Klaus Barbie

by Bower, Tom

  In an emotional three-day debate starting on 16 December 1964, the National Assembly confronted their dilemma. The vast majority of German war criminals had not been punished and were leading prosperous lives in the new Federal Republic. The only legal tool available to maintain their criminal status was to incorporate Nuremberg’s ‘crimes against humanity’ into the French penal code and declare them exempt from the statute of limitations. The proposal was enacted on 26 December by ‘taking note’ retrospectively that crimes against humanity are imprescribable. This inevitably became the subject of interminable, intricate legal squabbles, not least because it offended the basic criterion of a crime: that it should have defined penalties.

  Barbie’s lawyers will find it difficult to challenge the legality of that legislation. Paul Touvier, Barbie’s wartime collaborator, has already tried and failed. So have Maurice Papon and Jean Leguay, two former Vichy officials who allegedly collaborated with the Germans in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz. They were suddenly hauled from apparent respectability into the limelight by Serge Klarsfeld on charges of crimes against humanity – a category, they argue, which was intended for the prosecution of Germans, not Frenchmen. The examination of their wartime collaboration continues.

  Whether, in Barbie’s case, the eight crimes can be interpreted as crimes against humanity will be open to argument. He would have to prove that those deported or killed were involved in acts of Resistance, and that deportation was not a crime against humanity because special conditions apply in wartime. Barbie’s defence, so far, has been to plead, firstly, ignorance; secondly, that he left Lyons for the last time on 17 August 1944 and never returned, and therefore cannot be responsible for anything which occurred after that date; thirdly, that he was only the third-ranking officer in the Gestapo headquarters and therefore cannot be held responsible for general commands; fourthly, that, if anyone was tortured, it was done by subordinates; and fifthly, concerning the Jews, that, in signing the two telexes to Paris, he was standing in for the specialists normally sent from Adolf Eichmann’s team. He claims that he sent the telexes as a mere administrative chore. He vehemently denies having been in Izieu; that he said, was ‘Wenzel’s responsibility’ (Wenzel died during the 26 May Allied bombing of Lyons). As proof, he argues that his name on the Izieu telegram is preceded by the letters IA, the German for ‘Im Auftrage’, meaning ‘Acting under orders’. It is a weak argument because all Gestapo officers used that format, even Adolf Eichmann. Barbie also denies that he knew the fate of any of those deported, including the children. It is an argument which a French jury will hear with some scepticism, if only because his superior, Werner Knab, was a member of an Einsatzgrüppe in the east.

  ‘It was only because of the children of Izieu that I chased after Barbie, and on that he’ll be convicted,’ says Serge Klarsfeld. ‘In 1944, there were lots of refugee homes for Jewish children in France, and the Gestapo knew all about them. Only two Gestapo officers in the whole of France didn’t deliberately ignore them, both because it was the end of the war, and they were after all children. That was Alois Brunner and Barbie. Barbie must be convicted because he murdered those harmless children of Izieu.’

  At the beginning of June 1983, Barbie changed lawyers. The modest, uncommitted Servette was replaced by the flamboyant, left-wing Jacques Verges. Verges claims that Barbie approached him because he is famous in both Germany and France for championing unpopular causes. His former clients include Algerians fighting against the French army during their war of independence, Palestinian-backed aeroplane hijackers, and German members of the Baader-Meinhof group. Verges only started work again in France four years ago. During the previous ten years, he had disappeared; some suspect that he was in China and Albania, others say that he was in the Middle East. He refuses to reveal his whereabouts. In the early Sixties, he edited a well-financed magazine called Revolution, a pro-Chinese monthly devoted to the Third World. One of his earliest contributors was Régis Debray who wrote about the guerrillas in Venezuela. Twenty years ago, the two were comrades for the same cause. Verges does not hide his present disdain for Debray: ‘He is now an official, and I am still fighting a cause.’ He is clearly delighted at the opportunity to embarrass the unfaithful.

  Verges’ first objective is to expose the deceptive Hercules flight. He is convinced that, because Barbie was expelled rather than extradited, he will have to be released. ‘The key is that the expulsion was the result of connivance between the French and Bolivian governments, and the French courts will refuse to judge a case where an expulsion or extradition is improper.’ Klarsfeld laughingly rejects Verges’ argument. The lawyers will clash about the interpretation of jurisprudence, but even Verges is realistic about the slim chance of finding a French judge who is prepared to order Barbie’s release and face the consequences. ‘To release him,’ says the Marxist, ‘would be a victory for French justice and would halt this appalling piece of theatre. Riss’s dossier against Barbie is thin and unconvincing.’ It is the natural brazenness of the lawyer for the defence. To Klarsfeld’s insistence that Barbie will be convicted for sending the Izieu children to Auschwitz, Verges answers that his client had nothing at all to do with the Jews, ‘He was just number three in the Gestapo, obeying orders.’ Klarsfeld, delighted that Barbie’s lawyer not only speaks his client’s language but even seems to believe in his defence, insists that because Barbie’s SS written record describes him as ‘the dynamo of the department’, there will be no doubt that the twelve-man jury will be convinced that Barbie was a ferocious leader rather than a meek subordinate.

  On 5 March, Barbie’s daughter Ute travelled from Austria to visit him. To the press she said, ‘He is still for me my father, a very good father, not a war criminal,’ and claimed that the two-hour meeting had been ‘very moving’. But those who saw the reunion were surprised by the lack of emotion. The following day, Barbie was rushed to hospital with a strangulated intestine. The medical expert who had made the diagnosis was Dr René Guillet. In 1944, Guillet had been a young doctor in the Ain Resistance, close to both Heslop and Romans-Petit. Among the many brutalities he witnessed was an incident that resulted from a visit by a Gestapo detachment, led by Floreck, to the hospital in Nantua on 12 July. Nine patients, too wounded and sick to be evacuated, were seized and executed in a nearby village. ‘It was a shock when I walked in and saw the patient in the flesh, but then I treated him like any other sick man.’

  Forty years on, the unforgettable was still unforgivable, but the society which Barbie had tried to demolish had proved that its humanitarianism had more than survived.

  AFTERMATH

  Erhard Dabringhaus became quite excited as he watched the television news reports of Barbie’s return to France in February 1983. He had already tried to contact the local NBC station in Detroit to tell them that he, an obscure, retired professor, had known this Nazi who was now headline news across the world. It was to take another twenty-four hours before anyone in the station’s New York headquarters was prepared to take his claim seriously and transmit an interview on the nightly news show. But even as he repeated across the world his story that the Nazi butcher had been a paid US agent, there was genuine disbelief. For the public, the Second World War was a just war, where good had triumphed over evil and the criminals had been punished at such places as Nuremberg. Was it at all possible that the American Army, having fought and sacrificed so much to defeat the Nazis, could actually embrace one of the perpetrators of the worst Nazi crimes? Dabringhaus said it was, but he was an unconvincing witness, even when the Klarsfelds supported his allegations. All the other dozens of Americans who knew the truth held steadfastly to their thirty-five-year-old secret.

  In Washington, the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee for many years had been investigating and publishing disturbing evidence that many eastern Europeans, who had willingly aided the Germans in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during the war, had been smuggled illegally into the USA, had
been granted American citizenship and were leading peaceful, prosperous lives. Investigation had revealed that their presence in America was the successful result of an extraordinary criminal conspiracy between the CIA, the FBI and the US immigration services. The Committee’s current chairman, Peter Rodino, and other politicians followed Dabringhaus’s claims with interest and waited for further revelations. The few which appeared shed little extra light but confirmed the need for an official inquiry. The initial reaction of William Smith, the Attorney General, was to reject the demand personally, arguing that the whole case was of historical interest only, and there was no possibility of criminal prosecution because of the statute of limitations. If his concern was that any inquiry would raise more questions than were answered, then his political judgement would eventually prove correct. Yet, after substantial pressure, Smith was forced to reverse his stand and on 14 March 1983 he commissioned Allan Ryan to investigate America’s relationship with Barbie. It would be the first time that the extremely sensitive post-war relationship between the western Allies and the defeated Nazis would be explored officially, and in public. Taken to its natural conclusion, an investigation would have shown that the intimate post-war relationship between the victors and the Nazi war criminals had been approved at the very highest levels of the American military and government establishments in Germany, usually in total disregard of the policy guidelines laid down in Washington. In the event, the Department of Justice report avoided that sensational conclusion by limiting the area of responsibility and so confining political repercussions.

  The alternative would have provoked demands for innumerable further investigations with innumerable embarrassing disclosures.

  Allan Ryan was head of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. As the man leading a long, successful investigation into the presence of east European Nazis living illegally in the USA, he was ideally placed to discover and understand the available documentary evidence. His 218-page report, with a massive 680-page appendix of documents, was published on 16 August 1983. Superficially it seemed impressive. Here was the American government voluntarily declassifying literally hundreds of ‘Top Secret’ documents to prove that its servants had conspired not only to defeat justice but also to betray Barbie’s victims and those who had fought and died to rid the world of the Nazi scourge. Adding to that self-inflicted wound, Ryan also recommended that the American government formally apologise to the French government for ‘delaying the due process of the law’. Having suggested that the American government offer its help to the French prosecution, Ryan reported to the Attorney General: ‘This is a matter of decency, and of honourable conduct. It should be, I believe, the final chapter by the United States in this case.’ After initial State Department opposition, the White House formally announced that it had sent a formal note to the French government expressing ‘the deep regrets’ of the United States for the concealment of Barbie. It was magnanimous behaviour and proof that America, despite its contradictions, is an unique democracy. In contrast, when the British Foreign Office was asked whether they would allow Ryan to publish the British documents on British attempts to recruit Barbie, Richard Clarke, the FO spokesman just said, ‘No comment.’ The British have destroyed most of their archives concerning the occupation of Germany, a convenient excuse to conceal their own unsavoury dealings with the Nazis.

  Yet, despite Ryan’s achievement, his investigation suffers from a curious narrowness which suggests that he was anxious to present a completely unambiguous conclusion placing the exclusive blame for Barbie’s concealment on the CIC.

  It is a dubious conclusion, based on insufficient evidence; and because there is no apparent reason for that tactic, it produces more speculation.

  For example, his blame of the CIC is preceded by a surprisingly generous explanation of the CIC’s motives for hiring Barbie. After mentioning the mounting political and strategic problems facing the western Allies, Ryan summarises the opposing arguments facing the CIC in 1947 when considering whether Barbie should be recruited. For those in the CIC concerned about the future of Europe, says Ryan, the argument was that, ‘If a Klaus Barbie was available and effective and loyal and reliable … his employment was in the best interests of the United States at the time.’ The opposite argument, looking back to the past, would say, according to Ryan, that it was a ‘grave misjudgement … incomprehensible and shameful’ to employ anyone with a Gestapo record, regardless of his worth.

  Ryan concludes that the ‘conscientious and patriotic’ CIC agents cannot be criticised for recruiting Barbie in their fight against the communists, because their motives were neither ‘cynical nor corrupt’. His reasons are precise. The CROWCASS lists were uniformly disregarded because they were discredited; the French presented the evidence and demanded Barbie’s return as a war criminal for the first time only in 1950; Barbie convincingly presented himself as an effective anti-Resistance and counter-intelligence agent and not a torturer; and had the CIC really known the man’s record, they would not have agreed so readily to the French interrogations in 1948 and 1949: ‘The decision to use Barbie was a defensible one, made in good faith by those who believed that they were advancing legitimate and important national security interests.’

  The report’s genuflexion to the CIC’s predicament is not an expression of Ryan’s benevolence. It is the direct result of his own approach. Until very late in the investigation Ryan and his advisers were very doubtful as to whether Barbie was actually head of Section IV, the Gestapo. In the absence of documentary proof, they were convinced that Barbie was in fact head of Section VI, Intelligence. They hoped to prove that Barbie was not ‘the Butcher of Lyons’. What the investigators hoped to gain by pursuing that argument mystified the French when Ryan explained his thoughts during his visit in summer 1983. They could not understand why he discarded as unimportant evidence the UNWCC and CROWCASS 1945 listings of Barbie as a murderer. Many feared that he hoped to exculpate the Americans completely for any responsibility by pleading ignorance, and warned him of the consequences. But finally he split his own argument artificially and isolated the responsibility by entirely blaming the CIC – but only after 1949.

  It was in May 1949 that the CIC received the newspaper cutting containing the French protest with the brief account of Barbie’s crimes. According to Ryan, Browning’s covering note to Region XII, that ‘headquarters is inclined to believe that there is some element of truth in the allegations’, changes the whole onus of responsibility. After that time, he argues, everyone in the CIC knew about the charges against Barbie but decided, on their own definition of ‘national security interests’, to ignore them. Thereafter, although Barbie was allegedly dropped, he was in truth more trusted than ever. It was a period of outright deception, primarily towards the French, but also according to Ryan, towards HICOG; the culprits were possibly EUCOM and definitely the CIC. Ryan condemns that deception and says that only the statute of limitations prevents the prosecution of those in the CIC who were solely responsible. It is a cosy argument because it limits the blame to a small, easily identifiable group of men who, operating at the lowest levels both then and now, possess neither the political power nor the prestige within the military establishment to upset the neat answer.

  Ryan’s report is wholly based on documents. Claiming that they provide infallible proof, he has deliberately ignored present-day explanations, saying that he suspects the accuracy of personal memories of events which happened more than thirty years ago – an argument which will not prevent Barbie’s own trial. Ryan’s approach would be less vulnerable if so many crucial documents were not missing, and if he had published all the documents which he had seen. In effect, he has excluded a mass of documents including those which reveal a grey area of both indecision and disagreement, and which suggest an inter-agency conspiracy. To corroborate his own conclusions, Ryan published low-level correspondence – for example, between Alan Lightner, who was an uninformed HICOG official, and an unimportant
officer at the American embassy in Paris. This corroboration only establishes Lightner’s ignorance, proving that the discussion within HICOG about the CIC’s protection of Barbie took place elsewhere; the documents establishing those discussions are still classified.

  The CIC did not operate in a vacuum. Had their military and political masters in EUCOM and HICOG been genuinely concerned about Barbie’s presence, the records so far published would demonstrate something more than the evident institutional ignorance, disinterest and apathy. After all, no one was actually ordered to search for Barbie. Ryan does not criticise either HICOG or EUCOM for that failure. Despite the impressive volume of documents published, absolutely none are included from the highest levels of either EUCOM or HICOG. These were the crucial decision-making areas which were concerned with the Barbie question. If no documents have survived, it further weakens Ryan’s exclusive dependence on documentary evidence.