part in the Battle of Kharkov and the Kursk Offensive
as commanding officer of the Forty-Eighth Panzer Corps in 1943 and led the Eighty-Fourth Army Corps in France in 1944 before assuming command of the German occupation of Paris in early August 1944. He replaced Lieutenant General Hans Wilhelm Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, who had been relieved of his command for refusing to destroy the Parisian bridges over the Seine River. Hitler was confident that he would not face this kind of insubordination from von Choltitz.52
Yet, upon taking command in the French capital, von Choltitz, the reputed “destroyer of cities,” appears to have been transformed. He took command of Paris as the Allies were closing in and received orders from Hitler on August 14 to destroy all forty-five of the Seine River bridges as well as most of the city’s industrial capacity and public utilities. Von Choltitz refused, for the practical reason that he and his fellow Germans, who were still occupying the city, required utility service as well. Three days later, on August 17, he again received orders to detonate the charges that had previously been set on the bridges and again he refused, contending that this action would make it impossible to maintain control of the Parisians. Hitler had also reportedly instructed von Choltitz to “stamp out without pity” any acts of rebellion or sabotage. On August 19 von Choltitz spurned this directive as well by aborting a planned attack against the French resistance movement that had initiated armed resistance to German control earlier in the day.53
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