Final solution Pre-Machtergreifung Post-Machtergreifung Parties From 1933 to the end of the Second World War, high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany accepted vast bribes in the form of cash, estates, and tax exemptions in exchange for their loyalty to Nazism.
Unlike bribery at lower ranks in the Wehrmacht, which was also widespread,[1][2] these payments were regularised, technically legal, and made with the full knowledge and consent of the leading Nazi figures.
[9] Hitler routinely presented his leading commanders with "gifts" of free estates, cars, checks made out for large sums of cash, and lifetime exemptions from paying taxes.
[10] A typical example was a check made out for a half million Reichsmarks, presented to Field Marshal Günther von Kluge in October 1942, together with the promise that he could bill the German treasury for any and all "improvements" that he might wish to make to his estate.
[20][21] In 1938, Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch decided to divorce his wife to marry a much younger woman who happened to be a "two hundred per cent rabid Nazi".
Hitler earned Brauchitsch's eternal gratitude by agreeing to use German tax-payers' money to pay his entire divorce settlement, said to have been between 80,000 and 250,000 Reichsmarks.
[28][29] According to Goda, when it became clear that Hitler was still alive, Guderian ordered Panzer units in Berlin to stay loyal to the regime, and then sat on the Court of Honour that had the responsibility of expelling officers involved in it so that they could be tried before the Volksgerichtshof, a duty that he performed with zeal.
[31] Goda comments that much of the fury that Guderian expressed in his 1950 memoir Erinnerungen eines Soldaten about what he regarded as unjust border changes after the war in Poland's favour, seemed to be related to his intensely held private view that the Poles had no right to take away the Polish estate that Hitler had given to him.
[32] In 1943, retired Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb managed to have the German state buy him an entire district of prime forest land in Bavaria, valued at 638,000 Reichsmarks, on which to build his estate.
[35] In response, Hitler's aide General Rudolf Schmundt told Leeb that he was completely out of line for criticising the massacres at Kaunas, and should co-operate fully with the SS in "special tasks" in future.
[34] Schmundt asked if Leeb really appreciated his monthly payments from Konto 5, and reminded him that his birthday was coming up in September; the Führer was planning to give him a 250,000 Reichsmark cheque as a present to reward his loyalty.
[39] According to Goda, payments from Konto 5 to the bank account of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus stopped in August 1943, not because he had lost the Battle of Stalingrad six months earlier but because he had gone on Soviet radio to blame Hitler for the defeat.
[40] Goda notes that the 1944 list of recipients (of the Generaloberst ranks and above) of the monthly allowance includes Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and others who were associated with the July 20 plot, but these names are crossed off.
According to Goda, after the failure of the 20 July plot in 1944, the families of Erwin Rommel, Franz Halder, Friedrich Fromm, and Günther von Kluge were punished by being cut off from the monthly payments from Konto 5.
Although they note that Rommel was among the officers invited by Lammers to join the system in 1942, the two historians opine that whether he did successfully object to the donations cannot be known using current archival sources.
[45] At his trial in 1948, General Franz Halder perjured himself when he denied that he had taken bribes, and then had to maintain a stern silence when U.S. prosecutor James M. McHaney produced bank records showing otherwise.
[45] Weinberg commented that "the bribery system understandably does not figure prominently in the endless memoir literature of the recipients and has attracted little scholarly attention".