The Nuremberg Interviews (57 page)

He did not speak easily or elaborately on these questions. I obtained the impression that he was rather vague and ill-informed about world affairs but opinionated, and pretty conservatively, along well-known Nazi lines.

Habits:
He says he stopped smoking in 1925 because of severe headaches, which he attributed to smoke. During the First World War he had smoked as much as twenty cigars a day. One day he stopped smoking and has never resumed it. He drinks very little at any time. There was never any alcoholism in his family, though there were no religious or other scruples exercised within the family against smoking or drinking. “I don’t smoke anymore myself but I enjoy having other people smoke — it is a manly thing to do.”

He is certain that his opinion about war would be the same as other generals’, namely that the common soldier is least enthusiastic about war because he knows the cruelties of war. His opinions about the impossibility of having many small states in Europe is based, he said, on his experiences in piloting planes. In air travel you are over a foreign state’s borders in a few minutes. “In the present day you are over someone else’s borders in a plane before you realize it.” Besides, small states would not be self-sufficient.

He last piloted a plane in March 1945. He went through all flying exercises at the age of fifty-five years. Since 1934 he averaged three to four days’ flying a week. He has flown A and B planes (two-motor fighters) and has flown the C type (heavy bombers) as second in command. He believes he has the record for the largest number of air kilometers flown.

Was there any connection between you and Milch in your work? Until 1933 Kesselring was an artillery officer with the air force. Milch at the time was a state secretary. Three years later they parted and Milch stayed in Berlin while Kesselring went to the front. “Milch was in Norway for a short time to get some medals, but he was not a combat commander.” They were originally good friends and comrades, but then some differences arose. Just what these differences were, he did not
state. But they were still good friends. What differences did you have with Milch? He eluded this by replying that they were personal reasons, but that it led to Kesselring’s being taken out of the Air Ministry and sent to the front, something that Kesselring appreciated. Was there any feeling of personal rivalry between you? “Well, General Stumpf, Weber, and a whole group of others of which I was part were enjoying privileges, whereas Milch at the time was still a colonel, and it might have been the case that Milch was jealous. Milch was always older in rank than they, but when he was made field marshal he was younger than the rest. Milch is a good administrator.”

Kesselring has been a field marshal since 1940. There are twenty field marshals in the German armed forces, including the navy. It is the highest rank except for Reich marshal, a position held by Goering.

Kesselring said that his general health has always been excellent, that his energies were so great he frightened his staff, who were younger men. He laughed and said literally: “I would destroy others around me.” By this he meant he worked harder and longer than his associates and wore them out.

Did you know Rommel? “Yes. He was the best leader of fast-moving troops but only up to army level. Above that level it was too much for him. Rommel was given too much responsibility. He was a good commander for a corps of army but he was too moody, too changeable. One moment he would be enthusiastic, next moment depressed.” Was Rommel ever so depressed he had to be hospitalized? “Yes. Rommel had a nervous breakdown in Africa and was hospitalized. He was depressed mainly. At El Alamein he was not the Rommel he had been anymore. From then on it was too much for him.” Is there any truth to the story Rommel was ordered executed by Hitler? “I believe it to be 99 percent true. I heard that Rommel was given the choice of suicide. I heard that his son said so, too. He was supposed to have been implicated in the
Attentat
of July 20.”
¹

At the time of capitulation Kesselring gave his word that none of his officers would commit suicide, “and my word and honor is worth more than any guard.” The entire treatment of higher officers by the Americans is bad, he said, because it gives the American guards the impression that the same thing might happen to their leaders. “It is bad for the American soldiers.

“I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four
walls as a common prisoner.” There was no anger in his voice, but considerable bitterness. “A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him.”

I asked him about the kaiser’s rule about not violating human rights, namely that a soldier should not obey an order which is against human rights. I had heard this from Halder. He answered: “A soldier’s first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.” He handed me a book by Thomas Carlyle in which it was stated that a soldier’s duty is to obey body and soul. He also read a quotation from Polish head of state Marshal Pilsudski stating that the institution of militarism was a history of obedience. A soldier without obedience is no soldier.

“In the military code,” continued Kesselring, “no soldier should commit a crime. But during war, with blood in the air, a soldier might do it. But if an officer, knowing it wrong, countenanced this, he would be wrong. Sometimes,” he said, “strict orders are necessary to do away with things which threaten to overcome one. The mass executions are impossible to discuss.” Well, what do you think about them, or have you thought of them? “I don’t know about them. Of course, they are wrong. Things which come up against human rights and had bad consequences, however, couldn’t necessarily be called crimes. Wars should be fought by soldiers.” I don’t see that your two statements have much relationship; that is, affairs against human rights and that wars should be fought by soldiers. Do you mean that crimes were committed by civilians? “Yes. No soldier under my command committed crimes.” I have been told by several other generals that the army had detachments of SS troops with them, also Gestapo detachments. “Maybe — yes — not Gestapo but SS.” Did they come under your general command? “Not exactly.” What do you mean? This system of command is very complicated, it seems. In other words you had SS troops in your armies but their command was autonomous. “No, they were responsible to me at the front.” The SS are reputed to have committed crimes. “Not the SS under my armies.

“Furthermore,” he said, “many cruelties could have been avoided if there was no war behind the front.” Do you mean if the partisans, guerrillas, and so forth had not operated? “Yes. Often a car would be stopped by civilians and soldiers shot. In other cases soldiers were induced to come to a village and murdered. It is impossible for any military commander to sit idly by while his soldiers are being killed in other ways than in battle.”

Any reprisals in Italy therefrom? “After my soldiers were in retreat, I
had to issue strict orders to prevent my soldiers from helping themselves and thereby creating a chaotic situation. If human rights are broken by one side they can be broken by the other.” Yes, but were there any actual reprisals for partisan activity either before or after the retreat of your soldiers? “Yes. A few.”
²

Family History:
His father died in 1934, at eighty-nine, almost blind but alert mentally. He had been a schoolteacher, appointed superintendent of schools in Bayreuth. He stopped working at seventy-three, but did calisthenics. Kesselring feels that he resembles his father, though his father was somewhat stouter. Did your father approve of your going to military school? “Yes. It was with my father’s permission.” Can you describe your father’s personality? “Introspective, very strict, at least the children thought he was, even when we were grown up. He was the president of clubs, unions, et cetera. In 1880 he was a Freemason. He was assistant headmaster of a great lodge. He was very religious, a Lutheran. Politically he was a national-liberal, which today might be called a mixture of democratic and nationalistic ideas.” Do you think your father would approve of National Socialism? “I think that as a Freemason, he would have opposed it. But aside from his own Freemasonry, everyone to his own liking, I don’t think he would have opposed it. Father was an absolute German man, and his belonging to the Freemasons was not against that.” What was Hitler’s objection to Freemasonry? “Because it was international. A cousin of mine was a member of a lodge in Bayreuth and was looked on askance. Understanding of other nations does not mean a feeling against your own country. That’s the whole trouble with Germans. They can see only their own country, the local church steeples only. If only German youth could go abroad, and youth from other countries come to Germany. You always have to have criticism if you wish to become better.”

When your father died, were you particularly upset emotionally? “The death of my father was felt keenly, because we were a very closely knit family.” But he was quite old — eighty-nine is a ripe old age. “Nevertheless, you know how it is.” Yes. “One of the troubles with the Nazis was that at too early an age children were taken away from their families. Especially girls. One of the first things to do is give children back to their families. Particularly the fifteen- to sixteen-year-old ones. It was not so much, or not only the influence of the Labor Service, but the taking of the children on Sundays and evenings, instead of having children educated by parents.

What do you think of Schirach’s idea of youth education? “It had a lot of good points, but for one thing the educators were too young. I don’t agree with at least one of their slogans, ‘Youth must be educated by youth.’ ”

Mother:
“She died of kidney disease at fifty-five, when I was twenty-eight. She had been ill several years. There is no hereditary tendency to kidney trouble in the family.” Personality of mother? “An ideal woman and mother. She lived only for the family. You might call her a sunny figure of light.” Was she the dominant one in the household, or would you say your father seemed to have more power? Kesselring laughed. “You might say it was a united front against the children. Discipline was Father’s task — and he believed in beating us if we deserved it. Which was not too often.”

As youngest in the family, would you say you were in any way the favorite? “My brother and sister say it was like that, but it was not really so.”

At the time of the death of his mother, Kesselring was already married and living in Metz. Mother was sickly, death expected, and he was not at her deathbed. He was in the habit of returning once or twice yearly to visit her. When he was stationed in nearby Grafenberg he would go home on weekends.

Marital:
Married at age twenty-five. Wife now fifty-seven, living and well. She lives with her eighty-nine-year-old mother, near Telz. Most of his money was confiscated and he lost many personal belongings while in the camp in Braunschweig. His wife lives on money he gave her. “She is poor as a church mouse.” Wife is very religious and comes from a family of priests. No children. In 1912 a vaginal operation was performed on his wife without benefit. The menopause was artificially induced in 1926 by electrical means (she was about forty at the time). She had leukemia and was receiving electrical treatments for it, and that accounted for the artificially induced menopause, he said. Asked about his marriage from a sexual standpoint he says it was successful. “Yes,” he said, casually.

Kesselring testified that he had some German soldiers shot “on the spot” for looting.
³
Did he consider shooting the proper penalty for looting? Well, he could not “quite admit that,” but if an army gets into the habit of doing misdeeds, then the severest type of measures were justified.
That was in the best interests of the civilian population and the army. He had “a pretty bad quarrel” at headquarters because of this problem. Otherwise, paradoxically, Kesselring believed in educational methods, and that explained some of the milder penalties.

He knew nothing about the removal of art treasures from the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy.
⁴
On the contrary he protected artistic treasures by cooperating with SS general Karl Wolff in having these treasures removed to secure spots.
⁵
He tried to exclude art treasures from areas of combat, avoided using cultural towns as places which might cause the enemy to bomb them. Later, after he was captured, he heard that art treasures were removed from Monte Cassino. As far as he knew they were in the Vatican. Did he know that art treasures from Monte Cassino were delivered to Goering? Well, he heard something about a holy statue but nothing else. Besides, the Hermann Goering Division was stationed in this sector, and Kesselring was not sure just how far their activities went.

At the trial, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe brought out the point that Kesselring had admitted in a previous interrogation that the real purpose in bombing Rotterdam was “to present a firm attitude and secure an immediate peace.” He admitted this but denied that it was to terrorize the people of Rotterdam. He denied the interrogation’s accuracy by saying that he never used the expression “firm attitude.” Finally Kesselring settled on having said “severe measures” were indicated. Furthermore he said he was a soldier and not a politician and was merely complying with General Kurt Student’s request for the bombing.

Then Admiral Raeder’s statement was read to him, to the effect that “whereas it was desirable to base all military measures on existing international law, nevertheless if a decisive victory could be obtained and success achieved, measures beyond existing international law should be executed.”

Kesselring said he did not completely agree with that point of view. As far as Rotterdam was concerned it did not apply. It was then shown that negotiations for the capitulation of Rotterdam had begun at ten-thirty in the morning and Kesselring’s bombing began at one-thirty or two. Kesselring said that General Student called for the attack, and the capitulation was unknown to him at the time. Maxwell Fyfe pointed out that the communication between Student’s ground forces and Kesselring’s air bombers was excellent and that the attack could have been called off
by radio or flares if a terrorization attack, not a tactical one, were in mind. Kesselring admitted that the conditions were such that an attack could have been called off, but still clung, rather unreasonably, to the idea that it was tactically indicated because he had been ordered to do so, and he was not a politician but a soldier.