-2-
 
     1)  That Russian tanks were three times as many as expected,
 
     2)  That the Russian troops were loyal to Stalin instead of showing the bad moral that had
been expected,
 
but that the German General Staff still expected:
 
          l) To annihilate the Russian armies by the end of October, this representing only a two
month's delay beyond their original estimate of the end of August,
 
     2)  That the Russian political situation would be fully in hand by the spring of 1942.
 
         Goering had recommended to Hitler that a boundary be put upon the German names in
Russia and that an all-out effort to conquor Russia should be abandoned. The next morning he
found his home, the Kerinhalle, surrounded by SS men. He could not go out and his telephone
wires had~been cut. (I was informed of this by Frau Goering, who told me the whole story.) The
basis of Goering's ideas on the Russian campaign was that the German people's morale would not
stand up to it.
 
     I was also reliably informed that Mussolini asked Hitler to make peace, saying that Italy
must have peace. It was believed that Mussolini was the only man that could say this to Hitler
without being locked up. But Hitler was merely rather amused by Mussolini, regarding him as sort
of a naughty boy.
 
         I also know that Von  Pfeffer, who was the organizer of the Nazi party in Prussia, made the
same recommendation to Hitler and was immediately arrested and ordered to be shot, but due to
the intercession of Frau Von Pfeffer he was reprieved and put in solitary confinement.
 
Note by Whitney: I know that the informant was intimate with Von Pfeffer as I attended a private
luncheon in informant's room with Von Pfeffer in a Berlin hotel in 1936, at which Von Pfeffer
outlined the then plans for an ultimate Russian campaign.This is the only corroboration that I can
personally give to the informant's story.
 
         I was called in by General Udet, Chief of the Luftwaffe, because I had had a long prior
acquaintance with him, and through him I met Brauchitsch and Keitel and through them in turn
many other officers. As a consequence I was invited to a rather formal luncheon at which were
officers (not the top officers, but the second men) in each of the military establishments,--General
Staff, Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe. The course of the conversation ran as follows: