“When the priest appeared to carry out his mission, the subprefect was already with the condemned. He had come to announce the horrible fate which was awaiting them, and he asked them to write letters of farewell to their families without delay. It was under these circumstances that the priest presented himself at the entrance to the quarters.”
That was at Châteaubriant. The same thing was going on in the prison of La Fayette at Nantes itself, where sixteen were to be shot:
“The condemned were all very brave. It was two of the youngest, Gloux and Grolleau, who were students, who constantly encouraged the others, saying that it was better to die in this way than to perish uselessly in an accident.
“At the moment of leaving, the priest, for reasons which were not explained to him, was not authorized to accompany the hostages to the place of execution. He went down the stairs of the prison with them as far as the car. They were chained together in twos. The thirteenth had on handcuffs. Once they were in the truck, Gloux and Grolleau made another gesture of farewell to him, smiling and waving their hands, which were chained together.”
The priest had not been able to go to the place of execution at Châteaubriant, either. But a French police officer, Roussel, saw the condemned men being driven off, and later, brought back:
“The 22nd of October, 1941, at about three-thirty in the afternoon, I happened to be in the rue du 11 Novembre at Châteaubriant, and I saw coming from Choisel Camp four or five German trucks, I cannot say exactly how many, preceded by an automobile in which was a German officer. Several civilians with handcuffs were in the trucks and were singing patriotic songs, the ‘Marseillaise,’ the ‘Chant du Depart,’ and so forth. One of the trucks was filled with armed German soldiers.
“I learnt subsequently that these were hostages who had just been fetched from Choisel Camp to be taken to the quary of Sablière on the Soudan Road to be shot in reprisal for the murder at Nantes of the German Colonel Hotz.
“About two hours later these same trucks came back from the quarry and drove into the court of the Châteaubriant, where the bodies of the men who had been shot were deposited in a cellar until coffins could be made.
“Coming back from the quarry the trucks were covered and no noise could be heard, but a trickle of blood escaped from them and left a trail on the road from the quarry to the castle.
“The following day, on October 23rd, the bodies of the men who had been shot were put into coffins without any French persons being present, the entrances to the château having been guarded by German sentinels. The dead were then taken to nine different cemeteries in the surrounding communes, that is, three coffins to each commune. The Germans were careful to choose communes where there was no regular transport service, presumably to avoid the population going en masse to the graves of these martyrs.”
Police officer Roussel could not know it, but there was a standing order about this, and for the reasons which he guessed. For the shooting of hostages, as nothing else, bound the population together; and it is without surprise that we read the protest of General Falkenhausen, Military Governor of Belgium, to Keitel, dated September 16th, 1942:
“Enclosed is a list of the shooting of hostages which have taken place until now in my area and the incidents on account of which the shootings took place.
“In a great number of cases, particularly in the most serious, the perpetrators were later apprehended and sentenced.
“The result is undoubtedly very unsatisfactory. The effect is not so much deterrent as destructive of the feeling of the population for right and security; the gulf between the people influenced by Communism and the remainder of the population is being bridged; all circles are becoming filled with a feeling of hatred towards the occupying forces, and effective inciting material is given to enemy propaganda. Thereby military danger and general political reaction of an entirely unwanted nature …”
A similar protest was sent in also to Keitel, by the Commander of the Wehrmacht in Holland. But the shootings went on, sometimes carried out by the Security Police, sometimes by the Wehrmacht, who in the West as in the East were relied on to make up for the numerical weakness of the Gestapo.
From early in 1942, however, the dominating horror of the occupation was the notorious Nacht und Nebel Decree. It was thought up by Hitler, promulgated by Keitel, and issued to the Security Police by Himmler in the following form:
“I. The following regulations published by the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, dated December 12th, 1941, are being made known herewith.
“(1) The Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the Fuehrer that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against the Reich or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered. The Fuehrer is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose.
“The attached directives for the prosecution of offenses correspond with the Fuehrer’s conception. They have been examined and approved by him.”
Himmler elaborated on this:
“The decree introduces a fundamental innovation. The Fuehrer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces orders that offenses committed by civilians in occupied territories … are to be dealt with by the competent military courts in the occupied territories only if: (a) the death penalty is pronounced, and (b) sentence is pronounced within eight days of the prisoner’s arrest.
“Unless both these conditions are fulfilled, the Fuehrer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces does not anticipate that criminal proceedings within the occupied territories will have the necessary deterrent effect.
“In all other cases the prisoners are, in future, to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because: (a) the prisoners will vanish without leaving a trace; (b) no information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”
There followed instructions as to the reporting of cases for deportation to Germany directly to the Director of the Kripo at the R.S.H.A. in Berlin.
Six months later we have a letter from the Chief of Security Police and S.D. which goes over the old ground and emphasizes that the mystery surrounding Nacht und Nebel prisoners is to persist after their death:
“I therefore propose that the following rules be observed in the handling of cases of death:
“(a) Notification of relatives is not to take place.
“(b) The body will be buried at the place of decease in the Reich.
“(c) The place of burial will, for the time being, not be made known.”
The Security Police in the Reich and all over Europe had absolute jurisdiction over the whole population. They could arrest. They could interrogate and torture. They could arrange with summary military courts whether a death sentence was desirable or not. And, if it was not, the victims were deported to Germany and passed by the home-based Security Police to the concentration camps, where most of them died.
But it was not only over the civilian populations that the Security Police held this absolute sway. There were also categories of the Allied Armed Forces which had to be surrendered to them by the Wehrmacht. In every camp for Russian prisoners-of-war there was a small Gestapo screening-team whose job it was to comb out undesirables—i.e., “political, criminal, or in some other way intolerable elements among them.” Russian prisoners-of-war, like all others, were the responsibility of the Army. But it was laid down that the Security Police screening squads could in no way be interfered with and were the absolute arbiters of which prisoners should be taken away and executed. In a Gestapo directive of July 17th, 1941, the squads were told how to set about their task:
“The Comm
andos must make efforts from the beginning to seek out among the prisoners elements which would appear reliable, regardless of whether they are Communists or not, in order to use them for intelligence purposes inside the camp and, if advisable, later in the occupied territories also.
“By use of such informers and by use of all other existing possibilities, the discovery of all elements to be eliminated among the prisoners must proceed, step by step, at once. The Commandos must find out definitely in every case, by a short questioning of those reported and possibly by questioning other prisoners, what measures should be taken. The information of one informer is not sufficient to designate a camp inmate to be a suspect without further proof. It must be confirmed in some way, if possible.…”
These instructions give in a very convenient form a clear idea of the methods of the Gestapo everywhere. What they came to in practice was indicated by General Lahousen, not of the S.S., in his evidence for the Prosecution at Nuremberg. Lahousen belonged to the Military Intelligence organization, or Abwehr, of Admiral Canaris, who was later executed for plotting against Hitler. Canaris and his Abwehr were at daggers drawn first with Heydrich, then with Kaltenbrunner and the Security Police in general; and this was not only because the Security Police and the S.D. in particular was constantly poaching on the preserves of Military Intelligence (in the end, after Canaris’ execution, the S.D. took the whole outfit over, so that the German Army was unique in the world in having no Intelligence of its own) but also because Canaris and his friends were wholly revolted by the methods of the Security Police and the S.D. General Lahousen said:
“The prisoners were sorted out by commandos of the S.D. and according to peculiar and utterly arbitrary ways of procedure. Some of the leaders of these Einsatzkommandos were guided by racial considerations, particularly of course, if someone were a Jew or of Jewish type or could otherwise be classified as racially inferior, he was picked for execution. Other leaders of the Einsatzkommandos selected people according to their intelligence. Some had views all of their own and most peculiar, so that I felt compelled to ask Mueller: ‘Tell me, according to what principles does this selection take place? Do you determine it by the height of a person or the size of his shoes?’ ”
(We are reminded of the notorious Gestapo round-ups in France, ostensibly to send Frenchmen to work in Germany, actually, as a rule, to consign them to concentration camps. “Certain German policemen were especially entrusted to pick out Jewish persons, according to their physiognomy. They called this group ‘The Physiognomists Brigade.’ ”)
Sometimes the Russian victims of the Gestapo screening-operations were shot then and there—but some way from the camp. More frequently they were sent off to concentration camps, where they were executed or worked to death. It is worth recalling that the man in Berlin who directly supervised these activities was S.S. Colonel Kurt Lindow, the gentlemanly Gestapo man who gave evidence at the trial of Heinrich Baab, and was afterwards taken away.
Soviet prisoners-of-war were not the only ones to come into the hands of the Gestapo. On March 4th, 1944, Mueller issued an instruction to the Security Police and the S.D. which became known as the Kugel Erlass, or Bullet Decree, which provided that certain categories of prisoners-of-war were “to be discharged from prisoner-of-war status” and handed over to the Secret State Police by the Army. These categories included all Soviet prisoners-of-war recaptured after escaping; all Soviet prisoners-of-war who refused to work, or were considered a bad influence on other prisoners; all Soviet prisoners-of-war screened by the Security Police (as described above); all Polish prisoners-of-war involved in sabotage. All prisoners-of-war of all nations except Britain and America, for whom a special order was made by the O.K.W.
This was called the Bullet Decree, because prisoners handed over to the Security Police and S.D. under its provisions for “special treatment” were sent to Mauthausen concentration camp and shot. As a rule the prisoners were taken directly to the “bathroom,” where they had to undress. The “bathroom” was used for gassing unwanted inmates of the concentration camp, and when there were many prisoners “for special treatment” they were gassed like so many civilians. But, as a rule, they were disposed of in what Major General Ohlendorf would doubtless have considered a more military manner. They were shot in the neck by a sort of humane killer; “the shooting took place by means of a measuring apparatus—the prisoner being backed towards a metrical measure with an automatic contraption releasing a bullet into his neck as soon as the moving plank determining his height touched the top of his head.”
British and American prisoners alone were unaffected by the Bullet Decree. But they too on occasion were liable to be “discharged from prisoner-of-war status” and handed over to the Gestapo. These included captured Commando Officers and men, who came under the provisions of the Commando Decree of October, 1942, and the fifty escapees from Stalag Luft III at Sagan, who were shot by the Gestapo on special orders from Hitler.
The notorious Commando Order was a no less blatant infringement of international law in general, and the Geneva Convention in particular, than the Bullet Decree. It was Hitler’s personal response to the inconvenience caused by British Commando raids on the Atlantic Coast, and it offers one more example of his obsession with terror as a deterrent. The gist of the matter was contained in paragraphs three and four of the original order.
“III. I therefore order that from now on all opponents engaged in so-called Commando operations in Europe or Africa, even when it is outwardly a matter of soldiers in uniform or demolition parties with or without weapons, are to be exterminated to the last man in battle or while in flight. In these cases it is immaterial whether they are landed for their operations by ship or airplane or descend by parachute. Even should these individuals, on their being discovered, make as if to surrender, all quarter is to be denied on principle.…
“IV. If individual members of such Commandos working as agents, saboteurs, etc., fall into the hands of the Wehrmacht by other means, such as through the police in any of the countries occupied by us, they are to be handed over to the S.D. immediately. It is strictly forbidden to hold them in military custody or in prisoner-of-war camps, even as a temporary measure.” Paragraph 6 showed that Hitler and Keitel were well aware of the opposition this order would arouse within the Wehrmacht.
“VI. In the case of non-compliance with this order, I shall bring to trial before a court-martial any commander or other officer who has either failed to carry out his duty in instructing the troops about this order or who has acted contrary to it.”
The only modification permitted was set out in a covering letter from the Fuehrer which stated: “… should it prove advisable to spare one or two men in the first instance for interrogation reasons, they are to be shot immediately afterwards.”
Thus from October, 1942, the Allied Commandos were up against not only the combined forces of the German Army, which was instructed to kill them to a man, but also, in the last resort, found themselves face to face with the Security Police and the S.D., whose methods we have been exploring. Sometimes they were shot on the spot; sometimes they were interrogated and then shot. Official instructions were that the cause of death should be recorded as “killed in action.” On the other hand, there is evidence that some commanders did in fact disobey the order, in spite of Hitler’s threat.
The fifty R.A.F. officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III were all said to have been shot while trying to escape. In fact, they were as a rule picked up by the Gestapo and then shot. The Security Police and the S.D. all had their orders direct from the R.S.H.A. in Berlin. One officer got as far as Alsace, across the whole width of Germany, before he was recaptured and taken to Strasbourg Gestapo H.Q. Berlin told Strasbourg what to do:
“The British prisoner-of-war who has been handed over to the Gestapo by the Strasbourg Criminal Police, by superior orders, is to be taken immediately in the direction of Breslau and to be shot en route while escaping. An undertaker is to be directed
to remove the body to a crematorium and have it cremated there. The urn is to be sent to the head of the Criminal Police Headquarters R.S.H.A. The contents of this teleprint and the affair itself are to be made known only to the officials directly concerned with the carrying out of this matter, and they are to be pledged to secrecy by special handshake.…”
The procedure followed was that on the way to Natz-weiler concentration camp, where the cremation was to take place, the prisoner should be allowed to get out of the car to relieve himself, one member of his Gestapo escort was to hold him in conversation, while the other shot him from behind. This procedure was followed in other cases as well.
Chapter 18
Full Circle
We seem to have come a long way from Berlin; but we have not. To this immense city in the heart of Europe, with its music, its theaters, its unquenchable pride, came the stream of teleprints and mimeographed reports of all that we have recorded, and a hundred times as much besides. From it went out the orders, meticulously detailed, condemning millions to unspeakable suffering and death.
Hitler is no longer there, in the spring of 1944: he lives with Keitel and his other friends underground at his field headquarters behind the Russian Front, cut off from all reality, a sick and exhausted shadow of himself, to all intents and purposes off his head. But his Generals, all but a handful of them, still obey him. Goering, the savage and the bold, the buccaneering figure, the only recognizable human type among all that gang, is in eclipse and will remain in eclipse until his impressive comeback in the dock at Nuremberg. The city is ruled in practice by Himmler, with Goebbels as a sort of cheer-leader.
Berlin is no longer the city it was. It has been badly knocked about already by the Allied bombing; but it is still a functioning city. The luxurious building in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse has been damaged, and some officials have had to find quarters elsewhere. Others work in rooms with the windows boarded up, and in basements. But it is still Gestapo H.Q.
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