by Alex Gerlis
Herr Schäfer took over the briefing at this point. ‘You need to know there is a sophisticated organisation behind you. Although you may feel alone, you will be part of something big. You must be wondering why I am telling you this. After all, you are not even officers. You do not require explanations, just orders. And what we are telling you – talking about defeat – is the kind of talk that gets people arrested by the Gestapo. But we are telling you because you cannot be expected to undertake a mission like this if you have no idea of its context.’
Herr Schäfer told us a number of groups of young people were being prepared to help lead the Fourth Reich. He would not say how many, but he did say that ‘when the time comes’ there would need to be ‘many thousands’ of committed and proven Nazis in place, who could lead Germany back to its destiny.
Our group had been chosen for a very specific mission, he said. ‘As well as being young and in the SS, you are all highly proficient in the English language. The mission you will undertake in the service of the Reich requires you to be captured by the British.’
I well remember the atmosphere in the room as Herr Schäfer said this: disbelief, along with a fear this could be another test, like the one Werner failed. What point could there possibly be in a mission requiring us to be captured by the enemy?
Brigadeführer Reinher took over. ‘You will remain here for a few more weeks for the first phase of your training. Much of this will involve Captain Canterbury, who I know you have met already. You will then move on to another location for your final phase of training. Within a few months you will each to be attached to frontline Waffen SS units. Your unit commander will have instructions that rather than fight to the death, he should surrender his unit to the Allies at the earliest opportunity. This will ensure that you are taken as a prisoner of war. Herr Schäfer, please.’
The small man began to speak again. His voice was quiet, and he stared down at the floor as he talked. ‘All Waffen SS soldiers captured by the British, Americans and Canadians are taken to prisoner of war camps in Britain. The situation with the Wehrmacht is more complicated. Our understanding is that as the number of German prisoners of war increases, most Wehrmacht prisoners will not be transported back to Britain. But we can be certain that all SS prisoners will go to Britain. As far as the British are concerned, you are all Nazis, and dangerous. We know quite a bit about the prisoner of war camps in Britain. There are over one hundred of them. Some are in remote, rural locations, others in towns and cities. Prisoners are treated reasonably well. The important point though, is that security is not too stringent. The British think it unlikely German prisoners will escape, because they have nowhere to go to. The British population is overwhelmingly hostile although, as you will see, there are a few exceptions. And of course, Britain is an island. It is not as if you can try and reach the border to escape to a sympathetic country and so make your way home, as Allied prisoners of war can do. So, escape is not only possible, it is quite feasible. It just does not happen very often. Prisoners who escape are recaptured very quickly. They do not have the right papers and, of course, they are foreign. The British can smell out a foreigner from a long way off, let me assure you.
‘You will be different. By the time you are in a position to escape, you will be able to pass yourselves off as Englishmen. You will have good identity papers. And more importantly, you will have somewhere to head to in Britain.’
The Brigadeführer then said that it had been a long day, and we had many more ahead of us. The briefing would continue tomorrow. ‘Remember, boys. You are soldiers. You are only being told to do what soldiers do. You are being sent into battle.’
I slept very little that night: I doubt if many of the junkers did, apart from Richter, of course. He was in the bed opposite me and not once did I detect that he was anything other than fast asleep. Whenever I glanced over at him he was lying quite still, as if to attention. His dark hair was still immaculate and his face seemed set into a smile, as if in his dreams he was replaying the days’ events with some satisfaction.
***
At breakfast the next morning, Richter was the only one in a talkative mood. His bed was very comfortable, he told us. It was just a shame that there wasn’t a beautiful woman to share it with him – though if that had been the case he would not have got as much sleep, he assured us. And then he talked about Werner: the maggots would have started to eat him by now, he told us, laughing as he did so. No-one said a word, although I noticed a couple of the others smiling nervously. Werner deserved to die. He was a traitor. Did we not all agree? Around the table, we all nodded our heads, some more enthusiastically than others. Horst was the only one to reply to Richter.
‘Of course. You were very brave.’
After breakfast, we were called into the main room where Brigadeführer Reinher addressed us. ‘We realise that it is strange for you to see an English officer so closely involved in your mission. The English are, after all, our enemy. But I wanted to take this opportunity to explain how important Captain Canterbury’s role is. I require you to take him every bit as seriously as you would an SS officer or Herr Schäfer here. As you will find out tomorrow, without Captain Canterbury the chances this mission being a success would be very limited indeed. In fact, it would be near impossible. His role is not limited to the briefings he is giving you here. When you are in Britain, he will assume an even more important purpose. Nor must you see him as the enemy. He is a very committed follower of our cause, and he is not alone among Allied officers. A number of Allied prisoners have realised that the British are fighting the wrong enemy. They realise that Germany and Britain have much in common, and the real enemy is the Soviet Union. A number of Captain Canterbury’s comrades have joined the SS and a number are also working in Berlin, some in the Foreign Ministry and some with our English language radio services. Captain Canterbury himself worked in the latter for a while. He is an intelligent and resourceful man.’
The next day, Captain Canterbury was on his own with us in the main room, smoking a pipe as usual. On the wall behind him was a large map of the British Isles. Attached to it were dozens of green stickers, dotted all over the map. They represented prisoner of war camps, he said. As SS prisoners we would be taken to one of seven camps, which he pointed to.
‘Now you already know that your mission is to escape. But what are you to do then? Where will you escape to? Birmingham. Oxford. Bristol. London.’ He was pointing at four blue stickers on the map.
‘I think Brigadeführer Reinher may have dropped a hint the other day with regards what I am going to reveal to you now. You will appreciate the need for complete secrecy. Although the British population is overwhelmingly hostile to us, there are exceptions – a very small number of people, perhaps no more than a few hundred. They are dedicated people who, like me, were sympathetic to the Nazi cause long before Churchill so misguidedly took Britain into a pointless war against Germany. He should have known that the real enemies are the Jews and the Communists, who in truth are one and the same.’
That afternoon Herr Schäfer joined Captain Canterbury for the next stage of our briefing. They explained that we would join our Waffen SS units using our real names, but would be given British identity papers, along with some money and maps. Herr Schäfer said these documents would be expertly sewn into our uniforms, so it would be almost impossible to find them. He explained that the reason for using our real names was in case the British checked out our identities – it was important we were seen as genuine.
‘Once you’ve escaped you’ll lie low in your safe house for a few weeks. When it is alright to do so, we will move you on to other safe houses. In these houses you will assume new British identities, that should last you for the rest of your lives. You will remain at these houses until the war is over and then you will be sent away. We will identify locations where we think you should live. You will then be expected to establish your new lives. You will find jobs, have families and become normal Englishmen. We will maint
ain contact with you. This will be very discreet, although you should understand that we will always know where you are and what you are up to. You will never, ever again have contact with your families here in Germany. You must be very clear about that. You will get on with your lives and wait for us to contact you. As we have said, that may take many years. You will be patient. You will wait, but be assured that we will contact you.’
Following Captain Canterbury’s briefing, the pattern for the next seven weeks began to emerge: physical training sessions in the morning, map reading exercises, weapons training, and a series of briefing sessions with either Captain Canterbury or Herr Schäfer.
In the evenings, we would be immersed in British culture. We were shown British films, most of them at least ten years old, and given British magazines and newspapers to read. Surprisingly, some of these were not that old, maybe only a year or two, so they were all about the war. Captain Canterbury explained that we should realise that the Jews owned the press in Britain, and therefore everything we read was Jewish or Communist propaganda. Nonetheless, it was important that we understood it: it was good for us to get a proper sense of British life and the popular subjects that people spoke about.
In the last week of November, our time in the house outside Magdeburg came to a sudden end. We had been on a map-reading exercise in the country and when we returned to the house, Brigadeführer Reinher was waiting for us. We had performed better than he had expected: he’d imagined at least two or three of us would not complete this level of training, but with the help of Herr Schäfer and Captain Canterbury and the Obersturmführers we had exceeded expectations. We had served the SS well, and he was optimistic that our mission would be a success. With young men like us, he said, the ideals of the Reich would live on.
I remember feeling quite emotional at this stage. After the death of Werner on our first night at the house, it felt like the same fate would befall any of the rest of us if we put a foot wrong. That was a terrible burden to have carried around with us, and now I could feel it being lifted. We had a good meal that night, a wonderful pork stew and cold beer. Afterwards, we had a cake which tasted so wonderful I think they must have used eggs and real cream.
I think I need to add something here – the names of the recruits. Of course Axel Werner was dead, and I have already mentioned Wilhelm Richter. So apart from myself and Horst the remaining six were: Konrad Hartmann, Christian Schäfer, Arnold Bauer, Lothar Meier, Mathias Hahn and Carsten Möller.
The next morning, we left the house near Magdeburg for the very last time.
***
We were driven to Dortmund where we stayed in a large Wehrmacht barracks, all of us sharing one large room, but it was warm and the beds were comfortable. We were able to relax for a couple of hours, and there was a real sense of camaraderie: we had, we sensed, reached the end of our journey together. We had somehow survived – or so we thought.
The following afternoon we were taken to the police station in Hörde, in the south of the city. When we arrived Brigadeführer Reinher briefed us. He seemed rather nervous. ‘You have already shown that you are very well qualified for this mission. You have the right backgrounds, you all speak English well and you are the right age. In addition, the training at Magdeburg showed that you possess the right skills. However, this mission is so important that we also need to be absolutely certain you possess other essential qualities we are looking for: unquestioning obedience, an ice-cold nerve, decisiveness and, finally, the ability to undertake even the most unpleasant task in an efficient manner. We will now test all of those qualities.’
He went on to tell us that this police station was also the Gestapo headquarters for the area and they had brought together a number of enemies of the state, the kind of people for whom they no longer had any need.
We were then taken into the basement and to my dying day I will never forget the sight that greeted us. It was a very large room, brightly lit, and arranged against the far wall was a group of ten people, each of whom was naked and strapped to a post with a number hanging round their neck. There must have been at least another fifteen people in the room as we entered it. Half a dozen were in civilian clothes, and I took them to be Gestapo officers. The rest were guards, apart from two men operating a large movie camera on a slightly raised platform opposite the prisoners.
It was hard not to stare at the prisoners:; they were such a shocking sight. They all looked so frightened and pathetic. I have to be frank and say that this was the first time I had seen a naked woman in real life, although I know that this sounds like a most inappropriate observation.
Brigadeführer Reinher went to stand by a small table to the side of the row of prisoners. On the table was a small wooden box. A tall man in his early thirties, wearing a light grey suit, joined him. He spoke without introducing himself. He addressed the ten of us directly.
‘The vermin here are all enemies of the state. We have finished questioning them and we have no further purpose for them. In normal circumstances we would have disposed of them by now – but we giving you that honour.’ One of the other civilians addressed the prisoners in French. I have no knowledge of French, but I assume he was translating.
The man in the suit continued: ‘some of these people are members of the so-called resistance, some are Jews, some are black marketeers, others have engaged in defeatist behaviour.’
There was a pause while the Gestapo officer and Reinher conferred with each other. I noticed that the cameraman on the small stage was filming us and then panning across the row of prisoners. It was Brigadeführer Reinher who spoke next, this time directly to us.
‘Now we have come to the time when we can give these criminals what they deserve. You will be the ones carrying out that task. In this box there are numbers corresponding to the prisoners. Each of you will come up here as I call your name, pick a number and then go over to the prisoner and dispose of them. Remember what I told you upstairs: we are looking for obedience, an ice-cold nerve and the ability to carry out a task such as this in an efficient and decisive manner.’
It is impossible to describe exactly how I felt at this point. I had assumed the test would be to watch these people being executed. To be expected to kill them ourselves was unimaginable. I experienced a mixture of fear and disbelief, but also a very strange sense of understanding quite clearly what I had to do. I knew full well that if I did not do it I would certainly be killed too.
The Brigadeführer picked up a piece of paper and called out Arnold Bauer’s name. He marched swiftly to the table, gave a smart ‘Heil Hitler’ salute and took a piece of paper from the box. Seven: a woman whose crime had been to tell her neighbours she thought the war was lost. Arnold was handed a small knife and walked towards the woman, who only now fully understood what was going to happen to her. She started to wail, a sound that was more of sadness than fear. Without hesitating, Bauer grabbed the woman by the hair, pushed back her head and slit her throat. However, the blade was clearly too small and blunt to do the job cleanly. Blood was gushing everywhere and the woman was now screaming. She sounded as if she was drowning.
Bauer turned round, a look of panic on his face. He turned back to the woman and stabbed her repeatedly and violently about the torso – maybe a dozen times – before her body slumped, lifeless. Bauer walked back to the group, his face and uniform splattered with blood, and we all slapped him on the back. The prisoners were now all screaming and crying.
I do not propose describing each execution, if that is the right word, in detail. It is too horrific and has been the stuff of my nightmares for these past twenty-five or so years. The other five who came after Bauer and before me all killed their victims with much the same degree of violence that Bauer had used. All of the deaths were slow and brutal.
Wilhelm Richter came immediately before me. Without going into detail, let me tell you he set about his prisoner – I think it was a German Communist – with more enthusiasm than the rest of us. He spent so long tort
uring his prisoner that Brigadeführer Reinher eventually told him to hurry up. I selected number six, a black marketeer. I decided to use the knife, as I remembered from somewhere in my training that even a blunt knife could be lethal if used in the right way, and I was confident I remembered the method. I had to look right into the man’s face. His eyes were frozen, staring into the distance. I did my best to avoid staring at his naked body as I thrust the knife into his midriff and then pulled it sharply upwards. I could see his lips moving as I did so, but then they froze, as if in mid-sentence. His skin swiftly turned pale as life poured out of his body.
You do not need me to tell you how those moments have haunted me ever since, even though at the time I still believed I was doing my duty. What has compounded my feelings is that I am certain I know what he was mouthing at me as he died: ‘so young.’ Those were his last words, I am sure of it. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen those words being mouthed at me in my sleep, and sometimes even when I am awake. Each time it happens, I am as horrified as on the afternoon itself. And it is getting worse. I see those lips moving in front of me every day now. I am certain that they will be the last thing I see as I slip away from this earth. I was young – only eighteen – but from that moment on, I felt like an old man. I had been cursed.
Horst’s victim was a Jewish woman. He walked behind her and strangled her very fast, pushing his knee against the post to give him extra leverage. She seemed to lose consciousness very quickly. I would say that she died more quickly than any of the other prisoners. Horst had his head down as he walked back to stand next to me. I caught a glimpse of his face and I promise you, I saw that his eyes were moist, as if he was about to cry. He blinked a couple of times and a moment later he looked up, by which time he was composed again.