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

Discussion in 'Prisoners of War' started by Drew5233, Feb 2, 2011.

  1. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    Here are the rank, place and function of the people who were involved.
    Superb work! In particular, the video clip of their agonising death march demonstrates vividly that these Nazi killers had ample time to reflect on what they were doing. These murders clearly were not done in the heat of the moment.

    Excellent research, those who sought to silence you should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
     
  2. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    I missed that video so I've added it again incase anyone else has missed it. Its an excellent idea and I may do some on my threads like the PoW walk at Wormhout.

    [YOUTUBE]QxHHJTZQ2pQ[/YOUTUBE]

    Anyone know why the Youtube thingy isn't working?
     
    RosyRedd likes this.
  3. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    [YOUTUBE]QxHHJTZQ2pQ[/YOUTUBE]
     
  4. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Anyone know why the Youtube thingy isn't working?
    As AHD has illustrated, find the code that each video has in it's link, mate.
    In this case: QxHHJTZQ2pQ

    Insert that between the Youtube tags:

    [Y OUTUBE]QxHHJTZQ2pQ[/Y OUTUBE]

    and all should work.
    It's a change from the older method where you just pasted in the whole URL.
     
  5. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    This is the shed were the hitler youth lived. They were six leaders and had a room together inn the so called "kleine Stube". From here the hitler youths were fetched on the 17th march to meet at the paper factory for their lynchingtrip to Huchenfeld, and from here they were also fetched the day after on the 18th march by NSDAP Ortsgruppenleiter Ecker to the police station "cause there is a nigger". The shed was a former school room, build in 1921 and teared down in the 70s. Infront of the shed was a kind of parade ground. Next time I´m in Pforzheim I will have a talk to several former hitler youth who were serving at the age of 10-12 at that place and under the boys who murdered the airmen. Maybe I will find more out about their characters.
    Picture is from 1937
     
  6. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    great work Pollux

    Has anyone (other than me) been wondering whether there is
    a possibility that the neo-Nazi's might pick up on this incident
    and view it as something worth 'celebrating'?

    I think with the amount of detail now being uncovered by our
    detective whether it is worth thinking of what to do with the
    info? Should Pollux approach the national newspapers, or plan
    writing a book or compose a synopsis as a proposal to a TV
    documentary production company?

    As harrowing and fascinating as the subject is, I wouldn't want
    to see it hijacked by people with agenda's. Just a thought.
     
  7. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    is this a positive ID of Knab?

    He looks very different in the two photographs.
    The hair is different, more importantly the ears are
    different (and they are as individual as fingerprints!)
     

    Attached Files:

  8. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    great work Pollux

    Has anyone (other than me) been wondering whether there is
    a possibility that the neo-Nazi's might pick up on this incident
    and view it as something worth 'celebrating'?

    I think with the amount of detail now being uncovered by our
    detective whether it is worth thinking of what to do with the
    info? Should Pollux approach the national newspapers, or plan
    writing a book or compose a synopsis as a proposal to a TV
    documentary production company?

    As harrowing and fascinating as the subject is, I wouldn't want
    to see it hijacked by people with agenda's. Just a thought.

    Well, I don´t think that this case would be interesting for some neo nazi people. Either the Germans behaved well or were the germans victims in this case and the trial of the accused was quite fair. The neonazi people are more interested in incidents where germans were threatened unfair in their point of view. We have every year a neonazi march on the 23rd february and of course a contra march and a lot of fightings between left wings, ricghtwings annd the police in the middle.

    Infact, the Huchenfeld/Dillweißennstein lynching was a planned conspiracy to commit murder by NSDAP authorities. And in the trial as we will see, the authorities made not a good figure.
    What at the end of the research stands, I don´t know. There are lot of points which are unclear to me. But I already contacted a friend of mine who is doing tv documentations for german television. I think the chance should be taken as long as some of the involved people are still alive.

    In general it can be said, that the people were not really proud of what they did and their relatives were shocked about what their familymembers had done, but they afterwards silenced the incident to death infact it was one of the heaviest organised lynching of allied pilots in southgermany and it was one of the biggest trials.
    I was really flabbergasted when i recognised the dimension and that it is hardly known by most the people.

    is this a positive ID of Knab?

    He looks very different in the two photographs.
    The hair is different, more importantly the ears are
    different (and they are as individual as fingerprints!)

    Must be. The first picture is his identification picture of the trial in Essen Steele where he was stentenced to death by hanging. The second picture is from our town archive. But there is another one of him in our townarchive with him in profile so with it would it be easier to identify him by ears cause it has the same earposition like tho trialphoto. I postet it yet, but it was not from good quality cause it was copied from the newspaper. Next time i´m in the archiv I will take a HQ picture.
    I think the photos dont look the same cause he was set on diet after his capture and the face changed and the 2nd picture is not dated axactly. On the back of the photo there was only remarked that this is Knab sitting in his Kreisleitung, Lindenstraße 10, Pforzheim, anytime before the 23rd february 1945 when he was bombed out too and had to move to the undestroyed Dillweißenstein.
     
  9. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    thanks Pollux

    keep up the great work!
     
  10. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

  11. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    Thought about it.
    I didn´t want to break copyright laws. But as far as I know it is allowed to quote from every book not only the books which were published by publishing companies.
    Is this a board under english law?
    Which quoterules do I have to use?
     
  12. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    Hallo Pollux - the easiest would be to transcribe the pages
    and give appropriate reference details, author, year of publishing,
    isbn number etc. That way you cover yourself. The digital images
    of the pages may be a breach of some copyright because you're
    'making' something. Copying the written word to use as a reference
    with the right credit isn't as far as I am aware illegal. Just time consuming ;)
     
  13. pauldawn

    pauldawn Senior Member

    i may well be wrong but i thought there was a "statute of limitations" type thing on copyright. ive always understood that in the case of photographs it was 60 years. therefore any ww2 pics now will not be subject to copyright. i may well be wrong though.
     
  14. Stig O'Tracy

    Stig O'Tracy Senior Member

    Interesting how the persons who committed these crimes, absolve themselves of responsibility for them by claiming that they were "just following orders" and therefore can't be held accountable. Yet their victims were, far more clearly, following orders themselves (although I'm not suggesting that their actions were criminal) and yet they paid for it with their lives.

    If one were to use the perpetrators own sense of judgment, obviously following orders is not a convincing excuse.
     
  15. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    *did someone remove my last post?*

    Well in the german army, if you didn´t follow order you could be shot dead, but none of them was in the army. And this I would look at more sophisticated. Cause in the last days of the third Reich it could easily happen if you didn´t follow orders or try to provend fighting you got quickly jugded by a SS wartrial to hanging and some SS troops tried to "defend" the village till everything was in ruins. We had a case, in Brettheim, where such thing happened an in which I´m interested too.
    A peasant took weapons away from some hitler youths to prevent fighting in his village. The hitler youths were enraged and informed the next SS commander. He held a wartrial and sentenced the peasant to death and he wanted the mayor of brettheim and the Ortgruppenleiter to sign the deathsentence. Both refused and were quickly sentenced to hang aside the peasant. And to make an example the SS defended the city against the US Army till and was in ruins and half the village was destroyed. Full of emotions because it happened so quickly. A daughter saw her father on a truck on his way to his execution and he waved at her and she waved back, cause she didn´t knew that he was on his way to the gallows tree. Between two trees at the cemetery the three people were hanged and the Hitler youths played with the hanged men like puppets on a string and played accordion.
    The little girls who saw her father waving is today one of the museums tour guide in Brettheim. They made a museum about this case. Sometimes I think it should be made a museum in my hometown too, maybe in the airshelter, where in front of james vinall was killed with the content of the citydestruction and also with the content of the brutal lynching of the noninvolved airmen to show that the people of Pforzheim were also offenders. Cause in our townhistory there is yet only memory for the bombing.


    But in this case it would have been easy not to follow orders. Some of the accused just decided to go home and not take part when they recognised what was going on.
    And they were not forced to enter the NSDAP.
    Especially the mayor, he was in the party since 1932. And he could have prevented it by contacting the nearer german airbase when he heard of it. But he only was afraid of the schoolbuilding.
    And the Kreisleiter was not authorized to order a killing and I think they knew that. What I´m not clear is about the boys. But I think they slithered into that case and were used by the authorities around Knab.
     
  16. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    Let´s have a look at the bombing of Pforzheim 23rd February 45.

    [YOUTUBE]oy9de07GYVg[/YOUTUBE]

    It starts with minute 3:33

    It maybe nowadays sounds cruel what the speaker says, but it should not be forgotten that the war didn´t start with the bombing of Pforzheim or any other german city, it started with the wiping out of Warschau, Rotterdam and Coventry.
     
  17. Realestate

    Realestate Junior Member

    Did any of those involved in the Huchenfeld war crime lose members of their family in the bombing of 23rd February 1945?
     
  18. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    Did any of those involved in the Huchenfeld war crime lose members of their family in the bombing of 23rd February 1945?

    According to the trialfiles, noone of them.
    But I´m not quite sure. The "mainshooter" of Huchenfeld, Eugen Weiss, commited suicide at his childs grave in autumn 45. Maybe his family died in the airraid. Cause he was dead before the investigation started I don´t know anything about him.
    But this incident wasn´t caused by people who lost relatives. It was planned by people from the authorities.

    For example the incident in Dillweißenstein.
    Before Maj. Niklas went to the police station to fetch James Vinall, he told the bombed out people living at the airshelter that he would bring a pilot who is responsible for the distruction of the city.
    He could imagine what the people would do and he wanted the people to do that even he didn´t gave any killing order.

    *edit*
    The most people who took part were not from Pforzheim.
    They lived in the suburb.
    Maybe Hauser, an original pforzheimer, lost relatives.
     
  19. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    What do you think, where do I have to look after when I´m interested in photos of the trial? Was it normal to make photos of every trial?

    Special thanks to Andy who send me new information.
    Here is a small anecdote about the bureaucratic chaos in the allied zones. When an escort tried to fetch the accused Mohr and Metzenbauer to the war trial from the french zone it was not possible.

    [​IMG]
     
  20. Pollux5

    Pollux5 Senior Member

    I need a pause of few days till I get the new files.
    I think I should first end with the scenes and the accused before we go on to the trial.
    And I must find a way to publish the trial here. there are nearly 600 pages only of the first trial and there were three trials. How can I manage this?

    Maybe by uploading each trialday on a oneklickhoster?
     

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