I liked to shoot women pushing prams": Secret Nazi tapes shocking Germany
Horrific new transcripts reveal ordinary soldiers and airmen bragging about their role in the Hiler's atrocities
Game: 
A Luftwaffe boss reveals shooting children was a sport (Image: Getty)
IT wasn’t their fault, has been the lame excuse. Ordinary German soldiers had nothing to do with the atrocities committed by Hitler and his hardcore Nazi henchmen.
But now a disturbing – and at times horrifyingly graphic – new book has laid to rest the myth that only the likes of the SS and Gestapo were responsible for war crimes and acts of rape, murder and genocide.
And the German people have been forced into reassessing their past.
Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs, which is published in English for the first time next week, contains shocking transcripts of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen condemning themselves from their own mouths.
We are printing some of them here to highlight how widespread the bloodlust was among German troops.
British intelligence hid microphones among POWs at Trent Park detention centre in North London, captured every boast, offhand remark and sick joke about the killing of children and new mothers, women being raped and the mass extermination of Jews.
The transcripts from tape recordings of 13,000 inmates over four years, form the most unique and bleak look inside the mind of war-time German forces ever published. Before the book by historians Soenke Neitzel and Harald Welzer came out in Germany, people there assumed that their fathers and grandfathers did not have blood on their hands.
Monster: Hitler's role is well known ( Image: PA)
But now it has become clear how the Nazi regime dehumanised so many of their own troops, they are taking nothing for granted.Soldiers speaking of the “fun” and “pure enjoyment” of killing civilians and fleeing troops litter 150,000 pages of transcripts.
And while Germany still remembers the mass rapes when the Russians later invaded their homeland, it is clear they, too, were guilty of the same terrible crime.
When the German POWs began to talk about their own atrocities in Russia – where 27 million Soviet citizens were butchered – counsellors were called in to give support to the translators.
In the recordings one junior German officer boasted in October 1944 about what he and his men did to a woman they thought was a Russian spy…
clobbered her on the a*** with a pistol, then all eight of us f***** her, then we threw her outside and shot at her. And as she lay there, we threw grenades at her. Every time one of them landed near her body, she screamed.”
From the tapes British intelligence learned how difficult the SS killing squads in Russia found it to shoot children.
At first they believed this could have been a moral dilemma. Then one day they listened into a conversation which revealed the real problem... the children would not stay still.
Intelligence officers who devised what became informally known at Trent Park as Operation Eavesdrop, soon began to realise the material they gathered was of limited military value but gave them a deep understanding of the psyche of the enemy.
And the transcripts also reveal the holocaust of the Jews was widely known about among Germany’s 20 million servicemen. In one recording, POW Major General Walter Bruns is heard recalling a “typical Jewish action” he witnessed in Russia…
BRUNS: “The trenches were 24 metres long and roughly three metres wide. They had to lie like sardines in a tin, heads towards the middle. Above, six machine gunners delivered the neck-shots.
“When I arrived, the trenches were pretty full already and the living had to lie on top before they got the neck-shot. They were all arranged beautifully so not too much space was wasted. They had already been robbed before they got here.
On this Sunday I saw a half-kilometre-long queue shuffling forward step by step, the line-up for death. As they got nearer, they saw what awaited them. Around about here they had to give up their suitcases and their sacks of valuables. A little further on, they had to strip, and they could only keep on a shirt or a slip. They were mostly women and children, not much older than two.”
Trigger happy: A German firing squad in Russia ( Image: AP)
Author Neitzel says: “The extermination of the Jews was known in the world of the soldier far more than recent investigations of the topic have suggested.”
Other times, ordinary German soldiers boasted of contacting men they knew in SS units to ask when executions at this or that village were scheduled.
Then they would take picnics and booze, and go along to watch for a grand day out.
Again, the following transcripts make disturbing, often harrowing reading...
During the German occupation of France in World War II, there were instances of French women being accused of fraternizing with German soldiers. One such incident occurred in a village near Marseille, where a French woman was accused of sleeping with Germans.
In an act of vindictiveness, her neighbors decided to shave her head as a form of punishment and public humiliation. This was not an isolated incident, as there were other cases across France where women, particularly prostitutes, faced violent consequences for engaging with German soldiers.
These acts of violence stemmed from a complex mix of emotions, including anger, betrayal, and a desire for retribution against those perceived as collaborating with the enemy.
The occupation brought immense pressure and hardship to the French population, and some individuals sought to vent their frustration and rage on those they believed had compromised their country's honor and independence.
It is important to note that not all accusations of collaboration were accurate or fair. Many women engaged in relationships with German soldiers out of necessity or survival, while others may have simply been seeking some form of protection or support.
The violence against these women highlights the deep divisions and tensions that existed within French society during this tumultuous period.
While these incidents were not widespread, they serve as a reminder of the complexities and moral ambiguities that arise in times of occupation and war.
They also shed light on the challenges faced by individuals trying to navigate a difficult and dangerous environment, where personal choices could have severe consequences.
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