The Nazi Hunters (33 page)

The villager had last seen Lieutenant Dill shortly before he was driven out to the Erlich Forest, to face Stuka Neuschwanger. In spite of everything, even then his charming smile had still been with him.

Barkworth and his team left Moussey laden down with an even greater sense of responsibility, and with further evidence to drive their investigations. Yet even as they headed back to Gaggenau, the proverbial sword of Damocles was hanging over their operations. The planned disbandment date for the SAS Brigade had been set for late September 1945 – less than a month away.

Barkworth and his team were painfully aware that the sands of time were running out, but short of forgoing all sleep there was little they could do to up their pace of operations. And so it was fortunate that their single greatest ally in the fight for survival would shortly be arriving at their Villa Degler headquarters.

Captain Prince Yuri ‘Yurka’ Galitzine, war crimes investigator at the War Office’s 20 Eaton Square branch was Gaggenau-bound. He carried with him 200 copies of Barkworth’s wanted lists to distribute around the Allied authorities. As Galitzine had penned the first ever report into Natzweiler, he commanded more than a little respect from Barkworth’s Gallic hosts.

Of particular interest to the French was Josef Kramer, who was scheduled to stand trial over the Belsen atrocities. As the French pointed out to Galitzine, Kramer has commanded Natzweiler for three and a half years, living in the Hansel-and-Gretel house that stood beside the camp fence. By contrast, he had been at Belsen for barely a matter of months before that camp was liberated, but Belsen had grabbed all the headlines.

Understandably, the French wanted Kramer to stand trial for the crimes that he had committed at Natzweiler against the French Resistance. They stressed how vital it was for the people of the Vosges to see Kramer tried – as a morale booster and to see justice being done. The French authorities had tried approaching the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), to ask for Kramer to be handed into French custody following the forthcoming Belsen trials, but they had enjoyed little success.

Galitzine wasn’t overly surprised. Barkworth’s team had received even less help from the BAOR – the force garrisoning the British zone of occupation. In fact, the BAOR had been actively obstructive, especially concerning some of Barkworth’s less orthodox methods of tracking down war criminals. Galitzine was in entire agreement with his French hosts: Kramer needed to be tried by the French. It didn’t particularly matter who hanged him – French or British – as long as the sadist and mass murderer swung for his crimes.

At the Villa Degler, Galitzine rendezvoused with Barkworth, plus his twelve-man team. It was immediately obvious how under-staffed and ill-equipped they were. Their only transport with which to search across Germany and France – and very possibly nations further afield – were four jeeps that had been airdropped into France on several operations during the war. They were held together with wire, string and a good few prayers.

Despite this, Galitzine found morale at the Villa Degler to be amazingly high, and Barkworth bullish about his chances of success, if only he were given the time and the resources to properly finish the job.

‘He has managed to account for the murder and torture of all except 18,’ Galitzine noted of the Op Loyton missing. Galitzine wrote of the ‘very fine work being done by the present team’, stressing how ‘the chances of . . . solving the last cases quickly are good’.

Galitzine also noticed that in contrast to what their detractors might claim, the SAS team was seeking justice on behalf of many more than simply their own. ‘Major Barkworth had followed up all War Crimes against other British or American personnel uncovered in the area . . . he has about fourteen additional non-SAS cases on his hands.’

What Barkworth needed now was more personnel and more time, and not to face the threat of imminent closure. To help Galitzine understand how pressing his needs were, the SAS major listed the key priorities for his ongoing investigations:

Obtain photographs of Strasbourg Gestapo for possible identification by . . . witnesses.

See MALZOF re the unknown American alleged to be buried at Schutterwald.

Establish evidence of beatings prior to death.

Outstanding . . . bodies not yet found or accounted for . . . This is split into

(a) a party of 8 (BLACK’S stick, provisionally traced from Schirmek to Strasbourg).

(b) a party of 8 (DILL’s stick, provisionally traced . . . to Schirmek . . .)

Evidence regarding perpetrators should be obtainable from members of Gestapo column active Moussey area period 20 Aug 1944 (at least one prisoner held).

The list went on and on.

The one thing that Galitzine figured the Barkworth team wasn’t doing – and it certainly wasn’t their area of expertise – was using the media. He contacted the press and radio team that he had commanded while attached to the US 7th Army. They were still in existence and in theatre.

‘Their assistance was enlisted in the launching of a campaign advertising for witnesses who might be of value,’ Galitzine noted. That press campaign was fired up even before he prepared to leave the area en route to London.

But prior to departure, there was one pressing issue that needed to be aired. While Galitzine knew how Barkworth’s team was ‘all 100% keen and doing a very fine job’, he was equally aware that the days of this extraordinary enterprise were seemingly numbered. ‘In the near future the team will be faced with many . . . difficulties,’ he noted, ‘and will require all the help that can be given.’

In the Villa Degler’s sumptuous drawing room, and with a bottle of spirits placed on the round wooden table between them, they ruminated over the future. That table was one upon which the men more normally played cards during their rare evenings off. A US carbine was propped casually against the side of the table. A lighted candle lay in the middle, shadows flickering conspiratorially across the walls.

One of Barkworth’s men used his Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife to slice off a hunk of bread, feeding it into his mouth as he talked. Nearly everyone was smoking, and a somewhat agreeable smog thickened the intense and febrile atmosphere.

Galitzine confirmed the men’s worst fears. Right now, 2 SAS stood to be disbanded by the end of September at the latest. The HQ of 2 SAS, at Glebe House in Colchester, would be closed down shortly thereafter. Glebe House presently provided all the communications and logistical backup for Barkworth and his men.

As Barkworth pointed out, losing the Glebe House set-up would ‘seriously dislocate’ his entire operation – not that, strictly speaking, they should still even be operating by then, for the SAS itself would have been terminated. Barkworth outlined the minimum requirements that would enable him to continue with his present mission, if somehow that could be sorted.

He needed to keep his twelve-man team. Ideally, he wanted more. He needed a headquarters and liaison unit somewhere in the UK – London, ideally – without which very little would be possible in the field. And above all else he needed to retain his Phantom signallers, providing a direct radio link to whatever might be his headquarters. As Barkworth pointed out, there existed ‘no other means of contact with the outside world. Postal communications non-existent’.

Over their time together in the Villa Degler, Galitzine and Barkworth had gelled. Though from somewhat different backgrounds, they shared a number of qualities: a rigorous and unshakeable sense of right and wrong; a can-do, maverick attitude; a fine intellect; a healthy disregard for unnecessary rules and red tape. And born of this was a solution to the problem that they then faced – one as breathtaking as it was unorthodox.

Barkworth’s unit would ‘go dark’. It would slip beneath the radar. These thirteen men who wore the SAS beret and winged dagger as they hunted the Nazi war criminals would officially cease to exist. In effect, Galitzine’s 20 Eaton Square outfit would take control of their activities, massaging budgets, equipment and personnel out of a War Office that was still in something of a post-war meltdown.

Galitzine would ‘hide’ the SAS manhunters amidst all the chaos and confusion of the War Office system. Even as the SAS was formally disbanded, so Barkworth’s team would become a hidden and deniable adjunct to AG3-VW. In Germany, they would continue to operate as if they had every right to do so – they would be hiding in plain sight.

Barkworth and Galitzine’s conviction that they must continue with this vital work, come what may, was strengthened by their recent experiences. In early August a team of ‘official’ war crimes investigators had been sent from the BAOR to ‘assist’ Barkworth’s efforts. Having just completed their Belsen investigations, their offer of help may well have been genuine. The results proved desultory.

Galitzine and Barkworth had talked through the debacle. ‘Investigation was not recognized as a job of the team,’ they concluded. ‘No attempt was made to find bodies or to dig about for evidence, but they purely went over ground already covered, or went after witnesses already known to exist.’

The BAOR team’s commander, a Lieutenant Colonel Genn, had even confided to Barkworth: ‘The difficulties of organization are so great that I am only marking time.’

When Genn suggested that it might be better if he and his team left the Villa Degler, Barkworth readily agreed. They’d spent less than a month there. As just one illustration of how lacklustre was their approach, Barkworth cited the actions of the team’s so-called ‘pathologist’. He was in truth an Army medical officer who’d been held as a POW, and who’d completed a very short course in pathology following the war.

One case brought to him by Barkworth involved a body whose identification was proving difficult. The BAOR pathologist suggested that the corpse should be ‘left to weather for a year’, after which identification might somehow prove easier. Barkworth had taken the case to Colonel Chavez’s man. He had managed to identify the body after three days’ work. He pointed out that the British ‘pathologist’s’ proposal would have rendered the task almost impossible.

More to the point, Barkworth did not have a year to spare.

Lieutenant Colonel Genn had penned a report on his work in Gaggenau. It concluded that Barkworth’s efforts to trace the eighteen missing, ‘have now reached a dead end . . . The . . . missing members of 2 SAS still remain untraced, and it is considered that as far as this Team is concerned no avenue remains which can be usefully followed up.’

Inexplicably, Genn concluded of those who had been held at Natzweiler: ‘It may be assumed that possible extermination of Allied personnel occurred. The case is considered too vague to follow up. It is noted that of the Allied personnel known to have been in [Natzweiler] . . . all are believed to be safe and well in England.’

Safe and well in England
. The mind boggled.

Genn’s recommendation was for the ‘final discarding of any further investigations’ of the Op Loyton missing.

Barkworth countered the colonel’s criticisms with a pithy one-liner: ‘It is not agreed that no avenue remains; it is however agreed that [Genn’s team] is perhaps most usefully employed elsewhere.’

Towards the end of September 1945, the BAOR upped their rhetoric still further. In terms of the eighteen missing men, ‘only a miracle’ would provide evidence to solve their cases. Even more damningly, the BAOR stated: ‘Barkworth’s material conforms to no known legal standards of proof and is very often based on pure hearsay . . . and could not possibly be used for our purposes.’ In other words, Barkworth’s evidence would not stand up in a court of law.

Galitzine begged to differ, as did the legal experts under his purview. The BAOR’s objections seemed driven by a fear that Barkworth was not only treading on their toes, but that his work was in danger of showing up their own lack of zeal, not to mention their commitment to getting results.

‘The SAS team are all personal friends of the missing men whose cases they are investigating and also of their families,’ Galitzine noted. ‘In addition they are inspired by the esprit de corps of their Regiment.’ To his mind this was one of their greatest strengths and the source of their tireless motivation. Captain Galitzine wasn’t about to let that be thwarted by either a jealous BAOR or the War Office’s top brass.

As Barkworth and Galitzine discussed plans for their future covert operation, a new phrase tripped off the tongue to describe this fresh phase of operations.

Barkworth’s team would become ‘the Secret Hunters’.

Chapter Twenty-two

‘Officially’ the Secret Hunters took on the name of ‘The SAS War Crimes Investigation Team’ – the SAS WCIT. Whether the name referred to the fact that the war crimes had been perpetrated against an SAS unit, or that the investigators were SAS, remains unclear. Perhaps it was left deliberately ambiguous. Either way, their ‘official’ identity – ‘SAS WCIT’ – should further their attempt to hide in plain sight.

With the SAS’s closure pending, Barkworth faced further antagonism from his chief detractors; within the BAOR’s ranks he was making few friends.

‘They regarded him as very unorthodox,’ Galitzine reflected. ‘Not prepared to give the proper respect due either to rank or system, so that wherever possible obstacles were put in his way. So you had tremendous cooperation with the French zone and the American zone, but in the British zone you had absolute antipathy. At one stage he was actually forbidden to operate in the British zone, which made life very difficult indeed.’