• 6 •

General Gullmann Calls

Shortly after my return to the chancery from the German legation, my messenger announced the arrival of the German general in command, accompanied by his aide. General Gullmann, in field gray, erect and dignified, was accompanied by a fresh-faced aide-de-camp. I received him coldly but “correctly.” At this time he represented the sole power, might, and dominion in the country, and was the only channel through which I could hope to ensure the protection of British, Belgian, French, and Luxembourg interests, which latter were equally dear to me, although I had not officially been charged with them.1

The General began by saying that he called to pay his respects to me, in order to express his good will and his desire to have me understand his plans. He said that he regretted being forced, through military necessity, to be in Luxembourg with his troops. I replied that I understood his sentiments and deplored more than he did the presence of the German Army in a country that the Chancellor of the German Reich had solemnly guaranteed against German invasion. General Gullmann said that, although he was in Luxembourg on an ungrateful errand, he intended to make his occupation a model one—mustergültig was the word he used. I told him that I was very glad to hear that, for I would much rather report good things to my government than bad.

“You are not going to have any bad things to report, Mr. Minister,” the General broke in at once, “and if you think you have at any time, do get in touch with me. I shall always be at your entire disposition, and we will iron out anything that through misunderstanding may be wrong, or seem wrong. I hope to show you that the German Army is not what its enemies have accused it of being; we are not barbarians or monsters. I shall count on your good will and fairness in admitting this after you shall have had time to see us here, and judge of our desire not to harm Luxembourg or the Luxembourgers in any way that can be avoided.”

I answered that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be shown by actual experience that the German Army could behave as he said it would. I then told him that, insofar as he was resolved to maintain order and decency, my wishes and my influence were in a sense parallel to his. I thanked him for his visit, saying that I would return it later in the day. He asked me not to stand on protocol, but to come when I liked. I told him that I would, in that case, call within a few days. I accompanied him and his aide to the lift and shook hands almost with cordiality. In my utter isolation from every possible support my spirits rose at the prospect of being of real use to the Belgians, French, and Luxembourgers through General Gullmann’s solemn assurances, which I then more than half believed, and was later to have reason entirely to believe.

I lunched quietly at home. When he brought in dessert, Ernest said that my cook, Marguerite, would be grateful if she might speak to me. I told him to show her in, and she entered weeping, saying that her family were leaving town with their goods and chattels, that their whole neighborhood had been ordered to evacuate, and might she go with her father and sisters?2 She was afraid to stay alone in the house, even during the day. I told her that if she felt that way, to go in peace; that I needed someone more than ever in such times to be in the house to answer the telephone and to take messages, but that if she did not feel this greater obligation now, I would not urge her. She said she would come back as soon as possible, and I wished her God Speed.

Returning to the Chancery I hoped that the Stadtkommandant Colonel Schmidt would call, as I wanted to arrange many things with him for the efficient functioning of my office—matters which did not come within the direct purview of General Gullmann, the Oberfeldkommandant.3 The afternoon was wearing on. Colonel Schmidt might not call that day or the next. I could not wait. I had one of my clerks call the office of the Stadtkommandant, which I knew to be located in the building of Radio Luxembourg Studios, and to say that the American Chargé d’Affaires was coming over to talk with Colonel Schmidt on matters of urgency—that my visit was not the courtesy call I would gladly pay in returning Colonel Schmidt’s visit, which he had thus far doubtless been too busy to make. Colonel Schmidt’s clerk said that his chief would be honored to receive me immediately, and this he did as soon as I arrived at his office.

While a certain amount of confusion existed in the hallways and corridors, due to the occupation only a couple of hours before of a building housing the studios and concert halls of the most modern and powerful broadcasting station in the world, Colonel Schmidt’s waiting room and office were perfectly in order. I was met at the door by a blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked man of perhaps forty-eight, stockily built but not ungraceful. With a cordial smile and handshake, he escorted me to a comfortable chair and asked me to be seated. I did not want to like him, and I reproached myself for my outward show of civility. It would have been so much easier to shut myself up in the ivory towers of my chancery and house and have no contact whatever with the Wehrmacht, but then I could not have accomplished the thousand and one things that had to be done, and could be done by no other person. I braced myself and said briefly that this was not an official call of courtesy but was a business visit to discuss just three things which were urgent and which were in the province of the Stadtkommandant. I said that the first thing was simple and could be adjusted at once; the second might be more difficult, but with that good will which I counted on from him could also be adjusted that afternoon; the third matter might take longer, but was more important than all the rest.

“I am not talking charades, colonel, so I will begin, finish, and leave. Since I am even more busy, if possible, than are you yourself. My first need is to get clearance for the two thousand liters of gasoline, my personal property, which was paid for and stored last September three miles out of the city.”4

“But, Mr. Minister, what has your benzine to do with me, or the German Army?” he asked.

“What, indeed!” I responded. “I know that every drop of benzine in the Grand Duchy is being commandeered by the Wehrmacht.”

“No German soldier would dare touch your benzine, Sir!”

“That’s fine,” I responded, “but do your soldiers know that?”

“What do you want me to do, Mr. Minister?” asked the colonel.

“I want a statement, under your signature and stamp, that my 2,000 liters of benzine, now but plainly marked and stored with other drums at a storehouse of the Société des Carburants, are sacred, are not to be touched by anyone without my written order, and are to be moved, stored, used, or disposed of according to my pleasure at all times, notwithstanding any general instructions or regulations. My benzine is pre-war. I want to preserve its identity, and I don’t want to be fobbed off with 2,000 liters of your army benzine, or any Ersatz.”

“Mr. Minister, although you do not need any such a document to protect your benzine against the Germany Army, I will give you such a paper with the greatest pleasure,” the colonel replied. He sent for a clerk, dictated a draft, asked me if it was satisfactory, then signed and stamped the typed copy.

I thanked him, and then said: “My second matter, colonel, is this: I must have communications with my government.”

“But that is not possible. I cannot help you there. The posts, telegraphs, and telephones are not functioning. You hear the noise of artillery, where our forces are fighting ten miles to the south; we are fighting the English in Arlon, sixteen miles to the west. You hear that English plane overhead. How can you communicate with Washington at such a time as this?”

“Colonel, do you mean to tell me that you have not maintained constant communication with your General Staff and with Berlin? What are all those field telephone wires which this morning are covering Luxembourg like a spider-web? If you can communicate with Berlin, I see no reason why I may not.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, really,” responded the jovial colonel. “It is really an idea.”

“You see, if I can get telegrams to Berlin, your war office can send them at once to the American embassy, which in turn can telegraph them to the Secretary of State.”5

“Splendid!” rejoined the colonel. “Write out whatever you want to send, sign it, and put your rubber legation stamp on it and send it here. I’ll guarantee that it gets to Berlin immediately, or at least as soon as my own messages do. I’ll take the responsibility for sending messages, but as I don’t know much English, will you please have your people make a German translation for my files and thus save us the time of having them translated here before they are sent out?”

I had neither time nor desire to use any code or cipher at that time, and was delighted to find this means of getting to Washington the only telegrams that were to go out of German occupied territory for many a day—from embassy, legation, or consulate anywhere in German-occupied countries.

“Now, colonel, my third point, and then I will leave you in peace. I am charged by my government with the Belgian and French legations. Baron Kervyn and Monsieur Tripier, with their staffs, are here in Luxembourg against their will. I must arrange as speedily as possible for their comfortable and dignified return to Brussels and Paris, and that is a reciprocal obligation on the German government. Your own ambassador, with his innumerable staff is in Brussels, and you may be sure that the Belgians are making all possible arrangements for his departure.”

“That, Mr. Minister, is a matter that is not entirely within my province,” responded Colonel Schmidt. “I can arrange for automobiles, trains, safe conducts, and so forth, but you will have to arrange all the diplomatic details with Berlin, through the German legation here. But feel free to state in your conversation with your German colleagues that I shall be very glad to cooperate with you in every way, so far as the physical and military arrangements are concerned. I am thinking also of sending an officer to the Belgian minister and to the French minister, to act as a sort of aide-de-camp, and in whose company these gentlemen may be free to go about the city at their pleasure until their departure.”

I did not tell Colonel Schmidt that the Belgian minister was still under no sort of control or guard, and had been into town once or twice that day, while visitors had called at the legation at pleasure. The French minister, however, was a prisoner in his legation, and no one other than myself was allowed to go in or out of the building. I did tell the colonel, however, that I did not think the diplomats wished any such “honors” shown them, and suggested that he leave things as they were.

I was very desirous of getting to the chancery to send my telegram to the secretary of state, reporting this day’s doings. So I told the Colonel that I must leave. He said that he was very glad to have met me, and asked if when he paid his official call he might not come to my house.6 “Do that, by all means,” I said, “and if you give me a few minutes notice, I’ll serve you a cocktail.” He said he would like that above all things and would consider it a promise. He had great curiosity, he said, about American cocktails for he had never had one in his life. I left this officer, feeling that I was really getting started in arranging for the three things that were bearing most heavily upon my mind.

Returning to the Chancery I got off a fairly long telegram to the Secretary of State, sending it over to Colonel Schmidt for relaying to Berlin.7 Throughout the day the skies had been filled with aeroplanes and the air had been riven by the thunder of bombs and anti-aircraft guns. We could not know how the fighting was going, but we knew that the French, all too belatedly, had made ineffectual and spasmodic resistance along the Luxembourg frontier. British and French planes had even dropped bombs over Bascharage. Some fifty-thousand Luxembourgers had been carried off by the French in their evacuation of the towns on the frontier, while another forty thousand on this side of the German lines had commenced their sad journey on foot, in carts, on bicycles, into the northwestern part of the Grand Duchy, where they were given shelter and comfort and food by their more fortunate compatriots in that region. Should the French penetrate the Grand Duchy, pushing the Germans back, the city of Luxembourg would also be evacuated.

This day, and up until Saturday afternoon, the Germans were by no means certain that they might not be driven out of Luxembourg. They could not but believe that perhaps the French lack of resistance was some strategic plan to lead to their discomfiture. They had not yet recovered from their amazement at having been allowed to cross the Moselle in quiet and without hearing a single shot from their well-armed adversaries. A German officer told me some weeks later the following story:

You know the Schneeberg? You know that it is a mountain at the very tip of France, between Luxembourg and Germany, and commanding the whole Moselle River from the French frontier to Wasserbillig, where it turns into Germany and ceases to be the frontier between Luxembourg and Germany?8 Well, you know that the Schneeberg was very heavily fortified by the French; they had formidable batteries of artillery on that mountain, and with those heavy guns they commanded, and I mean commanded, the whole Moselle . . . all the bridges, all pontoons which might be put on the water . . . everything. Now we knew of those batteries, and we knew that if the French used them properly we could not cross the river to invade Luxembourg. Nevertheless, on the morning of May 10 we took a chance. We wanted to make the attempt. But if and when the French cut loose against us, after we had lost the couple of thousand men who would have to be sacrificed before anything could be done, we would have stopped where we were, so far as Luxembourg was concerned. We would not have invaded at all but would have contented ourselves with taking the Grand Duchy later after we had finished with Belgium, and then taking it through Belgium and France. Do you know how many times those heavy cannon on the Schneeberg fired at us, Mr. Minister? Would you know how many of our men were killed as we marched over those bridges under the eyes of the French, if they had been open? Not one gun was fired at us, not one of our men was killed. We crossed the Moselle in peace and tranquility!

This was an afternoon when I did not get my tea. I worked, visited the French and Belgian Legations, and than went home late and had an improvised supper which Ernest, my faithful chauffeur, fixed with some tinned things. Mr. Pauwels had at my invitation come up to my house for the few days before his departure, and had brought some food-stuffs from his own pantry. We could not listen to the radio for there was no current. The French had destroyed the electric power plant at Esch near the frontier, and the Germans had not linked up the Grand Duchy with power from their own nets, as it suited them well to have the population without radio news and forced to have their first blackout with 100 percent efficiency. The sirens wailed a couple of times during the night and a heavy anti-aircraft battery, just above and to the left of my house, shattered the peace of the night as the Germans had shattered the peace of the day.

As I lay in the dark it seemed impossible that less than twenty-four hours before I had been sitting in the salon of the French legation with softly shaded lights and the luxury and tranquility of peace. My host of the evening before was now a prisoner. The Belgian minister and his gracious wife were equally prisoners. The prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs and their lovely ladies were homeless wanderers in a foreign land, at best, and, for all I knew, already blown to bits by a falling bomb or even murdered by parachutists. Monsieur Bech had shown me an enormous pistol as he entered his car, and had said to me: “I will not be captured by the Germans. If one of their parachutists attempts to take me, I will kill him!” The force with which he had spat out his words had filled me then with gloomy forebodings, and now in the darkness my fears for him returned. As I lay there, I tried to piece into a coherent pattern all that I had gone through and to plan how I could most effectively deal with all that lay before me during the next days. When I could have dozed off, a sudden burst of anti-aircraft fire would rouse me, and when the early dawn trickled into the room it found me still awake.

1. Major General Otto Gullmann was the commander of Oberfeldkommandantur 520 of Army Group A, a unit which functioned as the military administration authority in Luxembourg until 25 May, when it was succeeded by Feldkommandantur 515 led by Colonel Schumacher. See Willard Allen Fletcher, “Plan und Wirklichkeit: German Military Government in Luxemburg 1940,” in Historians and Archivists: Essays in Modern German History and Archival Policy, ed. George O. Kent (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1990), 154–56.

2. Depending on their home location, families like Marguerite’s were urged to cross into France or to evacuate to the interior of the grand duchy. The roads were soon crowded with military and civilian traffic. Almost 90,000 civilian refugees were aided by the Red Cross, Caritas, and sympathetic communities; most found employment on farms or in industry until a return was possible after the Armistice which was signed on 22 June. See Paul Müller, Die 200 Tage: Geschichte einer Evakuierung (Esch-sur-Alzette: Escher Tageblatt, 1945), passim. See also Serge Hoffmann, “L’exode des Luxembourgeois en France (mai-août 1940),” in . . . et wor alles net esou einfach, 37–40.

3. As Stadtkommandant in Luxembourg City, Colonel Kurt Schmidt was the authority in matters of municipal administration.

4. A stunning example of Waller’s prescience: severe restrictions accompanied the threat of fuel shortages. Priorities in the use of cars, trucks, and buses were established and severe penalties were imposed on individuals violating the regulations.

5. Waller’s bold proposal displayed the ingenuity that he had developed in years of foreign service.

6. From this first encounter Colonel Schmidt developed a relationship with Waller and his circle of friends including the Oberndorffs, Gaston Diderich, and the Ansembourgs. See Waller to Dagmar Schmidt, 30 June 1941; idem., 21 November 1946 (Collection Claude Marx) See also Dagmar Schmidt, Hamelin, Germany, to Waller, 27 February 1947; and his reply, 12 March 1947; and his testimony that Stadtkommandant Schmidt was no Nazi, to Colonel Clare H. Armstrong, Brussels, 12 March 1947, File 123 RG84 NARA.

7. For text of Waller’s first written report, 11 May 1940, courtesy of German military command, see Kirk, Berlin, T. 1341, 15 May 1940, File 740.0011EW/3040, MP982/21 RG59 NARA.

8. To understand the geographical significance of the Schneeberg, see the Guides Cosyn map in Etringer, Kriegsgeschehen, 39. At least during the day of 16 October 1939, the German attack had successfully seized the heights of the Schneeberg from the French, idem, 33.