dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
VON MANSTEIN: The General Staff officers were an elite group as far as they were selected on the basis of their tactical abilities and also on the strength of their character. They did not set the tone in the Army, as their views were exactly the same as the views of all other officers. As to the General Staff setting the tone in the Armed Forces, there really cannot be any question of that. The Navy did not have a General Staff. As for the Air Force, as far as I can judge, the General Staff officers may have played a smaller part than "outsiders" like Milch, Udet, and so forth, but to begin with, the Armed Forces did not have an Armed Forces General Staff. Therefore one can hardly speak of the General Staff setting the tone within the Armed Forces.
DR. LATERNSER: Did the General Staff have authoritative influence on all military plans? And was it, shall we say, the brain of the Army?
VON ALA-NSTEIN: At-its headquarters, that is, in the Reichswehr Ministry, the General Staff dealt in its various departments with the main questions as far as they concerned the direction and employment of troops. But all other matters were in the hands of the various departments or of the Army Inspectorate. These offices worked in parallel with the General Staff, and as far as matters referring to the ' troops were concerned, they were dealt, with in these departments.
DR. LATERNSER: But then surely the General Staff gave opinions?
VON MANSTEIN: The General Staff could, of course, express itself on the questions dealt with by the departments, on training and armament, for instance. But the chiefs of the other departments were on exactly the same level as the chiefs of the Troops Department, and important personnel questions, in particular, were dealt with entirely outside the General Staff.
DR. LATERNSER: Was the Chief of the General Staff the decisive adviser to Hitler, or was it the Commander-in-Chief of the Army or of the Air Force?
VON MANSTEIN: One cannot possibly say that the Chief of the General Staff was the decisive adviser of Hitler. The position of Chief of the General Staff in the Armed, Forces of the Third Reich differed entirely from the position held by the Chief of the General Staff at the time of the Kaiser. In those days the Chief of the General Staff was immediately subordinate to the Kaiser, that is to say, he could report directly to him. In the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) of the Third Reich on the other hand, and even of the Weimar Republic, that was entirely different. The Chief of the General Staff of the Army, for instance, was nothing else than the adviser of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army regarding matters of military leadership. Between him and Hitler there was, first of all, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and then, as long as we had a Minister of War, in the person of Blomberg, there-was the Reich Minister of War, too. Thus, there was no question at all of the Chief of the General Staff advising Hitler. But even as regards the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, he shared his work, in peacetime at least, with the chiefs of the departments, that is to say, the Personnel Department, the Armament Department, and the Defense Department, who were all on his own level.
DR. LATERNSER: Was there a special service channel for the General Staff?
VON MANSTEIN: A special service channel for the General Staff did not exist. On the contrary, that was strictly taboo. Towards the end of the first World War something similar was developed when Ludendorff in practice had gained control of military matters and always communicated with the General Staff chiefs who were his subordinates instead of addressing himself to the commanders-in-chief themselves. This deterioration, as I might call it, of military leadership was radically done away with by Generaloberst Von Seeckt, and a special service channel for the General Staff as is meant here therefore did not exist.
DR. LATERNSER: And what about the privilege of recording varying opinions? VON MAN§TEIN: In the old Army, every chief of the General Staff had the right, if he was of an opinion that differed from that of his commander, to record that dissenting opinion, although, of course, he had to carry out the order of his commander. In the Armed Forces of the Third Reich, on the other hand, that was expressly discontinued with the agreement of the Chief of the General Staff, General Beck.
DR. LATERNSER: Was the High Command of the Armed Forces, shall we say, the central brain of the Armed Forces?
VON MANSTEIN: The High Command of the Armed Forces, of course, in the form in which it is now being mentioned, only came into being in 1938 as a working staff for Hitler. Before that Blomberg was Reich Minister of War, and in his position as a Minister he held a position which dealt with all matters affecting the Armed Forces, which he represented to both State and Party. In his hands, too, was the distribution of funds for the various branches of the Armed Forces as well as the rearmament capacity for the Armed Forces. Gradually, no doubt, Blomberg was trying to achieve a more outstanding leadership of the Armed Forces, but in that connection he soon got into considerable difficulties, particularly with the High Command of the Army, for the reason that in the opinion of the High Command of the Army Blomberg was too lenient with the Party. He himself then attempted to establish a sort of tactical leadership staff, which later became the Armed Forces Operations Staff. But that was still in the early stages. Then came his dismissal, and subsequently the Wehrmachtffihrungsstab (Armed Forces Operations Staff) was created under Hitler. This, however, is not to be regarded as the head of the three General Staffs of the Armed Forces or as the dome of the structure; it was nothing else than the practical leadership staff of the Fuehrer.
DR. LATERNSER: Did the high commands of the Armed Forces branches or the General Staff nevertheless agree with the High Command of the Armed Forces in their aims?
VON MANSTEIN: Naturally the three branches of the Armed Forces were in agreement with the High Command of the Armed Forces that the national element should be kept up. Furthermore, that they were there to uphold the idea of national honor, of equality, and most of all security for Germany, which they considered to be their task. Apart from that, one can hardly speak of a unified determination. I should like to say, for instance, that the Army had one basic thought, which was that under no circumstances must Germany ever again fight a war on two fronts. The Navy, in my opinion, was always guided by the idea: never again war with England. What G6rIng, as the reigning head of the Air Force aimed at personally, I cannot judge. But I do not suppose that he was interested in jeopardizing the position of the Third Reich and his own position in another war.
DR. LATERNSER: And the High Command of the Armed Forces?
VON MANSTEIN: As far as the High Command of the Armed Forces is concerned, if it had a will of its own at all, it did not, in my opinion, have the possibility seriously to express that will in opposition to Hitler.
DR. LATERNSER: What was the importance of the Schlieffen Club and what were its aims?
VON MANSTEIN: The Schlieffen Club was, generally speaking, a club of elderly gentlemen who were ex-members of the General Staff. Apart from that, General Staff officers and assistants to leaders of the young Wehrmacht were in it, too. They met once a year at an annual dinner preceded by a so-called business meeting during which the treasurer's report was read; and that was about the principal business. Then, of course, the Schlieffen Club had a council of honor, which usually had to occupy itself with settling quarrels between the older members resulting from Ludendorff's attitude toward Hindenburg. We younger ones did not go to those discussions any more; and apart from that we were not subject to this council of honor. Any political or military aims on the part of this club did not exist and at all events, it cannot be considered a club where intellectual schooling or training was being carried on, taking the place of the General Staff.
DR. LATERNSER: What were the relations between the 129 military leaders affected and the High Command of the Armed Forces and the General Staff?
VON MANSTEIN: The bulk of them, according to their position, had no relationship to them at all.
DR. LATERNSER: A little more slowly, Field Marshal.
VON MANSTEIN: Only four of them belonged to the High Command of the Armed Forces, these are Keitel, Jodl, Warlimont and Winter; and only the Chiefs of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe and of the Army belonged to the General Staff, although they were changed frequently. I think there are five of each of the Armed Forces branches. All the others belonged neither to the General Staff nor to the High Command of the Armed Forces.
DR. LATERNSER: But what else are these military leaders? VON Alf-ANSTEIN: They are the holders of the highest positions in the military hierarchy, as they are in every country.
DR. LATERNSER: Did not these military leaders, according to, their views, represent an entity with a uniform will?
VON MANSTEIN: Naturally, as far as the conception of their work was concerned, they agreed; that is a matter of c9urse. Also they agreed regarding the view of the necessity of Germany's being strong because she was surrounded by three neighbors from whom one might, after all, expect one thing or another. Over and above that, however, such a uniformity of thought cannot be spoken of. I might say that, horizontally considered, the three branches of the Armed Forces were on the same level; and each branch had different military ideas and aims which were quite often at cross purposes. Considered vertically, these 129 officers in the military hierarchy were classified in four grades, let us say, governed by the relationship of superiors to subordinates. The highest grade was the Fi1hrer and his working staff, the High Command of the Armed Forces. On that level rested the entire military and political responsibility which, according to military principles, can only be assumed by the highest leader. The second grade consisted of the three commanders-in-chief of the branches of the Armed Forces. They were responsible for the military tasks of that branch of the Armed Forces which, was under their command. On the level of command, they, of course, had full responsibility. They were, naturally, to a certain extent Hitler's advisers too, if he asked their advice in military matters. Grade 3, which, in the persons of the 129 officers, only existed in war, comprised the commanders of army groups, and then, below that, Grade 4, the commanders of armies. The commanders of army groups were responsible for the leadership of the operations which they were to carry out. The same measure of responsibility for their armies was in the hands of the army commanders below them, who also exercised territorial authority in their operational areas. But this third and fourth grade had no contact. Let us say, there was no mental nexus with Hitler, with the Fuehrer, because the grade of the commanders-in-chief intervened.
VON MANSTEIN: They received orders and had to obey them, as in all phases of military life the relationship is that of one who gives orders and one who carries them out.
DR. LATERNSER: How could anyone, within the measure of this responsibility which you have just described, have the possibility of expressing his views on Hitler's plans?
VON MANSTEIN: To state one's view about Hitler's plans was quite out of the question for the third and fourth grades, because they would only learn of them when they appeared in the shape of an order. If in individual cases the commanders-in-chief were called to a conference with Hitler, then it was only to hear the announcement of some unalterable decision already arrived at. The commanders-in-chief of the Armed Forces branches could, of course, when previously asked by Hitler, of which I cannot judge individual instances, state their views, their opinions. How far they might have succeeded in that is entirely another question.
DR. LATERNSER: Now, did not nearly all of these military leaders come from the General Staff, and was it not for that reason that these leaders formed an entity?
VON MANSTEIN: Certainly, a certain part of these leaders did come from the General Staff. In the case of the Army, of the 94 Army officers who are supposed to belong to the so-called organization, 74 had been General Staff officers; 20 on the other hand were not. With the Air Force, there were, as far as I know, only 9 out of 17 ex-members of the General Staff; and the Navy, of course, did not have any at all. Uniformity, let us say, as far as it existed at all, was therefore due to the fact that they had the same military training, the same military courses in the General Staff, but no more.
DR. LATERNSER: So that the conceptions of High Command of the Armed Forces and General Staff on one hand, and these 129 officers on the other, were entirely different?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, of course they are quite different. They were mainly the military leaders, and not the General Staff and not the High Command of the Armed Forces; and you can neither ideally, nor materially, nor practically, nor theoretically call them one unified organization.
DR. LATERNSER: Were there not certain SS leaders amongst that group? Was not the SS the fourth branch of the Armed Forces?
VON MANSTEIN: No, it certainly was not a fourth branch of the Armed Forces. Certainly a large number of the reasonable leaders of the Waffen-SS, and during the war the mass of the Waffen-SS units wished to be incorporated into the Army. But, naturally, considering the opposing will of the Fuehrer and of Himmler, it was not to be thought of. The units of the Waffen-SS fought during the war very bravely as our comrades at the front; but they were not the fourth branch of the Armed Forces. Quite the contrary, Himmler prohibited everything which could have exerted any influence on the SS by the Armed Forces. That individual leaders -of the SS were incorporated amongst the group must be described as grotesque, considering Himmler's personality; because if there ever was a mortal enemy of the Army, it was Himmler.
DR. LATERNSER: Why do you say Himmler was a mortal enemy of the Army?
VON MANSTEIN: There is no doubt whatever that Himmler wanted to replace the Army by his SS; and in my opinion the generals of the Army were particularly persecuted by him with hatred and Ebel. I know that in my case, at any rate, according to an entirely reliable source, my discharge was largely due to Himmler's intrigues, especially his malicious libel. As far as the other leaders are concerned, I know only that some of them had formerly been in the Reichswehr and had been discharged, so that they were not exactly favorably disposed toward us and did not feel they belonged to us; that is pretty clear.
DR. LATERNSER: But did not the Party and the Armed Forces work together on one plan in the interests of the Reich?
VON MANSTEIN: The Party was working in the political field; and we were working in the soldier's sphere. There can be no talk of a common plan of the Party and the Armed Forces because the prerequisites for it were missing. First of all, the most important requirement, a common basic attitude, was lacking. With many methods of the Party, as is known, we did not agree at all; and if there is no agreement even on such basic questions as, for instance, Christianity, one can say only that the intellectual basis for a common plan is obviously missing. The second reason against it was the Party's claim for -total power, which again and again attempted to influence the Armed Forces, and I can safely say that we officers were fighting a continuous battle against the influences of the Party which sought to win over our soldiers, and thus remove the soldierly element which we represented. Then the third reason is that under Hitler any planning would have been out of the question. If anyone made a plan, it was Hitler alone, and no one under him was allowed to make plans; people just had to obey. Quite apart from that, in the political and practical life of the Third Reich one branch never knew what the other was doing, or what its orders were, so that here too, there was no kind of uniformity. There was, therefore, a lack of all the necessary prerequisites for such a uniform plan.
DR. LATERNSER: What was your capacity in the General Staff of the Army?
VON MANSTEIN: In the General Staff, that is to say, at the very center, I was from 1929 to 1932 employed as senior General Staff officer, in the First Division of the Troops Department. Then in 1935 1 became the chief of the Operations Department of the Army, and in 1936 1 became Oberquartiermeister I, that is to say, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army.
DR. LATERNSER: Did the Operations Department come under your command as Oberquartiermeister I?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, the Operations Department came under my orders. So did the Organization Department and various others.
DR. LATERNSER: So that you as chief of the Operations Department would have had to deal with the employment of troops in the event of war?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, of course.
DR. LATERNSER: But then you must have been informed about the aim and the degree of armament?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes.
DR. LATERNSER: Please be very brief.
VON MANSTEIN: The goal of our armament, first of all, in the twenties, in the years before the seizure of power, was the most elementary security against an unprovoked attack on the part of any one of our neighbors. After all, since all our neighbors had certain designs on German territories, we had to reckon with such a possibility at all times. We were perfectly aware of the fact that at best we could stand up to such an attack for a few weeks only. But we did want to achieve that at any rate, so as to prevent a fait accompli, for instance, in the event of an attack by Poland by the occupation of Upper Silesia. We wanted to make sure we could put up a fight until the League of Nations would intervene. Practically speaking, we were relying upon the League of Nations, and we could do so only if we ourselves could in no circumstances whatsoever be called the aggressors. At all times, therefore, we had to avoid everything which might be considered a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, or a provocation. For that reason we in the First Division of the Troops Department had formed a special group of officers who had the sole duty, whenever the High Command of the Army, or at that time the Army General Headquarters, were issuing orders, to make sure that no such violations would result from them.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you have plans for a mobilization at the time when you were Oberquartiermeister I?
VON NMNSTEIN: Yes. We had the very first mobilization plan, which became effective on I April 1930; it concerned the transformation of the 100,000-man Army to a war footing. That mobilization plan was then brought up to date annually after 1930.
DR. LATERNSER: And before that time?
VON MANSTEIN: Until then there was no mobilization plan at all.
DR. LATERNSER: Were there plans for strategic concentrations?
VON MANSTEIN: Plans for strategic concentrations did not exist at all from the end of the first World War until 1935. In 1935 the first strategic concentration plan was worked out; it was the so-called "Red" concentration, which was a defensive "forming-up" along the Rhine, that is along our Western frontier, with defensive "forming-up" at the Czech and Polish borders at the same time. And then a second concentration plan, called "Green," was worked upon in 1937, that ...
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, by "forming-up" do you mean deployment? What do you call, a forming-up plan? You mean deployment?
VON MANSTEIN: By a "forming-up" or "concentration plan" I understand a plan according to which troops, in the event of a threatening of war, are got ready along the frontiers, that is to say, a plan for the event of threatening political conflagration. Whether it may lead to war or whether from this formation one would enter into a war has actually nothing to do with the concentration plan. It merely states how the troops are to be assembled and, in the event of war, what would be the first tasks for the army groups and armies.
DR. LATERNSER: Were those all the troop concentration plans the two which you have just described?
VON MANSTEIN: Those were the two forming-up plans which I as Deputy Chief of the General Staff had been engaged in. The concentration plan "White," which was against Poland, was not worked out during my time. It must have been worked on in 1939.
DR. LATERNSER: When did you cease to be Oberquartiermeister I at the High Command of the Army?
VON MANSTEIN: I left on 4 February 1938,- at the same time when General Von Fritsch was removed.
DR. LATERNSER: And at that time the plan for concentration against Poland was not yet in existence?
VON MANSTEIN: No. Only the concentration plan "Red" existed, which was a defensive measure along the Polish frontier in the event of war.
DR. LATERNSER: What was the attitude of the High Command of the Army with reference to the declaration of Germany's military sovereignty in 1935? At that time you were still in the High Command of the Army, were you not?
VON MANSTEIN: In 1935-no, I was still chief of the General Staff at the headquarters of Wehrkreis III (Military Area Number 3) when military sovereignty was declared. But from my knowledge of the General Staff I know that that declaration completely surprised all of us at the time. I personally, and my commanding general in Berlin, only heard of it over the radio. The General Staff, had it been asked, would have proposed 21 divisions as the size of an Army increase which we would have considered suitable and feasible from a practical point of view. The figure of 36 divisions was due to a spontaneous decision made by Hitler.
DR. LATERNSER: Was the occupation of the Rhineland demanded by the military, and was it intended as a preparation for war?
VON MANSTEIN: No. We did not demand the military occupation, and above all we did not intend it to be a preparation for war. On the contrary, at the time the occupation was carried -out, I was the chief of the Operations Department, and I myself had to draft the orders for that occupation. Since we were completely surprised by the decision of the Fuehrer, I had only one afternoon in which to do it, because the following morning the generals concerned came to receive their orders. I know that at that time the Reich Minister of War and General Von Fritsch stated their objections, and warned Hitler against such a one-sided solution of this question. That warning is the first source, in my opinion, for the distrust which subsequently the Fuehrer increasingly felt for the generals. Later, at a private conference which I had with him, he himself admitted that that was so, and particularly that Blomberg at that time, when France was mobilizing 13 divisions, had suggested that the three battalions which we had pushed across the Rhine to the Western bank should be withdrawn. The intentions we then had for the fortification of the Rhineland were purely defensive ones. The Siegfried Line was planned, just as was the Maginot Line, as a wall which would be as impregnable as possible in the event of attack.
DR. LATERNSER: To what extent did military leaders participate in the case of Austria? Surely you are well informed about that, Field Marshal?