by Helen Fry
The end of January 1944 marked the eleventh anniversary of Hitler coming to power in Germany. The generals gathered around the wireless to listen to the Führer’s radio speech. None of the generals appeared impressed by it, and Reimann summed it up as ‘a worn-out gramophone record’.1 One German officer (unnamed) was recorded saying: ‘If we entertain the possibility that we may lose the war, then we have already lost it.’2
Whilst Allied commanders made the final preparations for the largest invasion in history, the mammoth task of collecting intelligence ahead of D-Day continued at Kendrick’s sites.3 German prisoners were escorted from the battlefields of Sicily and Italy to temporary holding camps before being brought to England for processing. Fritz Lustig recalled: ‘Most of our prisoners were initially either shot-down Luftwaffe-pilots or members of U-boat crews who had been rescued when their boat was sunk. There might have been a few army prisoners captured in North Africa, but a major influx of those only started after D-Day in June 1944.’4
On 11 January 1944, M Room operators overheard the generals in the anti-Nazi clique debating whether they should set up their own official political council at Trent Park.5 Sicily and Italy had already fallen the previous summer and the war was clearly not going Germany’s way. Bassenge commented: ‘It’s quite possible that within the next few months the Nazi regime will collapse.’ To which Neuffer replied: ‘Do you want to have a military council here? Crüwell might even collect the batmen as witnesses and set up a government or something (laughter).’6
This led to discussions on what should happen to the Nazi leaders back in Germany. On 15 January, Cramer, Reimann and Köhncke were overheard discussing how the main leaders of the Nazi regime must go:
CRAMER: It is high time to get rid of these people.
REIMANN: Those hot air merchants like Hermann Goering.
CRAMER: These people must go, and that Jew-baiter too.
REIMANN: Yes, but Streicher really doesn’t count any more.
CRAMER: Those people must disappear for good. They are …
REIMANN: Criminals.
CRAMER: Yes criminals. We must be governed by decent men again.7
The generals believed that they could achieve political change in Germany if they united and stood up to Hitler. Cramer pointed out that they were being governed by the SS (whom he termed the ‘peacetime army’) and that the combined numbers of SS and police outnumbered the military. Köhncke considered that a ‘very great risk’. To which Cramer replied: ‘We can’t get around the fact that we started it. That’s the bad thing about it.’ Cramer admitted: ‘I too am in favour of fighting to the last ditch, but I don’t want to find Goebbels sitting in the last ditch. It is a pity that the idea of fatherland and country have been lost.’8
In monitoring and recording these conversations, British intelligence tried to ascertain whether the military men would rise up again after the war, with their old aspirations for world domination. Reimann, Köhncke and Cramer all agreed that the First World War was ‘an honourable, chivalrous one – we all knew what we were fighting for’. Cramer continued, ‘In this war, when everyone is being killed, and all the things the army is made to do, the shooting of prisoners and commissars and Jews, etc., it’s so vile. And it really was the limit when I came across the case of a General who was suddenly degraded to the rank of private.’ Cramer’s comments were quite extraordinary – he was more outraged by the downgrading of a general than the mass murder of innocent people.
That same week, Dr Haccius of the International Red Cross visited Trent Park to report on conditions there.9 He was received by General Bassenge on behalf of the other generals. The secret listeners were primed to record their conversations. Haccius was overheard expressing mild criticism of American methods and lack of understanding at an American camp which he had visited at Oxford. Bassenge gave a description of the Christmas festivities at Trent Park and told Haccius: ‘The British made a great effort to ensure our celebrations were a success.’10
Haccius suggested that there ought to be a vegetable garden on site.11 Bassenge seemed unenthusiastic and said the food was ample. They discussed long delays in prisoners’ mail and censorship. Haccius asked about the two interpreters in the camp and received assurance that they were excellent and had arranged English and mathematics lessons. Haccius promised to send more cigarettes for the batmen.
A separate conversation took place between Haccius, von Arnim and Bassenge in which they discussed the possibility of an exchange of German internees and prisoners.12 Von Arnim continued his complaint about English dentistry and insisted on having a German dentist and doctor.13 Over coffee, von Arnim thanked Haccius for the Red Cross parcels and asked if it was possible to buy wrist-watches from Switzerland.14 A discussion about the difficulties of obtaining such items ensued during which Haccius seemed to become quite chatty and over-sympathetic with the Germans. Two days after his visit, MI19 compiled a summary report:
The general impression made on the M Room operators was that Dr Haccius did not observe a strictly neutral attitude. His remarks on other camps, censorship and exchange of POW gave the impression of being more pro-German than neutral.15
One of the positive outcomes of the visit was that the batmen were given the opportunity to work in a vegetable garden on the estate, for which they received payment.16 Five pro-Nazi batmen refused, saying it helped the British war effort. Deputy camp leader, General Bassenge pointed out that, if they rejected work in the vegetable gardens, logically they should refuse to receive English cigarettes which helped the British war effort through taxation. Neuffer and Bassenge dismissed the attitude of the pro-Nazi batmen as pure stupidity.17
DISCONTENT IN ‘SPECIAL QUARTERS’
Discontent continued amongst the batmen who, like the generals, had formed into two distinct groups of pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi. The British officers had difficulty with General von Hülsen who, according to the camp diary: ‘Seems to think that camp orders do not refer to him.’18 Instead of arranging an afternoon walk with his minders, he just turned up at the allotted time and expected to be accommodated. Neuffer was already irritated by von Hülsen and ‘gave him a piece of his mind’, leading to a very public row in front of the batmen. Von Hülsen went so far as to call Neuffer an ‘imprudent fellow’.19 The intelligence report for this period commented: ‘The fat was in the fire and the whole camp buzzed with excitement.’20
Major Topham, camp commandant, warned von Hülsen that if he carried on as before, he would be subject to ‘special treatment’. The generals speculated on the meaning of his words and concluded it might mean transportation to Russia.
Suspicions ran high with the arrival on 22 January 1944 of Lieutenant Colonel Müller-Rienzburg of the German air force. Not understanding the politics in the camp, Müller-Rienzburg made the mistake of airing his defeatist and pro-British views to some members of the pro-Nazi group who consequently suspected him of being a British Secret Service agent – which was not the case.21 Ironically on the other hand, they had failed to suspect that most of the British officers in the camp were from British intelligence.
Crüwell began to realise that he had become the most unpopular man in the camp. The others avoided sitting with him at mealtimes and the dejected Crüwell only came downstairs for dinner, taking other meals in his room, becoming more and more isolated. British officers found him mainly in his room, staring into the distance or playing a game of patience. The British intelligence report noted that he and von Arnim were ‘heading for mental disaster if they don’t change their attitudes’.22
Lieutenant Hubbuch and the ardent Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Boes left for a POW camp in Canada.23 This caused a stir amongst the generals who feared they too might be sent to Canada, something which they saw as a backward step. In spite of their grumblings, life in Trent Park was comfortable, and they now petitioned British officers against leaving. With the departure of Hubbuch and Boes, the bedrooms were slightly rearranged. Neuffer was given a room on his o
wn; Müller-Rienzburg and Bassenge shared a room, and so did Reimann and von Glasow.
The generals enjoyed a timetable of wireless broadcasts that included all German news bulletins from Germany, BBC concerts and the daily 10 a.m. BBC news broadcasts. Towards the end of the first week of February 1944, the ‘guests’ were shown the film Christmas Carol, during which ‘God Save the King’ was played. The pro-Nazis were furious and considered it an insult that they should be shown a film with this in it.24
NAVAL SUCCESSES
Information continued to be forthcoming on the U-boat war, details of which enabled the Allies to keep ahead of the battle at sea. General von Broich (codenamed M159 in the transcripts) gave a British army officer (below, BAO) detailed descriptions about the U-boat shelters at St Nazaire.25 The U-boat pens were not visible from the air and, without this conversation, could not have been found by RAF aerial reconnaissance missions. Von Broich had visited the site himself and was able to give an extraordinary eye-witness account:
M159: The most interesting sight will be these U-boat shelters at St Nazaire. There are large underground shelters there with a covering of cement the depth of this room.
BAO: Have you seen them?
M159: Yes, they’re terrific. You simply can’t imagine what these vaults are like. As in an engine shed where there’s a turntable in the middle and engines can go in from every direction, in the same way here there’s a large basin and on all sides these –
BAO: How many U-boats can get in there at one time?
M159: Oh, dozens of them. They just laugh at this bombing of St. Nazaire. I myself saw the effect of one of the heavy bombs on one of those things; it’s made of special cement, not the normal kind, and it knocked out a piece this size.
BAO: Ten centimetres?
M159: Yes.26
References to St Nazaire and Lorient came up frequently in conversations between lower ranks. These prisoners provided details of the extent of damage to U-boat pens after Allied bombing campaigns and were sources of valuable eye-witness material. In one such conversation, two naval prisoners discussed the aftermath:
N15: At St. Nazaire everything has been damaged. Only the shelters are still standing and they have been partially damaged.
N1584: Then it isn’t a proper base any longer?
N15: Oh yes, the base as such – the U-boat shelters are still standing, they can’t destroy them. To do that they would have to fire torpedoes into them from aircraft, but they can’t destroy them from above.27
The same conversation revealed details of the complex living quarters in the U-boat shelters which also had female personnel: ‘They were smart women and they really made the U-boat hostel look very nice and smart.’28 The complex of deep bunkers had a lounge, ladies’ room, swimming bath, dance hall and facilities for playing golf and billiards. Everything was catered for the men, who even decorated their shelter with flowers picked when they went ashore in the evenings. If beer was plentiful, they drank well into the early hours of the morning. Prisoner N15 even admitted: ‘At Lorient we lived in the shelter. We had a wonderful officers’ mess. The chief petty officer had a mess, which made you feel you were in a country mansion.’29
SCHARNHORST
News of the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape, off Norway, on 26 December 1943 caused surprise amongst the generals, who speculated that Hitler had intentionally sent her to her doom because all was not well with the German navy.30 The Scharnhorst had been attacking Britain’s Arctic convoys and its sinking was a priority for the Allies. The thirty-six survivors, out of a total crew of 1,968, were brought to Wilton Park and Latimer House.31 Their arrival made news in the M Room at Wilton Park where secret listener Fritz Lustig was then working: ‘We were quite excited when we heard that the few survivors of the Scharnhorst had arrived at our unit. We felt privileged when we were told to cover the cell which was holding one of them. We were very conscious of the fact that they required special attention.’
For Kendrick, events had come full circle. During the 1930s, his spy network, which he ran from Vienna, had carried out espionage missions into Nazi Germany to penetrate the dockyard at Wilhelmshaven where the Scharnhorst was then being constructed.32 For him, there must have been a great sense of satisfaction to see part of that military might of Germany being ‘dismantled’ during the war.
Information from the survivors of the Scharnhorst was widely discussed in naval intelligence circles. Edmund Rushbrooke (head of Naval Intelligence) wrote to Lieutenant Commander Cope at Latimer:
The heavy simultaneous influx of nearly 250 prisoners from Scharnhorst, T.25, Alsterufer, U.593 and U.73 threw a greater strain than ever before on your section. The results have nevertheless maintained the high standard to which I have been accustomed, and the speed with which they have been produced has been very creditable. You and all those concerned are to be congratulated on this very good effort. Please convey my thanks to those officers who were responsible for these satisfactory results.33
However, the formidable German battleship Tirpitz still plagued the seas. Two surviving able seamen from the Scharnhorst spoke about the sister ship:
N2145: The Tirpitz was lucky; the adhesive charges only adhered to her for a moment and then fell off again. There was too much sea-weed and too many mussels on the ship, she had been lying there too long. They [the charges] fell to the bottom of the sea, where they exploded; otherwise the Tirpitz would no longer be there, she would have been split in two.
N2133: The whole thing is said not to have been so serious. They [the English] are supposed to have come on board and [one of them] said: ‘I report having carried out the King of England’s orders – the Tirpitz will blow up in so-and-so many minutes time.’ Then everybody left the quarterdeck.
N2133: I suppose the Scharnhorst made off pretty quickly then?
N2145: No, the Scharnhorst had been making a trial trip that night. She was sailing about in the fjord. The captain started off and suddenly got a signal reporting that the Tirpitz had suffered minor damage.
N2133: Minor damage! When we sailed up there, we carried two hundred shipyard … on board. There was a repair ship already there.34
The Tirpitz was eventually sunk by the RAF on 12 November 1944. Naval intelligence via MI19’s prisoners continued to flow. Sub-Lieutenant Striezel of U-1003 spoke to a junior Sub-Lieutenant (codenamed 42Z) about the new kind of U-boats being developed:
STRIEZEL: The new boats (Type XXI) were supposed to have been ready by Christmas. But it didn’t come off. To start with, the Allies smashed half of them at Hamburg and at Bremen. There was a heavy air-raid just on the factories of Blohm & Voss and Deschimag and they smashed half of them then. Some are out – a certain number of the new boats are in use already. I had the nineteenth … There are also racks (Greifer) up here: three, six, nine, twelve, and below there are two more, fourteen, sixteen, and another six by the tubes.
42Z: My God, twenty-two (torpedoes)!
STRIEZEL: It’s a room on its own, i.e. two sections … You don’t need to worry any more about periscope depth and being spotted or the ‘snorter’ head being located etc. Nothing like that anymore. They are now working on it so that they can fire the torpedoes from 80 metres.35
In MI19 files, a sketch of the German Type XXI U-boat was reproduced as an appendix to the above report.36 On a rare occasion, a prisoner was security conscious, as in the case of a telephonist from the Scharnhorst (N1552), who chatted to his cellmate (N2243), an able seaman from U-264 (sunk in the north Atlantic on 19 February 1944):
N.1552: What do they say in the security lectures?
N.2243: So far it has been correct: ‘You will come to a camp where you will be interrogated from all quarters, by English and American officers and when you are in your rooms, you mustn’t speak about your U-boat or about any service matters. There is apparatus installed through which they hear everything, even the slightest sounds.’37
With preparati
ons under way for the D-Day landings, the intelligence gathering was gaining pace. Across the three CSDIC sites, interrogations produced new intelligence on the location of displaced German war industries, electrical sub-stations, and a large synthetic oil plant at Auschwitz.38 Of particular value was information from prisoners on underground sites, particularly underground factories in Germany and Czechoslovakia that could not be identified from aerial reconnaissance missions.39 An example of such a discovery was the Mittelwerk Niedersachsenwerfen, near Nordhausen, which manufactured V-2 rockets, Junkers aero engines and jet propulsion units.40
REPATRIATION OF CRAMER
During the week of 20 February 1944, Cramer and his batman Edelhäuser were set to be repatriated to Germany.41 The day before their departure, Trent Park commandant, Major Denis Topham, went to see Cramer. The intelligence report gave an account: ‘Cramer made a very nice speech to the commandant in which he thanked him for the excellent treatment he had had here. He stated that now that he was going he could reveal to the commandant that he had 25% English blood. He went on to say that every time he looked out of his window and saw the very smart guards, he was proud of his English blood.’42
Cramer attributed the high standards to Major Topham and would not fail to mention it to influential friends in Germany.43 He told Topham that the German struggle was now hopeless and would lead to Germany’s ruin.
After Topham had left the room, Cramer made another speech, this time to the British army officer. He reminded the officer that he had been Commander of the Afrika Korps and therefore wished to present a memento to him: ‘Not only in his own name but in [the] name of all the officers of the Afrika Korps, as a token of their gratitude for the British “gentlemanly [behaviour]”.’ He gave the British officer his Afrika Korps armband from his uniform, with the remark, ‘Even von Arnim isn’t entitled to wear it’.44
General von Arnim stepped forward and gave Cramer two bars of soap because of the shortage of soap in Germany. The intelligence report said the bars of soap were: ‘One for his wife and the other for his mistress.’45 This appears to have set a trend, because when the other officers bade Cramer goodbye, they too were concerned about the lack of soap in their country and offered to give him more.