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In World War II, German Generals Knew about the Annihilation of Jews
(Ha'aretz) Ayelett Shani - Avner Gershony is a doctoral student at the University of Haifa. His dissertation deals with the stories of nine top Wehrmacht generals during the last year and a half of World War II. British intelligence recorded conversations of German officers who were taken prisoner and brought to an estate in London, which was completely wired with eavesdropping devices. The transcripts were inaccessible until 1996. These generals are veteran army personnel who were already officers during World War I. They are not a product of Nazi education. Yet there is really not a great difference between the ambitions of the kaiser or of the Second Reich (1871-1919), and those of the Third Reich. The worldview of these generals is imperialistic. Hitler's ambitions suit them: to expand to the east, to raise Germany to the status of a superpower. As long as Hitler was winning, they had no problem with him. They were all antisemites in their worldview. They simply believed totally in the anti-Jewish propaganda. We can glean from their conversations that they were fully aware of what was happening on the ground. They speak openly about the annihilation of Jews, about the murder of local populations in the East. They knew everything. Some of them were even responsible for it. There's a conversation in which one of them, an amateur photographer, recalls having been invited by his comrade to view executions of Jews. He tells him with the height of nonchalance: Listen, we usually shoot them in the morning, but if you come, we'll do it around noon. There's another general, who oversaw the murders, and he actually describes how children are taken and shot in the back of the neck.