Das Hossbach-'Protokoll': Die Zerstoerung Einer Legende

Reviewed by Mark Weber

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world, or at least Europe. At the great postwar Nuremberg Tribunal the victorious Allies sought to prove that Hitler and his "henchmen" had engaged in a sinister "Conspiracy to Wage Aggresive War." The most important piece of evidence produced to sustain this charge was and is a document known as the "Hossbach Protocol" or "Hossbach Memorandum."

On 5 November 1937, Hitler called a few high officials together for a conference in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin: War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Army Commander Werner von Fritsch, Navy Commander Erich Raeder, Air Force Commander Hermann Göring, and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Also present was Hitler's Army adjutant, Colonel Count Friedrich Hossbach.

Five days later, Hossbach wrote up an unauthorized record of the meeting based on memory. He did not take notes during the conference. Hossbach claimed after the war that he twice asked Hitler to read the memorandum, but the Chancellor replied that he had no time. Apparently none of the other participants even knew of the existence of the Colonel's conference record. Nor did they consider the meeting particularly important.

A few months after the conference, Hossbach was transferred to another position. His manuscript was filed away with many other papers and forgotten. In 1943 German general staff officer Colonel Count Kirchbach found the manuscript while going through the file and made a copy for himself. Kirchbach left the Hossbach original in the file and gave his copy to his brother-in-law, Victor von Martin, for safe keeping. Shortly after the end of the war, Martin turned over this copy to the Allied occupation authorities, who used it to produce a substantially altered version for use as incriminating evidence at Nuremberg. Sentences such as those quoting Hitler as saying that "The German question can only be solved by force" were invented and inserted. But over all, the document presented at Nuremberg is less than half the length of the original Hossbach manuscript. Both the original written by Hossbach and the Kirchbach/Martin copy have completely (and conveniently) disappeared. More