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Volume IV · Page 530
| the figures were exaggerated, even falsified.
Yet, when Blume was asked why, since he was so morally opposed to the Fuehrer
Order, he did not avoid compliance with the order by reporting that he had
killed Jews, even though he had not, he replied that he did not consider it
worthy of himself to lie. Thus, his sense of honor as to statistical correctness surpassed his revulsion about cold bloodedly shooting down innocent people. In spite of this reasoning on the witness stand, he submitted an affidavit in which it appears he did not have scruples against lying when stationed in Athens, Greece. In this affidavit he states that the Kriminalkommissar [Criminal police commissioner] ordered him to shoot English commando troops engaged in Greek partisan activity. Since Blume was inwardly opposed to the Commissar Decree as he pointed out, he suggested to his superior that the order to kill these Englishmen could be circumvented by omitting from the report the fact that the Englishmen were carrying civilian clothes with them. Although Blume insisted at the trial that the Fuehrer Order filled him with revulsion, yet he announced to the firing squad after each shooting of ten victims — |
"As such, it is no job for German men and soldiers to shoot defenseless people, but the Fuehrer has ordered these shootings because he is convinced that these men otherwise would shoot at us as partisans or would shoot at our comrades, and our women and children were also to be protected if we undertake these executions. This we would have to remember when we carried out this order." |
| It is to be noted here that Blume does not
say that the victims had committed any crime or had shot at anybody, but that
the Fuehrer had said that he, the Fuehrer, was convinced that these people
"would shoot" at them, their women and children, 2,000 miles away. In other
words, the victims were to be killed because of the possibility that they might
at some time be of some danger to the Fuehrer and the executioners. Blume says
that he made this speech to ease the feelings of the men, but in effect he was
convincing them that it was entirely proper to kill innocent and defenseless
human beings. If he was not in accord with the order, he at least could have
refrained from propagandizing his men on its justness and reasonableness, and
exhortation which could well have persuaded them into a zestful performance of
other executions which might otherwise have been avoided or less completely
fulfilled. Blume's claims about revulsion to the Fuehrer Order are not borne out by his statement -- |
"I was also fully convinced and am so even now, that Jewry in |
