by Larry Loftis
He had escaped.
After turning himself over to the Americans, Sühren and several SS officers had been placed in the former concentration camp at Neuengamme, near Hamburg. Before the Ravensbrück trials began on December 5, 1945, however, Sühren and SS Sergeant Hans Pflaum disappeared. It was unthinkable, but true. Perhaps because of his experience as a camp commandant—and knowledge of security weaknesses—Sühren managed to slip out.
And he wasn’t the only war criminal who had avoided justice. Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann had fled to Austria,51 while Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller had simply vanished.52 With or without Sühren, however, Odette’s testimony would be required.
Paris
HUGO BLEICHER STOOD ON the tarmac staring at the Frenchman. He really had no idea who he was.
“You arrested my best friend Pierre de Vomécourt,” the man said, “alias Lucas of the French Resistance.”
Hugo cringed. He remembered Lucas well. It was during the tail end of his dismantling of the INTERALLIÉ network in 1941–42 that he had arrested this courageous SOE operative.53
“Then Lucas will have told you that he owes his life to my intervention,” Hugo said.
“Oh yes, we know that.”
Hugo rested easy; so far, so good.
A special commissioner picked them up for the drive to town and seemed friendly enough. “Have you had a good flight, Monsieur Jean?” he asked. “Are you glad to be back in Paris?”
Hugo paused. Four years of living as Monsieur Jean in this enchanted city indeed brought back memories. “I suppose you are taking me to Fresnes Prison?”
“You are not a convict, Monsieur Jean. We asked for you from London because we require some information from you. You are the guest here of the Ministry of the Interior, and you will stay there. You must know the Ministry of the Interior in the rue des Saussaies.”
The commissioner smiled. It was the painted smile of a clown.
Hugo nodded. Gestapo headquarters had been located at 11 rue des Saussaies, at the back of the French Ministry of the Interior.
They went into an office and Hugo was introduced to the ministry superintendent, who introduced his deputy. As they conversed, a parade of employees streamed by, all wanting to catch a glimpse of Monsieur Jean, famous German spy-catcher.
“I told you, Monsieur Jean, that you were our guest here,” the commissioner said again. “You will have to live in the cellar. It will not be as comfortable as it was in England, but do not forget that it was the Gestapo who first put our people in this cellar.”
It was only fair, Hugo knew. The cellar was a dungeon, but the commissioner assured that no harm would come to him; they only wanted Hugo’s written testimony of his wartime activities. To Hugo’s surprise, Suzanne was brought in. She had been convicted of collaborating with the enemy and espionage, he was told, and sentenced to death. The commissioner had spared her from the firing squad, however, when he learned that Hugo would be returning to Paris.
Hugo and Suzanne descended the stairs and at once the stench engulfed them—sweat and body odor. Suzanne was taken off to the women’s section, and Hugo to the men’s. He was shut in cell number 1 with fourteen prisoners. The foul odor, he realized, was because there was no fresh air coming underground. Air was sucked into the cellar by a huge hand-operated ventilator that required the strenuous effort of two prisoners, each pair taking half-hour shifts.
The next day Hugo began his written record and the interrogations began. He was confronted with a number of witnesses, many of whom he had arrested. “They were all truthful enough to make it plain that I had treated them decently during the war,” he recalled. “Many shook me warmly by the hand. I was glad to be able to provide some explanations that cleared innocent people of the suspicion that they had denounced or betrayed Resistance men to the Germans.”
One day another prisoner was brought in.
Marsac.
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur Jean, still alive?”
“My goodness, Marsac, you spent enough time a prisoner in German hands for the sake of France. How is it that you have been arrested by your own countrymen?”
He had been arrested on suspicion of betraying the Resistance to Germans, Marsac said. “Monsieur Jean, tell the Superintendent that I was not intending treason when I was in your hands. I really thought that in you I had won a friend for France. How was I to know that you were such a good actor?”
Hugo explained to the superintendent that Marsac was innocent; that he had fooled the Frenchman.
“The chief of an organization has no right to be outwitted in that way,” the superintendent replied.
Hugo pressed the matter over several days and Marsac finally was released, mollifying Hugo’s conscience.
Some days later Suzanne passed word that one of Hugo’s turned agents was in the cellar: Roger Bardet. Roger desperately wanted to speak with him, she said, but as the evidence of his treason was strong, he was kept in solitary confinement.
Indeed, Bardet had been one of Bleicher’s best. “Through him I had been in a position to protect the Wehrmacht from all sorts of dangerous sabotage,” Hugo later wrote. “His collaboration meant much to me. It had saved the lives of countless German soldiers. His own personal welfare had become of lively concern to me.”
Hugo told Suzanne that he and Roger could sign up to turn the ventilator and eventually they would be paired.
The day came and each grasped the heavy handles. Roger looked like hell, Hugo thought, haggard and spent—a man whose conscience had exacerbated the ill effects of prison. They began turning and the fan roared. Shouting at each other to be heard over the whirring, they discussed Paul—Major Henri Frager—who had been executed at Buchenwald.
Hugo had been almost tearful when he arrested him the prior August. While working under the assumption that Bleicher was sincere in his request to flee to England, Paul had given Hugo the name and address of his sister in Neuilly-sur-Seine. If “Colonel Henri” had any trouble when the Allies arrived, Paul had said, the good colonel could take refuge with her. Trouble arrived first, however, for Paul.
Major Kieffer, frustrated at Bleicher’s slack and often mysterious relationship with the enemy, summoned him to Avenue Foch.
“You should have arrested ‘Paul’ when you last met with him,” the SD chief said. “Now we might never catch up with him again. Well, you’re responsible for it. I give you one week. Then I shall send a report to RSHA. This means a People’s Court trial for you, or worse.”
Bleicher had no choice. He visited the sister and said that it was still too early for him to leave his “Luftwaffe post,” but that he needed to see Paul. Her brother was out, she said, but would be arriving at five the next day at the Gare Montparnasse station.
At the appointed hour Bleicher and three Abwehr men, along with three supervising SD agents, were waiting when the train arrived. “I am sorry,” Hugo told Paul, “I misled you. I am an Abwehr officer and I have come to arrest you.”
Paul took it in stride. “I often suspected you might be a German counteragent,” he said, “but one has to believe in one’s fellow human beings. I believed you and I have only myself to blame.”
It was the one thing that haunted Hugo. Paul was a wonderful man and respected by everyone, even Kieffer, who called him a true patriot. Frager’s last words at Fresnes, Hugo told Roger, were: “Promise me, Monsieur Jean, that you will not harm Roger Bardet. I have always cared for him as my own brother.”
Roger tugged the handle, sweat dripping from his brow. “Paul! Paul! Yes, he was the finest man I ever knew. It was his example that decided me to go into the Maquis with him. You must understand this, Monsieur Jean. I lost my head then. It was plain to everybody that Germany could not win the war. I saw myself with no foothold any more. The victors would march in and settle their scores with us. What could I do? I was young. Life still lay before me.”
Hugo worked the handle, sweating and huffing. It made sense, really. If Roger could le
ave the Resistance so easily to work for Germany, it would have been just as easy to switch sides again once he realized that the Third Reich was doomed. Easy come, easy go.
Roger was likely to be convicted of treason, Hugo knew, and it became apparent that this was his last confession, ventilator substituting for booth.
“So I went into the Maquis to rehabilitate myself,” Roger went on. “Who could have proved anything against me? Who knew of my past activities? The one witness who could give evidence against me was you, Monsieur Jean. So I came to the conclusion that I must kill you.”
They continued to crank the handles, pulling and grunting as galley slaves, and Roger became agitated as he worked himself up, eyes bulging. “It was I who stole your car in Auxerre,” he shouted. “I wanted to first immobilize you and make you helpless. I had ten desperate men ready for the job. We crept around your house, night after night. They were all determined to kill you and Suzanne at the first opportunity.”
So there it was. Double cross, triple cross. Et tu, Brute?
“Today I am glad that the chance never came,” Roger said, “and that I have not a murder on my conscience.”
The joys of war. Betrayal, counterbetrayal, attempted murder, missed opportunity, confession.
The ventilator droned on and the men cranked, Hugo remembered, toiling “like two souls expiating our souls in an inferno of our own making, working the wheel, fanning the damned.”
London
THE YEAR 1946 WOULD be busy and bittersweet for Odette. While her marriage with Roy had for all practical purposes ended years before, they were finally divorced. Strangely, the record is silent about Roy and the details of their broken relationship. One can only surmise that their relationship had cooled prior to the time Odette left for France.
That summer, another event disrupted family tranquility.
Odette had rented a cottage in Petersfield, a small town about sixty miles southwest of London, where she could disappear and relax with her girls for a few weeks. At seven o’clock in the evening on August 19, there was a knock on the door.
“Congratulations,” the man said.
Odette gave a puzzled look and asked what he was talking about. As the man tried to explain, she cut him off: “You’ve got the wrong address. It’s not my cottage, it’s just rented.”
“Oh, yes. No, I’ve got the right person.”
Odette asked again what he was talking about.
“The George Cross.”
“The George Cross. What’s that?”
The reporter was incredulous. Everyone knew what the George Cross was—Britain’s second-highest honor—and Odette would be the second SOE agent54 and the first female55 who had faced the enemy to receive it.
“I don’t know what the George Cross is,” she said again. “To do with me?”
“Yes. You’ll read it in the Gazette tomorrow morning.”
The following day, forty-two newspaper reporters showed up at the cottage; Odette had become famous overnight. She did her best to be hospitable but was still at a loss for what all the fuss was about, and what the journalists were saying.
One reporter asked what she would be doing in the future.
“I am going to stay home and do some knitting!” said the SPINDLE spy.
That evening, as Odette was putting the girls to bed, Marianne asked, “Mommy, is the George Cross the best you could do?”
* * *
MORE HONORS WERE TO come. Odette was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, and was awarded France’s highest honor, the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, for her service to the French Resistance. Peter, in turn, was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and France’s Croix de Guerre. In addition, Odette had been promoted to lieutenant; Peter, to major.
At Peter’s suggestion, he and Odette would receive their British awards together at the investiture on November 17. That morning Odette received a couple injections to help her through the service, and they were off to Buckingham Palace. Not realizing that he could park in the palace courtyard, Peter parked on a side street and they walked to the main gates. As they approached, something peculiar happened.
The guards seemed to recognize Odette—perhaps from the news broadcast at Petersfield—and presented arms. Again and again, each set of guards followed suit. Peter could not have been more proud of the girl on his arm. He saluted each time, and they made their way to the reception area.
While waiting for seating instructions, Peter noticed something remarkable: of the 250 or so to be decorated, Odette was the only woman. He smiled.
They found seats in the back and a general recognized them and said a few words of greeting. No sooner had he left than the Lord Chamberlain appeared and stooped before Odette.
He whispered something.
Odette could not believe her ears.
* * *
50. More than $27,000 today.
51. And later, Argentina. He was captured by Israel’s Mossad in 1960 and tried in Jerusalem for war crimes and crimes against humanity the following year. Eichmann was found guilty and hanged on June 1, 1962.
52. Some said he had died during the bombing of Berlin, but there was no body.Others said that Müller had been captured by the Russians or had fled to Argentina, but there were no trails to either.
53. Hugo had turned INTERALLIÉ’s number two agent, Lily Carré, and Lucas—who had lost his wireless operator—had heard that Lily had a radio in Paris. Indeed she did, but it was Hugo who was now running it, contacting London as if he were the Allied circuit. Rather than arrest Lucas, though, Hugo had opted to give him line to see what bigger fish could be caught. In a labyrinthine operation, Hugo sent Lily to London with instructions to infiltrate British Intelligence. Lucas coordinated the submarine pickup and escorted her to England, all under the watchful eye of Bleicher and his Abwehr assistants. The Kriegsmarine (German navy) had been ordered to cancel patrols in that area, and local German soldiers were ordered to look the other way when they saw a man or two with a girl in a red hat.
When Lucas returned to Paris, his orders were to kill Monsieur Jean. Hugo was warned, however, and arrested Lucas before he could eliminate SOE’s nemesis. But rather than have Lucas executed as a spy, Hugo had him interned in a POW camp.
54. Brigadier Arthur Frederick Crane Nicholls received the award posthumously on March 1, 1946, for gallantry and leadership during service in Albania.
55. Daphne Pearson, a corporal in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, received in 1940 the predecessor to the George Cross, the Empire Gallantry Medal, for rescuing a pilot from a crashed bomber in Detling, Kent. King George VI replaced her EGM with a George Cross on December 31, 1941.
CHAPTER 23
COMPLETING THE LOOP
“Madame, His Majesty has requested that you lead the investiture,” the Lord Chamberlain had said.
Odette gasped. “Oh! I couldn’t possibly do that.”
“Oh yes, you can.”
Odette was at a loss for words. Leading a procession of 250 soldiers and officers—all of whom were being decorated for valor—before King George VI?
The Lord Chamberlain smiled and said he understood that two of her daughters were in attendance. “If you will kindly point them out to me I will arrange that they are moved up close to the dais.”
Odette did and the Lord Chamberlain ushered her to the front of the line. To her left were thirty senior officers lining the red carpet leading to the dais, and behind her five hundred guests. The king entered and took his place immediately across from her. As the orchestra played the national anthem, his eyes never left hers.
When everyone was seated Odette’s citation was read:
Mrs. Sansom was infiltrated into enemy-occupied France and worked with great courage and distinction until April, 1943, when she was arrested with her Commanding Officer. Between Marseilles and Paris on the way to the prison at Fresnes, she succeeded in speaking to her Commanding Officer and for mutual protection they agreed
to maintain that they were married. She adhered to this story and even succeeded in convincing her captors in spite of considerable contrary evidence and through at least fourteen interrogations. She also drew Gestapo attention from her Commanding Officer on to herself saying that he had only come to France on her insistence. She took full responsibility and agreed that it should be herself and not her Commanding Officer who should be shot. By this action she caused the Gestapo to cease paying attention to her Commanding Officer after only two interrogations.
In addition the Gestapo were most determined to discover the whereabouts of a wireless operator and of another British officer whose lives were of the greatest value to the Resistance Organization. Mrs. Sansom was the only person who knew of their whereabouts. The Gestapo tortured her most brutally to try to make her give away this information. They seared her back with a red-hot iron and, when that failed, they pulled out all her toe-nails. Mrs. Sansom, however, continually refused to speak, and by her bravery and determination she not only saved the lives of the two officers but also enabled them to carry on their most valuable work. During the period of over two years in which she was in enemy hands, she displayed courage, endurance and self-sacrifice of the highest possible order.
Odette was motioned forward and the king pinned on the George Cross and took her hand.
“I asked that you should lead the procession, Madame, as no woman has done so before [or] during my reign.”
He continued to hold her hand as he offered gracious personal compliments.
Odette was speechless. She curtsied and gave way to the next recipient.
When Peter’s turn came—some two hundred spots later—the king was just as gracious. He knew all about “Mr. and Mrs. Peter Churchill,” the courageous SPINDLE spies, and Peter was touched by his remarks.
Odette with her George Cross. CLANCY TUCKER/ATHENA PEARL
* * *
DECORATIONS, HOWEVER, THOUGH WORTHY and deserved, are worn proudly for a time and then forgotten by most. But the actions for which they were given are never forgotten by witnesses.