Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  In many ways, Barkworth used the same tricks of the trade as Kieffer had employed at 84 Avenue Foch, though there were no threats of beatings, semi-drownings or worse at the Villa Degler. Barkworth utterly eschewed all such violence, and in any case found it unnecessary to secure results. At one stage he’d been after a certain piece of information, which no one would divulge. He gathered a few of his captives and shared with them some oranges, which then were in precious short supply, of course. As they chatted away over the rare feast, Barkworth artfully steered the conversation to where he needed it to be, and one of them unwittingly let slip the information he sought.

  In many ways, Kieffer’s statement to Barkworth would simply confirm what those before him had already divulged, but while much had been hinted and guessed at previously, now it had the absolute ring of authority. Kieffer confirmed that his key role at Avenue Foch had been ‘the execution of radio deception plans with fake messages’ and that Operation Marbois, the capture of Captain Garstin and his stick, had come about ‘during the course of a radio deception plan’ – a Funkspiel.

  When Garstin and his men were brought into Avenue Foch, Kieffer’s prime interest had been to assess if a new Funkspiel might be possible, as a result of their capture. But with Lieutenant Wiehe, the team’s radio operator, so grievously injured, nothing was doing, at least in the short term. Even so, careful study of the captured maps and communications kit ‘provided a certain amount of information concerning those SAS groups that had already made an appearance’, and Kieffer ordered a ‘detailed interrogation’. By unleashing Schnur and von Kapri on the SAS captives, Kieffer had hoped to glean clues to lead him to other SAS teams already operating in France.

  The final report on the captives’ interrogations was dispatched to RSHA Berlin for Sturmbannführer Kriminaldirektor (Major Chief Inspector) Horst Kopkow’s attention, amongst others. Kieffer’s report revealed the SAS’s teams targets: ‘demolitions of railway tracks, road engineering and river regulation works . . . in the area south of Paris’. No one, it seemed, had breathed a word about SABU-70’s real objective, to sabotage Étampes airbase. By way of response, Kopkow ordered ‘that the SAS men should be segregated while in custody’, and that all decisions regarding their fate would rest exclusively with Berlin.

  With Allied forces advancing on Paris, Kieffer had pressed Kopkow repeatedly for a decision as to what was to be done with the men in his custody. The response, when finally it came, was that they were to be put to death on authority of the Führer, and that prior to ‘execution, they were to be dressed in civilian clothes’. As the matter was absolutely top secret, Kieffer had had no option but to use his own men to carry out the shootings. ‘The escape of one of the prisoners was truthfully mentioned,’ Kieffer told Barkworth, and was reported up the chain of command to Berlin.

  Kieffer rounded off his statement by emphasising that no one had been happy about what had transpired. ‘Even on the days following the execution, I only mentioned very little concerning details to the men of my section who had taken part. Obviously, it was disagreeable to any one of them to have to speak about it.’ Soon, though, Kieffer and his men were going to have to talk about it in very great detail, standing trial as suspected war criminals.

  Barkworth combined characteristics that might at first appear contradictory: he was a ruthless and eccentric rule-breaker, whose tenacity on the hunt was legendary, yet at the same time he was a deeply humane individual, determined to see fair and proper justice being done. That Christmas, with the trial for the Noailles Wood killings fast approaching, he allowed his prime suspect a family visit. Hans Kieffer’s wife, Margarete, had died of stomach cancer while her husband had been in hiding, so it was his youngest daughter, Hildegard, then aged nineteen, who travelled to see him. Upon arrival, Hildegard found her father’s ‘host’, Barkworth, ‘kind and reassuring’.

  In many ways the Kieffer family had been close. During a visit home from Paris in 1943, he’d given his son, also named Hans, a gift – a trophy of his work. It was a hunting knife with the initials ‘PC’ engraved upon the hilt. It had belonged to SOE agent Peter Churchill, who’d been captured in France in April 1943, becoming one of Kieffer’s captives. Peter Churchill had claimed to be related to Winston Churchill, and his captors had largely believed him – hence the trophy that Kieffer had delivered to his son. That simple ploy – achieved by a coincidental shared surname – would help Peter Churchill survive the war.

  Since his capture, Kieffer had written often to his daughter Hildegard, addressing her as ‘Meine liebe Moggele’ – my dear squirrel – and he had a photo of her pinned to the wall of his cell. During her visit, Hildegard found her father quietly confident, especially as he didn’t think that he had done anything wrong. His main concern seemed to be whether he would have his best suit ready in time for the hearing. Just prior to departure for his trial, Kieffer would remove the photo of Hildegard from the wall of his cell and ask for it to be mailed to his daughter, together with a note. It read, somewhat presciently, ‘Moggele, I bless you in my last hour. Your father.’

  Repeatedly, Barkworth had asked for the Noailles Wood case to be postponed. He’d done so to buy time in which to hunt down the full cast of suspects. He did so again now, at the cusp of the year. In Britain, the winter of 1946–7 would prove the harshest of the twentieth century: it was so cold and snowbound that families went to bed without food and suffering endless power cuts. In Germany, coal mines stopped working, factories closed, homes remained unheated and families were unfed, as transport across the nation ground to a halt.

  But the Secret Hunters remained stubbornly active, as Barkworth sought one last suspect to stand trial for the ‘deplorable incident’ – the Noailles Wood killings – without whom he feared the entire case might collapse: SS Standartenführer Dr Helmut Knochen, who had been Kieffer’s immediate superior at Avenue Foch, at least until he’d been accused of being part of the Operation Valkyrie conspiracy, the attempted assassination of Hitler in July ’44. If Knochen failed to take the stand, it could ‘cause extreme difficulties for the Noailles trial’, Barkworth warned. The other accused would be able to claim it was all Knochen’s fault, so why wasn’t he on trial, especially as he was known to be in Allied custody?

  For some time now Knochen had been held in France, where he was slated to stand trial for the deportation of thousands of Jews and French Resistance figures to their deaths in the concentration camps. As Barkworth was the first to admit, ‘the French have an indisputable right to arraign Dr Knochen’, but he remained a crucial figure for the Noailles trial. Barkworth proposed a solution: a trade. In British custody were Goetz – the Avenue Foch Funkspiel whizz – plus two other Gestapo men wanted by the French. Barkworth suggested that if they were handed over to the French, ‘I take it . . . our Allies would be willing to lend us Dr Knochen for short duration’.

  In making that proposal, Barkworth also made it clear he hoped ‘to be able to give some return for the help which my regiment received while it was operating in France’. The appeal worked. On 21 February 1947 Barkworth sat down to interrogate Helmut Herbert Christian Heinrich Knochen, who had been handed over from French custody. Amongst other things, Knochen was able to confirm how he’d been punished as a result of the Valkyrie accusations: ‘I was dismissed from the position of Commander on 25 August on Himmler’s orders’. Stripped of his rank, he was ‘called up to the Waffen SS as an SS Grenadier (= private soldier)’.

  Knochen’s role in Operation Marbois – the SABU-70 stick’s entrapment – had been marginal: at most he’d been a conduit between Kopkow in Berlin and Kieffer at Avenue Foch. But still his statement fleshed out some key details. He stated that he’d played an active role in challenging the Kommandobefehl after D-Day, arguing that a fast-moving front line made it impossible to implement the order on the ground. Hitler had responded by decreeing an arbitrary line, beyond which all captured parachutists were to be executed. As a result, Knochen argued, ‘an immediate
execution ought to have taken place’ of the SABU-70 captives. ‘I did not give such orders.’

  By failing to do so, Knochen maintained that he had tried to buy the captives time. Once Kopkow and the RSHA took over, that had ‘tied my hands’. As Garstin and his men had been seized as part of a Funkspiel operation, that made them automatically Berlin’s concern – ‘everything in this sphere had to be reported to Berlin at once’. And if Knochen had tried to resist the execution order, the consequences would have been dire: ‘No one would have been able to have suppressed such a direct order of the Supreme Commander, or could have dared not to have such orders carried out.’

  In case Barkworth had missed what would be the key thrust of Knochen’s – indeed all of the accused’s – defence, he rounded off his statement thus: ‘Neither I, nor one of my subordinates, could have acted otherwise, without being condemned to death immediately.’ Thanks to Knochen, it was crystal clear what all were going to argue at trial.

  On pain of death, they had simply been carrying out orders from the highest authority in the land.

  Chapter 25

  The trial of the accused would take place from 7 to 14 March 1947, in the banqueting hall of the Zoological Gardens in the city of Wuppertal, in west-central Germany, within the British zone of occupation. It was presided over by six military judges. Barkworth, Rhodes and team would be billeted in an admin block adjacent to the courtroom, with the accused held in the local jail. Barkworth made it clear that he wanted the prisoners watched closely, especially when being transported to and from the court. ‘Do not wish to have to look for them again,’ he remarked, pointedly.

  It was approaching two years since the work of the Secret Hunters had begun, and the coming trial would prove extraordinary on many levels – not least of which was that a foremost SS and Gestapo war crimes suspect would appear for the prosecution, giving evidence against his former comrades, and a high-profile SOE renegade, or war hero (depending on your view of things), would appear for the defence, giving evidence in support of his former captors.

  A week before the case opened the star witnesses arrived in Wuppertal, in preparation for seeing those who had ‘tortured us and murdered our comrades’ stand trial. It was the first time that Serge Vaculik and Ginger Jones had seen each other since the end of the war. Jones had flown in from England, and his plane had almost crash-landed on the frozen runway. Even so, the reunion after so many months was a joyful one.

  ‘Ginger!’ Vaculik cried, giving the former SAS trooper a hug. ‘Dear old pal, it’s good to see you again.’ Jones had been busted back to the rank of private – ‘trooper’ in SAS parlance of the time – for some misdemeanour, just prior to the disbandment of the SAS.

  ‘Good old Frenchy!’ Jones enthused. ‘Damn glad to see you again too.’

  But as they began to contemplate exactly why they had returned to Germany, their spirits waned. ‘We were no longer . . . two light-hearted parachutists,’ Vaculik remarked. ‘We were sombre and silent.’ Worse still, ‘Ginger no longer swore whenever he opened his mouth, and that was a bad sign. His red hair seemed washed out and his once gleaming eyes had lost their sparkle . . . The war had turned him into an old man.’

  The trial opened at 10.30 a.m. on 7 March, with the six accused – Knochen, Kieffer, Schnur, Ilgenfritz, Haug and Hildemann – being led in, and taken to a bench opposite the dock. The presiding judge was Lieutenant Colonel H. Bentley, OBE, a man who had previous form. In October 1946 he’d headed up a war crimes trial in which eight Germans were accused of ill-treating British prisoners at Stalag XI-B Fallingbostel, a POW camp in northwest Germany. Under Bentley sat four other British military judges and one French. Together with the six accused – all dressed in civilian clothes – sat their six German defence lawyers. There were also legal clerks, interpreters and at least eight armed guards.

  Jones and Vaculik were seated in the witness gallery, just ‘a few feet away from men who had murdered our comrades and so nearly murdered us’. It had taken two and a half years and a string of near-miracles to get to this point, where they could look the killers in the eye, knowing or at least hoping that justice was about to be done. But from the appearance of the defendants –Schnur in particular – convictions looked unlikely. As they chatted and joked with their lawyers that first morning, there was a high-spirited arrogance about the former SS men that was galling.

  The six accused were facing charges of murder, and all were pleading not guilty. After the prosecution’s opening address Vaculik was the first to be called to the stand. Under questioning, he described SABU-70’s mission and their departure from Britain in ‘full battle dress, a steel helmet and a beret. The objective was in the neighbourhood of Paris.’ Point one had been well made: they had deployed in full uniform on a bona fide military operation. He went on to describe the ambush at the DZ: ‘Some shots came from a wood. I lay down and took a rifle and a grenade from my pack.’

  Vaculik spoke about the firefight, his capture, the wounded men being brought in, the incarceration at Avenue Foch, the interrogations and the fact that they were kept ‘handcuffed all the time’. He explained how they’d been forced to change into civilian clothes, and the lies about the prisoner exchange. Then he recounted the moment of their departure to the Noailles Wood, and how he ‘saw the accused, Schnur, by the truck. We were given sandwiches and told we were going on a long journey.’ He told about the drive to the woodland, and being formed up for execution: ‘The order of the line was Jones, Captain Garstin, myself, Varey, Barker, Walker and Young.’

  ‘The Germans took up a line six paces away,’ Vaculik continued. ‘Opposite Jones was von Kapri. Opposite Captain Garstin was the accused Haug, whom I identify. Opposite me was accused Schnur, whom I identify. Next to Schnur was a German whom I think was Ilgenfritz, but I am not quite sure. Accused Schnur read from a piece of paper. Von Kapri translated it into English.’ Vaculik went on to recount the shooting, and his escape, in as firm and commanding tones as he had started. By the time he was finished, the six accused didn’t seem quite as haughty or self-assured any more.

  The second witness was called – ‘Mr Thomas Jones’. As Jones began speaking, he told a similar tale to Vaculik, but if anything his testimony proved even more powerful. He remembered particularly the ride in the death truck: ‘Accused Schnur, whom I identify, was by the truck. Accused Haug, whom I identify, was in the truck. Accused Hildemann, whom I identify, got out of the truck when we reached the field . . . I helped Captain Garstin out of the truck, as he was sick. Accused Hildemann said, “Schnell! Schnell!” Captain Garstin was very weak and ill. No consideration was shown to him.’

  ‘Accused Hildemann accompanied Captain Garstin and me up to the firing point,’ Jones continued. ‘He was armed. I do not know if he was in the line of Germans firing at us.’ Jones then told of his desperate escape under fire, his fleeing through the woodland and taking sanctuary with the help of locals in a nearby French village. His words, simply and plainly told as any soldier would, proved electrifying.

  On behalf of Schnur, defence lawyer von Bruch posed a question about how the SAS men had been supposed to make contact with Britain. ‘The only means we had of communicating with England upon landing was by pigeon,’ Jones answered. ‘Our job was to do what we had to do and get out. We were not told in England that we might not be treated as prisoners of war,’ he added, pointedly.

  Apart from that one paltry line of questioning, there was no further cross-examination. It was almost as if the German defence team had decided to try to get Vaculik and Jones off the witness stand as quickly as possible. In a sense it was hardly surprising. Their eyewitness accounts had proved absolutely devastating. Rarely if ever had those facing a top-secret SS and Gestapo execution squad survived to tell the tale, and then to face their would-be killers in a court of law.

  The third witness on that first day was something of a surprise –Fräulein Käthe Goldmann, one of Gestapo chief Kieffer’s former secretaries at the Av
enue Foch. The main value of her testimony was that she was witness to several reminders sent from Paris to Berlin, before the response finally came that ‘the prisoners had to be shot within twenty-four hours and in civilian clothing’. In other words, if Berlin hadn’t been chased, the captives might well have been overlooked, and could have been syphoned off to a POW camp, where all might have survived the war. And with that, at 6 p.m. on 7 March the court adjourned, pending more evidence to be heard the following morning.

  At 9.30 a.m. on 8 March counsel von Bruch took to the floor, outlining the defence for the three most senior men – Knochen, Kieffer and Schnur. They accepted that the Kommandobefehl was ‘contrary to international law’ as ruled during the Nuremberg trials – a series of hearings from November ’45 to October ’46 for senior Nazi war criminals. But this case was different, von Bruch argued. The SAS men had been executed ‘on a special order from Berlin aimed at this particular Commando [sic] . . . the accused were unable to resist this order, because they would be shot if they did . . . The accused acted under duress and not of their own free will.’

  This was clearly a well-thought-out and ingenious argument. Knochen was first to take the stand. He began by recounting how he had wanted to become a teacher after finishing university studies, but ‘I had to become a member of the SS’. No reason was given as to why he’d been obliged to join. After that, his evidence pretty much echoed the statement he’d given Barkworth. There was one notable exception. Knochen tried to justify why Captain Garstin and his men had been forced to change into civilian clothes, before being killed. ‘If the men had been shot in uniform, enemy intelligence might have reported the fact that the Germans had captured them.’