Treatment of Captured Airmen

When a bomber or fighter plane is shot down over hostile territory or forced to perform an emergency landing, surviving crew become prisoners of war.

The Geneva Convention (1929) was an international treaty which Germany, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom, had signed.
Part I, Article 2 of the Geneva Convention reads:

Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile Government, but not of the individuals or formation which captured them.
They shall at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence, from insults and from public curiosity.
Measures of reprisal against them are forbidden.

Nazi Leaders Defy Geneva Protections

As early as 1940, Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess demanded that enemy parachutists should be “arrested or rendered harmless.” The Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trial translated his German words into English as “to be arrested or liquidated,” and it must be admitted that this, although not translated literally, was in all probability what he had in mind. When Hess said this, Allied bomb raids had not yet reached their later devastating impact.

Three years later, on 10 August 1943, Heinrich Himmler sent out a circular to all Higher SS and Police Leaders:

“It is not the task of the police to meddle with skirmishes between German nationals and parachuted English or American terror fliers.”

With this circular, he denied the parachuted men the “protection against acts of violence” to which they were entitled under the Convention. However, the SS seemed to know they were on dangerous ground: Himmler’s staff ordered, in transmitting the circular, that subordinates should be informed verbally only.

Goebbels Encourages Mob Violence

In the last days of May 1944, Minister of Propaganda Dr. Joseph Goebbels wrote in the Völkischer Beobachter, the main Nazi newspaper:

“It is only with the assistance of the armed forces that it would be possible to preserve the lives of shot-down enemy pilots after such (sc. air) raids, because otherwise they would be beaten to death by the afflicted populace. Who is within his rights here: The murderers who after having committed their cowardly misdeeds still expect humane treatment on the part of their victims, or the victims who want to strike back following the doctrine of ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’?
These questions are not hard to answer. It does not seem possible nor bearable any more to use German police or army against the German people when they treat murderers of children like they deserve.”

Goebbels also made similar speeches on national radio. One of them (Nuremberg, 4 June 1944) contained the following lines:

“It so happened that in a few villages or towns the population took the law into their own hands against the terrorist fighter pilots. They battered them to death (cheering, applause) or cut their throats, or similar.
We’re not shedding crocodile tears over that, and those who did this will not be led to the scaffold for it; we’re not as stupid as that.”

From trial documents, we know that this speech became widely known among the people (see, e.g., the case of the murder of Lt. Reuss at Preist).

Secret Orders to Kill Airmen

Field Marshal Keitel recorded that Hitler decided, at the end of May 1944, that the army should shoot to death downed Allied airmen in certain cases without even so much as a drumhead court-martial. These cases included:

If they had fired at German airmen while descending by parachute.
If they fired at crash-landed German planes while crew members were still on board.
If they attacked public transport trains.
If, in low-altitude raids, they fired on civilian individuals.

Hitler’s party secretary, Martin Bormann, sent out a secret circular on 30 May 1944, which was to be transmitted verbally only to local Nazi party leaders.

Bormann’s circular (swastika in the letterhead removed by the authors) stated that:

In recent weeks, low-altitude fliers had repeatedly attacked non-military targets such as playing children, ploughing farmers, etc. In several cases, the pilots of such planes who had to crash-land or bail out were lynched on the spot by the enraged populace. It had been decided not to prosecute the German nationals involved.

This was not just a report of events but a blatant instigation to kill. Other Nazi officials issued similar circulars, and the spiteful term “terror fliers,” repeated in the press and radio, combined with the horrifying experiences of civilians in air raid shelters, fueled the general climate of hate.

Implementation and Impact

On 4 July 1944, the police received secret orders that effectively amounted to instructions to kill all Allied airmen, regardless of the circumstances.

The total number of cases is still under dispute. The latest publication on the subject, Kevin T. Hall’s dissertation Terror Flyers (2021), states that it is likely there were at least 1,000 cases of lynch justice committed against Allied airmen within Germany’s postwar borders. A conservative estimate would be 3,000 cases of mistreatment throughout Germany and its occupied territory.

Most perpetrators were members of the Gestapo, SD, SS, SA, police, or army. When civilians were involved, they were almost always Nazi party functionaries.

Postwar Trials and Justice

The cases of murdered Allied airmen were among the first to be tried by Allied Military Courts. At Dachau alone, U.S. courts tried about 200 cases, of which 82 ended in execution by hanging.

The legal foundation was the violation of the Geneva Convention, committed in pursuit of a common design. The defense of “superior orders” was frequently—and almost routinely—invoked. It was indeed true that such orders had existed.

However, the courts never accepted this defense in determining guilt—only occasionally as a factor in mitigating punishment. For justification, they might even have cited Goebbels himself, who had written the following (ironically against Allied airmen) in the Völkischer Beobachter:

“There is no provision in the Laws of War that a soldier becomes exempt from punishment for an ignominious crime if he invokes Superior Orders, particularly if these orders are blatantly opposed to every human morale and usage of warfare.”

The Case of Curt Bruns

The first charge against a German for having killed prisoners of war did not concern airmen. Hauptmann (Captain) Curt Bruns, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 293rd Regiment, 18th Volksgrenadier Division, was tried and sentenced to death by a U.S. Military Commission for ordering two GIs to be killed.

After being taken prisoner, they were shot on Bruns’ orders on 20 December 1944 near Bleialf, Germany, because they were Jewish. The victims were T/5 Murray Zappler and S/Sgt Kurt R. Jacobs, members of IPW (Interrogation of Prisoners of War) team #154, attached to the U.S. 106th Infantry Division.

Days earlier, German soldiers from Bruns’ unit had been taken prisoner and interrogated by Zappler and Jacobs. When the 423rd U.S. Infantry Regiment surrendered to Bruns’ unit, 300 GIs, including Zappler and Jacobs, entered captivity. German former POWs who returned with them informed Bruns that they had been interrogated by “Jews from Berlin.” Zappler and Jacobs were, in fact, Jews of German extraction.

Due to their language skills and loyalty to the Allied cause—they had been persecuted by the Nazis—they were trained at the secret Military Intelligence camp at Ft. Ritchie, Maryland. Graduates of Ft. Ritchie were distributed to IPW and other intelligence teams. Zappler and Jacobs were two of 1,985 German-born “Ritchie Boys” who served in World War II.

Bruns’ trial took place in Düren on 7 April 1945, before the war had even ended. He was executed by firing squad on 14 June 1945 in a gravel quarry at Denstorf (now part of Vechelde).

The Execution Date of Kurt Bruns

In internet sources, the date of Bruns’ execution is sometimes given as 9th June, and sometimes as 14th. According to his death registration entry at Brunswick (No. 2508/1945), he was born on 12 March 1915 on the island of Juist and was executed by shooting on 14 June 1945. The entry gives his first name as “Kurt”.

But already two weeks after Bruns’ death, the first execution for the murder of an airman took place.

The Bad Penny That Did Not Come Back

The navigator, 21-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Lester E. Reuss, had done a good job on board the B-17 Flying Fortress “Bad Penny”, tail number 42-31183. He had found the assigned target, and together with the 38 other crews of the 303rd Bomb Group (Heavy), they had dropped their payload on an airfield near Wiesbaden. Now they were on their way back to their base at Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, England.

It was 11:48 a.m. when the formation, flying in a lower, higher, and lead group, was attacked by 20 to 25 German Focke-Wulf FW-190 fighter planes. Nine out of 13 of the lower group planes were shot down. One of them was “Bad Penny”, flying immediately behind and to the left of the leading aircraft. All nine crew members were able to bale out, radio operator Sgt Patsy Rocco (28) seemingly staying in the radio room to the last.

A Deadly Encounter in Preist

Down on the ground, it was wheat harvest time—15 August, 1944. Few men were left in the village of Preist to do the work: the old, the boys, the cripples and mentally unstable, some forced labour workers from Belgium and Poland, and those who were deemed to be indispensable: the Nazi party officials.

Seventy-four-year-old Nikolaus Nospes saw the parachute descending. He interrupted his work of cutting wheat and went to the place where the flyer came down. The parachute caught on a tree. Old Nospes was the first to arrive on the scene, together with his niece Appolonia Binz and her three children. Then came two soldiers who were on furlough. They helped the airman disentangle himself from the parachute.

Almost simultaneously, Matthias Krein arrived—a member of the Landwacht whose duty it was, among other things, to guard enemy grounded flyers. He had his rifle with him but no ammunition. He demanded the airman from the soldiers, but they refused, saying, “No, he is in our custody.”

At that point, a motorcycle arrived. The driver, 37-year-old Peter Back, put it against a tree and limped up to the scene. From a very early age he had suffered from infantile paralysis in both feet. He was a tailor by profession, a Nazi party member since 1937 and currently Block Leader. Right now he was brandishing a .30 cal Browning automatic pistol and shouted, “Shoot him down, beat him down.”

When within two or three yards of the flyer, he shot and hit him about the head. The flyer fell, but stood up again, and Back fired a second shot, hitting him.

More and more people assembled. Krein busied himself with warding off the curious but did nothing to protect the airman. One of the crowd, Peter Kohn—a former soldier who had lost his left arm on the Russian front—wielded a stick a yard long and two or three inches thick and hit the flyer about the head several times. Another man, Matthias Gierens, had a hammer and beat the airman too.

When Gierens finished, Reuss was dead.

Burial Without Honor

That evening between 7 and 8 o’clock, farmer Johann Jacob drove the dead body to the cemetery at Preist. The next morning at about 7:30, he helped old Nospes to bury him. There was neither coffin nor priest—the Nazi party forbade it.

The Fate of Sgt. Patsy Rocco

Three miles to the west, Sgt Patsy Rocco had landed safely in the vicinity of a place called Idesheim. He surrendered to a boy of sixteen, of all persons, and accompanied him to a Prisoner of War Camp located in that very village. While walking, he asked his captor about the chances of escape and how far it was to Luxembourg.

Later, Rocco was taken to another village two miles away which curiously went by the very similar name of Idenheim. There he was confined, apparently overnight.

It was decided that Rocco should be brought to Bitburg, twelve miles to the north. He was given into the custody of Friedrich Scheilz, a policeman in his fifties, who shackled his prisoner’s hands behind the back, armed himself with pistol, carbine, and bayonet, and set out to walk Rocco to Bitburg along the Trier–Bitburg highway (today: highway B 51).

During that walk something happened which gave Scheilz the impression that Rocco was about to run. He grabbed him and warned him not to try this again or he would be shot.

About three miles further along the road, Rocco accelerated his steps. Scheilz pursued him, took the carbine from his shoulder, slipped a bit but regained his step and fired at a distance of about ten yards—as he would later claim: after having shouted twice “Halt!” and with the intention of giving a warning shot over Rocco’s head. In fact, Rocco was hit in the back of his neck and died on the spot. The body was taken to Bitburg, examined, and buried.

Justice After the War

Less than nine months later, Nazi Germany had surrendered, and the Allies were investigating war crimes. Killing a parachuted airman certainly was one.

On 1 June 1945, in an administrative building at Ahrweiler, a US Military Commission consisting of six colonels, one lieutenant colonel, and one major heard the case of Peter Kohn, Matthias Gierens, and Matthias Krein. They were charged with violation of the laws and usages of war, “in that they… not being lawful belligerents… did feloniously assault, and with one Peter Back did wilfully kill an American airman.”

The commission did not judge rashly; they heard 18 witnesses for the prosecution and three for the defense. The next day, they pronounced sentence: All three were to be hanged by the neck—Krein, too, although he did not fire a shot nor strike a blow.

The German civilian defense lawyer had brought up the question of criminal responsibility: two siblings of Gierens had died in insane asylums, and he himself had been denied a marital credit because the family was hereditary defective. The court followed up on this lead; however, a neuropsychiatric examination declared Gierens sane.

The Trial of Peter Back

Of course, the man who was most badly wanted was Peter Back. He was found shortly after the trial of the three others and stood trial on 16 June. His unsworn statement was a curious mixture of justification and remorse:

“…he heard Dr. Goebbels’ speech: ‘The population should take steps in this matter and should judge for itself.’ He did not think of this speech when firing; he was thinking of a woman in Preist and his own wife who were nearly killed by a low-flying airplane. He does not know why he fired; cannot explain why he fired; no intention to kill airman; although commended by the District leader, he realized that he had become a murderer and decided never to do it again; his conscience worried him, his wife and he grieved a lot over it…”

From the evidence of other villagers, it seemed that Back was of limited mental capacity, sometimes got very ecstatic, was not able to judge things clearly, and had a tendency to act without thinking. While this gave a probably accurate picture of the man, it was of course no excuse. “Death by hanging” was the sentence.

Execution and Aftermath

A fortnight later, the sentences had completed their review process. Matthias Krein, the Landwacht man with the empty rifle, was not to be hanged but to serve a life sentence; the other death sentences were confirmed, and Lt. Colonel J. V. Roddy, a Californian from San Francisco, was ordered to see them executed.

This was the first time after Germany’s surrender that a death sentence for war crimes was executed by hanging. In the prison yard at Rheinbach, Master Sergeant John C. Woods and Staff Sergeant Thomas F. Robinson supervised the erection of the gallows, and on 29 June 1945, they hanged the murderous trio:

Peter Kohn at 5 a.m.
Matthias Gierens at 5:45 a.m.
Peter Back at 7 a.m.

LIFE ran a 5-page report on the trials and executions with 30 photos. In the caption referring to Back’s execution, LIFE claimed: “After this hanging, as after the other ones, the hangman wept”—a statement which no one will find credible who ever looked into Woods’ career and character for a single minute.

One of the pictures shows Back’s body, still hanging from the rope, being slipped into a white mattress cover. Maybe this is how he was buried, just like the US servicemen executed at Shepton Mallet—unless he was returned to his family and given a coffin. The authors were unsuccessful in locating his grave.

The Trial of Friedrich Scheilz

And what about Sergeant Rocco?

One more year passed until on 7–9 August 1946, his death was the topic of a trial at Dachau. Friedrich Scheilz stood accused of “wilfully, deliberately and wrongfully (killing) a member of the United States Army, believed to be Patsy ROCCO, who was then a surrendered and unarmed prisoner of war.”

There were two witnesses for the prosecution, one of whom had actually seen the shooting from a distance, and three for the defense, one being the prisoner himself. The eyewitness was not what the prosecution would have wanted; he varied his description of what happened and even said the accused had a bicycle with him, which Scheilz denied.

The court found Scheilz guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

At that time most Germans felt that Allied justice was little better than vengeance in legal disguise (and, sad to say, there are still some who do). This case, however, shows otherwise.

There seems to have been a disagreement among the members of the court whether Rocco’s death had been indeed a “wilful”, “deliberate” or “wrongful” killing. Since Scheilz was not sentenced to hang, it seems that there was a sufficient majority to find him guilty—but not sufficient to sentence him to death. One member of the court, Infantry Colonel Edward B. Jackson, was so dissatisfied with the outcome that he filed a Petition for Clemency.

Clemency and Closure

And then there was, of course, the Review. On 9 August 1947, attorney Oliver C. Hardy of the Post Trial Branch wrote his recommendation: that the findings and sentence be disapproved because the evidence did not warrant the guilty verdict. On 14 October 1947, Lieutenant Colonel C. E. Straight, Deputy Judge Advocate for War Crimes, concurred. On 22 October, the Board of Review recommended that the findings and sentence be disapproved and the accused ordered released.

It seems that this is indeed what happened. Friedrich Scheilz may have spent about two years in prison for his fateful shot until he was set free without being sentenced.

Final Resting Place

The bodies of the two American airmen were not allowed to remain in hostile territory. The US Army moved them to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, where Reuss now lies in Plot A, Row 6, Grave 8, and Rocco in Plot B, Row 9, Grave 9. Their seven crew comrades of the “Bad Penny” survived the War in German POW camps.

More Trials to Come

There were more trials and more executions to follow. The case of Lt. Reuss was one of the comparatively few where the trial and the execution were not held at Dachau or Landsberg, respectively, but it was not the only one. In November 1945, US hangman John C. Woods went to work in the Bruchsal prison yard.

The crime he was ordered to avenge became known as:

The Rüsselsheim Massacre

A Targeted City

Rüsselsheim, on the River Main, was then—and is today—known as the city of a large Opel plant. The firm, since the 1920s owned by General Motors, used to build cars (as it does again today), but during the war took up the building of aircraft parts, including those for the Junkers Ju 88 bomber, Arado 96 (fighter/trainer), and Messerschmitt Me 262 (the world’s first jet fighter). This made the firm a legitimate target for bombing, of course.

British and U.S. aircraft flew multiple attacks on the Rüsselsheim Opel factory:

8/9 September 1942: The RAF attacked Rüsselsheim, along with targets in Frankfurt/Main and Mainz. One bomb hit the Opel factory’s POW camp, setting 21 huts ablaze, killing 18 French POWs and severely wounding 18 more.
20 July 1944: Units of the 8th U.S. Air Force flew a daylight attack at 11:13 a.m., consisting of 102 planes in six waves, dropping 400 high-yield explosives plus incendiaries. The result: 112 dead.
13 August 1944: The RAF dropped 964 tons of explosives.
26 August 1944: Beginning at 12:52 a.m., 412 RAF aircraft dropped 674 bombs (totaling 1,451 tons) on Rüsselsheim, plus 556 tons on Darmstadt. Of the 674 bombs dropped, 21 hit the factory. The rest destroyed large parts of the residential area of the city (east of the factory) and surrounding areas. In the camp for slave laborers, 31 huts were destroyed. A direct hit on the dugouts for Russian women killed many of them.

Of the 198 dead that day, all but twelve were slave laborers.

The U.S. bombing survey later stated that in July and August 1944, 315 Opel workers were killed and 277 severely injured. Of the 9,000 worn but usable machines in the factory, 2,500 were disabled.

A Mob Erupts

When dawn came, weary and angry Rüsselsheim citizens looked at the ruins that used to be their homes. They sighed, fetched shovels, brooms, and wheelbarrows, and began to clean up the mess.

Between 9 and 10 a.m. that Saturday, a small troop of men in foreign flight suits came loping along, accompanied by two German soldiers as guards. Suddenly, a shrill female voice was heard:

“Beat them to pieces, beat them to death. They are the ones who were here last night. Kill the dogs. We cannot have pity on them.”

But the six men under guard had nothing to do with the Rüsselsheim raid of the previous night. They were Americans.

The Airmen

Two days earlier, on 24 August 1944, a large bomber fleet had taken off in England to attack 16 targets north of Hanover: 485 B-24s and 834 B-17s, accompanied by 739 fighter planes. Seventy-two of the bombers were assigned to strike the Hanover-Langenhagen airfield.

One of these was a B-24J Liberator, serial 42-110107, aircraft N of the 854th Bombardment Squadron, 491st Bomber Group (Heavy), 8th U.S. Air Force, based at North Pickenham, Norfolk, England.

Crew:

2LT Norman J. Rogers Jr. (24), pilot, Rochester, NY
2LT John N. Sekul (22), co-pilot, Bronx, NY
FO Haigus Tufenkjian (23), navigator/bombardier, Detroit, MI
S/Sgt Forrest W. Brininstool (28), flight engineer, Munith, MI
S/Sgt Thomas D. Williams Jr. (19), radio operator, Hazleton, PA
Sgt William A. Adams (19), nose gunner, Klingerstown, PA
Sgt Elmore L. Austin (19), left waist gunner, Edinburgh Falls, VT
Sgt Sidney Eugene Brown (19), tail gunner, Gainesville, FL
Sgt William A. Dumont (20), belly gunner, Berlin, NH

Just after bombing their target—with the bomb bay still open—an anti-aircraft shell exploded below the aircraft. Shrapnel disabled the hydraulic system and one engine, damaged two others, and injured Brininstool and Adams. The pilots managed to keep the plane under control, but with only one good engine and continuous altitude loss, returning to base was impossible.

Rogers ordered the crew to abandon ship. All nine men bailed out successfully.

Capture and Transit

The aircraft crashed at 12:15 p.m. near Greven, about 75 miles west of their target. One by one, the crew was captured. Rogers and Dumont injured their ankles on landing. Brininstool, wounded in the belly, was treated by a doctor and sent to a hospital in Münster.

The next day, the remaining eight airmen were placed in custody of three Luftwaffe soldiers, headed to the Dulag Luft interrogation center at Oberursel near Frankfurt. The train ride took all day, but they had to disembark before midnight due to nearby Allied bombing. Alongside other passengers, they sheltered during the raid and resumed their journey at 3 a.m.

Three hours later, the train stopped outside a city: Rüsselsheim. It was announced that the tracks were bombed out, and travelers would need to disembark, walk around the damaged section, and catch another train. The Americans were left under the watch of a single guard while the other two went off to get directions. Two hours passed. Only one returned.

The two remaining guards, both junior soldiers, decided to march the prisoners through town, following the crowd. Instead of turning at Marktstraße (the shortest route), they continued along Frankfurterstraße.

A mob began to gather.

The Lynching

The Attack Begins

A man with a green armband—an air raid warden armed with a 6.35 mm pistol—stopped the guards and insisted the airmen be taken east out of town. The guards refused; they were trying to reach a train.

Then came the shout from the rear:

“Beat them…!”

It was Käthe Reinhardt, who ran a tobacco shop on Frankfurterstraße with her sister Margarete Witzler. Käthe picked up a brick from the rubble and hurled it at Rogers, cracking his skull. The air raid warden, Josef Hartgen, fired his pistol into the air to calm the crowd—but it was too late.

Margarete Witzler followed suit, throwing a brick at the prisoners.

That was the signal. A mob of 20 to 200 people (accounts vary) descended on the airmen—throwing bricks, stones, and tiles, and wielding sticks, brooms, hammers, and shovels. People came out of their homes to join the attack.

Describing the ordeal in detail would be too long and too grim. Suffice to say: Six airmen were killed. Two more, Brown and Adams, were severely injured but feigned death.

Between 11 a.m. and noon, a farmer’s cart arrived, drawn by Hitler Youth. The dead and dying were loaded on it. One man climbed onto the cart and clubbed any signs of life.

Then the air raid alarm sounded, and he fled.

Survival and Discovery

After nightfall, Brown and Adams crawled out from under the corpses and fled. Four days later, they were captured and sent to a POW camp. They survived.

Russian POWs buried the six victims on 28 August in a common grave.

On 25 March 1945, soldiers of the U.S. 3rd Army took Rüsselsheim. Slave laborers and POWs informed them that eight British soldiers (they assumed) were buried in the Waldfriedhof.

On 28 June, exhumation began. Only six bodies were found. Four wore dog tags: Sekul, Williams, Dumont, and Austin. All but one had fractured skulls; the exception had two bullet wounds to the head. Two others also had bullet injuries.

Aftermath and Trial

Austin, Dumont, and Sekul were returned to the U.S. for burial. Rogers, Tufenkjian, and Williams were interred in the Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France:

Rogers: Plot D, Row 3, Grave 14
Tufenkjian: Plot E, Row 48, Grave 16
Williams: Plot E, Row 44, Grave 17

In June 1945, the U.S. Army began investigating war crimes.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a video offering insights into the evidence gathering and trial.

Lieutenant Colonel Leon Jaworski (later of Watergate fame) prosecuted the case. Eleven German civilians were tried between 25 July and 2 August 1945 in Darmstadt, defended by U.S. military and German civilian lawyers—among them Heinrich von Brentano, later West German Foreign Minister.

Verdicts and Executions

The trial ended with:

Seven death sentences (including Käthe Reinhardt and Margarete Witzler)
One sentence of 25 years at hard labor
Two of 15 years
One acquittal

On 23 August 1945, Col. C. Robert Bard, Staff Judge Advocate, recommended that all sentences be upheld:

“While American sympathy may be aroused at the prospect of hanging women and old men, it must always be remembered that half-way measures will never impress upon the people of Germany that their actions have been unlawful and degenerate… punishment must be great enough to prevent forever crimes that are an abomination in the eyes of man and blasphemy in the sight of God.”

However, the commanding general reduced the two women’s sentences to 30 years. The remaining five death sentences were confirmed by the commanding general of the European Theatre.

On 10 November 1945, in the yard of Bruchsal Prison, M/Sgt John C. Woods, assisted by S/Sgt Fred Guidry, executed the sentences. One by one, the condemned were hanged.

The first to be hanged was:

Josef Hartgen, 41, married father of three, Opel foreman, Nazi Party leader, SA member, air raid warden, propaganda chief for Rüsselsheim. He had beaten the airmen with a hoe handle and fired pistol shots into the heads of at least three men.

Acts of Brutality

Johannes Seipel, 67, kicked an airman who was sitting on the ground, wounded, against the neck and chin.
Philipp Gütlich, 49, married with four children, the youngest only eight months old, had beaten the airmen several times with a club three feet long and two inches thick, using both hands.
Friedrich Wüst, 40, beat with a piece of wood with great force, and later beat an airman on the head with a hammer.
Johannes Opper, 62, beat the airmen twice with a broom and joined in the incitement to violence.

The persons sentenced to serve prison terms were released in 1953 and 1954 and returned to Rüsselsheim.

Further Pursuit of Justice

After this trial, the prosecution did not consider the case closed. They clearly had not succeeded in rounding up all persons involved—and probably never would. But they tried nevertheless.

Two more individuals were found and tried for their part in the Rüsselsheim massacre: the man who climbed on the cart near the cemetery and tried to finish off the still-living victims with his club (“the size of a table leg”), and one of the several soldiers who had been mentioned in evidence during the trial as having joined in the beating.

Final Trials and Sentences

Otto Hermann Stolz

The man with the club was found to be Otto Hermann Stolz, 34, a carpenter and SA member. He was tried on 15/16 May 1947 before a General Military Government Court at Dachau, found guilty, and hanged on 14 November 1947 at Landsberg, at 11:12 a.m.

Franz Umstatter

One of the soldiers was identified as Corporal Franz Umstatter, 36, a wine gardener in his civilian profession, and described by the investigator as “the worst-looking criminal of them all and … built like a gorilla.” He was tried on 26/27 August 1946 before a General Military Government Court at Dachau, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

The War Crimes Group of the European Command, however, overturned the verdict. The reason appears to have been a technicality: the charge against Umstatter did not specify where the crime had been committed. On 1st March 1948, at 2 p.m., Umstatter was set free. The five missing words—“at or near Rüsselsheim, Germany”—saved his neck.

Acts of Remembrance

In August 2001, survivor Sidney Brown, accompanied by his wife and Tufenkjian’s brother with the latter’s wife, came to Rüsselsheim upon an invitation from the town mayor to take part in a service of remembrance and to receive a formal apology.

On the sixtieth anniversary of the crime, 26 August 2004, a memorial was unveiled on the spot where the airmen suffered most, near the railway station in Grabenstraße.

The Elten Case: The Murder of P/O William E. Maloney, RAAF

A Downed Aircraft

On 16 September 1944, the mission of No. 80 (Fighter) Squadron was to attack “Big Ben” sites—i.e., launching pads of V2 missiles—and military transports.

“We were strafing a train in Holland, near the German frontier,” S/L Bob Spurdle wrote two days later, “when ‘Spike’ had to crash-land his machine with a dead engine.” After receiving a flak hit in the vicinity of Arnhem, glycol had been seen streaming from his engine. The squadron comrades were anxious to find out what had happened to Pilot Officer William ‘Spike’ Maloney and circled the crash site for 15 minutes.

“I flew low over his aircraft several times and he appeared to be unharmed,” the squadron leader wrote. Receiving this letter, Maloney’s parents in Toowoomba (Queensland, Australia) would have thought the worst that could have happened to their son was being taken prisoner of war. They were wrong.

Enemy Perception and Crash

Flying a low-level interceptor on a ground attack mission, Maloney was the perfect fit for the distorted image painted by German propaganda. Low-level attacks, according to common belief, were targeted at ploughing farmers, playing children, and public transport railway trains full of civilians. A fighter pilot like Maloney was perhaps even more hated than a bomber pilot.

Maloney crashed at about 1100 hrs at Elten, a part of Emmerich, in a field near the spot where the railway crossed a road. The plane “turned over and I thought that no person could have survived … it did a complete loop and landed in a cloud of dust,” eyewitness Johann Bosmann told Canadian investigators in July 1945.

Eyewitness Accounts

Bosmann, a local farmer and Landwacht member (German equivalent of the Home Guard), set out for the crash site, since it was one of his duties to take prisoner any downed enemy pilot. On his way, he saw a car arrive. Three men in field grey and two in Nazi brown Sturmabteilung (SA) uniforms exited the vehicle.

As Bosmann approached, he saw them return to the wreck with an airman who had been hiding. A struggle began. From about 100 yards away, Bosmann recognized local policeman Hans Pelgrim. He saw the airman being beaten with rifle butts and saw Pelgrim wielding a rifle. “They came around the aircraft where I could see everything very clearly,” Bosmann continued. “The airman was bleeding and his skull was smashed in… While he was bent over, and four men were beating him, one man came and kicked him in the face with his boot.”

Then another man—Hans Renoth, gamekeeper and police officer of the Gendarmerie Reserve—told the others to stand back and took aim with his carbine. Bosmann turned away. After a few steps, he heard a shot, then a cry. Some more steps, and he heard a second shot. Then there was silence.

There had been a second witness: fellow farmer Hubert Franken. The rumour spread quickly through the village. When the Allied invasion reached the region, Bosmann and others informed the War Crimes Investigation teams.

Investigation and Identification

The investigators determined that the downed aircraft was Maloney’s Tempest Mk. V, serial EJ662. The likely burial site was the Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery) at Düsseldorf. A cemetery attendant confirmed that an unknown airman had been admitted at 2400 hours on 16 September 1944 and buried the next morning at 9 a.m.

According to the German casualty report accompanying the entry, the crash had occurred on 16 September 1944, at 1145 hours, in meadowland at Elten.

Exhumation and Findings

On 23 July 1945, grave no. 544, Field 111c, was opened and the coffin taken to the mortuary. Pathologist Major James Balfour, Royal Canadian Medical Corps, established three key points:

There was no identity disk or items for identification, but the upper jaw was intact while all upper teeth were missing.
The right side of the skull was smashed, and the body lacked the right part of the forehead. Injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma causing almost instant death.
Due to decomposition and skull damage, it could not be determined if a gunshot had been involved.

Identification came from a dental plate for the upper jaw, found earlier at the crash site by Investigator Wady Lehmann. Witness Franken confirmed having seen the plate beside the corpse in 1944. Dental records matched Maloney’s.

The Trial at Elten

Defendants and Defense

A British Military Court convened from 8–10 January 1946 at the Bahnhofshotel in Elten. Four were tried: Renoth and Pelgrim (police officers), and Friedrich Wilhelm Grabowski and Paul Hermann Nieke (customs officials). The latter two had been seen in SA uniform, having just returned from a funeral.

Renoth claimed that a Wehrmacht captain ordered him to administer the coup de grâce to the suffering pilot and that he had a written confirmation, since handed over to his superior. This note was not produced, and the captain’s name was vague—perhaps “Kuehne.”

In pre-trial statements, Renoth said only the six known men were present. At trial, he introduced two new soldiers, one with a truncheon, to shift blame. Pelgrim, who was seen beating the pilot with a rifle, claimed the unknown soldiers had disarmed and assaulted the pilot. Grabowski and Nieke supported this story.

The Prosecution’s Case

Contradictions abounded between and within the accused’s testimonies. The two “unknown soldiers” were convenient scapegoats.

The prosecutor refuted their claims. The farmers’ testimonies clearly identified Pelgrim, Grabowski, and Nieke as the assailants. Even if the unknown soldiers had delivered the final blows, the silent presence of officials amounted to “aiding and abetting.”

Renoth’s plea failed. Even if ordered to kill, the act was illegal, and carrying it out was murder under English law. Even a few seconds of life shortened made it criminal.

Sentencing and Execution

Renoth was sentenced to death by hanging. Pelgrim, Grabowski, and Nieke received 15, 10, and 10 years respectively. All sentences were upheld. While some believed Pelgrim should also have received the death penalty, the court’s proximity to events lent weight to their decisions.

Renoth was hanged on 8 March 1946 at 14:40 hours at Hameln Prison by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill. Weighing 154 lbs., he was given a drop of 7’3″. His heart beat at 120 bpm ten minutes after the drop and stopped soon after.

Post-War Lives of the Accused

Pelgrim was released in 1953. He did not return to police duty but worked as an electrician and died of a heart attack in 1963. He always protested his innocence, maintaining that he had been too far away to do anything and had not even touched the pilot.

Grabowski was released on 26 February 1952 upon remission of sentence. He always maintained that he was subject to an injustice. He died in 1972.

Nieke was released on 17 April 1952 upon remission of sentence. He returned to his duties as a customs official and died in 1975.

Pilot Officer William Edward “Spike” Maloney

Pilot Officer Maloney was born on 25 July 1921 in Clifton (Queensland, Australia), as the 8th child (2nd boy) of a schoolteacher. He enlisted from Brisbane on 8 November 1941, service no. AUS 414715.

He was first buried in Nordfriedhof Düsseldorf, 111c grave 544, and later reburied on 19 October 1946 at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, 7.F.18.

The Mission to Worms

Sgt Cyril W. Sibley
P/O William Edward “Spike” Maloney, RAAF

The target was Worms. At 17:27 hrs on 21 February 1945, Halifax III bomber MZ351 MP-X of No. 158 Squadron took off from RAF Lissett in Yorkshire, together with hundreds of other bomber planes, for another night raid.

The crew consisted of:

F/Sgt Alan Charles Widdowson (pilot)
Sgt Frederick J. Fox (flight engineer)
P/O Terence Dillon (navigator)
P/O John McFarlane Scott (air bomber)
F/Sgt Michael Edward Jordan (wireless operator and air gunner, an Australian)
Sgt Cyril William Sibley (air gunner)
Sgt Francis Leslie Charles Mewis (air gunner)

They had not yet reached their target when night fighters attacked them. The pilot attempted to evade them with a corkscrew manoeuvre but was unable to do so due to another Halifax in their path. A night fighter then came up from underneath and hit them in the bomb bay.

Most of the crew managed to bale out, landing in open fields where they were captured and made prisoners of war. The pilot, Widdowson, had also tried to bale out but was found with his parachute entangled in one of the engines of the plane, which had crashed in a vineyard.

The Capture of Sgt Sibley

Sergeant Sibley came down in the branches of a tree in the backyard of Maria Gassner at Friedhofstraße 18, Dirmstein, 11 kilometers southwest of Worms. Frau Gassner helped him to free himself, cared for his cuts and bruises, gave him two large glasses of wine spritzer and some cigarettes.

Then Adolf Wolfert appeared. He was the local Nazi party leader, and with him was Georg Hartleb, battalion commander of the Volkssturm (territorial army, home guard). They took Sibley away to the local police station.

There, a third man joined them: Volkssturm adjutant Heinrich Kreß, a teacher in civilian life. Later, they took Sibley away, allegedly to a collecting point at Grünstadt.

The Execution

Fifteen-year-old Arthur Maurer, together with some friends, followed them from a distance. Just after passing the disused station building of the local railway, the men turned suddenly and disappeared behind the building. A few moments later, the boys heard shots. Others heard them too—three shots.

This is what Wolfert himself said in a trial statement:

“We took the airman behind the railway station. He did not say anything and we did not speak to him. Hartleb took him with his left hand, turned him around and held his revolver close to his face. I then took my revolver and shot the airman from a distance of about two meters, once in the head and once in the chest. The airman fell down, and Hartleb fired one more shot after he had fallen down.”

The next morning, Frau Gassner saw the bodies of two airmen on a handcart and recognized one as Sibley. The other was presumably Widdowson, who had been removed from the crash site.

Burial and Exhumation

In the afternoon of 22 February, Widdowson and Sibley were buried in a mass grave together with six airmen from another bomber crash near Dirmstein.

On 6 August 1945, 18-year-old Erwin Folz, together with a number of other men, was given the task of unearthing the bodies. An American commission of inquiry had come to investigate. Erwin Folz remembered in 2014 that Sibley’s body was lying on top, without a coffin, and that even he could clearly see an entry or exit wound when the American medical officer handled the skull.

The War Crimes Trial

From 13 to 17 May 1946, a British Military Court sat at Bad Lippspringe—curiously without a Judge Advocate or Legal Member—to try the case.

Wolfert, Hartleb, Kreß, and a fourth man (later acquitted) were charged with:

“Committing a war crime in that they at Dirmstein, Germany, during the night of 21/22 February 1945 in violation of the laws and usages of war were concerned in the killing of Sgt Cyril W. Sibley, Royal Air Force, a British prisoner of war.”

Wolfert claimed superior orders, saying that the Nazi county leader—his superior—had ordered that crashed or parachuted enemy airmen should not be taken prisoner.

Hartleb denied knowing of such an order but admitted he had known Wolfert’s intention to kill. Kreß said that, due to his being hard of hearing, he had not known what was afoot until the killing— in which he claimed no part—was committed.

The trial ended on 17 May with death sentences for Wolfert and Hartleb, and a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for Kreß. The death sentences were confirmed by higher authority on 22 July 1946; the prison sentence was not.

Execution and Final Resting Place

On 11 October 1946, Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by RSM O’Neill and Alexander Hurry, hanged twelve men at Hameln, among them Wolfert and Hartleb.

Wolfert, at 10:31 a.m., shared the place on the trap doors with Dr. Rohde (see the case of Sgt Habgood and the SOE women, below).
Hartleb’s turn came 28 minutes later, together with Friedrich Fischer, who had murdered an Allied airman at Bochum.

In 1948, Cyril W. Sibley was reburied at Rheinberg War Cemetery (within the city limits of Kamp-Lintfort, Germany), in grave 20.B.20.

He was born on 10 October 1923 in Merthyr Tydfil (Wales), the son of Cyril V. W. Sibley and Rhoda B. Sibley (née Jenkins). In 1943, he had married Florence Rogers.

Memorials to Sgt Sibley

Sibley’s headstone at Rheinberg War Cemetery
“Stumbling Stone” for Sibley in Dirmstein

Some in Dirmstein tried to forget. Others didn’t.

In 1985 and 2004, regional writers wrote about the murder. In 2001, there was a radio broadcast—its typescript is still available on the internet. When the village chronicle was printed in 2005, however, the names of the murderers were shortened to initials.

In March 2009, Dirmstein honoured the memory of nine Jewish fellow citizens who had been deported and murdered, by setting Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in front of the house where most of them had lived.

A Stolperstein is a cobblestone-size concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. The Stolperstein art project was initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 and is still ongoing. As of 31 January 2017, over 56,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in 20 European countries, making the project the world’s largest decentralized memorial.

Next to these nine Stolpersteine, a tenth was set for Cyril W. Sibley, making him the only murdered airman so far to receive this kind of memorial on German soil. The spot where he had been murdered could not be used, as it had been covered by a new road.

Ferdinand Flach and Lee Huffman

Background of the Accused

34-year-old Hermann Noack was born at Duisburg on 4 June, 1912, and was married with three children. He had been an athletic instructor before the war. By 1940, he was a first lieutenant in the paratroopers. During September 1944, he was operating a Hitler Youth Camp near Harbach in Rhineland-Palatinate.

His co-defendant was Karl Georg Böss (given as Boess in the trial records), a 42-year-old butcher and innkeeper at Grünberg, Oberhessen. Böss was a member of the Grünberg Fire Brigade. He thus wore a uniform and was permitted to carry a pistol. He too was married and had a daughter.

The Crime

Liberator bomber B-24H Nr. 41-28922 “Texas Rose” of 445 Bomber Group, 701 Bombardment Squadron, piloted by 2LT Palmer M. Bruland, was shot down on 27 September 1944, near the village of Hattenrod in Germany. Among the crew were Staff Sergeants Ferdinand E. Flach (army serial no. 37540396) and Lee R. J. Huffman (army serial no. 34203002). Flach was the nose gunner and Huffman the right mid-ships gunner.

Both men were able to parachute out and were captured and taken to the Bürgermeister’s office (mayor’s office). Noack and Böss took each man in turn out to Noack’s car and, together with two other men with spades, drove off to a nearby shooting range. Each man was shot and then ordered to be buried by the men with the spades. Noack is reported to have said, “Revenge for the first sergeant.” It is not clear what he might have meant by this remark.

The commanding officer of the Harbach Airfield had issued an order that all captured Allied airmen were to be shot on the spot.

Arrest, Trial, and Execution

Noack was arrested and released but then re-arrested and sent to an internment camp at Karlsruhe, where he remained until 18 July 1946.

Noack and Böss were tried before a U.S. Military Court at Dachau on 29–31 July and 2–5 August 1946, in case no. 12-472. At the time of the trial, the victims’ names were unknown. Both men were found guilty of their parts in the murders. Noack was condemned to death, and Böss sentenced to eight years in prison.

At Landsberg, Noack fasted and lost sufficient weight to enable him to squeeze through the bars of his cell and escape in the nude. He was caught by Russian soldiers and shot in the leg. They returned him to Landsberg, where he had the injured leg amputated.

Noack was hanged at Landsberg on 21 March 1947, probably the only one-legged man to be executed there. A surviving photograph of the preparations for the execution indicates that he may have been strapped to a collapse board.

LT Joseph H. Williams, who had been posted to Landsberg to improve security there, recorded in his book that Noack tried to stun himself prior to the execution and took ten minutes to die after the drop, death being confirmed at 9:36 a.m.

Ferdinand E. Flach is buried in the American Cemetery at Margraten in the Netherlands, Plot A Row 15 Grave 14. Lee R. J. Huffman is buried in the same cemetery in Plot H Row 3 Grave 8.

P/O Gerald Hood and Bote van der Wal

The Accused and Trial

42-year-old Georg Otto Sandrock and 37-year-old Ludwig Schweinberger were tried before a British Military Court sitting at Almelo in eastern Holland on 24–26 November 1945. With them were Franz Joseph Hegemann and Helmut Wiegner.

Sandrock and Schweinberger were accused of the murder of P/O Gerald Hood, a British prisoner of war, on 21 March 1945, and of Dutch civilian Bote van der Wal on 24 March 1945. Hegemann was tried for his involvement in the murder of Hood, and Wiegner for his part in the murder of Bote van der Wal.

All four men were convicted. Sandrock and Schweinberger were sentenced to “suffer death by being hanged,” while Hegemann and Wiegner were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The sentences were confirmed by the Commander-in-Chief, British Army of the Rhine, on 12 December 1945. Sandrock and Schweinberger were hanged at Hameln by Albert Pierrepoint at 15:49 hrs on the afternoon of 13 December 1945, following the executions of the Belsen defendants.

The Fate of Gerald Hood and Bote van der Wal

23-year-old Gerald Hood, from London, was the navigator in Lancaster Mk. III bomber LM658 HW-W of No. 100 Squadron. On the night of Saturday, 12 August 1944, it had taken off at 21:45 hrs from RAF Waltham near Grimsby, Lincolnshire, for a night bombing raid on Brunswick/Braunschweig.

There were problems with the plane’s navigational equipment and also with high winds. They encountered a great deal of anti-aircraft flak, which resulted in a fuel tank being punctured and the Lancaster going down in flames near Almelo, between the villages of Hardenberg and Bergentheim at approximately 01:10 hrs local time on the Sunday morning.

Hood sustained burns to his legs but managed to parachute to safety. He was found by Jan Piksen, a local resistance leader, and taken to a “safe house.” Hood was moved several times until he was at the home of Mrs. Ebeltje van der Wal in the village of Nyverdal. Mrs. van der Wal had a son, Bote, and a daughter, Grietje.

Bote had refused to sign up for the Nazis and work for them. So, on the night of 13 March 1945, following a tip-off, the local Nazi police surrounded the house to arrest him. Fearing for the safety of Mrs. van der Wal and her daughter, the men gave themselves up. On searching Hood, the police found his identity tags. Both were taken to Almelo prison.

Hood was interrogated by Oberfeldwebel (M/Sgt) Georg Otto Sandrock, who spoke good English. Hood told Sandrock that he had been shot down but could not remember where he had hidden his parachute and uniform.

On the morning of 21 March 1945, Untersturmführer (SS 2LT) Paul Hardegen arrived at Sandrock’s office and told him that Hood had been sentenced to death as a spy.

Sandrock was unhappy about this, as no trial had taken place, and he did not feel that Hood was a spy. However, orders were orders, so he had Hood brought to his office from Almelo prison. At around 10 p.m., he was loaded into a car with Sandrock, Ludwig Schweinberger, and Franz Josef Hegemann, who was the driver. He was taken to woods near the village of Zenderen, where Sandrock told him that he was to be executed as a spy. Schweinberger fired a single round from a 9 mm Luger pistol into the back of Hood’s neck.

Two days later, Bote van der Wal was executed in the same way and at the same place.

The Tilburg Lynching Case

The Victims and Circumstances

Three Allied airmen were shot execution-style at a “safe house” during a raid by German Gestapo officers on the morning of 9 July 1944 at Tilburg, in the southern province of Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands.

They were:

F/L Ronald Arthur Walker (RAF), age 21
F/O Jack Stewart Nott (RAAF), age 26
F/O Roy Edward Carter (RCAF), age 23

Walker was the pilot and only survivor from Lancaster bomber ND551 OL-V ‘Victor’ of No. 83 (Pathfinder) Squadron, which took off from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire at 23:18 hrs on the night of 21 June 1944 to bomb Wesseling. It was intercepted by a German night fighter, some 9 km south of Eindhoven in Holland, at 01:25 hrs on 22 June 1944. The aircraft exploded in mid-air with the loss of six crewmen, who were buried in Woensel, Eindhoven.

Jack Stewart Nott was the bomb aimer in Halifax bomber MZ698 KN-J of No. 77 Squadron, shot down over St-Oedenrode. Five of the crew were killed; two were captured.

Roy Carter was with No. 431 Squadron RCAF. His Halifax was shot down near Nistelrode. Most of the crew bailed out; some were killed or captured. Carter and F/Sgt Thomas Masdin evaded capture for a time.

The Capture and Executions

Walker survived with bruises and was helped by Dutch Resistance. Eventually, he and Nott were moved to the home of Miss Jacoba Pulskens (“Aunt Coba”) in Tilburg, where Carter was already hiding.

On the morning of 9 July 1944, after the arrest of other airmen and their driver, the Gestapo raided Aunt Coba’s house. The three unarmed airmen moved toward the back door, where Michael Rotschopf was waiting. He forced them to line up and shot them. Witnesses, including Mr. Nico Pulskens, testified that Rotschopf was the shooter.

A Dutch flag was used by Aunt Coba to cover the bodies in defiance. The corpses had been shot around 100 times and were later cremated, possibly at Vught concentration camp.

Aunt Coba was arrested and later gassed at Ravensbrück in February 1945.

The Tilburg Lynching Trial

The “Trial of Franz Schonfeld and Nine Others” was held before a British Military Court at the Jugendheim on Fürstinstraße in Essen-Steele, from 11–26 June 1946. The ten defendants were charged with committing a war crime:

“At Tilburg on the 9th of July 1944, in violation of the laws and usages of war, were concerned in the killing of a member of the Royal Air Force, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and a member of the Royal Australian Air Force.”

All ten pleaded not guilty.

Miss Leoni van Harsell testified on behalf of the prosecution. The Doctrine of Common Purpose was applied in convicting four of the defendants.

Verdicts and Executions

Karl Paul Schwanz – Death sentence, hanged at 10:08 a.m., age 49
Albert Rösener – Death sentence, hanged at 10:41 a.m., age 35
Karl Cremer – Death sentence, hanged at 10:41 a.m., age 37
Michael Rotschopf – Death sentence, hanged at 11:36 a.m., age 26

The following were acquitted and released due to lack of evidence:

Karl Otto Klingbeil
Franz Schonfeld
Hans Harders
Werner Koeny
Eugen Rafflenbeul
Karl Brendle

The executions took place at Hameln on Friday, 5 September 1947, by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by RSM Richard O’Neill and Edwin Roper.

Memorial

All three airmen are commemorated at the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede in Surrey:

Jack Nott – Panel 257
Ronald Walker – Panel 203
Roy Carter – Panel 245

Jacoba Maria Pulskens was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947. On 27 June 1984, a memorial rock to Mrs. Pulskens and the three airmen was unveiled in Tilburg.

The Borkum Island Massacre

Background on Borkum Island

Borkum Island is the largest of the seven East Frisian islands, with an area of almost 31 square kilometres. It is approximately 30 kilometres from the mainland and is Germany’s most north-westerly point. During World War II, it was an important German military and naval base and had a population of 4,500 to 5,000.

The Crash of the Flying Fortress

On Friday, August 4, 1944, Boeing B-17G-75-BO Flying Fortress S/No. 43-37909 of the 486th Heavy Bombardment Group had taken off from its base at Sudbury in Suffolk, England. The nine-member crew comprised:

2LT Harvey M. Walthall (pilot)
2LT William J. Myers (co-pilot)
Sgt Kazmer Rachak (flight engineer)
2LT Howard S. Graham (bombardier)
2LT Quentin F. Ingerson (navigator)
T/Sgt Kenneth Faber (radio operator)
S/Sgt James W. Danno (turret gunner)
S/Sgt William F. Dold (waist gunner)
S/Sgt William W. Lambertus (tail gunner)

At 12:51 that Friday, the plane was over the German coastline, northwest of Bremen. Here, it was involved in a mid-air collision with another plane from the Group, 43-38145, piloted by 2LT Haper. Two crew members—Rachak and Ingerson—bailed out and parachuted down onto mainland Germany, where they were taken prisoner and survived the rest of the war.

William J. Myers managed to regain control of 43-37909 but realized that he would not be able to nurse the damaged plane back to England. He decided to make an emergency landing on Borkum Island. The plane came under anti-aircraft fire during its final approach. Only one crew member was injured, and all surrendered to German soldiers, who took them to the Eastland Battery, commanded by Oberleutnant (1LT) Jacob Seiler.

German Military Involvement

Present at the battery was Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Kurt Goebell of the German Navy, the highest-ranking officer on the island. Oberleutnant (1LT) Erich Wentzel was called in to act as interpreter, as he had a good command of the English language. The prisoners were to be transported to a naval base on the south of the island, from where they would be transferred to the mainland and interned as prisoners of war.

Oberfeldwebel (M/Sgt) Josef Johann Schmitz, together with seven armed soldiers, was detailed to march the US airmen to the naval base. Seiler briefed Schmitz that the prisoners were not to be protected from the local people, were to march with their hands up, and were to take the longest of the three possible routes—some seven miles. As Schmitz was unfamiliar with some of the streets, Wentzel offered to accompany the group, becoming the only officer on the march, though not in charge.

Civilian Involvement and Violence

The police chief, Heinrich Rommel, and the acting mayor of Borkum, Jan Akkermann, were informed by phone of what was about to happen and reminded not to interfere, “since this was a purely military matter,” according to an edict issued by Joseph Goebbels. Akkermann phoned Rommel to ensure compliance and informed Meyer-Gerhards, the acting chief of the Air Raid Police, that he hoped its officers would show “what kind of men they were.” Akkermann then took two of his men to a point where he knew the prisoners would pass and made a public speech encouraging an attack on them.

The first assault occurred before the group reached the town. The prisoners were marched along the beach to an intersection with the road into town, where Wentzel met August Haesiker, commander of an RAD unit (obligatory Reich Work Service). Haesiker ordered them to continue on the Promenade to Strandstraße. On the Promenade, the airmen were forced to march between two lines of men, who were ordered to hit them with spades.

The Town Beatings and Executions

They continued into Borkum, where Akkermann made a speech urging locals to “beat the dogs, the murderers.” The locals complied. Oberfeldwebel Schmitz also participated, hitting the prisoners with his rifle butt.

In the town hall area, Howard Graham’s trousers fell down. He was not allowed to pull them up because Seiler had ordered that the men must keep their hands up at all times. Graham was assaulted by Air Raid Policeman Gustav Mammenga and left lying on the ground, where he was shot by Gefreiter (Pfc) Langer, whose wife and child had been killed in an air raid in Hamburg. Langer was not a member of the escort but happened upon the prisoners as he returned from guard duty. Graham was taken to the Naval Hospital, where he died soon afterward.

The rest of the group continued their march to the naval base and had nearly reached it when a further six were shot. Langer boasted that he had shot all of them, though it is likely that Schmitz and another sergeant also participated.

Those Killed

Those who died that day were:

Harvey Walthall
William Myers
Howard Graham
Kenneth Faber
James Danno
William Dold
William Lambertus

All were initially buried in the Lutheran Cemetery on Borkum. Harvey Walthall and James W. Danno were most probably reinterred in the USA. The other five were reburied at Ardennes American Cemetery in Neupré, Belgium:

William Myers: Plot B, Row 31, Grave 49
Howard Graham: Plot A, Row 24, Grave 5
Kenneth Faber: Plot B, Row 11, Grave 2
William Dold: Plot C, Row 1, Grave 2
William Lambertus: Plot D, Row 15, Grave 2

Aftermath and Trial

Borkum Island fell to the British, and a French POW informed them that he had witnessed the seven murders. An intelligence report was forwarded to the US Naval Liaison Officer, who conducted a preliminary investigation. The US Army Intelligence Corps followed up, and charges were brought against 23 defendants. Only 15 could be located and put on trial at Ludwigsburg between 6 February and 22 March 1946. The trial was entitled “Kurt Goebell et al.” There were two charges, both relating to violations of the laws of war:

Count 1: Murder of the airmen
Count 2: Non-lethal assaults on them

All 15 defendants pleaded not guilty. Gefreiter (Pfc) Langer had died in action just before the end of the war and could not be brought to trial.

Verdicts and Sentences

Name	Count 1	Count 2	Sentence
Akkermann, Jan J.	Guilty	Guilty	Death
Albrecht, Günther	Not guilty	Guilty	6 years
Geyer, Karl	Not guilty	Guilty	4 years
Goebell, Kurt	Guilty	Guilty	Death (commuted to life, paroled 1956)
Heinemann, Heinrich	Not guilty	Guilty	18 years (reduced to 10 years)
Krolikovski, Walter	Guilty	Guilty	Life (reduced to 14 years)
Mammenga, Gustav	Not guilty	Guilty	24 years
Meyer-Gerhards	Not guilty	Not guilty	Acquittal
Pointner, Johann	Not guilty	Guilty	5 years
Rommel, Heinrich	Not guilty	Guilty	2 years
Schmitz, Johann Josef	Guilty	Guilty	Death
Seiler, Jakob Valentin	Guilty	Guilty	Death (commuted to life)
Weber, Karl	Not guilty	Guilty	25 years
Wentzel, Erich	Guilty	Guilty	Death
Witzke, Heinz	Not guilty	Guilty	11 years

The five death sentences were confirmed by Governor US General Lucius D. Clay in 1947. However, Goebell’s and Seiler’s sentences were commuted to life in prison in 1948. Goebell was paroled in February 1956.

Jan Akkermann, aged 54, was hanged at Landsberg on 15 October 1948.
Josef Schmitz was executed on the same day.
Erich Wentzel was hanged at Landsberg on 3 December 1948.

Trial of August Haesiker

August Haesiker came to trial on 26 June 1947 and was sentenced to 10 years for ordering his men to beat the prisoners. He was paroled in December 1952.

Commemoration

On 4 August 2003, a memorial to the seven airmen was unveiled at Hindenburgstraße in the town of Borkum.

The Essen-West Lynching Case

Essen and the Strategic Bombing Campaign

The Ruhr area, with its coal mines and steel works, was the “Armory of the German Reich,” as Hitler said. Essen in particular, the home town of the Krupp armament works, was therefore an important target for the Allied bomber planes during the First (March to July 1943) and Second Battle of the Ruhr (October to December 1944).

During the night of 12/13 December 1944, RAF Bomber Command flew their last heavy night raid on Essen with 540 aircraft: 349 Lancasters, 163 Halifaxes, and 28 Mosquitos. Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., 57 blockbuster bombs (the RAF’s HC or High Capacity bombs) were dropped, plus 4,000 explosive bombs, 60,000 incendiaries, and 5,000 white phosphorus bombs.

About one-third of the explosive bombs were equipped with a time delay device that set them off 12 or 36 hours after dropping, thus endangering salvage workers both the morning after the raid and again the following day.

In addition to damage to the factories, 696 homes were destroyed in Essen and 1,370 more damaged. 463 people on the ground were killed, including 84 political prisoners who died when the prison was hit, and many slave workers and prisoners of war. 196 were injured, and 40 were reported missing. Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had made a speech on the Krupp premises just one hour before the barrage started and escaped the attack.

Six Lancasters failed to return to base, but there were survivors.

Capture of Allied Airmen

On the morning of 13 December, civilians brought three parachuted Allied airmen, taken in the neighborhood, to police station No. 13 in Essen-West. Police commander Hauptmann (CPT) Abel handed them over to army Hauptmann (CPT) Heyer, commanding officer of No. 6 Company of the Landesschützen Battalion No. 471, which was conveniently billeted next door in the same disused school building on Mülheimer Straße.

Abel expected the Allied flyers, as per traditional Geneva Convention procedure, to be brought under military escort to the nearest Luftwaffe unit for interrogation – in this case, Mülheim Airfield, about four miles distant. Heyer was somewhat irritated. Why should he be troubled with these men, he asked Abel—they would be shot anyway, he said. Or perhaps he said “should be shot”—the witness was not quite sure during Heyer’s trial before a Military Court, which took place one year later, from 18 to 22 December 1945, in the “Jugendheim” (youth centre) in Fürstinstraße, Essen-Steele.

Thanks to a trial transcript contained in the file WO 235/56 of the British National Archives at Kew, it is possible to follow the proceedings in considerable detail. The prosecution called 14 witnesses, and from their evidence it was established that Heyer eventually agreed to take charge of the airmen.

Orders and Escort

His interview with Abel took place at 9:00 or perhaps 9:30 a.m., witnessed by a police officer. Heyer, within earshot of a waiting crowd, ordered an escort of one Unteroffizier (Sgt), Ferdinand Nelges, and one Private (the accused Koenen) to accompany the airmen to Mülheim Airfield, adding that they were not to interfere if civilians should molest the prisoners. (Heyer, when examined, admitted giving this order, but not within earshot of civilians.) The accused Koenen testified that this order of non-interference had already been read to his unit twice in the preceding days.

Off they marched, followed by a number of civilians and, according to some evidence, for about 175 yards by Hauptmann Heyer and one Feldwebel (T/Sgt) Grosche or Groosse as well. One witness said Heyer incited the crowd while walking, saying, “Civilians, attack these airmen; they are not men but murderers.” (Heyer denied this.)

The prosecutor said that about halfway between Kruppstraße and the Wickenburg bridge, near a brickyard, “an unknown corporal in the German anti-aircraft wing actually fired a revolver at one of the airmen, who is identified as a sergeant, and wounded him in the head, and that the sergeant took out a bandage and put it round his head.” The accused Koenen testified having seen this shooting but did not mention the bandage. However, the bandage is mentioned by several witnesses and serves to identify the sergeant whenever he is mentioned as the story progresses.

The Attack at Wickenburg Bridge

Not quite half a mile into their march, they reached the bridge where the street crossed a narrow stream and a railway line. By this time, Hauptmann Heyer had returned to the barracks.

The crowd had increased until finally about 60 people—witness estimates ranged from 40 to 170—milled around the prisoners, shouting abuse, throwing sticks and stones from the tramway track bed, and beating them with whatever was at hand. The accused Boddenberg, for instance, took off his belt for the purpose. The accused Braschoß was seen beating the airmen by several witnesses, using the stick with which he used to walk, having been shot through his knees in World War I. (On the witness stand, he and his wife denied he had the stick with him on the bridge.)

Most witnesses saw only five to seven people actually taking part in the violence; the majority seemed to limit themselves to verbal abuse. Some voices shouted, “Don’t beat them, leave them alone,” and similar remarks.

In the end, two of the airmen were thrown over the parapet on the western (downstream) side of the bridge, about forty feet deep. One, who had attempted to escape, was thrown over the other side, allegedly by Braschoß and one Franz Kircher (not before the court in this trial). The Unteroffizier of the escort, blind in one eye (one witness spoke of his glass eye), was seen firing two or three shots (other witnesses claimed ten, twelve, or fifteen) from his rifle at the two airmen lying downstream in the water, killing them.

Several people, among them Braschoß and Unteroffizier Nelges, were seen by the stream, robbing the bodies, undressing them, and throwing them into the water. Some witnesses said the bodies were carried away by the current. According to some evidence, the water level in the stream was indeed above normal at the time.

Trials and Sentences

After five days of trial, the court acquitted two of the accused.

Hauptmann Erich Heyer was sentenced to death. Although he had not taken part in the killing, he had used “words that kill,” which “lit the fuse” leading to the eruption of violence. The court believed the witness who said Heyer instigated the civilians. His instigation made him “concerned in the killing.”
Johann Braschoß was sentenced to hang for his part in the beating and, as the court believed, in throwing one airman off the bridge (though only one witness claimed to have seen him do it).
Karl Käufer received a life sentence.
Hugo Boddenberg received ten years.
Peter Koenen was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

The prison terms were served at Werl Prison, where the British held German war criminals and Allied nationals. At Hameln Prison, Erich Heyer and Johann Braschoß were hanged together on 8 March 1946 at 4:10 p.m. by Albert Pierrepoint and RSM O’Neill.

The Trial of Franz Kircher

From 1 to 3 April 1946, a British Military Court tried Franz Kircher, who was previously named in the charge sheet but had not been apprehended. He was accused of throwing or helping to throw an airman off the bridge and of taking the boots from one of the dead.

Kircher denied having been on the bridge and claimed he had pulled a body from the stream to prevent it sinking. He admitted buying the boots from an escort in exchange for cigarettes. His defense argued that he had opposed the Nazi regime and that this, along with discrepancies in witness testimony, made him an unlikely suspect.

Nonetheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The execution was carried out at Hameln by Pierrepoint and O’Neill on 15 May 1946 at 5:30 p.m.

Post-Trial Reconsiderations

On 25 July 1949, the sentence of Karl Käufer was scrutinized by the Deputy Judge Advocate General of the British Army of the Rhine, Lord Russell of Liverpool. He found the evidence against Käufer flimsy and advised that the conviction be quashed. General Sir Brian H. Robertson, the Military Governor, followed this advice four days later.

Lord Russell later reviewed the sentences of Koenen and Boddenberg. He found both correct in law but wrote on 4 August 1949 that the Commander-in-Chief “may feel that [Koenen] has received sufficient punishment.” Koenen was released from Werl Prison on 11 August 1949.

Reinvestigation in 1990

Since 1979, there has been no statute of limitations for murder in Germany. In 1990, prosecutors reopened the case to determine whether those previously untried could be prosecuted: Unteroffizier Ferdinand Nelges, Peter Tewes, and Hans Braschoß (Johann’s son). Investigators found that Nelges and Tewes were dead and that no evidence linked Hans Braschoß to the crime.

Who Were the Airmen?

Throughout the trial papers, the airmen were called “unidentified.” Of the six Lancaster bombers lost on this mission, four were downed over or near Essen. These aircraft came from Nos. 150, 460, 582, and 635 Squadrons. Their 29 crew members are known, and 26 are buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, near Kleve.

Three airmen—F/O Michael Gisby, F/Sgt William Horlor, and F/O Leon Milner—are commemorated at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial as having no known grave. It is tempting to believe these were the lynching victims.

However, recent research by Sean Feast and Marc Hall in Missing – Presumed Murdered suggests that only Gisby and Milner remain without known graves. The third victim is believed, beyond reasonable doubt, to be Sgt Harry Mawson, whose body is buried at Reichswald.

Feast and Hall also propose that Horlor may lie in the same grave as Sgt Stephen H. Ward, in Plot 3, Row 1, Grave 14. A 1944 record shows that two bodies were buried in one coffin, but only one was found during exhumation. The CWGC, however, declined to update their records.

Feast and Hall believe that Horlor’s body “was still in the coffin and is still in Stephen’s war grave. We believe that sadly there wasn’t that much of Bill left to identify him.”

Epilogue: A Transition to Other Crimes

The final case in this chapter of murdered Allied airmen also serves as a transition to the crimes committed in the concentration camps. It is the case of Sergeant Habgood, who was killed at the same spot and by the same men responsible for thousands of other deaths, including the murder of four women of the Special Operations Executive.

Sgt. Frederic H. Habgood, RAF, and the Four SOE Women

The Stuttgart Raid and the Fate of Lancaster NE164

Between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on 28 July 1944, 494 Avro Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force took off from different bases in Yorkshire, England, accompanied by 400 fighter planes. Among them was a plane bearing the number NE164, which had taken off at 9:36 p.m. from North Killingholme air base near Grimsby. It belonged to No. 550 Squadron and was piloted by F/O Harry Jones.

His crew, as in all main force Lancasters, consisted of:

Flight engineer: Sgt. James Drury
Navigator: F/O William Dinney (a Canadian)
Wireless operator: Sgt. Donald Hunter
Two gunners: Sergeants Roy Cumberlidge and Idwal Williams
Bomb aimer: 160253 Sergeant Frederic Harold Habgood (21), son of Harold Herbert and Gwynne Elizabeth Habgood of Wandsworth, London.

Their target was Stuttgart. The city was to be raided for the third time that week. The Bosch works were to be damaged or destroyed. The route took the planes over Rouen, Orléans, St. Dizier, Strasbourg, and Karlsruhe. Altitude was 19,700 ft, temperature –95°F, cruise speed 185 mph.

Shot Down Over Alsace

When they were over Orléans, still far from their target, they were already picked up by German fighters—300 of them were on their track. The fighters and anti-aircraft guns caused the loss of 53 RAF planes, 17 of which went down in France. NE164 was intercepted near Strasbourg and shot down at 1:32 a.m. by Oberleutnant (1LT) Gottfried Hanneck of Nachtgeschwader 1 (Night Fighter Wing No. 1), flying a Me 110.

With the Lancaster’s right wing on fire, F/O Jones steered the aircraft toward Mount Ste. Odile in Alsace, passed overhead the small town of Obernai, and crashed around 1:50 a.m. in the forest near the mountain. Six crew were able to bale out, but pilot Jones died in the crash, and Sgt. Williams didn’t survive his parachute jump.

Sgts. Drury, Hunter, and Cumberlidge were taken prisoner and survived the war in a camp in Poland. Dinney, the Canadian, hid in a nunnery and was handed over to the Résistance, who helped him escape back to England.

Sgt. Habgood’s Capture and Execution

Sgt. Habgood hid nearby until early Sunday, 30 July. He was discovered in a wood near Lutzelhouse by a woman who tried to detain him in her house with offers of schnapps until she could alert the Gestapo. Habgood, however, realized what was happening and managed to escape. Unfortunately, the Gestapo were warned, and he was recaptured later that evening in a barn where he had been hiding under hay. He was taken to Château Schiedeck at Lutzelhouse, the Gestapo Headquarters.

Later that night, or early Monday morning, he was transferred to the SS security camp at Schirmeck and placed in Cell 24. Schirmeck was essentially an outpost of the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof, 6.5 miles away. On Monday evening, he was driven by car to Natzweiler, taken directly to the crematorium, stripped, and hanged from a hook in the ceiling in front of the furnace in a manner that amounted to slow strangulation.

Ceiling hooks in front of the crematorium furnace at Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp, Alsace, France

SS Hauptscharführer (M/Sgt) Peter Straub, the NCO responsible for the crematorium, kicked away the support beneath Habgood’s feet after his stoker, an inmate named Franz Berg, had fixed the noose. The car’s driver smoked a cigarette outside and later testified that, after ten minutes, Habgood was still not dead.

It is assumed that Habgood’s body was cremated in the furnace. Behind the crematorium building lies a large field where the ashes of cremated inmates were scattered. It had been assumed that Habgood’s ashes were among them—until August 21, 2018.

A Bracelet and a Breakthrough

On that day, Anna Bernard, a second-year sports student working a summer job at the European Center for the Deported Resistance Fighters (CERD) at Natzweiler-Struthof, noticed something glittering while watering the flowers. It was a silver bracelet bearing the RAF wings, Habgood’s name and service number, and, on the reverse, the name of his cousin “Jean.”

Paul Habgood, son of Frederic’s brother Ronald, and his sister Marilyn traveled to Struthof in October 2018 to receive it. They had known about the bracelet, which Freddie had received from Canadian relatives after completing training there in 1943. He had written about it in a letter home.

Natzweiler crematorium furnace

The bracelet showed signs of partial melting—almost certainly it had accompanied Habgood’s body into the furnace. Where the bracelet ended up, his ashes cannot have been far away.

Justice at Wuppertal

Not quite two years after Habgood’s death, a British Military Court convened in the main building of the Zoological Garden at Wuppertal—one of the few buildings large enough to host such proceedings. The “Trial of MUTH and five others” took place on 4 and 5 June 1946, addressing the murder of Frederic Habgood.

Charges were dropped against one accused, and the court proceeded against five. It confirmed the events described above and pronounced one prison term and four death sentences. Two of those sentenced to death were handed over to the French for trial on additional charges and were ultimately not executed.

The remaining two—Peter Straub and Franz Berg—had their sentences confirmed on 7 August 1946. They were hanged simultaneously on 11 October 1946, at 9:54 a.m., in Hameln.

Straub (58), weighing 145.5 lbs, was given a drop of 7 ft 7 in. Berg (43), at 130 lbs, dropped nine inches more. Executioner Albert Pierrepoint was assisted by RSM Richard A. O’Neill and Alexander Hurry.

Peter Straub talking to his counsel during the trial

On 8 May 2008, a memorial stele was dedicated to F/O Jones, Sgt. Williams, and Sgt. Habgood. It stands about 100 yards from the crash site in the Alsatian forest, within the boundaries of Ottrott, where Jones and Williams are buried.

Dr. Werner Rohde and the Four Women of SOE

At 10:31 a.m., half an hour after Straub and Berg were executed, Dr. Werner Rohde also faced the same fate. A British Military Court had sentenced him to death for a crime he committed with Straub and Berg just three weeks before Sgt. Habgood’s execution.

Dr. Werner Rohde (*11 June 1904) had been the camp doctor at Buchenwald in 1942, Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943/44, and, from 1 July 1944, at Natzweiler-Struthof.

On the afternoon of 6 July 1944, inmates at Natzweiler-Struthof saw something extraordinary: four women in this men-only camp. They were carrying suitcases and coats. Initially believed to be visitors, the women were led down the camp road to the Zellenbau (cell block) next to the crematorium and locked into cells.

Franz Berg later testified that Straub had instructed him to heat the oven to maximum by 9:30 p.m. and then disappear. He was told a doctor would arrive to give injections. “I knew what this meant,” he said.

Witness Testimony: A Night of Horror

Berg’s sleeping area in the crematorium building allowed him and his bunkmates Georg Fuhrmann and Alex (a Russian) to hear—and partially see—what happened. Fuhrmann, lying in the top bunk, observed a woman being dragged down the corridor. Groans and heavy breathing followed. The same occurred with the next two women. The fourth resisted, saying, “Pourquoi?”

A voice—recognized by Berg as one of the doctors—replied, “Pour typhus.”

They heard a struggle, muffled cries, and louder groaning as the fourth woman was dragged away. Then came the sounds of the oven door opening and closing. Berg stated clearly that the women were placed into the oven while still alive.

Another inmate reported that flames were seen coming from the chimney four times that night—coinciding with each cremation. Walter Schultz later claimed that Straub had admitted one woman had regained consciousness and scratched his face before being pushed into the oven alive. Schultz had seen the scratches.

When the SS men had left, Berg and his comrades opened the crematorium oven and found four blackened bodies. The next morning, while clearing ashes, Berg found a pink woman’s stocking garter.

Identifying the Victims

During interrogation by WAAF Squadron Officer Vera Atkins of SOE’s “F” Section (France), Berg identified Vera Leigh as one of the four women, and believed another to be Noor Inayat Khan—later determined to be Sonia Olschanezky. Investigations identified the other two as Andrée Borrel and Diana Rowden.

All had been parachuted into France by SOE and worked as wireless operators and couriers until captured. They had been imprisoned for nearly a year in Karlsruhe without trial, then transported at 4 a.m. to Natzweiler for execution.

Medical Murders and Legal Aftermath

The camp doctors were caught off guard by the execution order. Rohde, who had just taken over from Plaza, recalled a debate about the method: Straub rejected hanging as it would cause “ein großes Theater” (a big fuss). The doctors considered and rejected Evipan due to low stock, then settled on phenol injections.

Rohde admitted to injecting one woman but claimed he was so disturbed that Plaza had to take over. It remains unclear how many each administered.

The trial for this case ran from 29 May to 1 June 1946. Rohde was the only one sentenced to death. Straub and Berg received prison terms. Plaza had not yet been located. The British press widely reported on the trial, especially Schultz’s statement that the women had been cremated alive.

The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail called the verdicts a “sorry sequel,” decrying that only one death sentence was imposed. The Yorkshire Post later admitted newspapers had only printed the prosecution’s case and neglected the defense.

Judge Advocate Lt. Col. A.A.H. Marlowe, K.C., M.P., wrote to The Times to refute the lurid claims. He called Schultz “the most unreliable witness I have ever seen,” emphasizing that three of the four executioners had either died, been sentenced, or not been found. The letter prompted more balanced coverage.

Lt. Col. A.A.H. Marlowe, K.C., M.P., Judge Advocate of the trial

Escaped Justice

Two key perpetrators escaped justice. Dr. Heinrich Plaza fled to Bavaria, became a GP, and died in 1968. Though sentenced to death in absentia by a French court in 1954, German prosecutors dropped the case due to his illness.

More notably, Horst Kopkow—senior counter-intelligence officer in Berlin and responsible for parachuted agents—was captured by British Military Police on 29 May 1945. Instead of being tried, he was secretly interrogated about Soviet espionage, declared dead in 1948, released around 1950 under the name “Peter Cordes,” and lived quietly until his death in 1996.

Final Recognition

Vera Atkins relentlessly sought to uncover the fate of all her missing SOE women. In the furnace room of Natzweiler’s crematorium, a stone plaque now commemorates their sacrifice.

Victims’ List

There were far more Allied airmen murdered while prisoners of war than are mentioned here. For a database of all cases known to us, see Aircrew Remembered.

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