The Nuremberg Interviews (58 page)

Later it was pointed out that General Student apologized to the Dutch for the attack, since it had occurred after the war was over. Maxwell Fyfe proceeded to ask Kesselring about the attack on Poland. He said that Kesselring had claimed yesterday that Warsaw was a military objective. If so, he asked, what about the fact that fourteen other towns and cities in Poland had been bombed simultaneously? They must have been military objectives, too, said Kesselring. This attack began at 5 a.m., September 1, 1939, and thus there was no time for a single reconnaissance plane to fly over Poland, Maxwell Fyfe observed. True, answered Kesselring, but we had sufficient agents who furnished intelligence beforehand. In fact, said Maxwell Fyfe, had not the whole plan for the attack on Poland been worked out in April 1939?
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Kesselring said that in April 1939 he knew nothing about it. He admitted that it was quite possible that Goering had been at his secret headquarters for a week before the attack on Poland began. Maxwell Fyfe said that the general attack on Polish towns was a well-planned scheme to break down Polish resistance.

Kesselring became rather indignant and said that if his statements as a field marshal and soldier under oath were disregarded and not believed, as obviously Maxwell Fyfe did not believe them, there was no purpose in his making any more statements. He repeated that his attack was not on Polish towns but on military targets, and that as a soldier he should be believed.

The examination turned to the subject of the partisans in Italy during the time of Kesselring’s command. Keitel’s order of December 16, 1942, was read, a copy of it having been found in Kesselring’s headquarters in Italy. It stated:

Kesselring remembered the order. He was then confronted with his own order of June 17, 1944, which read:

Kesselring admitted having issued that order. Furthermore, three days later he issued another “top secret” order saying:

Kesselring was reminded of two instances of how his words were carried out. A Colonel von Gablentz was captured by bandits. The entire male population of the villages on the stretch of road concerned were arrested. As reprisal for the capture of this colonel, 660 persons, including 250 men, were arrested. Maxwell Fyfe asked him if taking 410 women and children into custody was what was meant by his order of “steps necessary to deal with partisan warfare.” Kesselring answered equivocally that it was unnecessary.

The other example was what happened to the village of Civitella, on
June 18, 1944. Two German soldiers were killed and a third was wounded in a fight with partisans in the village of Civitella. Fearing reprisals, the inhabitants evacuated the village, but when the Germans discovered this, punitive action was disposed. On June 29, when the inhabitants returned and were feeling secure, the Germans carried out a well-organized reprisal. Inhabitants were shot. Two hundred and twelve men, women, and children were killed that day. Some of the dead women were found naked. The ages of the dead ranged from one year to eighty-four years. Approximately one hundred houses were destroyed by fire. Some of the victims were burned alive in their houses.

Maxwell Fyfe asked Kesselring if military necessity demanded the killing of babies of one year and people of eighty-four years of age. Kesselring said, “No.”

Ewald von Kleist
1881–1954

Ewald von Kleist, general field marshal, tank commander in the 1940 invasion of France, led the First Panzer Army against the Soviet Union in 1941. Captured by the Allied forces in 1945, he was tried for war crimes in Yugoslavia and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Later released and turned over to the Soviet Union, he died in 1954 in a camp near Moscow.

This sixty-four-year-old man, Ewald von Kleist, was born on August 8, 1881, in Braunfels, Hessen. He said that he lived in the town of his birth for only four weeks, after which he lived in Hanover.

In general, he was healthy as a child. He had measles and scarlet fever and a few other minor childhood illnesses. On three occasions he suffered a concussion of the brain as a result of falling from horses. The first concussion occurred at the age of twenty-seven. At that time he was unconscious for two hours and had to spend six weeks in bed in a darkened room. The last concussion occurred in 1924, and Kleist told the following story about it.

“Hindenburg was about to become president of Germany. I happened to be in bed and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz came to my house and asked me to join him in a visit to Hindenburg. Admiral Tirpitz was refused admission because Hindenburg’s son did not want his father to become president. I didn’t want Hindenburg to become president either. I told Hindenburg that he was a famous soldier but that if he became a politician he might lose face both as a statesman and as a human being.

“Hindenburg for the first time took part in the candidacy for president during Easter 1924. Stresemann visited Hindenburg in Hanover and brought him a draft of an Easter message that he wanted Hindenburg to sign and deliver. I just want to tell you about this anecdote to show you what sort of a man old Hindenburg was. He took the message, read it through, and tore it up, throwing it in the wastebasket. Hindenburg sat down at his desk and wrote his own Easter message. He told Stresemann that if he were president, he would not be a puppet but would do things in his own way.

“Well, this is getting a long way from my concussion of the brain which I suffered that year. It was an ordinary concussion — I fell from a horse, and the horse landed on top of me. I think I was unconscious for a few minutes and was kept in bed for several weeks. I never had any bad results from any of my concussions.”

I asked Kleist to tell me more about himself and his early career. “I was a captain in the First World War and I knew Hindenburg slightly while stationed in Magdeburg. After the war I knew Hindenburg better because he lived in the same city as I did, Hanover.”

Kleist went to elementary school for three years, then spent nine years in a gymnasium. He then entered the army as the equivalent of an officer candidate and attended military school. “Our system of becoming an officer was quite democratic. I was more or less elected on democratic principles from the corps to become an officer. At the next occasion, which was usually on August 18 or on the emperor’s birthday, we would be appointed to the status of officer in groups. I was officially commissioned on August 18, 1901.

“On February 5, 1938, I retired from the service along with General Fritsch. Then I was called back when the war broke out.” Why had Kleist been retired in 1938? “I was inactive for one and a half years, from February 1938 until September 1939, when the war with Poland began. I withdrew from the army because of the attitude of the National Socialist Party toward the church and other religious questions and because I spoke up for religion too much.”

He said that he was a Lutheran, “but I stood up for all religions and all churches. The Catholic bishops in Breslau know how I fought for religious freedom.” Had Kleist ever discussed this subject with Hitler? “Not personally, but I was an outspoken advocate of religion and I issued a directive in my command that the young soldier must attend church services
and be religious. I received an order from the OKW that I should retract such an order. I declared that I would not do so.”

Who was the leader of the OKW at that time? “It was in the summer of 1937 and Wilhelm Keitel was the leader. Of course, Keitel is not to blame — he did it because of pressure from the party.”

Kleist described how he was ordered back to duty in 1939 in the beginning of the war. “I was awakened in the middle of the night in my house by the mayor of the small village in which I lived. He told me that mobilization for war had begun and that I must report for duty at once. I reported to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt in Silesia. Our formations against Poland were in readiness at that time, which was toward the end of August 1939.”

Kleist said that he married in 1910. His wife was fifty-six on her last birthday and was well when he last heard from her. He had two sons, aged twenty-nine and twenty-five. The older one was in a Russian POW camp, the younger was with his wife. The twenty-five-year-old son had been drafted as a soldier for a short time but became ill with asthma and was discharged before the end of the war. The older son was a professional cavalry soldier who held the rank of captain until the end of the war. Kleist said that he had received one postcard from this son, dated March 1, 1946, saying that he was alive and well and that his address was care of the Red Cross, Moscow, USSR.

He described his marriage as a very happy one. His wife’s father was a wealthy industrialist in Hanover. “Women are wonderful — they never complain. For example, my wife has backaches but she does not trouble others about her own difficulties. She always tries to cheer me up. Our own family is generally healthy except for my younger son’s severe asthma.”

I mentioned to Kleist the fact that I had read that the Kleists were among the richest landowning families in Germany. I wanted to know whether this was correct. Kleist smiled and denied this categorically. “No, on the contrary. My immediate family was very poor. In general, the Kleists are very numerous as a family and it may be that in aggregate we own a considerable amount of land. There are no Kleists who are millionaires, however. There are no industrialists among us, no large factory owners or other rich people. I have always been interested in family history as so many other people are, and I have traced the family name of Kleist to the year 1175. Since then we have spread out a great deal. I
suppose that this is the reason that my name is included among the richest landowners in Germany. It is true that all of the Kleists have the same ancestry and we always treated each other as relatives and if one member of the family was poorly off, he was assisted financially.

“The bulk of the Kleists were poor and owned small farms in Pomerania. If you count all those farms together, there were about thirty or forty. But you can see how ridiculous such reasoning is. It would be the same as if you said in America that all the Smiths were rich. However, because they stuck to the soil in Pomerania and were very industrious people and were thrifty, they maintained their farms and bought up adjacent land and so became landowners. I would like to express it succinctly that the Kleists are a thrifty and industrious group, proud but poor, whose common pride held us together through the loose bonds of blood. There is only one millionaire in my family that I know of. He is a Swiss citizen who married a Kleist and so cannot be said to be really a member of our family by blood. But in our family we have two poets of international fame as well as a great physicist.”

We discussed his family history. “My father was an old philosopher, philologist, and student of ancient languages. He died at the age of seventy-five, in 1923 or 1924. He served as a soldier for one year voluntarily in the War of 1870, but developed pneumonia and was released. My father was very unhappy when I became a soldier. For some reason he didn’t like it. I don’t know why. He probably believed that I wasn’t inclined to be a soldier. I joined the field artillery, although at that time it was very difficult to be accepted because too many people wanted to join.”

Kleist smiled and reminisced. “My father had to apply for me to be accepted. He did so unwillingly, and wrote, ‘My son wants to be an officer but I don’t think he would be satisfactory as a soldier and officer.’ Then came an unexpected answer, to the effect, ‘Please send your son immediately.’