The Venlo Incident

by Nigel Jones

  One of the first of my fellow prisoners whom I met was old Count von Alvensleben, to whom I apologized for my rather brusque behaviour when he spoke to me on my first arrival. He was a dear old man, slightly senile although he was only just seventy; whenever he could he buttonholed me and told me interminable stories about his hunting expeditions in Canada and his amatory successes everywhere. His first words, whenever we met, related to the end of the war, and with bated breath he would mention a date some fortnight or three weeks later as though it had been communicated to him from heaven. He had always opposed Hitler but, as he was old and harmless, he had been left to live more or less in peace on his estate in Westphalia. After the 20th July attempt on Hitler’s life he was, like so many others, suddenly arrested and taken to Buchenwald, for although he had himself taken no part in the conspiracy many of those who had, amongst them Field-Marshall von Witzleben, were friends of his. No charge had been brought against him, and he had not even been interrogated; nevertheless about a fortnight after I reached Buchenwald he was informed that he had been sentenced to two years imprisonment, and was taken away to serve his sentence at the prison at Münster. He was highly delighted with this turn of events as Münster was close to his home and would certainly soon be in Allied hands.

  General von Rabenau and his companion, Dietrich Bonnhöfer, were alike only in the fact that both were deeply religious. Von Rabenau, the author of A Life of General von Seeckt, had reached the rank of full general and had retired from the army in order to devote himself to religious study, having since taken degrees in both arts and divinity. He was a militant churchman who retained about him the authoritative bearing of the soldier and was, I imagine, inclined to expect unquestioning obedience to his religious opinions. Bonnhöfer, on the other hand, was all humility and sweetness; he always seemed to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. There was something dog-like in the look of fidelity in his eyes and his gladness if you showed that you liked him. He was one of the very few men that I have ever met to whom his God was real and ever close to him. Yet both these men, each of them deeply religious in his own way, had played an active role in the plot to depose Hitler, which culminated in the events of 20th July, 1944. I do not know whether they were actually involved to the extent that they knew that Hitler’s removal was to be effected by assassination, but they were in the confidence of all the main conspirators, and Bonnhöfer in particular had played an important role as messenger and connecting link between different parts of the country. Both men had been tried before a People’s Court and both had heard the death sentence passed on them. Why execution had been postponed, and why they had instead been sent to Buchenwald, was something they could not understand.

  Another active member in the 20th July plot was Captain Gehre. When he heard of the failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life, realizing that his arrest was imminent, he shot his wife and tried to commit suicide, but succeeded only in blowing out his right eye. He had been nursed back to health by the Gestapo, had been tortured and interrogated, and finally condemned to death by a People’s Court. He was a spare, dark, good-looking man of about thirty, and the absolute opposite of his room mate, Dr. Josef Müller, who, indeed, looked upon him, as he did on practically everyone with whom he came in contact, with the deepest suspicion. Müller was a very important man, and knew it. He was, next to Cardinal Faulhauber, probably the most influential representative of Roman Catholicism in Germany and Hitler’s most bitter enemy. To look at he was just an ordinary stoutish little man with a florid complexion and drab fair hair cut en brosse, the sort of man whom you would not look at a second time if you met him anywhere and yet, one of the bravest and most determined men imaginable. He had spent some three years in the hands of the Gestapo, during which they had exhausted their arts in efforts to get him to talk, but in vain.

  In revenge for their failure they had made his imprisonment as intolerable as possible. For two and a half years he had been confined in a small, dark, unheated underground cell, chained day and night. His hands were handcuffed together and his feet clamped to an iron bar one and a half yards long so that his feet were kept some two feet apart. His bunk was fixed to the wall and the bar was so long that it was impossible for him to rest both feet on the bed at once. The only occasion when these fetters were removed was once a month, when he bathed and changed his underlinen; for the rest, he wore them night and day and consequently could never remove his clothes. Add to this insufficient food of the coarsest possible kind and frequent beatings up about the head and face with rubber truncheons, and it will be understood that for him Buchenwald seemed like heaven, even though he had grown somewhat distrustful of his fellow men. Because I was English and because he remembered all details of my capture he accepted me at face value and eventually we became very good friends.

  Of the Heberleins, the grey mare was undoubtedly the better horse. A mixture of Irish and Spanish blood cannot fail to produce something vivid and out of the ordinary. Margot Heberlein was all of this; indeed, she was so full of fire and energy that I had my work cut out to restrain her when in her impatience for action she interfered in delicate and difficult negotiations in which I was engaged with our jailers. She always wanted quite a lot of things, and she wanted them at once; she was as big a trial to her captors as two British prisoners, which is saying a lot. Her husband? A charming man, a diplomat of the old school, with impeccable manners and the impaired digestion of his class. Conversation was for him a screen designed to hide his feelings and thoughts from the world, and so much of his life had been passed in that atmosphere of make-believe which is called diplomacy, that I often doubted whether he really knew where he was and why. His wife tended him, shielded him, and was ready to fight for him.

  Heberlein had been German Ambassador at Madrid and, as a professional diplomat, had carried on with his duties even though, as he declared, he was from the first an opponent of the Nazi regime. One day he went on leave and at its end did not return to his post, but continued to stay at the house of relatives of his wife. He was ordered to return and report at once to Berlin, but again disobeyed. This, of course, was more than the Gestapo could tolerate, so one night three or four men broke into the bedroom where the Heberleins were sleeping, laid Heberlein out with a blow on the head and bundled his wife up in the bed clothes. Both were then taken down a ladder, put into a car, driven to an airfield, and flown to Bordeaux, where they were imprisoned for some weeks. They were in their night clothes and were given nothing else to put on, so for warmth had to make shift with the blankets in which Mrs. Heberlein’s cries had been stifled. They were then flown to Berlin where each was confined in a different prison until October 1944. Then, without warning, they were suddenly taken by car to Sachsenhausen, where they were conducted to what they called a magnificent and comfortably furnished suite, where they also found luggage containing clothes and other effects which had apparently been sent from Spain. Neither had ever been interrogated, and they were entirely ignorant of everything that had happened in the world since their capture, as they had seen no papers nor been allowed to receive or write letters; they had simply been forwarded from one place to another like parcels.

  Dr. Pünder was a man who concealed a keen intelligence behind almost exaggerated politeness and good breeding. This formed rather a barrier to any intimacy between us, for after five years spent in the company of men of the working class my conversational style had become more graphic than polite, and I was, I fear, rather too much inclined to call a spade a bloody shovel. Our relations were, however, perfectly amicable, and I even succeeded in winning his gratitude by presenting him with my best tie, one of those delicate grey creations worn at weddings and other formal social functions, which certainly helped him to appear as well as to act as a one-time Secretary of State. His cell mate, Commander Franz Liedig, was a member of the staff of Admiral Canaris, the chief of the Germany coun
ter-espionage organization, and had been stationed in Greece. Admiral Canaris, until his own arrest by the Gestapo, had been the influential hidden hand behind all plots against Hitler, and had used his organization to plant members of the opposition in key positions and to help others to escape arrest by fleeing the country.

  I do not in the least know what had been Liedig’s role, as it was not customary amongst prisoners to ask any questions, but it was obvious that at the time of which I am speaking he did not himself believe that he had much longer to live. Conversation with him was particularly interesting to me because he had such detailed knowledge of the German railway system, and could therefore estimate the possibility of any mass movement of troops from the north to what was already known as the Southern Redoubt. It was his opinion that even at this time, the beginning of March 1945, such a movement was no longer feasible, and that for all practical military purposes Germany had already been cut in half, into a northern and a southern zone. This was important, for rumours were already current that our final destination was the neighbourhood of Berchtesgaden, where Hitler intended to make his last stand, and that it was intended to use us as hostages to be bartered in exchange for the safety of important members of the Nazi hierarchy.

  Colonel von Petersdorff, who later became a great friend of mine, was a wild adventurous fellow. In the First World War he had been wounded six times and already in 1914 had lost the use of his right arm. After the 1918 armistice he had joined one of the free corps operating in the Baltic, with which he had had a number of hair-breadth escapes. When the Nazi Party started he became one of the earliest members and, as a very wealthy man, a most valuable recruit. When Hitler rose to power in 1933 and showed that his reading of his election pledges was different from what they had generally been believed to mean, von Petersdorff immediately went into opposition and joined the party of dissidents in the S.A. under the leadership of Roehm, narrowly missing being one of the victims of the subsequent bloody purge. After this he went underground and came into association with most of those actively engaged in conspiracy against the Nazi regime. On the outbreak of war though he could not resist the call to arms and immediately volunteered for service. He took part in the Polish campaign and, in the invasion of France, commanded the armoured reconnaissance unit, which was the first to reach the coast on the English Channel near Abbeville. For this action he was awarded the Knight’s Cross to the Iron Cross, being one of the first three men to receive this decoration. Very soon afterwards he was again in active opposition even though he continued to take part in the war, being wounded a further four times.

  He had been involved in the 20th July plot and was one of the many hundreds of army officers arrested after its failure. Luckily, the Gestapo failed to find any proofs of his complicity, and although a case was made out against him and he was brought before a People’s Court, he was acquitted. The Gestapo, as was often the case, did not agree with the verdict, and at once arrested von Petersdorff and consigned him to the prison in Laehrterstrasse, in Berlin. When this was destroyed by bombs on 3rd February, 1945, he was buried under debris in his cell, suffering injury to lungs and kidneys, for which he was given no treatment of any kind. When I met him he was obviously a very sick man, but his spirit was indomitable, and throughout the rest of our adventures as prisoners he never shirked danger or responsibility.

  Of all the party at Buchenwald, the one whom I liked most and whom to this day I consider one of the finest men I have ever met, was General Freiherr von Falkenhausen, late German Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in Belgium and Northern France. A member of an old family of the German nobility he had done distinguished service in the First World War, receiving the ‘Pour le mérite’, the highest German decoration for bravery. Until the outbreak of the Second World War he had been in China, where he was head of a military mission engaged in the reorganization of the forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The East, and particularly Chinese philosophy, had always exercised a great attraction on him, and as he found his work show greater and greater success he made up his mind to make his home in China. With the rise to power of Hitler, who represented everything in politics that he found most abhorrent, he even decided to relinquish his German nationality and adopt that of his new home. When, however, Nazi Germany attempted to secure the co-operation of Japan and her adhesion to the Axis power block, objection was raised to the fact that a German mission was assisting China in her fight against Japanese aggression, and orders were issued from Berlin that von Falkenhausen should liquidate his organization and return to Germany.

  When this order reached him, the general reported the matter to Chiang Kai-shek, who at once said that to his great regret he could not permit him to leave China. Owing to his position, von Falkenhausen was fully informed as to every detail of China’s military organization and her plans for the future and, since Germany was now flirting with her enemy and seemed even to contemplate a close military alliance, to permit him to return to Germany would be tantamount to disclosing all China’s most secret information to Japan. Von Falkenhausen at once said that he had no wish to return to Germany and that he hoped that the Generalissimo would refuse to sanction his return, and would facilitate his adoption of Chinese nationality so that he could continue in his service. Chiang Kai-shek was in full agreement and von Falkenhausen wrote at length to Berlin explaining his position. The next thing that happened was that he received a telegram signed by von Ribbentrop personally, informing him that unless he left for Germany by a boat due to sail in about three weeks’ time, all his property would be confiscated and all members of his family would be sent to concentration camps.

  Again von Falkenhausen reported to Chiang Kai-shek who, he said, “like the fine gentleman he was”, immediately told him that under such circumstances he could not of course think of preventing him from leaving the country. He was sure that China’s interests were safe in his hands, and he hoped that he would find it possible to return soon and take up his duties again. He would not allow him to resign from his service but would grant him leave of indefinite duration during which he would be on full pay.

  When von Falkenhausen returned to Germany attempts were made to obtain information from him regarding China’s defence plans, but he absolutely refused to give any information about such matters. At that time, when he was already contemplating war, Hitler did not feel himself strong enough to take violent action against a general of such high reputation as von Falkenhausen, especially since the case of von Fritsch, who had been a victim of a Gestapo conspiracy, was still fresh in the memory of all German officers, so von Falkenhausen was permitted to return to his home. When, however, France, Holland and Belgium were overrun in 1940, von Falkenhausen was appointed Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in Holland and Belgium. At that time it was still Nazi policy to pretend that they had entered these countries, not as aggressors, but as liberators, in the mistaken belief that large sections of the population headed by Mussart and Degrelle, the Dutch and Belgian Quislings, would be willing to co-operate with them. Von Falkenhausen was therefore appointed because he was well known for his liberal views, and it was thought that he might succeed in establishing a government which would reconcile the mass of the population to German occupation, and even bring it gradually into the Nazi camp.

  Von Falkenhausen raised many objections before he would consent to accept the appointment, and when he actually did so in 1941 Holland had already been taken from him and given to Seiss-Inquart, and his command in Belgium was then extended to cover Northern France. He told me that when he heard of Seiss-Inquart’s appointment in Holland he knew what that would mean for that unfortunate country, and had he not accepted the post in Belgium that country also would have suffered under the rule of some dyed-in-the-wool Nazi.

  Throughout his term as Governor-General a bitter war was waged between him and the Gestapo until, when he came to Berlin one day in 1944, he was arrested on arrival and imprisoned in one of the lower dungeons in
the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. He had been brought to Buchenwald a day or two before our party arrived, without ever having been interrogated or charged with any offence; he was in a very bad state, starved and verminous, and one of the first things that happened after my arrival was the delousing of his own and the two neighbouring cells.

  Three or four days after reaching Buchenwald, Sippach told me one evening that they were expecting a new prisoner, an Englishman, and that very possibly he would have to share my cell as they were short of room. Of course I was delighted with this news and could hardly sleep that night; anyhow, there was a big raid on Weimar and so much disturbance that sleep would have been difficult in any case. I heard the arrival of a car and the sound of someone being brought into the cell next to mine. Next morning, when I went to wash, there was a little man with a ginger moustache in the lavatory who introduced himself as Dr. Rascher saying that he was half English and that his mother was related to the Chamberlain family. When I told him my name he was much interested saying that he knew all about my case, and that he had also met Stevens when he was medical officer at Dachau. We could not talk much at this first meeting, but I often managed to have my exercise at the same time as he and, probably because he was an SS officer, the warders raised no objection to our talking together. He was a queer fellow; possibly the queerest character which has ever come my way.