Dachau to Dolomites. Tom Wall
continually in attendance. These discomforts were mild, though, when compared to what others suffered. Prisoners in punishment cells were regularly tortured. From the compound outside, they often heard the cries of prisoners who had been suspended on a pole, their wrists tied behind their backs and connected to a high hook so that their toes were just off the ground. Left in this position, their shoulder ligaments would tear and their joint would dislocate, causing excruciating pain.12 It soon became evident that Payne Best and Stevens were receiving comparatively favourable treatment as, over time, their conditions improved. Their shackles were removed, their food rations were adequate and they were allowed to take daily exercise. Facilitated by his fluent German, Payne Best managed to establish cordial relations with most of his guards, and from some he managed to secure cigarettes. Stevens fared less well in this regard and, according to Payne Best, he became depressed.13
Elser, recovering from his earlier torture, also began to enjoy improved conditions. He was allocated a large cell, was supplied with adequate amounts of food (although he ate little), and was provided with materials and tools to make items of furniture and musical instruments. This favourable treatment astonished the SS guards and irritated the more Hitler-adoring of them. It didn’t make sense to them that the Führer’s would-be assassin should enjoy such privileges. Then, a rumour circulated that Elser was merely a stooge of the SS; the bomb had been a Nazi plot to gain sympathy and support for Hitler and Elser was just a bit player and fall guy. Although Elser was strictly isolated, and it was forbidden for other prisoners to have any contact with him, this rumour spread among guards and prisoners in the bunker. Payne Best certainly believed it.
In his book, The Venlo Incident, Payne Best, although admitting that he never met him, claimed that Elser managed to smuggle a series of notes to him in which he gave an account of his life and his involvement in the Bürgerbräkeller plot. He says Elser told him that he had been detained in Dachau as an ‘anti-social’ before the war and, while there, he was induced by the SS to undertake a mission. The supposed scheme was to plant a bomb that would only be detonated after Hitler left and which was designed to kill some anti-Hitler plotters. According to the story Payne Best related, Elser was promised that he would be allowed to escape to Switzerland after the bomb went off, a promise that was reneged on. His comfortable billet in Sachsenhausen was less than adequate compensation. This story, and Payne Best’s description of how he learned about it from Elser, is implausible. There is no factual evidence for the assertion that Elser was detained in Dachau as an ‘anti-social’. And why would Elser lie about being complicit in a Nazi conspiracy? And if he was working for the SS, why would they torture him? How or why would he scribe his life story to a man he had never met and, given the ever-present SS guard, manage to smuggle out succeeding missives? Payne Best claims the writing was in indelible ink; how would Elser have obtained the necessary chemicals? It is likely Payne Best heard the story from the guards, with whom he was on friendly terms. The part about Elser smuggling material to him had to be invented, possibly to enhance his book’s narrative and to obscure his actual source. It is now widely accepted that Elser acted entirely alone, but at the time Payne Best was writing his book there were a number of speculative stories portraying Elser as a stooge – Payne Best may have been influenced by these accounts. Payne Best’s The Venlo Incident is the source for much of what has been written about the Prominenten. The lesson is to treat his accounts with caution.
Payne Best was detained for five years, the latter years in relative comfort. He recounts that he was visited by Himmler on one occasion during a tour of the camp in June 1942. It is plausible that Himmler would want to meet the Englishman, especially as he had been intimately involved in his case and Elser’s. Less plausible is Payne Best’s claim that he infuriated Himmler by refuting his suggestion that that British stories of German atrocities were false; Payne Best alleges that he told the Reichführer that their actions were even worse than stated.14 If he was so audacious, he didn’t suffer any consequences. He was soon put on double rations, permitted to purchase alcohol from the SS canteen, had his own electric cooker, was supplied with a typewriter and even had a small library in his cell. Following their occupation of the Netherlands, the Germans went to the trouble of retrieving his wardrobe – which included a number of tailored suits – from the Hague. In addition, he obtained a wireless set which allowed him to listen to the BBC. He could exercise outside for an hour or two daily and he grew vegetables and flowers on a patch of ground.
It began to seem that the SS were attending to his needs, more in the manner of dutiful servants than as guards. Adjacent to scenes of mass murder and barbarity, where prisoners suffered from hunger, torture, sickness and exhaustion, Payne Best was allowed to live the life of a cosseted tenant. He was not alone among the characters we will encounter that were relatively well cared for, although no other British captive – with the possible exception of his colleague Stevens – was treated with such consideration. Why was he so privileged? He himself, unconvincingly puts it down to guile on his part and to the decency of some of his SS guards. He was on quite friendly terms with the camp commandant, Anton Kaindl – ‘a good friend to me’ – and the head of the prison block, Kurt Eccarius – ‘a very decent fellow’.15 Both were regarded by most as odious and were later convicted of war crimes. Other factors were at play. It is likely there was an order to treat him well to ensure that he would be a presentable defendant, or witness, at the envisaged trial. He and Stevens are believed to have provided valuable information during interrogation.16 Could it be that he was rewarded for his good behaviour? His conditions began to improve in late 1942. By then it was becoming clear to the Germans that the war was not going as planned. The thoughts of some in the Nazi leadership turned to ways by which the British might consider a ceasefire. Perhaps an intelligence officer, one who was obviously a Germanophile, might be able to assist. The idea of using select prisoners for this purpose probably germinated about this time.
Stevens spent just over a year in Sachsenhausen. To ensure his isolation from Payne Best, he was transferred to Dachau where, as we will later discover, he also enjoyed rare privileges. Before then, another British officer had entered the bunker. John McGrath was an Irishman who had earlier been held in a special camp for Irish POWs. Although he did not meet with Payne Best or Stevens in Sachsenhausen, they were later to become acquainted in Dachau under very different circumstances.
CHAPTER TWO
THE IRISH CAMP
Friesack Camp, June 1941
Major John McGrath, a tall, well-built, middle-aged man, was apprehensive about the task he was about to undertake. He was being driven to a POW camp north of Berlin, where he was about to take on the role of Senior British Officer (SBO) in a camp designed to turn British servicemen with Irish backgrounds into traitors. There had been disciplinary problems at the camp and the Germans felt that a senior officer, preferably one sympathetic to their designs, would improve matters. They had sought an Irish-born officer from a Catholic nationalist background and McGrath seemed to fit the bill. The son of a Roscommon farmer, both his mother and father’s families were active in Irish nationalist politics; even more encouraging from a German perspective, was the fact that he had indicated a willingness to co-operate with them.
The Germans were mistaken about McGrath. He had only agreed to go to Friesack at the urging of a senior officer, in his previous camp in Laufen. Like many Irish servicemen, McGrath had mixed allegiances, but he was never going to dishonour his uniform. His relative’s involvement in the Irish War of Independence happened after he moved to England in 1911. Although, like the majority of his class and religion, he was brought up in a nationalist environment, this was of the early twentieth-century constitutional and parliamentary variety that was, for the most part, ‘culturally and politically comfortable with the trappings of empire’.1 Before the Easter Rising in 1916, careers in the police or British Army were seen as legitimate options for young Irish Catholics and McGrath was no longer resident in Ireland when the post-1916 transformational change occurred within Irish nationalism.
The mission he was about to undertake was, as he was later to describe it, to ‘investigate and endeavour to smash’ the Germans’ project.2 It was a difficult and dangerous task. He had to convince the Germans he was prepared to fight for Ireland against Britain while, at the same time, win the confidence of the men and conspire with them to frustrate the Germans’ plans.3 For