Letters from Vienna #157
Letter to Horst von Wächter IV
Dear Horst,
Even if you were to appeal for clemency it would most probably fall on deaf ears; Gonzalo Lira’s arrest is likely due to the CIA (who are worried about Biden losing the upcoming election) rather than the Ukrainians. It is the Americans and not the Ukrainians who appoint Ukrainian judges and as the Ukrainians readily admit: they’re fighting a NATO proxy war, which has little to do with the real interests of the Ukraine.
It might surprise you to hear this but I remain firmly convinced that the campaign to defame your father and Gonzalo’s fate are intimately intertwined. In both cases: too few have shown “backbone”, “moral courage”, or “spoken out”. Above all else: both cases are indictments of a horribly corrupt, unjust and mendacious system. The very fact that I’m writing these letters (and doing this research) shows how corrupt the establishment (especially the media & academia) either has become or, perhaps, always was. How many historians or journalists know perfectly well that your father is innocent yet remain silent? How many lie or defame him?
Of course, one is confronted again and again with Shakespearean questions involving responsibility, power, and morality. Should one hold office in order to do good (and occasionally make compromises involving evil) or should one resign in disgust and clear the path for other, more malignant forces? Should one do more within the system or outside of it? How important is personal integrity? Can one be a “good person” in a world beset by so much evil? Should one speak the truth even if it means a possible death sentence? These are just a few of the issues your father was forced to deal with.
And one is confronted, again and again, with the enormity of the crimes involved, which defy one’s imagination. As Imre Kertész puts it: “But how does she (Hannah Arendt) explain Auschwitz, the special units, everyday life in the camp? This is where every historical, every scholarly explanation must fail. Even anti-Semitism hardly plays a role here. Here only one person torments the other, kills in droves, wallows in the stench of decaying flesh, here only corpses are burned by the hands of the half-dead and objects are sorted by warehouse workers; the world is dying at its core, far transcending history, reason, or science...”[1]
In order to throw more light on the question of your father’s actions I’ve decided to draw on the invaluable research of Sönke Neitzel, who provides one with an insight into the thoughts and experiences of the German officer corps at the time. This was the paradigm your father was working with and this was the paradigm which is essential to understand if one is to grasp the context, meaning and implications of his actions.
Interestingly enough: the name Krüger if not Katzmann does in fact crop up in one of Sönke Neitzel’s books: “Abgehört, Deutsche Generäle in Britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942-1945” (Eavesdropped, German generals in British captivity, 1942-1945). In Document 119 there’s a discussion between Generalleutnant Schaeffer, Generalmjor von Felbert, Generalmajor Bruhn and Generalleutnant Kittel in December 1944.
Felbert: Have you ever experienced places where the Jews were got rid of?
Kittel: Yes
Felbert: Was that carried out systematically?
Kittel: Yes.
Felbert: Women, children, everything?
Kittel: Everything. Terrible.
Felbert: Were they loaded onto trains?
Kittel: Yes, if only they were just loaded onto trains! I experienced things! I sent a man over and said: “I’m ordering you to stop this; I can’t listen to it any longer.” Well, for example in Latvia, near Dünaburg (where, in three phases in July, August and November 1941 around 14,000 Jews were killed), there were mass shootings of Jews. These were SS or SD. The SD was there with about fifteen men, and there were sixty Latvians who are known to be the most brutal people on earth. I’m lying in bed early on Sunday morning and I hear two volleys and then some small arms fire. I get up, go out, and say: “What’s the meaning of this shooting?” The orderly says to me: “Colonel, you have to go over there yourself, you’ll see something…” I got close and that was enough for me. Three hundred men were driven out of Dünaburg. They dug a pit, men and women. They dug a mass grave and then marched home. The next day they came back, men, women and children…They were stripped stark naked and the executioners put all their clothes in a heap. Then twenty women had to stand at the edge of the pit, naked, and were shot...
...
Bruhn:…All the hate and dislike is solely due to these murders, and I have to say that if you believe in divine justice at all…if you have five children, like me, then one or two of them ought be killed in this way...
...
Felbert: You mean that it all comes from Himmler?
Kittel: Of course. If someone at the top says: “Cattle will be exterminated”, then they all start running...
...
Kittel: I often sat with people all night long. “How did the Third Reich come about?”. I had the worst remorse as to whether one could still remain a soldier at all.
Felbert: You couldn’t stay a soldier at all in this state; something has to be done about it.
Schaefer: When you saw these murders in Dünaburg, back then, didn’t you have a superior?
Kittel: The Army Group.
Schaefer: You then came to give official lectures about the construction of fortifications, etc. – wasn’t such a position significant enough to report with an expression of horror?
Kittel: That’s what I told people.
Schaefer: How did our commanders-in-chief react to that?
Kittel: “We can’t do anything, it’s none of our business.” It’s a question of organization. In Poland, Governor General Dr. Frank, a legally minded man, said to me, very clearly: “If what I want is carried out here, then there’ll be no gangs in Poland. My power has its limits, that you know yourself.” It is as follows: Obergruppenfuhrer Koppe is State Secretary and an all-powerful policeman, with the rank of Commanding General. Now I said to myself, Koppe, he has the executive power in all of Poland under Frank. So, there was a silly question of jurisdiction. I go to the Koppe and say: “I have a case that affects your responsibility and also the responsibility of the Governor General.” He says: “The Governor General is not responsible. Himmler in Berlin is responsible. I’m subordinate to the Governor General in name only…I’m really subordinate to Himmler.” Koppe was the successor to Obergruppenfuhrer Krüger and Krüger did everything to Frank. If Frank felt any government action was necessary, then Krüger simply screwed it up for him…”[2]
Given that Himmler was in the pay of the Americans and Hitler was most probably working for the British (which is why he was able to escape to Argentina) it is fair to assume that the real object of the murderous policy was two-fold: old fashioned (eugenics driven) depopulation and the creation of Israel (by extermination of all the Jews who were suspected of being anti-Zionist).
The furtherance of Fascism is in full swing today. As Matthew Ehret puts it:
“Across the spectrum of post Warsaw Pact members absorbed into NATO, such as Lithuania, Estonia, Albania, Slovakia, and Latvia, Nazi collaborators of WWII have been glorified with statues, public plaques, monuments, and even schools, parks, and streets named after Nazis. Celebrating Nazi collaborators while tearing down pro-Soviet monuments has nearly become a pre-condition for any nation wishing to join NATO.”
“In Estonia, which joined NATO in 2004, the defense ministry-funded Erna Society has celebrated the Nazi Erna Saboteur group that worked with the Waffen SS in WWII with the Erna advance Guard being raised to official national heroes. In Albania, Prime Minister Edi Rama rehabilitated Nazi collaborator Midhat Frasheri, who deported thousands of Kosovo Jews to death camps.”
“In Lithuania, the pro-Nazi Lithuanian Activist Front leader Juozas Lukša who carried out atrocities in Kaunas was honored as a national hero by an act of Parliament which passed a resolution dubbing “the year 2021 as the year of Juozas Luksa-Daumantas”. In Slovakia, the ‘Our Slovakia Peoples Party’ led by neo-Nazi Marián Kotleba moved from the fringe to mainstream wining 10% of parliamentary seats in 2019.”[3]
Given that your father sought to hinder the Himmler directed genocide and later most probably refused to work for either the British or the Americans one can understand perfectly well why the Anglo-American Empire continues to hate and lie about him even today. The Anglo-American Empire doesn’t like independent-minded people, it prefers (Fascist) conformity (all beyond the bounds of such conformity is deemed “conspiracy theory”) as both Gonzalo Lira and your father found out to their cost.
[1] p.71 Ich – ein anderer (I – another), Imre Kertész
[2] pp.274-280 Abgehört, Deutsche Generäle in Britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942-1945, Sönke Neitzel