Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  The cross-examination of Knochen pulled no punches, as the first of the accused was assailed by a volley of questions, and a copy of the Kommandobefehl was handed in to the court as evidence. Why were the men shot in hiding, in the depths of a woodland? Why were no efforts made to delay the order, with Paris facing evacuation? How was the wounded man, Lieutenant Wiehe, spared death, yet none of the Gestapo team punished or shot?

  ‘I do not know why the men were taken away from a main road and shot where they could not be seen,’ Knochen conceded. ‘At a conference we decided not to execute the wounded men. We disobeyed the order, when we refused to shoot the wounded.’

  Those two points landed hard. The SAS captives had been killed out of sight and in secret, and no explanation could be furnished as to why. The Avenue Foch Gestapo had got away without executing the wounded, so arguably the same mercy could have been extended to the other captives, not that Captain Garstin wasn’t grievously wounded in any case. Under cross-examination, Knochen had at first faltered and then tied himself in knots. If anything, Kieffer’s performance was to prove even less edifying.

  Kieffer took to the stand and began: ‘The statement I made to Major Barkworth is correct.’ He didn’t intend to add a great deal more. The one point he did want to address was the change out of uniform for those facing execution. ‘The civilian clothes were ordered, to ensure the strictest secrecy.’ Kieffer added a last few lines, in which he clearly sought to appeal to the court’s sympathy. ‘I have three children. My son is a prisoner of war in France. I lost my wife during the war.’ And with that, his evidence was pretty much done.

  Facing cross-examination, Kieffer seemed to weaken and wither. Asked about the other parachutists that he had ensnared via Funkspiel operations and their fates, he mentioned some thirty agents who were ‘wireless men and English officers in civilian clothes . . . I do not know what happened to them. This was the first time men in uniform were captured. I do not know why such men should be treated worse than men captured in civil clothes. As a human being, I have to say it was shameful to shoot the men without trial.’ Needless to say, that last line was a telling – potentially catastrophic – admission.

  Schnur – the unrepentant Nazi – was up next. Like Kieffer, he sought to rely on his statement to Barkworth, claiming to have little further to add. But under cross-examination Schnur began to writhe and thrash about, as he tried to argue that he could not possibly have killed any of the captives himself. ‘I looked upon the prisoners with great respect, as they had undertaken such dangerous duties . . . It was impossible for me to have fired a burst . . . I brought my Sten gun to the firing position and intended to shoot. I did not have my magazine on and I could not fire. I must have lost it.’

  As the questions came thick and fast, Schnur seemed torn between his stubborn belief that the killings were justified, and his desire to win acquittal by claiming that he’d never fired a shot. It was an unreconcilable tension. ‘I knew it was forbidden for soldiers to operate with terrorists. The prisoners had been in cooperation with French terrorists . . . I pitied the fate of the courageous men, but I thought the sentence was a correct one . . . I chased two prisoners without any magazine in my Sten gun.’

  With that – Schnur speared on the horns of a dilemma – day two of the trial was done. The court wouldn’t reconvene until 10 March, for the ninth was a Sunday – meaning that the accused would have a day locked in their Wuppertal cells in which to contemplate their performances so far. Those can’t have been the most relaxed and restful twenty-four hours. At 9.30 a.m. on the tenth the trial began again, with Ilgenfritz up next.

  Instead of the SS Obersturmführer addressing the court, the statement that he had given to Barkworth was read out in both English and German. After that, Ilgenfritz added a few brief words. ‘I am a motor mechanic by trade. The statements I have made are correct. I have nothing to add to them . . . I had no suspicions, before the sentence was read out, that I was concerned with Englishmen. I had no idea, before the shooting, that they were prisoners of war. I had no reason to believe that the sentence was illegal.’ And with that he was pretty much done.

  Under cross-examination, the prosecutor sought to pick apart Ilgenfritz’s argument that he had no idea of the true identity of the captives. Finally the SS Obersturmführer admitted: ‘From the moment I heard the translation in English, I knew the prisoners were English and not French. It was several minutes later that I shot the escaping prisoner. I shouted to him to stop. I thought it was my duty as a soldier to prevent the escape of dangerous prisoners, who had been sentenced to death by the proper sentence of a court.’ Though somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, Ilgenfritz had if anything given a better account of himself than the three senior SS officers who had gone before.

  Haug was up next, the man whose very capture had led to the rest of the accused being hunted down and arraigned. In contrast to those who had gone before, Haug chose to speak at length in a heartfelt plea. ‘I am fifty-two years old and I have six children aged between eight and seventeen,’ he began. ‘During the 1914–18 war I was a prisoner of the English for thirty-seven months . . . I was conscripted into the SD in Paris. I was not a member of the SS.’ As Haug was at pains to point out, he was the only non-SS man standing trial.

  He spoke next of the capture of the SAS patrol on 5 July ’44, being assigned as an escort on the truck that drove them to the Noailles Wood and how he ‘gave them cigarettes at the place of execution . . . When Vaculik and Jones ran away, I did nothing at first. Someone shouted “Shoot!” When Vaculik was fifty metres away I started firing. I did not aim at him. It was impossible as I had previously talked with him . . . I took the handcuffs off the dead bodies. I felt pity for them.’

  SS Hauptsturmführer Schmidt – killed on the Eastern Front, so unable to stand trial – was the target of Haug’s greatest ire. Schmidt had blamed Haug for letting the prisoners escape and now was payback time. ‘I saw Schmidt with a pistol in the firing position,’ Haug told the court. ‘As a human being, I could not have fired at any of the prisoners.’ In other words, SS Hauptsturmführer Schmidt – the commander of the execution squad – had clearly opened fire, and was sub-human for what he had done that day.

  Of all the accused, Haug’s testimony had the ring of truth to it. A veteran of the First World War, he was a long-serving soldier and no die-hard SS, that was for sure. It was understandable why he would have felt such compassion for the captives – fellow soldiers whom he had seen captured in uniform while undertaking a daring mission behind the lines. His cross-examination was perfunctory, but whether Haug had done enough to win a suitable reprieve remained to be seen.

  Hildemann, the truck driver, was last. Again, he chose to rely on his statement to Barkworth being read out in court. ‘I am a good shot,’ he explained, but ‘was too excited to hit an escaping prisoner, even if I had wanted to. Somebody shouted, “Shoot! Shoot!” I therefore opened fire involuntarily. I aimed too high at the escaping prisoner, who was stooping. At the interrogation by Major Barkworth . . . I first learned of the full facts of the investigation.’

  With that, the evidence of the six accused had been heard. No one, it seemed – apart from the dead SS Hauptsturmführer Schmidt – had actually gunned down the condemned men, apart from Ilgenfritz, who had admitted to shooting the one escapee. Apart from that, all had either shot high or had lost their magazines of ammo. Nevertheless, five men had died in that clearing on 9 August 1944, and amongst those arraigned in that court there had to be the killers. Their defence, that they had been acting on the specific order of the highest authority in the land –the Führer – on pain of death, seemed like a sound one. But it was about to be dealt a knockout blow, and from the most unexpected of quarters.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, the prosecution called to the stand Sturmbannführer Kriminaldirektor Horst Kopkow, the Berlin commander of all Funkspiel, anti-sabotage and anti-SOE/ SAS operations across the length and breadth of the Reich. Hav
ing overseen the executions of the last Allied agents, and having burned his files and dressed himself in civilian clothes, Kopkow had fled into hiding at war’s end. But in due course he’d been tracked down. He’d been in British custody for several months, pending his own trial for war crimes. In the interim, he’d decided to turn evidence against his former SS and Gestapo colleagues. It would prove devastating.

  Having outlined his role at RSHA Berlin and his relations to the Avenue Foch Gestapo, Kopkow turned to the case at hand: ‘I knew men, and not containers, had been dropped. I know of no case where refusal to carry out the Führerbefehl [Führer Order; his term for the Kommandobefehl] resulted in a death sentence being carried out on those who had refused to obey it.’ Kopkow’s words fell like a bombshell into the courtroom. In one fell swoop he had demolished the mainstay of the defence team’s argument. No one had been killed for refusing to act on the Commando Order, and so said the RSHA’s Berlin supremo.

  Kopkow’s testimony was short and sweet, at least for the prosecution. It was 4.45 p.m. and the court adjourned. The following morning, 11 March, the court was back in session for the prosecutor to give his summing up. It proved gripping and condemnatory. It was common ground that the Kommandobefehl was illegal, and Knochen and Kieffer at least must have known this. Under the Hague Convention, even a spy was entitled to a proper trial. These SAS men were no spies. They were British soldiers in uniform. The argument that ‘terrorists’ could be shot without trial was all too convenient. ‘By calling anyone inconvenient a terrorist, it is easy to find this excuse for killing without trial.’

  The lack of coercion on the six accused had been proved by their getting away with not executing the wounded SAS man, Lieutenant Wiehe. If Wiehe had been saved, all could have been saved. Haug had known from the point of capture that the condemned men were British soldiers. Ilgenfritz had known this as soon as the ‘sentence’ was read out in English, although Hildemann quite possibly did not know. Even so, ‘why were the four accused who were present at the shooting so reluctant to admit they took part in the shooting[?] . . . Each one pleads some excuse: the loss of a magazine; the jamming of a pistol; the firing deliberately into the air.’ Each had tried to duck responsibility, for they knew what they had done was illegal and wrong.

  The lead counsel for the defence did his best to counter these points so brilliantly made, but his arguments proved unconvincing and perfunctory: the ‘military situation was so bad for Germany that everyone was afraid to disobey in any way. The atmosphere then was very different to the sober atmosphere of this court today. Can a man be guilty if he refused to choose his own death? I ask for an acquittal.’ The sense in that courtroom, especially after Kopkow’s testimony, was that the accused were fighting a losing battle.

  But then, unexpectedly, the defence requested an adjournment, and for a reason that would prove utterly astonishing. It was agreed that the court would not reassemble until the following afternoon, for a surprise witness was willing to give evidence, one who had ‘just arrived from England’. SOE agent Captain John Ashford Renshaw Starr was to be called as a ‘character witness’ for former Gestapo chief Hans Kieffer. So it was that at 2.00 p.m. on 12 March 1947, the former captive of the Avenue Foch Gestapo took the stand, as a witness in defence of his captors.

  ‘I knew the accused Kieffer and I identify him,’ Starr began, having been sworn in. ‘I knew him at 84 Avenue Foch. I was his prisoner. He treated me very well indeed. The food I received was the same as that of my guards. Other prisoners at Avenue Foch were treated in the same way. My treatment did not change after I had tried to escape . . . From his behaviour, I do not think he would take part in the deliberate murder of British prisoners. I was at the Avenue Foch from September 1943 to July or August 1944.’

  Having heard Vaculik and Jones give powerful testimony as to their own, terrible incarceration, and to the way in which even the badly wounded Captain Garstin had been treated, Starr’s testimony sounded preposterous and absurd. Worse still, the very fact of his giving it appeared like an insult to those two survivors, not to mention those who had died. And it begged the question –why was Starr offering evidence in defence of a man who had sent dozens of his fellow SOE agents to unspeakable torture and death in the concentration camps, not to mention their treatment in Paris beforehand?

  In some cases, Starr would have known those SOE agents personally. In the case of Madeleine (Noor Inayat Khan) he had even tried to execute an escape attempt with her, from their cells in the Avenue Foch building. After Kieffer had dispatched her to Germany, Khan had been shackled at the hands and feet, as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner, before being forced to kneel by her SS and Gestapo killers and shot in the back of the head, together with three fellow female SOE agents. They had even been denied the final request of seeing a priest. The last word on Khan’s lips had been liberté – freedom.

  By now, spring 1947, the fate of numerous captured SOE agents, Noor Inayat Khan amongst them, was well known. In October 1946 Khan had been Mentioned in Dispatches for her heroism and gallantry in the face of the enemy. The case of the four SOE agents killed at Natzweiler – one of whom was still alive when shoved into the crematorium; some of whom had been processed via Kieffer’s Paris Gestapo – had made headline news. It could be argued that Horst Kopkow had a motive to turn evidence against his former comrades. Held by the British as a war crimes suspect, he might be trying to curry favour with his captors. But John Starr was under no such compunction.

  ‘I identify accused Schnur,’ Starr ploughed on, as he proceeded to give evidence on behalf of Kieffer’s former comrades as well. ‘I do not know much about him. I never heard any complaints about his treatment of the prisoners.’ Was this man’s testimony somehow to be viewed as more credible than that of Vaculik and Jones? Still he wasn’t done. ‘I identify accused Haug. As far as I know he treated the prisoners very well. He often brought me cigarettes and had a chat. I do not think he would have enjoyed killing British prisoners.’ The issue at stake wasn’t whether anyone had enjoyed killing the SABU-70 captives. It was whether they were guilty as charged of the crime of murder.

  Starr rounded off his evidence with this: ‘I was not always in touch with other prisoners at the Avenue Foch, though I tried to contact them.’ Which simply left the question hanging – so what exactly were you doing there all that time? Kieffer had had high hopes for Starr’s appearance. He’d personally sought out the former SOE agent as a character witness. In truth, it had backfired spectacularly. There was no cross-examination, for obvious reasons. Starr’s testimony had proved more of a benefit to the prosecution.

  In the deepest of ironies, Captain John Starr’s was to be the last evidence heard in that courtroom, before the verdicts were reached. At 2.15 p.m. the court adjourned while the judges considered their ruling. ‘This time, none of the accused smiled, as they passed me in the corridor,’ Vaculik remarked of the adjournment. ‘As the end came near, they were on edge and ill at ease.’

  The court reopened thirty minutes later, although the accused had been held back in an adjoining room. ‘Call the first prisoner, Colonel Knochen,’ the presiding judge announced.

  ‘Attention! Quick march,’ came a sharp cry, as SS Standartenführer Dr Knochen was led in, pale and erect, a guard to either side. ‘Halt! Right turn.’

  The accused turned to face the dock. ‘The court martial at Wuppertal has found you guilty of wilful murder against the persons of five British soldiers and condemns you to death by hanging.’

  With that, Knochen was ordered out again, leaving as he had entered, his face set like stone. ‘I remembered what we had felt in that clearing,’ Vaculik would recall of the moment, ‘and I could well imagine what the German was feeling as he listened to the sentence.’

  ‘Call the second prisoner, Kieffer,’ announced the presiding judge.

  Sturmbannführer Hans Kieffer was marched into the court. He turned to face the panel, his face as impassive as his predecessor’s. The ruling an
d the verdict were the same: ‘Death by hanging.’ On hearing it Kieffer blinked, almost in disbelief, but he did not visibly falter before he too was marched away from the courtroom.

  For Vaculik, seeing Kieffer face justice was the greatest moment of all: ‘the one-time commandant of the Gestapo at the Avenue Foch was marched out by the military police, under sentence of death, his head held high and his face and neck as red as ever.’ Justice against the Avenue Foch’s ringmaster had finally been served. But before exiting the courtroom, Kieffer paused and did the most extraordinary thing. He turned and gave a salute to John Starr, who was in the gallery.

  In his written evidence, Kieffer had showed little loyalty to his former captive. Indeed, he’d testified that Starr’s cooperation with the Gestapo had been extensive. Apart from making use of his draughtsmanship, Starr was used for ‘wireless plays’ –Funkspiel – checking messages to ensure they were rendered in faultless English. ‘It was by means of this activity that Bob [Starr] gained a great insight into our counter-espionage work and got to know numerous arrested agents,’ Kieffer averred. ‘It was precisely at this time that the capture of the woman W/T [wireless] operator Madeleine took place . . . She told us nothing. We could not rely on anything she said.’

  There were even reports that Starr had taken one of Kieffer’s secretaries, Ottile Scherrer, as his lover while residing at Avenue Foch – accusations that were treated pretty much as fact by SOE. Whatever the truth of the matter, the two men – Kieffer and Starr – had shared some inexplicable bond that endured to the very moment of Kieffer learning of his own death sentence.