The Last Prussian

by Messenger, Charles;

  Germany’s senior surviving Field Marshal, von Brauchitsch, was already languishing at Nuremberg and had had much time to consider how best the High Command should conduct its case. On 3 January 1946 he addressed a letter to the President of the International Tribunal, the British judge Lord Justice Lawrence. Dr Exner had already been appointed as the defence lawyer for this case, but von Brauchitsch asked that he be replaced by Dr Leverkühn on the grounds that Exner was already defending Jodl and was unable to devote his full attention to the case. He went on to say: ‘The defence should be conferred upon an officer belonging to the circle of the higher ranking commanders representing the General Staff. He will be supported by a legal adviser. In the first place the oldest officer of the former German Army, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, comes into question for this purpose.’55 In fact, it was Dr Hans Laternser who took on the task of counsel for the defence and on 4 February he wrote to von Rundstedt stating that both von Manstein and General Siegfried Westphal had specifically requested that he appear. Not until a month later did von Rundstedt receive the letter, and two days later he wrote to the IMT requesting that he be allowed to appear before it. He had not made such an application before:

  ‘… because I had received the impression from various reports by press and radio, that I myself was mentioned as a war criminal [presumably the French demand of the previous autumn to try him as such]. This was indicated by the British side as an “unofficial statement”. I shall, however, in my capacity as senior Field Marshal on active service to the end of the war, not withdraw from the request of my brother-officers of the Army – former Germany Army [sic], its generals fighting and leading the frontline and its General-Staff. I have always, during 54 years of active service, sought loyally to serve my country [sic] and the Nation [sic], without regarding the person at the head of the State to whom every soldier was bound to swear allegiance. Now I consider it the last task entrusted to my life to safeguard the honour of the German Army.’

  He also asked that Blumentritt and Hans Gerd be allowed to accompany him in order to assist with the case. The IMT’s comment was that should the defence request their presence then they would be called individually.56 The summons came and on 15 May von Rundstedt, von Kleist, Westphal and Blumentritt, but not Hans Gerd, were flown to Nuremberg. The late Captain Ted Lees, the camp interpreter at Island Farm, remembered von Rundstedt’s departure from Island Farm. ‘As he came walking slowly towards the main compound gate, he found the entire complement of 185 or so generals and admirals lined up at the salute. One of the senior among them then delivered a short speech asking him “to uphold the honour of the German officer corps at Nuremberg”.’57

  Von Rundstedt arrived in Nuremberg at the time when the individual cases for the defence were being heard. He and his companions were housed in the witnesses’ wing of the jail. Before anything could happen Dr Laternser had to make a formal application for von Rundstedt and the others to appear in front of the IMT Commission, which carried out the preliminary review of evidence prior to the case being formally considered in court. In the meantime, G M Gilbert, the official prison psychologist at Nuremberg, visited von Rundstedt in his cell. The Field Marshal asserted that he and Rommel had told Hitler at the beginning of July 1944 that ‘it was time to quit’. He objected to the Ardennes counter-offensive being named after him since he had had little to do with the planning. ‘If old von Moltke thought that I have planned the offensive he would turn over in his grave’. He also complained:

  ‘All we had was [sic] the run-down old men who couldn’t fight and the foreigners who kept deserting. – And Hitler kept hollering, “hold your ground”. – Like at Bastogne, just to mention one name – and that was the man who wanted to be considered a great field general! – He didn’t know the first thing about strategy! – All he knew was bluff.’58

  Eventually, on 19 June, von Rundstedt appeared before the Commission.

  Much of what von Rundstedt said during this appearance has been referred to earlier, but suffice it to say the questioning was very searching, much more so than anything that he had previously experienced. Much of it was aimed at establishing the culpability of the High Command and General Staff in the decisions and planning to invade Poland, Norway, France and the Low Countries, the Balkans and Russia. Von Rundstedt asserted that he was not privy to these, being a field commander who merely received the orders to carry them out. The Commission then went on to examine the Eastern front and the atrocities there. Von Rundstedt denied that the Wehrmacht had not observed the Laws of War, and that the Einsatzgruppen were under army command. Indeed, he only knew of one atrocity committed by them in his army group area and that merely because it had happened near his headquarters – he was presumably referring to the Berdichev massacre at the end of July 1941. There had been no intentional maltreatment of prisoners – what had happened in the rear had not been his responsibility since his was an operational command and not concerned with routine logistic matters. Nevertheless,

  “… one has to admit that a lot of these unfortunate prisoners succumbed to exhaustion and hunger, and died. In an encirclement battle [Kesselschlacht] the surrounded troops were almost starving because no food could get in and they only had what they carried with them. The number of prisoners of war sometimes amounted to hundreds of thousands and sometimes was larger than the army which captured them. As much as it would have liked to, the German Army could not supply enough food for the poor prisoners from its own stocks, as these were short as well. In addition, the supply system was miserable; railways were hardly traffic-able, the roads not at all, because of mud, ice and snow. One tried to feed the poor people with maize, soya beans or whatever from the fields. But in my judgement, the main reason for the death was the lack of provision of shelter for them in bad weather. They had to remain in the open air.’

  Von Rundstedt denied that he had given orders for mines to be cleared by prisoners, although he was aware of one occasion when this happened, at Kiev, but believed that it was a regiment which had ordered it. He was also asked whether he knew what went on in the concentration camps, but said that he was only made aware of this through Allied films and publications. Nevertheless, he had known of two camps. Oranienberg had been a show place to which foreign diplomats had been taken to demonstrate how humane the camps were.

  ‘Then there was Dachau, which was in the vernacular jokingly called “concert camp”, not concentration camp. People were sent there who had made careless statements or had fallen from favour, like Pastor Niemöller. Two acquaintances of mine who are here in the prison, Haider and Falkenhausen, were inmates of Dachau for a year, and had no idea of the dirty business that was going on.’

  The Commission then referred to a statement made by SS Brigade-führer Ernst Rohde that ‘an energetic and united protest by all field marshals would have brought about a change in aims and methods’ of the war in the East. Von Rundstedt bridled at this, pointing out that if they had made such a protest they would have merely been replaced by commanders more sympathetic to the régime. The only possible option was ‘silent sabotage as with the Commissar Order’. In any event, ‘I find it outrageous that an SS man dares give judgement on the field marshals in such a way’.

  The examination now moved on to France and von Rundstedt’s policy towards the Resistance, as well as the infamous Commando Order. The Ardennes followed, with von Rundstedt’s knowledge of the Malmédy massacre being examined. The July 1944 Bomb Plot was also brought up and then von Rundstedt was asked why he had taken part in the invasion of Russia if he did not agree with it. He replied that he had sworn on oath as a soldier to do his duty. To the argument that he did not have to keep his oath to a man who had broken his, the Field Marshal replied that ‘the soldier is not a villain’ but, said his questioner, what if your superior is a villain? Von Rundstedt declined to answer this. He was then asked what he did with the RM 250,000 given to him by Hitler on his 66th Birthday and the other gifts he received from the Führer. W
hen speaking of the von Moltke portrait, he said that he had loaned it to a museum in Kassel. It was, however, in Bila’s possession at the end of the war. To discourage the Americans from confiscating it, she removed Hitler’s presentation plaque from the frame and passed the picture off as a portrait of a relation. It hangs today in grandson Gerd’s house, still with the gap in the frame where the plaque had been. Von Rundstedt also let slip that he had additionally received some coffee at the same time, ‘which I do not want to mention here’. One suspects that, while he could put the other gifts he received from Hitler out of sight, the coffee was too much of a temptation. He had recently arrived in France as C-in-C West and it is likely that he sent it to Bila to use. The examination ended with a trick question. Von Rundstedt was asked whether he was aware of the old Prussian General Staff watchword ‘an officer does not owe obedience to anyone if the order is against his honour’. He denied all knowledge of this, quoting von Moltke the Elder’s famous dictum as the only one worth following, ‘the general staff officer has to be more than he seems’. The Commission was not convinced by von Rundstedt’s denial and put the question to him twice more, but he refused to elaborate. It was then slightly rephrased: ‘Do you agree with the words of Field Marshal von Moltke: “The officer bears a completely different responsibility in front of God and his fatherland than merely the order of some superior”?’ Dr Laternser objected, and von Rundstedt, clearly angry, retorted: ’ I have sworn on oath to say what I know, to the best of my knowledge and conscience. I do not allow anyone to examine me here. I am not a cadet!’ Eventually, after more cross-examination in the same vein, von Rundstedt finally replied: ‘I hold the same opinion as von Moltke and Elder, that one is responsible for one’s actions to God and one’s Fatherland’, a subtle amendment of the quote as given by the Commission. The examination was now nearly at an end. After a couple of questions on von Rundstedt’s attitude to Hitler’s coming to power, he was asked his opnion on race theories – ‘That was nonsense. You only have to look at the German people’ – ‘Lebensraum?’ – ‘We had enough Lebensraum. The only desire we had was to regain our colonies’ – ‘In the East?’ – ‘The only thing to achieve was the [Polish] corridor link [with East Prussia]’. There the Commission’s examination ended. It had not been a pleasant experience for the Field Marshal.59

  There was then a further wait and it was another month before Dr Laternser applied for von Rundstedt to appear as a witness for the defence in the case against the High Command and General Staff. Finally, on 12 August, von Rundstedt entered the witness box. Dr Laternser first took him through the ground which had been covered by the Commission in its examination. The most significant answer that von Rundstedt gave was to Laternser’s last question, on the senior commanders’ attitude to Military and International Law. In his reply he stressed that these were ‘always binding for us older leaders’ and that ‘very severe measures were taken in the case of excesses which in war can probably take place in all armies’. The divisional court-martial records would support him on this point. He then went on to say:

  ‘We old officers who lived through the time of cavalry battles and infantry bayonet attacks witnessed the increasing mechanisation of warfare with regret. Today the bravest men and the best troops are helpless against the force of mechanisation. All the more did we leaders believe that where there was fighting on land the old soldierly, decent forms of battle should be maintained, and that they should be impressed on the troops again and again.

  As senior soldier of the German Army, I will say this: We accused leaders were trained in the old soldierly traditions of decency and chivalry. We lived and acted according to them, and we endeavoured to hand them down to the younger officers.’60

  It was now the prosecution’s turn to cross-examine and the task was given to the British lawyer Peter Calvocoressi. The first part of his questioning was concerned with the relationships among OKH, an army group commander and his army commanders. What he was trying to establish was that the High Command did operate as an organisation in which an overall policy was generated as a result of an interchange of opinions. Von Rundstedt, however, said that this only happened at the operational and tactical level and that political and strategic matters were laid down by Hitler and the OKW and were not open to question. Calvocoressi then tried to get von Rundstedt to admit that the Army was not entirely non-political. It had not supported Kapp because he failed in his putsch, but backed Hitler after he came to power because he was successful. Von Rundstedt admitted that Hitler had tried to make the Army National Socialist minded, but that the senior commanders, although they may have privately held political opinions, never voiced them at an organised meeting or as a body. He also denied that the Army was training for an aggressive war before 1939 and said that the manoeuvres which he had conducted had been strictly defensive, usually taking as a scenario a Lithuanian threat to the then isolated East Prussia, a joint Polish-Czech attack against eastern Germany or a French crossing of the Rhine. Having then tried to make von Rundstedt accept that Chancellor Schuschnigg of Austria had caved in in 1938 because of the might of the Germany military machine, Peter Calvocoressi then changed tack and asked von Rundstedt about the Commando Order. The Field Marshal assured the prosecutor that no one had lost their life in the West as a result of it, but ‘if the Commando Order was carried out elsewhere in another theatre of war, then the commander of the unit in question acted in accordance with Hitler’s order, which they had to assume as founded on International Law’.61 After raising the so-called 1941 Severity Order issued by von Reichenau when commanding Sixth Army and that issued by von Schobert’s Eleventh Army, which von Rundstedt denied having seen at the time, although copies might have reached his headquarters, Calvacoressi then read out an order sent to Panzerarmee Afrika in June 1942 ordering the immediate shooting of any members of the Free French forces who were German refugees. The fact that it strictly ordered all dissemination of it to commanders to be verbal and not written proved that whoever wrote it recognised its illegality. Von Rundstedt was not given the opportunity to comment, for Calvocoressi then asked him what he knew of Rommel’s death. The reply was that he had had no suspicion that his death had been unnatural. That was the end of the cross-examination, but Laternser then asked some further questions on the commander-subordinate relationship to clarify that there was no form of senior commanders’ ‘trade union’ in operation. Likewise, von Blomberg’s talk of ‘the Group of German Staff Officers’ meant nothing to von Rundstedt. There his day in the witness box ended.

  On the impression that von Rundstedt gave at Nuremberg, The Times correspondent commented that he was ‘alert in mind in spite of his 71 years’ and that he bore ‘a strong resemblance in appearance and mannerisms to Keitel’62, which would have annoyed von Rundstedt, given his views on the Chief of Staff of the OKW. Airey Neave viewed him as ‘now a frail old man but dry and aristocratic’.63 Peter Calvacoressi’s recollection of over forty years later was that:

  ‘… he was – and probably exaggerated how much he was – an old man. Partly by nature and partly by training, he exhibited the professional officer’s posture of being half outside the events of his lifetime; his posture was dignity achieved through aloofness. He was not going to let on how much he and his colleagues had known or done. He did this well – or anyway successfully.’64

  Von Rundstedt himself did not enjoy his stay at Nuremberg. He, von Kleist and Blumentritt flew back to Britain on 19 August. On arrival back at Island Farm, von Rundstedt, according to Ted Lees, ‘wrung us all by the hand and assured us that he was glad indeed to be back at his “Hotel Island Farm”. Later he intimated that he would be quite happy to remain there until his dying day – as long as he was not handed over to the Americans again.’65 One of the camp guards also recalled that on von Rundstedt’s return ’… we saw a big change in him. His face was gaunt and expressionless and he had aged considerably.’66 In the end, the IMT could not find the former German High Command and
General Staff guilty on any count as an organised body, but stressed that this did not absolve individual members of guilt.

  Island Farm itself was not called a ‘special’ camp just because it housed senior officers. Many of them were on CROWCASS lists, including, of course, von Rundstedt himself. Some were handed over to allies or sent back to the scene of their alleged crimes for trial. Thus, von Kleist left the camp in October to be tried in Yugoslavia for war crimes. Two years later he was handed over to the Russians and died in one of their prison camps in 1954. General Kurt Student was handed over to the French and Blumentritt was, as we shall see, taken to Hamburg to be put on trial. Because of this, conditions were much stricter than they were becoming at other camps. Indeed, a PID training adviser visiting the camp in June 1946 had commented in his report that the other ranks in the camp resented these restrictions and objected to serving as orderlies to senior officers whom they regarded as war criminals.67 These restrictions were tightened considerably in autumn 1946. Classes in English, some of which had been conducted by Hans Gerd, whom a Technical Adviser had described in an April 1946 report as ‘fawning’,68 were stopped, as were outside lectures. The grounds given for this were that the inmates were dedicated Nazis and militarists and beyond re-education.69 One suspects that the British Government did this in the immediate aftermath of the Nuremberg international trials because it feared a renewed clamour from the Soviet Union and the states of Eastern Europe for the handover of many of the senior officers in British hands, especially since the Cabinet was keen to bring war crimes trials to an end.70 It did not believe that they would have fair trials, but, on the other hand, did not want it to seem that it had ‘gone soft’ in its treatment of them. The inmates of Island Farm were therefore thrown even more in on themselves, but life would have been much worse if it had not been for a sympathetic commandant and staff. Indeed, von Rundstedt so appreciated Topham’s efforts that just before Christmas 1946 he presented him with his treasured Interimstab. In his letter of thanks Topham wrote: ‘… I am proud to accept your gift in the spirit in which you gave it, not only as from a very great soldier to a very humble one, but also, I like to think, as from a friend to a friend … the baton will always remain a very treasured souvenir, and a reminder of a very gallant officer.’71 Topham apparently promised that, after his death, the baton would be returned to von Rundstedt’s family. Instead he bequeathed it to his regiment. It was placed in the Grenadier Guards Museum, but some years later went missing and has never been traced.72 When Topham relinquished command of Island Farm, von Rundstedt made a speech of farewell, thanking him ‘for the way in which you have fulfilled your difficult task. We thoroughly appreciated your gentlemanlike chivalry which made you always look at us not as criminals and prisoners but only as officers in a really hopeless situation.’73