Who were the German Generals?
Dr. Alex Henry
By the end of the war, over 80 senior German officers had passed through Trent Park, over two-thirds were generals and above. Who were these men? They were certainly a diverse group, but some trends do emerge. For example, the majority were born at the end of the nineteenth century, and consequently many were veterans of the First World War. Most were Prussian, and Protestants outnumbered Catholics by 4:1. As a group, their wartime experiences were extensive – from the unstoppable victories of 1940 in Poland, Scandinavia and France, to crushing defeats in Russia and the Western Desert in 1942-1943, and the storm of steel that came with the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Although, their specific roles within these campaigns differed widely between military administrators and fire-breathing frontline leaders.
As the following examples show, they included some of Adolf Hitler’s most infamous commanders.
SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer
SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer (1910-1961)
The youngest general at Trent Park, Meyer joined the SS in October 1931. A devoted and fanatical Nazi, his military career took him through Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the USSR, and France. He was captured by the Americans on 7 September 1944. Highly decorated, ‘Panzer Meyer’ nonetheless became notorious for his ‘terror tactics’ and the murder of POWs and civilians. He was convicted of war crimes for his role in the murder of Canadian prisoners in June 1944. His death sentence, however, was commuted and upon his release in 1954, he became a prominent apologist for the Waffen-SS.
“I have breathed in National Socialism as a religion, as my life” – Meyer Quoted in a Feb. 1945 Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (‘CSDIC’) (UK) transcript.
General Der Fallschirmtruppen Bernhard Ramcke
General Der Fallschirmtruppen Bernhard Ramcke (1889-1968)
A veteran of the Great War, Ramcke was a pioneering commander of German paratroopers, who he led on Crete, in North Africa, Italy, on the Eastern Front, and in Brittany, where he was captured on 19 September 1944. Though sentenced to five years imprisonment for war crimes during his fanatical defence of Brest, he has also been accused of atrocities against civilians on Crete.
A CSDIC (UK) report noted – “Ramcke is inordinately vain and has the most extensive knowledge of distorted history; ambitious, ruthless yet naïve, an opportunist.”
General der Infanterie Dietrich von Choltitz
General der Infanterie Dietrich von Choltitz (1894-1966)
The so-called ‘saviour of Paris’, Choltitz was the last German governor of ‘the City of Lights’ who refused Hitler’s order to obliterate the city before it was liberated by the Allies in August 1944. Whether his decision was rooted in a sense of decency and humanity – as he claimed – an attempt to ensure better treatment as a prisoner, or that he simply lacked the resources to do so, is a matter of debate. What is undeniable, however, are his confessions of complicity in atrocities, such as the ‘liquidation’ of Jews, in the CSDIC (UK) transcripts.
In the opinion of a CSDIC (UK) report, he was – “a cinema-type of a German officer, fat, coarse, bemonocled & inflated with a tremendous sense of his own importance.”
Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim
Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim (1889-1962)
Arnim surrendered to the British in Tunisia on 12 May 1943, the last commander of ‘Army Group Africa’. He had previously fought in the Battles for Poland and France and had led the 17th Panzer Division in Operation Barbarossa – the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In 1942 he had been described by then Generaloberst Walter Model as, ‘a fully proven commanding General in defensive fighting. Energetic and relishes responsibility.’
“We are and we remain part of the nation even if we are PW [prisoners of war], and in spirit we are intimately bound up with the decisive battle of our Fatherland.”—Arnim quoted in a July 1943 CSDIC (UK) transcript.
References & Further Reading
Helen Fry, The Walls Have Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
Sönke Neitzel, Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942-45 (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2007).
Character studies & photographs of the senior German officers held at Trent Park are available at the National Archives (Kew, London) in the files: WO 208/3433 and WO 208/3504.
‘Listening to the Generals’ (Dir: Eoin O’Callaghan), BBC Radio 4 (2009), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jn0q6
‘Spying on Hitler’s Army: The Secret Recordings’, Channel 4 and PBS (2013), https://www.channel4.com/press/news/spying-hitlers-army-secret-recordings