London Cage

by Helen Fry

  It was not until the summer of 1948 that the driver, Robert Schroeder, was located. During interrogation by Scotland at the cage on 2 and 10 June, Schroeder confirmed the facts that had been provided by Wieczorek, and the part taken by Scharpwinkel in the killings. He provided a list of all the men in the firing squad. In his own defence, he argued that he was merely the driver and had taken no part in the shootings.40

  Another man implicated in the Sagan case was Josef Gmeiner, head of the Gestapo in Karlsruhe. He, too, found himself in the London Cage, where he spent a week typing up his statement, only to be told by Scotland that what he had written was ‘utter nonsense’.41 During interrogation, Gmeiner quoted the Sagan Order word for word. When it came to the part stating that escapees were to be executed, Scotland barked at him: ‘Stop!’ He challenged Gmeiner that the prisoners had not been tried by any court in Germany, and therefore it was an order to commit murder.

  ‘Didn’t your natural sense of justice revolt against that?’ he asked Gmeiner.

  Gmeiner had his answer: ‘No. It was an order from the Führer, therefore it was legal and binding on me.’

  Scotland warned him: ‘That statement will hang you, Gmeiner.’42 Gmeiner voluntarily signed a statement in the presence of Captain Cornish on 25 September 1946.

  Also in the cage was Johannes Post, the brutal Gestapo man who had been in charge of a correction camp at Kiel. Scotland admitted that ‘We had a mutual hatred of each other.’43 Of all the Sagan war criminals, Johannes Post stood out as a complete sadist. At the camp near Kiel, he had ensured that Germany’s forced labourers were beaten to death for not working hard enough. When he was brought before Scotland, he was still smoking a cigarette and ‘putting on an act’.44

  ‘You are Johannes Post?’ Scotland asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with what was seen as supercilious arrogance.

  Scotland did not tolerate him and turned immediately to the guard: ‘Take good care of this man. He is one of the worst bastards of the whole lot.’ This was a coded message to rough him up.45 Exactly what kind of treatment Johannes Post suffered has not been recorded. Reflecting on the matter some years later, Scotland commented that only SS officer Reinhold Bruchardt of Danzig, ‘a giant of a man at over 6ft tall’, was more ‘physically brutal’.46

  The precise date of Bruchardt’s arrival at the London Cage is not recorded in the surviving files, but it is known that Wing Commander Bowes tracked him down in Germany and arranged for him to be transferred to the London Cage. The escorting guards were given a message for Colonel Scotland that Bruchardt was highly dangerous. By the time he arrived, the team had already reconstructed the part that he had played in the killings.

  In his room at the cage, Bruchardt readily began to write down his version of events. Scotland was unimpressed and told him that he did not believe a word.47 He told him straight: ‘We know you were the man in charge of the special duty squad. You, and you only, were responsible for the murders. We already have all the evidence we want.’48

  He called in Sergeant Prion of the guard and instructed him to see that Bruchardt was kept under constant observation until sent to a holding camp. Scotland recalled:

  Prion set Bruchardt to work scrubbing floors. The German was both cocky and clever and fond of exhibiting his strength. Yet he found his match in Prion and he was so completely exhausted after a ‘competition’ at lifting sand buckets that he was glad to leave the cage for the prisoner of war camp in Colchester.49

  Security at Colchester was not as strict as at the London Cage. One night, during Bruchardt’s incarceration there, prisoner Lehmann passed his cell while attempting to escape. Bruchardt whispered to him to give him something to work the bars of his window. Half an hour later, the two men had made off over the boundary wall. They succeeded in living for three weeks undetected in woods near Colchester, raiding farms for food. Eventually they were both arrested by police and transferred back to the London Cage, where Colonel Scotland instructed Sergeant Prion to ‘greet’ them.50 Bruchardt is said to have asked for work and chores in the cage to stop him going mad with boredom.

  To prevent another escape, Bruchardt was transferred to a prison in Sheffield while the war crimes case was prepared against him. Then, in October 1948, he spent a brief time back at the London Cage before being transferred to Hamburg for the second Sagan trial which took place that same month.

  The London Cage on trial

  When the first Sagan trial opened in July 1947 and the second opened in October 1948, the reputation of the London Cage came under intense scrutiny for its treatment of prisoners. Colonel Scotland found himself in the dock answering serious charges about how statements were secured from Nazi war criminals. Accusations of brutality against the prisoners extended to periods of starvation, sleep deprivation and third-degree methods of interrogation and electric shock treatment. There was much at stake – not only months and years of careful detective work, interrogations and research into the whereabouts of war criminals, but, if it could be proved by the defence lawyers that Scotland and the interrogators had acquired the confessions by force, then the war crimes case might collapse and the war criminals walk free.

  The first Sagan trial commenced on 1 July 1947, and soon the focus of the military court shifted from the Nazi war criminals to the London Cage itself. The defence tried to show that the statements secured for the trial were the result of coercion in the cage. This led to Scotland spending three days in the witness box under cross-examination. He realised that something was wrong when the female German defence lawyer, Dr Ohlert, addressed him as Herr Zeuge (Mr Witness), rather than by his full military rank.51 The judge advocate did not correct her. It was always Scotland’s belief that a remnant underground SS movement was behind the disruption in court. They knew that the SS war criminals standing trial had signed an oath of allegiance to Hitler that they would never break. Scotland believed that Dr Ohlert was under their influence, as she tried to corner him into publicly admitting that the statements had been signed under duress.

  The court granted her request to cross-examine Scotland, and it became a very public affair. She put it to him that Zacharias’s statement had been made under physical pressure. She asked Scotland whether prisoners had been denied food, whether their complaints were investigated and whether they had been engaged in cleaning duties as a disciplinary measure. And were they ordered to clean their rooms with a toothbrush as a punishment? She wanted to know why Zacharias had been interrogated more than ten times. She related to the court how Zacharias had been struck across the face several times, had had food withheld for several days, and on the days when he was interrogated, how the guards had refused to let him sleep.

  ‘If that were true, Zacharias should have made a complaint and we would have done something about it,’ responded Scotland, remaining outwardly unruffled by the accusations. But from comments he made later in his autobiography, he was seething at the turn of events.52

  Dr Ohlert fired back another comment: ‘Zacharias says you threatened him with electrical devices in the London Cage.’

  ‘Quite untrue,’ replied Scotland. ‘We have no such weapons or devices.’

  She then levelled accusations against his staff, who allegedly beat up Zacharias when he was alone with an intelligence officer. Scotland’s reply was carefully worded: ‘I cannot vouch for things that happened when I was not present at an interrogation, but I would have noticed marks on Zacharias if he had been beaten.’53

  ‘Is it true that prisoners in the London Cage were told that they would be hanged and their wives deported to Siberia?’ she asked.54

  Scotland retorted: ‘I have heard a lot of nonsense about the London Cage, but this is really the limit. It is absolutely untrue and nonsensical.’

  Scotland had one key weapon at his disposal: from decades of human espionage and dealing with German prisoners of war, he understood psychology. The calmer he remained, the more agitated and frustrated Dr Ohlert became. She began
shouting across the courtroom, and played her one final card that she thought would destabilise the situation. She asked him: ‘Is it true that you have served in the German army?’

  Courtroom observers and journalists muttered in shock at the question. Scotland did not deny it, and was forced to admit publicly that he had served in the German army during the Khoikhoi War. It led to sensationalist newspaper headlines about ‘Schottland – Spy serving in the German army’.55 The Observer on Sunday reported ‘allegations of beatings up and third degree methods’, but added the rider that these allegations ‘may be baseless’.56 The military court refused to be drawn in and ruled that these details were irrelevant to the case.

  It was only when Scotland wrote up his memoirs that he provided some clue as to the treatment of prisoners; but the intelligence services censored out the following paragraph:

  Naturally we used disciplinary measures if they were required. You don’t allow tough Gestapo criminals to imagine they have arrived at a Kindergarten or for a rest care. But there were ways of putting a troublesome or cocky prisoner of war in his place without beating him up. And as for work about the cage, many were happy to be given something to do to occupy their time. It is true that we tried a little showmanship with Zacharias, but this was a matter of psychology, not force.57

  The military court sat for forty-nine days. Thirteen of the accused were sentenced on 3 September 1947 to be hanged at Hameln prison; others were given various lengths of jail sentences.

  The second Sagan trial, which convened in Hamburg in October 1948, was far more efficient. It was here that Bruchardt, Zacharias, Wieczorek and Hansel were tried. Although Bruchardt was condemned to death, his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Erich Zacharias, Johannes Post and Oskar Schmidt were among those sent to the gallows. Wieczorek and Hansel stood accused of the death of twenty-nine RAF officers from Stalag Luft III who been murdered near Breslau. Hansel was discharged. Wieczorek was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was subsequently released.

  At the end of both Sagan trials, it could be said that justice had only partly been served: some of the war criminals were never caught. The case against the London Cage for torture and brutality was dismissed and Scotland was exonerated. But he always regretted that he and his team had not succeeded in bringing all the war criminals of the Sagan case to justice. As he wrote:

  Though we knew the full story of the murders in the Breslau area, it was one of the most unsatisfactory sections of the Sagan crime for, in the end, not one man went to the gallows to answer for the deaths of the twenty-nine RAF officers.58

  13

  NORWAY AND WAR CRIMES

  It was May 1946 when Colonel Scotland walked into Room 22 to see General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst’s name among the list of prisoners on the board. Falkenhorst had been Hitler’s supreme commander-in-chief of the German army, navy and air forces in Norway, and was loathed for his part in war crimes there.1 Norway had been invaded and occupied by the German army from 9 April 1940 until Germany’s surrender in Europe in May 1945. The civilian population had suffered various kinds of brutality that extended to cruel interrogations at Gestapo headquarters in Oslo. Falkenhorst stood out as the man responsible for the atrocities. A month after Germany’s unconditional surrender in May 1945, Colonel Scotland dispatched a team to Norway to investigate. The team, headed by Captain Broderman consisted of twenty-five officers and thirty-five sergeants, and took up residence in the old medieval fortress of Akershus in Oslo, once the Gestapo headquarters. They were tasked with investigating two particular war crimes against British special forces during clandestine operations in Norway in 1942. The Allies were holding around 370,000 German prisoners of war in camps in Norway, and Broderman and his team had to comb the camps for any suspected war criminals.

  The Americans had arrested Falkenhorst on 10 May 1945 and were holding him in Dachau concentration camp. Falkenhorst’s guilt was clear; it was the job of the London Cage to gather the evidence for a court to sentence him to hang him for his crimes. Major Terry was dispatched to Dachau to interview Falkenhorst and secure a statement from him, which he did on 5 April 1946. The statement outlined Falkenhorst’s military career, and in it he stated that no German soldier wanted the shootings, but he was acting on Hitler’s orders. He spoke about the ‘tragic conflict between honour and conscience, responsibility and a sense of duty, obedience and oath of allegiance’.2

  The following month, Scotland had Falkenhorst in the London Cage. He asked the guards to take him to his office, where Falkenhorst waited alone for fifteen minutes before Scotland entered. Scotland wrote of the moment that he first saw him:

  I found Falkenhorst standing in the middle of my room facing a window, and I had a side view of him as I passed to my table. At 5’7”, he was of slight build, a retreating forehead and beaky nose. His furrowed brow revealed an anxious man with thin grey hair.3

  According to Scotland, he seemed a physical and moral weakling,4 and Scotland showed him no tolerance during the hard-line interrogations in the cage. Falkenhorst refused to make eye contact as Scotland asked him to pull up a chair to the desk.

  Scotland stared at him for a few minutes in silence, then said: ‘I want to know why Hitler selected you as senior officer commanding the whole of the Wehrmacht forces in Norway – an appointment that no other German enjoyed throughout the whole of the war. Why?’5

  Falkenhorst replied that he had commanded the 21st Army Corps in Poland, and that same unit had been selected to occupy Norway. Scotland interjected with his own analysis of Falkenhorst’s career, saying that, in his view, Hitler had chosen Falkenhorst because he was the only member of the Prussian military aristocracy to have accepted the principles of the Nazi regime absolutely. He then explained to Falkenhorst that he would not be treated as a prisoner of war with the rights that afforded him, but rather as a war criminal, deprived of his rank as a general. He could expect to be in the cage for at least three weeks, during which time the interrogators would obtain all the information they needed for a conviction. Scotland outlined the atrocities he had committed in Norway while Falkenhorst became subdued; he tried to argue that he had had no authority over the Nazi figures who had committed those crimes.6 Before Falkenhorst was dismissed and escorted back to his cell, Scotland told him that he had three days in which to write down his account of exactly what had happened in Norway.

  The Commando Order

  Between 11 and 21 September 1942, ten British commandos and two Norwegian commandos had mounted a raid on the power plant at Glomfjord. Their mission, codenamed Operation Musketoon, succeeded in blowing up the Norwegian industrial factory there and removed it from operation for the rest of the war. The explosion awoke the German troops and resulted in the capture of seven of the special forces. They were transported to the famous prison at Colditz Castle in Germany, and from there were later transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and shot. They should have been treated as prisoners of war, but they were murdered under the jurisdiction of General von Falkenhorst and, as such, were the victims of a war crime.

  Norway was strategically important to the Third Reich because of its key industrial sites and power plants, some vital to Hitler’s developing atomic programme. The clandestine British raids on these plants, often in conjunction with Norwegian special forces, enraged the Führer. He issued the Commando Order, which amounted to the legitimisation of ‘no quarter’ – no clemency – to commandos captured in battle. Marked ‘Top Secret’ and dated 18 October 1942, the Commando Order stated:

  I have found myself forced to issue a drastic order for the extermination of enemy sabotage parties and to make non-compliance with it severely punishable … Should it prove advisable to spare one or two men in the first instance for interrogation reasons, they are to be shot immediately after their interrogation.7

  The Commando Order made it compulsory for German commanders to kill captured special forces or commando raiders in
any theatre of war.8 Under no circumstances were they to be treated as prisoners of war. With no consultation, Falkenhorst took it upon himself to add a sentence to the end of Hitler’s Commando Order: ‘If a man is saved for interrogation, he must not survive his comrades for more than twenty-four hours.’9 Falkenhorst dispatched the order to the commanders of the German army, navy and air force in Norway, together with his additional sentence, as if it had come direct from Hitler. Falkenhorst had personally sanctioned the killing of special forces within twenty-four hours of capture and had authorised his commanders to do so.

  The following month, the Commando Order was executed against raiders of another clandestine mission called Operation Freshman, which targeted the Vemork heavy-water plant outside Rjukan. On 19 November 1942, a combined airborne operation of sappers from the Royal Engineers, SOE and 1st Airborne Division attacked the hydroelectric plant to destroy any Nazi capability to produce heavy water for its nuclear programme.10 Operation Freshman was always known to be extremely risky and costly, with a high probability that the men would be taken prisoner. No one expected them to be executed in cold blood after capture.

  The events surrounding this secret mission and the subsequent atrocity were investigated at the London Cage and gradually pieced together. A detailed picture emerged, with interrogators learning that two Horsa gliders had headed for the site at Vemork with thirty-one men on board, including two officers.11 The weather was against them, and high winds had separated the gliders.12 The first glider crashed on cliffs above Lysefjord, near Stavanger, when the tow rope snapped. Five survivors, all Royal Engineers, were captured by the Germans: Lance Corporal Jackson, and sappers F. Bonner, J.N. Blackburn, J. Walsh and T.W. White. All were taken to Grini concentration camp in Bærum, near Oslo.13 On 18 January 1943, the men were taken into nearby woods and executed on the orders of Colonel Probst, chief of staff to Lieutenant-General Karl von Behrens of the 280th Infantry Division, headquartered at Stavanger.14