Human Game: The True Story of the 'Great Escape' Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen (35 page)

Post testified to this issue while on the stand.

“My attitude is quite clear,” he said. “If I received an order as I received it then—that is, if I had been told by order of the Führer four
British prisoners are to be shot—this would be a violation of international law, but for the officer who carried it out it would be an entirely legal action. I will prove this. We live in an authoritarian state headed by a Leader, and there can be no doubt that an order given by an authoritarian Head of State is law.”

The argument lacked obvious merit in the eyes of the court. While it could be argued that countless Germans assumed what Hitler said to be law, there was no “statute or decree…to the effect that a spoken command of the Head of the State had legal force, or as some counsel suggested, replace the finding and sentence of a court of law.” Furthermore, the prosecution, in countering the plea of superior orders, cited the case of the
Llandovery Castle
, “a British hospital ship which was sunk by a submarine” during the First World War. The submarine’s commander, Lieutenant Helmut Patzig, ordered his men to kill all the survivors. Torpedoes sunk two of the ship’s three lifeboats and killed all on board. Patzig and two of his lieutenants were eventually arraigned on war crimes. Patzig fled Germany and escaped prosecution, but his two subordinates were tried and found guilty. “Patzig’s order does not free the accused of guilt,” said the Sagan prosecutor, quoting the court’s findings in 1918. He referenced the
German Military Penal Code
, which states that a subordinate who obeys an order he knows to be an “infringement of civil or military law” is “liable to punishment.”

Multiple other arguments put forward by the defense came up short, including one that stated only combatants—and not civilians—could commit war crimes. The prosecution countered by reading into the record an excerpt from
chapter 14
of the
Manual for Military Law
: “The term ‘war crime’ is a technical expression for such an act of enemy soldiers and enemy civilians as may be visited by punishment or capture of the offenders.” Despite the shortfall of various defense arguments, the prosecution’s case wasn’t necessarily clear-cut, relying, as it was, “on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice or of accomplices and that one accused cannot corroborate another.” In short, the defendants could only be convicted on the corroborative statements of their onetime comrades if the court was convinced “that the evidence given was true.” The defendants took the stand in their own defense and
expressed in their testimony everything from remorse to pride in their actions. The interrogation tactics employed at the London Cage were also put on trial. On the stand, Erich Zacharias claimed that he confessed to the killings of Thomas Kirby-Green and Gordon Kidder only after Lieutenant Colonel Scotland tortured him by shoving an electrical probe up his rectum.

Taking the stand to refute the defendant’s account, Scotland said he neither tortured Zacharias nor sought a murder confession from the man. What he wanted, he testified, was “information on Gestapo hot-iron methods of torture in Czechoslovakia.” Scotland said Flight Lieutenant Lyon had at one point visited the London Cage to interrogate Zacharias, something Scotland acquiesced to with a measure of reluctance. In questioning the prisoner, Lyon learned that Scotland had made Zacharias strip to the waist and kneel for hours on a cement floor. Beaten down, Zacharias confessed to murdering the two RAF men.

“I can only die once. I will tell you the truth,” he said. “The officers were murdered. I am sorry. They were handcuffed. They did not try to escape. The officers were killed under Ziegler’s orders.”

Now, on the stand, Scotland said he was angered by the confession.

“I did not want Lyon to be successful,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Frau Dr. Oehlert, defense counsel for Zacharias.

“I thought that the torture story was a very much more important one from Zacharias than a confession of shooting guilt,” Scotland said. “If I had a confession of shooting, I could not get a confession of torture.”

Oehlert grilled Scotland on the methods employed at the London Cage.

“Surely, as a British soldier,” she said, “you are familiar with the types of Army punishment?”

“The only army in which I have served for any length of time is the German Army,” Scotland testified. “I do not know the punishments in the British Army.”

“When were you a member of the German Army?”

“I served in the German Army from 1903 to 1907.”

“Have you ever heard of the punishment of cleaning up a room with a toothbrush?” Oehlert asked.

“It sounds very stupid,” said Scotland. “I have not heard of it.”

“I am very surprised that you, with four years’ service in the German Army, do not know anything about that,” said Oehlert, her tone incredulous. “Would you be astonished that my client alleges that such singular punishments were given in the London Cage?”

Scotland kept a straight face: “Yes.”

Oehlert told the court that Zacharias complained of being severely beaten on several occasions while at the London Cage. He also accused guards of denying him food for days at a time and depriving him of sleep. Oehlert asked Scotland if he cared to address the accusations. Scotland’s response lacked conviction. “If that were true,” he said, “he should have made a complaint and we would have done something about it.”

Other allegations of torture at the Cage put forward during the trial included incidents of hair pulling and electrocution. One defense lawyer accused Scotland of telling Nazi prisoners they would die at the end of a rope and their wives “would become common property” in Siberia. Scotland dismissed them all as “manufactured tales” and worried the accusations of torture would soon overshadow the trial and “the brutal fate of those fifty RAF officers.”

Zacharias, called once more to the stand, now said his confession at the Cage had been a lie—an attempt on his part to actually spare the reputation of the German people. Asked by his attorney to explain, he said, “I did not make this statement upon oath, so I did not regard it as too important. I left quite important facts out, of which the most important was the Sagan Order, the fact that the killings had to take place on higher orders, which I assumed to be Hitler.… Secondly, I felt that because of the interests of my own colleagues and because of the reputation of the whole German people, I really could not make such a damaging revelation as this reference to Hitler’s orders to kill the fifty.”

It was a creative, if not pathetic, defense; one destined for failure. As for Scotland, he would continue to defend his interrogation methods. “It was to be expected,” he later wrote, “that the world should be intrigued by the success with which we had persuaded substantial numbers of Nazis criminals not only to confess their role in murder plans, but also to write the detailed story of the events surrounding the crimes and the activities of their own colleagues.… But how was it all done? What were the secret methods employed to obtain such confessions? There was no mystery. It was no easy task, but there was no mystery. Consider the situation of our German guests at the London Cage.… They were eager enough to tell sufficient of their story to demonstrate their individual blamelessness. Many, however, committed the fatal error of underestimating our intimacy with German habits, personalities and language, as well as the facts of the Sagan outrages.”

While other defendants on the stand acknowledged taking part in the Sagan murders, they sought to justify their participation. Otto Preiss, who shot Dennis Cochran through the back of the head, said he did not consider himself guilty. He was only acting under the orders of a superior officer. Heinrich Boschert—also charged in the Cochran murder—said he never considered himself a typical Gestapo thug, despite the fact he always took pride in wearing his Gestapo uniform. The prosecutor questioning Boschert voiced his incredulity. “It is only when you lose the war,” he said, “that you become a timid little mouse.” Eduard Geith, of the Munich Gestapo, said depression had plagued him since he took part in the murders of Lieutenants Johannes Gouws and Rupert Stevens. Adopting a unique strategy, Albert Schimmel—the Strasbourg Gestapo chief who had Flight Lieutenant Anthony Hayter shot the day before Good Friday—played the religion card. Two church officials testified on his behalf, detailing for the court the man’s piousness and devotion to God. Indeed, on the stand, Schimmel said he spiritually struggled with his role in the crime and considered ignoring the orders from Berlin. He knew such an action, however, would be met with dire consequences.

“Why did you not carry out this killing yourself?” the judge advocate, presiding over the trial, asked Schimmel. “That would have made one less person in the secret, would it not?”

“No,” Schimmel said. “I could not do this.”

“And you salved your conscience by making another man do it, is that it?”

“The execution of this order,” said Schimmel, “was just as difficult for me as passing on the order to another official.”

While many of the defendants said they feared their families would be shot if they disobeyed orders, not one of them could ever recall hearing of an incident where the wife and children of a Gestapo officer were executed by the state. On September 3, 1947, the eighth anniversary of the outbreak of war, the court rendered its verdicts. Not surprisingly, all were found guilty. Wielen was the only defendant found guilty of the first two charges, mainly conspiring with Müller and Nebe in the planning of the fifty murders. The other seventeen defendants were found guilty of actually carrying out the killings. In determining the verdicts, the court pondered two questions: What role did the accused play in the actual shootings? And did they know the victims were prisoners of war? Standing in the dock, the defendants listened to the court pronounce their fates.

Emil Schulz, Walter Breithaupt, Alfred Schimmel, Josef Gmeiner, Walter Herberg, Otto Preiss, Emil Weil, Eduard Geith, Johann Schneider, Johannes Post, Hans Kaehler, Oskar Schmidt, Walter Jacobs, and Erich Zacharias were all sentenced to hang. Gestapo drivers Artur Denkmann and Wilhelm Struve received ten years imprisonment for their role in the Kiel murders. Heinrich Boschert was sentenced to hang for his involvement in the Dennis Cochran murder, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Max Wielen, for his involvement in planning and concealing the murders, received a life sentence.

On October 17, 1947, one month after the trial, Soviet authorities sent word to the British government that Dr. Wilhelm Scharpwinkel—the man who oversaw the murders of more than half the Sagan escapees—had died in a Moscow prison. Four months later, on February
27, 1948, at Hameln Gaol in Westfalia, on gallows built by the British Army’s Royal Engineers, the fourteen Sagan murderers went to their deaths at the end of a rope.

Ten months later, Breslau Gestapo officers Erwin Wieczorek and Richard Hansel went on trial for their involvement in the murders of twenty airmen. Also in the dock was Reinhold Bruchardt, onetime member of the Danzig Gestapo, who claimed a Ukrainian execution squad had murdered Flight Lieutenants Gordon Brettell, Romas Marcinkus, and Gilbert Walenn, and Flying Officer Henri Picard. Wieczorek was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but the verdict was later overturned based on the fact that he had not actually pulled a trigger. Hansel was acquitted. Bruchardt’s death sentence was later commuted to life in prison after the British government announced a temporary suspension of the death penalty. Eight years into his imprisonment, Bruchardt was released under general amnesty.

Kiel Gestapo member Johannes Post stands in the dock in a Hamburg courtroom during his murder trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang for murdering Lieutenants Hallada Espelid and Nils Fuglesang, Squadron Leader James Catanach, and Flying Officer Arnold Christensen.

Members of the upper Nazi hierarchy complicit in the Sagan killings who did not successfully go underground escaped justice via self-inflicted gunshot wounds and cyanide pills. In the case of
Kripo
Chief Arthur Nebe, he was executed by his own people. Himmler killed himself not long after British troops captured him in May 1945. Ernst Kaltenbrunner—Himmler’s deputy at the Central Security Office—and Wilhelm Keitel, head of Germany’s armed forces, were both tried and found guilty at Nuremberg. They were sentenced to death and went to the gallows on October 16, 1946. Hermann Göring, also scheduled to hang, poisoned himself the night before the execution.