RAF Hunt for Nazis

[Bill Greenwood]

In March 1944 76 Allied prisoners, mostly RAF aircrew escaped for a German prison camp, as shown in the good movie THE GREAT ESCAPE. Almost unbelievably they dug down 25 feet under their shower and then 300 feet horizontal under the fence. The movie shows that most were captured and brought back to be shot in a group of 50, but thats not accurate. Some of the men in groups of 2 or 3 made it hundreds of miles even near the border before being captured. By Geneva Convention as POWs they should have been returned to Stalag 3 for normal punishment, but Hitler was so angered by the escapes that he ordered all to be shot as soon as captured. So these men were executed alone or in small groups in various places. This was far outside the normal boundaries of even a brutal war, and the RAF was determined to find the killers and bring them to justice. They appointed Frank McKenna (sp?) a London detective and Lancaster flight engineer as head of the group. He was smart and above all determined. He eventually tracked down all but one of the men who had done the executions. The key was local police and crematoriums had kept records of the men killed.In one case he found a man in a town that he had bombed. One of the Germans admitted the killings and regretted it but said he and his family would have been shot if he refused, one of the horrors of war.
One the most famous escapers was Roger Bushel, pilot who had 2 previous escapes and was the main planner for this one. He spoke both french and german and had forged papers and made it all the way to the French border when his companion made a mistake ans spoke in English. One of the vets who lived, all old men now, said Bushell was the bravest man he ever knew.
It is a fascinating show on tv, disturbing but vital. If you believe the show, there were a number of German officers who did not believe in shooting prisoners, but not able to defy Hitler. The former comander Stalag 3 said he would not execute prisoners, and aided the search for those who did.
One question one might ask is what sacrifice should a prisoner make? Should you resist whenever possible or if the war is ending soon should you do what is necessary to survive and be released alive? Would their decision be different if the D day Normandy invasion has already happened?
These men, especially Bushell chose to continue to fight in their own way to the end.

[rwanttaja]

Coincidentally, I just re-read Paul Brickhill's book The Great Escape. He was a prisoner in the camp, and was actually selected to be one of the escapees. Claustrophobia removed him from the list...for which he was later, grateful. Wonderful book, and a good companion to the movie (which takes some liberties, mostly reasonable ones).

Hitler originally ordered ALL the re-captured escapees to be shot. There was precedent for this...he'd signed the Commando Order, which required that all captured Commandos be executed immediately, without trial. International law permitted countries to execute spies and saboteurs captured out of uniform. Hitler's Commando Order required German forces to execute enemy soldiers if they were caught in occupied countries (this was pre-D-Day), even if they were in uniform. An example of this was the Royal Marine "Cockelshell Heros" raid, where Marines paddled canoes into a German-held French port and blew up some shipping. All of the captured Marines were executed, despite being in uniform.

This was complicated during the escape, because none of the prisoners were wearing obvious RAF uniforms. They recut/resewed their uniforms to resemble civilian or military clothing (the blue of the RAF uniform was almost identical to that of the Luftwaffe). They were, in effect, wearing civilian clothing. One captured POW demanded the Gestapo bring in a seamstress to prove that what he was wearing was a re-cut military uniform (she confirmed it). In any case, the Geneva Convention allowed prisoners to attempt to escape, and part-and-parcel of that is a need to blend in with the populace.

Hitler's staff convinced him that executing ALL the captured prisoners would be too obvious, so they amended that to a round 50. Of the Fifty, all captured non-Britons except one were shot (there were a lot of Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, French, and pilots from other occupied countries in the RAF). Bushell's execution surprised no one; his previous escape including hiding out with the Czech resistance for weeks, and the Gestapo had their eyes on him. As part of that earlier escape, he was given a genuine civilian suit. When he was returned to camp, it didn't occur to the Gestapo to take it from him, and it didn't occur to the Luftwaffe brass at the camp to search him, since the Gestapo would have removed all contraband.

There weren't any Americans in the fifty...because about two weeks prior to the escape, the Germans had removed all Americans from the compound and put them in their own camp. Otherwise, the fifty would have probably included some people from the US...such as Jerry Sage, OSS agent (who managed NOT to get shot when captured) who would have been second for a bullet on any Gestapo list. He was the person the Steve McQueen character was based on.

Finally, while we remember "Tom", "Dick," and "Harry," the three tunnels that led to The Great Escape, let's not forget "George." "George" was the tunnel the POWs at Stalag Luft 3 started AFTER the fifty were executed. That took guts.

Ron Wanttaja

[Bill Greenwood]

I never knew about a tunnel started after the escape ,ie George. Another thing this latest tv report is called THE RECKONING, says is that the POW camps for the Allied airmen were run by the Luftwaffe, so it was a much better situation than if the Gestapo had done it. There were people in the Luftaffe that saw themselves as professional soldiers with still some standards. There was even a bit of camarderie between the RAF guys and Luftwaffe and if an allied POW arrived safely at one of these camps he had a good chance of surviving till the war ended, hungry maybe and cold for sure, but at least kept alive, unlike the Japanese camps. I think German pows in British camps were likewise treated ok. How would you like to be the prisoner whom a life and death decision depended on a seamstress report on your altered uniform?

[rwanttaja]

I think you would have found similar relationships for British and American prisoners in the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (Army and Navy) POW camps. The German Army, Navy, and Air Force were largely led by similar professional military officers. In addition to being punctilious about following regulations (and the Geneva accords were incorporated into their military code) the pre-war officers got to know the officers of their eventual foes pretty well. The navies exchanged port visits and the Air Forces showed off their latest airplanes at international exhibitions. The biography of Robert Tuck (another Stalag Luft III POW) tells a story about how Luftwaffe officers were permitted to crawl all around a Hurricane during a pre-war exhibition, even to the extent of being briefed about how a new refracting gunsight works.

The exception would be the Waffen SS...the military arm of the SS. The officers there were highly politicized, and generally not professionals in the pre-war sense. If you recall the massacre of American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, that was an SS unit. After the war, the Allies attempted to prosecute General Peiper, the commanding officer, but his death sentence was commuted due to alleged misconduct by the American investigators. He was eventually released and went to work at Porche.

The issue for the Japanese (who had signed the same Geneva Accords) was cultural. They did not accept that a person could surrender and keep his honor.

Germans vs. Russians was different, too....

Ron Wanttaja

[rwanttaja]

How would you like to be the prisoner whom a life and death decision depended on a seamstress report on your altered uniform?
It's actually an interesting situation. That seamstress was German...the POW's friends were probably dropping bombs on her every night, and men of her family were probably serving in the German military. All she would have had to say was, "This is a civilian suit" to get some revenge.

But she didn't.

I am reminded of one of Rudyard Kipling's stories written in his later years. He's famous for a lot of rousing fiction about brave, principled people... Sergeants Three, Gunga Din, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King, the Jungle Book, etc.

When WWI began, Kipling pulled strings to get his only son, Jack, into the British Army. When Jack went missing in action in 1915, Kipling's writing went dark. Very dark.

One story in this era involves the woman who was a nurse (caretaker) who had raised a British boy who'd gone off to war and was killed. She hears a commotion in the backyard, and finds a badly-wounded German flyer.

Bandage him up, get him help? Naw. She doesn't tell anyone, and spends the afternoon, just watching the man die.

That German seamstress could have got a similar revenge...but didn't. She actually went against the Gestapo, to tell the truth.

Ron Wanttaja

[TedK]

I think you would have found similar relationships for British and American prisoners in the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (Army and Navy) POW camps. The German Army, Navy, and Air Force were largely led by similar professional military officers. In addition to being punctilious about following regulations (and the Geneva accords were incorporated into their military code) the pre-war officers got to know the officers of their eventual foes pretty well. The navies exchanged port visits and the Air Forces showed off their latest airplanes at international exhibitions. ...

Ron Wanttaja

i was recently re-reading Admiral Dan Gallery's autobiography "Eight Bells and Alls Well". Gallery was a Naval Aviator and Captain during WW2 who commanded an Escort Carrier task force that captured the U-505 (now in a museum in Chicago). He rescued the crew of an earlier Uboat that hadn't played by rules of the game and the Brits wanted to try that skipper for war crimes. Gallery promised him if he "sang" they would put him in a POW camp in the USA, if he didn't they would pull into Bermuda and he would turn him over to the Brits.

The Uboat skipper reluctantly sang.

Gallery kept his promise.

BTW. If you can lay your hands on one of Gallery's books they make great, sometimes sidesplitting, reading.

ted

[rwanttaja]

i was recently re-reading Admiral Dan Gallery's autobiography "Eight Bells and Alls Well". Gallery was a Naval Aviator and Captain during WW2 who commanded an Escort Carrier task force that captured the U-505 (now in a museum in Chicago). He rescued the crew of an earlier Uboat that hadn't played by rules of the game and the Brits wanted to try that skipper for war crimes. Gallery promised him if he "sang" they would put him in a POW camp in the USA, if he didn't they would pull into Bermuda and he would turn him over to the Brits.

The Uboat skipper reluctantly sang.

Gallery kept his promise.

BTW. If you can lay your hands on one of Gallery's books they make great, sometimes sidesplitting, reading.
Dan Gallery's books are a hoot to read. "Stand By-y-y to Start Engines" captures Naval Aviation of the 1950s, with a lot of hijinks in the air and on the ground. His series involving Boatswain's Mate John "Fatso" Gioninini are hilarious as well.

And for readers of science fiction, Fatso Gioninini is reincarnated as a minor character (same name, same rank, same questionable businesses) in Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet" series.

Allied treatment of POWs wasn't always as correct as people might want to think. MacDonald's non-fiction book "Company Commander" included an event where he instructed a soldier to escort a set of prisoners back to the holding area just prior to a major attack starting. The soldier came back a few minutes later...wasn't gone long enough to deliver the prisoners. MacDonald figured he'd just shot them...but didn't take action.

Back in the dawn 'o time when I was in ROTC, we were told to be SPECIFIC about what underlings should do with prisoners. Not just "Take care of them...." There was also the difference between paratroopers (shoot them in their chutes) and bailed-out airmen (should be allowed to land). IIRC, American pilots were ORDERED to shoot parachuting Me-262 pilots...killing an experienced jet pilot prevented him from flying another jet.

Ron Wanttaja

[Bill Greenwood]

ive never read or heard of any official order to shoot an German pilot in a parachute, and I think that is less likely for several reasons, first any 262 pilot would not be a rookie he would be someone who was already experienced in 109 or 190, and may have bailed out before. And not that many 262s downed in combat anyway. Nothing about that in Yeagers book or any that Ive seen.Wouldnt this endager Allied pilots also who would be going down over Europe, since 262s were not over England, and likely violate Geneva Convnetion.
Yes I have read of U S troops shooting prisoners on the ground in the Pacific, Lindberg even wrote about it, but it was not the overall officail policy.

[rwanttaja]

ive never read or heard of any official order to shoot an German pilot in a parachute, and I think that is less likely for several reasons, first any 262 pilot would not be a rookie he would be someone who was already experienced in 109 or 190, and may have bailed out before. And not that many 262s downed in combat anyway. Nothing about that in Yeagers book or any that Ive seen.Wouldnt this endager Allied pilots also who would be going down over Europe, since 262s were not over England, and likely violate Geneva Convnetion.
Yes I have read of U S troops shooting prisoners on the ground in the Pacific, Lindberg even wrote about it, but it was not the overall officail policy.
Don't remember where I read it, but recall it wasn't formally promulgated... and that there were commanders who refused to pass it on. I can't find any specific references. May have read about it in a German source, which would be biased, of course.

Eisenhower did, just prior to D-Day, issue an order prohibiting attacking shot-down pilots in parachutes. It's not likely such a specific order would be issued without some history behind it. No one warned people not to eat Tide Pods before people actually started eating Tide Pods.....

Doing a Google search on "shooting at parachuting pilots" leads to some interesting stories, including interviews with Allied pilots who routinely shot Germans hanging in chutes and saw nothing wrong with the practice. According to one German source, German pilots considered this a common Allied activity.

However, you are certainly right about "Practice" vs. "Policy." Practices were an individual choice, and whatever policies along these lines were attempted by commanders in the Allied services were resisted, without consequences, by many of the people involved. The Germans, on the other hand, issued formal orders... the Commando Order (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Order) (execute captured commandos, even when captured in uniform), and the order to execute re-captured POWS (the Kugel Decree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugel-erlass)). These tended to be followed.

In Brickhill's "The Great Escape," he describes what happened in the camp after the escape, and through the end of the war. As the Russians came closer, the Germans evacuated the camp, forcing the prisoners to the East on foot. Many prisoners, malnourished for years and with health conditions, died on the way. Brickhill says the German guards had orders to shoot the prisoners if they didn't reach a given river by a certain day. They didn't meet the deadline, but the Germans didn't follow their orders. Brickhill says, by late April 1945, German soldiers were a little leery of committing war crimes.....

Ron Wanttaja

[Auburntsts]

My Dad, who turns 100 in April, was a POW in Stalag Luft III which is the same POW camp as the Great Escape. He was there from '44-'45 so it was a few years after the Escape, but it still holds my interest and I watch the movie any time it's on.

Another good Admiral Gallery book is "Clear the Decks" which pretty much covers his entire WWII service.

[rwanttaja]

My Dad, who turns 100 in April, was a POW in Stalag Luft III which is the same POW camp as the Great Escape. He was there from '44-'45 so it was a few years after the Escape, but it still holds my interest and I watch the movie any time it's on.
Actually, the Great Escape occurred in April 1944. However, as I mentioned earlier, the Germans had moved the American POWs to their own compound a few weeks prior.

We had a B-17 tail gunner/POW as a speaker at EAA Chapter 26 a while back. I was curious about how the poor food and bad health care in the camps had affected his long-term health. I expected some nutritional deficiencies, or dental problems.

I asked him. His response was immediate: "Nightmares."

This really rocked me. But it makes sense. Airmen do not become POWs because of a sudden overrun of their position, or a negotiated surrender. They become prisoners after a violent, life-shattering event that they barely escaped from. Today, we call the aftermath Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). And there were camps filled with thousands of men who'd survived their shootdowns. As well as ground and naval personnel with similar experiences, of course.

I really recommend Brickhill's book. He talks about some who broke, but a lot more about how the others coped. He goes a lot into what it was like in the camps, and why the POWs were (mostly) so anxious to escape.

Ron Wanttaja

[rwanttaja]

I really recommend Brickhill's book. He talks about some who broke, but a lot more about how the others coped. He goes a lot into what it was like in the camps, and why the POWs were (mostly) so anxious to escape.
After I posted this, I remembered the very first paragraph of the book:

Prison camp life would have not been so bad if:

(a) It weren't such an indefinite sentence. At times you couldn't say you wouldn't still be there (or worse) in ten years.

(b) The Germans didn't keep dropping hints that if they lost, Hitler was going to shoot you anyway, just to even the score.

(c) You could get enough food to fill your belly again. Just once.

- Paul Brickhill, Foreword to The Great Escape (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Escape-Paul-Brickhill/dp/0393325792/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

Ron Wanttaja

[Auburntsts]

After I posted this, I remembered the very first paragraph of the book:

Prison camp life would have not been so bad if:

(a) It weren't such an indefinite sentence. At times you couldn't say you wouldn't still be there (or worse) in ten years.

(b) The Germans didn't keep dropping hints that if they lost, Hitler was going to shoot you anyway, just to even the score.

(c) You could get enough food to fill your belly again. Just once.

- Paul Brickhill, Foreword to The Great Escape (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Escape-Paul-Brickhill/dp/0393325792/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

Ron Wanttaja


Pretty much what my dad said. Plus he said he was always cold and he lost a ton of weight. Other than that, he said it wasn't all that bad, at least in comparison to combat. He was shotdown and bailed out over the Channel on his 72nd mission 2 weeks before D-Day.

[L16 Pilot]

A few years ago I wrote a book (now out of print) about an air crew lost over Japan during the later days of WW2 called "The Crew of the Empire Express and Peace on a Quiet Mountain in Japan. The brother of a friend of mine was on the B29 aircrew and he along with two others were able to bail out, captured by the Japanese and eventually executed on June 20th, 1945. If you "google" B29 Empire Express it should bring up a short synopsis I wrote and posted before I wrote the book.

[Mike M]

USA National POW museum is at Andersonville, GA. Worth a trip. And there's a museum at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, MS, which had a section on its use as a POW facility when we visited several years ago. The museum has been remodeled, anybody know if it still has that display? It included info on recreation activities, POW jobs outside the camp, etc.

https://www.nps.gov/ande/planyourvisit/natl_pow_museum.htm/index.htm

https://armedforcesmuseum.us

[wingandprop]

Eisenhower did, just prior to D-Day, issue an order prohibiting attacking shot-down pilots in parachutes. It's not likely such a specific order would be issued without some history behind it. No one warned people not to eat Tide Pods before people actually started eating Tide Pods.....

Doing a Google search on "shooting at parachuting pilots" leads to some interesting stories, including interviews with Allied pilots who routinely shot Germans hanging in chutes and saw nothing wrong with the practice. According to one German source, German pilots considered this a common Allied activity.

Ron Wanttaja

At least some air commanders were concerned that where there were several chutes in the air, you might end up shooting a friendly and that did happen more than once. The most senior US command, of course, had their own experience with parachutes in WWI. Unlike pilots, balloon observers had parachutes throughout the war and it was standard practice among the WWI Allies to shoot parachuting balloonists whenever the opportunity presented itself. The rationale was that shooting a balloon down, at great risk to the attacking aircraft, accomplished nothing if the balloon observer could parachute to the ground and then simply trot over to the next balloon in line and be back in the air in an hour or less. Thus the standard instructions were to shoot the balloonist in his parachute if time and defenses permitted (which they usually did not, fortunately for the observers). I suspect many pilots would have declined to take the opportunity even if it presented itself.

Matt

[Cap'n Jack]

I think you would have found similar relationships for British and American prisoners in the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (Army and Navy) POW camps. The German Army, Navy, and Air Force were largely led by similar professional military officers. In addition to being punctilious about following regulations (and the Geneva accords were incorporated into their military code) the pre-war officers got to know the officers of their eventual foes pretty well. The navies exchanged port visits and the Air Forces showed off their latest airplanes at international exhibitions. The biography of Robert Tuck (another Stalag Luft III POW) tells a story about how Luftwaffe officers were permitted to crawl all around a Hurricane during a pre-war exhibition, even to the extent of being briefed about how a new refracting gunsight works.

The exception would be the Waffen SS...the military arm of the SS. The officers there were highly politicized, and generally not professionals in the pre-war sense. If you recall the massacre of American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, that was an SS unit. After the war, the Allies attempted to prosecute General Peiper, the commanding officer, but his death sentence was commuted due to alleged misconduct by the American investigators. He was eventually released and went to work at Porche.

The issue for the Japanese (who had signed the same Geneva Accords) was cultural. They did not accept that a person could surrender and keep his honor.

Germans vs. Russians was different, too....

Ron Wanttaja

Ron- Did they really sign the accords?
My memory is that they signed the 1907 Hague Convention, and only the portion regarding Sick and Wounded in the 1929 Geneva Convention. My understanding is they agreed to follow it in 1942 although they didn't sign it. Perhaps a pedantic distinction given their actions, and my memory could be very wrong.

[rwanttaja]

Ron- Did they really sign the accords?
My memory is that they signed the 1907 Hague Convention, and only the portion regarding Sick and Wounded in the 1929 Geneva Convention. My understanding is they agreed to follow it in 1942 although they didn't sign it. Perhaps a pedantic distinction given their actions, and my memory could be very wrong.

Good gravy, it looks like you're right. They SIGNED the 1929 accords, but didn't ratify it! And, like you said, they agreed to follow them in 1942 though there wasn't a formal signing (nor was there compliance, for the most part....)

This reminds me of the US and the Great War, the US signed the treaty that formally ended the war in 1919, but the Senate refused to ratify it.

Ron "I'm getting more and more eddicated every day" Wanttaja

[Cap'n Jack]

Well, I didn't think they signed the 1929 agreement, so I have some learning too, Ron