Strik-Strikfeldt Wilfried. Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement

New York: The John Day Company, 1973. — 256 p. — ISBN: 0-381-93185-1Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt was bom in 1896 of a family of German Balts. He went to school in tsarist Petersburg, becoming bilingual in German and Russian. In the First World War he served in the Imperial Russian Army. During the Revolution he was in the Baltic area where, for a time, he was associated with the British Military Mission. In 1920 he set up in Riga as representative of German and British heavy engineering firms. His interests extended far beyond his business. He took an active part in the work of the International Red Cross for Famine Relief in Russia. In 1939, following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Soviet forces took over the Baltic States and local residents of German race were evacuated to German-occupied territory. Strik-Strikfeldt settled in Posen (Poznan. In spring of 1941 he was invited to join the staff of Field-Marshal von Bock, commanding the Central Group of Armies. From then till the end of the war he served in the Wehrmacht with the rank of captain. All that time he kept a full and intimate diary (names and dates omitted as a precaution against the Gestapo). It is on this diary that this memoir is closely based.For the first few weeks of the campaign the author's duties were to tour the area behind the advancing armies and to report to the field-marshal on feeling and conditions in the occupied zone. He was impressed by the eager response to Nazi claims that the Germans were there to free the population from the Bolshevist yoke (‘Hitler the Liberator’), and by the almost universal readiness to cooperate with the invader. It seemed as if a spontaneous anti-Stalin revolution had come into being throughout the occupied area. Within a few months of the start of the offensive some 800,000 cx-Red Army personnel were serving in the Wehrmacht, a very large proportion as combatants. But as the fighting troops moved on to new objectives, an ignorant and arrogant Nazi civil administration took over, and the SS were given a free hand for their brutal excesses. Conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps were appalling. What could be gathered of the Fuhrer’s war aims might be summed up as annexation, confiscation, exploitation and enslavement.At one stage the author, with two senior staff officers, drew up plans for setting up a Russian Volunteer Army to serve alongside the Wehrmacht.The latter minuted: ‘Of vital importance for the issue of the war’ and passed it on to Fuhrer HQ. There it was ignored. Matters of policy, it was held, were no concern of the Army. In December 1941 both field-marshals were dismissed and Hitler himself assumed supreme command. Early in 1942 Strik-Strikfeldt was transferred to Fremde Heere Ost, an information section of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) where he came under the command of General Reinhard Gehlen. Here he found many who shared his views. In late 1942 in Dabendorf near Berlin, the training center for the Russian Liberation Army was established.Against Stalin and Hitler is the story of how that venture fared in face of persistent attacks by rabid party organs and in the ever- increasing shadow of impending military defeat. It is a story of achievement and set-back, of loyalties and compromises, of interdepartmental jealousy and intrigue, of risks taken and of hopes dashed. The record ends with the author’s last service to his Russian friends: in April 1945 he took part in a delegation to cross the front and put the case of the Liberation Movement to the American authorities. The party arrived in the American lines, were courteously received by General Patch, and the matter referred to Washington. But before any answer was received the Armistice was signed, and the delegates became prisoners of war. The author spent eight months as a prisoner in American hands, much of the time in solitary confinement. On his release he set to work, once again, to build up his engineering business.Translator’s ForewordAdvance into Russia
The Question of Policy
Oberkommando des Heeres
First Meeting with Vlasov
The Viktoriastrasse
Dabendorf
The Smolensk Proclamation
The Volunteers
Visits to Army Group IIQs
A Set-back
Hitler’s Decision
Tour of the Third Reich
Dabendorf under Fire
The Volunteers in the West
The SS Show Interest
20 July
Himmler and After
The Prague Congress
Last Meeting with Vlasov
The EndAuthor’s EpilogueAppendicesThe Russian as Human Being
General Vlasov’s Open Letter
Extracts from Report of Captain Peterson on His Inspection of the Dabendorf Camp
The Prague Manifesto