Munsterlager provided another shock for von Manstein and in view of his warm reception at Bad Oeynhausen, especially so, for von Rundstedt. First, they were surprised to find that both von Brauchitsch and Strauss had not been released, but were still there. Secondly, they found themselves under very different conditions of confinement to those which they had previously experienced, except at Nuremberg. Liddell Hart acquired a letter sent by an anonymous National Serviceman who had to guard von Rundstedt during his first days at Munsterlager:
‘I had to stand in his room, armed with a wooden truncheon, and wearing PT shoes and watch him carefully all the time to see that he did not try to commit suicide. I was ordered not to take my eyes off him for a moment, and I even had to escort him to the toilet, etc. Rundstedt is an old man almost seventy [sic]. Although he walks with the aid of sticks he is still surprisingly upright for his age. He wore a haggard and worn expression on his face and spoke very little to any of us (he speaks excellent English) so you will gather he was not one of the cheerfullest of characters to look after. It was a very monotonous job and I was very pleased when it was all over.’58
This was substantiated in von Manstein’s letter to Liddell Hart, which has been referred to earlier. While ‘the officers are polite’, the windows were wired in, all potential suicide weapons, including string, were confiscated and they were only permitted outside exercise for one hour daily. They were allowed to see their wives for one hour per day but only in the presence of an officer. Bila, still in the American zone and now living in two rooms at Solz, was unable to visit. Matters were made worse when, on 10 August, the Commandant received instructions that the four were no longer allowed to see one another, thus placing them under solitary confinement. It was this step which clearly prompted von Manstein to write to Liddell Hart and it would seem that the Commandant was sympathetic to their plight in allowing the letter to be sent. Worst of all was the fact that the four had as yet been told nothing of what was in store for them. As von Manstein wrote:
‘You will understand that we are deeply depressed by such treatment. Three years after the war we are still POWs, although none of us in command when the war finished…. If there be any true case against us, there would surely have been time enough during those three years to tell us something about it and to have made the necessary investigations. The prolonged uncertainty of our future as to the time of our further confinment is a torture not only for ourselves but even heavier for our wives. No criminal is detained in such a way without giving him the reasons for his detention and notice about the time he will be detained…. A criminal who is arrested has a right to hear the next day the reasons for his arrest.’
Von Brauchitsch went on hunger strike for 36 hours, while Ditha received a letter from her father-in-law forbidding her to visit him. ‘I don’t think that even my trust in God can help me anymore’. Sensing that something was very wrong, she managed to get permission to come to Munsterlager and was shocked by the humiliated state in which she found von Rundstedt; he was to call this period the worst in his life.59
The Field Marshals and Strauss were not, however, the only ones who had been kept in the dark. On 7 August, Sir Brian Robertson sent an angry telegram to the Foreign Office, copied to the War Office. He had been told by the Commander-in-Chief BAOR that he had received instructions to confine the four at Munsterlager and to prevent possible attempts at suicide. He was surprised not to have been informed of the Cabinet decision to try them, especially since he had been assured that his views would be taken into consideration before reaching a decision. He went on to say:
‘Before any further steps are taken, I wish to record my conviction that to bring these old men to trial three years after the end of hostilities will have an exactly contrary effect in Germany from that for which war crimes trials were instituted. All sympathies will be on their side and instead of holding them up to opprobrium as criminals, the trials will turn them into martyrs. I have long been conscious that the public is sick of and wishes to see an end of such trials. Each death warrant that comes before me brings with it a bundle of petitions from religious leaders and I have no doubt that these prosecutions will excite widespread indignation and resentment against us …
These men are a spent force in Germany. The only asset which they retain is their dignity which will only be enhanced if we bring them to trial. I consider that if, at this later stage and at this juncture in the affairs of Western Germany, we bring them to trial we shall undo much of the good work that has done by the ORC decision [to cease such trials after 1 September]. I therefore appeal to you most earnestly to have the matter reconsidered before it is too late. The conditions in which these men are being held pending trial are also causing me grave anxiety. It would appear that instructions have been given not to inform them that they are being held for trial as war criminals [author’s italics]. In my opinion it is contrary to justice that they should be held and treated as war criminals and yet not told either that they are to be tried or on what charges. They naturally strongly resent the continuous and humiliating surveillance to which they have been subjected. Brauchitsch has already indicated that he will go on hunger strike if this continues. It has been suggested by the War Office that he should be forcibly fed. The case of Rundstedt is particularly invidious. Having once let him out on parole to visit his sick son we must now appear to be playing cat and mouse with him. Pending consideration of my appeal against the trials, I ask most earnestly, that I be authorised to rescind these draconian orders.’60
There was no immediate reaction from the Foreign Office and in the meantime the matter became public.
On 16 August The London Times published a letter from Liddell Hart, as did the Manchester Guardian. The former mentioned the cat and mouse treatment to which the Field Marshals were being subjected and summarised the contents of von Manstein’s letter, which the Manchester Guardian letter quoted at length. That evening, the London Star carried a leader on the subject. Three days later, the Times carried a further letter, this time from the well-known academic, Professor Gilbert Murray. It read in part
‘… what alarms me most is the fear that in the awful conflict now raging in Europe between two standards of human conduct, we, who must by necessity as well as by our traditions, be champions of the higher standard, are being infected by the things we hate. The first defence offered for the incidents mentioned by Captain Liddell Hart is: “Well, what have they done to us?” It is a defence which amounts to a confession.’
On that same day, the 19th, Winston Churchill telephoned Sir Orme Sargent and complained of the decision to go ahead with the trial. Bevin’s marginal comment on Sargent’s report of this conversation was: ‘I do not mind what he does. Most of the others under them have been tried. After all he started this business.’61 Nevertheless, Bevin was clearly shaken by Robertson’s outburst and the fact that the whole business was now being aired in public made it worse. In a letter to Shinwell on the 21st, he expressed his sympathy with Robertson over the conditions of confinement and asked, within the constraints of not allowing the four to collude over evidence and to prevent suicide attempts, that these be made ‘no more arduous than is necessary’. He was not, however, prepared to reconsider the trial decision and made this clear in a telegram to Robertson dated 24 August. Again he used the argument that their subordinates had already been tried, but also that the Poles and Russians assumed that the British refusal to extradite was because they intended to try them themselves. In the meantime the War Office was preparing a draft statement for issue to the Press and Bevin had asked Shinwell if the Field Marshals could be informed of the decision to charge them simultaneously with the release of this.62
Yet, the wheels of governmental bureaucracy were turning in no way fast enough to stem public outcry. Further letters to the Press followed. Baron Parmoor viewed the situation as having a ‘Nazi rather than British flavour’;63 a host of literary figures, including Osbert Sitwell and T.S. Eliot, asserted t
hat the treatment of the Field Marshals was ‘alien to all our traditions and likely to damage our national reputation’.64 Finally, on 27 August, the lunchtime edition of the Evening Standard broke the story that the four were to be tried for war crimes. The Government could delay no longer.
That evening the War Office issued a statement:
‘HM Government has declared that preparations should be made to bring Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, Field-Marhsal von Manstein, and Colonel-General Strauss to trial as war criminals by a military court in the British Zone of Germany. This court, which will in all probability be convened in Hamburg, will be the same type of court as that before which war criminals have been tried by the British military authorities in Germany.
These four officers are held in Munsterlager Hospital in the British Zone of Germany as prisoners-of-war. They will now be demilitarised by the appropriate military authorities and will no longer be prisoners-of-war. They will then be officially informed that it is proposed to bring them to trial.
These four German generals will be defended by German counsel of their own choice, or, in default of choice, by German counsel allocated to them by the British authorities, and will be given sufficient time within which to prepare their defence to the charges.’
The War Office spokesman who handed out this statement also assured the Press that the four were being well looked after. They each had a radio and the families of von Brauchitsch and Strauss were living on the ground floor of the building in which they were housed. Frau von Manstein lived close by and visited daily, while Ditha had recently visited von Rundstedt. Furthermore, a BAOR staff officer had visited the four on the 26th and none had any complaints.65 Not released to the Press were details of some of the crimes for which a prima facie case was considered to exist, although Sir Oliver Franks (later Lord Franks), who had recently taken over as British ambassador to Washington, was informed. These crimes included the involvement of all four with the Commissar Order, the Commando Order (von Rundstedt only), ill-treatment of Allied POWs, ‘chiefly Russian’ (all four), contravention of the Geneva Convention in employing POWs on prohibited and dangerous work (all except Strauss), and crimes against civilians (all four). Franks, however, was warned that ‘the crimes listed are no more than a prima facie case since it would be improper to prejudge the decision of the Military Tribunal as to whether the four Generals were in fact guilty of the offences attributed to them’.66
If the Government hoped that public opinion would be assuaged by this it was to be mistaken. The Times leader which accompanied the War Office statement, while it accepted that if the four had committed war crimes they should be punished, considered that they had ‘been held far too long in captivity without trial. Even if no explanation could conveniently be given, it is still difficult to understand why the authorities have delayed the arraignment of these men for so long.’ Leading Socialists, including Michael Foot MP, the Jewish publisher Victor Gollancz and Richard Stokes MP, who had during the war several times discomfited the Government over its strategic bombing policy, wished ‘to record our shame that so grave an affront to the national traditions should be committed by a Labour Government’.67 Indeed, the outcry transcended political divisions. Thus Lord De L‘Isle and Dudley VC, who had won his Victoria Cross in Italy, fighting the Germans, asked:
‘If the charges so tardily formulated are for breaches of the recognised laws of war, it puzzles a layman how soldiers can be “demilitarized” before trial and conviction. Or ought we to infer that the prisoners are to be arraigned upon charges of breaking laws that were never formulated until after the Allied victory?’
Furthermore, the charges had not yet been announced and this filled De L’Isle with dismay. ‘I fear for the reputation of our country, and I fear for a precedent which is likely to prove not a deterrent but an incitement to further barbarity in war.’68 On 11 September the Liberal Party, representing the centre ground of British political opinion, passed a resolution in London viewing with the greatest misgiving the decision to bring the four to trial after such a long delay, as well as deploring their conditions of captivity and the demilitarisation decision. They also demanded an ‘adequate explanation’ from the Government.69 Liddell Hart, too, was anything but mollified by the War Office statement. He pointed out that demilitarisation put the four outside the protection of the Geneva Convention and International Red Cross and that he had heard from one of them that there had been no change to their conditions and that they had complained to the BAOR staff officer.70
In spite of the public outcry and persistent criticism in Parliament, the Government pressed ahead. Contrary to Bevin’s wish, it was not until over 24 hours after the release of the War Office statement that the Field Marshals and Strauss were formally discharged from the Wehrmacht and charged as war criminals.71 The charges, however, were outlined in only very general terms in the formal written notices issued to each of the four. In von Rundstedt’s case:
‘… the maltreatment and killing of civilians and prisoners of war, including political commissars, killing of hostages, illegal employment of prisoners of war, deportation of forced labour to Germany, economic exploitation of territories occupied by troops under your command, looting of objects of cultural and artistic value from territory occupied by such troops, mass execution of Jews, general devastation and annihilation of territories which was not justified by military necessity and other war crimes, still to be specified.’72
Besides removing their prisoner of war status, there were other implications to being designated war criminals. For a start, although this had been standard practice for all war crimes trials, it implied guilt before this had been proved in a court of law. On a more practical basis, Control Council Law No 10 laid down that the occupying authority within its zone of occupation not only had the right to arrest any person suspected of war crimes but that the authority ‘shall take under control the property, real and personal, owned or controlled’ by the suspect ‘pending decisions as to its eventual disposition’.73 In other words it was confiscated and this meant the freezing of bank accounts and savings, with no allowance made for support of the suspect’s family. The payment of 80 Deutschmarks made to each discharged member of the Wehrmacht, which the four did receive, was of little consolation.74 This served to add further to the burdens being placed on the Field Marshals.
The task of preparing for the trial was mammoth. Apart from the many potential charges outlined in the Taylor memorandum, much of the evidence was still in American, Russian and Polish hands. Also, in line with the ORC decision, the whole war crimes investigation organisation was being wound down. In order to help gather the evidence, the Foreign Office asked Robertson to request of Clay the retention of four American war crimes experts who had been lent to the British and the services of two experienced war crimes attorneys, Paul Niedermann, who had collated the evidence produced in the Taylor memorandum, and Walter Rapp. Clay’s response was not very helpful. The United States war crimes apparatus was being wound up on 30 November and the British could not retain any of them after this date.75 Instead, Otto John was invited to assist as adviser on German law and interpreter. He had spent the first half of 1948 at Nuremberg, at Telford Taylor’s invitation, studying German militarism and his involvement in the July 1944 Bomb Plot was another bonus. His own reaction was:
‘I had neither patriotic or moral scruples in taking on this task. I felt no obligation towards the German generals, but I did feel myself bound by a Christian ethic transcending nationality and it was entirely in accord with this that men who wished to conquer the world by genocide, and had brought about frightful calamity, should be brought to trial and sentenced.’76
The Foreign Office also moved to halt the handback to the Germans of the Curio-Haus in Hamburg, the scene of a number of previous war crimes trials, and which had been partially turned into a music school.77 Luckily for the Government, both Gilbert Murray and Liddell Hart wrote to The Times st
ating that they had heard from the Field Marshals that conditions had greatly improved and that they were now allowed a reasonable amount of privacy and unsupervised family visits.78 On 24 September, however, all four were transferred to No 94 British Military Hospital at Barmbeck, Hamburg. Again, their wives were allowed to stay in the same building, the hospital pavilion. Von Rundstedt, while he was unable to see Bila, continued to be visited by Ditha and also by his elder grandson, Gerd, who was at a Pestalozzi children’s home in Hamburg. Two months later, Munsterlager, its task of processing the release of German prisoners-of-war now done, was closed down.
Criticisms of the delay in bringing the Field Marshals and Strauss to trial still dogged the Cabinet. During much of September the Government continued to ‘stonewall’ questions put by Members of Parliament. It was nevertheless determined that the trials should go ahead, in spite of the criticism. At a Cabinet meeting held on 22 September, it was agreed that Bevin should make a statement in the forthcoming foreign affairs debate in the House of Commons. It was recognised, however, that although there was a prima facie case it might be impossible to prove since much of the evidence was in Polish and Russian hands. On the other hand, if the case was abandoned there would be no grounds for not handing the four over to the Russians.79 Bevin made his statement two days later. He related the history of the case, stressing the time needed to establish that there was a prima facie case. He did, however, omit to recount the saga of von Rundstedt’s and von Manstein’s fruitless trip to Nuremberg in July 1948 and, describing conditions at Munsterlager, stated that ‘there were no restrictions on them beyond those necessary for their custody’. In response to questions by two Labour MPs, Richard Stokes and Reginald Paget (later Lord Paget), he said that he did not understand their protests. He regretted the delay in bringing the four to trial, but ‘it is a very awkward thing to put a Minister in the position of sanctioning the trials of people who carried out their orders and not sanctioning the trials of the people who gave the orders’.80 Privately, though, the Governmental finger of accusation was pointed firmly at the War Office. Shawcross wrote:
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