German POWs on Homicidal Gassing in Secretly Recorded Conversations

The British and the US secretely recorded private conversations of some of their German POWs during World War 2. Extracts of the transcripts were published in Tapping Hitler's Generals and Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. In the following passages, the POWs talked about homicidal gassing carried out by the Germans.

Rudolf Müller on 22 March 1945:

MÜLLER: I was in front of the court martial because of refusal to obey an order in Russia. I was maintenance sergeant, because our maintenance sergeant was killed in action, and I was the second in the workshop. And I had to convert a truck 8, put on a rubber cover. I didn't know what it was about and did it. The vehicle was sent away and provided to the local commandant. The thing was over for us. The driver came back and he was white as chalk in the face. I asked him, what's wrong, and he said, he won't forget what happened to him today. He said, they loaded civilians on the vehicle. They stuck in the exhaust, the vehicle was closed and the exhaust was directed inside. Next to me sits a SS-Leutnant, pistol on his lap, and he gave me the order to drive! Well, he was 18 years old, what should he have done, he had to drive. He drove half an hour, then they came to a pit. There were corpses inside, chlorine in between. He had to drive to it with the back, then opened the tailgate and all fall out. Dead from the exhaust gas. The next day I receive the same order to provide the vehicle to the local commandant. I said, the vehicle will not be provided. I was sent to the court martial, refusal to obey an order. They deliberately loaded people on it and killed them with exhaust gases.

(Neitzel & Welzer, Soldaten, German edition, p. 183, my translation)

[?] Heimer in December 1942:

HEIMER: There was a large collection site, the Jews were taken out of the houses and sent to the train station. They could take food for two to three days with them and then they were brought into the train, the windows and doors were made tight. They were driven to Poland, shortly before the arrival they've blown in some odorless gas, you know, carbon or nitrogen gas. Then they were undressed and buried. They did this with thousands of Jews! (laughing)

(Neitzel & Welzer, Soldaten, German edition, p. 206-207, my translation)

Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma and Gerhard Bassenge in December 1943:

THOMA: In the paper today there are details of the mass poisonings, that gas business. I know it's true, because the people, who did it, told me about it.

BASSENGE: I don't know, but I presume it is ... 100 per cent correct.

THOMA: Yes, I heard of it from a man who had to do it. It was SS men and Gestapo youths who rounded up the Jews and so on, and as they had no technical experts amongst their own numbers, chemists who were in the gas department of the Ordnance Branch, had to work with them. One man told me himself with horror that that time in RUSSIA was the most appalling time of his life; I said I wouldn't have done it.

(Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals, p. 179)

Hans Schäffer and Heinrich Kittel in December 1944:

KITTEL: In UPPER SILESIA they simply slaughtered the people systematically. They were gassed in a big hall.

SCHAEFER: When was that done?

KITTEL: Up till the spring, then it was stopped.

(Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals, p. 211)

Edwin Graf von Rothkirch and Bernhard Ramcke in March 1945:

ROTHKIRCH: All the gassing institutions are in POLAND, near Lvov. I know that there are large gassing centres there but I don't know any more. Let me tell you though, the gassings are by no means the worst.

RAMCKE: I first heard about all those things here in this PW camp.

ROTHKIRCH: I'm an 'Administration General' and the people here have already interrogated me. It was near Lvov. Actually we washed our hands of it all because these atrocities took place in a military area. At Lvov in particular I was always receiving reports of those shootings and they were so bestial that I wouldn't care to tell you about them.

RAMCKE: What happened?

ROTHKIRCH: To start with the people dug their own graves, then ten Jews took up their position by them and then the firing squad arrived with tommy-guns and shot them down, and they fell into the grave. Then came the next lot and they, too, were paraded in front of them and then fell into the grave and the rest waited a bit until they were shot. Thousands of people were shot. Afterwards they gave that up and gassed them. Many of them weren't dead and a layer of earth was shovelled on in between. They had packers there who packed the bodies in, because they fell in too soon. The SS did that, they were the people who packed the corpses in.

(Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals, p. 220)

Friedrich August Freiherr von Heydte and Eberhard Wildermuth in March 1945:

HEYDTE: There's another camp which is even worse than LUBLIN,- it's in CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Half-a-million people have been put to death there for certain. I know that all the Jews from BAVARIA were taken there. Yet the camp never became over-crowded.

WILDERMUTH: Yes, I've heard of that too.

HEYDTE: But I don't only know that all the Jews from BAVARIA were taken there, I know that all the Jews from AUSTRIA were taken there, and still the camp wasn't over-crowded.

WILDERMUTH: From all over GERMANY. It appears that most of the Jews from GERMANY were either sent to LUBLIN or to that place.

HEYDTE: I was also told that the Jews are simply gassed in a gas-chamber there. They gassed mental defectives too.

WILDERMUTH: Yes, I know. I got to know that for a fact in the case of NUREMBERG; my brother is doctor at an institution there. I've seen one of those transports myself. The people knew where they were being taken.

HEYDTE: Yes, and then they've also done it with old people.

WILDERMUTH: Not with old people!

HEYDTE: Homes for old people! Yes, that is so.

(Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals, p. 222)