Triumph of the Free Will
Lee Hoinacki
This article, was written by Lee Hoinacki in March 2009 [during the season of Lent] He gave it to me before he left to spend his last years with his daughter Beth’s family. It is shortened for considerations of space.—
Frank McGinty
Just what did the German generals know about the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by Nazi Germany? How did they regard Hitler? To fully understand this, one must read the book —“Tapping Hitler’s Generals” by Sonke Nietzel, [2007]
In 1996 the inner thoughts of German generals came to light when England declassified what the generals perceived to be safe and confidential taped-conversations in their places of imprisonment. 167 of the most important tapes appear in Sonke Neitzel’s book.
To me the most relevant subject during this season of Lent is the transformation of a battle- hardened, highly decorated, Roman Catholic commander of the Afrika Korps, General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma. His transformation from an obedient servant of Hitler and the Nazi government to the leader of the Hitler opposition in captivity hold lessons for all Christians.
Wilhelm Josef Thoma was a young lieutenant in a Bavarian military unit during World War I; he, participated in some of the bloodiest battles on both the Eastern and Western fronts. He was awarded the highest military decoration that could be bestowed on a Bavarian officer for bravery in war. Thoma was entitled to add the noble title, “Ritter von” to the family name for his lifetime. Between the world wars he served in Germany’s first true armored unit. He took part in the suppression of Hitler’s Bier Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923. He claimed to have participated in 192 tank actions during the Spanish Civil War. Von Thoma was a regimental commander in Poland at the outset of World War II and was rapidly promoted to General of the Tank Troops and assumed command of the Deutches Afrika Korps in September of 1942 prior to the Battle of El Alamein [October 23, 1942]. El Alamein was the first great turnabout battle of World War II and the beginning of the end for Adolph Hitler. It was also the great turnabout in the life of Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma who had received word through his superior, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, that Hitler had ordered the army in Africa to stand and fight to the last man. William L. Shirer mentions how von Thoma reacted to the order in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”:
“The next day, November 4 -after telling a subordinate officer, ‘Hitler’s order is a piece of unparalleled madness. I can’t go along with this any longer’, General von Thoma donned a clean uniform, with the insignia of his rank and his decorations, stood by his burning tank until a British unit arrived, surrendered and in the evening dined with British General Montgomery.”
On November 19, von Thoma reached Trent Park, England, where conversations with captured generals were taped at a relatively luxurious place of imprisonment. Von Thoma was one of the highest German generals to have been captured at that point in the war. He immediately became the center of the opposition to Hitler in captivity. “Tapping Hitler’s Generals” records von Thoma’s outspoken words to his fellow incarcerated officers including the following: “I regret every bomb, every scrap of material and every human life that is still being wasted in this senseless war. The only gain the war will bring us is the end of Nazi gangster rule.” [12 September 1943]. “Every day the war continues constitutes a crime.” [12 September 1943]. “The German nation can’t deny that it must share the blame itself. If someone goes on defending the whole thing now, then I say he is either stupid, cowardly, or lacking in character.” [15-16 July 1944]
Von Thoma was initially like too many of us, obedient to authority when that authority contradicts our conscience. His military service is excusable so long as he was legitimately defending his own country. In fact when Hitler came to power in 1933, parts of Germany [the Rhineland] were occupied by a foreign power. The occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia [1938], however, and the invasion of Poland [1939] and the Soviet Union [1941], must have troubled von Thoma’s conscience. “Tapping Hitler’s Generals” makes it clear that the German generals were aware of the annihilation of the Jews, and other atrocities committed on the Eastern Front.
Although von Thoma insisted that he had not participated in any way, and that he had even helped protect targets of Hitler’s tyranny, one can only imagine the process of initial rationalization and ultimate delusion that led to von Thoma’s capture in North Africa. His transformation at El Alamein could not have been similar to St. Paul’s on the road to Damascus. It must have been a painful inner conflict over several years with his conscience warring with the human tendency to rationalize evil. In the end, however, his conscience, his free will, triumphed. He had been drawn into evil in spite of good intentions. Ultimately, however, he was a man of faith who was aware of his past failures and who was able to take a stand that was consistent with his conscience. His life was a victory of free will over the immense social pressures exerted by a nation gone mad.
His story speaks out to each of us about the need to recognize our failures and to seek reconciliation by taking the appropriate action. Von Thoma’s life is a Lenten message for all of us. His life also confronts us and our faithfulness to the ‘just war’ principles first expounded by Saint Augustine and formalized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. No doubt von Thoma viewed Germany’s re- occupation of the Rhineland as justified, but questioned the invasion later of sovereign nations.
We too must be vigorous in assuring that we never encourage our political and military leaders to cross the ‘just war’ line. We too must never be like the mindless millions of ‘good Germans’ who filled the stadium in Nurnberg and lined the streets of Germany with their hands extended, exclaiming ‘Sieg Heil’.
[A closing comment: Lee was certainly correct in invoking the “just war teaching” in the case of von Thoma’s rejection of Hitler’s war-making, of the Contra’s oppression, and of George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. If written today, however, aware of the Plowshares’ actions against Trident submarines armed with nuclear missiles, Lee would have agreed that the very existence of weapons of nuclear war is clearly immoral. FMcG]