by Helen Fry
Another alleged war criminal and captive at Trent Park, SS Kurt Meyer, requested of General von der Heydte that he undertake to defend him before a war crimes tribunal. Von der Heydte refused:
He [Meyer] is charged with the fact that POWs were shot in front of his position. Two cases are particularly serious – in the first, nine were shot 200 metres from his battle HQ . . . Of course, as a regimental commander, I can well imagine that in the heat of battle, I might not know what was going on 200 metres in front of my battle HQ – I’ve other things to do and think about. But that there were many cases of shootings of POWs – that POWs were shot – is incontestable. It has been ascertained who shot them and the people involved are, of course, falling back on the excuse of orders received from [SS Kurt] Meyer.26
Kittel suspected that he might be named as a war criminal. His explanation: ‘18,000 Jews were killed at Rostov. Of course I had nothing to do with the whole affair! But it is down on my account because I was the only known general there.’27
Eberbach asked him: ‘Who is really responsible for the affair? There’s no doubt at all that the Führer knew all about this massacre of the Jews.’
In typical fashion, Kittel blamed the Jews and replied: ‘Well, those Jews were the pest of the east! They should have been driven into one area and employed on some useful occupation.’ He added that he was going to hold his tongue about the things he knew until he was called to give evidence:
After the fall of Rostov, the Russians accused me, in a great official solemn declaration on the radio, of having poisoned 18,000 Russians. As regards that I can only say: until then I knew nothing whatsoever about the whole affair in which so many people were killed . . . Wildermuth also told me in the strictest secrecy that he has signed about forty sentences of death in his official capacity as Field Commander. Yes, I have some anxiety on that score!28
Discussions about culpability intensified further after SS Meyer had been notified that he was to appear before a War Crimes Court of Enquiry.29 On 26 March 1945, General Bassenge – in his capacity as new camp leader – notified Meyer that he would be transferred to London at midday, in readiness for a court appearance at 8.30 a.m. the following morning. Meyer told Eberbach: ‘He [Bassenge] didn’t know what it was all about. It’s quite possible that it is in connection with that question I raised some time ago.’30
On return from the Court of Inquiry, Meyer was full of it and recounted the experience to Elfeldt, Kittel and Kogler:
‘They wanted me to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to their questions.’
‘Did they tell you who accused you?’ Elfeldt asked.
‘Yes, they never stopped doing that,’ replied Meyer.
‘Did they first tell you the charges under which you were accused?’ Kittel asked.
‘No,’ Meyer replied.31
The conversation continued, then with some frustration Kittel said:
I gave the order for the shooting of Russians, allegedly. I gave the order myself – allegedly . . . They can wipe out the whole of the officer corps, it won’t matter to them. Then that will be the end of us.
He decided that, if it came to it, he would dispute the legality of the Court of Inquiry and plead to be heard only in a German court. He finished by saying, ‘The Allied courts can do what they like with me, but I am under no obligation to say anything more than appears in my pay book.’
Later, in another conversation, Kittel told his fellow officers: ‘You are under an obligation of silence.’ Effectively he was arguing with them that they were not obliged to say anything if called to a Court of Inquiry.
As the reality of defeat finally sank in, the generals became quite philosophical about the atrocities. Bruhn commented:
Have we deserved victory or not? No, not after what we’ve done. After the amount of human blood we’ve shed knowingly and as a result of our delusions and also partly instigated by the lust of blood and other qualities, I now realise we have deserved defeat. We’ve deserved our fate.32
M ROOM FILES AND NUREMBERG
When the mountain of evidence for war crimes was finally presented at the Nuremberg Trials, there was one vital part missing – the transcripts from bugged conversations of German prisoners of war. Enquiries to various government departments on whether these acetate discs have survived today have been unsuccessful; although it is still possible that they lie forgotten in a basement.
Throughout the war, Kendrick had instructed his secret listeners to keep all recordings of atrocities, indefinitely, and mark the acetate discs with a big red ‘A’ (for atrocity). He genuinely believed that the conversations would be drawn upon at the various trials.33 The volume of information provided enough evidence to bring to justice the Nazi war criminals and POWs who had passed through one of MI9/MI19’s sites. However, declassified MI9 files now reveal that a fierce debate broke out in intelligence circles over whether the bugged conversations could be released to the war crimes trials. Secret listeners, like Fritz Lustig and Eric Mark, would not find out until decades later why the evidence they had gathered was never released.
By mid-May 1945, pressure was mounting within MI9/MI19 to release files for the war crimes trials. The matter was raised by Cavendish-Bentinck of the Foreign Office, as part of the agenda of the Joint Intelligence Committee which met on 15 May 1945 and again on 5 June.34 He reported that the leaders of the German armed forces were likely to do their utmost to show that they were not guilty of atrocities, a tactic which, of course, was already known from M Room transcripts. Senior German officers at Trent Park had already denied any complicity in war crimes to British army officers. MI14’s representative on the committee said:
I regard it as of the utmost importance that everything possible should be done to discredit the German General Staff and Officer class in such a way that they may never regain their former influence . . . There is abundant evidence of atrocities committed under the authority of German Armed Forces’ leaders in the occupied countries. It should therefore be possible to conduct an effective propaganda campaign both inside and outside Germany.35
The meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee on 5 June 1945 deliberated whether recordings discussing the atrocities could be played in court as evidence for war crimes. One main objection was the impossibility of proving ‘that the voice of any individual is, in fact, the voice alleged to be reproduced on the record’.36 It was further stated:
Even if this could be established, the basic security, from the point of view of the future, of CSDIC [MI19] methods as developed in this war must be considered. A large measure of success has been achieved by the methods we have employed, and it is the measure of success which has been attained which is of even greater security importance than the methods themselves which have actually been used. From this angle, the greater effect of playing back these records in open court, the more deeply will the future use of CSDIC’s be compromised.37
However, some concessions were made. ‘If the records and reports were made available on a TOP SECRET basis for the purpose of briefing the cross-examiners at the trials (in order that the accused may be induced to confess or be so shaken that he is discredited), then it would appear that Security would be preserved and the main object of discrediting the accused achieved.’38
It was the new head of MI9, Lieutenant Colonel Sam Derry, who made the final decision.39 The original source on war crimes and the death camps via bugged conversations could not be released because it would blow current methods of eavesdropping that were still in practice at the end of the war.40 The files would have become public property and neither MI6 nor MI9 were prepared to allow this to happen.
Europe had also entered the Cold War with new dangers from an old adversary – the Soviet Union. Like other top-secret sites of the Second World War, any possibility of leaking the original source of intelligence potentially put at risk other ongoing operations. Information could only be used at the trials if it could be corroborated from another source known to the e
nemy. Having intelligence and being able to act on it are two different matters. The Allies could not risk the source of their information being leaked into the public domain, especially to hostile or enemy states (like the Soviet Union) because then the method of obtaining that intelligence could no longer be used. It explains why British intelligence did not declassify the M Room files until the late 1990s, after the Berlin Wall had come down and the Cold War was effectively over.
Not everyone in intelligence circles agreed with the decision to withhold M Room files from the war crimes trials in 1945.41 Three surviving letters in a slim file provide an insight into the frank exchange and feelings of those within British intelligence at the time. The first, dated 31 October 1945, is from the time when the twenty-one surviving leaders of the former Nazi government were being held at Nuremberg Prison, ahead of their trial (which would finally open on 20 November). The letter was written by the Military Deputy of the Military Department at Judge Advocate General in Whitehall, in which he expressed no objection to evidence from MI9/MI19 files being used in the war crimes trials, as long as the methods of obtaining that information were kept secret:
I understand the DMI [director of military intelligence] may take objection to members of CSDIC staff giving evidence of what they heard a prisoner of war say, in the circumstances. In my opinion it may, in some cases, be essential to call an officer of CSDIC [MI19] staff as a witness. He could say that he overheard a conversation between the POWs and give the context of the conversation without saying how he came to overhear it. On the other hand, it appears to me now obvious that the Germans were fully aware of the procedure adopted by CSDIC, and it is clear from investigation in the Dulag Luft case that the Germans employed exactly the same methods. The matter, therefore, does not appear to be so secret as it was during the war.42
On 16 November, Derry replied in firm language that anything that drew attention to the wartime work of CSDIC and MI19 could not be disclosed under any circumstances, even though the Germans may be aware of it after the war.
In spite of warnings, memories are short and POWs continue to talk indiscreetly, but anything which will tend to increase security-mindedness on the part of an enemy should at all costs be avoided . . . It does not require much imagination to visualise the sensational Press articles to which such disclosure might well give rise. In short, what up to now has been known to comparatively few (and those mostly persons who are directly interested and are under oath of secrecy) would become common knowledge.
Derry highlighted that any use of bugged conversations would lead to the disclosure at the trial of the names of POWs – some of whom had been persuaded to work for the Allies, often as stool pigeons. He finished by saying: ‘Nor would we view with equanimity the calling as a witness of an officer who had been employed in the particular branch concerned who would have to submit to cross-examination which might easily result in the disclosure of information which was then and still is Top Secret.’43
The third surviving letter is dated 28 November 1945, from a brigadier whose signature is illegible:
I must return to the attack. It is unfortunate that war criminals should avoid the consequences of their misdeeds because evidence cannot be given of what they said quite voluntarily while a prisoner of war to another prisoner of war. If the MI [Military Intelligence] are of an opinion that it is undesirable that evidence should be given in open court, orders can be given that an application should be made to hear the evidence in camera or the names of witnesses suppressed . . . A point raised by MI9/MI19 that cross-examination might result in the disclosure of information which is Top Secret can be got over by the witness claiming the privilege under the Official Secrets Act. Will you please take this matter up again with DMI.44
None of the generals ever faced trial for the war crimes which they admitted during their unguarded conversations at Trent Park. SS General Kurt Meyer, commander of the 12th Panzer Division, captured by the Americans near Liège in Belgium, was not brought to justice based on anything he said there. As one of Hitler’s most decorated warlords, Meyer had served in the major campaigns of the German offensive.45 During 1945, he was finally extradited to Germany to stand trial for the shooting of Allied soldiers earlier in the war. For this atrocity, he received the death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment. But he had admitted in conversations at Trent Park to massacring the population of a Russian village near Kharkov, for which he never stood trial. This was because much of MI19’s evidence of war crimes could only be used to steer post-war investigations, by advising legal teams and prosecutors at Nuremberg that a particular prisoner was believed to be guilty, and that a confession should be sought.46 If the prisoner confessed, then he could be sent for trial. If not, then he was repatriated. It underlines how the M Room material had limitations, in the end, with regard to the war crimes trials. It also highlights the moral dilemmas facing intelligence chiefs in which intelligence gathered in wartime sometimes has to be discarded or set to one side to avoid compromising other ongoing operations and in the interests of national security.
CHURCHILL AND THE M ROOM
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s views on the whole bugging operation became clear in a Personal Minute dated 16 February 1944, issued to Sir Percy Grigg (Secretary of State for War) and General Hastings Ismay (for the Combined Chiefs of Staff). Churchill wrote that the records of conversations between enemy prisoners of war at CSDIC ‘afford an excellent insight into the German character and the results of the Nazi regime.’47
Churchill wanted a book written, using a summary of conversations.48 He received a favourable response from the Joint Intelligence Committee, but it would have to wait until after the war. In the end, it was a parallel scenario to the evidence gathered on war crimes by the secret listeners. British intelligence refused to release any of the files or knowledge of their contents into the public domain. Neither were the unit’s existence and clandestine operations during wartime acknow-ledged. Consequently, around 75,000 transcripts from the M Room remained closed until at least 1996 and some were not released until the period between 2004 and 2006.
CHAPTER 15
Always Listening
The Axis powers may have been defeated, but the Allies faced a huge task in the denazification of Germany, the hunt for Nazi war criminals and the reconstruction of post-war Europe.1 There was also a new, more dangerous threat from Europe’s old enemy, the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill had raised international awareness to the Soviet threat in his speech on 5 March 1945 in Missouri, USA where he famously coined the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.’ It would characterise much of the Cold War where the battlefield shifted from direct physical combat to the arms race and superiority in the technological spying game. The challenges facing British intelligence would prove as difficult as during the hostilities of 1939–1945. British and American forces raced to snatch German scientists and technologists before they fell into the hands of the Russians.
Kendrick’s secret listeners were not demobilised immediately. A small number were posted to the former London Cage in Kensington Palace Gardens, when it became the War Crimes Investigation Unit until 1948.2 Some were posted to new listening posts in Germany and others to Farm Hall near Cambridge. There was still vital work for them to do.
OPERATION EPSILON
British and American special teams such as ‘T Force’, Counterintelligence, Fleming’s 30 Assault Unit, and Field Security units successfully hunted down the key German atomic bomb scientists and brought them to England, before their eventual transfer to the United States. From May until December 1945, they were held at Farm Hall, a comfortable Georgian country house in Godmanchester near Cambridge, and codenamed Operation Epsilon.3 Ten chief German atomic scientists were held there, with no explanation for their detention. Amongst them were two Nobel Prize winners: Max von Laue and Otto Hahn (the latter heard about his awa
rd of a Nobel Prize whilst at Farm Hall).4
The files of their bugged conversations survive in the National Archives; amongst them are copies of their reactions to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.5 As with the German generals during the war, the scientists did not suspect that their conversations were bugged from the M Room. The listeners ironically overheard them saying: ‘The British are too stupid to bug our conversations.’
This highly top-secret site came under the daily running of Major Rittner, one of Kendrick’s wartime intelligence officers. A number of secret listeners were posted to the site, as noted by Major Rittner in a report dated 17 June 1945:
Lieutenant Commander [Eric] Welsh and I went to Farm Hall where arrangements had already been made to install microphones. I had asked for such an installation from the day I took charge of the professors. We arranged with Colonel Kendrick to transfer the necessary staff from CSDIC (UK) to man the installation. We were fortunate also in obtaining the services of Captain Brodie from CSDIC (UK) to act as Administrative Officer.6
The secret listeners there were known to include George Pulay, Herbert Lehmann, Heilbronn and Peter Ganz.
Farm Hall represented a prime example why intelligence files could not be made public after the war and released to the war crimes trials. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardise Operation Epsilon, from which the British and Americans expected to obtain the most important scientific secrets in the new era. The Cold War, that would last forty years, was a period now deemed as more dangerous than the Second World War because for the first time in history, the world faced the real threat of its own total destruction by nuclear war. There could be no admission that the intelligence services were bugging the conversations of personnel being held at special sites. That would jeopardise the vital new intelligence gathering and hence, the security of Europe.
NO.74 CSDIC, BAD NENNDORF