MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) published for the first time a testimony by a Wehrmacht general about Nazi Germany’s wide-spread war crimes on the territory of the Soviet Union.
The general’s testimony publication has been timed for the 80th anniversary of the start of the Red Army’s largest strategic offensive in Byelorussia (Operation Bagration) during the Soviet Union’s 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.
Major General Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff commanded a regiment in German Army Group Center from the start of the war, was commandant of Mogilev and the Mogilev fortified area from March 1944 and was captured together with his headquarters by Soviet troops on June 28, 1944.
In mid-July 1944, he was among 19 Wehrmacht generals captured during the Byelorussian offensive who led a column of German prisoners-of-war across Moscow (the Parade of the Defeated, also called Operation Great Waltz).
"Decorated with medals and wearing a peaked cap, there walked bulky and broad-shouldered Major General Erdmannsdorff. He kept looking around fearfully whenever a whistle was heard in the crowd or he would flinch and draw his head into his shoulders when a woman shouted curses without restraining herself," Soviet novelist Boris Polevoy wrote in the article: "They Saw Moscow" in the Pravda newspaper on July 19, 1944.
The FSB published for the first time an archived protocol of the questioning of Erdmannsdorff in Minsk on December 24, 1945. When asked by an investigator about how he viewed Hitler’s aggression against the USSR, Erdmannsdorff replied: "As a big crime." As the general said, firstly, Germany breached the non-aggression pact with the USSR, "secondly, the German government deceived the German people and the world public about the Soviet Union’s alleged preparations for an attack on Germany and the alleged amassment of troops in this regard on the border with Germany."
He further said that "the Hitlerite government made preparations for the invasion for a long time and secretly concentrated a large amount of troops on the border with the Soviet Union."
"Finally, I consider the very method of conducting the war on the entire territory of the Soviet Union, including Byelorussia, as criminal," the captured German general said. He pointed to "the atrocious treatment of prisoners-of-war actually leading to their physical elimination," an all-out extermination of the Jewish population, the mass destruction of cities, villages and industrial enterprises on the occupied territory, the large-scale deportation of Soviet citizens for forced labor in Germany and also their extermination under the guise of the fight against partisans, the exportation of valuables, food and equipment to Germany.
During the detailed questioning, Erdmannsdorff said that he had personally issued orders following instructions from his superiors on gathering young Soviet citizens for their deportation to Germany for forced labor, orders on punitive measures against civilians due to the activity of partisans, the execution of the order received on June 24, 1942 "on making sweeping arrests, shooting Communists on a large scale" and taking inventory of the property seized at enterprises for its subsequent exportation to Germany.
Hitler’s order on eliminating Red Army commissars was brought to the notice of Wehrmacht commanders of regiments several days before Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. The Erdmannsdorff testimony shows that Wehrmacht troops only did not receive an order on the extermination of the Jews because, as he put it, "all the Germans believed that 'every Jew carried his death sentence without a date in his pocket.'"
Mogilev fortified area
Separately, the captured German general said that in creating the Mogilev fortified area on Hitler’s order, he received "a written command" from Army Group Center Commander Field Marshal Busch "on the construction of the Mogilev fortress, pursuant to which … he was ordered to destroy a considerable part of Mogilev." The construction of the fortified area implied involving the entire able-bodied population of the city and its outskirts for small portions of food. Incapacitated people - the sick, the elderly and children - and all the rest of the population were evacuated to the right bank of the Dnieper River from the territory that the Soviet Army was due to take. As Erdmannsdorff admitted, they were not provided with food and all the necessary items and were located close to the fortified area, as a result of which they would inevitably come under Soviet artillery fire upon the Red Army’s advance and under German artillery fire upon the retreat of German troops.
Execution at Minsk hippodrome
Erdmannsdorff testified the following about his personal participation in war crimes: "In fulfilling orders by 56th Infantry Division Commander Lieutenant General Oven, I issued an order to my subordinate commanders to execute captured Red Army commissars and arrest Communists."
"As a result, in the period of June 22, 1941 - September 1941, the subordinates of my regiment shot one Red Army commissar and arrested about 600 Communists - Soviet civilians, of whom 20 individuals were shot dead allegedly upon their attempt to escape and put up resistance. The other Communists were … handed over to the field gendarmerie and also shot dead," the captured German general said.
"For the purpose of intimidating Soviet citizens, on my order, Soviet citizens were arrested, imprisoned in camps and forcibly sent to Germany for hard labor," the captured German general said in his testimony.
"I personally approved 120-125 death penalties issued by secret field police on Soviet citizens having relations with partisans. All of them were shot dead while their corpses were burned." Also, as the captured German general admitted, several villages whose names he did not remember were destroyed on his orders.
During his trial on January 15-29, 1946 in Minsk, Major General Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff was sentenced to death for war crimes. He was publicly hanged at the Minsk hippodrome on January 30, 1946.