Red Air Force Captain Ivan Bitukov and Army Lieutenant Viktor Ukrainzev had a stroke of luck when Russian and Polish prisoners who were being used as farm labourers by the Mayor of Holzleiten spotted them. The farmhands hid the two officers in the mayor’s loft while he was out hunting down other escapees. The farmhands gave Bitukov and Ukrainzev clothes, food and shoes and successfully hid them for fourteen days until the escapees were strong enough to leave and try to reach Soviet lines.16
Another young Soviet officer, Semjon Shakov, turned up at a farm near Schwertberg. The farmer, Johann Mascherbauer, and his wife had already seen just how ugly the war had become when, on the first day of the escape, searching Nazis had discovered a Soviet escapee hiding in their barn. The Nazis believed Mascherbauer when he told them that he had had no idea that the PoW was on his property, but they also made sure that Mascherbauer and his neighbours would be under no illusions as to what would happen should this occur again. The Soviet officer was dragged from the barn and shot dead in front of Mascherbauer, his wife and five children. So when Semjon Shakov turned up at the Mascherbauer farm seeking shelter days later, it would not have been surprising if Mascherbauer had turned him away or handed him over to the police. But in spite of the terrible risks to his family, Mascherbauer bravely gave Shakov shelter and successfully hid him until the end of the war.17
In nearby Winden, another farming family led by Johann Langthaler took in two escaped Soviet officers. Langthaler had five children and his eldest son was actually serving in the Volkssturm in Schwertberg, and was involved in the hunt for the escaped PoWs. Langthaler indicated that the Soviet officers, Michail Rjabchinski and Nikolai Zemkalo, climb into the hayloft in his barn and hide. Langthaler later moved the two fugitives into the attic of his house, where they hid until the end of the war.18
Although the above are splendid examples of humanity and compassion on the part of a few brave Austrians, the fact remains that most of the local citizenry either ignored the plight of the escaped prisoners or actively engaged in hunting down and killing them. The entire incident was to prove to be one of the darkest pages in Austria’s recent history.
Back at Mauthausen, the SS took out their fury at the escape on those prisoners in Block 20 who had been left behind. They were all shot – a single survivor had earlier been found a job with a group of electricians inside the camp and would be able to bear witness after the war.
Only eleven Soviet officers from Block 20 who took part in the mass breakout survived the war. It was a pitiful number compared with the 500 who actually managed to escape from the camp, and was indicative of the absolute barbarity the Germans showed towards Soviet prisoners-of-war.19
With both Soviet and US forces closing in on the region, Commandant Ziereis received orders from higher command to place the camp and its many sub-camps into a defensive state. Himmler had issued an order two months after the ‘Great Rabbit Hunt’ that commanded the SS to kill all remaining prisoners in the Mauthausen complex, to prevent their liberation by the Allies. Ziereis ordered the prisoners to construct anti-tank obstacles east of the camp, while non-Jewish German and Austrian inmates were coerced into joining an ad hoc defence unit, the SS-Freiwillige Haeftlingsdivision, commanded by the notorious Oskar Dirlewanger, who was famous for brutally crushing the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It seems incredible that prisoners should be uniformed and armed to serve alongside SS-TV and Ukrainian Trawnikis, but such was their desperate situation that the Germans permitted such a move.
Whilst these preparations were continuing at a feverish pace, Ziereis ordered the execution of sick prisoners to make space for thousands of new arrivals, evacuated from camps to the east. Rations were by now reduced to such a degree as to cause widespread starvation.20
Many of the inmates were members of underground resistance organizations at Mauthausen, and sensing that the end of the war was fast approaching, they decided that they must prepare to defend themselves. It seemed likely that the SS would either force them on to death marches south or kill them all inside the camps. Ziereis did indeed have a plan as per Himmler’s order: at the appointed time, thousands of prisoners would be driven into the underground armaments and aircraft manufacturing plants and the entrances sealed with explosive charges, entombing the unfortunate slave labourers.
On 28 April 1945, many of the prisoners believed that their time had come when, to the accompanying wail of air raid sirens, 22,000 prisoners were rapidly herded underground by screaming SS guards. Yet for some reason they were not killed, but were permitted later in the day to return to their barracks and work details. Ziereis claimed that his wife had persuaded him not to go through with the plan, but this may simply be conjecture. Even so, Soviet, Polish and French prisoners made plans to assault the main SS barracks to grab weapons and ammunition.
On 3 May, the prisoners noticed that the SS were starting to leave. Reports had reached Ziereis that US Army units were approaching, and not wishing to be taken prisoner and face justice for their crimes, the senior SS officers decided to evacuate all but thirty of their men. Unarmed Volkssturm militia and a unit of middle-aged Viennese policemen and fire fighters made up the shortfall in guards.21 Soon after arrival on 4 May, the senior police officer met representatives of the prisoners and agreed to the creation of an ‘international committee’.22 To all intents and purposes, Mauthausen was now under the control of the prisoners, with the SS, Volkssturm and police guards manning the gates and watchtowers, but no longer venturing into the various camps. The prisoners immediately ceased all work in the factories.
Liberation came the next day, 5 May, when elements of the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron, US 11th Armored Division, US Third Army drove up to Mauthausen’s main gate. There was no resistance from the remaining guards. The enraged prisoners killed all the thirty remaining SS. The following day, the 11th Armored liberated Mauthausen’s many sub-camps.23 Shortly afterwards, Mauthausen was handed over to the Red Army as part of the Soviet Occupation Zone of Austria.
SS-Standartenführer Ziereis disappeared into the Austrian Tyrol, hoping to keep a low profile and avoid apprehension for war crimes. But on 23 May 1945, the 39-year-old former commandant of Mauthausen was captured by American troops. He was shot and wounded while trying to escape custody. Lingering for a couple of days, Ziereis was interrogated by former prisoners in the protective custody hut at Gusen I, providing a detailed confession of his crimes at Mauthausen before he passed away.24 His body was subsequently publicly displayed on the wire at Gusen I Sub-camp.
Chapter 11
A Call to Arms
‘Several hundred yards inside the main gate, we encountered the concentration enclosure, itself. There before us, behind an electrically charged, barbed wire fence, stood a mass of cheering, half-mad men, women and children, waving and shouting with happiness – their liberators had come! The noise was beyond comprehension! Every individual (over 32,000) who could utter a sound was cheering. Our hearts wept as we saw the tears of happiness fall from their cheeks.’
Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Fellenz,
US 42nd Infantry Division, 1945
The wireless set crackled with static, then a voice began to speak clearly in German, a voice that had never been heard on air before, saying things that had never been heard in twelve years. It was 27 April 1945. In the small, but extremely pretty market town of Dachau, a few miles from Munich, several local leaders gathered transfixed around the wireless set.
‘This is Bavarian Freedom Action,’ announced the voice on the radio. ‘We have taken control of the city of Munich in the name of Bavaria. We call on all patriotic German soldiers to resist the criminal National Socialists who have led Germany to absolute destruction.’ The voice at the microphone was Hauptmann Rupprecht Gerngross, a Wehrmacht veteran of Poland and the Eastern Front, and a Bavarian right wing nationalist. Standing before the microphone, he had altered his uniform, removing anything ‘Nazi’ from it. His cap was no longer adorned with the eagle and swastika; the same
had been unpicked and removed from above his left breast pocket. He had even removed the medals that he had won in combat as their design incorporated Nazi symbols. Thus ‘cleansed’, he addressed Bavaria. Gerngross ended his speech by urging loyal Bavarians to immediately enact a grand ‘golden pheasant hunt’.1 ‘Golden Pheasant’ was the nickname Germans had given to Nazi Party officials due to their brown and gold uniforms. For listeners who had been fed only Dr Goebbels’ propaganda for a dozen years, such revolutionary talk was absolutely electrifying. In Munich and in several surrounding towns, steps were soon underway to carry out Gerngross’s plea, while the Gestapo and SS struggled to contain the rebellion. For the citizens of Dachau, however, there was much more at stake than just the liberation of their town from the Nazis. Close by was Dachau Concentration Camp, where over 30,000 people were barely clinging to life under brutal SS guards. Time was fast running out for the prisoners as the war situation continued to deteriorate for Germany. Action had to be taken, and taken fast. But who would take that action?
By the time of Hauptmann Gerngross’s address, the military situation was almost terminal. On 25 April 1945, Germany had been cut in two when American and Soviet troops linked up at the town of Torgau on the Elbe. The following day, US forces had crossed the Danube at Neuburg, Ingolstadt and Kelheim. At Dachau Concentration Camp, which was severely overcrowded due to the Nazi policy of evacuating west inmates from camps in danger of being overrun by the Red Army, the commandant, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter, had written to Heinrich Himmler requesting permission to turn the camp over to the Americans. Himmler had angrily written back forbidding any such action. He added at the end of his letter: ‘No prisoners shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive.’ The prisoners at Dachau were ordered to be evacuated south into the Tyrolean Alps, as part of German preparations for the Alpine Redoubt. The SS were also busily burning files and documents at the camp in the hope of covering their tracks.2
Dachau was the very first concentration camp, opened shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933. It held political prisoners, Jews, ordinary German and Austrian criminals and foreign nationals from almost all of the countries attacked by Germany. The installation spawned almost 100 sub-camps to house prisoners being used for forced labour.3 Well over 30,000 people died at Dachau, including many who perished in a programme of medical experimentation by SS doctors.4
Incredibly, even though the war was obviously lost by April 1945, the Germans continued to send prisoners to Dachau. One of the final transports was sent on 19 April from Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Containing 4,500 sick and emaciated prisoners packed into freight wagons, the SS diverted the train to the town of Nammering. The local townspeople attempted to feed the prisoners but the 150 SS escorting the train stole the provisions. Approximately 800 bodies were removed from the train and buried. The 524 other prisoners whom the SS had forced to carry the bodies from the train were shot. The train then continued on its journey to Dachau.
Commandant Weiter made efforts to follow Himmler’s evacuation order. On 26 April, Weiter, most of his officers and a strong guard detail left Dachau, escorting a death march consisting of 6,000–7,000 inmates to Tegernsee. During the six-day march, thousands were executed or died of exhaustion, hunger and exposure. One mass grave was later found to contain 1,071 bodies. Weiter then made himself scarce, going on the run in the Austrian mountains.5
SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker, an extremely junior officer, was left in command at Dachau with about 100 guards. There were still tens of thousands of starving prisoners inside the camp, and the supply situation had by now completely broken down. Adjacent to the camp were several hundred Waffen-SS troops who would probably be used to exterminate the surviving prisoners at an appointed moment.
Meanwhile, the Americans were fast approaching nearby Munich, the cradle of Nazism. A member of Bavarian Freedom Action, Major Alois Braun, had already made contact with the advancing Americans on 23 April, in the hope of negotiating their peaceful entry into the city. But Gauleiter Paul Giesler, the local party boss, was not prepared to surrender the city at any cost, and he had some serious backup in the form of troops from the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. The Bavarian resistance movement in Munich amounted to Hauptmann Gerngross and his 440-man interpreter company, along with some sympathetic Volkssturm Home Guard and some reservist Wehrmacht Landdesschützen soldiers. On 27 April, the Bavarian nationalists rose, capturing the City Hall, two radio stations and the offices of the two Nazi Party daily newspapers. Gerngross immediately began broadcasting his call to arms.6
In Dachau town, preparations had already been underway for some weeks concerning what to do if the Americans approached. There was some agreement among the town’s leaders that attempting to resist, as the dying regime’s leadership had ordered all settlements, would only result in the destruction of their town by the US Army. As surrender was forbidden, the townspeople would have to rise up and overthrow the Nazi administration. A further problem was the fact that Dachau had one of the largest concentration camps right on its doorstep, with a sizeable SS guard unit. There was also the moral obligation to do something for the camp inmates as well as their own town.
Leading the resisters of Dachau was Georg Scherer. A passionate athlete and a communist, Scherer had been arrested for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in 1935 and sent to Dachau. There he was severely beaten, but later in 1940 became a block leader and then the first camp elder. Whilst in Dachau, Scherer got to know Walter Neff, the head nurse in the prisoner hospital block. Neff had helped Scherer protect some of the camp’s more vulnerable prisoners by hiding them in the camp hospital. Neff had ended up in Dachau in 1938 after planning a bombing attack on an army outpost in his native Austria. He had spent nine months in solitary confinement but later worked as a nurse. Controversially, Neff had been forced by the SS to participate in the T-4 euthanasia programme, selecting tuberculosis patients to be gassed at the Hartheim Institute.7
Scherer had been released in January 1941 and lived with his wife in Dachau town. He had kept in contact with Neff, who was also released. By early 1945, Walter Neff had absconded from his penal tank-hunting company and returned to Dachau. With Jakob Schmid and his friend, local glass painter Syrius Eberle, the men had planned how to defend Dachau. Schmid was a committed Social Democrat who had also spent time behind bars for his political beliefs. Some local Nazi sympathizers and even some officials were made privy to the conspirators’ plans. These included Deputy Mayor Hans Zimmer, police chief Georg Engl and tobacconist and SA leader Michael Burger. The group’s aims were to preserve Dachau town from American destruction, and Scherer also wanted to save as many of the prisoners at Dachau Concentration Camp as possible. This process had already started on 25 April, when Scherer found shelter for a group of escaped prisoners.8
To make any of the plan a reality, the group needed soldiers. The only soldiers available were the locally raised Volkssturm unit of Home Guard reservists, numbering 130 men. The unit’s company commander was Josef Lerchenberger, and the sergeant major a committed SA man, Michael Burger, who was alredy privy to the conspirators’ plans.
On the afternoon of 28 April 1945 the group made its move. It was a rainy and cool Saturday. A man loyal to the revolt replaced Volkssturm commander Lerchenberger, while the troops were deployed to guard the roads around the town hall and district administration.9 The local police remained passive and did nothing. Nazi Party district leader Hermann Nafziger and the SS-appointed Mayor Hans Bauner were furious when armed men burst into their offices, but were in no position to argue. The only trouble came from Heinrich Niederhoff, an SA man, who armed himself with a machine pistol and attempted to force his way into the heavily guarded town hall. A scuffle ensued with the Volkssturm on guard and Niederhoff was shot dead.10
The situation at the concentration camp was confused. Since the commandant, Eduard Weiter, the officers and most of the guards had absconded on 26 April, escorting a large party
of prisoners south, the tall, scar-faced SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker had been left in charge. Though only a very junior officer, Wicker had come up through the ranks and was an experienced and decorated combat veteran. Due to wounds received in battle, he had been assigned to concentration camps.11 There were still over 30,000 prisoners inside the camp, and the food and water had run out some days previously. Wicker’s orders were unclear. He knew that Himmler did not want the camp surrendered, but he lacked the manpower to kill all the prisoners, only having about 100–150 guards left, manning the main gate and the guard towers.
Unfortunately for the leaders of the revolt in Dachau town, a very senior Nazi general was billeted nearby with his large staff. It is believed that this officer was none other than the Inspector General of Concentration Camps, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pöhl. As soon as reports reached him that there was an anti-Nazi uprising in Dachau, Pöhl called in reinforcements. These came in the form of three companies of panzergrenadiers from the still heavily armed 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. The SS launched an immediate assault on the town hall.
The battle was soon over. Though the rebels and the inadequately armed farmers of the Dachau Volkssturm fought with bravery and determination, the SS overcame resistance and stormed the building. Some escaped prisoners also fought alongside the rebels. Three prisoners and four locals died during the fighting or were brutally executed immediately afterwards as a warning to the rest of the town. The bodies were publicly displayed for all to see in the street opposite the town hall. Many of the rebels managed to flee into hiding, while several dozen Volkssturm were taken prisoner but later released.12
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