Twice more von Choltitz’s superiors ordered him to initiate the destruction of Paris and twice more the general refused or simply ignored the command. Von Choltitz even prodded the Swedish consul general, Raoul Nordling, to travel through the German lines outside Paris in hopes that the Swede would contact the Allied command and encourage them to liberate Paris before von Choltitz was forced to follow orders or risk Hitler’s wrath.54 Why would von Choltitz develop such reluctance to carry out the demolition of the French capital when he had so eagerly carried out Hitler’s previous orders to destroy cities in Holland and Russia?
The general later claimed that he was “simply appalled” by the order to destroy Paris. He believed that the wanton destruction of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe lacked any military justification. Moreover, von Choltitz now suspected that Hitler was insane and that the Führer wanted von Choltitz to destroy the French capital “and then sit in its ashes and accept the consequences.” It seems much more likely, however, that by mid-1944 von Choltitz must have seen the end of the war approaching and realized that the unnecessary destruction of Paris would win him no favor from the Western Allies. His fellow prisoners at Trent Park later summed up von Choltitz’s political persuasion by noting that he had been “very much ‘Third Reich’” earlier in the war but had “become something quite different in the meantime.” He knew on “which side his bread [was] buttered.” Likewise, British camp personnel found von Choltitz to be not only “a cinema-type German officer, fat, coarse, bemonocled and inflated with a tremendous sense of his own importance.” More importantly, they also quickly realized that the general was “very much concerned with appearing in the most favorable light possible.”55
In spite of von Choltitz’s apparent change of heart, regardless of his motives, he nonetheless continued to defend Paris against the Allied advance. By late August, however, French resistance forces had completely taken over the city, according to von Choltitz, and “were even driving about in tanks in front of his hotel,” and the Americans and French were on the outskirts of the city. Lacking the manpower and inclination to continue the struggle, and having satisfied his soldier’s honor by putting up token resistance, von Choltitz surrendered to General Jacques Philippe Leclerc of the French Second Armored Division on August 25.56
Upon arriving at Camp No. 11 in late August 1944, the garrulous von Choltitz claimed that he had been a defeatist for a couple of years because he had “spent too much time at HQ” and, he explained sarcastically, “seen the masterly way in which difficult problems [were] solved there.” The British did not find von Choltitz’s contributions to be “of any tremendous value,” although they did find his conversations with his fellow prisoners entertaining; he was apparently somewhat of a comedian. Notably, his descriptions of meetings with the German High Command showed “the incredible state of mind of Hitler” and gave the impression that Germany was now a “mad house.”57
As the Allies advanced eastward following von Choltitz’s surrender of Paris, they quickly captured dozens more Wehrmacht general officers, including Brigadier General Hans-Georg Schramm. Schramm served as field commander of German forces at Troyes, southeast of Paris, and was captured on August 26, the day after the fall of the French capital. Three days later, Brigadier General Alfred Gutknecht, commander of motorized units on the Western Front, was ordered to bring important documents and report to his superiors in Soissons. While on the road from Rheims on August 29, he rounded a curve only to find himself in the middle of an American brigade. Despite his attempts to quickly turn his car around, he was captured and slightly wounded in the process. Gutknecht represented an important source of information about German motorized vehicles and the Wehrmacht’s ability to replace and repair them. The papers in his possession included information about recent relocations of maintenance parks, tables detailing the location and capacity of available supply and repair depots, lists of the types of vehicles that could be repaired in particular depots, and the number of personnel available in each location.58 Also on August 29, the American 36th Infantry Division captured Brigadier General Otto Richter, an engineering officer in command of the 198th Infantry Division in southern France. Richter, like his colleagues Bieringer, Neuling, and Schuberth, went directly to the United States, bypassing any British interrogation or eavesdropping at Trent Park.59
Generalmajor Hans-Georg Schramm (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
On the first of September 1944, Lieutenant General Erwin Vierow, military commander of northwest France and commanding general of the newly formed corps the Generalkommando z.b.V. Somme, fell into Allied hands.60 Three days later, the British captured Brigadier General Christoph Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg in Antwerp, where he served as military commander. Prior to his appointment in Antwerp, Stolberg had commanded Special Employment Division Staff 136, responsible for battalions largely composed of Soviet prisoners of war who had offered their services to Nazi Germany either out of a strong conviction to fight communism or simply to escape a German POW camp.61
General der Infanterie Erwin Vierow (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
Generalmajor Christoph Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
At about the same time, the Allies also captured Brigadier General Hubertus von Aulock and Major Generals Rüdiger von Heyking and Paul Seyffardt. The Allies captured all three of these senior officers in the vicinity of Brussels as they pushed eastward out of northern France.62 CSDIC assumed responsibility for both von Heyking and Seyffardt and sent them to Trent Park. Von Aulock, on the other hand, was quickly transferred to the United States. He visited Camp No. 11 for a few hours to see his brother, Andreas von Aulock, the “Mad Colonel of St. Malo,” who was a resident of Trent Park at this time.63 But General von Aulock did not remain at the camp and spent only a few weeks in British custody before being transferred to the Americans by the end of September.64
The “egocentric” and opportunistic Brigadier General Detlef Bock von Wülfingen, military commander of Liege, and Rear Admiral Hans von Tresckow, German naval commander along the northwest coast of France, also surrendered in early September.65 But the biggest prize for the Allies in the month of September was the capture of the fortress of Brest and its “fanatical defender,” General der Fallschirmtruppe Bernhard-Hermann Ramcke. Called “Papa” by his men, Ramcke was one of the most decorated German officers captured by the British and Americans. Ramcke began his military career as a marine in the German Imperial Navy of the First World War. He finished the war as a second lieutenant, having earned the Iron Cross, both first and second classes, as well as the Prussian Military Service Cross for his bravery. After serving in the Reichswehr under the Weimar Republic and obtaining the rank of colonel, Ramcke volunteered for parachute training school in 1940 at the age of fifty-one. Completion of this training normally required six jumps in six days; Ramcke did all six in three days.66
Generalleutnant Paul Seyffardt (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
In May 1941 Ramcke parachuted onto Crete with what he thought were five hundred paratroopers to restore order to an ongoing German invasion of the island. Upon landing, he discovered that he had only half the expected number of men and that the ship bringing most of the Mountain Division to support him had been sunk by the British Royal Navy. Displaying his usual ingenuity, Ramcke and his small force captured an airfield and used an abandoned British tank to clear the runway for German planes bringing reinforcements, munitions, and supplies. The Germans subsequently captured the island, including over seventeen thousand prisoners of war, on June 2, and in August Ramcke received the Knight’s Cross for his role in the operation. Alarmingly, and perhaps displaying what would become Ramcke’s customary brutality, the general condemned the treatment he believed his men had received at the hands of the Cretans and admitted taking revenge against the people in villages where mutilated German paratroopers were found. He believed this behavio
r was justified to maintain order among the Cretan civilian population.67
After a brief stint as a parachute instructor, Ramcke assumed command of the parachute brigade bearing his name in the spring of 1942. Berlin quickly sent the Ramcke Parachute Brigade to support Rommel in North Africa in July, and Ramcke only added to his reputation in this theater of the war as well. During the German retreat following the Battle of El Alamein, Ramcke’s brigade was separated from Panzer Armee Afrika and forced to proceed on foot for several miles through hostile terrain. During this trek, Ramcke and his men happened upon a British tank supply column that included vehicles, fuel, water, and a large supply of food and cigarettes. Crawling to the vehicles under the cover of darkness, Ramcke’s unit hijacked the entire column without firing a shot. One can only imagine the reaction that Ramcke must have received from Rommel and the rest of the German Army when he and his men proudly rolled up in British vehicles. For this bold move and for returning his men to safety, Ramcke received the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross on November 11, 1942.68
In the spring of 1943 Ramcke formed the Second Parachute Division and was promptly sent to Rome to oppose the Allied invasion of Italy. He then led this unit to the Russian Front and fought at Zhitomir and Kirovograd in the Ukraine in the winter of 1943–1944. Following the successful Allied landing at Normandy in early June 1944, the Americans needed the French port city of Brest, located on the tip of the Breton Peninsula, as a conduit for supplies for their men in western France. Consequently, Hitler sent Ramcke and thirty thousand men to shore up the city’s defenses in mid-June.69
In the last week of August the Americans began an assault on the French port city that would last for over three weeks. During this time Ramcke and his chief of staff, Brigadier General Hans von der Mosel, who had been the commandant of the fortress of Brest before Ramcke’s arrival, refused American demands to surrender. The two sides conducted fierce house-to-house fighting in the city streets before the Americans finally forced the Germans back into the fortress.70
Generalmajor Hans von der Mosel (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
By September 13, American forces had surrounded the fortress and offered the Germans a chance to surrender “with honor,” but the fanatical Ramcke steadfastly held out for another week. Finally, having exhausted all avenues for victory or escape, Ramcke chose to surrender rather than risk the lives of any more of his men. Remarkably, considering his dogged defense of the French fort, Ramcke seemed well prepared to be a prisoner of war when he emerged to officially surrender to American general Troy Middleton on September 19, 1944. As if expecting a luxurious vacation, the general arrived with “eight large, well-packed suitcases, a complete set of delicate china, an elaborate box of expensive fishing tackle together with four long rods, and a thoroughbred setter dog.”71
In an interesting twist, on September 19 Ramcke became both the ninetyninth recipient of the Swords and the twentieth of only twenty-seven recipients of the Diamonds to add to the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves he had already earned. Hitler decorated Ramcke both for his bravery and for his “continuous tenacious struggle” to hold Brest Fortress. The Führer normally awarded the Diamonds personally but, considering Ramcke’s situation at the time, ordered that they be parachuted into the fortress and awarded to Ramcke there.72
Upon arriving at Trent Park, Ramcke and four of his accompanying subordinates became the most vocal Nazi supporters that British officers had seen since the departure of Ludwig Crüwell. Like their commander, Major General Erwin Rauch, Brigadier General Hans von der Mosel, Vice Admiral Alfred Schirmer, and Rear Admiral Otto Kähler had been captured following the surrender of Brest.73 It quickly became obvious that the attitudes of these four subordinates reflected that of their commanding officer. The American officer who interrogated Ramcke in France following his surrender summed up the general as “an egotistical, conceited Nazi.” The officer found the general to be “a firm believer in Hitler and greatly inclined towards the [Nazi] Party.” Ramcke espoused the belief that Germany was “a clean, innocent nation greatly wronged by other nations” and that, following the war, Germany would “rise again in 10 to 30 years.” He defiantly stated that he would return home and prepare his five sons “to revive and free Germany again.” The British officers at Trent Park gained the same “deplorable impression of him as a man.” They agreed that “if there [was] to be such a thing as a list of especially dangerous men to be kept under surveillance [after the war], General Ramcke ought to qualify as one of the very first candidates.”74 They would not realize how correct their impressions were until several years after the war had ended.
Generalleutnant Erwin Rauch (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
There seemed to be little doubt that Ramcke genuinely supported the Nazi regime. Aside from his political orientation, he also benefited from financial ties to Hitler and Goebbels. The propaganda minister ordered that each German mayor purchase a copy of Ramcke’s book, Vom Schiffsjungen zum Fallschirmjäger-General (From cabin boy to paratroop general), for his city. The book had been published by Eher Publishing, the Nazi Party press that controlled the overwhelming majority of German publications, including the infamous daily party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter. When four hundred thousand copies of the book sold, both Ramcke, who earned two reichsmarks per sale, and Hitler, who owned a significant interest in Eher, profited handsomely.75
At the end of September, following Ramcke’s surrender of Brest, the Allies also captured Rear Admiral Carl Weber and Brigadier General Botho Elster. Weber had been apprehended in the vicinity of Beaugency, France, located partway between Paris and the coastal city of Bordeaux, where Weber had served as commandant of the German arsenal. Upon capture, he joined the senior Wehrmacht officers at Trent Park in England. The following day, September 17, 1944, and in the same area of the Loire Valley, the Allies also captured General Elster. He served as commanding officer of Feldkommandatur 541, which oversaw the transfer of Spanish supplies through France to Germany. Elster, who had been dogged for some time by the French resistance, ceremoniously surrendered his pistol as well as munitions, machinery, and twenty thousand men to Major General Robert C. Macon of the American Eighty-Third Infantry Division on Beaugency Bridge on the Loire River. For deciding to capitulate rather than unnecessarily send hundreds more men to their deaths, a Nazi court condemned Elster to death in absentia in March 1945. Elster’s decision and the Nazi court’s subsequent sentence proved to be a bone of contention between the general and his fellow high-ranking prisoners when he arrived in the United States. Despite being interrogated by CSDIC at Wilton Park along with Generals Ramcke and von Heyking and Admiral Weber, Elster did not accompany his colleagues to Trent Park. Rather, after two days, he was transferred to Camp Clinton, Mississippi, by American request.76
Elster did not go alone. A week after his capture, on September 23, 1944, ten of the generals from Trent Park departed for the United States. Three of these officers—von Sponeck, von Liebenstein, and Krause—had long been residents of the English camp. The other seven—Vierow, Spang, Menny, Badinski, Sattler, Schramm, and Stolberg—had only briefly been at Camp No. 11. A month later, on October 25, the British transferred nine more senior officers from Trent Park to America. This group included Generals Seyffardt, Rauch, von Wülfingen, Gutknecht, and von der Mosel and Admirals Schirmer, Kähler, von Tresckow, and Weber.77
A photograph of German prisoner-of-war generals at Trent Park, November 1944. Front row, left to right: Generalleutnant Rüdiger von Heyking, Generalleutnant Karl Wilhelm von Schlieben, and Generalleutnant Wilhelm Daser. Back row, left to right: General der Infanterie Dietrich von Choltitz, Oberst Gerhard Wilck, General der Fallschirmtruppe Bernhard-Hermann Ramcke, Generalmajor Knut Eberding, and Oberst Eberhard Wildermuth. (German Federal Archive [Bundesarchiv], Bild 146-2005-1036 / Photographer: Unknown)
There do not appear to have been any special Allied criteria for choosing which senior officers to t
ransfer to the United States. These two groups constituted a mix of cooperative “anti-Nazis” and uncooperative “Nazis,” as well as others who had been in England for some time and many who had only recently arrived. It appears most likely that the British chose to send those prisoners from whom they had already gathered as much information as they thought possible as well as those in whom the Americans expressed particular interest.
November 1944 saw the addition of only a few new faces at Trent Park, including Brigadier General Knut Eberding and Major General Wilhelm Daser, commanding the Sixty-Fourth and Seventieth Infantry Divisions, respectively. The Allies captured both in the Battle of the Scheldt Estuary. The Germans doggedly defended this coastal area of Belgium to prevent the Allies from capturing Antwerp, the port that was essential for supplying an Allied advance into German territory. Eberding was an “efficient, ruthless officer” who chose to fight the Canadian Second Corps rather than surrender, inflicting significant casualties and considerably delaying the Canadian advance to Antwerp, although he destroyed his own division in the process.78 Daser serves as an interesting contrast to Eberding. Defending the same area, both received the same orders from their superiors: “Negotiations quite out of the question; fight until the last; in case of desertion relatives [will be] made responsible.” Yet Daser chose to surrender, citing potentially high civilian casualties, while Eberding adhered to his orders despite the destruction of his unit and the deaths of hundreds of his men. Eberding even later admitted into British microphones that he had issued an order that “the next of kin of all deserters would be called to account at home.”79
Generalmajor Knut Eberding (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum)
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