Scotland on Sunday - International - German officers 'knew of Holocaust'

HIGH-ranking German officers knew much more about Adolf Hitler's plans to murder millions of Jews than previously thought, according to newly revealed transcripts of conversations between captured generals. During the Second World War, British intelligence secretly bugged the cells occupied by some of the most senior German army, navy and air force commanders who had been captured by the Allies. The transcripts have only recently been made available to researchers and show that: • Senior Luftwaffe officers mused together at the end of 1943 that millions of Jews had already been killed. • General Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander who defied Hitler's orders by not allowing Paris to be destroyed, admitted that he had been involved in killing Jews; • Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been fully briefed about the 1944 attempt to kill the Nazi leader, and refused to betray the plotters.