rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

SITZKRIEG IN THE WEST 593On October 18, Haider wrote down in his diary the main points of a talkhe had had with General Eduard Wagner, the Quartermaster General, who hadconferred with Hitler that day about the future of Poland. That future was tobe grim.We have no intention of rebuilding Poland . . . Not to be a modelstate by German standards. Polish intelligentsia must be preventedfrom establishing itself as a governing class. Low standard of livingmust be conserved. Cheap slaves . . .Total disorganization must be created! The Reich will give the GovernorGeneral the means to carry out this devilish plan.The Reich did.A brief account of the beginning of Nazi terror in Poland, as disclosed bythe captured German documents and the evidence at the various Nurembergtrials, may now be given. It was but a forerunner to dark and terrible deedsthat would eventually be inflicted by the Germans on all the conquered peoples.But from first to last it was worse in Poland than anyplace else. Here Nazibarbarism reached an incredible depth.Just before the attack on Poland was launched, Hitler had told his generalsat the conference on the Obersalzberg on August 22 that things would happen”which would not be to the taste of German generals” and he warned themthat they ”should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to theirmilitary duties.” He knew whereof he spoke. Both in Berlin and in Poland thiswriter soon was being overwhelmed with reports of Nazi massacres. So werethe generals. On September 10, with the Polish campaign in full swing, Haidernoted in his diary an example which soon became widely known in Berlin. Sometoughs belonging to an S.S. artillery regiment, having worked fifty Jews all dayon a job of bridge repairing, herded them into a synagogue and, as Haiderput it, ”massacred them.” Even General von Kuechler, the commander of theThird Army, who was later to have few qualms, refused to confirm the lightsentences of the court-martial meted out to the murderers – one year in prison– on the ground that they were too lenient. But the Army Commander in Chief,Brauchitsch, quashed the sentences altogether though not until Himmler hadintervened, with the excuse that they came under a ”general amnesty.”The German generals, upright Christians that they considered themselvesto be, found the situation embarrassing. On September 12 there was a meetingon the Fuehrer’s railroad train between Keitel and Admiral Canaris at whichthe latter protested against the atrocities in Poland. The lackey Chief of OKWcurtly replied that ”the Fuehrer has already decided on this matter.” If theArmy wanted ”no part in these occurrences it would have to accept the S.S.and Gestapo as rivals” – that is, it would have to accept S.S. commissars ineach military unit ”to carry out the exterminations.”I pointed out to General Keitel [Canaris wrote in his diary, whichwas produced at Nuremberg] that I knew that extensive executionswere planned in Poland and that particularly the nobility and theclergy were to be exterminated. Eventually the world would holdthe Wehrmacht responsible for these deeds. 777