The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  Everett’s original intention of denigrating the procedures of the Dachau trial now expanded into a campaign to rehabilitate the convicted SS murderers as honourable soldiers. As one army review after another rejected the claims of his former clients, he petitioned the Supreme Court, continuing to cite the discredited rumours as evidence. When the petition was rejected, the lawyer met with the secretary of the army who had publicly expressed concern over the conduct of the case. Everett repeated the rumours and unsubstantiated allegations as fact. He claimed all the defendants had been tortured in their cells by Jewish refugees intent on revenge. (Correspondence written by the lawyer at this time displayed open anti-Semitism. He resented bitterly the trial judges’ legal adviser, who was Jewish, and complained that three members of the investigating War Crimes Group were Jewish refugees.)

  Appalled by what he took to be fact, the secretary of the army ordered a halt to all executions. The proclamation provided new ammunition for the pro-German lobby in America, and unrepentant Nazis in Germany, to attack the conduct of the entire war crimes trials. New accusations were made that confessions had been obtained from defendants by threatening to hand them over to the Russians. The secretary of the army appointed a three-man commission of American judges to investigate the way war crimes had been prosecuted, with particular emphasis on the Malmédy trial.

  The judges flew to Frankfurt to spend sixweeks studying the case and prepared a classified report. It found no evidence of systematic intimidation and declared the trials to have been ‘essentially fair’, although some of the methods used in obtaining sworn statements were again categorised as ‘questionable’. The report went on to say that the evidence proved the guilt of the defendants, but suggested commuting the death sentences to atone for any injustice that might have been committed.

  A separate investigation, conducted by the Administration of Justice Review Board over seven months, cross-examined all those involved in the pre-trial interrogations. It too criticised some of the methods employed but also concluded that there had been no violence. After close scrutiny of trial transcripts, the review found substantial evidence against the twelve men condemned to death.

  A sensational new element was now introduced when one of the judges sent to Frankfurt on the three-man panel, LeRoy Van Roden, claimed that he had been prevented from publishing the truth. He said in a public speech that he had received statements proving that interrogators had abused, beaten and tortured the Germans to extract confessions. The effect of the judge’s remarks was to destroy the credibility of the report and make it seem little more than a whitewash. The pro-German lobby in the USA attacked it, and an editorial in the Chicago Tribune lamented the depths to which American justice had sunk.

  But Van Roden had actually received his information from Everett, and had merely repeated the lawyer’s most extreme allegations. The men had been room-mates in Frankfurt after the war, and also shared prejudices. Van Roden too was an open anti-Semite and expressed the belief that Jewish refugees were using their recently acquired American nationality to pursue race vengeance. The attacks fuelled the army’s critics over the handling of the Dachau cases. Most Germans now openly sympathised with the convicted Malmédy SS men, whom they saw not as criminals but as victims of the admitted malpractice and incompetence of the American Army.

  The army received another blow when a German newspaper disclosed that the US military government in Germany had reduced the life sentence handed down on the notorious Use Koch to four years. The gruesome stories surrounding Koch, known as ‘Mrs Commandant’, had graphically illustrated the perverse side of concentration camp life and outraged American public opinion. Use Koch, who had no military rank or official position, was married to the commandant of Buchenwald, where she lived for six years. When her husband had been removed for corruption she chose to stay on. Fifty-one thousand people died at the camp through starvation, murder and torture. The stories in the American press reported that Roch had selected prisoners with interesting tattoos for extermination. The camp’s pathology department skinned the corpses and then tanned the human hide to be made into gloves and lampshades. Critics of the US military now suggested that the sentence reduction was proof that Roch had not committed any crime in the first place.[198]

  American politicians in those states with large German populations began to see the growing backlash to the war crimes trials as a vote-winning bandwagon. And an unknown junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, hopped aboard. McCarthy desperately needed a cause to deflect attention from a court case in his home state where he was awaiting conviction by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court on charges of unethical conduct in a local trial. He now gave his support to a petition for clemency filed by the wife of Hans Schmidt, the former adjutant of the guard battalion at Buchenwald. McCarthy claimed that Schmidt had been denied a proper trial and had been tortured during interrogation to make a false confession. It was not true, but the senator demanded to know why the army had not commuted the sentence. He omitted to mention the proven fact that Schmidt had overseen executions on a daily basis for four years.

  The plea was rejected, as McCarthy surely knew it would be, but the publicity encouraged a slew of petitions to the White House on behalf of hundreds of war criminals. And while the twelve remaining Malmédy death sentences were initially upheld, the publication of the previously classified judges’ report added weight to the demands of Everett and allied Congressmen for a reprieve. They ignored the finding that the men were guilty and chose to concentrate on criticism of the army’s methods of interrogation.

  Yet another inquiry into the Malmédy trial was set up, this time to be conducted by the Senate’s Committee on Armed Services. An idea of the emphasis and direction this would take, along with the exaggerated and unreal atmosphere in which it would be conducted, was provided in advance by Senator McCarthy. ‘It sickens me to the core of my being... that Americans have engaged in these brutal and unjustified acts.’

  The murdered American POWs and Belgian civilians had been forgotten, and the interrogators had become the villains. Six of the twelve remaining death sentences passed on the Malmédy SS men were now commuted, while execution of the remainder was delayed until the committee reported its findings. McCarthy introduced the unique brand of low showmanship and political charlatanism to the hearings that would later turn him into a national figure. He ranted and raged about the abuse of prisoners, with particular emphasis on damage to their genitalia, but was unable to produce a scintilla of evidence to back his accusations. The witnesses he called tended towards gross exaggeration and outright lies. A German dentist claimed to have heard screams of pain coming from the jail and reported that twenty prisoners had teeth smashed by the interrogators. An independent investigator found no evidence whatsoever to support the charge.

  Undeterred, McCarthy attacked foreign-born Jews, whom he claimed had maliciously abused American justice. He shouted, bullied and lied for a month, then when it became apparent that his case was about to collapse, he called a dramatic press conference and resigned. He told a room packed with reporters that the inquiry had become a whitewash to protect men who had extracted confessions under torture, ‘brutalities greater than we have ever accused either the Russians or Hitler’s Germany of employing’.

  After McCarthy stormed off the stage, the inquiry dismissed the allegations of violence. It laid the blame for the initial acceptance of the rumours on an organised conspiracy by Nazis and their American sympathisers to discredit the trials. (McCarthy would return a year later, having discovered Communism, to transform another Senate investigation into a circus act.)

  One such German sympathiser, Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, wrote to a prisoner in Landsberg at the end of 1949, actually soliciting further allegations against the US Army. ‘Confer with your fellow prisoners to determine if there are any notorious cases of injustice involving any of them so that you will be able to call such cases to the attention of the representatives of
the Inspector-General when they arrive.’[199]

  The convicted Malmédy war criminals in jail at Landsberg Fortress took heart. It was hard to believe, but powerful American politicians had willingly stepped forward to support them, American lawyers continued to petition Washington on their behalf, and a significant section of American public opinion was on their side. The men conferred daily with one another in the prison yard, met frequently with German and American lawyers, and carefully planned the most effective strategy to bring about their release.

  In the winter of 1949, the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express ran a story outlining Michel’s capture of Gustav Knittel - as one of the principal perpetrators of the Malmédy Massacre - and Emil Mahl - hangman of Dachau.[200] The story was picked up by the International News Service and reprinted in the European edition of the Stars & Stripes.[201] The final paragraph of the news report read: ‘Next month Congress will consider giving Thomas full US citizenship because of his war services without waiting for the five-year period of residence.’ The war criminals were given shrewd advice to seize upon this vulnerable area of attack. Although neither Knittel nor Mahl spoke English, and certainly did not read Stars & Stripes, their leader, Joachim Peiper, obtained an interpreter’s diploma in English while in prison.[202] Much had been made in the various hearings of ‘recently’ naturalised American émigrés pursuing their interrogations in a spirit of revenge rather than justice. Here was a man who was not even American.

  On the day after Christmas 1949, Mahl wrote a letter to Michel via the Stars & Stripes - typed in German on one side and translated into English on the other - objecting to statements he made to the paper. ‘I was neither a Nazi nor at any time hangman at Dachau. I was a plain prisoner of the Third Reich and in my capacity as a concentration camp inmate it was my assignment to have corpses cremated in the camp crematorium after executions. Thus I was Capo Crematorium. Therefore you are requested to omit in the future to mention my name in a derogativ [sic] manner, even if it should be your intention to do that to impress people for the purpose to get American citizenship granted to you at a premature date.’

  In fact, Mahl had been sentenced to death for his activities at Dachau, although along with other war criminals his sentence had been reduced to ten years of confinement. He had sought the job at the camp crematorium and volunteered as hangman. Emboldened by support in the States, the convicted murderer now claimed that the US Army had never returned money taken from him on his arrest. He estimated the value and thoughtfully worked out the exchange rate: three hundred and five US dollars. You are requested to have this amount transferred to me. In case I should receive no answer from you until 1 February 1950 I shall report the case to the competent legal authorities in the U.S. to have you indicted for theft. Furthermore I shall inform members of the U.S. Congress who are competent for the grant of [sic] American citizenship to you. Sincerely, Emil Mahl.’[203]

  Michel was sickened to receive the letter, but particularly outraged by a stamp in the right-hand corner of the letter: PASSED BY CENSOR. It seemed to give official sanction to a war criminal’s crude attempt at blackmail. ‘I made sure to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities that they might take action in the future to prevent proven war criminals from making threats with official approval.’

  He prepared a statement for the press, which shared his sense of outrage and quoted his reaction. ‘It is strange that Mahl should receive ten years of imprisonment, because if he is innocent, as he claims to be, then this man should be released - with all the necessary apologies. But one cannot help wondering, with amazement and some frightful doubt, what made it possible to commute a lenient life sentence given to Use Koch, into four years of confinement. And what caused the change of the death sentence of the Hangman of Dachau to ten years of imprisonment - the same punishment which could be given under US laws to a nineteen-year-old boy for breaking into a grocery store.’

  A second, more subtle and invidious letter was written in Landsberg at approximately the same time by Gustav Knittel. It was sent not to the press - or Michel, who never learned of it - but to the US Army’s Director of Intelligence at the Pentagon. Cleverly drafted, it hit on every weakness in the Dachau trials revealed in the various judicial reviews, exaggerated in the press and distorted by McCarthy. Knittel was careful not to refer to his own crimes, as he was unable to withdraw his sworn confession ordering the murder of eight American POWs. Instead, he adopted a self-righteous position in which he claimed to be intent on helping his needy wife and restoring his personal honour.[204]

  The target of his attack was Michel Thomas, who had captured and interrogated him. Quoting from the article in the Stars & Stripes stating that Michel was not an American citizen, Knittel attempted to portray him as an émigré interrogator bent on revenge (Knittel remained unaware that Michel was a Jew). ‘I should like to state that I have no interest whatsoever which persons the American Congress consider worthy to be granted American citizenship,’ Knittel wrote. ‘Likewise I have never borne any grudge against my apprehension by Thomas, as he was fully acting in the line of duty. However, my objection is directed against the attempt on the part of Thomas to base his “merits in the interests of the US” on untrue facts which not only touch my personal honour but which might hurt me in the future.’

  Knittel had perfectly caught the mood of the times when a confessed Nazi SS murderer could appeal to the head of intelligence of the US Army to defend his personal honour against an émigré interrogator. He proceeded to launch an attack on Michel and Ted Kraus, head of CIC in Ulm at the time - who was, of course, not only American, but German-American. It repeated the rumours and lies that had been disproved in endless independent legal reviews, but were nonetheless still believed by pro-German groups in the US and a large section of the populace in Germany.

  Knittel claimed that upon arrest he had been ordered to take off his blue woollen pullover, which had never been returned to him. A pair of his wife’s gloves had also disappeared. He accused the men of stealing a set of china, his watch and money, and a jubilee edition of Goethe’s Faust - the irony of which might, or might not, have escaped him. He also complained of brutal treatment at the CIC prison in Ulm after Michel and Ted Kraus had given instructions to the sergeant on duty and left. ‘At first I had to stand at attention in a corner for two hours,’ Knittel wrote. ‘Then on order of the sergeant, a German auxiliary policeman brought in a bucket with water and a toothbrush. I was ordered by the sergeant to scrub the floor of the guard room with the toothbrush which lasted from about midnight to 0500 hours. While I was kneeling down and scrubbing the floor, I was repeatedly beaten with a dog whip by the guards under the laughter of their comrades. One evening during the second week of January my cell was locked, a guard entered, aiming a pistol at me and telling me that he would shoot in case that I should move [sic]. Then appeared soldiers in uniform who slapped me about thirty times in my face. When I did not react to this maltreatment, they threw all items they could get hold of outside my cell. A scar above my eye is still a visible mark of this maltreatment.’

  Meanwhile, according to Knittel, his aunt, wife and child were placed in confinement two cells away from him. ‘I could hear the crying of my child for reasons of not being properly fed which depended entirely upon the mood of a female warden. For eight days the little child of seven months was not allowed to be taken out in the fresh air. After my futile attempts, my wife finally succeeded that [sic] the baby was taken out for twenty minutes daily, but she and my aunt were not allowed to leave the cell for a single moment during these three weeks.’

  Knittel also wrote that while unable to prove that Michel and Kraus were directly responsible for his mistreatment, he was certain they had condoned it and were the ‘bad spirits’ behind the action. He then addressed the manner in which he was interrogated on five occasions over three days. The interrogations opened with Michel threatening to incarcerate all of Knittel’s family, including his elderly parents, un
less he agreed to give up his POW status. ‘Thomas declared that I would be given to the Russians in case I should be found innocent in the matter.’

  It is true that immediately after Knittel’s arrest he was ordered by a guard at the prison to clean his cell with a toothbrush, and the man had been severely reprimanded by Michel for his action. But there was no truth whatsoever in any of Knittel’s other accusations. Neither Knittel’s aunt, nor his wife - and certainly not his baby - were arrested. Frau Knittel was questioned in the comfort of her own home. The only time she entered the prison at Ulm was for the wedding condoned and organised by Michel. ‘It is ironic, but I went out of my way to protect Knittel from the beginning. It was well-known that he was responsible for Malmédy and he now came under the control of American MPs. But they would not have dared mistreat him after I had expressed my anger over the toothbrush incident. It was the only complaint he ever made to me, and after that they knew how I would react if he was treated badly. The talk of a dog whip and the laughter during the beating is typical of the Gestapo and SS mind-set. American soldiers, of course, did not carry whips. And I rejected using psychological torture, if you can call it that. I could have destroyed him by making him suspect his wife as the person who betrayed him, but did not. I regret it - it was a golden opportunity.’

  Knittel’s accusations cunningly repeated almost every charge ever brought against American interrogators, short of having his testicles crushed. He claimed to have been whipped and beaten by guards, tortured psychologically through his wife and child, and physically humiliated and mistreated. The threat with the pistol, and the alleged theft of personal belongings - particularly the gloves - exactly mirrored accusations made against the SS during the Malmédy Massacre.