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

by Read, Simon

  “On the right of the prisoners was Geith, also slightly in front of me,” Weil said. “I did not see whether or not the prisoners were manacled. While I urinated, two shots from an automatic weapon fired in quick succession. I saw the first prisoner on the left falling forward and, immediately afterwards, the one on the right. I turned at once towards the car and saw Schermer standing before the rear right door. At the same moment, I noticed Schneider at the back of the car. He had a submachine gun in his hand. Then I saw Schermer going to the two who were lying there. He looked at Schneider and told him to fire more shots at each. Schneider approached the two corpses and fired a few shots with his sub-machine gun, as he had been ordered. Schermer ordered that a covering be fetched from the car and the bodies covered. I did not go to the bodies nor did I cover them.”

  Weil drew a nervous breath before continuing.

  “Schermer said he had to drive to the municipal legal official and medical officer, and told me and Geith to remain with the bodies in the meantime. After about twenty minutes, two policemen came along on their beat. Geith showed them his papers and said our commanding officer had gone to the authorities. As far as I remember, one of the policemen remained with us, and the other left us after a while.”

  Schermer and Schneider returned in a van roughly one hour later with a police officer and a civilian worker. The latter approached the bodies and pulled back a corner of the blanket.

  “They’re dead,” he said.

  Schermer summoned the officer and civilian to the back of the van, where they conferred in quiet tones. What they said could not be heard by the others, who remained by the bodies.

  “Shortly afterwards,” Weil said, “the civilian and the police officer drove off in the direction of Ingolstadt. At Schermer’s instruction, Schneider, Geith, and I had to put the bodies in a hollow to prevent their being seen so easily from the autobahn. We also had to cover them with pine twigs so that we could take the covering with us. One of the policemen remained with the bodies. Schermer, Geith, Schneider, and I then returned to Munich. At Allerhausen (or some such name) we stopped at the police station where Schermer, I presume, telephoned the funeral office at Munich to collect the bodies. On our return to the office we had to swear an oath of secrecy before Schäfer.”

  Not until April 1945, with the Americans only days away from the city, did the matter come up again. A panicked Schäfer dispatched Weil to the local funeral home to remove the airmen’s names from the undertaker’s registry. Weil did as instructed, using a pocketknife and typewriter eraser to eliminate the names from the pages of the book. Reporting to Schäfer upon completing the job, Weil was ordered to do the same with the booking ledger at the police prison, where Gouws and Stevens had initially been held. The police, Weil said, did not object to his mission, as they planned on destroying all records prior to the arrival of the Americans.

  Courtney had Weil transferred to the British military prison in Minden and crossed the man’s name off his list. He now turned his attention to combing the American camps for Schneider and Geith. Although the U.S. Army had seized both men in a postwar roundup of Nazi collaborators, locating them among the hundreds of thousands of people now interned in Allied camps posed a significant challenge. Inaccurate record keeping and the in-and-out flow of transfers from one camp to another meant some individuals got lost in the shuffle. Oswald Schäfer’s whereabouts, however, were a different matter. Depending on whom Courtney spoke with, Schäfer was either dead or on the run. Until the man’s fate could be firmly substantiated, his name would remain on the wanted list.

  The search for Schneider eventually took a turn in the right direction when Courtney located the man’s wife. She said her husband was being held in Hammelburg, a small town in Bavaria and the site of a large internment camp. The lead was forwarded to the Americans, who confirmed several days later that Johann Schneider’s name appeared on the camp’s list of identified prisoners. The journey from Munich by jeep took Courtney through the snowcapped Bavarian Alps, a stunning reprieve from the depressing drudgery of shattered cities and mud-swollen camps. His arrival in Hammelburg, however, brought him back to reality. The camp sat in a forested area roughly two miles south of the city. Initially a training facility for the German Army, the camp was used to hold enemy combatants during both world wars. It was here the Germans imprisoned Americans captured during the Battle of the Bulge. Conditions at the camp, designated Oflag XIII-B, were grim during the best of times and had grown increasingly dire as the war turned against the Reich.

  Each of the seven five-roomed barracks in the camp’s American compound housed nearly two hundred GIs during the war. Lighting in each room, provided by two single fifteen-watt bulbs, was extremely poor—as was insulation against the elements. Temperatures in the barracks during the winter averaged no higher than twenty degrees and forced the incarcerated men to gather whatever clothes and blankets they could spare and burn them in the single stove that furnished each room. Because the camp received no clothes from the Red Cross, staying warm during the cold months became a matter of basic survival for the inmates. There were no washrooms. The men had to retrieve any water they needed from a faucet in the camp’s kitchen to fill the few sinks in their barracks. Because of fuel rationing, the camp was not equipped with hot water. Comfort could hardly be found in the daily rations, which consisted of “one-tenth of a loaf of bread, one cup of ersatz coffee, one bowl of barley soup, and one serving of vegetables.” Occasionally, the diet was supplemented by a teaspoon of sugar and a small slice of margarine. Toward the end of the war, many men in the camp were bedridden by malnutrition.

  As the war swung in the Allies’ favor—and air raids over Germany wrought ever-increasing carnage—tensions between the Americans and their German captors ran increasingly high. The camp’s commandant had strict rules in place dictating the proper protocol during an air raid. When air raid sirens in the vicinity of the camp signaled an impending attack, the prisoners had three minutes to get back to their barracks. One evening, the sirens began to wail, and four American officers, standing at the barbed-wire fence and chatting with several Serbian POWs in the neighboring compound, did not immediately seek shelter. They eventually returned to their barracks with a slim margin to spare and were spotted by a guard standing post seventy-five yards away. The guard fired at the four men and struck one in the back. The bullet tore through the prisoner’s lung and blew out his chest. Another POW was shot, on a separate occasion, in the back of the head by a guard after failing to understand an order barked at him in German. One order in particular irked American officers imprisoned at Oflag XIII-B. The camp’s commandant deemed it necessary for all Americans, regardless of rank, to salute German officers first. The regulation, naturally, led to a fair number of ugly confrontations between guards and prisoners.

  In late March 1945, Lieutenant General George S. Patton—commanding the U.S. Third Army—ordered the creation of a special task force to penetrate fifty miles behind enemy lines and liberate Americans imprisoned in the camp. Patton issued the order under the official guise of a rescue operation, but his true intent may have simply been to free his son-in-law, who was captured in Tunisia in 1943. The task force, codenamed “Baum” after its commander, Captain Abraham J. Baum, was drawn from Third Army’s 4th Armored Division. Numbering 314 men, 16 tanks, 28 half-tracks, and 13 other assorted vehicles, the task force set off at 21:00 hours on March 26 from the American bridgehead south of Aschaffenburg. They ran into heavy resistance almost immediately outside the nearby town of Schweinheim. Intense German fire destroyed two Sherman tanks and bogged the task force down for hours. Not until the early morning did it punch a hole through the German defenses and continue on its way, thundering along Reichstrasse 26. Reaching the town of Gemünden at 0800 hours on March 27, the force again encountered blistering enemy fire and lost three more tanks. Unable to break through, the Americans were forced to retreat and find another way to the camp. They followed the Sinn River nort
h and turned in the direction of Hammelburg before making visual contact that afternoon with the camp. Seeing men in gray uniforms moving about the compound, the Americans opened fire from a distance, not realizing they were shelling Serbian POWs. The camp’s commandant sent four men—including, by chance, Patton’s son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel John Waters—to alert the American force to its mistake. As the men approached the tanks, an anxious German guard shot Waters in the back. Waters was carried back to the camp and treated by a Serbian medical team.

  Negotiations between camp representatives and Captain Baum went forward despite the incident and carried on for several hours. As thousands of American prisoners gathered at the compound’s perimeter fence to cheer the task force’s arrival, it became clear that there was no way Baum could transport them all back to Allied lines. Baum decided only field-grade officers would be allowed to journey with the task force. The remaining American prisoners were given the option of traveling the fifty miles west back to the American lines by foot, if they so wished. Many wisely opted to stay put until the final liberation. At 20:00 hours, the task force pulled away from the camp. The outward journey had cost Baum more than a quarter of his fighting force. The journey back promised to be just as arduous. There was no moon to light the way. Baum and his men would have to use the lights on their vehicles, meaning they would be easy prey for the German forces stalking the return route.

  Several miles from the camp, near the town of Hollrich, the task force’s lead tank was hit by a German panzerfaust. German troops swarmed the vehicle and maneuvered it into a nearby garden. They aimed its gun down the road and took out three more Shermans in rapid succession. Baum ordered his men to pull back. What remained of Baum’s force retreated to a nearby hill, where they spent the remainder of the night. Staring at the four pillars of fire in the near distance, Baum knew their chances of making it back to the American lines alive were slim. Early the next morning, as Baum ordered what remained of his men and machines to move out, the hill rumbled violently to life. Throughout the night, German forces had moved into concealed positions at the base of the hill. They now opened fire from all directions, sending up great columns of blasted earth, obliterating flesh and metal. Baum ordered “every man for himself.” The men scattered and ran into the surrounding woods. The Germans quickly rounded up those who were slow or injured. Baum made it into the woods but was shot in the leg and soon captured. He wound up a prisoner in the very camp he’d been sent to liberate. His stay, however, would prove to be a short one. The U.S. 14th Armored Division liberated the camp ten days later, on April 5, 1945.

  The rescue operation proved costly in both men and machines. Baum’s task force lost all 57 vehicles; 26 of its 314 men were killed. The Americans assumed control of Oflag XIII-B at the war’s end. In the camp’s northern compound, the U.S. Army interned known and suspected Nazis. It was here Courtney arrived on a damp March afternoon. He was greeted by the camp’s American commandant and escorted to a room in one of the compound’s stone-built barracks. A small table surrounded by three chairs sat in the center of the room. Courtney took a seat and waited several minutes before two armed guards brought Johann Schneider, shackled at the wrists, into the room.

  Courtney studied a file in front of him and reviewed the man’s particulars. Schneider had worked as an unskilled laborer, bouncing between farm work and the odd construction job, before joining the SA (the first Nazi paramilitary organization, its members often referred to as “brownshirts”) in 1932. He soon transferred to the SS and marched with troops into Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938, and then Poland the following year. Between 1940 and 1943, he served as a chauffeur with the Security Service on the Eastern Front before taking a job as driver with the Gestapo in Munich. Courtney, done reading, looked up and introduced himself. He urged Schneider to share what he knew about the business at hand. All Schneider could do was nod and give his version of events.

  At roughly ten o’clock on the night of March 29, Schneider answered a knock on the door of his Munich flat. A uniformed policeman stood in the hallway with a summons from Gestapo headquarters. Schneider got dressed and rode his bike to the office, arriving within the hour. As he entered the building, Schermer met him and ordered him to prepare a six-seated car for a late-night journey. Schneider went down to the garage and checked out a vehicle. As he finished checking the tire pressure and oil levels, Schermer and Geith appeared.

  “We drive to police HQ,” Schermer said.

  At the station, the two men disappeared inside and left Schneider behind the wheel. They emerged fifteen minutes later with two prisoners shackled together at the wrists. They drove back to the Gestapo building, where Geith ordered the prisoners out of the car and led them away to an interrogation cell.

  “Be ready to leave,” Schermer said when the captives were out of sight. “Make sure you have a machine-pistol with you. This may take a long time, but I’ll let you know.”

  It took the better part of three hours. Not until four-thirty in the morning did Schermer return to the garage.

  “On Schäfer’s orders, you have to drive in the direction of Ingolstadt,” Schermer told Schneider. “It concerns two prisoners who have often escaped. They are air-raid shelter burglars and looters. Should these two escape, then you will shoot on my orders.”

  Weil and Geith placed the prisoners in the back of the car at gunpoint and sat on either side of them. Schneider assumed his position behind the wheel, while Schermer sat in the front passenger seat. In the east, the first slate moments of daylight were evident above the city’s shattered skyline as the car pulled out of the garage. Schneider turned onto the autobahn outside Munich and drove twenty-one miles in the direction of Ingolstadt. The sky had by now sufficiently brightened to a point where headlights were no longer necessary. In the back, the prisoners stared out at a frostbitten landscape, at fields covered in white, and the glistening branches of trees. Eyeing the bleak terrain, Schneider suddenly felt Schermer’s hand on his arm.

  “Stop,” Schermer barked. “Pull up to the right.”

  Schneider pulled onto the frozen shoulder. As the car slowed to a stop, Schermer turned to the men in the backseat.

  “Relieve yourselves,” he said.

  Weil and Geith got out of the car and led the prisoners down a slight incline into the meadow. Schermer, standing near the passenger door, leaned through the window, motioned to the submachine gun under the driver’s seat, and told Schneider to exit the vehicle. Schneider got out, retrieving the gun as he did so. He pulled a magazine from his pocket, jammed it home, and slung the gun over his shoulder. He walked to the rear of the car and leaned against the luggage box. From this vantage point, he had a clear view of the meadow and the prisoners—still chained at the wrists—fifteen feet in front of him. Except for the random bush and tree, there were few places for the prisoners to take cover should they make a run for it.

  As Schneider surveyed the scene, he noticed Schermer, standing several feet away, excitedly waving his hands. When Schneider looked in his direction, Schermer pointed at the prisoners and, in a hushed but excited voice, said, “Shoot! Shoot!”

  “I looked at him again briefly,” Schneider told Courtney, “and then it went through my head. He wants me to shoot the two prisoners here on the spot.”

  Schneider took aim with the submachine gun and squeezed off six rounds. He saw the two prisoners collapse in the snow and heard Schermer tell him to “stop shooting.” In the meadow, Weil and Geith knelt beside the bodies and checked for signs of life. Death having been established, the two men signaled Schermer the job was done.

  “Take off the chains at once,” he ordered.

  Schneider remained by the car, a thin wisp of gray smoke curling up from the gun’s muzzle. He stuck the weapon back under the driver’s seat and, following Schermer’s orders, retrieved a large piece of tarpaulin from a toolbox in the back. Weil and Geith spread the tarpaulin over the two bodies and camouflaged it with fallen fir branches
gathered from the base of a nearby tree. Alongside the road, Schermer busied himself collecting the spent shell casings. He ordered Schneider to pull the car fifteen feet forward and scattered the casings about the car’s new position.

  “If there is a commission of enquiry,” he said, “you shot from here.”

  The remainder of Schneider’s story mirrored Weil’s statement. He and Schermer went off to notify the proper authorities while Weil and Geith remained with the bodies.

  “Schermer told me later that nothing had to be mentioned about this case,” he said in conclusion.

  Courtney took Schneider into custody and placed him in a cell at Minden. The Americans confirmed they had Eduard Geith in custody, having arrested him on May 5, 1945, and soon turned him over to Courtney. A career police officer before the war, Eduard Geith had joined the Munich Police Force as an auxiliary officer in 1919, shortly after his twentieth birthday. He worked his way up the chain of command, eventually achieving the equivalent rank of assistant senior detective. In January 1938, he transferred to Gestapo headquarters, Munich, and continued his ascent. The war took a personal toll on him in November 1944, when his wife, Magdalene, was killed in an air raid.

  Johann Schneider called at Geith’s flat shortly after midnight on March 29, 1944, and said he was to report immediately to local Gestapo headquarters. A car was waiting downstairs. The two men arrived at the Wittelsbach Palais less than half an hour later and reported to Schermer. Reading from a teletype, Schermer said that local police had captured two fugitive RAF officers. The men were to be turned over to the Gestapo and, on orders from Berlin, shot. Schermer filed the teletype in a desk drawer and made Weil, Schneider, and Geith swear to secrecy. The men discussed how to execute the order. They decided the best course of action would be to find open country near the edge of a wood and shoot the men near the tree line, making it look as if the prisoners had made a run for it. Geith said that he and Weil advised against using their Walther service pistols, for fear the weapons were not accurate enough.