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

by Read, Simon

  It was McKenna’s turn to shake his head.

  “Papirosi,” the soldier said again, bringing an imaginary cigarette to his lips.

  “No,” McKenna said. “No cigarettes—no papirosi.”

  The Russians decided to check for themselves and rummaged through the vehicle. McKenna eyed their firearms and kept silent. He stood shivering in the snow as the soldiers foraged through the glove box and checked under all the seats. Satisfied McKenna was not holding out, the Russians turned and walked back to their truck. One soldier flashed a broad grin and shook McKenna’s hand before joining his comrades. His teeth chattering and his shoulders hunched against the cold, McKenna watched the Russian transport pull away and disappear into the dark. He retreated quickly to the relative warmth of the jeep’s interior and continued to wait. At about midnight, a car came speeding down the autobahn from the direction of the capital and pulled in behind McKenna. From it emerged a visibly annoyed squadron leader from RAF headquarters in Berlin.

  “You should have abandoned the car,” the squadron leader bellowed. “What does it matter?” He examined the jeep and shook his head. “We can’t tow this thing anyway with a broken axle. We’ll have to get out a heavy aid detachment in the morning.”

  McKenna shrugged off the superior officer’s displeasure.

  “Have you seen my sergeant interpreter?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the squadron leader said, still examining the jeep, “we’ve got all the papers in Berlin.”

  “Well,” McKenna said, “that’s all that matters.”

  The squadron leader drove McKenna to Berlin and left the stricken jeep by the roadside. McKenna borrowed a car the next morning and returned to check on the vehicle and wait for a towing crew. He arrived at the spot mid-morning and found the jeep gone; four tire marks in the snow were all that remained. Desperate locals must have raided the jeep for scrap, McKenna theorized, picking it apart piece by piece. McKenna drove to the nearest military checkpoint and called the local RAF authorities to report the jeep stolen.

  “Are you sure there were no papers in it?” asked the group captain who took the call.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right, then forget it,” the group captain said. “We’ll write it off.”

  McKenna returned to Rinteln without his jeep or any worthwhile information on Scharpwinkel.

  Naked bulbs hanging from exposed wires in the ceiling bathed the interrogation room in a harsh white light. Dr. Ernst Kah sat at a long table and raised his shackled wrists to his mouth. He took a long drag on his cigarette and smiled at his inquisitors. Two weeks had passed since Kah’s initial arrest. The army, having obtained from him whatever information it sought, had now made him available to the RAF. McKenna, along with Squadron Leader W. P. Thomas, recently dispatched from England to assist in the investigation, arrived at No. 1 CIC at Neumünster on the afternoon of October 17. Expecting the onetime chief of the Breslau Security Police to be an ardent Nazi, they were surprised when he voiced, by way of greeting, his admiration for the British.

  “I think you are prepared to help us with information,” said Thomas.

  “Yes,” Kah said. “Germany has lost the war. Germany will not recover again. It is too late. England is the only country which can lead Europe and to establish Europe again. I do not say this as a joke.”

  “If you do not tell us the truth,” Thomas said, “it will be your responsibility and not ours.”

  Kah nodded, taking in another lungful of smoke. “I want to help you voluntarily,” he said, “because Germany cannot now do anything.”

  The RAF men asked Kah if he knew of Scharpwinkel. Kah answered in the affirmative and explained that the man had served as chief of the local Gestapo in Breslau. The last he heard, Scharpwinkel had been shot in the left leg during the Russian assault and most likely remained in the city. But such information, he warned, was based solely on secondhand intelligence he’d picked up in the days following the battle.

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “No,” Kah replied. “The capitulation was so much in a hurry. The report came in on a Sunday that the capitulation would be during the night of Sunday or Monday. During Sunday—and during the night—many fled to other parts, away from the Russians. That is what I did. We were surrounded, but many people succeeded in getting out. It was a matter of life and death. I left Breslau alone in the night of Sunday.”

  Kah suggested a number of individuals on the RAF’s wanted list had been killed in the fighting at Breslau or were now in Russian custody. It would, of course, take time to corroborate such information. The Russians had thus far ignored McKenna’s various requests for assistance. Arrangements were promptly made to ship Kah back to England for further interrogation at the London Cage, a prisoner-of-war facility run by British Intelligence out of a grand house in Kensington Palace Gardens.

  Still lacking strong leads, McKenna once more channeled his energy into canvassing the internment camps and focused on the British Zone of Occupation. New to the team was Flight Lieutenant Stephen Courtney who, accompanied by a large German shepherd of questionable demeanor named Fritz, had arrived in Rinteln in early October. McKenna tasked Courtney with searching the holding facilities in the American Zone. The camps, miserable in ideal conditions, were utterly wretched in the cold damp of winter. Drenched in rain, the grounds were rendered muddy swamps; the wooden huts reeked of rot. Over the course of several weeks, Courtney and Smit, serving as interpreter, made their way from one compound to another. It was monotonous and tiring work rife with bureaucracy. Authorization was required to travel from one town to another, and permission was needed to access the camps. On November 29, Courtney arrived at Dachau, the Nazis’ first concentration camp, located roughly ten miles outside Munich, on the grounds of an old munitions factory. A GI standing sentry ushered Courtney’s car through the main gate, the wrought iron bearing the phrase Arbeit macht frei—“Work makes one free.” Entering the grounds, Courtney thought of a jingle he had heard shortly after his arrival in Germany:

  Lieber Herr Gott, mach mich stumm

  Das ich nicht nach Dachau komm.

  [Dear God, make me dumb

  That I may not to Dachau come.]

  Men—some in tattered civilian clothing, others in faded uniforms—milled about the compound as though waiting for something to happen. In a cold interrogation room, Courtney questioned prisoners known to have served in the Gestapo. He asked them about Scharpwinkel, Absalon, and others on the RAF’s wanted list. Some prisoners spat invective; others refused to talk. Some minor gains, however, were made. Information Courtney obtained from several inmates led to the arrest in early December of Colonel Ernst Richard Walde at a private residence outside Hannover. Walde, who had served as a Luftwaffe administrator at Stalag Luft III, was number twenty-four on McKenna’s list. Another informant steered the team to General Inspector Walther Grosch—Walde’s superior and number twenty-three on the list—who was hiding outside Kiel. Also apprehended in the same region was General Rudolf Hoffman, number twenty-six, overall commander of Luftwaffe installations, including Stalag Luft III, in Lower Silesia. The men were transferred to the London Cage, where, although cleared of direct involvement in the Sagan murders, they—as witnesses—confirmed the roles of other men being sought by the RAF.

  The investigation continued to advance on the hearsay of others. For a detective with nearly two decades’ policing experience, McKenna found it discomfiting. He craved personal interaction with the suspects, longed to confront them with the facts, back them into a corner, and elicit a confession. In mid-December, the Judge Advocate General’s Branch of the British Army of the Rhine forwarded McKenna a dossier on Fritz Panzinger, number seventy-five on the wanted list and onetime adjutant to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller. Panzinger’s last known address was in Berlin, where he and his wife had lived in a second-floor flat at Yorckstrasse 72. On April 28, with the Red Army closing in, Panzinger joined other Gestapo officials on a
flight out of Berlin, bound for Thuringia in central Germany. The aircraft reportedly crashed on takeoff, the fiery impact killing all on board. The story, however, was impossible to verify as the Gestapo had destroyed all pertinent records prior to the capitulation. What Allied investigators had managed to ascertain was that Panzinger’s wife, two days after the plane supposedly went down, bit into a cyanide capsule and killed herself. Panzinger’s mother and brother had been located in Munich and would be questioned in due time.

  “The Americans,” the dossier concluded, “are interested in locating Panzinger and will pass on any information they may obtain.”

  McKenna was happy to let the Americans worry about it; he had enough to deal with.* He remained desperate for one solid lead, a cornerstone upon which he could slowly build his case.

  On the afternoon of December 2, 1945, Dr. F. V. van der Bijil—a Czech lawyer who’d flown with the RAF during the war—returned to his room at the Hotel Esplanade in Prague, took pen to paper, and began a long letter to the British ambassador. A steady rain pummeled the window and distorted the view of the city’s ancient steeples and spires.

  Restored after Germany’s defeat, the Czechoslovakian government was conducting its own investigation into wartime atrocities. On May 27, 1942, Prague Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich—“head of the Reich Security Service, Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, administrator of the concentration camps, and a specialist in Nazi terror techniques”—had had an appointment with Hitler in Berlin. He left for the German capital that morning in an open-air car driven by his chauffeur. The black Mercedes pulled away from Heydrich’s villa in the suburb of Paneské Břežany and traveled along the Dresden-Prague Road. At an intersection, where the car slowed to maneuver a hairpin turn, two Czech patriots trained by British Intelligence lay in wait. Shortly after 10:30 A.M., as Heydrich’s car navigated the bend, one of the assassins stepped into the street and tossed a grenade at the vehicle. The resulting explosion wrecked the car and wounded Heydrich, who died several days later in a local hospital. His killers fled and took refuge in Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. Rather than surrender to the German troops who soon besieged the church, they took their own lives and became martyrs to the cause.

  Response to the assassination was immediate and brutal. The Germans rolled into the small town of Lidice on the morning of June 9 and rounded up every male sixteen years of age and older. The 173 men were taken to a local farm and shot. “Seventeen rows of corpses in bloody clothes, with shattered skulls, brains and guts spilling out, lay on the ground in batches of ten” by the time the killing was done. German soldiers destroyed the town’s graveyard and desecrated four hundred graves. Women and children were shipped off to concentration camps, their homes looted and set ablaze.

  The Czechs cast a wide net in their search for the perpetrators and hauled in more than their intended catch. Czech officials had been receptive to the British plea for help in the Sagan investigation. The government had a vested interest in the case. Flying Officer Ernst Valenta, a Sagan escapee, was a Czech national and one of the murdered fifty. After the war, Czech officials ensnared in their dragnet a onetime driver for the Gestapo. Under interrogation, the man confessed to participating in the murder of two escapees from Stalag Luft III: British Squadron Leader Thomas Kirby-Green and Canadian Flying Officer Gordon Kidder. Van der Bijil, having informed the Czech government of his personal interest in the Sagan murders, was granted access to the Narochi Vybor prison in Zlín and allowed to question the man.

  Now, in his hotel room, writing to the British ambassador, van der Bijil put what he knew down on paper:

  Sir,

  Detailed information has just come into my possession regarding the alleged murder of two Royal Air Force officers on March 29th, 1944. I have personally questioned a former Gestapo man who was an eye-witness of the murder. I have every reason to believe the complete accuracy of the report, which I submit to Your Excellency, although more than this I cannot certify.

  Thomas Kirby-Green. British. Born in Nyassaland on 28th February, 1918. Gave his rank as “Major” of the Royal Air Force; i.e. Squadron Leader. I think there is little doubt this was Squadron Leader Kirby-Green who was formerly officer i/c of training of 311 Czechoslovak Squadron R.A.F. whilst stationed at R.A.F. East Wretham, Norfolk.

  He was prisoner of war at Sagan in Lower Silesia. He escaped and was arrested at Zlín, Moravia, at 11.00 hours on the 28th March, 1944 by the German Criminal Police. Charge: “Escape from Prison Camp.”

  With Squadron Leader Kirby-Green was a Canadian flight lieutenant, and the story applies equally to him.

  Following their arrest and interrogation, wrote van der Bijil, the prisoners left Zlín in two Gestapo cars:

  The driver of one was Kiowsky, at present in custody in Zlín. I was invited to personally question Kiowsky at the Narochi Vyber, Zlín, on November 30, 1945. The driver of the other car—Schwarzer—has not been caught.

  Also along for the ride was a Gestapo man named Erich Zacharias. According to information obtained by van der Bijil, Zacharias was married and now living in Gartenstadt in the British Zone. Military authorities in the region, oblivious to the man’s past, had classified Zacharias “a harmless person.” According to Kiowsky, Zacharias had already murdered three people in Zlín, one being an eighteen-year-old girl. The letter went on to detail the murders of Kirby-Green and his Canadian companion:

  Arriving at a spot somewhere between Frydek and Moravska Ostrava about 10 kms from Moravska Ostrava, the cars were stopped to permit the prisoners to relieve themselves. Kiowsky was some few meters away when, hearing a shot, he turned and saw Erich with a revolver in his hand having shot Kirby-Green in the back by the shoulders. As Kirby-Green swung round from the shot, he then shot him in the head and Kirby-Green collapsed, dead. The Canadian officer was murdered in a similar manner.

  It is asserted that these murders were ordered by the Chief of the Gestapo in Zlín, Hans Ziegler…. Ziegler forbade any discussion of this incident for fear of Red Cross investigation.

  Van der Bijil concluded his letter with a plea for immediate action:

  I, therefore, request [Your] Excellency to arrange for an immediate enquiry into these alleged murders and, in particular, for the immediate interrogation of the alleged murderer, Erich Zacharias.

  I would add that I am deeply interested in the fate of S/Ldr. Kirby-Green, who was a gallant and distinguished officer with whom I had the honour to serve in the Royal Air Force.

  Van der Bijil signed his name to the page and dropped the letter in the hotel’s outgoing mail.

  *The man was never found.

  FOUR

  ZLÍN

  Squadron Leader Tom Kirby-Green, with his mop of thick black hair, Clark Gable mustache, and chiseled features possessed a bohemian streak that both entertained his fellow prisoners and gave him an exotic air. One contemporary remembered him looking like “an overgrown Spaniard.” He wore bright-colored kaftans and played the maracas. He enjoyed Cuban music and was enthralled by Latin American culture. While others sat around and played cards, he reclined on his bunk and read French literature.

  The son of a colonial governor, Kirby-Green was born in what is now present-day Malawi. His parents soon shipped him off to school in England, where he earned something of a reputation at Dover College. Accustomed as he was to a more adventurous upbringing on the subcontinent, he irked the headmaster early in his school days by shooting the ducks on the college pond. It did not take long, however, for him to earn the respect of his teachers and fellow students with his intellectual acumen and prowess on the rugby field. When done with school, he joined the ranks of RAF Bomber Command in 1936 intent on becoming a pilot. Coupled with his lust for adventure was a concern over Europe’s growing fascist threat. He served with several squadrons—including a Czech training unit—before joining No. 40 Squadron, flying Wellingtons out of RAF Alconbury in Cambridgeshire. On the evening of October 16, 1941, he took off on his
thirty-seventh operation, the target being Duisburg. Enemy fire knocked his bomber from the sky on the return flight and brought it down near Reichswald Forest in north Germany. He was captured near the wreckage. The Germans considered the incident a propaganda coup to the extent that Lord Haw-Haw, the traitorous Briton turned Nazi broadcaster, announced it over the airwaves. Not long thereafter, Kirby-Green ended up in Stalag Luft III.

  In a letter to his wife, Maria, dated September 30, 1943, he described the horrifying ordeal of bailing out:

  We were on our way home when we were extremely hard hit, all controls were completely “dead” and the aircraft was spinning and losing height extremely fast. I gave the order to jump. My parachute opened almost at the same time as I hit the ground with the result that I injured my spine and could not walk.

  The aircraft crashed about three seconds after I landed and about 30 yards from me. Martin was found in the tail of the aircraft dead. The others were found some short distance away but on very much higher ground with their chutes open, killed instantaneously.

  During the escape’s planning phase, Kirby-Green helped handle security matters and took part in digging the tunnels. All the while, his thoughts centered on Maria and their young son, Colin. Wandering the camp one afternoon, he paused and gazed through the wire at the surrounding pine forest. The trees, he wrote home later that day in his neat, cursive writing, “don’t do well. Few are growing, but anyway I feel we’ll be together before they grow much bigger.”

  And so the days, marked only by the slow lengthening of tunnels and the sluggish growth of the trees, bled one into the other until, at last, all was ready. Prior to the breakout, Kirby-Green partnered with Canadian Flying Officer Gordon Kidder, a twenty-nine-year-old navigator who had done his part helping planned escapees learn German. Prior to the war, he had briefly attended Johns Hopkins University in the States, intent on gaining a master’s in German before deciding to try his luck in the real world. When war broke out, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was posted as a navigator to No. 156 Squadron, a Pathfinder unit that flew in ahead of the main attack force to light the target area with colored flares. On the night of October 13, 1942, Kidder’s Wellington suffered heavy flak damage over Kiel and lost an engine. The pilot fought to maintain altitude as he turned the bomber for home. Over the North Sea, the second engine gave out. The plane came down hard in the water and killed all on board except Kidder—who suffered a broken ankle—and the radio operator. The two men managed to scramble aboard the aircraft’s emergency dinghy and spent the night bobbing about on the waves. They were picked up early the next morning by a German minesweeper. Kidder had subsequently languished in Stalag Luft III since Christmas 1942.