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

by Read, Simon

  The hunt for Zlín Gestapo chief Hans Ziegler continued. McKenna had the man’s picture printed in the Bavarian Police Gazette, hoping to generate some leads, but the public failed to respond. The British military continued to monitor the mail of his wife, Therese, as well as his mother and sister, without success. McKenna had confirmed the death of Leopold Spann, head of the Saarbrücken Gestapo and the man who oversaw the murders of Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer. Following up on the report that Spann had transferred to Linz after the killings and subsequently died in an air raid, McKenna found a certificate in the town records stating:

  In the death records of the Kriminal Polizei office at Linz dates 26.4.45 no. 1470/45 K. N 2155, the profession of Dr. Leopold Spann who died in Linz on 25.4.45 was recorded as “Leader of the Gestapo, Linz.” By order of the undernamed authority of administration it was ordered that this description of profession should be altered to the occupation “official.”

  Signed: The Official Town Administration.

  The Natzweiler case, the murder of Flying Officer Dennis Cochran, had reached a satisfactory conclusion. But for all that was known, so much still lingered in seemingly impenetrable shadow. Four airmen—Squadron Leader James Catanach, Pilot Officer Arnold Christensen, and Lieutenants Hallada Espelid and Nils Fuglesang—had died in Kiel, the gunmen phantom figures without faces or names. Twenty-seven men had died in the Breslau region, but the RAF had yet to make a single arrest in the case. Based on the information readily available to him, McKenna decided at present to focus on the murders of Flying Officer Henri Picard and Flight Lieutenants Edward Brettell, Romas Marcinkus, and Gilbert Walenn in Danzig. They had a few details regarding the crime courtesy of Erich Graes, deputy director of the Danzig Kripo. Following Graes’s statement to Flight Lieutenant Courtney back in January, the RAF had begun searching for Danzig Gestapo chief Dr. Günther Venediger. To the physical description provided by Graes, McKenna had added his own notes based on information acquired during the canvassing of internment camps:

  Deep powerful voice. Clipped manner of speech. Invariably holds his head at an angle and his eyes take on a fixed expression. Good strong teeth. Dark hornrimmed spectacles. Plays piano. May have gone to Wernigerode in the Harz mountains.

  Word had recently reached the RAF that a German general, a man named Ritzer, was in contact with Venediger at an internment camp in Neumünster. McKenna dispatched a member of his team, Flying Officer D. J. Walker, to interview the general. Ritzer, when confronted, denied ever communicating with Venediger and said he had simply heard a rumor that the onetime Gestapo chief was in the camp under an assumed name. Walker spent several days interrogating the camp’s inmates. When done, he wired McKenna the results of his inquiry: “It is interesting to point out that Venediger was never actually seen at No. 1 C.I.C. It is possible that Venediger never was at the No. 1 C.I.C. and that his ‘hearsay’ presence in that camp was the result of a previous interrogation in which Venediger may have been mentioned. The mentioning of his name probably started the glorified rumour of his presence among the inmates of the Camp.”

  Considering the scope of the Sagan investigation, one would have expected more men assigned to the case. As it was, only one wing commander, four flight lieutenants, sixteen noncommissioned officers, and sixteen interpreters on loan from the Dutch armed forces made up the RAF’s investigative team. McKenna spent much of his time on the road, traveling between zones of occupation. Conducting a routine canvas of a camp outside Hamburg, McKenna stumbled across a man named Kurt Achterberg, a former deputy in the Danzig Gestapo. Graes, in his statement provided several months earlier, had mentioned Achterberg as someone who might know about the Danzig killings. Guards brought the prisoner to McKenna for questioning. He was a man of rather unfortunate appearance. Unruly brown hair stuck out in all directions above a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, which sat atop a bulbous nose and ears that seemed too large for his head. When the man spoke, he revealed a mouth of irregularly shaped teeth, badly yellowed and capped with gold fillings. His hands were large and his physical frame was impressive. McKenna thought the man would prove more than a handful in a physical altercation.

  “One morning in the late summer of 1944, it was during August or September, I stood in the antechamber of Dr. Venediger’s office,” Achterberg said. “There, Kriminal Secretary Reinhold Bruchardt spoke to me. He had a file under his arm and was apparently on his way to see Venediger. He said to me, ‘It has been damned difficult to get the Red Cross to believe that the British officers had been shot whilst escaping.’ I was greatly startled by this remark. There was, however, no further discussion between us, as apparently Venediger came along and went with Bruchardt into his office.”

  McKenna expressed interest in Achterberg’s story and urged him to continue.

  “I remember at about that time, there was a rumor going around the building of the State Police that Bruchardt had murdered some people,” Achterberg said, pushing his glasses up his nose with an oversized finger. “I did not press Bruchardt to give me more details, as I did not want to mix myself up with Venediger’s business.”

  “Venediger’s business?” McKenna asked.

  “Of course,” said Achterberg, as if it all made perfect sense. “Bruchardt was subordinated to Venediger directly. He accepted instructions from Venediger only. It can only be in the Sagan incident that Venediger gave the order for the murder to Bruchardt and, with him, formed the murder squad.”

  “What do you know about the Sagan case?”

  “Until then, all I knew was that in spring 1944 a large number of British RAF officers had escaped from the PW camp in Sagan and that, on account of this, a nation-wide search had been started,” Achterberg said. “I did not learn the results of the search, nor the fate of the recaptured officers. I only knew that recaptured prisoners of war were to be handed over by the Criminal Police to the Armed Forces.”

  “You never heard of any other arrangement?” asked McKenna.

  “Never at any time did Bruchardt mention to me that he had received orders to kill captured Sagan officers,” Achterberg said. “He also never discussed with me the carrying out of such an order.”

  Achterberg said he subsequently spoke with a fellow coworker who saw Bruchardt in an office, packing into boxes the personal effects of the four murdered officers. What happened to the possessions Achterberg couldn’t say. “Possibly,” he theorized, “Berlin got them.”

  “And what about Bruchardt?”

  “He has not yet been captured.”

  Achterberg told McKenna he was in contact with other incarcerated members of the Danzig Gestapo and Kripo, all of whom were allegedly outraged by the murders. If Bruchardt was in custody, someone would have known about it. Achterberg fell silent and pondered some distant point only he could see. McKenna, sensing the man had something to say, urged Achterberg to speak his mind. The big German offered a weak smile, his thick lips parting just enough to reveal a glimpse of yellow teeth. It was, McKenna realized, a look of embarrassment. In a quiet voice, Achterberg said Bruchardt had been having an affair with his wife. He had found out during the war when he stumbled across letters exchanged between the two.

  Bruchardt apparently enjoyed and cultivated a reputation for violence. In his office, alongside his desk, he kept a bullwhip soaking in a bucket of water—something he supposedly enjoyed using on prisoners with vicious regularity. He hardly ventured out without a pistol tucked away in a pocket and harbored no fear of physical confrontation. Achterberg told McKenna to find a woman named Frau Blum in Kempten, a town in the southwest of Bavaria where the Nazis operated one of Dachau’s satellite camps. Blum, Achterberg explained, was friends with both his wife and Bruchardt. Since the end of the war, Blum had been the mail go-between for Bruchardt and Achterberg’s wife, forwarding letters from one to the other when they arrived at her home. Achterberg did not have an address for the woman but told McKenna she would undoubtedly know where to find Bruchardt.

  Ke
mpten was situated in the American Zone, meaning the RAF had to obtain permission from U.S. authorities to take Bruchardt into custody. Several days of bureaucratic headaches, fueled by stifling paperwork and face-to-face meetings, ensued before the necessary clearance was granted. McKenna and Lyon paid a visit to the field office of the United States Counter Intelligence Corps. With the help of two American agents, the RAF men began sifting through files maintained by the U.S. Army, reviewing the names and addresses of local residents. Although monotonous, it paid off several hours later when one of the Americans found the address of Frau Blum. She lived just outside of town. It was past midnight when McKenna and Lyon, accompanied by the two agents and two U.S. soldiers, drove to the address on record. They parked away from the house and approached on foot. The soldiers covered the rear of the house. McKenna approached the front with Lyon and the two agents and banged on the door. The windows remained dark and the house stayed silent. McKenna thumped on the door again but still got no response. Lyon yelled at the house in German and threatened to stand outside all night if necessary. McKenna, his fist poised to knock once more, backed away when he heard a lock turn on the inside. A light came on and the door opened slowly. A middle-aged woman wrapped in a dressing gown stood in the doorway, a look of puzzlement on her face.

  “Frau Blum?” asked McKenna.

  “Yes.”

  McKenna pushed his way into the house and threw a cursory glance about the place. There appeared to be no signs of a hasty exit. Through Lyon, he told the woman he was looking for Reinhold Bruchardt. The woman said she had never heard the name before. The mentioning of Achterberg and his wife did nothing to persuade Frau Blum to come clean. McKenna and his team searched the house top to bottom, turning out wardrobes and drawers, upturning beds and furniture. They found nothing. Throughout the investigation, even when facing individuals he considered reprehensible, McKenna had maintained an outward calm. On this particular night, he found his patience lacking. When Blum again denied knowing anyone named Bruchardt, McKenna took the hard line. He turned and spoke to Lyon. “Please tell Frau Blum that she has probably heard a lot about the British officers, and British police officers, and how kind they are to women. Please tell her not to believe it, because some of us here are going to alter the shape of her face unless she is very careful. And I personally am going to take a leading part in this. She is in very great danger of being severely beaten up.”

  McKenna watched Blum recoil and immediately regretted his course of action, but to backpedal would have served no purpose. He instead allowed the shaken woman to ponder the veracity of his threat. She lowered herself into a chair and spoke in a quiet voice, admitting she knew the man McKenna sought. He lived in a flat at Rathausstrasse 22, in Kempten, under the alias Brandt. McKenna asked the two soldiers to stay and watch over Blum until Bruchardt was in custody. With Lyon and the two American agents, McKenna drove to Bruchardt’s flat, which he noted with some irony sat above the local police station. The Americans retrieved tommy guns from the trunk of the car, Lyon a German automatic. McKenna opted not to carry a weapon. Inside the building, he asked the concierge to lead them to Brandt’s flat. The man led them up a cramped flight of stairs and down a narrow hallway. Outside the door, the concierge passed McKenna the key and hurried back down the hall.

  McKenna put the key in the lock and turned it slowly. The men entered the flat, worked their way in stagnant gloom down a short corridor, and paused outside a bedroom door left slightly ajar. They could hear the sound of heavy breathing from the dark space beyond. McKenna stepped quietly into the room and felt for a light switch on the wall, all the while keeping an eye on the large, dark shape in the bed. When McKenna flicked the lights on, the shape sprang to life. It leapt from the bed and lunged for a small side table in a blur of arms, legs, and flapping sheets. McKenna and his team had only the briefest moment to register the man’s immense size before tackling him to the ground. It took all four men to subdue Bruchardt, who flailed and screamed under their collective weight. He eventually calmed down enough to be led from the flat at gunpoint. In the side table’s drawer, McKenna found a loaded pistol. Bruchardt spent the night in the local jail. He left with the RAF men the following morning for the two-day journey to Minden, where McKenna booked him into the British holding facility. That night, the prison’s deputy commander—pulling heavily from a bottle of whiskey—scanned the inmate registry and noticed the RAF had booked a suspect that afternoon wanted in connection with the Stalag Luft III murders. When McKenna arrived at the jail the following morning, he entered Bruchardt’s cell only to find the man beaten almost beyond recognition. The man’s face was a grotesque mask of swellings and contusions. Bruchardt refused to say what had happened, but McKenna was quick to find out. A complaint to the head of the War Crimes Investigation Unit later that same day saw the immediate dismissal of the prison’s deputy commander.

  Bruchardt was a rock. He displayed neither remorse for the crime nor concern for his future. He said he met with Dr. Venediger one spring morning in 1944 and was told four British escapees from Stalag Luft III had been captured near Danzig. Venediger, he said, wanted the prisoners returned safely to Sagan, but matters had not gone “smoothly.” Transporting the RAF officers was a detachment of Eastern European soldiers “formerly employed in the border fights in Poland, and who had, as a result of the East Front retreating, found employment at our Dienststelle as additional guard duty.” Roughly thirty Ukrainians—“respectively white Russians who were hardly masters of the German language”—made up the guard detachment in question. It was Bruchardt’s supposed understanding that somewhere near the neighborhood of Gross-Trampken—some twenty-five miles outside Danzig—the prisoners told their Ukrainian guards they needed to relieve themselves. Let out along the roadside, they made a dash for the nearby trees and were gunned down in their last desperate bid for freedom.

  McKenna, disbelieving, said nothing.

  “It appeared to me,” Bruchardt continued, “as if this incident seemed very unpleasant to Dr. Venediger, because he spoke of possible international conflicts and inquiries. I was to drive out there and look at everything and ask the Ukrainian Untersturmführer about the exact facts of the case in order to furnish Venediger with an account and to set everything on the right path.”

  Bruchardt said he rode his motorcycle to the scene of the shooting and saw two cars parked alongside the road. The guards’ commander, leaning against one vehicle, told Bruchardt his men had warned the prisoners they would be shot if they tried to escape. When the officers scrambled for the trees, he and his men opened fire. He admitted with a coy smile to being somewhat drunk at the time and had perhaps been too quick to rely on his weapon.

  “When he had led me into the woods for about 100 meters, I saw four corpses lying one next to the other in a line. In various directions leading into the wood, were tracks of bodies having been dragged, at the end of which I saw traces of blood,” Bruchardt said. “As the shots had all obviously entered into the backs of the bodies, I had no doubt of the authenticity of the story.”

  Bruchardt dispatched one of the guards to retrieve a truck and take the bodies to the local Gestapo headquarters, where he debriefed Venediger. The Gestapo chief told Bruchardt to write a report on the incident for Berlin but omit any reference to Venediger having relied on “White Russians” to transport the prisoners. In the report, Bruchardt was to say he had been in charge of returning the RAF officers to Sagan and was forced to shoot them when they tried to escape.

  “What purpose would it have served if I refused?” Bruchardt asked McKenna. “It would either have been deemed as a refusal to obey an order during a time of war, or a violation of instructions regarding Secret State Matters. Both would have resulted in the death penalty. I arranged to coffin and cremate the bodies in the crematorium at Danzig-Langfuhr. The urns with the ashes were then sent to Berlin, together with the belongings of the dead bodies.”

  Based on what Venediger told him, Bruch
ardt said he believed the remains and personal possessions were destined for England. He claimed not to know of any plan to kill recaptured POWs. Surely, he said, had the Gestapo murdered the British officers in cold blood, the bodies would have been disposed of quietly. He thought nothing more of the matter until some months later when the Sagan affair made international headlines.

  “Since the Nuremberg Trials, I have lived in constant fear of being connected with this incident,” Bruchardt said. “Now, I am hoping for the speedy seizure of Dr. Venediger so that he can clear me by describing the real facts of the case.”

  McKenna, confident Bruchardt was one of the Danzig gunmen, arranged for his transfer to the London Cage. All the while, the whereabouts of Venediger remained unknown.

  *Roemer was never heard from again; the Czechs executed Kozlowsky in 1947.

  ELEVEN

  FINDING SCHARPWINKEL

  What the RAF knew of the Breslau murders came from postwar statements by escapees who had passed through the jail at Görlitz before being shipped back to Stalag Luft III. Thirty-five of the seventy-six men who fled through the tunnel found themselves, shortly after their recapture, in the civilian jail at Sagan. Instead of being returned to the camp as expected, they were driven to Görlitz—some sixty miles away—for interrogation at the local Gestapo headquarters. There, all the officers were questioned in regards to the escape. The interrogators, who wore civilian clothing, tried to scare information from the prisoners by threatening them with execution if they failed to answer specific questions.

  On the morning of March 30, 1944, Flight Lieutenants S. A. “Dick” Churchill and R. A. Bethell heard cars pull up outside the jail. They peered through the barred window of their cell and saw three cars idling in the frost-covered courtyard below. “Ten civilians of the Gestapo type” emerged from the vehicles and entered the building. They reappeared several minutes later with six prisoners in tow, including Australian Flying Officer Al Hake, who had overseen the escape committee’s compass factory at Stalag Luft III. From their vantage point, Churchill and Bethell watched the Gestapo bundle the RAF men into the waiting cars and drive them away. Six urns arrived at Stalag Luft III several days later. A plate on each urn, dated March 31, identified the place of cremation as Görlitz. The Gestapo agents returned on the morning of March 31. Through their cell window, Churchill and Bethell saw a large, middle-aged man they recognized from the day before. One prisoner described this particular agent, who appeared to be in charge of the others, as having a “battered-looking, pugilistic type of face.” The Gestapo removed ten prisoners from the jail that morning. Shortly thereafter, ten urns—each stamped with a name, but no date—arrived at Stalag Luft III from the town of Liegnitz, fifty-five miles east of Görlitz.