The World at War (60 page)

GERBERN WAGENAAR

Dutch–Communist Resistance

It was the biggest demonstration, the protest of the people against the persecution of the Jews, that spread so enormously among the population, because those feelings were very strong, that it became a general strike. It was a demonstration against the Nazis, against the Nazi occupation, against the persecution of the Jews . . . Thousands in a closed group marched through the streets of the centre of Amsterdam while the Germans with tanks circled around them. They didn't have any weapons so they found their weapon in marching and singing the Internationale.

COMMISSIONER HIEJENK

There were Jews who under the threat of the Germans had to betray other Jews. The way the Germans put the pressure on those Jews to make them betray their fellow sufferers is something I don't want to talk about because that was really vicious. I know of a case when someone had been shot by the Resistance, a doctor, but I won't tell you his name. This doctor was very gifted and talented and this man had betrayed several of his fellow kinsmen, betrayed to the Germans but so badly that the Resistance had to kill him. That's one case – but another more difficult case is a Jew who betrayed several people. He is shot down and he is hit in the belly and wounded like this he is taken into a Jewish hospital. So the Jewish doctor is obliged to treat this Jew who had betrayed his fellow man to the Germans, and he had to try to keep him alive, and that is a very difficult decision.

DR SLOT

My main reason for joining the Resistance were not nationalistic reasons. I joined the Resistance because I recognised the devil in the National Socialistic system. It is the most perverse barbarism we have known in the course of history. I reached this conclusion by reading a book by Herman Rauschning,
The Revolution of Nihilism.
I would like to add that Herman Rauschning has been a National Socialist, he had been a governor for Hitler in Danzig, but at a certain point he saw through it. Then he wrote this book, which shows very clearly how perverse this National Socialism was.

MR VAN HALL

Dutch banker who ran an illegal welfare organisation to help victims of the Occupation

It was simply that you couldn't stand it, what was happening around you, and you said I'm not going to take it. I'm a rather stubborn man at times, all members of my family are the same, and we couldn't have it that these people marched around and did the most awful things in our country. Now if we'd been in your country we would have served in the armed forces, but that was impossible of course. Some Hollanders left Holland and went to England and it often took them a very long time, but I was an older man and that didn't come up. Furthermore I was involved so much in this business and I thought it was very important, but I felt just like your soldiers must have felt. The only thing is we didn't carry guns – but we did it in another way.

MR VAN DER VEEN

In that time you had seen such terrible things that you felt the very integrity of your being as a Christian was at stake. In reacting to this situation we should make ourselves available for the oppressed and take the risks that come with it. I felt that being in the hands of my Lord was the special equipment to be available for the dangerous jobs that had to be done. I was not married, I had no children and of course it's a question of character and temperament, partly, but I felt that I could take that risk. There are certain limitations to what the Germans could do to you if you are in the hands of the Lord. They can shoot you, they can kill you, but the relationship with Christ goes beyond the possibilities of German police and therefore I felt free. There was taking care after me, if that is English. You felt free to be available for other men and I said to my girlfriend when we discussed it, 'As Christians we can't make a point of the risk that you accept by doing the dirty job.'

ANONYMOUS ROTTERDAM WOMAN

I was working in a café–restaurant in the kitchens as a cleaning woman and there was also a man, a very nice chap – I got on with him very well. One morning it was freezing and he comes in with his collar down and I say to him, 'Oh, Tom, aren't you cold? and I grab his collar and I put it up. And then suddenly as I fastened it up I feel this little triangle, the little NSB [Dutch Nazi Party] pin. I got a terrific shock and he got a shock himself because he never would have thought that I would touch his collar. But he was still a nice guy because after that I would call him 'Dirty Black Dog' and he would just reply 'Orange Goat', just like that.

DICK WOUDENBERG

Teenage son of a prominent Dutch Nazi

It was very difficult for me to go to a normal Dutch school because my father was a well-known man on the one side but I think on the other he was a hated man. And it is not very nice for a young boy to have a hated father. There was a possibility in the first year of the war to go to Germany to this National Socialistic educating institute and I was very glad to have this possibility to switch. I was very glad to leave this country, then. In a very short time I was educated in this SS thinking – a great Germanistic empire and there was no reason for me to think about Holland and the Netherlands. This war had to be won and I was too young, but when I had the age I had to be a soldier to fight for this country, to give it its place in the greater Germanistic empire. And then it went so far that we could leave behind a situation that was too old, that little, small country was an old fact in history and we came to the new situation – this great new Germanistic empire.

PETRONELLA ELDERING

Dutch Resistance

I think it was quite a vital thing, you know, it was the best way to live during the war to do something against the occupier. It was something that made you happy that you could do it, it gave you a feeling of being, not brave but just doing something worth while. You see, you just had to do it.

MR VAN DER BOOGARD

Dutch factory worker

After the disaster of May 1940 the Germans took our officers of the Army to prison camps. Later on most of the officers were sent away home. I don't know exactly the reason but in the end of April 1943 they said that all the officers of the formal Dutch Army must go back to the prison camps. Well, we did not like it, but what will we do, what can we do? So here in this factory some people said we will go on strike, don't work any further. We phoned to everybody, you know we had many connections all over the Netherlands at that time. Elsie knew everybody and so she phoned to say we are going home, we don't work any longer and we will go on strike.

GERBERN WAGENAAR

What drove me personally, and I think all of the other people, we were driven by a terrific hate because we'd never experienced anything like that in Amsterdam, that many people just because they were Jewish, that those people – women and children and there was no exception – that those people were just arrested and knocked about. So you almost got a feeling to see someone in the water so there's not really anything left but to dive after him to get him out. You don't ask yourself is it clean or is it polluted, you are filled with anger. I'm still absolutely sure it helped to relieve their fear and terror, the depression and the despondence, that it helped cheer those people up. But we've only realised that afterwards – at that moment it was sheer hate.

ANONYMOUS ROTTERDAM HOUSEWIFE

When the doorbell was rung, two Germans, they both came up the stairs and one stayed at the top of the stairs, the other came into the room. He looked all over the room and the two men who were there had to get dressed and come with them. And we, being women, crying of course, both of us, one woman with the baby in her arms and the other one hanging on to her skirt. And I can still recall vividly the one German who was inside the room, he was crying and the tears were streaming down his face and he said, 'Oh, I'm so terribly sorry I'm not alone,' that is to say I would love to help you but I can't do anything because there is another one with me. He couldn't do it but he would have tried very hard to leave those two men there because he thought it was terrible. And that was the first time I'd ever seen a German cry, and to see him really cry, big tears down his face. He was terribly upset.

ALBERT SPEER

None of my thoughts about assassinating Hitler succeeded and such ideas have something ridiculous if they don't succeed. I am quite aware of that – I only wanted to state how far Hitler was forcing one of his followers in the end of the war by his attitude, that he was forcing him freely to think about killing him. One can see in the end of a person sometimes his whole life, and in my opinion the end of Hitler showing us what the whole thing was like. It was more an idea to kill Hitler, but that can't be compared with what the people around Stauffenberg did because they were doing it for a very high ethical level and this was not the case for me.

MAJOR GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT

Deputy Chief of Wehrmacht Operations

My
disillusionment had begun early during the otherwise so successful campaign against France; at many instances during the campaign against Russia, when Hitler dispersed the German forces on our march to the south of Russia, to Stalingrad, with all the consequences. So there was not much to get disillusioned about later, all he did then in my opinion was no more military leadership, it was just despair, obstinacy against everything which went wrong.

DR JOHN

Claus von Stauffenberg was wounded in Africa, he had lost his left eye, three fingers of his left hand and his right hand altogether. He came to Berlin to do Staff Officer work in the High Command of the Home Army and this placed him in a position to be near the original conspirators. He came to Berlin in October 1943, before that he'd been in hospital and before then he'd been in Africa. Now he was a very intelligent and able Staff Officer and he realised nothing would be done unless someone really went into it and saw to it that things were properly prepared in a General Staff manner. I never forget a friend of mine, a captain of the First World War who was working in intelligence, he came to me and said, 'Otto, we've got a young man who's come in and he's the one who will do something.' In the end it did turn out that he did take action. Originally he was only the planner but then he became aware that there was no other chance for any other officer to get near Hitler, which he could do because he had to report to Hitler's headquarters and attend conferences there. This enabled him to get really near to Hitler and then to make the attempt, which he did on 20th July 1944. I was prepared since November 1943 because since March 1942 it was my particular job to try and establish contact in Madrid and Lisbon with the governments of the United States and England.
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MAJOR OTTO-ERNST REMER

Commander of the Berlin Guard Regiment, July 1944

The whole conspiracy was organised in a dilettante fashion. They had especially overlooked the fact that the German Army was fighting for Germany and for Europe and wanted to win the war. Every German knew that if Hitler was assassinated then the war would be lost and nobody could hinder the Russians to invade Europe. In addition to this the preparation of the putsch was insufficient. One had to know the mentality of the German Army and know that the overriding duty was to the oath of loyalty. Any putsch such as Stauffenberg's had to succeed in lulling Hitler because it was to him that the oath was sworn. This could not be achieved by cowardly placing a bomb in a corner – he should have had the courage to use a pistol and shoot Hitler. This is what a real man would have done and I would have respected him. On the contrary one of the main conspirators, General Erich Fellgiebel, who was in charge of suspending immediately the central news office in headquarters, when he heard that Hitler was alive went straight to the leader and congratulated him on his survival. These are things that I, as a soldier, cannot understand.

ALBERT SPEER

Those of
20th July plot I saw quite often. My job as Armaments Minister brought a weekly contact with them because they were all my clients in some way. When we discussed things they were very bitter, but never about how far they wanted to go; they were just showing me that organisation is very low, that many things could be done to make things more effective and so on. It was found out a few days later that there was a list of new government which was drafted by those who plotted. It was found I was Minister, in this new government, for Armament. Luckily enough behind my name was the question mark, which was proof that I was not involved in the plot. If Stauffenberg could have succeeded in killing Hitler, in my opinion things could have taken quite another course because when, for instance, in Vienna the gauleiter was taken over by an officer and a few soldiers and was arrested for a while, there was no coun-termeasure, they just behaved like sheep and let themselves be arrested, which I wouldn't have believed before. And the same thing happened in Paris where the whole of the Gestapo was arrested without taking any defence measures. So if Hitler would have been killed I think there would have been really a chance for the men who made the plot of 20th July to come through.

GRAND ADMIRAL KARL DÖNITZ

On 20th July 1944 I was at my post of command to the north of Berlin; towards noon I was called by telephone by my communication officer in Hitler's headquarters in the province of East Prussia. He told me that it was necessary that I should come as quickly as possible to Hitler's headquarters; the reason, why I should come, he did not tell me speaking by telephone. When I arrived by plane in the late afternoon I was instructed at once on the aerodrome what had happened. Who belonged to this Resistance organisation and which reason and project it had I did not know at this time. About my opinion which I have today, on this question, I have written in my book. There's no doubt that the persons who made this attack were morally right.