Hitler's Atrocities Against Allied PoWs: War crimes of the Third Reich 9781526701879, 9781526701893, 9781526701886

Table of contents :
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Glossary
Chapter 1: The Murders Begin
Chapter 2: The Road to Dunkirk
Chapter 3: North Africa
Chapter 4: Greece, Crete and the Trial of General Student
Chapter 5: Commandos
Chapter 6: Slaughter in the East
Chapter 7: Italy
Chapter 8: The Special Air Service Murders
Chapter 9: Life in the Camps
Chapter 10: Prisons and Concentration Camps
Chapter 11: The D-Day Murders
Chapter 12: The Arnhem Murders
Chapter 13: Massacre in the Ardennes
Chapter 14: Luft Gangsters
Chapter 15: The Long Walk to Freedom
Chapter 16: The Day of Reckoning
Appendix: Punishments

Citation preview

Hitler’s Atrocities against Allied PoWs

Hitler’s Atrocities against Allied PoWs War Crimes of the Third Reich

Philip D. Chinnery

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Pen & Sword Military An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd Yorkshire – Philadelphia Copyright © Philip Chinnery 2018 ISBN 978 1 52670 187 9 eISBN 978 1 52670 189 3 Mobi ISBN 978 1 52670 188 6 The right of Philip Chinnery to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime and White Owl. For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Or PEN AND SWORD BOOKS 1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.penandswordbooks.com

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Glossary

Chapter 1

The Murders Begin

Chapter 2

The Road to Dunkirk

Chapter 3

North Africa

Chapter 4

Greece, Crete and the Trial of General Student

Chapter 5

Commandos

Chapter 6

Slaughter in the East

Chapter 7

Italy

Chapter 8

The Special Air Service Murders

Chapter 9

Life in the Camps

Chapter 10 Prisons and Concentration Camps

Chapter 11 The D-Day Murders

Chapter 12 The Arnhem Murders

Chapter 13 Massacre in the Ardennes

Chapter 14 Luft Gangsters

Chapter 15 The Long Walk to Freedom

Chapter 16 The Day of Reckoning Appendix

Punishments

Acknowledgements

I

would like to thank all of the following people: Stan Johnson and Rupert Gandy, who were taken prisoner while keeping the Germans at bay outside Dunkirk; Michael Petrich, a flier who found himself in Buchenwald concentration camp; Howard McCord who was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge; authors Colin Burgess and Art Kinnis, the president of the KLB Club; researcher Brian Sims, an acknowledged expert on the prisoner-of-war ships sunk by the Allies; Geoff Bryden for his account of the day that Sergeant Jack was shot at Stalag 21C/H; and Dennis O’Callaghan for the photograph of his father, one of the two survivors of the massacre at Le Paradis. A personal thank you to my son Mark who spent many hours helping me to analyse the war crimes files in the British Public Record Office at Kew, Surrey. Also to my son Peter who accompanied me to the American National Archives at College Park in Maryland.

Introduction

D

uring the last twenty years I have been proud to occupy the position of historian and more recently chairman for the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association. I was involved in the campaign to try to persuade the Blair government to ask the German government for compensation for the men who were held captive by the Germans and Italians during the Second World War. Our government had just agreed to pay compensation of £10,000 each to the men who were prisoners of the Japanese and we felt that the suffering of those held captive in Europe had been ignored. The official government view is that the Germans abided by the Geneva Convention and a 1950 Foreign Office report is quoted as justification to refuse compensation. During the exchange of letters with the Ministry of Defence on the subject, we received on 21 September 2001 a reply from Dr Lewis Moonie, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and newly-appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. It read in part: There is no doubt that there were indeed cases of improper treatment by individual Germans of our servicemen held prisoner of war. However, the point being made by the Foreign Office report was that these represented improper acts by individuals, rather than acts authorised or encouraged by the German government. The German authorities did, in general, implement the provisions of the Convention with respect to prisoners of war. This was, of course, a contrast to the actions of the Japanese whose government singularly failed to take such steps. It is because of the unique, collective experience of our personnel detained by the Japanese authorities, that we have made the ex-gratia payment to these former captives of the Japanese.

The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War includes the following wording: ‘Prisoners of war are in the hands of the enemy Power, but not of the individuals or military units who have captured them. Irrespective of the individual responsibilities that may exist, the Detaining Power is responsible for the treatment given them.’ So how did the German government treat our prisoners of war? Someone who should know was the Right Honourable Lord Russell of Liverpool, CBE, MC. In June 1946, Lord Russell became Deputy Judge Advocate, British Army of the Rhine, and he held the appointment until July 1947 and again from October 1948 to May 1951. During his tenure of this appointment he was legal adviser to the commander-in-chief in respect of all trials by British military courts of German war criminals. In May 1951, he returned to the office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Forces in London and took up the appointment of Assistant Judge Advocate General from which he resigned on 8 August 1954. In the British zone of occupation in Germany alone, 356 war crimes trials were held involving more than 1,000 war criminals. In his position as Deputy Judge Advocate, Lord Russell of Liverpool was ideally placed to form an opinion of the German attitude to the Geneva Convention and of their treatment of prisoners of war. He later wrote a book entitled Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes. Lord Russell also wrote the foreword in 1956 to the book The Vengeance of Private Pooley. The author was one of the two survivors of the massacre at Le Paradis in May 1940 when nearly 100 men from the Royal Norfolk Regiment were murdered after surrendering to the SS. He stated: At the outbreak of the Second World War the treatment of prisoners was governed by the Geneva Prisoner-of-War Convention of 1929, the Preamble of which stated that the aim of the signatories was to alleviate the conditions of prisoners of war. During the war, however, the provisions of the Convention were repeatedly disregarded by Germany. Prisoners were subjected to brutality and ill-treatment, employed on prohibited and dangerous work, handed over to the SD for ‘special treatment’ in pursuance of Hitler’s Commando Order,

lynched in the streets by German civilians, sent to concentration camps, shot on recapture after escaping, and even massacred after they had laid down their arms and surrendered. The responsibility for the ill-treatment and murder of prisoners of war rested in Berlin and it was to that city that many complaints were directed by the War Office following reports of prisoners being killed or ill-treated while in German hands. There were literally thousands of incidents and these were so widespread that they had to take place with the approval, if not the instructions, of the Nazi government. This book has been written to help set the record straight and to try to educate those in government who should know better. To those who still believe that the Germans abided by the Geneva Convention and that acts of ill-treatment were the fault of individual guards rather than Nazi government policy, I invite you to read this book and remember its contents. Lest you forget. Philip D. Chinnery London, 2017

Glossary

Ranks and Abbreviations German Military Ranks and UK/US Equivalents SS

WEHRMACHT

ALLIED

Oberstgruppenführer

Generaloberst

US: General

Obergruppenführer

General der Truppe

UK: General US: Lieutenant General

Gruppenführer

Generalleutnant

UK: Lieutenant General US: Major General

Brigadeführer

Generalmajor

UK: Major General US: Brigadier General

Oberführer

?

UK: Brigadier

Standartenführer

Oberst

Colonel

Obersturmbannführer

Oberstleutnant

Lieutenant Colonel

Sturmbannführer

Major

Major

Hauptsturmführer

Hauptmann

Captain

Obersturmführer

Oberleutnant

Lieutenant

Untersturmführer

Leutnant

Second Lieutenant

Sturmscharführer

Stabsfeldwebel

UK: Regimental Sergeant Major US: Warrant Officer

Hauptscharführer

Oberfeldwebel

UK: Company Sergeant Major US: Master Sergeant

Oberscharführer

Feldwebel

Staff Sergeant

Scharführer

Unterfeldwebel

Sergeant

Unterscharführer

Unteroffizier

Corporal

Rottenführer / Oberschütze

Obergrenadier

UK: Lance Corporal US: Private First Class

Schütze / Sturmmann

Grenadier

Private

Abbreviations BAOR

British Army on the Rhine

BdS BEF

Befelhshaber der SiPo

CIC

Civilian Internment Centre

CMF

Central Mediterranean Forces

British Expeditionary Force

CROWCASS Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects CSM Company Sergeant Major ETOUSA

European Theatre of Operations, US Army

FANY

First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

Gestapo

GHQ JAG

General Headquarters Judge Advocate General

MC

Military Cross

MM

Military Medal

MO

Medical Officer

NARA

National Archives and Records Administration

NCO

Non-Commissioned Officer

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German High Command)

OSS

Office of Strategic Services

PGR

Panzer Grenadier Regiment

PRO

Public Records Office (now the National Archives at Kew)

RAMC

Royal Army Medical Corps

RASC

Royal Army Service Corps

RSHA

Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office)

SAS

Special Air Service

SD

Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)

SHAEF

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

SiPo

Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police)

SOE

Special Operations Executive

SQMS

Squadron Quarter Master Sergeant

SS

Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron)

USAAF

United States Army Air Force

WAAF

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

Chapter 1

The Murders Begin

W

e will never know whether the pilots of the Luftwaffe Stuka divebombers checked their watches before they threw their planes into a near-vertical dive, sirens screaming, before releasing their bombs over the Polish airfields and communication centres on that fateful first day of September 1939. For the record, it was 4.36 am. The Poles knew that the attack was coming; indeed, it was Polish intelligence that first broke the German Enigma codes. They moved their old, slow aircraft away to subsidiary airfields and prepared to do battle with the 1 million German troops deployed along their borders. In order to persuade world opinion that the Poles had started the war, SS men dressed in Polish uniforms staged an ‘attack’ on a radio station, customs post and forestry camp near Gleiwitz in the far south-eastern corner of Germany. Murdered concentration camp inmates were used to provide the ‘casualties’ of the Polish incursion and the captured radio station was soon broadcasting a call to the Poles living in the border region to take up arms against the Nazis. On the following day Poland was invaded from three different directions by forty-one infantry and fourteen panzer and motorized divisions. The German army had adopted the blitzkrieg or ‘lightning war’ tactics of fighting that had been developed as an alternative to the trench warfare stalemate of the First World War. Armoured columns would pierce the enemy lines, bypass their strongpoints and penetrate deep behind their

defences, cutting the defenders into separate pockets. They would be aided by dive-bombers of the Luftwaffe and followed by slower-moving infantry and artillery tasked with crushing the pockets of resistance. The Polish army was no match for Hitler’s generals and their new mechanized divisions. The bulk of the army was thinly spread along the border and there were not enough reserves to successfully counter-attack. Poland’s twelve cavalry brigades were mainly equipped with horses and the troopers, armed with lance, sabre and carbine, were shot down in their hundreds. Far away in England, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his advisers studied the documents laid before them. The agreement was quite clear and titled the ‘Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland’, signed in London on 25 August 1939. Article One read: ‘Should one of the Contracting Parties become engaged in hostilities with a European Power in consequence of aggression by the latter against that Contracting Party, the other Contracting Party will at once give the Contracting Party engaged in hostilities all the support and assistance in its power.’ Accordingly, at 11.15 am on 3 September, the prime minister announced over the wireless that England was sending her sons to war again. However, the unfortunate fact of life was that England was a long way from Poland and when the invasion finally came, that country was overrun before England could do anything to help. What could not be known at the time, although the signs were there if you looked hard enough, was that Adolf Hitler was about to launch his legions on a campaign of murder and plunder that had not been seen since the days of Attila the Hun. No one would be spared; neither civilians nor soldiers and especially not prisoners of war. The murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war began even before the last Polish resistance was crushed in early October 1939. To make matters worse, the day after Warsaw fell on 17 September, Russian troops invaded from the east. Four days later they had reached the Bug River, the demarcation line having been agreed in secret with the Germans. As the fighting petered out, many Polish troops began the long trek south through Slovakia and Hungary to France where they came under the

command of the Polish general Wladyslaw Sikorski. The number of Polish dead was unknown, but around 694,000 Polish servicemen were taken prisoner including some 30,000 officers. A further 217,000 were captured by the Russians. The land to the east of the Bug River was annexed by the USSR and the large-scale deportation of the Polish upper classes and intelligentsia began. Many of the Poles taken to the East would never see their homeland again. When Russia changed sides and became an ally of the West following the German invasion of 22 June 1941, the Polish Provisional Government in London demanded the release of the prisoners of war taken by the Russians in 1939. Few officers returned and their fate was shrouded in mystery until the discovery of seven mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in 1943. Eventually, more than 4,500 corpses were dug out of the ground, most having been shot in the back of the head while their hands were tied. A further 11,000 were still missing. To the west of the Bug River, a six-year reign of terror began as the SS and Gestapo turned their attention to Poland’s civilians and large Jewish population. As for the Polish prisoners of war who were entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, they were soon to experience the murderous nature of their captors. On 5 September a massacre took place near the village of Serock, in Swiecie district. Several thousand prisoners were being held overnight in a field. Around midnight the German guards suddenly began shouting that a tank was approaching and that the prisoners should take cover. As the men began to get up and seek cover, a shot was fired to signal the start of the massacre of the ‘escaping prisoners’. Sixty-six prisoners were killed and buried in a common grave the following morning. Their remains would be exhumed in 1947. The following day, 6 September, nineteen officers of the Polish 76th Infantry Regiment were shot in the fields around the village of Moryca. Some of the captured other ranks were herded into two buildings that were then set on fire. This massacre was probably in reprisal for the heavy losses inflicted by the unit on a German panzer formation. On 8 September two German soldiers led a captured Polish major into a

field near Nadarzyn, Blonie district and ordered him to dig his own grave. As he was digging, the major suddenly turned around and struck one German with his shovel, killing him. The second German began to stab him with his bayonet while other Germans from the 4th Panzer Division ran over and kicked the prisoner to death. Another massacre in a field took place on 13 September at Zambrów. Around 4,000 men from the defeated Polish 18th Infantry Division were assembled on the training grounds of the Zambrów garrison. They were guarded by a Waffen SS unit with machine guns mounted on lorries trained on the prisoners. When night fell the Germans illuminated the area with searchlights and warned the prisoners that anybody who got up during the night would be shot. However, a number of Polish horses from a captured transport unit were being kept just outside and during the night they suddenly burst into the enclosure. To avoid being trampled by the horses, many prisoners got up to flee and were immediately fired upon by the German guards. The firing only stopped when the Germans hit some of their own men by mistake. The prisoners were told to remain on the ground until morning and all through the night the cries of the wounded and dying could be heard. At daybreak the extent of the slaughter was revealed when more than 200 dead and 100 wounded were removed from the enclosure. The survivors claimed that the stampede had been part of a deliberate German plan to exterminate some of the prisoners, while others believed that the searchlights had scared the horses. Another massacre that occurred during September 1939 happened in a barn and was one of many such incidents to take place in barns over the next two years. The unfortunate soldiers were men from the Polish 4th Regiment of Podhale Fusiliers whose battalion was overrun on the River San near Przemyśl. Around 100 prisoners were marched in the direction of Drohobycz and herded into a barn in the village of Urocze, where they were told they would spend the night. When all the prisoners were inside, the Germans closed the door, poured petrol around the barn and set fire to it with hand grenades. There were only two survivors, Privates Jan Marek and Antoni Dobija. Dobija later testified at the trial of General von Manstein, chief of

staff of Army Group South (transcript, vol. VI, pp.435–436): It was about 3pm. When all the Polish soldiers were already in the barn and the loft, the German soldiers shut the entrance door. I heard explosions and the barn became ablaze. I was injured by a splinter on my right hand and right temple. I fell from the loft onto the floor and noticed a loose board in the wall of the barn and I got outside through the hole. I crawled between two haystacks and from there along the fence towards the lavatory, by which I lay down in a potato clamp. In the meantime the fire extended to the stacks and so I could easily have been burnt alive. I got up, jumped over the fence, and ran. The German soldiers who were standing around the barn saw me and shot after me. I was not hit and managed to reach the wood. Along with other senior Wehrmacht commanders, von Manstein knew from the very beginning of the Polish campaign that ill-treatment and murder of prisoners of war was rife. His own intelligence officer submitted a report to him on 8 September in which he drew von Manstein’s attention to the treatment of prisoners and suggested that the report be forwarded to the Army Group South commander General von Rundstedt. Manstein rejected the proposal. Two of von Rundstedt’s subordinates – General von Reichenau, commander of the Tenth Army, and General List, commander of the Fourteenth Army – became well-known for the atrocities committed in their area of operations. They would continue the practice of murdering prisoners of war on an even larger scale, both in the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. According to German figures, 694,000 Polish soldiers became prisoners of war. From this total 10,000 died soon after capture and around 140,000 were released and allowed to return home. The remaining 540,000 were eventually transferred to Germany where they were divided into three categories. The first category was agricultural workers, who were underfed and overworked. However, working on farms meant that there was always the opportunity to supplement their diet, a possibility not often available to the other categories. The second category was those employed on public works such as road, bridge and rail repairs. They also endured long hours and

heavy work and the constant brutality of their guards. Food was scarce and usually comprised acorn ‘coffee’ and small amounts of black bread and watery soup. It was estimated in August 1940 that there were 236,000 former prisoners of war in these two categories, now regarded as civilian workers. The remainder of the Polish prisoners of war were sent to thirty-five prison camps in Germany, with separate camps for officers (Oflags) and soldiers (Stalags). Their treatment was much worse than that later given to French and British prisoners of war. The main reason for this was that, as the war progressed, the number of Germans in British hands steadily increased and there was always the possibility, however faint, of reprisals being carried out against prisoners in England. The winter of 1939–40 was particularly hard for the prisoners. Most were in overcrowded, unheated accommodation where food was inadequate and medical treatment non-existent. Blankets, overcoats and boots were often removed and many parcels sent to the men from relatives in Poland were damaged or stolen by the camp authorities. Occasionally sick and emaciated prisoners of war were returned to Poland, but had to travel in the most inhumane conditions. In January 1940 2,000 Polish prisoners were sent by train from East Prussia to Warsaw. They were crammed into cattle trucks and taken on a journey lasting thirteen days instead of the usual few hours that the journey normally required. When they finally arrived, 211 of them had frozen to death and the rest resembled walking corpses. It was a scene repeated on many occasions with Polish and later Soviet prisoners of war and was part of a plan to reduce the prisoner-ofwar population by means other than a bullet in the back of the neck. An exchange of Polish prisoners was agreed between the Germans and Russians during the winter of 1939–40, based on their place of birth or place of residence. In the first two transports of Polish soldiers captured by the Soviets, 140 men were frozen to death. They had been put in unheated rail trucks without warm clothing, food or drink. It appeared that the Russians had sent along four prisoners more than the number agreed and refused to take them back. The Germans in turn refused to accept them and simply shot the four men in front of their horrified comrades. The ill-treatment of Polish and later Soviet prisoners of war would

eventually be found by the Germans to be counter-productive. With most of the German male population now in uniform, there were not enough men available to work in the farms and factories and it eventually became apparent that prisoners of war could be used instead. In July 1940 Hitler decreed that most Polish prisoners of war should be released from their camps and exploited as civilian workers, despite the protests of the Polish Red Cross that the men should be repatriated to their homeland. Around 40,000 men were to remain in their prisoner-of-war camps for the time being. The German civilian population was constantly reminded by their newspapers how to treat the Polish prisoners who had now become labourers for the greater German Reich. On 20 February 1940 the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten declared that ‘The Court at Halberstadt has condemned a man 49 years of age to a month’s imprisonment for offering a box of cigarettes to a Polish prisoner’ and ‘At Papsdorf a 50-year-old man has been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for enabling a prisoner to correspond with his family.’ On 13 January 1941 the Braunschweiger Neueste Nachrichten announced that three German women had been sentenced to fifteen to eighteen months’ imprisonment for showing generosity towards Polish prisoners. The women gave the prisoners cigarettes and food and even drank beer from the same bottle with them. The judge declared that ‘these women shamefully and boldly treated Polish prisoners as they would have treated their own fellow countrymen!’ The Völkischer Beobachter (the Nazi German newspaper) of 16 May 1941 reported that: It sounds incredible, but unfortunately there are still Germans who feel friendly towards the Poles. Last Christmas the Nazi leader at Überlingen in Baden discovered that, with her mother’s approval, a 22-year-old girl had decorated a Christmas tree for a Polish prisoner of war at her parents’ farm. This utter shamelessness has now been punished with a sentence of 30 months’ hard labour for the daughter and 18 months for the mother.

Worse things could happen to a prisoner who fraternized with a German woman. Notices were posted in the prison camps warning that sexual intercourse between a Polish prisoner of war and a German woman was punishable by death for the prisoner and several years’ imprisonment for the woman. Such pleasures of the flesh were the last thing on the minds of some Polish officers one dark night four years after the invasion of their country. On the night of 19 September 1943, forty-four Polish officers and three orderlies escaped from a tunnel dug under the wire at Oflag VIB at Dössel near Warburg, Westphalia. The first the camp administration knew of the escape was when they received a police report the following morning about the arrest of two fugitives at the railway station at Soest. An alert went out to all police stations and soon several more of the escapees were in custody. They were dressed in civilian clothes made out of blankets and carried civilian identity cards. One was even disguised as a woman. Five days after the escape, the PoW Office of the OKW issued the following order to the camp commander of Oflag VIB: 1) The escaped Polish officers, when recaptured, are to be handed over to the SS instead of being returned to the camp. 2) The camp authorities should not apply to other camps for return of the recaptured Polish officers. 3) Those officers who have already been brought back to the camp are to be turned over to the SS for interrogation. By that time twenty of the escapees had already been returned to the camp. They were assembled and taken away from the camp, never to return. It was later established that they were taken by train to Buchenwald concentration camp where they were summarily executed without trial. During the second week of October the camp guard and 100 Gestapo men carried out a surprise search of the officers’ quarters at Dössel. Three more Polish officers were arrested and accused of being the organizers of the escape. They too were taken to Buchenwald and their camp records were

marked ‘shot while trying to escape’. A further seventeen escapees were later recaptured and murdered by the Dortmund Gestapo. Out of the forty-seven men who escaped that night, only ten are believed to have reached safety.

CHAPTER NOTES Books: Datner, Szymon, Crimes Against POWs (1964) The Black Book of Poland (Putnam, 1942)

A German motorcycle battalion advancing through Bydgoszcz on 18 September 1939.

German units march through Warsaw following the invasion of Poland.

Date: 8 September 1939. The village of Dabrowa near Ciepielów was the site of the mass murder of 300 Polish prisoners of war from the 74th Infantry Regiment of Upper Silesia. The order was given by Oberst Walter Wessel, commander of the German 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division after one of his officers had been killed by a sniper. The division would later be destroyed at Stalingrad.

General Wilhelm List was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 1948, principally for the reprisal killing of Serbian hostages in Yugoslavia. Released from prison in December 1952, officially because of ill health, he would live for another nineteen years, dying in August 1971 at the age of 91.

Rows of bodies of Polish officers exhumed from the Katyn Forest in 1943 by the Germans. They had been murdered by the Russian NKVD in April and May 1940. They were captured when the Russians invaded Poland from the east, while the Nazis invaded from the west.

The execution of fifty-six Polish citizens in Bochnia, near Kraków, during the German occupation of Poland, 18 December 1939, in ‘reprisal’ for an attack on a German police officer two days earlier by the underground organization ‘White Eagle’.

Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, which was then reduced to twelve years. He served only four and was released in 1953. He would go on to help re-establish the German armed forces following the establishment of NATO.

Polish civilian ‘hostages’ being shot by the Nazi invaders in October 1939.

Chapter 2

The Road to Dunkirk

I

t was 11.15 am on Sunday, 3 September 1939 when the announcement was made that Great Britain was once again at war. An hour later, Australia and New Zealand announced their intention to stand with Britain and the French followed suit at 5.00 pm on that sunny day. South Africa had many Nazi sympathizers and Prime Minister General James Herzog wanted to keep his country out of the war. However, he resigned and was replaced by the pro-British General Jan Smuts, who declared war on 6 September. The Canadian government took longer to make up its mind and eventually declared war on 10 September. America stood on the sidelines, despite the fact that on the day war was declared the German submarine U-30 sank the British liner SS Athenia, killing 112 civilians including 28 Americans. President Roosevelt was convinced that the majority of his nation would not support the war. During the second half of September, the Royal Navy transported a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of initially four divisions across the Channel to France, taking with them 24,000 vehicles, fuel, ammunition and food. The Allies anticipated that the Germans would soon attack, not across the French Maginot Line of fortifications immediately across the border but rather through neutral Belgium to the north. The British moved towards the Belgian border and prepared to repel the enemy. They were due for a long wait. While Hitler reviewed his plans, the BEF spent a wet, cold winter living in barns, farms and commandeered houses.

The German high command made the most of that winter, planning for a campaign in the spring of 1940 that would last only six weeks and would end with the defeat of The Netherlands, Belgium and France and the retreat of the BEF back to England from a place known as Dunkirk. German gliderborne troops landed on the roof of the supposedly impregnable Belgian fort of Eben-Emael on 10 May. It was one of the main obstacles on the road into Belgium as its guns could fire on targets 12 miles away. The sappers blew up the gun emplacements as the defenders retreated into the depths of the fort and on the following day 1,100 men surrendered to a force of fewer than 100. Similar acts of subterfuge helped spearhead the attack into Holland on the same day. Paratroops from General Kurt Student’s 7th Airborne Division seized airfields and bridges and Luftwaffe bombers pounded Rotterdam and The Hague. In response to the German attacks, the now seven divisions of the BEF and the cream of the French army hurried eastwards to face what they thought would be the main German assault, a classic flanking movement to the north to cut them off from the Channel ports. In the meantime, seven of Hitler’s ten panzer divisions equipped with more than 2,000 tanks and armoured vehicles rolled around the northern end of the French Maginot Line and through Luxembourg into the wooded hills of the Belgian Ardennes. A total of forty-five German army divisions would follow the route along narrow roads and through sleepy villages in snake-like columns stretching back 100 miles into Germany. When the panzers emerged from the Ardennes they fought their way across the River Meuse and drove hard to outflank the BEF to their north, their infantry struggling to keep up with them. On 15 May Prime Minister Churchill was awoken at 7.30 am by a phone call from French Premier Paul Reynaud. He asked for more help, crying ‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle, the road to Paris is open.’ Four days later Lord Gort, commander of the BEF, reported that the French First Army on his right had disintegrated and he would fall back to Dunkirk and ‘fight it out with his back to the sea.’ The fight would not last long. Three battalions of the Rifle Brigade reached Calais on 23 May and with various support units kept the Germans at

bay for three valuable days. Welsh and Irish Guards performed a similar heroic defence at Boulogne and the Highland Division took up positions at Saint-Valery. A defensive ring was being thrown around Dunkirk while preparations were being made to evacuate the BEF. Between 27 May and 4 June 338,226 officers and men – 139,000 of them French – were taken off the Dunkirk beaches and back across the Channel to England. It was not done without cost, however, as a number of British army units fought a desperate rearguard action to allow their comrades the chance to get away. Their heroic sacrifice enabled most of their comrades to live to fight another day, but more than one German regiment took its revenge on the prisoners who had given them a bloody nose.

Le Paradis The 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment was sent to France as a part of the BEF in September 1939. On 27 May 1940 they were in position near Le Paradis where they had been in action since the previous day. Their ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies, fighting to defend nearby Le Cornet Malo against heavy infantry and tank assaults, had been decimated and the remnants of ‘A’ Company had fallen back to battalion headquarters. Their attackers were the Second Infantry Regiment of the SS Death’s Head Division and they had been hit hard, losing their battalion commander and all four company commanders. NCOs were in charge of companies that had dwindled to platoon strength. The Third Infantry Regiment was ordered to support the Second in their attack against Le Paradis and the order was passed down from the German battle headquarters in the newly-subdued Le Cornet Malo that Le Paradis must fall that very day. Battalion headquarters were in a large farmhouse about 600 yards southeast of Le Paradis. It was three storeys high and had two cellars underground to house the wounded and the signal section with its radios. A courtyard outside was flanked by outbuildings and a high wall, making it an ideal defensive position. At around 1100 hours on that day, surrounded by the enemy, with their

ammunition running low and parts of the farmhouse now on fire, the commanding officer Major Ryder called together the remnants of battalion headquarters and of ‘A’ Company and asked them to decide among themselves whether they should surrender or continue to fight. Casualties throughout the battalion had been heavy and only two officers and seven men from ‘A’ Company, including Private Albert Pooley, had made it to HQ out of their original 184 men. During the morning ‘D’ Company came over the radio to report that they were down to a handful of men and that they would defend company headquarters to the last. The CO joined the last of his able-bodied men in the cowshed behind the burning farmhouse. They included three men from the Royal Signals who operated the battalion wireless set and two gunners who were the last survivors of their battery. After some discussion among themselves they decided, with the approval of their commanding officer, that no further useful purpose would be served by fighting on and in order to save the wounded they would surrender to the German forces. At that time their total strength was five officers and forty-five other ranks, with an unknown number of wounded in the cellars under the care of the medical officer. Private Albert Pooley later described what happened next: The first attempt to surrender was made by three men who walked into the open displaying a white cloth. They immediately came under heavy machinegun fire. The second attempt was then made by all of us running out into the open with our hands in the air. We were lined up and searched, our helmets were struck from our heads and our equipment and gas masks were forcibly removed. We had no weapons with us as these had been destroyed before we surrendered. Not one of us to my knowledge still possessed a weapon when we were searched by the Germans. We were told by an English-speaking German NCO that any wounded could sit down, whereupon some of us did. I was one of those (I had been hit in the left arm and right hip, but not seriously wounded), but no sooner had I sat down than I received a brutal kick in the ribs from a German soldier and was ordered to stand up. During the search which then took place several of us were struck because we did not answer questions or were not quick enough in obeying the orders of the Germans

which naturally were unintelligible to us. During this time our wounded were being brought out of the farmhouse by our own stretcher-bearers, but I do not know where they were taken. After some fifteen minutes we were ordered to form up on the road with our hands clasped behind the backs of our heads. During this process some of us were struck with rifle butts while standing in the ranks. The guards who did this were not reprimanded by their officers or NCOs. While we were standing there our numbers must have swollen by the addition of other prisoners because when I turned round I could see that the column had lengthened. I do not know where these additional men came from. At this time I estimate the number of prisoners in the column to have been sixty-five at the very least. We were then ordered to march along the road, all the time being struck and cuffed by the guards and any other Germans passing us. Our direction at this time appeared to be westerly across the road leading to Le Paradis until we came to the vicinity of another farmhouse with a field adjoining it on the western side. We halted on the road for two or three minutes. During this time a German took from my pocket a packet of cigarettes and when I turned to look at him he struck me with his rifle, knocking me through the ranks. An unbroken line of German transport was standing on the right-hand side of the road facing us. Unbeknown to the prisoners, a conference was taking place to discuss their fate. All five German company commanders were present, together with Sturmbannführer Fortenbacher, the 1st Battalion commander. When it had finished, orders were given and the weary prisoners resumed their journey. The column was ordered to continue marching and the head of the column turned into the field and began to march alongside the wall of the farmhouse. As Pooley looked to his right he could see what fate was about to befall them. Hauptscharführer Theodor Emke was a 27-year-old SS trooper at the time of the massacre. He was an agricultural worker until he joined the State Police (Landespolizei) in 1934. The next year they were incorporated into the SS. He was sent to Dachau in October 1939 for the formation of the SS Division Totenkopf and became a section commander in the 4th Company,

1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment. The division had moved from Belgium into France in mid-May and the 4th Company had its baptism of fire at La Bassée Canal, which they crossed on the evening of 26 May 1940. Emke’s machine-gun section was one of two that formed the machine-gun platoon. The platoon spent much of 27 May supporting the 2nd Company and moving positions as the Germans advanced and by the mid-afternoon they were in the vicinity of Le Paradis. The surrender of Major Ryan and his men was actually taken by the 2nd Company. Emke later recalled: Petri himself took over command of the section, since he gave orders direct to the section, bypassing me, a method to which I was used to from previous occasions. We crossed an open field for approximately 300 paces in the same direction and reached a small meadow, at the far end of which we passed a corner with three or four trees and we halted at a hedge. Petri ordered the guns into position behind the hedge and to aim at a house front facing us, located to the north-east, right limit being the right corner of the house and left limit the left corner. At the same time he remarked that some were going to be shot. I did not hear any mention of the identity and number of persons to be shot. Further events at the guns escaped my notice, since I went towards two comrades I saw coming from the road. It did not escape my notice that a group of prisoners was standing on the road, hands behind their heads, guarded by soldiers whose unit I do not know. I noticed the officers Obersturmbannführer Fritz Knöchlein, the 3rd Company commander and the 4th Company commander Hauptsturmführer Schrödel, both of whom I know by name and also personally, between me and the prisoners, partly on the road and partly on the footpath. After a few minutes I saw the prisoners being marched in column on to the meadow in the direction of and subsequently above the house front. Knöchlein, the senior company commander, was obviously in command, and was conspicuous by his especially dominating behaviour and orders. As the prisoners reached the house front, Knöchlein and Schrödel and the guards remained behind, leaving a clear distance between them and the marching column. As the column was within four to five paces of the right corner of

the house and the last prisoners had just reached the left corner, Knöchlein suddenly shouted ‘Fire!’ Schrödel and Petri almost simultaneously gave the order ‘Open fire!’ Both guns opened fire immediately. I involuntarily looked towards the guns and noticed Mai and Pollak on the gun nearest to me. I could not see the other gun because of the hedge. My attention was, however, naturally taken up by the prisoners, who collapsed from right to left and fell forward. The whole business was over in a few seconds. When the column of prisoners turned into the meadow, Pooley noticed a group of German officers standing just inside the gate, talking among themselves. One of the men was clearly an officer. He had a silver cord on his peaked cap and was about 5ft 10in tall, slim, with a dark face and prominent hooked nose. He had dark piercing eyes and appeared to be about 35 to 40 years old. As the column continued to march into the field Pooley noticed that there was a large hole at the foot of the wall of the farmhouse. It was at least 5ft deep, 8ft wide and 15 to 20ft long. As the head of the column reached the far end of the hole the German officer barked out the command to ‘Open fire’. Both machine guns opened fire at the same time and began to traverse from right to left. Men began to fall into the hole and Pooley recalled one of his comrades crying out ‘I’m not going to die like this’ as the hail of bullets swept towards them. Marching next to Pooley, Private Ward was hit and at the same time Pooley felt a sharp pain in his left knee. He fell into the hole on top of some others who were already lying there and more men fell on top of him. The firing continued for a few more seconds and Pooley looked up to see Major Ryder sitting inside the hole with his back to the wall. He was very badly injured and signalled to the Germans to finish him off. Three of them jumped down into the hole and began to plunge their bayonets into those still living. The men were ordered out again as others stood at the edge of the hole and fired at anyone still moving. The man underneath Pooley groaned and two shots were fired towards them, both striking Pooley in the left leg. Suddenly a whistle was blown and the sound of firing ceased. The Germans

began to move away from the carnage. It was then 1530 hours. Pooley drifted in and out of consciousness for three or four hours. When he awoke it was dark and raining hard. Finally he gathered his strength and dragged himself to the rim of the hole. As he slowly peered over the top he heard the sound of snoring nearby. He reached out and shook the man and asked him if he was alright. Signaller Bill O’Callaghan replied ‘Yes, how are you?’ Despite a wound in his leg, O’Callaghan was so exhausted from the recent lack of rest that he could not stop himself from going back to sleep. Pooley told him that his leg was smashed and suggested that they clear out as quickly as they could. He had to move two of his dead comrades to get clear of the charnel pit and was weak due to loss of blood. In the distance they could hear Germans celebrating in the courtyard of the farmhouse. While O’Callaghan crept away to seek shelter for the pair, Pooley noticed the body of his friend Nobby lying nearby. He was filled with grief as he reached out and touched his friend’s tunic. In a pocket he found Nobby’s lighter and he clasped it as he made a silent pledge to Nobby and the others that he would do what he could to bring to justice those responsible for the crime. O’Callaghan returned and carried Pooley for a couple of hundred yards across the meadow and through a ditch to a cornfield. The men were exhausted, but knew they had to get away from that terrible place. They crawled through the cornfield to the farm of Monsieur Duquenne-Creton, brother of Louis Creton who owned the farm where the massacre had taken place. O’Callaghan evicted two pigs from the pigsty and dragged Pooley into the small building. Exhausted, they fell asleep. Unknown to them, the king of Belgium had ordered his army to surrender and at midnight they lay down their arms, thus exposing the northern flank of the Allied armies. The two wounded soldiers remained in their shelter for the next few days, tended by Madame Duquenne-Creton, the wife of the owner, and her son Victor. Eventually the local villagers became concerned about reprisals if they were found to be harbouring British soldiers and an ambulance was sent to convey them to the nearest hospital where they were taken prisoner again. Madame Creton waved as the ambulance took Pooley away. Thirteen years

would pass before he saw the brave woman again. After a spell in Béthune hospital the two men were taken to prisoner-ofwar camps. In 1943, Pooley was included in an exchange of seriouslywounded prisoners and returned to Britain. At Richmond Convalescent Camp he reported the war crime to the interrogating officer, who took the news too casually for Pooley’s liking. He declined to name O’Callaghan as the other survivor. He was still in enemy hands and if his name leaked out he would be killed without mercy. In the event, the report was filed away and forgotten. In May 1945 O’Callaghan returned home and filled out a report on the atrocity. It must have found its way to the same place as Pooley’s because nothing official would be done until the summer of 1946 when Pooley finally took matters into his own hands and the hunt for the perpetrators began. The blood was on the hands of the men of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of the SS Division Totenkopf (Death’s Head). Fritz Knöchlein, commander of Number 3 Company, was the officer who ordered two machine guns to be put in position, covering the field and barn nearby. When the prisoners marched into the field and alongside the barn, he gave the order to open fire. The German officers were well aware that they had committed an atrocity and began to cover their tracks straight away. One rumour began circulating, alleging that when the British raised the white flag to surrender, Regimental Commander Standartenführer Götze drove up to the farm with some of his men and were fired upon by the defenders. Götze and part of his staff were supposed to have been killed and the massacre in the meadow was supposed to have been the revenge. It is a fact that Götze was killed during the fighting at Le Paradis and was buried there and one can only assume that the massacre was in revenge for this. The German troops had also suffered severe losses and their inexperience in battle was no doubt largely to blame. Poor leadership also led to the decision to attack determined men holding out in well-built houses without artillery support, a decision to which Götze had objected. The war crimes investigators would later try to ascertain whether the murder was part of a higher unit command of not taking prisoners or as a result of a decision taken at local level. They could not find any evidence of

such a policy, but the German high command as well as the divisional commander must be blamed for not taking disciplinary action against the perpetrators. After the battle, Iron Crosses 1st Class were given to Kaltofen, Knöchlein and Schrödel, the officers who were in favour of shooting the prisoners. Obersturmführer Löw, the 2nd Company commander and the only officer in the battalion who protested against the shooting, received merely the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Perhaps in an attempt to cover up the originators of the massacre, Knöchlein and the battalion and regimental commanders were sent to other units. A disinterment took place in 1942 and the bodies were laid to rest in the local cemetery. A total of ninety-seven or ninety-eight different bodies were found. A couple of fields away from Le Paradis, on that fateful day in May 1940, the men of the Lancashire Fusiliers were running out of ammunition. Stan Johnson later wrote of that terrible day when the smoke and noise numbed the senses and men wondered whether they would survive another day: We were told by our officers to surrender. After capture we were all made to sit on a grass bank and the Germans were screaming at us, aiming their rifles at us and I am sure that had it not been for a German officer who shouted at his men to calm them down, that we would have been shot and I was number one. We were so hungry and tired at this time, then we carried our wounded over the fields to the road near the La Bassée pontoon bridge. From then on we were marched every day 30 or 40 kilometres in blazing heat by day and slept freezing cold in fields at night. We were marched in circles, going through the same villages as we had already been through and the column was ever-increasing in size. We were dirty, lousey and the walking wounded still did not get medical attention. At the first stop we were given a piece of bread and the next morning a ladle of soup. We must have looked a sorry mess; ravenously hungry, tongues swollen. My mouth was dry as a bone and lips cracked and crawling with body lice. In this heat they were increasing by the day.

After an 800-mile slog we arrived at the road that leads in to Luxembourg, where the Maginot Line ends. We marched down this road and at last we were put on a train to Trier, where we stopped and were marched through the streets. It was a most humiliating time; we tried to straighten up, but the people were shouting and spitting at us. I saw the red flags with black swastikas on them hanging from the roofs to the ground as we marched up a hill to a camp where we were given a piece of black bread and a ladle of soup and we rested that night as we were so tired. Next morning we were herded back down the hill to a line of railway trucks. We were given half a loaf and a piece of sausage and filled our water bottles or anything to hold water, then we were crammed 60 or 70 men into a carriage that was built to hold 8 horses or 40 men. There was a bit of loose straw on the floor but we could hardly sit down and the heat was hellish when the doors were slid shut. At each end near the top a board was left out to let air in, or we would have all suffocated. Me and some of our platoon had managed to stay together, which took some doing, but little did we know that we would spend five to six days in that carriage. When the train set off we knew nothing of where we were going. Inside it was stifling hot and I thought I would conk out, but we all thought it would be a short journey. I was wedged next to my mates Vince Neil and Stan Bookman and we all stripped our shirts off. Despite the terrible position we were in someone on the other side of the wagon was playing a mouth organ. We were a mixture of Scots, English from all parts of the country; cockneys, Yorks, Geordies. Soon it was dark and cold and we soon put our shirts back on as the train rumbled onwards. Often we were shunted into sidings, but we were never let out. Some of the lads had dysentery and were very ill, but no amount of banging on the side made any difference. We had to do everything in the straw and by the first night it was really stinking. This suffering went on for three days and nights. Our bread had long since gone and water was low, we tried to sip it. There was also a padre with us who kept saying prayers. A sergeant who was near the opening kept everyone informed as to what was happening and he said we were pulling into a station. The doors slid open and the guards stood well back, avoiding the smell.

We stumbled out onto a platform and could smell cooking. We always carried a tin or mess-tin and I had picked up a jug in Cambrai. Further along the platform German Red Cross women were manning two big soup kitchens and we stood in line while they filled our tins. The smell was lovely and we felt like the ‘Bisto Kids’. As we were herded back in I noticed a sign that said ‘Stettin’ in big letters, but we had no idea where that was. Two of the lads were too ill to get out so we brought their soup to them. All this took about four hours and then the doors shut and we were off again. Just then I started to get toothache in a back tooth. I had never had toothache before, it was so painful and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. We spent another two days in that hell hole, when the sergeant said we were pulling into a station. It was Stalag XXA at Thorn in Poland and we were at the end of our nightmare journey.

Wormhoudt The town of Wormhoudt lies in northern France, about 5 miles west of the border with Belgium and 12 miles south of the port of Dunkirk. The exhausted men of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment began to trudge into the town at dawn on Sunday, 26 May, having marched through the night. When the order was given to fall out, many men simply lay down on the grass or pavement and were soon asleep. The companies were allocated defensive positions in and around the town and began to dig trenches for the forthcoming fight. To the east of the town the 8th Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment took up their positions. The rest of the day passed uneventfully and many were lucky to have a good night’s sleep, little knowing that it was the calm before the storm. When the commanding officer inspected the battalion front the following day, it became obvious that his men were spread very thinly on the ground and their supporting anti-tank guns were few in number. Convoys passed through once in a while, with the occupants abandoning their vehicles to trek the last few miles to Dunkirk, guided by a huge cloud of thick, black smoke

in the distance. Overhead, waves of German bombers homed in on the same target, unhindered by the Royal Air Force. Orders arrived from GHQ instructing the battalion to hold the position ‘at all costs and to the last man and the last round’. Other units of the rearguard received the same order. If there was to be any hope of evacuating the bulk of the BEF, the advancing enemy had to be delayed at all costs. It was a grim situation. The defenders of Wormhoudt received a taste of things to come early in the afternoon when German dive-bombers screamed out of the clear blue sky to unload their bombs on the town and its helpless citizens. The battalion suffered only four casualties, but the civilians were hard hit and the medical officer and his orderlies tried to alleviate their suffering. Later in the afternoon ‘C’ Company was withdrawn and sent elsewhere, although two platoons of machine-gunners from the 4th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment arrived to replace them. Within hours, fighting began to the southwest of Wormhoudt as dense formations of Germans tried to evict the 5th Battalion of the Gloucesters from the town of Ledringhem. During the night of 27 May the men of the 2nd Warwicks lay in their trenches trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep, while others stood guard, straining their eyes to watch for movement in the darkness. Only a few miles away the SS troopers of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment checked their equipment while they waited for dawn to break. Three battalions would be committed to the fight, supported by tanks of the 10th Panzer Division. They were to begin their attack at 0500 hours on 28 May. At 0330 hours the British sentries began to wake their sleeping comrades with a whispered ‘Stand to, stand to’. In time-honoured tradition, the British army in the field always ‘stands to’ just before dawn, having learned from ancient battles that the enemy usually attacks at first light. For an hour the weary men lay in the dew and peered across the fields as the mist began to lift. At 0500 hours the first German artillery shells began to land in the area and an hour later ‘A’ Company was dive-bombed by Luftwaffe Stukas and there were many casualties. The softening-up process had begun. The first enemy troops were sighted north-west of the town at 1000 hours and the 4th Cheshires opened up on them with their machine guns. The main

attack came from the west, from the village of Esquelbecq, led by six German vehicles. The men of ‘B’ Company took them under fire and they burst into flames, their occupants scrambling clear to seek cover in nearby houses. Overhead an enemy reconnaissance plane flew in circles, directing the accurate shellfire as the fighting spread along the whole of the battalion’s front. By midday the fighting was intense, but the outnumbered Tommies were holding their own. The 2nd Battalion of the Leibstandarte Regiment had come to a standstill and the regimental commander Sepp Dietrich decided to go forward to see what the problem was. He soon found out. After driving about a mile from the 1st Battalion headquarters in Esquelbecq towards Wormhoudt, the car was hit by a British anti-tank shell and burst into flames. The driver was killed and Dietrich crawled from the wreck of the car into a nearby ditch. His second adjutant Hauptsturmführer Wünsche crawled into a conduit and became unconscious. Soon burning oil began to flow into the ditch and Dietrich tried desperately to beat out the flames, all the while trying to keep his head down so as not to draw fire from the defenders. The leader of the Führer’s favourite regiment would remain in the ditch until late in the afternoon. Another casualty that morning was Sturmbannführer Schützeck, the 2nd Battalion commander who had been wounded during the attack on Wormhoudt. A call went out to the senior company commander Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Mohnke to take over the battalion. This significant event was the first step in a career path that would take Mohnke to the Führer ’s command bunker in the twilight days of the Third Reich and to the inclusion of his name on the War Criminals list as the war came to an end. As the fighting continued into the afternoon, ammunition began to run low as the SS sought to avenge the loss of their senior commanders. Enemy tanks clanked forward to support the attack and the Warwicks’ companies began to disintegrate. Bert Evans of ‘D’ Company looked around at the mortar craters surrounding his trench and at the half-dozen tanks coming slowly towards him and decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Together with

other survivors he climbed out of the trench and began to run towards the rear. As he reached a riverbank he paused and looked around to find that half a dozen Germans had caught up with him. He put up his hands and was marched away to join about fifty others from his company. While the column of prisoners was being marched along, a significant incident took place. As a German tank drove past, a grenade sailed through the air, thrown by one of the British soldiers still at large and hiding behind a nearby pill-box. The grenade exploded in the confined space with the expected results. The guards began to shout at their captives and push them around, although the death of the tank crew was hardly their fault. The fate of the grenade-thrower is not recorded. A short while later the prisoners were halted in front of a shed where other prisoners were lined up. About fifteen of them stood there, probably men of the Cheshire Regiment whose machine guns had held up the advance for so long. Suddenly their guards opened fire and murdered them all in cold blood. The men of ‘D’ Company were apprehensive as they were shepherded along the road in the direction of Wormhoudt. On the way they were searched by the guards and their identity discs removed. Finally they reached the enemy 2nd Battalion headquarters, where they were joined by other Warwicks from ‘A’ Company, some artillerymen and some Cheshires. One of the Germans guarding the prisoners was Rottenführer Oskar Senf from the 2nd Platoon of 7 Company. He recalled that when they reached the Battalion Battle Headquarters, a furious senior officer emerged and remonstrated with the platoon commander, Heinrichs. He demanded ‘What do you mean by bringing in prisoners contrary to orders?’ The officer was Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of 5 Company who had just taken over command of the battalion from the wounded Schützeck. The prisoners and a handful of guards from 7 Company stood around waiting for half an hour until Heinrichs returned. With him were about ten men from the signal section of 8 Company. It was now around 6.00 pm and it had begun to rain. Heinrichs ordered Senf and his comrades Dorth, Schallwig and Rüger to go with the other men and walked away to rejoin the rest of his platoon. The newcomers, who were all NCOs, told Senf that they had orders from Mohnke

to shoot the prisoners. Senf later insisted that he had protested to Heinrichs before he departed, but the other men assured him that they knew what to do. It was later claimed that one of the prisoners who could understand German exclaimed ‘My God! They are taking no prisoners.’ If this is so, then the unfortunate men must have been aware of what fate awaited them. The guards then turned on the prisoners and shouted at them to march at double time across the fields. For about 500 metres the weary men ran or stumbled along, driven by their guards. Those who fell behind were beaten or bayoneted where they lay. Gunner Richard Parry had been in a convoy of vehicles making for Dunkirk when it was ambushed and destroyed. The men were ordered to scatter and he made his escape by swimming along a stream to the cover of some houses just outside Wormhoudt. As he made his way through one of the houses to the street he was captured by SS troops. Parry was ordered to join about thirty other prisoners of war standing against a wall with their hands above their heads. Their guards took turns in visiting a vacated café for refreshments before marching the men for about a mile towards Wormhoudt. Eventually they reached a large field where about fifty men were collected, mostly Royal Warwickshire Regiment and Cheshires and a handful of Royal Artillery. Later a German officer interviewed one of the men and afterwards they were all marched across the fields to a cow barn and ushered inside. Charles Daly already had first-hand experience of how the Germans treat their prisoners for he had been shot in the shoulder by a German soldier after he had surrendered. He estimated there were about ninety men in the barn at the time. As one of the Germans outside the barn reached down to remove a hand grenade from his jackboot, the only officer present, Captain Lynn-Allen who commanded ‘D’ Company, protested at the lack of room in the barn for the wounded and what appeared to be preparations for a massacre. The German soldier shouted back in English with a strong American accent: ‘Yellow Englishman, there will be plenty of room where you’re all going to!’ The English-speaking German and some of the others then threw hand grenades into the barn. Some were smothered by CSM Jennings and Sergeant Moore who bravely threw themselves on the grenades, giving their lives to

try to save their men. One of the men wounded was Albert Evans and as the Germans took cover from the explosions, Captain Lynn-Allen grabbed him and dragged him out of the door and round the corner of the barn. Then the pair ran for their lives. Private Evans later told investigators: Captain Lynn-Allen practically dragged or supported me the whole way to a clump of trees, which was about 200 yards away. When we got inside the trees, we found there was a small stagnant and deep pond in the centre. We got down into the pond with the water up to our chests. Captain Lynn-Allen was standing some little distance from the edge. I, because of my condition, stood closer to the bank and presumably lower in the water. Suddenly, without warning, a German appeared on the bank of the pond just above us, showing that we must have been spotted before we gained the cover of the trees. The German, who was armed with a revolver, immediately shot Captain Lynn-Allen twice and he fell forward and disappeared under the surface. The German then fired at me from a range of about 3 yards. I was hit twice in the neck and, already bleeding profusely from my arm, I slumped in the water. No doubt he thought he had finished me off. Albert then passed out and by the time he came to again the German had gone. He tried unsuccessfully to locate Captain Lynn-Allen in the water and with his strength failing he crawled away. By nightfall he had reached a house that was occupied by a German ambulance unit and their doctor treated him, saving his life for the second time that day. Many of his friends, however, would not be so lucky. The four German soldiers from 7 Company had placed themselves on one side of the barn, at a distance of about 15 to 20 metres. The others from 8 Company congregated near the only entrance to the barn, also keeping the same distance from the doorway. No sooner were the men all inside than hand grenades were thrown in, about five in all. At that time Captain LynnAllen and Evans made a run for it and it appears that one of the 8 Company guards saw them and fired at them. However, he seems to have hit Rüger from 7 Company, who suddenly screamed and fell to the ground. Senf went

over to him and saw that he had been shot in the chest and in the jaw. Taking the opportunity to remove himself from the terrible scene, Senf went back to headquarters to fetch an ambulance for his comrade. It later transpired that Rüger had been wounded by a shot from a 6.35mm pistol. As the Germans were equipped with rifles firing an 8mm round it was assumed that the shot came from a captured British revolver. Neither Dorth nor Heinrichs would see the end of the war as both were later killed in Russia. The explosions blew Private Parry through a gap in the side of the barn and only his feet remained inside. Wounded by shrapnel in the leg, he could only lay there helpless as events unfolded. Parry heard the Germans shouting ‘Raus, Raus’ and the British replying with abuse. Later he heard some of the men asking if they could have a smoke before they were shot. It would seem that this last request was not granted because seconds later five men were lined up on the side of the barn where Parry lay and they were shot in the back. Five more men were called out and lined up in the field on the far side of the barn. Parry could see them and their last act was to turn around and face their murderers before they too were shot. Unsurprisingly, when the Germans called for five more men to come out, the prisoners refused. Undeterred, the SS men stood at the barn entrance and fired into the mass of men inside. Parry was hit a second time, this time in the foot, and he passed out. When he awoke, he saw a German looking at him from the barn. As he struggled to get to his feet, the German raised his Tommy gun to his shoulder and shot Parry through his face. When Parry regained consciousness it was evening and all was quiet. Two Frenchmen slowly approached the barn, but as soon as they saw the carnage inside they took to their heels. Two long days passed while the lives of the survivors slowly ebbed away. Finally a unit of the German medical corps came on the scene and discovered the half-dozen survivors still clinging to life. They were carried on stretchers to a clearing station and thence to Boulogne.

St Venant

It was 27 May, around 1300 hours, and Baker was running for his life. He had been holding his own against the Germans around the crossroads at NoirMaillot/Rue d’Aire at St Venant, but they were getting closer and he was wounded and running out of ammunition. He took cover behind a hedge near a smithy, but his pursuers had seen him and he was soon surrounded. Monsieur Philogene Camus was standing outside the window of his smithy at the time and saw the British soldier lying in a ditch at the edge of the field about 50 yards away. Two German soldiers walked past the smithy, searching the ditch. They found the soldier and lifted him up into a standing position. Then they both hit him with the butts of their rifles and continued after he had fallen back into the ditch. After the two Germans had gone, Camus went to the ditch and discovered that the unarmed soldier was dead. At first the Germans would not allow the French civilians to bury Baker and they threatened them with their pistols. They were very angry as a number of their comrades had been killed during the fighting and would later be buried at the Desprez Farm in the Rue de Guarebecque at St Venant. However, the civilians ignored their threats and buried the murdered Baker where he lay. Eventually he would be moved to Grave 169 in the local cemetery. Thirty minutes after Baker was killed, the Germans came across a wounded soldier from the Berkshire Regiment. He had been badly wounded in the stomach and chest by shrapnel and was lying near the crossroads behind a corn stack opposite the Luthin Farm. One of the Germans appeared at the Bonnet residence and ordered Jules Bonnet, his daughter and an evacuee who was staying with them, Madame Claire Rogère, to follow him. As they walked past the outside water pump the German ordered Mr Bonnet to pick up a bucket in which the Germans had just washed their boots. When the group reached the wounded man, the German ordered Mr Bonnet to wash his wounds. Madame Rogère recognized the man as a member of a party who had called at the house the previous day and she insisted that the water was dirty and the man should be taken to the house for treatment. As the three civilians reached down to lift the soldier, another German stopped them with the words: ‘ Pas necessaire Madame, Tommy kapout.’ The German then offered the wounded man a cigarette, which he refused. The civilians were

told to go away, but had only gone a few yards when one of the Germans drew his revolver from under his camouflage jacket and shot the man in the head. Did the German shoot the wounded man to put him out of his misery? Madame Rogère did not think that the wounded soldier could have recovered, but the other two witnesses disagreed. Another similar incident had taken place a couple of hours earlier, around noon, when a British soldier with leg wounds was found lying near a trench opposite the Boulet Farm. Although he was unarmed, a German shot him in the head. The treatment of the British wounded after the battle around St Venant was appalling. The previous day, 26 May, a British soldier wounded in the abdomen was seen at the side of the road in the Rue de Guarebecque. Heavy fighting was still going on and it was not possible to render him first aid. The following day he was found in a trench with bayonet wounds and several revolver shots to his head. The body was later taken away by the Germans in a lorry. Although the fighting around St Venant came to an end on 27 May, the murders continued the next day. At 10.30 the following morning Mademoiselle Céline Camus was at the middle window of the refectory on the first floor of the Orphanage of Saint Augustin when she saw a British soldier with his hands in the air walking across the field on the east side of the orphanage. Three German soldiers walked across to him and stopped about 3 metres away. Suddenly one of the Germans fired at the man and he fell on the ground. He was shot twice more and then struck with the butts of their rifles. Mlle Camus was about 30 metres away at the time. The body remained in the field for several days afterwards. At 1100 hours another British soldier was found with a bullet wound in his arm. His arm was bandaged and was folded against his chest. The SS men led the wounded soldier across a small bridge and up the path leading to the entrance door of the house owned by 55-year-old Madame Cottrez and leant the wounded man against the wall. He was then shot twice in the head. As he lay on the ground they kicked him with their boots before firing one more bullet into his head. He was also buried near where he fell. The Germans refused to allow the French to bury most of the dead

soldiers. It was only when they started to decompose that they were properly buried. It was a shameful episode. There was worse to come in other areas on 28 May as considerable skirmishing took place in the neighbourhood of Calonne-sur-la-Lys. The inhabitants of the commune fled from the area while the fighting was going on and returned the following day to a scene of carnage. On the road outside the farm of Mr Seraphim Westrelin they saw a British lorry containing soldiers’ kit and at the side of the road were the bodies of eight British other ranks piled on top of each other. All of them had a wound right through the base of the neck, 1 inch in diameter at the back and 1.5in at the front. There were no other visible wounds and it was obvious that an execution had taken place. Some 50 metres to the south of these men lay three other men with similar wounds, their broken rifles lying nearby. Around 100 metres to the north of the eight men was a corporal, also with the same type of wound, and his broken rifle also lay nearby. Presumably the men had destroyed their weapons before surrendering. In the field to the east of the truck lay another man with a bullet wound in his head. It had penetrated his steel helmet and may have happened as he tried to escape. Two Vickers machine guns were found in the road at the junction 75 metres from the truck. They were not mounted and the legs were some distance down the road. The three farmers who found the bodies buried them in the field. They were exhumed in 1942 by order of the Germans and were buried in the communal cemetery, together with two other British soldiers who died in the normal course of the battle. All are buried as unknown soldiers. On 4 April 1945, a Court of Enquiry in the Field took place on the orders of the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. Its president was Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Boraston, CB, OBE. The members spent the morning in St Venant, reviewing four of the six cases that had been reported to them. Two of the cases were judged to have no reasonable prospect of obtaining evidence on which to base a report. When the flesh of a victim decomposes, the evidence of an atrocity may also disappear unless there is still visible damage to the skeleton. Two of the men murdered on 27 May were named as 5332412 Baker and

4124583 Edward Willoughe. The soldier who met his end at the house of Madame Cottrez was named as 333166 G. Waters. All the victims were judged to have been killed in violation of the well-recognized laws and usages of war and the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929. When the names and units of the thirty Germans who were killed in the fighting at St Venant were checked, the investigators could safely assume that the murderers were part of the same units. The problem now, five years later, was how to find the perpetrators.

The Steenbecque Murders After the war a number of war crimes incidents were reported to the authorities, many of which had no hope of a successful resolution. The murder of four men of the 4th Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment was just one such incident. The battalion was part of a British force that held up the German advance in the Steenbecque area. One of the main formations facing them was the SS Verfügungs Division. Decoopman Gaston was looking out of the window at the front of his café, the Café au St. Joseph at the crossroads on the Aire-Steenbecque-Hazebrouck road. He saw four British prisoners, one a corporal much taller than the others, being marched along the main road in the direction of Steenbecque by two German soldiers. Decoopman had been a prisoner in the First World War and noticed that the two men were not wearing any badges of rank, only the ‘lightning’ signs on their helmets indicating that they were SS men. As he watched, the four men were made to stand in a line on the road towards Steenbecque. The two SS men walked behind them and drew their revolvers but, possibly disturbed by the number of Germans on the road, they holstered their guns again and marched the four prisoners down a lane at the side of the café. Decoopman turned and climbed the steps up to his loft and saw from the back of his house the six men walking down the lane. Suddenly the four prisoners were no longer in view, only the two SS men walking back towards the café. He had not heard the sound of shots, but that was not

surprising in itself as there was a lot of noise coming from the main road as tanks drove past. When the two men reached the main road they were met by an officer wearing a leather coat who shook hands with them. Someone who had heard the fatal shots was Madame Dupreys, the occupant of the small house at the end of the lane. She heard four shots fired and the whine of the bullets as they passed her house. Later that day she went out into the lane and found the four bodies, all of whom had been shot in the head, lying two on each side of the road. The incident took place at around 1800 hours on 28 May 1940. Although Madame Dupreys later stated that Belgian refugees had picked up some letters that were lying beside the bodies, their identities were never established. Neither were the identities of their murderers.

CHAPTER NOTES Books: Aitken, Leslie, Massacre on the Road to Dunkirk (Wormhoudt) (1988) Jolly, Cyril, The Vengeance of Private Pooley (Le Paradis) (1977)

Other Publications: News of the World, 17 December 2000 (Wormhoudt)

Le Paradis: PRO WO309/72: one page mentions five separate massacres. PRO WO309/1371: five different cases mentioned, plus suspect list. PRO WO309/734: diagrams, witness statements.

PRO FO916/1166: one-page letter from Frenchman about massacre dated 9/44.

Wormhoudt: PRO WO309/26: statements and diagrams. PRO WO311/680: return to Wormhoudt.

Steenbecque: PRO FO383/262

St Venant: PRO WO311/97: court of enquiry findings, diagram of scene.

French troops retreating towards Dunkirk.

British and French wounded being taken into captivity.

British and French prisoners of war marching into captivity in May 1940.

An aerial view of the Le Paradis farm where dozens of surrendered members of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were lined up and machine-gunned by members of the SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Division.

A photo of the bodies of the murdered soldiers, still lying next to the barn where they had been shot, taken by a passing German photographer. Almost 100 bodies would be exhumed in 1942 and buried locally.

The barn at Le Paradis as it looks today.

Signaller Bill O’Callaghan (left) and Private Albert Pooley (right), the only two survivors of the Le Paradis massacre.

Survivors from Dunkirk arrive back in England.

Fritz Knöchlein was the senior company commander who gave the order to machine-gun the Royal Norfolks at Le Paradis. He was hanged on 21 January 1949.

The rebuilt barn at Wormhoudt, the scene of the murder of around eighty British prisoners in 1940.

Chapter 3

North Africa

I

n brief, the campaign in the Western Desert was fought between the Commonwealth forces – with the later addition of two brigades of Free French and one each of Polish and Greek troops – all based in Egypt, and the enemy comprising the German and Italian forces based in Libya. The battlefield, across which the fighting surged back and forth between 1940 and 1942, was the 1,000 kilometres of desert between Alexandria in Egypt and Benghazi in Libya. It was a campaign of movement and manoeuvre, the objectives being control of the Mediterranean, the link with the east through the Suez Canal, the Middle East oil supplies and the supply route to Russia through Persia. Because of the desert wastes of those countries, most of the fighting would take place along the coast where most of the roads and towns were situated. Benito Mussolini’s orders to his North African commander, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, were quite clear. His 300,000-strong army in Cyrenaica (north-east Libya) outnumbered the 30,000 British in Egypt by ten to one. It should be an easy task to throw them out of the country and open up the line of communications with Italian troops in Ethiopia. In September 1940 six Italian divisions moved east, forcing back the British under General Sir Archibald Wavell. By 17 September, four days into the campaign, the Italians had advanced 60 miles and then they stopped and began to construct a series of fortified camps, extending from Sidi Barrani on the coast to 50 miles inland.

Graziani intended to improve his supply lines and advance again in the cooler months of the year. However, Wavell did not intend to sit back and after reinforcements arrived from Britain, he planned a counter-attack. Major General Richard O’Connor, commander of the British Western Desert Force, sent his reconnaissance patrols out into the desert and discovered that the Italian camps were widely spaced and open to exploitation by fast-moving armoured forces. On 9 December he sent the 4th Indian Division supported by the 7th Royal Tank Regiment through one of the gaps and into the Italian rear. By the 11th they had overrun some of the fortified camps and had blocked the Italian line of retreat. Some 38,000 Italians surrendered, including four generals. By late December O’Connor’s formations were advancing again, with the 6th Australian Division following the coast road and the 7th Armoured again sweeping through the desert to outflank the enemy. The Italian fortress at Bardia, 15 miles inside Libya, was taken on 6 January 1941 after three days of hard fighting. Tobruk fell on the 22nd and O’Connor made preparations to move on to Benghazi, 240 miles further west. However, Graziani abandoned Benghazi on 3 February and prepared to make a stand at Sirte, the entrance to the western province of Tripolitania. O’Connor was determined not to let the Italians escape and sent the 7th Armoured Division across the desert to intercept them. The Italians considered the trackless waste impassable and were taken completely by surprise when the British tanks crossed the 150 miles of desert and reached the coast road ahead of the retreating Italian forces. They arrived at noon on 5 February and half an hour later the first Italian column arrived on the scene. The fighting continued for two days, the Italians arriving in small columns, unable to consolidate their strength for a breakthrough. They had nowhere to go and were forced to surrender. On 7 February Australian troops entered Benghazi and the next day Al Agheila, at the head of the Gulf of Sirte. In less than two months O’Connor’s forces had destroyed ten Italian divisions and taken 130,000 prisoners. British casualties were fewer than 2,000. Both Wavell and O’Connor wanted to continue the campaign and conquer Tripolitania, but Churchill believed that it was more important to send help to

Greece, now under threat from the Germans as well as the Italians. On 12 February he ordered Wavell to reduce his army in Cyrenaica to the minimum and send all available men to Greece. He would later regret that decision, for on that same day German General Erwin Rommel landed in Tripoli with the advance elements of his Afrika Korps. Over the following sixteen months the campaign in the desert went backwards and forwards as Rommel’s Afrika Korps eventually got the better of the Allied forces. There were various changes of leadership on the Allied side and much political interference from London but nothing could stop the ‘Desert Fox’, as Rommel became known. He eventually recaptured all the ground lost by the Italians and at each battle more prisoners of war fell into the bag. He would not be stopped until he came to a place named El Alamein in July 1942. Tobruk finally fell to Rommel on 20 June 1942. Command at the very top had been lacking and the German commander was overhead telling some captured Allied officers: ‘Gentlemen, you have fought like lions and been led by donkeys!’ Ahead of the defenders now lay the long road to captivity. Most of the prisoners taken in North Africa suffered similar experiences. They were not allowed to retain any equipment except their water bottles, greatcoats and blankets, if they had them, together with what they stood up in. Everything else was taken from them, including sand boots that were prized by the badly-shod Italians. Jackknives and eating utensils were also taken from the prisoners and they had to improvise until they got to the prisoner-of-war camp at Tripoli in October. Most of the men were transported from place to place by German or Italian trucks to which a trailer was attached. Packed so tightly that there was no room to sit down, there was no stopping for those suffering from dysentery; they had to simply cling to the bouncing trucks and do what they had to do over the side. Most of the men later confirmed that the men of the Afrika Korps had treated them as well as could be expected, but the Italians were another kettle of fish. If the men were required to march from place to place they often did so without food and on many occasions without water.

Benghazi RAF Warrant Officer Keith Graley was shot down near Tobruk on 13 July 1942 and captured by Italian troops. He spent two days in the town and then made a break for freedom. It only lasted an hour and a half before he was recaptured and shipped to the Sidi Hussein prisoner-of-war cage at Benghazi. When the lorry came to a halt he was kicked off and lay sprawling in the dust. He stood up and looked around at the ‘camp’ which stood on the salt flats. Inside the barbed wire he could see one or two shelters made up of canvas sheeting slung over wooden posts, but for the majority of the men there was no shelter and all slept out in the open. Graley was kept under guard while one of the Italians reported to the camp staff. Soon afterwards a group of half a dozen Carabinieri (the Italian military police) approached and marched him at rifle-point to the wire surrounding the camp. He noticed between nine and twelve British soldiers fastened to the wire by ropes, their wrists and ankles being in the crucifix position. The ropes were pulled tight to the wire which made it necessary for the victims to stand on tiptoe. It was obvious that they were suffering great discomfort from being tied up in the heat of the day and all were suffering from thirst. Graley was pushed towards a tree and made to stand with his back to it while his escort pushed him up so that he also stood on tiptoe. His wrists and ankles were tied and then his arms were stretched above his head. Before long his arms, shoulders and ankles were numb and pain began to spread through his stomach. After three hours of this punishment in the heat of the day, the guards returned and cut him down. It was a full hour before he could walk properly again. A large number of the prisoners were South Africans, captured at Tobruk or ‘Knightsbridge’. Many wore only shirt and shorts as protection against the sun, which sometimes reached 118 degrees, and they were only allowed one dixie of water to last all day. Dysentery was rife and the latrines were totally inadequate for the number of men who had to use them. As if this was not enough, squads of four Italians would circulate among the prisoners every

couple of hours and strike out at them with truncheons. Captain Edward Theodore Gilbert of the Royal Army Medical Corps was a medical officer with the 1st Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, attached to the 22nd Guards Brigade. He had been captured at El Adem on 19 June 1942, but escaped to Tobruk the same day. When the Germans took over the town he made his way east, but was captured again on 23 June. He arrived at Benghazi a month before Warrant Officer Graley and spent the next four months there. What awaited Gilbert were 16,000 prisoners of war and all were in a distressing state of hunger, thirst and illness. The camp was simply a piece of ground surrounded by barbed wire that was being used to corral thousands of prisoners ‘in transit’ to Italy. It was extended from time to time and eventually developed into a camp with rows of barbed wire 4ft or 5ft high, caging more than 20,000 men. There was no organization and no medical attention except that provided by a few disinterested Italian medics who were more interested in bartering with the prisoners than treating them. Seven other medical officers arrived at the same time as Gilbert and Major Pryn took command as senior officer. However, he fell ill two or three days later and was subsequently sent to Italy by hospital ship. The mantle of responsibility then fell on Gilbert’s shoulders. Two days later the number of prisoners had risen to 24,000 but seven more medical officers had arrived and all combined their efforts to care for the men. Three South African padres also arrived to help out where they could and Captain Johnston of the 4th Hussars also volunteered to act as sanitary officer. He escaped three weeks later but was recaptured in a very poor state after almost three weeks on the run. There was no sanitation available other than shallow open trenches and there was no latrine paper either. For those suffering from dysentery it was misery indeed. There were no practical facilities for washing or disinfestation and soon the first lice made their appearance. Fortunately there was no outbreak of typhus, an infection spread by these creatures. The officers were held in a separate compound next to an Italian supply depot and occasionally the medical officers managed to steal tins of jam that

helped them keep going as they worked day and night. No fruit was given out at any time, even though supplies of lemons appeared from time to time. The men were not even given the packing material from the crates for latrine purposes. After three weeks in the camp Captain Gilbert asked the camp authorities to provide the same rations as for Italian front-line troops as dictated by the Geneva Convention, but they were not provided. After a month had passed some cigarettes were given out, but they were no substitute for food. The medical supplies given to the MOs were only enough to treat about 5 per cent of the sick. An isolation ward was set up in what was used as the hospital, where diphtheria and other infectious diseases were treated. Sixtyseven men died there, due mostly to the lack of medicines, food and care on the part of their captors. One of Captain Gilbert’s main complaints when he made his report on return to England was the fact that at no time did a representative of the International Red Cross or of the Protecting Power visit the prisoner-of-war camps at Benghazi or Tripoli. No Red Cross parcels were ever received either, although Gilbert suspected that such parcels were probably received by the Italian authorities but withheld from the prisoners. The Italian officers and guards were a disgrace and openly indulged in barter with the prisoners of war, taking advantage of their craving for cigarettes to strike hard bargains such as offering only twenty inferior-quality cigarettes for a watch worth 10 pounds sterling. Even the Italian medics tried to barter with patients on their way to hospital by ambulance. Contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, some European prisoners were taken out of the camp on fatigue duty, but when they realized that this involved work connected with the Axis war effort they refused to work. Consequently, Indian and South African coloured prisoners were taken instead and forced to work. When this became known they were taught how to remove the detonators from shells, fill petrol tanks with water and to put sand into the petrol tanks of enemy vehicles. When the war came to an end a search began for the Italian commanders of the camp, Captain Palermo and his successor Captain Felice Vismara. The war crimes investigators had arrested Vismara, but the decision was taken in

April 1946 not to charge him with ill-treating his prisoners due to the short period of time he had been in charge. Palermo was still on the wanted list.

Tarhuna Warrant Officer Ian MacKintosh was one of the many South African soldiers taken prisoner at Tobruk and he was sent to Tarhuna prisoner-of-war camp, run by the Italian army. Conditions there were so bad that it was agreed among the men that anyone who did anything to the detriment of their fellow prisoners would be tried and punished by the warrant officers in the camp. While this was an admirable system in a desperate situation, it did have unfortunate consequences for one of the men, a Private Benade who decided to try to obtain a second helping of the meagre food allowance by joining the queue again. He was spotted and taken to the warrant officers where he was given a fair hearing. They decided to punish him by ordering him to clean the latrines in the camp for two weeks. As the men were so weak it was not possible to award any corporal or severe punishment. Each man, including the officers, only received half an Italian bully-beef tin of coffee each morning, an 8cc cup of boiled rice at 11.30 am and 5.30 pm, plus a 200 gram loaf of bread per day. Private Benade decided to refuse to accept his punishment, so the warrant officers followed their usual procedure of announcing his name, group and crime in front of the full parade of men at a mealtime. As this was being done, Benade stepped out of line and refused again to accept his punishment. Perhaps at that point it may have been wiser to give the obstinate man a beating, because RSM Martin announced that he had no option but to hand him over to the Italians for punishment. The Italian commandant at that time was a Captain Luigi Orlando and he ordered that Benade be thrown into a cell measuring 10ft by 10ft, joining fifteen other prisoners of war. They had no latrine facilities whatsoever and had to use their mess tins, with no opportunity of washing them. When Benade was released thirty days later he was a walking skeleton, covered in bug and vermin bites and had to be assisted to the medical room where 2nd

Division HQ medical officer Captain Harrison cared for him as best he could. A South African corporal with the surname of Harrison was ordered by Orlando to hand over a South African pound note without giving a receipt for it in return. This was one of the many ways in which the Italian commandant supplemented his pay, by stealing from or swindling the prisoners of war. Harrison made the mistake of tearing the note up in front of Orlando and he was immediately thrown into the cell now known to the prisoners as the ‘black hole of Calcutta’. When he was released twenty-six days later he was in a worse condition than Benade. Captain Orlando often had the men’s food carried into the compound and then he would walk around and around, creating a cloud of dust that would settle in the cooking pots on top of the rice. When he was satisfied that the food had been covered with dust he would say: ‘Now you English pigs may eat.’ If the men tried to eat the food without his consent they would forfeit their entire ration for the next day. The issue of cigarettes was personally supervised by Orlando, who would attempt to swindle the men at every opportunity. Every other man would be denied his ration with the remark that his hair was too long or too short and every man had to carry his hat in his hand or he received no cigarettes. The men were paid 1 lira per day up to the rank of sergeant and 1.7 lire per day for sergeants and above. Once he had paid them, Orlando would then go to the local Tarhuna market and purchase tomatoes, onions and dates on their behalf. He would not, of course, allow any of the prisoners to view these transactions and they found themselves paying 5 lire for just one date. Eventually the men were transferred to prisoner-of-war camps in Italy where conditions were slightly better. Ian MacKintosh would later take his life in his hands by making a break for freedom as the Germans tried to transfer the men in his camp to Germany.

Tripoli One of the worst places at which a prisoner of war could end up was the PoW camp at Tripoli. It was ruled with a rod of iron by an animal with the name of

Oberleutnant Held, a recently-promoted former sergeant major in the German army. The camp itself was a miserable enclosure about 12 yards by 50, flanked by five stone barracks, a cookhouse, a wooden hut and a couple of smaller rooms, with a high wall at one end and two small huts roofed with asbestos sheeting at the other. The sanitary arrangements in the camp were appalling, with only seven latrines between 350 men, most of whom were suffering from dysentery. All were infested with lice, a curse that affected most prisoners of war at one time or another. The only way to get rid of them was to subject one’s clothes to extreme heat or to laboriously pick them out of the folds and creases one at a time. The prisoners of war had very little time to clean either themselves or the camp as they were forced to work very long hours on war-related work parties that were forbidden by the Geneva Convention. As if that was not enough, contrary to the Geneva Convention an anti-aircraft battery was installed close to the camp and machine guns were mounted on the roofs of their accommodation. As Tripoli and its docks came under almost nightly air attack, the noise rendered sleep almost impossible and left the helpless men open to strafing by the RAF as well. Held was nicknamed ‘Battleaxe’, a short individual with prominent eyes who shouted his orders at all times. He hated the English and totally ignored the Geneva Convention. Medics who should only have been employed in hospitals were sent out on working parties and the men were sent out to work at ammunition dumps, petrol dumps and ordnance stores, all forbidden under the terms of the Convention. One incident never to be forgotten by the men occurred on 10 August 1941. An air-raid began around midnight and one of the targets was the Italian barracks about 40 yards from the prisoner-of-war camp. Bombs fell close to the camp, blowing in windows and doors and sending pieces of the asbestos roof of the canteen hurtling across the camp like shrapnel. At 1.00 am, at the height of the raid, the guards roused all the men out onto the parade ground. Facing them was a drunken, furious Held who screamed and shouted at the men, his eyes bulging like a maniac. Apparently the cookhouse

and store-room doors had been blown in by the bomb blast but Held insisted that someone had broken them down to get at the contents. When one bold soul stepped forward to insist that it was bomb damage, Held ordered his right-hand man Unteroffizier Müller to beat him up. The German interpreter explained: ‘You must not contradict. The Kommandant said somebody tried to break in, and it is so. When a German officer says a thing is right, then it is right – even if it is wrong!’ Müller was better-known to the men as ‘Raus’ due to his constant use of the word (‘Hurry, move faster’). He was always at the gate of the camp to help the prisoners on their way by use of his hands or feet and many of the instances of ill-treatment originated from him. When three escapees were returned to the camp they were sentenced to a month in solitary confinement on bread and water. Müller would visit them and beat them up and urged the guards to do so as well at the slightest provocation. Müller also forced sick men to go out on work parties and refused them permission to see the German MO. He also encouraged the guards to fire their pistols in the barrack rooms to wake up the exhausted men. One prisoner was forced to clean out the latrines with his bare hands as a punishment for a minor offence. Another nasty piece of work was Unteroffizier Linckler, a fanatical Nazi who took a sadistic pleasure in ill-treating the prisoners. When an Australian prisoner was caught stealing some tinned fruit, Linckler beat him and made him run across the sand carrying boxes from one building to another while following him waving his pistol. The man eventually collapsed and was beaten again before being sentenced to thirty days on bread and water. It became common practice, condoned by Held, for the guards to beat the prisoners with their rifle butts if they showed signs of slackening off at work. This got worse when the first Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) types began to come into Africa in August 1941. Trooper Jones from the Royal Tank Regiment was caught eating a piece of melon given to him by another prisoner who had bought it from an Arab working in the depot. He was beaten and forced to carry twice as many canisters of petrol as normal, running ‘at the double’ while the German helped him on his way with kicks and punches.

However, it must be said that not all Germans in the camp were bad. The men had a lot of respect for the German medical officer Fischer who did all he could to alleviate their suffering. Many of the prisoners were suffering from desert sores and he worked hard to find a cure for the problem. Also, the men had long suspected that their rations and canteen supplies were being looted by a clerk at the camp named Schultz. When eventually another commandant took over from Held, the culprit was punished accordingly.

SS Scillin The SS Scillin had been built in Glasgow in 1903 and was registered at Genoa. When she docked at Tripoli to transport some of the prisoners to Italy she was full of coal dust and was listing to port with the large quantities of bilge water flowing through the keel of the ship. Some 810 weary prisoners started to climb down into the hold on 12 November 1942 and found that it was so crowded that no one could lie down. About half the men were suffering from dysentery and many were seasick. The only light entering the hold came through a hatch that was kept open during the day to allow five men at a time to go on deck to draw water. After dark the hatchway was covered with planks, leaving only one small opening. The guard comprised a dozen Italian soldiers who were going home on leave. The ship cast off at around 3.00 pm on the Friday and hugged the African coast as she made her way home to Italy. Significantly, the ship flew no flag and carried no signs that she was transporting prisoners of war. At around 8.30 pm on Saturday, 14 November, while the ship was about 16 miles off Cape Bon, the British submarine HMS Sahib commanded by Lieutenant J.H. Bromage fired a warning shot across her bows as a signal to heave to. This was disregarded and the Italian wireless operator began to send signals that the ship was under attack. As this was considered a hostile act in that it would aid the enemy in locating the submarine, they fired nine more shots from her 3in deck gun at the Scillin. Some of the Italian personnel and at least one prisoner of war were hit and they were carried to the sick bay by two NCOs where Captain Gilbert,

RAMC dressed their wounds. As Sergeant Heath, one of the NCOs, went back on deck he saw the Italians running around, throwing away their rifles and putting on lifebelts. He found a lifebelt himself and started to put it on, but one of the Italian sentries then struck him with his rifle butt and threw the lifebelt overboard. Private McLean was down in the hold when the shelling began and with a few of his comrades climbed the iron ladder and pushed up the boards that covered the hatchway. He had to lay down on the deck to avoid the shrapnel and crawled away to hide behind a packing case. As he watched, two Italian guards ran back and replaced the boards over the hatchway. Keeping a close watch on the guards, he slowly moved around to the other side of the ship, all the time hearing the cries of the prisoners in the hold to be let out. Sergeant Hickman was also on the deck and together with Lance Sergeant Skivington they started to pull the boards away again. They had only removed three or four of them when four of the remaining guards pushed them away and replaced the planks. Suddenly a torpedo hit the engine-room and Hickman was knocked unconscious. The funnel and a shower of coal slack and steam shot 20ft into the air. Some men were thrown overboard by the force and others near the rail jumped as the ship began to heel over. However, for the majority of the men trapped in the hold by the Italian guards, there was no escape. The ship sank in two minutes. Sergeant Hickman came to in the water and clung to some wreckage until the submarine moved in to survey the scene. When Gunner Rhodes surfaced, he saw the submarine about 500 yards away and swam towards it. As the crew reached down to pull him aboard they discovered for the first time that British prisoners were aboard and began to move among the wreckage searching for survivors. It was not long, however, before a lookout reported ‘a white feather astern’ meaning that a ship was closing in on them. They had to abandon the search and leave the area with only twenty-four rescued prisoners and thirtyfive Italians on board, including the captain of the SS Scillin who was among the first to abandon his ship. The names of those lost are remembered on the memorial at El Alamein.

The sinking of the Scillin was not an isolated incident as similar events occurred at least four times. Whether the Italians decided not to inform the Allies that the ships were transporting prisoners or whether it was decided that the ships should be sunk regardless will never be proven. The Italians could certainly have taken more steps to ensure that as many of the prisoners as possible would be saved when disaster occurred. On 9 December 1941, almost a year before the Scillin was sunk, the Samarian was attacked while transporting 2,000 prisoners of war from Benghazi to Italy. The ship was 8 miles off Greece when a torpedo hit the forward hold and panic ensued among the prisoners battened down in the other holds. It took about twenty minutes for some of the men to break the covers to the hatches and get out on deck. Several men jumped overboard, but were fired upon by a small gunboat nearby. New Zealander Private William Martin remembered seeing many seriously wounded prisoners lying around the deck. As he looked around for something that would float in the water, he saw two South African prisoners unfasten a lifeboat and swing it out over the side. However, before they could get into it, the Italian captain of the ship appeared and, without warning, shot them both with a pistol from about 8 yards away. The captain and some members of the crew then climbed into the lifeboat and made their way to safety. Fortunately the second-in-command of the ship was a German officer and he fired his pistol into the air to calm the panicking men. He remained on the bridge and succeeded in beaching the ship near Cape Matapan, thereby saving the remaining men. One of the men who found himself in the water was Rifleman Harold Levine who later thought that at least 100 men had drowned. He was in the water for six hours before he was picked up by an Italian cruiser.

CHAPTER NOTES Benghazi Camp:

PRO WO311/301

Tarhuna: PRO WO310/12 and 26

Tripoli: PRO WO311/305 Also Broomhead, E.N., Barbed Wire in the Sunset

SS Scillin: PRO WO311/26 Thanks also to historian Brian Sims whose father was lost on the Scillin.

British prisoners captured during the fall of Tobruk are escorted away by members of the Afrika Korps.

Prisoners captured at Tobruk were passed over to the Italians who kept them in barbed-wire concentration camps until they could be shipped over to permanent prison camps in Italy. The treatment received in Italian hands was very poor: inadequate food, water and accommodation and guards who would shoot to kill without warning.

American soldiers taken prisoner in Tunisia marching to a prisoner collection point.

Italian guards escort some of the 33,000 prisoners taken at the fall of Tobruk into captivity.

New Zealand prisoners of war in the tented Camp 116 at Benghazi in Libya in 1942.

SS Scillin was sunk by a Royal Navy submarine while carrying British prisoners of war to Italy.

Chapter 4

Greece, Crete and the Trial of General Student

P

rime Minister Churchill’s plan to divert troops from the North African campaign to Greece ended in failure. By the end of April 1941, eleven German divisions had pushed the Allied forces back to the beaches and ports where those that could be recovered were taken off by ship to Egypt or Crete. Those taken prisoner of war would endure near-starvation rations before being shipped to Germany in cattle trucks. Even the wounded prisoners of war, hoping for repatriation through Turkey, would follow them. The treatment of the prisoners by their guards would follow a familiar pattern. On 1 May Captain Hughes Stanton was bartering for oranges with the Greeks who gathered daily by the camp fence when a German came up, drew his revolver and shot him in the neck. The bullet entered his neck on the left, an inch below the angle of the jaw; the exit wound was over the right cheek. It was extremely lucky that he still lived to be taken to the makeshift British PoW hospital nearby. The memo regarding the situation was quite straightforward, dated 7 December 1946 and sent to the Deputy Judge Advocate General, GHQ Central Mediterranean Forces by Major T.G. Field-Fisher, the officer in command of the war crimes section. The report stated the current position on the war crimes cases in Greece. Four cases were the most promising. Case One involved the shooting of Sapper L.H. Tobin from the 2nd New

Zealand Expeditionary Force at Ghioza on 20 January 1943. Sapper Tobin, together with another British evader named Webster, had been hiding in an isolated hut owned by a Greek named Tsimitzis. Although the hut was in a very mountainous district, the two men were found asleep by a small patrol of Carabinieri. The men were taken down to a nearby village and interrogated by Lieutenant Vitozzi with Andreas Vitale acting as interpreter. After the interrogation Tobin was taken outside the house and made to walk about 50 metres accompanied by some of the Carabinieri including a Maresciallo de Billio and the interpreter. The unlucky prisoner was then shot dead. The interpreter Andreas Vitale then returned to the house and told the owner to fetch a priest and two men to bury the ‘dog’ they had just shot. As of December 1946, Vitale had just been arrested and there was a very good chance of picking up Maresciallo de Billio. There were about nine Greek witnesses in addition to Webster, the surviving prisoner of war. Case Two involved the shooting of Corporal Cocker and Private Howe at the village of Kapareli, Thebes on 21 October 1941. Apparently the two men were hiding in a hut when they were surprised by a search party of Carabinieri sent out by the commander of the Thebes detachment. Cocker resisted arrest and wounded one of the Italian search party with a knife or bayonet. He was immediately shot dead. The Italian officer then said to Howe ‘Your friend has wounded one of my men’ and he was also shot dead on the spot. The only eye-witness would later testify that Howe had his hands up during the incident and never moved at any time. At the time of the report the war crimes investigators knew the names of the four officers in the Thebes detachment and were trying to trace them and the other ranks stationed there. There were also eight Greek witnesses to the incident. Case Three concerned the ill-treatment and murder of prisoners incarcerated in Larissa Concentration Camp from early 1942 to mid-1943. These included a Captain Savage, Lance Corporal Coleman, Privates Lake, Ditchburn and Nathan and numerous Palestinian, Cypriot and Greek prisoners. Accused of the crime were successive commandants including a

Lieutenant Reggimenti, Captain Supan, Captain Modigliani, Lieutenant Depascale and Lieutenant D’Allessio. At that time only Lieutenant D’Allessio was in custody, although the whereabouts of Captain Modigliani were known. There was a small British element in the camp, which was not a prisonerof-war camp as such but rather a concentration camp for political prisoners. Somewhere in the region of 250 prisoners died there over a twelve-month period. The war crimes investigators considered the Palestinians and Cypriots to be British subjects, but it was thought that the Greeks would try the case. Captain Savage and Private Winter were recaptured after an escape and were tortured. They were stripped to the waist, tied with their hands above their heads to two poles and flogged with rubber truncheons bound with wire until they both lost consciousness. Winter received forty lashes and Savage forty-four and their backs were a mass of torn flesh when this deplorable act was over. The other British victims also received similar treatment, but only six or eight lashes. On one occasion a Cretan prisoner escaped and as the Italian authorities could not discover how it happened they decided to take twenty men from each hut and make them run the gauntlet as a punishment. The punishment was so severe that some men had their bones broken and several Greek prisoners died during the following two days. This was only one of many such incidents at the camp and the various commanders could be tried on a number of charges including murder, brutality, torture, starvation and theft of Red Cross supplies and personal belongings. The war crimes investigators considered that the Greeks should continue the investigation, although a suitable prison to hold the suspects was still being sought.

Crete and the Trial of General Student On Tuesday, 20 May 1941 the weary prisoners in Greece were woken by the sound of a throbbing drone. As they looked up into the clear, bright sky they saw hundreds of Luftwaffe Ju 52 transport planes, each towing a glider and escorted by flights of tiny Messerschmitts. The vast armada was heading

south and the men on the ground asked each other ‘Is it Egypt or Crete?’ As the planes returned within the hour minus their gliders, they knew it was Crete. A couple of days later the first wounded prisoners of war began to arrive in Greece from Crete. One of them brought with him a pamphlet that had been dropped on the troops as they fought the German paratroopers. It was entitled ‘To the population and military forces in Crete’ and read: 1) Whosoever commits such crimes against International Laws on German prisoners of war will be punished in the manner of his own cruel action – no matter be he man or woman. 2) Localities near which such crimes have been perpetrated will be burned down. The population will be held responsible for the outrageous acts. 3) Beyond these measures further, sharper reprisals will be held in store. Apparently the Germans had discovered the mutilated bodies of some of their paratroopers who had been scattered all over the island. At first sight it appeared that they had been butchered by Cretan civilians fighting to defend their island, and many of them were murdered in reprisal. Months after the fighting had ended, an Abwehr investigation cleared the Cretans of the atrocity and put it down to the carrion birds that feasted on the dead. It was too late, however, for the innocent civilians murdered in mistaken reprisal. It was one of many outrages committed on the island by the invaders, involving both civilians and military personnel. By the end of February 1946 the Judge Advocate General had decided that there was enough evidence to charge the commander of the German 11 Air Corps, the paratroop General Kurt Student, on eight separate counts of committing a war crime during the assault on Crete in May 1941. The first charge was that, in violation of the laws and usages of war as commander-in-chief of the German forces in Crete, he was responsible for the use of British prisoners of war as a screen for the advance of German troops. This allegedly took place near Maleme when German paratroopers drove a party of prisoners in front of them, resulting in at least six of them being killed by the fire of British troops.

The second charge was that Student was responsible for the employment of British prisoners of war in prohibited work. This charge arose from the use of British prisoners of war to unload arms, ammunition and other war-related stores from German aircraft at Maleme airfield. The third charge was that he was held responsible for the shooting of British prisoners of war at Maleme airfield after they had refused to carry out prohibited work. The fourth charge was that he was responsible for the bombing of Number Seven General Hospital near Galatas when aircraft under his command bombed the hospital, even though it was marked with a red cross. The fifth charge was similar to the first, in that German troops used staff and patients from the above hospital as a screen during their advance on British positions, causing the death of Staff Sergeant Whetton of the Royal Army Medical Corps and other British prisoners of war. The sixth charge was that Student was responsible for the killing of three soldiers of the Welch Regiment by his paratroopers after they had surrendered near Galatas. The seventh charge was that he was responsible as commander-in-chief German Forces in Crete for the killing of a British prisoner of war when troops under his command wilfully exposed British PoWs to the fire of British troops near Galatas, resulting in the death of Private Davies of the Welch Regiment. The eighth and final charge was that Student was responsible when men under his command shot and killed several British PoWs in a prison camp near Maleme. Sixty years later, former prisoner of war Doug Arthur described to the author how well the Germans treated our prisoners of war on Crete: I was taken on Crete and was detained in Galatas. I broke out of the compound three times to beg or buy food from the Cretans in Chania and had to find a way to get back into the camp with the proceeds. On the last occasion when I and my companion returned with our pockets full of raisins and rice we found that the guards had been increased, presenting a bigger problem of how to get back inside without being spotted. The opportunity to

duck under the barbed wire came when we heard a rifle shot and saw the guards running towards a man on the ground. I believe he was a Kiwi trying to get out of the camp but I can’t say for sure and I don’t remember what happened to him. I think he was badly wounded in the leg. The first reports of prisoners being shot began to filter through to the Prisoner of War Department in London in July 1942. They involved four men who had all been reported missing on 2 June 1941. Each sent a postcard home on 26 June, stating that he was unwounded and quite well and was a prisoner of war in a transit camp. A further card, supposedly from one of the men but not in his handwriting, confirmed his good health on 18 July. All four men were later reported buried in the Prisoner of War Camp Cemetery at Chania. Private Arthur Hyde died from a gunshot wound to the brain on 11 July; Private Pinnell died of a gunshot wound to his back on 17 July; Lance Corporal Scaife died from a fracture of the left femur on 30 July; and Private Seward, a medic, died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen on 6 July. The PoW Department noted that the men had probably been shot while trying to escape. Apparently there were so many escapes and escape attempts in Chania that most of the prisoners were transferred early in 1942. It seems to this author that they were giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt, especially after Driver Lawson wrote to the parents of Seward from his new camp at Stalag 3D in Germany, expressing his sorrow at the ‘misfortune’ that had befallen their son. Why would a medic attempt to escape from a prisonerof-war camp on an island when he could reasonably expect to be repatriated under the terms of the Geneva Convention? Before the trial of General Student began, the Judge Advocate General suggested that, in view of his high rank, the court might consist of a major general as president and four senior officers, including a New Zealand officer as the New Zealand Expeditionary Force considerably augmented the British troops fighting on Crete. Following the appearance of an extract of the trial in The Times newspaper, RAMC Captain G. Crean wrote to the President of the War Crimes Court in Lüneburg on 8 May 1946. Apparently, he had met a New Zealand medical officer who had been on Crete and who was evacuated by

destroyer before the island surrendered. He described the capture of the hospital by the German paratroopers who treated the patients very well. They undertook to continue treatment of the ‘lying’ patients, but insisted that their MOs remain with them. They could not treat the walking wounded who were too numerous, but undertook to escort them back to friendly lines and sent a message to that effect. It would seem that the message was not received until too late and the New Zealanders, thinking that the Germans were using the patients as a screen as they advanced, opened fire and many prisoners were either killed or wounded several times. The escort then fired back and a general battle ensued with the prisoners in the middle of it. Some of the men were retrieved and later evacuated to Egypt. The lying wounded were later flown to Athens in Luftwaffe Ju 52 aircraft. This was broadcast in a message to New Zealand by General Freyberg, which was repeated in the press. One of the witnesses at the trial was Brigadier L.M. Inglis, a seasoned New Zealander who escaped from Crete and went on to serve with the New Zealand Division in North Africa and Egypt. When the invasion began on 20 May 1941, his headquarters were situated on a hill overlooking the hospital referred to in charge number four and he actually observed the use of staff and patients as a screen in charge number five. He testified that around 19 May a German plane attempted to drop bombs on troops bathing in the sea near the hospital and that one of the bombs fell in the hospital area. The hospital was marked as such by a large red cross. The brigadier went on to describe how a relatively small number of paratroops landed in the area of the hospital, approximately two plane-loads of them. Among them was a German officer who behaved outrageously. He entered the end of a large long tented hospital ward and fired his automatic carbine down the ward, wounding one or two of the men in bed. In very good English, he shouted ‘Come on, get out you bastards’ as the patients and staff were rounded up. Brigadier Inglis thought that this was the same man who shot Colonel Plimmer, the OC of the 6th Field Ambulance just across the road from the hospital. A number of medical staff were sheltering in a trench and the German ordered them to come out. As Colonel Plimmer climbed out with his hands in the air he was shot in cold blood, despite being unarmed and

wearing his Red Cross medical armband. A report on the incident from the medical officer who was alongside the colonel when he was killed reached the brigadier within twenty minutes. In the fighting that followed, most of the Germans around the hospital were killed or wounded and it was known that the German officer was one of the wounded that were taken to a hospital in Chania. It was intended prior to evacuation to get the German out of hospital and try him by court martial, but the eye-witness who was sent to get him out of hospital could not identify him. The brigadier did not think that the staff and patients were being used as a screen by the advancing Germans. There was no attack being mounted behind them and the whole area had developed into a series of running battles between the 18th New Zealand Battalion in the olive groves and the scattered bands of Germans. It is not known, however, why the Germans did not simply leave the patients and staff in the hospital, which was itself protected under the Geneva Convention. In further defence of General Student the brigadier considered that, in his opinion, there had not been an organized breach of the laws and usages of war; the hospital in Chania had not been bombed and the trucks that were used to transport wounded from Maleme back to Chania, marked with red crosses on sheets over the cabs, were not molested on any of their journeys. The trial took place between 6 and 10 May 1946 and at the end of it Student was acquitted of five of the charges against him. He was convicted of the other three: charge two, which involved the use of British prisoners of war on prohibited work, unloading ammunition and war-related stores from German aircraft; charge three in which prisoners of war who refused to unload German aircraft were shot; and charge six in which he was held responsible for the killing of three soldiers of the Welch Regiment after they had surrendered near Galatas. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. On 23 May, Student petitioned against the findings of the court on the grounds that 1) the prosecution did not prove the particular intent or state of mind on his part, which is a necessary ingredient of the offences for which he had been convicted; 2) that the learned Judge Advocate in his summing up at the trial failed to direct the court adequately on the law and in particular that he failed to direct the court adequately as to the nature and extent of mens rea

(the state of mind that the prosecution must prove a defendant had at the time of committing a crime in order to secure a conviction); 3) that the best evidence available to the prosecution was not adduced by it in respect of certain matters which the prosecution purported to prove; 4) that the written Operation Orders issued to the German troops for the invasion of Crete were available to the prosecution, but although they were of the greatest importance for proving or disproving the charges preferred against him, were NOT put in evidence by the prosecution; 5) that the production of said Orders was requested on his behalf in ample time before the trial, but the said Orders were NOT made available to the defence; 6) that there was no evidence upon which the Court could reasonably find him guilty or alternatively that the findings were against the weight of evidence; 7) that a substantial miscarriage of justice had actually occurred and that the convictions on all three charges should be quashed. The petition was referred to the Deputy Judge Advocate General at Headquarters, British Army of the Rhine for his advice and report. The petition was considered by Brigadier Lord Russell of Liverpool and his report is a good example of the lengths to which the British legal system bent over backwards to ensure that the former enemy were given fair hearings. In his opinion, the prosecutor in the case failed ‘to place upon the accused criminal liability in respect of the incidents which formed the subject of the second, third and sixth charges of which he was convicted.’ There was no doubt that the incidents had taken place but Dr Heine, counsel for Student, insisted that the court had to prove that his client had ordered the alleged violations of the laws and usages of war, or that he instigated them, or that he knew they were being committed but did not try to prevent them happening, or that he was guilty of gross negligence which was the direct and immediate cause of the crimes. Lord Russell of Liverpool gave his opinion, which was that the proceedings should not be confirmed on the grounds of items six and seven of Student’s petition, i.e. that there was no evidence upon which the court could reasonably find him guilty or that the findings were against the weight of evidence and that a substantial miscarriage of justice had actually occurred and that the convictions on all three charges should be quashed.

Because of the importance of the case and of the question of responsibility that might arise in future cases, the case was referred to the JAG back in London. The proceedings were reviewed by the Judge Advocate General in Cockspur Street in London in June 1946. He declared that he did not believe that an officer in chief command of a force or of an operation can be held responsible merely because war crimes have been committed by troops under his command. In order to hold him responsible it must be proven that he ordered, instigated, connived at or condoned the crimes, or that he had been guilty of culpable neglect in failing to prevent them. General Student admitted that he had not reminded his men of their obligations towards prisoners of war just prior to the battle, but said that the troops had been fully instructed in those matters in the course of their training or exercises. Under the circumstances, the JAG felt that he could not be held responsible for all the violations of the laws and usages of war that had occurred. Due to the lack of evidence of a system of planned or organized violations, it was the opinion of the JAG that Student was not responsible for the killing of the British prisoners of war referred to in the sixth charge and accordingly the finding on this charge was not confirmed. The advice given to the General Officer Commanding, 30 Corps District in BAOR was that he could confirm that Student was guilty of the second and third charges regarding the use of prisoners of war to unload war material, but that if he was not completely satisfied from the military point of view as to Student’s responsibility for the offences he could refuse confirmation. That is indeed what finally happened. The five-year sentence was not confirmed and Student was let off the hook. In the final analysis, was Student responsible for the actions of his paratroopers? If he was not, then who was? Highly-trained they may have been, but they were ruthless men for all that. Lance Corporal Tom Jagger was with the 1st Battalion Argylls when they and other Allied units were sent in May 1941 to defend the island of Crete against an imminent German invasion. The battalion was dispersed on the Messara Plain inland from the port of Heraklion. When the Germans mounted their huge airborne invasion, their paratroopers may have suffered heavy losses but they still caused chaos

among the defenders. Tom and a fellow Argyll, Frank Proctor, were separated from their platoon and taken prisoner. They were put up against a farmhouse wall to be shot, like the pair of Greek partisans before them. Tom and Frank shook hands together, then they stood to attention and came to the salute, looking the men who were about to shoot them straight in the eyes. However, the Germans then had a change of heart and set the two men to work digging graves in the farmyard. They suspected that these might be for themselves so agreed to take their time, but the graves turned out to be for the two Greeks and the two Scots buried them. Tom was asked if he was a medical orderly and thinking that the answer ‘no’ might be perilous, he said ‘yes’ and found himself helping to organize a makeshift German field hospital set up in a farmhouse. He tended the wounded as best he could but was then taken away and set in harness like a beast of burden to drag one of the German hand carts full of ammunition. Suddenly a British mortar attack began and Tom threw off his harness and dived into a large hole, followed by two Germans who immediately surrendered to him as the Leicestershire Regiment retook the farmhouse. Tom was lucky enough to get away from Crete on the last warship out of Heraklion and went on to fight at El Alamein and in Sicily and Italy. He was commissioned in 1946 and eventually retired from the army at the age of 55. A tireless worker for a number of charities including the National ExPrisoner of War Association, he died following a stroke suffered during a visit to Crete in 2002. On 5 September 1946 the Greek government notified HQ BAOR that they required the extradition of Kurt Student, whose conviction by a British military court for war crimes in Crete had not been confirmed. The Greek Military Mission to the HQ was informed that the extradition could go ahead as long as the case was registered with the United Nations War Crimes Commission and that the Greek charges against him did not cover the same ground as those on which he had already been tried before a British military court. On 21 November 1947 it was confirmed that Student was now cleared of all British and Netherlands War Crimes interest. At the time Student was in Rothenburg Hospital and the medical officer there had recommended his

release from custody on grounds of health. There was much discussion at the time as to whether or not Student should be extradited to Greece because many of the incidents quoted by the Greeks occurred after Student had left Crete for Berlin on 30 June. However, as far as the author can ascertain, the extradition did not go ahead.

CHAPTER NOTES Greece: PRO WO310/187: war crimes in Greece. PRO WO311/613: the shooting of four PoWs ‘while trying to escape’. Borrie, John, Despite Captivity (William Kimber, 1975)

Crete and the Trial of General Student: PRO WO235/115: eight charges of war crimes against Student. PRO WO309/737: General Student and reprisals. Statement from RAMC officer. Tom Jagger obituary, National Ex-Prisoner of War Summer 2002 newsletter.

During the German airborne invasion of Crete in 1941 their airborne forces suffered heavy losses.

Allied troops surrendering to the German invaders.

British troops surrender to a German paratroop patrol.

A German paratroop patrol passes by dead Allied soldiers. It is difficult to assess whether they have been killed in combat or not. There are no weapons or equipment lying near the bodies.

Date: 2 June 1941. German paratroops open fire on Cretan civilians following allegations that they murdered wounded paratroops.

Cretan civilians frantically search for cover at Kondomari as German paratroopers open fire on them. The reprisal was carried out against male members of the village as the bodies of a few dead Germans were discovered nearby. Between twenty-three and sixty civilians were killed. The massacre was photographed by a German army war propaganda correspondent whose negatives were discovered thirty-nine years later in the Federal German Archives by a Greek journalist.

German paratroopers round up the male population of Kondomari and prepare to massacre them for allegedly killing fellow paratroops.

British and Commonwealth prisoners of war marching to a German collection point, from which they would be taken to camps in Italy and Germany.

General Kurt Student, whose paratroopers were decimated during the battle for Crete. He escaped a prison sentence for the ill-treatment of British and New Zealand prisoners during and after the battle.

Chapter 5

Commandos

Translation of Hitler’s Commando Order THE FÜHRER: TOP SECRET No 003830/42 Top Secret. OKW/WFSt (Wehrmachtfünrungstab) F.H.Qu 18.10.42 Twelve copies. 1. For some time now our opponents have been using in the prosecution of war, methods which do not conform with the international agreements of Geneva. Especially brutal and cunning is the behaviour of members of the so-called Commandos who themselves (as has been established) are partly recruited from among hardened criminals released in enemy countries. It appears from captured documents that they are instructed not only to bind prisoners but also to kill defenceless prisoners out of hand as soon as they believe that the latter, in the further pursuit of their purpose, as prisoners represent merely dead weight or in other ways could be an obstacle. Finally, orders have been found in which the killing of the prisoners has been demanded on principle. 2. For this reason it was already announced in a supplement to the

3.

4.

5.

6.

Wehrmacht Communique of 7.10.42 that in future Germany would take the same measures against these sabotage parties of the British and their accomplices, i.e. that wherever they may be found they will be ruthlessly exterminated in battle by the German troops. I therefore order: From now on all opponents brought to battle by German troops in so-called Commando operations in Europe or in Africa, even when it is outwardly a matter of soldiers in uniform or demolition parties with or without weapons, are to be exterminated to the last man in battle or while in flight. In these cases it is immaterial whether they are landed for their operations by ship or aeroplane or descend by parachute. Even should these individuals, on their being discovered, make as if to surrender, all quarter is to be denied them on principle. A detailed report is to be sent to the OKW on each separate case for publication in the Wehrmacht Communique. If individual members of such Commandos working as agents, saboteurs, etc., fall into the hands of the Wehrmacht by other means, e.g. through the Police in any of the countries occupied by us – they are to be handed over to the SD immediately. It is strictly forbidden to hold them in military custody, e.g. in prisoner of war camps etc., even as a temporary measure. This instruction does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner in open battle or who surrender in the course of normal battle operations (offensives, large-scale landing operations and large-scale air landing operations). Equally little does this regulation apply to enemy soldiers who have fallen into our hands after naval encounters or are seeking to save their lives by parachute after air battles. In the case of non-execution of this order I shall make responsible before a Court Martial all commanders and officers who have either failed to carry out their duty in instructing the troops in this order, or who act contrary to this order in carrying it out. Signed A. Hitler

***

Cockleshell Heroes During the summer of 1942 the decision was taken to try to do something about the fast German blockade-runners that were steaming through the western approaches to bring supplies into the French port of Bordeaux. The valuable supplies included crude rubber, tungsten, vegetable and mineral oils. The Royal Navy could not spare the fast cruisers necessary to catch the blockade-runners. Perhaps the ships could be destroyed while anchored safely in Bordeaux harbour? A new Commando unit had been formed in June 1942. Named the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment (RMBPD), it was commanded by 28-yearold Major Herbert ‘Blondie’ Hasler. Following a period of experimentation in the use of small boats for offensive and defensive purposes, the unit was given the role of attacking enemy shipping in harbours under the code-name Operation FRANKTON. The night was cold and dark when the conning tower of the submarine HMS Tuna broke the surface off the French coast in the Bay of Biscay. Some 2 miles away a German armed trawler patrolled its beat as the torpedo hatches on the deck of the Tuna were eased open. Dark figures helped to lift six canoes onto the deck where black-faced Commandos climbed in and settled themselves among the explosives and equipment stored inside the boats. Working in the darkness, one of the canoes, Cachalot, was severely damaged and the raiding force was reduced to five. The canoes and the crews were then lifted bodily by a hoist and lowered into the sea, reducing the chance of damaging or upsetting the flimsy craft. Muted farewells were exchanged and the submarine sank slowly below the waves, leaving the Commandos steadying their canoes on the Atlantic swell. As the ten men prepared to begin their mission, little did they know that only two of them would ever set foot in England again. Major Hasler estimated that four days’ paddling would be required to infiltrate the Gironde and Garonne estuaries and reach the docks at Bordeaux.

It would be a long haul. It was 10 miles to the mouth of the estuary and then a further 60 up the river to Bordeaux. Once there they would attach limpet mines to the fast merchantmen, conceal their canoes and make their own way overland back to England. Once the alarm had been raised it would have been too risky to send the submarine back for the men. They were on their own. The Cockle Mark II canoes were heavily laden and sat low in the water as the men began to paddle towards the coast. A slight swell had built up and the waves broke over the canoes as the men struggled to keep together. At the end of each hour Major Hasler signalled to his men by hand to ‘raft up’ to bunch the canoes together so they could have five minutes’ rest. The major would then check their position using a compass and the stars, while his companion cockney Marine Sparks tried to bail out the water leaking into the canoe. Three hours after leaving the submarine, the roar of a tide-race could be heard. Major Hasler threw a line over the side and confirmed by depthsoundings that they had reached the sandbanks known as Banc des Olives. Each canoe then made its own way through the foaming waters, but when they regrouped on the other side they discovered that the cockle Coalfish crewed by Sergeants Wallace and Ewart was missing. It later transpired that Sergeant Wallace had become very seasick and decided to go into hiding on shore and try to attack the shipping in Bordeaux at a later date. German records show that Wallace and Ewart gave themselves up at 0530 hours on 8 December at Le Verdon, south of Pointe de Grave, less than twelve hours after the start of the operation. The men were interrogated that day and on the 9th and 10th at GIC Sub-station and Security Office, Bordeaux. They informed their interrogators that their boat had capsized and they had to swim ashore. The boat was beached, turned over and washed back out to sea by another wave. At that point they decided to throw away their weapons and give themselves up. They stated that only one other canoe, Cachalot, was involved and it was damaged on the submarine and not launched. They also gave details of the equipment in the boats, but kept quiet about the participation of the four other cockles. Their interrogators noted that they were wearing canvas shoes with rubber soles, heavy linen trousers, military shirts and pullovers with irregular black

camouflage patches on a green background; on their arms they were wearing the Combined Operations badge, rank badge and Royal Marines shoulder flash. They had lost their woollen caps when they were stranded and abandoned their rubber oversuits before they gave themselves up. The 29-year-old Irish-born Sam Wallace and 21-year-old Robert Ewart bravely covered up the fact that the operation was still under way. Despite being told during training that they did not belong to the Commandos, they expected to be shot on being arrested in Germany. Their superiors had not mentioned it at all, but rumours to that effect were circulating among those taking part in the training. The rumours were correct. Admiral Bachmann, FOIC Western France, was told of the event at 0845 hours on the 8th and gave orders that the two men were to be interrogated by the Abwehrstelle (Counter Intelligence Section), Bordeaux. However, they declined and referred to Standing Orders by which all captured prisoners were to be sent to the navy PoW camp at Fallingbostel for interrogation. He overruled their comments and ordered the interrogation to proceed. Bachmann noted in his war diary on 8 December that ‘About 1700, I informed Lieutenant Harstick, GIS Station, Bordeaux, that after interrogation had taken place I would give orders for the prisoners to be shot on account of attempted sabotage.’ He also informed his superior, Admiral Marschall, Commander-in-Chief of Navy Group West, of the capture of the two men. At 2330 hours that day, Harstick rang the admiral to tell him that while the Marine from Glasgow refused to make any statement, the Irishman made a statement containing important information and could the shooting be postponed? The admiral refused. Presumably Harstick took his request elsewhere, because shortly afterwards Captain Krenig rang Admiral Bachmann from Paris and informed him that Navy Group West wanted the executions postponed so that further interrogations could take place. Bachmann had no choice but to acquiesce. A teleprint arrived from Navy Group West at 0100 hours on 9 December directing that, before the men were shot, every means should be used to extract information, including promises of good treatment and of sparing their lives. During the morning of 9 December, Navy Group West directed that the

two men be interrogated by Sonderführer Corssan from the prisoner-of-war camp at Dulag Nord. Then at 2330 hours they were to be handed over to the SD Bordeaux for execution. Their deaths were to be reported to Navy Group West by 1100 hours on the 10th. While Wallace and Ewart were struggling ashore to surrender to an antiaircraft battery, the four remaining canoes continued their journey through the night and, helped by the tide, moved quickly towards the lighthouse on the Point de Grave. As they negotiated a second tide-race at 0300 hours the 5ft-high crashing waves capsized the cockle Conger, throwing Corporal Sheard and Marine Moffat into the freezing water. Once capsized, the cockles were almost impossible to right, especially in rough water, and the two men could only hang on desperately to the other canoes. Not only was Hasler now reduced to half his original force, but the dead weight of the two men hanging on to the cockles drastically reduced their speed through the water. As they passed into the mouth of the estuary, searchlights lit up the area but fortunately they were not discovered. They then negotiated a third tide-race, but the sight of a mole jutting out into the estuary forced Major Hasler to make a hard decision. The strength of the tide would not allow the overloaded cockles to pass around the obstacle and Sheard and Moffat, already suffering severely from exposure, had to be cast adrift. As a bottle of rum was passed to the two floundering men, Sheard said: ‘That’s alright sir, I understand. Thanks for bringing us so far.’ The body of Moffatt was washed ashore on 17 December. There was worse to follow. Beyond the Pointe de Grave lay the small port of Le Verdon and lying at anchor offshore were several destroyers awaiting inspection by a German admiral the following day. To pass them by the three cockles would have to negotiate a narrow strip of water between the ships and the shore, under the eyes of German sentries. Hasler decided that the cockles would go through one at a time, but when they met up again past Le Verdon Hasler’s second-in-command Lieutenant Mackinnon and Marine Conway in Cuttlefish were nowhere to be seen. As dawn approached on 8 December the remaining canoes probed the shore for an hour before finding a hiding place on a sandy promontory called the Pointe aux Oiseaux. The canoes were beached and hidden with

camouflage nets and the exhausted men tried to get some sleep. They had covered 27 miles. The next day the Marines were discovered by some French fishermen and their wives. Major Hasler managed to obtain some bread from them to supplement their iron rations and then spent a restless day wondering whether or not they would be betrayed. The ebb and flow of the tide dictated that they wait until almost midnight before dragging their canoes across three-quarters of a mile of mud flats before reaching the water to continue their journey. The men set off at a fast pace and although the spray froze on their cockpit covers, they made good time with no incidents of note. Unknown to them Cuttlefish was also under way, although their two paths would not cross again. After paddling for 25 miles the Catfish and Crayfish found an ideal hiding-place in a dry ditch running between two hedges at right angles to the river. They built a small fire and rested throughout the daylight hours. As twilight approached and they prepared to launch their canoes again, a French farmer appeared and, recognizing them as British, invited them in for a drink. The Marines politely refused and the farmer departed after wishing them good luck and inviting them to call in next time they were passing. On the night of the 10th, the men found themselves approaching the islets in the upper reaches of the estuary where there was more chance of discovery. They were now close to the target area and as night turned to day they dragged their canoes across the mud flats once again to find a hidingplace on the Ile de Cazeau. Little did they know that Mackinnon and Conway from the Cuttlefish had also landed on the other side of the island. As the men were paddling stealthily towards their targets the telephone rang in the office of Theodor Prahm, who was deputizing for the naval secretary of the NOIC Bordeaux, Commander Kühnemann. It was around 2000 hours and on the line was CPO Reckstadt of the HQ Company at Admiral Lütjens’ barracks. Apparently the SD had applied to him for an execution detail to shoot the two Marine sergeants. He was aware of the order given for the execution by Admiral Bachmann and the request seemed to be in order. Two hours later the head of the SD Bordeaux rang Prahm and informed

him that he was sending a car to collect him. When he arrived the SD officer showed him an order stating that the execution had to be carried out by the navy and also a certificate that gave him authority over all units of the armed forces. As the execution detail from HQ Company sat in their truck and watched, Prahm argued that the SD should carry out the execution themselves. In another car sat the two doomed prisoners, guarded by other SD men. The head of the SD insisted that the navy had been tasked with the execution, but as he was in charge of the operation he bore full responsibility. Prahm reluctantly gave in. The convoy drove first to the submarine base where they picked up a naval surgeon. When Prahm asked whether a priest would be coming with them he was told by the head of the SD that a priest had been with the two prisoners all afternoon. He also stated that the death sentence had been read out to the prisoners before their departure. The convoy then drove to a wood a couple of miles outside the town. Two coffins had also been taken along in the truck and these were laid at the edge of the wood. Two wooden posts had been dug into a sandpit, the far side of which would serve to stop the bullets. The two prisoners were then tied to the posts and the vehicles moved so that their headlights illuminated the scene. At thirty minutes past midnight on 11 December 1942, Prahm placed his sixteen men in two rows, the front row kneeling, and told his men which targets to aim for. On his order the execution squad opened fire. Immediately afterwards he ordered them to turn around and march off, while the two SD men went forward and fired several pistol shots into the back of the neck of the victims. The surgeon then established that death had taken place. The two murdered men were placed in the coffins and taken to a building at the edge of the woods. The execution squad then returned to their barracks. Theodor Prahm would be invited to relive the events of that night in front of Major E.A. Barkworth, a war crimes investigator at Wuppertal, Germany on 29 April 1948. The navy was rather unhappy that they had been given the job. As the Commander-in-Chief Navy Group West pointed out in a signal ten days later, the execution of saboteurs really is a matter for the security services.

This third day would be full of tension as the four men lay in a badlyexposed position near an anti-aircraft battery. The weather conditions on the fourth day were ideal, with poor visibility and rain showers to deaden their movements as they entered the Garonne River. At 2200 hours they sighted the first targets in Bassens, down river from Bordeaux itself. As they silently paddled along in the shadow of the brightly-lit dock area, they found an ideal hiding-place in the wide reed banks along the shore opposite their targets. As the tide retreated, the canoes beached of their own accord and, hidden by the dense foliage, the four men could stretch their aching limbs as they patiently waited throughout the day and into the next night. Unknown to Hasler and his men, Cuttlefish had struck an obstacle and was wrecked. Mackinnon and Conway managed to get ashore with their iron rations, money and maps and set off inland. Hasler planned his attack for around 2130 hours, after the moon had set. It was clear and calm rather than the ideal conditions of the previous night, but the plan went ahead regardless. The eight limpet mines carried in each of the canoes would be attached to the targets and the ebb tide would then help them to escape downstream. Corporal Laver and Marine Mills in Crayfish would concentrate on the ships lying off Bassens, and Hasler and Sparks in Catfish would paddle a further 3 miles towards Bordeaux East Docks. To Hasler’s surprise, Bordeaux and the ships in the port were wellilluminated. Catfish reached the end of a line of berthed ships and as the tide turned the two men drifted downstream, attaching their limpet mines as they passed. The procedure was simple and well-rehearsed. Sparks would use a magnetic ‘hold-fast’ to steady the cockle against the hull of the ship, while Hasler attached a limpet mine to the end of a ‘placing rod’ which was placed in the water and guided by hand to the required position on the hull. Although they could hear engine-room noises and the sound of men on the decks above, they were masked by the bulk of the ships and when all eight limpets had been planted, they paddled downstream hoping that the ninehour-delay fuses would give them time to get clear before the balloon went up. Meanwhile, Laver and Mills were planting their mines on two ships opposite their hiding-place, three on one and five on the other. They were

soon reunited with Hasler and the two crews paddled to just north of the town of Blaye before paddling ashore. They shook hands and set off on their respective escape routes. They had good reason to be pleased with themselves, having paddled 91 sea miles in five nights in atrocious conditions. Despite the early capture of Wallace and Ewart, the Germans were still in the dark about their mission until the first explosions began at around 7.00 am on the 12th. Throughout the morning the explosions continued and when the sound of the last one had died away the damage parties made their reports. The initial damage report dated 13 December 1942 stated: Steamer Alabama 5 explosions, water penetrated into hatches 1 and 5, ship is still afloat, hawsers laid out to secure; Steamer Tannenfels 2 explosions below waterline. Hole 3.2ft x 1.9ft, hatches flooded. Hole stopped up by divers, ship afloat but listing 16 degrees; Steamer Dresden 2 explosions, holes 9.8 to 13ft below water line. Stern of ship grounded immediately, repairs in progress; Steamer Portland officer of watch felt two slight vibrations at 0550 and 0630 [presumably mines had fallen off the hull] and explosion at 0955 near hatch 1. 1.6ft x 1.3ft hole. Collision mat streamed. Small amount of water pumped out; Steamer Sperrbrecher 5 explosion on seaward side about 1030, no damage. Presumably mine fallen off during examination of ship’s side and later detonated on sea-bed. Mackinnon and Conway got clean away from the area with the help of French civilians, but were arrested on the other side of the demarcation line in La Réole on 18 December. Eleven days later they were taken back to Bordeaux for interrogation by the security service. Laver and Mills were arrested by French police on 14 December in La Garde, this side of the demarcation line. They had not received help from the French population and were still in their original rush-green uniform. They were also returned to Bordeaux. It was not until 19 December, following the interrogation of Laver and Mills, that the Germans realized that they had been fooled by Wallace and Ewart. Soon the Germans knew who was involved and how the operation had

taken place. It was noted by the interrogator that Laver and Mills both insisted that they had burned their charts. He ominously remarked that this was obviously untrue and ‘it will be ascertained where the charts are.’ The 21-year-old Lieutenant Mackinnon and 20-year-old Marine Conway were interrogated at Bordeaux on 29 December. The officer refused to give evidence but the Marine was forced to make a full confession. He told the Germans that after completing their task the men were to proceed directly to the Spanish frontier and they were given the name of a nearby French village where they would find friends to give them clothing and instructions. The two men did in fact receive such help, but would not reveal the name of the village or the people concerned. Mackinnon, Laver, Mills and Conway were all shot on 23 March 1943. It is not known if the murders were carried out by the German navy or the Security Police. Of the original ten men who set out on the mission, only two made it back to England after a long journey through Vichy France, Spain and Gibraltar. Hasler received the Distinguished Service Order and Sparks the Distinguished Service Medal. Laver and Mills were Mentioned in Dispatches. Retribution for the murder of the Marines would never take place. By the time the war crimes trial began in 1948 fate had intervened and Admiral Bachmann was now deceased. An attempt was made to assess the responsibilities of the officers involved and the Bordeaux Case saw the trial of Admiral Marschall and Colonel von Tippelskirch. Hitler’s Commando Order was clearly to blame. It had been issued only two months previously on 18 October 1942 and had been received by Marschall who then passed it down to his two subordinate admirals, including the deceased Bachmann. By the time of the incident Marschall was the senior naval officer in the west, commanding Naval Group West and with his headquarters in Paris. Vice-Admiral Bachmann commanded western France, including the Bordeaux area. Colonel Tippelskirch became involved when he took a call from Marschall’s chief of staff Meisel who requested a postponement of the execution. He was at Hitler’s headquarters at the time and in the absence of Jodl he confirmed that the Führer’s order must be complied with. It was this

message, promising to spare the prisoners’ lives in exchange for information, which was passed to Bachmann’s headquarters. During these exchanges Marschall was merely an errand boy, passing messages up and down the chain of command. It was this that spared his life when the verdicts came in. Colonel Tippelskirch’s position was different as he actually gave a direct order for the murders to take place. The case for the prosecution took twentysix days to hear in court and at the end von Tippelskirch’s defence advocate made a formal submission that there was no case to answer. The court rejected the submission and it took a further thirteen days for his own evidence to be presented. At that time von Tippelskirch was also on trial with von Fritsch for their alleged involvement with the killing of seven British prisoners of war near Colditz. Both were eventually acquitted and set free.

Assault on the Tirpitz Adolf Hitler had personally declared war on Commandos and others trained to fight behind enemy lines. The order went out to all units of the German high command and would lead to the deaths of countless Allied servicemen. It was 25 October 1942 and the weather in Norway’s Trondheim Fjord was getting worse. At one end lay the German battleship Tirpitz, riding out the storm with ease. At the other end a small motor torpedo-boat (MTB) was being tossed about as the wind rose to Force 5 on the Beaufort scale. The latter’s task was to try to sink the enemy battleship but the weather was clearly against them. Then disaster struck: the two torpedo machines broke loose and fell over the side. Then the engine stopped and the craft was driven aground. The fourteen men on board had no choice but to abandon ship and six men lowered a dinghy over the side and rowed for the shore. The remainder took to a Carley float but were soon lost to sight as the weather worsened. The vessel ran aground at 0201 hours and it took a further thirty minutes for the men in the dinghy to make it to the shore. Dragging the dinghy into cover, they set off towards the east, following their escape and evasion instructions to head for the border with Sweden.

For more than twenty-four hours they kept moving until at 0600 hours the next day they came into contact with some Norwegians who gave them some food and directions to the border. For the next couple of days they continued their journey east, travelling by night and hiding by day. Friendly Norwegians kept them supplied with food and the farmers gave them fresh directions to see them on their way. On 30 October the men were suddenly surprised by a small three-man German patrol. Judging by the noise they made, the fugitives thought there were more of the enemy and surrendered. They were placed in a line with one guard on either side and one behind and told to start marching. As they were negotiating a steep bank on the way to the main road, the guard on the left slipped and fell. Seizing their chance, Sergeant Craig of the Royal Engineers and Sub-Lieutenant Brewster jumped on the remaining guards and disarmed them. The other four members of the party scrambled after the third guard and dealt with him in the same way. In all, the men had been prisoners for only forty-five minutes. Sub-Lieutenant Brewster decided to split the party into two groups to increase their chances of escape. Together with Able Seamen Causer and Brown he took two of the captured rifles and set off first. Sergeant Craig, Able Seaman Tebb and Ordinary Seaman Evans went off in a different direction, armed with a pistol. Sub-Lieutenant Brewster and his party continued eastwards and finally crossed the Swedish border near Stallstugan on 6 November without further incident. The Swedish military took charge of them and fed them and later sent them to the Falun internment camp. The second party was not so lucky. They continued to follow the main road to Sweden, sleeping in barns by day and travelling by night. Around 4 November they were warned by one farmer that Germans were in the area and he was not prepared to give them shelter. They left the farm and continued along the main road, perhaps rather unwisely as it turned out. As the three men rounded a bend in the road they found themselves face to face with two German soldiers who shouted at them to surrender. As Craig and Evans raised their arms, Tebb slowly raised his left arm and drew the pistol with his right hand. He opened fire and the first German went down,

the second taking refuge in some bushes where he began to fire back with an automatic rifle. Ordinary Seaman Evans was hit and believed killed. Tebb fired at the second German and silenced him, but the pistol jammed and Tebb and Craig took to their heels and escaped into the woods. Evans, however, was not dead but only wounded and he staggered away to find shelter in a hut where the searching Germans found him later. Tebb and Craig continued through the woods until they found themselves back on the main road again. They saw the lights of a motor-cycle and sidecar approaching and hid until it passed them by. Eventually they came to a bridge and crossed it, walking backwards to confuse any pursuers. Then they headed south and followed a track up towards the mountains. At the highest point they found a milestone at 2,000ft marked ‘Gustav V’ and knew they were almost home. They followed the track and arrived at a Swedish frontier post where they were questioned before being sent to join the others of the first party. Ordinary Seaman Evans was not so lucky. He was taken to Trondheim where he was interrogated by the German Sicherheitspolizei. Witnesses later stated that he was wearing dark blue clothing like a one-piece overall when he was captured; another stated that it was a two-piece suit but without any badges of rank or insignia. He was later given civilian clothing in exchange for his own which was bloodstained. Later Evans was taken to Grini Prison, Oslo and on 18 January 1943, together with five British servicemen from Operation FRESHMAN, was executed by a firing squad under the direction of SS Hauptsturmführer Oscar Hans. They were taken to a place of execution at Trandum, a small wood where many Norwegian patriots were shot by the Germans. They were told that they were to meet a special German delegation and therefore had to wear blindfolds. They were told to snap to attention at the command ‘Achtung’ which would signal the delegation’s arrival. In fact, the word would signal the firing squad to fire, which was a cruel deception. Hans later stated that he was acting on the written orders of SS Oberführer Heinrich Fehlis, head of the SP (Gestapo) and SD in Norway, given to him in the presence of Reinhardt, chief of Branch IV which was responsible for dealing with all sabotage cases. In June 1945 six bodies were exhumed by the

Norwegian police, including that of Evans.

Operation MUSKETOON During the night of 20/21 September 1942 a Commando raid took place on the Glomfjord Kraftverk electric power station at Glomfjord, Nordland, Norway. Chief Engineer Bernt Lund was in the control room with three others when two masked men came through the door just after midnight. They were given the option of being chloroformed or returning to Glommen. They chose the latter, as did the Swiss engineers discovered sleeping on the fourth floor of the power station. As the Commandos escorted the civilians from the power station they came upon a German sentry slumbering in a chair near the entrance to the tunnel and he was promptly despatched with six silenced shots. A smoke grenade was thrown into the tunnel behind them to discourage pursuit. The first explosions took place in the engine room at 0107 hours, followed by others at 0135 as both turbine pipelines were demolished. One of the pipes was empty but the other was working under full water pressure and the volume of water that rushed out carried with it masses of stones and mud that filled the pipe forks behind the power station with perhaps 15,000 cubic metres of debris. The water also flooded the engine-room to a depth of 1.5 metres and other parts of the station even deeper. The concrete wall at the ventilation corridor behind the engine-room was forced in and the large sluice ventilators were badly damaged. It would take two months before one of the turbine pipes was back in action, but the other one was still unserviceable at the end of the war. Once clear of the power station, the twelve Commandos planned to head for Sweden. Some of the men managed to get there, but another party was captured in a skirmish with a German patrol. They were Captain G.D. Black, Captain J.B.J. Houghton, Sergeant M. Smith, Lance Bombardier W. Chudley, Private E. Curtis, Private R. Makeham and Rifleman C. Abram. One other was badly wounded and died. He was known as Edward Dawson, but he was in fact the Norwegian Corporal E. Hogvold. When captured, the men were

wearing battledress without badges of rank. The prisoners were taken straight back to Glomfjord and spent the night inside the schoolhouse under heavy guard. They were then taken by motor boat to Mosjøen and then by train to Trondheim. There they were interrogated but apparently made no compromising statements. Around the beginning of October the party was taken to Oslo and imprisoned in the Akershus Festning (prison). At this time they were still being treated as prisoners of war. When they arrived at Akershus they were seen to be wearing chains, apparently as they refused to give their parole not to attempt to escape. Soon they were being interrogated by the Oslo Abwehrstelle and Sicherheitspolizei. After two or three weeks had passed, the prisoners were handcuffed and put on a ship for Germany. Hauptmann Rothaar was in charge of the escort of eight Wehrmacht soldiers. They disembarked at Aalborg in Denmark and went by train to Lübeck where new guards took over. The Commandos were next seen in Oflag 4C near Colditz, Leipzig. They were not allowed to communicate with any other prisoners and were kept in very heavily-guarded cells outside the camp. They were taken into the courtyard of the camp to be photographed singly, in pairs and all together with their full kit including alpine ropes, etc. Lieutenant Bruce who was serving a sentence in the cell next to the Commandos tried to talk to them, but they would only give their names and the fact that the raid was a success. They had only been there for less than a week when they were taken away, it was said, to the Reichs Hauptsicherungsamt Berlin. The next of kin of Captain Houghton asked the Red Cross if they could make enquiries and were officially informed by the Kommandantur of Oflag 4C that he had ‘escaped’ on 24 April 1943. Since then letters sent to Germany were returned marked ‘Flown’. It was feared by Intelligence School 9 that if all of the letters being sent to the men were returned marked ‘escaped’ it would signify that they had, in fact, been shot. Their subsequent fate has not been established but it appears that in compliance with Hitler’s Commando Order, they were all shot or murdered in Germany. The final note in the war crime file stated that the investigators were still seeking Hauptmann Franz Rothaar, the leader of the escort that

took them to Denmark. It was noted that two of the officers were killed on 23 October 1942 at an unknown location. The file was to be suspended until further information could be found as to their place of death.

Operation FRESHMAN The prime minister is privy to many secrets and Winston Churchill was no exception. One of the secrets on which he was briefed in 1942 concerned German research into the atom bomb. The Americans were working on an Allied version of the Doomsday weapon and the fate of the free world depended on their ability to construct one first. In order for the German scientists to carry out their research, they required a good supply of what was known as heavy water. The only facility producing the special water was in German hands, in southern Norway at a place named Vemork. It was absolutely essential that the Germans be deprived of the means to produce heavy water and the decision was made to mount a raid on Vemork to destroy the Norsk Hydro-Electric plant and the heavy water therein. Heavy water looks no different to normal water, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, but the two hydrogen atoms (as in H2O) are replaced with deuterium atoms (as in D2O). Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen and has one extra neutron. Each deuterium atom consists of one proton and one neutron in the atomic nucleus and one orbiting electron. It is the extra neutron that makes heavy water 10 per cent heavier than normal water. In nuclear research, it was regarded as a very efficient moderator and heat transfer agent for slowing down neutrons in a uranium pile. It was decided that thirty-four Royal Engineers from the 1st British Airborne Division could do the job. They would be packed into two gliders with seventeen men in each and towed to southern Norway by two Halifax bombers. There they would be released to float down onto the snow-covered mountain slopes where a reception committee of Norwegian Special Operations Executive agents would meet them. Once on the ground they would trek to the plant, gain entry, deal with any opposition, place their

charges and leave, heading for Sweden. That, at least, was the theory. The men were hand-picked for the job. They were from the 9th Field Company, RE (Airborne) and 261 Field Park Company, RE (Airborne). Lieutenant A.C. Allen would command the force and Second Lieutenant M.D. Green would be his second-in-command. Each Horsa glider would contain two pilots, one Royal Engineers officer and fourteen men, plus supplies and equipment. The Norsk Hydro plant was built on a narrow ridge, enclosed by steep mountains in the county of Telemark. The countryside was sparsely populated and bleak in the middle of winter. From September to March that part of the country is deprived of sunlight and in November frost and snow was the norm. A clear night would be essential both for the glider pilots and for the agents on the ground, and the full moon period of 18 to 26 November was chosen. The plan was for the agents to be parachuted into the area one month prior to the operation to reconnoitre the route to the target and the opposition likely to be met. They were to await the arrival of the gliders and guide them in using a wireless homing device. If all went well the gliders would complete the 500-mile flight from an airfield in Scotland in just over three hours and land by moonlight at around 2000 hours in the area of the south end of Lake Mosvatn. The distance to the plant would be about 10 kilometres. If one glider went astray, the other party would still be capable of doing the job. The troops would be wearing battledress and steel helmets for the approach march to the plant, with white clothing on top to blend in with the snow. Once they reached the plant two subsections would attack the power house and two the electrolysis plant. Two glider pilots would enter the office building and smash the telephones, while the other two would ensure that any workers would be locked up. Twenty minutes were allowed for the placing of the explosives on the production equipment and the stocks of heavy water. Following the detonation of the explosives, the men would split into pairs to make their way to neutral Sweden, 90 miles away. The four-man SOE team was parachuted into Norway on 18 October. Facing them was a 160-kilometre trek to the target area through deep snow and carrying two rucksacks each. It took them until 6 November to reach

their base for the operation. Back in Scotland the men were making their final preparations for the operation when Second Lieutenant Green accidentally shot himself in the hand while cleaning his weapon. His place was taken by 20-year-old Lieutenant David Methven. It transpired that fate had dealt Green a ‘lucky hand’. The two aircraft took off on the night of 19 November and navigated their way to Norway. The Norwegian SOE members who had been waiting on the Hardanger Plateau to meet the raiders heard the sound of aircraft and prepared to ignite the marker flares. Suddenly, low cloud began to drift across the plateau, obscuring the ground from the air. The men on the ground stamped their freezing feet and looked skywards in the hope that the gliders would cast off and try to land regardless. It was not to be. The first Halifax circled the target area twice, but could not locate the glider release area. Apparently the maps were not drawn correctly and the wireless homing device would not work. The aircraft turned for home, with the glider still in tow. Some time later, near the coast, the towing cable either broke or was released and the glider began its descent from 9,000ft into the unknown. The glider came down in south Norway, in the mountains between Helleland and Bjerkreim. Three of the occupants were killed and three more severely wounded. Two of the survivors made their way down to the Hovland family farm 2 miles from the crash site. They were made welcome, but the farmers explained that in order to obtain the necessary medical assistance the Germans must be told and this was accepted by the two Commandos. If they had landed closer to Sweden perhaps some of them might have tried to get there but as it was, perhaps a prisoner-of-war camp would not be so bad after all. A German and Norwegian rescue party eventually reached the crash site and began the difficult job of carrying the dead and wounded down the hillside to the Hovland Farm. The dead and the three wounded were taken away by ambulance, while the other eleven survivors climbed into trucks to be taken away for interrogation at the Wehrmacht camp at Slettebø. On 20 November 1942, the fourteen survivors from the first glider, including the sick and wounded, were taken one by one into a clearing in the

barracks at Slettebø and shot. They were buried in a mass grave and later moved to another grave on the seashore 50 kilometres from Helleland in an attempt to hide the evidence forever. They were seen, however, by a farmer who reported the sighting at the end of the war and their remains were recovered for proper burial. The Halifax that was towing the glider was heard circling for a while before it crashed into a mountain at the side of the Oslo to Stavanger railway line. As the aircraft came down, it ploughed a furrow in the ground 800ft long and bodies, equipment and debris were scattered in all directions. When the Germans reached the wreckage there were no survivors to be found, just broken remains which the Germans threw carelessly into a nearby bog. Outraged civilians would later reinter them on the mountainside. The tow rope on the second glider had also broken or was cast off as the Halifax lost height following its second attempt to find the landing area and it came down in Fylgjesdalen, in the Lysefjord on the south-west coast of Norway. It was remote countryside with impassable terrain and the glider hit the ground nose-first, the front half and both wings being crushed. The Halifax towing this glider made it home to England and its crew would be the only survivors from the mission. Eight of the raiders were killed on impact or died shortly afterwards and the nine others survived, some seriously injured. A Norwegian doctor examined the men and ventured the opinion that eight of the nine should survive their injuries. The Gestapo took five of the men to Stavanger on 21 November and were followed two days later by the other four. The whole group was first taken to Lagårdsveien Prison, but the five lesser injured were moved to Grini, near Oslo. These five men were later shot at Grini Prison, together with Ordinary Seaman Evans whose motor torpedo-boat had been sent to try to torpedo the Tirpitz. The head of the local Gestapo and SD in Stavanger was SS Obersturmbannführer Wilkens. He informed his men that the four injured raiders were to be shot as saboteurs, in accordance with Hitler’s Commando Order. It appears that Wilkens’ subordinates refused to carry out the order on the grounds that the men were wounded. Wilkens then summoned a Doctor

Seeling, who was a member of the Luftwaffe who also did work for the Wehrmacht. He examined the men and came to the conclusion that the four should be taken to hospital. Twenty-four hours after he first examined the men, Seeling was sent for again by Wilkens who told him that the men were to be shot. Allegedly Seeling objected to this and to a second suggestion that the men be poisoned. However, that night Seeling was driven to the prison by a Hoffman, the NCO in charge of the motor transport for the Gestapo. The four condemned men were suffering from a number of injuries. The worst had a broken arm and foot and a broken rib appeared to have pierced one of his lungs. The other three were mainly suffering from broken ribs. A Norwegian medical student had administered morphine to three of the injured from supplies that they were carrying with them. That was the total sum of the aid given to the unfortunate men. When Seeling entered the prison together with Kriminalinspektor Otto Petersen he gave injections to the four men, telling them that they were antityphus injections. While they waited for the morphine to start to take effect, Feuerlein the gaoler and others arrived. A second injection was followed by a third some time later. It soon became clear that he had been ordered to extinguish the lives of the injured men by using morphine and, when the supply was exhausted, by the injection of air into the bloodstream. The fittest of the four men was clearly not reacting properly to the injections and he was taken back to his cell. A different means would need to be found to dispose of him. Seeling eventually returned to his office and went back to the prison just before midnight. He later claimed in a statement in August 1945 that when he arrived he saw other German soldiers ‘finishing off ’ the three men by strangling them with a belt and, in one case, by standing on the throat of the helpless man. Another version was given by Hoffman, the Gestapo driver who was also present at the time. He claimed that he saw Seeling inject one of the men who was groaning and then stand on his throat. He also claimed that Seeling had told him that he had injected the men with morphine because, being wounded, they could not be shot! The gaoler Feuerlein would later state that the men had died in great

agony after being given injections of air by Seeling. He also admitted to placing his foot on the chest of one of the men and claimed that both Seeling and Petersen had done so as well. The three bodies were stripped of their clothing, thrown into a lorry and taken down to the quay. The plan was to take the bodies out to sea and throw them overboard, but the weather was so bad that the plan was postponed until the next day. In the meantime, the fourth Commando waited in his cell, blissfully ignorant of the fate of his comrades. The next day Seeling and Hoffman went to the prison again and took the prisoner to Gestapo headquarters. He was ordered to walk down the stairs to the cellar and as he did so, Hoffman shot him in the back of the head. It was also alleged that Petersen shot the man a second time. This later became rather academic as Petersen committed suicide in Akershus Prison, Oslo on 2 November 1945. The murdered Commando was thrown into the lorry with his deceased comrades and that night all four were taken far out to sea and thrown into the deep water. They were Corporal J.D. Cairncross, Lance Corporal Trevor L. Masters, Driver Peter P. Farrell and Sapper Eric J. Smith. On 21 November 1942 the Germans released a brief communique which simply read: ‘On the night of 19/20 November two British bombers, each towing one glider, flew into Southern Norway. One bomber and both gliders were forced to land. The sabotage troops they were carrying were put to battle and wiped out to the last man.’ The SOE now took over the project. A six-man team known as the ‘Gunnerside Team’ was parachuted in to join the others sent in to assist the failed Operation FRESHMAN. Using their cover as students on a skiing holiday, they explored the area around the Hydro plant and decided to attack from high up on the plateau where there were fewer guards to be found. On the night of 27/28 February 1943 they made their way into the plant, set their explosives and got out in one piece. The damage was soon repaired and Norwegian intelligence soon discovered that the heavy water supplies were to be moved to Germany by train ferry. Knut Haukelid, one of the team, was given the job of destroying the heavy water and he destroyed the ferry and sent its cargo to the bottom of the fjord. As a result, the German atom bomb research came to a halt and the scientists were directed by Hitler to work on

the V-1 and V-2 terror weapons instead. At the end of the war the murderers of the four helpless prisoners were tracked down and their trial was held at Oslo between 10 and 13 December 1945. The men were found guilty by the court and their sentences were reviewed by the Judge Advocate General in London. On 20 December 1945 he wrote in his reply: I have reviewed these proceedings and in my opinion the record discloses a deliberate and brutal killing of four unidentified British prisoners of war at Stavanger about November 1942, at a time when they were injured and unarmed captives of the Germans. There can be no doubt that each of the accused were concerned in this killing and that they must have realised that these unfortunate British soldiers were being killed without trial and in breach of an unchallenged rule of warfare. I am of the opinion that each of these accused was properly convicted of committing the war crime alleged against him and that the Proceedings may be confirmed. Each of the three defendants submitted petitions for clemency before the end of December. Stabartz Dr Werner Fritz Seeling had been sentenced to death by shooting. In his petition he did not protest against having been found guilty, but asked that the death penalty be commuted to a term of imprisonment. He claimed that he was aware of having trespassed and that he should not only have refused to participate in the crime but should have reported the intended crime of shooting the wounded prisoners to his superior officers. He thought that it would not have prevented their deaths, but at least he would have done his duty. Seeling was adamant that his co-defendants had lied in their statements and that he did not try to kill the prisoners with injections of air or try to strangle them. He said that if he wanted to kill them, as a doctor he would have had other means at his disposal. He argued that you would not try first to lessen the pain of those intended to die by means of drugs and then strangle them with bare hands.

The petition continued: The fact that the prisoners had such an awful death has haunted me since then every day and every hour, so that it seemed to me like a deliverance when the day of judgement dawned upon me! But I am NOT their murderer! I was a coward! I felt afraid of the sinister power of the SD. I did NOT murder. The Judge Advocate General did not agree with Seeling’s pleading. The doctor who had disgraced his profession was shot on 10 January 1946. Erich Hoffmann was not to suffer a relatively quick death by shooting. He was sentenced to hang. Whereas Seeling’s petition for clemency sounded contrite and was merely a plea that he be allowed to live to condone for his sins, Hoffmann tried to concentrate on technicalities. He claimed that the evidence cleared him of being a part of a conspiracy to murder all four of the soldiers and that the court was satisfied that he was guilty only of the killing of the fourth soldier and therefore only part of the charge. His defence was that he had shot the soldier upon the order of Untersturmführer Petersen and due to this fact he asked that the amount of punishment be reconsidered. He went on to quote: According to Amendment 12 of the Manual of Military Law, an ‘obligatory order’ excuses a war crime only in case a lawful order is concerned. Hereby is to be considered that obedience to an order which is not obviously unlawful discharges the obeying person, since he cannot be expected first to examine the legality of the order. However, it is considered a principle that an obligatory order is no reason for an excuse if obeying same is against the common rules of warfare and violate the general human feelings. I must admit that I have made myself guilty according to this formulation and I sincerely regret my crime. Hoffman appeared to be suggesting that he did not realize that shooting a prisoner of war in the head would be committing an unlawful act. He went on to state that within the Wehrmacht, according to the German Military Law of

20 June 1872, the subordinate acting upon an obligatory order made himself criminally guilty only if he knew that the order of the superior concerned an act aiming at an ordinary or military crime or offence. Hoffman went on to suggest that under German law he would not have been found guilty and that he was being punished under English law. The four-page petition full of its comments on the finer points of German and English law and the technicalities associated with the murder of a prisoner of war on the instructions of a superior officer, carried out in ignorance of the fact that it was a war crime, did not persuade the reviewer. Hoffmann was hanged on 15 May 1946. Fritz Feuerlein had been sentenced to life imprisonment and his petition for clemency was six pages long. Perhaps he felt that he had to try harder to persuade the reviewer to reduce his sentence. He had rather cooked his goose when it was established that he had brought two of the men down from the upstairs room to the office and admitted: ‘When I brought them downstairs I knew I was taking them to their death. I knew it was wrong. I made no protest.’ Feuerlein did not try to insist, as Hoffmann did, that he did not know that the order was wrong. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Not only had he carried the prisoners from their cells to the office, but upon the orders of Petersen he ‘once slightly put his foot on the chest of one of the prisoners.’ In addition, he was present during the greater part of the crime and did not do anything to try to prevent it. The office in which the murders took place was indeed Feuerlein’s office, in which he was supposed to remain unless he was making his inspection rounds through the prison. He argued that he did not carry the prisoners down so that they may be killed, but because it was a part of his duty to do so. He also argued that the fact that he put his foot on the chest of one of the prisoners and then withdrew it did not make him guilty of murder, merely of assault. Could he have prevented the crime taking place? He did not deny that he had a moral duty to help one’s fellow beings, but does such a complex legal duty exist? Of the three petitions, Feuerlein’s seemed more reasonable and convincing to the author than the other two. However, the sentence was

confirmed and Feuerlein was transferred back to Germany to serve his life sentence. He was subsequently handed over to the Russians who wanted to question him about his participation in alleged atrocities carried out on Russian prisoners of war. In March 1943 a meeting was held at the Foreign Office to consider the questions of law arising from the report that the Germans had shot seventeen of the British airborne troops captured during Operation FRESHMAN. All of the men were armed and wearing full uniform, so they could hardly be classed as spies. They were, however, all wearing black underclothes or windproof clothing, similar to the ski-suits worn by Norwegian civilians. When captured they would all have been in uniform, although a few may have been wearing their black underclothes. Regardless, all of the survivors were interrogated by the Gestapo and shot without trial. The instructions to the men were that they should wear their military uniforms until they had completed their mission and only then should they discard their arms and uniforms. However, there are a number of dangers inherent in a member of the armed forces bringing civilian clothes into enemy territory. Clear guidelines are laid down in international law in that members of armed forces who penetrate behind the enemy’s lines in civilian clothes as a disguise in order to carry out sabotage or espionage are liable to be shot if captured, as distinct from being made prisoners of war. A trial should, of course, be held first and shooting without trial is illegal. If a court is satisfied that there was intent to use civilian clothes as a disguise in the course of an operation, it would be entitled to inflict the death penalty, even if the man had been captured before he had carried out his operation. A court might consider that the escape and evasion plan in civilian clothes formed part of the mission itself and the men may have been treading a very thin line if they had appeared in front of a German court. As it happened, there would be no such discussions and no trial. The men were simply pronounced guilty of operating behind the enemy lines and shot as a requirement of Hitler’s Commando Order.

The MTB Case

The Germans listed below were tried by a British military court at the Law Courts in Oslo, Norway, between 29 November and 4 December 1945. The Judge Advocate was Mr R.A.L. Hillard, Barrister-at-law. The president of the court was Major General C.H. Miller, CB, CBE, DSO. Obersturmbannführer Hans Wilhelm BLOMBERG. Obersturmbannführer Hans KELLER. Obersturmbannführer Georg Ludwig Werner OPPEL. Untersturmbannführer Alfred KREUTZ. Untersturmbannführer Erwin LANG. Rudolf Hermann Theodor KAPP. Willi Friedrick Reinhold TIEGE. Oberscharführer Georg EBERL. Hauptscharführer Friedrich Wilhelm EISENACHER. They were charged with committing a war crime in that they, at Ulven, Norway, in or about the month of July 1943, in violation of the laws and usages of war, were concerned in the killing of Lieutenant A.H. Andresen, Petty Officer B. Kleppe, Leading Stoker A. Bigseth, Able Seamen J. Klipper, G.B. Hansen and K. Hals, all Royal Norwegian Navy, and Leading Telegraphist R. Hull, Royal Navy, prisoners of war. On 24 July 1943 their motor torpedo-boat, number 345, left Lerwick in the Shetland Islands to begin an operation off the west coast of Norway. Their task was to lay four small mines in the shipping lanes that were used by German ships. Once that was done they were to lay up during the day under a camouflage net in one of the many inlets and emerge at night-time with the intention of using their two torpedoes on any German ships that might come their way. The MTB reached the island of Aspö, just to the north of Bergen, on the evening of 27 July. The following morning they were discovered and were soon hemmed in by German vessels on water and ground troops on the land. In the ensuing action two of the men were wounded before the whole party was forced to surrender. The prisoners spent that night in the Bergenhus at Bergen, which was

being used as a detention barracks by the German occupying forces. Captain Drascher, the senior Naval Intelligence Officer in Bergen, instructed one of his officers, Lieutenant Fanger, to interrogate the men. He soon established that they were on a legitimate wartime mission and the prisoners were indeed entitled to treatment as captured prisoners of war. The men were dressed in battledress uniform with Royal Norwegian insignia and were carrying their pay books with them. Lieutenant Fanger was still conducting his interrogation when the door opened and Obersturmbannführer Blomberg, the head of the Bergen Sicherheitspolizei arrived, accompanied by a naval captain by the name of Morath. A rather angry scene took place in which Morath insisted that the men should be handed over to the SP while Fanger argued that they were prisoners of war. Blomberg said little, but he clearly expected to take custody of the men in due course. Lieutenant Fanger reported back to Captain Drascher, who went to see Blomberg. The Gestapo officer, the equivalent of a British lieutenant colonel, later insisted in court that he was not happy to take charge of the men but he was under instructions from his superior, Keller, in Oslo. Unfortunately, the naval men had no choice but to abide by the terms of the secret order that the Führer had recently issued to senior officers, with instructions to destroy the document after reading. The effect of the order was that, in relation to men landed on the shore, whether they were in uniform or in civilian clothes they should be exterminated without quarter, but if any of them were in fact taken alive they should be handed over to the Sicherheitspolizei for disposal. The seven prisoners were taken to a camp at Ulven which was being used for the imprisonment of Norwegian civilians who had allegedly been found guilty of anti-German activities. They arrived at about 9.00 am and were allocated separate cells. During the course of the day each man was blindfolded and taken away for further interrogation. One of the main Gestapo interrogators was named Arndt and he was assisted by Untersturmführer Kreutz. On a number of occasions Obersturmführer Lang came in to see how the questioning was going. Within a few hours the three Gestapo officers had come to the conclusion

that the men were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war and around 4.00 pm on the 29th Lang went to Bergen to see Blomberg. After Lang returned to Ulven, Blomberg made contact with Oslo again and was told that the men were to be executed and Obersturmführer Oppel was despatched to Ulven to tell Kreutz to proceed with the murder. At his trial Kreutz insisted that he again drove to Bergen to try to persuade Blomberg to change his mind, but he could not locate him. At this point it is perhaps time to pause and reflect that the order to execute the men came directly from Adolf Hitler himself. Would any respectable Gestapo officer dare to question such a directive or would they merely say that they had done so, bearing in mind that they were on trial for their lives? One thing is clear and that is that Blomberg, Kreutz, Oppel and Lang fully realized that the execution was not justified and that the men were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. Keller, later in Oslo, insisted that he was merely an office boy in the Gestapo headquarters and was not even aware of the content of the messages that he was passing to and fro. When Kreutz and Oppel returned to Ulven at around 4.00 am on the 30th they woke Lang who was asleep in his car and discussed the means of carrying out Blomberg’s order. Kreutz suggested that the seven men should be taken away separately from the cells and then the whole party should be taken to a rifle range on the camp where they would be separately shot. He would later claim that this was done to save the men from any unnecessary pain of realizing that they were to be killed. Soon the deed was done and the crew of MTB345 was no more. The driver of the car that transported the men was a civilian named Tiege, and technically he was guilty of assisting in the execution. Others accused were Corporal Kapp who was a member of the firing squad, and Staff Sergeant Eberl and Sergeant Major Eisenacher who were responsible for checking that the men were dead and putting their bodies into coffins. The dead were conveyed by lorry to a garage in Gestapo headquarters in Bergen, where they remained while Lang received his orders from Blomberg on how the bodies should be disposed of. Blomberg said that he had received orders from Oslo that the bodies should be taken out to deep water where an explosive charge attached to each coffin would ensure that the body could

never be recovered. At the trial of the accused men, the defence argued that they were each in turn following the orders of a superior officer. The prosecutor’s case was that while soldiers are expected to carry out lawful orders, they are morally bound to refuse to carry out any order that is unlawful and that they can be expected to know is unlawful. The prosecutor, Major Steel, had three objectives: the first was to establish that the seven men were killed unlawfully; the second that each of the accused was concerned in the killing; and lastly that he must satisfy the court that each of the accused knew individually that what he was doing was wrong. The reader would be forgiven for wondering what he would have done under the circumstances. If one had refused to carry out the order of a superior, even knowing that it was wrong, one might well find oneself in front of a firing squad as well. It would be a brave man indeed who would tell a lieutenant colonel in the Gestapo that he was refusing to take part in an execution. The members of the British Military Court listened to the statements made by each of the accused, together with oral evidence from the accused and witnesses and eventually retired to deliberate their verdict. Tiege, who had driven the vehicle to the execution, and Eisenacher who helped put the bodies in the coffins were found not guilty and acquitted. The other seven defendants were found guilty of involvement in the war crime. Hans Wilhelm Blomberg, the senior Gestapo officer at Bergen, was sentenced to be shot and his accomplices Hans Keller and Erwin Lang were sentenced to life imprisonment. Georg Ludwig Werner Oppel was sentenced to twenty years in prison; Kapp and Eberl to fifteen years each. Alfred Kreutz of the Oslo Gestapo received three years in prison. These findings and sentences were confirmed and Blomberg was executed on 10 January 1946. It is known that Kapp and Eberl were transferred to Germany to serve their sentences there and that Keller, Oppel, Kreutz and Lang were retained in Norway for some time as the Norwegian government intended to bring further charges against them. Information was later received from the Deputy Judge Advocate General, British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) that Kreutz was serving a life sentence in the BAOR and it seems

likely that the other three prisoners were in the BAOR also.

The Men at the Top The War Crimes Investigation Team, Norway investigated six cases involving the murder of servicemen under Hitler’s Commando Order. These were referred to as the following: WCI/682: WCI/743: WCI/744: WCI/755: WCI/745: WCI/743:

MUSKETOON FRESHMAN 1 (Stavanger and Tradum) FRESHMAN 2 (Helleland) Tirpitz CHECKMATE MTB345

The results of the investigations, at least as far as the ‘small fry’ were concerned, are detailed in this chapter. There were, however, a couple of more powerful figures who had to be called to account. These were the men who were responsible for carrying out the infamous Commando Order. General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was born in Breslau on 17 January 1885. Descended from one of the oldest German/Prussian military families in Germany, he joined the army in 1907 and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general in 1937. During the Polish campaign in 1939 he commanded the 21st Army Corps and was appointed Wehrmachtbefehlshaber and supreme commander of Norway by Adolf Hitler in 1940, a position he held until 1944. The successful invasion of Norway was in fact conceived by Falkenhorst and, probably because of his record, Hitler summoned him to plan and lead the attack against the Soviet army at the Murmansk Russian Front in the summer of 1941. After the battle was won he was promoted to the high rank of Wehrmacht commander on 1 January 1942 and held that position until he was honourably discharged by Hitler on 18 December 1944 for opposing the policies of civilian Josef Terboven who was appointed the Reichskommissar to Norway.

Despite falling out of favour with Hitler in 1944, Falkenhorst was a dedicated Nazi who followed his Führer ’s wishes to the letter and sent thousands of civilians to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. He also followed Hitler’s Commando Order to the letter and approved the murder of dozens of British Commandos. Falkenhorst appeared before a military court for the trial of war criminals at Brunswick on 29 July 1946. The members of the court included officers from the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, British army and Norwegian forces and they would hear of nine charges laid against the general, to all of which he pleaded not guilty. Charges three and four related to the Operation FRESHMAN killings and his responsibility as commander-in-chief for their deaths. He was also accused in the first charge of inciting his men not only to refuse the surrender of Commando forces but to kill any prisoners of war taken immediately after capture. Falkenhorst would have had first-hand knowledge of the Commando Order and its application against those captured during the various operations. During his tenure as Commander-in-Chief Norway, one group was shot by the Wehrmacht, five more groups were handed over to the Gestapo for disposal and one party was transported from Norway under military escort. It came out at the trial that he had actually met Able Seaman Evans, more out of curiosity rather than for serious interrogation, and wanted to discover more about the material intended for use against the Tirpitz. With such firsthand knowledge of the seaman and his mission, it would have been a simple enough task to order that he be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. In fact, Evans was shot together with five of the Commandos who survived the Lysefjord glider crash. Falkenhorst was found not guilty on charges two and five, but guilty of the remaining seven, including charges three and four from the FRESHMAN cases. He was sentenced to death, but shortly afterwards the sentence was reduced to twenty years’ imprisonment. However, due to his alleged ill health he was released in 1953. Apparently his ill health was not that bad as he survived for another fifteen years before his death in Holzminden on 18 June 1968.

Karl Maria von Behren held the rank of major general in October 1942 and commanded the Ortskommandantur at Stavanger. His aide was Oberst Erwin Probst. Von Behren appeared before a military court in Hamburg at the end of May 1946 charged with being concerned in the killing of fourteen unidentified British prisoners of war at Slettebø. He knew well what the Commando Order meant and told the court that he assumed his right-hand man Probst would hand the Commandos over to Obersturmbannführer Wilkens as per orders. He claimed that he had not authorized the shooting of the men by the Wehrmacht; that had been done by Probst. After the summing-up at the end of the trial, Von Behren was found not guilty. Probst was to have stood trial for the same charge, but he died before he could appear in the dock. At the end of the war many of the Gestapo chiefs went underground and were very difficult to track down. Some did receive their just deserts though: SS Oberführer Heinrich Rehlis committed suicide in May 1945 and the hated SS Obersturmbannführer Wilkens, head of the Gestapo and SD in Stavanger, died in a gun battle between members of the Norwegian underground and the Gestapo outside Sandnes, Norway on 4 April 1945.

CHAPTER NOTES Cockleshell Heroes: PRO WO309/109: Hitler’s Commando Order. PRO WO311/527: Cockleshell heroes, trial of senior officers. PRO WO309/1604: description of raid. PRO WO309/352: Sparks’ affidavit. Cockleshell Heroes (paperback edition)

Assault on the Tirpitz:

PRO WO331/20: fate of Evans.

Operation MUSKETOON: PRO WO311/382: suspension of file. PRO WO309/845: description of raid.

Operation FRESHMAN: PRO WO309/193: murder of survivors. PRO WO235/29: petitions. Wiggan, Richard, Operation Freshman (William Kimber, 1986)

The MTB Case: PRO WO235/30

The Men at the Top: PRO WO311/388: trial of Falkenhorst. PRO WO235/196B PRO WO208/3430: general information on all cases. Casualty lists.

The ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ in their tiny kayaks.

The men who took part in the raid, only two of whom returned alive.

Major H.G. ‘Blondie’ Hasler, wartime photo.

Bill Sparks, DSM returns to the water in 1983.

The two survivors recall their exploits years after the war.

No. 1 Commando at Hastings after a raid on St Cécile Plage near Le Touquet to seize Freya and Würzburg radar equipment, 4 June 1942.

The power plant at Glomfjord, the target of Operation MUSKETOON.

The second Operation FRESHMAN glider crashed with fourteen men on board. They were all murdered by the Germans and buried in the sand of the beach at Brusand on Jæren. They were exhumed after the war for military burial in England.

The German commander in Norway, Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, was tried by a military court martial for his part in carrying out the Commando Order. He was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 on the grounds of ill health. This seems to have been a frequently-used excuse to release high-ranking war criminals because he lived for a further fifteen years before passing away in 1968.

Some of the participants of the Operation MUSKETOON raid.

Operation MUSKETOON memorial.

Operation FRESHMAN memorial.

Chapter 6

Slaughter in the East

The Statistics of Death

I

cannot remember who said that it is easier to relate to a train crash with perhaps fifty fatalities rather than the sum of 1 million souls exterminated in a concentration camp. We can easily imagine fifty people lying dead, but 1 million becomes just a statistic and does not produce the horror and outrage that it should. Maybe if we concentrate our minds and try to imagine each one of the million being beaten, starved, bayoneted, burned, hung or shot to death; perhaps if we imagine each one lying in a filthy hut slowly dying from typhus, or collapsing wounded and exhausted at the rear of a column of staggering, half-dead men; or imagine one of the guards walking back, placing the muzzle of his rifle at the back of the fallen man’s neck and pulling the trigger, it would make a difference. If you apply the scenario to 3.3 million individuals, each of whom had mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons or daughters, you are beginning to understand the fate of 50 per cent of the Russian soldiers taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht, the Nazi German armed forces. Under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 19 August 1939, Germany and Russia agreed not to initiate aggressive war against each other. This solidarity was cemented by the partition between them of the territory of Poland following its defeat by Germany. This co-operation between the two powers would eventually lead to the murder of the bulk of the Polish officer

corps in the Katyn Forest. Could Hitler rely on Russia to adhere to the terms of the pact? Britain and Russia had joined forces against Germany in the First World War and against Napoleon before that. Should he run the risk of the sleeping Russian bear building up its strength before attacking Germany, or should he attack the bear in its lair first? Hitler launched Operation BARBAROSSA (the invasion of the Soviet Union) on 22 June 1941. He expected a quick victory and boasted that ‘We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down!’ The Russian army, robbed of the majority of its quality leaders by Stalin’s purges in 1938, retreated in confusion and its divisions were encircled and destroyed. Seventeen days after the launch of the invasion, 300,000 Russian prisoners, 2,500 Russian tanks and 1,400 guns had been captured on Army Group Centre’s front alone and hundreds of enemy aircraft had been destroyed. Eventually Army Group Centre paused at the River Desna to replenish its supplies and recuperate prior to the drive on Moscow. It would be a hard fight, but the men were confident that they could defeat the Bolsheviks who were building up their strength in front of them. At this point Hitler made one of his most fateful decisions of the war and instead of continuing eastwards to Moscow he ordered General Guderian’s Panzer Group to move south-west, back towards Kiev and sent I Panzer Group north and yet another vast series of encirclements began. The cost to the Russians in manpower and prisoners was enormous, but the cost to the Germans would be disastrous in terms of the one thing that Hitler did not have: time. Three Army Groups would be deployed for the invasion. Army Group Centre would drive eastwards through Minsk and Smolensk to Moscow, thence north to Archangel and east to the River Volga. Army Group South would aim for Kiev in the Ukraine and thence to Kharkov and Stalingrad. Army Group North would drive towards Leningrad. Once the most important Russian armament and industrial centres had been taken, the battle would be won. However, Hitler modified the plan personally and directed that once the Russian armies defending White Russia, the region east of Poland and north of the Pripet Marshes, had been defeated, strong elements of Army Group

Centre would swing north to help Army Group North secure the Baltic Coast and Leningrad. Only when they were taken would the advance on Moscow resume. Four Einsatzgruppen of the SS went with them. Divided into Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos, their primary task was the murder of Jews. In addition, thousands of armed police had been called up to serve in police battalions, operating in areas in the rear of the army. The Wehrmacht also formed the Special Field Police, whose role was combating political opponents including Jews. Other SS units were formed, all with the same task in mind: the extermination of the Jews in Russia and the enslavement of non-Jews. The blitzkrieg tactics of encirclement led to large numbers of Russian prisoners being taken by the invaders. After the war one of the excuses used by apologists for the genocide in the east was that the Germans had no idea that so many prisoners would be taken and therefore they had not planned to build enough prison camps to hold them. Hitler had also planned to conquer Russia within a few weeks and the troops only carried twenty days’ rations with them. There was simply not enough food available to feed the tens of thousands of surrendering Russians. This is not true. The German high command, the OKW, knew that their tactics would produce huge numbers of prisoners. The reality is that there never was an intention to maintain the health and life of the prisoners as expected under the Geneva Convention. Most of them were earmarked for death. The result was that the countryside was covered with columns of prisoners of war, slowly grinding to a halt as the meagre rations, inadequate quarters and physical demands of the march sapped their strength. The 6th Army Headquarters gave orders that stragglers and those who collapsed on the march be executed. Soon the roads were littered with dead bodies. The majority of the deaths, perhaps 2 million of the 3.3 million, occurred during the first months of captivity as hunger, thirst, exhaustion and illness decimated the ranks of the prisoners. Few wounded Russians were ever taken prisoner. The Germans had other priorities for their medical services and food supplies. There was no transportation available either and the prisoners had to march for hundreds of kilometres to reach a prison camp. Once the weary

men reached the camp, there would be little to see. Most were just open areas surrounded by barbed wire. The prisoners had to lie in the sun or the mud or the snow. Water and food were scarce, with the usual daily ration amounting to about a quarter of what a normal person requires to survive. One British prisoner of war who was unfortunate enough to see the inside of a Russian prisoner-of-war camp was Corporal Graham Palmer, a 19-yearold in the East Surrey Regiment who had been captured in France in June 1940. He had escaped a second time from Stalag 21A and was making his way towards the Soviet frontier when he found himself in the path of one of the invading German formations to the north of Kraków. Taken prisoner again, he was thrown into a crowd of Russian prisoners and marched back towards the west. For more than a week the lengthening column of prisoners straggled towards the assembly point, with Palmer’s insistence that he was an escaped British prisoner of war falling on deaf ears. Eventually they reached the compound, about half a mile square and surrounded by barbed wire. Palmer later described the place as ‘Hell itself, complete with demons and miserable downcast sinners, a real-life furnace and no doubt somewhere around, Satan himself ’. The call of nature had to be attended to where the prisoners stood. The little food that was supplied was merely thrown over the wire, the guards determined to keep their distance from the ravenous hordes inside. A frantic scramble would ensue with packs of men fighting each other for the smallest piece of bread or potato. The Germans referred to the Russians as animals and within days that is what they had become. Fortunately, Palmer spoke some Russian as well as German and made friends with two large Russian regular soldiers from Leningrad and they helped him to survive. The most noticeable difference between the Russian camp and the British Stalags was the total lack of discipline among the Russians. Many were conscripts from east of the Urals to whom Stalin and his Communist regime meant little. They had no respect for the regular army officers and displayed open hostility to the party representatives whom they blamed for their present predicament. Many of the men were emaciated when they were captured and must have been suffering from poor diet, clothing and equipment even before the Germans invaded their country.

Another difference between the British and Russian camps was the smell. Apparently the Russian idea of personal cleanliness was clearly very different to that in the West. However, it must be said in fairness that water supplies were limited and many prisoners would suffer from dysentery from drinking contaminated water. Lice and fleas were another problem and disease was rife. Medical treatment was non-existent and the wounded could only suffer as their injuries festered. When a prisoner died, his corpse would be kept and held up to be counted at roll-call in order to obtain as large a share of the available rations as possible. There were also other uses for a corpse. Cannibalism became rife as the desperate men were driven to desperate measures. Even corpses that had succumbed to typhus would be kept for future use, despite the risk of spreading the disease. The prisoners were crammed 300 or 400 at a time into single-storey huts with wooden three-tier bunks with wire netting to support the non-existent mattresses. One of the men near Palmer’s bunk died the day after they arrived. The other inmates were dark, swarthy-looking men from the east and four of them came over and dragged the dead man down from his bunk. They proceeded to strip the corpse and then produced wicked-looking knives and began to slice layers of flesh from the buttocks and thighs of the corpse. The guards never came near the huts and the body was kept until the smell became too great and it was thrown out to be collected by cart and delivered to a lime-filled pit outside the camp. The strips of flesh were cooked, at least partially on a stove in the hut, the nauseating smell blending with the stink of dirt, sweat and disease. As the weeks passed Palmer tried again and again to draw the attention of the guards to the fact that he was a British prisoner of war, but to no avail. Eventually, one of the guards who spoke a little English told his superior and Palmer’s pay book was taken away for scrutiny. Three days later he was summoned and given clean clothes to wear before being taken to the camp commandant’s office. There his identity was confirmed and he was told that he would be sent to nearby Stalag 344 at Lamsdorf. Under the circumstances the commandant decided not to punish Palmer for his escape attempt. Before he left, Palmer took the risk of complaining

about the conditions in the camp. With ice-cold Teutonic logic, the commandant pointed out that the maximum capacity in the camp was 25,000 and that he received rations for 25,000 men. However, every month another 10,000 prisoners arrived, so he had to get rid of the same number. He saw no problem with this mathematical necessity as, after all, they were just subhumans (Untermenschen). Two types of prisoner were specially selected for disposal. The political commissars present at all levels in the Russian army were to be immediately shot on discovery. Jewish prisoners were to be separated from other prisoners and shot as soon as possible. A typical example took place in October 1941 when Sonderkommando 4a reported that, apart from the political functionaries, active communists and saboteurs, they had executed more than 1,000 Jewish prisoners of war. Following a request from the Wehrmacht commander of the local PoW camp in Borispol, 742 Jewish prisoners of war were shot by a platoon from Sonderkommando 4a on 14 October, followed by 357 on the 16th including several commissars and 78 wounded PoWs handed over by the camp doctor. While the Wehrmacht was responsible for selecting prisoners for execution in the battle zone and army rear areas, Himmler’s SS selected and executed prisoners in the Polish General Government and in the Reich commissariats. Eventually 500,000 prisoners would meet their end in their hands. Hitler eventually realized the folly of systematically destroying tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war. It was far more productive, he was advised, to employ them as labourers in the farms and factories, where manpower was reduced as men were called up to fight. They would, of course, be fed on minimum rations and would receive no medical treatment at all. On the night of 22 May 1944 there was an Allied air-raid on the Krupp factory at Rheinhausen, during which a camp housing Russian prisoners of war was hit, allowing many of the men to escape during the confusion. The starving men proceeded to search for food, giving little thought to the fact that they were guilty of looting. The phone rang in the office of Hauptmann Wilhelm Brinkmann of the

Moers Schutzpolizei just after midnight. At the other end was the Landrat, Doctor Bubenzer, who was two steps further up the chain of command from Brinkmann. He ordered him to take all available policemen and proceed to Rheinhausen where a number of Russian prisoners had escaped and were plundering nearby houses. Bubenzer reminded him how to treat plunderers: ‘It is written everywhere on the walls.’ When Brinkmann and his men arrived at the camp, they discovered that three of the Russians had been caught already. Through an interpreter Brinkmann informed the men that they had been caught stealing and would be shot. They were taken to the parade ground and made to face a wall, while three policemen were detailed to form a firing squad. On Brinkmann’s command they were all shot once in the back and he then went forward to shoot them again in the head. Another Russian by the name of Grigori Karawaes was found by Herr Anton Hous, coming down the stairs of his house, pockets full of bread and cheese. He took him by the arm and led him back towards the camp, where he met Friedrich Dikty and an SP man by the name of Hugo Schubert. They escorted him back to the camp, but the camp leader refused to take charge of him as the cells were already full. Dikty, Schubert and the Russian then walked along a garden path in the direction of the Italian camp. On the way, Dikty drew his pistol and shot the Russian in the temple from a range of about 1 metre. As the Russian attempted to rise, Dikty shot him again. Both Dikty and Brinkmann were in custody by October 1947, but their final fate is unknown. A total of seven Russian prisoners of war were shot that night. They were probably well aware that the penalty for looting was death, but after three years of living on starvation rations, who could have blamed them for searching for food? Eventually the Russian winter halted the German advance just outside Moscow. The men were ill-equipped to survive such conditions and their lines of supply and communication were at full stretch. To the east of Moscow, Russian armament factories were working twenty-four hours a day and new armies were being formed. The Germans would advance no further and eventually the Russians would push them all the way back to the German capital city of Berlin. Then they would take their revenge on the invaders.

Victors’ Justice German war criminals put on trial in Russia at the end of the war were generally given short shrift, if indeed they were brought to trial in the first place. Some were executed immediately, while others were sentenced to years of captivity in the Siberian Gulag system. Some might be spared if the Communists could think of something useful to do with them, as was the case with Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, the defender of Stalingrad, who was persuaded to assume command of the new Communist German army in East Germany. In the west, the German High Command Trial (Case No. 12) commenced at Nuremberg on 5 February 1948 and the prosecution’s case was completed by 5 March. The court was recessed until 12 April to enable counsel to prepare their defence, then resumed and was completed on 13 August 1948. The presiding judge was John C. Young, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Colorado, assisted by Judges Justin W. Harding and Winfield B. Hale. The indictment was lodged against the defendants by Brigadier General Telford Taylor, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, acting on behalf of the United States of America. The prosecution’s case was made in part by the introduction of 1,778 documents, mainly taken from German records and documents captured by the Allied armies. The defendants complained that the context of many of these documents was necessary to their proper understanding and evaluation and that other documents would tend to explain or refute any inference of criminality that might be drawn from the documents relied upon by the prosecution. The German lawyers defending the senior officers clearly knew their job and the tribunal had no choice but to order the procurement of these additional documents. From the captured enemy documents archive in Washington DC came 37 foot-lockers containing 1,503 document folders. Of these, the defendants chose 259 different document folders comprising 2,058 pages that were to be used as exhibits in the case. In addition, the defendants were given access to the captured documents still in storage in the court archives in Nuremberg and increased their total of defence documents and affidavits to 2,130. The transcript of the record contained 10,000 pages.

A total of 165 witnesses were summoned for the defendants, but only 105 could be found. Of these, only eighty were finally called by the defendants. In short, the generals were given all available help to prepare their defence, which is more than can be said for the millions of poor souls whose demise was directly attributed to the actions of those now on trial. The indictment was in four counts charging 1) Crimes against Peace; 2) War Crimes; 3) Crimes against Humanity; 4) A Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit the crimes charged in counts 1, 2 and 3. The first count comprised forty-four paragraphs, the first of which stated that All of the defendants…during a period of years preceding 8th May 1945, committed Crimes against Peace as defined in Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they participated in the initiation of invasions of other countries and wars of aggression in violation of international laws and treaties, including but not limited to the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances. Paragraph 2 stated the fact that The defendants held high military positions in Germany and committed Crimes against Peace in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, were connected with plans and enterprises involving, and were members of organisations and groups connected with the commission of Crimes against Peace. The rather complicated and long-winded counts covered all possible permutations and ensured that there would be no let-off due to technicalities or loop-holes. Paragraphs 3 to 44 covered plans of aggressions and wars and invasions against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Great Britain, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, Greece, the USSR and the United States of America, and undertook to show

the unfolding of these plans of aggression and to particularize the participation of the defendants in the formulation, distribution and execution thereof. Count 2 was that of War Crimes, specifically Crimes against Enemy Belligerents and Prisoners of War. The first paragraph was numbered 45 and stated that The defendants…participated in the commission of atrocities and offences against prisoners of war and members of armed forces of nations then at war with the Third Reich or under the belligerent control of or military occupation by Germany, including but not limited to murder, ill-treatment, denial of status and rights, refusal of quarter, employment under inhumane conditions and at prohibited labour of prisoners of war and members of military forces, and other inhumane acts and violations of the laws and customs of war. The following paragraph, number 46, set out in general terms the unlawful acts as follows: Unlawful orders initiated, drafted, distributed and executed by the defendants directed that certain enemy troops be refused quarter and be denied the status and rights of prisoners of war, and that certain captured members of the military forces of nations at war with Germany be summarily executed. Such orders further directed that certain members of enemy armed forces be designated and treated by troops of the German armed forces, subordinate to the defendants, either as ‘partisans, communists, bandits, terrorists’ or by other terms denying them the status and rights of prisoners of war. Prisoners of war were compelled to work in war operations and in work having a direct relation to war operations, including the manufacture, transport and loading of arms and munitions and the building of fortifications. This work was ordered within the combat zone as well as in rear areas. Pursuant to a ‘total war’ theory and as part of a programme to exploit all non-German peoples, prisoners of war were denied rights to which they were entitled under conventions and the laws and customs of war. Soldiers were branded, denied

adequate food, shelter, clothing and care, subjected to all types of cruelties and unlawful reprisals, tortured and murdered. Special screening and extermination units, such as Einsatz Groups of the Security Police and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) operating with the support and under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht, selected and killed prisoners of war for religious, political and racial reasons. Many recaptured prisoners were ordered executed. The following paragraphs 47 to 58 dealt with certain specific acts such as the ‘Commissar Order’ and the ‘Commando Order’ and the participation of the defendants in these unlawful plans. Crimes against Humanity were covered by paragraphs 59 to 82 and dealt with the treatment of civilians (which will be the subject of a further book in due course) and paragraphs 83 and 84 defined the Common Plan charge of Count 4. When the tribunal began to deal with the charge of Crimes against Civilians it soon became obvious that in the history of man’s inhumanity to man never have so many innocent people suffered so much. Millions of people whose only offence was that they were Soviet Nationals or of Jewish blood or were gypsies or Poles, designated as ‘social inferiors, sub-humans or beasts’, received what the Hitlerites callously described as ‘special treatment’ or ‘liquidation’ or ‘the final solution’ and were murdered regardless of age or sex. In addition, the civilian populations of the countries invaded by the Germans were enslaved, starved, tortured, murdered, executed as hostages, deported for forced labour, compelled to erect fortifications and remove live mines. Their homes and property were plundered and destroyed, all contrary to Article 46 of the Hague Convention which stated that ‘Family honour and rights, the lives of persons and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice must be respected.’ As far as the treatment of prisoners of war was concerned, the spotlight fell upon the defendant von Roques, Commander of the Rear Area Army Group South. He was No. 4 on the distribution list of an order from OKH dated 7 October 1941 and providing for the SD to enter the prisoner-of-war camps in the rear areas to segregate and remove prisoners as they saw fit. The

fate of such men was clearly described in the order: In agreement with the commanding officers of the rear area army (district commanders for prisoners of war), the operations of the Sonderkommandos have to be regulated in such way that the segregation is effected as unobtrusively as possible and that the liquidations are carried out without delay and at such a distance from transit camps and villages as to ensure their not becoming known to the other prisoners of war and to the population. In order to try to cover their involvement in the campaign of liquidation of Russian prisoners of war, the OKH further directed that the order must not be passed on in writing, not even in the form of an excerpt. The district commanders for prisoners of war and commanders of transit camps were to be notified verbally. The order was discussed at the Commanders’ Conference in the Rear Area Army Group South on 17 November 1941. It was placed on the agenda under the heading ‘Authority of the SD in prisoner of war transient camps (new decree)’, so von Roques could hardly argue that he had not seen the order and in fact the SD could only enter camps within his jurisdiction with his permission. On 15 May 1942, 500 prisoners segregated in Dulag 160 at Korol were shot. The camp physician Doctor Fruechte later testified: The SD came to Korol with the mission. I myself talked with the SS Untersturmführer, a non-commissioned officer; their mission was to shoot all Jews and all other persons who were in some way suspects. Some fifty civilians had remained in Korol. Some were craftsmen who were still needed. In addition all prisoners of war had remained in Korol and a number of persons who were detained in the prisoner of war camps as suspects, that is suspicion of being partisans, Jews, gypsies, communists, functionaries etc. The SD first had all Jews detained in the local prison in Korol, all of them civilians; then the SS Untersturmführer went to the camp; in the camp a list had been compiled by the camp management, recording all persons who were

not Jews but were suspect. The Jews didn’t have to be checked because they were to be shot just as the Jewish civilians without any formalities. The SD Untersturmführer then had two or three hundred suspects file past him on two days and put on his list, behind each name an ‘F’ which denoted ‘Free’ or an ‘E’ which meant ‘to be shot’. All persons who were assigned an ‘E’ were put together with the Jews and on the 15th May they were shot together (450 Jewish prisoners of war and suspect persons plus the 50 local civilians). Another witness to the atrocities being committed in von Roques’ area of command was Jewish prisoner of war Blumenstick who was in a column of between 12,000 and 15,000 Russian prisoners of war being marched from an overcrowded Dulag 160 to Kremenchug. He testified that three men were shot by his side because they were exhausted and fell and that he thought probably 1,200 were killed for this reason. In January 1946 Karl Languth, one of the former commanders of Camp 4 at Dulag 131, a prison complex at Bobruysk, went on trial at Minsk. He told the Soviet tribunal that in November 1941 he was ordered to reduce the 40,000 prisoners held in the camp to more manageable numbers. He related how his superior officer informed him that the barracks at Camp 4 were to be burned to the ground, together with their occupants. A special detachment would set the fire on 7 November 1941, the anniversary of the Socialist Revolution, and make it look like the prisoners had set fire to their own barracks and then tried to escape. The plan worked and as the prisoners fled the burning barracks they ran into the fire of four machine guns. Some 4,000 of them were killed. Languth also recalled that in December 1941 the division sent him fifty rail cars to use in transporting the prisoners to other locations and 3,200 of the prisoners were herded into open rail cars. It was later established that all prisoners shipped in open rail cars in the middle of that winter froze to death and so it was with the men from the Bobruysk camp. Their bodies were thrown down the railway embankment. Von Roques later took over command of the Rear Area Army Group A. In September 1942 the 454th Division, subordinate to him, reported that together with the SD they had shot two partisans for being Communists, plus

thirty-seven active Communists. There was no question that even if von Roques did not hand down the Commissar Order, he received it and from the beginning of the campaign knew that it was being carried out in his area. He also denied that he distributed the Commando Order, but paratroopers were shot as guerillas in his area. In fact, an order distributed by his chief of staff stipulated that ‘Only if paratroopers report to a German headquarters on their own or have themselves been brought there by Ukranian militia to whom they voluntarily surrendered will they be treated as prisoners of war.’ As proof of the determination of the rear area troops to execute captured paratroopers, a report issued by the director in charge of the field police in the rear area of Army Group 103, a part of von Roques’ command, described the shooting of forty-nine parachutists as guerrillas. Nine more were killed by the field police of the 444th Security Division, as testified by the entry in their war diary of 21 March 1942. A report of the Einsatzgruppen dated 12 November 1941 clearly portrayed the close relationship between the SD executioners and the German army. It mentioned that Among those executed by Sonderkommando 4a in the second part of the month of October 1941 until the date of this report, in addition to a comparatively small number of political functionaries, active communists, people guilty of sabotage etc., the larger part were again Jews, and a considerable part of these were again Jewish prisoners of war who had been handed over by the Wehrmacht. At Borispol, at the request of the commander of the Borispol PoW camp, a platoon of Sonderkommando 4a shot 752 Jewish prisoners of war on 14th October and 357 more on 18th October, amongst them some commissioners and 78 wounded Jews, handed over by the camp physician. One report that von Roques did admit to having read was from the 24th Infantry Division, dated 15 October 1941. It included the fact that ‘Devoting every effort to the task, the removal of prisoners proceeds according to order. Insubordinations, attempts to escape and exhaustion of prisoners make the march very difficult. Already there are over 1,000 dead following executions

by shooting and exhaustion.’ One of the tasks given to the commanders of the rear area of the army and Army Groups by the army high command entailed the guarding and transfer of prisoners of war and the allocation of prisoner-of-war labour detachments. It was von Roques’ duty under international law to provide and care for the prisoners of war in his area and to treat them humanely. However, a 20 December 1941 report to OKH clearly stated the situation facing the 52,513 prisoners of war in Dulag 160, 182, 205 and Stalag 346. Entitled ‘Mortality rate of prisoners of war in the camps’, it went on to inform the high command that in Dulag 160 (12,959 prisoners) the mortality rate was ten per day, or 28.02 per cent per year. It soon became clear that the Wehrmacht was as guilty of committing atrocities as the SS units specially formed for the task. The commanders of the German army units knew exactly what was being done in their areas and co-operated fully with the killing and ill-treatment. All things considered, their punishment was rather lenient. Sentences in the German High Command Trial (Case No. 12): Generaladmiral Otto Schniewind and Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle: both acquitted. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm von Leeb, C-in-C Army Group North: three years’ imprisonment. Generaloberst Karl Hollidt, C-in-C 6th Army: five years’ imprisonment. Generaloberstabsrichter Rudolf Lehmann, Judge Advocate General, OKW: seven years’ imprisonment. General der Infanterie Otto Wöhler, last C-in-C Army Group South: eight years’ imprisonment. Generaloberst Hermann Hoth, C-in-C 4th Panzer Army and Generaloberst Hans Reinhardt, C-in-C 3rd Panzer Army: fifteen years’ imprisonment. Generalfeldmarschall Georg Karl Friedrich-Wilhelm von Küchler, C-in-C Army Group North; General der Infanterie Karl von Roques, C-in-C Rear Area Army Group A and Generaloberst Hans von Salmuth, C-in-C 2nd Army: twenty years’ imprisonment. General der Infanterie Hermann Reinecke, Chief Prisoner of War Department, OKW and General der Artillerie Walter Warlimont, Deputy Chief of Staff, Wehrmacht: both to serve life imprisonment. Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz committed suicide in prison on 5 February 1948.

Each sentence was reduced by the amount of time the defendant had spent in custody since 7 May 1945. The Russian idea of justice bore no relation to the trials being conducted in the West. Lieutenant General Friedrich Bernhardt, the former commander of the German Second Tank Army, was tried by a Soviet tribunal at Bryansk on 29 December 1945 for atrocities committed in the Bryansk area. He was found guilty and hanged the same day. The former governor of the Orel area, General Adolf Hamann, was also sentenced to death by the Bryansk tribunal almost a year later on 26 December 1946 for atrocities committed in that area and he was hanged the same day. Lieutenant General Karl Burckhardt was the former commander of the rear of Sixth Army. He was sentenced to death in January 1946 for atrocities committed in the Ukraine and hanged on the same day. He was accompanied to the gallows by Major General von Tschammer and Osten. On the 17th of that month the tribunal at Nikolayev sentenced Lieutenant General Hermann Winkler to death for atrocities committed in that region. Lieutenant General van Ditfurt, the ex-commander of Kursk, was sentenced to death on 3 February 1946 by a Soviet tribunal at Riga for atrocities committed in that district. General Küpper, the ex-commandant of Saldas, also appeared before the Riga tribunal charged with being responsible for atrocities committed in the same area, as was Lieutenant General Dejon von Moteton, the ex-commandant of Liepaja. Major General Paul, the former chief of the rear of the 4th German Army and Lieutenant General Ruff, the ex-commandant of Riga, were also found guilty, as was Major General Werther, the ex-commander of the Coastal District and all six men were hanged the same day that the verdict was announced. Four days later Major General Ermannsdorf was hanged for atrocities committed in Byelorussia. The Soviet tribunal in the Leningrad area also handed down its fair share of death sentences. Major General Heinrich Remlinger, the ex-commander at Pskov, was sentenced to death and hanged on 5 January 1946. General von Rappard, the ex-commander of Veliki Luki, was sentenced to death on 31 January 1946 and hanged the same day. Some high-ranking officers escaped the hangman. Lieutenant General Ochsner was tried by a Russian court at Bobrinsk in November 1947 and

sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment. A court at Poltava awarded twenty-five years’ imprisonment to General Schartow on 25 November 1947. Major General Karl von Dewitz Krebs was tried by a Russian court in December 1947 and was also sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment. The same sentence was awarded that month to General Kurt Herzog and Major General Josef Rupprecht by a Russian court at Novgorod. It has been estimated that approximately 10,000 Germans were either executed or imprisoned for war crimes committed within the Soviet Union. The German other ranks also paid for their sins and those of their countrymen committed on Russian soil. Some 3 million of them fell into Russian hands and ahead of them lay frozen purgatory in the concentration camps of Siberia where the majority froze, starved or were worked to death. One example is the 90,000 men of the Sixth Army that capitulated at Stalingrad in February 1943. Marched around in circles while the weak and the sick fell by the wayside, the remainder were shipped off to Siberia from where a mere 5,000 would return a decade later.

CHAPTER NOTES The Statistics of Death: PRO WO311/500: shooting of Russian looters, May 1944. Palmer, Graham, Prisoner of Death (Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1990) The German Army and Genocide (New York Press, 1999)

Victors’ Justice: PRO FO1060/1377: trial of German high command.

Former Russian PoW Piotr Palnikov looks on as German civilians exhume the bodies of 223 Russian PoWs murdered by the SS in Würfel, Hannover on 8 April 1945. He alerted US troops from the 35th Infantry Division who forced local civilians to give the bodies a proper burial.

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler inspects a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia.

Russian prisoners of war begging for scraps of bread in Vinnytsia in the Ukraine, July 1941.

Russian prisoners arrive at the Mauthausen concentration camp in October 1941.

Huge numbers of Russian prisoners of war taken on the Ukrainian Front near Kharkhiv, 18 June 1942.

Haggard Russian prisoners of war in October 1941.

The execution of partisans in the Ukraine in September 1941.

Lieutenant General Helmuth von Pannwitz was the commander of the 15th SS Cossack Cavalry Corps and was executed in Moscow in 1947 for war crimes in the Soviet Union.

Victors’ justice: German prisoners hung en masse at the end of the war in Moscow.

Chapter 7

Italy

T

he Italian dictator Benito Mussolini took Italy into the Second World War in 1940 against the wishes of the majority of the Italian people. Although Italy had fought on the side of the Allies during the First World War, this time they were to side with the Germans. After some initial success, the Allies defeated their forces in North Africa and went on to occupy Sicily and eventually land in force in southern Italy. As the tide of fortune turned against the Italians they negotiated in secret an armistice, which was declared on 8 September 1943. Mussolini was imprisoned and the king appointed Marshal Badoglio head of an interim government. At most of the prisoner-of-war camps, the Italian guards simply packed their bags and walked away, leaving the gates open. Secret instructions were sent from the War Office in London to the senior British officers in the camps, telling them to stand fast and not leave the camps. It was assumed at the time that the invading Allies would soon liberate Italy and General Montgomery did not want thousands of prisoners of war ‘messing about’ behind the enemy lines. Many of the prisoners did not agree with the order nor, indeed, did many of the senior officers and as a result thousands of men grabbed what kit and food they could lay their hands on and made for the hills. They left just in time, for within a couple of days the Germans had released Mussolini and established a military government that proclaimed martial law. German guards appeared at the gates of the prisoner-of-war camps and those who had obeyed the instructions from

London found themselves packed into trains and sent to Germany. The hunt began for those who had got out and who were now relying on their wits and the generosity of the Italian people for their survival. At the time of the armistice there were approximately 80,000 Allied prisoners of war in Italy. During the following year it is estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 of these men made their way to the Allied lines or were recovered by behind-the-lines parties sent in to assist them. Others took to the hills and remained with friendly families or partisan groups until the Allies finally reached them. An unknown number were murdered after recapture by German or Italian Fascist troops.

Shot by the General It was 30 November 1941. Flying Officer William Alfred Weaver and his crew had been in worse places. They had arrived at Torre Tresca camp near Bari earlier in the day after a two-day trip from the squalid prisoner-of-war cage at Benghazi. They were now waiting their turn on a clothing parade and they chatted to the Italian guards as those ahead of them were kitted out with all sorts of different attire. Suddenly the blaring notes of a trumpet sounded the alarm and panic-stricken guards ran in all directions. The men were shepherded back to their quarters and the doors were locked behind them. Captain G. Playne of the Gloucestershire Hussars and Lieutenant R.R. Cooke of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment had made a hole in the wire fence and were running as fast as their legs would carry them. In accordance with standing orders the guard commander telephoned headquarters at Bari and the message was passed to General Nicolo Bellomo. He was wearing civilian clothes that day, as he did every Sunday when he made unofficial tours around his command to check that his orders as to dress and conduct within the city were being carried out. He left immediately to drive to the camp, stopping at his house on the way to pick up a pistol. Meanwhile the two escapees had been recaptured by a patrol of Italian guards under Second Lieutenant Stecconi and had been taken back to their quarters. The camp commander, Captain Sommavilla, overuled this and the

two men were taken away to the punishment cells, their hands bound behind their backs with wire. It was nearly dusk when a highly-excited General Bellomo arrived at the camp and he loudly berated Sommavilla for allowing the officers to escape. On the general’s order the captain sent Lieutenant Stecconi and three men to get the men out of the punishment cells. As he walked over with Sommavilla he continued to shout at the luckless officer. At his trial General Bellomo would claim that he said to the men: ‘Go and see where and how you have escaped. Show me where and how you have escaped. I wish to see how and where you have escaped.’ According to Cooke, Bellomo spoke in a mixture of Italian, French and English. Cooke could speak some French and he gathered that Bellomo wanted them to show him where they had escaped. Bellomo was losing patience and shouted orders at the guards who began to force the two officers along with their rifle butts towards the wire enclosure. On several occasions Cooke heard Bellomo shout ‘Chi scappe e morto ’ (‘He who escapes is dead’) as he gesticulated with his pistol and Cooke had the impression that he might be shot. As they neared the wire the guards suddenly stopped and moved back about 10 yards. Suddenly Bellomo shouted an order and the guards opened fire on the prisoners. Cooke was hit in the buttocks and fell to the ground, feigning death; Playne was hit in the head but stumbled another six or seven paces, was hit again and fell to the ground. Cooke would later state that he saw Bellomo firing his pistol as well. A few minutes later the two bleeding prisoners were dragged to the camp medical room where Playne died a few minutes afterwards. Cooke’s hands were untied and his wound examined by the camp medical officer, Cardillo. He was later moved to hospital in Bari. While in hospital, Cooke kept up the pretence that he had been shot while trying to escape as he was afraid of reprisals if the truth came out. Two months after the shooting, General Jengo, Inspector of Prisoner of War Camps, paid a visit to Torre Tresca Camp. He asked Captain Sommavilla for details of the killing of Captain Playne and he admitted that the men had been taken out of the cells and shot on General Bellomo’s orders; in fact he had been told personally by the general to open fire as well.

An official investigation took place at Bari in February 1942 conducted by Generals De Biase and Rossi and several of the guards gave evidence. This evidence was not given under oath, but took the form of questions and answers. Bellomo himself did not give evidence but was asked for a report on the facts. The enquiry was basically a whitewash and substantiated the story that the two men had been trying to escape. Captain Sommavilla was subsequently punished for giving rise to false suspicions. Three of the sentries were given monetary rewards after the enquiry. Four years later they would admit to war crimes investigators that they had not given the true facts and the camp MO Cardillo stated that he was ‘guided’ in his answers by General Rossi. On 16 March 1942 the enquiry was reopened after Lieutenant Cooke was transferred to Sulmona, where he made a written statement to the senior British officer, accusing Bellomo of shooting at him without cause. Bellomo appeared before Generals De Biase and Rossi and was asked to fill out a questionnaire, wherein he maintained that he had asked the prisoners to show him where they escaped and that they had been shot while trying to escape a second time. He was acquitted and Lieutenant Cooke was subsequently given thirty days’ imprisonment for ‘making a false statement to the discredit of the Italian Army’. Not long after the shooting there was a strike in the prison camp because of the bad conditions. The men were not being fed enough and would collapse through weakness. The strike was to persuade the Italians to reduce the hours of working. General Bellomo soon arrived at the camp and ordered the men to parade before him. Flying Officer Weaver was summoned because he could speak French and the general told him that they were prisoners and must do as they were told. Weaver replied that the men were not receiving enough food and that conditions were generally bad. His comments were ignored and then Bellomo addressed the men directly, with Weaver acting as interpreter. He reminded them that the Italians were the detaining power and that the prisoners had to do as they were told, whether NCOs or not. They asked who was responsible for the strike and a Corporal Westwater stepped forward. He was reprimanded in rapid French and ordered back into line.

In early December 1942 Corporal Westwater escaped from the camp. His absence was not noticed until the following evening and the usual panic ensued. At around 8.00 pm that day Flying Officer Weaver was summoned and marched to a spot inside the compound under the trees. General Bellomo and Captain Sommavilla were there, together with half a dozen guards standing in a line. Once again Bellomo was very excited and he asked Weaver what he knew about Corporal Westwater’s escape. When Weaver insisted that he knew nothing, Bellomo said that he did not believe him and said: ‘You have half hour to get the information I want, that is how the escape was managed, or you will suffer death.’ Weaver made out that he was frightened, probably not too difficult under the circumstances, and said that he would do what he could for the general. Flying Officer Weaver was escorted back to the barracks and locked inside with the rest of the men. He told them what had happened and said that he was going to ask certain questions to which he did not expect replies. Half an hour later the guard returned and escorted Weaver back to see the general. He was very impatient and demanded answers. He pointed at the guards, still standing in a line as though they were a firing squad and spoke rapidly to the other Italian officers. Weaver wondered if he was about to be shot. After a few moments of suspense he was brusquely dismissed. Later that evening Weaver was taken from the barrack room and his hands were bound behind his back with wire. He was then put into a fowl house where he was left for about two hours. He was soon joined by the recaptured Corporal Westwater and Sergeant Fred Birch who was also accused of concealing the escape. Both had their hands bound behind their backs with wire. Weaver, still bound, was later taken out and put into solitary confinement for three days. Perhaps as an act of kindness one of the Italian officers came in late at night and loosened the wire, returning each morning to tighten it again. On the fourth day he was sent to Camp 59 at Chiavari where he spent another three weeks undergoing punishment before he was finally released. General Bellomo was arrested by the Allies in January 1944 and he went on trial eighteen months later, charged with committing a war crime in that, in violation of the laws and usages of war he did instigate and take part in the

killing of Captain Playne and the attempted killing of Lieutenant Cooke. Bellomo’s defence lawyer pointed out that he was 64 years old and had had a long and distinguished career in the Italian army since 1901. He had been commended for his work in capturing British paratroops who had been dropped in Italy to blow up the Poleaze Aqueduct in February 1941 and he refused to obey verbal orders from Rome to shoot two of them for killing some Italian civilians on the grounds that the civilians had themselves been armed. After the Italian armistice in 1943, he organized the defence of Bari against the Germans to prevent them destroying the harbour installations and was wounded in eight places by hand grenades. In recognition of these services he had been recommended for the Italian Silver Cross. However, the fact remained that he had taken part in the killing of British prisoners of war and for that he was sentenced to death and shot on 11 September 1945.

An Interpreter’s View One person who spoke openly after the war about the treatment of British prisoners of war in Italy was Oberfeldwebel Anton Zörle. An Italian-German, he was conscripted into the German army and placed on the staff of General Von Pohl as an interpreter in the Italian Air Ministry. He was usually in the vicinity of Pohl’s office and that of his chief of staff, Oberst Paul Gottschling. Interviewed in December 1945 in Transit Cage Z77, he described some of the things he had seen. By the autumn of 1942 Zörle had been transferred to Foggia after incurring the displeasure of Oberst Gottschling. At that time there were about 600 British prisoners of war billeted in an ice-cold garage with a stone floor. They had been sent there to construct a cement runway on the big Foggia airfield. After a couple of days the prisoners realized that they were being used for work of military importance, contrary to the Geneva Convention, and refused to continue the work. In retaliation the German and Italian detachment commanders ordered the leader of the prisoners, a sergeant major, to be thrown in jail.

In an attempt to change the prisoners’ minds, the sergeant major was fed only on bread and water and the rations for the men were cut. Although some of the German officers conceded that the British were correct, there were others with more sinister opinions. One German commander suggested that the men be used in the marshes and to let them die there. This plan was discussed with Oberst Gottschling over the telephone. Eventually the prisoners were transferred southwards to an unknown location to carry out agricultural work. The British prisoners were then replaced by 400 to 500 Cretan and Indian prisoners of war who were billeted in the same place and ordered to continue the construction work. They also refused, but for the time being were kept in the huts near the airfield. On 28 May, however, British bombers from Libya attacked the airfield and returned again on the 30th. On that day General Von Pohl in Rome gave orders to evacuate the German personnel between 1100 and 1600 hours but to leave the prisoners of war where they were. The next day the bombers returned again and the prisoners’ billet received a direct hit. Between five and nine men were killed and a further twenty were severely injured. It would not be the first time in the war that prisoners would be killed after having been kept in danger areas by their captors. In the spring of 1943 a fellow Oberfeldwebel showed Zörle a secret order issued in Rome by Oberst Gottschling confirming that orders had been received from higher authority that when enemy airborne or seaborne troops were captured, they were to be shot. Similar orders were received in many other areas. Zörle stated: ‘My friend and I were quite upset and ashamed about this order, because German soldiers were asked to do such a thing.’ As the war continued Zörle heard of similar incidents such as a German anti-aircraft battery at San Severo, near Foggia, who simply shot six to eight British prisoners as they hindered their progress during the retreat. On another occasion he met a German NCO in the Hotel Diana in Rome, who showed him a wristwatch that he had taken from a wounded British officer in Africa. He then shot the man to conceal his crime.

The Murders at Campo 73

No one would ever know their names. All evidence of their identities had been taken away by their murderers. All that was left was to bury them. Campo 73 had been taken over by German troops on 9 September 1943 following the Italian armistice. Within days they had begun to ship the prisoners to Germany, the last of three parties leaving on 25 September. As the last party prepared to leave, several prisoners tried to make their escape by finding hiding-places within the barracks. They hoped that when night fell they could make their way through the barbed wire surrounding the camp. It was a plan put into practice on other occasions in other camps, but in this instance the three would-be escapees paid with their lives. Lance Sergeant Geoffrey Johnstone of the Scots Guards decided to try to conceal himself in the camp with Sergeant Marris of the Royal Artillery and Sergeant Guyon, RASC. During the night they heard shots being fired and found too many guards still around to try to get away. The three men split up but Johnstone was found by the Germans the next morning and marched down to the camp infirmary where nine other British soldiers were assembled. Watching the events unfolding below them were three other prisoners of war. Captain Robert Matthews of the the South African Signal Corps had been sent to PG73 from Campo 47 Modena together with other officers following their recapture after previous escape attempts. In the new camp he met Corporal ‘Chips’ Carpenter and his friend Corporal MacNiel and the three decided to hide in the roof of their building on the day that they were supposed to have been moved out to Germany. They peered through a ventilator in the roof as the dozen prisoners were marched in. Under the direction of a German NCO, the party of Germans began beating the prisoners systematically and without mercy. The German NCO began by beating the prisoners on the forehead with his pistol butt and then the rest of the guards took their turn, striking the men with rifle butts and heavy clubs, making them circle around so that all received their share of punishment. After about twenty minutes an NCO told six of the men to follow him, picking up three groundsheets on the way. They were made to run round to the south side of the camp, along which ran a canal. They came upon the first

body lying on its back, wearing a British uniform. On picking up the body to lay it on the groundsheet, the back of the head fell out. The second body was on the far side of the canal, showing several small wounds about the chest and shoulders that may have been caused while climbing through the wire. The forehead had been bashed in with a rifle butt. The third body was lying in a field about 20 yards away from the second. The man was lying on his back with his knees up. As they carried the bodies back to the infirmary in the groundsheets the men were beaten by the guards. Then they were ordered to stand outside and while other guards covered them with machine guns they were beaten one at a time by the guards and a German sergeant major who wielded a baseball bat that had been sent to the camp by the Red Cross. Johnstone and the newly-discovered Sergeants Marris and Guyon were later told to bury the three dead escapees on the northern side of the Italian football pitch. They would eventually be exhumed and buried in the local churchyard by the Catholic priest. On the morning of 1 October the Germans finally evacuated the camp, handing over to the Italian Carabinieri. At dusk that evening the three men hiding in the roof climbed down and scaled the wire surrounding the camp. They were spotted though and took cover in the moat as bullets whined overhead. While the guards ran to cross the moat by a bridge a short distance away, the men made good their escape, eventually reaching Allied lines in March 1944. E.H. Prodgers was another prisoner who made a successful escape from the camp. He was about to begin his attempt with Corporal Arthur Farrow of the RASC when Sergeant Edwards of the Royal Artillery suddenly turned up and joined them. All three men managed to get across the moat around 8.30 that evening, but were spotted while climbing the far bank and three shots were fired, killing Edwards outright. It was very dark with a thunderstorm in progress and as Prodgers sheltered on the far side of the bank a flash of lightning lit up the scene. Edwards was lying over the top of the bank and Prodgers was able to reach up and touch his head. There was no response and under the circumstances he had to move on as quickly as possible. Whether Edwards was one of the three men recovered in the morning, it is not possible

to tell. Prodgers was eventually recaptured and at the end of February 1944 he and hundreds of other prisoners were on their way out of Italy by train to Germany. The train had stopped not very far from Verona when one of the men, a guardsman, tried to escape from his waggon by cutting through the floorboards. However, he was spotted by the German sergeant major in charge of the train, lying under the carriage waiting for the train to move off. Realizing that the game was up, the man surrendered, whereupon the German pulled out his pistol and blew the top of his head off. He then had the doors of the waggon opened and emptied his pistol among the prisoners packed inside. The body was laid out on display as a warning to other prisoners and the eight wounded men from inside the waggon were taken to hospital. It would prove impossible at the end of the war to track down the perpetrators of such war crimes. Too much time had elapsed and the witnesses and the murderers themselves were scattered to the four winds. The only useful item of information regarding the murders at Campo 73 was the recollection of an Italian major who recognized the sign on the car belonging to the officer in charge of the third party of Germans. It was that of the 157th Infantry Division and the name of Feldwebel Bernhardt of the division’s Pioneer Unit was placed on the suspects list in the file before it was finally closed due to lack of evidence. Author’s Note: One of the more persistent escapees in Campo 73 was Staff Sergeant Harold Hewitt, MM. His first attempt to escape was made while wearing an Italian uniform, but he was recaptured and sentenced to two months’ solitary confinement while awaiting trial for improper use of an Italian uniform. Undeterred, Harold escaped again and this time they did not catch him. He was later sent to the Soviet Union and his photograph appeared on the cover of the Evening Standard newspaper, being thrown up into the air by celebrating Soviet citizens on VE day.

Shot for Urinating When the Italian armistice was declared a number of prisoners escaped from

Campo 54 at Fara in Sabina, but were recaptured and sent to Campo 77 at Foligno near Spoletto. On 6 October 1943 a party of prisoners was put on a train for Germany, but while they were less than 20 kilometres from the camp twenty-three of them managed to cut through the lock on the cattle truck door and jump from the train. Two of the escapees were soon recaptured and returned to Campo 77 and regulations were tightened to prevent further escapes. One of the new edicts was an order forbidding the men to go outside their huts or tents after 1800 hours. The British camp leader at that time, Sergeant William Batchelor, asked the commandant what was to be done about sanitary arrangements and he provided buckets for each hut and tent, which were to be kept outside the door. Each camp had its own Abwehr or intelligence officer and the person holding that position at Campo 77 was the newly-appointed Hauptmann Sander. He decided that the buckets were to be placed inside the huts and tents, which was a most unsanitary arrangement. On the night of 13 November 1943, Sergeant Kruger went to the door of the hut that he shared with four others to urinate outside. As he opened the door he was told by the German sentry to go back into the hut. After urinating outside, he did so, re-entering the hut and closing the door behind him. Seconds later the German sentry opened fire with his machine gun, firing through the hollow brick wall and wooden door of the hut and striking Sergeant Kruger four times in the stomach and Sergeant Stewart once in the shoulder. Kruger died at 0200 hours the next day in the hospital at Foligno. After the incident the sentry was not suspended pending enquiries, but was allowed to continue his duties. Sergeant Batchelor waited two days before the English-speaking Abwehr officer agreed to talk to him. He protested about the shooting and informed Sander that the International Red Cross and the South African government would be told about the murderous act. Sander retorted that the sentry had acted in a proper manner and that the German government would deal with the matter. Batchelor was also told by the two English-speaking interpreters at the

camp that the sentry had killed other British prisoners while on sentry duty in similar unprovoked circumstances. As for Sergeant Stewart, he remained in the hospital at Foligno for fortyeight hours, then supplied with food and clothing smuggled to him by friends from the camp, he managed to escape and join a partisan group in the mountains. Perry D. Pickett, a major in the United States Army Air Corps, sampled the hospitality of the camp at Spoletto in December 1943. His aircraft had crashed into the Mediterranean that February and he spent eight months in various Italian prison camps until 2 October when he was put on a train for Germany. Together with seven other American officers he escaped from the train and made his way up into the mountains. Around the end of the month he started to trek south towards the Allied lines, but was betrayed by some villagers after he asked them for food. Recaptured once again, he was taken to a German transit camp where he spent a week before escaping once again. One month later, Pickett and five companions found themselves within the sound of the guns firing in support of a push northwards by the British Eighth Army. Their luck had deserted them, however, and they were picked up by a German patrol and shipped up to Spoletto where they joined 800 British Indians and about 500 American and British officers and men. He later recalled that the conditions there were bad. They had no blankets and the cold was so intense that men would have to walk around all night in an effort to keep their bodies warm. There were no beds and the prisoners had to sleep on the floor or wherever they could find space. Around 100 men were crammed into tents made to comfortably accommodate only 20 or 30. There were no latrine facilities and they had to use a ditch dug near the tent area. They were given food once a day, which was a German stew made out of cabbage, black bread and a few morsels of meat. He even saw American and British officers so hungry that they picked up scraps of food that the Germans had thrown away. The quantity of food provided was not enough to sustain life. After spending a week in the camp, Pickett and thirty other officers were taken out of the wired compound to a small hospital nearby. Once inside he managed to open a window in the latrine and jump down to the ground.

Undetected, he made his way to the mountains where he spent the winter alone. In March 1944 he made contact with the partisans and stayed with them until June when he came across a British patrol and found himself among friendly forces once again.

The Murder of William Connel It was 8 September 1943 when three soldiers knocked on the door of Elisa Bettili’s home in Acquabuona. They told her that they had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp at Zevio and asked for food and shelter. The courageous lady asked them in and provided them with food and a room in which to sleep. One of the men was an officer named William Connel and the Christian names of the others were Michael and Walter. The men remained guests of the Bettili family for two months. However, everything was to change just before midnight on 5 November 1943 when a dozen Fascist militiamen burst in through the front door and began to search some of the rooms. Someone had obviously tipped them off for they dragged Elisa out of her room and demanded to know the whereabouts of the Englishmen she was sheltering. The members of the family were taken to the kitchen where they saw Connel standing facing the wall with his hands above his head. Tenente (Lieutenant) Calenda began to beat the officer on the head and back with his submachine gun. The militiamen searched in vain for the other two prisoners who had made good their escape. At around 0200 hours on the following day Tenente Calenda and some of his men escorted Connel away, leaving the Bettili family under guard. As dawn broke they were back with about 200 militiamen and 100 German soldiers who began to surround the village and round up some of the villagers. Among them were Elisa Bettili, her brother-in-law Leonildo and her 51-year-old husband Attilio. They were taken to Montorio Barracks in Verona where Elisa was separated from her relatives and placed in a room on her own. At about 1100 hours that day, Elisa looked out of the window of the room

and saw William Connel, her husband and brother-in-law being escorted by a number of militiamen. A few minutes later she heard the sound of rifle-fire coming from the direction in which they had been walking. It was the last time 50-year-old Elisa saw the three men alive. Shortly afterwards a militiaman came to her room and told her that her husband and brother-inlaw had been shot for harbouring British prisoners of war. Five days later she was released and told to go home and not mention the affair. The three men were buried in the cemetery at Verona. In June 1945 they were exhumed and reburied in the cemetery at Palu. The 48-year-old Regina Ferrari lived in a house in Quartovecchio near Zevio. In the middle of October 1943 an Indian soldier appeared at her door asking for food and shelter. The young man was about 24 years old and wore a white turban, English-type battledress and black boots. He could speak a little Italian and told Regina that his name was Harbajant Ink and he was an escaped prisoner of war. She graciously agreed to provide him with food and allowed him to sleep in the barn. At around 0800 hours on 6 November 1943 dozens of militiamen appeared at the house and asked Regina if she had seen any escaped prisoners of war. She told them no but they searched the area and discovered the Indian hiding in the barn. They demanded that Regina accompany them and, together with her husband Luigi who had been working in the field, they set off towards the village of Acquabuona. However, before they reached the village one of the militia officers told Regina to return to her home. That was the last time she saw her husband or Harbajant Ink again. Eleven days passed before Regina learned that the Indian, her husband, an English officer and two members of the Bettili family had been shot at Montorio Barracks, Verona and that they were buried in the cemetery there. Two years passed. On 20 November 1945 Sergeant Camfield of 78 Section Special Investigation Branch sat down to take the statement of Giulio Giulietti in the Political Prison at 75 Infantry Barracks in Verona. Giulio had joined the Italian Republican National Guard in October 1943 and held the rank of Maresciallo (marshal). He was stationed at Montorio Barracks in San Michele, Verona. Giulietti related the story of how, during the night of 3 November 1943,

he and Lieutenant Calenda went to the Zevio area to search for escaped Indian prisoners of war. While the search was taking place, three Indian soldiers emerged from their hiding-place, snatched his submachine gun and knocked him unconscious. When he came to he discovered that his assailants had fled and he returned to the barracks. Two days later, together with Lieutenants Calenda and Franceschini and fifteen German and Italian soldiers, Giulietti returned to the Zevio area again. As they approached one house, they noticed that a light was being switched on and off. Then someone started shooting and in the commotion one member of their party was killed. When they rushed into the house they found William Connel, dressed only in vest and underpants, and he was arrested and taken back to the barracks. At around 0930 hours the next day Captain Franzini ordered Giulietti to take charge of a firing squad made up of men from his own company. When he went outside he saw six or eight men of his company escorting the Englishman and two male Italians. He marched the prisoners and escort to an open space inside the barracks at the north wall. The two Italians were ordered to turn around and face the wall, but the Englishman bravely faced his executioners and refused a blindfold. He was about 25 years old, 5ft 7in tall and well-built with fair hair and blue eyes. Giulietti gave the order to fire and all three men fell to the ground. The medical officer Captain Carretto examined the bodies and pronounced them dead. The murderers then marched back to the barracks and handed their weapons in to the armoury. It was around midday of the same day that Giulietti left his room to walk to the mess. On the way he noticed Maresciallo Franconi and some of his troops escorting an Indian prisoner towards the north wall, where the earlier executions had taken place. He recognized the Indian as the one who had snatched his submachine gun a couple of nights earlier and he followed the group towards the execution ground. The Indian was standing with his back to the wall as the firing squad took aim. On the ground nearby lay the bodies of the three men executed earlier in the morning. Franconi gave the order to fire and the Indian fell to the ground. At that point Giulietti returned to the mess and sat down to eat his lunch.

After reading through his statement again, Giulietti signed his name and handed the document back to Sergeant Camfield. The military policeman thanked the interpreter and walked through the door, satisfied that the Italian would receive his just deserts. However, when it came to the trial Giulietti was acquitted on the first charge but convicted on the second. He was given two years in jail. Franconi was acquitted. The colonel who was Deputy Judge Advocate General at the time reviewed the proceedings of the trial in view of the verdicts given. In his opinion, the court was substantially misdirected by the legal member in refusing to accept as evidence the statement made by Gulietti to Sergeant Camfield. The legal member appeared to be under the impression that the judges’ rules appear to form part of the law of England. This is far from being the case as those rules were designed as a guide to police officers and as a basis for an English court of law in deciding whether or not a statement made by an accused was free and voluntary. In any event, these rules have not the slightest application to a trial held under Army Order 81 of 1945 as the terms of Regulation 8 of this order made it quite clear that any document relevant to the issue is admissible, the court giving such weight to it as they think fit.

Fugutives It was 11 December 1943. Lance Sergeant John Ford and his two companions had been on the run for three months when they were stopped by two Fascists on the Mogliano-Macini road. The Italians, Nilo Luchetti and Mario Foglia, were both armed with revolvers and things did not look too good for the escaped prisoners of war. Suddenly a young woman named Guglielmina Petrelli passed by the group on her bicycle. Ford took advantage of this diversion and moved so as to put the girl between him and the Fascists. Luchetti opened fire at Ford, but hit the girl near the abdomen. The two other prisoners took advantage of the confusion and took to their heels, followed by Foglia who fired as he ran. One of the men was shot in the hand, but they both made good their escape.

Ford remained at the scene, standing with his hands behind his head. He tried to indicate to Luchetti that he did not intend to escape and moved so that he could look at the wounded girl. At that Luchetti shouted ‘Don’t move, by God!’ and fired three shots that hit Ford in the abdomen. Foglia then returned and tried to help the young girl, but his companion told him to leave her alone. Luchetti said that he thought Ford was dead and kicked him, but the wounded man groaned in pain. As Guglielmina Petrelli struggled to her feet and started to walk away, pushing her bicycle, Luchetti told her to say nothing in Mogliano about the shooting. The two Fascists then left Ford lying in the road and went off to report the incident to the Carabinieri in Mogliano. They met a man riding a bicycle and told him to remain with Ford. Eventually, the Maresciallo of the Carabinieri arrived and took Ford to Mogliano where he was seen by a doctor. Sadly he died of his wounds and was buried in the local civil cemetery. Later he was exhumed by No. 19 Graves Registration Unit and buried in Ancona military cemetery. Soon after the incident took place, the local Carabinieri began an investigation and discovered the names of the two Fascists. Photographs of the men were obtained and when Foglia returned to the area he was arrested and held at Macerta pending trial as an accomplice in the murder. As of 10 June 1945, there was no sign of Luchetti.

Murdered by the Brandenburgers Two Americans had been on the run for some months now, since the exodus from the camps following the announcement of the armistice. Corporal Robert Newton from the 1st Anti-Tank Regiment and Private Edwin Majeski of the 17th Field Artillery Battalion, US army were among many escaped prisoners of war in the Ascoli Piceno province. Many had moved into the mountainous regions where they were reasonably safe from recapture and where they could work on the farms to obtain food and shelter. In November 1943 the two men came to the house of Pietro Viozzi, a farmer in the area of San Vittoria where they were given food and refuge.

They admitted that they were escaped prisoners of war but Pietro was happy for them to stay, using the names Roberto and Martino. During the winter of 1943 the partisans had been active, ambushing German convoys and their Fascist supporters. The ranks of the partisans had been swollen by escaped prisoners of war and Italian former soldiers who decided not to fight on the side of their former allies. Their success was such that the German authorities decided to move troops into the area of Ascoli Piceno and a proclamation was issued stating that severe action would be taken against those assisting or harbouring partisans or escaped prisoners of war and that those found guilty of such offences would be shot. Detachments of troops were moved into the neighbouring villages of Montalto and Ascoli and in March 1944, together with Fascist collaborators, they began to search all farms and villages in the area. At around 0700 hours on 9 March Pietro was walking on the high ground of his farm looking down at the road junction of the San Vittoria and Val D’Aso roads when he saw a convoy of German troops slowing to a halt. As the soldiers began to jump from the back of their trucks, Pietro turned and began to run. It was pure bad luck that they were in the area at that time. The road to Communaza was impassable due to weather conditions and the Germans had decided to search the farms and houses in the immediate vicinity instead. The breathless farmer reached his house and urgently told Roberto and Martino to go and hide in the stable until the Germans went away again. Time passed slowly until the roar of an engine heralded the arrival of a motor-cycle combination with a German driver and his Fascist passenger. After a brief search the two escapees were found in the stable and were then driven away to the German command post that was set up not far from the house of Maria Vergari, who was one of the witnesses as the events unfolded. Two hours later the German and the Fascist returned and took possession of two greatcoats belonging to the recaptured prisoners of war. Then they ordered all of the occupants out of the house, including the seriously ill wife of Pietro Viozzi. They set fire to the house and threw in four hand grenades for good measure. Seventeen days later Pietro’s wife died, her condition aggravated by exposure to the inclement weather. Clearly the men had been

ordered to destroy the house by way of reprisal for sheltering the Americans. Some of the Germans guarding the two men came into Maria’s house and requested food. Shortly afterwards an officer appeared, asking for coffee. He was described as being very tall and thin with dark grey eyes, the right eye being nearly closed and crossed, and he was wearing spectacles. Other witnesses including Anselmo and Irene Squarcia would recall seeing the two men standing with a group of German soldiers who were offering them cigarettes. Shortly afterwards two German soldiers ordered the two prisoners to walk ahead of them towards the River Aso. They were seen to cross some fields and to walk along a footpath that led over a footbridge to a small wooded slope on the banks of the river. Shortly afterwards the party disappeared from sight and two shots were heard. Maria Vergari later told investigators that the two Germans then came to her house and reported to a German officer who was in her dining room. The two men then went into the kitchen and washed their hands, a significant act in view of what had already transpired. A notorious Fascist by the name of Settimio Roscioli also drove up to the house at around 1000 hours and spoke with the German officer. It was not impossible that he had betrayed the two escaped prisoners to the Germans. Very shortly afterwards Roscioli and all the Germans drove away. At around 1600 hours another witness, Sguaria, retraced the path taken by the prisoners and their guards and found the bodies lying together, covered with branches. They had been shot in the head and their boots had been stolen. A doctor arrived on the scene the following morning and the bodies were taken to the San Vittoria cemetery for burial. The problem facing war crimes investigators was how to identify the German unit and personnel responsible for the crime. The rapid movement of German units around that time, coupled with the understandable desire of the Italian civilians to keep out of the way when such manhunts took place, made it difficult to pinpoint the culprits. Eventually army intelligence came to the conclusion that the Brandenburg Regiment was in the area at that time. It would seem that they were a part of the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division which arrived in Italy in June 1943 and fought in the battles at Salerno, Cassino, the Bernhard Line and Anzio

beachhead. The remnants of the division were transferred to the Florence area in late June 1944 and then to the Western Front in August 1944. Officers from that unit known to be in the area at that time were a Lieutenant Hossfeld from the 6th Company and Lieutenant Fischer and Lieutenant Rommel from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brandenburg Regiment. The latter was the nephew of the late Field Marshal Rommel. The author is still trying to discover if there is a link between the famous name and the fact that the war crimes file was not released by the British government until 2001. Apparently the Brandenburgers had quite a reputation as a bunch of murdering thugs and eventually the regiment was disbanded and incorporated into the 5th Mountain Division. In June 1945 the US War Crime Investigators from the 60th Special Investigation Section began to circulate their details in the hope of locating the officers and thereafter the enlisted men who had fired the fatal bullets.

The Dostler Case On the night of 22 March 1944, two officers and thirteen men from the American Special Reconnaissance Battalion 2677 were put ashore from a US navy ship about 100 kilometres north of La Spezia. They were far behind enemy lines, the fighting at that time being at Cassino and the Anzio beachhead. Their mission was to destroy the railroad tunnel on the main line between La Spezia and Genoa in order to disrupt the supply lines to the Germans in the south. The entire party was captured by Italian Fascist soldiers and German troops and taken to La Spezia where they were confined near the headquarters of the 135th Fortress Brigade, commanded by German Colonel Almers. The men were interrogated by two German naval intelligence officers and in due course one of the American officers revealed the details of their mission. Two days after their capture, a report was sent to the next higher headquarters, the 75th German Army Corps, commanded by General Anton Dostler. The next morning, 25 March, a telegram was received at 135th Fortress Brigade Headquarters, signed by General Dostler. Its contents

were to the effect that ‘the captured Americans will be shot immediately.’ The brigade commander and the two German naval officers requested a stay of execution, but they were instructed to report compliance with the order by 0700 hours on the 26th. Colonel Almers gave orders for the execution of the prisoners and when further attempts to telephone Dostler failed to change the orders, all fifteen men were shot early in the morning of the 26th. The men were dressed in uniform and were on a legitimate wartime mission and were therefore entitled to the protection of the Hague Convention of 1907 and to a rule of customary international law dating back some 500 years. Both General Dostler and the brigade commander Colonel Almers were taken into custody, although Almers escaped and went on the run. Dostler appeared before a United States Military Commission in Rome between 8 and 12 October 1945. It was established on the orders of General McNarney, the supreme commander of all American forces in the Mediterranean theatre of operations and presided over by Major General L.C. Jaynes. Dostler claimed initially that the commission had not been legally established and that he was entitled to the benefits of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention of 1929 in that he should be tried by a court martial that would have afforded him a higher degree of safeguards than trial by a military commission. These arguments and Dostler’s plea of superior orders were rejected and the trial continued. General Dostler relied for his defence on a plea of ‘Superior Orders’ and quoted the Führerbefehl (Commando Order) of 18 October 1942 and alleged orders received from the commander of his Army Group, General von Zangen, and from the commander of the Army Group South West, Field Marshal Kesselring. The prosecution pointed out that under the requirements of the Commando Order, members of Allied Commando units were to be exterminated either in combat or in pursuit, not killed two days after their capture. Prisoners were in fact to be handed over to the Sicherheitsdienst without delay. Dostler had actually exceeded the terms of the Führerbefehl, although he was never punished by his superiors for doing so. Accordingly

General Dostler was sentenced to be shot to death by musketry and he met the same fate on 1 December 1945 as those he had sent to their deaths. The names of those who died are as follows: First Lieutenants Vincent Russo and Paul J. Traficante; Technical Sergeants Livio Vieceli, Dominico C. Mauro and Alfredo L. di Flumieri; Technicians Fifth Grade Liberty J. Tremonte, Joseph M. Farrell, Salvatore di Sclafani, Angelo Sirico, John J. Leone, Thomas N. Savino, Joseph Libardi, Joseph Noia, Rosario Squatrito and Santaro Calcara.

Murder on the March One of the prisoners of war who successfully escaped from his camp when the Italian armistice came into being in September 1943 was Corporal Levenberg of the East Yorkshire Regiment. He made his way to Rome but was recaptured in May 1944 and taken to Campo 82 at Laterina. The camp was overcrowded and the 800 to 900 prisoners were infested with lice. The washing facilities were quite inadequate and the food consisted mainly of soup made from cabbage leaves. The German commandant was a Hauptmann Schultz and his interpreter was an NCO by the name of Feldwebel Hoffmann. They were both typical Nazis and Schultz always made a point of ignoring the protests made by the American technical sergeant who had been elected as camp leader. As the Allied advance made progress, the decision was made to evacuate the camp on 21 June 1944. There was no transport available so the men would have to march. Due to the proximity of the Allied forces the prisoners were very restive and a number made attempts to escape. The column had gone only 2 miles from the camp when a handful of men tried to climb down an embankment and escape. Corporal Levenberg watched as the German guards shot them down. The guards were a murderous bunch and when an American soldier asked a guard for permission to relieve himself it was refused. The American tried to step out of the column, whereupon the guard struck him on the head with his rifle butt and knocked him down. He continued to batter the defenceless

man and left him lying at the side of the road. His subsequent fate is unknown. Eventually the column reached a village where a number of armoured cars were stopped at the side of the road. As the column marched by some hand grenades were thrown from the cars and the explosions killed and wounded a number of prisoners. Some of the prisoners tried to scatter but were shot at by the guards. Levenberg would later testify that the English-hating Hoffmann was very excited and was cursing the men. The corporal was a witness when one of the prisoners stumbled out of the line of march and Hoffmann walked up and shot him dead. One of the other witnesses to Hoffmann’s merciless killings was Ian MacKintosh, who we last heard of at Tarhuna camp in North Africa. He had escaped from Campo 54 at Fara Sabina and made his way south before being picked up again. After a beating from the Gestapo he found himself in a truck heading for Laterina, minus his boots and trousers, both removed by the guards to discourage escape attempts. Suddenly British planes appeared over the trucks and while the guards were distracted, MacKintosh jumped off the moving truck and made good his escape. Unfortunately for him, the Italians who befriended him in a nearby farmhouse betrayed him at the first opportunity and some Germans arrived who then made him walk the 5 miles to Laterina camp with bare feet. Six weeks after his arrival at Laterina, the men were formed up in threes and marched out of the camp, with guards walking alongside at 5-yard intervals. MacKintosh counted sixteen dead prisoners on the road before he made his mind up to escape. He saw two of the men shot dead from behind by Hoffmann, merely for turning their heads towards the side of the road. Together with Sapper Zimmerman, MacKintosh made his break as the guards opened fire at them. Although two bullets went through his clothes, MacKintosh was not hit and the pair made good their escape and joined the partisans in the mountains of Arezzo. On 6 August 1944 he successfully made his way through the German front lines and met up with the Indian 7th Brigade. While MacKintosh made good his escape, the column continued to march

for another couple of kilometres until they reached another village where they were to spend the night in a sports field. The next morning they were told that they were going to return to Laterina camp. On the way back they passed through the village where the hand grenades had been thrown and Levenberg saw a number of prisoners’ bodies lying in the street in a crushed and unrecognizable condition. They had been run over by tracked vehicles. As the column of men retraced their footsteps, Levenberg saw the bodies of four more prisoners lying in a ditch. They had all been shot. When they reached the camp again on the afternoon of 18 June they saw the bodies of eight men who had been brought there for identification. They had been killed soon after leaving the camp on the previous day. When Levenberg discussed the march with some of his comrades, more than one told him about an incident that had occurred in the first village. A number of prisoners had tried to escape and took refuge in a house. The Germans followed them and threw hand grenades through the windows, killing the prisoners and an Italian girl. The day after their return to the camp, all the prisoners were marched out again to a railway siding 7 kilometres away. They were packed in, sixty-five men to one cattle truck, for the three-day journey to Stalag 7A at Moosburg in Germany. There was no room to lie down or sleep and the only water they received was given to them by Italian peasants when the train stopped. At one town all the men were taken off the train, stripped naked in public view and searched. They would finally be liberated by the American army in May 1945. War crimes investigators were given descriptions of Hauptmann Schultz. He was believed to have been an artilleryman, about 30 years old and 5ft 6in in height. He was well-built, tending to run to fat, and weighed about 12 stone. He had very thin dirty-brown hair and some gold fillings in his teeth. He was missing the top of one of his fingers. Feldwebel Hoffmann was about 60 years old and had spent some time as a prisoner of war in Canada during the First World War. He was about 5ft 8in tall, had a pointed nose and sharp features. As far as the author can ascertain, the two Nazis were never located after the war.

The Torture of Sergeant Banks One of the worst examples of the ill-treatment of prisoners of war in Italian hands is that of Sergeant A. Banks of the RAF who was shot down in August 1944. He was on the run until he was picked up by German security police and Fascist militia in December. During some of that time he was sheltered by Italian partisans. The local German commander at Ariano Polesine was a Major Saggau and he handed Banks over to Lieutenants Magnati and Rinaldi who were officers of the Black Brigade of the Fascist militia. Saggau was present when the first interrogation took place and he would later receive eight years’ imprisonment for his part in the war crime. The Fascist officers wanted information about the partisans who sheltered Banks and they also falsely accused him of raping an Italian girl. It seems that some of the partisans did indeed carry out the assault, but Banks steadfastly refused to assist them. It came out at the trial of his torturers that Banks actually helped the girl to escape. He was not, however, about to betray those who had helped him while he was on the run. The Fascist officers decided to torture Banks. His hands were tied and he was suspended by his hands from a door until his feet just touched the ground. Magnati and Rinaldi proceeded to strike him in the face with their hands and beat him severely with a whip and the dried tail of an ox. This treatment lasted for about half an hour. Later that evening, despite his injuries, Sergeant Banks managed to grab a Tommy gun that had been left unattended by one of the Italian guards. Unfortunately, he was not familiar with the gun and could not release the safety catch to fire the weapon. He was overpowered by German and Italian soldiers who threw him to the ground where he was kicked, punched and beaten with a chair. On the orders of Magnati and Rinaldi he was again strung up by his wrists and then burned with red-hot irons on the testicles, thighs, legs, belly and face. It was estimated by witnesses that this went on for an hour and he was left strung up to the door for a further four hours. Eventually he admitted that he had been sheltered by partisans, but continued to deny raping the girl. Two

Italian partisans who shared his cell testified that following this treatment, Banks was in a pitiful condition and could no longer walk. Some days passed following this ill-treatment, during which a captured partisan named Belluco was put in the same cell as Banks. A stool pigeon overheard Belluco speaking to Banks and informed his Fascist masters. Banks was dragged out again and ordered to reveal what he knew of the partisans and of Belluco. At this time both Magnati and Rinaldi were present, together with another Fascist officer named Zamboni and his mistress Anna Paola Cattani. Banks was bound in a kneeling position and Cattani removed his trousers. She then spread a mixture of fat and sugar around his anus and at her suggestion a large dog was brought in to lick the mixture off. Her idea was that the dog would become sexually excited and commit a sexual act against him while he was unable to resist. While this was going on an Italian warrant officer left the room in disgust. Fortunately the dog did not perform as expected and was removed from the room. Lieutenant Rinaldi ordered Banks to be stripped naked and laid on his back, whereupon he poured petrol over his chest and stomach and set it alight. The pain was so great that Banks passed out. He was then revived and ordered to dress. Witnesses would later state that he had the appearance of a dying man. Rinaldi then gave orders that Banks should be thrown into the River Po. The helpless prisoner was taken to a bridge over the river and heavy stones were lashed to his feet. He was then thrown off the bridge into the waters below. Contrary to all expectations, Banks managed to free himself and reach the riverbank. However, he was observed by an Italian and was once more taken prisoner. When he was taken back to the Italian headquarters again he was promptly shot by Lieutenant Rinaldi. With so many witnesses to these terrible acts, it was impossible to prevent news of the incident from leaking out and war crimes investigators were soon on the trail of the participants. On 2 May 1947 a British military court at Padua sentenced Lieutenant Magnati to ten years’ imprisonment without remission. Lieutenant Rinaldi was tried and executed by the Italians. Following her trial on 25 September 1946, Anna Paola Cattani was awarded

twenty years in jail with a recommendation from the War Crimes Sentence Review Board of no remission.

CHAPTER NOTES Shot by the General: PRO WO235/1 PRO WO310/19

The Murders at Camp 73: PRO WO310/20

Shot for Urinating: PRO WO310/22

The Murder of William Connell: PRO WO310/70

Murdered by the Brandenburgers: PRO WO310/198 and 199

Murder on the March: PRO WO310/12

The Torture of Sergeant Banks: PRO WO311/649

General Dostler ordered and oversaw the unlawful execution of fifteen captured US soldiers. They were sent behind the German lines to demolish a tunnel that was being used by the German army as a supply route to the front lines. Despite wearing proper military uniforms in compliance with the Hague Convention, Dostler ordered them to be treated like spies in civilian clothing. Sentenced to death by an

American military tribunal, he was shot by firing squad on 1 December 1945 in Aversa.

General Nicola Bellomo was tried for war crimes at a court martial for the murder of a British prisoner of war. He was one of the few Italian commissioned officers prosecuted for war crimes during the Second World War and the only one to be executed by a British-controlled court.

Hitler and Mussolini in Munich in 1940.

Shortly after the Allies captured Rome in June 1944, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring issued a directive making the civilian population responsible for all partisan actions taken to hinder the army’s retreat. A number of massacres of Italian civilians followed. On 6 May 1947 he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. This was later commuted to life imprisonment and he was released in 1952 on grounds of ill health.

British prisoners of war assemble at an Italian prisoner-of-war camp in December 1941.

Prisoners queue for soup in the Italian camp No. 52 at Gruppignano.

Many Allied prisoners of war took to the hills when the Italians agreed to an armistice in 1943. Some were captured and killed by Italian Fascists and German

troops, such as these men from the Brandenburg Regiment who were in the Ascoli Piceno Province when the two American prisoners were murdered.

Italian prisoner-of-war camp PG82 at Laterina. It was the evacuation of Allied prisoners of war on 21 June 1944 that led to the murder of many prisoners on the march.

The official record of the defendants in the case of the murder of Sergeant Arthur Banks.

Chapter 8

The Special Air Service Murders

Italy

T

he Special Air Service (SAS) was founded in 1941 in North Africa under the leadership of David Stirling, who was at that time a Scots Guards officer serving with Number 8 Commando. Their mission was to create havoc behind enemy lines and very successful they were too, carrying out raids in the Aegean and Adriatic and later in Italy and NorthWest Europe. When the invasion of Sicily took place in July 1943 the SAS began to parachute small groups of men behind the enemy lines to attack their lines of communication. Following the armistice in September 1943 and the invasion of the Italian mainland, they began to operate far behind the German lines, sometimes with local partisans, often on their own. The autumn of 1943 was a bad time for any British servicemen to be caught out in the countryside by either Germans or Italian Fascists. Italy had just declared an armistice and many of the guards simply walked away from the prisoner-of-war camps. Many prisoners followed the foolhardy instructions from London to stay put, while others took to the hills. As they tried to make their way to freedom, German troops began to pour into the country and many an escaped prisoner of war met his end in an unmarked grave following summary execution. Kampfgruupe Feuerstein had been established by the Germans to defend the Alpine passes in the event of Italian surrender and towards the end of

August it moved into the area of La Spezia. Designated as the 51st Mountain Corps, the group comprised the 65th Infantry Division and a handful of other formations. After the Italian army had been disarmed, the corps was made responsible for the defence of the coast and the strip of territory just behind it. It was not long after the move to the La Spezia area that numerous acts of sabotage began, particularly in the mountains, and the commander of the 65th Infantry Division was becoming concerned that a possible Allied landing might take place. The hunt for the saboteurs began.

‘You will be shot in an hour’ The letter was written on 11 May 1945 in Luxembourg prison, three days after the end of the war in Europe. It was addressed to the father of Captain P. Dudgeon, an SAS officer who had been executed by the Germans in late 1943. The letter began with the words: By this letter I fulfil my word pledged to the bravest of English officers I met in all my life. This officer is your son, Captain Dudgeon, who fell for his country in Italy on October 3rd 1943. Before he died I had to promise to give you information about the circumstances and the spot he was buried. The writer of the letter was one Victor Schmidt, formerly a platoon commander in the 65th Infantry Division of the German army. His unit had been stationed in the Passo della Cisa, about 30 miles west of Parma on the road from Parma to La Spezia. At around 0100 hours on 3 October 1943 he had been awakened by his men who told him that they had captured two English soldiers who had been driving a car in the direction of Parma. Apparently their clothes were smeared with blood and in their bags they had about 40lb of explosives. Schmidt went down to the guardroom and asked the two men who they were. They gave him their military identity cards which identified one of them as a captain. Schmidt reported the incident to his company commander and to the

division headquarters. The duty officer at division informed him that half an hour previously a German sergeant and a private who had been driving towards La Spezia had been stopped and shot and their car stolen. The two men were doomed, for not only had they killed two German soldiers but they were several hundred miles behind the lines and engaged in a sabotage operation. Hitler’s Commando Order quite clearly stated that such men should be shot immediately after capture. The German battalion commander confirmed this when he arrived to try to interrogate the men, using Schmidt as the interpreter. When he insisted that the two men answer his questions, Dudgeon replied: ‘If you were my prisoner should you betray your country talking about your mission?’ When told that he would probably be shot, the captain replied: ‘All right, I’ll die for my country.’ Victor Schmidt sat down on the straw and talked with Captain Dudgeon for the rest of the night. He told him that the German officers were scandalized that an enemy who had behaved in so brilliant a manner had to be shot, but were helpless against an order of the Führer. Schmidt was so impressed with the 23-year-old officer that when they were alone he said to him: ‘Your country may be proud of you. If you were not my enemy I should ask you to be my friend.’ Captain Dudgeon shook hands with the German and said: ‘I thank you for telling me that.’ In the morning Divisional Commander General Von Ziehlberg arrived to see the two captives. After another fruitless interrogation the general told Schmidt to translate his words. They were to the effect that the general respected his bearing and determination, but he and his companion Corporal Brunt would be shot in an hour. Captain Dudgeon saluted the general and began to prepare for the end. The young officer asked Schmidt to remain with him until it was all over. He agreed and promised to write to his father after the war. He asked for a Protestant priest and asked to die with free hands and open eyes. When the hour came to an end he got up and went to his death like a hero. Victor Schmidt was forbidden to give the details of the death of the two men to the Red Cross, so he waited until the war was over before writing to Captain Dudgeon’s father. He described the officer’s last night on earth and finished the letter with instructions on how to find his burial place: ‘The

grave of Dugeon is 200 metres south-west of the chapel on the Passo della Cisa going in the direction of La Spezia, behind the last of the buildings. Signed, Victor Schmidt.’

Murder in the Quarry Captain Dudgeon was one of a party of six men who parachuted into an area 7 miles south-west of Borgo Val di Taro on 7 September 1943. Operation SPEEDWELL involved the dropping of SAS men in the Genoa district immediately prior to the armistice to disrupt rail communications in northern Italy. They all landed without injury, buried their parachutes and split up into two-man teams. Each pair was detailed to lay explosives at different places on the railway track that ran between La Spezia and Genoa. Captain Dudgeon and Lance Corporal B. Brunt were to make for the north and Sergeant W. Forster and Corporal J. Shortall the south. The first anyone knew of the fate of these four men was when they failed to arrive at the rendezvous at Villa Franca, south of Pontremoli, on 17 September. A later unconfirmed source reported that on the day after Captain Dudgeon and Brunt hijacked the German staff car, a Captain Foster from the 28th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery and a Captain Reid, also from the RA, were caught by the Germans in the Cisa Pass and immediately shot against a wall. A Captain Armstrong was with the officers but he got away. Later investigations would clarify that Sergeant Forster and Corporal Shortall were the first pair to be captured on 20 September 1943 at a place called La Foce, 2 kilometres north-east of La Spezia. They simply walked into a party of Germans without realizing they were there. They were taken to division headquarters and put in the Italian civilian jail where they were interrogated, but both refused to give any information other than their name, rank and number. On the following day reports began to come in of explosions on the railway along the valley. The interrogators were getting nowhere with their captives and the question was asked what was to be done with the two saboteurs. Apparently the intelligence officer Reiners was instructed by

Lieutenant Colonel Knesebeck to ring the intelligence officer at Corps, the higher formation. This was von Menges, but he was not there and the call was taken by von Oppen, his assistant. The message was passed on to Army where the Führer’s Order was consulted. The instruction to shoot the men came back down the line to von Menges who had now appeared and he relayed the instruction back to division to Reiners and Knesebeck who went to see the divisional commander General Ziehlberg. How far up the chain of command the order to shoot the SAS men originated is difficult to establish. Field Marshal Rommel, the Army Group commander, was later reported to be furious that a valuable source of intelligence had been lost, so one can assume that he did not give the order. At any rate, the order was passed from General Ziehlberg to his chief of staff Knesebeck and down to the punishment platoon commander, who marched his men to the quarry behind the pottery factory in Ponzano where they dug a large deep grave. Around midday Hauptmann Sommer, the headquarters defence platoon commander, went to the defence platoon billets and ordered ten men under Sergeant Bost to assemble in full fighting order. The 28-year-old Richard Belkner was having dinner with several of his comrades when Sommer burst in and ordered them to fall in outside with steel helmets and rifles. He thought at first that they were going out on drill, but when he came out onto the road his comrades told him that two men were to be shot. Belkner later insisted that he told his comrades that he did not wish to take part in the execution and that they reported this to Hauptmann Sommer. The officer warned him that if he refused, he would be shot himself. Thereupon he went with his comrades down the road and into a local quarry: The two prisoners, Forster and Shortall were brought from the local jail by the German military police commanded by Leutnant Zastrow. They had no idea that they were to be shot until they found themselves facing the defence platoon firing squad. Belkner recalled that the men were wearing khakicoloured berets with a badge on the front and grey overalls. The tallest of the two men was led to the middle of the quarry by the military police and tied with his hands behind him to a tree. The execution squad formed a line about 5 metres in front of the prisoner of war. Belkner remembered most of their

names: Bost, Adamick, Schorck, Schubert, Benzel, Weist, Weissman, Lietz. The lieutenant of the punishment platoon stood to the right of the men, ready to give the order to fire. The interpreter Doctor Grether then stepped forward and read out in English the order for their execution. It had been signed by the division commander Ziehlberg himself. One of the men asked for the services of a Protestant chaplain. Grether translated the request for Sommer, who replied: ‘No, there isn’t time for that.’ At that moment somebody said that the second prisoner should not have to watch the execution of his comrade. The second man was then taken further back so he could not witness the murder. As the execution squad prepared to fire, the helpless prisoner turned his body to the left, presumably to present a smaller target. The order was given to blindfold the prisoner and his bonds were tightened. The order to fire was given by the lieutenant of the punishment platoon. As the sound of the shots died away, the prisoner was untied and fell to the ground. He was not yet dead and the punishment platoon officer went forward and shot him through the head. The body was thrown into the grave and the second man was brought forward and tied to the tree. The order was given to fire and the man slumped in his bonds. A coup de grace was not required.

Day of Reckoning When Victor Schmidt was interrogated in jail in Luxembourg he suggested that Zeihlberg, the 65th Division commander, was only carrying out the orders of General Feuernstein, the corps commander, that parachutists should be shot. He stated that a Lieutenant Glendenning was captured shortly after Dudgeon by men of Zeihlberg’s division, but the general refused to officially accept the report of the arrest in order to avoid receiving further execution instructions. He told the division intelligence officer to evacuate Glendenning through normal prisoner-of-war channels and to make no report.

When the case came to trial it became obvious that there was no real case against Oppen who was the intelligence officer at Corps HQ with the rank of second lieutenant. All he did was to receive a telephone message from Reiners at Division and pass it on to the chief of staff at Corps and higher up the chain of command to Army. He only took the call because von Menges was away from headquarters at the time. The telephone message reported the capture of British parachutists. Oppen was ordered to locate a copy of the Führerbefehl from Army and when he did so and gave it to the chief of staff he was told that a decision to kill the men had already been made at Army. Von Menges’ part in the crime was that he received the instruction to kill the men from Army and passed it on down to Division. The corps commander Feuerstein pleaded ignorance of the incident, even though General von Ziehlberg had visited Corps Headquarters to protest against the decision to kill Forster and Shorthall. When the trial came to an end in September 1948, Feuerstein, von Menges and Zastrow were found not guilty and the two remaining accused, Knesebeck and Sommer, were found guilty and both sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. It was not a surprise to see Feuerstein walk free as the evidence against him had always been rather slender, but there was quite a good case against von Menges and Zastrow. The light sentences on Knesebeck and Sommer were also surprising as they were convicted of involvement in the killing of prisoners of war. However, the judgement had been made and that was the end of it.

Other Losses While trying to find their way back to Allied lines, Captain Gunston and his party discovered a boat that had been laid up on a beach throughout the winter and they put to sea on the night of 7 March 1944, just south of Porto San Georgio. Unfortunately the boat began to let in water and they were forced to land again. They started to move inland, possibly with the intention of joining up with other SAS men in the Terni area. They got as far as Montebuono, a very small village near Gubbio, but were caught by the

Germans and shot. Their murderers were possibly the 16th SS Division which had a very bad reputation at the time. On 15 February 1945 a three-man advance party from the 2nd SAS Regiment dropped into an area north-east of Verona where they were met by local partisans. Ten days later on 25 February the group clashed with a German patrol and Major R.R. Littlejohn, MC and Sergeant J.D. Crowley were taken prisoner. Corporal Clarke and the rest of the partisans escaped from the area. At the beginning of April the guide interpreter who had been with the three SAS men made his way through the German lines and reported to Major Walker-Brown from the 2nd SAS. It was assumed by the partisans that the two missing men had run into a second enemy ski patrol and were last seen firing at the advancing enemy from a distance of only 30 yards. This information supplemented a previous report that two British soldiers wearing red berets had been seen in a truck that was being driven away from the SS headquarters at Rovereto. The men were certainly alive and prisoners of war for some weeks as the International Red Cross in Geneva were given their names and next-of-kin addresses by the Swiss Consular Representative in Milano. However, they never came home. The American war crimes investigators took over the case a few months later. They had also lost some airmen and an OSS operative around the same time: Captain Roderick G.S. Hall, OSS and fliers Lieutenants Charles Parker, George W. Hammond, Hardy D. Narran and Staff Sergeant Medard R. Tafoya. By December 1945 they had four German suspects in custody: SS Sturmbannführer August Schiffer, SS Sturmführer Heinz Andergassen, SS Oberscharführer Albert Storz and policeman Hans Butz. All were involved in the murder of the Americans, together with the two British SAS men. Captain Hall had parachuted into northern Italy with the ‘Eagle Mission’ towards the end of 1944. In the middle of January 1945 he was apparently captured near the village of Campo di Sopra by a forest guard named Alberti Michele. He was handed over to two policemen and taken to Bolzano where he was seen in the custody of August Schiffer. After he was murdered, Andergassen and Storz took his body to a Doctor Karl Pittschieler who made

out a false death certificate prior to the burial. His remains were later discovered in the cemetery at Bolzano. Lieutenant Charles Parker was flying with the 489th Bomb Squadron when he was shot down on 17 March 1945. His body, together with those of Littlejohn and Crowley, was later discovered in the Cemetery of the Resurrection in Bolzano. They had apparently been shot on 19 March 1945 by Andergassen and Storz on the orders of Schiffer. Fliers Narron, Hammond and Tafoya were all shot down three days later and met the same fate. A postscript to the story of the two missing SAS men came from British governess Miss May Taylor who had been a governess for more than twenty years to an Italian family. She was incarcerated in a concentration camp near Bolzano for six months and witnessed British and American parachutists being severely beaten by SS men armed with cudgels and crowbars in a vain attempt to extract information. Miss Taylor was liberated on 29 April 1945 and was taken to a house in Merano to recuperate, together with two British soldiers. A German officer entered the house, ordered the two men to raise their hands and then shot them both in cold blood. Revenge was swift, however, as the German officer was later executed by partisans.

France In March 1944 both the 1st and 2nd SAS regiments went to England to train and prepare for the invasion of France. They had learned a lot in the previous three years. The further behind enemy lines they operated, the greater their chances of survival for here they would find second-line troops and large areas in which to move around. Their effectiveness, however, was limited not only by the amount of supplies and ammunition they could carry, but by the amount of time they could spend in an area. Once the enemy was aware of their presence it would become a game of cat and mouse and the hunters were merciless men, well aware of Hitler’s infamous Commando Order.

Operations LOYTON and PISTOL

Operation LOYTON and Operation PISTOL took place on the border of France and Germany in the Vosges Mountains and the valley immediately to the north known as the Haggenau Gap. Originally they were to have taken place shortly after D-Day, but were delayed and did not begin until August 1944. By that time the German army was retreating through the area and the advance from Normandy had stalled due to lack of fuel. Around 100 men from the 2nd SAS Regiment were deployed on LOYTON and around 50 others on PISTOL. When the men on LOYTON were withdrawn from the area, thirty-two of their number were left behind. Captured by the Germans, all would be interrogated and then shot. Operation LOYTON began when an advance party of a dozen men was dropped behind enemy lines in the Vosges area on the night of 12/13 August 1944. The task of the regiment was to disrupt enemy rear communications at a time when the enemy front line was beginning to retreat. The advance party was tasked with reconnoitring the area and calling in the main body. The French Resistance were also active in the area at that time, although it was not the role of the SAS to organize or cooperate with the Resistance. A three-man Jedburgh team from Special Forces was sent in to liaise with the French, whose main area of resistance was in the hills around the village of Moussey. Although the Resistance was several hundred strong, the local Maquis (French Resistance guerrilla fighters) were largely untrained and poorly-equipped and the area was infested with Nazi informers. Because of this, the Germans were very active in the vicinity and a sweep of the area on 17 August led to the scattering of the advance party and the capture of Parachutist Hall. Three days later Sergeant Davis was also captured. On the night of 1/2 September the commanding officer of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Franks, and his party of thirty men, Jeeps and stores were dropped into the area near Veney and they were followed soon afterwards by sixty more who parachuted into a drop zone near Pexonne. The fifty men employed on Operation PISTOL were luckier than their counterparts on LOYTON. They were dropped in small groups in Lorraine and part of Alsace with instructions to carry out specific tasks and then regain their own lines. Although three men would be captured in Lorraine, none of them would be murdered in captivity. Seven men from this operation were

made prisoners of war in Alsace and two of them were killed. The other five were repatriated at the end of the war. In the summer of 1944 the Gauleiter (Nazi district leader) of Alsace had given orders for the construction of a fortification line in the west of the Vosges. He also issued orders to the commander of the police in the district, Doctor Isselhorst, to provide police protection from 1 September for the labour involved in the construction of the line. Prior to that, ‘Action Schirmeck’ was launched to suppress the Resistance forces in the area. This was controlled from the camp of Schirmeck, which was in the area controlled by Obersturmbannführer Schneider assisted by Gehrun, both of whom had left their headquarters in Strasbourg and moved to the camp to exercise better control of the operation. At least two conferences were held in the camp in which the capture and treatment of parachutists was discussed and both Schlierback and General Seeger were present. Close to the camp of Schirmeck was the concentration camp known as Natzweiler-Struthof, where some of the victims were taken for disposal. Every day the SAS patrols went out, ambushing enemy convoys, mining roads and demolishing bridges. One of the achievements of the operation was the discovery two days into the operation by Major Peter Le Poer Power of an SS headquarters and a fuel dump containing 3 million litres of petrol. Both targets were attacked by the RAF and 400 SS men at the headquarters were killed as they assembled prior to deployment. What had been envisaged as a short ten-day operation was turning into a prolonged campaign due to the slowness of the American advance and the movement of German reinforcements towards the front lines. Under relentless pressure from the Germans, the teams from the 2nd SAS were hunted day and night and Colonel Franks was ordered to withdraw from the area in late September/early October. The village of Moussey fed and sheltered the SAS during the six-week operation. In reprisal, the Germans arrived on 24 September and removed the entire male population of 210 men and boys to concentration camps. Only seventy returned at the end of the war and some of these were to die from the effects of starvation and torture. Some 500 men were also taken from the villages of Senones and La Petite-Raon, while 30 others were shot out of

hand. This brought a halt to the Maquis activity in the area, but within two months the area was back under Allied control. When the SAS regrouped back in England, they found that they had thirty-two men unaccounted for. When the war came to an end the SAS formed their own SAS War Crimes Investigation Team under the command of Major Eric (‘Bill’) Barkworth, who had been their intelligence officer during the war. His assistant was Company Sergeant Major Fred (‘Dusty’) Rhodes. The team left England for Germany at the end of May 1945 and over the next two years discovered the fate of their missing men. The first man to be taken prisoner was Parachutist Hall who was captured on 17 August 1944 at Moussey. He was taken to the Schirmeck camp where he was interrogated by an Obersturmbannführer Schneider. He was then taken to the concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof but was shot on the way and his body was cremated at the camp. The second man to be captured was Sergeant Davis who was taken prisoner at the small village of Saint Jean Le Saulcy by members of Kommando Schömer. Local witnesses claimed that he was captured at around 0745 hours on Sunday, 20 August and was next seen at the camp at Schirmeck between 1000 and 1100 hours the same day. He was also interrogated by Schneider and three others, but refused to answer any questions. He was threatened with death should he continue to refuse to answer and his body was discovered in the wood above Moussey during the following year. The next prisoners were taken following the paratroop drop on the night of 8 September. They were 321375 Sergeant M. Fitzpatrick and parachutists 4200829 Private J. Elliot and 14567132 Private J. Conway. One of the men fractured his thigh on landing and two of his comrades remained with him, hidden in a wood near the drop zone. The next to be taken prisoner was a larger party of eight men comprising Lieutenant Black, Sergeant Terry-Hall, Corporals Winder and Iveson, Parachutists Crozier, Dowling, Lloyd and Salter. They were taken prisoner at a saw mill by a detachment of Kommando Ernst. This Kommando had been transferred from the control of Obergruppenführer Oberg, the chief of police in France, to that of the chief of security police in Alsace, Doctor Isselhorst.

Kommando Ernst was under the command of Major Ernst of the security service, the SD, and its total strength was around 100 men. The main task of these Kommandos was the suppression of all Resistance efforts in the area under their control. They wore SS uniforms with a shield on the left arm bearing the letters SD. The commander of the detachment that initially captured the eight men handed them over to the Wehrmacht. He later told war crimes investigators that he did this because they were wearing uniform and he considered them to be prisoners of war. Unfortunately his chief, Major Ernst, disagreed and he took steps to recover the men from the army. The transfer took place at Schirmeck camp and the prisoners were taken back to St-Dié and subsequently shot on 21 or 22 September in a nearby wood. The next SAS men to be captured were Sergeant Neville and Parachutists McGovan and Church. They were also captured by a detachment from Kommando Ernst led by Leutnant Taufel and taken to the Kommando headquarters which was at that time in the small town of Saales. This took place between 2 and 5 October. On 7 October another party was taken prisoner, but this time by the Wehrmacht who promptly handed them over to Kommando Ernst at Saales. This group comprised Lieutenant Dill, Sergeant Hay, Lance Corporals Robinson and Austin and Parachutists Bennet and Weaver. The officer, Lieutenant Dill, was put aside for later disposal, but the other eight were shot in a wood near Saales on 15 October. Parachutist Brown was the next unfortunate to fall into enemy hands. He had come down to the edge of a road and saw a Jeep passing by. The Jeep had been captured by the Germans but Brown did not realize this until he walked up to it and was promptly taken prisoner by members of Kommando Retchek. He was passed on to Kommando Wenger and was joined on 9 October by Lieutenant Silly and Parachutist Lewis. These two had been taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht while trying to cross a river back to the west. The two parachutists were eventually taken to the small hamlet of Leschally where they were killed on 16 October. Lieutenant Silly was later killed with six Frenchmen in a saw mill which was then set on fire to destroy the evidence.

On 12 September Parachutist Griffin was taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht near La Lac de la Mai and delivered to Schirmeck camp, where he remained until the camp was evacuated in the middle of November. Parachutist Ash was taken prisoner by Kommando Zinhof on 27 September and held at Strasbourg prison before he was separated from the others of his party and sent to Schirmeck where he also remained until the camp was evacuated. Next to arrive was the aforementioned Lieutenant Dill who had been spared temporarily when his men were taken away and murdered on 15 October. He arrived at Schirmeck between 21 and 25 October. On 1 November Major Reynolds and Captain Whately-Smith were taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht and eventually ended up at Schirmeck camp. Whately-Smith was then taken to the headquarters of Kommando Ernst for interrogation. The receipt, signed by SS Sturmscharführer Schossig, a member of Kommando Ernst, ironically describes the captain as a prisoner of war. Captain Whately-Smith was returned to Schirmeck camp and just prior to its evacuation, which was completed on 23 November, he and Reynolds, Griffin, Dill and Ash were taken to the branch camp of Gaggenau. Four American airmen and four Frenchmen were also transferred at the same time, together with another British officer from another regiment. The commander of the branch camp, Hauptsturmführer Karl Buck, later told war crimes investigators that he received orders on 17 November from Doctor Isselhorst to have this party shot. He did not carry out the order at that time, but waited until they had been moved to Gaggenau. The order was carried out on 25 November. Two further SAS men failed to return to Allied lines. Parachutist Puttick was seen as a prisoner in the hands of Kommando Wenger by a member of the French Resistance. Parachutist Wertheim was taken prisoner at the same time as Parachutist Ash and both were inexplicably separated from the other four of their party. Wertheim remained in the Strasbourg prison from the end of September until 23 November when he was moved to the camp of Neiderbuell. At the beginning of December 1944 he was taken in a lorry towards the camp at Gaggenau but never arrived. Both Ash and Wertheim were among ten SAS men captured during

Operation PISTOL. The other eight were luckier and were transferred to prisoner-of-war camps and returned at the end of the war. Three of them had been captured in Lorraine, in territory not under the command of Strasbourg, and the other five including Ash and Wertheim in a group near Wingen, a town in Alsace, near Strasbourg. All members of the SAS captured in Alsace while participating in Operation LOYTON were murdered with the exception of Sergeant Seymour who had broken his ankle on landing. He was taken to the camp at Schirmeck and then on to Gestapo headquarters in Strasbourg. What discussions took place while he was in the hands of the Gestapo will never be known. He was later transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp and survived. The SAS War Crimes Investigation Team eventually accounted for their missing men and in most cases discovered the identities of the perpetrators of the murders. The trials of these men were referred to by the area in which the crime took place.

The Pexonne Case Doctor Robert Emile Husson was handed a message on the morning of Wednesday, 13 September by a 14-year-old girl. It read: ‘Doctor, you must come immediately to the farm at La Fosse to look after wounded English parachutists. Signed, A Patriot.’ The girl was the niece of Monsieur Jaco who owned the farm and when the doctor made his way there he was taken into a little wood by the road. He found three Englishmen, including one who was stretched out on a parachute. They were in uniform and one was a sergeant. The doctor could not do very much for the injured man as he did not have much equipment with him. He did, however, make him a splint and then returned to his home. On 16 September the doctor was warned by Madame Claude, the wife of the local FFI (French Forces of the Interior) leader, to be careful as the farm had been surrounded by Germans. It was said that someone had gone to the woods to pick fruit and had seen the men and reported their presence to the Germans. Later that day he saw the three men again. They had been arrested

and were being taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Badon Villers, not far from where the doctor lived. A couple of days later the doctor was told that a car with the three Englishmen in it had been seen driving in the direction of La Fosse. Monsieur Camille Simon was a 62-year-old mason and on 19 September he was tending his cattle in a field near La Fosse farm, assisted by one of his daughters. At around 0945 hours he saw a light truck approaching the farm and when it stopped he could hear the sound of loud German voices. He asked himself: ‘What can they be wanting to do now?’ and wondered if they had returned to see the results of their handiwork as on the previous Saturday they had set fire to the farm and shot the occupants. Monsieur Simon decided it was wiser not to pay too much attention and continued mowing the hay. Suddenly he heard a shot and both he and his daughter turned in the direction of La Fosse farm where he saw a German firing in the direction of the beehive. He heard three single shots and then noticed that the beehive was on fire. He was only 100 metres away at that time and decided it was not a safe place to be. Beckoning to his daughter, he turned away and left the field. Within a couple of days it was common knowledge in Pexonne that three Englishmen had been shot at La Fosse farm. Monsieur Simon then said to himself: ‘Those must be the three rifle shots I heard.’ Monsieur Simon had been in the main street of Pexonne on 16 September, the day that the three men had been captured. He saw them in a German truck, together with a French collaborator named Genevieve Demetz in front of the mayor’s house. He overheard one of the Germans telling the mayor: ‘You will bury the two bodies that are over there.’ On the following day, 17 September, Monsieur Simon went to the farm and among the smouldering ruins found two bodies, which he took to be those of Monsieur Jaco and his mother. At the end of November 1944 Doctor Husson was asked by war crimes investigators Major Barkworth and Captain Sykes to accompany them to La Fosse farm. When they searched among the ruins of the farm, they discovered a lower jawbone in the remains of the burned-out beehives. They found enough bones to assess that at least two men had died there, possibly

three. They also found an unexploded German hand grenade. Uniform buttons and belt buckles confirmed that they were English soldiers and the remains were buried in one grave in the Badon Villers cemetery. Another version of events that surfaced was that Fitzpatrick and Conway were taken back to their place of capture and shot in the beehive. Parachutist Elliot was allegedly shot on his way back from interrogation and was in fact placed in the luggage compartment of the car of the commander of that particular detachment as a joke so that when he opened the luggage compartment of his car the body would fall out. In a statement made at Nancy Prison on 31 October 1945, the collaborator Genevieve Demetz admitted that she worked for Kommando Wenger at Le Neuveville and she accompanied members of that unit to the farm on 16 September, the day that the men were taken prisoner. She was also present when members of Kommando Wenger took the three prisoners of war back to the farm to be murdered. The Kommando was made up of elements from the Sicherheitspolizei of France and came under the orders of Obergruppenführer Oberg and Obersturmbannführer Suhr. She identified Lieutenant Schumann, a Frenchman by the name of Rene, ‘Little Bobby’ and Max as four of the men escorting them. Following a SHAEF court of enquiry, a search began for the members of Kommando Wenger, including its commanding officer Hauptsturmführer Erich Wenger and Lieutenant Schumann. By this time it was known that these men were also involved in what was to be known as the Le Harcholet case involving the murder of two more SAS men on 16 October at Le Harcholet in the Commune de Moussey.

The St-Dié Case The St-Dié case concerned the trial of various suspects involved in the murder of some of the other Operation LOYTON victims on 21/22 September. Kommando Ernst was in St-Dié when the message arrived. It came from Berger, a Frenchman who worked for another Kommando. One of his

English-speaking agents had informed him that a party of English parachutists were hidden in a house not far away. Hauptsturmführer Albrecht took some of his men to Raon-l’Étape where they gathered reinforcements: more German SS men and French collaborators. He remained there and sent the rest of the party under the command of Untersturmführer Wetzel to the place, a solitary house down a side road in a valley. The trucks stopped and the men went ahead on foot and surrounded the house. One of the Frenchmen was sent forward to try to lure the men outside into an ambush. He returned and said that there were eight men in the house, not three as had been reported. He was told to try again, but when he knocked on the door the occupants began firing from the windows. The exchange of fire lasted about five minutes before the English were called upon to surrender. The door opened and the men filed out, carrying their wounded officer. Before the group returned, Berger shot the French owner of the house and his wife. The SAS men were put in a large school building at Raon-l’Étape, but shortly afterwards Albrecht sent them to Schirmeck to be handed over to the Wehrmacht. Major Ernst was furious when he heard that the men were being treated as prisoners of war and were now in Wehrmacht hands. He sent one of his men to bring them back to St-Dié. One of the men who accompanied Berger to capture the parachutists was SS Untersturmführer Otto Wetzel. He later said in his statement that he had suggested to Albrecht that the men were prisoners of war and should be handed over to the Wehrmacht. He alleged that Ernst was angry with him and ordered that he be present when the prisoners were executed. When he refused, he was supposedly reminded that his family would be punished if he did not comply. Wetzel claimed that the execution and burial had been organized by Jantzen, who had supervised the digging of the grave earlier. He said that the prisoners had been quiet and calm in the lorry taking them to their execution and that he stood 50 metres away as the men were taken one at a time to the graveside and shot in the back of the head. Jantzen apparently stood at the side of the grave and supervised the execution. One of the other witnesses to the murder was Herbert Griem who had only

joined Kommando Ernst in the previous month. He had been given command of the guard, which comprised three Germans of foreign nationality and about fifteen French. His rank at the time was Unterscharführer but for some reason he was dressed as a Hauptscharführer. Griem was with the party of two dozen members of the Kommando sent to carry out the execution of the eight men. When they reached the chosen area they formed a chain between the lorry and the grave and each prisoner, dressed only in his shirt and underpants, was escorted by two men to the graveside. Griem observed a number of different men fire the fatal shots, including Wetzel, Oppelt, Jantzen, Machatschek and Koch. Griem recalled warning them not to shoot one another by mistake. The SAS officer, a lieutenant wounded in the leg, was carried on a piece of canvas and shot with his men. When Walter Jantzen made his statement to Major Barkworth on 6 March 1946 he claimed that Ernst had ordered him to interrogate the prisoners at StDié and then arrange their execution. Jantzen requested that an SS officer of the Kommando should be present as he did not have the courage to disagree with Ernst’s decision to kill the prisoners of war. Untersturmführer Wetzel was ordered to attend. Jantzen contended that contrary to Wetzel’s statement, the grave had already been prepared by others. He claimed that he was among the men guarding the lorry and at no time did he admit to being involved with the shooting. He stated that Wetzel was at the graveside the whole time and that he only went there to help shovel in the earth afterwards. The post mortem took place on 10 and 11 of May 1946. It was carried out by Major Mant of the Royal Army Medical Corps and he established that all eight men had died from gunshot wounds to the head and neck. Lieutenant Black had been shot twice and had also suffered a previous gunshot wound in the thigh. The trial took place one week after the La Grande-Fosse trial and lasted from 22 to 25 May 1946. The fourteen accused were members of Kommando Ernst and had either taken a direct part in the murders or were on the fringes. Some had also been involved in the La Grande-Fosse case. As there were no impartial witnesses to the murders, the bulk of the

evidence came from accomplices. However, the hunt for the truth became more difficult as each defendant told a different story and attempted to blacken his comrades and exonerate himself. One defence strategy was to insist that the SAS men were not entitled to prisoner-of-war status as they had been associating with the Maquis and should be treated as partisans. When that failed, they tried to claim that the soldiers were ‘judicially executed’. This defence was thrown out by the JAG who pointed out that for a judicial execution to be lawful a warrant must be signed by a sovereign authority after a legal and properly-constituted trial had taken place. The court was not impressed and sentenced the three main participants – Griem, Wetzel and Jantzen – to death. The other accused were given prison sentences ranging from three to thirteen years in jail. The following had been shot on the St-Dié-Raon-l’Étape road and buried in a wood at the roadside: 262193 Lieutenant Black, J.D. 14402126 Parachutist Crosier, J. 5346560 Parachutist Dowling, J. 73377 Corporal Iveson, T. 2063834 Parachutist Lloyd, L. 4200942 Parachutist Salter, J. 1422304 Sergeant Terry-Hall, F. 3460628 Corporal Winder, H.

La Grande-Fosse The La Grande-Fosse case went to trial in Wuppertal between 15 and 21 May 1946 and in the dock were some of the men responsible for the murder of the eight SAS men who were shot on the road to La Grande-Fosse near Saales on 15 October 1944. The bodies had been exhumed on 6 November 1944 and Lieutenant Marvin Kuschner carried out the autopsies in the cemetery chapel at Gaggenau. Nine spent rifle cartridge cases and three rusty spadeheads were

also found in the grave. The 17-year-old Frenchman Roger Souchal had been taken prisoner with Lieutenant Dill, Sergeant Hay, Robinson, Jimmy Bennet and one other on Saturday, 7 October 1944 at the Côte des Chênes near Moussey. Colonel Franks had been ordered to gather his men together and make their way back to friendly lines, but left a small rear party to wait for Sergeant Neville and two others who were away on patrol. Their hideout was discovered by the Germans and after an hour-long engagement, with ammunition running out, the group surrendered. The officer in charge of the SS Panzer unit shook Lieutenant Dill by the hand and said: ‘You are my prisoner; you are a soldier and so am I.’ They were then handed over to Kommando Ernst. The captives were taken first to Le Harcholet and then to Saales where they were placed in a cell in the Maison Barthelemy. In the cell already were Captain Gough, Sergeant Neville and parachutists Church, McGovern, Weaver and Austin. Souchal particularly remembered Weaver because he always said ‘Fucking Germans’ whenever they came in. On Sunday, 15 October the eight SAS other ranks were taken away, leaving Gough and Dill with Souchal. When their names were called out they were told that they were going to a prisoner-of-war camp. In fact, they were being taken to a place of execution. Souchal, Gough and Dill were interrogated and beaten over the next few days as the Germans tried to discover the whereabouts of the SAS colonel and his men. On 20 October they were taken to Schirmeck camp and the two officers were separated from Souchal. He saw them once or twice again, together with an older officer, a major with a bald head. The young Frenchman was taken to a concentration camp, but survived and was awarded the King’s Medal after the war. All the SAS men were shot. By the time the War Crimes Court convened, the perpetrators of the crime had scattered to the four winds. However, fourteen men were in the dock and seven others were being sought by war crimes investigators. The main defence of the accused was that they were acting on superior orders, which meant the infamous Commando Order issued by Hitler. The Judge Advocate General in his summing-up said: ‘The fact that a rule of warfare has been violated does not deprive the act in question of its character

as a war crime; neither does it in principle confer upon the perpetrator immunity from punishment.’ Hans Hubner was a 37-year-old member of Kommando Ernst and he gave a statement to Major Bill Barkworth in February 1946 that detailed his part in the crime. He had been summoned to the house that was being used as the headquarters of the Kommando one morning in October 1944, along with others of the unit. The unit leader Sturmbannführer Ernst had previously told them that SAS troops were not to be treated as prisoners of war, even though they were wearing uniform. On this particular day he informed them that they were to take the eight parachutist prisoners away and shoot them. Other men detailed for the murder were Oppelt, Dietrich, Schossig, Wuttke, Zahringer, Klein and Gäde. Oppelt was in charge, although his superior Hauptsturmführer Golkel and his driver would arrive before the end of the executions. The armed members of the Kommando made a chain from the door of the house to a waiting lorry to ensure that no escape attempts were made as the eight condemned men were led out. Three guards climbed in the back with the prisoners and two private cars carrying other guards took up position in front and behind the lorry as it drove away. The convoy took the road leading from Saales towards La Grande-Fosse and eventually stopped at the junction of a track with the main road. The driver put the lorry in reverse and backed along the track before halting. The guards all converged on the lorry to ensure that the prisoners did not escape. Oppelt then told Schossig, who spoke English, to order the first prisoner to get off the lorry and to undress. The man who stepped down was the tallest of the eight men and he undressed and was taken away into the wood by Oppelt, Dietrich, Wuttke and Klein. A single shot was then heard. The guards returned and repeated the process with the next prisoner. Hubner noted that other members of the Kommando were also present, including Machatschek, Thielker, Limberg and Pilz, while others were detailed as sentries in the distance, including Geiger and Bott. Hubner admitted that he and Zahringer escorted one of the last prisoners to the grave site where Oppelt ordered them to shoot the man. Zahringer refused and said he had received no orders to do so. Hubner noted that

although it was October and the prisoner was naked, he did not shiver or tremble as he awaited his fate. Oppelt then shot the prisoner through the back of the head and he fell forward onto the pile of bodies in the grave. Just before the last of the prisoners was executed Golkel arrived, having stopped at an anti-aircraft unit nearby to warn them not to be alarmed by the sound of firing. Oppelt complained to him that Hubner and Zahringer had not carried out his order and Golkel told them that in future they must not be such cowards. The clothing belonging to the dead men was taken away in the lorry to be burned on the orders of Sturmbannführer Ernst. However, both Golkel and Gäde were later seen wearing British camouflage jackets with zip fasteners. Heinrich Klein was another member of the Kommando interviewed by Major Barkworth. His recollections differed slightly from Hubner in as much as he was Golkel’s driver and he claimed that they arrived before the executions took place and it was Golkel who ordered Schossig to tell the prisoners to undress. Klein also escorted one of the prisoners to the grave site and was told to remain there as a guard. He later said that Oppelt shot each of the men in the head as they stood at the edge of the grave. None of the prisoners spoke. The fifth man was not quite dead and moved in the grave into which he had fallen. A number of those who were present all fired at this wounded man. Klein did not admit that he was one of them. Despite the gravity of the crime and the availability of contributors to the deed, the court was surprisingly lenient and the main culprit, Hauptsturmführer Karl Adam Golkel, who had organized and commanded the execution squad, only received ten years’ imprisonment. Six of the accused were acquitted and the seven others received jail sentences of two to eight years, the eight-year sentence being passed on Horst Gäde. There was a subsequent outcry in the Press and the president of the court, Brigadier Hennessey, was highly critical of the officers who had sat with him and protested to the War Office about their unsuitability. Justice was finally done in the case of one or two of the accused, who were also defendants in other related trials. Jantzen was one of these and he was sentenced to death by shooting at the court in Wuppertal on 25 May

1946 for his involvement in the St-Dié murders. The eight murdered SAS men were the following: 6287803 Lance Corporal Austin, F. 14219880 Parachutist Bennet, J. 2938122 Parachutist Church, P. 845212 Sergeant Hay, R. 2938162 Sergeant Neville, P. 900715 Parachutist McGovern, P. 884882 Lance Corporal Robinson, G. 1060893 Parachutist Weaver, E. Not in custody and still being sought were Sturmbannführer Hans Dieter Ernst, Sturmscharführer Alfred Schossig, Oberscharführer Heinrich Diedrich, Sturmscharführer Fritz Oppelt, Unterscharführer Willibald Wuttke, Unterscharführer Paul Machatschek and Ernhardt Starck.

Le Harcholet No. 315950 Private S. Brown and 1441072 Private D. Lewis were among other SAS men dropped into the Vosges area in August 1944. Together with an unidentified Frenchman, they were seen in the custody of members of the German SD or Gestapo on 16 October when they were taken to the ruins of a burned-out house and appeared to be undergoing interrogation. In the meantime, other Germans were seen to be making preparations for a fire with straw and other material. Soon afterwards shots were heard and a fire was seen in a 10ft by 6ft outhouse nearby. The ruins of the outhouse were searched three days later and the three bodies were found. They were left where they were until December 1944 when the bodies were recovered and two were clearly identified as Brown and Lewis. The case came to trial in July 1946. There were six accused:

Hauptsturmführer Erich Wenger, Unterscharführers Schneider, Gimbel, Münch and Zerves and Untersturmführer Karl Paul Gerhart Preil. The only problem was that of the six men, only Preil was in custody in Wuppertal gaol. The other men were either dead, on the run, or now using false identities. Wenger, Priel, Schneider and Gimbel were all accused of being concerned with the killing of Parachutists 315950 S. Brown and 14410728 D. Lewis at or near Le Harcholet in the Commune de Moussey in the month of October 1944. Wenger, Priel, Münch and Zerves were also concerned in the killing of Parachutist 6201328 F. Puttick in the neighbourhood of Étival in the month of October 1944. When Preil was interviewed by Major Barkworth of the SAS War Crimes Investigation Team in June 1946, he gave his version of both of the events. His first statement on 25 June concerned the death of Brown and Lewis. He claimed that on 16 October 1944 Wenger ordered Preil and Schneider to take two SAS men and a young Frenchman out of Étival where Kommando Wenger was based and shoot them. Wenger also ordered them to take a captured SAS officer named Lieutenant Silly with them and make him watch the execution. His reasoning was that this would then persuade the officer to cooperate during subsequent interrogations. The four prisoners of war climbed into a lorry, accompanied by Preil, Schneider and a dozen other members of Kommando Wenger and driven away. They had not gone too far when the lorry broke down and they had to abandon it and continue on foot. After about half an hour they reached some houses on the slope of a hill near the edge of a wood in the neighbourhood of Le Harcholet. Wenger had decreed that the men were to be shot and their remains destroyed and to that end a wooden shed was selected, not far from a burnedout farmhouse. The two SAS parachutists and the Frenchman were ordered to sit down on a rafter, facing away from the doorway, while Schneider escorted Lieutenant Silly over to the ruined farmhouse. At 1300 hours, on Preil’s instructions, three NCOs including Gimbel opened fire on the helpless men. Apparently two of their weapons malfunctioned, but the third did not. The men fell lifeless to the floor.

Unbeknown to Preil at the time, there was another witness to the crime who told a slightly different story. Monsieur Maurice Lyautey was a 55-yearold Frenchman who had lived in Le Harcholet since 1927. He was in his house 100 metres away from the shed and saw all that went on. Four or five German soldiers were walking around collecting straw from the other houses and one of the two sergeant majors with the group came to his house and took some of his straw, warning him to keep his mouth shut about what he saw. Monsieur Lyautey later claimed that the sergeant major who had come to his house opened fire on the defenceless men, changing magazines as he did so. The straw was then piled in the shed and set alight. While the fire was burning he could see bodies swinging because they had been suspended. They appeared to be dead and were just hanging there. He turned away and joined his wife in the rear of the house. Later that day Monsieur Lyautey walked past the house on his way to work and noticed that a body had been thrown about 5 metres away from the shed. It transpired that the fire had not completely consumed the remains of the deceased and hand grenades were thrown at the charred remains as well. The man was lying on his back on a heap of manure. He could also see the remains of two others underneath the debris of the demolished shed. The next day he returned and covered up the remains and there they lay until the first Americans arrived in the area on 26 November 1944. As for Lieutenant Silly, he was taken back to Étival by the murderers and would meet a similar fate shortly afterwards. Untersturmführer Preil was interviewed again the following day, regarding the death of Parachutist Puttick. He said that while Kommando Wenger was stationed in Étival, a wounded English prisoner in uniform was brought in by an NCO or officer of the Wehrmacht. Preil noticed the ‘wounded’ label on the man’s chest and assumed that he had come from a hospital. The wounded man was about 30 years old and of slim build with fair hair. He also wore SAS flashes on his uniform. The prisoner was placed in the guard room for the night and was interrogated by Hauptscharführer Schneider. On the following day the prisoner’s condition was worse and Wenger considered that, with the bullet wound in the chest, he would not survive further interrogation. He gave

orders to Preil and Münch to ‘do away with the man.’ Late in the evening, the two men together with Gimbel and Zerves put the prisoner in a vehicle and set off in the direction of Étival-Clairfontaine/StDié. When they came to a spot where the River Meurthe flowed in a bend near the road they stopped. Preil and Münch got out and walked across the meadow to the river. After having a look around, they returned to the vehicle and turned it around. While he was doing this, he said, Münch and the other two men took the prisoner across the meadow and he was shot by Münch. The dead man was then placed in a sack and thrown into the river. While this was going on, Preil insisted that he remained with the vehicle in order to rev up the engine to try to drown out the sound of the shot. When Preil reported back to Wenger, he asked him if a stone had been placed in the sack to weigh it down. He confirmed that it had, but only to placate Wenger and avoid ‘an unpleasant outburst of rage’ as he put it.

The Murder of Lieutenant Silly Maurice Simon and his father were arrested by the Gestapo on 19 October 1944 and taken to their headquarters in the school at Vivier. As they walked down the steps into the dark cellar they saw half a dozen other Frenchmen and, strangely, a British parachutist officer. As they sat on the cold floor, the Englishman told them that he had been captured in the Bois de la Chipotte after dropping in uniform on 15 October. Having watched the murder of two other SAS men at Le Harcholet, he had no illusions about what was going to happen to him and gave Maurice a piece of paper with his name and address on it. The boy hid the paper in a ventilator in the room and was unable to retrieve it when he left the next day. He recalled later that the name was Silly and the address included the word ‘Greenway’. After the Gestapo left the area, the piece of paper was found, bearing the address of the officer’s mother in Berkhamsted. The officer’s spectacles case was also found in the ruins of a saw mill where the seven bodies were discovered. The mill had been burned to the ground and the remains were found under the debris. It is believed that Lieutenant Silly and the six

Frenchmen were executed on 21 October 1944 by members of the Gestapo Kommando Wenger. The autopsy was carried out on 25 August 1945 by an RAMC major from the War Crimes Investigation Team Specialist Pool. The remains had been discovered in a nearby wood and moved to the Moyenmoutiers cemetery on 9 December 1944. The grave was marked with a small stone plaque bearing the words ‘Un groupe de FFI. Martyrise. Mort pour la France.’ The remains were in two coffins, buried one on top of the other, and lay in water under about 6ft of clay soil: The top coffin contained fragments of burned bones, charred and decomposing flesh. The parts of the pelves of at least four adult males were identified, but no single whole limb bone could be found. Pieces of corduroy cloth and a strong dark grey cloth with a silk lining, suggesting the back of a pair of trousers were found. The lower coffin contained similar remains of three or possibly four males. Only one incomplete charred skull was found in the two coffins. The investigating officer concluded that the remains were that of at least seven males whose bodies had been burned and that the amount of destruction prevented recognition or the discovery of the cause of death. On 5 November 1945 Christian von Krogh dictated a statement that pointed the finger firmly at Kommando Wenger. Von Krogh was an Untersturmführer in the SD at Nancy and his superior was BDS Knochen. He recalled seeing a secret order that came from Knochen, stating that all special parachute troops captured behind their lines were to be shot within forty-eight hours. He confirmed that the order would also have been passed direct to the officers in charge of SD Kommandos such as Kommando Wenger and JadgKommando (Hunter) Retschek. This would have been at about the time of the Allied landings in southern Italy. Kommando Wenger was stationed in Baccarat in September 1944 and then in October he moved to Étival. On one occasion he visited Kommando Hoth in which Von Krogh was serving and during the course of a conversation discussed an action that his group had undertaken against Allied

parachutists. He did not mention taking any prisoners. The suspects in this case were Obergruppenführer Oberg, Obersturmbannführer Suhr, Sturmbannführer Doctor Stindt, Sturmbannführer Kolb, Hauptsturmführer Gutekunst, Hauptscharführer Griem and Hauptsturmführer Wenger. All would be implicated in other cases.

The Gaggenau Case On 9 May 1946 the British judge at the court in Wuppertal announced his verdict as to the guilt or innocence of the eleven accused in what was known as the Gaggenau case. The crime of which they were accused was involvement in the killing of six British and four American prisoners of war at Gaggenau, Germany on 25 November 1944. Perhaps the name of the case should have been Rotenfels rather than Gaggenau, because the men were imprisoned at Rotenfels security camp. Rotenfels was a sub-camp to the Schirmeck security camp, which was commanded by SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Buck. The head of discipline within the camp was Oberleutnant Karl Nussberger. Erwin Martzolf was 38 years old when he found himself in the Rotenfels camp. He had lived in Strasbourg, France since he was born, but he had been sent to the camp for political prisoners, along with approximately 1,200 others. In November 1944 he made friends with six British prisoners and four Americans and spoke to them often in a mixture of French and English. He must have known that their fate was uncertain and took steps to ascertain and record their names and details. George Hammerling worked in the camp records office and he passed the names and dates of birth of the ten men to Erwin, who compiled a number chart which he used as a code to record the information. At the end of the war in May 1945 he returned to Strasbourg and gave the names to a British liaison officer there. He recorded the American names as Garis Jacoby, Michel Pipock, Curtiss Hodges and Maynard A. Latton. The British were

listed as Andy Whately-Smith, Dennis Reynolds, David Dill, Victor Goff [sic], Maurice Griffin and Ash and all were members of the SAS. Early in the afternoon of 25 November 1944 the men were told that they were to be taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. As they lined up ready to leave, Erwin shook hands with each of them, including Captain Victor Gough. He then heard SS Sturmscharführer Zimmerman, who was acting for the Rotenfels camp Kommandant Untersturmführer Robert Wunsch, announce in a loud voice: ‘No packages – leave your packages here!’ Erwin then looked around and saw some Russian prisoners placing shovels in the truck and noticed that Neuschwanger, Ullrich, Ostertag and Dinkel all had machine pistols. All four Wachtmeisters wore the green uniforms of the German police. Erwin realised that an execution was about to take place. Whether the SAS men did so as well, no one will ever know. They climbed up into the truck, followed by their guards, and drove away into oblivion. The driver of the truck was Frenchman Albert Arnold who had been a prisoner in the camp since December 1943. The truck was a grey-yellow diesel that had been loaned to the concentration camp by the firm of Daimler Benz in Gaggenau, Germany. It was parked under the trees at the side of the road, just outside the main gate of the camp. Ostertag summoned Albert around 2.30 in the afternoon and instructed him to drive in the direction of the railway station at Gaggenau. Albert noticed that there were fourteen people in the truck. Four were wearing civilian clothes and the other ten wore soldiers’ uniform. Some wore brown trousers with a beige-coloured jacket with a zipper front. Some wore fliers’ boots with sheepskin and a zip fastener. Others wore regular army boots. He recognized the ten soldiers as they were the only British and American prisoners in the camp at that time. One of the civilians he also recognized was a Catholic priest named Abbé Roth. Albert climbed into the driver’s seat and Ostertag sat beside him. Neuschwanger, Ullrich, Nussberger and another Wachtmeister climbed into the rear of the truck with the prisoners. It was only a short drive to the railway station, but as Albert began to slow down Ostertag told him to keep driving to Michelbach. Once there, they

turned right at the cemetery of Gaggenau and drove towards the woods. There was a track bordering the edge of the woods and Albert drove the truck for about 500 metres until Ostertag told him to stop. The Wachtmeisters in the back of the truck dismounted and Ostertag walked to the back and ordered the prisoners to throw down the four picks and four shovels. The Catholic priest and two of the soldiers were told to get down and Ostertag, Neuschwanger and Ullrich marched them away into the woods. About five minutes had elapsed when the first of half a dozen single shots was heard. The sound came from only about 50 metres away and the men on the truck jumped when they heard the sound. There was now no doubt about the fate awaiting the others in the truck. In the meantime, Muth had appeared and joined the fourth Wachtmeister guarding the prisoners. The three Wachtmeisters returned to the truck alone and Neuschwanger shouted for three more men to get down. Three soldiers jumped to the ground and were ordered to walk ahead of their guards into the woods. Once again, shots were heard and the guards returned alone. Three more times the Wachtmeisters escorted small groups of prisoners into the woods, the last time taking shovels with them. Half an hour after the echoes of the last shots had died away, the three Wachtmeisters returned to the truck and ordered Albert back to the driver’s seat. Ostertag and Neuschwanger got into the front and warned Albert to keep his mouth shut about what he had heard, otherwise he too would be shot. Later in the day it became general knowledge in the camp that the men had been shot. A few days later Oberwachtmeister Willing told some of the French prisoners about a conversation he had had with Zimmerman. Another prisoner had died and Willing had neglected to write out the death certificate within the twenty-four-hour time limit. When admonished by Zimmerman, he replied: ‘Why Zimmerman, at the time when you killed those English and Americans you were in no hurry to make out any death certificates.’ The Gaggenau case came to trial in May 1946. Eleven accused were in custody, men who had both planned and carried out the murders. The prosecution endeavoured to prove that those who had set up the execution had known the likely fate of the victims. Five of the accused were sentenced to death, but only Zugwachtmeister Heinrich Neuschwanger was to be

executed by the British. The commandant of Schirmeck, Hauptsturmführer Karl Buck, the security officer Oberleutnant Karl Nussberger, Wachtmeister Erwin Ostertag and Bernard Ullrich were all extradited by the French for the murder of French civilians. Ullrich was shot in August 1947 and the others were given jail sentences. Apart from the five men sentenced to death, six others were found guilty. Untersturmführer Robert Wunsch received four years in jail, Dinkel received four years, Korb three years, Vetter two years and Zimmerman ten years. Only Oberwachtmeister Joseph Muth was found not guilty but was returned to Wuppertal gaol to await trial in the Natzweiler-Struthof Case Number 2. Neuschwanger, who had personally shot the SAS men, was to meet his maker at 5.00 am on 26 September 1946 in Hameln Jail. Bill Barkworth and Fred Rhodes from the SAS war crimes investigation team were both there to witness the hanging, carried out by Albert Pierrepoint, the official hangman from England.

The Vosges Case The Vosges Case came to trial at Wuppertal on 5 June 1946. In the dock were six accused. It was not alleged by the prosecution that any of them had actually physically shot or hung any of the victims. The case against them was that they occupied important positions and were responsible for issuing the orders that had led to the deaths of the thirty-two SAS men, together with one RAF crewman, who happened to be part of a crew that was shot down in the area of operations. The luckless airman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the bottom of the chain of command was Gehrun, who was a subsection chief in the Strasbourg Gestapo responsible for counter-espionage, sabotage, frontier control, etc. He worked directly under Schlierbach who was chief of Section 4 and he in turn worked for Schneider. Schneider was the deputy to Isselhorst who was the commander of the whole security police organization in Alsace. The police organization under Isselhorst was split up into a number of

branches, which included the state secret police and criminal police but other types as well. Directly under Isselhorst’s command were units known as Einsatzkommandos, which were usually given the name of their commanders. These were armed military-type units and were responsible for the capture and murder of most of the SAS men. Isselhorst’s senior officer was the chief of police and SS South-West France. He was not in the dock but his equivalent rank, the officer responsible for the whole of France, was the accused Oberg. General Seeger was the commander of the 405th Infantry Division which had been ordered to suppress the hostile elements in the area. He was well aware that some parachutists had been captured in uniform and that they would be handed over to the SD for disposal. As the senior German army officer on the spot, he could have prevented the execution of fellow soldiers but failed to do so. The actual murder of the SAS men was carried out by executioners under the command of the above officers. Seeger would later claim that it was a police operation with the assistance of the army. Schlierbach, who occupied an important position in the police, insisted that it was an army operation with a stiffening force of police on loan to the army. The result of the trial was that Schneider was hanged at Hameln Jail on 23 January 1947. Isselhorst was also sentenced to hang and so was Oberg, although his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Schlierbach was given ten years’ imprisonment and Seeger three years. Gehrun was found not guilty.

CHAPTER NOTES Italy: ‘You will be shot in an hour’: PRO WO309/99 and WO311/630

Murder in the Quarry: PRO WO309/99 Day of Reckoning: PRO WO311/158 Other Losses: PRO WO311/630

France: The Pexonne Case: PRO WO311/72 The St-Dié Case: PRO WO311/90 La Grande-Fosse: PRO WO311/89 and WO311/627 Le Harcholet: PRO WO311/72 and 73 The Murder of Lieutenant Silly: PRO WO309/91 The Gaggenau Executions: PRO WO309/72 and WO235/185 The Vosges Case: PRO WO235/554 and WO311/629

General Reference:

PRO WO309/2: Hitler’s Orders. PRO WO311/43: Commando Order. PRO FO916/1166: SAS and other atrocities. Kemp, Anthony, The Secret Hunters (Coronet Books, 1988)

1 Troop, 2nd SAS Regiment prior to their paradrop into France.

SAS troops deployed in northern Italy. If caught, they would be summarily executed.

An armoured SAS Jeep patrol in the Vosges Mountains in France.

The post-war exhumation of eight SAS troopers murdered on the road to La Grande-Fosse on 15 October 1944.

Captain Andy Whately-Smith was captured on 1 November 1944 and shot with a dozen other prisoners on 25 November.

Captain Patrick Dudgeon, MC who was shot as a result of Hitler’s Commando Order. He was described by the German interpreter present as ‘The bravest man he had ever known.’

The entrance to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp where the captured SAS men were taken to be murdered.

Zugwachtmeister Heinrich Neuschwanger was one of the defendants in the Gaggenau case which came to trial in May 1946. He had personally shot eight captured SAS troopers and was punished by hanging in Hameln Jail on 26 September 1946.

Chapter 9

Life in the Camps

A

s Hitler began his conquest of Europe, prisoner-of-war camps were being built to contain the thousands of men expected to fall into the hands of the Wehrmacht. Germany had plenty of experience with prisoner-of-war camps; the First World War had ended only twenty years earlier and many of the old camps could be brought back into service. The British and French prisoners taken in 1940 were shipped clear across Germany to Poland where they were hundreds of miles away from the front line, thus making escape or rescue almost impossible. In those early days an escapee had to go west across occupied Europe or east across Poland and into Russia where they would be imprisoned until that country joined the Allied cause in 1941. Conditions in the camps were very hard. The Germans considered that the war was all over bar the shouting and treated the prisoners very harshly. However, within two years they realized this was not necessarily so and conditions began to improve. Visits from Red Cross representatives took place and Red Cross relief parcels began to arrive to supplement the nearstarvation rations issued by the Germans. Eventually approximately 168,000 British and Commonwealth and 90,000 American prisoners would languish in Nazi camps. The enlisted men or ‘other ranks’ were held in Stammlagers known as Stalags and officers would generally be held in Offizierlagers or Oflags. The prisoners of war suffered greatly from the poor rations, inadequate

clothing and harsh weather. In the wintertime with snow deep on the ground, all they could do was to put on every piece of clothing they had and huddle under whatever blankets they had, trying to conserve heat and energy. Other ranks were usually sent out of the camps on working parties where the food might be better but the working hours were long. The NCOs and others who remained in the Stalags had to suffer cruel and trigger-happy guards and good and bad commandants. There was little they could do but complain and quote the Geneva Convention. Even the reports from the Red Cross representatives usually described the Germans and the camps in a good light. As one former prisoner said, the Swiss did not know if they were going to be invaded next and did not want to upset the Germans. Escaping was considered to be a prisoner’s duty but towards the end of the war the punishments became worse and eventually Hitler decreed that escaping prisoners, with the exception of British and American PoWs, should not be returned to their PoW camps but sent to concentration camps for elimination. As it happened, a small number of Allied PoWs also ended up in such camps. Most made it out again, but not all of them. To a certain extent, the German treatment of Allied prisoners had also to be balanced against the treatment of German prisoners of war in Allied countries and as the war went on, the numbers rose by the thousands. The idea of exterminating all the Allied prisoners was discussed on a number of occasions, but there was also the faint possibility that the same fate might befall German prisoners of war in England, Canada and America. The attitude of many guards and camp commanders changed as the war came to an end and many became friendlier, hoping to avoid retribution. Others became worse and they would shoot and injure prisoners on a whim. There was talk of war crimes trials at the end of the war and many a guard began to think very carefully about his future.

The Murder of Sergeant Jack It was a lovely sunny day as Private Geoff Bryden walked towards the German office to collect his first parcel from home. He approached the

counter and asked for his parcel. The small German soldier with a sullen look on his face brought it over, opened it with scissors, but then seemed reluctant to hand it over. As Geoff reached out to take it, the German suddenly jabbed at his face with the scissors. Instinctively he parried the thrust with his right hand and grabbed him by the neck with his left. The surprised German struggled, but two other German soldiers came to his aid and Geoff was escorted out of the office without his parcel and with a few parting blows for company. As he walked dejectedly back to his barracks, he noticed that a large crowd was gathering at the main gate. Signaller Leslie May had only been in Stalag 21C/H Wollstein for four days, since his transfer from Stalag 21D where he had spent the first of his five years of captivity. It was around 10.15 in the morning when he saw the crowd begin to gather near the main gate. Being a new boy in the camp, he walked closer to see what was going on. Two escaped prisoners of war were being escorted in through the gates of the camp. A large crowd had now gathered and some of the men began to shout comments and encouragement to the pair, although the general behaviour of the crowd was quite orderly. As Bryden walked closer to see what was going on, a German Obergefreiter approached him and punched him in the face, knocking his cap off. As he bent down to pick it up, he turned his back to the German and was kicked on his backside, knocking him over. Bryden sensibly disappeared into the crowd, although he was unable to sit down for days. The Obergefreiter drew his revolver and began to threaten some of the men in the crowd. Three other guards also drew their sidearms and began to shepherd other portions of the crowd away from the gate. Unfortunately the crowd was slow in moving and the continued shouting and joking just served to anger the Obergefreiter. The portion of the crowd that was moving away as the Obergefreiter advanced towards them reached a wooden staircase leading to an attic where there was a barrack room. By now the men realized that the guards were becoming very excited and they hustled through the barrack room doorway as quickly as they could. The Obergefreiter reached the foot of the stairs behind the last of the

crowd. He was very excited and was shouting loudly as he aimed his pistol and fired into the crowd. Signaller May was about 25 yards away at this time and he saw Sergeant Jack fall on the stairs. The luckless NCO was not abusing or obstructing the guard; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sergeant Jack died that evening and the next day May went with Company Sergeant Major MacDonald to ask the camp authorities for a military funeral. As they stood in the corridor asking a German clerk if they could see the commandant, a Hauptmann came out of the office and told them that Jack had behaved like a rebel and would be buried like a rebel, in a wood. At that point the two men accused the Germans of murder and were in turn threatened with a spell in the cells. Eventually they had a brief interview with the commandant who agreed that a proper burial would be conducted. The funeral took place the next day. However, the coffin was badly constructed and the bearers could still see the feet of the body inside. The bearers carried the coffin for about 1 kilometre to the cemetery. May took a bugle with him in order to blow the Last Post but this was forbidden and the Germans also refused to supply a firing party to fire shots over the grave. Sadly, Sergeant John Jack of the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry, Royal Armoured Corps would not be the last prisoner of war to be shot by triggerhappy and unstable guards. After the end of the war Geoff Bryden was shown a photograph of the German who had committed the murder and along with others he was called to give evidence to the Judge Advocate’s office. Known as the ‘Cowboy’ because he had lived in America for some years, Obergefreiter Scharr still had not been found by 8 September 1947 and the file was therefore closed.

Prosper Heyl Prosper Heyl was an unhappy man. On a Saturday afternoon in September 1944 seven British officers had escaped from Oflag 9 A/Z and he was sure that he would be blamed. It was not as though his superiors had not been warned that this could happen. He had told them himself, about a week after

the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, in a confidential letter to Hauptmann Brans, security officer to the Army Command IX at Kassel. In his letter he had refused to take further responsibility for the security of the officers’ prison camp and announced that he was volunteering for service at the Front. Heyl had written the letter because he was unhappy with the changes that had occurred since the attempt on Hitler’s life. SS Headquarters was now claiming the right to remove prisoners of war from camps on their authority, to search camps when they wanted and the sole right of the Gestapo to interrogate escaped prisoners. He contended that the granting of these rights meant the dismissal of the camp security officers, especially as far as interrogation by the Gestapo was concerned as that organization was outside the Wehrmacht which was charged with the running of the camps. In addition, Heyl was not happy with the new camp commandant Oberstleutnant Brix whose orders were now ‘paralysing’ the system of ‘safety from outside’ that he had built up. One of these orders rescinded Heyl’s own instructions that no prisoners were to approach the south-east gate of the camp unless there were German personnel in the nearby parcel store hut. It was through this gate that Maud, Oldman, Forbes, Mugford, McDermott, Wylie Carrick and Pryor Jones escaped. Heyl was summoned to see General Voss, who pointed out that all of them were now at the beck and call of the SS-Hauptamt (the administrative office of the SS) and there was nothing they could do about it. He refused his request for a transfer to the Front on account of being ‘indispensable’. When the escape took place the various departments in the camp did not try hard to help Heyl figure out how the escape took place as it would reflect badly on them and also justify his earlier warnings about camp security. It was only when a guard unwittingly remarked in his presence that ‘the silly boys have pushed the tin cart up to the sunken road and left it there’ that he finally pieced together how the escape had taken place. The first two escapees to be recaptured were Maud and Oldman and they were taken to the Gestapo office at Hersfeld. Heyl was also summoned and ordered to explain how the escape took place. When he told them his theory, he was informed that the two prisoners were to be kept in prison until they made a full confession. The Gestapo were convinced that they could only

have escaped with the help of a German guard who had opened the gate to the escapees. They would therefore not recognize the escapees’ identity and would keep them in custody until the matter had been resolved. Heyl was later authorized to take part in the interrogation, but only on the condition that the identity of the recaptured prisoners would only be admitted after they had made definite statements about any possible participation of a guard in the escape. On the evening before the interrogation, Heyl thought for a long time about his part in the proceedings. Personally he doubted that a guard had assisted the escapees, at least not knowingly. He also knew that even if a guard had helped the British officers, there was no way that they would give him away. If that were the case the men would remain in Gestapo hands for a long time. In the end Heyl decided that their best option would be to give their word of honour that no guard was party to the escape. When interrogated himself by British war crimes investigators in January 1946, Prosper Heyl claimed that Lieutenant Oldman eventually realized that this was the only way out and gave a statement that ‘No German guard assisted the escape’ and this allegedly satisfied the Gestapo. As it happened, the guard in question was a British officer impersonating a German guard, who had seen the men through the gate. The release of the officers, however, would take weeks. Heyl later claimed that it was the fault of the Gestapo who did not want the recapture of the various groups to be known in the camp. [Author’s Note: at this stage one’s thoughts might turn to the fate of the RAF escapees from Stalag Luft 3.] Heyl carried out a short interrogation of the second batch of prisoners to be recaptured and allegedly tried to take them back to the camp, but was forbidden to do so by the Gestapo. The third group of escapees to be recaptured were interrogated by Heyl on the escape route. He did, however, discover who had impersonated the German guard: it was Captain WylieCarrick. This was found out by trial and error; they had the uniform that was used and he was the only one who would fit into it as it was rather small and narrow. Lieutenant Noel David Mugford of the Royal West Kent Regiment later

made a statement together with Captain Hamish Stewart Forbes at Oflag 9A/Z in March 1945, just two months before their liberation. When recaptured the men were wearing British battledress without badges of rank and military berets. They were also carrying their German identity cards and prisoner-of-war identity tags. These were ignored by the Gestapo as they sought to obtain a confession that a German guard had assisted their escape. When Hauptmann Heyl interrogated the men he was alone except for Oberfeldwebel Muller from the camp and the Oberwachtmeister of the prison. As far as Mugford was concerned, the Gestapo were not connected with their imprisonment in any way. The whole business seemed to be conducted by Hauptmann Heyl himself. The men remained in the civil jail at Korbach for about six weeks. They discussed their plight with the Oberwachtmeister on several occasions and he assured them that he was only too anxious to return them to Oflag 9A/Z. Conditions at the prison were difficult. The food consisted of one slice of black bread and a cup of cold ersatz coffee without sugar or milk for breakfast. For lunch they were given a plateful of vegetable soup made from cabbage, potatoes or carrots. In the evening they received more soup but no bread. On Sunday evenings they were given a slice of bread and a small piece of cheese instead of soup. They were also lucky enough to receive three Red Cross food parcels between the two of them. Sanitary arrangements consisted of one bucket for the two of them which was emptied every twenty-four hours. For exercise they were allowed to walk in the prison yard for twenty to thirty minutes each day. They were given one blanket each and it was so cold that they had to rub themselves all night long in order to keep warm. They were given no books, no newspapers and no mail. The officers also had to bear the sound of other prisoners being beaten in the cell next door, including a Polish girl who had been imprisoned for refusing to work for the Germans. This was a strain on the nerves of men who had heard about the fate of the escapees from Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan. The officers asked permission to telephone the senior British officer at the camp and to see a Red Cross representative or the senior military officer at Korbach. They were refused. Four weeks after their recapture a judge of the

Peoples’ Court came to see them and said that he would write to the OKW. Fourteen days later the Wachtmeister told them that a letter had arrived from the OKW ordering their release. Two days later they were returned to Oflag 9A/Z. It became quite clear that the officers were left in prison at the behest of Hauptmann Heyl rather than the Gestapo. Perhaps it was his revenge on the men who had escaped from his camp and made a fool of him. The recaptured escapees had only been back in the Oflag for a couple of weeks when another incident illustrated Hauptmann Heyl’s attitude towards his charges. It was 10 December 1944 and Captain Harold Westley was looking out of the eastmost window of Room 237 on the first floor of the main building of Oflag 9A/Z. The window looked out towards the railway line that ran from Kassel to Berra. The officers were cheering and shouting as some Allied aircraft dived down to attack a train moving east along the railway line. Hauptmann Heyl appeared in the yard below and took the rifle from the sentry. Pointing it towards the building, he fired a shot that came through the window next to Westley. The bullet broke in two pieces and each piece lodged in a bed belonging to some of the twenty-five officers who were in the room at the time. They were very lucky indeed.

Trigger-Happy Guards Stalag Luft 6 at Heydekrug was situated about 1 mile south-east of Heydekrug railway station in East Prussia. The Lithuanian frontier was about 8 kilometres east of the camp, which was surrounded by flat, swampy, wooded countryside. The camp had been specially constructed on sandy ground with the water table being about 5ft below the surface. The reason for its inhospitable location was to deter would-be Air Force escapees. Constructing tunnels in sand was very difficult and striking water 5ft down more or less put an end to that method of trying to escape. The camp was divided into three compounds, referred to as ‘A’, ‘E’ and

‘K’. ‘A’ compound was the first to receive guests in June 1943 when the RAF NCOs from the Centre Compound at Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan arrived. By October the compound was filled to capacity and ‘K’ compound was opened with the transfer of some of the NCOs from ‘A’ compound. They were soon joined by most of the NCOs from Stalag Luft 1 at Barth. New prisoners continued to arrive and by February 1944 this compound was also full. By this time ‘E’ compound had been completed and the new arrivals, mostly USAAC NCOs, were accommodated there. The perimeter fence of the camp, together with the dividing fences between the compounds, was composed of two barbed-wire fences about 6ft apart and 8ft high. The area between the fences was filled with barbed-wire entanglements to a depth of about 2ft 6in. All fences were lit from dusk to dawn by arc lights situated about 20 yards apart. Sentry towers equipped with searchlights and machine guns were erected at strategic positions, particularly at the corners of the camp. Sentries patrolled outside the perimeter fences twenty-four hours a day. A ‘warning fence’ was situated inside all the compound perimeter fences at a distance of about 15 yards from the fences between compounds and 30 yards from the outside fences. This fence consisted of a wooden rail attached to posts about 3ft high. The area between the warning fence and the main fence was ‘no man’s land’ and the Germans warned that anyone touching the warning fence would be shot. Very often footballs would be kicked into the forbidden zone and had to be recovered by one of the guards. One man who escaped from the camp was Warrant Officer TownsendColes. He was recaptured, but when he returned to the camp in April 1944 he was held in the cells and not allowed to communicate with the other prisoners. About a week later he was removed from the cells and taken to an unknown destination. He is believed to have been executed. Three other warrant officers escaped from the camp in the spring of 1944 and are believed to have been recaptured and executed. They were not returned to the camp and were never seen again. A large number of shooting incidents took place in the camp. Most of these occurred when personnel were fired upon for going beyond the warning fence to recover footballs etc., but none were injured on these occasions. The

German sentries were only too keen to try out their marksmanship skills on the prisoners, as Sergeant Kenwell discovered on 28 October 1943 while throwing his washing-up water over the warning fence in ‘A’ compound. Not only did he suffer a broken arm but to add insult to injury he was sentenced to fourteen days in the cells for touching the warning fence. The guards required little excuse to open fire on the men. At around midday on 6 January 1944 the guard in the north-east tower noticed a prisoner of war throwing some cigarettes to a Russian prisoner of war who was working nearby. As this was contrary to German orders, the guard fired several bursts of machine-gun fire at the prisoner as he ran to the nearest barracks. Many of the bullets went through the wooden walls of the barracks, one of them passing through the trousers of another prisoner. Many others had narrow escapes. On 29 April 1944, Sergeant Walker of the USAAC and another man tried to escape from ‘E’ compound and had reached the Vorlager when they were discovered in the early hours of the morning. Some shots were fired and both men stood still with their hands above their heads. One of the guards walked towards them and shot Walker dead, even though his hands were still raised. A German order was in force on 26 May 1944 to the effect that any prisoner seen in the compound between 2200 hours and 0600 hours would be shot. On that day Staff Sergeant Nies of the USAAC awoke at 0530 hours and, finding that the door to his barrack room was not locked as it should have been until 0600 hours, picked up his towel and went out into the compound. As he walked towards the wash-house he was shot and killed. The Germans claimed that he was trying to escape.

Murder at Arbeits Kommando 46 Stalag 20B at Marienberg in Poland, together with its attached working detachments, also suffered from trigger-happy guards and an attitude on the part of successive camp commanders that the murder of prisoners was to be accepted, if not condoned. Up to the time of the evacuation of Stalag 20B to the west, eighteen prisoners had been shot dead and a further dozen wounded.

One of the murders took place on 2 July 1944 at the site of Arbeits Kommando 46 at Gut Freydeck where nine prisoners of war worked at a farm owned by Herr Eric Lehrbass. Unfortunately there were no British witnesses to the shooting, only a young Polish boy who later related what he had seen to his sister who passed it on to the British. By the time the other members of the Kommando had reached England and told war crimes investigators about the incident, that area was under Russian control and the chances of finding the Polish witnesses had vanished, together with the perpetrator. No. 6018825 Private C.M. Swift of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment was taken away from the working party and returned to the Stalag for a change of employment. He was escorted by Obergefreiter Werner Richter who was then a guard at Kommando No. 797. There was some kind of trouble on the way and on arrival back at the main camp Swift complained about his treatment and disciplinary action was taken against Richter. Not long afterwards Swift was sent to a working Kommando at Reisenburg, not very far from Gut Freydeck. Swift had escaped on two previous occasions and in June 1944 he went on the run again. This time he did not go very far, but returned to his old working party where he was hidden by the other prisoners of war until the end of the month. He then left the farm, intending to make a clean getaway, and left a note to say that he would be hiding in the nearby wood. On 2 July Swift made a fatal mistake. It was very hot and he asked a German boy to find him some water. The boy noticed that he was wearing British uniform and reported the request to his father. A search party of police and guards searched the wood and soon found Swift hiding in a tree. He was asked questions about Russians who were believed to be in the district and after denying that he knew anything about them he was left in the charge of Richter. The only witness to what happened next was a Polish boy named Vallik Bloskevitch. The German said something to Swift, who replied: ‘You cannot shoot me, I am an Englishman.’ To this the guard replied: ‘Yes, you are an Englishman and Englishmen don’t squeal. Turn around and put your arms above your head.’ Swift turned around as ordered and was then shot through the back.

The body of Swift was found by Private Harris, the camp leader. The body had been dragged some distance from where the murder had taken place. Swift was buried with full military honours at Deutsch Eylau on 4 July 1944. The guard concerned reported that Swift was discovered in the tree and on the march back to his quarters he suddenly rushed into the thick undergrowth in order to escape again and, in spite of being ordered three times to halt, did not stop. Thereupon the guard made use of his weapon and the prisoner was killed.

The Great Escape The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, assumed responsibility for the prison camps containing Allied Air Force officers and air-crew. Their camps were known as Stalag Luft 1, 3, 4 etc. and contained both officers and enlisted men, although often they were segregated in separate compounds. Air Force servicemen were considered by the Germans to be the most intelligent and dangerous of the prisoners and their escape back to Allied lines was to be prevented at all costs. On the other hand, these highly-educated and motivated men considered it their duty to harass the Germans at every opportunity and assist the war effort from behind the wire. At Stalag Luft 3 in Sagan, Silesia in 1944 a mass break-out was planned through ‘Harry’, a 400ft (122 metre) long tunnel. It was lit by tapping into the camp’s wiring, had rails to bring out trolleys of earth and was ventilated with pipes of dried milk tins and bellows made from two kitbags. The plan was to get 250 men out of the camp and cause tens of thousands of Germans to be diverted from other duties to hunt for them. If some of the prisoners made it home, it was to be considered a bonus. During the night of 24/25 March 1944, eighty Royal Air Force officers and officers from other Allied air forces got out of the tunnel before it was discovered. Four were captured in the immediate vicinity of the tunnel and were returned to the camp along with fifteen others who were captured later. Six were recaptured and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where they remained until the end of the war and two Czech officers were

imprisoned by the Gestapo in Prague and survived. Three got back to England and the remaining fifty were recaptured and shot. When Obersturmbannführer Max Wielen, the head of the Breslau KripoLeitstelle, was informed of the escape he put out a Grossfahndung, a nationwide alert that almost had every man, woman and child in Germany and every policeman in occupied Europe looking for the escapees. He also reported the escape to Berlin. On Saturday, 25 March 1944 a meeting took place at Hitler’s headquarters, at which Hitler, Göring, Keitel, Himmler and Kaltenbrunner discussed the steps to be taken to discourage such mass escapes. It was decided to shoot ‘more than half of them’. As head of the RSHA, Himmler was ordered to see that it was done. The OKW Prisoner of War Department was not informed of Hitler’s order to murder the men until the following day. When Generals Walther von Gravenitz and Adolf Westhoff found out they argued with Keitel and Kaltenbrunner at the RSHA, but to no avail. By 6 April, fifty of the escapees were dead. The order that was sent out from Hitler’s headquarters specified how the murders were to take place. Amt V, the Kriminal Polizei (abbreviated to Kripo) of the RSHA was to apprehend the escapees and hand over half of them to Amt IV, the Gestapo. The prisoners were to be told that they were being returned to Stalag Luft 3 and on the way they were to be shot. The Gestapo would then report to the Kripo that they were shot while trying to escape. As the reports of escapees being recaptured came in, Kripo Gruppenführer Nebe selected the men who were to be shot and distributed the order to his subordinates. A few words of explanation of the German security services organization are needed here. At the head of the security services throughout Germany was Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and one of his branches was the RSHA (Reichssicherheithauptamt) commanded by Kaltenbrunner. This was divided into various Amts (departments) and BDS (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei) such as BDS Prague in Czechoslovakia. The BDSs controlled the security services in occupied Europe. Amt IV was the Gestapo, the Geheimstadtpolizei, or Secret State Police, commanded by General

Müller. Amt V under Gruppenführer Nebe controlled the Kripo, the equivalent to the British CID (Criminal Investigation Department). Both Amt IV and V controlled various sub-units referred to as Leitstellen and Stellen. Each Kripo-Leitstelle had an anti-escape officer, responsible for liaising with the prisoner-of-war camps in his area. As soon as the escape from Stalag Luft 3 was discovered, Wielen from the Breslau Kripo would have been notified. When comparing the ranks of some of those mentioned in this chapter it should be noted that both Müller and Nebe were the equivalent of a British assistant commissioner of police. Wielen was summoned to Berlin and Nebe showed him the orders issued by Himmler. He then returned to Breslau and met his opposite number in the Gestapo, Scharfwinkel, and discussed his orders with him. Müller sent the official instructions down the Gestapo chain of command to Scharfwinkel and the wheels were set in motion. Twenty-eight recaptured officers would be killed by Scharfwinkel’s Gestapo Leitstelle in Breslau after they had been handed over by Wielen’s Kripo policemen. The other twenty-two prisoners were murdered by Gestapo agents in various locations throughout Germany. Most of the murders would take place at the roadside, after the prisoner was allowed to get out of the car to relieve himself. All the bodies were to be cremated and the urns containing the ashes sent to Kripo headquarters, from where they would eventually be returned to the prisoner-of-war camp. As a result of the escape, the camp commandant was removed and jailed. On 4 April the new commandant at Sagan, Colonel Braune, was ordered by telephone to inform the senior British officer of the death of forty-one of the escapees. This he refused to do and insisted on receiving the orders in writing. On 6 April he summoned Group Captain Massey and gave him the awful news. He told him that forty-one officers had been shot while trying to escape. Massey’s reply was ‘and how many were wounded?’ Eventually he received the reply: ‘None of them.’ Massey and his interpreter Wank Murray sat there in disbelief. Eventually the group captain rose and asked that a list of names be provided as soon as possible. When the list was finally posted on the camp noticeboard, it contained fifty names. A report reached the Swiss Protecting Power soon afterwards and the official investigation began on 17 April 1944. Eventually the occupants of

Stalag Luft 3 were evacuated to the West as the Russian advance came nearer. A memorial containing the ashes of the deceased was left near the camp. At the end of the war Wing Commander Bowes, head of the Special Investigation Branch of the RAF Police, was given responsibility for the investigation and apprehension of the accused. Together with his team he tracked down or accounted for sixty-nine of the seventy-two suspects so far identified. Unfortunately, two of the main suspects had disappeared from sight. By January 1946 the war crimes investigators were still having trouble tracking down Wilhelm Scharfwinkel, the head of the Gestapo in Breslau, or many of the 200 members of the Kripo-Leitstelle Breslau who were responsible for the area which included Sagan. The other main culprit who carried out most of the shootings was named Lux and he was believed killed in the fighting in the Breslau area. Scharfwinkel was taken prisoner by the Russians who refused to hand him over for trial. They later claimed that he had died in prison but many believe he was given a new job working for the Soviet police. The Breslau Gestapo were responsible for the murders of twenty-eight of the escapees who were killed not far from Görlitz prison: Flight Lieutenant Henry Birkland, Flight Lieutenant Mike Casey, Squadron Leader Ian Cross, Flight Lieutenant Brian Evans, Flight Lieutenant William Grisman, Flight Lieutenant Alastair Gunn, Warrant Officer Albert Hake, Flight Lieutenant Charles Hall, Flight Lieutenant Edgar Humphreys, Major Antoni Kiewnarski, Flying Officer Adam Kolanowski, Flying Officer Stanislaw Krol, Flight Lieutenant Patrick Langford, Flight Lieutenant Thomas Leigh, Flight Lieutenant James Long, Second Lieutenant Clement McGarr, Flight Lieutenant George McGill, Flight Lieutenant Harold Milford, Flying Officer Johnny Pohe, Flying Officer Robert Stewart, Flying Officer Denys Street, Flight Lieutenant Cyril Swain, Flying Officer Pawel Tobolski, Flight Lieutenant Ernst Valenta, Flight Lieutenant James Wernham, Flight Lieutenant George Wiley, Squadron Leader John E. Williams and Flight Lieutenant John F. Williams. When Hermann Göring was questioned at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in March 1946, he insisted that he was on leave at the

time of the escape and was not informed about it until a day or two later. He claimed that his chief of staff told him of the executions and was not party to the decision to murder the escapees. This was rather puzzling as Stalag Luft 3 was an Air Force camp under the control of the Oberkommando Luftwaffe, specifically Luft Inspektion 17, one of its branches. Göring would later commit suicide after the death penalty had been handed down to him at Nuremberg. Himmler would not stand trial either, having committed suicide after capture. ‘Gestapo Müller’, head of Amt IV, disappeared at the end of the war and was never brought to trial and Kripo boss Nebe would be dead before the end of the war. When the case went to trial in Hamburg on 1 July 1947, Scharfwinkel had still not been handed over by the Soviets, but eighteen others were in custody and they faced nine charges of involvement in the killing of twenty-three of the escapees from Stalag Luft 3. They were Henry Boschert, Walter Breithaupt, Artur Denkmann, Walter Herberg, Edward Geith, Joseph Gmeiner, Walter Jacobs, Hans Kahler, Johannes Post, Otto Preiss, Alfred Schimmel, Oskar Schmidt, Johann Schneider, Emil Schulz, Wilhelm Struve, Emil Weil, Max Wielen and Erich Zacharias. All were members of the Gestapo with the exception of Wielen, who was head of the Breslau KripoLeitstelle, and Zacharias, who was a member of the border police. All pleaded not guilty. The first two charges involved general conspiracy in the murders; the other seven charges concerned the following murder incidents: 3rd Charge: Squadron Leader Roger Bushell and Pilot Officer Bernard Scheidhauer were shot down in a field near Saarbrücken, between Hamburg and Kaiserslautern, on or about 29 March. Two of the accused from the Saarbrücken Gestapo, Schulz and Breithaupt, were directly involved in their murder. The head of the Saarbrücken Gestapo and the man who fired the initial shots, Spann, never stood trial as he was killed in an air-raid after the murder. 4th Charge: Flight Lieutenant Tony Hayter was shot in a wood by members of the Strasbourg Gestapo on 6 April near Natzweiler-

Struthof concentration camp. Sturmbannführer Schimmel, the head of the Strasbourg Gestapo, was put on trial but Diessner and Hilker who carried out the murder were not found. We should mention that Schimmel’s immediate superior was Doctor Isselhorst, the BDS of Alsace who we would meet at the SAS murder trials. 5th Charge: Flying Officer Dennis Cochran was captured on the border with Switzerland and was taken to the Kripo prison at Ettlingen. He was later murdered on the way to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. The head of the Karlsruhe Gestapo, Obersturmbannführer Gmeiner, Criminal Commissioner Herberg from the special assignments department, Kriminal Sekretär Preiss and Boschert would all appear in the dock in connection with the murder. 6th Charge: On or about 29 March, Lieutenant John Stevens and Lieutenant Johannes Gouws of the South African Air Force were killed near Schweitenkirchen. Their murderers even fired some shots into a telegraph pole to make it look like they had been shot at during the escape. The head of the Munich Gestapo, Schaefer, was not in custody and his No. 2 Schermer had committed suicide. However, three of the others involved in the murders – Kriminal Sekretärs Weil and Geith and the driver Schneider – were in court. 7th and 8th Charges: Also killed on 29 March were Pilot Officer H. Espelid, RAF, Squadron Leader J. Catanach, DFC from the Royal Australian Air Force and Flight Lieutenant A.G. Christensen and Pilot Officer N. Fuglesang, both from the Royal New Zealand Air Force. They were captured at Flensburg just south of the Danish border and shot near Roter Hahn by Schmidt, Jacobs, Struve, Post, Kahler and Denkmann of the Kiel Gestapo. 9th Charge: On the same day, 29 March, near Moravska, Czechoslovakia, Flying Officer G.A. Kidder, Royal Canadian Air

Force and Squadron Leader T.G. Kirby-Green, RAF were killed by Erich Zacharias of the Zlín border police (Grenzpolizei). The head of the Zlín Grenzpolizei, Ziegler, was eventually caught and committed suicide in a British PoW cage in 1948. Friedrich Kiowsky who was one of the drivers was executed by the Czechoslovaks for ‘other crimes’. Apart from the 28 men murdered by the Breslau Gestapo and the 12 named above, 10 other escapees were murdered including Flight Lieutenant Gordon Brettell, Flight Lieutenant Romas Marcinkus, Flight Lieutenant Henri Picard and Flight Lieutenant Gilbert Walenn who were all murdered by Hauptmann Reinholt Bruchardt of the Danzig Gestapo. He was traced in 1948 and sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment (in Germany this meant twenty-one years). The chief of the Danzig Gestapo, Doctor Venediger, received a two-year sentence in December 1957. The trial lasted fifty days and all the accused were found guilty. Fourteen of them were sentenced to hang, but Heinrich Boschert’s sentence was later commuted from death to life imprisonment. Max Wielen was sentenced to life imprisonment but only served a few years before being released. Breithaupt, Denkmann and Struve were given ten years each. On 27 February 1948 the other thirteen were hanged in Hameln Jail. Over the next twenty years the search for other participants continued and in May 1968 Fritz Schmidt of the Kiel Gestapo received a two-year prison sentence for his part in the deaths of Catanach, Christensen, Espelid and Fuglesang.

The Death of Lieutenant Deacon Early in the war a small number of prisoner-of-war camps were established in Austria, one of which was Stalag 18A at Spittal an der Drau. The original occupants were men taken prisoner in Crete and Greece, but by September 1943 prisoners of war were being transferred in from the Italian camps, including the first Americans.

On this fateful day the newly-arrived prisoners were sitting in the sun outside their barracks and others were walking on the pathway that ran through the camp past the gate. Suddenly the sentry on the gate became wildly enraged for no apparent reason and began to threaten the prisoners nearby with his rifle. Very quickly they withdrew into the barracks and peered through the windows at the scene unfolding outside. Lieutenant Deacon was one of the newly-arrived American officers captured during the Italian campaign. He had not had time to learn the German language and was unaware of what was happening. He came out of his room and began to slowly walk up and down in front of his doorway. The sentry opened his gate, stepped inside the lager, levelled his rifle at the officer and as Deacon turned in his walk, shot him through the body. Several German NCOs came running and began to shout at the sentry, but he was in a violent mood and made threatening moves towards one of them with his rifle. Soon afterwards he was removed from his post and the unfortunate officer was taken to the medical ward attached to the camp. He died in the early hours of the morning. Lieutenant Colonel Jones, the senior American officer, held an enquiry the next morning and took signed statements from some of the witnesses, including Sergeant Quinn and Staff Sergeant McCaughey. Later they were called to attend a court martial to be held on the sentry. The court martial was held at the German headquarters in Spittal and the German colonel presiding over the trial treated the witnesses with consideration and politeness. The German interpreter Corporal Gruber admitted to McCaughey that he considered the sentry’s actions to be inexcusable. The sentry, in his defence, claimed that Lieutenant Deacon was attempting to communicate with other prisoners held in the camp jail nearby. McCaughey testified that it was not so. The sentry was found guilty and the German colonel raged at him for several minutes, telling the prisoner that his act was unjustified and only his age and the state of his nerves prevented him from receiving the death penalty. He was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment. A couple of weeks later, Staff Sergeant McCaughey, who acted as the quartermaster for the prisoners, visited the west lager of the camp to collect

some blankets. There he met the same sentry, armed and obviously on duty. It was quite clear that he did not serve any part of the small sentence imposed on him for the unnecessary and senseless murder.

CHAPTER NOTES The Murder of Sergeant Jack: PRO WO311/141 Geoff Bryden interview.

Prosper Heyl: PRO WO309/1563, WO235/97 and 644

Murder at Arbeits Kommando 46: PRO WO311/211

The Great Escape: PRO WO235/424 and AIR40/2273 Vance, Jonathan, The Gallant Company (Pacifica Military History, 2000)

The Death of Lieutenant Deacon:

PRO WO311/32

Fifty of the Allied airmen who tunnelled out of Stalag Luft 3 were executed in chilling scenes like this. In 1946, RAF Special Investigation Branch officers reconstructed the murders of Squadron Leader Thomas Kirby-Green and Flying Officer Gordon Kidder near Zlín, Moravia. Gestapo officer Erich Zacharias was hanged for his role in the murders.

Severely malnourished prisoners of war released during the liberation of Stalag XIB at Fallingbostel in April 1945.

A group of Stalag 8B guards photographed in 1941.

Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan, the scene of the ‘Great Escape’ involving seventy-six prisoners on 24 March 1944. Fifty were recaptured and murdered on Hitler’s orders.

The funeral of two Russian prisoners who died on the day that Stalag 7A Moosburg was liberated.

British and Canadian prisoners of war captured during the failed raid on Dieppe in 1942 march away to captivity.

The mass burial of Allied prisoners of war from Lager 22A, part of Stalag 4C. They were killed in an Allied bombing raid on a nearby factory on 21 July 1944.

Prisoner-of-war camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, the latter often occupied by trigger-happy guards.

Stalag Luft 6 at Heydekrug was one of the prisoner-of-war camps with sadistic trigger-happy guards.

The German prisoner-of-war record cards for four of the ‘Great Escapers’ who were murdered after recapture. They were captured just south of the Danish border and shot by members of the Kiel Gestapo.

Chapter 10

Prisons and Concentration Camps

The Gross-Rosen Murders

W

ho can possibly imagine the thoughts that went through the minds of the ten naked officers as they stood in a line before their SS executioners? The prisoner watching through the hole in the gabled roof of the nearby hut was sure that they were officers; their bearing and calm manner in the face of death convinced him it was so. A prolonged burst of firing, followed by a small number of single shots, and the deed was done. The men were all serving members of His Majesty’s Forces and belonged to the ‘French Section’ of the Special Operations Executive. They were either of British or French nationality and spoke fluent French and in some cases German and all had been parachuted into occupied France with their wireless operators in 1943 and 1944. Eventually all had been discovered by the Gestapo or betrayed by disloyal Frenchmen and were arrested in various parts of France and imprisoned at Fresnes prison near Paris. The capture of the officers was reported to Himmler who personally ordered the transfer of the prisoners from Fresnes to the Rawicz prison in German-occupied Poland. In the summer of 1944 Himmler decided that the officers were to be shot and signed a personal instruction directing that the men were to be transferred to the concentration camp at Gross-Rosen and executed. The order was passed to SS Obersturmbannführer Scharfwinkel, the officer in charge of the Breslau Gestapo, in whose district the camp was

situated. The officer concerned in passing on the executive directive for the transfer of the officers and their subsequent shooting was Kriminalrat (Detective Superintendent) Ampletzer of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. He would later meet his end in the fighting for Berlin in 1945. In the late spring or early summer of 1944 a special hut was constructed on the old roll-call yard of Gross-Rosen concentration camp and surrounded by barbed wire. The hut was known to the other prisoners as the WetterStation (Weather Station) and rumours were soon circulating that ‘special prisoners’ (Sonderhäftlinge) were to be accommodated there. The prisoners from other huts were forbidden to contact the men when they arrived and shutters were made for the windows of the huts facing the Wetter-Station. The construction and security arrangements were supervised by the first Rapportführer (Report Leader) of the camp, Helmuth Eschner. The first group of prisoners to take up residence in the Wetter-Station were actually Czech specialists who arrived in June 1944 to work in one of the camp’s secret workshops. The second party to arrive were wearing civilian clothes of foreign rather than German cut and were presumably the men of the French Section. At that time they were given preferential treatment in that their hair was not cut off, they could continue to wear civilian clothes and were allotted German servants from outside the camp. They arrived in a lorry from Rawicz and were handed over by Scharfwinkel, the head of the Breslau Gestapo. Ominously, the Politische Abteilung (Political Department) directed that no names or personal data of the new arrivals were to be recorded in the camp register. Captain Kruk-Rostanski, a former officer in the Polish army, was employed as a clerk in the Arbeitseinsatz (Manpower Division) office of the camp and had a greater freedom of movement than other prisoners. He soon discovered that ‘British Parachutists’ were held in the Wetter-Station and would later identify Lieutenants Alexandre and Pardi and Pilot Officer McBain from photographs at the war crimes trial. He was also present when the same men were taken to the place of execution by Schutzhaftlagerführer Ernstberger, Rapportführer Eschner, Rottenführer Drazdauskas and other SS men. One week after the arrival of the first party, a second lorry-load of

prisoners arrived at the Wetter-Station. Scharfwinkel’s personal driver Robert Schröder would later tell investigators that another Gestapo driver told him that the men in the second lorry were shot straight after arrival at the camp and the driver had seen it happen. Another prisoner, Johannes Anton Strunz, a Sudeten-German, managed to speak to some of the Czech specialists and discovered that the special prisoners were British and he also witnessed Rottenführer Drazdauskas kicking and beating the prisoners. He later identified the photos of Lieutenants Gaillot and Hamilton and Captain Ledoux. According to Strunz, the officers left the Wetter-Station at about 0500 hours, escorted by Rapportführer Eschner, Rottenführer Drazdauskas and other SS men and were marched towards Block Number 19. The camp commandant Sturmbannführer Hassebrök and Schutzhaftlagerführer Ernstberger followed the party on the way to the crematorium wearing steel helmets and armed with pistols. Harry Richard Wolfram was born in Chemnitz in 1901 and was 43 years old when the executions took place. He had been arrested in 1933 for his Communist sympathies and again in 1935. In September 1939 he was arrested yet again and sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. In April 1941 he was transferred to Gross-Rosen where he was employed as a clerk. He had seen a lot in his three years in the camp and when he was awoken by the room orderly before reveille and told that an execution was about to take place, he was neither shocked nor surprised. The hut was situated near the execution place of the camp. Peering through the hole in the left gable end of the hut he listened as something was read out to the ten naked prisoners by a member of the camp staff. Then a member of the Breslau Gestapo stepped forward and also read something to the men. He did not recognize the civilian, but he knew two of the six Blockführers (Block Leaders) standing before the condemned men, their machine pistols at the ready: Radautzky and Schrammel. Apparently the men were ordered to remove their clothes before the execution so that their underwear could later be sold on the camp black market. Four years after the murder of the officers, Wolfram related the events to an investigating officer. His statement ended with the comment that the

corpses were burned straight after the execution. It was customary in the camp to burn corpses of shot officers straight away. One of the crematorium workers, a Ukrainian by the name of Ivan, was notorious in the camp and he allegedly removed the gold teeth from four of the deceased before their bodies were incinerated. Ludwig Butz also remembered the incident, despite the other terrible things he had witnessed in the concentration camp. Although a German national, he had been arrested in 1936 and tried for preparation of high treason. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and when that had been served he was sent to Gross-Rosen. In October 1941 he was transferred to disinfecting work, with six Russians under his command. A transport of 2,400 Russian prisoners had arrived for extermination and their job was to get up at four o’clock in the morning and collect the corpses that were lying about in front of the Russians’ barracks and take them to the crematorium. Usually there were between 70 and 110 corpses. By December 1941 only a handful of Russians remained and these were given potassium cyanide to drink by the medical orderly. After the Russian camp was closed, Butz was given the job of disinfecting the clothes of the prisoners who had been executed. This was carried out in the crematorium and was to rid the clothes of lice before they were sold on the black market. Every day he had to report to the stores the number of clothes that he had gassed during the day. Therefore he knew exactly how many people had been executed in Gross-Rosen during the course of the four years. By December 1944 the number was 24,000. By the time of the murder of the French Section Butz was employed as a batman to the SS officers. On this particular day he arrived for work at 0430 hours to find that the officers were all up and about, including the camp leader Ernstberger and the camp doctor. After he finished his work in the leader’s home, he asked one of the SS men what was going on. He was told that Englishmen or Americans were to be executed. Later he spoke with one of the crematorium workers and was told that fifteen Englishmen had been executed by shooting. It must have been a special event because such executions were usually supervised by Rapportführer Eschner, but on this occasion it was supervised by Ernstberger in person.

At the end of 1948 the war crimes trial in the Gross-Rosen case was ready to begin. Eduardas Drazdauskas, a Lithuanian national, was charged with committing a war crime in that he was responsible for the ill-treatment of Allied prisoners of war Captain J.P.H. Ledoux of the Highland Light Infantry, Lieutenant J.T. Hamilton and Lieutenant H. Gailloy, both of the General List. Johannes Hassebroek and Rapportführer Scharführer Helmuth Eschner, together with Drazdauskas, were charged with the killing of ten Allied prisoners of war including Major F. Antelme, Captain J.R.A. Dubois and Captain A. Rabinovitch, all of the General List, and Pilot Officer G.B. McBain, Royal Air Force. All of the accused were held in custody at Altona Prison, Hamburg. Both the camp commandant Hassebroek and Rapportführer Eschner first denied that they belonged to the camp staff at Gross-Rosen. However, when this was proved to them they admitted being in the camp in July and August 1944, but denied any knowledge of the presence or execution of the British officers. They made sworn statements that during their time of duty in the camp only five executions took place and these were on the order of the proper German authorities, most probably as a result of trials. The Gross-Rosen trial lasted from 29 September to 22 October 1948 and at the end all three defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death.

No Mercy for the Ladies It takes a very brave person to volunteer for special missions behind enemy lines, especially if you are operating out of uniform and under the threat of being shot as a spy or saboteur. However, for a woman to volunteer, in full knowledge of the consequences of being captured and interrogated, it takes a very brave person indeed. Eight such women were parachuted into occupied France in 1943 as part of the French Section of the SOE. They were to establish contact with the French Resistance and gather information for transmitting to their headquarters in England. All were trained radio operators, bilingual in French and English and all were wearing civilian clothes. Their names were Jolande

Beekman, Denise Borrel, Madeleine Dammerment, Vera Leigh, Eliane Prewman and Odette Sansom-Churchill of FANY and Nora Baker and Drana Rowden of the WAAF. They were all young, single officers. All were eventually captured by the German security services and taken to Fresnes Prison near Paris. Despite being captured out of uniform, they were entitled to be tried by court martial or military court according to Article 30 of the Regulations of the Hague Convention of 1907. Their captors, however, decided to do things differently. The officers were taken to the HQ of the BDS Paris in the Avenue Foch on a number of occasions and were sometimes tortured. Later investigation discovered that the interrogations were carried out by the same people: Untersturmführers Götz, Otto and von Capri, with interpreters in attendance. Eventually each prisoner was called before a board of SS officers and made to sign a short statement giving personal particulars and accepting responsibility for military espionage. They were also told that the SS officers had the right to shoot them on the spot. These proceedings usually took about ten minutes and were meant to create the impression of proceedings before a court. It would transpire that none of the SOE officers were ever tried by a court and were in fact executed on the orders of Himmler. The orders were sent down the chain of command from Himmler to SS Sturmbannführers Thomas Ampletzer and Kopkpow of Sections IV A2 of the RSHA and thence to the SS officers in charge of the cases in Paris: SS Standartenführer Knochen and SS Sturmbannführers Pömmelburg and Kieffer. One of the SOE officers, Nora Baker, twice attempted to escape and as a consequence the RSHA ordered her transfer to the Stipo-Leitstelle Karlsruhe in November 1943. After a couple of weeks there, she was sent on to Pforzheim jail where she remained from 17 November 1943 to 11 September 1944. On arrival, her hands and feet were manacled on the order of the RSHA, although the prison governor Krauss later claimed that he disregarded the orders and was reprimanded as a result. He insisted that Baker was manacled for a further three weeks, but then the chains were removed. Prison warder Giller confirmed this and added that Baker was also allowed walks in the prison yard whenever possible. Another prisoner, Yvonne LaGrave, who

was imprisoned at Pforzheim from January 1944 until liberation later stated that this was untrue and in fact Baker was never allowed out of her cell and that her hands and feet were always manacled. The other seven female members of the French Section remained at Fresnes, together with some men of the same section until the latter were sent to Gross-Rosen concentration camp where they were murdered. In May 1944 Beekman, Borrel, Dammerment, Leigh, Plewman, Rowden and SansomChurchill were taken from the jail to the Avenue Foch and despatched with an SS escort to Karlsruhe where they were handed over to members of the Gestapo and placed in the police prison. The arrival of the prisoners was reported to SS Sturmbannführer Hermann Rössner, the officer in charge of security and espionage matters, who in turn informed his superior SS Obersturmbannführer Joseph Gmeiner. A few days later they were told by the RSHA that the matter was ‘top secret’ and that the prisoners were to be held pending further instructions. One of the ladies, believed to be Dammerment, later complained to SS Untertsturmbannführer Herbert that she was a British officer and should be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp instead of being detained in a jail. It did no good, however; her fate was being decided at the highest level and transfer to an Oflag was out of the question. As the weeks went by the prison staff became concerned about the lack of instructions regarding the prisoners and Gmeiner referred the matter back to the RSHA. A reply was received at the beginning of July 1944 instructing him to arrange the transfer to the nearest concentration camp of Borrel, Leigh, Rowden and another female prisoner by the name of Olschnezky, who appeared to have come from Paris at the same time as the British officers. Natzweiler-Struthof men’s concentration camp was the nearest and Kriminal Sekretär Max Wassmer was sent to escort the prisoners, together with Wallos and two female employees, Simon and Venroy. On 6 July 1944 the party travelled by train from Karlsruhe to Rothau where a car from Natzweiler-Struthof collected Wassmer and the four prisoners. The others returned to Karlsruhe. Once in the camp Wassmer obtained a receipt for the four women and was told that the ‘Report on the execution’, the Vollzugsmeldung, would be sent by mail and he then returned to Karlsruhe.

The four women were murdered by lethal injection and a few days later the Vollzugsmeldung arrived and was forwarded to the RSHA by either Gmeiner or his deputy Faber. On 18 July Miss Sansom-Churchill was roused from her cell and taken out to join a routine transfer of forty women to Ravensbrück concentration camp. When interrogated after the end of the war, neither Gmeiner, Roessner, Wassmer nor any of the prison staff could recall the transfer. Whatever the reason for the transfer, she was the only one of the eight women to survive. In the meantime, Nora Baker languished in Pforzheim jail where her presence was noted by Yvonne LaGrave, a French political deportee who had arrived at the jail in January 1944. Yvonne occupied cell No. 12 with two friends, while Nora was in cell No. 1 further down the passage. The door to cell No. 1 was always kept closed, while the others were unlocked so that the prisoners could stretch their legs in the courtyard. One day one of Yvonne’s friends suggested that they try to discover if there were any Frenchmen in the other cells by writing on the bottom of her mess tin with a knitting needle: ‘Here are three Frenchwomen.’ The mess tins were taken away to be cleaned and replaced in the evening. When they looked they saw a message: ‘You are not alone, you have a friend, cell No. 1.’ Thus began their correspondence. On 4 July, American Independence Day, she wrote ‘Here’s to the 4th July’ and on 14 July, Bastille Day: ‘Long live free France, for that keeps us together.’ In the course of the correspondence Yvonne learned that Nora was very unhappy, that she never went out, that her hands and feet were manacled and that except when they brought soup or changed the water they never opened her cell door. She eventually wrote her name and details: ‘Nora Baker, Radio Centre Officers, Service RAF, 4 Taviston Street, London.’ Yvonne made a note of the address and kept it in the hem of her skirt, promising herself to get in touch with her after the war. One day the three friends in cell No. 12 heard footsteps and climbed on the bed to see Nora walking in the courtyard. She smiled up at them and later asked them never to tell her mother that she had been in prison. They would only see her on two more occasions. Two French girls in cell No. 3 tried to ‘sing’ news to Nora one day.

Immediately a warder named Trupp opened the door and started beating Nora before dragging her downstairs to the dungeon below. Afterwards he paid a visit to the girls in cell No. 3. In the middle of September, the mess tin arrived and Yvonne read the last message from Nora, written in a quick and nervous hand: ‘I am going.’ At the beginning of September further instructions arrived from the RSHA to dispose of the remaining prisoners. On 11 September Nora Baker was taken from Pforzheim to Karlsruhe jail to join Beekman, Dammerment and Plewman. They were escorted by Wassmer, Kriminal Sekretär Ott and Heuser and travelled by train to Dachau concentration camp, arriving on the evening of the 12th. The women were handed over and the three men went away to find a bed for the night. In the morning Wassmer went to the administrative office and received a receipt for the prisoners, together with the Vollzugmeldung from an SS officer who informed him that the women had been shot. By the time the case came to trial in 1948 all the senior officers of the security services at Paris originally responsible for the ill-treatment and transfer of the eight women to Germany had been arrested, with the exception of Bömelburg. Knochen and Kieffer had been tried by French and British military courts and condemned to death for other crimes. Oberg was being tried on capital charges by a French military court. Himmler had committed suicide, and head of the Gestapo Müller was believed to be dead. Ampletzer was still being sought for a number of war crimes. In 1946 some of the staff of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp were tried for their part in the killing of Borrel, Leigh and Rowden. The camp adjutant Ganninger had committed suicide and the camp commander Hartjenstein was sentenced to life imprisonment. The camp doctor had been sentenced to death and others had received various terms of imprisonment. Since then, other members of the camp staff had been arrested and tried by both American and French military courts. The staff at Dachau concentration camp had not escaped lightly either. Many of them had been tried by US military courts between 1945 and 1947 including the camp commandant and others who had held senior positions in

September 1944 when the four officers were shot. Most of them were sentenced to death and executed. From Karlsruhe Jail, Gmeiner, the officer in charge, was tried by a British military court in 1947 for his part in the killing of Flying Officer Cochrane, one of the escapees from Stalag Luft 3, and was sentenced to death. His deputy Faber was still on the wanted list for other war crimes, but he was believed to have been killed in the last few days of the war. Only Roessner, Wassmer, Ott and Heusser were in custody, having been apprehended in May 1945. The governor of Pforzheim Jail had retired in 1944 and four years later was a very old and sick man. When the legal team at War Crimes Group, North-West Europe wrote up their conclusions they reasoned that all senior officials, with the exception of Ampletzer, responsible for the murder of the women had either been brought to justice or had died. The same thing applied to those who took part in the executions in the two concentration camps. Now only the case of the minor officials remained to be considered: The legal team decided that Roessner, Wassmer and Ott were well aware that the women were to be executed, but were in no position to influence the course of events, even if they had realized that the killings were illegal. They went on to recommend that no further action be taken against the men, who had now spent three years in custody. The legal team reasoned that the prisoners had at one time or another said they were agents and doubted that the prosecution could convince a military court that a war crime had been committed. The fact remained that if the officers had been properly tried by a German military court they would have been sentenced to death in any event. Yvonne LaGrange wondered what had happened to Nora after she was taken away. She thought that because of the advance of the French, Nora may have been taken to a camp and all the remaining French girls waited for the day when they too would go. Then on 30 November 1944 all the cell doors were opened at 0500 hours and the girls were told that they were leaving, all except Yvonne, that is. She remained a prisoner and was finally repatriated on 1 May 1945. Two weeks later she discovered that all her friends had been

massacred and buried 2 kilometres from the jail at Pforzheim. Had Nora suffered the same fate, she wondered? She wrote to 4 Taviston Street, London. The letter was eventually returned marked ‘Not known at this address.’

Theresienstadt Concentration Camp Driver Harold Glanville of the Royal Artillery was living in Kent Avenue, Slough, Buckinghamshire when he joined the army, not more than a couple of miles from where the author sat typing this story more than sixty years later, although by then the boundaries had shifted and Slough was now in Berkshire. Harold was taken prisoner at Kalamata, Greece on 29 April 1941 and spent time in various prisoner-of-war camps in Greece and Germany before ending up in Stalag 18B at Spittal in Austria. In October 1943 he escaped and made it as far as the frontier with Italy before he was recaptured. He was taken to the SS barracks at Ponterba and spent ten weeks there before he was moved to Stalag 7A at Moosburg. In order to get out on a working party he assumed the rank of sergeant major and escaped again on 2 April 1944 with eight other NCOs and was on the run for two weeks before he was recaptured. From Moosburg Harold was moved to Stalag 8C at Sagan where his knowledge of the German language helped him to escape from a working party at Hammerfeld together with an American who was using the name Nash, but who was in fact Technical Sergeant Victor Gasquire, USAAC. This time he got as far as Czechoslovakia and was captured there on 10 September 1944. After eight weeks at the prison in Yitchin, Harold was sent to the SS prison at Prague where he joined up with seven other escapees. On arrival at Prague the SS guard told the prison commandant that they were prisoners of war and ought to be sent to Germany. The commandant, however, replied that he did not give a damn and that they must go on the next transport. The word ‘transport’ in those times usually meant a shipment of people to a

concentration camp. In November 1944 the men found themselves on the way to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Some men received worse attention in the SS prison in Prague than others. In February 1945 escapee Private George Klauber of the Palestinian Pioneer Corps was held there together with twenty-five other British prisoners. They were kept in a cell 12ft by 12ft and had only a dozen blankets between the lot of them. One day there was an Allied air-raid on the city and Klauber asked the German guard if they could be taken down to an air-raid shelter. As a result of his request, Klauber was taken out of his cell and made to stand facing a wall for four hours. During that time a German Feldwebel and other guards beat him around the head and body. One day Klauber was taken to the main Gestapo headquarters in Prague for interrogation. One of the others in the car was a British prisoner from another cell. In a very frightened voice he told Klauber that the Germans were accusing him of being a Special Forces parachutist and he was beaten every day. He showed Klauber his stomach where there was an open wound that was not dressed and smelled badly, but the Germans refused to give him any medical treatment. In the meantime, Harold and his comrades had reached Theresienstadt. On arrival at the camp all their kit or personal belongings were taken from them. The American Gasquire tried to keep hold of a religious medallion suspended from his neck by a chain, but it was discovered and he was severely beaten. They were then issued with a blanket, spoon and bowl and were given a welcome hit on the head with a rubber truncheon. The treatment given to the civilians around them was worse. Old men and cripples had their sticks and crutches taken away from them and broken over their heads. One Jew was told to take his boot off and was beaten over the head with it until his head ran with blood. This all took place in front of the camp commandant. That night was spent in a small cell with 200 other men. There was not enough space for all of them to lie down and Harold and many others spent the night standing up. In the morning their hair was shaven off completely and their uniforms were taken away and convicts’ clothing was issued instead. When they objected, they were told that they had escaped and had therefore lost their status as prisoners of war and were now civilians.

The men were taken to a small tunnel-like room that would normally contain twenty men but now had a total of forty-five. The cell was very wet and the men had to sleep on concrete floors. After a couple of weeks they were moved to a larger cell. In the cell next door were twelve Jews who were only fed once a week. Each Thursday they received a litre of soup and were made to crawl on their stomachs towards where the food was being handed out and the guards would beat them as they did so. During their time in the camp the British prisoners received very little food. It was the same menu each day: black coffee at 0700 hours, so-called soup at midday which was little more than hot water thickened with a little barley or flour, and about 300 grams of black bread with another threequarters of a litre of soup in the evenings. In the first week of January 1945 an SS NCO ordered them out of their cells and made them run around the yard for an hour and a half. The weather was so cold that Trooper Roper got severe frostbite in both hands. After huge blisters had formed, he lost all his fingernails on both hands. Two weeks later another party of Jews arrived, including two more British prisoners. Twenty of them were put in a separate cell and the next morning fifteen bodies were taken out of the cell and burned. This was observed by a Belgian escapee in Harold’s cell, who was peering out of the window above the door of the cell. A guard outside saw him and fired a shot at the window, sending shards of broken glass into the startled man’s forearm. On one occasion, one of the British prisoners was very ill with malaria and pneumonia and his plight was brought to the attention of the guard. The guard went away and returned with three others and proceeded to beat the sick prisoner and the Palestinian interpreter George Klauber. Afterwards the sick man was delirious and appeared to be in a coma. In March 1945 the men were taken out by their SS guards to work on antitank ditches, work forbidden under the terms of the Geneva Convention. Harold complained to the officer in charge of the guards and he said that he would see what he could do to help. That afternoon they watched helplessly as a civilian overseer used a pickaxe handle to bludgeon two Jewish civilians to the ground where they were shot by an SS guard. The guards were

apparently from an SS Cadet Corps who were being trained as officers. With the evacuation of Silesia through the Protectorate, many columns of prisoners were on the march and a number escaped, only to be recaptured and sent to Theresienstadt. Flight Lieutenant Sandman of the New Zealand Air Force and Captain Dettre of the USAAC also joined the 140 British prisoners now in the camp. Towards the end of the month the British prisoners were told that they were going to be taken away and were put in the transport cell. There was no room to lie down so they had to sleep in a sitting position. Two Russians slept in the lavatories which were overflowing due to the shortage of water. The cells had previously been used to keep Jews in solitary confinement and there was blood, hair and brains on the walls. Two British prisoners were recognized as Jews – Gunner Rubinstein and a Czech Palestinian – and they were kept separately and beaten many times. The Germans said that they were not going to be released with the others, but Harold and Flight Lieutenant Sandman complained and managed to achieve their release. On 4 April 1945 178 British prisoners of war finally left the camp and travelled by train to Falkenau. The camp commandant was SS Hauptsturmführer Yockl, a well-fed 6ft specimen of the ‘superior Nazi race’. About 45 years old, he wore two gold stars on his epaulette and the Death’s Head insignia on his collar. He had a habit of standing with one leg in front of the other and his head on one side. The chief ‘Jew killer’ of the camp was Royko, an SS Oberscharführer who would kill without a second thought. He was about 5ft 7in tall and of slight but strong build with dark receding hair. He was aged about 35. After the war it was reported that Yockl and Royko had been captured in the American Zone and handed over to the Czech War Crimes Investigation Team. Their subsequent fate is not known.

The Buchenwald Airmen Mike Petrich knew he had to get out of the cockpit. The aircraft had suffered a direct hit and was about to break in two parts. Fortunately his co-pilot had

already opened the top hatch and as the plane came apart and went into a spin, he was thrown out, desperately pulling at his ripcord as he fell through the air. The B-26 was taking part in a bombing mission against an ammunition dump south-west of Paris on 6 July 1944. The invasion had taken place a month earlier and Petrich’s aircraft was one of hundreds in the air that day, supporting the advance. All this was forgotten as Petrich looked down and tried to remember what they had taught him about descending into trees. Before he could cross his legs in the prescribed manner he was down, his back hitting the trunk of the tree with his legs straddling a large branch. After a few moments, when he had gathered his thoughts and said a silent prayer for surviving the crash, he unharnessed himself and climbed down the tree to the ground. Figuring that his .45 pistol would not do him much good against the whole German army, he buried it together with his ‘Mae West’ (an inflatable life jacket) among a pile of leaves. Looking briefly around him, he strode off through the trees. Eventually he heard the sound of someone chopping wood and walked very slowly to the edge of the forest. He saw a very elderly gentleman with a horse-drawn cart and walked up to him, saying: ‘Je suis Americain ’ (‘I am an American’). The startled man looked up and motioned for him to stay where he was. He then got in his cart and set off at a fast pace down the track. For some reason Petrich did not trust the man and he followed at a distance for several hundred yards. He saw him go into a clearing where German soldiers were walking around and calmly open the door into a farmhouse. At that point Petrich decided to make himself scarce and continued walking for another couple of hours. Finally he saw another civilian and identified himself again. This man was a farmer and he told the airman to follow him. He took him to a tool shed and told him to wait. Unlike the first man, Petrich felt as though he could trust this one. He had made the correct choice and within an hour the man returned with two others and some bikes. The group rode to a farmhouse and Petrich spent the night in the loft above the barn. In the morning the Frenchmen took Petrich to another farmhouse where he met Lieutenant Joe Mosier and two of his B-24 crew members who had been

shot down the night before by the same guns that had hit Petrich’s B-26. One of the Frenchmen told Petrich that his co-pilot Lieutenant Sullivan, who had got out of the cockpit hatch before him, had been struck by the aircraft propellers and his legs had been almost severed. The Germans who found him said that his wounds were too severe and shot him where he lay. From the rest of the crew, only one man survived: Staff Sergeant Bob Read who suffered shrapnel wounds to his back and neck and who spent the rest of the war in a German hospital. The waist and tail-gunners were both killed when the plane was hit and the bombardier never had a chance to get out of the nose of the bomber before it hit the ground. The group remained in the farmhouse for a week, waiting for the Frenchmen to arrange an escape route across to Spain. Eventually the four airmen were taken by car to Paris and were deposited in an old hotel where they stayed for another couple of days. They were now in the hands of another group of Frenchmen and after a few more days had passed they were taken by car to a residential area where they were to meet a truck that would take them on the first leg of their journey. As the truck slowly made its way towards them, other cars appeared and men started scrambling out of them and into the back of the truck. Petrich and his three companions joined them and discovered that there were now seventeen escapees in the truck. When they were all seated, their guide Jacques asked them all to hand over their money, watches, rings, identification, etc. He then told them that if they were stopped they were to pretend to be Polish workers going down to southern France. Jacques took his leave of the airmen and the truck started to move off. Soon they were back in the centre of Paris and after a while the truck began to slow down and turn off the main road. Petrich raised the canvas at the back of the truck in time to see German soldiers running to surround the vehicle. They were in Gestapo headquarters and had been betrayed by French traitors. The men were taken to the notorious Fresnes prison where they joined dozens of other airmen who had also fallen foul of the traitors. A couple of weeks later the Gestapo decided that the Allies were getting too close for comfort and packed up their stolen booty and their prisoners and moved back to Germany.

On 15 August 1944, 168 Allied prisoners of war and hundreds of French men and women were packed into a freight train. The sign on the side of the wagon said 40 men or 8 horses, but 80 men were packed into Petrich’s wagon. On the second night out some of the Frenchmen prised up some floorboards and when the train slowed down, they lowered themselves down onto the tracks and escaped. In the morning when the Germans discovered this they made the rest of the men in the wagon strip off their clothes which were then taken away. They reached Frankfurt and stopped in a recently-bombed railway station. Some of the Frenchmen got up to one of the windows and put their hands out. Suddenly there was a burst of gunfire and the men dropped to the floor, clutching their wounded hands. The doors were flung open and the guards climbed in, demanding ‘Where are the wounded?’ The Frenchmen were dragged out of the wagon and shot dead at the side of the track. The train journey lasted for five days, through Nancy, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Weimar and finally to Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald is located 5 miles north of Weimar, in the German province of Thüringen. The concentration camp was built in 1936 and would eventually become one of the largest on German soil. The camp initially held 7,000 prisoners, but expanded quickly as Hitler’s persecution of the Jewish people gathered momentum. In November 1938, 10,000 Jews were sent to the camp following the Kristallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’) outbreak of anti-Semitic violence. In the next year or so they were joined by many Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Russian political prisoners. From 1942 Buchenwald was used as a forced labour camp where the strong, skilled and cunning survived the longest. The camp commandant Koch ordered the construction of the first crematorium to assist in the extermination of the Jews in the camp. Most were transferred to Auschwitz, but others were used for medical experiments in the camp hospital. When the airmen arrived in late August 1944 there were more than 80,000 prisoners registered to the camp; 35,000 inside and 45,000 outside the wire on working parties. Eventually almost a quarter of a million prisoners from thirty different countries passed through its gates during the eight years of its

existence and more than 65,000 of them were killed or died there. The internal running of the camp was organized by the prisoners themselves and a number of factions were formed. Up until the end of 1942 the criminal prisoners held the power, but this was taken away from them and given to the political prisoners, generally German Communists. This group was split into parties, one of which was controlled by the SS canteen manager, a renowned pastry cook. They were very friendly with the airmen and it was through them that they acquired greatcoats, cigarettes and other items. One of the first things the airmen noticed was that each prisoner wore a triangular patch on his shirt. Political prisoners had a red triangle, criminals wore green, Jews yellow, and so on. Within a few days of their arrival in the camp, one of the inmates appeared and asked to speak to the senior officer. Squadron Leader Phil Lamason, one of the two New Zealanders in the group, came forward and found himself face-to-face with Wing Commander ‘Tommy’ Yeo-Thomas. He was one of thirty-seven captured SOE agents who had arrived three days previously and was using the pseudonym Squadron Leader Dodkins, who coincidentally Lamason had known in England. Yeo-Thomas had already made contact with the most influential prisoners in the camp and he wanted to discuss the participation of the fliers in a revolt if the time came when the SS decided to exterminate the population of the camp. Known as the ‘White Rabbit’, Yeo-Thomas and the other SOE agents were soon faced with their own extinction after the order arrived to murder them all. They had been kept in Block 17 opposite the crematorium and their record cards had all been marked ‘Darf in kein anderes lager – Not to be transferred to another camp’, which was the Germans’ way of earmarking them for eventual execution. Of the group of 37, 24 were Frenchmen, 10 were English, 1 was Canadian and 2 were Belgian. Otto Storch was the German leader of Block 17 and he later related how a list was given to him on 9 September containing the names of sixteen of the SOE men. They were told to be at the camp gate at 1530 hours and that they were wanted for interrogation. Marcel Leccia did not believe it and gave his

engagement ring to Storch, with the words: ‘We’re going to be hanged!’ He was correct. At the gate, SS Unterscharführer Werle called out the names two at a time and as the men came forward they were tied together in pairs and led into the detention cells. A contact in the Polish underground reported the next day that the men had been beaten up but were still alive. The following day when Yeo-Thomas met his contact, the Pole stood to attention and saluted. He said: ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that your sixteen comrades were executed last night. There can be no doubt; one of our organization has seen their bodies. They were brave men and we grieve for you.’ The helpless men had been tied together in pairs, then a wire noose was placed around both necks and the men lifted bodily and the wire hung on a meat hook on the wall. The men suffered a terrible death by slow strangulation and their corpses were burned in the crematorium. When the execution order arrived, contacts forewarned Yeo-Thomas and a plan was hatched to try to save the remaining twenty-one men. Sturmbannführer Ding-Schuler was the chief of Block 46, where typhus experiments were conducted. He was persuaded that it would be in his own interests if a good word could be put in for him when the Nazis were finally defeated. All he had to do was to help hide some of the men until they could be given other identities and moved outside the camp to a working party. The idea was to exchange identities with some of the men who died of typhus in the Guinea Pig Block. He agreed to the plan, but due to the lack of hidingplaces he could only conceal three men and he stipulated that Yeo-Thomas be one of them in the hope that his rank would make the difference at a future war crimes trial. The wing commander then had the terrible task of choosing two others to join him. He chose one Frenchman, Stephane Hessel, and one Englishman, Henry Peuleve. He could not tell the others who would be doomed to die, as it was essential that only he knew of the plan. Three other men were to be admitted to the tuberculosis section of the Revier Hospital. Squadron Leader Maurice Southgate, Pierre Culioli and Bernard Guillot joined him. Yeo-Thomas and the two others were secretly given injections of a fluid that brought them out in a raging fever. When they reported to the hospital

the following morning they were taken by one of Ding-Schuler’s accomplices to the typhus block. They were hidden in the loft of the building and when three of the many patients suffering from typhus expired, they were cremated as Dodkin, Peuleve and Hessel. Not long after the three men had gone into hiding, a further thirteen men were summoned to the camp gate. They were taken away in vans in two groups and shot by the SS with pistols. By the end of October, thirty-one of the thirty-seven SOE men were dead. In November it was arranged that Hessel and Peuleve would assume the identities of the deceased Frenchmen and were transferred to a working party in an aircraft factory. Yeo-Thomas was sent to a working party at Gleina. Of the three men in the TB isolation block, Southgate remained hidden in the block until the camp was finally liberated, while Culioli and Guillot were transferred to an outside working party. All six men survived to see the end of the war. The day finally came when the order arrived in the camp to kill the 168 airmen. This was known to Squadron Leader Phil Lamason at the time, but he decided to keep the awful news from the men. It was not until 1983 that he finally informed some of the survivors that their lives had been hanging in the balance. In a last-ditch effort to save them, a prisoner working on an outside party was given a letter and a nominal roll of the group and this was passed on to the Luftwaffe at a nearby airfield. They in turn contacted their headquarters in Berlin who persuaded the SS to transfer the men into German Air Force hands. The first the airmen knew about this was when two Luftwaffe officers appeared at the camp and went through a mock interrogation that confirmed the identities of the men and resulted in their move from the camp on 19 October 1944. Two of the airmen did not go with their comrades. Flying Officer P.D. Hemmens had died earlier from rheumatic fever and Lieutenant Levin Beck succumbed in the so-called hospital from pneumonia on 31 October. The other ten sick fliers in the ward eventually rejoined their comrades at Stalag Luft 3 Sagan at the end of November. The 168 airmen and the SOE agents were not the only Allied prisoners of war to find themselves in Buchenwald. More than 8,000 Russian prisoners

were also sent there to be murdered. They were all sent one at a time to Hut 19, ‘The Stable’, where they were told they would receive a shower and a medical examination. The hut had actually been designed as a production-line place of execution. Escorted by two guards, the prisoner would enter the hut through a door at one end and would find himself in a room where he would undress and deposit any valuables on a table. He would then walk through a soundproof double door on both sides of which loud martial music would be playing through loudspeakers. Then he would pass through a second wooden double door and into the ‘surgery’. A single door would lead into the ‘doctor’s room’ where he would be met by the ‘doctor’ wearing a white gown who would ask him to stand against the wall to measure his height. The prisoner might look around at the instruments lying on the table behind the ‘doctor’ or he might look at the man himself as he lowered the measuring rod to touch the top of his head. Unbeknown to the prisoner, behind the wall stood an SS executioner from Kommando 99 with a silenced pistol in his hand and as the rod touched the top of the unsuspecting man’s head, he would be shot in the back of the neck and killed. From the Germans’ point of view it was very efficient. The corpse would then be thrown through a trap-door and onto a trolley piled with dead bodies and taken to the crematorium. A total of 8,483 Russians perished in this manner. Last but not least, we must mention the fate of the French traitor whose betrayal led to the deaths of so many of their countrymen and women and almost to the end of the 168 airmen. It did not take the French Resistance long to identify the traitor in their midst and on 7 July 1949 the trial began of Jacques Desoubrie. In 1940 at the age of 18 he fled to Marseilles with his aunt in the hope of obtaining false papers and escaping to England. He did not succeed and returned to northern France where he was arrested by the Gestapo. It was at this point that he began his new career as a turncoat by denouncing those who had supplied him with the false papers. Desoubrie infiltrated a number of networks and once he had got to know their members they would be arrested and tortured, then either shot or deported to concentration camps. On 20 July 1949 he was condemned to

death and the sentence was carried out on 19 December when he was shot by a firing squad at the fort of Montrouge.

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen, together with Buchenwald and Dachau, was one of the first large concentration camps to be constructed by the Nazis. Between 1936 and 1945 at least 45,000 prisoners would die there from ill-treatment, starvation, disease and overwork. After liberation in 1945, the quantity of remains found in storage such as 300,000 teeth and 900,000 pairs of shoes led experts to estimate that the true figure could be as high as 80,000 people. Many were sent there specifically for execution. In March 1940 17,000 prisoners arrived, mostly Poles, and over the next six months the majority were killed. Some 18,000 Russian prisoners would also be liquidated there during the last three months of 1941. British prisoners were few, mainly Commandos and SOE agents, but almost all would meet the same fate. Seven British Commandos had been taken prisoner by the Germans on Urter Island, west of Haugesund, between 24 and 31 May 1943. Their original task was to sail into a Norwegian fjord in the west of the country and attempt to sink the German ships at anchor there. Unfortunately their engine failed them as they made their night approach and they drifted ashore. The men made contact with a Norwegian fisherman who could speak little English and they tried to convey their need for engine parts to him. They gave him some tinned goods, but the fisherman returned with some fish. A second attempt was made with gestures and tinned food, but the man returned once again with fish. Reluctantly the Commandos decided to abandon their boat and try to get across the country to Sweden. The men made drawings of some of the German coastal gun positions and then moved further inland. They made the mistake of taking shelter one night in a field next to a small farm. They were spotted by the farmer’s wife who assumed they were German sailors and informed the authorities. They were soon rounded up and taken to Gestapo headquarters in Oslo. After interrogation they were taken to Hovedøya for execution, but the orders were

changed and they were taken back to Oslo and incarcerated at Grini. In view of Hitler’s order to kill captured Commandos, they were kept isolated and then transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Although they were captured wearing naval uniform including shoulder badges, they were treated as civil prisoners and made to perform hard labour in the camp. The Commandos made contact with some Norwegians who were also imprisoned in the camp and associated with them whenever they could. In the autumn of 1943 the RAF began to bomb Berlin and in an act of retaliation the seven men, plus one other who had been taken prisoner in Belgium, were transferred to a penal company. Erik Johannsen, one of the Norwegians in the camp, described the punishing exercise regime to which the Commandos were subjected: From 4 o’clock in the morning for three hours they had ‘Straf ’ exercise, such as goose-stepping, lying down, rolling on the soil and rabbit-jumping. From 4am to 7pm they were not allowed to get into the barracks, save half an hour for dinner. From 7am to 5pm they were forced in continual march on a trial track wearing shoes (also female shoes) usually a number or two smaller than their ordinary fit. They marched on average from 48 to 52 kilometres each day wearing a pack weighing from 50 to 90 pounds. The trial track was divided in parts of cobblestones, sand, gravel, concrete and water, etc. They had to march in all sorts of weather from sunshine to pouring rain, in all temperatures. Needless to say the men became weaker from the punishing regime, but the Norwegians were well-supplied with foodstuffs and ensured that the Commandos kept their strength up. However, one of the men, Alfred ‘Trilby’ Roe, the petty officer motor mechanic on the operation, had kidney trouble and was laid up for three months. The British prisoners had to wear a large letter ‘E’ on the back and chest in addition to their other prison numbers, but they would often wear a jacket to conceal the numbers in order to slip into the Norwegian barracks for a couple of hours in the evening. The block elders were all German prisoners,

but they could be bribed to look the other way. Surprisingly, the seven Commandos managed to survive until 2 February 1945 when the Russian advance reached the River Oder. Two former German prisoners, now wearing SS uniforms, came to their room and told the men to follow them. When they started to collect their kit they were told to leave it and they would get new clothes at the place where they were going. The men knew at once what was going to happen as the two guards belonged to the Sonderkommission (Special Commission). Andrew West wrote a brief note to his mother which one of the Norwegians later delivered to the British Legation in Stockholm. As the men walked out of the barracks, their last words to their Norwegian friends were ‘They have taken everything from us, but not our spirit. God save the King!’ On that fateful night a total of 137 men were ordered out of the barracks to be murdered by the SS guards, including five of the British. Sergeant Victor ‘Jack’ Cox, Petty Officer Harold ‘Shorty’ Hiscock, Ordinary Seamen Neville Burgess and Andrew West and Sub-Lieutenant John Goodwin always knew they were living on borrowed time. As they were being taken through the entrance to the place of execution, Lieutenant Goodwin suddenly knocked down one of the attending Oberscharführers, snatched his revolver and killed him and severely wounded one other. It was later reported that all the British died fighting. When Erik Johannsen later went to Neuengamme concentration camp he met a Norwegian prisoner who was wearing Goodwin’s jacket. He had been given it in the hospital at Sachsenhausen. It showed several spots that had been patched, apparently holes made by bullets, and the jacket was soiled with blood. Ordinary Seaman Keith Mayor from 14 Commando was sent to BergenBelsen concentration camp on 8 February 1945 and Alfred ‘Trilby’ Roe followed on 12 March 1945. Neither man was seen again. After the war the Norwegians reported on two other British officers seen in the camp. One was named ‘Fred Jones’ who was supposed to have been a bookmaker in London. He was arrested in Brussels where he had been since Dunkirk and was possibly an intelligence officer. He was sent to the camp at Natzweiler-Struthof where so-called Nacht und Nebel (‘Night and Fog’) prisoners were held. It was said that he was knocked down by an SS man, but

exclaimed that a British officer does not allow himself to be knocked down and he hit back, possibly killing the SS man. Further details were to be obtained from Karl Jakhelln, son of the Norwegian minister at Lisbon, who was a great friend of Fred Jones. Another Englishman at Sachsenhausen was Captain John A.R. Starr who came from Staffordshire. He was taken prisoner at Dijon and was taken to the headquarters of the Paris Gestapo. He apparently became very friendly with the chief of the Gestapo who was later shot by the Germans. Starr was sentenced to death on at least seven occasions, but was not executed due to his relationship with the Gestapo chief. He was later transferred to Sachsenhausen and was still there in March 1945 when he was sent to Dachau. Finally one must mention the escapees from Stalag Luft 3 who were recaptured and sent to Sachsenhausen where they were imprisoned in Sonderlager ‘A’. They were Harry ‘Wings’ Day, Jimmy James, Sydney Dowse and Johnny Dodge. The compound in which they were held was only about 30 yards by 70 and contained two huts surrounded by electrified barbed wire. Together with Commando Colonel Jack Churchill, they dug a 120ft tunnel under the Sonderlager wall and scaled the outer wall of the adjoining compound using a workman’s ladder found nearby. On 23 September 1944 they were on the run again. Coincidentally, in early 1945 another new inmate arrived at the camp execution block. It was General Artur Nebe, the man who had selected the names of the fifty escapees who were to be murdered. He had become involved in the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler and was sent to the camp to be executed. He was hung from a noose of piano wire, while the escapees he had sent to Sachsenhausen lived on. In 1947 a Soviet military court tried former commandant Kaindl and fifteen of his subordinates in Pankow Town Hall, Berlin. He admitted that 42,000 prisoners had died or been killed while he was in charge. Together with most of his subordinates, Kaindl was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

CHAPTER NOTES The Gross-Rosen Murders: PRO WO309/350 and 618 PRO WO235/552–3, 792–3 The members of the ‘French Section’ were the following: Major F. Antelme, Captain M. Defence, Captain A. Rabinovich, Captain F. Vallee, Captain F.A. Deniset, Captain V.C. Hayes, Captain J.P.H. Ledoux, Captain L. Lee, Captain J.R.A. Dubois, Lieutenant R.E.J. Alexandre, Lieutenant P.F. Duclos, Lieutenant D.H. Finlayson, Lieutenant H. Gaillot, Lieutenant J.T. Hamilton, Lieutenant P.B. Pardi, Lieutenant A.A. Mangenet, Lieutenant C.R. Malraux and Pilot Officer G.B. McBain.

No Mercy for the Ladies: PRO WO309/282

Theresienstadt Concentration Camp: PRO WO311/199 News Flash 30 May 2001, Munich District Court. ‘Camp Guard Anton Malloth was jailed for life yesterday at the age of 89. The sentence came 56 years after the former SS sergeant humiliated, tortured and killed 700 Jewish prisoners. The five-week trial of Malloth, who is cancer-stricken and blind, is likely to be the last featuring Hitler’s hatchet-men.’ He died on 31 October 2002.

The Buchenwald Airmen:

Burgess, Colin, Destination Buchenwald (Kangaroo Press, 1995) Kinnis, Arthur G. and Booker, Stanley, 168 Jump into Hell (ISBN 09684198) Marshall, Bruce, The White Rabbit (1952) PRO WO311/36: Aktion Kugel. PRO WO311/158: Yeo-Thomas statement. Correspondence with Michael Petrich, March 2002. Lieutenant L.C. Beck was one of two Allied airmen to die of neglect in Buchenwald. While evading capture in France he wrote a manuscript entitled Fighter Pilot and asked a French family to send it to his mother when the war was over. They did so and Mrs Beck had the book published.

Sachsenhausen: PRO WO309/109 and WO208/3430 James, B.A. ‘Jimmy’, Moonless Night (Pen & Sword, 2002)

Stalag Luft 3: ‘Great Escaper’ Jimmy James seated in the middle, with ‘Cookie’ Long standing at the rear who was one of the fifty murdered after capture. James was recaptured and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from where he tunnelled out from the Sonderlager. He made 100 miles before he was recaptured.

Squadron Leader Jimmy James was one of the men who took part in the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft 3. The author had the pleasure of spending an evening with him at a PoW reunion 60 years later. He passed away on 22 January 2008, aged 92 years.

A camp guard is identified after liberation by a Russian prisoner at Buchenwald concentration camp.

Violet Szabo was an SOE agent, captured during her second mission into occupied France. Interrogated and tortured, she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where she was executed.

Denise Borrel, one of the female Special Operation Executive agents of the French Section, was murdered at Natzweiler concentration camp.

Russian prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp.

Women prisoners labour at the Ravensbrück concentration camp where 92,000 women were to die during the war.

Russian émigré Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, nicknamed Nora Baker and codenamed Madeleine, was an SOE agent who was murdered in Dachau concentration camp on 13 September 1944. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross.

The commandant of Sachsenhausen concentration camp Anton Kaindl was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Soviet court and sent to the Vorkuta camp complex in Siberia where he was forced to work in the coal mines. Within five months he and five of the twelve staff members who had been sentenced with him were dead.

A total of 8,483 Russian commissars were murdered at Buchenwald by Kommando 99. The unsuspecting victim would be led into a room and told to stand against a device to measure his height. An SS executioner would be standing on the other side of the wall with a silenced pistol and would shoot his victim through a slit in the device.

See 9 above. This is the shooting room in which the executioner stood.

The entrance to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

Chapter 11

The D-Day Murders

T

he date of 6 June 1944 is probably one of the most remembered in recent history, for that is the day on which the Allies invaded France and launched Operation OVERLORD, the campaign that would finally defeat Germany. Referred to as D-Day, the operation involved the landing of troops by sea on a number of beaches in Normandy. On the previous night thousands of airborne troops were to be landed by glider and parachute behind the enemy lines. Many of the men setting foot in France had little or no combat experience and facing them would be some of the toughest battlehardened troops in the German army. Canada’s role in war crimes prosecution would develop out of the events that took place after the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944. Most of the incidents occurred during the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division’s operations between 7 and 17 June. They had landed on Juno Beach with orders to push forward into the gap between the cities of Caen and Bayeux. Within hours of landing, the forward elements of the 9th Infantry Brigade including the North Nova Scotia Highlanders supported by tanks from the Sherbrooke Fusiliers had advanced almost to Caen. By the afternoon of 7 June their ‘C’ company was in Authie at the point of the advance. That is where the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend hit them with tanks, artillery and fanatical young stormtroopers. Between 6 and 17 June the 12th SS would murder 106 prisoners of war in 30 separate incidents. On 8 June it was the turn of the 7th Infantry Brigade. Their lead infantry,

the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, had reached the Caen-Bayeux road to the town of Putot-en-Bessin. In the morning they were attacked by the 12th SS and 256 riflemen were killed or captured. At the Château d’Audrieu on 8 June, thirteen Canadians were discovered lying dead in a line. Altogether, twentysix bodies were discovered around the château and almost all had been shot in the head. On 11 June the 6th Armoured Regiment and the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada attacked at Le Mesnil-Patry into an area held by the 12th SS. The Canadians were repulsed with heavy losses and for the next two months the front stalled on the Caen-Bayeux road. On 17 June seven Canadians captured at Le Mesnil-Patry were found executed.

The Hemevez Murders The US 101st Airborne Division fought in some of the toughest battles of the Second World War. The division was formed in 1942 when parachuting was a new form of warfare and in 1944 they were still untested in combat, along with most of the American army. After training in America, the division was sent to England where they took part in a full-scale rehearsal over Berkshire just prior to D-Day. They suffered 436 casualties in the drop over Normandy and 28 of the Dakota aircraft returned to base without having dropped any of their men. On the night before D-Day their job was to land behind enemy lines in Normandy and secure passages into the French countryside for the infantry coming ashore at Utah Beach. However, so many pilots were unnerved by the flak as they approached their drop zones that they turned away from the pathfinders’ beacons and scattered the paratroopers over a wide area. Even their commander General Maxwell Taylor was completely lost for twenty minutes and by dawn only one-sixth of his 6,600 paratroopers had reached their rendezvous. By mid-July when the 101st was finally pulled out of the line, of the 6,600 men, 868 were listed as killed in action, nearly 2,000 had been wounded and hundreds taken prisoner.

During the early hours of 6 June, a stick of fourteen paratroopers was dropped in the wrong place, landing close to a small wood. The men were from the Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 507th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, US army. They comprised one second lieutenant, one corporal and twelve enlisted men. The corporal was injured in the jump and had to be carried and one of the men had injured his ankle but could hobble along. There is evidence that thirteen of the fourteen men assembled in the wood and tried to make their two injured comrades comfortable. The officer then sent three men out on patrol to try to establish their location. The rest of the men took up defensive positions along the edge of the wood. About half an hour later a dozen German soldiers entered the wood and found the injured corporal. A fire-fight ensued at close range and after a few minutes six of the Americans surrendered. It is not known whether more German soldiers entered the wood from another direction, nor is the exact fate of the other three Americans in the wood known: The six men carried the injured corporal to the German headquarters and were taken into a dugout and searched and interrogated by a German major. Thereafter the men were marched away into the wood and shot. A SHAEF court of enquiry in the field decided that Corporal Robert Watson was injured and unable to walk without assistance at the time of his death. That the killing of the prisoners was in violation of the well-recognized laws and usages of war and the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929 and was murder.

The Hérouvillette Case One or possibly both of the Germans were lying. Was it Captain Leo Molters, the commander of No. 1 Company, 716 Engineering Battalion, or his equipment NCO, Lance Sergeant Karl Finkenrath? Both men were awoken in the early hours of 6 June by the sound of aircraft passing overhead. Looking up into the night sky they could see parachutes blossoming as the men of the 6th Airborne Division dropped

behind the enemy lines. The Engineering Battalion was stationed in the village of Hérouvillette, just east of the River Orne and slightly to the north-east of Caen. They were on their own, without any infantry or armour support, and most of the men of the unit had no combat experience. Company headquarters was stationed at a former horse-racing stables at a farm named Le Lieu Harras and considerable confusion was caused by the reports of the descending parachutists. Most of the men were simply standing around when Captain Molters appeared on the scene and quickly positioned them along the avenue of trees leading from the farm to the racecourse and along a wall enclosing the garden behind the farm. During the evening around ten or eleven prisoners were taken, the first of which was an Allied officer who was discovered by Molters himself as he was untangling himself from his parachute. This prisoner was tied to the door of the ammunition store until the military police arrived from divisional headquarters to take him away for questioning. Thereafter the waters become murkier. Corporal Karl Stark, the canteen corporal, would later testify that he saw Captain Molters hand over a second prisoner to Lance Sergeant Finkenrath, who promptly marched him to the exit of the farm courtyard and then shot him. Molters may not have been on the scene at the time, but it was very likely that he knew about his presence. Stark further alleged that a Private Fritz Krohn, who was later killed, also brought a prisoner from the rear of the building who was shot by Finkenrath at the entrance to a horse-box. At least three other prisoners were brought in prior to 1000 hours that day and all were allegedly shot by Finkenrath. The witness Stark saw the three men walking down the road with their hands in the air and that he called out for Finkenrath who searched them and marched them towards some horseboxes in the corner of the courtyard. Stark then heard three shots and turned to see Finkenrath slamming the doors of the horse-boxes and bolting them. Stark would testify that when he next saw the men they were all lying dead in one of the boxes. In June 1947 Finkenrath made a statement to Major E.A. Barkworth of the SAS War Crimes Investigation Team in which he alleged that when Captain

Molters brought the first officer prisoner to him, he said: ‘Here is your prisoner, you are responsible for him with your life. If anything happens to him I shall shoot you. The others will be knocked off (umgelegt).’ This prisoner was later taken away by the military police. He went on to say that Molters later summoned him at dawn to the company office where he saw two more prisoners. Both men were wounded and had been bandaged by one of the German medics. Finkenrath claimed that Molters handed over the first prisoner to him with the words ‘Knock him off (umlegen).’ He admitted that he then took the prisoner to a horse-box, but as he entered the box the prisoner turned and put his hand in his pocket, whereupon Finkenrath shot him with his pistol and slammed the door. When Finkenrath reported back to company headquarters he claimed that Molters handed over the second prisoner with the order ‘Away with him (Ab damit).’ He then took the man to the next horse-box where he must have had a twinge of conscience because he claimed that when the prisoner lay down on the straw he pulled his pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling. He reasoned that this man must still be alive and as he had kept his military watch which was numbered and could therefore be traced back to the owner, he would no doubt corroborate Finkenrath’s kind behaviour. Finkenrath finished his statement by claiming that Captain Molters had addressed the company before the invasion and gave them instructions that in the event of an invasion no prisoners were to be taken. The orders originated from higher up the chain of command. Whether or not Finkenrath or Molters were lying, the invasion was passing them by. In the middle of the nearby race-course pathfinder parachutists had laid out lines of marker lights to guide in the flights of gliders that were en route from England. They cast off from the transport planes and circled above the farm before coming down to land on a hill not far away. The company finally evacuated the farm in a great hurry at around 8.00 pm that day and there is no evidence that any sick, wounded or prisoners were taken with them. When the case against Captain Leo Molters and Lance Sergeant Karl Finkenrath was assembled to be sent to the Judge Advocate General’s department in January 1948, a covering note was sent by Colonel Draper of

the North-West Europe War Crimes Group. The facts seemed to be that ten prisoners were taken that morning, one officer was sent to divisional headquarters and six others were shot by Finkenrath. Major Barkworth who carried out the investigation believed that Captain Molters did not give orders to shoot the men, but was indifferent to their fate. There was discussion as to whether the officer should be used as a prosecution witness, tried as an accused or dropped from the case completely. The final result of this case is unknown.

Friendly Fire? It came as a surprise to the author to learn that 150 US enlisted men and 15 officers were already in German hands the day after the invasion of France began. They were apparently under guard in trucks travelling in a convoy near Le Mesnil-Vigot when Allied fighters found them. It was early afternoon and the convoy was heading away from the combat zone at the time. The German drivers slammed on their brakes and jumped out of the trucks, followed by the guards in the back of the trucks. As they took shelter in nearby ditches and buildings they shouted at the prisoners to remain where they were. At least two of the GIs tried to clamber over the side of the trucks and were shot dead by their guards. The Allied fighters were soon upon them, with machine guns spewing a wave of death towards the stranded prisoners. Sixty-two of the men were hit and several of them would die during the night. The prisoners remained where they were for a further three days and although German medical personnel were in the vicinity, none were summoned to help the wounded. It was not until 12 June, when the prisoners finally reached a temporary prisoner-of-war enclosure 6 kilometres north-east of Tessy, that American medical officers were permitted to treat the sick and wounded. A note of protest was sent to the German government via the Swiss on 13 January 1945, pointing out that Article 2 of the Geneva Convention provides that prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated and protected and

that Article 7 provides that prisoners shall not be needlessly exposed to danger while awaiting their evacuation from the combat zone. The note ended with the expectation that an immediate investigation should take place and that those responsible would be punished; also that an assurance was required from the German government that effective measures would be taken to prevent such a repetition in the future. In reality, the note did little more than inform the German government that the American government was aware of what its soldiers were doing. They were in the middle of a war where such things did take place and the culprits would never be found or punished.

A Particularly Nasty Bunch of Killers The introductory report by the Field Investigation Section of the North-West Europe War Crimes Group was a composite report. The initial investigations had been the subject of courts of enquiry by SHAEF in 1944–45, while the war was still in progress. They were carried out by the Canadian War Crimes Investigation Unit and after that unit was disbanded were passed on to the NWE Group. The investigations had been thorough and comprehensive and at the end of the day all investigators had come to the same conclusion: that the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend were a particularly nasty bunch of killers. The unit was formed in 1943 and many of its members had served in other SS formations, including the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler which also had a reputation for shooting prisoners. The initial SHAEF investigation came to the conclusion that at least 107 prisoners had been murdered by the unit between 7 and 15 June 1944. Subsequent investigations discovered that the total was indeed much higher. Two infantry regiments formed part of the 12th SS Panzer Division, one of which was the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment (PGR), commanded at the time by Kurt Meyer. He was promoted to division commander on the death of Brigadeführer Witt on 10 June 1944, but certainly bore the responsibility for the crimes committed by his men around that time. He was succeeded as regimental commander by Wilhelm Mohnke. He was tried before a military

court at Aurich, Germany between 10 and 28 December 1945 on five charges. He was found guilty of three of the charges as follows: Charge No. 1) As commander of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, he incited and counselled his men to deny quarter to Allied troops; Charge No. 4) He ordered or was responsible for the shooting of seven Canadian prisoners of war at his headquarters at L’Ancienne Abbaye d’Ardenne; Charge No. 5) He was responsible for other such shootings of eleven additional Canadian prisoners of war, both at his headquarters and during fighting nearby. Meyer was sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. So many incidents came to light that it was virtually impossible to investigate every one of them, for a number of reasons. A large number of witnesses and the accused were killed in action after June 1944 and many others could not be found. Some of the most important witnesses and accused were known to be living in the Russian Zone or in Russian prisons. One major problem for the investigators was the widespread and highlydeveloped agreement among the former members of the 12th SS Division that one member would not testify against another unless he was convinced that the person against whom he was giving evidence had already stated what he himself was required to corroborate. An accused would not admit to his participation in a crime unless he was convinced that the investigator had irrefutable evidence to that effect. He may eventually admit his guilt, but would not implicate anyone else unless he was convinced that they had admitted the true facts. The composite report dealt with a large number of incidents of murder of Allied prisoners of war by the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 12th SS Division immediately after the D-Day landings. For ease of identification, each incident was named after the locality in which the crime was committed. One case seemed to offer the best chance of securing a conviction as not only was there evidence available, but accused and witnesses as well. That case was known as Le Mesnil-Patry 1 and it was submitted as the main evidence against Siebken, the senior SS officer of that regiment then in Allied hands.

Le Mesnil-Patry 1 Within a couple of days of the Allied landings in Normandy, the 2nd Battalion of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 12th SS Division was concentrated in the area of Le Mesnil-Patry. The regimental commander during this incident was Mohnke who had just taken over from Meyer and who had been instrumental in the killings at Wormhoudt four years earlier. Bernhard Siebken, the battalion commander, had his headquarters in the village and on 8 June Doctor Schuett, the battalion medical officer, arrived together with his driver Wimplinger and his senior medical orderly Staff Sergeant Ischner. They established a field dressing station in the farmhouse of the St. Martin family, who were told to leave but were given permission to return during the day to look after the cattle. Heavy fighting was taking place in the area at the time and as the rest of the medical personnel had not yet arrived, Doctor Schuett ordered Fritz Bundschuh and Heinrich Albers, the medical orderlies from two of the companies, to assist him at the dressing station. The first to arrive was Albers who had to join the other members of the dressing station in a slit trench in the garden of the house while an artillery bombardment shook the ground around them. The following morning three Canadian soldiers were taken prisoner in the vicinity of the dressing station, either by Albers or Wimplinger. They were Private Angel of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa and Riflemen Holness and Baskerville of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. Two of the men were wounded, one in the foot and one in the arm, and their wounds were dressed by Albers, who supplied a wooden clog to the man with the injured foot. The presence of the prisoners was soon reported to Bernhard Siebken’s headquarters. On the morning of 9 June Bundschuh arrived at the dressing station, as did Madame St. Martin who came to milk her cows. She was in the house preparing milk for the wounded as the events of the day unfolded. At around 9.00 am Dietrich Schnabel arrived in his Volkswagen and went into the kitchen where he spoke to Doctor Schuett in the presence of Albers, Bundschuh, Ischner, Wimplinger and Madame St. Martin. Schnabel was

Siebken’s orderly officer and he demanded that the prisoners should be shot as the battalion did not have spare transport to send them to the rear. Doctor Schuett, to give him his due, argued with the battalion commander that prisoners of war were not to be shot at the field dressing station. Thereupon Schnabel told the three medical orderlies to take the men outside and shoot them. The three prisoners were motioned to stand and walk out into the yard, with Albers and Bundshuh assisting the wounded man. The orderlies carried machine pistols while Schnabel followed on with his pistol drawn. Madame St. Martin was also ordered by Schnabel to accompany the party. As the prisoners reached the slit trench at the end of the garden they were ordered to stand in a row with their hands on the back of their necks. At this point it is almost certain that they realized what was about to happen. On Schnabel’s command, Albers and Bundschuh opened fire on the helpless men and after they had fallen to the ground the officer stepped forward and fired a shot through the head of each of the victims. The orderlies were instructed to bury the bodies and Madame St. Martin was calmly told that she could go. When A450947 Sturmann Heinrich Albers was in custody in the London District Cage in May 1947, he gave a statement to the war crimes investigators in which he admitted that he and Bundschuh escorted the prisoners to their place of execution. He insisted that the other man shot the prisoners, believing Bundschuh to be dead. However, he was very much alive and in another PoW cage. Investigators were sent to interrogate him. On 3 July 1948, Madame St. Martin also gave a deposition about the events at her farm. She confirmed that the SS officer ordered her to watch the execution; in fact, for a while she thought that they planned to shoot her as well. She thought that four SS men escorted the three prisoners and that all fired at the defenceless men, with the officer firing his revolver into their heads as they lay on the ground. For two or three days afterwards Madame St. Martin kept her head down, literally, as there was much artillery fire in the area. Two or three days later she returned to the farm and saw the corpses of four more British soldiers at the entrance to the yard. One had been shot in the temple. The investigators were initially confused but then decided that at least two

separate executions had taken place at the dressing station. One involved three prisoners shot by four SS men on 9 June and the other was the murder of three other prisoners on 8 June by Bundschuh and possibly Albers. A search was initiated to try to track down any other members of the dressing station. It was eventually discovered that Doctor Schuett had died in Hamburg from blood poisoning, but Bundschuh was discovered in a French prisoner-of-war camp where he was duly interrogated. He admitted the crime but insisted that Albers also shot at the men, a fact corroborated by Madame St. Martin. It was eventually established that Schnabel gave the order for the murder and during a search of the prisoner-of-war cages he was located and arrested. During his first interrogation on 18 June 1948 he did not deny that he was the officer who issued the orders, but insisted that during that period he was so much under the influence of drugs that he was unable to remember his actions. He was later interrogated again in the light of Albers’ and Bundschuh’s depositions and then stated that orders to shoot prisoners of war were issued by the new regimental commander Mohnke and passed on by Siebken. Perhaps realizing that he was implicating his battalion commander, he insisted on consulting a lawyer before he said any more. As he was in custody in the American Zone at the time this was not practical and the interview ended there. Over the following weeks the commander-in-chief intercepted a number of letters from Schnabel to his sister in Hannover, asking her to get in touch with former SS comrades and with Siebken. He asked that a foolproof alibi be prepared for him by former members of the SS in order to put the blame on other officers who had subsequently been killed in action. Bernhard Siebken was also working hard to save himself from the gallows. A note in the pre-trial briefing described him thus: His behaviour and bearing is that of a typical SS officer and he has in fact during his captivity been the Lagerführer of the Number 2 War Criminals Holding Centre. In this capacity he has not only received visits from former members of his battalion, but has also instructed co-accused interned with him on what they should state in evidence and he is known to have

interrogated other accused after their examination by members of this Group. A difficult subject to interrogate, but it is thought that on confrontation with Bundschuh and Schnabel, to whom he had no access since the latters’ arrest, he will be forced to admit his responsibility for issuing the orders for shooting the prisoners of war. The war crimes investigators came to the following conclusions: that a) sometime between 8 and 10 June 1944 Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, gave orders that no further prisoners of war were to be taken, but that they should be shot and that Siebken received this order from Mohnke; b) on 9 June 1944, Bundschuh and Albers shot and killed three Canadian prisoners of war, having received the order to do so from Dietrich Schnabel; c) Schnabel also participated in the killing of these three prisoners of war and that he received the order to do so from the headquarters of the II Battalion; d) Siebken, as commander of the II Battalion, issued the order for the shooting of the prisoners of war or was, as battalion commander, responsible that they were shot. The investigators further recommended that Siebken, Schnabel, Albers and Bundschuh be charged with being concerned in the killing of three Canadian soldiers, prisoners of war at Le Mesnil-Patry on 9 June 1944. The case came to trial at the Curio Haus, Hamburg on 21 October 1948. Both Schnabel and Siebken were found guilty and hanged on 20 January 1949. Albers and Bundschuh were both acquitted. It was considered that they were just private soldiers and may not have had the mental capacity to appreciate that they were carrying out an unlawful act. The result of the trial, which was only the second involving Canadian prisoners murdered in Normandy and the first and only one in which the SS murderers had paid with their lives, was received with indifference in Canada. It was as if the war was long over and the war crimes had to be forgotten. Author’s Note: A number of other murders were believed to have been carried out by Siebken’s battalion of the 26th PGR. They were referred to as the Fontenayle-Pesnel case, Le Mesnil-Patry II, III and IV and Les Saullets I and II.

A number of other cases were attributed to other units of the 12th SS Division. The case names were Le Haut du Bosq, Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse I and II, Cambes/ Anisy, Steinmetz, Authie/Buron, Galmanche, Les Fains, Mouen and, the worst of the lot, the Château d’Audrieu case.

The Le Haut du Bosq Case It was late in the afternoon of 11 June 1944 when three Canadians were led to the regimental headquarters of the 26th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. They had been laying mines when they were attacked and were captured when the enemy got behind them, cutting off their escape route. Sappers Ionel and Benner and Rifleman Owns of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles might have thought twice about surrendering if they had realized that the enemy who faced them was the 12th SS Panzer Division (Hitlerjugend). The Hitler Youth who filled its ranks were young but tough and were being taught their job by battlehardened officers and NCOs who had learned their trade in Russia. The three men were turned over to two members of the Feldgendarmerie, military police attached to the regimental headquarters. They were taken to the entrance of the regimental headquarters and were told to wait. Soon, none other than the regimental commander appeared, Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke. An interpreter was summoned and for fifteen to twenty minutes Mohnke interrogated the three men, while the adjutant Hauptsturmführer Kaiser looked on. The regimental commander appeared to be very angry and was shouting and gesticulating while the men were stripped of their identity discs and personal possessions. When Mohnke had finished his interrogation, the two members of the Feldgendarmerie saluted with a loud ‘Heil Hitler’ and marched the three prisoners back in the direction of Allied lines, following a line of hedges towards a very large bomb crater in a meadow about 300 metres away. As the men drew level with the crater the NCO of the Feldgendarmerie suddenly opened fire from behind with his machine pistol. He fired a long burst of about twenty-five rounds and all the prisoners fell to the ground, mortally wounded. Single shots rang out as the NCO or the Sturmann or both

delivered the coup de grace and then they turned and jogged back to the headquarters. At no time had the prisoners attempted to escape. The execution was watched by officers of the regiment including Mohnke as they stood outside their headquarters. None attempted to intervene. Other members of the 26th SS Grenadiers witnessed the incident, including Obergrenadier Withold Stangenberg, a member of the Motorcycle Platoon of Headquarters Company. Shortly thereafter the regimental headquarters was moved to a new location about 800 metres away. Stangenberg was captured two weeks later and gave particulars of the atrocity when he was interrogated in July 1944. Almost a year would pass before he was examined in detail under oath in June 1945. By then the war had been over for a month and Stangenberg stated that he could find the location of the scene if he was taken back to Normandy. On 19 July 1945 he identified the area where the headquarters had been and the general location of the execution. Within days the area had been searched by members of the 2nd Canadian Graves Concentration Unit and at the exact spot where the regimental headquarters had stood they found the identity disc of Sapper Ionel. The three bodies were found the next day, covered in a layer of mud at the bottom of the bomb crater. Some 8ft of water had to be pumped out of the hole before the investigators could get to the bottom. The men could not be identified individually and were buried in Brettevillesur-Laize cemetery as Unknown Soldiers 351/352/353. The case suffered a severe setback, however, in early 1946 when Withold Stangenberg, who was the only surviving eye-witness to Mohnke’s instructions to murder the men, was returned to Poland. One wonders how serious the Canadians really were in pursuing the killers of their men.

The Château d’Audrieu Murders On 9 June, British forces seized the Château d’Audrieu, a large country mansion owned by Philippe Level, a French Air Force pilot. On their arrival the niece of the owner showed them the bodies of thirteen Canadian soldiers

laying in a row against a fence. Each had been shot in the head from close range. An investigation was begun by the Canadian 1st Army and they were more than a little annoyed when General Eisenhower appointed an American general to head the court of enquiry. The finding of the court of enquiry was that one Canadian officer, twentythree Canadian soldiers and two British soldiers met their deaths at or near the Château d’Audrieu, Calvados, Normandy on or about 8 June 1944. The investigation established that the château had been occupied by the headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 12th SS Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Sturmbannführer Brehmer. Advancing towards them was a battalion from the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the 7th Battalion, the Green Howards. When the Germans arrived and set up their command post under a large sycamore tree near the château, the fighting was taking place about 1 kilometre away. The four companies of the Winnipeg Rifles had been under attack during the night by patrols of Germans but were still in place on the morning of 8 June. At around 1000 hours ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies came under heavy attack and ‘A’ Company was overrun by tanks accompanied by infantry. The attack passed through ‘B’ Company and drove ‘C’ Company out of the village of Putot-en-Bessin. ‘D’ Company and battalion headquarters were still holding on that evening when friendly artillery finally opened up and a counter-attack by other units drove the enemy back. From midday onwards a steady stream of Canadian prisoners was brought in from the fighting around Putot-en-Bessin. Beatrice Delafon watched from a window in the château as three prisoners were taken to the command post under the sycamore tree. She went outside and sat down and saw the three men being marched away into the trees. As she went back into the château she heard three shots coming from the same direction. Shortly afterwards three more prisoners suffered the same fate. At around 1630 hours a party of British soldiers was seen near a henhouse on the estate by Léon Leseigneur. They were surrounded by German soldiers at the time and were unarmed with their tunics unbuttoned. When other witnesses walked past the spot half an hour later they saw around ten dead men lying on their backs near the hedge. That afternoon a German

soldier smoking British cigarettes came to the château kitchen and said ‘Tommy kaput’, at the same time making a throat-cutting gesture. A fourth group of seven bodies was later found in the château grounds. At around 2130 hours that day Allied artillery shells began to land in the area of the château as the counter-attack began. The SS ammunition dump and several vehicles were destroyed and the unit made a hasty retreat. It is believed that Brehmer the unit commander was wounded at this time, as Hauptsturmführer Reitzenstein was known to have been in command the following day. These were not the only men from the Winnipeg Rifles to be murdered in that area. It was the 2nd Battalion of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment who had overrun Putot-en-Bessin on 8 June and scores of prisoners had been taken. One group of about forty men was marched south from the town and kept in a barn near the battalion headquarters at Le Mesnil-Patry. Late in the afternoon the march continued until near dusk when they were herded into a field at Fontenay-le-Pesnel and told to sit down. After a while a vehicle stopped and two officers joined the guards, who began to spread out in a line. Some of the men including Weldon Clark realized what was about to happen and prepared to run away. As two of the Canadian officers began to rise to try to talk to the Germans, they opened fire into the group of prisoners. Clark took to his heels and managed to get away, with the sounds of his comrades’ cries following him into the darkness. On 3 May 1945 a mass grave containing thirty-one of the Canadians was found near the area and four more were discovered in a shallow grave nearby. It was the largest massacre of Canadian servicemen in Europe. Although suspicion fell on Siebken’s 2nd Battalion, it would prove impossible to locate the murderers and produce enough evidence to convict them. The case would never come to trial. The murders at the château had clearly taken place on the orders of the unit commander Gerhard Brehmer, probably with the assistance of his second-in-command Graf von Reitzenstein. The latter was taken prisoner by the French after the war but released due to lack of evidence. On 19 March 1952, the French military tribunal at Rennes issued a ruling discontinuing any investigation.

The North Nova Scotia Highlanders Captain Joseph Austin Trainor had been a member of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders for almost four years when he came ashore at Normandy on 6 June 1944. He was now second-in-command of ‘Able’ (‘A’) Company and he was filled with apprehension as he led his men inland on 7 June. The Highlanders passed through Buron and continued along the Buron-Carpiquet road towards Authie. Their objective was the Carpiquet Airport. By 1400 hours their advance had been stalled by enemy shellfire and panzers had appeared on their right flank, cutting them off from the rest of the battalion. Captain Trainor was with company headquarters as the fighting intensified all around them. The radio had been hit by shrapnel and was now useless and when the Bren gun on their left flank suddenly fell silent, Trainor realized that the end was near. Before he knew it, the enemy was upon them, immediately identifiable as SS troops by their cap badges. The captain and those around him raised their hands and stood stock still while the men in camouflaged uniforms disarmed and searched them. Money, cigarettes and personal effects were stolen; in fact, everything was taken except their identity discs and clothes. Following shouted commands and the liberal application of rifle butts, the fifteen or so Highlanders began their march to Abbaye d’Ardenne, arriving at around 1700 hours. It was a traumatic march to L’Abbaye, with the SS moving about the area shooting the Canadian wounded who were lying on the ground. As they were leaving the Authie area Captain Trainor heard a distinct gunshot and turned around to see Lance Corporal Taylor clutching his stomach where one of the guards had just shot him. Sergeant W.L. McKay was another ‘A’ Company Highlander who witnessed atrocities that day. As the company moved up to reinforce ‘C’ Company’s position, an enemy bullet went through the muscle of his right arm and another went straight through his face, causing him to black out for a few minutes. When McKay came to, he was being searched by a German soldier wearing a camouflaged suit with a parachute wing sewn above his left pocket. An escaped prisoner who had fought in North Africa against these men identified the unit as the 21st Panzer Grenadier Regiment.

After relinquishing all his personal possessions McKay was led away towards Authie village by another German soldier. When they reached the centre of the village the soldier motioned McKay into a doorway and ducked around the corner into an alleyway between the buildings. As McKay looked around him, he noticed Corporal Davidson and seven other Highlanders from ‘C’ Company sitting across the street, guarded by three Germans in camouflaged suits. McKay estimated the distance between them as about three times the width of the road, in the middle of which stood two more German guards. Suddenly the two guards opened fire on the sitting men and they collapsed under a hail of bullets. Two of them were tipped backwards by the impact of the bullets and another guard came along and pushed them to the edge of the road with the others. The dead men would later be dragged into the road where passing tanks and trucks would destroy the evidence of the awful crime. McKay had only been standing in the doorway for about five minutes when his guard returned and motioned for him to start walking towards the north. Did he spare his life by hiding him in the doorway or was there another reason for leaving him there? No one will ever know. The sergeant and his captor walked for another 200 to 300 yards until another group of prisoners came in sight. As McKay got closer he heard someone say ‘There’s Bill coming’ and then saw Lance Corporal Taylor grip his stomach and turn around in a circle. This was the incident also witnessed by Captain Trainor. As McKay neared his comrades Major Rhodenizer, the company commander, came over and asked if he would like some morphine for the pain of his wounds. As McKay turned to speak to him, he saw Corporal Arsenault grab his stomach and fall down on his face. The guard that had been standing behind the corporal then moved around to the side, raised a pistol and shot the prone NCO once again. McKay rejoined those of his comrades who had not been murdered by their captors and marched along with them to the abbey where the wounded were loaded on carts. One of their own stretcher-bearers administered morphine to the wounded and eventually a French ambulance came to take

them to hospital. Taylor died two days later. Two months later, Sergeant McKay escaped from captivity and with the help of the French Underground made his way back to Allied lines. By October he was back with his unit and would live to testify at the war crimes trial the following year. It was eventually established that in the Authie-Buron area a total of twenty-eight Canadians had been murdered in thirteen separate incidents. So common were the incidents that it suggested either direction or approval from the senior German officers. It must be mentioned in this chapter that more than a few Germans claimed to have received reports of German prisoners being killed by Canadian and American troops. However, murdering prisoners of war by way of reprisal is still not acceptable under the Geneva Convention. It must also be remembered that many of the SS officers and men had had years of experience of killing defenceless prisoners, whether they be men, women or children. As if the arbitrary murders of the prisoners was not enough to contend with, the column of prisoners was attacked by three American Mustang fighters on 11 June as they marched along the road towards Condé. Both Germans and Canadians dived towards the nearest cover, but there were few hiding-places. Fourteen Canadians were killed and thirty-five others wounded.

CHAPTER NOTES General: Brode, Patrick, Casual Slaughters and Accidental Judgements (1997)

The Hemevez Murders:

PRO WO219/5045

The Hérouvillette Case: PRO WO309/101

Friendly Fire: US National Archives, Washington (NARA Record Group 24, file W-II)

A Particularly Nasty Bunch of Killers: PRO WO309/25

Le Mesnil-Patry 1: PRO WO309/25 PRO WO235/570

The Le Haut du Bosq Case: PRO WO309/318

The Château d’Audrieu Murders: PRO WO219/5045

PRO WO311/92 The victims found in the grounds of the château included the following: Major F.E. Hodge, Corporal G.E. Meakin, Lance Corporals A.R. Fuller, F.U. Meaking and W. Poho, Riflemen W.C. Adams, E. Bishoff, L. Chartrand 41247, L. Chartrand 41994, S.J. Cresswell, A.A. Fagnon, D.S. Gold, R.J. Harper, H.A. Labrecque, S. Lawrence, J.L. Lychowich, J.D. McIntosh, R. Mutch, F.E. Ostir, H. Rodgers, S. Slywchuk, F. Smith and W. Thomas, all from the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, and Private F.D. Harrison from the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, Private E. Hayton of the Durham Light Infantry and W. Barlow from the 50th British Division.

The North Nova Scotia Highlanders: PRO WO235/595

Kurt Meyer in his prison cell. He faced five charges and was found guilty on three counts. He was sentenced to death, but this was reduced to life imprisonment and he was released in 1954.

Prisoners from the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, some of whom were murdered on 14 June 1944 by the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. Most Canadians who came ashore on D-Day had not been in combat before.

Kurt Meyer, commander of the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment.

A memorial in the garden of the Abbaye d’Ardenne commemorating the Canadian prisoners of war murdered in its grounds.

Long lines of American dead after D-Day.

British prisoners taken by the SS Panzer Hitlerjugend Division on 21 June 1944.

Pictures of some of the Canadians murdered at the Abbaye d’Ardenne on the wall of one of the buildings.

A wartime photo of the Château d’Audrieu, the scene of the murders of twenty-five Canadian and British prisoners of war.

General Eisenhower talking about the forthcoming invasion with American paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division. By the time they were pulled out of the line in the middle of July 1944, of the 6,600 men 868 had been killed in action, 2,000 wounded and hundreds taken prisoner. Some of them would be murdered by their captors.

Kurt Meyer, Fritz Witt and Max Wünsche in the grounds of the Abbaye d’Ardenne around the time of the murders.

Chapter 12

The Arnhem Murders

Murder on the Hospital Steps

R

everend Buchanan was taken prisoner on 19 September and was permitted by the Germans to remain in the Arnhem Municipal Hospital to assist in the care of the wounded. At least three Royal Army Medical Corps doctors were also in the hospital, although one was shortly to lose his life. On the evening of 24 September, Reverend Buchanan met Captain Brownscombe at the hospital entrance. He was in the company of a Danish SS corporal from a propaganda unit: 5 Company, Skorpion West of the SS Standarte Kurt Eggers war correspondent’s brigade. The SS man was clearly drunk. He waved away his driver and then began brandishing his dagger and revolver in an apparently joking manner. Brownscombe said to Buchanan: ‘Take no notice of the revolver as he has fired off all his shots.’ Later though, he asked the Dane if he could hit a target that he indicated. Buchanan took this to mean that Brownscombe was not satisfied that the revolver was empty. The Dane apparently remarked: ‘You fellows can make off now as there is no guard, but I would not advise you to do so.’ He then continued talking to the two officers for a further forty minutes before walking into the hospital where he sat on the bottom step of the stairs. Reverend Buchanan remembered that there were two Dutch doctors upstairs together with the other two RAMC doctors, Captains Logan and

Devlin. As the Dane had insulted the two Dutchmen earlier in the day, Buchanan went up the stairs and along the corridor to warn them that the very intoxicated Dane was in the building. When Buchanan returned to the lower corridor he could not see Captain Brownscombe or the Dane and after checking the ward he walked outside the hospital entrance where he found Brownscombe lying in a pool of blood. No one else was in sight. Brownscombe died a few minutes later without regaining consciousness. Needless to say, suspicion fell on the Danish SS NCO. Captain Brian Devlin later recalled that the man spoke excellent English with a marked American accent. He had been born in Denmark, was the son of a parson and had lived in America for several years. Brownscombe and the Dane had met a day or so previously and on the 24th he returned to the hospital with another SS officer and carrying some bottles of alcohol. It seems that the SS men had a few drinks with the British officers and then left after an hour or so, promising to return later. This he did, returning at around 7.00 pm with Captain Brownscombe who had apparently been drinking with the Dane. Devlin then went upstairs and was there when Reverend Buchanan came to find him at 9.00 pm to report that Brownscombe had been shot. Nothing more could be done for Brownscombe and he was duly buried. The Dane returned to the hospital two days later to insist to Devlin that he had not shot the officer, but a passing German soldier had seen him talking to Brownscombe and thought they were two escaping British soldiers and had fired at them. The Dane alleged that he had pursued the soldier and had him arrested. It was not a very good alibi, but who could call him a liar under the circumstances? The incident was reported at the end of the war and the Dane, now identified as Knud Flemming Helweg-Larsen, was tracked down. On 13 December 1945 he made a statement in Copenhagen prison where he was being held on other charges for crimes committed when he was a member of the SS Viking Division. Larsen stated that he visited the hospital the day before the fatal shooting, accompanied by his company commander SS Obersturmführer Ernst Beisel

and Oberscharführer Lerche. Together with the three British medical officers and the two chaplains they went to the mess room and drank some bottles of red wine, apricot brandy and whisky. The conversation was apparently friendly and the Dane acted as interpreter for his two German comrades. Eventually the SS men left, but Larsen had returned with some more wine and the drinking continued until dusk. Larsen invited Captain Brownscombe back to his billet for a last drink and to show him that the SS were not as bad as English propaganda made out. He accepted the invitation and they left in Larsen’s car. There were about ten men in the billet and they drank and sang English and German songs. When they were finished Larsen was not fit to drive the car himself, so a driver took him and Captain Brownscombe back to the hospital. Larsen claimed that he and the captain stood outside the hospital and talked for a long time. They were both getting rather maudlin and kept shaking hands and patting each other on the back. Larsen described what happened next in his own words: At last we were going to say a final goodbye and while we were gripping hands Captain Brownscombe fell down in front of me and lay face-up on his back. I could not realize what had happened. It was a matter of seconds before I realized I had heard a shot. I thought we were absolutely alone. Lerche came up from the direction of some bushes in the shadow, holding a Luger pistol in his hand. (My weapon was a .45 Colt as the English officers know.) It was all like a confused dream. I stared at him and asked: ‘What is this all about – what has happened?’ Lerche approached, saying ‘Come on – let’s get going.’ I said: ‘What have you done?’ and he repeated: ‘Come on, I’ll explain.’ Lerche said: ‘Yes, I shot him straight through the head.’ He added that he had shot a Russian in the same way with the same gun on the Eastern Front. I said it was different in the case of Bolsheviks; Captain Brownscombe had been our guest and Lerche himself had drunk with him. I asked what we were going to do about it as we could not leave him lying there. Then Lerche told me that all the English in the hospital were being moved

and we must leave at once as the town was being evacuated. He gripped me by the arm and led me to the car, feeling quite stunned. I was the more shocked not only because of the good time that Captain Brownscombe and I had spent together that day, but because Lerche was an old friend of mine who had been kind to me as a recruit when he was my Unterscharführer in the Waffen SS. He was the last man of whom I should have expected such a thing. The perpetrator of the crime was never established. The war crimes investigators tracked down Lerche’s wife, who stated that she had not heard from him since March 1945. She also suggested that he might be in the Russian Zone. The JAG concluded that he was very likely killed during the last few weeks of the war. Apparently members of the Wehrmacht were believed to have killed a number of SS men in Holland. As for Larsen, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Dane, committed in Denmark, and he was executed there on 7 January 1946.

Massacre in the 3-Tonner Major Charles Gough was serving with the 1st Airborne Squadron Reconnaissance Regiment with the 1st Airborne Division when he was captured in the Arnhem bridgehead on 21 September 1944. Together with other prisoners he was passed back from the front-line troops of the SS Division Hohenstaufen to the Provost Section of that division. On the afternoon of the 23rd the German military police began to evacuate the large number of prisoners by lorry. As he climbed into the lorry Gough observed that it was similar to a 3tonner and contained twenty other officers and three other ranks. The guards comprised a driver and two SS men in the cab with one other standing on the running board on the nearside. In the back with the prisoners were two Luftwaffe guards. The engine coughed into life and the truck moved off with a lurch, jolting the prisoners in the back.

One of the other prisoners in the back was Tony Hibbert, the brigade major of the 1st Parachute Brigade. Hibbert had volunteered for No. 2 Parachute Commando in 1940 and by 1944 he was desperate to get to grips with the enemy. General Montgomery approved an operation code-named MARKET GARDEN, an ambitious undertaking to cut through Holland and encircle the German munitions production centre in the Ruhr. If it worked, it would bring the war to an end within months. Two American airborne divisions would drop on Eindhoven and Nijmegen and a British airborne division would drop near Arnhem. The aim of all three divisions was to capture seven bridges across various rivers to facilitate the advance of the Guards Armoured Division which would follow up and consolidate the gains made by the paratroopers. Tony Hibbert and the 1st Parachute Brigade had the job of holding the bridge over the lower Rhine at Arnhem for forty-eight hours until the ground troops arrived. In an interview more than fifty years later he mentioned that he was taken to one side after the briefing by intelligence officer Major Brian Urquhart who expressed his doubts that the operation would be successful. Reports were coming in that two SS Panzer divisions were re-equipping in the area and that meant 20,000 troops with armoured vehicles. General Browning, the Airborne Corps commander, was determined that the operation would go ahead and on Sunday, 17 September 1944 streams of transport aircraft crossed the Dutch coast and began to drop sticks of paratroopers over the target areas. The two American divisions captured their objectives because they chose to drop their paratroops directly onto the bridges themselves, thus making maximum use of the element of surprise. The British, however, decided to drop their troops several miles away and by the time they had regrouped and marched to the bridge they found the enemy entrenched at the far end. Due to fierce enemy resistance, only one of the three battalions made it to the bridge. The paratroops occupied the houses at their end of the bridge and fought off all attempts by the Germans to turn them out. Unfortunately the ground troops were taking longer to reach them than planned and they were on their own. They held out for two days until the cellars were packed with wounded men and the ammunition was almost finished. Then the order was given to

split up into small groups and to try to make it to Allied lines. Major Hibbert and a war correspondent found a small coal shed and hid underneath the coal in the hope that they could remain undetected and escape the next day. However, it was not to be; they were discovered and taken prisoner. As the lorry negotiated a bend in the road near Brunnen, Major Hibbert and Major Munford of the Light Regiment, Royal Artillery, vaulted over the side of the open lorry and ran for their lives. At the same moment another lorry coming in the opposite direction saw what was happening and signalled the driver to stop. Two SS men from the oncoming lorry ran off in pursuit of the two escapees while the SS man on the running board jumped down and ran to the back of the lorry. He was joined by another SS man and without further ado they opened fire on the helpless prisoners in the back of the vehicle. A hail of bullets swept the inside of the lorry, killing Lieutenant Platt from the Reconnaissance Squadron, an unknown glider pilot officer, one of the other ranks and a Luftwaffe guard. Lieutenant T.V. McNabb of the Reconnaissance Squadron and Private McCracknell, the batman of Captain Panter of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, were wounded and later died. Major A. Cotterell, the official War Office reporter, was among others wounded. By now the SS guards were very excited and ordered the uninjured prisoners out of the lorry and made them sit in a semi-circle on the road with their hands above their heads. Within a few minutes Major Munford had been recaptured and returned to the scene. At this point an Oberleutnant from the intelligence service came on the scene and calmed down the excited SS men. In all probability he prevented a worsening of the situation. Apparently he spoke excellent English and had worked in England before the war. He discussed the situation with Major Gough, the senior officer present, and promised him safe conduct if no other prisoner tried to escape. When Gough agreed, he ordered that the dead and wounded be put on another truck and they drove on to Zutphen where the wounded were treated at a Luftwaffe dressing station. By February 1947 the War Crimes Group, North-West Europe had the name of the SS man who had fired into the back of the truck. He was SS

Unterscharführer Rudolf Matzke. At that time he was in the custody of No. 3 Team, Field Investigation Section at HQ BAOR and the group captain in charge of the group was pressing them to give some priority to the investigation. It transpired that Major Hibbert got clean away. He joined up with the Dutch Resistance and rounded up 134 escapees who made it back to their own side. As this book was being researched in 2001, the 85-year-old former wine merchant Hibbert and his wife were living near Falmouth. He had six children and ten grandchildren. A second escape took place on 25 September when Major Anthony Cotterell got away after having been wounded by the indiscriminate shooting into the back of the truck. Sergeant E.E.G. Atkinson later told war crimes investigators: I was treated for a shoulder wound at Zutphen hospital. We were ordered to leave and go to a collecting centre which was about 2 miles away. This short march took place at dusk and there were about 200 men who could be marched, including officers, a padre and a couple of MOs. There was a halt after a short distance had been covered and some of the column stopped by a wood. It was whispered that some of the officers and men were going to make a break for it. On arriving at the collecting centre we discovered that three officers and seven men had gone. I can remember a Major Cotterell being with us when we started the march because he had wounds in the left thigh and shoulder and a head injury which had been dressed by the Dutch nurse who had helped me on with my jacket. I am certain that he was one of those three officers that escaped at about 8.30 to 9.00 pm. The other men in the column marched 1 mile further to a level crossing and boarded a train for Germany and captivity. Unfortunately nothing more was heard from Major Cotterell and by September 1946 the investigators had come to the conclusion that he had either died of exhaustion, was shot when trying to cross the Rhine or any other line of defence, or drowned when trying to cross the Rhine. The latter fact seemed to be the most likely as the Graves Search Bureau could not find any graves in the area that fit the

description of Major Cotterell. As the war crimes investigation progressed it was determined that Unterscharführer Rudolf Matzke was a member of the Feld Ersatz Battalion, a field reserve unit of the 9th SS Panzer Division. When the landings at Arnhem took place, Matzke and other members of the battalion occupied a house or possibly a former hotel in the western part of Arnhem that was to be used as a prisoner-of-war collecting centre. On the seventh or eighth day of the fighting around Arnhem, a party of ten to fifteen prisoners was brought to the collecting centre. Just afterwards the RAF carried out a raid on the headquarters of the battalion, located about 200 yards away. The raid lasted ten to fifteen minutes and during that time the prisoners took cover in a cellar in the house, together with their German guards. After the all-clear had been given and the guards had reassembled outside the house, Sturmann Herbert Bresemann saw a very excited Matzke throw a hand grenade into the cellar, saying something about ‘those bloody dogs’, referring to the prisoners still in the cellar. It is not known whether any of them were killed or injured, but this was hardly unavoidable. It was prisoners from this collecting centre who were being taken to the rear on 23 September when the incident with the shooting in the back of the truck took place. Another of the Feld Ersatz members tracked down at the end of the war was Alfons Diehl. He described himself as an army sergeant rather than an SS man and after release from his prison camp he obtained a job as a motor mechanic at a civilian internment camp in the US Zone of Germany. He was arrested and taken to the London District Cage where he made a statement about Matzke. He confirmed that Bresemann was the only person to see Matzke throw the hand grenade into the cellar and then made the startling announcement that Matzke was in fact dead. He said that Hauptscharführer Schwegler was with Matzke when he died and that he had been captured by US Forces in January 1945. While orders were given for investigators to find Schwegler, another name came to light: that of Unterscharführer Fritz Dahl. Apparently he had always been together with Matzke at Arnhem and may be able to throw some light on the identity of the second SS man who opened

fire on the prisoners in the back of the truck. On 3 June 1947 No. 3 Team of the Field Investigation Section was detailed to interrogate Dahl, who was now a member of the German police at Solingen. They were to ask him for confirmation of Matzke’s alleged death, to clarify whether anyone else was involved in the hand-grenade incident at the house, what casualties had resulted from the act and whether any other guard was involved in the shooting into the truck. The investigator was also instructed to make enquiries with the local field security officer at Solingen to ascertain why Dahl was permitted to work with the German police because as a former SS man he came into the automatic arrest category. The final result of these enquiries is not known.

I did not know they were British Officers During the first week of October 1944 SS Rottenführer Karl Denner was instructed by Heinemann, the deputy chief of the Aussenstelle (Field Office), to interrogate two British officers. He took Breit with him to the upstairs room. The questioning did not take long: the two men had landed in the Arnhem region on 17 September and were taken prisoner during the battle. While being transported to Germany they escaped, obtained some civilian clothes and tried to make their way back to Allied lines near Nijmegen. Denner did not even bother to make a note of the two officers’ names. As far as he was concerned they would soon be handed over to the Wehrmacht and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. This had happened in the past when members of Allied air-crews fell into their hands. After about twenty minutes Heinemann, accompanied by SD police clerks Carl Rappard and Kurt Roters, entered the room and asked Denner how the interrogation was proceeding. He repeated what the two officers had already told him. Heinemann then took out a map and asked the prisoners where they had obtained their civilian clothes. They gestured vaguely at the AlmeloOotmarsum region and Heinemann stated: ‘We will never know that.’ He told Rappard and Roters to take the prisoners with them and followed them out of the door.

As the door closed, Breit turned to Denner and said: ‘They will surely be executed.’ Denner had recently had an operation on his rectum and went to lie down on his bed in his room. A couple of minutes later he heard the sound of shots from an MP and put on his tunic and went downstairs. He walked out into the garden and saw a freshly-dug grave with the two officers lying on top of each other. A paper sack of lime was being thrown over the bodies and men were standing nearby with spades waiting to fill the grave with earth. It was June 1945 when Major William Addinall of the Intelligence Corps was taken from The Hague to Bathmen in Holland to meet a Dutchman named Jansen. He told the war crimes investigator how he had sheltered two British officers in October 1944 whose names he knew as Lieutenants Machiel Cambier and Raymond Bussell. He gave the men two of his civilian suits and saw them off in the direction of the British lines. He did not know the ultimate fate of the two men, so Addinall set off for the police station at Vorden. The policemen informed the officer that the two men were buried in the cemetery at Vorden and that a certain Dutchman by the name of Rappard, who was then languishing in the Utrecht jail, would be able to show them the site of the original grave. Rappard did as required and showed the investigators where the men had been buried in the Burgomeister’s (mayor’s) garden before they were exhumed and moved to the cemetery. Major Addinall visited the cemetery and spoke to the grave-digger who showed him the remains of two civilian suits that had been badly torn and burned with lime. He took the suits to Bathmen and showed them to Jansen, who immediately identified them as the two suits he had given to the British officers. In March 1946, while still in custody, SS Obersturmführer Ludwig Heinemann wrote out his life story. It was meant to elicit the sympathy of the reader and to convince him that he was incapable of such a dastardly deed. Reading between the lines, however, it soon becomes obvious that Heinemann was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. As an idealistic 16-year-old he had joined the NSDAP in 1926 and became a member of the SS in 1930. His party number was 4629, relatively low in a party that measured the loyalty of its recruits by their low membership numbers.

At the start of the campaign in Poland in September 1939, Heinemann worked for the commandant of the Sicherheitspolizei in Crakow, SS Obersturmbannführer Dr Ludwig Hahn, who was shot by the Polish Resistance during the occupation of Warsaw. He claimed to have done nothing during the twelve months he was in Poland that might be of interest to war crimes investigators. If that is true, he was probably the only SS man in that country without blood on his hands. In June 1940 he requested a transfer to Holland to be nearer to his wife who lived just over the border. He was now no longer attached to the Gestapo but to the SD, working for the Dienststelle BDS Netherland, the commander of the security police and SD in The Hague. Arriving in September 1940, he was attached to Department 3 of the SD and tasked with keeping a watch over cultural and artistic institutions and clubs, artistic performances, cinemas, cabarets and exhibitions. He later became involved in the closingdown of the universities of Leiden and Delft and the student clubs in those towns and the arrests of such people as artists and actors. He claimed that there was no Dutchman who could say that between 1940 and 1944 he personally harmed him spitefully. In April 1944 he was transferred from The Hague to Arnhem where his wife joined him as their home had been destroyed by bombing. His job there was to prepare the cases of offences by the churches and their representatives and was involved in the destruction of the main headquarters in Holland of the Roman Catholic Resistance organization ‘Christopher’. He authorized the arrest of forty people and claimed that as far as he knew all of them were still alive, although some of them were taken to the Hertogenbosch concentration camp. In September 1944 he was transferred to the Dienststelle BDS Arnhem at Vorden as deputy chief to SS Hauptsturmführer Thomsen. While Thomsen controlled the outlying detachments of the organization, Heinemann commanded the rear party of five German and thirty Dutch personnel. Their targets were members of the Dutch Resistance who would be arrested and sent to concentration camps inside Germany. When Resistance activities intensified after the Arnhem landings, stricter measures were announced by the Reichskommissar and his deputy SS Gruppenführer Rauter. Heinemann

was told to arrest some hostages in Gorssel and if the Resistance leader Jan Berghuis and the mayor of Gorssel did not give themselves up, the hostages would be shot. The ultimatum expired and the six Dutchmen were shot. At least two further incidents of shooting of hostages or suspected Resistance members took place on Heinemann’s orders. When the war came to an end Heinemann took on the identity of a Luftwaffe Home Guard corporal with the name of Schmitz. All his colleagues were adopting similar measures as members of the SS fell into the automatic arrest category. A doctor removed the tattooed blood group from under his arm and false identity papers helped to keep up his disguise. On 13 July 1945 he was released from Allied custody and went into hiding. War crimes investigators were soon on his trail and his wife was jailed for three months for misleading the British authorities. Meanwhile, Heinemann lived in the same way as the Dutch Resistance members he used to hunt by forging identity papers and stealing ration cards. In March 1946 his luck ran out and he was arrested by the police. Ludwig Heinemann was tried at Zutphen on 10 December 1946. It was a special court for the trial of war criminals known as Bljzonder Gerechtshof consisting of three Dutch judges and two Dutch army officers. The evidence for the prosecution was obtained by No. 2 War Crimes Investigation Team, together with evidence from Roters who had been arrested by the Dutch. Although Heinemann did not deny the shooting, he stated that he did not know the two men were British officers. This defence was torn apart by the evidence of the prosecution. It became clear in the course of the evidence that Heinemann had shot one of the two, probably Bussell, and Roters had shot Cambier. There was a plea in Bar of Trial lodged at the start of the proceedings on two assumptions. The first was that Heinemann was a prisoner of war and as such the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Convention applied and he could only be tried in the manner laid down by the Convention. The second was that the new Dutch law under which he was being tried specified that the persons to whom the law applied must be proved to have helped the enemy. As the accused himself was an enemy, counsel pleaded, the people whom Heinemann had helped were his friends.

Both these submissions were overruled and Heinemann virtually threw up his defence, stating that he had nothing to say. He was sentenced to be shot.

No Surrender This incident did not take place during the Arnhem operation, but occurred soon afterwards on the Arnhem-Nijmegen railway line. It is included because of the interesting precedents set by the trial. Major D.I.M. Robbins was commanding ‘C’ Company of the 4th Wiltshires on the morning of 3 October 1944. He was with half a dozen men of his company who were clearing up a German position. They had just crossed a railway track and in a ditch on the other side they took about thirty prisoners. They advanced another 30 or 40 yards and Robbins stationed some of his men on the left of a track as he crossed over it and went to investigate a slit trench that was covered by a German gas cape. He discovered two Germans under the cape and called on them to surrender. One climbed out of the trench and the other put his hands up. Satisfied that the two men were surrendering, Major Robbins turned to look at the other trenches in the vicinity. He found another trench containing two Germans covered by a British gas cape. After some hesitation the soldier facing him raised his hands while the other appeared to be pulling the gas cape away from his head. At this time the major was only 2 or 3 yards away from the trench. As Major Robbins looked over his shoulder to call a soldier to take charge of the prisoners, the German with his hands up pulled out a pistol and fired two or three shots at the officer. One of the rounds hit Robbins in the right index finger and then travelled on to strike his belt and side. As he fell to the ground, he shouted to Lieutenant Sanderson to shoot the Germans and he ran to the trench and emptied the remainder of the rounds in his Sten gun into the trench. Major Robbins was taken back to the dressing station to have his wounds attended to and was not aware that the two Germans had survived. Lieutenant Sanderson was later killed in action. Unsurprisingly Major Robbins was not

amused by his brush with death and a military court was convened at Wuppertal on 17 October 1945 to try former Lieutenant Hans Werner Wandke of the 156th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. Before the court, Wandke described the events leading up to the incident and his subsequent capture: On the morning of 3rd October 1944 I occupied a defensive position with my platoon along the railway line from Arnhem to Nijmegen. All the time we were under light mortar fire and tanks fired at us with their machine guns and with fragmentation bombs. It was not possible to find out exactly where the tank was situated. I told my men not to fire in order not to betray our position. However, the tank must have recognised us as it set fire to the railway guard’s shed and sprayed bullets along the railway embankment. This lasted for about two hours, then suddenly, when I took the opportunity to make some observations, I noticed a tank moving slowly along a path, whilst, at the same time, shooting continuously. The path ran at right angles to the railway. I now realized that the British were attacking and I called to my men to open fire as soon as infantry could be observed. However, as the tank kept on shooting continuously, none of my men dared to lift their heads above their holes, and, as far as I can remember, only the MG farthest to my left fired a few rounds. Then I realized that British infantry were advancing under cover of the tank and of a small pine nursery. The noise of the fighting emanated entirely from the tank which, in the meantime, had advanced some 50 metres. British infantry opened out and called on my soldiers to surrender. They did so without exception, were disarmed and led back. Up to that moment I had not been discovered. It appeared as though the British thought they had already captured everybody, i.e. the whole platoon. But about ten men advanced further, I presume to investigate the railway guard’s shed. As to myself, I fully realized that there was only one way out for me, namely to defend myself to the last round in order to be able to square my conscience. I was quite calm at that time. I took my pistol from the holster; it was a Czech model, calibre 7.65mm and my only armament. My medical orderly told me that it was completely useless to shoot now and I explained to

him that I, as an officer, was bound to do so. I knelt down and shot right into the huddle of infantrymen at a distance of about 10 metres. They recognized me and advanced upon me from all sides. I hit one of them, the one nearest to me, but it appeared that the bullet did not penetrate through the uniform. The British soldiers wore greatcoats. At the moment when I fired the first round, my medical orderly jumped out of the hole shouting, ‘Sir, stop shooting’ and surrendered. After that I fired another one or two rounds. At the same time, the same British soldier at whom I had fired opened fire himself, and another threw a hand-grenade. I received a shot through my left upper arm, the hand-grenade exploded on my steel helmet and a splinter went into my left hand, which produced shockeffect. Under this effect I dropped my revolver – of the 8 rounds some 2 or 3 were left in the magazine – and surrendered by raising myself up in my hole and lifting my right arm. At the same time or a few seconds earlier, the two Unteroffiziers surrendered as well. They had remained all the time under cover in their hole and did not fire a single round. I then advanced some ten steps with raised right arm and, upon reaching the railway embankment, was ‘dressed’ by a British medical orderly. A guard led me, the Unteroffizier and the medical orderly back. Prior to and during my capture I did not see any British officer. At the end of the trial he was acquitted.

CHAPTER NOTES Murder on the Hospital Steps: PRO WO311/376

Massacre in the 3-Tonner:

PRO WO309/21

I did not know they were British Officers: PRO WO309/84

No Surrender: PRO WO235/2

Major Tony Hibbert escaped from a German truck after being captured at Arnhem. An SS guard opened fire on the others in the truck, killing four of them.

British paratroopers reached the bridge at Arnhem but were forced to surrender. For many, their next stop was a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

Major Tony Hibbert of the 1st Parachute Brigade on the left, prior to take-off on 17 September 1944. He escaped from a German truck after being captured at Arnhem. An SS guard opened fire on the others in the truck, killing four of them.

By the look on their faces, these British wounded have made their way back to Allied lines.

Arnhem bridge after the surrender of Major Frost and his men.

British prisoners are marched past a German tank destroyer.

British prisoners still wearing their helmets, straight from the front lines.

British paratroopers advancing through Oosterbeek. They were too lightly armed to take on the German armour in the area.

Captain Brian Brownscombe of 181 Air Landing Field Ambulance. He landed at Arnhem on 17 September 1944 and set up a hospital in a museum. After capture he was moved to Arnhem Municipal Hospital. On 26 September after sharing some drinks with some of his captors, he was shot by a drunken NCO on the steps of the hospital.

Lieutenant Harry Cambier was one of two British officers captured while wearing civilian clothes after the battle at Arnhem. They were shot by SS Obersturmführer Ludwig Heinemann, who would later be tried by a Dutch court and himself face a firing squad.

Chapter 13

Massacre in the Ardennes

A

s the snow began to fall and the chills of the coldest winter for many a year began to penetrate the overcoats of the sentries stamping their feet in their frozen foxholes, rumours began to circulate of German orders to murder captured prisoners. The news came from some of the many German prisoners being interrogated at Allied prisoner-of-war camps. They told how their commanding officers ordered them not, repeat not, to take any prisoners but to destroy them. Divisional Commander Krämer from the SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend told his troops: ‘I ask you and expect of you not to take any prisoners with the possible exception of officers who might be kept alive for the purpose of questioning.’ Second Lieutenant Schnittker of the 10th Company, 19th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment ordered the troops under his command to kill American prisoners. Lieutenant Colonel Franke, the commanding officer of the 190th Volksgrenadier Regiment gave orders to his battalion commanders to take as few prisoners as possible and gave a speech to his men on 27 November 1944 which included the statement: ‘The American is an animal killing German women and children. It is the duty of every German soldier to kill as many of the Americans as possible.’ It was not long before the exhortations of the senior German officers began to take effect. On 17 December the body of an American soldier was found. His feet had been tied together and he had been shot in the head at close range. On the same day an American patrol consisting of two officers

and four enlisted men was surrounded and taken prisoner at Clermont. The men were lined up and shot following a perfunctory interrogation. However, one of the men survived and later described how he fell to the ground and was then kicked about the face and head by the German soldiers before being left for dead. Soldiers in the 3rd Replacment Battalion of the Totenkopf Division in Brünn were told by their officers that the ‘Death’s Head’ Division did not take prisoners of war. In a similar vein, officers of the 1128th Regiment, 560th Volksgrenadier Division informed their troops that American prisoners were an unnecessary burden on the German economic system and advocated harsh treatment of all Americans. One particularly nasty individual was a Captain Kugler, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 190th Regiment, 62nd Volksgrenadier Division. On 19 or 20 December he ordered the shooting of forty Americans at Habscheid after they had laid down their weapons and surrendered. By now the Germans knew well that the war was slowly coming to an end and such orders were being given in desperation to motivate their men and strike fear into the enemy. Months later, war crimes investigators would have a difficult task in finding copies of these orders in writing, but there is no doubt that orders to murder American prisoners were verbally given to many German formations. The culmination of this murder campaign took place just before Christmas 1944 in a field at Malmedy in Belgium.

Malmedy Their shoelaces and belts had been removed to prevent suicide attempts and each wore a card bearing a number around his neck as the seventy-three men listened while their sentences were read out. No. 58 was Oswald Siegmund, death by hanging; No. 73 was Otto Wickmann, ten years in prison; No. 72 Erich Werner, life imprisonment; No. 45 Hermann Priess, former commander of the 1st SS Panzer Corps, twenty years in prison; No. 42, Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, death by hanging. So it went on, until the list was exhausted. Forty-three men had been sentenced to death, twenty-

two to life imprisonment and the remainder were given ten to twenty years in prison. As the men stood there, how many of them thought back to the day eighteen months earlier when the story began? It had all started at dawn on Saturday, 16 December 1944. The American sentries stamped their freezing feet as they counted the minutes until their stint came to an end. Their comrades shivered in their bunkers and foxholes as they tried to snatch a few more minutes sleep before the dawn of the new day. To the rear, the supply and communications troops made the most of the comfort afforded them in the houses of the small Belgian towns and villages. This was the ‘Ghost Front’, far removed from the areas where the war was slowly grinding to its inevitable end. The front line hereabouts wound its way in and out of Belgium and Germany as it ran through the rugged Ardennes-West Eifel hills. The men were thinking of Christmas, only nine days away. Most thought it would be the last Christmas of the war; they would all be safely back home in time for the next one. They were correct in their thinking that it would be the last Christmas of the war, but many of them would not be around to celebrate the next one. All hell was about to break loose on the unsuspecting sleeping soldiers. At 0530 hours hundreds of German artillery commanders checked their watches and barked out orders to the waiting artillerymen. The barrage lit up the horizon for miles around and soon the shells began to fall among the sleeping Americans. In the German forward areas hundreds of tank and armoured vehicle engines burst into life and their tracks creaked as they slowly began to advance towards the American lines. After five months of retreat following the Normandy invasion, the German counter-offensive in the West had begun. Known as the Runstedt or Ardennes Offensive, or more commonly as the Battle of the Bulge, the aim was to break through the Allied lines and drive to the coast to capture the port of Antwerp. One of the German thrusts in the overall offensive was a combat group commanded by Standartenführer Joachim Peiper, the veteran regimental commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. This group

is commonly referred to as Kampfgruppe Peiper and their first objective was to seize and hold a bridgehead across the River Meuse. Success or failure of the offensive would depend on the ability of the attacking formations to move quickly through the American lines. There would be neither the time nor the men to spare to take care of prisoners of war. It would later be alleged that the order was given that no prisoners were to be taken and this directive found its way down the chain of command from Generaloberst Joseph (Sepp) Dietrich, commander of the 6th SS Panzer Army, to his chief of staff Brigadeführer Friz Krämer, to Gruppenführer Hermann Priess, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Corps, to Willibald Mohnke, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division and thence down to Peiper. The offensive would be fought in a ruthless manner, and methods would be employed to spread terror and panic among enemy troops and the enemy civilian population. The old rules would be cast aside and humane inhibitions would not be shown, meaning that prisoners of war and civilians would be shot. These were the instructions that Peiper passed on down to his battalion and company commanders and they in turn passed them on to their platoon leaders and tank commanders. At first Kampfgruppe Peiper had some success, but as resistance stiffened and American engineers blew up bridges in their path, the mood of the SS men altered and murder and brutality became commonplace. As they advanced they left a trail of blood of murdered American prisoners of war and Belgian civilians in Honsfeld, Büllingen, Schoppen, Ligneuville, Stavelot, Cheneux, Stoumont, La Gleize, Wanne, Petit-Thier and Lutre-Bois. The citizens in the Café Bodarwe heard the sound of the American vehicles before they came into sight; slowly climbing the incline from Malmedy, they approached the café from the left and halted just short of the Baugnez crossroads. They were Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion and they were making their way to the town of Vielsalm. An officer came into the café to ask for directions and as he returned to his Jeep the first German half-track came over the rise to the east. Within seconds, the column of American vehicles came under heavy tank and machine-gun fire. Trucks began to burst into flames and the American troops

sought cover in ditches at the side of the road. After suffering a number of casualties, the men raised their hands and surrendered. The young SS troopers searched the Americans and relieved them of their personal possessions before marching them along to the crossroads and into a meadow to the right of the café. The spearhead of Kampfgruppe Peiper, including the commander himself, continued on their way towards Ligneuville, where an American general was reported to be billeted. The following are extracts from the official report: Other German soldiers in tanks and armoured cars halted at the crossroads and searched some of the captured Americans and took valuables from them… at about this same time a German light tank attempted to manoeuvre itself into position on the road so that its cannon could be directed at the group of prisoners in the field…some of these tanks stopped when they came opposite the field in which the unarmed American prisoners were standing in a group with their hands raised or clasped behind their heads. A German soldier, either an officer or a non-commissioned officer in one of these vehicles stood up, drew his revolver, took deliberate aim and fired into the group. One of the Americans fell. This was repeated a second time and another American soldier fell to the ground. At about the same time, from two of the vehicles on the road, machinegun fire was opened on the group of American prisoners in the field. All or most of them dropped to the ground and stayed there while the firing continued for two or three minutes. Most of the soldiers in the field were hit by this fire. The German vehicles then moved off towards the south and were followed by more which also came from the direction of Weismes. As they came opposite the field in which the American soldiers were lying, they also fired with small arms from the moving vehicles at the prostrate bodies in the field…some German soldiers, evidently from the party who were on guard at the crossroads, then walked to the group of wounded American soldiers who were still lying in the field…and shot with pistol or rifle, or clubbed with a rifle butt or another heavy object any American who still showed any sign of life.

In some cases the victims were shot at point-blank range, either between the eyes, in the temple, or in the back of the head. It was later estimated that there were 150 American prisoners in the meadow at that time. When the Germans were finished they mounted their vehicles and moved off. Some of the tanks drove over dead and wounded Americans who had made it as far as the road before they went down. In the meadow, around twenty others played dead while their wounds bled and they prayed for deliverance. Eventually the men pushed themselves up and began to run. Sergeant Ken Ahrens had been hit twice in the back and Second Lieutenant Virgil Lary’s toes had been severed on one foot. They ran as if the devil was on their heels as the few Germans still left opened fire on them. Some of the men were hit again but Lary, Homer Ford and another man got clear of the area and were eventually picked up by an American patrol sent out from Malmedy to investigate the sound of shooting at the crossroads. When they reached the aid station they found two journalists from Time magazine there, looking for a story. By the next day the massacre was on the front page of the newspapers and an investigation had been set in motion. It was not until 13 January 1945 that American forces returned to the Baugnez area. The 3060th Quartermaster Graves Registration Service Company had already been assigned to recover the remains of the men murdered at the crossroads, but when they arrived at the scene they discovered that the area was still under enemy artillery fire and the field was covered with 2ft of snow. Army engineers using mine detectors were employed to locate the bodies under the snow. Due to the freezing temperatures the remains were remarkably well preserved and over the next forty-eight hours seventy-two men were recovered. When the snow began to melt, other remains were uncovered and a dozen more came to light over the following four months, making a total of eighty-four fatalities. It was a difficult job. When the mine detectors reacted to the metal in the men’s equipment, the snow would be removed by brooms to uncover the bodies. Often the deceased were frozen to the ground or the remains would be frozen together. Once separated, they were carried to the road and then

transported to an abandoned railway building in Malmedy. One thing soon became clear: none of the men were wearing their dogtags. They must have all been removed by their captors before the massacre began in an attempt to prevent identification. However, most of the men still carried their personal effects and much of the clothing bore the names of its owners. Before long, all had been identified. Autopsies were carried out on the seventy-two initial sets of remains and these indicated that at least twenty men had potentially fatal gunshot wounds to the head inflicted at very close range, in addition to wounds from automatic weapons. Most head wounds also bore the telltale signs of powder burns on the skin, indicating that they had been shot at very close range. Twenty more showed evidence of small-calibre gunshot wounds to the head without powder burns, indicating a coup de grace administered probably from a standing position. Ten more had suffered fatal crushing or blunt trauma injuries, most likely inflicted by German rifle butts. This confirmed that an atrocity had taken place. The murdered soldiers were laid to rest in the cemetery at HenriChappelle, Belgium, about 25 miles north of Malmedy. The site eventually became a permanent US cemetery for almost 8,000 American dead. At the end of the war the relatives were given the choice of either leaving them in Belgium or taking them home to America. Many chose the latter, but twentyone victims of the massacre still remain in the cemetery. Although Peiper’s men had murdered both American servicemen and Belgian civilians, the news of the massacre had outraged many in the United States and the decision was made to prosecute the men by the EUCOM theatre judge advocate before a US army court at Dachau. The trial began on 16 May 1946. The accused were charged with violating the laws and usages of war in that they murdered American prisoners of war and non-combatant Allied civilians during a German offensive on the Western Front in the months of December 1944 and January 1945. Specifically, as far as the prisoners of war were concerned, they violated Article 2 of the Geneva Convention which reads: ‘Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile power, but not of the individuals or corps who have captured them. They must at all times be humanely treated and protected,

particularly against acts of violence, insults and public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against them are prohibited.’ The murder of civilians was a violation of Article 46 of the Regulations Respective to Laws and Customs of War on Land, annex to the Hague Convention of 1907, as follows: ‘Family honour and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated.’ The accused SS men were to discover that the EUCOM judges were not as lenient as those who presided over the trials at Nuremburg as Peiper and forty-two of his men were sentenced to death. Peiper remained under sentence of death until the Theatre Judge Advocate’s Division confirmed the sentence on 20 March 1948. Following the trial, Colonel Willis N. Everett Jr, the American lawyer who had served as defence counsel for the seventy-four Germans, lodged a petition of habeas corpus with the US Supreme Court. He charged that the Germans had not received a fair trial. He did not claim that they were all innocent, but if they did not receive a fair trial there was no way of telling who was really guilty or innocent. Complaints about the methods used to obtain confessions began to fall on the desk of Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall. The allegations were serious and seemed more in keeping with the methods used by the Gestapo. American investigators at the US court in Dachau had beaten and kicked the suspects, knocking out teeth and breaking jaws. There were mock trials, solitary confinement, reduced rations, spiritual deprivation, promises of acquittal and investigators disguised as priests. Justice Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Edward L. Van Roden were sent to Germany to check out the reports. Accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lawrence Jr, they travelled to Munich and began to hear testimony about the way in which the defendants had been treated. At that time 152 Germans had been executed and 139 more were awaiting execution. Apart from Colonel Everett’s charges, the judges were assigned to examine the cases of the 139 on death row. They were in three groups: one accused of involvement in the Dachau concentration camp crimes; one in the

killing of many American aviators; and the third convicted of the Malmedy massacre. As far as the Malmedy massacre was concerned, the event did take place and undoubtedly some of the seventy-four Germans were guilty, but was it now possible to establish whether a travesty of justice had occurred? The Russians insisted that the men could not be tried again. Their philosophy was that the investigators determine the guilt or innocence of the accused and the judge merely announces the sentence. Lieutenant Colonel Ellis and Lieutenant Perl of the prosecution tried to justify their actions by claiming that it was difficult to obtain competent evidence. It was an unwritten law among the SS men that they did not give evidence against a comrade. It would be a tough case to crack so they resorted to some persuasive methods including violence and mock trials. The American prohibition of hearsay evidence had been suspended and secondand third-hand testimony was admitted, although the JAG warned against the value of hearsay evidence so long after the event. When the statements were finally taken they had come from men who had been kept in solitary confinement for three or four months, in rooms with no windows and with no opportunity for exercise. Two meals a day were pushed into the cell through a slot in the door and the men were not allowed to communicate with anyone, including their families or priests. The tougher prisoners would have a black hood pulled over their head and then investigators would punch them in the face with brass knuckles, beat them with a rubber hose and kick them in the testicles. Many Germans had their teeth knocked out and others suffered a broken jaw. Lieutenant Perl admitted that such methods were used but said that the court could then decide the weight of the evidence thus obtained. At least one prisoner hanged himself in his cell. Mock trials were staged and even a bogus priest was produced who attempted to persuade the prisoners to sign confessions. The final report on the trials was handed over to Secretary of the Army Royall. In spite of the many instances listed above, they found no general conspiracy to obtain evidence improperly. With the exception of twenty-nine cases, they saw no reason why the executions should not be carried out. For the 110 others, there was sufficient competent evidence from other sources to

warrant the death penalty, exclusive of the evidence obtained by the third degree. The twenty-nine men whose sentences were recommended for commutation certainly did not have a fair trial by American standards. Twenty-seven of the men had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment, one received ten years and another two and a half years. They also recommended a permanent programme of clemency to reconsider the sentences of other convicted war crimes prisoners. Unfortunately, before Secretary Royall could act on the report, five of the men whose sentences were recommended for commutation were hanged and 100 of the 139 men that they had set out to investigate were now dead. There were two final recommendations made by the judges. The first was that those men whose death sentences had not been commuted and who had not yet been hanged should be saved, pending full judicial review. The second was that the American investigators who abused their position should be exposed in a public process, preferably in the United States, and prosecuted. As for Sepp Dietrich, he was initially sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for his part in the Malmedy massacre, but only served ten years. When released, he was then re-arrested in connection with the Röhm purge of 30 June 1934. On 14 May 1957 he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment and died shortly after his release. Other sentences were reduced and Peiper, the last of the prisoners in Landsberg jail, went free after serving eleven years. In 1976, however, he was killed when an inflammatory article in the French Press incited someone to fire-bomb his home in Alsace.

Staff Sergeant Howard W. McCord For a number of reasons the last German offensive in the West failed and the invaders retreated back across the border into Germany. The 1st SS Panzer Corps took 2,300 prisoners during their drive into Belgium and Staff Sergeant Howard McCord was one of them. A member of the 81mm Mortar

Platoon of HQ Company, 38th Armoured Infantry Battalion of the 7th Armoured Division, he was wounded by shrapnel and taken prisoner at Krombach on 23 December 1944. He told the author: I had never seen so much snow in my life as I did on the march towards the prison camp. There were about 200 of us in this group and the temperature was always freezing or below freezing. The Germans had taken our overshoes, gloves, overcoats and steel helmets. The Germans moved us on the back roads away from military traffic. As usual the guards promised us food at the end of the day, but it never arrived. We had no drinking water so we had to eat snow. From this dirty snow we started to get dysentery and also from eating rotten apples that we picked up at the side of the road. We were warned that if we tried to escape we would be shot without trial. The guards also had big black and tan German Shepherd dogs that would bite you on the leg if you got behind in the march or out of line. The guards also reminded us over and over that for every man who escaped they would shoot one of us. Someone came up missing after one short break and at random they just picked out a man and shot him there on the road to prove their point. By the seventh day after capture I was coming down with the ’flu and dysentery at the same time as suffering from hunger. With dysentery, the call came so often to go that you didn’t have time to drop your pants, so you had to let go in your pants. At the end of the first day I had to pull off my underwear shorts and sling them. We had no toilet paper or water to clean ourselves. My dysentery became so bad that part of my insides was protruding out of my rectum and was bleeding. Walking only made it worse, but we had no choice. We had no food in our stomachs and every time a pain hit you, only a little foul-smelling liquid would pass and your rear end felt like someone stuck a hot poker to your rectum. This went on for weeks. On 31 December 1944 we were given a loaf of bread between six men. It tasted sour and was mixed with sawdust. Later in the afternoon we were given three small boiled potatoes about the size of a ping-pong ball. We scoffed these down in a hurry.

I remember once when we were going through a small village there were old people standing on the side of the street watching us go by. Some of the old ladies tried to hand us bread and apples and the guards would push and shove them back from us. In some of the towns we went through, the people threw rocks and sticks at us. Some would even try to spit on us. The older German people treated us the best. Around 4 January the guards promised us a hot meal. The column halted near a village and we moved to the edge of a field. Up near the head of the column excitement broke out. They could see a two-wheel cart pulled by two cows and two old farmers driving the cart heading our way. On the cart were two big wooden pots of watered-down pea soup. The prisoners began to get more excited as the cart got closer and they began to rush towards the cart. We were hungry and hungry people can’t think straight. The guards fired shots over our heads and this brought us back to reality. The guards got the soup lines in order and the farmers began to ladle out the soup. I did not have anything to put the soup in so I cupped my hands to receive my portion. I drank it out of my dirty hands and licked my fingers like a mother cat licking her kittens. As soon as the pots were empty, four GIs charged the two farmers and started running their hands around the sides trying to scrape out more soup. It turned into a mad fight. The guards had to fire some rounds over their heads to break it up. I never thought I would see Americans acting in this manner. We had a lot of sick people in our group. Those that passed out fell to the ground and you had to step over or around them and keep walking. If you stopped to help, the guards and the dogs attacked you. It was getting to where it was every man for himself if you wanted to survive the ordeal. Those that could not get up were left on the side of the road, supposedly to be picked up by a horse-drawn cart. I don’t know if they were ever picked up or not. We heard from prisoners that later came along the same route as we did that they saw dead American prisoners that had been shot on the road. In the afternoon of 4 January 1945 we came to a railroad yard where we found a long line of empty boxcars with their doors open wide. Known as a forty and eight, they would carry forty men or eight horses. I was so weak I couldn’t climb up into the boxcar. One of the guards started hitting me in the

back with the butt of his rifle and I fell to the ground in the snow. Other prisoners were trying to climb into the boxcar and were stepping on me as I lay on the ground. Finally someone picked me up and shoved me into the boxcar. I crawled into the corner and watched as the guards kept pushing men in until there was standing room only. Sixty of us were packed into a boxcar made for forty. The door was closed and locked and the only light you could see was from two small openings near the roof. A 5-gallon bucket was to be used as our latrine, and almost everyone had dysentery. We remained in the boxcar until the next morning when we began to move. We were so crowded we had to take turns standing so some of the men could stretch their legs. We slept standing, squatting and some lying on their sides curled up in a ball. We had to stop once because our planes were bombing a town that we would be passing through. We could hear the bombs whistle as they were falling and when they hit their targets it would shake the ground and the boxcars. We stayed in those boxcars for four days, all cramped together. Finally the door opened and someone said: ‘This is Mühlberg, Germany.’ We learned that this was Stalag 4B.

CHAPTER NOTES NARA RG24 File W-II: orders to murder US troops. PRO WO309/949: list of accused and sentences. Memoirs of Staff Sergeant Howard W. McCord, 2000.

Appendix: Malmedy Trial – List of the Guilty Valentin Bersin Friedel Bode Marcel Boltz

Death Death Released to French

Willi Braun Kurt Briesemeister Willi von Chamier Freidrich Christ Roman Clotten Manfred Coblenz Josef Diefenthal Joseph (Sepp) Dietrich Fritz Eckmann Arndt Fischer George Fleps

Life Death Life Death 10 years Life Death Life Death 15 years Death (fired the first two shots to begin the massacre) Heinz Friedrichs Life Fritz Gebauer Life Heinz Gerhard Godicke Life Ernst Goldschmidt Death Hans Grühle 20 years Max Hammerer Death Armin Hecht Life Willi Heinz Hendel Death Hans Hennecke Death Hans Hillig 10 years Heinz Hoffmann Life Joachim Hofman Death Hubert Huber Death Siegfried Jakel Death Benoni Junker Death Friedel Kies Death Oskar Klingenhöfer Death Gustav Knittel Life Georg Kotzur Life Fritz Krämer 10 years

Werner Kuhn Erich Maute Arnold Mikolaschek Anton Motzheim Erich Munkemer Gustav Neve Paul Hermann Ochmann Joachim Peiper Hans Pletz Georg Preuss Hermann Priess Fritz Rau Theo Rauh Heinz Rehagel Rolf Roland Reiser Wolfgang Richter Max Rieder Rolf Ritzer Axel Rodenburg Erich Rumpf Willi Schaefer Rudolf Schwambach Kurt Sickel Oswald Siegmund Franz Sievers Hans Siptrett Gustav Adolf Sprenger Werner Sternebeck Heinz Stickel Herbert Stock

Death Death Life Death Death Death Death Death Life Death 20 years Life Death Death 10 years Life Death Life Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Life

Erwin Szyperski Edmund Tomczak Heinz Tomhardt August Tonk Hans Trettin Johan Wasenberger Günther Weiss Erich Werner Otto Wichmann Paul Zwigart

Life Life Death Death Death Life Death Life 10 years Death

SS Leutnant Heinz Tomhardt stands as his death sentence is read out.

The accused in the Malmedy trial await their verdicts in the courthouse at Dachau. In the front row sit Sepp Dietrich (11); Fritz Krämer (33), former chief of staff of the 6th SS Panzer Army; Hermann Priess (45), former commander of the 1st SS Panzer Corps; and Joachim Peiper (42), former commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, Battle Group Peiper.

American investigators begin the long process of identifying the men murdered by Battle Group Peiper during the Battle of the Bulge. The bodies were taken to the nearby railway station where they were thawed out and identified.

Large numbers of American troops were taken prisoner during the German Ardennes Offensive and suffered greatly during the winter of 1944–45.

SS Standartenführer Joachim Peiper, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, was one of forty-three men sentenced to death at their trial. He would eventually serve eleven years in prison. He died when his home in Alsace was fire-bombed in 1976.

View of the defendants in the courtroom awaiting the verdicts. After investigations into torture and brutality by their American captors, most sentences were reduced.

American prisoners of war marching past a German Tiger tank. It was estimated that between 350 and 750 US prisoners of war were murdered during the Ardennes Offensive.

The bodies of captured Americans murdered at Malmedy are discovered under the snow one month after they had been killed by members of Kampfgruppe (Battle Group) Peiper.

The day of the verdicts outside the court at Dachau. The trial lasted from May to July 1946

Chapter 14

Luft Gangsters

Incitement to Kill

D

uring the early days of the war, air-crew who managed to get out of their stricken aircraft and reach the ground in one piece could consider themselves very fortunate. All that awaited them was a trip to the Luftwaffe interrogation centre at Dulag Luft near Frankfurt and then off to a prisoner-of-war camp. Some were even fortunate enough to be taken to the nearest Luftwaffe camp for lunch and a drink of schnapps before they were taken away. From 1942 onwards everything changed. When Allied tactics were modified to include the bombing of German cities, a new enemy entered the fray: the angry civilian. The civilian population began to suffer for the sins of the military and when the bombs began to rain down on their houses, schools, churches and hospitals, who could blame them for wanting to take revenge on the enemy fliers, the Luft Gangsters and Terror Fliegers. The Nazi leadership was quick to harness the emotions of the civilians and turn their thoughts to revenge and murder. Perhaps they thought that if it became known that downed fliers were being killed when they reached the ground, the crews would abandon their missions and drop their bombs in the countryside. Perhaps the leaders wanted revenge themselves, because as 1943 and 1944 came and went, the bombing raids became worse and there was no way of stopping them. They certainly did not want a civilian uprising against

Hitler and his regime and made the decision to turn the thoughts of the population against the fliers themselves rather than those directing the war. There are many tales of German soldiers and police doing their duty and protecting captured air-crew from enraged civilians and they must be praised for doing so. On the other hand, there were many instances when the opposite occurred and in the opinion of the author many hundreds of Allied airmen perished at the hands of German civilians. One decree went out under the names of the Higher SS and Police Chief West and the Chief of the Civil Police. It was dated Münster 24 April 1944 and referred to three earlier decrees. It read: I herewith consolidate all instructions regarding spontaneous shooting or manhandling etc. by the population of foreign looters or bailed-out airmen, and the shooting of such persons by the Civil Police. A distinction is necessary between reprisals by the population and executions carried out by the Civil Police on orders of state or municipal authority, or of Chief Constable (Kommandeur der OrPo) or a local court with the object of making an example, thus preventing demonstrations by foreigners and spreading of the trouble. It was decreed that: Such reprisal measures must in principle be kept within certain limits. It is not intended to take away from the foreigners the will to work by arbitrary treatment. Lynch law can only apply in flagrant isolated instances of looting during an air-raid; otherwise the matter remains the business of the armed forces of the state. Acts of revenge of the population against enemy airmen who have bailed out or otherwise landed from ‘terror’ aircraft are not to be prevented by the police, i.e. the police must not interfere in such cases but must stand aside. If enemy airmen take any action against the populace, firearms must be immediately used against them. Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann issued instructions on 30 May 1944 to all

Gau and Kreisleiters (County Leaders) prohibiting any police action or criminal proceedings against persons who had taken part in the lynching of Allied fliers. This was accompanied by a Goebbels’ propaganda campaign inciting the German people to take action of this nature. Bormann disappeared at the end of the war, but was found guilty of war crimes in his absence at the Nuremberg trials. Towards the end of 1944 similar instructions were passed down to Generaloberst Hans Stumpff, the commander of Luftflotte Reich, the German Home Air Force Command. They came from the desk of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the most senior officer of the German armed forces, the OKW. Keitel was Hitler’s most important and closest military adviser and he would be sentenced to death at Nuremberg and hanged on 16 October 1946. Stumpff was instructed to pass Keitel’s instructions down through the chain of command, through the LuftGau commanders to the subordinate formations, the anti-aircraft and signal units and the airfields themselves. Stumpff had 300,000 men under his command at this time and the order given to them was that ‘The escorts of shot down terror flyers will, in the event of excesses by the civilian population, not interfere or protect the aircrew with their weapons.’ Keitel was well aware of the illegality of his orders and made sure that the written orders only went down as far as the Air Divisions, the next level under the LuftGaus. Below that, the orders were to be passed on verbally and then the written orders were to have been destroyed. Thus the civil police were ordered to stand aside and ignore the rights of bailed-out airmen to protection under the Geneva Convention. Indeed, it went further and members of Luftwaffe ground units also took it upon themselves to deal as they wished with captured fliers. Hundreds of airmen would die as a result. One notorious incident that occurred as a direct result of this order became known as the Essen-West Case. Towards the end of the war it was impossible to transport captured airmen to the Luftwaffe interrogation centre in Frankfurt without them coming in contact with civilians at one place or another. Thus when Hauptmann Erich Heyer gave instructions that three captured RAF airmen were to be taken to a Luftwaffe airfield on the first stage of their

journey, he ordered the escort not to interfere if civilians should molest the prisoners. His orders were given out on the steps of the barracks in a loud voice so that the crowd that had gathered would know exactly what was going to take place. Witnesses would later state that Heyer followed the crowd for 100 yards and shouted out: ‘These are the dogs that have killed your wives and children – kill them!’ It was 13 December 1944 and the airmen had been captured near EssenWest, having been shot down during a bombing raid the previous night. As the prisoners and their escort made their way through one of the main streets, the crowd grew bigger and started hitting them and throwing stones at them. They were incensed at the damage done to Essen the night before and knew that the soldiers would not protect their prisoners. One unknown German corporal from an anti-aircraft unit actually fired a revolver at one of the airmen, hitting him in the head. The RAF sergeant pulled out a bandage and put it around his head, but his wound would not save him. When they reached the Wickenburg bridge the crowd attacked the airmen and threw them over the parapet. One of the airmen was killed by the fall, but the other two were killed by shots from the bridge and by members of the crowd who beat them and kicked them to death. Their bodies were stripped, robbed and thrown into the river. Private Peter Könen, one of the escort, and Hauptmann Heyer were put on trial in December 1945. The private received a five-year jail sentence and Heyer was sentenced to hang. Three out of five of the civilians were also found guilty and Johann Braschoss was sentenced to hang for his part in the lynching, Karl Kaufer received a sentence of life imprisonment and Hugo Boddenberg was given ten years. Many such crimes would go unpunished and many of the murdered airmen would never be found. Not only were they killed in fields and on the streets, but in prison camps as well. After the end of the war a British officer filed a report on a concentration camp in which he was imprisoned on the borders of Yugoslavia. He was disguised as a French civilian at the time and he stated that in September 1944 about forty-eight British, French and Belgian pilots were brought to the camp and within two days had all been beaten to death. The staff put on SS

uniforms when they finally fled from the camp on the approach of the Americans. Some of the examples below might help to explain why so many Allied air-crews failed to return home. They are a small sample of the hundreds on record.

The Killing of George L. Roth On 6 August 1944 a court of enquiry convened in Dieppe to consider the circumstances of the deaths of two American airmen who had been shot by German troops shortly after the crash of their aircraft. The incident took place on 24 June and involved an American aircraft on its way back to England. The aircraft was clearly in trouble and was flying low as anti-aircraft fire burst around it. Suddenly five parachutes bloomed in the sky over Quiberville as some of the crew bailed out. The plane continued to descend and passed over the village of Longueil, about 6 miles west of Dieppe. The aeroplane circled and after clearing some trees to the west, crashed in a field outside the village. The plane broke into two pieces on impact and came to rest about 30 yards apart on either side of a sunken country lane. After crashing, the wreckage caught fire and ammunition began to explode. Within minutes German troops were on the scene and found one airman sitting on a bank next to a sunken roadway, holding his head and swaying from side to side. Gefreiter Fritz Aschmitat advanced towards the injured airman and then, after speaking to one of his comrades, raised his rifle and fired two shots at the airman. Four French civilians working in the fields nearby witnessed the scene. Within ten minutes of the shooting, Oberleutnant Schröer commanding a German company that had arrived at Longueil from Paris during the previous night fired two shots from his revolver into the airman who had been sitting on the bank. This was done from a distance of about 12 yards and was witnessed by a French civilian who was about 9 feet away from the airman who then fell forward into the lane. A couple of minutes later a Doctor Raymond Theiu arrived and examined the airman. He

was still breathing at that time but died a few minutes afterwards. The doctor removed the airman’s wristwatch and noticed that it bore the name George L. Roth, 0813064 T43 44A. He put the watch in his bag for safe-keeping. A second airman was discovered lying in the sunken lane. This airman was not seen to move by any of the witnesses, although one witness heard one of the airmen speak and other evidence pointed to the probability that it was this one. Examination of the body in October 1944 discovered a smallcalibre bullet wound in the back of the neck which had shattered the vertebrae. This shot was also attributed to Schröer, although it was possible that Aschmitat fired one shot at each airman and hit both. It was deemed impossible for the wound in the neck to have been caused during the crash as the body lay prone in the sunken lane and its nature would have prevented the airman from moving to that spot from the wreckage. Both men were later buried by local French civilians in the Longueil cemetery. An autopsy was carried out on Roth in October 1944 and the examination showed that he had sustained four wounds, three in the head and a lacerating wound in the right armpit that may have been caused either by a bullet or by the airman striking something when the aeroplane crashed. Gefreiter Fritz Aschmitat belonged to the 13th Company of Grenadiers which had been stationed at Longueil since January 1944 and was commanded by Leutnant Ketterke, who was stationed with another detachment at Blosseville. Witnesses would later state that within half an hour of the crash, and indeed again two hours later, Leutnant Ketterke was seen shaking hands with Aschmitat as if congratulating him. Another witness overheard Aschmitat boasting that, on the instructions of Sossna, a Pole, he had shot the American airman. Sossna was there at the time and did not contradict Aschmitat. The court concluded that these actions may indicate general official instructions to the German forces in that district that Allied airmen were to be killed and not taken prisoner. Both the deceased were robbed of their outer clothing, boots, personal possessions and identity discs by Aschmitat, Sossna and Obergefreiter David Bitch. Everything was taken with the exception of their underclothing and socks. The court of enquiry established that the killing of George L. Roth was a

violation of the well-recognized laws and usages of war and of the terms of the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and was murder. The court also considered that Corporal Joseph Sossna was also guilty as he was with Aschmitat at the time and that Leutnant Ketterke commanding the 13th Company actively approved the shooting by a member of his unit and was equally guilty. However, finding the culprits would be a different matter. Four days after the court of enquiry was convened, the US government asked the Swiss to protest on their behalf about the reports that were coming in concerning aviators being attacked and killed after parachuting from their disabled aircraft. They reminded the German government that Article 2 of the Geneva Convention provides that prisoners must be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence.

Incidents It was now clear that responsible German government officials were inciting civilians to acts of violence against prisoners of war. An article that appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter on 28/29 May 1944 was viewed not only as an admission that the authorities had lost control over the civilian population, but as abetting reprehensible acts of violence against prisoners of war whose protection was guaranteed under existing codes of civilized warfare. It was not long before such approval of murder began to have its effect. On 17 May an American pilot was brought before an assembly of NSDAP officials at Altlüdersdorf where, after the pilot had been subjected to insults and violence, a German official asked: ‘Is there a manure pitchfork available to kill this individual?’ A similar incident occurred in early June when the Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Group Leader) of Gransee at Wentow was reported to have encouraged civilians to attack Allied aviators who had parachuted from their disabled planes. On 21 June 1944, an American captain was murdered after he parachuted from his plane over Berlin and landed on the balcony of a house at No. 6, Bayerischerplatz. He was captured by a civilian and two soldiers who

violently mistreated him before he was taken away by the security police. By the time they arrived at the security police station, he was dead. On the same day at Friesackerzootzen near Hauen, in what would later become the post-war Russian Zone, four American airmen were captured and killed. A total of eight airmen had parachuted from their stricken plane. Staff Sergeant George Vassilopoulis was taken prisoner together with Staff Sergeant Francis Heekin and the co-pilot Second Lieutenant Harley Gaudinier. They were taken to a village about 30 miles from Berlin. As they sat in the jail under guard a truck drew up and Heekin and Gaudinier were told to climb in the back. Two shovels were thrown in after them. To their horror they found that the truck contained the bodies of four of their fellow crew members: Second Lieutenants Herschel Wilson, pilot, Chester Perkins, navigator and Jack Strout, bombardier; and Staff Sergeant Frank Garzia, radio operator. All had been beaten about the face and had bullet-holes in their bodies. The two men were forced to bury their friends. Staff Sergeant Josef Schankin was the eighth member of the crew and he later discovered what had happened to his pilot. He was told by British prisoner of war Frank McCaffrey who was working near camp 962, one of the sub-camps to Stalag 3D, which was used as a propaganda camp where selected Allied prisoners of war were taken in the hope of persuading them to fight for Germany. Apparently the pilot had reached the ground safely and avoided the German search parties for twenty-four hours. When he was discovered he was taken to camp 962 where the commandant shot him in cold blood. On 20 July, three American air-crew were forced to land in Constance. All three were captured and then shot: one by a German army officer, one by a German soldier and the third by a German policeman. In another case three American aviators were reportedly stoned to death and another who came down in a street in Zehlendorf was only just saved from being beaten to death by the intervention of a few responsible onlookers. On 13 June, following a raid on military targets in Munich, a number of American aviators landed in the vicinity of Freising. It was soon common gossip in Freising that three of these aviators were murdered by members of the NSDAP.

The Dreierwalde Murders The accused Major Karl Rauer and Hauptmann Wilhelm Scharschmidt were charged with committing a war crime in that on 22 March 1945 at Dreierwalde aerodrome they were concerned in the killing of four Allied prisoners of war. In addition, together with Major Otto Bopf, Hauptmann Bruno Böttcher, Oberfeldwebel Hermann Lommes, Feldwebel Ludwig Lang and Unteroffizier Emil Günther, they were charged with being concerned in the killing of seven unknown Allied air-crew on or about 24 March. Rauer, Scharschmidt, Bopf, Böttcher, Lommes and Lang were also charged with being concerned in the killing of one unknown Allied prisoner of war on 25 March 1945. The seven accused were members of the staff of the Luftwaffe aerodrome at Dreierwalde, an aerodrome in the north of Germany between Dreierwalde and Hopsten. The commander of the aerodrome was Major Karl Rauer, responsible for administration and discipline. His assistant or adjutant was Hauptmann Scharschmidt and together with some clerks they formed the Kommandanteur or commander’s department. One of the sub-units on the aerodrome was the Horst Company, Horst being German for ‘aerodrome’. Commanded by Major Bopf, the company performed general duties such as providing guards, escorts, defence and general fatigues. Three of the accused – Lang, Lommes and Günther – were NCOs in that company. Another sub-unit was the ULK Company or Unteroffizier Lehr Kommando. It was a training cadre to teach NCOs their duties, drill, weapontraining, etc. This unit was commanded by Hauptmann Gruber and one of his instructors was a Karl Amburger. The flight control unit was commanded by Hauptmann Böttcher. This unit was responsible for the support of the operational aircraft on the aerodrome, repair of runways, etc. The squadron based there at the time was JG27 (Jagdgeschwader 27) with its own pilots and staff and none of them participated in the horrific events that followed. One of Major Rauer’s responsibilities was the handling, safe custody and proper disposal of captured prisoners of war. The normal procedure when any

captured air-crews were brought to the aerodrome was as follows. They were usually brought to the commander or his adjutant Scharschmidt, where they were searched, their particulars noted and then they were briefly interrogated. The adjutant would then arrange their transportation to Oberursel, the interrogation centre known as Dulag Luft where all air-crews captured in Western Europe eventually came to rest. It was quite easy for Scharschmidt to find willing escorts for the two- or three-day trip to Frankfurt. At that time, March 1945, the Allied bombing campaign was causing serious disruption to the rail service and it would be easy duty away from the aerodrome, perhaps with an opportunity for the men to spend an evening at home. On 21 March 1945 there was a severe air-raid on the aerodrome and thirty or forty local German and foreign workers were killed. On the same day a captured Australian pilot named Paradise was brought in and he was interrogated and put in a cell in the guard room. He was joined by four other members of his crew the same afternoon: two Australians by the names of Flying Officer Berwick and Pilot Officer Greenwood, and two RAF NCOs Flight Sergeants Armstrong and Gunn. For the next twenty-four hours they would receive neither food nor water. On the evening of the 22nd, the adjutant Scharschmidt told Lauter, his chief clerk, to find an escort for the airmen. Unusually, he had trouble in finding volunteers until Amburger, one of the ULK NCOs, came forward and offered his services and those of two of his comrades. Lauter did not feel that Amburger would be a suitable senior NCO for the escort and said as much to the adjutant, but there was no one else available at the time. Together with an unnamed officer, the three NCOs went to the cells armed with machine pistols and collected the five airmen. As they walked out of the camp gate the officer stopped and the party continued without him. As they proceeded along the road, the NCOs ordered the five men in front of them to march abreast. As they did so, there was the ominous click, click of the machine pistols being cocked. Suddenly and without warning the escort opened fire on the helpless men. On the extreme right of the five, Flying Officer Berwick moved fast and ran towards the woods, receiving two bullets in his left thigh as he did so. As he ran through the woods he looked back and

saw his four comrades crumpled in the road with the Germans still firing into them. Berwick was extremely fortunate and he eventually made his way back to Allied lines. Amburger returned to the camp and reported to Scharschmidt that the men had tried to escape and four had been shot. A search party was sent out to try to find Berwick but it was getting dark and they returned empty-handed. The next day a written report was sent by the adjutant to the next senior Luftwaffe authority. No further action was taken by any officer or NCO on the aerodrome. A day or two later, on 23 or 24 March, the guard room held eight more airmen, possibly American. The runway on the aerodrome had been severely damaged and with the Allies drawing nearer, it was imperative that the Germans repair the damage at night so that the JG27 could continue operations the following morning. The aerodrome commander, Major Rauer, gave orders that the prisoners of war were to be used to help fill in the craters and instructed the adjutant to organize it. Scharschmidt relayed the orders to Bopf, the commander of the Aerodrome Company, although responsibility for the upkeep was under the Flight Control Officer Böttcher. The prosecution would later contend that Scharschmidt detailed Lommes, an NCO of Bopf ’s Horst Company, to collect some other NCOs and take the prisoners of war together with some tools out on to the runway to start filling in the craters, together with three other NCOs: Lang, Günther and a Feldwebel Zakowsky. Lang was hardly pleased to be summoned for the duty as he was entertaining two ladies together with Major Bopf. The four NCOs went to the armoury and drew machine pistols. Ominously, they did not obtain any tools. They arrived at the guard room around midnight and ordered four of the prisoners to come with them. In itself this was strange as there were seven fit men in the cells at that time, the eighth having a wounded leg. It was a clear, moonlit night as the airmen walked along the runway, hands on their heads, followed by their guards. Suddenly, the NCOs opened fire on their prisoners, killing three of them instantly. The fourth, with his face partially blown away, took longer to expire.

A few seconds later, Hauptmann Böttcher of Flight Control and his driver arrived on a motorcycle and sidecar. There were no Germans in sight at that time, but after shouting into the night Böttcher saw the four NCOs appear from behind a truck in a rather agitated and nervous condition. A conversation ensued and Böttcher went off on his motorcycle to report the incident to the adjutant. Whatever had been said between Böttcher and his NCOs, it did not stop the latter going back to the guard room and collecting the other three fit airmen. They suffered the same fate, shot in the back as they walked out to the runway. The bodies were then taken to the mortuary where Lang had the job of removing their uniforms; standard procedure in a country where clothing was now so scarce. The next morning the four NCOs reported to the adjutant and made out a written report on the incident. Nothing else was done as a result of the killings. Only one of the eight American airmen now remained in the guard room. How he felt when his comrades failed to return can only be imagined. The following afternoon Lommes asked Hauptmann Böttcher if he could borrow his motorcycle and sidecar to take the injured prisoner of war to the local hospital. Bear in mind that this was the same officer who had discovered Lommes standing with his machine pistol next to the bodies of four murdered airmen. Lommes and Lang then went to the guard room and lifted the injured man into the sidecar. They drove out of the aerodrome, supposedly to go to the hospital at Oldenburg. They made a detour and as the motorcycle slowed down, Lang fired two shots into the neck of the prisoner in the sidecar. His body was taken to Dreierwalde Cemetery where it joined his seven other murdered friends. In September 1945 an RAMC pathologist would examine the bodies again and the war crimes trial would be set in motion. The trial took place at Recklinghausen between 18 and 26 February 1946. Scharschmidt, Bopf, Böttcher, Lommes, Lang and Günther were all sentenced to death by hanging. Rauer’s death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

The Two Spitfire Pilots The two RAF pilots were clearly out of luck. Of all the opposition to be encountered during a low-level strafing raid, an anti-aircraft train had to be one of the worst. Within minutes both of their Spitfires were hit and going down in the neighbourhood of Bohmte. It was 1030 hours on 28 February 1945. Amazingly, both pilots walked away from the crash-landings and joined up with each other a couple of hundred metres from the second Spitfire. Two men on the ground had watched the spectacle of the aircraft coming down and walked over to the pilots. Farmer Clamor-Bredhold and a Belgian worker named Malcorps asked the pilots if they were English and on being told ‘yes’ Bredhold took a pistol from one of the pilots. The fliers requested that they be taken to the local police station and the four men set off in that direction. After walking about 500 yards they were stopped by Meister der Gendarmerie Bertram and former policeman Willi Kothe who had also seen the aircraft come down. Bertram took possession of the pilot’s pistol and mounted his motorcycle to drive ahead to Reckers Inn to report the incident by telephone to Oberleutnant der Gendarmerie Borcherding at Wittlage. Kothe followed on behind, escorting the two pilots. As Kothe and the airmen reached the inn, a car screeched to a halt bearing Ortsgruppenleiter Friedrich Bühning and Doctor Muenk with their driver Ferdinand Heidmeyer. Bühning and Muenk got out and started swearing at the pilots, the latter probably resorting to violence as well. On seeing this, Kothe went into the inn to find Bertram to remind him of his responsibility for the safety of the two pilots. As he stood by the telephone, Kothe overheard Borcherding saying to Bertram: ‘I only want the identity discs.’ Kothe then left to return home. Bertram would later claim that two Luftwaffe NCOs arrived from the ack-ack train that had shot down the aircraft and took the pilots away. Apparently Friedrich Bühning was now making calls and issuing orders himself and soon his brother August, Friedrich König and August BrefordTeckner arrived at the inn. By now the two pilots were firmly under the control of Friedrich Bühning and on his orders the party set off on foot in the

direction of Haldem. Eventually the two Bühnings, König and the two pilots turned off the road into a wood. The airmen were then shot by their three captors, Friedrich Bühning using the pistol taken from one of the pilots. The other two murderers used German 9mm pistols. The bodies of the airmen were then dragged to the edge of the wood and covered with fir branches. Later in the day a Luftwaffe detachment arrived from Achmer aerodrome to inspect the aircraft and remove the bodies. It was later assumed that they had been buried at the aerodrome but they were never found and their identities were never established. Why did the shooting take place? Two days before the pilots crash-landed in the area a meeting had taken place in the Hermann Göring Heim in Melle. Present were Volkssturm (militia) and Ortsgruppenleiters and they were addressed by Seidl in his capacity of Kreisleiter and Gaustabsführer. He issued the order that captured crews of aircraft carrying out low-level attacks were to be shot. Among those present at the meeting were Friedrich and August Bühning. As of 7 September 1945, August Bühning, Friedrich König, August Breford-Teckner and Norbert Müller were in custody and Friedrich Bühning was still being sought.

The Enschede Murder The 41-year-old Heinrich de Haar was working as a political prisoner at the villa Hoge Boekel in Enschede, Holland on the morning of 21 November 1944. He looked up as he heard the sound of an aeroplane in trouble and saw a parachutist descending about 100 yards away. Three or four German soldiers came out of the house and ran towards the woods, returning a few minutes later with the airman. He was being held by Sturmscharführer Albert Blankenagel and was of medium height and stout, aged about 26 years with dark hair. He was in uniform and Heinrich noted the identification number B83B on his left trouser pocket. Heinrich then went into the villa through the kitchen entrance and emerged in the passage. Before he was turned back by a German guard he

saw the airman again, standing about 5 yards away, and again noticed the number on his trousers. The prisoner was moved down to the cellar and some food was brought for him, although he did not touch any of it. Unbeknown to the luckless airman, Standartenführer Doctor Albath, the head of the Gestapo in western Germany, was visiting the villa at the time, together with SS Brigadeführer and Major General of Police Doctor Eberhard Schöngarth. Albath passed the opinion that ‘In the Reich we treat such airmen as terrorists’ and suggested that Schöngarth, the commander of the SiPo in Holland did the same. Both visitors then left the villa, but not before Schöngarth gave the order to kill the prisoner. Between 3.00 and 3.30 pm a car was driven up to the villa carrying Obersturmführer Knop and another SS man. Knop and the other SS man went into the house and came out ten minutes later with the airman. This time he was wearing only a white shirt, grey trousers and white socks. He was shoeless, his flying boots and overalls were nowhere to be seen and his hands had been tied behind his back. The prisoner was forced into the car and joined by Scharführer Liebing, Oberscharführer Böhm and Obersturmführer Knop who was carrying an automatic weapon. They drove away into the forest. Heinrich joined two other Dutchmen behind the villa and all three heard a shot fired. That was the last anyone saw of the airman until his body was exhumed months later, together with three others. The airman had been shot in the back of the neck, while the others – two SS men and an unknown male – had all been hung. Kriminal Kommissar Erwin Knop, the commander of the Einsatzkommando of the SiPo at Enschede, ordered Kriminal Sekretär Herbert Gernoth to shoot the airman and he did so. On 11 February 1946 the following defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death: SS Brigadeführer Dr Eberhard Schöngarth, Kommissar Erwin Knop, Untersturmführer Wilhelm Hadler, Sekretär Herbert Gernoth, Obersturmführer Friedrich Beek. Scharführer Erich Lebing was sentenced to fifteen years and Oberscharführer Fritz Böhm to ten years. Albath, at whose suggestion the airman was murdered, disappeared at the end of the war and was not brought to trial. Two of the principal witnesses for the prosecution were Blankenagel, who had initially taken the airman prisoner, and Zendig,

Schöngarth’s chauffeur. After the trial was over it came to light that two young Dutchmen had found a briefing notebook belonging to the airman in November 1945 and the addresses inside indicated that he was probably an American crewman who had bailed out of an aeroplane returning from a mission over Germany. It was hoped that with this evidence the American authorities could identify the missing airman.

The Bomb Crater Murders One area that did see a large number of Allied air-crew murders was Graz in Austria. On a Sunday at the end of February or beginning of March 1945, two American bombers were shot down and the crews began to descend by parachute. They were seen by Sturmbannführer Schweitzer, the commander of SS Training and Reserve Battalion No. 11 based in the nearby Wetzelsdorf barracks. The SS men jumped into a truck and drove after the descending parachutists. Two of the American fliers were shot before their parachutes even touched the ground and the other two were murdered shortly afterwards. SS Obersturmführer Schulz claimed one of the men while he was still in the air. The dead air-crew were robbed of their personal effects and clothing, with Schweitzer helping himself to one of the flying jackets after removing the USA signs on the back. Later another American airman was brought to the camp and taken before Schweitzer. The camp commander gave a sign to take him away and the prisoner was taken into the yard and shot dead. By Easter 1945 the Russian advance was coming nearer to Austria. One day a column of Jews appeared on the road leading from Hungary to Graz. It was not known where they came from but they were driven by their Gestapo guards to the SS barracks in Wetzelsdorf. SS Unterscharführer Walter Dittman was ordered by SS Justice Officer Obersturmführer Doctor Müller to arrange for the Jews to be shot within the grounds of the barracks. The victims were first taken to the hall of the staff

building north, where they were severely beaten by drunken SS NCOs. Then they were marched to the parade ground where they were joined by a group of American airmen. One of the witnesses to the incident was Frau Edith Jeske, the wife of an SS man who lived in the barracks from 1941 to the end of the war. She later recalled that it was Easter Monday around midnight when SS Unterscharführer Zimmerman awoke her in the cellar of the building and told her to come to the roof to see something that was about to take place. As Jeske and Zimmerman looked down at the parade ground, they saw between eight and ten American fliers led out of the arrest bunker to stand in a line with about twenty Jewish prisoners. They were surrounded by armed SS men, including the commander Schweitzer who barked out an order and the prisoners were taken across to the sports ground where they were made to stand in front of some bomb craters. There was a burst of firing and the prisoners fell to the ground. As the SS men began to drag the dead into the bomb craters, an SS man appeared on the roof with a message from the commander for Edith Jeske. It warned her to disappear immediately or she would share the fate of those below. The next day Zimmerman was placed under arrest. Schweitzer gave orders that placards were to be hung on the walls of the barracks. Entitled ‘SS-man, what do you say to this?’ the cards encouraged the reader to ‘Beat them all dead, these murderers, who murder our towns, wives and children!’ In January 1946 Edith Jeske gave war crimes investigators the names of other SS men who had taken part including Maurer, Sagmeister, Hansorgle, Walch, Lellinger and Wagner. Other names later put forward were Hüttel, Gulden, Schurbiers and Weinhofen. During the same week that the airmen were killed, between twenty and thirty political prisoners from the ‘Free Austria’ Party were brought to the barracks and shot and buried in the bomb craters. Not long afterwards, the commander Schweitzer decided that too many people knew about the bodies in the bomb craters and that they were to be dug up and disposed of elsewhere. A party of eight political prisoners plus four SS men awaiting execution for various reasons were to be used for the work. It was assumed

that the twelve men would themselves be shot after they had finished the deed. Whether the exhumation or the murder of the labourers was carried out is not known. There were other incidents in which American airmen were murdered in Austria and this continued almost until the last day of the war. On 20 March 1945 three American aircraft were shot down at Schützen am Gebirge near Vienna. Five airmen descended by parachute, observed by a gamekeeper walking in the fields. One of the airmen was wounded and he was shot as he lay on the ground by one of the German search party. The other four were taken into Schützen and then marched into the woods where they were stripped of their clothing and shot. The following day a group of German officers visited the woods and then gave orders that the men should be buried in Schützen cemetery. A wreath was later placed on the grave, leading to reprisals against the civilians in the town by the Gestapo. The German company in Schützen at the time was the 2nd Company, 351st Battalion and three of the men involved were named as Vormann Henn, Hans Falk and Oberfeldmeister Seidl. The details were given by the gamekeeper to British prisoners from working detachment A1986GW who were stationed in the town and they forwarded them to their camp leader in Stalag 17A. When the British camp leader Warrant Officer Francis White was on the march from the Stalag at Kaisersteinbruch to Braunau he was informed that the Burgomeister of Waidhofen was in possession of information concerning the shooting of a further nine American airmen.

CHAPTER NOTES Incitement to Kill: PRO WO235/56 and 396

PRO WO309/2

The Killing of George L. Roth: PRO WO219/5049

Incidents: PRO WO309/1621 PRO WO311/32 NARA Record Group 24, file W-II

The Dreierwalde Murders: PRO WO225/82 PRO WO309/1624

The Two Spitfire Pilots: PRO WO309/40

The Enschede Murder: PRO WO309/16

The Bomb Crater Murders:

PRO WO310/99 PRO WO311/32

An American B-24 Liberator breaks up over a target. Those lucky enough to reach the ground in one piece faced lynching or summary execution rather than a guaranteed safe ride to a prisoner-of-war camp.

The local coroner Karl Keller points to the grave of three fliers murdered at Eutingen including Cyril Ludlow who was murdered in the town jail after being found with a broken leg.

An American B-17 Flying Fortress goes down in flames over the Nis railway yards on 25 April 1944

An American B-24 Liberator flies above the flak during a bombing raid.

About to be hanged, one of the five civilians who murdered six captured American fliers at Rüsselsheim.

Civilian dead in Dresden after Allied bombing raids.

The exhumed remains of six American airmen murdered in Rüsselsheim by angry civilians.

Joseph Hartgens, a German air-raid warden and the leader of the civilians who murdered the captured American fliers in Rüsselsheim was hanged for the crime on 10 November 1945.

Chapter 15

The Long Walk to Freedom

The Inquest

U

sually one waits until the end of the proceedings before summarizing what went before, but in this case it would be useful for the reader to know from the start what was facing the tens of thousands of prisoners of war as they began their march to the West. The ‘Russian steamroller’ was coming and when the sounds of artillery fire could be heard in the distance, the prisoners would be roused and given an hour or two to make their preparations before forming columns and marching off towards the West. These were men who had spent years in their prison camps, who had not been fed or housed properly and who were hardly dressed or equipped to march hundreds of miles in the middle of winter. Many, indeed, were wearing wooden clogs stuffed with straw, their army boots having long since fallen to pieces. After the war a study of a large number of reports from prisoners who took part in the ‘Death March’ established the following facts: Food: This was totally inadequate and rarely cooked. Red Cross parcels were relied on to a large extent to eke out supplies, but even so the men were often days without food. It is clear that the evacuation was undertaken without any planned ration scheme, and the feeding of the prisoners of war was largely a matter of chance. The guards carried adequate rations for themselves, and in

some cases were seen to use Red Cross supplies. Sickness: Forms of dysentery, chest complaints and frostbite were common and all suffered severely from malnutrition and exposure. Medical supplies were scarce. Only the obviously very seriously ill were able to remain behind at stopping places or enter hospitals en route, and many were forced to march who were not in a fit condition to do so. Men collapsed and died on the road after repeated applications by British medical officers to have the men rested and treated had been refused. German medical orderlies helped Allied medical officers in their task, but the amount of help and supplies available was totally insufficient to cope with the great amount of sickness. Accommodation: This was satisfactory only when a halt happened to coincide with a permanent camp, or a village which was not already fully occupied. Otherwise accommodation for the night usually consisted of overcrowded and often filthy quarters or the open air. The latter kind finished off, during the night, those men who had come to the end of their tether during the day’s march. Washing was a problem. Any change of clothes was out of the question in most cases, and frequently time to wash before starting on a day’s march was refused. Louse infestation was therefore common. Transport: Evacuation was achieved by forced march of between 20 to 30 kilometres per day and only in a few instances were short parts of the journey undertaken by rail. In some cases a small quantity of horse-drawn transport followed behind the column to carry those who were too sick to march. Days of rest were rare and irregular. The guards’ kit was carried on a horse-drawn cart, but the prisoners of war were generally allowed to take with them only what they could carry. Attitude of guards: Among the guards there were invariably some who were unnecessarily strict and even brutal. Stragglers were often kicked and buffeted back into line when their state of collapse was obvious and men too sick to move were beaten with rifle butts. Shootings were almost invariably

unjustified and often occurred when the guard failed to challenge and mistook the intention of the prisoner of war or for minor offences such as taking vegetables from fields en route to allay starvation. NCOs in charge of columns often refused to make any effort to improve conditions, even when repeatedly requested to do so, although in justice it must also be said that, in some instances, the German officers and NCOs seem to have done what they could for the prisoners under orders which could not be carried out without inflicting great hardship. It was clear that the whole evacuation scheme was set in motion at short notice with very little regard to the administrative problems of the prisoners’ welfare. Brutalities were the fault of individuals but the extreme privations of the prisoners were in general a result of lack of preparation from above, which in itself rendered great sufferings inevitable.

Long Walk to Freedom An appropriate subtitle would be ‘The ill-treatment of British prisoners of war on a march from Stalag 8B Lamsdorf to Brunswick.’ Lance Corporal Denzil Francis Caple was a member of the 1st Bucks Battalion, captured at Dunkirk in May 1940. On 24 January 1945 he was working on a farm in East Prussia near the town of Elbing when the order came through for all civilians to evacuate the area. Hastily the men piled the farmer’s belongings onto a waggon and were then marched away to the small town of Altmark where they were billeted in a barracks next to the sugar factory. By the evening all the English, French and Russian prisoners in the area had been assembled, about 1,000 in all. At about nine in the evening the march began. It was intensely cold with more than 20 degrees of frost and some prisoners were pulling sledges on which they had packed whatever food they possessed. Ominously, no food was supplied by the German guards. By two o’clock in the morning the German Feldwebel in charge decided that it was time to halt. They had marched 35 kilometres and the River

Weichsel (the Vistula) now barred their way. They were ordered to sleep in a barn, but as it was so cold the men found their own billets in houses in the village. Later that morning they marched to the river and spent most of the day waiting to cross over on the ferry. No food or drink was issued and the men had to wait until 4.00 pm until they could find a place on the ferry. Once on the other side, they walked for half the night and then slept in a barn. On the morning of 26 January the march resumed and the men were soon passing the bodies of civilians lying in ditches who had been shot because they were too weak or ill to march any further with their columns. Those Germans guarding the prisoners were a little more lenient. They knew that they would have to cross through Poland where the British prisoners would find the natives friendly and they were well aware that the Russian advance guard might overtake them at any time and their lives might depend on a friendly word spoken on their behalf by the British. It was just after dark when the men filed into a large park in the old port city of Danzig. After waiting around in the cold and snow, the men were finally issued with 12.5 grams of bread and some sausage, which was to last for an indefinite period. The march continued in driving snow, up and down hills, while the guards tried to find the correct road to the West. Eventually around midnight they arrived at a farm and were herded into the barn. No hot food or drink was provided and there were no facilities for making their own. The tired men huddled on the frozen floor of the barn and fell into an exhausted sleep. The men were roused before daylight but their departure was delayed as many had removed their boots, which by then were frozen and difficult to put on. In future they would keep their boots on while they slept. A blizzard enveloped them as they set off again, marching well over 30 kilometres each day. They were now in Poland and the going was very difficult with steep hills and deep snow. During the three days it took to reach Germany, their only rations were frozen bread and sausage. Some of the men managed to make their own tea or coffee in Polish houses, but often the guards would discover them and, out of sheer spite, upset the cans. When they reached Germany the column came under the command of Oberleutnant Heering and men of No. 4 Company, 610 Landschütz Battalion.

By now many of the men were suffering from frostbite, but the German guards informed them that there was no doctor with the column or any medical supplies and there were no hospitals in the area to which to send the sick men of the column. They would be forced to continue, or if they were lucky they might be given a lift on the waggon that was used to carry the guards’ kit. Now that the guards were back on home soil their attitude changed and they forced the sick to keep up and foiled any attempts at trading with civilians for a little extra bread. The guards, of course, had enough for themselves. The trek continued through the state of Pommern (Pomerania) with the prisoners marching 25 to 30 kilometres each day and arriving at a barn after dark. With no lights, cooking or washing facilities in the barns it was a miserable existence and the men became hungrier as the days passed. They no longer had any reserves of strength and any extra food that they had brought with them was long gone. All the Germans would give them was about a sixth of a loaf per man per day and once a week a litre of hot soup. The latter was not supplied by the guards, but had to be scrounged from the farmer by the men themselves. Eventually they reached the islands at the mouth of the River Oder. They were given three days’ rations, comprising a quarter of a loaf per man and some sausagemeat. The first day they marched 44 kilometres and arrived at their destination at 8.00 pm. There was no barn for them that night, merely a clearing in the woods where they were to spend the night. It was the middle of February and although they were allowed to light fires to warm themselves, very few men got a good night’s sleep. The next day the column crossed the river from the island of Swinemünde to the island of Wollin. They marched halfway across the island and were again billeted in barns. Some of the men were lucky enough to buy a few potatoes from the farmers, but for most it was just a small amount of frozen bread. The mainland was reached on the following day and another long march brought the column to yet another large barn. This time the guards forced all 800 of the men into the barn, using their rifle butts until the men were packed inside like sardines. They were given a few potatoes and bread, but the health

of the men was visibly deteriorating. Several were suffering from dysentery, but there was no medical aid or medical supplies. The heartless guards, observing the deterioration in the men’s condition, increased their bullying and prevented the men from obtaining extra food. The officer in charge, Oberleutnant Heering, claimed that the men were getting sufficient to eat and told the farmers not to sell the men any extra food. He even ordered the guards to shoot at anyone who wandered even a few yards away in search of food. One poor Russian prisoner asked the permission of a guard to speak to his friend who was standing in the food queue and had his head split open by the guard’s rifle butt for his trouble. Heering showed his true mettle on the day that the column spent the night at an American prisoner-of-war camp. The Americans had a stock of Red Cross parcels and promised to hand some of them out to the men as they left the camp the next morning. Upon learning of this, Heering ordered the whole column to be out of the camp within ten minutes and told the guards to force the men out with their rifles. The Americans saw what was happening and threw Red Cross foodstuffs over the wire onto the road, but the guards prevented the men from picking them up and kept everything for themselves. On one occasion the men were not issued with any German rations for a whole week and had to live off anything they could scrounge or steal. Many of the men were now suffering from dysentery or diarrhoea and were often forced to squat in the roadside ditches to relieve themselves. Rather than try to alleviate their suffering, the guards would use their bayonets on the unfortunate men. The next stage of the march was through the state of Mecklenburg and it was particularly hard going. The men trudged through vast forests with sand tracks for roadways. Marching on sand is always heavy going and when the column did rest for the night they had to use small hamlets in clearings in the forest where food was far from plentiful. It was around this time that the senior British NCO managed to obtain some Red Cross parcels, but a number of them were noticed on Heering’s waggon and he was often seen eating the men’s food during the following weeks. The state of the men’s footwear was now becoming desperate. It had been agreed that the men would march for an hour and then have a ten-minute

break; a sensible way of doing things that was accepted practice in the British army. The Germans, however, would march the men for two or three hours without a break. The men’s boots, which had been in poor condition to start with, were now beginning to fall apart and many were now literally walking in their socks or bare feet. After marching about 800 kilometres (almost 500 miles), the column arrived at a village in some woods. Oberleutnant Heering had no further orders about their future destination and the men spent the next ten days living in barns in the area. There were no washing facilities and all the men were infested with lice. Food was hard to come by and on one occasion Lance Corporal Caple noticed the pigs on the farm being fed. As soon as the farmer turned his back, Caple filled his dixie with the pig food and walked away. The men were so hungry that they would steal a dog’s dinner at a farm and every day they became weaker. Some of the men had to sleep on high platforms in the barns and climbing up and down the ladders would severely tax their strength. Eventually the march was resumed and the men continued in the direction of the city of Brunswick. By the time they got there they had completed a march of 1,156 kilometres (718 miles). They were now employed in bomb debris work on the railway in the city, being forced to leave their barn at 0430 hours. The only food they received while working was a cup of coffee in the morning, a litre of watery turnip soup at lunchtime, and a small piece of bread with perhaps a little jam or margarine in the evening. Again, there were no washing facilities and the latrine was a huge bomb-hole just outside the door of the hut. The men were also refused permission to use the civilian bomb shelters when an air-raid took place and had to take their chances in the open air. The long march that had begun on 24 January 1945 ended on 26 March. Almost every day Obergefreiter Schultz and Gefreiter Erdmann struck or otherwise ill-treated the prisoners of war in the column and Oberleutnant Heering was often seen to slap the faces of some of the men. Their names were noted by the prisoners, who knew that they did not have long to wait for the day of reckoning. On 12 April 1945 they were liberated by the advancing American forces.

Oberleutnant Heering was captured by the Americans on the following day. His name was later added to the wanted lists and on 21 September 1945 in the London PoW cage he made a statement regarding his activities during the march. Amazingly, following his trial Oberleutnant Heering was awarded just one day’s imprisonment. He was luckier than one of the other German officers found guilty of ill-treating the prisoners in his care: Hauptmann Willi Mackensen was sentenced to death by hanging.

Death March from Görlitz The memo was short and to the point. The originator was Lieutenant Colonel George W. Haley and the recipient Group Captain Somerhough, Chief of the War Crimes Section at HQ BAOR. It confirmed their discussion of 15 May 1946 regarding a joint British-American investigation into a ‘Death March’ of Allied prisoners of war from Görlitz near the Polish border to the vicinity of Brunswick. A group of some 1,800 to 2,000 Allied prisoners of war had started the march from Görlitz, but on reaching Duderstadt the group had been reduced to around 800 to 1,000. When they finally reached Brunswick their total strength was down to 600. It was noted that the hospital records at Duderstadt indicated that a large number of prisoners had died from gunshot wounds. It was suggested that a joint British-American team of war crimes investigators should retrace the route of the march from the edge of the Soviet-occupied zone to Brunswick. As the team got to work they soon established that at least three columns of prisoners had traversed the route from Görlitz to Duderstadt from Stalags 8A, 8B and 8C. The first column left its camp on 13 February 1945 and comprised around 3,000 Russians. The second column left the next day and consisted of approximately 2,000 American and up to 25 British personnel. The third column left on 15 February and comprised around 2,000 British prisoners. When the burial registers at Duderstadt were studied, they revealed that at least 65 prisoners of war from the march were buried in the local cemetery: 19 American, 16 Russian, 13 British, 7 French, 7 Czech, 2 East African and 1

Indian. The causes of death included pneumonia, diarrhoea and frostbite and, in the case of one British prisoner, a gunshot wound to the lung. The war crimes team tried to retrace the route taken by the columns, but could not cross into the Soviet zone to seek witnesses and without the actual participation of some of the prisoners themselves, they concluded that further investigations would be pointless. Some of the prisoners were interviewed by the investigators and it soon became apparent that conditions on the march were appalling and that a number of prisoners of war lost their lives as a result. It would prove virtually impossible to bring any of the guards to justice as the prisoners did not know their names or units and the guards changed at least twice during the march. The only person who could be named was Oberst Fuhrmann, who was the commandant of the Dulag at Duderstadt. He was then in custody, about to stand trial for the ill-treatment of British prisoners of war at Stalag XIB Fallingbostel. However, it was unlikely that he would be brought to book for the events at Duderstadt as the circumstances in which he became commandant made it almost impossible for him to do much to improve conditions in the camp. One reliable witness was Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant McCaskill of the Royal Army Service Corps. Taken prisoner at St Omer on 23 May 1940, he spent four years at Stalag XXID Posen until he was moved in September 1944 to Lamsdorf. He remained there until 17 January 1945 when the whole camp began the march to the West to stay ahead of the Russian advance. He spent a week at Görlitz until they left for Duderstadt, arriving there one month later. At the Stalag at Görlitz, chaos reigned. The snow had melted somewhat and the place became a sea of mud. The barracks were filthy and drastically overcrowded. There were no heating arrangements and no facilities for cooking or boiling water. The usual daily food ration consisted of less than a litre of watery pea soup and about one-seventh of a loaf of bread. It was not unusual to see prisoners scavenging in the garbage pails in search of something to eat. Any valuables that the prisoners still possessed were bartered for bread and the guards did a brisk trade in watches, rings, fountain pens, etc. The ever-innovative Russians smuggled bread into Görlitz in a

coffin after taking one of the many corpses away for burial. One of the barrack buildings had been taken over by the medical personnel who worked in terrible conditions to deal with the many cases of frostbite that had occurred during the difficult march from Lamsdorf. On 15 March the British prisoners were assembled, given marching rations of bread and a piece of sausage and moved out towards the West. They were glad to leave Görlitz, but they were in poor state for marching long distances. The days of starvation rations and previous marches had left them dangerously weak. After a few days on the march, the three columns became intermingled as some men forged ahead while others dropped back. The German guards formed them into columns of 100 with a few guards at the front and rear. Stragglers would fall out and join one of the rear columns or would be persuaded to keep up by the use of boots, bayonets or rifle butts. One of the guards was nicknamed the ‘Butt Stroker’ because of his habit of striking anyone in range with the butt of his rifle. On one occasion he struck twelve men, knocking one unconscious. This particularly nasty piece of work held the rank of Obergefreiter and had more power than the Feldwebels and Unteroffiziers with the column. Shelter on the march was usually found by the German billeting officer who would cycle on ahead and find barns, factories or occasionally military barracks to house the weary men. Usually there were few home comforts to be found and the men were lucky to find drinking water of dubious quality and a toilet area out in the open. While in the barracks the men would be taken to the toilet in batches of ten, thus producing an endless stream of men picking their way over the mass of humanity trying to sleep on the floor. The barns were the worst. Often the men would arrive at night and, unable to produce lights, had to find somewhere to lay in the darkness. Added to this misery, the men were usually locked in and had to urinate or defecate where they were. Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant McCaskill recalled that on four occasions he was urinated on by his fellows in the upper storey of the barn. It was one of the great hardships of the march. Each day the weary men would be roused at about 6.00 am and formed up on the road. There they would be counted, usually more than once, and then

the day’s marching would begin. Once on their way they would be given their day’s rations, for what they were worth. As they marched past some point en route the German quartermaster would throw a loaf between five men and sometimes a portion of sausage that would have to be divided between anything up to twenty men. This was very difficult to do on the march, particularly with the guards chasing them along. The meagre portions were usually consumed at once. They were promised warm soup at the end of the day’s marching, but often received nothing warm for days at a time. The starvation rations and poor organization often drove the prisoners to try to forage in the fields for mangolds or sugar beet as they passed. This meant running the risk of being beaten with a rifle butt or even being shot. Dysentery was often the result of eating anything that came their way, with no means to clean out their food containers or even wash themselves. The lack of regular water supplies also caused great hardship. Men would beg for water as they passed through the villages, incurring the wrath of the guards. Others would eat snow or drink from a ditch or pond and pay the price later. One example of collective ill-treatment occurred on 3 March 1945. The men were billeted in small barns between Bad Laulitz and Zeitz and had been told to expect a day’s rest. However, late in the afternoon they were ordered to form up in the road and were marched about three-quarters of a mile to a lime quarry. The 3,000 men were herded onto the top of some lime-burning kilns before being forced at bayonet point into the quarry. They were forced to spend the night out in the open and were given no rations. The next morning they were marched away without receiving anything to eat or drink. They were never told the reason for such treatment, but heard that due to pilfering by prisoners of war the Burgomeister had refused to allow the prisoners to sleep in the barns. The effect on the already weakened men can only be imagined. Pilfering could be a very risky business and further on in the march three men discovered this first-hand. At one barn a farmer discovered that three of his ducks were missing. The German guards aimed their guns at the barn and warned that if they were not returned the prisoners would be turned out into the fields and shot. Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant McCaskill went into

the barn and asked the men to return the ducks. Eventually they were produced and he took them outside to the farmer. The man was beside himself and demanded that the guilty men come out. When they did so, they were beaten and taken away to the jail at Zeitz. Their eventual fate is unknown. Two weeks later the men reached Duderstadt on 15 March. It was supposed to have been a Stalag, but in fact it was a brickworks staffed by guards from the Stalag at Fallingbostel. As the men arrived, their columns were halted and a document was read to them, warning them not to light fires or show lights at night or damage the barracks. Not long afterwards Corporal Meyer, a South African, was shot dead by a guard for lighting a fire in the middle of the day just after an air-raid. It would not be an isolated incident. The brickworks at Duderstadt were the worst place in which any of the prisoners had been. The building comprised a large kiln with a drying shed built around it. There were two floors above the kiln, accessed via rickety staircases. The place was full of brickdust and debris and conditions were appalling. Due to another masterpiece of German organization, the daily soup arrived during the hours of darkness and was ladled out under the only working 40-watt bulb in the place. It meant that the men on the top floors had to negotiate their way down in the dark, queue up sometimes for hours and then make their way back up again. To produce a light of any kind would prove fatal. The latrine was situated 100 metres from the building and at night it was impossible to get to it. As a result, the men would use the windows or any other place that suited them and those on the lower floors often received unpleasant surprises from above. The place soon stank like a pigsty. There were about fifteen different nationalities in the place at this time and the Americans seemed to be suffering more than most. Many of them had only been in captivity for a short while and were not used to existing on poor rations. When faced with what the Germans were feeding them, they quickly began to go downhill. There was only one water pump in the brickyard and the water was not really fit for drinking. To prevent dysentery, men would try to boil the water but again would risk being shot.

On the night of 4 April 1945 the German guard evacuated Duderstadt, taking all available food rations, and Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant McCaskill found himself in charge of the remaining Allied prisoners of war. Within days, American troops arrived and the men were finally free.

The Russians are Coming Bombadier Jack Sherriff was taken prisoner on 12 June 1940 when the Highland Division surrendered at St Valery. For the next four years he worked in an Arbeits Kommando at an explosives factory in the woods near Bromberg in Poland. The place was huge and covered 36 square miles. He should not have been employed there as such work is prohibited under the Geneva Convention. His next job was hardly appropriate either. In early 1944 he was moved to Stolzenberg among a working party attached to Stalag 20B at Marienburg. From there he was sent to work in an anatomy institute near the port city of Danzig. Initially he was required to carry out electrical work at the Anatomises Institut and Stadtises Blut Untersuchung Amt in Hindenburg Alley about 1 mile north-west of Danzig. This was a blood-testing and disease research institute and was later used as a school for training Wehrmacht doctors. Sherriff worked alone and was not allowed to communicate with the outside world. However, he managed to smuggle medical equipment and messages to Captain I.F. Ross of the RAMC who was at Stolzenberg. Usually this was done by throwing messages through the window to a working party commanded by Sergeant Neil of the Royal Scots, a regular soldier with many years of service under his belt. Between sixteen and forty corpses were brought to the institute each day. They were filled with preservative fluid and used for dissection purposes, after which they were burned. The corpses were mainly Jews or Jewesses who had been starved and tortured, plus Poles, Russians and, interestingly, some German soldiers. Most of the corpses arrived at practically blood heat, having been beheaded at a place of execution in Danzig. Sherriff was told to wash them

and to assist with the injection of the preservative mixture used to keep them in good condition for dissection. They were then put into bins and used as required. During his time at the institute Sherriff saw four corpses in British uniform. All identification marks including tattoos had been destroyed and they appeared to have died from beating. He was convinced that they were British due to their build and general appearance. This seems to be borne out by the fact that the corpses were not used at the institute but were cremated immediately on arrival. Sherriff soon realized that his presence at the institute might be the end of him. He was never left on his own and was locked in his room at night. He did not receive any mail and the letters that he wrote never reached their destination. He became concerned when Sergeant Neil passed a message through the window telling him that he had been listed on the camp’s books as ‘escaped – whereabouts unknown’. A friendly doctor at the institute warned him that he may soon be liquidated as he ‘knew too much’ and he decided to escape. As the Russian forces fought to capture Stettin, he made his escape. Three weeks later he stood at the top of a hill overlooking Gotenhafen (Gdynia). Suddenly he heard the tramp of marching feet and sought cover from where he spied a column of men about three-quarters of a mile away. He estimated that between 400 and 500 of the men were British prisoners of war and they were followed by around 700 to 800 French prisoners of war. He was in no doubt about their nationality; their uniforms and general bearing made it clear enough. He decided to remain hidden and was eventually discovered by the Russians who sent him to Odessa, from where he was sent home by ship. One other possible atrocity report that was never investigated came from British prisoner of war 5048001 Gunner W. Green, who was among 600 British PoWs evacuated from working camp E393 in Upper Silesia. They spent the night of 25 February 1945 at the German camp for Russian prisoners at Tabinskin Grube, a coal mine. On the morning of the 26th the camp was evacuated, less Green and a few others who were unable to march. The column of British and Russian prisoners of war, together with some

Poles and Jews, were marched towards Ratibor escorted by an SS armoured unit. As the column approached the River Oder the Russians closed in, whereupon the SS indiscriminately shot all the prisoners in the column. It was later reported by a Russian prisoner who arrived from Ratibor that the Soviet authorities intended to take no prisoners in their attack on the town. Although Green did not witness the incident, he was told about it by a French prisoner who escaped the massacre. Green was discovered by the Russians and sent to the port of Odessa from where he returned to England by ship. At around the same time, other reports began to come in from repatriated prisoners at Odessa alleging that 2,000 British prisoners of war had been shot by the Germans on the eastern side of the Oder. On 4 April 1945 the Swiss government was asked to investigate. Did the incident take place? In twenty years in the position of historian for the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association, the author has been unable to trace anyone from working party E393.

Trains and Planes One fact that the author was unable to discover during the research for this book was the number of prisoners of war who died or were killed on the march to the West. The British Army Historical Branch claims that the number of prisoners still unaccounted for is only in double figures. However, the author does not believe that for one moment. The whole story of the evacuation of the prisoner-of-war population to the West is one of disorganization, confusion, lack of planning and heartless cruelty. The American and British prisoners were in no fit state to march 600 miles, much less the Russian and Polish prisoners who had suffered far worse treatment. As the evacuation progressed in stages, many men were left behind when the camps were cleared, their medical officers trying frantically to arrange transportation for them. Sometimes trains were provided for those unable to walk, but the conditions on them were intolerable and the trains themselves were targets for Allied fighters. Captain D. Teverner, RAMC was at Stalag 2D Stargard in Pomerania

when a party of 1,200 American prisoners arrived by train from Lemberg (Lviv) on 20 January 1945. They had been in the unheated boxcars for seven long days with insufficient food or water and all were in a bad way. At least 600 reported sick straight away, mostly with frostbite, and within twenty-four hours an emergency hospital with 350 bed patients had been established. There were thirty cases of pneumonia, fifty of dysentery and numerous others with gangrene of the feet. At least five men died. Two weeks later the German authorities at Stargard ordered the 1,200 men, less those still in hospital, to continue the journey on foot. They had still not recovered and were in no fit state to march, but the German Kommandant insisted. Teverner later heard from a Canadian sergeant that a number of these Americans died or were bayoneted on the road. Army Chaplain William Burns was with a party of 1,100 Americans shipped out of Stalag 12A on 23 March 1945. They were packed into unmarked boxcars, which should have had ‘POW’ painted on the roofs, and were strafed by American fighters the next day. Fourteen men were killed and twenty-six wounded. Two days later they were turned off the trains and made to walk through the night to Braunfels. There were many cases of sickness and the local German civilian doctor diagnosed cases of diphtheria, pneumonia and malnutrition. He gave the chaplain a note to take to Oberleutnant Albert Bertrand, stating that the men were unfit to march any further. The German officer read it and laughed, stating that a civilian doctor was in no position to give orders to the army. That evening the march began again and within an hour the chaplain saw two men lying at the side of the road wrapped in blankets. He remained behind with them and the rest of the party marched on. In his opinion, seven out of ten men were in no fit state to march. Sergeant Howard McCord was one of many American prisoners of war taken at the Battle of the Bulge. Suffering from malnutrition, frostbite and shrapnel wounds, he hobbled along to the train standing outside Stalag 8A Görlitz and pulled himself up into the boxcar. Fortunately there were only 200 men in the party and with 30 per car there was enough room to lie down. As the train moved off, he marvelled that the door was kept open by the guard. There was little chance of escape, however, as they were too weak, did

not know where they were, had no food and could not speak the language. It made more sense to stay where they were and hope for the best. They spent the night in a rail yard, listening to bombs being dropped in the distance. At about 1000 hours the next day the guards opened the doors and shouted for the prisoners to get down. The sun had begun to shine. Howard recalled: I stood up to get out of the boxcar when out of nowhere came this British Spitfire fighter plane with his four .50-calibre machine guns blazing away. I bailed out of the boxcar and hugged the ground on my belly as close as I could. By now guards and prisoners were in ditches, under boxcars and laying flat on the ground; any place they thought would give them cover. The plane made one run on us before realizing that we were PoWs. He circled high over us, tipped his wings and was gone. He sure got a cussing from us guys. By now guards and prisoners were scattered all over the area. I climbed back into the boxcar to where I had been sitting and nearly passed out. There were three holes in the wall and floor at the spot where I was sitting. You could hear the wounded crying for help. We lost seventeen people that morning and many more wounded. The guards made the strongest prisoners gather the dead and place them in one of the boxcars. At this point their attitude towards us changed and they assembled us in a field across from the tracks. They did a head count and found they were three prisoners short. They counted again. Three prisoners missing. By the time they started the third count, the sergeant of the guard got very nasty. He ordered three light machine guns set up on the perimeter of our formation. If the next head count was short, he was going to give the order to open up on us. God, I was scared! Thoughts rush through your mind real fast when you are near death. I wondered what our baby would be? How would my wife take the news of my death? Would our bodies be found by American troops? The sergeant of the guards made one more strong demand to the prisoners that were missing: ‘If you care anything about your comrades, come out now or I will give the order to fire on your comrades!’ It was a nerve-wracking sound to hear those machine guns being fully charged ready to fire and you

standing there helpless. There was complete silence. No one was begging, no one was crying; just standing there waiting and praying that the three would give up. Seconds went by, then from a small building at the edge of the field a voice in English said: ‘Hold your fire, hold your fire. We are coming out.’ They had hid in the building hoping the train would leave them behind. Right then, I believe if the Germans had turned them over to us we would have taken care of them on the spot. Two guards marched them to the head of the train and I never heard from them again. One war crimes trial that did take place after the war involving the exposure of prisoners of war to attack from the air was known as the Oflag 7B Case. Carl Bessinger, the commandant of Oflag 7B, was accused of violation of the laws and usages of war by having ordered the evacuation in daylight of prisoners of war from his camp and refusing to allow them to exhibit such emblems as were necessary to protect them from air attack, with the result that they were attacked and fourteen British prisoners of war were killed and thirty-eight other British and Allied prisoners of war wounded. The role of the prosecution was to satisfy the court beyond reasonable doubt that the commandant of the camp allowed them to be unnecessarily exposed to danger while they were being evacuated. Article 7 of the Geneva Convention 1929 lays down that prisoners shall not be unnecessarily exposed to danger while awaiting evacuation from a fighting zone. Two weeks before the incident, Bessinger had been warned by the GOG (Gegenwehr Ohne Grenzen) Prisoners of War in that district that he was to evacuate all the prisoners of war in his camp from the west side of the Danube to the east side to prevent their release by American troops. In accordance with this order, at 0600 hours on 14 April the 1,600 prisoners were marched out of the camp. They had to march on foot as there was no transport available and the Germans decided not to mark the column as prisoners of war. The inevitable happened and, not far from the camp, American planes spotted the column and swooped down to strafe the men as they scattered from the road. On 23 May 1946, Carl Bessinger was sentenced to three years in prison.

His lawyer immediately petitioned against the finding on the grounds that a war crime did not exist and that internationally-acknowledged laws and usages of war had not been violated. The appeal read: Military necessities justify acts contrary to laws and usages existing beside (art. 7, Geneva Convention: ‘unnecessarily’; art II Ib law No 10 of Control Council ‘not justified by military necessity’). During the time when he issued the order (14.4.45), the accused considered an evacuation during daylight as necessary. He acted after careful judgement and not in arbitrariness. The prohibition to show recognition signals is moreover justified, because no international usages or customs exist about it. Concerning the age and the good behaviour of the accused, the not taking into account of the custody for examination and the not allowing of a respite of keeping in the sentence appears as too rigorous. The poor English translation notwithstanding, the lawyer won his appeal and the sentence was reduced to one year’s imprisonment.

CHAPTER NOTES The Inquest: PRO WO309/2

Long Walk to Freedom: PRO WO208/4644 PRO WO309/34

Death March from Görlitz: PRO WO309/931

The Russians are Coming: PRO WO311/271 PRO FO916/1166: E393 massacre.

Trains and Planes: Correspondence with Howard McCord, 2001. PRO WO311/32 PRO WO235/107: strafing of Oflag 7B column.

Dachau concentration camp inmates being marched back to the West. Often such parties were murdered by their guards as they sought to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the advancing Soviets.

Officer prisoners of war from Oflag 9A/Z marching back to the West ahead of the Russian advance in the winter of 1944–45.

German soldiers being executed by American troops outside Dachau, enraged by their discovery of the concentration camp.

Prisoners of war marching through a German town.

Chapter 16

The Day of Reckoning

Then the Guns Fell Silent

O

n 8 May 1945 the Second World War finally came to an end in Europe. The war against Japan would continue until September, but would end in spectacular fashion with the dropping of two atomic bombs on that country. Hitler had committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin and the Russian army now occupied the city. The Russian and American armies had met at the River Elbe and both parties were settling down in their agreed territories, which in the case of Russia meant its occupation of Poland and the eastern half of Germany. Eventually the occupation of Berlin would be shared by Russia, Great Britain, America and France, even though it was actually in the new Russian Zone. The surrendering German armies in the West would be disarmed and shipped to prisoner-of-war camps within mainland Europe as well as in Great Britain, America and Canada. Those taken prisoner by the Russians were sent by train to the far-flung corners of the Soviet Union, which for many meant the frozen wastes of Siberia. During the last couple of months of the war the Russians had been taking their time about sending ‘liberated’ prisoners of war home. As the guns fell silent the reason became clear: they wanted all the Russians in the West sent home. This meant not only those who had disgraced their country by surrendering in the first place, but also those who had put on German

uniforms and fought against the Motherland. This included such formations as the Cossacks and the Ukranian SS Division. The prisoners in two of the main camps, Stalag Luft 3A at Luckenwalde and Stalag 4B at Mühlberg, were in fact held hostage until the repatriation of the Russians had begun. Over the next two years somewhere in the region of 3 million Russians were sent home, many forcibly. Those who had collaborated with the Germans were generally shot as soon as they set foot on Russian territory. Most of the others were sent to Siberia as punishment for surrendering in the first place. One formation that was not sent home was the Ukranian SS Division. By then the Cold War had begun and they were considered to be prime candidates for infiltration into their homelands as resistance or sabotage groups. Russian spies within the British government were well aware of their possible future use and the information soon found its way to Moscow. There is a school of thought that the Russians retaliated by not releasing all the British and American prisoners of war then in their hands. The author subscribes to that possibility, even though successive governments have had almost sixty years to cover the trail. The majority of the Allied prisoners of war found themselves in friendly hands before the guns finally fell silent. A massive operation began to feed and clothe them and get them home as soon as possible. Most were asked to fill out ‘Q forms’ which included such questions as ‘Are you aware of any war crimes that have taken place?’ The list steadily began to grow. The United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) had been established on 20 October 1943 and given the task of compiling lists and exchanging information on war crimes subjects. Although each country would have its own investigative agency, all information would be available through the UNWCC. By the end of August 1945 a Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS) had been established in Paris under joint British and American control. The registry occupied a part of the building at 53 Rue des Mathurns. The military staff of the registry comprised two British and two American officers and 200 French civilian clerical staff. A monumental task lay ahead of the registry. Already 150,000 records of

wanted persons had been compiled and the numbers were increasing daily. It was estimated that the final number of war criminals and security suspects would reach half a million. In addition, the registry was given the task of recording the details of all the German prisoners of war held by the Allies in the West, estimated to be between 3 and 5 million. At that time accommodation was a problem and Lieutenant Colonel W.J.H. Palfrey, the officer in charge at CROWCASS, was having trouble taking over the remaining three floors of the building to accommodate the 100 extra staff needed and the heavy equipment required. The French Minister of Justice and the French Committee for National Defence supported the plan, but final approval by the Minister of War could not be obtained. One month later, at the end of September 1945, the matter was still causing concern. Responding to enquiries from the War Office, Major General M.S. Chilton, CBE at HQ BAOR explained that ‘we must accept some of the responsibility for the delay which has undoubtedly occurred, as it took us a little time to find out what was going wrong and how to put it right.’ Apparently the longest delay was caused by the difficulty in obtaining the photographic apparatus required by the prisoner-of-war and internment camps to enable them to complete their reports. The equipment was not requested until the end of April and did not arrive until mid-July, so the detention reports did not begin to find their way to CROWCASS until early August. He also pointed out that there were only 9 officers working on war crimes at HQ BAOR compared to the 100 American war crimes officers at HQ USFET, in addition to their investigation teams. The powers-that-be in Whitehall were concerned that little or no information had been forthcoming as to how those who had been captured were being dealt with. Chilton explained that ‘Belsen’ would be the first major trial and forty-five others were in the pipeline. Hopefully things would improve. In the meantime, the major war criminals – those who were responsible for starting the war in the first place – could be dealt with.

The Search Begins

Across the continent, from HQ 21st Army Group in Germany to Allied Forces HQ in Italy to GHQ Middle East, the recipients of the fifty-five copies of the letter signed by Lieutenant Colonel V.A.R. Isham on behalf of the DPS must have shaken their collective heads in dismay. Under the heading of ‘Major War Criminals and Nazi State Organisations. Collection of Information. Notes for Guidance No 1’, the three pages tried to provide some guidance in the search for material likely to form evidence or background material of eventual use to the International Military Tribunal (IMT) due to sit at Nuremberg at the end of November 1945. Those to be put on trial were Hitler’s inner circle and the tribunal would comprise judges from Great Britain, America, France and Russia. Colonel Isham went on to explain that there was now a matter of urgency as the target date for passing this evidence to the Attorney General via the British War Crimes Executive had been fixed as 15 August, only five weeks away. The prosecution intended to concentrate on three major headings: 1) Criminal Aggression, such as the invasion of Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Holland, Luxembourg, Greece and Yugoslavia; 2) Violation of the Rules of War as a definite and accepted criminal policy; 3) Criminality of Nazi State Organizations, such as the SS, Gestapo, Todt Organization, in that they a) acted in general in defiance of the accepted laws of warfare and humanity; b) acted regardless of the rights of other nationals and pursued a systematic policy of extermination, pillage, piracy and terrorism; c) carried out collective reprisals irrespective of guilty or innocent people; d) disregarded the status of and treatment due to military captives, connived at and carried out the shooting of prisoners of war both in camps and in the field; e) approved and put into effect the methods employed at concentration camps which would show a systematic pattern of barbarity. To help the prosecution, they asked that certain types of evidence be collected: Criminal Aggression: i) Evidence from documents, reliable statements, etc. which help to prove that any of the accused were responsible or ultimately

responsible or connived at or actively encouraged the issue of ultimatums, threats etc. to any of the countries listed above. ii) Discover who drew up or signed the plans or the operational orders for any of the acts of aggression specified above. iii) Discover who gave or signed the final orders for any of these acts or for any of the acts of individual acts of criminal aggression connected with these acts, i.e. the bombing of Warsaw, Brussels, Rotterdam, Belgrade. iv) What evidence is there to connect any of the accused with a deliberate policy to ensure by illegal means the success of such operations, i.e. the use of German parachutists disguised in Dutch uniforms for the attack on Rotterdam? Violation of the Rules of War, as a definite and accepted criminal policy: i) What evidence is there which will assist in establishing the existence of a general policy to act in defiance of the normal rules and usage of warfare and what evidence is there which will definitely connect any of the accused with the formulation and approval of such policy? ii) What official statements, directives, etc. are there which relate to the special treatment to be accorded on capture to such personnel as Commando troops, SAS troops, saboteurs, etc.? iii) Atrocities were committed in the field and on the high seas, i.e. shooting of survivors after the sinking of a merchantman. Were such atrocities due to the brutality of individuals or were they part of a recognized policy which was sponsored by any of the accused? iv) Torture. Is there sufficient evidence to prove that torture or treatment amounting to torture was employed as a recognized policy for the extracting of information from prisoners of war and others? Who was responsible for such a policy and did it have the approval of any of the accused? Are there in existence any official reports or directives on this subject? Can the names of any thoroughly reliable witnesses to such torture be supplied? What photographic evidence is there of the existence of means of torture for this purpose? v) Hostages. What evidence is there which will establish that the taking

and execution of hostages was carried out as part of an organized campaign of terrorism? Who was responsible for such action? Are any of the accused directly or indirectly implicated? vi) Reprisals. What evidence is there that reprisals involving the wholesale destruction of towns and villages were carried out as part of an organized campaign of terrorism? Who ordered such reprisals and did any of the accused actively co-operate or assist in the carrying out of such reprisals? What official orders, statements or reports are there on such reprisals? Criminality of Nazi State Organizations: i) What evidence is there which will materially assist in proving any of the indictments listed in item 3 above? ii) Who was primarily responsible for the issue of any orders putting the criminal policy of these organizations into effect? iii) Were any of the accused directly or indirectly implicated in either the formation or policy of these organizations? iv) Concentration camps. Who was responsible for the institution of the system? Was the policy one of organized extermination of elements considered undesirable? If such was the policy, who formulated it and who helped to put it into effect? What official documents, photographs or statements are there which deal with conditions at concentration camps? Was the policy one of organized brutality to all concerned or was this to some extent dependent on the personality of the commandant? The notes concluded with the advice that although time was short, it was fully realized that the search must often be lengthy if the best results were to be obtained.

The Hangman Awaits The accused men had been taken to the Palace Hotel in Luxembourg soon

after capture and American Colonel Burton C. Andrus was appointed their jailer. Not only did he have the job of keeping them from the hands of enraged local citizens, but also to prevent their release by some of the many fanatical Nazis still at large. He was also responsible for ensuring that they did not kill themselves before they were made to account for their crimes. Hans Frank, upon his capture, had slashed his wrists and throat and Joachim von Ribbentrop had a cyanide capsule in his possession when he was discovered under an assumed name in Hamburg. Hermann Göring was a man of many surprises and cyanide tablets were found in a tin of coffee and sewn into one of his uniforms. There was also another that he hid in a personal place, which would not be found until it was too late. The trial of Hitler’s inner circle lasted for ten long months and at the end eleven of the twenty-two men were condemned to death by hanging. Three were acquitted and the rest were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Those sentenced to die were Hermann Göring, chief of the Luftwaffe; Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister; Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German high command; Alfred Rosenberg, former chief of the administration of the invaded countries in the East; Alfred Jodl, former Nazi chief of staff; Wilhelm Frick, ‘Protector’ of Bohemia-Moravia; Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Hitler’s overlord in occupied Holland; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hitler’s deputy as Gestapo chief; Hans Frank, Nazi governor general of Poland; Fritz Sauckel, Nazi labour chief who organized millions into slave gangs; and Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy who was tried in his absence. His escape from Berlin has never been confirmed. On 13 October a specially-built door in the prison opened and the execution squad began to carry in their equipment. Three scaffolds were constructed in the gymnasium, each reached by thirteen steps. They were painted black and the nooses hanging from each of them were ready for business. Master Sergeant John Woods from Texas was the official US army executioner and he had hanged more than 300 soldiers in his fifteen-year career. Although Colonel Andrus the jailer did not want the condemned men to know that their last hour was near until the very last moment, it soon became common knowledge. The guard around the building was intensified and

silence descended like a dark cloak. Hermann Göring went behind the screen in his cell to use the toilet. It was the only place that could not be seen by the guard as he watched through the peep-hole in the door. Göring returned to his bed and lay down, his hands outside the blankets as regulations required. Suddenly, as the guard watched, his body heaved in convulsion as the cyanide pill took effect. Within seconds he was dead. As midnight approached, each of the other eleven condemned men was manacled to a guard, leaving one hand free with which to eat their last meal. Just after midnight the witnesses began to assemble in the gymnasium: generals and officers from the four occupying powers and, to represent Germany, the premier of Bavaria. At 1.00 am on 14 October 1946 Colonel Andrus went to each cell in turn and read aloud the sentence of the tribunal. The prisoners were given their clothes and led out of the cells and down to the gymnasium. Ribbentrop was the first to die. As each of them entered, they were asked to give their name and then began the long climb up the thirteen steps to the gallows. Sergeant Woods dropped the noose over Ribbentrop’s head and his legs were tied together. At a signal, the trapdoor opened and the condemned man dropped into the darkness. Field Marshal Keitel, whose orders had led to the deaths of so many Allied airmen, cried ‘Deutschland über alles’ (‘Germany above all else’) as he disappeared from sight. Kaltenbrunner was led to the gallows by a Roman Catholic chaplain. His last words were as follows: I have loved my German people with a warm heart. And my Fatherland. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I regret that my people were led, this time, by men who were not soldiers, and that crimes were committed of which I have no knowledge. Like so many other pre-death sentiments uttered by his comrades that night, it sounded sincere and moving. However, Kaltenbrunner was a hard-core SS man and Gestapo chief. He had been instrumental in the master plan to exterminate the European Jewry and was the superior to Adolf Eichmann who would later be abducted from Argentina and condemned to death in

Israel. By 0400 hours they were all dead. Their bodies were loaded onto trucks and driven to Dachau concentration camp, where for the last time the ovens were lit. Those who had formed part of Hitler’s inner circle and who had caused so much misery in the world were cremated. Their ashes were later raked out and scattered in the nearest river. It was a fitting end. Twelve further major trials were held by the American Military Tribunal at Nuremberg up to the middle of 1949. For the record they were the following: 1) The Doctors Case involving twenty-three persons accused of taking part in the ‘Euthanasia Programme’; 2) Trial of Field Marshal Milch for taking part in the War Armaments Programme; 3) The Lawyers Case; 4) Trial of eighteen members of the SS Economic Administrative Office, which ran the concentration camps; 5) Trial of industrialist Friedrich Flick and five staff on a charge of exploiting slave labour and plundering foreign property; 6) Trial of twenty-three senior executives of I.G. Farben on various charges including the exploitation of prisoners of war; 7) The ‘Hostages Case’ or ‘Balkan Generals Case’ against twelve senior officers accused of shooting hostages in the Balkans; 8) The ‘Ru SHA Process’ involving fourteen senior members from the SS Office for Reich and Resettlement Matters and other organizations for taking part in the annihilation of Poles and Jews and ‘racially unsuitable’ children; 9) The ‘Operational Groups Case’ involving the twenty-four heads of operational groups and units of the Security Police and Security Service and their part in murders committed in the occupied Eastern territories; 10) Trial of Alfred Krupp and eleven senior executives on a charge of plundering foreign property and exploiting slave labour; 11) The ‘Wilhelmstrasse Case’ involving twenty-one ministers, state secretaries, Gauleiters, senior SS officials and other prominent figures accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity; 12) The ‘OKW Case’ involving fourteen of the most senior officers in the German armed forces on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Of the 184 people above, 24 were sentenced to death, although only 12 such sentences were actually carried out. Among the other trials conducted by American military tribunals were those against concentration camp guards at Dachau, Buchenwald,

Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora and Flossenbürg. Of the 1,021 accused, 885 were convicted. In total, American military tribunals began proceedings against 1,941 persons of whom 1,517 were sentenced (324 to death). British military tribunals began criminal proceedings against German nationals, not only in the British Zone of Germany but also in Italy and The Netherlands. Of the total number of 1,085 accused tried by the British, 240 were given the death sentence. Most of the accused given terms of imprisonment had them reduced as an act of clemency. The last prisoner was released in 1957.

South-East Europe General Headquarters Central Mediterranean Forces (CMF) originally had responsibility for the investigation of war crimes in Italy, Austria, North Africa and Greece. In January 1946, a war crimes investigation section was detached from Italy to Austria and came under the direct control of the assistant director, Judge Advocate General, British Troops in Austria. In June 1947, the War Crimes Group, South-East Europe was formed under the direct control of the Military Deputy, Judge Advocate General in London. This short-lived group would operate until March 1948, when the balance of its work was handed over to the War Crimes Group, North-West Europe based in Germany. The war crimes investigators were busy in June 1947 and had some success with the arrest of Willi Schweitzer, one of the suspects in the case of the execution of Allied airmen at the SS barracks in Wetzeldorf near Graz. SS man Max Paustian was being extradited back to Austria for the shooting of Marine Beckham and Private Burns at Krusdorf and investigators had traced two other suspects, one to the Russian Zone and the other to the area around Sandbostel in the north of Germany. Much time was taken up in the collecting of about forty witnesses for the trial of SS Gruppenführer Simon, which took place at Padova from 27 May to 26 June 1947. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by shooting. The group settled into its new home at Ferlach, near Klagenfurt, Austria in

July 1947, all except Major Tighe who was the liaison officer with the Procura Militare Generale in Rome. In his first official report to the Military Deputy, JAG on 6 August the commander of the group, Lieutenant Colonel Heycock, reported that there would be no further trials in the Central Mediterranean Forces area owing to the run-down of the theatre. He had just visited Rome to complete arrangements for volunteer Italian witnesses to travel to Austria and to make certain that the Germans handed over to the Italians would have every facility for their defence. Apparently the Germans wanted for war crimes by the Italians were to be tried in the Italian civil courts, so that only advocates of the Italian bar could have right of access. The Italian Ministry of Justice guaranteed that good German-speaking advocates would be made available. During the latter months of 1947 it would be fair to say that the War Crimes Group, South-East Europe was not receiving the support it should have been. Brigadier Shapcott, the Military Deputy to the Judge Advocate General in London, was breathing down their necks. Following his return to London after visiting the unit in Austria, he wrote to the officer in charge of the group to complain that, in his opinion, the establishment of fifteen investigators was not being used as profitably as it might have been. He wanted to know how each of the fifteen captain investigators was being employed and gave instructions that they were to keep daily ‘log books’ which were to be sent to him weekly. Perhaps he was not paying as much attention as he should have been during his visit, for although the unit had an establishment for fifteen investigators, there were only ten on the staff at the time. There was also a long-standing shortage of vehicles and spare parts that would also hamper investigations. In addition, despite the provisions of Article 45 of the Peace Treaty, the Italians were being obstructive and were refusing to hand over Italian suspects for cases SEE/31 (the killing of Private Connolly at Tobruk in July 1942), SEE/87 (the shooting of Privates Batt, Clarke and Smedly at Biella, Italy) and SEE/115, with the result that these cases had to be dropped. The British Embassy in Rome was approached on this matter, but simply replied that the Foreign Office in London had given the Italians a virtual assurance that no further requests for the handover of Italian war criminals would be made. The fact that Article 45 was no longer

operative was quite unknown to the group. It was clear that the group’s location with Rear Headquarters, British Troops in Austria was far from ideal. Very few war crimes were committed in Austria against British personnel. Those that did occur were against prisoners of war in Stalag 18A at Wolfsberg. Any cases of airmen being murdered by the civilian population would have been American as the USAAF flew most of the missions over Austria and therefore were handled by American investigators. There were, however, a number of war crimes committed in Italy that were still being investigated. The crimes had taken place some hundreds of miles to the south of the group’s current location, while the perpetrators were probably now located hundreds of miles to the north. The crimes were generally committed by a German army that was constantly moving and had little contact or common language with the civil population. This made it difficult to identify suspects, and often all a witness could state was that the perpetrator was a German soldier. As there were 750,000 German soldiers in Italy, the tracing of an individual was always a lengthy business. Some briefs for interrogation were sent to the War Crimes Group, NorthWest Europe for their investigators to pursue, but this inevitably took time. Extraditing witnesses or accused from the American Zone of Germany was also time-consuming and frustrating. One of the men whose extradition had been applied for was General Wilhelm Schmalz, the former commander of the Hermann Göring Division. He was required to answer for atrocities committed by his division while in Italy in 1944. The peace treaty with Italy was ratified in the middle of September 1947 and from that date the War Crimes Group had ninety days in which to continue their work. Thereafter the Italians would be responsible for their own war crimes trials. As that period came to an end the War Crimes Group applied to the Italian government for passes for some of the investigators to continue to work in that country. Without the passes, the officers would have to obtain visas and travel as ordinary citizens in Italy. Their work was almost at an end now anyway as the Italians were refusing to hand over any of their own nationals for trial, stating that they would try them themselves. That was

easier said than done and the Italians faced a number of difficulties in bringing these men to trial before their own courts. Due to the 1947 Christmas and New Year celebrations, field investigations slowed down and with the officer establishment down by almost 50 per cent, a lot less was achieved than would otherwise have been the case. One trial that was fixed for January 1948 was the trial of Colonel Karl Diebitsch who was accused of killing Private Jack Russell at Ponte di Piave, Italy in February 1945 (Case SEE/77). Discussions with the Russian legal authorities in Vienna were going well and it was expected that Martin Eisinger – SEE/47 (murder of Private Peterson at Stalag 18A) – and Joseph Moser – SEE/59 (shooting of Kearney, Brown and Raymond at Tanzelsdorf, Austria in March 1942) – would soon be handed over. The War Crimes Group was still waiting to hear from London regarding the results of one final Foreign Office request to the Italian government for the extradition of two Italian nationals whose cases were fully prepared: Costantino Forti, SEE/115 and Settimo Ricci, SEE/87. A decision was also awaited regarding the trial of Germans for atrocities against Italian civilians. One of the suspects being held was Sturmbannführer Walter Reder SEE/168 who had only been handed over by the Americans on the condition that he would be returned to them if he was not tried by the British. The War Establishment of the War Crimes Group, South-East Europe was cancelled on 31 March 1948 and the eighteen officers then on strength were dispersed to other locations. The group was still busy right up to the end. The French had ‘suddenly come to life’ and produced the names of half a dozen men they wanted arrested. A rare exchange had been arranged with the Russians and an extremely brutal specimen by the name of Murer was handed over in exchange for Joseph Wailzer who was on the SEE wanted list. The Yugoslavs were also very active now that the shut-down date was approaching. Hundreds of cases were being presented to the British officers but the charges and evidence, if any, were so inaccurate or unreliable that in one day alone, 182 cases were referred back to them. Their local representative appeared to take this quite cheerfully. Any remaining work was handed over to the War Crimes Group, North-West Europe. Eventually the Italians took over responsibility for the prosecution of war

criminals in their country. Umberto Coccia, who had shot Nathan Leach, the escaped prisoner of war in Petritoli, was languishing in the Carabinieri prison at Fermo charged with murder. He had already appeared in court, but the trial was postponed pending appearance before a military tribunal at Florence. As for the murder of 14809 Private Bowers of the South African army, Vinicio Vannozzi was charged with murder and tried by the Italian authorities. Three other suspects were being sought in north Italy.

Released! It was not long after the signing of the peace treaty, however, that the Italian government began to release war criminals without regard to their crimes, length of sentence or previous recommendations of no remission of sentence. The correspondence flowed between Rome, the British Foreign Office and the Judge Advocate General’s department in Cockspur Street for the next few years. It would appear that the ball started rolling towards the end of 1948 when the mothers of certain Italian war criminals sent a telegram to the then Princess Elizabeth asking that she lend her support to the release of the criminals. The question had caused quite a stir in Italy and the reply that was sent on her behalf had been seriously misrepresented. Earlier in the year, when the Lord Chancellor was in Rome, he was approached by the Italian Minister of Justice with a request that the Italian government be given some discretion to remit the sentences on twenty-six Italian war criminals who had been sentenced by British military courts and were now serving their sentences in Italian prisons. The Lord Chancellor discussed the question with the JAG and it was decided that he should send out to the Italian Minister of Justice a summary of the proceedings in the trials of each of the war criminals concerned, with an invitation that the Italian government make suggestions as to how some of the sentences might be remitted. Such grounds as good behaviour or showing support of the authorities in the event of a disturbance in prison might suffice. While the details of the trials were being studied by the Italian

government, the War Crimes Sentence Review Board in England was undertaking a similar exercise. It was decided in the halls of power that the Review Board should make its recommendations to Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, the Secretary of State for War, who would then authorize any remissions of sentence. This would then be put to the Italians in the hope that they would go along with the recommendations. Article 45 of the Peace Treaty imposed upon Italy the obligation to take all necessary steps to ensure the apprehension and surrender for trial of all persons accused of having committed, ordered or abetted war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was suggested at the time that the Italian courts could also try Italians accused of war crimes, rather than handing them over to British military courts. Many war crimes committed by Italians had been fully investigated and the accused identified but, as in the case of most European war crimes, it was very difficult tracing and arresting the suspects. When the Peace Treaty was signed there were about thirty cases on file, involving about sixty Italians. All were cases in which British prisoners of war had been seriously ill-treated or killed. After consultation it was decided to limit the demands to only nine named Italians and these were given to the Italian government in January 1948. The Italians objected to handing over the nine in question and the political decision was made to waive the rights under Article 45 in return for an undertaking by the Italian authorities to bring them to trial themselves. One advantage of this would be that under Italian law some of the nine could be tried in absentia, but the disadvantage was that Italian criminal procedure was very slow and the Italian government had to take note of the opinions of their general public and a hostile Italian Press. In the event, it was decided by the politicians in London in June 1949 to withdraw their demands for the nine wanted men, together with the rest of the thirty cases. Justice in these cases would not be done. By the end of 1950 the correspondence had ground to a halt. The Italian government had, without consultation, released all the war criminals in its jails, with the possible exception of a former guard at Campo 57 at Udine by the name of Marinello Sodini, who had been sentenced to death in March 1946 for the murder of a British corporal. His sentence was then reduced to life imprisonment.

Among the last few to be granted parole or remission of one-third of their sentence, or indeed remission of the remainder of their sentence due to ill health, were Musetti who received twelve years’ imprisonment for his part in the shooting of three British soldiers and the women Cattani and Magnati who were involved in the torture of Sergeant Banks.

North-West Europe By November 1945 a total of 50 war criminals had been tried by British military courts and there were a total of 652 individuals whose cases were in preparation or under investigation. By the end of July 1946 that figure had risen to 385 and 3,903 respectively. The 385 suspects tried fell somewhat short of the target figure of 500. A total of ninety war criminals had been hung and sixteen shot. More than 1,600 other suspects had been handed over to ten other nations who were to try them for crimes committed in their lands. The evidence and prisoners collected by British war crimes investigators in connection with war crimes committed at Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg and Auschwitz concentration camps had been handed to American and Polish investigators and the Sachsenhausen case was passed over to Russia. At that time the British War Crimes Investigation Unit, HQ BAOR was based at Bad Oeynhausen. On its staff were 52 officers and 128 other ranks. Between 1 July and 30 September 1946 its investigators travelled to all parts of Europe, from Norway and Sweden in the north to Austria and the Pyrenees in the south. France, Belgium, Holland and Czechoslovakia were all visited, as was the whole of Germany with the exception of the Russian Zone of Occupation. In those three months fifty-seven war criminals were traced and arrested. The Russians were not being very co-operative. It was very difficult to investigate the cases involving the killing of prisoners of war because most of the camps were in what was now the Russian Zone. As most of the camp guards belonged to local Landschutz units and lived in the vicinity of the camps, they were now out of reach. Only one investigator was allowed into

their zone and that was in the Russian sector of Berlin. The British, however, were trying to obtain the co-operation of the Soviets and forty-six suspects in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp case were handed over to the Russians. An investigation into the Russian prisoner-of-war camp at Hunswinkel was also carried out at the request of Major General Malkoff, Chief of the Civil Administration Division of the Soviet Military Government. During the last three months of 1946 the trial of the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp case began, although two of the principal accused, Fritz Suhren and Phlaum, escaped from No. 6 Civilian Internment Camp at Neuengamme by cutting their way through the barbed wire and escaping under cover of fog. Quite a few important Nazis had escaped from this centre and the war crimes unit began pressing for its own camp where war criminals could be kept pending trial. Suhren would eventually be executed in 1950. One large case involving Allied servicemen had been submitted for trial. This was the Rheine airfield case in which seventeen suspects were accused of the murder of Allied airmen. The War Crimes Group, North-West Europe came into being on 10 January 1947 and absorbed the following branches and units of HQ BAOR: A(PS4); JAG (War Crimes Section); War Crimes Investigation Unit; British Element CROWCASS; Liaison with the French Ministry of Justice, BadenBaden; Liaison with the American War Crimes Group, Augsburg; and the War Criminals Holding Centre, Minden. Based at Bad Oeynhausen in the north of Germany with 80 officers and more than 200 other ranks on its books, the new group was commanded by an RAF group captain. He in turn came under the direct command of the Officer-in-Charge, Military Department, Judge Advocate’s Department, London. At that time the post was held by Brigadier H. Shapcott, CBE, MC. Soon the whole group was actively engaged in investigating, preparing for trial, the prosecution and trial of war criminals. During the first three months of 1947 seventeen trials took place with eighty-two war criminals in the dock. The most important trial of that period was of the staff of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. As a result of the trials, twenty-six persons were

sentenced to death and thirty-four others received terms of imprisonment. In January the public hangman Pierrepoint arrived from England and executed sixteen war criminals. One of the major investigations under way at that time was the activities of the Hannover Gestapo, twelve members of which were accused of the mass shooting of 150 foreign workers. Another involved seven Germans accused of the killing of two members of the RAF at Weidenhausen in December 1944. The search section of the unit tracked down fifty-three wanted war criminals. Eight of them were in American civilian internment centres, but the rest were apprehended as a result of good detective work. Operation FERRET had been under way for some time in the US Zone of Occupation, whereby British investigators were combing the American CICs (Civilian Internment Centres) for war criminals wanted by the British. The operation was a great success and many applications for extradition were lodged. Field Marshal Von Runstedt, the planner of the Ardennes campaign, made a brief visit by plane from England to give evidence for the defence in the Le Poitiers Case at Wuppertal. A new operation named FLEACOMB began in the spring of 1947 to reduce the number of persons being held in civil internment camps as war criminals. Those for whom sufficient evidence existed to justify their being brought to trial before military courts were to be concentrated at the new No. 2 War Criminals Holding Centre at Fischbeck near Hamburg. A new secure holding unit was required in addition to that at Minden due to the number of escapes taking place from the civil internment centres that were under the jurisdiction of the Control Commission. In May 1947 the centre was opened for the arrival of the first of a maximum of 4,000 war criminals. There would only be twenty-eight British personnel on the staff, but the guarding would be done by the Civilian Mixed Watchman’s Service comprising Yugoslav and Polish nationals, specially trained in guard duties by the army. By the time FLEACOMB came to an end, 4,261 suspected war criminals had been screened in various civilian internment camps in the British Zone and 2,502 had been freed. The other 1,759 were transferred to the new holding centre at Fischbeck. Only 626 of them were of interest to the British;

the others would eventually be extradited by other Allied nations. Working hand-in-hand with the new centre would be the establishment in nearby Hamburg of a War Crimes Trial Centre, North-West Europe, complete with five permanent presidents holding the rank of lieutenant colonel. In future most if not all war crimes trials would be convened by the Commander Hamburg District and held in Hamburg where facilities would exist for three courts to be run at the same time. One officer from the Field Investigation Section was stationed at the American Internment Camp at Dachau, helping to screen internees prior to release in case any of them were wanted by the British authorities. Thereafter he was to visit other American camps and carry out the same procedure there. During the second quarter of the year from 1 April to 30 June 1947, a further fifty-one war criminals were tried by British military courts and thirty-three of them convicted. Fourteen were given the death sentence and the other nineteen received jail sentences of varying lengths. The trial of the Hannover Gestapo had taken place and three of the defendants were sentenced to death for the killing of Allied nationals. Other trials under way during that time period were Solingen, Gladenbach, Le Poitiers, Drutte and Hannover-Ahlem whose victims were either Allied nationals or RAF airmen. The individual cases were usually known by the name of the location where the crime had taken place. The number of war criminals held in custody was reduced somewhat when 294 suspects were released, having proven to be of no further war crimes interest. A further 466 were extradited to other Allied nations who were also working on their own war crimes trials programmes. Some 125 of the suspects were handed over to the Poles who were investigating the fate of hundreds of thousands of their citizens, while 83 went to the Americans and 79 to the French. The Russians wanted sixty-three of them and the Belgians forty, with the remainder going to The Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Norway, Luxembourg and Denmark. An enormous amount of work had been put into the investigation and staging of the Stalag Luft 3 trial which began at Hamburg on 1 July 1947. No fewer than fifty RAF officers had been shot and their remains cremated, following the famous escape of almost eighty men from that camp. Around

sixty Germans would stand trial for their part in the murders, although some of the Gestapo responsible had disappeared into thin air. The Field Investigation Section was working on sixty-four new cases, the largest of which was the Fuhlsbüttel Prison case in which Von BassewitzBehr, the general in charge of the police forces within Wehrkreis X, was accused together with others of the murder and ill-treatment of Allied nationals who were imprisoned in the jail during the war. The search section, which was working hard on more than 100 different cases, arrested Harald Heyns, the former Gestapo chief in Normandy, after four months on his trail. He almost slipped through their hands though, escaping on the day of his arrest, but he was recaptured three days later. Doctor Sonntag, a ‘dentist’ at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, was arrested after a year-long search, as was Lieutenant Sass who had long been sought on a charge of mass murder. Crimes against Allied servicemen had not been forgotten and on 4 June 1947 Rudolf von Ribbentrop, the son of Hitler’s Foreign Minister, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Canadian prisoners of war in June 1944. On 12 April 1947 Doctor Erich Isselhorst imitated the method of escape used by two British paratroop officers after their capture at Arnhem when he jumped from the back of a truck and disappeared into the crowd while being escorted to Wuppertal Prison. He had been sentenced to death for his involvement in the murder of SAS troops in France. Thousands of leaflets and posters were immediately produced and distributed throughout the Ruhr and the northern part of the US Zone and Isselhorst was re-arrested shortly afterwards. He was then handed over to the French who wanted him for the murder of Resistance personnel. He was tried, found guilty and shot. Between July and September 1947 the ratio of guilty verdicts to war crimes suspects improved when forty-eight of the fifty-five war criminals tried during that period were found guilty. Half the sentences were for death by shooting or hanging. This may have been due to the assistance being given to the legal officers of the group by civilian counsel sent out from England through the good offices of the Lord Chancellor who visited the group earlier in the year. However, it did not help matters when officers were demobilized

and legally-trained replacements could not be found, thus increasing the workload on the men who were left. The legal section also benefited from the advice of Lord Wright whose experience often proved useful in overcoming difficult points of law. He was also responsible for the publication of the official war crimes reports of the trials carried out by the group. As war crimes trials were entirely new in the legal field, their precedents in the future could be considerable and great care had to be taken in their recording and documentation for future reference. A number of large cases were awaiting trial, including some more of the personalities from the Ravensbrück concentration camp case. The camp commandant and his staff had already been tried for the more serious charges of killing and ill-treatment of inmates. The next four cases would see the trial of the smaller fish and those who had been arrested as a result of the first trial. Other cases awaiting trial involved the barbaric treatment of inmates of Gestapo work education camps. These ‘correction’ camps were used to ‘improve’ the attitude of slave workers and the methods employed often exceeded those used in the concentration camps themselves. Twenty-five members of the Wuppertal Gestapo had been apprehended and were about to be tried for the shooting of thirty Russian nationals in March 1945. As 1947 came to an end, strenuous efforts were being made to reduce the number of war crimes suspects in custody. At the end of the year only 612 suspects were held in the British Zone in No. 2 War Criminals Holding Centre at Fischbeck and of them only 241 were earmarked for trial by British military courts. The rest were awaiting extradition to other countries. Trials in the last quarter of the year included that of the Fuhlsbüttel prison staff, the Kiel-Hasse Gestapo camp and that of Luftwaffe Generals Stumpff and Schmidt. Stumpff commanded Luftflotte Reich during the early days of the Allied advance and Schmidt commanded Luftgau VI which covered the Ruhr area. Both generals were charged with passing on the Terror Fliers Order by Keitel dated 6 June 1944. Stumpff was acquitted as it could not be proven that he had passed the order down, but Schmidt was convicted as a document was found proving that he had passed the order down to his subordinate commands. As a result, many airmen had been murdered rather

than being treated as prisoners of war. The year 1948 saw a reduction in the number of officers working in the group from eighty down to fifty-two with a corresponding reduction in the work produced by the group. Most of the thirteen trials in the first quarter of 1948 involved the ill-treatment or murder of Allied nationals rather than military personnel. Of the 59 accused, 47 were found guilty and 12 of them were sentenced to death by hanging. Extradition from one zone or another to the various Allied countries was now being dealt with by the civilian Control Commissions and there were now no war crimes suspects wanted by Allied organizations left in British military custody. Plans were being made to run down the work of the group by the end of the year, although the search section was still actively hunting more than 100 war criminals who were on the run. All investigations were to be concluded by 31 July and the last case was scheduled to start on 1 September. The Control Commission soon began to take over some of the group’s work, mostly involving Allied nationals. This left the group investigating cases only involving British personnel. Cases pending such as the massacre of Jews in the Riga Ghetto and the murder of Russian and Polish nationals by the Dortmund Gestapo were passed on to be dealt with by the civilian authorities. On 24 October 1949 Brigadier Shapcott reported that a total of 937 persons had been tried on war crimes charges by British military courts in the British Zone of Germany. Of these, 677 had been convicted, with 230 being sentenced to death and 447 to terms of imprisonment. He was unable to say how many of the 230 had actually been executed as some of the sentences had been commuted by the convening officer or the military governor, but he believed that a substantial proportion of the 230 had been carried out.

Justice? By 1948 the Canadian War Crimes Investigation staff had returned home. Their outstanding cases had been transferred to the British who had some success, particularly where murdered RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) men

were involved. Some cases would never be solved, such as the murder of thirty-five prisoners at Fontenay-le-Pesnel. There would never be sufficient evidence to uncover those responsible. Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer found himself incarcerated in Dorchester Penitentiary in Canada. He got along with most of the other prisoners after his request to be treated as a prisoner of war was refused. As an example of the short memories of some of the Canadian leaders, one day Meyer was taken out of prison, given a Canadian army uniform and taken to watch Canadian army manoeuvres and asked his opinion afterwards. The British government announced that there would be no more new trials after September 1948. Within two years the Korean War would begin and Canadian troops found themselves on the way back to Germany, but this time they would be regarded as an ally. In September 1951 it was recommended that Meyer be transferred to the British military prison for war criminals at Werl, West Germany. The prison was visited in June 1953 by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who talked to a number of generals including Meyer and told them he was doing everything he could to secure their release. Despite their past, if war came again to Europe they would be valuable additions to the German army general staff. He asked the American and Canadian governments to create a tribunal to review their sentences. In October 1953 the Mixed Consultative Board (British Zone) was formed, consisting of five members: two German, two British and a chairman appointed by Britain’s high commissioner. The board recommended that Meyer’s sentence be reduced to fourteen years and a third of the sentence would be remitted for good behaviour. On 7 September 1954, almost ten years to the day since his capture, Kurt Meyer was released and given a hero’s welcome by hundreds of SS veterans in the town of Niederkrüchten. He took a job as a beer distributor and one of his major customers was the Canadian army mess in Soest. It was not unusual to find ‘Panzer’ Meyer in residence, lecturing those within hearing on German army tactics. Times were changing and the enemy of yesterday was becoming the ally of today. Conversely, our wartime allies the Russians were now the enemy.

The Korean War began in June 1950 when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded its neighbour in the south. The fighting spread as far as the border with China and the use of nuclear weapons was being discussed. The American army was spread very thin on the ground and if a war began in Europe, where were combat-experienced men and commanders to be found? Why, in Germany itself, of course. Such was the pressure on the Allies to agree to the founding of a new German state with its armies incorporated in a new Allied force known as NATO that war crimes trials became an acute embarrassment. The rule of politics had its way and the responsibility for future trials was given over to the new Federal Republic of Germany itself. Sporadic trials have continued almost until the present day, but there is no denying that many war criminals escaped scot-free.

The Vengeance of Private Pooley Private Albert Pooley was repatriated in 1943 because of the wounds he had suffered at Le Paradis when almost 100 of his comrades had been massacred. When the war ended he was working in the Post Office in Hayes, Middlesex and lived with his wife and child in nearby Southall. It was hard to forget the past, with his stomach ulcers and injured leg as constant reminders of that fateful day. He still carried Nobby’s lighter and used it every day. Then there were the nightmares, when Mrs Pooley would hear him calling out the names of his fallen comrades. Eventually the thought took root in his head that he had to return to the scene of the murder. Pooley would not speak to his wife about what he had been through. Once when he had mentioned it to a friend he had not believed him, just as the authorities disbelieved him when he returned home. So he then kept quiet and wondered sometimes whether it had really happened or whether he had dreamt it all. Eventually he decided that enough was enough. Despite the fact that he already had one child and another on the way, he would return to Le Paradis to confirm his story and then he would report the matter to the regimental

authorities. The Duries Farm had not changed in the six years since the men of the Norfolk Regiment made their last stand. Pooley could still see the bulletmarks on the wall and the holes where he had knocked out two bricks to make a firing slit. Rusting British steel helmets lay around the farmyard. He turned and walked 150 paces along the Rue de Paradis and turned into the Rue de Madagascar. About 100 yards along the road he stood in front of the farm owned by Madame Duquenne-Creton and her husband. As he limped into the yard he saw Madame Creton. Their eyes met and the old Frenchwoman slumped to the ground in a faint. She had enquired at the hospital at Béthune and had been told that he had died. A tall giant of a youth then appeared: this was Victor, Madame’s son who had brought so many meals to Pooley and O’Callaghan in the pigsty in 1940. The small group walked along the road to the farm of Louis Creton and stopped at the gateway through which the column of British prisoners had marched to their deaths. The farmhouse had been rebuilt and the pit next to the barn had been filled in. The French had buried the ninety-seven dead in a common grave a few yards away. It had been fenced with posts and wire to keep the cattle away and the steel helmets of the men had been spaced around the edge. After the war they were all moved to a British cemetery nearby. When Pooley told the French men and women that the story of the massacre had not been believed in England, they were outraged. The civil police were contacted and they passed on the information to the French military authorities. Pooley was also given a cutting of an article that had appeared in the Nord Éclair newspaper describing the massacre. The investigation finally began in the latter half of 1946. The War Crimes Investigation Unit soon discovered which German SS units were in the area on the day of the shooting. The spotlight soon fell on the 2nd Infantry Regiment of the SS Totenkopf Division and the prisoner-of-war camps were combed for surviving members of the unit. Theodor Emke, the machine-gun section commander, was one of the first to make a statement. He had survived the war and fought in the defence of Berlin before being captured in the British Zone. His statement pointed the finger at Fritz Knöchlein, who was already in custody in one of the PoW cages.

The investigation continued until August 1948 when Knöchlein was officially charged with committing a war crime. The trial was to take place in Hamburg. While the search for more witnesses was continuing, Pooley went into hospital for an operation to remove the stomach ulcers that had long plagued him. It was a very difficult operation and of the five patients who went into the operating theatre that day for the same type of operation, four of them died. Pooley eventually pulled through, but it was touch and go. The trial of Fritz Knöchlein took place in Court Number Five of the Curiohaus, Altona on Monday, 11 October 1948. He pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ to the charge. It transpired that the German high command had begun an investigation into the massacre after the discovery of the bodies by an officer of the general staff on 28 May. The SS Totenkopf Division was instructed to make a report and a medical officer was sent to examine the corpses. Major Doctor Haddenhorst visited the scene at 1700 hours on 29 May and reported the discovery of 90 dead, plus 5 more in the ditch on the left-hand side of the road leading past the house and 4 more in the field nearby. From their wounds, it was obvious that an execution had taken place. Battle Headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Regiment sent their report to XVI Army Corps on 29 May and alleged that the British had used dum-dum bullets that would have inflicted grievous injuries and that a white flag with a swastika painted on it had been used to lure their men out of cover and into an ambush. They also listed the German losses as 4 officers and 153 men killed, a further 18 officers and 483 men wounded, plus another 52 missing. It was a poor attempt at a cover-up. There never was any proof of modified bullets being used, nor of a white flag being used dishonourably. On 3 June a XVI Army Corps report to the 6th Army Headquarters complained that the report from the 2nd Infantry Regiment was unsatisfactory and a list of questions had been sent. However, on 1 June the division left the corps command area without replying. No further action was taken. At 11.30 am on 25 October 1948, the twelfth day of the trial, the court president announced a guilty verdict. Character witnesses were then allowed

to speak on behalf of the accused and the court was adjourned. At 3.00 pm Knöchlein was brought back into court and stood facing the president as he announced: ‘Fritz Knöchlein, the court sentences you to death by hanging.’ The sentence was carried out in Hamburg on 28 January 1949. The sun was shining when Private Pooley rejoined his old comrades. It was 7 June 1982 and forty-two years had passed since that fateful day in 1940. Bill O’Callaghan, who had helped Pooley to safety all those years ago, had passed away in November 1975 aged 61. Eventually Albert’s wounds forced him to have his legs amputated and he was confined to a wheelchair in his later years. His last wish was that his ashes be buried at Le Paradis and on 7 June 1982 his wish was honoured. A war memorial to the dead of Le Paradis has been erected by the Norfolk and Norwich branch of the 1940 Dunkirk Veterans Association on a site generously donated by the commune of Lestrem in which the village of Le Paradis is situated. The ashes of Albert Pooley were finally laid to rest at the foot of the war memorial, watched by his wife, two daughters and dozens of friends, veterans and well-wishers. The 79-year-old Madame Creton was there, as well as Bob Brown and Ronald Palmer, both members of Pooley’s platoon and captured the same day by a different enemy unit. It was their first visit to Le Paradis since their capture. They stood in front of the large stone cross overlooking the neat white headstones of the British dead and listened with tears in their eyes as buglers of the Royal Fusiliers played the Last Post. Albert Pooley’s epitaph was provided by his widow as she stood next to the stone cross in the graveyard: ‘It’s very sad, but he’s in a place of honour – and he’s with his boys.’

The Last Word On 5 June 1947 four of the Wormhoudt survivors returned to France together with Major Pantcheff of the War Crimes Investigation Unit. They landed at Calais and reported to No. 112 Transit Camp where they had been promised officer accommodation. As often happens in the army, they were not expected and the only billet they could find was a Nissen hut with double

bunks. Major Pantcheff went away with the duty officer who informed him that he could put him up, but the others had to make do with three dirty blankets and a damp, straw-filled palliasse. They even had to borrow mugs and plates in order to eat the substandard food. It was no surprise that Daley wrote to the JAG department on his return and pledged that he would not travel outside England again unless proper accommodation was provided. It might not have been so bad if they were not still suffering from their injuries received at Wormhoudt. On 6 June 1947 the party proceeded by truck to the site of the massacre and each walked around the area, describing his movements at the time. Major Pantcheff later regretted that had more time been available he could also have visited the local farms in order to glean information on troop movements and other events on that day. So who was to blame for the massacre? One report suggests that the divisional commander Sepp Dietrich managed to extricate himself from the ditch in which he had been hiding and got back to his headquarters in time to give the order for the massacre. Most fingers, however, point to Wilhelm Mohnke who had assumed command of the battalion. He was taken prisoner by the Russians in Berlin in 1945 as he made his escape from Hitler’s bunker and for years war crimes investigators tried unsuccessfully to get him back. It is assumed that he had first-hand knowledge of Hitler’s plans to try to come to terms with the West and persuade them that Russia was the real enemy. For whatever reason, the Russians kept hold of him and when he was finally returned to West Germany no charges were laid against him. As of December 2000, Wilhelm Mohnke, then aged 89, was drawing a £23,000 pension from the German government and living in a five-star complex in Rahlstedt near Hamburg. By contrast, Alf Tombs, one of the survivors of the massacre, was living in a caravan and trying to get by on a £71 per week old age pension, plus £99 per month military pension. On Saturday, 25 November 2000, the massacre of the Warwicks in the field near Wormhoudt hit the headlines again. The owners of the field were preparing to plough up the land for growing potatoes. The local villagers were enraged and collected £10,000 towards the £25,000 required to buy the land. Then the Daily Mail stepped in and put up the rest of the £15,000 in

order to preserve the land as a permanent memorial to the brave men who had fought to keep France free in 1940. The following report was sent in to the Daily Mail by Bernard Jenkin: The patch of ground where Brian Fahey faced a firing squad is overgrown now, but he recognised it instantly. It was just 15 yards from the spot where more than 80 of his comrades were murdered. After a Nazi executioner’s bullet thudded into his body and he was left for dead, it took him three hours to crawl through the mud to shelter. More than sixty years later, the 81-yearold returned to Wormhoudt yesterday with a lifetime of haunting images in his mind. But, for the first time since that day in May 1940, he knew that the memory of those who died alongside him would be preserved. Under calm blue skies, he stood at the scene of the slaughter and explained why lifting the threat of the plough from the site is so important. He now knows that the man responsible for the massacre was Wilhelm Mohnke. He knows also that the 92-year-old former SS officer, who lives in Germany, will never be prosecuted. Justice, therefore, can never be achieved for the dead of Wormhoudt. But Mr Fahey, a composer and musical director who carved a top-flight career after the war with artists such as Shirley Bassey, knew what he would say to Mohnke if he had the chance. ‘I’d like to bring him here and tell him about my music,’ he said. ‘I’d like to show him my six children and thirteen grandchildren, and tell him what they have achieved. And then I’d like him to think very hard about what all the young men who died here might have achieved too, had they not been murdered in cold blood. My overriding feeling about it is that it was a waste. Such a terrible waste.’

CHAPTER NOTES Then the Guns Fell Silent:

PRO WO309/1425: CROWCASS.

The Search Begins: PRO WO309/10: investigation procedure. PRO WO310/123: collection of information on major criminals.

The Hangman Awaits: The Evening News, 1 October 1946

South-East Europe: PRO WO310/6 and 49

Released! PRO WO311/305 and 649

North-West Europe: PRO WO267/600-2: quarterly reports. PRO WO32/12202: trial targets. PRO WO311/31: responsibility for trials.

Justice?

PRO WO309/1664: Canadian War Crimes Investigation Unit. PRO FO1020/14: disposal of war criminals.

The Vengeance of Private Pooley: Jolly, Cyril, The Vengeance of Private Pooley (1977)

The Last Word: Daily Mail, 25 November 2000 News of the World, 17 December 2000

Standartenführer Wilhelm Mohnke, commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 26, 12th SS Panzer Division, Hitlerjugend. He was captured by the Russians in 1945 and when released back to the West, no charges were laid against him for the murder of the Warwicks in the field near Wormhoudt in 1940. He died in 2001, aged 90.

Fritz Knöchlein was hanged in Hamburg on 28 January 1949. He gave the order for the Royal Norfolk prisoners of war to be machine-gunned at Le Paradis.

A war memorial to the dead of Le Paradis has been erected by the Norfolk and Norwich branch of the Dunkirk Veterans Association.

Captured German troops being marched through Moscow by their Russian captors.

Photos of the Nazi leaders put on trial at Nuremburg at the end of the war.

Head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring, who would later take poison in the prison at Nuremburg.

The former leaders of the Nazi regime in the dock at Nuremburg. In the front row (far left) is Hermann Göring wearing dark glasses, who would later commit suicide.

Next to him is Hitler’s former deputy Rudolf Hess who would serve life imprisonment in Spandau Jail. Two seats further along sits Wilhelm Keitel who would hang for – among other crimes – his part in the issuing of orders to allow civilians to murder Terrorfliegers.

Bodies of former Nazi leaders after their hanging at Nuremburg.

Bill O’Callaghan and Albert Pooley arrive at the war crimes court in Hamburg for the trial of Fritz Knöchlein.

The defendants at Nuremburg with their names and sentences handed down by the court.

American military police prepare three German spies for execution by firing squad. They were wearing American military uniforms when they were captured.

Killed by advancing American forces on 29 April 1945 not far from Oflag 7A at Murnau in southern Bavaria, Generalmajor der Waffen SS Ernst Fick had a letter in his briefcase from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler instructing him to arrange the murder of the 5,000 Polish officers in the camp.

Bert Evans and Alf Tombs return to the barn at Wormhoudt in 2010 where their comrades had been murdered seventy years earlier.

Veterans of the Warwicks at the unveiling of the memorial to their murdered comrades at Wormhoudt.

Appendix

Punishments

W0309/5 Notes for War Crimes Courts on the Infliction of Penalties Introduction 1. The adjudgement of sentences for war crimes does not call for consideration of all the factors which normally influence a court of criminal justice, such as the reform of the offender, the provision of opportunity for him to make good, the protection of society from the risk of repeating this offence, and the need for an immediate deterrent for other potential like offenders. What is left is justice in its retributive aspect, the satisfaction, not of blind vengeance, but of the outraged conscience of civilized humanity, the vindication of the sanctity of international agreement, and the sternest possible deterrent to future aggressors. 2. The laws of war contemplate the possible punishment of any breach of them with death; and in practice during the continuance of war the most severe penalty is visited on those offences, such as espionage, which are most calculated to impede the victory of the belligerent to which the court belongs, irrespective of their moral turpitude.

General Principles 3. In regard to the offences to be tried by military court in this theatre under the royal warrant, it is anticipated that few cases will be free from the taint of cruelty or the abuse of power, and those will probably be regarded as the gravest which involve calculated and systematic cruelty. The standard of severity will be high. This will not, however, preclude the exercise of discretion in fixing the penalty. Weight will be given to all relevant factors, including the age, upbringing and character of the accused, his position whether of authority or of subordination at the time, as well as the nature of the crime itself.

Acts Proved to have been Committed under Superiors’ Orders 4. The excuse that a criminal act was carried out on conformity with the orders of a superior is neither a defence to a charge of a war crime nor a ground for inflicting a merely nominal punishment. A court of justice, however, cannot in assessing the punishment ignore the fact, if it is established to their satisfaction, that the accused acted under pressure. The nature of that pressure, the degree of duress, and the effect which it may reasonably have had in controlling the free will or blunting the perceptions of the particular offender, having regard to his intelligence, will be material.

The Scale of Punishments 5

The following on penalties provided in the regulations and the appropriateness of their infliction in particular classes of cases are

issued for guidance. They are intended to indicate principles and not to fetter discretion. It may be accepted as a grim but unavoidable premise that where the guilty of the accused is established, short sentences are undesirable, and undue leniency is liable to be regarded by the German mind as indicative of weakness. 6. The royal warrant containing regulations for the trial of war criminals (army order 81/45) permits the infliction of any one or more of the following punishments: (a) Death (b) Imprisonment for life or any less term (c) Confiscation (d) Fine

Death 7. The offence of killing another without justification, whether immediately and deliberately, or by such ill-treatment that death is a consequence reasonably to be anticipated – e.g. starvation or beating resulting in death – is in English law murder, and death is normally the appropriate punishment. A court may properly award a sentence of death in cases other than murder, if the court is satisfied that the offence is one of such gravity that no other punishment is adequate.

Imprisonment 8. Courts should appreciate that no provision is made in the regulations for sentences of penal servitude: the only form of punitive detention authorized is imprisonment, which may be awarded for any period up to and including imprisonment for life. 9. As a general rule short sentences of imprisonment are undesirable (see para 5 above).

Confiscation 10. Where the court is satisfied that an accused has profited by his war crimes, the court should not hesitate to order confiscation in addition to any other punishments which they consider justified.

Fines 11. Fines up to a maximum of £2,500 may be imposed alone or in addition to any other punishment. 12. If the court does not think a substantial sentence of imprisonment is justified, a fine is a rule preferable to a short sentence. 13. In awarding a monetary punishment the court should have regard among other factors to the accused’s financial position. A fine of £2,500 awarded against a rich man is a lesser punishment than a fine of £5 to a labourer.

SECRET 21 A.Gp/15226/8/JAG Jul 45 Subject: trial of war criminals: Notes on punishment Reference to 21 A.Gp/37712/A(PS.4) dated 14 Jul 45 (document to JAG (WCS) asking for comments that may take the form of broadside, which may capsize any attempt to issue such a document). Given in reference to an early draft of the finished document detailing war crime penalties, as above. 1. I am opposed to any attempt to provide courts with a directive in regard to sentences, which by emphasizing uniformity as something

to be aimed at, is liable to be taken as relieving the trial court of the duty of exercising its discretion and weighing on their merits in each case the particular circumstances of the crime and the criminal. My opposition is based on principle and experience. 2. The scale of punishment permissible is laid down in the regulations, and courts will have the assistance of a judge advocate or a legal member, whose duty it is to advise on the general principles which they should apply to any particular case. This is in my view a much safer method of providing guidance than any written schedule. 3. Assuming that the trials of war criminals will not be so numerous or so widely dispersed as to make co-ordination and supervision impracticable, I suggest that the avoidance of eccentricities in the way of punishment may be attained by careful selection of presidents and of law members to act on a number of cases for a definite period. A collation of information as to sentences passed and experience gained could then be made available to later courts. 4. If contrary to my advice it is considered essential to publish notes for the guidance of courts on sentences, then in my opinion such notes should be scrupulously restricted to the enunciation of general principles, and on no account should any suggestion of appropriate ‘standard’ sentences be included, except in the case of murder. I attach a draft which I would suggest goes as far as the bounds of propriety allow. Brigadier, D.J.A.G., 21 Army Group. JAG’s Branch Hq. 21 Army Group, Hs-b/rhc