Lawrence Sellin: Hitler's Generals and American Politiciansy

At the end of World War Two, German army generals denied any knowledge of the Holocaust and the massive atrocities committed on the Eastern front. They were lying. Between 1942 and 1945, British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) recorded no fewer than 64,427 private conversations between captured German generals and other senior officers while held in the comfortable accommodations of Trent Park house in the north London suburb of Cockfosters. As it turned out, the conversations were only of limited usefulness toward the conduct of the war, but they did supply a wealth of information on the nature of the Nazi regime and the actions and opinions of the highest ranking officers in the German military. Sonke Neitzel, a professor at the University of Manz, has edited a volume of key extracts from the tape-recorded discussions, "Tapping Hitler's Generals. Transcripts of Secret Conversations 1942-45." Over the three years during which the recordings were made, the mass murder of Jews, the shooting of hostages, the burning down of churches filled with victims and a range of other war crimes against Russian and Ukrainian civilians are acknowledged and described. There is no longer any doubt about the complicity of the German general staff in some of the most horrendous atrocities of the 20th century. Why did they do it? Contrary to the conventional wisdom, many German officers favored the rise of Adolf Hitler because he promised to increase their own power and prestige. Not surprisingly, the subsequent reluctance of German generals to challenge Hitler's atrocities stemmed largely, not from fear, but from the risk of losing that power and prestige.