The Nuremberg Interviews (75 page)

Personality of the fifty-year-old sister? “Very sensible. Inclined to art. Many headaches until her children were born. Since then she has been better. I got along best with her, was her favorite brother. I got along all right with my brother-in-law too.”

2. Brother, forty-eight, was in World War I, gassed, and has had stomach troubles since then. He married two or three years ago, no children. He was employed in his father’s business. Personality of brother? “A quiet, content, introverted type of man. I got along well with him. He always protected me because I was little, and he was strong. He is two heads taller than me and stronger. He is a good sportsman.”

This brother was never a member of the Nazi Party, Schellenberg made a point of saying. But he was inducted into the armed SS toward the end of the war. He was at the western front. There is no news of him as yet.

3. Sister, forty-six, in good health, single, lives with father. At the end of 1941 she was in America, where she had been for fourteen years. She was deported as a German national. She had worked as a governess in a millionaire’s home for six years, helping to rear children. She plays piano perfectly and speaks English fluently.

She quit the governess job because the children had grown up. Thereafter she worked in the German consulate in New York until the outbreak of the war. She was a chief secretary.

He was reluctant to give much information as to his sister’s personality, except to say she was competent and cheerful. He does not know whether she was a member of the Nazi Party.

4. Brother, forty-four, living, in poor health. “We think he might have inherited some liver ailment from his mother. He is married, has four children.

“He was in charge of father’s business in Saarbrücken.” He was
inducted into the air force for the extent of the war. He returned home a few weeks ago, according to the latest letters from home. He was “a mere private” in the air corps. He was a high school graduate — “he hated soldiering, never cared for it.” Schellenberg never saw his brother since the start of the war. He believes he was in the ground crew of the air force. “I never had much to do with him — he was a very stubborn man. He always wanted to have his own way.” He was not a member of the party insofar as subject knows.

5. Sister, forty-one, good health, married, four children, husband just returned from war service. She married at a young age. “She had a lot of fantasy and temperament, a very alert and awake person.” He never saw her during the war. She was evacuated from Saarbrücken at the outbreak of hostilities.

How is it that you never saw members of your family during the war? “The only leave I could get from the office was to see my mother, and I had to fight for that. Besides, I had my young wife and children, and after my mother died I cared only for my own family.”

6. Brother, forty-one, good health, single, “was always a sort of adventurer who didn’t want to tie himself down.” He was in the U.S. for twelve years until 1939. He is an agriculturist and ran a hothouse for roses in Providence, Rhode Island. Why did he return to Germany? “He earned less and less, he wanted to change.” What did he do after he returned to Germany? “He was representative for Coca-Cola for part of Germany. Then he was inducted into the army. I only saw him once. He was in motor transportation, possibly in the air force. He is home now.”

Marital:
Married 1940. Four children: a boy of five years, and three girls, ages four, three, and seven months. The boy suffered from headaches as an infant but is now cured. All are living and well. Wife is a Catholic, as is the subject. He knew her six months prior to marriage. She is a high school graduate, and later attended an art academy, but never painted professionally. She does some portrait painting as a hobby. At the time of his marriage he was chief of Office IV in the RSHA (counterespionage).

His wife’s picture is on his table in the cell. She is a pretty blond girl, the photograph a regular studio portrait. Alongside it is a snapshot of his wife and the children, in which she looks quite unlike the larger studio portrait. He apologized more or less for her “bedraggled” appearance on the snapshot, saying she had just had their fourth child at the time
that picture was taken, and she was “run-down.” He fails to give much emotionally laden material regarding his marriage, except to state he is happily married.

Asked for a brief outline of his career, he gave the following:

“I always wanted to be promoted in the civil ranks but they promoted me in the SS.” Mainly he wore civilian clothes in his work.

“Wilhelm Hoettl was an employee in Office VI under my leadership. He represented southeastern Europe, was chief of that department.”

Asked of his impressions of Hoettl, he replied: “Hoettl is a very intelligent man, and very industrious in his work. I’m sure in due time he would have made the Foreign Office.”

Were there any differences of opinion between you and Hoettl? “In official business or personal contact, none. But Hoettl was too easy with his money, spent too much, legally and illegally. I always had to keep a strict watch and hold on Hoettl.”

Is Hoettl a man to be trusted, in your opinion? Schellenberg thought for a while before replying. “Yes, but you must always have him under supervision.”

What does that mean? Schellenberg smiled and raised both hands in gesticulation. It was as if to say, “Who knows?”

Going back to his marriage, Schellenberg said that his wife’s mother was Polish. On that basis Himmler disapproved of the marriage. Her family came from and lived in Silesia. Schellenberg met his wife in Berlin at a party. Finally Himmler consented to the marriage, under Schellenberg’s insistence.

He saw his wife last in March 1945, when he left for Sweden. He made several trips back and forth between Sweden and Germany. “It was my idea to make an agreement with the Swedish government to prevent any more actions in Denmark and Norway.

“I succeeded with my mission. After that, Denmark was occupied by the British and I could not return to Germany.” He therefore contacted a U.S. military attaché in Sweden and was brought to Frankfurt in the company of Count Bernadotte.

The latter stayed two days in Frankfurt, just long enough to turn Schellenberg over to the authorities, and then returned to Sweden. That was June 1945. Schellenberg’s last trip to Sweden began May 2, 1945.

Paul O. Schmidt
born 1899, year of death unknown

Paul O. Schmidt was Hitler’s interpreter.

Hitler’s interpreter, Paul O. Schmidt, was present at most international conferences and the like as Hitler’s personal aide, with rank of ambassador in the Foreign Office. He is middle-aged, has some puffiness under the eyes, but is otherwise in a state of good nutrition and a cheerful, talkative mood.

He came to the Nuremberg prison a week ago, having been in a hospital until then, suffering from nephritis. He showed me a copy of a request, which he wrote, asking for his release from detention and dated February 1946, Alaska House, Oberursel Interrogation Center.

He was in hospital in Frankfurt for three months with nephritis. Of that period, he was confined to bed for one month. He was interned. “I gave myself up to American troops at Salzburg on May 22, 1945.”

Previous Illness:
Nephritis — started November 1945 and is still not completely cured. He never had an attack of nephritis prior to that time.

Past History:
He said that for twenty-two years, from 1923 until 1945, he was employed in the Foreign Office as an interpreter for international conference work.

He was a Nazi Party member since 1943. He never wanted to join the party, he says, but did so under pressure. “I was expected to join, and the
director of personnel in the Foreign Office had asked me several times. I intended to keep out of the party until 1940, so that I could tell my son, who is now eighteen, about it. So you can see what my opinions regarding the Nazis were.”

Did you disapprove of the Nazis? “Yes. My whole education and background was anything but National Socialist. I was a liberal. My first chief in the Foreign Office was Stresemann. I first began conference work in 1924.”

I remarked that I had often seen pictures of him alongside Hitler. He replied that such pictures were frequent and numerous. Were you a friend of Hitler’s? “At first he thought I was no good because someone said I had been at Geneva. I began working with Hitler in 1935, and he liked my work.” Any rewards for it? “No, I naturally received normal promotions. I was a secretary of the legation, then promoted to councilor. I received another promotion after the Munich Conference. Another promotion came after the armistice with France.”

He states that he speaks French as fluently as English, and Spanish not quite so well, but well enough. “I translated once in Spanish for Serrano Suñer. Once I translated for Sumner Welles too; he knew some German but wanted a translator to make sure.

“I’m called as a defense witness for Ribbentrop, so his lawyer told me. I shall probably have to give evidence this coming week. My presence is not necessary, in my opinion. It was my duty to write minutes of all conferences. All those documents are in American hands, certainly all the minutes of meetings held during the war. On one occasion I was translator at a conference between King Leopold III of Belgium and Hitler. I was interrogated on that by American and Belgian authorities. This conference report had been in American hands, and was used in the Belgian government’s controversy with Leopold.”

Regarding his attitude toward the Nazis, for whom he worked from the rise to power until the end of the war, he says, “I was of a fundamentally different opinion. I was a member of the Foreign Office, as were most of us — not Ribbentrop, I mean the old bunch. We knew that compromise was something Hitler didn’t have in his vocabulary.

“Almost anything — the racial business, the blood and soil business — I couldn’t agree with it. It would have made life easier to have agreed. As it was, these people stole your own country from you. I said to an English friend in 1933, ‘It’s funny, I’m a stranger in my own country.’ Now I don’t think that’s funny anymore.”

Why didn’t you leave Germany? “Well, I was in the Foreign Office until Ribbentrop came. Neurath was there before Ribbentrop. I needed to work, had no other means of income. I now wish I had left in time.”

I asked whether that point of view could not apply to Ribbentrop or even Goering at this time. He said, “Well, Goering was a pilot in Sweden, Ribbentrop had been in the liquor business. They could more easily have left Germany if they wanted to. I was really dependent for my livelihood on my job.”

I’ve had several interviews with this former ambassador of the Foreign Office who was the official interpreter for Hitler and other leading Nazis in the government from 1933. He speaks good English, has an excellent Anglo-American accent, although his vocabulary is not extraordinary. He is bright but not impressively intellectual, and is given to making platitudes and aphorisms which are unremarkable but which he obviously feels mark him as a man of wisdom.

His general attitude is that he was an ideological opponent of Nazism from the very start, but since he was a public servant and “merely an interpreter,” stayed on in the Foreign Office after Hitler’s rise to power. The fact that he advanced in his position, finally becoming ambassador, is more or less neglected by him, and he depreciates this by saying that by chance he happened to be well liked by Hitler and thus received promotions which might ordinarily have occurred anyway in the course of his many years of service.

He is forty-seven years old, born on June 23, 1899, in Berlin, where he grew up and studied. He attended elementary school for four years and then went to a school where he could specialize in modern foreign languages, instead of going to a gymnasium with a more classical curriculum.

In 1917 he was drafted into the army as an infantry soldier. In November 1918, he was wounded by an American shell splinter, which penetrated the flesh of his right thigh. This occurred about ten days before the armistice. He was hospitalized until January 1919. He made a full recovery.

Thereafter he attended the University of Berlin from 1919 until 1923. He majored in English and French and also studied Spanish and philosophy. He received a Ph.D. in 1923. He wrote a thesis on the reading and literary criticism of the English author Oliver Goldsmith.

Immediately after his graduation from the university, in 1923, he entered the Foreign Office. “They invited a number of students and I
was selected from fifteen or twenty young men. I was sent on trial trips to The Hague as an interpreter.” He then went from one conference to another as an interpreter. In 1924 he attended the London Conference on Reparations and on the subject of the Ruhr and the Dawes Plan. In 1925 he served at the Locarno Conference. From 1926 until 1933 he was a member of the German delegation at the League of Nations in Geneva and interpreted at general assemblies, special council meetings, sessions of the Economics Committee. He also was the official German interpreter at the World Economic Conference in Geneva in 1927 and again in 1933 in London.