Trudging to and fro between the convoy and the village, Ducia was able to relay a message to Payne Best. He told him that he had managed to contact the US Army by clandestine radio and that he had asked them to mount an air rescue.
Meanwhile, Bonin, after walking into Villabassa, had gone to the post office, where he had tried to call General von Vietinghoff, an old friend and Wehrmacht contemporary. Vietinghoff was the Supreme Commander of the German Army in Italy and his headquarters at Bolzano were close by. Bonin’s idea was to ask the general to send a company of infantry to protect the prisoners from the SS. Unable to get through to him, Bonin spoke to General Roettiger, the chief of staff, whom he also knew. Roettiger agreed in principle but said he would have to clear it with Vietinghoff, who was not at headquarters. He promised to ask him as soon as he returned.
By the end of that day, the Prominenten were no closer to being rescued: Bonin had been unable to get through to his friend; Thyssen and Schacht lacked the courage to bribe Stiller; and the partisan ambush was not scheduled to take place until the following evening. Ducia’s radio message to the US Army remained their best hope; but there was no airfield nearby and the chances of the Americans diverting much-needed ground troops to rescue prisoners, more than half of whom were German, were remote.
Conversely, Bader, in executing his order to liquidate the prisoners, was confronted with an impossible scenario. While most of the women and children remained on the buses, the others had drifted into Villabassa and were now scattered in bars and restaurants around the village. Logistically, until he could assemble them in one place, he had no means of killing them, other than picking them off one by one – an option he ruled out. At this late stage in the war, with so many witnesses, he risked compromising himself. Via informants, Bader had also learned of the coming partisan attack. The layout of the medieval village, with its web of back streets and narrow alleyways running off the main square, made it awkward to defend and – against a rumoured partisan force of over a thousand – it was obvious that his detachment of fifty SS would be overrun.
In these circumstances, early that evening, Bader opted to round up the POWs and the younger Wehrmacht officers. But, in a place that had altered little since the fifteenth century, even this was not straightforward. One of the few coaching stations in the Puster Valley, Villabassa had been an important commercial centre and its hub – the Piazza Santa Trinità – was lined with mansions that had formerly belonged to wealthy merchants. With their pretty pastel-coloured facades and gabled roofs, the advent of the tourist industry meant they were now hotels. The small rooms and the multiple entrances, some giving on to courtyards behind, made them unsuitable prisons.
The one secure building was the town hall, which overlooked the piazza. Formerly a customs house, the ground-floor windows were barred. After posting sentries throughout the building, Bader set up a makeshift headquarters in front of it – the SS supply trucks, grouped together in the centre of the square, incongruous in the picturesque setting.
It was clear to the military prisoners that Bader was purposely rounding up ‘the troublemakers’. As ‘Jimmy’ James recalled, when word circulated that the SS intended to billet them in the town hall, ‘Wings’ Day considered bringing the partisan attack forward. ‘An attack by the Partisans who could certainly have overpowered the SS by weight of numbers alone, perhaps with minimum loss of life, was preferable to sitting around waiting to be massacred by the Bader gang.’13 The German officers, favouring Bonin’s plan, overruled this idea, creating tension in the group. Understandably, POWs captured by the Wehrmacht mistrusted the Germans, and found the idea of being involved in a call for help to their captors distasteful. ‘We wanted the satisfaction of freeing ourselves without German help,’ James wrote.
Fabian von Schlabrendorff, the Wehrmacht officer who in March 1943 had planted a bomb on Hitler’s plane (the bomb subsequently failing to detonate), and had later been imprisoned with Ulrich von Hassell, was among the men the SS corralled towards the old customs house. ‘We had to wait in the pouring rain before we were finally quartered in the town hall, where we slept on the stone floor.14 More than ever that night we had the feeling that the SS would find an opportunity to liquidate us and then try to make good their own escape. And so, before lying down to sleep we arranged to have several of us take turns standing guard through the night. It was not that we, unarmed as we were, could have done much against the heavily armed SS, but we did not want to be caught unawares and slaughtered in our sleep.’
British SOE officer Hugh Falconer worried about the unusually generous amount of straw they were allocated: ‘We discussed how well the straw would burn and how effective such a fire would be if it happened to occur in the middle of the night when we were safely locked in.15 We were on the first floor of the building and it was a long drop to the ground. We decided to post a watch to give the alarm if necessary.’
Lying awake, not daring to sleep, all the men were conscious of their perilous situation. It was not clear who was planning to shoot whom.16 Would the SS shoot the prisoners? Would the soldiers shoot the SS – if and when they arrived? Or would the partisans shoot the SS and the soldiers and anyone else caught in the crossfire?
Some 50 yards away, in a back street behind the town hall, Payne Best was at the Hotel Bachmann, where he had been billeted with General Thomas and a number of other prisoners. He spent the evening drinking in the kitchen with the two SS guards. In the hope of extracting information, Payne Best plied them with alcohol and, by midnight, both men were ‘glassy-eyed’. One was Sergeant Fritz, Bader’s quartermaster. ‘Fritz was by turns lachrymose and truculent, talking about his wife and innocent children or about how he would never be taken prisoner alive,’ Payne Best recalled.17 ‘He told me how his wife and 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 their path … Then he pulled a paper out of his pocket and said: “Here is the order for your execution; you won’t be alive after tomorrow.”’
Fritz told Payne Best that Bader was proposing to take the prisoners to a hotel in the mountains, where they would be shot. Afterwards, the hotel would be set on fire. In the brightly lit kitchen, in front of the proprietress, who was busy washing pots and pans, the SS officer drunkenly explained his objections to Bader’s plan: ‘“I don’t like it at all.18 I know what shooting people with machine 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.
‘“Herr Best, you are my friend,” he continued. “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 … that is the best way to die – you won’t know anything about it – I am a dead shot – never miss.”’
Pulling out a gun, the sergeant went on to explain the technique: ‘“You mustn’t touch them with the pistol for then they may flinch and your shot go astray.19 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 … Just turn around and I will show you.”’
Payne Best tried to persuade him that it would be foolish to shoot anyone at this late stage in the war, and that Fritz himself would be a prisoner in a few days. ‘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 with a sweep of his arm knocked bottle and glasses from the table.’20
Extricating himself, Payne Best returned to his room. At 3 a.m., he was woken by General Thomas. A
message had finally come through from General Vietinghoff, and a Wehrmacht officer and a company of infantry were on their way.
Vietinghoff, it transpired, had also alerted General Karl Wolff – the Supreme Commander of all SS forces in Italy – to the presence of ‘160 prominent hostages in the Bolzano area’.21 Wolff in turn then sent a secret message to Field Marshal Alexander – Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Forces – calling for his help in rescuing the prisoners.
This extraordinary gesture is explained by the fact that, later that day, Wolff would sign a document at the Royal Palace at Caserta – the Allied headquarters near Naples – formalizing the surrender of German forces in Italy, ending the Italian campaign.
The surrender – the culmination of negotiations with US intelligence chief Allen Dulles – was to come into effect three days later, on 2 May.
The hostages, however, were still not out of danger.
In fact, when General Thomas had woken Payne Best, Vietinghoff’s officer had already arrived in Villabassa.
His name was Major Wichard von Alvensleben and he was related to Polizeiführer Ludolf von Alvensleben, the notorious SS chief in Udine.
The major’s orders from General Vietinghoff were unclear. All he was told was that there was an SS ‘convoy of Prominenten’ in Villabassa and he was to see what the ‘trouble’ was and ‘if necessary find food and shelter for them’.22 With negotiations at Caserta at a sensitive stage, Vietinghoff, still fearful of rogue elements within the SS, had purposely kept his orders vague. But he knew he could trust Alvensleben, whose loathing of the SS was compounded by shame. His cousin’s involvement in atrocities in the Crimea and then as Polizeiführer in Udine had brought his family, otherwise anti-Nazi, into disrepute. ‘Let’s not talk about him,’ the major would say if asked.23 ‘As you can imagine, he is the black sheep of the family. I only hope that he doesn’t make it through to the end of the war.’
It was late in the evening when Alvensleben arrived. Leaving his company outside Villabassa, he set off alone on foot to investigate.24 Walking through the empty streets, he could see no sign of the convoy or the Prominenten who, at this late hour, were under guard in the town hall, and in numerous hotels and inns. But as he approached the Piazza Santa Trinità, he saw the SS, grouped in the centre.
The sight of the fifty-strong detachment unnerved him. He only had fifteen men with him; moreover, he had no authority to take military action if Bader refused to surrender the prisoners.
Nonetheless, as dawn broke over Villabassa, he moved his company into position, facing the SS on the edge of the square.
A few hours later, under pressure from the villagers, who were demanding that the prisoners be fed, Bader had no choice but to release them from their overnight billets. ‘Jimmy’ James described the scene that confronted him as he emerged from the town hall:
Across the square the SS men were grouped uncertainly around their vehicles, Bader standing in front exuding hatred and defiance.25 Facing them was a Wehrmacht unit of about fifteen men commanded by a young Lieutenant. The SS were having a heated discussion among themselves and were obviously unwilling to surrender to a Wehrmacht unit whose commander, von Alvensleben, seemed uncertain of taking any definite action …
I could see Bonin, very much in command of the situation, standing beside the Wehrmacht platoon. He now told Alvensleben that he would accept full responsibility for the actions of his unit, and that he should get on with the job of disarming the SS. Orders were barked out by the company Sergeant and two heavy machine guns were mounted quickly and trained on the SS. Colonel von Bonin strode across the square to Bader, and told him that the SS must throw down their arms. If they refused, he warned, the machine guns would open up on them. There was a moment’s hesitation, then they dropped their weapons …
Bader was soon pleading for petrol so that he could drive off with his men. Not only was this refused but Bonin could barely be restrained from shooting all the SS men on the spot.
37.
At the crossroads outside Villabassa, Fey was still on the bus, waiting with the other women and children: ‘We were anxious for news of the others. I was particularly worried about Alex, who I knew had been imprisoned in the town hall with the military prisoners. Suddenly, not long after dawn, we saw a man running towards us from the direction of Villabassa. Shouting and waving his arms to draw our attention, he was one of the Hungarian prisoners of war and, as he came closer, we were relieved to see the happy expression on his face. Incredibly, he told us that Lieutenant Bader and his squad had gone. We crowded out of the bus and rushed into the village in great excitement. There, at the Hotel Bachmann, we found the others celebrating. For the first time, we ordered drinks like ordinary people!’
To ensure that Bader did not cause any further trouble, General Vietinghoff had ordered him to return to the Wehrmacht’s headquarters at Bolzano. But, as Fey described, the celebrations did not last long: ‘Von Alvensleben stood up to address us. He said he and his soldiers would remain with us, but as protectors rather than warders. These were General Vietinghoff’s orders. The war was not yet officially over and the General was worried that other SS units, acting on Himmler’s orders, might make a last determined attempt to carry out the order to liquidate us.’
There were reports, too, of fighting between the different factions of partisans – Communists, pro-Austrians and Italian nationalists – and there was a danger the prisoners might be caught in the crossfire. In the circumstances, believing the Hotel Pragser Wildsee to be the safest place for them, Vietinghoff ordered the Wehrmacht generals to move out.1 The next day, the prisoners piled into the buses to make the 4-mile journey to the hotel which – but for Alvensleben’s courage – was to have been the scene of their execution.
It was snowing heavily and they had to walk the last mile as the single-track road on the approach to the hotel was impassable. The owner, Emma Heiss-Hellenstainer, was waiting at the entrance. ‘They were all so happy to have their lives back, thankful for every kind word, for any small attention.2 My hand was squeezed and kissed over and over again,’ she wrote in her diary. After entering their names in the hotel’s guestbook, she allocated them rooms and a porter showed them upstairs.
Built in the style of a chalet, with decorated wooden balconies running along the length of each of its four storeys, the 180-room hotel was an impressive building. Some 5,000 feet above sea level, before the war it had been a retreat for European royalty who had come to enjoy the spectacular scenery. The hotel was usually closed during the winter and, with no heating, its well-appointed rooms and spacious salons, decorated with all manner of taxidermy – badgers, stags, kites and eagles – were freezing. But, as ‘Jimmy’ James wrote, ‘After my years of viewing barbed wire, guard towers and cell walls, it seemed like a wonderful dream.’3 Fey was also enchanted with the hotel. ‘I had a lovely room all to myself for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. The view over the turquoise lake, ringed by snow-covered mountains, was so beautiful that I could hardly tear myself away from the window.’
There was plenty of food, brought by villagers and local farmers, and a rota was set up for cooking and kitchen duties. The men were sent out to gather wood to heat the fires in the rooms and, directed by Frau Emma, each of the prisoners was asked to make a list of the things they required.4 Many had only the clothes they stood in; they needed shoes, coats, underwear, shirts, trousers, stockings, razors, hairbrushes, socks and toothbrushes. There was also a box for complaints and suggestions, and the times of the four daily Masses, held in the small chapel on the shore of the lake, were posted on a blackboard.
Hugh Falconer, a wireless expert, found an old radio and made it work. That evening, gathered in the dining room, the group listened to the BBC. They cheered and clapped when it was reported that Hitler had sacked Himmler for his ‘treachery’ and that an elite squad, composed of the Führer’s personal bodyguards, had been ordered to track him down and kill him.
Out
side, Alvensleben’s troops formed a protective chain around the hotel. They were mostly out of sight in the woods behind and at the sides of the building, and the group was hardly conscious of their presence. As they settled in for their first night, Peter Churchill described their relief. ‘In this glorious setting, under the protection of Alvensleben’s unit, we felt that our freedom had almost begun.’5
Yet Himmler, having fled Berlin to escape Hitler’s assassins, was still determined to kill his former hostages.
The next morning – 1 May – General Vietinghoff alerted Major Alvensleben to the presence of a large number of SS in the area. Later that day, a message went out from his headquarters asking Himmler’s office to clarify the purpose of their mission.
Extraordinarily, code-breakers at Bletchley Park, who intercepted the communication, picked up this unease at Vietinghoff’s headquarters. That evening – marked ‘Top Secret Ultra’ – the decoded message was included in a file for Winston Churchill, containing the most important intercepts of the day.
The time and date that it had been sent were stamped on the copy the prime minister saw: ‘2.15 p.m. 1.5.1945’ – twenty-three hours after Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and ten hours before the German surrender in Italy was due to come into effect:
TO REICHSFUEHRER SS HEINRICH HIMMLER FROM A.O.K. 19 6, fn1
IN THE GAU-TIROL-VORARLBERG LARGE NON FIGHTING GROUPS OF THE WAFFEN SS, SD AND GESTAPO ARE STAYING IN THE VALLEYS. DETACHMENT COMMANDOS DO NOT COMPLY WITH ORDERS TO JOIN IN THE FIGHTING AS THEY ALL ALLEGE THAT THEY HAVE A SPECIAL TASK FOR THE REICHSFUEHRER SS. REQUEST ORDER FROM THE REICHSFUEHRER SS TO A.O.K.19
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