The Nazi Hunters (45 page)

Sadly, Isselhorst would be one of the last to face the justice of the Wuppertal courts. In the autumn of 1948 the British government signalled a halt to all British war crimes trials. Incredibly, this was halfway through the Stalag Luft trials – those covering the spring 1944 murder of the seventy escapees from the Stalag Luft POW camp.

The first Stalag Luft trial had been held as early as July 1947, with eighteen defendants facing charges of murder. The second Stalag Luft trial was held in October 1948, but in the midst of it the then Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, announced a British government decision not to prosecute any further Nazi war criminals.

While the second Stalag Luft trial was allowed to reach its verdict, the British quest for justice was officially over. It had lasted a little longer than three years. This was a politically motivated decision at a time when the West was gearing up for the Cold War. West Germany was seen as the new ally and the crucial bulwark against the Russian threat and Communism. In the eyes of many in power hunting down Nazi war criminals had become counterproductive, and something that Britain could ill afford.

The sensitivity of this decision, and of the SAS war crimes trials already completed, was reflected by the British government’s determination to close what few official files did survive on the subject for seventy-five years. Indeed, if that time frame had been adhered to, the files would be closed to this day. For Barkworth, of course, it signalled not only the end of an era – the Villa Degler dark operation was being brought to an end – but it spelled the cruellest cut of all.
Even after he had dedicated more than three years of his life to the search, Hans Dietrich Ernst had still not been run to ground.

While everyone wanted a slice of the notorious
Sturmbannführer –
the Americans and the French were also seeking him on war crimes charges – no one seemed able to get a trace on the man.

But for Colonel Brian Franks, Captain Prince Yurka Galitzine and Major Barkworth, the Secret Hunters had achieved one of their most cherished aims. Through their very existence, and their wearing of the winged-dagger beret on operations, they had kept the spirit of the SAS alive long enough for it to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.

In July 1947 the esteemed Artists Rifles regiment – a volunteer light infantry unit formed in 1859 – had merged with the ‘defunct’ SAS to form the 21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Reserves). This was a reservist Territorial Army unit, but it represented the much longed-for – if partial – resurrection of the SAS. Fittingly, the new regiment’s first commanding officer was Lieutenant Colonel Brian Franks DSO, MC – the man who had done so much to keep the SAS alive since its 1945 official demise.

Yet even at the very end, the sense of sniffy antagonism that Barkworth and his men had attracted endured. An August 1948 letter from a brigadier in the judge advocate general’s London office is typical: ‘I think when this officer has completed his task . . . and has had an opportunity of tidying up every SAS case . . . what must be obtained from him are all documents he has . . . If it is necessary to do so, he should be given an order to hand over these papers. They are not his private property but are the property of the military authorities.’

Had officialdom been allowed to hold sway, the dead of Op Loyton, the SOE agents who perished at Natzweiler, the villagers of Moussey and the wider Rabodeau Valley, and the victims of numerous related war crimes would doubtless have remained listed as ‘missing in action’. The most high-profile Nazi war criminals would have been prosecuted, but not those responsible for the crimes that the Villa Degler team doggedly pursued.

Had the SAS not mounted its own increasingly secretive investigations, the mass killers – Isselhorst included – would have very likely got away with their crimes. As it was, each of the Secret Hunters was hugely affected by this work, which left scars that would take an age to heal. Immersing oneself so deeply in such cases of unspeakable human degradation was psychologically damaging. And even the outcomes – the trials and the verdicts, such as they were – left many dissatisfied and hungering for more.

The Nazi atrocities were an unforgivable crime against humanity, argued Galitzine. He was shocked by the leniency that was being shown. He put the failings of the trials down to ‘the natural reaction against killing and against all the horrors of war’. The court’s view seemed to be that these men had been caught, tried and branded as war criminals, and that once released they would be marked men – which was enough of a punishment. Galitzine believed otherwise. He felt these men needed to be made examples of, to deter any future war criminals.

However, he didn’t let his anger at the trial outcomes colour his sense of all that the Secret Hunters had accomplished. Summarizing their work in the twilight of the unit’s days, he wrote: ‘Bill found that his missing comrades had been killed after being taken prisoner of war. He found nearly all their bodies and went on to seek out their murderers . . . They have traced or arrested in Germany, France, Italy and Austria over 100 Germans involved . . . and at last brought the . . . criminals to justice.’

Chiefly through Galitzine’s own efforts, the Villa Degler team had achieved one other crucial milestone in the war crimes investigations: they had ensured that the silence was broken over Natzweiler, and over the wider issue of such war criminals getting away with murder. That in and of itself was a seminal achievement, and it could only have been carried out by men such as the Secret Hunters.

Barkworth and his cohorts’ energy, personal motivation and sheer drive lent a dedication to their task which none could match. Their willingness to break all the rules meant that very rarely did they fail to get their man. No other unit could have achieved this. The fact that they did so working in the deepest secrecy, with scant resources, and more often than not fighting against a ‘Blimpish’ military bureaucracy, is further testament to their unique role.

To all intents and purposes the work of the Secret Hunters was wound up in early 1949. Barkworth and his men had completed the mission they were given at the beginning: they had sought and delivered a full reckoning for Op Loyton. Indeed, they had achieved so much more. And as one band of hunters passed away, so another was fully resurrected – the Secret Hunters helping give birth to the modern-day SAS.

On balance, Colonel Franks, Galitzine, Barkworth and Rhodes would have had every right to feel a certain sense of satisfaction had it not been for one thing: their failure to get
Sturmbannführer
Hans Dietrich
Ernst. But, as it happened, the story of the hunt for Ernst was far from over, though the drama would play out in another theatre entirely.

Those who served on the Villa Degler unit would get little recognition for what they had achieved. So secretive was the unit’s existence that even the SAS’s official war diary for the years 1941–1945 contains just a brief, four-line entry concerning their crucial work. Even that is contained in a limited edition released in 2011, and not available to the general public.

It reads: ‘In October 1945, the SAS was disbanded. Franks came to an unofficial arrangement with one individual from the War Office and the [war crimes] unit continued. It operated totally openly, as if it was official. The unit ended its hunt in 1948, three years after the SAS was disbanded.’

The final words, perhaps, should fall to Captain Prince Yurka Galitzine, without whom the Secret Hunters may never have had their success. He for one would never forget what had happened in the Vosges, at Natzweiler and elsewhere. He believed that the subsequent hunt for the Nazi war criminals and their bringing to jutice was of vital importance, lest we forget. It was crucial that ‘young people of this generation and the next . . . know what happened. Because it could happen again.’

There is perhaps no more fitting epitaph for the Secret Hunters.

Afterword

A great degree of controversy and subterfuge surrounds the fate of two of the accused that Barkworth and his men spent so much of their energy hunting down after the war. The first, predictably, is
Sturmbannführer
Hans Dietrich
Ernst. The second, somewhat less predictably perhaps, is
Standartenführer
Erich Isselhorst.

On 13 June 1962 the CIA chief of base in Frankfurt dispatched a secret memo to colleagues, regarding a ‘Hans Dieter Ernst’. As the man in question was, by the document’s own admission, ‘sought on a charge of having murdered six Americans, thirty-three British soldiers and four British women’, it seems inconceivable that this was not
Sturmbannführer
Hans Dietrich
Ernst. Indeed, in later CIA documents he is referred to as Hans
Dietrich
Ernst, and it records his year of birth as 1908, the correct year for Barkworth’s most-wanted man.

The 13 June 1962 memo, which appears to be a review of available intelligence on Ernst, states: ‘We found that CARETINA listed Hans Dieter ERNST as a fellow inmate of the camp at Vorkuta in the USSR and that as of 1957 CARETINA reported that Ernst was in the Leer/Ostfriesland . . .’

Ostfriesland is a coastal area of north-west Germany, bordering Holland. This means that Ernst was incarcerated in a Soviet prison camp – the Vorkuta Gulag was a major Soviet-era labour camp – before somehow making his way to Leer, a region of Ostfriesland, in (West) Germany, by 1957 – eight years after Barkworth et al were forced to drop their hunt for him. CARETINA is the CIA cryptonym for their agent, whose identity is not revealed.

Crucially, the memo continues: ‘CARETINA categorized his fellow inmates of camps in the USSR under a) suspected as cooperating with the Soviets; b) possibly suspicious; c) “positive”, i.e. above suspicion. ERNST fell into the “positive” category which is understandable if he was a member of the SS and SD, thus having a background somewhat similar to CARETINA, a former Amt IV, RSHA officer.’

‘Amt IV’ was the Gestapo, and the ‘RSHA’ was the Reich Security Main Office – the Nazi intelligence services and secret police, known more commonly as the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD). Of course,
Standartenführer
Isselhorst would fit the bill for being CARETINA, as he was both an Amt IV and RSHA officer, and we know from his trial how positively he viewed his former deputy Ernst: ‘A hard-working man, intelligent and conscientious . . . one of the best officials in France.’

But surely CARETINA could not possibly be Isselhorst, because Isselhorst was executed by the French in 1947? Whoever CARETINA was, his ‘positive’ opinion regarding Ernst rests purely upon Ernst’s opposition to the Soviet regime. On the premise that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, any enemy of the Soviets was presumably a friend to the CIA and the West, especially in 1962, approaching the height of the Cold War. Unsurprisingly, Ernst’s alleged war crimes get a very minor billing in the memo.

Moreover, Hans Dietrich Ernst was also allocated a CIA ‘201 File’, more commonly known as a ‘Name File’. The 1962 memo was released under the US Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The CIA has released few documents concerning Ernst’s 201 File; the pages run to three or four at most. The 13 June 1962 memo makes up the bulk of the material cleared for release. But there is a handwritten note on the front cover of the memo regarding Ernst: ‘Please reclassify to above subject’s 201.’

The CIA itself describes the opening of a 201 File as a means to ‘provide a method for identifying a person of specific interest to the Operations Directorate, and for controlling . . . all pertinent information about that person . . . Only a small number of personalities are of sufficient interest to justify opening a 201 dossier. These are normally subjects of extensive reporting and CI investigation, prospective agents and sources, member of groups and organisations of continuing target interest . . . ’

In other words, a 201 Name File is only ever created for what the Agency considers to be a significant intelligence asset, informer or agent, or other individual of major interest.

So, in the summer of 1962 it seems that Hans Dietrich
Ernst was alive and well, resident in West Germany and of remarkably significant interest to the CIA. Lest we forget, this was a man who had been condemned to death in absentia four times by the French courts for war crimes committed in the Vosges and elsewhere.

This is where things start to get even more bizarre.

On 22 November 1957 the CIA also raised a 201 ‘Personality File Request’ – a Name File – on Erich George Heinrich Isselhorst. The 201 File gave his ‘Country of Residence’ as France. How is that possible?
In 1957?
How could the CIA raise a 201 File on a man supposedly dead for ten years and record him as living in France, the country that had supposedly executed him a decade earlier for war crimes?

On 28 March 1974 – some twenty-five years after Isselhorst’s supposed execution – the CIA Name File received a fat dossier of new information, from the Central Records Facility of the US Army Intelligence Centre. The key document contained therein is a 3 July 1957 report entitled: ‘CONSOLIDATION OF ISSELHORST, Erich (Dr.)’

Funny that, ‘consolidating’ someone who was supposedly executed ten years previously. The reports opens: ‘DESCR: BORN 5 Feb 1906, Height 5'0", strong build, dark blond hair, grey-blue eyes, fresh complexion, round fresh face, large nose.’ What an odd description for someone who was supposedly executed over a decade previously. Surely it should read: ‘Shot dead by the French. Buried six foot under at Strasbourg.’ Or so one would have thought.