The Venlo Incident

by Nigel Jones

  Almost at our first meeting he told me that he had belonged to Himmler’s personal staff, and that it was he who had planned and supervised the construction of the gas chambers and was responsible for the use of prisoners as guinea pigs in medical research. Obviously, he saw nothing wrong in this and considered it merely a matter of expediency. As regards the gas chambers he said that Himmler, a very kind-hearted man, was most anxious that prisoners should be exterminated in a manner which caused them least anxiety and suffering, and the greatest trouble had been taken to design a death chamber so camouflaged that its purpose would not be apparent, and to regulate the flow of the lethal gas so that the patients might fall asleep without recognizing that they would never wake. Unfortunately, Rascher said, they had never quite succeeded in solving the problem caused by the varying resistance of different people to the effects of poison gases, and always there had been a few who lived longer than others and recognized where they were and what was happening. Rascher said that the main difficulty was that the numbers to be killed were so great that it was impossible to prevent the gas chambers being overfilled, which greatly impeded any attempts to ensure a regular and simultaneous death-rate.

  As regards the experiments on prisoners, Rascher obviously considered that these were fully justified by the great value of the scientific results obtained. He quite obviously saw nothing wrong in exposing a couple of dozen people to intense cold, in water or air, and then attempting their resuscitation. He was in fact very proud of having discovered a technique which he said would save the lives of thousands who would otherwise have died from exposure, and said that his imprisonment was due to the fact that he had attempted to publish the results of his research into this question in a Swiss medical journal so that it might benefit British seamen who, after rescue from the sea when their ships were torpedoed, frequently died without recovering consciousness. I should say here that Rascher gave at least half a dozen different reasons for his imprisonment, and no one ever discovered what he really had done.

  No, I was not at the time greatly shocked by his stories, nor, when they got to know him, were any of our fellow prisoners. We were all far too hardened to surroundings where sudden death was the order of the day. At any moment an order might come for some or all of us to be gassed, shot, or hung, and subconsciously we were all so much engaged in the struggle for survival that no one had the energy to expend in sympathy for the sufferings of unknown and anonymous people who, after all, were already dead; besides, Rascher was such a good comrade to us all. This is where the queer contradiction in his character comes in, for throughout our association with him he was distinguished by his bravery, unselfishness, and loyalty. In the difficult days that were to come he was the life and soul of our party, and although he well knew the risk, never hesitated to stand up to the brutal set of guards who had us in their power.

  My meeting with Rascher was particularly interesting because he could fill in many of the gaps in my knowledge of the circumstances which had led to the capture of Stevens and myself, and the way in which it had been intended to involve me with Elser as the author of the attempt on Hitler’s life in November 1939. According to what he had heard at the time, there was originally no connection at all between the two events, and the plan to capture Stevens and me had resulted from the arrest of Major Solms, through whom the Gestapo had got on the track of the conspiracy which we had been investigating. No action had been taken against the general whom we had hoped to meet as Hitler, at that time, was seeking to avoid any unnecessary friction with the General Staff; several of the minor people, however, had been arrested and in particular a colonel who should have visited us in Holland in the first instance, and who was the man who had made the first direct contact with Dr. Franz, had been intercepted and his place taken by two Gestapo officials.

  When Dr. Franz went to the frontier to meet, as he thought, a friend, he was accosted by two strangers who told him that everything had been discovered and that his wife and sons were now in Dachau. If he placed any value on their lives he would have to be sensible and do what was required of him, which was to tell the British officers that they were the friends whom he had expected; he must remember that if anything occurred to arouse the suspicion of the Englishmen, appropriate action would be taken against all members of his family. Well, Dr. Franz did as he was told and my presence in Buchenwald was the result; yet, I cannot find it in my heart to blame the little man for he was certainly placed in a most terrible position. He was by no manner of means a heroic figure; just an ordinary little Bavarian whom chance had thrust into the midst of a web of plots and counter-plots.

  As regards the Bürgerbraukeller bomb, Rascher said that everyone knew that this was a Gestapo fake, but he could not say exactly what had been behind it. From all that he had heard he believed that Goebbels had been at the back of it and that the intention had been to arouse public enthusiasm in Munich, where there was a sad lack of war-like spirit, by the pretence that British agents had attempted to assassinate the Führer. When I asked whether it had been the intention to kill a number of party members as had actually occurred, he said no, this had been an accident as normally they would have left the building at the same time as Hitler. For this reason the whole matter had been rather hushed up, for far from arousing any enthusiasm in Munich, there had almost at once been rumours that this was just another Reichstag fire affair, and that the people who had lost their lives had been murdered by the Gestapo.

  Rascher said that he was quite sure that at the time of our capture Schellenberg knew nothing about the Munich affair except what had been reported in the papers; he had, however, spent the night with a doctor friend of his in Düsseldorf, who had suggested that it might be a good idea to involve the two British Intelligence Officers in the matter, and to say that they had organized the attempt against Hitler’s life, and had been caught as they were trying to escape from Germany. When Schellenberg got back to Berlin next day he put this plan before Himmler who did not, however, think much of it, though he said that he would suggest it to the Führer without whose consent nothing could be done. As the capture of two Englishmen on neutral territory was a matter which concerned the Foreign Office, Himmler first mentioned the idea to Ribbentrop, who turned it down, and then to Bormann, who was most enthusiastic and told Hitler about it at once. A week or so later, Schellenberg was called to an audience with Hitler and having explained his plan in detail, received the Führer’s sanction and was decorated with the First Class of the Iron Cross for his bravery in venturing into a neutral country.

  I asked Rascher what had they planned to do. “Oh, there was to have been a big trial in Germany at which you would have confessed to the attempt to assassinate the Führer, but Goebbels made such a mess of things and allowed such contradictory reports to be published that the idea had to be dropped.” It seems though that Hitler, having once sanctioned the plan, no one could go to him and suggest that it should be called off, so Elser and I were just put into cold storage and left to await a better day.

  Rascher had been medical officer at Dachau and said that he had attended a British officer (Colonel McGrath) who shared quarters with Stevens. He said that Stevens himself was quite fit and that the conditions of his life were extremely comfortable; his quarters were roomy, he was allowed unlimited exercise in a garden which he shared with a number of other prisoners with whom he was allowed to associate, and he was permitted to leave the camp in the company of a guard to play tennis, bathe, and even go to the theatre at Munich. I was, of course, delighted to hear that he was getting on so well, as he had really seemed to be in very bad shape at Sachsenhausen, and I had often feared that his health might have broken down.

  Time passed in Buchenwald just as it always does in prison and elsewhere, but it was a cold and hungry time punctuated by air raids and my rows with the warders. The fact though that I could meet and talk to fellow prisoners made up to me for everything else, and I was really not at all unhappy. Somehow or other
we managed to get hold of some news as to the progress of the war, and it became very evident that the Germans were unable to offer any effective opposition to the American advance. The warders were themselves so nervous and so anxious to understand what was happening that they allowed General von Falkenhausen to come to the guard room and listen to the daily war bulletin on the radio, so that he could mark up the position on a large staff map which he had and explain to them how near Germany was to defeat. Sippach had quite made up his mind to bolt from the camp before the Americans got there, but his timing had to be accurate as, if he bolted too soon, he might be picked up by German police and return as a prisoner. Dittman played the hero; he would never run away but would stay and fight to the last, and then, he would tell me, “I shall still have my pistol with one shot for you and one for me—you will never leave this place alive”; I was never really popular with Dittman.

  By the end of March I really began to wonder whether I should live to see the end of the war, as on the 30th I had a terrific row with both Sippach and Dittman, who were waving their pistols about and telling me that they would shoot me down like a dog. They could easily have said that I had attacked them and that they had acted in self-defence. Rascher, who heard the row, warned me afterwards to be more careful as Buchenwald was very different to Sachsenhausen, and people there were often killed for far less than what I had done. My other neighbour was a Dr. Hoeppner, the brother of the General Hoeppner who had taken part in the 1944 plot and had been executed. He was the only man whom I met during my imprisonment who was an abject coward. He was a miserable worm of a man, and I really could not understand how his life could be of value to himself or to anyone else, but from the fuss he made, one would have thought that it was some priceless jewel. When he heard my quarrels with the warders he used to get into such a state of nerves that he collapsed on to the floor of the cell, and twice the doctor had to be fetched to attend to him. Of course I was sorry for him, but I also disliked him, for fear is contagious and the last thing we wanted was anything in the nature of a general panic. I admit that things had become very unpleasant and we had all become weak from cold and lack of food, indeed, I wrote in my diary at the end of the month:

  “This has been a hell of a month and has taken more out of me than the whole of my previous imprisonment. Doubt much whether shall ever get home. Probably shall be liquidated by a pistol bullet if our troops get too near. Only real hope is if troops land here from the air. The Germans say we intend to destroy them and see no reason to spare those of us who are in their power—thorough!”

  On the ist April the Americans had reached the Werra and the sound of gunfire was faintly audible. Sippach gave orders that we must be ready, day and night, to leave within twenty minutes, so I packed up my gear and went to bed all standing. Next day Dittman said that we should probably have to leave on foot and would only be able to take with us what we could carry. I had given quite a lot of my things away but still had a suit-case, a typewriter, and three large cartons, and I was furious at the idea that I might have to jettison more of my belongings. On the 3rd Sippach came in the afternoon and said that we would be leaving within the next hour, but it was ten in the evening before we got the order to move, and sixteen of us with piles of luggage squeezed into the back part of a prison van in which there was just room for eight without luggage. The front part of the van was crammed full of billets of wood for the generator, and when we were in we were packed so tightly that no one could move an inch.

  We had just got settled when the alert sounded, and all the military personnel bolted for the wide open spaces leaving us securely locked in. After the ‘all clear’ the engine started and we moved a hundred yards or so and then came to a standstill with the engine still running. Fumes filled the van and Rascher called out: “My God, this is a death van, we are being gassed”. Opposite me a glimmer of light came through a ventilator and I asked Rascher whether they had such things in gas chambers, and he said no, and in that case we were probably all right. After a time we started moving and gradually some of the fumes cleared from the van, though they remained pretty bad throughout our journey. General von Rabenau and both our ladies fainted, and all that we could do for them was to hold them on our united hands so that they could lie fiat until they came to.

  It was a hell of a journey. The wood generator did not seem able to propel the car at more than an average of fifteen miles per hour, and every hour we had to stop while the flues were cleaned and the generator refilled with firing. When this had been done they seemed to have a difficult job starting up and when the engine finally got going they had to run it for about a quarter of an hour before it developed enough power to move the van, during which time all the exhaust gases accumulated in our cell. There was no light, we had nothing to eat or drink nor, but for the generosity of Bonnhofer, who, although a smoker, had saved up his scanty ration of tobacco and now insisted in contributing it to the common good, anything to smoke. He was a good and saintly man. Literally, we could none of us move an inch for our legs were embedded in luggage and our arms pinned to our sides; we had even small articles of baggage wedged behind us on the seats so that our sterns rested on the sharp edges of the wooden bench and soon became the seat of neuralgic pains.

  We jogged and joggled along through the night, running an hour and stopping an hour, stiff, tired, hungry, thirsty, until a faint suspicion of light appeared at the ventilator. There came a time when nature, even after a sleepless night, makes certain demands, and soon there were cries from all sides, “I can’t wait any longer, they must stop so that I can get out,” and we started hammering against the sides of the van until it came to a sudden stop, the door was opened and a voice called: “What’s all this?” Our needs were explained with the delicacy required by the presence of two ladies which the inquirer then crudely and loudly detailed to his mates outside. It was evident that we had introduced a complication which had not been foreseen in our guards’ instructions, for an argument followed of which the gist was that one party said “They can’t” and the other “They must”, and in the end the ‘musts’ had it, the door was flung open and we all got out. We then saw that we were on a flat open stretch of road bare of hedges, trees, or bushes, and the question became one of how, and where. There were three guards with us. One took the two ladies across a field to a small copse in the distance, whilst we men were lined up on the bank with the other two guards covering us with their tommy guns. The ladies were prompter than we and although our backs were turned to their approach we were all of us conscious of over-exposure.

  With daylight our spirits rose, whilst by the exercise of great ingenuity, in which Falconer achieved wonders, we succeeded in stowing our possessions in such a manner that the van seemed to have become twice as roomy as before. Quite a lot of the wood blocks stored in the front part of the van had been consumed during the night and there was now room there, near the window of the door too, for two people to stand, at which each of us took his turn. The guards had produced a couple of loaves of bread and a large sausage, and I seem to remember something to drink. Anyhow, we had some sort of a meal and began to take more interest in future plans. Some one recognized a village through which we passed, and after discussion the conclusion was reached that we were on our way to Flossenberg. Not so good this, for the Flossenberg concentration camp was primarily used for the extermination of unwanted prisoners.

  About noon we reached Weiden, the nearest village to the Flossenberg camp, and we stopped at the police station and our guards went in there. When they came out, one of them who was more friendly than the others said, “You will have to go farther, they can’t take you here. Too full.” We weren’t at all sorry at this news, and Rascher became quite optimistic and told us with the authority of a concentration camp expert that obviously there was no present intention to liquidate us, for Flossenberg was never so crowded that it could not accommodate a few more corpses.

  We got under way again and had just cleared
the village when we were overtaken by a car from which a man made signs to our driver to stop. A couple of men in police uniform got out and one opened the door of our van and called out: “Müller, Gehre, Liedig, get your things and come with us.” The pile of luggage was pulled down and after a difficult search their bags were found and after a curt good-bye and ‘see you later’, the three men got out. Our cheerfulness vanished for we were ail certain that our friends had gone to their death, and that we had seen them for the last time, but life goes on and soon we were pretending high spirits to disguise our real feelings.

  After leaving Weiden there was a marked change in the attitude of the three SS guards. They had obviously left Buchenwald with orders to take us to Flossenberg, and for so long they had felt themselves constricted by the sense of an authority guiding them. When Flossenberg refused to receive us they were apparently sent off on vague instructions to continue a southward course until they found some place where they could deposit us, and so, in a measure, they felt that they shared our lot and like us were just sailing along into the blue with no certain destination. Next time that there was a stop for refuelling the door was opened and we were asked if we would like to get out and this procedure was followed each time. Once they stopped near a big farmhouse and the ladies were able to go inside for a wash whilst we men took our turns round the pump. The farmer’s wife came out with a big jug of milk and a couple of loaves of bread—real good rye bread such as none of us had tasted for years. With three less in the van we were much more comfortable and everyone was able in turn to take a short nap. The window over the door was left wide open, and as it was a lovely day everything looked bright in our cage.