The Nazi Hunters (39 page)

By the late summer of 1945 had Isselhorst also been turned? Even as Barkworth sought him out, was he secretly working for the CIC? Almost from the very moment he was taken into US custody, Isselhorst had offered his services to the Americans. Repeatedly he had tried to prove his value to those who held him, and they had certainly used him to help track down fellow Gestapo and SS colleagues.

And, for whatever reason, no one seemed inclined to hand Barkworth the man at the top of his wanted list.

It is within this context that Barkworth’s most experienced Nazi hunter – Dusty Rhodes – was dispatched on what has to be one of the strangest and most mystery-shrouded missions of the Secret Hunters’ entire operation. Speaking several decades after the war (his interview transcripts are held at the Imperial War Museum) Rhodes was only willing to talk about this snatch operation in very veiled terms.

The man Rhodes was after is never named, nor is the exact date of the capture specified. But what is clear is that his target was working for the Americans, and considered one of their ‘key personnel’.

Setting out from Villa Degler, Rhodes drove east into the American zone. As was his wont, he headed first for the mystery individual’s home address. ‘I went to interview him,’ Rhodes recalled. ‘Went to his home. The lady of the house . . . said he’d be home in five minutes, for he now worked for the American forces in their legal department. So I went outside and sat in the jeep.’

Rhodes waited. He had a photograph of their suspect and he was a patient man. He noticed a figure walking along the street who was apparently unconcerned to see an American-looking jeep parked outside his home. Why would he be concerned? After all, he had wangled himself a nice number working with US forces. Rhodes arrested the man on the spot, bundled him into the jeep and drove him hell-for-leather into the comparative safety of the French zone, and into captivity.

The scale of the upset suffered by the Americans at the shock disappearance of their man can be gauged by their – and Rhodes’ – subsequent reactions. Rhodes was forced to disappear for a month. ‘The American forces were looking all over for this Warrant Officer Rhodes who had arrested one of their personnel,’ Rhodes recalled. ‘I was quickly put out of the way for a . . . period of time.’

Was the man Rhodes had seized
Standartenführer
Dr Erich Isselhorst? Isselhorst was by training a lawyer. ‘Working for the American forces in their legal department’ was a perfect cover, if the CIC had indeed recruited him. The reaction – that one of the Secret Hunters was in turn hunted by the Americans – is unprecedented. No other Villa Degler arrest provoked anything like such a response.

If Isselhorst had been recruited by the CIC, no doubt this was viewed as being ‘justified’ by the realpolitik of the moment. In the later summer of 1945, the Western powers were just starting to come to grips with a new world order and a new enemy. But it remains deeply reprehensible; Isselhorst had the blood of many thousands on his hands.

He was responsible for the extermination of countless Jews, Russian partisans and other ‘enemies’ of the Reich on the Eastern Front. He was culpable of the murder of dozens of British and Allied Special Forces soldiers thereafter. He was indictable for war crimes against thousands of French men and women in the Vosges.

But worst of all, as far as concerns the actions of the CIC – then America’s foremost intelligence apparatus in the occupied zones – is that Isselhorst was guilty of overseeing the murder of a number of captured US citizens, airmen Curtis E. Hodges and Michael Pipcock amongst them, who were shot in the Erlich Forest.

Not a year before the CIC appeared to have recruited Isselhorst, he had been responsible for hunting down and murdering other American citizens. No matter how ‘useful’ SS
Standartenführer
Isselhorst might have appeared in the summer of 1945, recruiting him to the cause of the West was not acceptable. Shielding him from justice was even less so.

Predictably, during his interrogation Isselhorst proved to be as slippery as an eel, but in SAS Major Bill Barkworth the SS and Gestapo chief had met his match. Eventually Barkworth managed to corner Isselhorst regarding a group of eight ‘British parachutists’ that had been brought to his Strasbourg headquarters
.

Barkworth: ‘Did you give Schneider [Isselhorst’s deputy] any particular instructions regarding these men?’

Isselhorst: ‘I told him to ascertain if they had been working with terrorists.’

Barkworth: ‘What result did he eventually report to you?’

Isselhorst: ‘He told me . . . that those soldiers had been dropped by parachute to work with the Maquis, whom they were to train and lead. He therefore decided they were to be treated as terrorists. He put this point to me so strongly . . . and supported it with extracts from the interrogation reports, that I felt unable to disagree with him and decided that these soldiers were in effect in that class referred to by the order which I had received from Berlin.’

Isselhorst was referring to Hitler’s Commando Order, of course.

Barkworth: ‘Did you give Schneider any specific instruction regarding their disposal?’

Isselhorst: ‘I told Schneider that as these soldiers were considered as terrorists they must be treated in accordance with the orders received.’

Barkworth: ‘These orders of which you speak – are these relating to the execution of such soldiers?’

Isselhorst: ‘Yes.’

Barkworth: ‘Did Schneider report to you on the carrying out of this order?’

Isselhorst: ‘He told me that it had been carried out. I assume that the method was shooting, but the place I do not know.’

Isselhorst was like a fat fish wriggling on a hook, and unable to break free.

In subsequent exchanges, Barkworth would challenge
Standartenführer
Isselhorst over several other cases of mass killings. It was clear already the kind of defence that Isselhorst – a lawyer by training – would try and construct:
I was only obeying orders
. Yet as Barkworth well knew, that defence was unlikely to stand up in the British war crimes hearings to come.

With Isselhorst in Barkworth’s custody and ready to stand trial, the arch manhunter hungered to capture the Gestapo chief’s enforcers – the brute killers he had commanded.

Two names were uppermost in his thoughts:
Sturmbannführer
Hans Dietrich Ernst and
Oberwachtmeister
Heinrich ‘Stuka’ Neuschwanger.

Chapter Twenty-six

Barkworth launched the hunt for Neuschwanger in earnest, and in his own inimitable way. He described the early stages of the chase in a letter to Galitzine.

‘On Friday 4th January [1946] Neuschwanger visited his cousin, Ottmar Neuschwanger, in Göppingen. He was wearing a German railway employee’s cap and coat; under that a grey coat and Wehrmacht trousers dyed blue . . . This I heard from an inquisitive neighbour of Frau Neuschwanger in Reutlingen . . . I drove to Goppingen and contacted the . . . local police.

‘One of the local police said that at about half past four he had seen a man in railway employee’s clothing, with a woman. He described both the man and woman so accurately that there is no doubt that these were Neuschwanger and his girlfriend, Margarete Schneider. The house . . . was watched unobtrusively (we had already been careful before entering the town to take off red berets and to hide shoulder flashes) . . . 

‘I wish you could have seen me,’ Barkworth wrote to Galitzine, ‘wandering around Goppingen in civilian clothes, with a pair of trousers belonging to the local chief of police, and which were big enough to hold me twice over . . . after dark cousin Ottmar and Neuschwanger’s wife were arrested . . . and removed through the back entrance.’

Neuschwanger’s cousin and his wife admitted that they were expecting the former
Oberwachtmeister
at any moment. But Stuka Neuschwanger didn’t show. Something must have alerted him to the fact that the British had the entire place staked out. Either way, they had missed him by a whisker. Neuschwanger’s cousin admitted that the former
Oberwachtmeister
had been ‘hiding’ in the British zone of occupation, and that he had travelled south to Göppingen to get some fresh civilian clothing.

Neuschwanger and his wife were estranged, and Barkworth figured that the
Oberwachtmeister
had also come here to fetch his girlfriend. ‘He is travelling under a false name and has the travel pass given to employees of the German railway,’ Barkworth informed Galitzine. ‘My own impression is that he came from the British zone in Berlin. I am still hopeful that within a short time we may get some good news concerning him.’

Barkworth concluded: ‘Cousin Ottmar knows the false name under which Neuschwanger is travelling, but covers his unwillingness to give it by saying he does not remember, so with our democratic methods I am afraid we shall have to be satisfied. Anyway, he is in arrest, with the promise of release if he tells us, as under existing German law he can be held for six months.’

In the same letter, Barkworth explained to Galitzine how he had managed to nab another suspect – Karl Dinkel, who, like Neuschwanger, was one of the Erlich Forest killers. Recently, and bizarrely, Dinkel had joined a travelling theatre troupe. Perhaps he had thought it a good place to hide. He had been scheduled to perform before the military authorities in Baden-Baden, in the French zone.

‘I am afraid he will not be able to keep his appointment,’ Barkworth commented drily. ‘I was extremely careful to arrest him “bei Nacht und Nebel” and to speak French in front of his landlady. All recognisable pieces of English uniform were left behind in the car, so if any questions are ever asked about Dinkel’s disappearance, I found him while he was visiting his wife in Stuttgart.’

From Dinkel – now ensconced in the Villa Degler basement – Barkworth would learn the final vile details of
Oberwachtmeister
Neuschwanger’s behaviour on the day of the Erlich Forest murders.

‘I noticed that Neuschwanger had been drinking,’ Dinkel revealed to Barkworth. ‘I had heard that he was brutal and I had been told that when he drank things happened. I had also heard that he had shot a number of people at Schirmek.’

When the mass shooting in the Erlich Forest was done, Neuschwanger – fired up by drink – had returned with a pair of fur-lined boots taken from one of the dead. ‘Those were English,’ Neuschwanger told Dinkel, as he waved around the purloined boots. ‘They will make no more terror attacks on our cities.’

As the kinder, sunnier conditions of March 1946 chased away the winter chills – meaning that the open-topped jeeps could once again be used for long journeys without the risk of the occupants freezing to death, Barkworth began to cast his net further afield. The pace of operations can be gauged by daily sitreps that he was sending back to Eaton Square.

‘Programme as follows: 15 March to 3 Army. 21 March finish 70 and 90 camp interrogations. 28 March PARIS interrogations. 3 April BAOR interrogations . . . Loan of DAKOTA to carry jeep this period. Could be based MANNHEIM and would make [the] formidable task contained [in] your signal less difficult. Wish to make clear that transport, lack of drivers etc may make alterations to programme necessary.’

‘Loan of Dakota’ referred to Barkworth’s hope that he would get a DC3 Dakota transport aircraft to help him shift his jeeps from location to location, so as to cope with his punishing schedule. During the war the SAS had used DC3s to fly their vehicles in to front-line airstrips, from where they could sneak behind enemy lines. There was no reason why similar tactics shouldn’t work now for the purposes of manhunting.

Further radio skeds reflected how this intense pace of operations was scoring results. ‘Following believed involved in NATZWEILER women case. HERBERG, BOSCHER, LEHMAN perhaps also HILKER. All first three located. Add to witnesses NATZWEILER case.’

The ‘Natzweiler women case’ was the murder by lethal injection and incineration of Vera Atkins’ four women SOE agents. The war crimes trial concerning their case was the first of more than a dozen that Barkworth, Galitzine et al. intended to bring, starting in the late spring of that year.

Preparations were hectic. If Barkworth was to secure all the evidence to enable the trials to proceed – not to mention seizing all the suspects – he would have his work cut out. There were also now the legal issues – not least of which was the level of knowledge the accused possessed of Hitler’s Commando Order.

‘This is a most important item,’ Galitzine reported to Barkworth, ‘as if it is proposed to charge all who took part in Operation Waldfest with “conspiracy to murder British PW”, it will be essential to prove their knowledge of the Order. It may be the most effective way of charging those who did not actually fire a gun.’

In response to a promise from Galitzine to send a much-needed driver and a typist to beef up his team, Barkworth radioed a typically dry response: ‘Thank you very much. At least can look forward to being driven to interrogations and having someone to type for me . . . Hope to get sufficient evidence against those giving orders for murder . . . NATZWEILER people if I am not hurried too much.’

With some prisoners, identification proved unusually difficult, because all of the victims who might have testified against them had been murdered. In such instances Barkworth took the accused on an unwelcome journey down memory lane. He drove them back to Moussey, where there were invariably villagers who had played quiet witness to their horrors. The Moussey villagers could be relied upon to find someone who would unmask the SS and Gestapo killers for who they were.