by Nigel Jones
Our situation did not look any too good to me, and as the day passed several people told me of snatches of conversation between the guards which they had overheard, which indicated that they did not consider our expectation of life any too good either. I did everything that I could to allay people’s fears and assured everyone that I was quite certain we should come through safely, for several seemed to be thinking of attempting escape and I was pretty sure that any action of this nature would arouse the murderous inclinations of Bader’s men. If only we could get safely into Italy and our guards away from their home ground we might have a better chance of organizing opposition to their plans. I talked this over with Colonel Churchill who had the most definite escape plans and, as I thought, convinced him that our best plan would be to see the thing through together.
My Dachau friends brought with them the news that little Rascher had been shot the previous evening. When he went to the window in the door of his cell to take in his supper he was met by a pistol bullet instead of the expected bowl of soup. Undoubtedly he deserved his fate, which probably spared him the ordeal of trial and hanging at Allied hands, yet I could not help feeling sorry, for we had been through much together and always he had behaved with gallantry and been our loyal comrade.
Just before sunset that evening the whole party, now numbering over 130 people, embarked in buses assembled at the entrance; I believe that there were five in all as well as the lorry in which we had travelled from Innsbruck. I managed to get into a comfortable bus with my Dachau friends after a little difficulty with Stiller who had intended to put Stevens in with McGrath, who was already in the bus. I said that I had already done my share of uncomfortable travelling and as Stevens was ten years younger than I, it could do him no harm to do a spell as well; McGrath backed me up, so I was able to do this last bit of my long journey under conditions which approached luxury. As a matter of fact I was so thin and my stern so sore that I was afraid if I did any more sitting on hard seats my bones would come through my skin.
There were, of course, the usual delays before everything was ready for departure, and it was about nine o’clock by the time we got started. There followed the usual night journey in pitch darkness but from the first there was no doubt about the direction: we were on our way across the Brenner and to Italy. We jogged along at the usual fifteen miles an hour until we got to the top of the Brenner, where the convoy came to a halt and remained motionless for over an hour. There must have been some moon for I can remember that everything around seemed to be in ruins—near where we were stationed there was a concrete bunker and most of our guards went to earth there. Later we heard that we had stopped in this desolate spot in the hope that there might be an air raid, for these were of nightly occurrence, in which case we should all have been shot down and our death attributed to bombing. Luckily, the weather was very cloudy and there was no air raid.
Dawn was just breaking when we completed our traverse of the Brenner and continued along the lovely road which leads to Bozen. We had, however, heard rumours that our destination was a village in the Puster Thai and sure enough, when we reached Franzensfeste, we turned left on the road leading to Lienz and Klagenfurt in Austria. Dr. Schuschnigg, a Tirolese by birth, was familiar with every inch of this part of the country and knew the name of each village. At about nine o’clock our convoy came to a halt, and then turned to the right along a narrow road and over a level crossing; then there was another stop and much discussion between Stiller, Bader, and the rest of our guard. Our bus, and two or more others, were then backed out of the side turning on to the main road again, lined up, stopped apparently for good, and we were told that we might get out.
It was an open stretch of road with fields sloping to a copse on one side and a railway line on the other. Sentries armed with tommy guns took up positions along the road at intervals of about ten yards, and we were permitted to exercise ourselves between them and the buses. I managed to get hold of Stiller and asked him what was the plan. He said that he had intended to take us to a nearby hotel but had learnt that this was occupied by an air force staff and he really did not know what to do next; could not indeed do anything until he had found some petrol, as the tanks of his transport were almost empty. The general impression was that Stiller not only could not do anything but did not much want to, and it looked rather as though he were adopting only passive resistance to Bader’s wish to liquidate the whole lot of us, and thus be free to move to a better spot with whatever loot could be obtained from our luggage. The great idea, though, still seemed to be to hope for an air raid as an excuse for shooting us down.
I was by this time on pretty good terms with quite a number of our guards, including some of Bader’s men who had been with us at Schöneberg, and although they would have shot us if ordered to, they did not seem at all keen to begin—one or two to whom I talked seemed to think that it would not be a bad idea to make a start by shooting Stiller and Bader, but although I was encouraging, the idea was not put into practice. Stiller was quite obviously scared and inclined to favour our survival in the hope that we might put in a good word for him if he were captured by our troops. He was senior in rank to Bader and had thirty of his own men to Bader’s twenty, none of whom had the slightest wish to be involved in mass murder; most were quite decent fellows, many of them old Wehrmacht soldiers who had been drafted into the SS after their recovery from wounds. Could Stiller be induced to act?
The problem seemed to me one which could best be settled amongst the Germans, for I had already gone about as far as I dared in my attempts to influence Stiller and his men, so I got Schacht and Thyssen together, as the plutocrats of our party, and suggested that the time had come for a little bribery and corruption; would they put up the money for a substantial reward if Stiller agreed to take us all to the Swiss frontier so that we could cross to safety? They were quite ready to act as bankers and agreed on an offer of 100,000 Swiss francs, but neither they nor anyone else was prepared to approach Stiller and make him an offer; they were not even willing to come with me while I put it up to Stiller.
While this conversation was going on, Dr. von Schuschnigg was recognized by some cyclists who passed him and these reported his presence to a certain Dr. Ducia, a leader of the underground resistance movement who happened to be in the nearby village of Niederdorf. Not long afterwards, Ducia himself came along and, after a talk with Dr. von Schuschnigg, spoke to Stiller and told him that he could arrange for the feeding and billeting of his party in the village. Ducia went backwards and forwards several times between our car park and the village before Stiller would agree to any move being made, but in the end, as he and his men also felt the pangs of hunger, agreed to a mass movement towards the village and food. Ducia had already told us that we would be quite safe from air attack as he had succeeded in communicating with the American Army by clandestine radio; he also said that once we were in the village he hoped to find some means of assuring our safety—perhaps the Allies might be induced to make a landing by air to relieve us.
The distance to the village was about a mile and I walked between General Thomas and Fabian von Schlabrendorf, one of the only surviving participants in the 20th July plot. Just as we were entering the village there was a call of “Thomas! Thomas!” and a lieutenant-general standing by a building on our left rushed in a state of great excitement to General Thomas and threw his arms round him in affectionate embrace, and then both left the ranks and went away together. In the village Ducia led a number of us into an hotel where he said we should be given food, and then took the rest on somewhere else. Can you imagine our joy and excitement at being in a real hotel, welcomed by a friendly proprietress and brightly clad Tirolese waitresses? First we took it in turn to have a real good wash and then we all sat down at a long table and steaming bowls of food, a sort of stew of liver and mushrooms were brought in—would we like some wine? Would we! We were a charabanc load of beanfeasters—all shouting and laughing—and eating and drinking.
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p; Halfway through our meal Thomas came in with the news that the town major, the lieutenant-general who had welcomed him, was one of his oldest and best friends and was most eager to help us. There followed a long discussion as to what action could be taken and how Thomas’s friend could help. I put forward the argument that as we were now in army operation area the general commanding should be warned that if anything happened to us he would certainly be held responsible by the Allies. Thomas said that he did not know General Vietinghof, the general commanding the German southern armies, personally, but at this von Bonin said that he knew him extremely well. In the end it was agreed that Thomas should take von Bonin to his friend and try to get permission for him to telephone to Vietinghof and both went off on this mission.
After dinner we all walked back to our buses which, since they carried all our worldly possessions, we could not afford to neglect, then came a hitch. My bus, which was the last in the queue; started, ran a hundred yards or so, and then stopped—no petrol. There was only the driver and one guard with us, and they could not leave us to go to the village for help, so there was nothing for it but to wait in the hope that someone would pass and take a message; but no one did and as time went on it began to look as though we were stranded for the night. At last the guard agreed that one of our party should go to the village and ask for help, and I think that it was von Schlabrendorf who went; anyhow, the result was that one of the other buses came back and took us in tow. I had been very worried at the delay for naturally I was eager to hear the result of Thomas’s and von Bonin’s attempt to get the army to intervene in our predicament.
When we got to the village we were met by Ducia, who had arranged billets for all; quite a number of the men would have to put up with beds of straw at the town hall, but von Falkenhausen had arranged a room for himself, Thomas and me at Hotel Bachmann, and when I got there Andy Walsh, one of the Irish soldiers with McGrath, was waiting to look after me and my luggage, having apparently decided to act as my batman. There was no news of Thomas and von Bonin and no one had seen or heard anything of them since they left us after dinner, so as there were rumours that wine was to be had at the hotel if one talked prettily to the proprietress, McGrath and I decided to try our luck and found our way to the kitchen. A couple of our guards, Fritz, the quarter-master-sergeant, and one of Bader’s men, were already there with a bottle of wine before them so, hoping that there was some truth in the saying ‘in vino veritas’, and that it might be possible to extract some information from them, I asked whether we could join them, to which they gave cordial assent. It was obvious that the bottle on which they were engaged was far from their first and their mood was distinctly mellow.
Fritz was by turns lachrymose and truculent, talking about his wife and innocent children, or about how he would never be taken prisoner alive, and Bader’s man was in the glassy-eyed stage which presages an imminent ‘pass-out’. The kitchen was warm and brightly lighted and our hostess, although it was near midnight, was still busy with pots and pans at her kitchen stove, apparently preparing a meal for herself and family. I told Fritz what a good fellow he was and how well he had always behaved towards us, and he told me that he looked upon me as a dear friend and proposed that we should drink Brüderschaft. I said that I would certainly put in a good word for him when he fell into the hands of our troops, which started him off blustering again and boasting how many tommies he would take with him. When he calmed down again he said: “Yes, I know you are my friend and would help me if you were alive.” Then he pulled a paper out of his pocket and spelling through it he said: “Here is the order for your execution; you won’t be alive after tomorrow.”
“What nonsense is that,” I said. “Surely no one is going to be such a fool as to shoot any of us at this stage of the war. Why, the whole lot of you will be prisoners yourselves in a day or two.” This started him off again saying that no one would ever take him prisoner, and that all SS men would fight to the last, and his glassy-eyed friend revived sufficiently to start muttering “Shoot them all down—bum, bum, bum—bump them all off is best,” and he began fumbling at his pistol holster.
“No, it is quite certain. See, here it is in black and white—an order from the Reichssicherheitsdienst in Berlin,” and Fritz pushed a paper under my nose. He waved it about a good deal and I could not read it all, but it was an order that the following prisoners must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy and were to be liquidated should there be danger of this occurring. Then followed a long list of names which, as it reached to the bottom of the page, was probably continued on the back which I did not see. I saw the names of Schuschnigg, Blum, Niemöller, Schacht, Müller, Falkenhausen, Thomas and Haider, as well as Stevens and myself.
“You surely don’t mean to tell me that Stiller will be such a fool as to carry out this order—why, I have been talking to him today and he assured me that we could rely upon him to hand us over safely to the Americans when they reach here.”
“Stiller! Don’t you make any mistake about it. It is Bader who runs this show, and he says he is going to liquidate all the prisoners —he has had his orders to do so for the past three months, and Bader always carries out his orders.”
“Now, Fritz,” I said, “we have just drunk Brüderschaft, surely you don’t intend to take part in killing me.”
“Ja, Herr Best—but what can I do? You are all going up to a hotel in the mountains tomorrow which, after you have all been shot will be set on fire. I don’t like it at all. I know what shooting people with these tommy guns is like, half of them are not properly dead—the bullets are too small and you can’t aim properly—so a lot of people won’t be dead when the place is set on fire.” He thought deeply for a time and then continued, “Herr Best, you are my friend. I will tell you what we will do. I will give you a sign before they start shooting and you come and stand near me so that I can give you a shot in the back of the head (Nackenschuss)—that is the best way to die—you won’t know anything about it—I am a dead shot—never miss.” Then he went on to explain the special technique of killing people pleasantly by this means. “You mustn’t touch them with your pistol for then they may flinch and your shot go astray. No, you have to aim very carefully as the bullet must take a certain line to kill a man instantly and—you must do it quickly. I can do it without looking, almost.”
He pulled out his pistol and said: “Just turn round and I will show you.”
“Don’t be silly! How can I see what you do behind my back—why you might have an accident and shoot me now.” He turned to his pal and said: “You turn your head so that I can show Herr Best how to give the ‘Nackenschuss’.” But he only stared, muttering again about “bump them all off” and, with a sweep of his arm knocked bottle and glasses from the table.
Our further conversation was inconclusive. The other man passed right out and lay with his head and shoulders on the table and Fritz became more and more melancholy as he told me how his wife and innocent children had no idea that he had killed hundreds, no thousands of people, and that war was a terrible thing, but that it was all the fault of the Jews and plutocrats in England and America—the Führer was a good man and only wanted peace, and so did the common people everywhere, but the Jews were a pest which destroyed everything in its path.
McGrath, who did not understand German had left us some time ago, and as I was feeling pretty well dead tired I took the first opportunity I could of going too. When I got up to our room I found only von Falkenhausen who said that he had heard nothing of Thomas and von Bonin. I did not tell him of my talk with Fritz as there was nothing that we could do, and the more people that knew, the greater likelihood of panic. Of course it would have been a simple matter simply to pull out and escape for we were in a friendly country and I would have had no difficulty in finding a hiding place. As a matter of fact, one member of our party did escape that night. It was, I think, a cowardly action, such as even the bravest man is sometimes guilty of—luckily his escape was never di
scovered by our guards for if it had been, it would certainly have led to their taking precipitate action against the rest of us. My consolation is that he did not get far but spent an uncomfortable, and very cold week, wandering about in the mountains until he was found by the American troops who relieved the rest of our party.
It was not until about 3 a.m. that Thomas turned up. He and Bonin had spent all the time waiting for a reply from General Vietinghof who was not at his headquarters when they first rang up. They had spoken to his Chief of Staff who had promised to speak to the general, but it was after two before he rang them up again with his answer. Vietinghof admitted at once that the war was at an end, and that although his orders were to retire fighting to the Dolomites, he was trying to arrange for an end to hostilities. Certainly no harm must come to any prisoners in his army area, and he promised that he would send an officer with a company of infantry at once with orders to ensure our safety. He promised also to notify the Americans where we were and to ask them to regard the Niederdorf area as neutral ground—if forced to retire he would not establish any fighting line there.
This news was most heartening and for the rest of that night we put in some intensive sleep—I did, though von Falkenhausen complained that I had kept him awake by grunting like a wart hog in between loud snores. Early next morning von Bonin and Liedig came along and we held a council of war. Bonin told us that the officer whom Vietinghof had promised to send had arrived, but that he had only fifteen men with him and moreover had no authority to take any military action against the SS and SD detachments if they refused to allow him to take charge of the prisoners. Later, I spoke to him myself. He was a very charming, correctly behaved young officer, but so afraid of exceeding his authority that he was of little use to us in our present position. We all felt that if he were to start parleying with a man like Bader his weakness of character would be so apparent that it would only make the position worse, so we decided that the best thing would be for von Bonin to try and get him to stay put and refrain from any action for the time being. For our part, we would get hold of Stiller and see whether we couldn’t put the wind up him.