Heinrich Kittel


Heinrich Kittel was a German general during World War II who commanded the 462nd Infantry Division. As a prisoner of war, he was interned at Trent Park, where his conversations with fellow inmates were surreptitiously recorded by the British intelligence.
Appointed commander of the 462nd Infantry Division on 8 November 1944, he led it during the Battle of Metz until his wounding in action on 22 November 1944. Made a prisoner of war when the field hospital he was in was overrun by American forces, he was held in captivity until 1947.
According to Soldaten: Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Kittel's transcripts illustrate his culpable passivity while observing mass executions of Jewish men, women and children near Daugavpils in Latvia without intervening at all despite his rank: "Kittel : 'They seized three-year-old children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol and then threw them in. I saw that for myself. One could watch it; the SD had roped the area off and the people were standing watching from about 300 m. off. The Latvians and the German soldiers were just standing there, looking on'." Kittel "spoke from the perspective of an outraged observer, but as a high-ranking officer he would have had considerable opportunities to intervene in the course of events".
Kittel's recorded conversations provide very clear examples of the widespread self-deception and ambivalence among German prisoners of war about the Nazi war-machine. On the one hand, his concerns about the massacres were only that they were being carried out in plain sight, and that the bodies might pollute the water supply. On the other hand, he called the perpetrators "nauseating" and said "I keep silent about a great many things; they are too awful."

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