The Venlo Incident

by Nigel Jones

  Although Gogalla had assured me that we should be allowed to remain at Dachau until it was reached by our troops, we had not been there long before it became obvious that the Gestapo intended to keep hold of us as long as possible, and it was again rumoured that we were to be transferred to the Berchtesgaden area to become hostages, whose lives could be bartered for those of Nazi leaders if a last stand were made in the so-called Southern Redoubt. On the morning of 17th April we were told to pack up and be ready to move at two hours’ notice. Of course there was much speculation as to our destination and as we waited about in the garden, hour after hour, Rhode brought us news that we were going to Switzerland to be handed over to the International Red Cross, that we were to be moved to a château on the Lake of Constance, and finally, that we were to be taken across the Brenner to Italy.

  In the afternoon there was an influx of new guests, amongst whom were M. and Mme. Leon Blum, Herr and Frau Fritz Thyssen, and several other people whom we had already met at Regensburg; from them we learnt that all the other ‘Sippen Häftlingen’ had also been brought to Dachau and I was able to find out from Kohlenklau that they had been quartered in the camp hospital. The Blums had the cells which von Falkenhausen and I had occupied, and several other members of our party had been rendered homeless, but until long after dark we were kept hanging about in the garden with the possibility that at any moment orders might come for us to get under way. At last Stiller came and told us that we were to stay at Dachau yet a little longer as it had been found impossible to find other accommodation for us; he was going away himself to see what arrangements he could make.

  By this time I had managed to get on pretty good terms with Stiller, who was a weak, uncertain sort of fellow, and before he left us I suggested that the best thing he could do was to fail in his mission so that we could stay quietly where we were. The Americans had reached the Danube, it could not be long before they broke through the very weak German line and overran the Munich area. Stiller was inclined to listen to advice of this kind, for like most other officials at the camp he was pretty well scared out of his wits—afraid of what might happen to him if he fell into the hands of the victorious Allies and yet still, perhaps, more afraid of what might be his fate if he disobeyed orders; he was one of those men who always agree with the last adviser and a reconsequently quite undependable. From one of the trusties we learnt that, in addition to the newly arrived prisoners, another convoy had also reached Dachau, which consisted of a number of British and Greek officer prisoners. As no accommodation could be found for them they had remained in their prison van and it was said that they were being taken farther south that night; from what we could find out, it seemed probable that they were men whom the Schuschniggs had met at Flossenberg. Stiller went off that evening, and it was said that he had gone to make arrangements for the reception of these men at another camp.

  It was getting on for ten o’clock in the evening before any definite arrangements were made to house our party, and then von Falkenhausen and Wassilli were moved right to the end of the long passage past the iron door, whilst I was given the cell No. 72 which we had so far used as a sitting-room. I did not like this separation from my two friends and next day asked whether I could not join them, and as a result was given a cell next to von Falkenhausen, with Niemöller as a neighbour on the other side. I cannot remember whether I had met Niemöller before, but rather think that he had visited us in our garden. He enjoyed far more freedom than most and spent a great part of the day walking swiftly with a purposeful air along the passages; he was very kind to me when I entered into possession of my new cell, offered me wine and made me some good coffee. He was obviously pretty well at the end of his nervous strength, no wonder either after an imprisonment of nearly ten years, and did not seem able to settle down to anything, even to connected conversation.

  At the end of the passage where we were there was a door which could be used to shut off some six cells from the main corridor, and at first an armed guard stood there, apparently to prevent any of us from passing; at all events he made difficulties about my going to von Falkenhausen’s cell which was just outside the barrier. Niemöller went out to inquire the meaning of this restriction and succeeded in arranging that we could rejoin the rest of our party in our old garden. To get there meant, of course, passing along the main corridor, and inevitably several prisoners came out of their cells and spoke to us as we passed, amongst them Stevens, who took me into McGrath’s cell, which was next to his own, so that I could thank him for his most welcome birthday present. Later in the day when I again passed along the passage to my new cell I was hailed, and to my great delight found Müller and Liedig who had just arrived from Flossenberg. Both of them looked in very bad shape, through starvation and the beatings which they had received; Müller’s face in particular was bruised and puffy from blows received with a rubber truncheon—but at all events they were alive.

  Neither could understand why they had not been executed, for on the 9th April there had been a regular holocaust among the more important political prisoners at Flossenberg; our old companions Captain Gehre, General von Rabenau, and Pastor Bonnhöfer had all three been killed, and Admiral Ganaris and General Oster, the two chiefs of the Army Intelligence Service, had been put to death by strangling in the cruellest possible way; besides these, hundreds of others had been liquidated. Müller and Liedig had been practically without food since they were taken out of our ‘Grüne Minna’ at Weiden on the 4th April, and after the privations endured at Buchenwald were just about on the point of collapse. The day before Mrs. Rhode, who was always much concerned about my emaciation, had given me a bottle holding about a quart of cod-liver oil. I had already drunk quite a lot of it for, starved of fat as I was, it tasted like nectar. I fetched the bottle from my cell and gave it to my two friends who, drinking in turn, finished every drop in about five minutes both declaring at the end that it was the best drink they had ever had.

  During the afternoon the rest of our party from Schöneberg turned up, the Heberleins, Rascher and Heidi, Falconer, Pünder, and Höeppner, and all were permitted to come to our garden which was becoming rather overcrowded, but that evening Rascher and Heidi were both taken to cells in the main corridor and locked in. When little Wassilli saw his beloved Heidi he almost went off his head with joy, but she took not the slightest notice of him, having apparently taken up with little Rascher, so that it was quite appropriate that these two should be removed together from our circle. That evening, when we went to our cells to go to bed, I found Wassilli in the depths of suicidal depression, and I was really afraid that he might do himself some harm for at Sachsenhausen he had already made a couple of attempts to kill himself. His cell was opposite to mine and I went to have a look at him during the night—he was in deep sleep and next day was as cheerful as ever. There were six cells in our little block occupied on the one side by myself, Niemöller, and Kallay, ex-President of Hungary, and on the other, by Wassilli, a son of Field Marshal Badoglio, and the younger son of Admiral Horthy—distributed in other cells on the main corridor were all the ministers belonging to the last Hungarian Government under Horthy.

  Almost every time that I passed along the main corridor, going to or coming from the garden, Stevens would pop out of his cell for a brief chat. I did not much like this for I had heard that strict orders had been given that we were not to meet, and I felt no inclination to ask for trouble just for the pleasure of exchanging a few inanities with him, even though he said that it was quite safe and no one would give us away. Be it as it may, on the 21st April Stiller came into the garden and called to me: “Herr Best, please get your luggage ready, you are moving to other quarters.” A hurried farewell to my friends who all looked as though they never expected to see me again, and indeed I myself had my doubts, and off I went to my cell to pack. When I got there Niemöller came in and said, “It’s quite all right, Best—I have found out all about it—you are only being moved to the brothel where the other foreigners
are—I will come and see you there tomorrow.”

  Just as I was ready with my packing the alert sounded and I had to go to the shelter while there was quite a heavy raid on Munich—the evening before Munich had had its worst raid, when it was said that British planes dropped 140 ten-ton bombs and practically wiped out the whole centre of the city—although we were some ten miles away, the shelter in which I was, rocked about like a ship at sea, and when I went near the entrance I was almost blown off my feet. After the all clear sounded I set off in the company of an SS guard with a prisoner carrying my baggage. It was not a long walk, a couple of hundred yards or so past a number of huts, and I noticed that several were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by sentries armed with tommy guns—I asked the guard what they were and his answer was typhus. There were a few emaciated figures lying within the enclosures but I could not see whether they were dead or alive.

  We reached a hut, exactly like the others which housed the camp prisoners except that it, too, was surrounded by barbed wire and a sentry was standing at the entrance. I went in and was met by a trusty who said that the place was very full and that the only bed free was with the bishop as his room-mate had been executed the previous evening. I thought to myself, ‘a billet with a bishop in a brothel’, sounds quite original and so I accepted the proposal with thanks and was taken to a large cell, no, it could better be called a room, where I found a pleasant faced elderly Frenchman who was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clermont Ferrand.

  He was very kind and agreed at once to allow me to share his room telling me that his previous room-mate had been a French general named, as far as I can remember, something like Destrelle, who had been shot the evening before as a reprisal for the execution of some SS men in France. Like the bishop himself, he had been taken from France during the German retreat as a hostage.

  In addition to the bishop, three other Roman Catholic dignitaries were also imprisoned in the brothel, and it seems that the choice of this particular billet had been intended as an insult to their cloth. The SS had, however, reckoned without their host for with a bishop, a canon, and two priests, the purification of any place of every vestige of sin was mere child’s play. Holy water had been made and every nook and cranny thoroughly scrubbed and purified until, with an easy conscience, it had been found possible to sanctify one of the rooms as a chapel where Mass was celebrated daily at the appropriate hours.

  The population of the brothel was one of mixed nationalities, and although at the time I was very angry at having been removed from the society of my friends the Schuschniggs and the others, it turned out in the end to be a good thing, for it gave me an opportunity to make the acquaintance of other prisoners with whom I was to be associated in the future. There were five Russians, two generals, a colonel, a lieutenant, and an orderly; eight Scandinavians, most of whom had served with the R.A.F.; four Italians, a Swiss, a Lett, and a Czechoslovakian major, and during the following days I was able to get on friendly terms with all. The Russians were particularly kind and immediately after my arrival gave me tobacco and invited me to their rooms for drinks. The Scandinavians were rather inclined to keep themselves to themselves and had established their mess in one of two big rooms of which there were four, two at each end of the barrack. Although I often visited them for a chat I had my meals and spent most of my day in the room on the left of the entrance, opposite to which was the place where food was distributed and if necessary warmed up.

  With me were the priests, four Italians, General Garibaldi, Colonel Ferrero, and two rather mysterious men, one of whom was said to have been a commissioner of police at an important town. Garibaldi was a grandson of the famous Italian revolutionary and had been a leader of the French Maquis; I believe that the same was true of Colonel Ferrero. There were also several others who used this room, amongst whom were a Czechoslovak, Major Jan Stanek and a Swiss, M. Mottet, who had been condemned to death but somehow or other had escaped execution. General Garibaldi, who wore prison clothes, had been sent in from the camp to act as servant, but beyond occasionally plying a broom to create the impression that he was performing his duties, he did no work and was treated as one of us. When I first arrived, there was a trusty, a German, who really did all the work and did it very well, but a day or two later he was taken away for execution and in his stead came another Czechoslovak general staff officer. After this, all prisoners took their turn in cleaning up and generally looking after the establishment.

  When I first met the Russian officers I naturally told them about Wassilli and that he was at Dachau at that moment. This threw them into a state of tremendous excitement and crowding round me they almost mobbed me in their eagerness for news, for they had heard nothing of him since he was removed from their camp. Then they all started talking about his companion, Lieutenant Joseph Stalin—did he know that he was dead? According to what they told me, Lieutenant Stalin had suffered greatly from depression after the failure of the attempt which he had made to escape with Wassilli, and one day he had suddenly rushed to the barricade round the camp and seized hold of the electrified wire. The shock did not kill him but apparently he could not release his hold, and as he writhed in agony he kept shouting to the guard to shoot him which eventually one of the men did, killing him instantly. As far as I can remember it was stated that this took place on the 25th August, 1944.

  Niemöller did come to visit me on the day after my arrival and told me that there was a faint prospect that we might be permitted to stay at Dachau until it was relieved. Stiller had so far been unable to find any place where there was room for us, and although he had been sent off again to try to find accommodation across the Brenner in the Italian Tirol, Niemöller had advised him, just as I had before, to take the opportunity to vanish. The trouble with him was, and this applied to most Germans, that he could never shake himself free from the habit of obedience to orders even though he was himself convinced that he was foolish to pay any more attention to them. It is all very well to criticize them for this slavish subservience but the idea that orders were sacred and must be obeyed without question had been so drummed into them from earliest childhood that it had become almost the most marked German characteristic. When men of the upbringing and intellectual calibre of German generals seriously considered themselves bound by an oath which had unconstitutionally been extracted from them by Hitler, and were prepared to watch the destruction of their country rather than break it, one need not be surprised if the idea of disobedience never even entered the minds of the rank and file.

  I had plenty of evidence that although separated from my friends I was not forgotten, and almost daily little presents were brought me which they had saved for me out of their own scanty stores; Mrs. Blum was particularly kind as she sent me quite a large packet of her husband’s tobacco, which was far better than anything which I had smoked for a long time. Indeed, both the Blums were kind and very brave people whose behaviour throughout was an example to all. Never for a moment did they show the slightest sign of fear or even that they were conscious of being prisoners—they were with us, they were the friends of all their fellow prisoners, and our jailers simply did not seem to exist for them. M. Blum, always perfectly turned out, was so absolutely what one expected him to be that he was almost a caricature of himself, with his inordinately long legs and rather stork-like gait, raising himself on his toe with each step.

  During the time when I was in the first building I had often discussed with Rhode the possibility of entering into communication with the American forces on the Danube, as he said that he knew of people prepared to make an attempt to get through the lines. He wanted me to write a letter which his men could take with them, but this seemed to me rather too risky, particularly since I had no other proof of Rhode’s bona fides beyond what he had told me himself, and all that I was prepared to do was to permit the use of my name, to which I added a code number by which I could be identified. Not long after my removal to the brothel Rhode sent me word that one of his men had a
lmost certainly succeeded in getting through and that he was now planning to follow him himself; the SS guard, who generally accompanied him on his trips outside the camp, had agreed to go with him, so that with luck he should be able to reach the battle area without great difficulty. Frankly, we were all rather annoyed that no effort was made to relieve us, for we were convinced that if paratroops had landed either near us or at Munich they would have met with practically no resistance; indeed, from all that we could learn, apart from a few small detachments of SS men such as concentration camp officials and men employed on staff jobs, the whole area was pretty well devoid of troops. A few days after Rhode’s man was supposed to have got through to the American lines there was greatly increased air activity over the camp, with planes apparently engaged on reconnaissance, and we all got highly excited hoping for speedy delivery.

  Life in my new quarters was not too bad, though I greatly missed the apparent freedom of the old garden. Here the building was closely encircled by wire entanglement, and there was only just room for two to walk abreast round the sides and back; a guard at the front prevented us from passing. Gradually I got to know all my fellow prisoners as I made a point of talking to each in turn. At the beginning there was a strong tendency for prisoners to clump together, according to their respective nationalities, and as this, of course, was a possible source of weakness should the necessity for any joint action arise, I did everything I could to break down these national barriers and in the end I think that I can claim to have met with considerable success. I got on extremely well with the Russians and spent a lot of time with them in their rooms, but otherwise they were not good mixers, and throughout there was a Slav block which could not be completely assimilated. All the officers were strongly anti-Stalinists and laughed at the idea that after the war there could ever be any real co-operation between the U.S.S.R. and the West—they all claimed to be Communists and to belong to the school of Lenin; Stalin, they said, was nothing but a dictator and his policy had nothing to do with communism. I think it is probable that all of them had deserted to the Germans who had hoped to make use of them in their war against Russia; as they would not agree to take up arms against their country they had been handed over to the Gestapo, and so came to be treated as civilian rather than military prisoners of war.