16
The Seven Secret
Prison Cells
Several weeks ago, a taxi bumped over the uneven cobbled pavement of the Wilhelmstrasse, in the outskirts of Berlin, and came to a halt before the towering red-brick walls of the most heavily guarded and most highly secretive prison in the world.
The German cabdriver turned from his wheel, “Hier ist was Sie suchen, mein Herr. Spandau Prison!”
The American reporter, in the rear seat, stepped out of the taxi. “Danke schoen. Hold it a few minutes. I want to look around.”
Crossing the street, the American saw four large brick houses facing him across the narrow thoroughfare. These were the permanent billets for the director, wardens, and guards from Soviet Russia, Great Britain, France, and the United States, the four powers in charge of running the incredible German jail. Directly behind the houses rose the prison itself, with its blue-steel entrance door, and its medieval-styled twenty-foot-high walls.
Determined to have a closer look, the American reporter walked around one of the billets to the side wall of Spandau. A sign, in both English and in German, greeted him:
WARNING—DANGER—DO NOT APPROACH THIS FENCE. GUARDS HAVE ORDERS TO SHOOT.
Between the sign and the prison proper, he saw a series of obstacles that made Alcatraz and Devil’s Island seem, by comparison, invitingly accessible. A massive roll of concertina wire lay coiled and menacing in front of a wickedly barbed barrier about ten feet high. Behind this, fiendishly modem, gleamed an electrically charged fence set in a cement base. To the rear of that stretched another roll of concertina wire, and then three yards of green grass, and finally, the crimson-colored giant solid wall enclosing the buildings of Spandau.
Atop this wall, on a wooden platform fitted out with two immense searchlights and a cubicle with three large glass windows, an unsmiling British Tommy, rifle slung over his shoulder, moved slowly round and round.
Studying the layout of the block-square prison, the American reporter counted six of these sentry lofts perched along the high wall. He jotted, on the back of an envelope, a note about this and other penal refinements. Then, stuffing the envelope in one pocket, he pulled a camera out of the other and brought it up to his eye.
That moment, the roof fell on him. Or so it felt.
For in a split second, the entire area seemed to swarm with wild life—wild-eyed life, that is. Two large, angry men, one in civvies, one in a blue uniform, came charging out of the prison toward him. Two other men, even larger and angrier, tumbled out of the brick building beside him. The total effect, the American reporter recalled later, was that of being run over by a stampede of charging rhinoceroses.
There was a brief, silent, panting skirmish over the camera. The two from the prison heatedly crowded the American, while the two from the building held back, watching and listening sullenly.
“You’re in trouble, brother,” the blue-uniformed guard was saying. “This is a security area. Top secret.”
“Nothing in that sign says you can’t look or take pictures—from the outside.”
The guard was not interested in technicalities. “Two more steps and you’d have been shot dead. What’s your nationality? What are you doing here?”
The American handed over his green passport, and his army travel orders for Berlin, three of them written in English and one in Russian. A vigorous fifteen minutes of argument followed. The air was blued, the notes studied, the camera film confiscated.
“Lucky for you we’re Americans,” the guard said. “The others wouldn’t have let you off.” He lowered his voice. “See those two over there. The ones from the building. They’re two of the eight permanent Russian guards here. They spotted you from an upstairs window. They reported to the prison that you were taking notes. At the same time, the British sentry up there phoned back that you looked suspicious. Listen, pal, this is a four-power jail. Inside, we’ve got seven of the biggest criminals in the world. We can’t be too careful. Haven’t you heard about Spandau? No pictures. No stories. No outsiders. No nothing. Get it? We hate to talk to you like this, but we’ve got to. As it is, those Russians are taking in everything—they know you’re an American, and we’ll have to explain about you at the next four-power prison directors’ meeting. So take off fast, while you can. Last week, a German photographer did what you were doing. He’s still in jail.”
The American reporter prudently beat a hurried retreat. Looking back once, he saw the two Russian guards arguing with the two Americans.
I can vouch for the accuracy of what happened to that American at Spandau—because I was that American.
But what happened to me, I later learned, was only a repetition of what had happened to inquisitive visitors many times before. In the almost two and a half years since Spandau had become an active international prison, at least two dozen other curious journalists of varied nationalities had been jailed, roughed up, or chased, all for daring to snoop in the vicinity of the red-brick walls. Despite this, several overly enthusiastic journals have advertised that their representatives have penetrated Spandau. None of these claims can be classified as nonfiction. For the fact is, no outsider, journalist or visiting fireman has seen the inside of Spandau Prison, in Berlin, since July 1, 1947. Why this super-security? Why the hush-hush?
The answer lies in the nature of the criminals incarcerated. Of the twenty-two top Nazis tried at Nuremberg, only seven escaped paying the death penalty. These seven, today, are in Spandau Prison. The most infamous of the group is fifty-three-year-old Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s personal deputy, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. The other two lifers are seventy-three-year-old Erich Raeder, the Nazi admiral, and fifty-nine-year-old Walther Funk, boss of the Reichsbank after Schacht. The two youngest and healthiest Nazi prisoners in Spandau, the ones with the greatest likelihood of surviving their twenty-year sentences, are forty-two-year-old Albert Speer, an architect who became Minister for Armaments, and forty-two-year-old Baldur von Schirach, the youth leader who wrote poems to Hitler. The remaining two are seventy-six-year-old Constantin von Neurath, once Hitler’s Foreign Minister, who is serving a fifteen-year sentence, and fifty-eight-year-old Karl Doenitz, head of the Nazi Navy and seven-day ruler of Germany after Hitler perished in his bunker, who is serving only ten years.
These seven are guarded in this fantastic manner, not because they might manage to escape but because they might be forcibly liberated. It is highly unlikely that Doenitz, for example, could get out of his cellblock, past the three hundred or so guards, soldiers, and general employees dedicated to keeping him in, over the wall and through the fences to freedom. But it is possible that, among the 60 million surviving Germans who followed, and in some cases worshiped, these men, there are several hundred or more armed fanatics who might one night try to storm Spandau.
The four-power brain trust charged with securing Spandau is at present most worried about Baldur von Schirach. The moon-faced, boyish von Schirach, whose great-grandfather was a Union officer at Bull Run and whose mother was a Philadelphia girl, was the Reichsjungenfuehrer or Reich Youth Leader. It was von Schirach—whose home Hitler so often visited—who spent busy, frenzied days over the years visiting every German village and city, instilling in German youngsters between the ages of five and nineteen a belief in the party ranking above God, in Deutschland über Alles, in the superiority of the pure German “Aryan” to Jews and mongrelized peoples everywhere. As one Spandau official told me, “This von Schirach was really the idol of all German kids. There are still millions of them, now strong, smart young men, burning with a desire to rescue their hero. One day, they may get together and try to pull it off. It hasn’t happened yet. But it could happen tomorrow. Anyway, we’re not taking any chances.”
Another reason for the security surrounding the prison is that the four guarding powers do not want Spandau to become a mecca for the Fascist faithful. A tough American officer, speaking to me in a Berlin bar one evening, explained, “We want the Germans
to forget those bastards. We don’t want the Germans to keep thinking about these seven, then about the good old days, and then start squirming and giving us headaches. We don’t want these seven to be turned into living martyrs.” As a matter of fact, it was for this reason that Spandau, which is almost outside of Berlin and flanked by a field on one side and an orchard on another, was selected over several other sites. There was less traffic here, fewer citizens residing in the vicinity.
At one time, when the Allied powers were searching for a prison, they seriously considered the cement-and-steel antiaircraft Flak Tower or Tiergarten Bunker, in Berlin. This tower, built to house thirty thousand persons underground, was the place where the SS made its last stand against the on-rushing Soviet troops. It was a perfect prison, so perfect that when the British tried to blow it up with the latest of explosives recently, they succeeded only in twisting it and thereby lost face in front of the smiling German population. Despite its strength, this Flak Tower was not acceptable, because too many Berliners passed it daily to and from work. “Can’t you picture thousands of Germans hiking past it every day,” said the American officer, “staring at it, thinking to themselves, ‘Seven great men are in there. One day we must have men like that again, other gods like them to restore our dignity and prosperity.’ No, that wasn’t the way to make the Germans forget.”
Yet, inconsistently, while the four powers keep Spandau isolated from publicity in order to make Germans forget their late gods, the powers are at the same time permitting newspapers, magazines, book publishers in Germany to bring out story after story written by people who had been close to Hitler. Recently, Die Abendzeitung told its Frankfurt readers, “These naive memoirs of valets and adjutants, secretaries, mistresses and chauffeurs tend to leave one with the impression that after all Hitler wasn’t so bad; a little violent but very generous. He drove millions of Germans into death, but basically, he was a good fellow, fond of children and flowers…These publishers count on their readers’ stupidity, but leave out of account the others who use such publications to their advantage, the Bleibtreus [those who ‘remain true’ to the Nazis] who are awaiting their chance to persecute our people again.”
There was yet another reason, I learned, for the blanket of secrecy over Spandau. It was less dramatic than the others, more practical, and one that could any day explode into an international scandal. As one high-level source put it bluntly, “It’s not only that we want to keep information on Spandau away from the Germans. We want to keep it away from our own people back home. And believe me, all four powers feel exactly the same way. Imagine what the American taxpayer back home would say if he knew what it was really costing him to keep those seven in this fancy prison!”
Reliable sources reveal that it is costing five governments—the four powers and Germany—exactly $252,000 a year to run Spandau Prison. Since there are only seven prisoners in the mammoth jail, this means $36,000 is being spent annually to feed, house, and guard each one of the Nazis. That is more than 150 times the amount spent on the average German convict. Of the total sum, the West Berlin government pays the largest amount, 450,000 German marks, roughly $135,000. Next highest is the United States, which contributes $60,000 a year. Russia, Great Britain, and France contribute slightly more than $20,000 each.
The Germans are very bitter about paying such a heavy share of the budget. As a Berlin magazine, the Insulaner, remarked, “The German administration has no opportunity to hire laborers for Spandau or dismiss them either. It can only pay.” Off the record, German officials like to imply that much of their” money is going for graft, to supply the four-power guards with luxurious living quarters and expensive foods. These insinuations are, of course, utterly untrue. As a matter of fact, the Germans, who are trying to reduce their share of the burden by $35,000, have been remiss in furnishing Spandau with many necessary supplies, ranging from office equipment to toilet paper, and the Americans have been quietly furnishing these items out of Uncle Sam’s pocket.
No, the reason for this nightmarish expense is not graft, or even mismanagement, but rather the simple fact that Spandau is a kind of Mad Hatter’s castle. Originally built for 132 convicts, it had been overcrowded with 600 prisoners before the four powers requisitioned it. Emptied, and then rebuilt for Nazi war criminals, the prison that last held 600 men now holds merely seven. Of the 132 cells, 125 are empty. And, because the four powers managing the prison often cannot agree, expenses are quadrupled. There are, for instance, four kitchens instead of one, just as there are four guards’ barracks instead of one. Little wonder the four powers want to keep Spandau out of the limelight.
As a result of the super-security, few American taxpayers know what they are getting for their money. They do not know that powerful efforts are this moment being made behind the scenes to get Albert Speer legally pardoned and out of jail, his lobbyists arguing that he alone defied Hitler’s scorched-earth policy and that he once planned to gas Hitler through the ventilators of the Chancellory bunker. They do not know that Doenitz wears silk underwear (he has ten sets), that Hess alone still mentions the Fuehrer out loud, that von Neurath is expected to die very soon.
More important, as a result of this security, too few Americans know that with the exception of the air safety center in Berlin, Spandau Prison remains the only four-power institution in all Germany. For although the Soviets no longer meet with the British, French, and Americans anywhere in Germany to discuss mutual problems, they still permit their Spandau director to confer weekly with the directors representing the three Western powers. At these weekly meetings, the Russians have fought for solitary confinement for the seven Nazis, and lost to the British on that point; have fought against any religious worship in Spandau, and lost to the Americans on that point; have fought against publicity on the prison, and successfully defeated the French on that point.
Yet, despite the fact that no one can get into Spandau Prison, authentic information does get out. This report, perhaps the most complete made public since the prison became top secret, was obtained from firsthand sources. Which sources? That will have to remain this writer’s own top secret for the present.
The present use for Spandau Prison was conceived one month before the Nuremberg trials ended. On September 7, 1946, the Allied Control Council circulated the highly restricted Directive 35. The fifth paragraph of this directive ordered the four Allied elements of the Berlin Kommandatura, which was that city’s version of the bigger Control Council, to find and prepare a suitable prison in the Berlin area “for all persons sentenced” to prison at the Nuremberg trials. It was estimated that about one hundred Nazis would be sentenced in the series of four-power trials.
After an intensive search, the investigators came upon Spandau, located deep in the British sector of Berlin. Constructed in 1881, Spandau had been used as a military prison for German soldiers sentenced by court-martial. During World War I the Kaiser converted it into a civil penitentiary, and when that war was lost the prisoners broke out and rioted in the streets. During the Hitler regime, it was nicknamed Rote Schloss or Red Castle and was used to hold political prisoners before they were shipped to concentration camps like Sonnenburg. One prominent prisoner in that period was Paul Lobe, a president of the Reichstag under the Republic.
When the four-power representatives visited it in 1946, there were 600 common criminals inside, the convicts crowded five to each one-man cell. However, Spandau seemed perfect for this new purpose. It had the right number of cells. It was strongly built. It was isolated. Without dissent, the Kommandatura agreed upon the investigators’ choice.
To guarantee security, Spandau was promptly renovated. The 600 resident criminals were moved out, most of them being transferred to Moabit Prison in the French sector. Seven houses surrounding the prison were torn down, wire and electrical barriers erected, a half-dozen sentry perches added, entrances and cells reinforced, the old Nazi guillotine and gallows removed. But meanwhile in Nuremberg, something went wrong.
The first trial, before the International Military Tribunal, ended in violent discord. The Soviet judge, I. J. Nikitchenko, dissented on the acquittal of Schacht, von Papen, and von Fritsch. Furthermore, he objected to the life sentence given Rudolf Hess. “Taking into consideration that among political leaders of Hitlerite Germany Hess was third in significance, and played a decisive role in the crimes of the Nazi regime,” said the Soviet judge, “I consider the only justified sentence in this case can be death.” Quietly, the Russians withdrew from Nuremberg, insisting that thereafter they would try their own war criminals in their own way, and let the Western nations try theirs in their way. As a result, unexpectedly, this trial of twenty-two Nazis at Nuremberg was the first and last four-power trial.
Spandau was ordered to prepare for seven prisoners, instead of one hundred. And, because they were the only four-power prisoners, special and extraordinary precautions were taken. The main jail inside the Spandau walls was three stories high. A new ceiling was added, plastering off the upper two floors. Seven of the thirty cells on the first floor were given new solid steel doors, each door built with a slot at eye level. Inside the seven cells, all glass and all electrical installations were removed. By January, 1947, Spandau was ready for the seven. Yet it remained empty for six months, while the four powers wrangled over how to run the prison and how to handle their criminals.
The four nations, sitting together in the Kommandatura headquarters at 16 Kaiserwerther Strasse in Berlin, agreed almost at once on details for the administration and protection of Spandau. By cumbersome compromise, they agreed that everything about the prison would be completely quadripartite. Each nation would contribute one director, a military man, who would have under him one civilian warden and seven civilian guards. The four directors, to be called the Prison Governorate, and the four wardens, and the twenty-eight guards, would constitute a permanent interior personnel. However, the exterior or outside guard of the prison would be rotated monthly. The first of every month, one of the four powers would supply sixty armed soldiers to patrol the outer wall of Spandau. Thus, in December, sixty Americans, armed with M-l’s, will replace the Russians and guard the outside of Spandau. The first day of January, the British, bearing Sten guns and mounting machine guns, will take over from the Americans in a colorful ceremony. In February, the French will police Spandau. And in March, it will be done by a platoon of Russian soldiers.
The Sunday Gentleman Page 47
