The Murder of Five Captured RAF Officers. Warning: Graphic Images

Can someonne please help me?

What does DJAG Number mean? Is it the prisoners number?
Example:
Defendant: Gert Biedermann DJAG No. 466

Is it possible to get more information about a specific prisoner number? From where can I get information?

And about the trialfiles....the cover looks like this:









Can someone please help me especially with page 3?
What are the president, the members and the judge advocate and which function do the have? And what´s the difference between the judge advocate Basil Nield and the prosecutor captain F Honig?

Does anyonne know where I could get more informations about the court and the trial?

 

Pollux5,

It can be a bit confusing but in essence I believe you will find that the President of the court is the Senior military member of the panel of judges. If you equate this to the "Budesgericht" he is the senior judge.

The "Members" are equivelent to the other judges who would sit on the "bundesgericht".

The Judge Advocate usually being senior council for the prosecutor, but beyond that I wouldn't comment.

The Prosecutor is obviously the person representing the case on behalf of the War Crimes commission.


I hope this has clarified somewhat the positions


Regards

simon

 

The DJAG number is the number allocated by the Office of the Deputy Judge Advocate General to individual prisoners brought before court of justice.The prisoner would have a different DJAG number allocated, if brought in front of a court of justice,under a separate charge.(I should make this point clearer.I meant to indicate under a different court of justice)

It would appear that the Office of the DJAG had the responsibility of preparing the case against the accused.The Judge Advocate would then be appointed for each trial.

Waiting Member of the court would be a reserve member whose responsibility would be to fill any absence of a member of the court.

I note that the Judge Advocate,a Barrister at Law, (Kings Counsel.) Mr Basil Nield was a serving Member of Parliament in the first postwar British government.

 

fascinating thread, thanks to everyone for posting

Out of interest did this happen to Germans during the Blitz?

 

@Simon
Thanks for your explanation. I was just wondering that while reading the trial I could not really understand the function of the Judge Advocate. He sounds to be a kind of trial authority who "organizes" the process of the trial. I thought this would be the job of the president, cause Capt. Honig does all the questioning and cross examinations.

Summarizing:
The president and the members are the judges of the trial and decide the verdict.
Capt. Honig is the persecutor representing the english law.
And Basil Nield is the Head of the whole trial but has no right to decide the verdict.
Does anyone know where I could find a photo of Nield if he was that famous after the war? I unfortunately didn´t found one.
Greetings to Australia

@Harry Ree
Thanks for your explanation.
Does that mean that after sentenced to imprisonment the accused got new identification numbers?
That may be the reason why I don´t find any information about the accused who were in Werl war crime prison.

@Soren
I found only one case.
15.9.1940 killing of the german Oberleutnants Robert Zehbe (Pilot at the Geschwader KG 76) by civillians in London quarter Kennington.

Source: Price, Alfred: Battle of Britain Day, 15. September 1940, London 1990, S. 63

 

Thanks to Drew and his efforts, I found another case.
The mainproblem is that I don´t really know where I have to search, so I search in every file which contains the name of my hometown or the name of the acused of the files which I already knew.
Unfortunately I found another murder of a pilot, ordered by the same Kreisleiter, half a year ago. Done by a much more cruel way. First I was a bit frustrated when I saw that the files were not about the case I was interested in. After the second look I recognized what that meant.
This case is totally unknown.
The case in Huchenfeld and Dillweißenstein was known but silenced to death till some churchpeople in the early 90s positioned a plaque.
I will start a new thread according to the new files I got.
But I will of course continue this thread.

 

It has been estimated that there were about 100 western Allied aircrew who were murdered at the point of capture or were lynched en route to a POW camp or interrogation centre.The Luftwaffe had the responsibility for air force prisoners and were known to have been the perpretator of crime in some cases.

This responsibity led to one of the many charges against Goering in the case of the Stalag Luft 50 when he excused himself from involvement because he was on holiday and was ignorant of the ongoing illegal practice against the escapers.

One of the main problems was that German police who in some cases were in attendance as escorts did nothing to prevent outrages against air force prisoners.

(Some information to follow regarding Basil Nield (KC) MP and the structure of the Judge Advocate General's department.I believe the structure may have been changed to some extent since 1945 but fundamentally the principles have been maintained.)

 

Pollux5,

Here is Nields obituary:

Obituary: Sir Basil Nield - People, News - The Independent

Regards

Simon

 

Thanks Harry Ree and Assam for your explications and links.

What do you think in which way should i post the trialfiles, which include 5-600 pages?

When I read the files the whitnesstestimony of one made me a bit thoughtful cause it has been done by someone who was not really in touch with the incidents but only with the behaviour of the Mainaccused NSDAP Kreisleiter Hans Christian Knab.



And I was wondering from where the interrogaters knew him. And this lead me, of course with the superior help of Andy, to another murder of an airman!
Organized by the same man, nearly done by the same way as they wanted to kill Tom Tate and by the same Naziorganisations.

When I was reading the first files I also wondered what Knab could have thought, when Knab send the Hitler Youth Boys to Eutingen, that the local authorities would hand his people the airmen over. I thought that would be quiet naive.
Unfortunately it was not. And it had happened three-quater year ago and lead to a death of a young british airmen brutally lynched in the townhall of Eutingen/Pforzheim at the 29th July 1944.

I will open for this new case a new thread.

 

I think the testimony of Herr Bruder supports the charge of involvement of Knab in treating Allied aircew as "terror flyers" and not to be protected by the Geneva Convention.It further supports to portray the role of the NSASP structure in this criminal role which was directed from the top by Martin Bormann.Hence Knab's insistence to Bruder to follow NSASP orders rather then give up aircrew prisoners to the Wehrmacht.

Knab's role as a Kreisleiter within the NSASP structure would have quickly ascertained by the Allies.Allied intelligence would be be first tasked with the pencilling in of all NSASP officials in every Gau.Knab's rank was an important one in the party machine and it was through officials such as him that the NSASP governed the day to day life of the individual.It was important for the Allies to understand how the party structure functioned and from this understanding,those who had perpretated criminal offences would eventually be brought to book.

I think the new case might have arisen from the loss on 29 July 1944 of a No 467 RAAF Squadron Lancaster on a raid on Stuttgart.

I was incorrect to assume that the above aircraft was involved.I was assuming that this crew had fallen foul of criminals as the crew were intially buried at Pforzheim.It was an East Kirkby aircraft of No 57 Squadron.

 

Yes thats true Harry.
I opened a new thread. It can be read here.

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/prisoners-war/39400-murder-captured-raf-sergeant-eutingen-pforzheim-warning-graphic-images.html

 

I think the testimony of Herr Bruder supports the charge of involvement of Knab in treating Allied aircew as "terror flyers" and not to be protected by the Geneva Convention.It further supports to portray the role of the NSASP structure in this criminal role which was directed from the top by Martin Bormann.Hence Knab's insistence to Bruder to follow NSASP orders rather then give up aircrew prisoners to the Wehrmacht.

Yes...in the Dispositions there is often mentioned a secret order done by Bormann to execute allied "terror flyers". Maybe I´m not to good in WW2 history, but I could not remember to have read something about such an order.
Knab mention such an order to the Hitler Youth and he also mention such an order 1944 to the S.A. men in the other case cause they managed to kill only one airmen and not all of them.

 

What do you think in which way should i post the trialfiles, which include 5-600 pages?

You could highlight and transcribe relevant parts
or for example you could make the whole file bundle
available via zshare or similar. Although, I would remind
you that you have enough here to start a very interesting
book and for that reason shouldn't make all your research
available as someone might steal it and write their own book!

best regards

 

Does anyone know where I could find more informations about the trial or are they all in the WO files included?

 

I don't know of this has already been mentioned, but the trail of these men will probably have been part of the "Dachau trials" were war criminals, includings those accused of killing Allied PoWs and airmen, went on trial.

A few years ago I started to research the killings of Allied PoWs and came across a large number of PDF files put online by a German university, I think in cooperation with NARA, about these trials. These were the reports of these trials, so to say. I downloaded quite a bit, but not all...then my computer crashed. I still have some, but cannot find which German university had them online. I will dig deeper.

I did notice that the Jewish Virtual Library has many of these same PDFs online as well; Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage

Thank you for a truly interesting thread and sharing this. This is an topic very much of interest to me.

 

What a fascinating thread. This deserves a book like the one about the Canadian airmen. Are you going to look for the families Pollux?
Dee

 

Sorry that this thread is a bit sleeping.
At the moment I investigate in german archives for the NSDAP, SS and SA files from some of the accused. And I try to generate a profile of the mainaccused Hans Knab, cause he was also responsible in another murder. And investigating in german archives is not easy as work with Andy

I also try to get airphotos of the killingplaces cause, especially in Huchenfeld, the houses were built in the 50s.
But I found a painting of Maxeiner, the man who was accused to strike the first blow an James Vinall in Dillwißenstein, of the killing site.

 

How can I find out more about the pilots?
Where do I have to search for files of them?

 

The first stop in my opinion would be their service records from the RAF.

 

Thanks for your answer Drew.
Are these RAF service records at the national archive?