Human Game: The True Story of the 'Great Escape' Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen

by Read, Simon

  The men, back on British soil, told the War Office what they knew of the escape’s planning and execution based on their individual involvement. Their information was coupled with an account from Group Captain Massey—the repatriated senior British officer from Stalag Luft III—who provided what information he could on the violent aftermath. The documents, viewed in their entirety, were a threadbare tapestry of information when one considered the scope and immensity of the killings. The fog of war had effectively concealed many details of the crime. The identity of the gunmen remained a mystery, though the names of several high-ranking officials were put forward as most likely being involved in the murders. Some men of interest, noted Military Intelligence, might already be in custody. Allied prison camps were teeming with captives, but the daunting task of identifying the hundreds of thousands of prisoners behind the wire was far from complete. One man known to be in custody was Breslau Kripo chief Max Wielen. The British Army had picked him up after they crossed the Rhine, two weeks before Germany surrendered. In his statement to interrogators, Wielen detailed how national Kripo chief Arthur Nebe had ordered him to hand captured escapees in his custody over to Dr. Wilhelm Scharpwinkel, head of the Breslau Gestapo. British Intelligence placed considerable emphasis on this piece of information.

  It was ascertained, through interviews with surviving escapees, that the majority of the Sagan fugitives—thirty-five them—had been captured in the Breslau area and imprisoned in the town of Görlitz. The Gestapo murdered twenty-nine men and shipped the remaining six back to Stalag Luft III. Scharpwinkel was a killer—but his whereabouts, indeed even whether he was still alive, remained a mystery. He had taken part in the defense of Breslau, besieged by the Red Army during the last three months of war. Having declared the city a fortress, Hitler ordered Breslau’s defenders to fight to the last man. Scharpwinkel was most likely dead, but McKenna required hard evidence before accepting something as fact. Uncovering such evidence would not be easy. Seventeen months had passed since the killings—plenty of time for the Gestapo to destroy incriminating files and send the perpetrators underground with forged papers and new identities. Germany, wrecked from one end to the other, had been carved up among the Allies. Sagan, conquered by the Red Army in February 1945, now lay within the Russian Zone of Occupation and was closed to British and American forces.

  An intelligence report concluded: “In view of these difficulties, it would appear that the best way of increasing the speed and efficiency of investigations might be to set up temporarily a small unit to make investigations in Germany. There can be little doubt that the employment of a small group of officers with police experience and a knowledge of German would be well justified having regard to the facts that, first, it is one of the worst of the war crimes committed against British nationals in general and the R.A.F. in particular; secondly, that it involves major war criminals; thirdly, that a large number of victims are involved; and fourthly, that is has aroused considerable public interest.”

  McKenna closed the file and shook his head. A week after receiving the documents, he returned to Nicholas’s office to deliver his professional opinion. There was, he told the group captain, little hope of realizing Anthony Eden’s promise. Nicholas leaned back in his chair and tamped tobacco in a pipe. He sucked in a mouthful of smoke and hissed it out between clenched teeth, listening as McKenna rattled off various reasons as to why the case was destined to fail. Nicholas politely acknowledged McKenna’s arguments then casually brushed them aside.

  “Listen,” he said. “There appears to be little more evidence to be gained from Allied witnesses. Although the outline is clear, the full story cannot be learnt until more of the Germans connected with the case are traced and interrogated.”

  McKenna realized, with a certain degree of alarm, that a decision had already been made. When he opened his mouth to protest, Nicholas raised his arm to signify the matter had been settled. McKenna, accompanied by Flight Sergeant H. J. Williams, an ex–Portsmouth police officer, would venture to Germany and set about bringing the murderers to justice. McKenna resigned himself to the mission, knowing any argument against the assignment would most likely result in a forceful rebuff.

  McKenna and Flight Sergeant Williams left England on September 3, 1945, six years to the day after Britain’s declaration of war. They took off from RAF Northolt in a Dakota, thundered across the coast, and set a bumpy course over the English Channel. The bomber’s interior smelled of grease and metal polish. The Pratt & Whitney engines rattled every screw and joint in the plane—or so thought McKenna, who feared the water. He made a point of not looking out the window as they crossed the sea and instead focused on bringing Williams up to date. The two men had to shout to hear each other over the fuselage noise. McKenna passed files to Williams and familiarized him with their prey. There was, of course, Scharpwinkel, followed by Dr. Gunther Absalon, an SS captain charged with prisoner-of-war security in the Sagan region. McKenna provided the relevant background.

  “The camp’s commandant at the time of the escape was Colonel Friedrich-Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, sixty-four, a decorated cavalry officer from the First World War and pro-British,” McKenna shouted. “He had no patience for Hitler or the fanatics who towed the Nazi line. He knew any recaptured escapee would have to answer to the Gestapo, leaving him powerless to intervene on the prisoner’s behalf. The morning of the escape, he made forty-two telephone calls to regional Gestapo and Kripo headquarters, alerting them to the breach. Max Wielen—who we have in custody—was chief of the Breslau Kripo, which had jurisdiction over the Sagan region. He issued a Grossfahndung, a national hue and cry placing all military and security personnel on the highest alert. That same afternoon, he ordered Gunther Absalon to conduct an investigation at the camp. Absalon stripped Lindeiner of his rank and placed him under arrest.”

  McKenna handed Williams a copy of Lindeiner’s statement, taken by a British interrogator after the war, and summarized the main points.

  “Nineteen of the escaped officers were recaptured in the vicinity of Sagan immediately after the escape,” he said. “They were put in the local jail, where they were searched and identified by local Kripo personnel. At mid-day on Sunday, 26 March, Absalon was asked by Lindeiner to have the officers who were being held at Sagan prison returned to camp. Absalon refused the request peremptorily, explaining that he could accept no instructions from Lindeiner as the latter had been relieved of his post on account of the escape. On the evening of Sunday, 26 March, all nineteen officers were taken to Görlitz, and a further sixteen were brought there on various days. It’s not possible to establish with certainty on whose instructions this transfer was carried out. The normal procedure was to return escapers captured by ordinary police to their camp, which applied to at least the officers of British and Dominion nationality. On Sunday evening, no instructions could have possibly reached the local Kripo to treat this particular escape in any different way, and the assumption is therefore that the Kripo took these measures on their own initiative.”

  McKenna braved a glance out the window and felt a weight lift when he saw land passing beneath the clouds. He turned back to the case file. Because Absalon had received orders to investigate the escape, he said, he would naturally have been required to interrogate recaptured prisoners. The facility at Görlitz had been a prison in the traditional sense before the war. The Gestapo, however, took it over once hostilities commenced and ran it as an interrogation center. Prisoners housed at Görlitz were mostly civilian and foreign workers accused of sabotage and other treasonous acts against the Reich. The prison, overrun with lice and fleas, was filthy. Prisoners received barely enough food to survive, their daily rations consisting of “200 grams of black bread and one liter of watery soup.” Having been questioned, inmates were hauled before a special court where a panel of judges would sentence them to hard labor or condemn them to a death camp.

  “Presumably,” McKenna theorized, “it was Absalon who ordered the transfer of th
e officers to Görlitz, where interrogation and segregation could be more easily carried out.”

  As for Lindeiner, the stress of it all resulted in a coronary. He survived, only to be court-martialed—but the German capitulation spared him the hardship of a year in prison. Now held in London, he was cooperating with the British. Questioned after the war, former inmates of Stalag Luft III described the one-time colonel as “a good sort of commandant with a very difficult task, but well liked by his prisoners and staff.” He had encouraged the prisoners under his charge to pursue various hobbies, from sports and gardening to amateur theatrical productions. He routinely violated protocol by shaking hands with inmates, accepting their invitations to tea, and joining them for a smoke. On three occasions, he presented senior ranking prisoners with wine and champagne on their birthdays. McKenna couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for the man.

  Turbulence rattled the plane as McKenna and Williams next focused on the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy. Hitler and Himmler were dead. Göring and Keitel were awaiting trial at Nuremberg, as was Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s second in command at the Central Security Office. That left Nebe, national head of the Kripo, whose whereabouts were presently unknown. The fate of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller, last seen on April 29, 1945, in Hitler’s bunker, also remained a mystery. Their names had been added to the Central Register of War Criminals and Security Suspects in Paris, along with those of 106 other men wanted in connection with the Sagan murders. Britain’s Judge Advocate General’s Office had compiled the list, drawing the names from interrogations and intelligence reports. McKenna would have to determine who, on the list, had actually played a complicit role in the killings. It was understood that the list was a fluid thing, prone to change based on McKenna’s findings. For all anyone knew, most men listed were already dead or languishing in Allied prison camps under assumed names.

  “Where do we start?” asked Williams.

  “The first task will be to ascertain that none of the wanted men are in fact held in the British, American, and French occupation zones,” McKenna said. “It cannot be assumed that just because a name is not recorded in the Central Registry of Detained Persons that the individual is not in Allied hands. The next task is to make enquiries for the wanted persons in the German towns in the British, American, and French occupation zones. Saarbrücken, Natzweiler, Munich, Stuttgart. In these places, searches should be made where possible in the records of the Kripo and Gestapo offices.”

  There were additional avenues to explore, McKenna continued, including making inquiries in Berlin to review, if such material still existed, the records of the Central Security Office.

  “If it is found possible to make enquiries inside the Russian occupation zone,” he said, “full enquiries should be made at Breslau, Görlitz, Hirschberg, Oels, Liegnitz, Dresden, and Danzig.”

  The Dakota banked in a steep turn. McKenna looked out the window and saw a scene of utter devastation, a tortured expanse of twisted metal and shattered masonry: the skeletal remains of a city. Through the clouds, he could see people moving about the wreckage. It seemed remarkable that anything could live down there. Bombing Germany at night, all one could see was the glow of searchlights and the black clouds of flak illuminated by the fires below. It was impossible, under such conditions, to ascertain the true extent of the carnage being done. Now, in the light of day, McKenna felt a sense of pity—not necessarily for the people below, but that events had made such actions necessary.

  The plane touched down with a heavy thud on a freshly bulldozed runway outside Rinteln in northwestern Germany. McKenna and Williams disembarked, cleared military customs, and were met by a representative of the RAF, who drove them by jeep to RAF Rinteln. Located on the banks of the Weser River, the ancient town had somehow escaped the ravages of war. Its medieval architecture and timber-framed houses were reminiscent of a Grimm’s fairy tale. In stark contrast to the devastation McKenna had viewed from the plane, Rinteln was an oddity—a small vestige of simpler times. The jeep turned onto Waldkaterallee, a quiet, tree-lined street, and stopped in front of a guard gate. An RAF policeman, having checked identification papers, raised a red-and-white barrier and allowed the jeep to pass. McKenna admired the grounds and commented on the number of trees. It was an astute observation, said the driver. The English translation for Waldkaterallee is “Forest Hang Over Alley.” They pulled up in front of a three-story barrack building with a heavily sloped roof. The RAF man led McKenna and Williams inside and helped get them situated. They were shown their sleeping quarters and their office, a spacious room of desks and filing cabinets. A large map of Germany dominated one wall. Then, with an utterance of good luck, their escort left McKenna and Williams to the task at hand.

  The two men pondered their new surroundings and staked out their desks. McKenna spread the case files out in front of him and approached the wall-mounted map, which, he saw upon closer inspection, showed the Allied partitioning of Germany. The British occupied the northwest region of the country, while the Americans controlled the south. The French held territory along Germany’s southwestern border with France. The Russians occupied the east. Berlin, although located in the Soviet Zone, was jointly held by the Americans in the south, the British in the west, the French in the north, and the Russians in the east. McKenna returned to his desk and sorted through the files. The ashes of the dead had been shipped back to Stalag Luft III in urns, many of which bore inscriptions identifying the place of execution. McKenna found the list of cities and returned to the map. Breslau, the site of the majority of killings, lay deep within the Soviet sector. The Russians, who now oversaw nearly a quarter of Germany’s population, would most likely deny McKenna and his team access to the area. Cities such as Kiel, Hanover, and Hamburg fell within the British Zone and would pose no foreseeable problem. The British governed 23,000,000 people in their zone of occupation, which included the farmlands of the Rhine. Also under British control was the decimated Ruhr Valley. Once the industrial center of the Nazi war machine, its cities were now all but destroyed. American and British bombers had laid nearly 70 percent of Cologne to waste. “A staggering 93 percent” of Düsseldorf lay in ruins. In the American Zone, cities such as Frankfurt, Bremen, and Munich had suffered their own ordeal by fire.

  With a general lay of the land, McKenna contacted the relevant Allied authorities in the American, British, and French zones, informing them of his arrival, the nature of the investigation, and the particulars of those wanted by the RAF. German police departments were also forwarded the wanted list. Meetings consumed the next several days. The commander of the North Western Europe War Crimes Investigation Unit offered McKenna the use of a holding facility in Minden. Officials at the American Authorities’ Headquarters in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt granted McKenna permits to enter the American Zone of Occupation. Records of recently captured Nazi officials were reviewed at Rhine Army headquarters and the Judge Advocate General Branch. These first several days seemed to pass in a flurry of papers, files, and index cards.

  Back at his desk one evening, McKenna lit a smoke and pondered his next move. With no crime scene to examine, no witnesses to interview, and no evidence to analyze, the investigation lacked a clear starting point. Alongside the wall map he pinned mug shots of the murdered men, their solemn, black-and-white stares offering grim encouragement. Two of the victims were Flying Officer Robert Stewart and Flight Lieutenant Edgar Humphreys. Both men had been among the thirty-five prisoners to end up in the jail at Görlitz. McKenna flipped through the statements of the survivors who’d passed through the jail. The Gestapo had threatened to behead and shoot some of the recaptured men. Several prisoners were told outright that they would never see their homes or loved ones again. On the morning of March 31, 1944, roughly a dozen Gestapo agents—dressed in leather overcoats and fedoras—showed up at the prison and took ten inmates, including Humphreys and Stewart, away. Their ashes arrived at Stalag Luft III several days later in urns bearing their names and the pla
ce of cremation: Liegnitz. Humphreys was twenty-nine, Stewart thirty-two. McKenna took a drag on his cigarette and blinked the smoke out of his eyes. As a civilian police officer in Blackpool, he had become friends with a number of aircrew serving at RAF Squires Gate, the local air base. He often downed pints in the mess hall with Humphreys, a good-humored sort who showed him around the airfield and sparked an enthusiasm for the air force. A Blenheim pilot with No. 107 Squadron, Humphreys took off on December 19, 1940, for a daylight operation against the Channel ports and never returned. Stewart had also become a friend before being shot down over Duisburg on the night of April 27, 1943.

  McKenna stared at their photographs and felt the weight of responsibility on him. He hoped to provide the fifty men with an epitaph worthy of all they had suffered. He stubbed out his cigarette, switched off the desk lamp, and retired for the night. The next day he dispatched a report to London, summarizing his first ten days in Germany. The odds of conducting a successful investigation were daunting but not impossible. His immediate plan was to comb the files of regional war crimes record offices in the hopes of establishing a lead, whether it be a name or an address that might put him on track. He also intended to visit the “camps and concentration areas” where the Allies were holding German prisoners. The challenge lay in the sheer numbers. There were a multitude of such facilities, housing millions of Germans, whom the Allies had to clear through a process of elimination. While there was a register listing all those in captivity, it was most likely, McKenna wrote, that many prisoners had assumed false identities prior to their apprehension. Despite such obstacles, McKenna believed the investigation would last several months at most. It was an optimistic assessment.