The Scourge of the Swastika

by Lord Russell of Liverpool

  In July 1943 Blomberg was head of the SIPO in Bergen and was informed by the German Admiral von Schrader, that a Norwegian MTB had been captured by German naval forces near Bergen and that some of the crew had been made prisoners, including a few wounded. Schrader said that these sailors were ‘pirates and not soldiers’ and were to be shot by the SIPO in accordance with the Commander-in-Chief’s order. Blomberg set the wheels in motion and the execution was carried out the following day after the prisoners had been interrogated.

  Blomberg’s statement ended as follows: ‘The firing squad took the dead bodies to Calmarhus garage in a lorry and guarded them there. During the following night, they were placed in coffins and taken on board a boat. The mate of the boat was Oberwachtmeister1 der Wasserschutzpolizei2 Tiedman from Hamburg. Explosives were fastened to all the coffins which were then blown up under water in accordance with general practice.’

  All these sailors and soldiers were bona fide members of the Allied forces, dressed in uniform, taking part in legitimate warfare, and as such were entitled to the protection of the Prisoner-of-War Convention of 1929, which was binding on all the belligerents concerned.

  In September 1944 parties of paratroopers from the Special Air Service Regiment1 were being dropped in the Vosges Mountains whence they operated to disrupt enemy rail communications in Eastern France. One such party, which consisted of an officer and ten men, was hiding in a small village called Raon l’Etape when it was attacked by superior forces and, after a brisk engagement in which the officer was wounded, the whole party was taken prisoner.

  The unit which captured them belonged to the SS, but for some reason which remains a mystery the prisoners were handed over to the Wehrmacht after interrogation, instead of being shot in accordance with the Commando Order.

  This greatly incensed the local SS commander when it came to his ears. Steps were at once taken to recover the prisoners, and within forty-eight hours this had been done, and they were safely confined in a Security Service camp near Strasbourg. The next week all the prisoners were taken to a selected spot in the surrounding country, made to dig their own graves, and then shot. In 1945 their bodies were discovered by a British War Crimes Investigation Unit and exhumed. Each prisoner had been shot in the back of the neck.

  In other similar incidents large numbers of SAS were murdered after being taken in battle, contrary to the Prisoner-of-War Convention of 1929.

  A party of thirty-two prisoners of war belonging to the Ist SAS Regiment, all in uniform, were captured in the Vienne Département by the German LXXXth Corps and taken to Poitiers prison. Whilst there they were interrogated by members of the SIPO under the command of a Dr Herold. Instructions were then received to hand the prisoners over to the SD in compliance with the Commando Order. Dr Herold, to his own credit and to everyone else’s surprise, refused to hand them over. The Corps Chief of Staff, Colonel Köstlin, warned Herold of the serious consequences which non-compliance with the order might entail, but the Herr Doktor stood firm in his refusal.

  The decision as to what fate should befall these prisoners was left, therefore, to the Corps Commander, General Kurt Gallenkamp, and the Chief of Staff was told to have them shot, and an officer from Corps Headquarters was detailed to see that this order was carried out.

  Two days later, as dawn broke, Lieutenant C., and twenty-nine of his men were taken from Poitiers in a truck to the place of execution. On arrival there, the Corps representative, Captain Schönig, told the officer that he and his men would all be shot ‘on the orders of Hitler’. Schönig also said that at that moment he was ashamed to be wearing the uniform of a German officer. Nevertheless he remained throughout the shooting, collected the prisoners’ identity discs, and duly reported to the Red Cross authorities that they had been killed in action.1

  About the same time another party of British paratroopers was dropped from an aircraft near their objective in the neighbourhood of Paris. They were also in full battle-dress.

  Shortly after landing they were surrounded by some local German troops and after suffering a few casualties seven were captured and taken to the ill-famed Gestapo Headquarters in the Avenue Foch, Paris. There they were questioned.

  Subsequently a doubt seems to have arisen as to whether they should be handed back to the Wehrmacht who had captured them or dealt with under the Commando Order. A report of their interrogation was, therefore, sent to RSHA, Berlin, together with a request for instructions for their disposal. As no reply was received two reminders had to be sent.

  Eventually, about a month later, a reply was received. This stated that the prisoners were to be shot within twenty-four hours and ‘in civilian clothes’. The following day they were made to change into civilian clothes and then put into a truck outside the Gestapo Headquarters. They were given sandwiches and told that they were ‘going on a long journey’. The drive lasted four hours and ended in a field near Noailles. The prisoners were then made to leave the truck and were marched to a clearing in a nearby wood. Their escort, who were armed with sub-machine-guns, placed the prisoners in a line and the firing party took up its position opposite them.

  The leader of the German party took out a piece of paper and reading from it told the British soldiers, through an interpreter, that they had been found guilty of collaborating with the French Maquis and condemned to death by shooting. There had, indeed, been no trial of any kind and any such finding would, in any event, not have been in accordance with the facts. Furthermore, the British party had made a legitimate airborne landing, carrying arms and dressed in uniform.

  What then happened is best told in the words of two men who survived. One of them was a Czech serving in the British Army. ‘I opened my handcuffs with my watch key’, he said, ‘and ran away down the hill. I was not hit. Later I made my way to a French village and after spending a few days in hiding joined the French Resistance.’

  The other, a Trooper Jones, said, ‘I made a run for it. When I had gone about fifteen yards I fell as I lost my balance through being handcuffed. A lot of firing broke out but I was not hit. After a little while I crawled to some trees and stood behind one of them. I saw the bodies of four of my comrades lying on the ground but no sign of the Germans, but there was a lot of firing near the road one hundred and fifty yards away. I hid in the woods for a time. I was then able to get away to a French village.’

  Those directly responsible for this shooting well knew that the Berlin order was illegal beyond all doubt, for it had clearly stated that the prisoners were to be shot in civilian clothes so that they might be mistaken for members of the Maquis. Furthermore the execution took place in a wood over four hours’ journey from Paris and all were fully aware that their victims were British prisoners of war captured in fair fight while wearing uniform.

  In 1943, as the Allied bombing of Germany grew in intensity, orders were given by the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe that prisoner-of-war camps should be established in the residential districts of large cities as it was thought that in this way the inhabitants might obtain a measure of protection. Failing that, there would at least be the consolation of knowing that if the residents in those areas were killed a number of Allied airmen prisoners of war would die with them.

  From the Führer’s Headquarters,

  3rd September 1943.

  The Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe proposes to establish camps for Air Force prisoners within the residential quarters of big cities, which will constitute at the same time a protection for the population of the towns, and to transfer all existing camps containing about 8,000 British and American Air Force prisoners to larger towns threatened by enemy air attacks.

  This order was clearly contrary to the spirit of Article 9 of the Prisoner-of-War Convention of 1929, which provided that prisoners of war should not be used so as to render by their presence, certain points or areas immune from bombardment.

  Furthermore, Article 2 provided that prisoners of war ‘are in the power of the hostile government but no
t of the individuals or Corps who have captured them. They must at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence, insults, and public curiosity. Measures of reprisals against them are prohibited.’

  In flagrant violation of these provisions many Allied airmen who had baled out of disabled aeroplanes over Germany were not treated as prisoners of war, but ill-treated, beaten, and murdered by German civilians often incited and always condoned by high officials.

  Goring, Himmler, and Kaltenbrunner held a series of important conferences during which a list was made of air operations which constituted ‘acts of terrorism’ as opposed to normal acts of warfare. All bombardment of the civil population was to be regarded as terrorism and it was decided that ‘lynch law should be the rule’.

  In an order issued on 10th August 1943 by Himmler to all senior executives, SS and police officers, and transmitted orally by them to their subordinates, the following appears: ‘It is not the task of the police to interfere in clashes between Germans and the English and American terror flyers who have baled out.’

  The German people were also incited to punish Allied airmen shot down over Germany. In an article in the Völkischer Beobachter of 29th May 1944 Goebbels wrote:

  It is only by the use of firearms that we can protect the lives of enemy pilots shot down during bombing attacks. Otherwise these men would be killed by the sorely tried population.

  Who is right here? The murderers who, after their cowardly misdeeds expect humane treatment from their victims, or the victims who wish to defend themselves on the principle of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. This question is not difficult to answer. It appears to us intolerable to use our soldiers and police against the German people who are only treating child murderers as they deserve.

  Martin Bormann, too, circularized all Reichleiters, Gauleiters, and Kreisleiters on this subject in May 1944.

  After stating that women and children had frequently been fired at on the roads by English and American airmen he wrote:

  Several instances have occurred where members of such aircraft, who have baled out or have made forced landings, were lynched on the spot immediately after capture by the populace which was incensed to the highest degree. No police measures were invoked against German civilians who had taken part in these incidents.

  After receipt of this circular, the Gauleiter of South Westphalia, Albert Hoffman, issued the following instructions to all county representatives, mayors, and police officials in his district.

  Fighter-bomber pilots who have been shot down are in principle not to be protected against the fury of the people. I expect all police officers to refuse to lend their protection to such gangsters. Authorities acting in contradiction to the popular sentiment will have to answer to me. All police and gendarmerie officials are to be informed immediately of my views.

  The Gauleiter of Baden and Alsace, the ill-famed Robert Wagner,1 issued an order throughout his Gau that all Allied airmen who were brought down or who had baled out were to be killed. He said that they were causing great ravages in Germany, that it was an inhuman war, and that no captured airman should be treated as a prisoner of war nor did he deserve any mercy.

  Such incitements were not without results. During 1944 and 1945 numerous attacks were made by German civilians on Allied airmen entitled to be treated as prisoners of war, and many were lynched by the populace or shot by the police or the Volkssturm.2

  A German named Grüner, who was a subordinate of Wagner, described in a statement made to an American war crimes investigator how he noticed, when passing through Rheinweiler, four British airmen who had been rescued from the Rhine by some German soldiers. The soldiers refused to take charge of the prisoners and Grüner then decided that he would execute them himself in obedience to Wagner’s orders. He shot all four in the back with a tommy-gun and then threw them back into the Rhine.

  On 21st June 1944, two Liberators were brought down near Mecklenburg. The two crews, totalling fifteen men, were uninjured. All were shot on the usual pretext of ‘attempting to escape’. This crime was confirmed by a document found in the files of the headquarters of the 11th Luftgaukommando. The document states that six members of the crew were shot while attempting to escape and the other nine handed over to the police in Waren. Seven of these were shot en route for a prison camp whilst attempting to escape, and the two officers, Lieutenants H., and L., were shot later that day on the same pretext.

  One of the most cowardly of these attacks was carried out jointly by the Allgemeine SS and Hitler Jugend.

  In February 1945 the town of Pforzheim in Southern Germany was heavily bombarded by Allied aircraft and badly damaged. There were many fatal casualties and a large number of homeless people had to be evacuated to the nearby town of Huchenfeld.

  Some three weeks afterwards, a Flying Fortress manned by a British crew was returning from a raid on Leipzig when it was hit by flak near Baden-Baden. The crew, consisting of ten officers and warrant officers, baled out and all landed safely. Seven were made prisoner and taken to the civil prison in Buhl where they were temporarily confined.

  The next morning they were marched through the streets of Pforzheim where they were maltreated by the local inhabitants and then taken to Huchenfeld. There they were lodged in the boiler house in the cellar of the new school and made preparations to settle down for the night. But before they could do so, a crowd of Germans burst open the door and swarmed into the cellar. With them was the Burgomaster who had been interrupted while attending a wedding reception.

  The guards left their prisoners to the mercy of the angry crowd which first roughly handled them and then dragged them outside into the street and towards the cemetery.

  On the way there, three of the airmen succeeded in escaping, but one of these, a flying officer, was later recaptured and confined in a neighbouring police station. The following day he was taken from his cell and led past a crowd of Germans who were standing outside an air-raid shelter. He was set upon, beaten almost to a pulp, and finally shot by a sixteen-year-old member of the Hitler Youth who, in his own words ‘gave the officer a coup-de-grâce shot in his head from my pistol’. The German police took no steps to restrain the crowd and no arrests were made.

  The remaining four prisoners, who had not managed to get away, were taken by the crowd to the cemetery and there shot.

  The Hitler Youth played a major role in this affair. As one of them wrote afterwards: ‘The Bannführer1 made a short speech which made our young blood boil, then he distributed weapons and ammunition. We were told that there were seven British airmen in the Huchenfeld school and that we were to take them away and shoot them.’

  When the crowd had rushed into the school cellar they had clearly intended to kill the prisoners there, and it was only through the intervention of the Burgomaster that the airmen were taken to the cemetery. But his anxiety was not for the aircrew. He objected vehemently to the idea of their being shot in the school cellar. ‘It would’, he said, ‘be a continual horror for our children who have to go inside.’

  Shortly after the airmen had been shot, the Burgomaster returned to the wedding party from which he had been so abruptly dragged away earlier in the evening.

  On the night of 24th/25th March 1944, seventy-six Air Force officer prisoners of war escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan in Silesia. Fifteen were quickly recaptured and taken back to camp, three made successful escapes, eight were detained by the Gestapo after recapture, and the remaining fifty were shot by the Germans.

  The first intimation of their fate was given on 6th April when the acting Commandant read to the senior British officer in the camp a statement issued by OKW to the effect that forty-one had been shot, ‘some of them having offered resistance on being arrested, others having tried to escape on the transport back to camp’. No names were given.

  Nine days later the British officer was handed a list containing the names of forty-seven who had been shot and a month later three
more names were supplied. In each case the same reasons were given.

  It was quite untrue that these men had been shot resisting recapture or attempting to re-escape. They had all been shot by the Gestapo on the direct orders of Hitler.

  The first information to reach the outside world was a communication which was handed in June to the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Monsieur Naville, in reply to an inquiry he had made as the representative in Germany of the Protecting Power. This Note stated that thirty-seven prisoners of British nationality and thirteen not of British nationality, escaped from Stalag Luft III, had been shot when offering resistance to recapture or whilst attempting to escape after recapture, and that urns containing their ashes had been sent to Sagan for burial.

  M. Naville, however, was not deceived by the German Note. In his reply he described the cremation as ‘most unusual, the normal custom being to bury a prisoner in a coffin with military honours’ and pointed out that if, as the Germans alleged, these fifty officers who were recaptured in widely scattered parts of Germany had resisted or attempted a second escape, it was probable that some would have been wounded and most improbable that all would have been killed.

  It was as stupid of the Germans not to have seen this flaw in their story as it was wise of them to refuse to give the Protecting Power, as was the usual custom, details of the true circumstances in which these officers lost their lives. Let Keitel himself, continue the narrative: ‘One morning it was reported to me that the escape had taken place and that about fifteen of the officers had been recaptured in the vicinity of the camp. I did not intend to report this case at the midday conference at Berchtesgaden as it was the third mass escape within a very brief period.’

  But Himmler forestalled him and announced the incident to his Führer in Keitel’s presence. Hitler was furious, and said that the prisoners were to remain with the SD after recapture and not to be returned to the custody of the Armed Forces. He ordered Himmler to see that this was done.