Before the end of 1944, the Poles had formally registered von Rundstedt as wanted for war crimes, ‘mass murder, execution of persons without trial, and other crimes’ while C-in-C Army Group South during the period 1 September – 30 October 1939, with the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects (CROW-CASS).7 This, however, had no bearing on the selection of those who were to appear at Nuremberg, and von Rundstedt, as a field commander throughout the war, was not considered to be close enough to the centre of the Nazi web to merit selection. Keitel and Jodl, in view of their positions in OKW, were the only senior army officers to be tried by the IMT. Even so, when the list of those who were to be so tried was published, there was surprise expressed in some quarters that von Rundstedt was not among them. Thus the London Sunday Times felt that he should have been included on the grounds that he was responsible for sending Skorzeny’s ‘murder parties’ behind the lines during the Ardennes counter-offensive.8 Instead, he and his son remained at Wiesbaden for some six weeks. While there, von Rundstedt was questioned at the Seventh Army Interrogation Center about D-Day.’ He was also interviewed by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey team at HQ 12th Army Group’s T (Technical) Branch detention centre. The aims of this interview were to establish the German Army’s preparedness prior to the war, its supply situation during the war, and to discuss strategic planning and the mobilisation of economic resources. The significant points of this interview have already been brought out, but there was one curious exchange relating to the Field Marshal’s retirement in July 1944:
‘Question: “Why did you resign at this point of the campaign?”
Answer: “For reasons of health.”
Question: “This was the official explanation. Why did you actually resign?”
Answer: “I do not know.’”
Two weeks later von Rundstedt and Hans Gerd were moved again, this time to England.11 It was, however, only now that Ditha received news in a letter from Hans Gerd that he and her father-in-law were alive.12 Still in Austria with her children, she was apparently very upset that her mother-in-law had not given her any news13, but given the chaotic situation in Germany at the end of the war it is not surprising that she had heard nothing. One curious footnote to von Rundstedt’s movements during the weeks after his capture was that on 8 May, VE Day, a report appeared on the front page of the British Daily Express, which gave a graphic account of how von Rundstedt had taken the news of the German surrender. It claimed that both he and Hans Gerd were already in a British POW camp, Grizedale Hall in the Lake District, and that he had wept when he heard of the surrender on German radio, declaring that ‘it is not the Wehrmacht which is to blame. The political leaders of our country were schlecht – bad.’14 Certainly, a large group of senior German officers were taken to Grizedale Hall on 30 April, but von Rundstedt had not even been captured at this time.15
The Field Marshal himself, together with other high ranking German officers, was brought to England during the second week of July for what would be a three year sojourn. Hans Gerd accompanied him, supposedly with Montgomery’s special consent.16 Their first home was the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), otherwise known as No 11 Prisoner of War Camp, at Wilton Park, Buckinghamshire (now the School of Army Education). This had been originally set up in 1941 to interrogate captured enemy officers, in the early days largely Luftwaffe and U-boat crews. Its activities were highly secret at the time, but the intelligence gleaned from its often very subtle methods of extracting information was invaluable. Later, after the surrender in Tunisia in May 1943, it had played host to Marshal Messe, the last commander of the Axis forces in North Africa, and other senior Italian officers. Now it housed a large number of German generals, including von Rundstedt, Field Marshal Ernst Busch, who had signed the instrument of surrender to Montgomery on Lüneberg Heath, and Ritter von Thoma, erstwhile commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps, who had been captured during the closing stages of the Second Battle of el Alamein in November 1942.
Wilton Park consisted of a large white Georgian house set in its own grounds. This was the officers’ mess and the prisoners were housed in a concrete one story block which had been built in what had formerly been the nursery garden. There were four long intersecting corridors with cells large enough to hold four beds. All were centrally heated. There were no bars on the windows, many of which looked out on the eight foot brick wall that had surrounded the original garden, but being multi-paned and steel framed they were deemed sufficiently strong to be escape proof. Nevertheless, additional security precautions were introduced just before the arrival of von Rundstedt and his compatriots. The windows were heavily wired, floodlighting installed and an adjoining field turned into an exercise area with high perimeter fence and Bren gun posts. Colonel Grondona, the Commandant, recalled the arrival of his new guests:
‘When von Rundstedt was shown his room, he took no notice whatever of the heavily wired windows. Even if there had been no bed on which to sleep I don’t think he would have batted an eye-lid. The feelings of those Germans as – red-tabbed, gold-braided and erect – they walked inside their barbed-wire-enclosed exercise ground for an hour each morning and afternoon, must have indeed been bitter; but I never sensed that their bitterness was against their captors.’17
Von Rundstedt was still not well18 and neither were von Thoma (who would shortly have to have his leg amputated) nor Busch. Indeed, the last-named died of a heart attack in his bed on 17 July. The War Office informed Grondona that a motor hearse would collect the body next day and take it to Aldershot for interment. Grondona was granted permission to give ‘appropriate military honours’ to the cortège as it left Wilton Park and accordingly organised a Guard of Honour from the camp guards.
‘Next morning two lines of troops with heads bowed over their reversed arms were drawn up between the steps of the White House and the hearse on the wide carriage-way; another party stood ready to slow-march ahead of the short column as it moved the 400 yds to the South gate of the inner perimeter. Rundstedt and about 20 generals walked in rear of the hearse, with the British officers behind them. Then, as the gate was approached, there was a brief halt while the advance party formed two lines on either side of the hearse and, as it moved on, they presented arms. Rundstedt raised his Marshal’s baton and we all came to the salute till the hearse had passed through the gate – when it accelerated in setting out on its journey.’
The War Office subsequently said that von Rundstedt and eight others could attend the interment. They were taken by army coach, with blinds drawn, to Aldershot, but Grondona could not resist raising the blinds as they passed through Eton, Windsor Castle and Windsor Great Park.
Von Rundstedt asked me if it was likely that there would be “a firing party from the Brigade of Guards at the funeral”. I replied that I had no idea what arrangements were being made by the War Office. I marvelled at the outlook of this man who had seen all our newspapers’ gruesomely illustrated accounts of the terrible discoveries made at the concentration camps, and who even yet imagined that a party of the King’s Household Brigade would now be detailed as a guard of honour at a German general’s funeral. He was soon to be disillusioned on this and other points. The burial was conducted with a minimum of ceremony; and later that day I had a message to say that von Rundstedt would appreciate my visiting him in his room. He rose as I entered and asked me to sit down. Then he said: “Herr Kommandant, you will have received my letter expressing our appreciation of the ceremony which marked the departure of our late colleague’s body from this place. Can you tell me why he was today buried with none of the honours due to a soldier and with no respect whatever for his rank?” Speaking with manifest emotion he added: “None of us who were present at Aldershot today will ever forget what was a very bitter experience.” I had to explain to him the state of British public opinion at this time.’
Von Rundstedt’s reaction to this was to put his head into his hands and to reply: ‘We do realise what yo
u say, and have the utmost shame. But I give you my word of honour as a soldier that the revelations have appalled the Wehrmacht even more than the people of Britain.’ It was to be the first of a number of conversations that Grondona was to have with him, but at no time did von Rundstedt ever try to excuse or justify himself over the events of the past few years. His good manners also impressed his captors. When the Japanese surrender was announced, von Rundstedt ‘made the point of calling on a BAO [British Army Officer] in order to offer him congratulations on a glorious victory. This was done in the courtly manner at which he excels.’9
During this time von Rundstedt, von Manteuffel, Blumentritt and Kruse, who had commanded Army Group B’s artillery, were interrogated in depth about the Ardennes counter-offensive. The interrogation report on all four noted that von Rundstedt’s mind was no longer very alert and his memory was beginning to fail him. It also appeared that he had disinterested himself in the offensive and was therefore not as conversant with it as he might have been, even given his habit of delegating all detail. He himself stressed that all planning had been done by Hitler and the OKW and his own views, presumably the Small Solution, were ignored.20 This interrogation was carried out at Wilton Park, although von Rundstedt also spent time at what was known as the London District Cage in Kensington Palace Gardens, which also carried out POW interrogations and had now become the War Crimes Investigation Unit (WCIU) under Lieutenant Colonel A P Scotland. The late ‘Bunny’ Pantcheff, who was on the staff of the latter, remembered von Rundstedt being there, although he himself did not interrogate him. ‘The impression he made was of a traditional, old-style Prussian officer, a good professional soldier, though by then well past his peak, honourable (and honour-conscious) according to those professional lights, stiff and unbending in manner, sehr korrekt.’21
At Wilton Park itself, some at least of the wartime techniques of extracting intelligence from the prisoners were still used. In particular, eavesdropping of their conversations was employed on a wide scale and much revealing information was gleaned. Thus, at one point Hans Gerd was heard to comment that it was as well that the British had suffered light losses compared to Germany during the war since this meant that there was still plenty of ‘Teutonic’ blood with which to face the Russians.22 On the other hand, the Field Marshal, Hans Gerd, Blumentritt and von Manteuffel expressed themselves ‘rather pleased’ on another occasion, when talking about the Soviet threat, ‘at the trouble the British have on hand’.23 Discussing the July 1944 Bomb Plot, von Manteuffel considered Hans Gerd’s view that it would have been ‘a stroke of luck’ if it had come off as ‘unbelievable impudence’, damning Hans Gerd as ‘this young puppy’. ‘He has no idea what would have happened. I’m, sure that I would have used my troops to fire on the rebels.’24 As for views on von Rundstedt himself, Haider, who was at the camp and on loan from the Americans, considered him more of a Junker than a strategist and blamed him for keeping aloof from the anti-Hitler plots.25 Even his most loyal supporters, Hans Gerd and Blumentritt, in a discussion with Haider’s erstwhile deputy, Müller-Hillebrand, criticised him for ‘failing to speak out at times when action and words were needed’. They felt that he had ‘a negative attitude to life’ and particularly condemned him for his seeming indifference to the current sufferings of the German civil population.26 Of more immediate significance was a BBC news broadcast in German on 5 October. This reported that the French had branded von Rundstedt a war criminal and were demanding that he be handed over for trial by them if the IMT did not arraign him. It was heard by a number of prisoners, but not von Rundstedt, and caused a ‘considerable stir’, the attitude being that if the doyen of the officer corps was to be so treated then what hope for the other members? Von Thoma proposed that von Rundstedt should not be told about it for the time being, while Blumentritt thought that the Oradour massacre, perpetrated by the SS Das Reich in June 1944, was at the bottom of it. He and Hans Gerd immediately set about preparing a case for the Field Marshal’s defence.27
Probably on 19 October 1945,28 von Rundstedt and a number of others were transferred to another camp, this time in the North of England. Wilton Park itself was converted into a training centre for German re-education and during the next few years was to do much to further Anglo-German understanding. Before he left, von Rundstedt presented Grondona with a walking stick which had been made for him by General Gerd Bassenge, whom Grondona later claimed was the senior engineer officer of the German Army, although he was actually a Luftwaffe air defence specialist who had been captured in Tunisia, and was a fellow inmate at Wilton Park.29 Von Rundstedt’s new home was No 1 PW Camp at Grizedale Hall, the camp in which the Daily Express reporter had placed him at the time of the German surrender. The camp itself lay some three miles from Lake Windermere and close by the village of Hawkshead in the Lake District. It, too, was based on an Edwardian country house, (built by a Liverpool shipping magnate but no longer standing today) and its grounds. It was the first officers’ camp opened during the war and had initially housed Luftwaffe and U-boat personnel, becoming known to the locals as the U-boat Hotel. It had twice been the scene of escapes by prisoners. In August 1941 the U-boat U-570 had surrendered to a Hudson aircraft of RAF Coastal Command, which had attacked and damaged it in the North Atlantic. Her officers, apart from the Captain, who was detained in London, were taken to Grizedale Hall. So incensed were the inmates that a U-boat should have surrendered that they decided to place the officers before a Court of Honour presided over by top scoring U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer. The First Lieutenant, Bernhard Berndt, was found guilty of a dishonourable act and, in order to clear his name, resolved to escape from the camp and get back to Germany. He managed to get out of the camp, cutting a hole in the wire, but was caught by members of the Home Guard the following day. They decided to take him back to the camp to have him verified. En route he broke away from his escorts, who shot and killed him. Later he was given a full naval funeral and buried in the churchyard of Hawkshead. It was from Grizedale Hall, too, that the Luftwaffe fighter pilot Franz von Werra made the first of his three escapes from Allied POW camps, the third of which, from a camp in Canada, was ultimately successful and he reached Germany by way of the USA and Mexico. By the time von Rundstedt arrived, however, it had become a senior officers’ camp and one other Field Marshal, Ewald von Kleist, was already in residence.
The commandant of Grizedale Hall was a Regular officer and Great War veteran, Lieutenant Colonel Ryn Morton MC, the Cheshire Regiment, who apparently used to refer to his charges as ‘My Huns’ or ‘My Boches’.30 According to Basil Liddell Hart, whom, as we shall see, got to know the camp well, Morton, whom he mistakenly described as an ‘ex-ranker’, used to boast ‘of the way he ticked off the generals in humiliating terms’.31 Whether this was so or not, John Trevelyan, then Education Officer for the county of Westmorland, in which Grizedale Hall was situated (whose autograph would later become well known to all British cinema-goers when he was official censor to the British Film Board), noted that he treated von Rundstedt very differently. Trevelyan visited von Rundstedt on a couple of occasions in the room which he shared with his son and noted that when Morton took him to von Rundstedt’s door ‘he stood to attention and said deferentially, “Mr Trevelyan to see you, Sir”’.32 According to Liddell Hart, conditions were also very cramped with ‘six full generals to a room, and as many as eighteen major generals to a hut’. The only furniture in each room was ‘a small table and two hard chairs apart from the narrow iron beds with an apology for a mattress’.33 Certainly there were well over 200 prisoners in this camp by the time von Rundstedt arrived.34 Ernie Ridgway, who was a guard there from April 1940 until he was demobilised in 1946, recalls that the big house itself had 32 bedrooms and that some 100 prisoners slept in it. The overflow was catered for in five large huts in a compound.35 It is probable, however, that the vast influx of POWs after the surrender did mean that the camp was forced to accept more than it could cater for in comfort. This is substantiated by t
he report of an International Red Cross official who visited on 7 December 1945. He commented especially on the overcrowded conditions, but noted that there was a plan to move the prisoners to a camp in the South. The report also stated that all the inmates were losing weight and that the canteen was very sparsely stocked, with basics like toothpaste being unobtainable. Even so, although the prisoners made a number of requests to the official, they lodged no formal complaints.36
The von Rundstedts, however, were lucky enough to have a room with a window which had a view. During one of John Trevelyan’s visits he asked von Rundstedt whether he felt isolated from the outside world. Taking him to the small window, the Field Marshal replied: ‘Yes I often do, but on a clear day I can see from here a little patch of sea, and this makes me feel I am not entirely cut off.’37 Even so, occasionally von Rundstedt’s frustration got the better of him. Once he was seen by a sentry beating the perimeter fence with his stick and he had to point his rifle at him in order to make von Rundstedt stop. Liddell Hart became very concerned for the Field Marshal’s safety when he heard about this and asked Morton to ensure that the guards did not shoot at him when he did it, but treated him with sympathy.38 Nevertheless, the Generals were allowed to walk in the surrounding woods under escort. Ernie Ridgway remembered that von Rundstedt always had a polite smile for his captors and noted the respect with which the other inmates treated him. Another who was there at the time, Joseph Hutchinson, a nurseryman and an old soldier, who had served with the British Army of Occupation in Germany just after the Great War and had picked up a little German, used to converse with von Rundstedt when he was taking exercise, and recalled how approachable he was, probably because it was a way of ‘breaking the monotony’.39
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