Memoirs of SS officer reveal Hitler's true Holocaust role
Inner-circle author describes Fuhrer as 'the greatest man that ever lived'
Friday October 30 2009
THE MEMOIRS of the last SS adjutant to Adolf Hitler are to be published in a move historians say could cast away the last shred of doubt over the Fuhrer's personal involvement in the Holocaust.
Fritz Darges died at the weekend aged 96 with instructions for the manuscript about his time spent at Hitler's side to be published once he was gone.
Darges was the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle and was present for all major conferences, social engagements and policy announcements for four years of the war.
Experts say his account of his time as Hitler's direct link to the SS could discount the claims of revisionists who have tried to say the German leader knew nothing of the extermination programme.
Right-wing historians have claimed the planning for the murder of six million Jews was carried out by Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief.
Mainstream historians believe it inconceivable that Hitler did not issue verbal directives about the killings in the presence of Darges. Other courtiers, such as Albert Speer, the armaments minister, and Josef Goebbels, the propaganda chief, had their diaries published after the war with no reference to hearing Hitler ordering the Final Solution.
Darges died on Saturday still believing in the man who engineered the Holocaust as "the greatest who ever lived". His memoirs will be published now in accordance with his will.
Promotion
Darges trained as an export clerk but joined the SS in April, 1933. His zeal for National Socialism soon earmarked him for promotion and by 1936 he was the senior adjutant to Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary.
"I first met the Fuhrer at the Nuremberg party rally in 1934," Darges said in an interview given to a German newspaper shortly before his death at his home in Celle. "He had a sympathetic look, he was warm-hearted. I rated him from the off."
After serving in an SS panzer division, he was promoted on to the Fuhrer's personal staff, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Knights Cross. Much of his time after 1942 was either spent at Hitler's eastern headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg, East Prussia, or at his holiday home, the Berghof, in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria.
"It was a very familial atmosphere at the Berghof," he recalled. "One time we went off to Italy together with Eva Braun and her sister Gretel in an open-topped car.
"As adjutant I was responsible for his day-to-day programme. I must, and was, always there for him, at every conference, at every inter-service liaison meeting, at all war conferences. I must say I found him a genius."
But Darges misjudged the "warm-hearted" Hitler deeply during one conference at Rastenburg on July 18, 1944 -- two days before a bomb plot nearly succeeded in killing him. During a strategy conference, a fly began buzzing around the room, landing on Hitler's shoulder and on the surface of a map.
Irritated, Hitler ordered Darges to "dispatch the nuisance". Darges suggested whimsically that, as it was an "airborne pest", the job should go to the Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below.
Enraged, Hitler dismissed Darges on the spot. "You're for the eastern front!" he yelled. But despite the dramatic end to his time with Hitler, he would still hear nothing against "the boss".
"We all dreamed of a greater German empire," he said. "That is why I served him and would do it all again now," said the man who became a car salesman after the war. (©Daily Telegraph, London)
- Allan Hall in Berlin
Irish Independent
