Hitler and His Generals — The Italian Crisis, July 26, 1943

1. Hans Georg v. Mackensen; born January 26, 1883 (son of the future field marshal); 1902 Second Lieutenant in active service; 1911 transfer to the reserves to study law; 1919 entry into the diplomatic corps (1919 Copenhagen, 1923 Quirinal [Rome], 1926 Brussels, 1931 Madrid); 1933 envoy to Budapest; March 1937 Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office; and after April 1938 ambassador at the Quirinal [Italy]. Mackensen was called to the Führer Headquarters on August 2, 1943, i.e., one week after this discussion. The following month, due to a difference of opinion with Hitler regarding the Italian issue, he was relieved from his post, and dismissed in January 1945. Mackensen, who married a daughter of the future Foreign Minister Baron v. Neurath in 1926, died on September 28, 1947.—Source: Munzinger Archive.

2. Göring was supposed to go to Italy for Mussolini’s 60th birthday on July 29.

3. Farinacci was in fact among the initiators of the Grand Council meeting of July 24-25, 1943, but the rebels around Grandi, who had been clever enough to use him as a front, opposed him. The Grandi group wanted to end the war, while Farinacci, on the other hand, wanted to tighten Italy’s conduct of war under the Duce and to cooperate more closely with Germany. Farinacci was the first leading Fascist to escape to the Reich in the following days and to report on the incidents that had taken place in Rome. He took an active part in the establishment of the Republic of Salò but was unable to reach the expected leading position because of Mussolini’s return. With the title of a state minister without cabinet status, Farinacci returned to Cremona and to the editorial staff of the Regime Fascista. After the collapse, he was executed by a partisan firing squad in Lombardy on April 29, 1945.—Source: Munzinger Archive; Keesings Archive 1945, pp. 198f.; Goebbels Diaries (copy in IfZ archive), pp. 2538, 2556 and 2563ff.

4. Vittorio Emanuele Orlando; born May 19, 1860; 1888 professor of constitutional law in Palermo; 1897 liberal member of parliament; 1903-05 Minister of Education; 1907-09 and 1914-16 Minister of Justice; and 1916-17 Minister of the Interior. In 1919 he was Italy’s representative to the Paris Peace Conference and, because he was not able to completely force through Italian claims in the Adriatic, he was ousted in June 1919. Orlando initially established contact with the Fascists, but turned to the opposition in 1925 and retired from parliament in 1928. As Badoglio reported, Orlando was in fact not uninvolved in the change of the Italian regime in 1943; he had, for example, assisted in the drafting of the two proclamations by the king and Badoglio. After the war he became a senator and a member of the Constituent Assembly from June 1946 to August 1947. He died on December 1, 1952.—Source: Badoglio, p. 65; Keesings Archive 1952, p. 3761.

5. That Sunday morning (July 25), Mussolini had continued to attend to his daily business in the office as usual, and had received the Japanese ambassador and other persons. At noon he visited, together with Galbiati, the commander of the militia, the areas of Rome that had been bombed during the air raid on July 19. The audience with the king, which had been requested by Mussolini and during which the dictator was deposed and then arrested, did not take place until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.—Source: Rintelen, pp. 219f.

6. Guido Buffarini-Guidi, a friend of the Petacci family, was Undersecretary of the Interior until the “changing of the guard” on the occasion of Ciano’s removal on February 6, 1943. At the meeting of the Grand Council on July 24-25, 1943, Buffarini had voted against Grandi’s agenda. In the RSI government of Salò, he served as Minister of the Interior until February 23, 1945. According to statements by SD Führer Wilhelm Höttl, Buffarini was an agent of the Supreme Commander of the SS and Police in Italy, SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, and unconditionally devoted to him. After his release by Mussolini, he was supposedly supported by Wolff, and in April 1945 he allegedly submitted a plan to the German security police for playing Mussolini, who was becoming uncomfortable, into the hands of the partisans. With the collapse of the regime in northern Italy, Buffarini, like Mussolini, Pavolini, Starace, Farinacci, and others, was summarily executed by the partisans on April 29, 1945. His party comrade Anfuso characterized him as the “last Italian of the Renaissance.”—Source: Keesings Archive 1943, pp. 5823 and 6035, as well as 1945, pp. 198f.; Ciano, passim; Anfuso (It.), p. 106; Mellini, passim; Hagen: Die geheime Front, pp. 468f.

7. During the discussion in Feltre on July 19, 1943, Mussolini had intended— as requested by Ambrosio and others—to point out to Hitler that Italy’s military strength had been exhausted and that his country was thus no longer able to continue the war. In Feltre, however, Hitler—as was his custom—delivered a two-hour monologue regarding the necessity of total war and his willingness to conduct warfare without limits. Mussolini returned to Rome without having dared to utter his concerns. But the atmosphere in Feltre was not nearly as warm as it had been during earlier meetings.—Source: Rintelen, pp. 211f.; Westphal, pp. 221f. [NDT: see also Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini, pp. 295-330.]

8. General of the Infantry Reserves Edmund Glaise v. Horstenau; born February 27, 1882; Austrian officer; during World War I he was, among other things, liaison officer between the Austro-Hungarian and German army commands; 1925 director of the Austrian War Archives; 1936 to 1938 minister without portfolio in the Schuschnigg cabinet; March 1938 to March 1940 Vice Chancellor or Minister of the Interior under Seyss-Inquart; and subsequently in the Armed Forces High Command (inspector of the war graves). From April 12, 1941, to September 7, 1944, Glaise was the German deputy general in Croatia. He was in Rome, perhaps by chance, at the time of the Italian crisis. Glaise committed suicide in the Langwasser camp on July 20, 1946, when he was summoned to Nuremberg as a witness.—Source: Munzinger Archive; Kiszling, pp. 171, 211 and others.

9. Later, Hitler became more suspicious of reconstituted Italian formations, not to mention the fact that there was less and less material available even for the German units. To the indignation of Mussolini and Graziani, his minister of war—who wished to have 25 divisions, including 15 panzer and panzer grenadier divisions—only 4 infantry divisions of the “Republican Fascist Army” and a few battalions of Fascist militia were eventually formed.

10. After careful preparation, the SD had conducted a large-scale action against the Belgian Communist Party during the past few weeks. Among the functionaries arrested after July 6 were the Secretary General of the Belgian Communist Party, Xavier Relecom; the organization leader of the Belgian Communist Party, Joseph Leemans; the editor-in-chief of the underground newspaper of the Belgian Communist Party, Drapeau Rouge, Pierre Joyce; and the commander of the Armée Belge des Partisans, Jacques Grippa— who, incidentally, all survived the war. In addition, several members of the technical staff of the Communist underground press were arrested, and typesetting machines and paper stock were confiscated as well. Some non-Communist members of the Front de l’Independence also fell into the hands of the Germans. The SD believed at the time that it had destroyed the illegal Belgian Communist Party, and called upon the Belgian Communists—in a forged edition of Drapeau Rouge—to give up resistance in order to save the lives of their leaders. But the Belgian Communist Party recovered surprisingly quickly, and by August a successor to Drapeau Rouge was being published under the name La lutte continue.

11. The “Rote Kapelle” [“Red Orchestra”] complex has thus far not been clarified with complete reliability. This designation is understood to refer to Soviet espionage organizations acting before, during and to some degree even after World War II, but it is not clear whether there were any organizational connections between the individual actions of the “R. K.,” or whether this was merely an invention of the Reich Security Head Office [RSHA]. In the narrower sense, one also refers to the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group as “R.K.” This was a circle of Communist-minded or only Bolshevik-influenced people of all kinds surrounding the First Lieutenant in the RLM Harro Schulze-Boysen, the representative in the Reich Economics Ministry, Dr. Arvid Harnack, the author Adam Kuckoff, their wives and others. This group (consisting mainly of convinced resistance fighters but in some cases also persons—like the ambassador v. Scheliha—acting out of self interest) delivered information to the USSR via agents and increasingly after June 22, 1941, by radio. At the end of August 1942, the Gestapo struck against the “R.K.” The rounding up of the German organization, most of whose members were executed in Plötzensee in late 1942 and early 1943, was successful; however, because of the premature strike, the main organization in the occupied Western regions was warned in time and was able to evade the Gestapo measures.—Source: Roeder, passim; Flicke, passim; Weisenborn, pp. 203ff.; Numerous newspaper and magazine articles from the years 1950-52 in the IfZ archive.

12. The Interallied Control Commissions established under sections 203-06 of the Versailles Treaty were to control the implementation of the military provisions of the treaty. The three commissions (Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe) conducted numerous inspection visits until they were withdrawn from Germany on January 31, 1927, under the Geneva Protocol of December 12, 1926. The so-called military experts at the Berlin embassies of the Allies, who had been assigned to monitor the implementation of the “remaining points” of Germany’s disarmament, left the Reich three years later.—Source: Schwendemann; Berber; Bretton; Ströhle.

13. From Sicily.

14. Assembling to the north of Rome.

15. Reference to the withdrawal of German troops from Sicily. Hitler’s opinion, which he repeated several times here, is in strange contrast to his position during the evacuation of Stalingrad or Tunis, and might be the result of a—however temporary—lesson drawn from those two catastrophes. In addition, he probably regarded the units on Sicily, especially the 1st Parachute Division (assessed by the enemy as “one of the best German divisions”— Order of Battle, p. 323) and the 1st Panzer Parachute Division Hermann Göring, which consisted entirely of volunteers, as high-value divisions whose men were hand-picked and supposedly reflected the “fanatical” National Socialist approach that he considered so necessary. He had heard favorable estimations of these divisions’ personnel, and wanted to rescue them at all costs. The following day, however, when the first excitement had calmed down, Hitler’s position on this issue was already less strict.

16. Less than a month later, on August 19, 1943, Jeschonnek committed suicide in desperation over the failure of the Luftwaffe—a failure for which he, as a successful advocate of the theory of a short-term war, was partly responsible.

17. In southern France.

18. Rommel had left Wiener Neustadt already at 8 a.m. and was in Salonika at that moment to meet Colonel General Löhr, whom he was to replace as Commander-in-Chief of the Southeast, according to a recent decision of Hitler’s. The upheaval in Italy created a new situation, however. Shortly after 11 p.m., Rommel, in Salonika, received a call from the Armed Forces High Command, ordering him immediately to the Führer Headquarters, where he arrived at noon the following day.—Source: Rommel Papers, p.431.

19. A 34th Panzer Division did not exist; Hitler must have meant either the 24th Panzer Division again or the 44th Infantry Division (“Reichs Panzer Grenadier Division Hoch- und Deutschmeister”), which, like the 24th Panzer Division, was transferred from France to northern Italy in August 1943.

20. The 2nd Parachute Division in southern France.

21. As a bridgehead near the Straits of Messina.

22. Dino Grandi; born June 4, 1895; journalist; early Fascist; 1929-32 Foreign Minister, then ambassador in London; 1932 member of the Fascist Grand Council; 1937 given the title of count; July 1939 Minister of Justice; and November 1939 President of the Fasci and Corporations [Parliament]. [—] During this meeting of the Grand Council on July 24-25, 1943, which Hitler described here for the most part correctly, the agenda by Grandi— about whom Mussolini had said only a few hours before, “He is a truly faithful man!”—was adopted by 19 votes to 7. Grandi, who emigrated to South America, was sentenced to death in absentia during the proceedings against the members of the Grand Council before a Fascist special court in Verona in January 1944. He was acquitted by the Supreme Court in Rome in another political trial in December 1947.—Source: Munzinger Archive; Westphal, p. 211.

23. Giuseppe Bottai; born September 3, 1895; early Fascist; author of the Fascist labor and economic constitution; 1926 Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Corporations; 1929-32 Minister of Corporations; 1935 Governor of Rome; and 1936-43 Minister of Education. Bottai voted in favor of the Grandi resolution in the Grand Council, and was also sentenced to death in absentia in Verona in January 1944. Bottai later joined the French Foreign Legion and wrote several volumes of his memoirs before retiring to Rome, where he died in 1959.

24. This planned action, in which the members of the Badoglio government and the royal family were to be arrested in order to reinstall the Fascist regime, was known by the name operation “Student,” after the German parachute Colonel General. Both Kesselring and Rintelen (who were not originally supposed to be let in on the plans for this action) opposed it. Once Rintelen had given Hitler Badoglio’s confirmation of loyalty on August 2, Hitler relented somewhat and halted the “Student” action, which was then never implemented.—Source: Hagen: Unternehmen Bernhard, pp. 129ff.; Rintelen, pp. 227ff.

25. Code name for the prepared movement of troops to Italy in the event of a defection on the part of the ally. Neither Alarik nor similar measures in the Balkan area (Konstantin) were implemented, as initially only the Fascist regime was overthrown in Italy while the war continued. In mid-August, when Italy’s impending withdrawal from the war became more obvious, planning for the two actions resumed, now under a single code name Achse.

26. The following day Goebbels was also summoned to the Führer Headquarters. He and Göring were received by Hitler for a first discussion on July 27 at 10 a.m., as Hitler wanted to “check the situation with his closest assistants.” That day Hitler conferred nonstop—with individual midday discussions with Göring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Rommel, Dönitz, Speer, Keitel and Bormann, and with as many as 35 persons attending the situation conference in the evening.—Source: Lochner, pp. 406-416.

27. In March 1941, after a long hesitation, Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia and the Zvetković government gave in to German pressure and joined the Tripartite Pact when German troops marched into Bulgaria and Hitler conceded that Yugoslavia would not be obligated to let troop transports pass through its territory. On March 27, two days after the signing of the treaty in Vienna, the former Chief of the General Staff Dusan Simović revolted against this change in Yugoslavia’s policy. King Peter was declared to be of age and ascended the throne, the prince regent fled to Greece, the Zvetković government was forced to resign (some members were arrested), and all over the country—except in Croatia—anti-German demonstrations took place. Ten days later Hitler responded with military actions that soon led to the occupation of the country. [—] With the following aside, Keitel probably just wanted to indicate ironically that it was a palace revolution.

28. The Hungarians.

29. The Soviet air force had attacked Budapest on September 6, 1942. While the Soviets spoke of “extensive and continuous destruction of installations critical to the war effort,” “a comprehensive bombing attack” and the occurrence of “33 large fires,” the Hungarian denial claimed that only a church, a villa and a house on the outskirts of the city had been destroyed by the “random dropping of 17 bombs.”—Source: Macartney, pp. 116 and 262; DNB of Sept. 7, 1942.

30. Maximilian Baron von Weichs; born November 12, 1881; 1902 Second Lieutenant; 1914 Cavalry Captain; in World War I adjutancy and General Staff positions; Reichswehr; 1923 Major; 1928 Lieutenant Colonel and Commander, 18th Cavalry Regiment; 1930 Colonel; 1933 Infantry Commander III and Major General; December 1933 Commander; 3rd Cavalry Division; 1935 Lieutenant General and Commander, 1st Panzer Division; 1936 General of the Cavalry; 1937 Commanding General, XIII Army Corps, after October 1939 Commander-in-Chief, Second Army in the West, in the Balkans and in the East; 1940 Colonel General; July 1942 Commander-in-Chief, Army Group B in the East, February 1943 Field Marshal, and July 1943 Führer’s Reserves. [—] The following month, on August 25, 1943, Weichs (instead of Rommel) took command over the entire Balkan region as Commander-in-Chief Southeast (Army Group F) until March 22, 1945. Weichs was indicted in the Nuremberg trial against the Southeastern generals, but the proceedings were halted because of the state of his health. In November 1948 he was released from prison, and he died on September 27, 1954.—Source: Army High Command staff files (Nbg. Dok. NOKW-042); Munzinger Archive; Siegler, p. 142.

31. Possible correction: “send down to the Balkan” down there, meaning the Balkans.

32. The issue is again the evacuation of Sicily. Available ship capacity included the French steamers captured in southern France in late 1942 and small German-Italian ships and landing craft.

33. Possibly a misunderstanding.

34. The Strait of Messina.

35. In July 1943 nearly 150,000 Italian workers were still in the Reich.

36. By the “fellow” Hitler means Leopold III; born November 3, 1901; since February 23, 1934, king of the Belgians. He had surrendered with his army on May 28, 1940, and had been in the hands of the Germans ever since. One of Leopold’s sisters, Princess Marie José, had married Italian Crown Prince Umberto on January 8, 1930. [—] The Belgian king had been extremely reserved after his surrender, aside from occasional interventions in favor of his country’s population with the German military commander General v. Falkenhausen, and once with Hitler himself on the occasion of a visit to Berchtesgaden. Despite his earlier consent it disturbed Hitler that the king remained in Laeken Castle near Brussels, i.e., in the middle of the country. Perhaps because he was unable to seize “relatives” [of the king], Hitler abandoned, at least for the time being, the idea of “taking this fellow away.” It was not until June 6, 1944, that King Leopold was taken to Germany.—Source: Fabre-Luce, passim; Munzinger Archive.

37. When the Austro-Hungarian lands were distributed after World War I, the town of Fiume initially became “independent” during the already bitter border negotiations between Italy and Yugoslavia (Treaty of Rapallo, November 11, 1920)—even though the Italians had raised their claim in a way that could not be ignored (d’Annunzio’s coup against Allied-occupied Fiume on September 12, 1919). However, under the agreement concluded by the two neighboring countries on January 27, 1924, it did become part of Italy. The campaign against Yugoslavia in 1941 temporarily provided the Italians with further Dalmatian acquisitions, which greatly angered the Croatians. After Italy’s surrender, an administration appointed by Gauleiter Rainer of the Carinthian Gau quarreled with Croatian Undersecretary of State Turina (who had been appointed by the “Poglavnik” Ante Pavelic) over responsibility for the town. Following World War II, not only Fiume (now Rijeka) but also the whole Istrian peninsula up to the city limits of Trieste became part of Yugoslavia.

38. On Sicily.

39. Churchill mentions a visit by the king of England to North Africa in June 1943. It is probable that the meeting at the Cairo headquarters, reported to Hitler here, took place at that time.—Source: Churchill IV/2 p. 456.

40. Henry Maitland Wilson (Baron of Libya and Stowlangtoft after 1946), born in 1881; at the beginning of the war, as a lieutenant general, he commanded the rifle brigade in Egypt. He contributed significantly to the conquest of Cyrenaica in 1940 and, in February 1941, became senior commander of the British troops there and military governor of the province. In 1941 he was commander-in-chief in Palestine, Transjordan and Syria, as well as Commander of the 9th Army. In 1942-43 he commanded in Persia and Iraq, and in 1943 he was commander-in-chief in the Middle East. He succeeded Eisenhower as supreme commander of the entire Mediterranean region at Christmas 1943 and commanded—having been promoted to the rank of a field marshal—the Allied landing operations on the southern French coast in August 1944.—Source: Who’s Who 1950, p. 3025.

41. In southern France.

42. Because the events in Italy were developing much more slowly and did not result in an immediate defection, Kesselring had no cause to implement a voluntary siege like this. On the contrary, he was received—at his urgent request—by the king as well as by Badoglio the next day.—Source: Kesselring, pp. 231f.

43. An order that had been prepared previously and had meanwhile been adapted to the new situation in Rome.

44. The suspicions of the German leadership had been particularly aroused in the past few weeks by Roatta’s proposal to divide the German forces in Italy into five counterattack reserves, each consisting of two divisions, located in Sicily and Sardinia, and in southern, central and northern Italy, respectively. In actual and strategic terms this move was justified, and had been evaluated quite positively by Rintelen and Zeitzler at the time. Roatta—unlike the head of the Comando Supremo, General Ambrosio— was not among the inner circle of the conspirators because (being unaware of the negotiations being conducted at the highest level) he had unsuccessfully established contact with the Allies through General Zanussi in Lisbon. Thus, it seems plausible that he did repeatedly give his sincere denial to Generals Westphal and Toussaint on the night of Italy’s armistice declaration, as he confirmed on his word of honor the following night.—Source: Kesselring, p. 242; Westphal, p. 228.

45. After the surrender in Tunis, the German general at the Comando Supremo was ordered to form three new divisions out of the backlog of units, but only two divisions were actually drawn up. Rintelen was originally supposed to be the commanding general of this corps, but in the end he remained in his position while General Hube, who had come to Italy recently, went to Sicily in May with his General Command XIV Panzer Corps (Hube group) and essentially served as the head of the operations under the nominal command of the Italian Sixth Army. When he took over this command, Hube was instructed by Hitler not to trust any of the Italian generals and—this was probably meant sarcastically—not to accept any invitations, in order not to be poisoned or otherwise murdered on such an occasion. So Hube was surprised when he realized that the attitude of the Italian generals introduced to him was obviously quite different from that which had been described so clearly to him at the Führer Headquarters. He expressed this in a report—presumably the one quoted here—to the Armed Forces High Command, earning himself a severe rebuke.—Source: Rintelen, pp. 201f.; Kesselring, pp. 224f.; Tippelskirch, pp. 362f.

46. During the evacuation of Sicily.

47. The reference is probably to the Allied naval unit off the north coast of Sicily.

48. Plans to occupy the Vatican, and to kidnap the pope and bring him under secure German influence, were obvious to the National Socialist mentality, of course, and are mentioned repeatedly in the literature. Gisevius moves them to the spring of 1943, where Oster had heard about the plans and Canaris had thwarted them by giving Rome a hint. Rintelen and Abshagen, on the other hand, move these plans to the months between Mussolini’s overthrow and the defection of Italy. Another source indicates that Goebbels and Ribbentrop had torpedoed the plan. Weizäcker gives an even later date. After numerous rumors and press reports, he got a hint from the Vatican as late as October 1943. Despite various efforts and explorations, however, he was unable to get a confirmation or a reliable denial of these rumors until the day the Allies entered Rome.—Source: Gisevius, p. 470; Abshagen, p. 337; Rintelen, p. 235; Gilbert, p. 71; Weizsäcker, pp. 362f.

49. The reference is to Manstein and his planned relief attack, which is mentioned repeatedly above; “them” refers to the three SS divisions scheduled to be transferred to Italy.

50. Once Goebbels had arrived at the Führer Headquarters on July 27, he was instructed by Hitler to “take care of the prince” and to keep him away from Italian affairs. The role of the Prince of Hesse did not come to an end until the surrender of his father-in-law.—Source: Lochner, p. 413.

51. Italian fortifications along the passes in the Alps.

52. Transcript number unknown (presumably 430/43)—Fragment No. 16— Because the preserved shorthand record was heavily charred, the second transcription was possible only with large gaps.

53. The evacuation of Sicily.

54. After the first Russian winter, Horthy had appointed Nikolaus v. Kállay the new prime minister on March 10, 1942, under the assumption that he would be the suitable man to “take steps to bring about more friendly relations with the Anglo-Saxons while preserving the foreign relations with Hitler and Germany and without aiding the Soviets.” After establishing initial contact through Polish exile circles, Kállay managed to get in direct contact with the English via Turkey in the summer of 1942. He offered to take active measures against Germany as early as 1943, provided that a way could be found to geographically link the operations of the armed forces of the two countries. On September 9, 1943, a first meeting took place between an official Hungarian representative and the English ambassador in Ankara, Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugessen—behind the back of the Hungarian envoy in Turkey, who was unreliable for such purposes. It can be supposed that Hitler was informed about this Hungarian-English entanglement.—Source: Horthy, pp. 251ff.; Kállay, pp. 369ff.

55. Himmler, Dönitz and Rommel, like Göring and other high-ranking Nazi personalities, were summoned to Rastenburg to discuss the events in Italy.

56. Sardinia.

57. Northern Italy.

58. In France.

59. This judgment was also confirmed many times by other unprejudiced parties. Because these divisions consisted of specially selected young people, their attitude is not surprising. This procedure of gathering together an elite in a few privileged divisions also had a negative side. The military was deprived of young conscripts, as these youth were missing when their age groups were called up. A huge number of these boys died as young soldiers; had they survived until they were somewhat older, they would have provided an outstanding new crop of non-commissioned officers and officers for the whole army.

60. Friedrich Dollmann; born February 2, 1882; 1901 Second Lieutenant; 1914 Captain; Reichswehr; 1930 Colonel; 1931 Commander, 6th Artillery Regiment; 1932 Major General and Artillery Commander, VII; 1933 Lieutenant General; 1934 Commanding General, IV Army Corps; April 1936 General of Artillery; after October 1939 Commander-in-Chief, Seventh Army on the Upper Rhine front and later in northwestern France; and July 1940 Colonel General. On June 27, 1944, during the invasion battles, Dollmann died of heart failure while at his command post.—Source: VB of July 1, 1944; Seemen; Das deutsche Heer, p. 144; Rangliste 1944-45, p. 14; Keilig 211/67.

61. Johannes Blaskowitz; born July 10, 1883; 1902 Second Lieutenant; 1914 Captain; in World War I company commander, battalion commander and General Staff officer; Reichswehr; 1922 Major; 1929 Colonel; 1930 Commander, 14th Infantry Regiment; 1933 inspector of the Arms schools and Lieutenant General; 1935 Commander in Military District [Wehrkreis] II; 1936 General of the Infantry; 1938 Commander-in-Chief, Third Army Group; 1939 Colonel General; in the Polish campaign, Commander-in-Chief, Eighth Army (Kutno, Warsaw); and after October 1939, Commander-in-Chief East. Blaskowitz’s memorandum about the excesses of the SS in Poland was taken amiss by Hitler, to the extent that Blaskowitz was given only a reserve command in the French campaign and thus did not receive the marshal’s baton. From October 1940 to May 1944 Blaskowitz was inactive as Commander-in-Chief of the First Army in the West; he subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of Army Group G in Southern France, which, however, was disparagingly designated “Armeegruppe” [Army Group] at first. After the retreat from the mouth of the Rhone to the Vosges mountains, Blaskowitz was—supposedly at the instigation of Himmler, who hadn’t forgotten his behavior in Poland, but probably also through Göring’s influence—relieved again on September 20, but called back again on December 24. On January 28, 1945, Blaskowitz transferred to the northern wing of the Western front as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group H, and surrendered as Commander-in-Chief Netherlands/Fortress Holland. Blaskowitz, of all people, was accused in the Nuremberg Armed Forces High Command trial; he committed suicide on the way to his first court appearance on February 5, 1948, by jumping into the stairwell.—Source: Army High Command staff files (Nbg. Dok. NOKW-141); Siegler, p. 113; Munzinger Archive.

62. Gerd v. Rundstedt; born December 12, 1875; 1893 Second Lieutenant, 83rd Infantry Regiment; 1909 Captain in the General Staff; in World War I various positions in the General Staff; 1923 Colonel and Commander, 18th Infantry Regiment; 1927 Major General; 1929 Lieutenant General and Commander, 2nd Cavalry Division; 1932 Commander, 3rd Infantry Division and General of Infantry; 1932 to 1938 Commander-in-Chief, First Command Group (Berlin); March 1938 Colonel General; October 31, 1938 left the service; in the Polish campaign, Commander-in-Chief, Army Group South; in France, Commander-in-Chief, Army Group A and also (after October 25, 1940) Commander-in-Chief, West,; July 19, 1940 Field Marshal; in the Eastern campaign; Commander-in-Chief, Army Group South until December 3, 1941; from March 1942 to July 3, 1944 and again from early September 1944 to March 10, 1945, Commander-in-Chief West; and (until September 10, 1944) Commander-in-Chief Army Group D. Rundstedt presided over the court of honor that expelled the July assassins from the Armed Forces, and he gave the eulogy at Rommel’s “state funeral.” He died on February 24, 1953.— Source: Army High Command staff files (Nbg. Dok. NOKW-141); Munzinger Archive; Blumentritt, passim.

63. The reference is probably to the son-in-law of the KZ [concentration camp] organizer Eicke, SS Obersturmbannführer Karl Leiner, who was born June 14, 1905, later commander of the 2nd Heavy Panzer Detachment in the III SS Panzer Corps.

64. This momentary thought did not need to be considered later because the German troops marching through in the days that followed effectively occupied South Tyrol.

65. Follows as a separate transcript.

66. At this point, La Spezia was still a German submarine base, where boats of the 29th Submarine Flotilla anchored.

67. The Germans settled in Italy in the coming weeks, waiting for the Italian defection. They tried at the end of August (with two divisions) to secure La Spezia, where the bulk of the Italian fleet was anchored, saying that this port must have particularly strong protection against a potentially hostile landing. However, the Italians saw through this game and moved other forces to La Spezia, declaring the protection of this base by their own forces to be an issue of prestige. Thus, the Italian fleet under Admiral Bergamini, fulfilling the armistice conditions, was able to put to sea during the night of September 8 from La Spezia—joined by other minor elements from Genoa, Taranto, Pola, etc.—and follow a zigzag course to Malta for internment, even though it was part of the German Achse (or, previously, the Alarick) plan to prevent the Italian units from fleeing in the case of a collapse. The German command authorities, as well as some of the Italian army officers, obviously including Bergamini himself, were misled by messages about putting to sea for an upcoming decisive battle. All in all, the British were able to intern 5 battleships, 8 cruisers, 31 destroyers and torpedo boats, 40 submarines, and numerous small craft, as well as 170,000 GRT in merchant ships. Some units were sunk by the Germans—for instance, the battleship Roma was destroyed by a remote-controlled glider bomb. Four warships were interned in Spain and held there until January 1945. Fifty ships were scuttled in ports under the control of the Germans or the Japanese. Only the popular “Decima MAS” midget craft combat unit— the 10th MAS Flotilla (motoscafi anti-sommergibili: motor torpedo boats) under the leadership of Prince Valerio Borghese—remained loyal to Mussolini. Some other shipping was taken over by the Germans, mostly after smaller sabotage actions or sinkings in shallow waters, such as the battleships Cavour and Impero, 2 aircraft carriers, 2 cruisers, and various torpedo boat and destroyer flotillas in the Ligurian Sea, the upper Adriatic and the Aegean. However, practically without the Italian crews, the smaller units (which only the Germans preferred and which only the Germans put into commission) all had to be manned by German crews. Mussolini at Saló was extremely outraged by this inglorious end to “his” fleet.—Source: Tippelskirch, pp. 368ff.; Ruge: Seekrieg, pp. 256f.; Anfuso, pp. 262f.; Rintelen, pp. 248f.; de Belot, pp. 226ff.; Westphal, pp. 226f.; Moellhausen, pp. 257ff.; Trizzino, pp. 121ff.