by Bower, Tom
Just weeks later, the situation changed dramatically. The godfather of Roger Wybot, the head of the DST, was an administrator of Wagons Lits, the railway sleeping-car company. An employee told him that he had been the conductor on Hardy’s train and actually saw him arrested by the police. As evidence, the railman produced the duplicate reservation slip for Hardy’s couchette. Hardy’s whole defence was rendered worthless. His own lawyer described the trial as a ‘legal fiction’. Hardy had insisted that he had jumped off the train after seeing the collaborator at the Perrache station. After Wybot’s revelation, he admitted that he had lied and that he had in fact been interrogated by a Gestapo officer for eight hours; but he claimed that he had outbluffed the German and was allowed to leave Gestapo headquarters without compromising himself. Asked why he had lied, Hardy explained that, while in custody, he had learned of General Delestraint’s arrest and feared that he might be blamed. Suddenly Hardy’s fate was transformed from an internecine dispute between Resistance personalities into a national sensation. He was rearrested just two months after his acquittal. Moulin rapidly became a legend whose betrayal and death had to be avenged, and only one man could prove the betrayal – the Gestapo officer himself.
Responding to pressure from Resistance leaders in the government, several police and military agencies began looking for Barbie. One agency even spent considerable time finding a ‘Paul Barby’ in East Germany. Others confused Barbie with a French milice collaborator called Barbier who worked in Grenoble. It was in early 1948, after Barbie’s release from interrogation, that an unknown American leaked Barbie’s presence in Germany to the French. After lengthy secret negotiations between the DST and G2 in Oberursel, the Americans agreed that the French could question Barbie about Hardy in secret, on condition that they did not embarrass the Americans by either asking for Barbie’s extradition or publicising the interrogation. The French, just anxious to discover the truth and apparently unconcerned about whatever crimes this particular German had committed, were quite prepared to accept any conditions.
The first session was held near Frankfurt on 14 May 1948. There were four Frenchmen present: Commissaire Louis Bibes, the examining magistrate, Major André Gonnot, the magistrate of the Paris military tribunal, Inspector Charles Lehrmann of the DST, and Lieutenant Jean Whiteway, a Canadian-born French liaison officer from Baden-Baden. Two further sessions followed on 18 May and 16 July in a house near Augsburg. During all three sessions, Americans remained in the room. The transcripts of the interrogations have so far not been released, but there is no doubt that Barbie told the French that Hardy was a traitor. They were, however, as much puzzled by the numerous contradictions in Barbie’s account as French historians are today. Significantly, Barbie was not questioned about his war crimes or his wartime activities.
Despite the guarantees, news of Barbie’s discovery had been quickly leaked to Capitaine Michel Poignet, the Lyons military magistrate responsible for the Barbie case. Innocuously he wrote on 16 April to the DGER wondering whether there was any news of Barbie. The reply on 3 May conceded that Barbie had been found, but did not say where. Over the next weeks, Poignet pressed Gonnot to ask the Americans to extradite Barbie, but on 23 August Gonnot formally wrote that there was no hope of American help, on the grounds of ‘interests of American security’. As consolation, he sent Poignet a photograph of Barbie. Poignet was not so easily placated. Considerable pressure had built up locally demanding punishment for the Gestapo officers, not least because so little had been done by the police during the four years since the end of the occupation. Poignet therefore completed a file on Barbie, listing the evidence of his known crimes, and sent it on 25 November to Baden-Baden, where Whiteway was based, with a request that they submit a formal request for Barbie’s extradition. On 10 January 1949, the war-crimes investigation office in Baden-Baden replied to Poignet that Barbie was believed to be hiding in the Russian zone of Germany. But just eleven days later, on 21 January, Lieutenant Whiteway and another French officer interrogated Barbie yet again in Munich about the Hardy case. Vidal had refused to hand him over as a witness because he was convinced that he would be ‘interrogated in the usual French manner’ to reveal his CIC activities in the French zone. After two more interrogations, the French declared themselves as satisfied as was possible. Again, there was no mention of Barbie’s war crimes. This was all of little comfort to Poignet, who thereafter was to have little confidence in the French ability to find Barbie. He nevertheless urged his fellow countrymen to submit the application for extradition.
Had the Allies still observed the solemn declaration signed in Moscow in 1943, Barbie’s extradition to France would have been completed within at most a few weeks; but the change in the political atmosphere had affected the rules governing the handing over of war criminals. In the weeks after the war, the British and Americans had delegated individual extradition decisions to the unit on the spot. The only proviso was that the requesting nation had to produce a plain statement of facts (without even producing evidence of a prima facie case). The only exceptions were for the more important or valuable Germans. But despite the ease of obtaining suspected criminals, in the months following the war there were very few requests because of the chaos in each of the previously occupied countries. The demands for extradition only began in 1946 and by then the western Allies had become both suspicious and reluctant. The east European countries were asking not only for Germans but for their own nationals who had collaborated with the Germans. In the case of Yugoslavia, it was sufficient that the suspect was simply opposed to Tito. Nevertheless, extraditions continued, but with tighter safeguards.
By the beginning of 1947, the Allied military governors were under considerable pressure both from their own armies and from Germans to end the trials of war criminals. It was a natural progression that, if there were to be no further trials in the western zones, then Germans should not be dispatched to the hostile communist block where their chance of a fair trial seemed increasingly remote. In June, the British announced an end to trials and severe restrictions on extraditions. Six weeks later, on 30 July, Clay went even further and announced not only a complete end of trials, but also the end of extraditions after 1 November. Exceptions would only be made in cases where countries could convincingly explain why the request could not have been made before. Like many other countries, the French government immediately protested, claiming that their list of twenty thousand wanted criminals was growing daily and that their investigations had only just started. Clay, although severely criticised for unilaterally breaking an international obligation, rejected the complaint. He had after all retained the right to make individual exceptions personally, but that was for purely cosmetic reasons to forestall the charge that the American zone had become a sanctuary for war criminals.
For France to obtain Barbie’s extradition, it now had to submit in English a very full and convincing dossier on Barbie’s crimes and, after June 1948, the case had to be submitted to the Germans who required a formal extradition trial to judge whether there was a prima facie case. The biggest hurdle was the American regulation that the French, like all the other countries, had to provide the address where the suspect could be found. The French had been allowed to retain a mere six-man war-crimes team in the American zone and, as Poignet had already discovered, their head office in Baden-Baden was singularly incompetent.
It was just a few days after Kolb arrived in Augsburg in early 1949 that an acquaintance rang with the news that a French team was in town looking for Barbie. It was not the first time that the French, frustrated by American obstructions, had launched their own search party. Once, during Dabringhaus’ stint as Barbie’s handler, Barbie had escaped down the back steps as the French walked into the office through the front door. This time, Kolb ordered Barbie to stay hidden in his safe house for a week. ‘I did that,’ says Kolb, ‘on my own initiative. I don’t think we informed headquarters what was going on, but as I recall there were no directives from headquar
ters on this.’ The ‘bewildered’ Americans pleaded ignorance and the French left.
There are three reasons given by Kolb and other CIC officers to explain why the CIC decided to protect Barbie. Firstly, they genuinely believed that his work was valuable. Secondly, they felt that his alleged crimes against the Resistance were in reality acts of war and that the French were in pursuit of revenge and not justice. Most of them also insist that they never had any idea of the atrocities of which Barbie was accused. Thirdly, and most importantly, they did not trust the French. France was, in the American view, riddled with communists and the Americans were in little doubt that the real reason behind pressure for Barbie’s extradition was that the communist wing of the French security services wanted to interrogate Barbie about the extent of American penetration of the German Communist Party. ‘If the French had got Barbie,’ explains Kolb, ‘I have no doubt that he would have been in Moscow within a few days.’ For Barbie’s part, he was more afraid that he would not even survive the interrogation on his return. His appearance at a trial, he ingeniously told his American friends, would have been too embarrassing for the French. Secretly, he feared charges of mass murder.
In May, on the eve of Earl Browning’s final return to the United States, his unease at employing a former Gestapo officer appeared to be vindicated. On 14 May, a Paris newspaper briefly reported protests to the American ambassador by Lyons Resistance groups about the employment of Barbie. The piece summarised Barbie’s terror tactics in the region, including the use of an acetylene torch in interrogations. Ten days later, Browning’s office sent the small clipping to Major George Riggins, the commander of the newly named CIC Region XII based in Augsburg, for whom Kolb and Barbie now worked. Riggins was ordered to interrogate Barbie about the torture allegations, but without revealing the newspaper article. Riggins was told that headquarters had known about Barbie’s ‘successful missions’ against the Resistance but had ‘interpreted [them] as mere performance of his duty. It was not however known that such barbaric methods had been employed by Subject to obtain confessions from his victims. This headquarters is inclined to believe that there is some element of truth in the allegations.’ Anticipating the worst, Browning ordered Riggins to drop Barbie ‘administratively as an informant’ but to maintain relations until the State Department and the Department of the Army had decided what to do. Kolb admits that, when he read Browning’s orders, he was both ‘puzzled and unhappy. It just didn’t make sense.’
Eight weeks later Kolb reported that Barbie had been ‘discreetly interrogated’. Barbie had admitted using ‘duress during interrogations, such as interrogation over a long period of time … but has never implied or indicated that he used torture.’ After again eulogising his work, Kolb concluded that Barbie ‘is intelligent and skilful enough to accomplish a successful interrogation by use of his head and consequently did not require the use of his hands.’ On balance, Kolb believed Barbie rather than the French. But, for the record, headquarters was told that Barbie had been (or would be) ‘dropped … as an informant’. It was a purely cosmetic statement and, to minimise the dangers of future embarrassment, communications inside the CIC about Barbie were to be kept strictly ‘Top Secret’. Obsessively fearing that Barbie might still offer his services to another government, Kolb was ordered by Vidal to make sure that Barbie remained unaware of all the problems, especially by continuing the payment of his regular allowance. Until then, the CIC could justify Barbie’s use on grounds of their own self-inflicted ignorance. Although they knew he was a former Gestapo officer, and the organisation’s record was by then well-documented, they deliberately denied themselves even a glimpse at the wealth of unconcealed evidence of his crimes. Their predominant concern was their own convenience and the fight against Communism.
On 7 June 1949, the first formal French request to the Americans to help find Barbie was sent to the US Military Government (OMGUS) in Frankfurt. Significantly, it mentioned that Barbie was wanted for ‘war crimes’, the first time the charge was officially made. OMGUS, who knew nothing about Barbie, forwarded the request to the Munich police. With typical efficiency, the reply from the chief of Munich’s criminal police department arrived two weeks later. Barbie, he wrote, had not registered in the Munich area; but he added helpfully that Barbie’s name would be included in the police wanted list as a murder suspect. When Region XII discovered the listing in April 1950, they tried unsuccessfully to get it removed. Before the German police had replied, the French had already written to the US Military Government in Munich asking for their help to find him.
Poignet, increasingly frustrated, went even further and asked the political adviser in the French zone to appeal for assistance to HICOG (the American High Commission, successor to the Military Government in the US zone). His approach was eventually answered by an expression of regret and a plea of ignorance, very puzzling for Poignet since the Americans had produced Barbie at least three times for interrogation. A year earlier Gonnot had told him that the Americans were protecting Barbie; now it was to be spelled out in greater detail.
On 28 July 1949, M. Schmelk, the head of the Justice division in Baden-Baden wrote to the French Government Commission for German and Austrian Affairs enclosing Barbie’s address in Memmingen, which unknown to him was long outdated. He ended his letter thus:
I feel I must respectfully point out that Barbie is protected by the American authorities and it is possible that these authorities will not help our inquiries, so preventing us completing the formalities for a valid application for extradition. The application must include not only the real identity and description of the person concerned, but also a residence certificate which can only be authorised by the Public Safety Officer in the region. You should be aware that the security division, the political adviser and the liaison services, are all involved in this affair.
Poignet was given Barbie’s outdated address a month later.
The pressure for Barbie’s extradition again increased but it was still primarily motivated to ensure his appearance at the forthcoming second trial of Hardy. Several members of the French parliament, anxious for Hardy’s conviction, urged the government to raise the issue with the Americans in Washington. The government hesitated. Ministers were unwilling to embarrass the Americans on something relatively minor when Washington’s urgent help was needed on a whole range of major issues affecting France’s very survival. Moreover, in Paris, there was still only scant concern about a possible trial for Barbie’s crimes against the people of Lyons and the region; there was no mention whatsoever of charging him with the deportation of the Jews to Auschwitz, although the telegram signed by Barbie announcing the deportation of the forty-one children from Izieu had actually been produced and cited by the French prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial in 1946. Nevertheless, urged on by Poignet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally asked the French ambassador in Washington, Henri Bonnet, to approach the State Department and ask for Barbie’s arrest and extradition. His request was passed on to the office of John McCloy (Clay’s successor, now called the American High Commissioner, at HICOG) who cabled back to Washington: We have no record of request for extradition of Barbie Klaus by French. An accurate but inevitably unhelpful statement. At that stage no US organisation other than the CIC knew about Barbie. On 6 December the ambassador described to Robert Schumann, the Foreign Minister, the result of his efforts: the State Department had been told by the High Commission in Frankfurt that they had no knowledge of Barbie and had therefore suggested that the French should contact HICOG in Germany.
Yet just two days later Inspector Aimé Ferrier, an officer of the Police Judiciaire, interrogated Barbie near Augsburg about a collaborator, Lucien Doussot, who was charged with treason. Supporting his former colleague, Barbie formally denied that Doussot was involved in fighting with the Gestapo and Ferrier sent his report to the Lyons magistrate. Bechtold remembers that because Barbie was more concerned than usual for his safety, Captain Hugo Sandford was brought specia
lly from Munich to ‘babysit’ him. Sandford’s credentials were impressive. He had been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, which he wore in his lapel, and spoke fluent French. The interrogators were apparently sufficiently intimidated and did not stray from the agreed questions.
Bechtold also remembers why Barbie was suddenly offered to the French on this occasion. ‘The army was embarrassed because the French had been given the run-around in Heidelberg. McCloy’s office brought pressure on us to admit his presence. So we had to allow the interrogation.’ Yet, the US Department of Justice investigation in 1983 into the American connection with Barbie reported that, at that time, HICOG was completely ignorant about Barbie’s existence. After that interrogation, Region XII asked CIC headquarters what it should do with Barbie in the future. Its orders were to stay in contact with Barbie, to pay him from the Confidential Funds, and to have him available either for further interrogation or for extradition.
The scenario was now set for an extraordinary farce which would play for the next fourteen months. On the one hand, the State Department, HICOG in Frankfurt, the army command in Heidelberg, CIC headquarters in Stuttgart and the CIC office in Augsburg were all performing a charade of denials; on the other side, the exasperated French were trying to use every channel available to discover Barbie’s elusive custodian.
The play started with a letter from SDECE to Colonel Camadau, the government commissioner at the Paris permanent military tribunal. Camadau had asked whether SDECE could negotiate Barbie’s appearance as a witness in Hardy’s trial. On 13 February 1950, SDECE replied that the Americans would be willing to release him as a witness on condition that he would only be in France for a limited period and that the French would guarantee his return to Germany. After three weeks’ thought, Camadau’s superiors, not unreasonably, rejected the offer because, ‘The witness is a war criminal … wanted by the French authorities.’ To fulfil the American conditions would be ‘impossible and at least inopportune’. Hardy’s second trial started on 24 April 1950 without the star witness, and ended on 8 May in a sensational acquittal. Many more Frenchmen were infuriated than had been over the first acquittal because they were now all aware that the Gestapo officer was enjoying a protected existence in Germany. To the French officials it now seemed impossible for the Americans to deny any knowledge of Barbie’s address, especially because of the December interrogation. Pride and honour now demanded that the Americans be forced to extradite Barbie.
