Murder and Martial Justice: Spying and Retribution in World War II America

8. Ploys and Complaints

CHAPTER 8 Ploys and Complaints Prisoners who were released from the Papago Park stockade after the investigating board departed for California soon used their Geneva right to complain to the international red Cross (irC) and the swiss Legation. Their letters went via their spokesmen to the camp’s commandant and from him to the Provost marshal General’s office. Normally PoW letters were delivered to the addressees, but the War Department kept translations of these embarrassing complaints for its files. From these, we learn that the new spokesman for Compound 4, Karl-Heinz Jaeger, charged the united states with grave violations of the Geneva Convention. Papago Park’s new commandant, Col. George Barber, forwarded Jaeger’s collection of letters to the PmG’s office on may 12, 1944. Three days later he forwarded a joint letter from Jaeger and the Compound 2 spokesman, Karl Voelker, dated may 11, which summarized several other PoW letters that the two intended to send along later. The camp’s new spokesman, Fregattenkapitän Paul Keller, sent still more complaints, which were not forwarded from the camp until July 22.1 Capt. Keller strongly protested the American practice of swearing witnesses to tell the truth. in Germany, no suspected criminal was ever sworn. German police were not authorized to administer oaths. What were his men to think when some officers claiming to be agents of the FBi, which “corresponds to the German secret state police [Gestapo],” had used “deceptive tricks” to get military information? These interrogators had repeatedly accused “the PoW soldiers” of being spies, had threatened to hand them over to the “civilian authorities for final disposition or delivered over to russia or to Brazil; or said that other Prisoners of War already told all things worth knowing,” or threatened that the agents could “cause the soldier to disappear unnoticed.” 81 82 MURDER AND MARTIAL JUSTICE They would tell a “soldier” that since there was proof of his guilt, he “would be hanged as the first one,” the very next day. They would say “that the German Government desired the use of the electrical apparatus [lie detector], the staged deception of hanging scenes, etc., etc.” The PoWs, seeing through these ploys, had naturally assumed that the oath was another “police trick.” Therefore , those who refused to swear must not be accused of “a criminal intent to commit perjury.” Two prisoners, Drechsler’s victim Lothar mandelkow and u-118 seaman Walter schiller, wrote letters describing their outright resistance to the “electrical apparatus.” (The board’s transcripts contain no trace of these incidents .)2 The two most troublesome complaints were written by Willi Peters and Walter Nieswand. Peters told the irC: on may 2nd, 1944 . . . i was ordered to sit down and the civilian strapped a rubber covered steel-pipe around my chest, put over my right hand a clasp and fastened on my left arm above the elbow a steel-pipe with a rubber bandage, which was filled with air. i had to sit quite calm and was not permitted to move. The interpreter now read aloud to me about 5060 names of the first company with an interval of about 30 sec., and after each name i had to reply: “No.” When Peters questioned the process, he had been assured “that the usage of that appliance be allowed according to the Convention of Geneva. i replied, that so far as i know, the application of extortion be not allowed.” He threatened to complain to his spokesman, only to be “told that Kapitän Wattenberg had sat here exactly like me.” When Peters ceased to cooperate, suddenly the major said in english that i had hanged Drechsler. i answered that i be a German soldier and i therefore demand for examination in German language, and i would not stand that accusation. upon that the major screamed, that i be able to speak english and he struck at the back of my head. At once i jumped up but the major stood before me with clenched fists and ordered me to sit down. i said that this not be a treatment for a captured soldier, and the examination be terminated for me. Then i was told that i be belonging to the secret m.P. or to the Gestapo, but that seems only laughable to me. i then again was accused of murder, and finally i was brought back to the camp. PLOYS AND...