HITLER’S ERRORS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 70, 8 January 1947, Page 5

HITLER’S ERRORS

VON MAKENSEN’S TESTIMONY BLUNDER OF RUSSIAN ATTACK If Neville Chamberlain were alive today he would be heartened by the opinions of Colonel-General Aberhard von Mackensen, 64 year old son of Germany’s outstanding soldier in the First World War.

Munich, according to von Mackensen, provided an ideal formula for peace in Europe. But Hitler, greedy and dishonest, made the first of his three cardinal strategic mistakes in reaching out for Czechoslovakia after he had solemnly promised to be satisfied with Sudetenland.

An old school soldier in the purest Prussian tradition, Mackensen was discharged from the German Army in 1944 following a court martial in which he had been accused of making seditious utterances.

Small, wizened and hungry looking, he lives in a two-room flat and works as a common labourer for a German construction firm.

“Everyone must work,” he says. “After so many active years in the Army, I cannot sit idle. But, apart from soldiering I have no trade and can do nothing with my hands that requires skill or training.” Last winter the General volunteered to cut wood for fuel in the Grunewald, a park now almost denuded of timber. But after three months of working in the cold he had a heart attack and was forced to find less strenuous employment. Keitel The “Lackey”

Von Mackensen, despite the lustre of his name, never held an important field command in the war which, he said, should never have bcem fought. He, brushed off question about younger pciitical generals ’who led the German Army in its losing fight. But his reticence vanished momentarily at the mention of Keitel. “It was not for nothing that we called him La Keitel (lackey).” Hitler’s greatest mistake was to attack Russia, he said. As a professional soldier, Mackensen has a high regard for such Russian commanders as Zhukov and Rokossovsky and for the fighting qualities of the Soviet infantryman. He professed to be less well-informed about Anglo-American strategy but added: “If Allied generalship had not been first-rate you would not be interviewing me here today in this broken city.”

According to Mackensen, the Chetniks of the late Colonel Mihailovich and later Tito’s partisans were a persistent drain on the fighting effectiveness on the Wehmacht. Hitler’s third great mistake, he said, was to calculate on Yugoslavia’s passive submission. “It was criminal folly to invade Yugoslavia and to count on a bloodless occupation when the decision to invade the Soviet Union had already been taken,” he said. Resources rather than men tip the balance in any war, Mackensen declared. It should therefore have been plain to the German High Command that victory was impossible with both Russia and the United States as enemies. The True Value of Armies

Armies should be the instruments of national foreign policy, he said. But the ideal army would further the national interest without going to war. Its mere existence, reputation and deployment should be sufficient in Mackensen’s opinion. “They speak of a ‘fleet in being’,” he said. “Why not armies ‘in being?’ Professional soldiers know how inhuman war can be. No true professional soldier could have advocated going to war in 1938 when the major aim had already been achieved at Munich by diplomatic means.”

Asked whether he had read Secretary of State James F. Byrnes’ Stuttgart speech outlining American policy toward Germany, Mackensen said: “It would be an understatement if I said I ha'd read the speech. The truth is I studied it word by word. It gave me the first glimmer of hope.”