by Damien Lewis
Next to be led in was Schnur. On some level, the SS Hauptsturmführer seemed to have missed how badly the trial had gone for the accused. He glanced around at the gallery, grinning inanely, as if a guilty verdict just could not be possible. When it was read out – death by hanging – all that changed. As Schnur did not speak English, he had to wait for the translation to learn the worst, at which point he gave a despairing cry and collapsed into a faint. He had to be half-carried and half-dragged from the court.
There was little noticeable change on the presiding judge’s impassive features, but was there just a hint of emotion now; of disgust even? Vaculik fancied there was. It had to be repugnance at the behaviour of a man like SS Hauptsturmführer Schnur, the commander of the Noailles Wood execution squad. Ilgenfritz was next up. While he too was found guilty of murder, the SS Obersturmführer was seen as having extenuating circumstances, in that he hadn’t known the real identity of the prisoners until the moment of the shooting. He was given fifteen years’ hard labour.
‘Call the fifth prisoner, Haug!’
Of anyone, Jones and Vaculik felt that Haug should get away with a custodial sentence, for he was the most genuine on all counts. But when the verdict came it was the same as the first three: ‘Death by hanging.’ The Gestapo sergeant, who had always endeavoured to act as fairly as he could, was led away ‘as pale as death’. Haug wouldn’t yet know it, but his verdict was the only one that had split the judges. The rest had been unanimous, but it was four to two in favour that Haug should be hanged.
Finally Hildemann, the truck driver, was brought in. While he was also found guilty as charged, the fact that he knew even less than Ilgenfritz meant he got just five years’ imprisonment. The broad smile of relief upon hearing the verdict revealed how Hildemann figured himself fortunate to have got off so lightly.
With that, the last of the accused was hustled out of the court . . . and the ghosts of the SABU-70 victims – plus all those consigned to the Nacht und Nebel by the Avenue Foch Gestapo –should finally have been able to rest a little easier. But in fact, the Wuppertal proceedings weren’t yet done. One by one the counsel for the accused entered immediate pleas for clemency – which would be expanded into written arguments in due course – which sought to be as emotional and persuasive as possible, especially in the case of Haug.
Lawyer Sabine for Knochen: ‘His part in the affair was not big or important. He ordered that the wounded should be spared. Accused lost his wife during the war and he suffered materially from air raids. His family are faced with ruin. His age is thirty-seven. ’
Lawyer Lauterjung for Kieffer: ‘Kieffer was acting under duress. He treated his prisoners very well. He has three children. He lost his wife during the war. He meant no evil. His age is forty-six.’ Kieffer leaned heavily on Starr, especially in his written appeal for mercy. ‘My section was holding numerous prisoners, including several British officers . . . Not even these prisoners were shot. That is confirmed by the presence of witness Capt. Starr . . . According to him, the prisoners were treated very well and humanely by me. I have often granted them privileges.’
Lawyer von Bruch for Schnur: ‘Schnur is not the criminal type. The war is over. Events have a different aspect now. Accused has a clean record. He is married and has two children. He has made no attempt to escape, though he has had some freedom. I ask for a humane sentence. His age is thirty-seven.’
Lawyer Ludecke for Ilgenfritz: ‘He has been in prison for sixteen months already for this act. During that time he has not seen his wife or two children.’ Fifteen years’ hard labour was too severe a sentence for the crime.
Lawyer Kreib, for Haug: ‘He had given cigarettes to the prisoners before the shooting and had talked to them. He could not have killed them intentionally . . . Moreover, it is more than probable that Vaculik and Jones owe their lives to a great extent to Haug’s behaviour. Haug could have shot the witnesses who fled past him, if he had wished to do so . . . He has six children of minor age. His age is fifty-two . . . Should the sentence be carried out, the children . . . will not be able to understand that he who is such a good father should leave this world as a murderer.’
Finally, lawyer Somneer, for Hildemann: ‘Accused had only a few minutes for reflection at the execution point. He participated in the events only to a very small degree. He is only a driver . . . His age is forty-four.’ As a simple driver, five years was far too harsh a sentence.
In the rush to seek clemency, a cast of apologists stepped forward, including the priest allocated to the accused, plus the Evangelical Church of Germany, which argued – with some justification – that for years the German people had been taught absolute obedience to Nazi authority without question. Under Hitler, those in power had wielded absolute power, without precedent in history. In the SS in particular, renouncing religion – a belief in God – had been part of the cult: it was something to be lauded. A true convert could have no other allegiance but to the SS itself.
But the most extraordinary plea for clemency would come from the chief Secret Hunter himself. On 1 April 1947 Major Barkworth penned a five-page report, arguing for a reduction in the sentencing of those he had personally tracked and brought to trial. The main thrust of Barkworth’s argument was that death by hanging was too severe: ‘all gave their evidence with frankness, possibly in the mistaken belief that they had done what in their eyes seemed right.’ While Knochen, Kieffer and Schnur should still face death, it should be by firing squad, Barkworth argued, not ‘the most dishonourable form of death’.
Once and once only had Barkworth and Rhodes gone to see one of those that they had hunted down face his end. A few weeks prior to the Noailles Wood trial they’d watched SS Oberwachmeister ‘Stuka’ Neuschwanger hang. Though the Vosges torturer and killer went to the gallows without the slightest hint of remorse or regret, the two foremost Nazi-hunters vowed never again. ‘It was something one doesn’t want to do more than once,’ Rhodes recalled. ‘I believe we were both of the opinion that it’s not nice to see somebody die.’
Very possibly, it was seeing Neuschwanger hang that inspired Barkworth’s plea for clemency now – that there was a better way for those like Schnur, Kieffer and Knochen to die, especially as the latter two had expressed a certain degree of contrition and regret. But he reserved the strongest plea of all for Haug, for whom ‘the death sentence . . . [should] be commuted to one of imprisonment’, or the trial would risk ‘smacking of the trappings of SS justice’ and not of British fair play.
On 22 April 1947 the decision on all the clemency appeals was reached: all had failed. On 2 June Kieffer, Schnur and Haug were duly executed by hanging, by which time Ilgenfritz and Hildemann were already serving their custodial sentences. As for Knochen, he had been returned to the French, to be tried in a French court of law, just as Barkworth had promised he would be. (A year later, Knochen’s death sentence would be commuted to life in prison).
True to their word, having watched Neuschwanger put to death Barkworth and Rhodes declined to see the Noailles Wood guilty hang. As for Jones and Vaculik, as they strolled through the war-blasted streets of Wuppertal following the verdicts, they were gripped only by a strange feeling of desolation. Where was the elation – the sense of release – that they had sought for so long?
‘I felt like running,’ Vaculik recalled, ‘running away from this cold, acrid smell of burned debris, running away from the eyes of those fellow men who had just been condemned to death by hanging. But I knew it would be useless.’ There was no running from the ghosts of the past. The ‘proud and bitter memories’ would remain with them for all of their lives.
By the time they were disbanded in the summer of 1948, the Secret Hunters had brought well over a hundred Nazi war criminals to justice, as described in the citation for Barkworth’s MBE. ‘In spite of the fact that there were initially no clues to follow up Major Barkworth . . . brought to notice over one hundred and twenty Germans who are now held as War Criminals for the perpetration of crim
es . . . This officer’s energy, unflagging determination and ability in carrying out his task is beyond all praise.’
Even then, with the Noailles Wood casebook closed and the work of the Secret Hunters done, there would be one last twist of the knife, one last sting in the tail. Shortly after the trial at which he had appeared as a star prosecution witness, SS Sturmbannführer Kriminaldirektor Horst Kopkow was brought to Britain, and incarcerated in the London Cage. Some weeks later the war crimes investigator Alexander Nicolson was tying up the last of such activities in the British zone of occupation, and he made an inquiry about Kopkow’s whereabouts and his –presumably – forthcoming trial.
In August 1944 Kopkow had been put forward to receive the Deutsches Kreuz in Silber – the German Cross in Silver, an award instituted by Hitler in 1941 for distinguished war service. The citation would make abundantly clear the pivotal role Kopkow had played in combatting Allied parachute missions and in furthering Funkspiel plays: ‘The successful control of the parachute agents, the recording of the radio games and their extraordinary skilful continuation is due to his quite extraordinary achievements.’ Of course, Kopkow had dedicated similar energies to ensuring that captured agents – once their usefulness was exhausted – would be consigned to the Nacht und Nebel.
The response Nicolson received from a Lieutenant Colonel R. Paterson, of the London District Cage, was perhaps not what he had been hoping for. ‘The above as you know was sent to England about ten days ago for special interrogation and when he arrived here he was found to be running a temperature and after two days was sent to hospital, where we regret to say he died of bronchopneumonia before any information was obtained from him. We enclose a certificate of death issued by the hospital authorities, and would request that you duly advise his relations.’ Kopkow, it was stated, had been buried in a military cemetery along with other deceased German POWs.
Death, it seemed, had robbed the Allies of justice over the Berlin-based SS and Gestapo dark lord, a man who had sent some 300 British agents to the most horrible deaths imaginable, and who was also wanted by the Americans and the Soviets for similarly consigning hundreds of their agents to the Nacht und Nebel. That was deeply unfortunate – if it was true. Sadly, it wasn’t. In truth, Kopkow had so skilfully and convincingly sold his unique talents and expertise to the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) that his death had been entirely faked.
During his many interrogations Kopkow had deliberately and artfully played down his role in liquidating captured Allied agents, while playing up his role in tracking down agents from the east – from Soviet territories. In particular, he had stressed how prior to the war’s end, scores of Russian stay-behind agents had been inserted into Germany, and were now ideally placed to spy on the Western Allies. In the new war, the Cold War, this had seemingly made Kopkow far too valuable to hand over to any pesky war crimes tribunals and to a wholly inconvenient sentence of ‘death by hanging’. Instead, Kopkow was quietly disappeared, so he could be recruited into SIS ‘for special employment’.
Kopkow’s death certificate was faked and he was given a whole new identity. Henceforth he was to be known as ‘Peter Cordes’, although in later years he would feel safe enough – and apparently self-satisfied enough – to change that to Horst Cordes-Kopkow. Kopkow’s specialism for SIS would become the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) – the network of agents the Soviets established in Nazi territories throughout the war, many of whom were now said to be spying on the Western powers. In 1948 a 344-page dossier was issued by British intelligence on ‘The Case of the Rote Kapelle’, whole tracts of which were taken almost verbatim from Kopkow’s own reports on the Soviet espionage network.
While much of the Kopkow story remains top secret even today –the files are either closed or have been conveniently destroyed – this much is known. By 1949 Kopkow was back in Germany, ostensibly working for a textile company in Gelsenkirchen, a city in the northwest of the country, taking up a position provided by British intelligence and still very much working for them. Gelsenkirchen was the city in which the Kopkow – or ‘Cordes’ – family had made their home: Horst, his wife Gerda and their children. When he returned in 1949, he was to be known as ‘Uncle Peter’ by all, even his own children. He and his wife reportedly slept in separate beds, to maintain their cover.
Kopkow’s dealings with MI5 and MI6 stretched through to the 1960s, when he became the CEO of the textile company, a position he retained until his retirement in the 1970s. In 1986 the BBC journalist Robert Marshall went to interview Kopkow for a documentary he was making about the SOE’s French section. When speaking to Marshall, Kopkow ‘ranted and ranted’, claiming of SOE agents that ‘the British had scoured their prisons for low life and forced them to parachute into France and so killing them off was basically doing the British a service’. Unrepentant and arrogant to the last, Kopkow died in October 1990 in a Gelsenkirchen hospital, aged eighty-five, surrounded by his family.
By faking his death, shielding him from justice and protecting him for the rest of his life, SIS would ensure that Kopkow only ever ended up in the one courtroom – giving evidence in the Noailles Wood trial. For some, the widespread and horrific crimes of the war years really did set them up for life. For some, heinous war crimes really did pay handsome dividends. But for others, thankfully, there was no running from justice nor anyone to hide them. In the case of the Noailles Wood massacre, the SS and Gestapo killers had paid the proper price for their odious acts.
Captain Patrick Garstin, MC and his men had been avenged, as had the wider victims consigned by Kieffer and his cronies to the Nacht und Nebel.
Epilogue
Shortly after the Noailles Wood trial ended and the verdicts were enacted, Barkworth began working on his definitive study of the Kommandobefehl, running to seventy-one pages and with twenty-six supporting statements. Issued in June 1948, his ‘Report on the Commando Orders of 18.10.42 and 25.6.44 with Reference to Certain of the War Crimes Caused by Them’ is an exhaustive study of the German Supreme Command, establishing who was responsible for drawing up the Kommandobefehl and for its prosecution. Barkworth included six names of senior members of the Nazi regime who in his view should stand trial, making the point that significant publicity should be given to their cases, so as to demonstrate that ‘the prosecution of war crimes has been moved by considerations of impartial justice, rather than those of keeping a mosaic tally’.
Above all, Barkworth made it absolutely clear in his report that the ultimate responsibility for the Kommandobefehl lay squarely at Adolf Hitler’s door. ‘Hitler’s actions were not merely petulant and vindictive,’ Barkworth wrote, concerning the Kommandobefehl, but his ‘aims were clearly thought out and often based upon sound reasoning . . . to which his violence and pettiness did not always do full justice. As is known, the Führer’s logic was simple: whoever was not on his side was a criminal or an imbecile.’ By branding all Allied agents and Commandos in that manner, they could be condemned as ‘terrorists’ and ‘saboteurs’ and consigned to the slaughter.
Barkworth concluded that Hitler, plus a coterie of his senior military officers and legal advisors, ‘were party to a conspiracy 1) to produce an order for the murder of certain categories of legal combatants of the Allied Armed Forces, who had been captured . . . 2) to cloak this bare intention with a semblance of legality . . . 3) to enforce the implementation of this order by means of a system of reports . . . 4) to hide the true facts from representatives of the Protecting Powers and the International Red Cross’.
Sadly, by the time Barkworth’s report was ready, the Secret Hunters were scheduled to be disbanded: with the British war crimes tribunals coming to an abrupt end, there were no further means for suspected war criminals to be brought to trial, at least at that time. By the summer of 1948 the West had turned its attention away from its former enemy, Nazi Germany, and towards its former ally, the Soviet bloc, and the coming Cold War. No further action would be taken as a result of the recommendations
of Barkworth’s report, which was basically his final act as the commander of the SAS War Crimes Investigation Team, one of the most successful such outfits ever to have operated.
After the first clemency pleas had been heard on behalf of the Noailles Wood killers, further appeals were made for those who had not yet been put to death. On 1 December 1948 Knochen’s sentence was reduced to life in prison. On 22 December 1950 fresh arguments for clemency were mounted, based upon newly emerged evidence of Horst Kopkow’s role in the murder of the SABU-70 captives. Of course, by then Kopkow was officially dead, but secretly working for the SIS under the cover name Peter Cordes, and was nicely ensconced with his family back in Germany. Shortly after his clemency plea had been entered, Knochen’s sentence was reduced to twenty-one years. Dr Goetz, the Avenue Foch Funkspiel genius, would never be charged with any crime: he forged a new career for himself in Germany as a schools inspector.
On 11 July 1950 Hildemann, the death truck driver, was released from prison. After several pleas for clemency on behalf of Ilgenfritz, including one from his father concerning the penurious state of his son’s family, and one from the prison governor concerning his good behaviour, Ilgenfritz was released from custody early, on 28 September 1954. Dr Knochen’s lawyers continued to plead for his early release, arguing that he had saved the life of the one hospitalised SAS captive, Lieutenant Wiehe. On 28 November 1962 Knochen was released early, as an act of clemency by the French (he had been held in French custody). He retired to Baden-Baden, a spa town in southwest Germany, and died in 2003.
At that moment, all of those accused of the Noailles Wood murders had either been killed in the war, executed as a result of the Wuppertal war crimes trials or released after serving their terms in jail. Arguably, the one great exception – and the greatest stain on the consciences of the British authorities – was Horst Kopkow.