What the German generals knew
Video Overview & Insights
Trent Park is a country house located between Enfield and Barnet in north London, one can go to it via the underground station at Cockforsters and from there it is a walk of around 1km. During the second world war, Trent Park was used by the British government as a special camp for high-ranking prisoners of war . The rooms were bugged by the British secret service . It was assumed that in the relaxed atmosphere of this camp, where officers could enjoy the privelidges that they might have assumed came with their rank and waited on by British staff, they might talk more freely.
My father was gamekeeper to Mrs. Gubbay at Trent Park in the 50's & 60's. She inherited the estate from her husband David Gubbay who in turn had inherited it from Sir Philip Sassoon. She had apparently sold the estate to Enfield Council. The house and grounds being turned over to a teachers training college. The remainder of the estate was agricultural under the control of Mrs.Gubbay until her passing. Mrs. Gubbay used to go round the estate cottages once a year to ask the mothers what they might want for their children. The items she bought being handed out at the children's Christmas party she gave. There was no formal shooting, my father undertaking some basic pest control and assisting with the farming. The woodlands were given over to us feral kids !. There were no external signs of its wartime past as far as I can recall.
During the course of the war, eighty-four generals and a number of lower-ranking staff officers passed through Trent Park. Some valuable information which may have effected the course of the war was gleaned from their conversations but as far as this presentation is concerned, I am just going to concentrate on the war crimes that were discussed there and in particular how this dispels the myth – if it still exists – of the clean Wehrmacht and the cowardice of those officers who did nothing to stop National Socialist crimes. The archives were not opened until 1996 and the resulting conversations show that some of the officers should have been put on trial for crimes that they committed.
The Trent Park operation was the idea of Thomas Kendrick, who had headed the the British Secret Intelligence Service in Vienna in 1939.
Yes, and what about the members of the Allied High Command, who were made aware of the Holocaust by 1944, and did nothing to stop it, or alleviate the sufferings of it's victims. The Jewish Underground had smuggled the information on the Nazi extermination camps out, by means of the Vatican. They even refused to bomb the special trains carrying the Jews to the camps, and then pretended to be shocked, when the camps were finally overrun!
He found a Scottish aristocrat, Lord Aberfeldy, who was to be the prisoners’ welfare officer. He was a cousin of the King George VI and his role was to befriend the German generals. He let them know that his cousin, the king, was insistent that the captured officers were treated in accordance with their status. To this end he took them out on day trips shopping to the places like Harrods and out for meals at high end places such as the Savoy Hotel and Simpsons in the Strand in London. Part of the aim of this was not only to gain their confidence but also lull the prisoners into talking about subjects with their fellow officers. Lord Aberfeldy however was not a cousin of the king, nor was he a lord for that matter, he was an MI19 agent named Ian Munro.
However the situation suited the prisoners too.
A disgusting group of humans,
For the captured officers, life in Trent Park had its perks. The rations were simple but probably much better than their families were getting in Germany and they had the benefit of British whisky. There was a large library, a lounge and they could go for walks in the extensive grounds where the English King Henry IV had hunted some 550 years earlier. This all may have been conducise to loosening their toungues whilst talking to each other.
After WW2, most former generals refrained from self-critical reflection on their role in the “Third Reich”. They started the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht", the professional army had nothing to do with the regime, they said. They only learned about the atrocities committed by the SS and the Einsatzgruppen after the war. However the recordings from Trent Park show something completely different and they did indeed talk about the "commissar order", the massacre of the Jewish population, the cruel treatment of Russian prisoners of war, about the shooting of hostages and the plundering of the occupied territories.
Another great presentation. Seems to me there is no such thing as a "clean Wehrmacht.". My reading has led me to believe this is revisionist history meant to serve the guilty.
At the beginning of the war, there were few German prisoners there and those that were held there were of comparatively low rank. However bugged conversations of prisoners held there allowed the British to learn of how Luftwaffe planes managed to find cities in the dark through use of radio signals which the planes literally flew through. Once that secret was out, then all the British had to do was to jam the signals. From 1942, generals and other high ranking individuals fell into British hands and it was these that revealed that some knew a lot about Nazi atrocities.
Major General Walter Bruns recounted in great detail how he had witnessed a mass shooting near Riga:
I wonder too about Officers in the Field & what they knew. I can refer to one event. My Grandfather who was a WWII veteran himself had a friend who fought in Normandy. I believe his friend was part of The third Canadian Infantry Division and his Unit was The North Nova Scotia Highlanders. If I'm right they were supposed to take The Carpiquet Airfield outside of Caen. They Ran into the 12th Armored SS-HitlerJugend under The Command of Kurt Meyer. The Canadians including my Grandfather's friend Reg Keeping of The North Novies were captured and taken behind The Abbey of Ardenne and Executed By The 12th SS. Some say Meyer knew nothing about it happening But other stories suggest he gave the order
“The pits were 24 metres long and about three metres wide, the Jews had to lie down like sardines in a can, heads toward the middle. Six submachine gunners were above them and they shot them in the neck. When I arrived, the pit was already full, so the living had to lie down on the dead and then they got the shot; so that space in the pit was used to the maximum. They had to be correctly layered. Before that, however, their possessions were stolen. That Sunday, there were three pits. The queue of people was 11 – 12 km long, and it was gradually advancing - it was a queue of death."
Walter Bruns was captured at the end of the war, so this conversation took place once the details of the Holocaust were known, however we must ask why he continued to serve the National Socialist regime until the very end.
Most interested in Meyers story.
PBS documentary : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWT4h1ie_nM
https://www.facebook.com/historysite/
Amazing research, incredibly done. We have to get you more subscribers and watchers of your videos.
Please consider supporting me on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/alanheath
I don't believe that cowardice is the correct term to describe those wehrmacht officers who did not speak out when confronted by nazi atrocities,rather,self-preservation seems the more likely motivating factor.
More User Perspectives
War is Evil and Stupid;-
Putin and George W Bush never learnt this lesson! And Trump has attacked the core of USA's democracy with his 6th January attack on the White House!
My father fought in WW2 for the Great British Empire and he fought the Italians and Germans and Austrians etc and yes he was ordered to take no Italians or German's prisoner! His Battalion was probably the most highly decorated Battalion in the British Empire; My father was in the 1st Echelon, 20th Battalion of the 2nd NZEF.....a number of VC's as well as suffering 397 KIA.
My dad was wounded in Operation Crusader, taken POW and was treated exceptional well once the German Medics took over! Rommel visited the Hospital Tent and had a chat to Kippenberger who was the Head Man of the NZ Division!
My Dad later escaped with Major General Howard Kippenberger and 16 others!
His other fellow 20th Battalions POW's were treated like shit by the Italians and were happy to have been handed over to Austrians and Germans.... the Italians treated the New Zealanders like Shite.
War is a dirty Business! And Putin Hasn't learnt this yet! Russia, must be a slow learning country!
The Luftwaffe was well known to deliberately attack columns of civillian refugees in Poland during the invasion of that country. A blatant war crime.
@thepub245They knew everything. At least one spoke out against it and lost his job. Most went along with it. Some only raised objections when the murder sprees directly affected their own operations. Another complained that the many corpses would poison the water table and therefore was a danger to his troops of getting diseases.
@thepub245So, it is as we suspected: not only the SS but the entire Heer as well was a criminal organization.
Yes, it probably was the right thing to do, not using the Trent Park information in war crimes trials. Joseph Stalin was not a well man, mentally. He may very well have tried to expand the Soviet empire all the way to the Atlantic.
Even the German citizens understood much of the extent of the atrocities. The rotation of the Wehrmacht and SS, along with the wounded, certainly brought information back home.The daylight death marches down German streets in broad daylight was common. People choose to live in bliss. The heer was instrumental in the atrocities as they supported the einsatzgruppen or vice versa....and commited mass murder. Babi Yar is a clear example if this collaboration. Albeit, no better evidence then Barbarossa Decree, Nacht und Nebel. Schrecklichkeit is another great example. Damn...even the July 20th plotters like Von Stauffenberg were enthusiastic supporters of Lebensraum and enslaving the Poles to..."put the Poles under the whip"...as he stated in a letter home.
@thewwiiprofessor5808Vidal Sassoon if you don't look good we don't look good!
@jackrosario9990Shocking.
@clarkewiI've never heard of British whisky. Is it like the Scottish stuff?
@paulstewart6293As always people mention the Jews and forget the others.
@SkuliBragasonIt's called: " close miking"....ok ? Could not tolerate the annoying room reverb. Get a more direct signal on the voice with a lavalier mic,or, other solution like an " out of frame" mic on a boom, with a " dead cat " noise muffler attached.
@johnfoster5353 minutes in and i’m thinking the upper classes of the world were united despite the war on the bucket of crabs peoples.
@mygreatbigfoot1679In lieu of the grift scheme many of the generals, especially senior field generals. The type of "war" that was going to be committed was going to be one of brutal conquest and they were slated to profit directly for it. I think Heinz Guderian toured Poland before the war so he could select where to make his future estate, read that somewhere...? The bulk of them would have entertained anything.
@donsteitz6034The fear of Russia constantly makes the west do terrible things, Russia notified the west about Nazi crime they did nothing about it.
@vladimirthenailer2035The basic premise of national (racial) socialism was that only the aryan race was capable of building an advanced society and that, of all other races, the jewish race represented the greatest threat to society's development. According to the Nazi view, it was not a crime, but a duty to eliminate the jewish race, since their very existence could dilute the Aryan bloodline to the extent it could jeopardize Aryan supremacy and society. For a nazi, the elimination of "inferior" races was about as controversial as a farmer using selective breeding to improve his herd. Of course they were complicit.
@larryclemens1850Secrets of the dead is an awesome series. The one called searching for nazi scientists is excellent. Thats the approximate title. Its about the ALSOS operation at the end of the war.
@johnwright291There are color films taken by George Stevens of the nazi officer who signed the surrender of paris. Its a quite extensive film showing him being protected by mobbing parisians who wanted to lynch him.
@johnwright291Very interesting video, thanks! I didn't know that it wasn't used for war crime trials. BTW, the Germans also bugged places, like a Berlin brothel frequented by many of the German generals. I like the Soviet WW2 Spy TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring, every episode has Nazi bugged rooms in it!
@msgfrmdaactionman3000Judea declares war on Germany
@GriefTouristTrent Park now apartments/flats
@71ibanezStalin could advance? Churchill and Roosevelt started a war to remove a dictator and wound up handing all of Eastern Europe to one on historys greatest butchers. Hitler killed millions but far more people perished at the hands of communists. This misguided quest for social justice has cost the lives of more than 100 million people. The bloodbath continues today.
@joelex7966Love the artwork!!!
@townfanjohnWe didn't hang nearly anywhere enough kraut bastard Nazi war criminals.
@danwallach8826The guilty do a lot of squirming. And if the"government" ordered you to massacre people, the squirming then becomes more ridiculous. They treated women and children like vermin.
@heaterpistol6067i have always been pissed at the sainting of Rommel. how could he possibly not know?
@albertangeloro5832I'm guessing that transcriptions of recorded conversations exist in archives, but I wonder if they still have the original recordings?
@pauldurkee4764I have always thought that its kind of a stretch to believe that the german generals didn't suspect that the rooms might be bugged.
@johnwright291The General at the end of this video was right in saying they have sinned
All those who have participated in the evil acts of murder have their place in hell reserved.
Interesting to see how nazi fan-boys are doing their best to justify what the Germans did by digging out atrocities by the Allies. They fail to tell how this justifies what the Germans did!
What the Germans did was systematic and carried out on what can only be described at an industrial scale. There was nothing that the Allies that can even remotely be compared to the crimes of the Germans. but this does not bother nazi fan-boys.
Were the Germans the only guilty people of atrocities committed against humanity? From the time Christopher Columbus sailed out of Europe to explore distant lands what were the other Nations of Europe doing to the Natives in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America? It is rather ironic to see the Germans being singled out for Genocidal Crimes when the accusing people were as guilty or more in other theaters of war. What happened to the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans was not very different to the fate of Jews. They were all wiped out. But how many know of these Crimes against Humanity.
@senakaweeraratna741Much of the blame for that so-called Final Solution horror, is Henry Ford himself. The Fuhrer loved the anti-Semitic car maker, and wanted to go even further than to publish hateful periodicals like the idiot Ford did.
@williamfurman7498Nothing new here. Narrator seems to be struggling.
@mikhailiagacesa3406They talk about this very topic on a episode of "secrets of the Dead" very interesting.
@JohnSmith-cw4veYou mention "Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe" when you really mean "Heer [the German army] and Luftwaffe" as the Luftwaffe was part of the Wehrmacht [the German armed forces]
@daffyduk77Most went along with it.
@mth469Great job!
@roymartin500"Wir haben es nicht gewusst....."
@georgewillems32Of course they all knew what was happening. After all, they were generals. It is also clear that the English knew about the Holocaust very early on, like even before 1941. To their minds, they were soldiers, and had a job to do. The thought that what happen to the Jews was no concern of theirs.
@peace-nowExcellent work, as always. Well done
@daveanderson3805Good post seen the documentary 👍
@lablackzedIt wasn't influenza it was early AIDS
@xys7536After defeating the national socialists, using them to combat the international socialists, was the rational thing to do....
@marcboblee1863Thanks for the upload
@BryanWesleyWilliams