Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences

by Frederic Martini

  When Marcheret was playing the role of Captain Jacques, he was usually accompanied by Oberleutnant Wolfgang Brandstetter, a Lufwaffe reserve officer who had lived in the US. As a writer for an obscure German publishing house (owned by his family), Brandstetter appeared first in New York in 1936, but soon shifted to southern California until he was recalled to Germany in December 1938. He was about 6’2” tall, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a small scar on his forehead. Airmen often described him as very fit and good looking – a bit of a dandy who claimed to be “John,” an American from Pasadena who had become a French air officer. John was often the person who did the subtlest interrogations, performing that role for “Dr. Maurice” as well as for “Captain Jack” and sometimes for “Captain Jacques.”

  In July 1944, Marcheret often traveled with Ivonne Lallier, a woman in her 30s whom he introduced as his personal assistant. Lallier was described as “unattractive;” she was short, had narrow shoulders and poor posture, and her red hair, obviously dyed, often assumed a peculiar shade of red-orange. Her eyes were distinctly yellowed, probably because in mid-1944, she was suffering from jaundice. Because she dyed her hair red, she was often confused with Collette Orsini, although detailed descriptions of the two were very different.

  Whoever Captain Jack/Jacques might actually be, he attempted to get the men to fill out fake Red Cross cards, ostensibly so that the information could be radioed to England to establish that the airmen were who they said they were, rather than German spies. The airmen had been briefed on this tactic when they arrived in the ETO, so they often either refused to fill the cards out or filled in the minimal information required by the Geneva Conventions. Once that process was out of the way, the airmen were asked to hand over their dog tags and other identification – whatever they had kept – with the explanation that this would make their cover stories more believable should they be stopped at a checkpoint along the escape route. Few airmen complied with that request, but their refusal was accepted without a fuss.

  The airmen were then delivered to the Gestapo. Small groups of 1-4 airmen were picked up by car, often a black 4-door Citroen. Most were driven directly to the Paris Gestapo either at 84 Avenue Foch or Gestapo headquarters at rue des Saussaies for interrogation before transfer to Fresnes Prison, although a few groups were taken into custody at a roadblock. On 15 July, 16 July, and 2 August, there must have been too many caught in the traps, because the Germans used covered lorries instead of cars. These vehicles gave them bulk transport capabilities, and more than 30 airmen could be collected in one sweep by driving from one pickup location to the next within Paris.

  On 11 August, the last of the airmen within the escape lines were collected in a series of operations that included raiding the Prevost house and arresting the sheltered airmen along with George Prevost, Genevieve Rocher, and her husband Jean. After interrogation, the three were sent to Fresnes Prison and rode the same train out of Paris that carried the Allied airmen they had attempted to assist.

  There were few happy endings to these stories. George Prevost died in Buchenwald Concentration Camp; although Genevieve Rocher survived Ravensbrük Concentration Camp, her husband died at the Dora camp. Louis Gianoni was killed on 16 August 1944 while assisting in the last-chance roundup of FFI members he had betrayed. Collette Orsini, although arrested and tried for her involvement with Desoubrie, was acquitted — a court decision that continues to stimulate strong disagreements among those studying this period. According to Collette, the Desoubrie-Orsini affair had come to a dramatic finale on 24 July 1944, when she finally realized he was working for the Germans. He had settled the matter by shooting her in the chest.183 Although she was certainly injured and hospitalized, the circumstances remain obscure. It is difficult to reconcile her account with (1) the fact that she had shown her concealed pistol to a friend, a curious affectation for an innocent bystander, (2) that it was Desoubrie who took her to a hospital, and (3) that he later returned to try and convince her to flee Paris with him.

  Guy Marcheret was captured and imprisoned in late 1945, but Jacques Desoubrie remained at large until his arrest in 1949, following a tip from his estranged wife. The two were tried separately but at roughly the same time - perhaps the French wanted to get the Captain Jacques issue taken care of once and for all - and both were sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentences were carried out at the Fort de Montrouge, near Paris, in December 1949. Desoubrie went to his fate completely unrepentant, and his final letter stated his undying dedication to the Nazi ideals and closed with “Heil Hitler.”

  Maurice Grapin was arrested, tried, sentenced to 5 years of hard labor, and then released. Draga was captured by the British in Italy in 1945 and “aggressively interrogated.” His fate thereafter is uncertain. Brandstetter fared much better. He was no fool, and as things started looking bad for Germany he started hiding money in Paris. When France fell to the Allies, he deserted and waited for the right time to surrender. He was interrogated repeatedly, but after cooperating fully, he was released. He returned to Germany and to the publishing business that had provided him cover in the 1930s, spending the rest of his life in relative obscurity. Christian Schnell’s story was the most remarkable of all. Schnell was arrested and held in a French military prison in Paris awaiting trial. In May 1949, on the day before the trial of the SD agents from Avenue Foch was to begin, Schnell was released, for no apparent reason. It was either by design or the greatest stroke of luck imaginable. He was never seen again.

  183 Some other reports say she was stabbed. There are also disagreements about the date of the incident and when she was hospitalized. Her story evolved over time; she later claimed that she knew Desoubrie was a German agent, but that she continued to assist him because he was blackmailing her.

  APPENDIX 3: BUCHENWALD AIRMEN

  * = Deceased ** = Not located after WW II Boldface = Known to be alive in Dec. 2016

  APPENDIX 4: LAMASON, THE SOE, AND PLANS TO ESCAPE FROM BUCHENWALD

  KENNETH BURNEY, ONE OF THE SOE (Special Operations Executive) agents, had been in Buchenwald longer than the 37 in Dodkin’s group, and he had some value to the Germans as a linguist. As a result, he was held apart from the rest, but he could wander freely within the camp. Using discreet bribes, Burney had been able to get the prisoner-guards responsible for security at Block 17 to allow Dodkin free passage into the main camp.

  In short order, Burney convinced Lamason of his reliability by answering questions about minor details and personalities in the British organization that the Germans would be unlikely to know; Lamason had spent considerable time in the UK and had a capacious memory. But when Dodkin and Lamason spoke, Lamason was unusually reserved, if not outright hostile, and he seemed tense as he walked the two out of earshot to have a private conversation. A few minutes later, the atmosphere had changed, and the three were chatting like old friends.

  Lamason’s first impression had been that this man was a German spy, because he knew the real Kenneth Dodkin quite well from the time he had spent in the UK. Only after the two men had talked candidly and Burney had provided confirmation was he convinced that Dodkin was a dedicated British agent. The man posing as Dodkin was Squadron Leader Forrest Yeo-Thomas, age 42. He was probably the model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond character — Fleming also worked for the SOE during the war — and Yeo-Thomas’s exploits from age 18 onward resemble the script of one of the Bond movies.

  Yeo-Thomas and 36 other SOE agents had arrived from Fresnes Prison a week before the airmen, and like the airmen their fates remained uncertain. Yeo-Thomas, however, had used the last week to become familiar with the layout and organization of the concentration camp, and had worked out several escape scenarios. This was his third mission into Germany and the Occupied Territories, and the third time he’d been captured. Although this was his first time in a concentration camp, he was determined to escape and return to the UK just as he had on previous missions.

  In the week following their shift into Block 58,
Lamason had extended conversations with Yeo-Thomas (“Dodkin”) and Burney. Yeo-Thomas had tried unsuccessfully to have his men shifted to Little Camp and combined with the airmen, but the SOE agents were classified as spies, whereas the airmen were logged as police prisoners, and the two were incompatible. Yeo-Thomas had received word from prisoner clerks in the main office that all of his men were to be executed, and he asked Lamason to try to intercede with the administration, bringing them under his wing (so to speak). After agonizing over the decision, Lamason decided not to attempt it. He was worried that linking the fate of the airmen to the fate of the SOE agents might jeopardize any chance they had of being transferred to a POW camp. This was a difficult decision for two reasons. First, Lamason had heard that execution orders had arrived in the file with the airmen, but that SS-Captain Schmidt would not sign the order until a date was specified by the RSHA (Himmler’s office). (Lamason elected not to tell the other airmen as there was nothing to be done about this.) Second, the 37 SOE agents had now been released from isolation, and most of them had visited Little Camp to spend time with the airmen, swapping stories and making friends.

  Just after lunch on 11 September 1944, an announcement was made, ordering 16 of the SOE agents to report to the front gate. On arrival, they were shackled together in pairs and then pushed into the punishment cells by SS-Hauptscharführer (Master Sergeant) Gustav Heigel, who was in charge of the prison and guard platoons. Heigel was rumored to be in charge of prisoners designated for “special treatment” (execution), and he had a penchant for beating and torturing prisoners before the sentence was carried out. The next day, the SOE agents were escorted to the crematorium by SS-Unterscharführer Wolfgang Otto and executed in the strangling room. Their bodies were presumably the ones Fred and Sam handled in the crematorium basement.

  In the days that followed, Yeo-Thomas and Lamason met almost daily to compare notes and try to come up with a viable plan of action. The prospects were not good. Their numbers were already being whittled away; they had just lost 16 talented operatives and the surviving airmen and SOE agents had been weakened by malnutrition and disease. Most had dysentery, all had skin infections, many had rags binding festering foot wounds, others were coughing from respiratory infections, and those with minimal medical knowledge recognized the labored gurgling of pneumonia. The overcrowded camp was plagued by tuberculosis, strep infections, and pleurisy, as well as a persistent typhus epidemic that was barely kept under control by quarantining those infected in an isolation ward in Block 46. The two leaders agreed that their chances of a successful escape were now very poor. A surprise breakout by 200 trained, fit men backed by a Red/Green coalition might have a chance. But with their numbers reduced and their health failing, the ardor of their suitors had cooled, and their support was no longer guaranteed. Yeo-Thomas had tried to get the Reds to give him some of the weapons assembled by the airmen and now cached around the camp, but the Reds, who had hidden them, would not divulge their location.

  In August, around the time the airmen arrived, Yeo-Thomas had met Professor Alfred Balachowski, a 55 year-old prisoner who had been a doctor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Balachowski, an Austrian by birth, was a portly and pleasant fellow with short gray hair and thick glasses. He was given special privileges in the camp because he worked in Blocks 46 and 50, manufacturing experimental typhus vaccines and monitoring experiments the SS doctors performed on prisoners. Balachowski was a member of a French resistance cell known as the Prosper Network, and he had volunteered to be deported to a concentration camp in Germany to save as many lives as possible.

  In desperation, Yeo-Thomas prepared a coded message to the SOE, reporting on the bacteriological warfare work at Buchenwald and urgently requesting the assistance of paratroopers to break out of the camp with critical documentation. He entrusted the message to Hans Baumeister, a close friend of Balachowski’s. Baumeister was a trusted German prisoner often sent out of the camp on assignments. With the message, Yeo-Thomas gave Baumeister a note verifying Baumeister’s trustworthiness. The message and note were successfully smuggled out, but there was no response. (The message did not reach Britain until December 1944.)

  While Yeo-Thomas was sending his message, Lamason was using a similarly circuitous method to send an uncoded message in German addressed to the Commanding Officer of the Luftwaffe base at Nohra, informing them of their plight and requesting that they be evacuated to one of the Luftwaffe POW camps. Time dragged on while Lamason waited in vain for a response to his message.

  Yeo-Thomas continued to look for a way to save the remaining 21 SOE agents. A plan began to take shape after Balachowski arranged a meeting in Block 46. Attending the meeting were Balachowski, Yeo-Thomas, Baumeister, and a prisoner-orderly, Dr. Eugen Kogon, who had survived in Buchenwald for many years. Kogon knew all of the angles, and together they decided that the best hope of survival lay in having SOE agents assume the identities of dying prisoners confined to the typhus isolation ward. There were several major problems facing them, however. The most obvious was that the plan would not work unless the SS doctor assigned to Block 46, Sturmbannführer (Major) Ding-Schuler, would permit it. Dr. Ding-Schuler was Himmler’s friend, but Kogon suspected that he had a strong sense of self-preservation. The proposed arrangement would be that Ding-Schuler would allow the operation to proceed, in exchange for a written commendation and possibly supporting testimony at his trial, if and when the Allies won the war. Thomas would also promise to try to protect Ding-Schuler from retribution by prisoners when the camp was liberated.

  Kogon approached Ding-Schuler at his next opportunity, and the doctor agreed to the terms with the condition that the kapo of the experimental block, Arthur Dietsch, agreed as well. Fortunately, Baumeister and Dietsch were friends, and this obstacle was overcome. The only other problem facing them was the ticking of the clock — there were many typhus patients in isolation, but they were stubbornly clinging to life. But then Ding-Schuler had second thoughts; he would keep the bargain but he would only agree to save three of the SOE agents and one of them had to be Yeo-Thomas (otherwise he would have no-one to testify on his behalf). Yeo-Thomas reluctantly agreed, but continued to try to find a way to save the rest of his men while keeping the typhus plan secret from his men, Lamason and the other airmen, and the camp at large. And he knew all to well that secrets were very hard to keep in Buchenwald.

  Yeo-Thomas was now hiding in the Typhus ward, listed as a patient. Dietsche was giving him injections that gave him a fever, although Yeo-Thomas initially feared that it was a trick and that he was being executed. After much thought, Yeo-Thomas decided to include Harry Peulevé and Stéphane Hessel in the plan. Once they were safe he would see if he could get Ding-Schuler to agree to increase the permitted number. Fortunately for the three SOE agents, a kommando returned to Buchenwald with a large number of typhus patients who were brought to the isolation ward. Several were close to death.

  Unfortunately, time continued to work against them. On 4 October, 11 SOE agents were called to the main gate, but one of them, Peulevé, was in the isolation ward, supposedly deathly ill with typhus. A guard was sent to collect him, but Dietsch convinced him that it would be to dangerous to expose others to the disease. The others were never seen again. After the war, a German Private, Gerhardt Burkhardt, confessed to being part of a makeshift execution squad organized by an officer named Schmidt that killed roughly a dozen POWs that he thought were Americans in early October 1944. The men were brought out handcuffed together in pairs and shot in groups of four roughly 650 yards outside of the main gate of the camp. There are no records of any groups of American POWs in Buchenwald other than the airmen. However, the executed SOE agents included Canadians, and the distinction between American and Canadian accents could easily have escaped the ear of someone fluent only in German.

  There were now 11 SOE agents remaining of the 37 who had arrived at Buchenwald in mid-August. On 6 October, Marcel Seigneur, Buchenwald 76635, died of typhus. The body was sen
t to the crematorium and a form sent to the camp administration reported that Harry Peulevé had passed away. Harry, now called “Marcel,” miraculously recovered and rejoined the prison population.

  On 7 and 9 October, SOE agents were told to report to the front gate, never to return. Only six now remained alive; Harry was safe, but the rest were still in jeopardy. Yeo-Thomas was relieved to learn that the three SOE agents not in the hospital (Guillet, Southgate, and Culioli) had been sent away on an extended work kommando outside of the camp, so for the moment, they were not in danger.

  On Friday, 13 October, Maurice Chouquet, Buchenwald #81642, died in the isolation ward. This was unlucky for him but very lucky for Yeo-Thomas, who adopted his identity in the nick of time. “Dodkin” was called to the entry gate the next day, before the administration learned of his supposed demise. Finally, on 18 October, Michel Boitel died of typhus. When his body was cremated as Stéphane Hessell of the SOE, the last of the surviving agents was out of immediate danger. On the next day, 19 October 1944, Lamason and 154 other Buchenwald airmen were evacuated by the Luftwaffe. Levitt Beck died that night, but the others remaining behind in the medical tent were transferred to Stalag Luft III on 28 November.

  The three SOE agents still had to “recover” and then find shelter where nobody could recognize the identity changes. Kogon and Baumeister quickly arranged for Seigneur, Choquet, and Boitel to be transferred to a small kommando in Gleina, 34 miles from Buchenwald. From there, the men were transferred to other kommandos, and despite further hardships and abuse, they somehow managed to survive the war. Before leaving Buchenwald, Yeo-Thomas took a big risk and wrote a letter for Dietsch testifying that the man had given vital support to the SOE in general and Yeo-Thomas in particular. He signed the letter with his real name, rank, and serial number. The letter was ultimately introduced at Dietsch’s war crimes trial and largely ignored by the judges, who sentenced him to a lengthy prison term. Yeo-Thomas was distressed but could do nothing about it. He never got to fulfill his promise to put in a good word for Dr. Ding-Schuler, who committed suicide shortly after his arrest.