The Nazi Hunters (43 page)

In an effort to sink such arguments, Hunt called Barkworth’s evidence. The SAS major had secured a statement from Georg Kaenemund, a political prisoner and internee at Natzweiler. Kaenemund had overheard the interrogation of one of the four women prisoners. She had made it clear that she was ‘a Lieutenant in the British Army’, and she had ‘demanded to be brought before a proper Court Martial’, saying, ‘that as a member of the armed forces she should not be in prison’.

The trouble was, several witnesses for the defence – Brian Stonehouse included – had made it clear that the four agents had turned up at Natzweiler dressed in civilian clothes. It was hard – approaching impossible – to claim the legal defences due a soldier, when these four women prisoners had been masquerading as civilians.

In his summing up the judge advocate suggested that the four women had been executed without trial because, in the autumn of 1944, the Germans would have had ‘considerable apprehension as to the final results of the war’. They knew they were losing and they wanted to hide the evidence of their war crimes. If the lack of a trial could be made to stick, the accused should be found guilty.

That was the hope as the ‘jury’ – in reality, this being a military court, the panel of military officials – retired to consider their verdict. Forty minutes later they were ready. Natzweiler ‘doctor’ Werner Rohde would face the death penalty. But SS
Obersturmbannführer
(Lieutenant Colonel) Fritz Hartjenstein, the camp commandant who had presided over the liquidation of tens of thousands at Natzweiler, received only a life sentence.

Far worse for Barkworth, Rhodes and team, Peter Straub – the man who had shoved a living British woman into the camp oven – received only a prison sentence, and even that was of just
thirteen years
. Of the six other accused, all received light custodial sentences or were acquitted.

The Natzweiler trial had proved a travesty.

The Villa Degler team had scoured Europe searching tirelessly for the guilty. They had worked a crazy schedule and broken every rule imaginable in an effort to ensnare them, and when the SAS itself had been disbanded, they had risked ‘going dark’ to continue the good fight, come what may. Against all odds they had succeeded in the seemingly impossible – in tracking down the killers.

And now this: the courts – an arena in which they could exert little control or influence – were failing them. And that failure would force the Secret Hunters to some of their most extreme actions yet.

Barkworth, Galitzine, Rhodes et al. called a council of war. At Natzweiler four defenceless women agents had been injected with deadly carbolic acid and one at least had been burned alive. Yet the language of the trial had been so sanitized, civilized and almost . . . mundane in its treatment of the case. Nothing had captured the horror.

No one had got to the heart of the matter, conveying the depths of the inhumanity and the sheer terror inflicted on the victims. And owing to the ban on any media reporting, the great British public wasn’t even aware of what had transpired, or that those responsible had largely got away with it.

As far as Galitzine was concerned, Natzweiler was the ‘Belsen of France’, and yet for a second time now its very existence had been covered up and buried. So it was that Galitzine – himself a former journalist – decided to break the silence. He penned an article for the
Sunday Express
. Published on 2 June 1946 – the day following the trial’s conclusion – the headline screamed: ‘Four British girls burned alive – one German to die. Girl fought at oven door.’

Galitzine’s article blew the story wide open. It began with a description of the court scene. ‘The Germans, pale and trembling, stood to hear the verdict. The man who is to hang, Werner Rohde, the camp doctor, cracked a joke with one of his fellows as sentence was pronounced. The three who were acquitted sank to their seats with sobs of relief. So ended the trial of a group . . . who were guilty of “sheer brutality unparalleled in the history of mankind” at the Struthof-Natzweiler concentration camp in the Vosges mountains . . .’

The story included vivid eyewitness testimony of how the SOE agents were killed, and went on to recount the grim history of Natzweiler, from its earliest beginnings: ‘Shaven-headed prisoners in striped clothes arrived to hew granite from the mountain. The hotel became a gas chamber. A crematorium was built. A concentration camp was born.’

Wisely under the circumstances, Galitzine had penned his article anonymously. The fact that he was the author is revealed only from his private papers, which are fortuitously filed at the Imperial War Museum. On his copy of the article, Captain Prince Galitzine had scribbled in his own hand: ‘Written by Yurka.’ Attached to this is his – far longer – original, handwritten draft of the news report. That draft concludes that at Natzweiler, the Germans had devised a process of ‘death so inhuman that even savages would hesitate before turning to such methods’.

No doubt Galitzine had filed his papers at the Imperial War Museum – including his original and seminal Natzweiler investigation report; the one he had been forced to ‘bury’ – so that this vital piece of history, and his role within it, might be preserved for posterity. And, as the Secret Hunters had doubtless intended, publication of that
Sunday Express
article provoked a veritable storm.

The powers that be were apoplectic. London went as far as suggesting a court of inquiry be formed to investigate how ‘matters not brought before the court or proved in evidence appeared in press as statement of fact’. There were fears the leak had originated in Germany, and that ‘there may well be representations that press protests have influenced court . . . No need to stress most regrettable effect of this on members of future courts.’

The ‘future court’ mentioned was the next major hearing, in which the big guns – most notably Isselhorst – were to stand trial.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The trial of Isselhorst and five others – including his deputies, Wilhelm Schneider and Julius Gehrum – opened on 17 June 1946. It would take twenty-two days to complete, largely due to Isselhorst’s wily prevarication and the convoluted legal shenanigans he employed.

All six were charged with: ‘committing a war crime in that they in FRANCE and in particular in the VOSGES . . . in violation of the laws and usages of war were concerned in the killing of a number of airborne troops and personnel of aircrews’. They were specifically accused of running a ‘system of extermination of 32 members of the SAS Regiment . . . who took part in operations to disrupt enemy communications in the VOSGES mountains . . .’

From the outset Isselhorst quoted Hitler’s Commando Order, as if it was his get-out-of-jail-free card. The order provided for the following, he told the court: ‘ “All members of so called Commandos whether in uniform or not, whether armed or not, whether landed by water or air, or parachutists are to be shot if caught.” The order also provided for punishment of those who did not carry it out or failed to pass it on.’

Unbelievably, Isselhorst claimed to have had no knowledge of the torture and ill-treatment meted out to the captives held under his command. ‘I never had any knowledge of such happening, and . . . if it had come to my knowledge I would have taken severe measures against it.’ He also denied all responsibility for – and almost all knowledge of – Natzweiler. ‘I have never seen or entered the camp. I had nothing to do with it . . . and I had no reasons whatsoever to go there.’

Of his fellow accused and former deputies, Isselhorst spoke warmly, describing kindly ‘uncle-like’ figures. ‘Schneider was a considerably older comrade whom I respected for his age. I always knew him as a proper fellow worker, although on account of his age and sickness he was a bit of a muddle-head. He was liked by all on account of his comradeship.’

But Isselhorst’s opinion of Schneider was as nothing compared to his view of
Sturmbannführer
Ernst. ‘Dr Ernst was a hard-working man, intelligent and conscientious, and he was always personally very deeply interested in all matters concerning his group, and he was described to me as one of the best officials in France.’

Even under cross-examination by the prosecutor, Major Hunt, Isselhorst’s carefully crafted cover showed little signs of cracking.

‘Did you know that international law requires captors to safeguard the lives of prisoners of war?’ Hunt demanded.

‘Generally, yes,’ Isselhorst answered.

‘In spite of that you agree . . . that you did transmit orders which resulted in the death of a considerable number of prisoners of war?’

‘Not in this form, because these captives did not represent prisoners of war in our view . . .’

‘Did you know that when these orders were carried out many helpless men were led up to bomb craters, stripped naked, shot and buried?’

‘I said when this question was put to me by my own defence counsel: no.’

‘How did you think your orders were carried out?’

‘As a quiet, normal shooting, just in the way as was ordered by me . . .’

Hunt appeared increasingly exasperated at Isselhorst’s answers. ‘What I want you to explain is how is it, if all these men were shot in this irregular manner, that you did not know about it?’

‘I cannot answer this question.’

‘Why not? It seems a simple question.’

‘Because I do not know.’

Even more frustratingly, as the trial dragged on Isselhorst tried to deflect responsibility for any killings onto the usual suspect:
Sturmbannführer
Ernst.

‘We have heard from the witness Buck that . . . 125 Maquisards were sent to Natzweiler. Do you know who gave orders concerning that?’ Hunt demanded.

‘I believe it was Commandant Ernst.’

‘And what did you know regarding the 125 men?’

‘Nothing more than that it was reported to me later on.’

In other words, Isselhorst had had nothing whatsoever to do with the mass murder of the Maquis. Only
Sturmbannführer
Ernst was to blame. Isselhorst seemed happy to stand in the dock at Wuppertal arguing that black was white, with barefaced and haughty insouciance.

All Isselhorst would admit to was directing that the Maquis be used as forced labour. ‘The Maquis . . . should be sent to places of work in Germany itself . . . All Maquisards were sent [through] Schirmek camp to the Mercedes-Benz works in Gaggenau.’

For Barkworth, Galitzine and Rhodes this must have been agonizing to watch. Isselhorst the skilled, professional lawyer seemed to be parrying every thrust attempted by the court. It was approaching two years since the men of Op Loyton had been murdered, and a thousand villagers deported from the valleys of the Vosges to the Nazi concentration camps. Was the architect of all that going to get off scot-free?

Galitzine felt the courts were being ‘far too soft’. Far too few life sentences and death sentences were being handed down. The accused had committed ‘the most terrible crimes, and we couldn’t understand why they were given a year, four years, six years imprisonment’.

Hunt’s questioning returned to Hitler’s Commando Order. ‘Knowing the provisions of international law, how could you reconcile a printed order to kill as being right?’

‘As I said before, in the National Socialist regime the will of the head of Government was law, and therefore in consequence this order was law.’

When challenged over why the Op Loyton men had received no kind of trial, Isselhorst craftily argued: ‘The reason is the Führer Order, which excludes any sort of trial.’

Isselhorst’s stubborn, boorish circularity of argument – I cannot bear any responsibility because of Hitler’s Commando Order – grated on the court mightily. Doubly so, in fact, because Barkworth’s original interrogation of Isselhorst had nailed him on that point – one that he now tried to deny, claiming forgetfulness as the reason for any inconsistencies.

‘You now say that your previous statement is inaccurate, is that it?’ Hunt challenged.

‘Not quite . . .’ Isselhorst replied. ‘Not because I wanted to state something wrong at the time, but that I have remembered in the meantime the real sequence of events.’

Finally, the judge advocate himself seemed to crack. ‘I cannot believe you are so stupid as you make out,’ he snapped. ‘The Court are getting very tired of this constant going back on what you said on oath in your affidavit, with the result it is always exonerating somebody who is in the dock.’ And a little later: ‘I suggest that Isselhorst is not a fool and that he could not get so mixed up’.

Fortunately, at least two witnesses had been persuaded by Barkworth’s ‘incentives’ to turn evidence against Isselhorst. One was Karl Buck, the former Schirmek commandant. He testified to Isselhorst’s culpability in sending hundreds of maquisards to their deaths at Natzweiler – something that Isselhorst of course denied. The other witness against Isselhorst was his former deputy in Waldfest, Julius Gehrum.

The trial turned to Gehrum’s evidence. ‘You consider yourself to be a very humane man, do you not?’ the judge advocate challenged Isselhorst.

‘Yes.’

‘Gehrum thinks you are a man with very cruel ideas, apparently.’

‘I believe there have been two witnesses who have said that is nonsense and a lie.’

‘It is a matter for the Court . . . to decide as to who is lying in this case; but you heard Gehrum say it in his affidavit, did you not?’