General Brooks put his Packard sedan and chauffeur at my disposal, a delightful treat after months of bouncing around in a jeep. After the two-star license plate was covered, since the general was not in the car, we took off for the marshal's home in the winter sports resort town of GarmischPartenkirchen, some forty or fifty miles away. The snow-covered winding Alps roads could only be negotiated slowly. Not only had night fallen, but our headlights were dimmed in observance of the blackout. It was going to be a long drive both in distance and in time.
List, I had discovered at the interview, was a brilliant man with a remarkable memory. Thinking that conversation would speed the trip, I ventured a comment about the weather and road conditions, but he appeared to prefer reticence, perhaps even complete silence. "Oh, Lord," I said to myself, "this is going to be one long, long trip!"
Tired from a series of short nights, I considered lying back in the car and going to sleep. But then I offered the comment that I sympathized with his plight of becoming a prisoner of war at his age. List softened. I had hit a vein. He was sixty-five, he told me. And for the next several hours, sitting in the back of the Packard, we discussed his swiftly successful operations in Poland and France and contrasted them to the German travail in Russia.
I told him that while we were in Naples preparing for the invasion of southern France I had been the briefing officer for the eastern front at the General Staff Conference and had to rely for all my information on teletyped Allied Force Headquarters reports. "One of the things that puzzled me," I said, "was that the Germans would report the loss of a city or other stronghold a day or two before the Russians reported capturing it."
"Their press wasn't as efficient as their artillery," commented List dryly.
"Just why," I asked at one point, hoping for a more detailed answer than the one he had given Brooks during his interrogation "were you relieved of your command?"
"That's a bit complicated," he said, "but put simply, I considered foolhardy Hitler's plan for an offensive through the Caucasus passes to attack Stalingrad and then establish a foothold on the Black Sea. When I told Hitler in a private conversation that Germany was mired down in Russia and did not have the resources to win the war, he had Keitel dismiss me."
"Keitel," I said, "the chief of the High Command."
"Yes," said List.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was one of Hitler's top confidantes and military advisers, a constant presence, and instrumental in directing the German campaigns.
We continued to talk about our two armies, and he expressed surprise at my depth of knowledge about the German Army until I told him my specialty was order of battle-the study and tracking of the enemy's organization and equipment.
About midnight we arrived at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the marshal's house, stopping en route to pick up Mrs. List and their daughter, who were staying with friends.
List's wife was a charming, soft spoken, gray-haired grandmother type, as distinguished from the younger, dark-haired, vibrant, and militarily oriented Mrs. Rommel. In Rommel's letters to his wife he informed her daily of the battle situation. I could not imagine List reporting the military details to Mrs. List.
The List house was now the command post of a U.S. Army field artillery battery. After explaining my orders to a somewhat incredulous captain, we went to the master bedroom, which contained two beds. Smack in the center of one, still in his fatigues, lay a GI sound asleep, snoring gloriously. Awakened, he grumbled, "Jeez, sir, don't bagging a field marshal rate me a night's sleep in a real bed?"
I put him and the driver into another room, evicted a GI from a third room and restored it to the daughter, and then settled myself in a fourth room, which adjoined the Lists' bedroom. I felt like an innkeeper assigning rooms to a group of skiers.
The List family and I then had a snack and, before retiring, Mrs. List brought me a bottle of wine, which I politely declined.
In the morning we had breakfast together and the marshal's wife told him that while he was away the American Military Government (AMG) people had issued a decree that all citizens had to turn in all guns and other weapons. List took me to his gun rack and asked me to take his hunting guns, all six or eight of them. I had the driver load them into the trunk of the car together with List's bag, and then asked him to take a picture of us.
The photograph, which now hangs in my study, shows a dour-faced, contemplative List in knickers and overcoat, his hands thrust in his pockets.
On the return trip, made in daylight and much faster, I recounted to List what I had heard a year earlier in Rome from a lawyer who had returned from Germany, and from reports that had crossed my desk since, about what was going on in the concentration camps.
The marshal shook his head in disbelief. "Most Germans will neverbelieve it," he said. "Many, however, will because of the other sacrifices they have been forced to make."
As we neared headquarters he complained that a drawing and a sword his father had given him had been taken by the public relations officer of the 10th Armored Division. I promised to look into the matter and I later did: I called up the officer, put the fear of God into him, and told him to return the "liberated" items. ("Liberating" had become a euphemism for stealing in the GI lexicon, perhaps to salve the conscience.)
At headquarters as we prepared to part, the marshal gave me a photo of himself and his official calling card and posed with me for another picture. I then called the motor pool for two sedans and sent List and some other highranking German officers back to the Seventh Army Headquarters interrogation center in care of an MP lieutenant.
I distributed List's guns among the officers in the section, keeping for myself a.22 hunting rifle and two double-barrel shotguns, one a side-by-side and the other an over-and-under.
To keep pace with the frenetic fast-moving situation as the war raced to its climax, VI Corps Headquarters was moving in big jumps. It was no longer situated near Herrlingen, but in Austria, on the eastern side of the Danube. On the drive to our new headquarters, my mind reverted to the interview with Mrs. Rommel and stayed riveted there for the entire trip.
I had other things to occupy my mind once we reached headquarters, however. As the Nazi government was crumbling and the Wehrmacht was nearing complete collapse, high-ranking officers were being captured in significant numbers-colonels, generals, and even occasional field marshals. This kept me very busy, as I noted in my diary:
May 3: Two more field marshals captured. Interrogated both Field Marshal von Leeb and Field Marshal von Weichs today.
Field Marshal Baron Max von Weichs was sixty-four. a fairly tall man with darkish gray hair and thick glasses. He was hoarse, rheumatic and, I was to observe, a bit absentminded. A charming mixture of a rural Bavarian and a cosmopolite, he was dressed in a blue leather coat and pants having a wide red stripe down the legs, indicative of membership in the General Staff. He wore the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross, one of his country's highest military decorations. He had headed the 13th Corps in the Polish campaign, the 2nd Army in the French campaign, Army Group B on the Russian front and, when captured, had been commander of the German troops in the Balkans.
Early in my interrogating experience I had found that I got the most information out of high-ranking officers by immediately putting them at ease, offering them a cigarette and a chair, making sympathetic small talk about family and home, and only indirectly delving into the relevant matters. Talking in a relaxed manner, confidentially as man to man, rather than brusquely as victor to vanquished, invariably produced good results.
Left to right: Author; Field Marshal Baron Maximilian von Weichs; his aide; and Major Chews, the guarding officer, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on May 3, 1945. Weichs had been the supreme commander of the German forces in southeast Europe. While himself an agreeable subject for interrogation, his aide objected to questioning until the marshal silenced him. Photo from author.
An expression that worked well when used with the right inflection was, "Oh, com
e now, just between two officers," implying that, after all, we were both members of an international fraternity and therefore brothers under the skin. And to some extent this was the case among professional officers, particularly those who served in diplomatic missions, such as military attaches and those who spoke each other's language. Deep friendships often developed, as I was to learn.
I set Weichs at ease by indicating a chair and offering him a cigarette. At the beginning of our talk, his aide, a major, kept interrupting what he considered the marshal's indiscretions with, "The Herr Feldmarschall cannot answer that."
I became annoyed and threatened to throw him out and make his life miserable. Thereupon Weichs threw him a cautionary glance and, with a shrug, said to him, "The game is up."
After that the interrogation went smoothly, especially when I learned he was a Bavarian and switched from high German to his native Swabian dialect, much to his delight. My parents had emigrated to the United States from Swabian-speaking villages in Hungary, and their Swabian German was the first language I had learned as a child.
"Tell me," said he after a while when all tension had subsided, "what is the difference between a 'Schwab' [high German for a Swabian native and pronounced Shwahb] and a 'Schwob' [Swabian dialect for a Swabian native and pronounced Shwobe]?"
I smiled. "I bite."
"A Schwob," he said, "is a Schwab who calls a Schwab a Schwob."
It never failed after the war to get a laugh from Germans when I told it as my own.
Like List, Weichs believed we would soon be at war with Russia and that Germany's salvation lay in our taking her as an ally in the fight against Bolshevism. He asserted that we would get along with Russia only as long as we acceded to her demands. For many years, as the cold war was to prove, he was right in that assessment.
He was amazed at all our motor transport and expressed admiration for our ability to move sufficient food across the ocean for our troops.
After our somewhat lengthy talk, I took Weichs and his aide to the nearby enlisted men's mess for lunch. The GIs had already eaten, and the leftover food was cold. When I told the cook I wanted the two officers fed, he looked hatefully at the two "Krauts," slapped some cold canned beef and noodles on two plates, and hacked holes with his cleaver into two cans of orange juice. He was about to slam the dishes on the bare table, which was still dripping from its recent washing, when I ordered him, in spite of his painfully obvious reluctance, to spread out a cloth. To myself I said, with a mixture of horror and humor, "My God, what a meal for a field marshal accustomed to being indulged!"
To my surprise, Weichs ate every scrap with obvious relish and couldn't praise the food enough. Both Germans repeated that they couldn't understand how we got all that food overseas. The orange juice, to the marshal, was just out of this world.
Much of the conversation during the meal was small talk. Weichs was humorously philosophical about his capture until I asked him about charges that civilian hostages had been shot in some Balkan towns during his campaign. Then, quickly serious, he said to me, "A town has surrendered. You have troops in it, and at night some are shot or stabbed in the back. You take hostages and warn the populace that the next such occurrence will result in the hostages' lives being forfeited. Then, in spite of the warning-and remember, the town has surrendered-you have a repetition of the shootings and stabbings. What would you do?"
I thought a long moment, rubbing my tongue over my teeth. "They don't pay us captains enough for answers to knotty problems like that," I finally said.
"Yes," said Weichs grimly, "field marshals are paid more, but they don't have the answers either."
As we were walking back to the house where the officers were being held, I asked Weichs to pose for a picture with me. This hangs in my study today.
I asked Weichs how he had been treated so far. "Fine," he said, "no complaints." And he meant it.
I was to see Weichs only once more, a year later in the War Crimes Camp in Stuttgart.
After leaving Weichs I interrogated Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. Nervous, watery-eyed, and unprepossessing, he did not look like a man who had commanded vast legions of invaders.
It was now midafternoon, and upon asking I learned he also had not yet had lunch. I took him, too, to the enlisted men's mess. When the mess sergeant saw me coming again, the scowl on his face told me I was scoring no points with him this day. Getting me aside, he said, "I don't mind the work, Captain. It's just that I hate to feed good American food to these goddam Krauts."
The chivalry that General Brooks had displayed toward the Germans was not endemic to all soldiers but tended to be the hallmark of the professional officer, traditionally dignified in defeat and gracious in victory. For many men chivalry was a virtue that had died with King Arthur and the knights of old. At List's house, before retiring for the night, when I had told the officer on duty at what hour to wake me in the morning, he had grumbled about my "kicking a good American soldier out of bed to make room for a goddam Kraut." If I hadn't known better I would have thought that "goddam Kraut" was one word.
Leeb ate his cold bully beef and noodles with a relish equal to what Weichs had displayed. As we talked, he too expressed amazement at our ability to transport overseas the enormous food, fuel, ammunition, and supply requirements of our Army. To a great extent the German Army had lived off the occupied territory.
When I asked him why he was relieved of his command at Leningrad, he protested that he could not answer such a question.
When I cajoled, "Ach, es ist unter vierAugen" ("Oh, it is under four eyes," a German idiom equivalent to "Just between the two of us"), he opened up and explained that he had commanded the Northern Army Group, and when the decision was made to resume the winter offensive, he regarded it as a futile effort doomed to failure. Aside from that he was opposed to the Nazi regime and happy to have an excuse to resign, a fact I was later able to verify.
After involvement in the takeover of Czechoslovakia, Leeb had headed Army Group C in the invasion of France, where he successfully attacked the Maginot Line. "In France." he said, "I ran my command without any suggestions from Hitler and everything went like clockwork. In Russia it got to the point that every time I submitted a plan it came back tome for execution exactly in reverse. To make matters worse, Hitler interfered even to ordering the disposition and missions of battalions."
"And since you put such a direct question to me," said the marshal, "let me ask you one."
"Go ahead," I said.
"Why," he asked, "did you declare war against us?"
I recited a litany of Hitler's invasions and crimes against humanity. When I finished, Leeb looked at me for a few moments in contemplative silence.
"Nevertheless," he said finally, "history will prove your alliance with the Russians to have been the greatest tragedy for the human race."
Like List, he could not believe my description of what went on in the concentration camps.
When I asked Leeb how he had been treated by the Americans so far, he replied, "Not too well. At two o'clock on Sunday two of your soldiers came into my house, and when they left, they took my marshal's baton!"
I pretended to be horrified and took out my notebook for the details. Just what was a legitimate war souvenir was never to my knowledge clearly defined. I, too, would have liked a marshal's baton, but only if it were offered to me, not if I had to seize it over protest.
When I told Leeb that his book on defense had been translated into English and was highly thought of in America and that I had studied it in the intelligence school, he said, "Who put it out, the British or the Americans?" I said I didn't know.
He said, "Don't you at least remember the publisher's name?"
"Regretfully," I said, "I don't."
He said, pensively, The mark won't be worth much after the war. It would be nice to get some royalties in dollars or pounds."
Despite my effort to maintain a straight face, I couldn't avoid a little smile, althoug
h Leeb's grimace indicated that this was to him no laughing matter.
In his civilian clothes Field Marshal Leeb looked to me like a meek, harassed, retired grocer, at great variance with my conception of what the commander of Army Group North should have looked like. It was hard for me to believe that he was on the list of war criminals. Later, at Nuremberg, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment, but since he had already been imprisoned three years by the time of the trials, he was released.
With the once formidable Wehrmacht falling apart at the seams as we spoke, there was no information that List, Weichs, or Leeb could have given us that would have had tactical or strategic value. Their interrogation had only historical import. After we had finished questioning them, they were sent to Seventh Army Headquarters for further interrogation and then on to the detention and interrogation center for high-ranking Nazi and military leaders, a resort hotel outside Mondorf Les Bains in Luxembourg, known by its code name of Ashcan. Here numerous General Staff officers were retained as prisoners of war and put to work under the former chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Franz Haider, writing studies of the operations in which they had been involved. The prisoners turned out hundreds of manuscripts for use by the U.S. Army historical program and in training courses at service schools. The British also had such a detention center, code-named Dustbin.
The interrogation of prisoners was usually a fairly routine procedure when the captives were of the lower ranks. A reluctant private or corporal could usually be cowed into responding by the interrogator glowering at him, slamming his fist on the table and bellowing, "You will answer my questions! I am the one in authority here!" The German, reared to mindlessly obey authority, usually capitulated.
Information extracted from an enlisted man was rarely as valuable to a G-2 as information that officers, particularly high-ranking ones, could furnish if they would talk. Usually, and especially when in their eyes Germany still had a chance of winning, they were not persuadable. An interrogator named Lieutenant Henry Heide told me of an incident that occurred in France. He was frustrated by a lieutenant, a fanatical Nazi, who refused to talk and to whom Heide took an instant dislike. As a matter of pride he resolved to break the Teuton. He kept the lieutenant in a barn with his arms raised until he collapsed, then he forced the German to do this twice more. He still wouldn't talk. Next he took him to the nearby cemetery, held his pistol at the German's back and forced him to kneel. Then Heide told him to look at the moonit was almost midnight-and asked him if he wanted to see more such moons. He gave him to ten to talk and started counting. The Nazi was shaking like a leaf in a storm and begged Heide to pull the trigger. When Heide reached ten, the German still wouldn't talk. So Heide said, "You win."
Discovering the Rommel Murder Page 3
