The Nazi Hunters (38 page)

Galitzine wrote to one of his Berlin-based contacts – Berlin then being divided between the Allies and the Russians, but situated a good way into the Russian Zone.

‘Bill Barkworth has suggested I drop you a line . . . He is looking into the fate of 33 SAS personnel murdered in the Vosges during the Autumn of 1944. He has been extraordinarily successful and up to now has got 33 Huns in the bag. His present request is for you to try to get hold of a German believed to be living in the Russian zone . . .’

Galitzine’s sense of the numbers seems to have been a little fluid. From missive to missive the numbers of ‘Huns’ ‘bagged’ appears to vary. But his lobbying efforts proved tireless and highly effective. They would need to be. An inordinate number of the ‘wanted’ were thought to be in US Army custody, but getting the Americans to hand them over had proved challenging. Barkworth got Galitzine to use his influence to try to prise apart the doors that needed opening.

In a 5 January 1946 letter addressed to the US Army’s War Crimes Section, Galitzine wrote: ‘An important British War Crimes Investigation has been proceeding . . . concerning the murder of over 50 British airmen and parachutists . . . There appear to be 136 Germans involved . . .’

The number of murdered men kept rising as Barkworth uncovered more cases. ‘It is understood that requests have already been made at various times for the handing over of the Germans in your custody,’ Galitzine continued. ‘The officers concerned are ready to make immediate arrangements for the taking of these prisoners of war.’

Galitzine attached an outline of the wanted thought to be held by the Americans. It listed twelve names, including Wilhelm Schneider, Isselhorst’s right-hand man on Operation Waldfest, plus
Standartenführer
Isselhorst himself. Galitzine had asked for the ‘dirty dozen’ to be handed over.

The question remained: would the request be granted?

Chapter Twenty-five

One of those amongst the ‘dirty dozen’ held by the Americans was the very first suspect added to Barkworth’s list – Max Kessler. As early as August 1945, letters had been written to the US Army seeking the whereabouts of
Oberscharführer
Kessler.

By January 1946, the suspicion was that Kessler – plus one other wanted man – had been released by the Americans. ‘Colonel Haley tells me that he has independent confirmation of the fact that these men cannot be found,’ recorded a 22 January note. ‘It may be that these PW have been discharged since we made our application.’ Either way, ‘they cannot be traced’.

They say that the first cut is the deepest. Barkworth, Sykes and Rhodes had never forgotten their first encounter with the horrific evidence of the murders of their SAS comrades. When they had unearthed the three burned bodies at Le Harcholet barn, and learned of
Oberscharführer
Kessler’s role, they had their initial inklings of the fate that might have befallen the rest of the Op Loyton missing.

Kessler was hardly the worst of those on the wanted list, but he was the first. Barkworth and his Villa Degler team were determined to get him. When a possible address for some of
Oberscharführer
Kessler’s relatives was uncovered, Rhodes set out immediately in one of the battered and barely roadworthy jeeps to investigate.

It was a freezing January and black as pitch when Rhodes rapped on the door, and well past the midnight hour. It took a good while for that door to be opened. Maybe everyone had been in bed asleep, and it had taken time to rouse the household. Or maybe someone was being hidden. Rhodes had learned never to assume anything.

He headed for the kitchen – the heart of any household. A man and a woman were there, with two children ‘asleep in their beds’. Rhodes could tell right away that the man seated at the kitchen table wasn’t Kessler. He had a photo in his pocket and he had pretty much committed Kessler’s features to memory. Rhodes noted food on the table, and he was told that the family had been having a late supper.

‘We believe that a Max Kessler is staying with you,’ Rhodes announced.

There were blank looks. ‘No, he’s not with us. We haven’t seen Max Kessler for a long time now.’

Rhodes and his team carried out a thorough search of the house. It brought them back to the kitchen once more. Two things struck Rhodes. Firstly, the children had been in bed all right, but in his opinion they had only been feigning sleep. He suspected that someone had woken them up just now and warned them to keep quiet . . . about something.

Secondly, there were three plates of half-eaten soup on the kitchen table.

Two people having supper: three plates of soup.

Max Kessler was in the building somewhere.

Rhodes began to search again, this time a little more thoroughly. In the living room he discovered what he was looking for. Set into the wall in one corner was a small, hidden doorway. It was no more than a metre square and it fitted flush with the wall.

Rhodes levered open the door. By the dim light filtering through from the living room he could see that a set of wooden steps led into a dark void below. He grabbed a flashlight, drew his pistol and prepared to descend. He figured that as soon as he switched on the torch, ‘I’d probably get my head blown off’, but equally he knew in his bones that Kessler was down there.

He started on the steps. All was brittle quiet. The wooden stepladder led into a cellar. Rhodes flashed his torch around, probing the cobwebbed shadows. There wasn’t a great deal of junk. An old box here. A pile of rubbish there. Some rags and sacks lying in one corner. Nothing that was big enough to hide a fully grown male.

Rhodes’ flashlight came to rest upon a large silhouette. It was long and low and looked like an old linen basket. As he approached it, he let his foot brush against one side. Sure enough, it didn’t budge an inch. For a linen basket it was unnaturally heavy. Rhodes stepped back, raised one leg and booted the thing as hard as he could, slamming it onto its side.

Out tumbled a figure.
Oberscharführer
Max Kessler.

The man who had declared of the SAS captives; ‘They are shot as spies and saboteurs . . . They no longer exist’, had been captured hiding like a frightened dog in a damp linen basket. The Secret Hunters had tracked down their first ever war crimes suspect. And those at the very top of their wanted list were about to be cornered too.

While
Sturmbannführer
Ernst had the most blood on his hands
, Standartenführer
Dr Erich Isselhorst remained the chief architect of both Operation Waldfest and the wider Vosges horrors. At some stage during the spring of 1946 – the exact date remains unclear – Isselhorst was taken into British (Barkworth’s) custody. The means of Isselhorst’s capture appears to have been unprecedented, and convoluted and labyrinthine in the extreme.

In early October 1945 a query had gone out from the Eaton Square office, seeking what was apparently a strange piece of clarification. ‘The Americans have been asked to say whether they have in custody Dr. Isselhorst of the Gestapo.’ As the US 7th Army had held Isselhorst since June of that year, and bearing in mind what a high-profile suspect he was, it seems odd that for five months no one had heard anything of him.

From Galitzine’s 5 January 1946 letter, the Secret Hunters clearly suspected the Americans of holding Isselhorst. He was named as one of the ‘dirty dozen’ for whom the Villa Degler team was ‘ready to make immediate arrangements for the taking of these prisoners of war’. There were various responses suggesting that the US War Crimes Branch were preparing to hand him over: ‘Not yet cleared; being moved to Camp No. 78, pending clearance.’

But while the US authorities clearly had Isselhorst, there is no evidence that he was actually given up.

In 2007 the CIA was forced, under the US War Crimes Disclosure Act, to release a mass of files held on former Nazis. Some 50,000 pages of records were declassified, most pertaining to the post-war operational relationship between the CIA and former Nazis. The files include several reports held on
Standartenführer
Dr Erich Isselhorst.

Those CIA records include top secret and confidential memos, telegrams, personality profiles, interrogation reports and more. From them, a scenario can be reconstructed of what happened to the architect of Waldfest immediately after the war, and how Barkworth’s Secret Hunters came to get their hands on him.

Isselhorst’s US Army interrogation files from late 1945 and early 1946 suggest that he was proving ever more amenable to the US authorities. A confidential memorandum from the 307th Counter Intelligence Corps runs to six closely typed pages concerning Barkworth’s most wanted man.

Under the section entitled ‘AGENT’S COMMENTS’ it recorded: ‘Subject is an outspoken and convinced National Socialist [Nazi].’ The Agent noted that Isselhorst had been a protégé of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo, one of the key architects of the Holocaust and the overall commander of the
Einsatzgruppen
. Under Heydrich, Isselhorst’s ‘self-confidence’ and ‘ambition and ability’ had led to rapid advancement and promotion. Striking a markedly positive note, the CIC agent described Isselhorst as having a ‘driving and dynamic nature’ and being ‘too intelligent to be brutal, and he often even warned against unjustified severity’.

Of his experiences on the Eastern Front, Isselhorst complained that the Nazi regime had succeeded largely in turning potential allies into enemies. ‘The claimed original enthusiasm [for the Nazi regime] of the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian population was turned into hatred . . . Military Government vainly attempted to lead the destinies of a population whose habits and customs were unknown to the German officer . . . More considerate German officials were considered slackers.’

In another confidential memo on Isselhorst, his Russian experiences were again to the fore: ‘Nov 1942–Aug 1943: was attached to the staff of the B.d.S. Riga . . . taking charge of a special commando to counteract the very active Russian Maquis. Here subject earned two decorations, the Tapferkeit’s Medaille and the Eisernes Kreuz.’ The former appears to be an archaic medal awarded for bravery; the latter was the honour closest to Hitler’s heart: the Iron Cross.

Isselhorst’s command of ‘the fight against the Russian partisans’ was clearly of some considerable interest to the 307th Counter Intelligence Corps. But who were the Counter Intelligence Corps, or CIC? By the end of the war the CIC had become the leading intelligence-gathering organization in the American zones of occupation, with over 5,000 people in the field. CIC operators wore either plain clothes or uniform devoid of badges or rank, and identified themselves only as ‘Special Agents’.

Facing a new enemy in the coming Cold War, the CIC set up ‘ratlines’ to spirit informants and defectors out of the Russian zones. Given new identities and employed by the CIC as agents, these included a number of Nazi war criminals. One, former SS officer Klaus Barbie – the infamous mass murderer known as the ‘Butcher of Lyons’ – worked for the CIC from 1947 through to 1951. In 1988, the US Department of Justice investigated the CIC’s murky past, concluding that many suspected Nazi war criminals had been employed as informants.

By the late summer of 1945 the CIC had got their hands on former SS commander and Gestapo chief
Standartenführer
Isselhorst. However, they weren’t destined to keep him. Somehow, by late April 1946, the CIC had lost their man. A 26 April confidential note from the CIC amounts to an arrest warrant for Isselhorst. It reads: ‘Name (with aliases): ISSELHORST, ERICH DR. REQUEST APPREHENSION OF SUBJECT. REQUEST NOTIFICATION OF SUBJECT’S APPREHENSION.’

By 21 May 1946 the CIC’s hunt for Isselhorst appeared to be in full swing. A secret memo from CIC Headquarters states: ‘The wife of SUBJECT, who still resides in WALCHEN-SEE . . . stated that on 23 August 1945 she received a visit from an American soldier, named REID, who told her he brought regards from her husband who was, according to REID, in NUREMBERG . . . It is suggested that a complete check of internment camp records may reveal his whereabouts.’

However, in February 1947 the CIC were writing to the British Army’s Intelligence Division, seeking Isselhorst’s return from British custody. ‘Subject SS Standartenführer Erich ISSELHORST . . . is at present held by British War Crimes . . . Subject is urgently required in this Zone as a witness in a non-war crimes trial . . . It would be very much appreciated if subject could be loaned to this Headquarters . . . as soon as he is available.’

So, had Isselhorst been recruited by the CIC in the summer of 1945? And if he had, what had happened to him which led to his sudden spring 1946 disappearance, and subsequent reappearance in British custody?

Others of Isselhorst’s Waldfest cronies had been recruited by Allied Intelligence, some even before the end of the war. A confidential report by the Counter Intelligence Corps reveals that Alfonso Uhring – Isselhorst’s former foreign intelligence chief, and the brains behind Waldfest – gave himself up to the Americans following their October 1944 seizure of Strasbourg.

Shortly after, Uhring was given ‘a mission for the Allied Intelligence Services’. Trained in radio transmissions, Uhring was ‘turned’ and dispatched, via Switzerland, to Germany. There, he was to work as a double agent during the closing stages of the war, sending intelligence reports on the workings of the Gestapo. Supposedly, Gestapo files captured at Strasbourg had revealed Uhring’s role in war crimes, and it was that which had helped ‘induce Uhring to accept the Allied mission’.