by Helen Fry
The order was a direct breach of the laws of war and was intended to remain secret from the Allies; but it was discovered, and fell within the category of war crimes for investigation by Colonel Scotland.
German Luftwaffe officer Friedrich von der Heydte was brought to the London Cage for questioning about Hitler’s Commando Order. He made ‘a voluntary statement and without duress’ in the presence of Captain Terry on 26 October 1945, in which he denied ever implementing Hitler’s killing order.19 He claimed not to remember if he had signed the order or whether he had passed it on to divisional commanders. He told Captain Terry that the only British commando unit he ever came across was in Africa in September 1942: ‘I treated them in the same way in which I always treat prisoners of war, and in the way a courageous opponent is entitled to expect according to the unwritten law of chivalry.’20
At the same time as Heydte was held in the cage, First Lieutenant Hoff was brought in and accused of issuing Hitler’s Commando Order. He denied the charges. But the cage was also holding three Polish witnesses. One, Private Edmund Zalewski, confirmed that Hoff had been given the order, and vividly remembered the day that Hoff had paraded the whole company, read it out and then destroyed the written version.21 To verify Zalewski’s story, a group of German officers was brought out of the London Cage to the parade ground in the paddock of Kensington Palace, and Zalewski was asked to identify anyone he recognised. He pointed to Hoff without hesitation. The following day, Hoff sent a note to Colonel Scotland admitting that he had been with the company at the time, but denying ever reading out the Commando Order; he did admit, however, to reading Hitler’s order ‘to fight to the last man, last round’.
Zalewski gave interrogators the name of a former colleague and witness, Grenadier Nagel, who was tracked down at Camp 35 at Boughton Park near Northampton and brought to the London Cage. When questioned, Nagle could not remember the order or the company briefing by Hoff. Consequently, Scotland sent two interrogators to Camp 35 to question a number of other prisoners who had served under Hoff. Only four could remember a briefing, but none recalled Hoff reading out the Commando Order. The Commando Order would surface again in the cage in the context of war crimes, and would become the focus of an important war crimes investigation.
Nazi gold
October 1945 saw the arrival at the London Cage of Major-General Otto Wagener, who had taken over command of Rhodes and the eastern Aegean on 23 September 1944, at a time when Allied forces were mounting the Ardennes offensive in Western Europe and had already captured Brussels. Wagener commanded around 6,000 German soldiers, half of them troops from 999 Division. The reputation of 999 Division was already known at the London Cage due to some of its members having arrived there after the defeat of Rommel’s troops in North Africa in 1942 (see page 56). Colonel Scotland had once described them as ‘rabid Nazis’ who were heavily indoctrinated in Nazi ideology.22 They were tough ex-convicts, who had spent time in concentration camps but whose sentences had been reduced when they volunteered to serve in the crack SS battalion. Wagener’s testimony would be quite astonishing.
MI19 had knowledge of possible Nazi gold buried on Rhodes (the source of the information was not named). Allied intelligence was desperately trying to track and prevent the movement of Nazi gold out of Germany, mostly – it was thought – being transported on special trains. When interrogated about the Rhodes gold, at first Wagener denied any knowledge of it. Later, however, he would tell a different story.
On 29 April 1945, just a week before Germany’s final surrender and the day before Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, Wagener had been in hospital with a type of typhus. He had received a visit from his chief of staff and the quartermaster, Herr Becker. They reported that the last plane to leave Germany for Rhodes had already departed from an aerodrome near Linz, carrying the gold bound for Rhodes and Crete. A Turkish firm in Constantinople had been instructed to deliver to Crete food for the German troops there, for which it would be paid in gold. The two men at Wagener’s bedside wanted to establish what should be done with the gold in the event of surrender to the Allies, which was expected imminently. Major-General Wagener recognised that it would be impossible now to dispatch the gold to Crete, and that ‘the best plan would be to place the whole lot in a coffin and inter it properly in the soldiers’ cemetery’.23 Wagener expressed the opinion to Scotland that the gold belonged to the German government, and hoped that it would not fall into the hands of the British authorities.
Twelve hours after his interrogation, Wagener sent a note to Colonel Scotland to say that he realised the significance of the questioning on the gold and had some further information to add to his statement. He said that his testimony could be verified by Major-General Benthack, the commandant of Crete, with whom he had shared a room in the British prisoner-of-war camp in Cairo. Crucially, he added that he believed the weight of the gold buried in the coffin was 17 kilograms. He said that he had always intended to build a special home near the German cemetery at Kameiros in Rhodes for those soldiers who had fought in the Aegean, and maintained that the gold had been set aside for this purpose. As he told interrogators:
The gold was buried in a proper grave where all the new graves were. I would refer to the small photo (taken of the cemetery) which I have handed over … The position of the grave was on the left hand side on the extreme outside; but I cannot remember whether it was the last row or the last row but one. The cross was to bear the name Stein or Steiner or something similar.24
Wagener added finally: ‘The suspicion is unfounded that the gold was sent so that it could be hidden on Rhodes for future use.’ There the paper trail goes cold. It is not known if Colonel Scotland informed the intelligence services or whether the gold was subsequently dug up and hidden in Allied territory.
War Crimes Investigation Unit
Until Germany’s unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945, the London Cage’s role would continue to be to gather intelligence. But that would change as it made the transition to the unique role it would play in war crimes investigations. These began at the London Cage in 1944, but on nothing like the scale seen in 1945–48. By then the concentration camps had been liberated and the full extent of Nazi brutality had been revealed. While the world expressed its shock and tried to comprehend the scale of the extermination machine, Scotland and his team quietly turned their attention to other acts of Nazi brutality. They were specifically tasked with investigating war crimes against Allied soldiers, airmen and special forces. To this end, they were formed into a new unit: the War Crimes Investigation Unit (WCIU).
The London Cage became the most important centre outside Germany to deal with high-profile Nazi war criminals. Yet its vital contribution is rarely referenced in histories of the Second World War or the war crimes trials. Between October 1945 and the end of September 1948, 3,573 prisoners of war and enemy civilians passed through its doors. Many were eyewitnesses, who provided details of war crimes for the prosecution’s case against numerous Nazi war criminals; many of those Nazis were tracked down by Scotland’s own teams. The strength of his staff increased to forty officers and NCOs, some stationed at Kempton Park, Lingfield Park and abroad. Their work was an administrative challenge that generated thousands of interrogation reports on atrocities committed against Allied soldiers and airmen in all theatres of the war, as well as against civilians and Allied special forces; all were for direct use in the trials that followed.
The atmosphere intensified as the cage braced itself to receive some of the highest-ranking Nazi leaders and war criminals – many of them reviled even before they crossed the threshold of Kensington Palace Gardens. Among them were the commandants of liberated concentration camps, as well as SS General Sepp Dietrich, SS General Kurt Meyer, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, SS Colonel General Reinhold Bruchardt (commander of a murder squad in Danzig), Colonel General Adolf Strauss and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Held there, too, were a number of German generals who were being interrogated as w
itnesses: General von Manstein, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, Major-General Ramcke (see above) and Field Marshal von Rundstedt. A former witness to this period commented: ‘Rundstedt was neatly dressed, had a moustache, high cheek bones and was very military and correct. We had him for 4–6 weeks.’ Major Roger Mortimer, who occasionally visited the London Cage from Wellington Barracks, said of Rundstedt: ‘I grew fond of old von Rundstedt, the best type of Prussian officer. He never complained and sometimes I used to take him for a cocktail and have a chat with him.’25
The purpose of holding the generals in the cage was to find out from them what they knew about war crimes, whether the orders that had led to the atrocities had been issued by commanders below them, and if so, what they knew about those orders. The generals could be held for several days if there was much to ask them.
The London Cage no longer collected intelligence from military sources, as it had done during the war. Now it was dealing with the most heinous crimes – crimes that would test the interrogators’ patience to the absolute limit. The work would keep them busy for three years. In the first two of those years they would struggle to cope with the sheer number of Nazi war criminals and witnesses who crossed the threshold as part of the investigations. The rooms were crammed with men undergoing special and detailed interrogation for varying lengths of time. This placed a huge strain on the interrogators, who worked long days and evenings to get through the workload. As soon as an interrogation was completed, or a voluntary statement given by a prisoner or witness, the paperwork was dispatched to a secret location for typing up. It was an enormous logistical challenge, executed with great efficiency by the close-knit team at the London Cage. The huge volume of files surviving today in the National Archives is testament to their efforts.
In addition, time was spent trying to hunt down the whereabouts of suspected war criminals, with no assurance of success. When a wanted war criminal was finally located in hiding or in an internment camp, the paperwork had to be arranged and his formal transfer to London organised by special escort.
The London Cage witnessed plenty of drama as Scotland dealt with some of the highest-ranking leaders of the Nazi regime and commanders of the German forces. One such person was navy captain Hellmuth von Ruckteschell, who commanded the Neumark, an armed merchant ship which had orders to become a raider to sink Allied ships. Ruckteschell had shown no mercy to the drowning crews struggling in the sea. He was eventually given a new raider, R28, and ran missions to the Far East, finally giving over his ship to the Japanese. Not relishing any further fighting on behalf of his Führer, he had no intention of going to sea again.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, British forces tracked Ruckteschell down in Shanghai and transported him back to England, where he appeared before Scotland in the London Cage. The slight, bronze-skinned figure standing before Colonel Scotland was described by him as a ‘weedy-looking spiv dressed in a pressed Palm Beach suit, gaudy tie and white and brown shoes’.26 Ruckteschell strutted around Scotland’s office with an arrogance that would immediately be challenged.
Scotland asked him a few personal questions, then turned to technical details of raider R28. Ruckteschell began to shout, demanding that his interrogation be carried out by a naval commander. Scotland bawled at him: ‘Stand to attention you miserable traitor! Remain at attention until I give you orders to leave this room!’27 Scotland asked the guard to take Ruckteschell out, provide him with work clothes and set him to chores in the kitchens. Ruckteschell was told that he was not to address Scotland unless he asked permission, at which point his request would be considered. If he caused any trouble, the guards were to remind him that the only reason he was in the cage was because of his murders at sea, and that he would only leave the cage for his trial.
Just twenty-four hours later, Ruckteschell asked to see Scotland. But Scotland refused to see him, because the guards still found him arrogant and defiant. Instead he responded by increasing Ruckteschell’s chores around the cage. After three days, Ruckteschell stood in front of Scotland again, this time a docile figure who had accepted his discipline. There was no more trouble from him. In May 1946, he came before a war crimes court in Hamburg and was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Sent to Fuhlsbüttel prison, he died there of a heart condition on 24 June 1948.
One CSDIC/MI19 interrogator, Matthew Sullivan, summed up the situation: ‘The cage in its cool pursuit of justice became a hot-house of guilt, defiance and fear … Some nasty characters were being sent for examination and the outcome now might be a jail sentence or even death. To make the bully feel small gave great pleasure to certain interrogators.’28
10
A MATTER OF JUSTICE
In the spring of 1945, the world was shocked by the scenes captured on film of the liberation of the concentration camps. Across Europe, towns and cities lay desolate from aerial bombing, their communities in chaos, and thousands of displaced people in civilian internment camps. The continent bore the physical and psychological scars of a bloody war that had wreaked so much suffering and death on millions of ordinary people, not least through the Nazis’ horrifying systematic programme of mass extermination. The Allies began the slow process of restoring democracy to post-war Europe, a task that necessitated the denazification of every stratum of German and Austrian society, government, law and civic life. For democracy to succeed, there could be no surviving remnants of the Nazi regime to rise up and take power again. For post-war peace and stability, those Nazi war criminals who had gone into hiding had to be hunted down and brought to justice.
‘The entire history of the Hitler regime is riddled with acts of grossest and most inhuman cruelty,’ wrote Colonel Scotland.1 Now, it would seem, he felt justified in showing no tolerance or mercy to Nazi war criminals in his cage. He and his staff were disgusted by what the Nazis had done to Jews, civilians and surrendering Allied personnel. Pitted now against the Nazi war criminals, Scotland was determined to bring them to justice for their crimes, if it was the last thing he did. It became a very personal mission. He vowed to track down every name on the London Cage’s list of wanted war criminals.
The Allied powers had compiled a list of suspected Nazi war criminals that ran to over 60,000 names. Printed in four volumes and with two supplementary lists, it was known collectively as the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS). The Allies had agreed that all security suspects and alleged war criminals were to be transferred first to one of five holding camps in Germany: Esterwegen, Fallingbostel, Sandbostel, Recklinghausen and Westertimke. Colonel Scotland’s teams travelled to Germany and scoured the holding camps and civilian internment camps for war criminals who were hiding under assumed names or masquerading as refugees. When discovered, the suspects were transferred to the London Cage for extensive interrogation. The task of tracking down Nazi war criminals was slow and painstaking work. As well as CROWCASS, interrogators made use of an extensive card index of war criminals already created by the headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). The Allied Control Commission had numerous files with evidence of war crimes. Scotland’s teams could draw on them and prisoner records across all prisoner-of-war camps.
Once suspected war criminals were in the London Cage, an effective tactic was to place a particular prisoner in solitary confinement in a room next to another carefully chosen prisoner. The men would soon discover that the flues from the fireplaces in their rooms merged further up, allowing them to have a conversation. An eyewitness recalled: ‘They chatted up the chimney to each other. They thought they were so clever, but they gave away all kinds of information because we had placed bugging devices in the chimney and were able to record their conversations. It was wired back to an M Room in the basement.’2
Investigations into a prisoner’s past paralleled police methods, and involved reconstructing events, asking the prisoner to write down his version of events and his part in the incident or war crime being investigated. The written account was
useful, because it could be checked against known evidence and used to induce other prisoners to tell the truth. The interrogators always emphasised that they were not there to try a suspected war criminal. That was a matter for the courts. The purpose of their interrogation was to give the prisoner an opportunity to defend himself with his own written account, and to convince the interrogation team that he was innocent and should not be passed on to a court for trial. The interrogators presented the prisoner with the facts and evidence against him, and asked for his response. Scotland and senior interrogators made the final decision on the basis of the evidence available, and the prisoner’s statement was sent over to the war crimes trials.
Scotland and his staff soon discovered that interrogating war criminals in 1945 and 1946 was very different from questioning German forces personnel for general military intelligence. The mentality of the two kinds of prisoner was very different. According to the Geneva Convention, a captured prisoner was only obliged to give his name, rank and number. The interrogation became a battle of minds between interrogator and prisoner. In contrast, a suspected war criminal usually spoke freely in order to clear his name. He tried to cover up his guilt by denying all knowledge of the war crime or by implicating others. Psychologically, if a war criminal was guilty, it was uppermost in his mind. Nazi war criminals spent a lot of time in their rooms at the London Cage fretting about how to fool the interrogator into believing that they were innocent. They adopted a number of strategies: some tried to distract the interrogator with irrelevant stories; others found fault with the manner of interrogation. The interrogator had to be astute enough to spot the weaknesses in any argument. If the interrogator lost his patience, then the interrogation had failed and another interrogator had to take over. All allegations of abuse of prisoners in the cage that arose at this time were flatly denied by Scotland and the military.