Meeting the Enemy

by Richard van Emden

  I am now over three years torn away from my family, and no sign that I shall ever see them again. By these few lines I give my children a clear impression of what I have gone through, how many sleepless nights I have had, and hoped against hope.

  Noschke’s memoirs were written for his children, including his eldest son, William, conscripted to serve in one of the Infantry Labour Companies, in his case the 6th ILC. Interestingly, although written in Germany the diary is in English, not presumably because Noschke was so anglicised that English came more naturally, but probably because his children could not read German particularly well and perhaps not at all.

  Richard Noschke did return to England and a home in East Ham, London, although precisely when this was permitted is not known. He was still living there when the Second World War broke out.

  Too many British MPs were rabidly keen to purge Britain of almost anything German or German-tainted. The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act of August 1918 had contained many anti-German provisions including the right to revoke a certificate of naturalisation, and cases of revocation, as already noted, were pursued before the Armistice.

  It is not known how many civilians lost their British citizenship, although if the cases reported in The Times were all those on which the Home Secretary revoked certificates, then it would appear that fewer than a hundred men were affected, excluding wives and children. The majority lost their certificates in the two years following the war, although there were cases as late as October 1923.

  If the law as exercised against German-born Britons appeared harsh and even vindictive, it was benign in comparison to the way it made victims of those women whose only crime was to marry enemy aliens. Back in 1870, the debate in the House of Commons about women’s nationality was considered largely a matter of sentiment.

  During the war, the likely humiliation and punitive restrictions placed on these women became abundantly clear: they lost their rights as British citizens, and to diplomatic protection when travelling overseas. An Act passed in 1918 forbade the employment of these women in the Civil Service. And when the franchise was extended these women were ineligible to vote even if they fulfilled other criteria. It was hardly surprising that pressure grew to change the law so as to revert to the status quo pre-1870, in other words that status in respect of nationality was unaffected by marriage. By 1923 the House of Commons appointed a Joint Select Committee to look into the issue, but it failed to agree on the best path to take. Six years later, the Nationality of Married Women Bill was put before the House but, despite cross-bench support from 222 MPs, it fell by the wayside. Only in 1946, after twenty-five years of agitation, did the government finally agree that women should keep their own nationality on marriage, and all the protections that naturally accrued with citizenship.

  In May 1920, a final list of alleged German war criminals was sent to Berlin but owing to legal technicalities – and German foot-dragging – the cases were not brought to court for another year. In the end, the British authorities put forward seven cases, a ludicrously small number reduced to four owing to an inability to locate three of the accused. Those due for trial were low-ranking officers and men who were directly implicated in acts of criminality, the cases being taken forward owing to the strength of the evidence. Of the four cases, three were for the mistreatment of prisoners of war: Sergeant Karl Heinen, Private Robert Neumann, and finally Captain Emil Müller, whose brutality at Flavy-le-Martel POW camp was witnessed by many men, including former Private Nathan Sacof, captured in March 1918 and interpreter for Müller.

  Most of the British witnesses taken to Germany had resumed civilian lives and wished to forget about the war. Former Private Arthur Hoyland was to give evidence against Robert Neumann, but Hoyland ignored the notice requiring him to go to Leipzig until two Scotland Yard police officers were sent to collect him. As a prisoner, Hoyland had been hung by his thumbs and whipped with wire after trying to escape. He had also been put through a mock execution and starved.

  Several government representatives including the Solicitor General, Sir Ernest Pollock, joined the witnesses on their journey to Leipzig. Two police sergeants under the command of an Inspector A. C. Collins gave added security, Collins speaking to the witnesses before they left. ‘They were addressed by me regarding the importance and serious nature of their mission to Germany, and the necessity of conducting themselves in a proper manner whilst on the journey and during their stay at Leipzig in order to prevent any hostility, and not to provoke any ill-feeling on the part of the Germans.’ Collins’s words were eminently sensible but if anything was indicative of the government’s melting attitude to the Germans, then the last sentence was abysmally illustrative and may well have caused bitter reflection among the party.

  Those giving testimony would be in Leipzig only a matter of days. In the meantime, ‘in order not to attract the attention of the populace it was considered desirable’, wrote Inspector Collins, ‘that the witnesses should walk the street in small numbers with observation of their movements being kept by [both British] and German police officers.’

  The Supreme Court consisted of a long assembly room adorned with giant imperial paintings of Frederick the Great and Kaiser Wilhelm I. There were seven judges and two prosecutors, all dressed in full regalia. The court was packed with journalists from eighty newspapers from across the globe and the judges sat at a horseshoe-shaped table within which space witnesses stood to give testimony.

  The first witnesses attended court on 23 May. The case concerned Sergeant Karl Heinen who ran the Frederick-der-Grosse coal mine. He was charged with cruelly and inhumanely treating prisoners of war under his charge. Witnesses gave their evidence and then the defence rose to argue that the POWs were refractory in refusing to work and that no more violence was used than absolutely necessary. The German Attorney General said the case was proven and asked for a sentence of two years. The President in giving judgement praised the manner in which the men gave their evidence and proceeded to sentence Heinen to just ten months in prison. The German court had treated each assault as individual infringements of the law and, as one observer noted, ‘sentence merely represented the aggregate punishment for a series of assaults, and gave no consideration to the long course of brutal conduct involved’.

  As the case was concluded, witnesses were permitted to leave Leipzig for London. On their arrival, the second batch of witnesses was sent out for the trial of Captain Emil Müller. Deaths at Flavy-le-Martel camp had been frequent, averaging six men each day, the court was told. The deaths were directly or indirectly attributable to the camp’s appalling conditions, caused by a lack of food and water, dire sanitation, excessive work and brutal treatment.

  Several German sentries under Müller gave evidence for the prosecution, including one who directly contradicted Müller’s testimony. In his defence, the former commandant claimed he had no control over conditions (rather embarrassingly it was revealed that the camp was British-built and had been overrun by the Germans) and that chaos reigned owing to the number of prisoners. He claimed to have reported conditions to his superiors but that nothing was done. Müller was found not responsible for conditions but guilty of cruelty. The Attorney General called for fifteen months in prison; the President awarded six months for crimes that, British observers noted, were substantially the same as those committed by Sergeant Heinen.

  Of the other British cases, Private Robert Neumann was found guilty of beating British prisoners and received six months in prison, while the last case, that of U-boat commander Lieutenant Karl Neumann, descended into farce when the whole case was dealt with in two hours. Neumann was accused of sinking a hospital ship. He claimed that he was acting on orders, a lawful defence the court accepted. No witnesses were called and Neumann was released. The British cases were done and dusted in a week.

  Despite the unsatisfactory outcome of the Karl Neumann trial, the British cases were expedited without rancour, unlike those of the Belgians and French that des
cended into courtroom mayhem, such was the depth of mutual hatred and recrimination. Outside, crowds spat at and taunted members of the French and Belgian missions, and trials were abandoned.

  The Germans understood that their own best interests were served by treating Britain’s handful of cases with respect: witnesses and observers were not jostled outside court. It was relatively easy to sentence two other ranks to short periods in prison, and the one officer convicted of crimes had had his professional character protected during the President’s summary.

  As the British mission was about to leave Leipzig, the Germans, in an attempt to ‘make up’ for the decision to free Karl Neumann, informed the British that they would be pursuing another criminal case against two U-boat officers. These men had been party to an indisputably criminal attack against another hospital ship, the Llandovery Castle, in which survivors, including nurses, had been attacked while sitting in lifeboats. Both officers were found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison. With the ending of this case, the British drew a line under the whole issue of war crimes trials and normalised relations with Germany. Well-documented crimes, such as those against the prisoners sent to the Russian Front in February 1917, were allowed to pass into oblivion.

  The British press reported the proceedings and labelled them farcical, The Times calling them a ‘scandalous failure of justice’. In the Commons, the government was asked about the light sentences and whether anything was going to be done about the failure of justice.

  Sir Ernest Pollock, the Attorney General, who had attended the trials, answered on behalf of the Prime Minister and, while he felt it improper to make a statement when the French and Belgian cases were still in court, he nevertheless added:

  Perhaps the Hon. Members may care to know that the sentence which was delivered in my presence excited great dejection amongst the military party of Germany, and the officers there certainly did not think it was a small sentence to have one of their number sent to an ordinary prison to carry out the sentence of 10 months among thieves and other felons.

  Listening MPs may have struggled to see why German thoughts and feelings were of any relevance. Surely it was right to presume that sentencing had everything to do with the crimes for which conviction was secured and nothing whatsoever to do with the conditions under which that sentence might be served? It did not really matter. MPs blew off some steam, but there was no appetite to pursue the matter further. Politicians lost interest in the subject of war crimes because the British public lost interest. The war was over.

  So did Britain acquire the ‘fruits of victory’ as anticipated by Winston Churchill? If she did, then most Britons did not share in any obvious harvest. Broken families would have to find ways to re-adjust to living with people who had often become strangers especially to their children. It was a re-adjustment made all the harder by the post-war era of austerity. Years of extraordinary financial outlay resulted in the need for fiscal restraint. Unemployment, poverty and depression resulted; returning soldiers’ claims to pensions and support were ungratefully received and frugally rewarded. Historians have debated and will continue to debate the gross and net price of the conflict between Britain and Germany. Both nations were physically and emotionally drained, though Germany had come off much the worse. In 1917 and 1918 it is estimated that Germany lost as many civilians through the effects of hunger and associated illness as Britain lost in battle. What happened to both nations politically and strategically has been well documented. Less well recorded are the myriad stories of lives fractured by continuing physical and mental scars including those caused by enforced separation and isolation: the human face of the Great War.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the enthusiastic and supportive staff at Bloomsbury, particularly Bill Swainson, the senior commissioning editor, for their encouragement and continued belief in my books. I am also very grateful to Liz Woabank for her keen interest and kind assistance, Oliver Holden-Rea, Tess Viljoen, Maria Hammershoy, Holly Macdonald, Paul Nash and Anya Rosenberg for their collective skill in helping to bring Meeting the Enemy to publication. I would also like to express my gratitude to Richard Collins for his careful and insightful editorial comments on this, the fifth of my books he has edited.

  Especial mention should be made of my excellent agent, Jane Turnbull, whose astute thoughts and insights have been of invaluable help this year; I greatly value her friendship. Once again, I am very grateful to my great friend Taff Gillingham for his technical reading of the text and the discovery, as always, of small but important errors on my part; his kindness is much appreciated. My appreciation also goes to Peter Johnston for excellent additional research work.

  My warmest thanks must go to my family: to my mother, Joan van Emden, whose support is unquantifiable and whose deft literary comments are, once again, of immeasurable help. Thank you, Mum. I am indebted also to my wife, Anna, who is a tower of support and who never makes adverse comments other than that I should try to tidy my study now and again - will do!

  I would like to thank the following people for permission to reproduce photographs, extracts from diaries, letters or memoirs: Calista Lucy at Dulwich College for background information on Wilford Wells; fellow author Jack Sheldon whose expert knowledge of the German language and German military units helped decipher Wilford Wells’s military records; Christine Leighton, College Archivist at Cheltenham College for her generous permission to reproduce the image of Henry Hadley. I would also like to thank Margaret Tyler and Kevin C. Dowson for permission to reproduce the picture of Major Renwick and fellow officers of the 3rd Infantry Labour Company; Liz Howell for the image of men of the 30th Middlesex Regiment and Private Charles Kuhr, taken at Reading in 1917; Kevin Northover for his picture of fraternisation at Beaumont Hamel and Kevin Varty for the image of Captain Richard Hawkins. Thanks also to Fergus Johnston and Ellen Campbell, both distant relatives of Henry Hadley, and Christopher Jage-Bowler, priest at St George’s Church, Berlin. My gratitude for help and advice goes to my good friends Mary Freeman, Jeremy and Mark Banning for their thoughts and useful tip-offs! Thanks, too, to Dave Empson, William Spencer, Stephen Chambers, Duncan Mirylees and Gaby Chaudry.

  As always, I am very grateful to the families of those I have interviewed who have also been most kind in forwarding precious family photographs and documents.

  IMAGE SECTION 1

  The Kaiser (left) rides alongside his cousin, King George V, during a visit to Potsdam in 1913. Contact between the royal families prior to the war was close but could also be fraught as the race for naval supremacy mounted.

  Vast crowds pour onto the Unter den Linden to greet news of the outbreak of war. The Kaiser was profoundly shocked by Britain’s entry into the war on the side of France and Russia.

  Henry Hadley, pictured at Cheltenham College circa 1880. In 1914 this 51-year-old English teacher, was leaving Germany by train when he was shot and mortally wounded by a German infantry officer. He died at 2.30 a.m., 5 August, acquiring the dubious distinction of becoming the first British citizen to die by enemy hands in the Great War.

  Reverend Henry Williams, priest at St George’s Church in Berlin, left a detailed eyewitness account of the outbreak of war in the capital. He remained in Germany throughout the War, looking after the spiritual needs of British POWs.

  Captain William Morritt photographed at a Belgian convent, holding the sword shattered by a German bullet. Wounded at Mons, he was eventually captured, and was shot and killed during an escape attempt in 1917.

  A map drawn by Captain Morritt while recovering at the convent. It shows the East Surreys’ precarious positions during the fighting at Mons, as well as the ground over which he led a bayonet charge.

  Major Charles Yate surrounded by Germans after he was captured during the fighting at Le Cateau. Weeks later, he committed suicide when a bid to escape from a German POW camp was foiled.

  Exhausted British soldiers sleep in temporary billets during the retreat from Mons
. In two weeks, they had walked and fought over 200 miles, halting the German advance on the River Marne in early September.

  The harsh reality: the first news of enemy atrocities on the Western Front brought the 55,000 German civilians in Britain to public attention and unwarranted demonisation.

  Businesses similar to the Druhms’ hairdressing salon were wrecked in orgies of violence that spread across the country.

  Internment of enemy aliens helped allay widespread public fears of a dangerous ‘unseen’ enemy. However, the rounding up of thousands of German men led to an acute shortage of accommodation.

  The sinking of RMS Lusitania with the death of 1,200 civilians caused outrage in Britain. Thousands of Germans were rounded up once again, many returning to captivity while their families chose to be repatriated.

  A contemporary artist’s impression of a meeting of internees and their families at an unspecified London camp. Fortnightly visits were hugely anticipated but caused immense heartache for the internees.

  The Great Hall at Alexandra Palace. Several thousand Germans were held in cramped living conditions. Open-ended confinement caused serious mental health issues for men separated from their families.

  In the better internment camps, men were given activities to keep them occupied. Marquetry was a favourite pursuit and exquisite gifts were made for visiting families.