by Helen Fry
‘There have never been so many guests. All the cells are full,’ wrote interrogator Matthew Sullivan. ‘Fifty German names have been chalked on the blackboard in the main office with their units, interrogators and report editors.’2 Felkin and the interrogators uncovered details of another unnamed operation by German night fighters. ‘Carmichael’, the blonde ATS driver, was dispatched to Bomber Command with urgent papers. Felkin called a meeting to summarise Operation Bodenplatte and said it had been ‘a brave show, well-planned, but poorly executed because of the inexperience of the German pilots’.
The Group Commodore finally arrived in a closed, unmarked van. An Austrian and a defiant Nazi, he was escorted straight to his cell. Felkin left him to stew for a while, before sending interrogator Sullivan (aka ‘Forrest’) to make polite conversation with him.3 When Sullivan raised an issue of politics, the Group Commodore exploded and started to shout at him, saying: ‘I’d rather fight to the last drop of my blood and die in the snow, than live again those days of poverty and unemployment.’4 The Nazi kept up his aggressive front, accusing the American forces of opening fire on German pilots who bailed out. The whole conversation was picked up by the secret listeners from the M Room.
Interrogator ‘Forrest’ left the cell. His two American co-interrogators were briefed on the prisoner’s views. They stormed into the cell and, according to Sullivan, ‘blow so much air about him that he [the prisoner] apologises for his general behaviour.’5 The prisoner continued to hold out against all attempts to undermine him, but was relieved when, late that evening, Felkin invited him into his sitting room for a whisky. Slowly, the breaking-down of the prisoner began to work. A trip into London further undermined the prisoner’s confidence that Germany had bombed England into submission; meanwhile Felkin appeared to be the only friend in the camp who could protect the prisoner from the ‘unfriendly Americans’ who wanted to have him court-martialled. Around midnight on 21 January, the prisoner finally caved in – three weeks after capture.
LIFE AT TRENT PARK
The generals continued to try to improve their conditions. Bassenge made a request to Lord Aberfeldy for cinema tickets to attend performances in central London, there was a petition for extra cigarettes for the batmen, and a request was made for new uniforms to be brought over from Germany for the batmen.6
Von Thoma declared that he was enjoying his life as a POW. The intelligence report for the week of 11 January 1945 noted: ‘Von Thoma denounces Gestapo rule in Germany; embarks on the story of the beginnings of the Party, but is interrupted by the tea gong.’7 He began to criticise the slow progress of the Allies through the Netherlands and towards the invasion of Germany.
On 23 February 1945, General von der Heydte arrived at Trent Park from Wilton Park. The other generals were interested in his military experiences, and asked him to deliver a lecture on the history and operations of the German airborne forces, which he duly gave in Sir Philip Sassoon’s former dining room.8
The following month, Lord Aberfeldy wrote from ‘Trent Park Camp, Barnet’ to Captain Evans (MI19) that General von Thoma had had a slight heart attack late the previous evening and a stimulant had been administered.9 The medical officer had advised that the attacks were likely to recur and he might even have a stroke. Lord Aberfeldy wrote: ‘He must not excite himself but, of course, all these innumerable internal rows in this camp, do not tend to keep him calm – and the mere mention of the word Hitler sets him off . . . We never have a dull moment here, do we?’10
NEGOTIATING PEACE
With the impending defeat of Nazi Germany, MI19 and Chiefs of Staff had already mulled over plans to use the anti-Nazi clique of German generals at Trent Park.11 Could the generals be persuaded to broadcast to Germany and bring an end to the war?
Lord Aberfeldy submitted a list to Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson (head of MI19), with the names of senior German officers whom he felt would cooperate.12 In such an undertaking, only a high-ranking British commander would appeal to their egos. It was decided to dispatch General Sir Andrew Thorne (General Officer, Commander-in-Chief, Scottish Command) to Trent Park. He arrived on 3 April and met with Eberbach, Bassenge and Wildermuth.
General Thorne began by reassuring the generals that the discussion between them would remain secret. He explained that he was acting on the instructions of General Eisenhower to ‘enlist their cooperation in putting an end to the senseless slaughter and annihilation that was taking place at a time when there could be no other possible outcome of the war but the defeat of Germany.’13 The radio networks of the British Empire and America would be at their disposal to make a historic broadcast asking their nation to surrender.
In response, the generals made several points: first, they recognised the inevitable defeat of their country and they would do all in their power to avert unnecessary bloodshed. However, their hands were tied because of reprisals that would be taken against their own families, and so they could not agree to their names being used publicly.14
Second, they argued that the military men with the real power (Field Marshals von Rundstedt, Kluge and Kesselring) had not been captured.
Third, they feared that, with the end of the war, German soldiers could be held as prisoners for years, with some even being deported to Russia. Seeing how brutally the Russians treated POWs, they argued that German soldiers would rather die in battle than face the prospect of being a POW in Russian hands.
The following evening at dinner, von Thoma made an announcement to the other generals about the meeting. His speech was recorded via the bugging devices hidden in the dining room. A hushed room turned its attention to von Thoma’s speech, which was recorded word for word in the M Room:
The Camp Commandant approached me requesting that General Eberbach, General Bassenge, Colonel Wildermuth and myself attend a conference on post-war questions with an English general, an emissary from General Eisenhower . . . The conference took place yesterday afternoon. They were asked to say whether they would be prepared to draw up and sign a proclamation to the Wehrmacht to lay down its arms. The proclamation would be broadcast by means of the radio and leaflets. They turned it down with one accord. I am in complete agreement with their point of view. . .15
The subsequent reactions over the dinner table were recorded by the secret listeners. Eberbach told Elfeldt that the focus should be on trying to persuade the Allies to stop using the term ‘unconditional surrender’ which was bad propaganda for soldiers who had been defending the Reich for six years.
A final written decision from the generals was given to Lord Aberfeldy within days of General Thorne’s meeting, and a copy circulated at a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee in London on 11 April 1945. It said:
An appeal from German generals in captivity for the cessation of resistance even with the sole object of preventing further senseless destruction of the basis of German existence would – even in the present war situation – constitute an action which would not be understood by the troops in the field or by the German people.16
The generals did not believe that their retreating troops on the Western Front would have time to listen to wireless broadcasts, and leaflets rarely reached the frontline. On a political note, they said that the Nazi Party had already begun to blame them for the defeat of Germany; their betrayal was deemed to be the cause of Germany’s downfall. In their eyes, the only way forward was the elimination of the men currently in power in Germany; namely, the eradication of the Nazi Party. In a separate statement to Lord Aberfeldy, Bassenge told him that the generals had essentially the same aim as the Allies – to bring a rapid end to the war.
TOWARDS TOTAL DEFEAT
Just weeks before Germany’s unconditional surrender, Kendrick’s three sites were brimming with senior German officers. His staff were now processing the top echelons of the surrendering German forces, tasked with their interrogation and debriefing for intelligence data. The MI19 official diary provides an impressive list of fifty senior officers captured in April 1945 alone.17 Amon
gst some of the vivid descriptions of the ‘new guests’ was MI19’s assessment of 50-year-old Major General Paul Goerbig, captured in Germany on 10 April 1945. He was described as ‘a thoroughly despicable figure’ and ‘determined to treat his captors courteously in the hope of obtaining personal advantage . . . He states his hobbies to be old furniture and young women.’18
The conversations of senior German officers turned to Russian atrocities in areas along the Elbe. Holste spoke with von Thoma about how he had crossed the Elbe on 3 May and: ‘I saw a sight near Kuhnhausen (?) – perhaps 1000 or 2000 young German women on the banks of the Elbe. At that moment, Russian tanks and Cossacks appeared, who immediately fired into this crowd of women and lashed out with whips. They then picked up many women and carried them off, and hundreds of German women jumped into the river and drowned.’19
Von Thoma asked: ‘Didn’t the women get away from the Russians?’ He received the reply, ‘Well, they raped them immediately. It was bestial. You’ve no idea.’20
Bodenschatz discussed Nazi looted art with Bassenge, telling him that he knew Goering was buying paintings, but not the range and quantity of them.21 He confirmed that hundreds of paintings from the German State galleries were hidden in the zoo in Berlin, until Hitler suggested that they be moved to a tunnel near Berchtesgaden. ‘The paintings bought in Paris and Amsterdam,’ said Bodenschatz, ‘were mainly paid from money which they obtained from the sale at very high prices of degenerate paintings to Switzerland and other countries. The Führer received hundreds of millions for these paintings and used the money to buy better ones.’22
Their conversation turned to concentration camps and the scenes which Bodenschatz believed must be ‘rejected and condemned’. He argued that these scenes were nothing in comparison to the Allied air attacks on residential areas: ‘If you could see Dresden. I was there; 51,000 women and children were killed in one night.’23
Johann Kogler, a 33-year-old Austrian commander of a fighter unit, had ninety wartime flights to his name and four victories to his credit:
His native charm as an Austrian gave place to the studied boorishness of a would-be Prussian. When it suits him, he can still be as personally charming as he is politically reprehensible. His morale and security were both initially exceptional but his Prussian personality, artificially conditioned in resentment and inherently ‘phoney’, was fertile ground for doubts springing up with realism of the true facts. The bluster is gone and the conceited and very ‘German’ German has become a comparatively reasonable Austrian with nascent enthusiasm for Austrian nationalism.24
British minders didn’t fail to notice that, on first arriving in the dining room at Trent Park, Kogler gave a Nazi salute, which Major General Ullersperger returned with enthusiasm.25
Lieutenant Colonel Josef Ross was captured at Wesel on 24 March, brought to Wilton Park on 4 April, then four days later taken to Trent Park.26 Interrogators learned how his bunker had been attacked by Allied infantry regiments after the Rhine crossings, and Ross had surrendered with his surviving men. In interrogation, Ross refused to give any information about his activities as commander of Wesel and only told the interrogator that he was a senior German officer, located in a certain area, and tasked with defending it.27 However, once back with the other generals, Ross gave a full account to Bassenge of the fall of Wesel.28 The personal intelligence summary concluded: ‘He [Ross] would gladly work with the Allies for the building up of a new Germany after the war is over.’29
HITLER’S SUICIDE
By April 1945, Hitler had retreated to his bunker in Berlin for the final battle. Albert Speer had already written to him that the war was militarily and economically lost, and beseeched him not to take Germany to total destruction.30 On 20 April, on what turned out to be Hitler’s last birthday, Goebbels’s broadcast to the German nation to ‘blindly follow their Führer and the stars’. Some of the senior German officers at Trent Park listened to Goebbels’ birthday speech for the Führer in the common room at Trent Park. One of the officers (unnamed in reports) turned off the wireless half way through the German National Anthem. Kittel was outraged and complained that one officer had walked out during the anthem and the others had remained seated, calling them scoundrels and cowards.31 He told whoever was listening to him that he preferred death at Metz (where he was captured) than life at Camp 11. Major General Wahle complained to Heim that Goebbels’s speech was nothing but hot air, while Major General Bruhn told Felbert that ‘the speech was tripe’.
Three days later, Hitler ordered the following announcement to be made across Germany: ‘The Führer is in Berlin. The Führer will not leave Berlin. The Führer will defend Berlin to the last.’32
On 30 April, rather than surrender in the besieged city, Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun committed suicide in the bunker. Whether the generals ever foresaw that Hitler would take his own life was not clear. They displayed no emotion at the news of his suicide and did not mourn his death. Instead, they began to focus on the suitability or otherwise of Admiral Doenitz to be his successor.33 Schlieben referred to Doenitz as ‘a damned fool’.34
News of Hitler’s death came to the secret listeners via radio broadcasts and newspaper reports. Although there were no celebrations amongst the secret listeners at any of Kendrick’s centres, this was what Fritz Lustig and the other émigré listeners had waited for. Hitler was dead. The man who had singled out the Jewish people and themselves for annihilation was himself dead. Lustig commented: ‘We felt instinctively that Hitler would not allow himself to be captured by the Allies. In that sense his suicide came as no great shock. For days prior, everything had been pointing at Soviet forces overwhelming Berlin’s defences. We were realistic about the end game. At last Hitler got his come-uppance.’
Kendrick must have felt a sense of satisfaction that Hitler was finally dead, after thirteen years of autocratic and brutal rule, tracked since the 1930s by Kendrick himself for SIS. The end was now swift and, within a week, on 7 May 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender.
DEFEAT OF THE THIRD REICH
War was finally over and a new era dawned on a Europe devastated by thirteen years of the Nazi regime and six years of war. On a personal level for Kendrick and the secret listeners, it had been a long road to victory. On the day that Germany capitulated, secret listener Fritz Lustig and his fiancé Susan Cohn went into central London for the evening to witness the victory celebrations.
Piccadilly Circus was crammed full of people, some sitting on the roof of buses, others hanging out of windows or climbing lamp posts. It was a unique experience. We made our way through the crowds to Parliament Square, where we listened to a speech by the King, which was broadcast through loudspeakers in the street – nobody spoke a word. We then proceeded to Buckingham Palace where the Royal Family appeared on the balcony. It was now getting dark. We went back to Whitehall, where we heard Winston Churchill make a short speech from the balcony of the Home Office, lit up by searchlights.35
At Trent Park, the German generals celebrated VE Day by drinking wine – much to the disgust of their batmen who believed this was not in the German spirit and quite a scandal.36 One of the batmen was overheard saying that the generals were celebrating ‘their own funeral’.
European hostilities may have ended, but MI19’s work with German POWs was far from over. The task of deciding the future of the thousands of POWs and their re-education would take up much of its time, as well as the ongoing incarceration of Hitler’s generals. That month of Germany’s capitulation, Kendrick’s three sites received an influx of 106 senior German officers, amongst them Field Marshal Erhard Milch and SS Obergruppenführer General der Waffen SS Maximilian von Herff.37
Maximilian Herff, a high-ranking SS commander, was captured at Flensburg on 9 May and brought to Latimer House on 16 May, then moved to Trent Park on 14 July. MI19 noted that the circumstances surrounding his capture were unknown, but found him cooperative. He was, however, described by his fellow officers as ‘a sha
dy character and an opportunist’.38 Although he protested his innocence they failed to believe him, saying that a man in his influential position could only have got there through compulsion and ambition. Herff died of a stroke on 6 September 1945 whilst a POW in British custody and is buried at the German Military Cemetery, Cannock Chase.
Arriving at Trent Park at the end of May 1945 was Lieutenant General Edgar Feuchtinger. He had been condemned to death in Germany in March 1945 for allegedly being engaged in misappropriation and looting, and released on the personal intervention of Hitler.39 While in British custody, he tried to portray himself as an anti-Nazi, but MI19 saw through his façade and commented that he was ‘in reality a whole-hearted supporter of the Nazi regime’.40 His quick promotion in the German army supported the view that he was an ardent Nazi. As part-owner of a publishing house in Leipzig he tried to ingratiate himself with British Army officers with a view to a role in post-war Germany.
There was concern that some high-ranking officers might commit suicide to avoid justice. There was particular concern for Rear Admiral Scheer who had been transferred to No.1 POW camp at Grizedale Hall in the Lake District. A memo was sent on behalf of Kendrick to Camp 20 at Wilton Park, raising concerns about Rear Admiral Scheer:
We have reason to suspect that the above [Scheer] has a phial of poison hidden on his person or in his belongings. Although a search has been carried out we have failed to locate it. As this POW has now been dumped to Grizedale, you will no doubt wish to inform the Camp Commandant without revealing the source of our information. Care will also have to be taken, of course, to ensure that POW does not know that we suspect him.41
The Allies had every reason to be vigilant: Heinrich Himmler committed suicide with a cyanide pill on 23 May whilst in British custody in Germany and escaped justice. It was a scenario that British intelligence wished to avoid for Hitler’s other commanders.