The Scourge of the Swastika

by Lord Russell of Liverpool

  After the conference, Keitel sent for the head of the department of OKW which was responsible for prisoners of war, and also for General von Grävenitz. When they entered Keitel’s office he seemed excited and nervous and said that Goring had just reproached him in the presence of Hitler for having let some more prisoners of war escape. ‘These escapes must stop,’ said Keitel. ‘We shall take very severe measures…. The men who have escaped will be shot, probably the majority of them are already dead.’ General von Grävenitz at once protested, saying that this could not be done and that it was expressly laid down in the Geneva Convention of 1929 that escape was not a dishonourable offence. This protest had no effect.

  The shooting was carried out by the Gestapo. After Hitler’s morning conference Himmler had set the wheels in motion and orders had been sent by Kaltenbrunner to the appropriate departments for a nation-wide search to be instituted.1 Within a few days all save three of the escaped officers had been recaptured, most of them in Silesia, though a few had managed to get as far as Kiel and Strasbourg.

  The Gestapo then went into action. The following is an account of the shooting of one of the victims, Flight Lieutenant H., as presented by the prosecution at the trial of Max Wielen and seventeen members of the Gestapo for their part in these crimes.

  Flight Lieutenant H., had reached Alsace before he was recaptured by the KRIPO and taken to Gestapo Headquarters in Strasbourg. At that time the orders for the shooting had not been received in Strasbourg but later in the day the following teleprint was received from RSHA:

  To Gestapo, Strasbourg.

  The British prisoner of war who has been handed over to the Gestapo by the Strasbourg Criminal Police, by superior orders, is to be taken immediately in the direction of Breslau and to be shot en route while escaping. An undertaker is to be directed to remove the body to a crematorium and have it cremated there. The urn is to be sent to the head of the Criminal Police Headquarters RSHA. The contents of this teleprint and the affair itself are to be made known only to the officials directly concerned with the carrying out of this matter, and they are to be pledged to special secrecy by handshake. The completion of this task is to be reported immediately. This teleprint is to be destroyed at once.

  It was arranged that Flight Lieutenant H. was to be killed on the way to Natzweiler Concentration Camp and that the body should be cremated there. The prisoner was taken away in a car by two Gestapo men named Driesner and Hilker, a third member was the driver. On the way, H. was allowed to get out of the car to relieve himself in a wood and during the halt, while Driesner kept him in conversation, Hilker shot him from behind. The corpse was taken to Natzweiler where the Commandant was informed that it was the body of a prisoner of war who had been shot whilst attempting to escape.

  Much the same procedure was adopted in relation to another of the prisoners who had the misfortune to be recaptured when only half a mile from the Swiss-German frontier.

  As previously, Natzweiler was chosen for the cremation. Just before they arrived there the man in charge of the escort stopped the car on the pretence that he wanted to relieve himself, and the prisoner, who was handcuffed, was asked whether he too would like to get out. He did, and in the same way as Flight Lieutenant H. was shot.

  Four other escaped officers were recaptured near Kiel and the following account of their murder was given by Oscar Schmidt, an official of the Gestapo at Kiel who took part in the crime. ‘One morning I was sent for by my chief together with six others, Post, Kahler, Jacobs, another Schmidt, Denkmann, and Struve. We were told to drive to Flensburg where we would receive four British officer prisoners of war. We were to take them away and to use our firearms in the event of the slightest attempt being made to escape.’

  It was then explained to them that this meant that these four officers must be ‘liquidated’ and that non-compliance with this order would be punished by death and family dishonour, and that a similar fate would befall those who talked about the matter. These orders had come from Kaltenbrunner.

  Post was put in command of the party which arrived at Flensburg shortly before noon and after lunch took over the four officers. Their hands were then manacled behind their backs and they were led to two cars which were standing in the courtyard of the KRIPO Headquarters ready to take them away. Post took one of the officers with him in his car and the other three went in the second car in which were also the driver, Jacobs, and the two Schmidts.

  The method of shooting must have been decided at a high level because in this case too, like the murders in Alsace and near the Swiss border, it was arranged that the officers were to be given an opportunity to relieve themselves on the journey, at a place to be indicated, and that the shooting was to commence on a signal to be given by Oscar Schmidt. When the second car arrived at the scene of the crime, Post’s car was already there and Denkmann was standing in the road and gave the driver of the second car a signal to stop. Oscar Schmidt then gave the prisoners an order to get out and relieve themselves. They did so and were led into a field, Schmidt following a few paces behind. Schmidt’s account continues:

  When I came to within about six paces of the group, one of the officers suddenly let out a shout and they all scattered; at the same time shots were fired and the officers fell and lay with their faces to the ground. I saw Franz Schmidt and Jacobs at that moment directly behind the officers with their pistols in their hands. I also had a pistol in my hand; it was loaded and the safety catch released…. At this moment Post shouted to me, ‘You did not fire, the man is alive.’ One of the officers then raised himself and Post, who had snatched a rifle out of Kahler’s hands, fired two shots at the officer as he lay on the ground. I never had a chance to fire at this officer as he had thrown himself on the ground immediately the first shots were fired. After Post had fired two shots into this officer’s back he fired another rifle shot into the head of each of the other officers who were lying on the ground apparently dead. He then removed their handcuffs. I was ordered to wait for a hearse to arrive and then to take the bodies to the crematorium for cremation. This I did.

  About three months later these Germans were informed by their Chief that a Red Cross Commission was coming to investigate the affair. They were all taken again to the scene of the shooting and told that if interrogated they were to say that the officers had attempted to escape to the hedges in order to get possession of the cars and had been shot so doing. Their attention was once more drawn to the dire consequences which would ensue if any of them were to say what really happened.

  Thus fifty British officer prisoners of war were murdered in cold blood, and in each case an official report was sent to RSHA that they had been killed while attempting to escape.

  This crime, when it became known, shocked the civilized world; and it was described by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in their judgment as ‘plain murder in complete violation of International Law’.

  In November 1944 OKW issued instructions regarding the transfer of certain categories of prisoners of war to the SD. The Bullet Decree,1 as these orders were called, provided that the following prisoners of war were to be handed over to the SIPO and SD.

  (1) All recaptured Soviet prisoners of war.

  (2) All Soviet officer prisoners of war who refused to work.

  (3) All Soviet prisoners of war who had been specially selected by the screening detachments of SD stationed in prisoner of war camps (Einsatzkommandos).

  (4) Any prisoner of war confined in a prison camp who had committed an offence for which the Commandant considered he had not got adequate disciplinary powers.

  (5) Any prisoner of war in respect of whom a special order had been issued by OKW.

  All these categories were handed over to the Gestapo for ‘special treatment’. This consisted of being deprived of prisoner of war status, sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, and shot with a bullet in the neck.

  At Mauthausen they were known as ‘K’ prisoners.1 When they arrived at the camp
they were not registered as were ordinary prisoners, and their names remained unknown except to the members of the ‘Politische Abteilung’.2

  They were at once taken to the detention block where they were undressed and then taken to what, for camouflage purposes, was called the bathroom but which was, in fact, a room in the prison cells near the crematorium especially designed for execution by shooting or gassing.

  One of the methods of shooting these ‘K’ prisoners has been described by a French officer who was himself confined in Mauthausen. ‘The shooting was done by means of a measuring apparatus, the prisoner being backed towards a vertical measuring standard with an automatic contraption which shot a bullet into the back of his neck as soon as the wooden bar which determined his height touched the top of his head’.

  Sometimes they were marched down in batches to the quarry dressed only in shirts and pants and mowed down by machine-gun fire. Death certificates were prepared in every case and endorsed, ‘Killed while attempting to escape’.

  From the very outset of the Russian campaign it was evident that the Germans intended to disregard all the laws and usages of war appertaining to prisoners.

  The U.S.S.R. was not originally a party to the ‘Geneva Convention relating to Prisoners of War’ but it was to the ‘Convention relating to the Sick and the Wounded’. It was also a signatory to the Hague Convention. It was argued at the trial of the major war criminals at Nuremberg that this Convention did not apply to the Russian campaign, but the International Tribunal held that it did.

  As long ago as the end of the last century the Hague Convention established certain rules regarding the rights and responsibilities of belligerents in regard to prisoners of war, and the High Contracting Parties at that convention stated that ‘in cases not covered by rules adopted by them, the inhabitants and the belligerents remain under the protection and governance of the principles of the law of nations derived from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and from the dictates of public conscience…. The Contracting Powers shall issue instructions to their armed land forces which shall be in conformity with the Regulations respecting the laws and customs of war on land annexed to the present convention.

  In these annexed regulations the following Articles appear:

  Article 3. The armed forces of the belligerents may consist of combatants and non-combatants; in the case of capture by the enemy, both have the right to be treated as prisoners of war.

  Article 4. Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile government, not of the individuals who capture them. They must be humanely treated.

  Article 6. The state may employ the labour of prisoners of war, other than officers, according to their rank and capacity. The work shall not be excessive and shall have no connection with the operations of war.

  Article 7. The government into whose hands prisoners of war have fallen is charged with their maintenance. In default of special agreement between the belligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated, as regards rations, quarters, and clothing, on the same footing as the troops of the government which captured them.

  Article 23. It is particularly forbidden to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms or no longer having any means of defence, has surrendered at discretion.

  From the beginning of the war with Russia, Germany was, at the very least, under international obligation to regard all captured members of the armed forces, combatant or non-combatant, as prisoners of war; to treat them humanely whilst in captivity; adequately to house, clothe, and feed them; not to work them excessively nor to employ them in connection with the operations of war. The enemy could not be refused quarter nor could they be put to death after they had surrendered. This was well known to every German soldier, for included in the ‘Ten Commandments’ printed in his pay-book were the words: ‘No enemy who has surrendered will be killed.’1

  In a new edition of the German Army Manual which was issued on ist August 1939, exactly one month before the invasion of Poland, many of the above provisions were quoted; but from the very moment of their attack on Russia the Germans flagrantly violated each and every one of them, and the atrocities committed against these helpless prisoners were reminiscent of the barbarous Middle Ages. They treated their prisoners with extreme brutality. They starved them; they let them remain in the open throughout the long severe Russian winter; they worked them to death; they employed thousands of them on work directly connected with the operations of war, often under enemy artillery fire; and they shot all political commissars and politruks2 after capture.

  All these violations of International Law had been planned before the campaign began. Prior to the attack on Russia, Hitler had told his generals that different methods would be used in the new war, and that as the Russians were not signatories to the ‘Prisoners-of-War Convention’ the treatment of Russian prisoners did not have to follow its provisions.

  Several months before the invasion began, Lieut.-General Reinecke, head of the prisoners of war section of OKW, gave orders to the appropriate authorities that open-air camps, surrounded only by barbed wire, should be constructed for Russian prisoners, if there was no time to build ‘roofed-in camps’, and issued instructions directing all those responsible for guarding them to shoot ‘without warning’ any prisoners who might attempt to escape.

  The German Commander-in-Chief, in a pamphlet entitled The Conduct of the Army in the East which was issued before the invasion started, stated that to supply captured Russian soldiers with food was ‘misconceived humanitarianism’.

  Finally, it was decided at the highest level that political commissars of the Red Army would not be recognized as prisoners of war or evacuated to the rear areas. They would be ‘liquidated’, at the latest in the prisoner of war transit camps.

  Only one important voice in the whole of Germany was raised in protest against all these decisions; that of Admiral Canaris. He wrote to OKW:

  The Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners-of-War is not binding in the relationship between Germany and the USSR. Therefore only the general principles of International Law regarding the treatment of such prisoners apply. Ever since the eighteenth century these have gradually been established along the lines that war captivity is neither revenge nor punishment, but solely protective custody, the only purpose of which is to prevent the prisoners of war from further participating in the war. This principle was developed in accordance with the view held by all armies that it is contrary to military tradition to kill or injure helpless people…. These decrees for the treatment of Soviet prisoners are based on a fundamentally different point of view.

  This still small voice remained unheard and unheeded; for Keitel, to whom the protesting memorandum was submitted, merely endorsed the document with this note: ‘These objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology; therefore I approve and support these measures.’

  In March 1941, three months before Hitler invaded Russia, he held a conference in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin at which he told a distinguished military audience including Field-Marshals Keitel and von Leeb, and Generals Haider, von Manstein and Hoppner, his general idea of the new war against Russia, its objective, and the methods by which it would be waged. It would be an ideological war, he told them, for the extermination of ‘Asiatic barbaric Bolshevism’. Thus it would differ from the war in the West and chivalry and military honour would have no place in it. Bolshevism in the Red Army, he said, was kept alive by the political commissars who were present with every Soviet formation. These must, therefore, be liquidated. The commissars, said Hitler, would not fight cleanly and their fate would not be left to the jurisdiction of any military court.

  Thus did Hitler condemn to death all Soviet political commissars three months before the Russian war began.

  In the Red Army in 1941 there was a political commissar on the strength of every formation and all major units. They were of officer status. Among
st the rank and file were officials with similar functions known as politruks.

  Both of these categories were members of the Russian armed forces and entitled, if captured, to be treated as prisoners of war.

  By June, OKW had issued a ‘Directive for the Treatment of Political Commissars’.

  The preamble of this directive began with the prophecy that these political commissars would be dirty fighters and would maltreat German prisoners of war: that they were not to be treated as soldiers or have the protection of International Law. ‘They must therefore be proceeded against with all possible severity at once and without further ado. Thus if they are captured they are to be liquidated at once when fighting or offering resistance.’

  The order went on to point out that all political commissars wore a particular emblem on their uniform sleeve; that they were to be segregated from other prisoners of war immediately after capture and then ‘they will be eliminated’. In deciding the question whether a suspected commissar was guilty or not guilty ‘the personal impression and the attitude of the commissar will on principle be considered of greater importance than the facts of the case, which possibly cannot be proved’. If commissars were caught in the rear areas they were handed over to a Sonderkommando1 of the SD where their fate was automatic.

  This order which was issued by Keitel on the instructions of his Führer was promulgated to the German Army by Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief, over his signature and with a foreword which stated that the elimination of political commissars with the troops was to be carried out on the order of an officer after their separation, outside the fighting area proper, and inconspicuously.

  Thus was this directive distributed throughout the German Army. No one, from the Generals who issued it to their troops down to the junior officers who had to put it into execution, can have been in any doubt of its criminality. But Hitler cared not whether they understood it or not. He did not expect, he once said, the officer corps to understand his orders, but he demanded that it should unconditionally obey them.