Klaus Barbie Read online

  My war ended in Wuppertal. We turned a garage into a stronghold. Nearby were two trucks loaded with civilian clothes for the Werwolfs [the abortive German resistance movement]. But no one had made any plans to continue the fight underground, probably because no one thought that we would lose the war. So I buried my gun. The four youngsters I was with and myself changed our clothes, got some false papers from the police headquarters, and headed off through the forests and pastures towards the Sauerland. It was very hard. From one day to the next, I’d become a beggar.

  For a short time, they rode on stolen bicycles, facetiously smiling at passing American soldiers. It was, however, a short-lived honeymoon. As the unconditional surrender silenced Germany’s military juggernaut, the security net was already tightening. To prevent a resistance movement, the Allied armies were searching and randomly interning most German men of military age. Abandoning the road, Barbie travelled by night and hid in forests during the day. His luck ran out near Hohenlimburg when he fell into an American roadblock.

  Locked up in a school Barbie was questioned by a former concentration-camp inmate, acting as a jailor. For three years Barbie’s professional skill had been directed at destroying the carefully constructed cover stories of his victims: now it was essential to his own survival that he cover up his past. His first interrogator presented no challenge. With little difficulty he convinced him that he was just an ordinary soldier who was trying to get to Kassel. No further checks were made. According to one American’s memory, he was sentenced to fourteen days’ imprisonment and then released, but Barbie says that after only a short time he convinced another of his jailors that they were all ordinary, innocent soldiers, and that he should let them escape. Allegedly he agreed. Nearby was a church: ‘He told us, “Go in one door and go out the other.” We did that and then separated. That’s when I began my secret life in the underground.’

  Barbie’s name at that time appeared on two Allied lists of wanted war criminals – one published in London by the United Nations War Crimes Commission, the other published in Paris by CROWCASS, the Central Registry of Wanted War Criminals and Security Suspects. Both stated that he was a Gestapo officer wanted for murder and torture in Lyons. The failure to identify and arrest such men was not unusual in those immediate post-war months. Despite many public declarations during the previous years by Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt that one of the major purposes of the war was to hunt down and prosecute war criminals like Barbie, virtually nothing had been done to create the machinery to implement those solemn promises.

  Even before war was declared on 3 September 1939, the British government, and the Foreign Office in particular, had been most reluctant to become at all involved in showing concern at German brutalities. As long as British nationals were not involved, the civil servants in Whitehall believed, there was no British interest at stake. If anything, the actual declaration of war hardened that attitude. Now there was a war to be fought, and the priority was to defend Britain and defeat Germany; there could be little concern about atrocities against non-Britons.

  The first demand for the British government to commit itself publicly to punishing the Germans responsible for atrocities was delivered by the Polish government-in-exile. The Nazi attack on Poland is the historical pretext for Britain’s declaration of war and German atrocities against the Poles had, from the outset, been widespread. To the surprise of the Poles, the British were reluctant to take any stand and when pushed would only agree to a short unpublicised protest. Frank Roberts, the Foreign Office official who was to become so closely identified with his Ministry’s ‘detached attitude’, told the Polish representatives that the British government utterly refused to commit themselves to any sort of policy to punish the Germans responsible. It was a position he and his colleagues defended inflexibly for the next two years. Reassuringly for them, their grim determination not to get involved in the war-crimes business had the full blessing of their minister, Sir Anthony Eden.

  Eden openly sympathised with his officials’ impassive reaction to the reports from Europe, especially reports involving the Jews. Eden supported the Arabs in his Middle-Eastern diplomacy and was, according to his private secretary, Oliver Harvey, ‘hopelessly prejudiced’ against the Jews. He read with sympathy a comment written by another of his officials, Roger Makins, in 1940, that any commitment to ‘hunt down and try thousands of Germans after the war’ would be ‘virtually impossible to carry out’. The government, he suggested should ‘studiously refrain from saying what we propose to do with them in the unlikely event of our catching any after the war.’ Eden endorsed that view. Foreign Office policy was clear and agreed: Britain was not to be committed to hunting down and punishing war criminals after Germany’s defeat. It was most important, the Office felt, to avoid in any way possible the drawing up of lists of wanted men with the intention of presenting them to the Germans at the end of the war; this had happened in 1918 and had resulted in a humiliating charade because the Allies had been unable to force the Germans to deliver.

  To Eden’s considerable irritation, Churchill and the cabinet disagreed. Reliable reports had arrived in London of the coldblooded massacre of hundreds of innocent Frenchmen by German soldiers and Ministers wanted to respond in any way they could. At a Cabinet meeting on 5 October 1942, the Foreign Office was instructed to produce a public statement which would promise retribution for war crimes. Makins immediately began searching for ways to avoid fulfilling what the politicians demanded. He began toying with words to produce a vague and deceptive phrase which would be unenforceable in the future. At the same time he suggested that the BBC be warned not to repeat a broadcast to Europe which mentioned that lists were being drawn up of ‘persons guilty of infamous conduct’.

  His machinations were sabotaged on 25 October. Genuinely affected by increasing reports of German massacres in France, President Roosevelt spontaneously issued a public protest and promised ‘fearful retribution for those responsible’. In one stroke the White House had committed itself to prosecuting German war criminals. Securing that statement was the result of the sort of intense lobbying and pressure which is the natural part of American government – but it had taken nearly ten years to produce the desired result.

  Attacks by the Nazis against their German opponents had intensified immediately after Hitler’s government was sworn into office on 30 January 1933. Jews, communists, socialists and trade unionists were randomly beaten and murdered. The American newspaper reports were coldly played down by the new Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and for the next ten years he and his department consistently discounted reports of German atrocities as either exaggerated or unreliable, only giving way when the pressure finally became irresistible. Departmental policy was similar to London’s: in public, to remain uninvolved in the domestic affairs of another country; in private, the Secretary could raise the issue in a gentle fashion with the German ambassador. Commitments had to be kept to an absolute minimum and for some time President Roosevelt did little to outface his officials.

  The outbreak of war increased the pressure on the Administration to help not only those persecuted in Germany but victims in many other countries which came under German control. Roosevelt made several speeches critical of German aggression, but his reaction on 25 October 1942 to the shooting of innocent French hostages was his first public protest against German atrocities. His commitment to bringing the Gestapo officers responsible to justice was a wry irony considering Barbie’s later employment by the Americans.

  Churchill had only had a few hours’ notice of the President’s speech. Clearly it would be embarrassing if he remained silent while the leader of an ostensibly neutral country made a public commitment. In a hastily written speech, Churchill also condemned the ‘Nazi butcheries in France’ and ended by saying that, ‘Retribution for these crimes must henceforth take its place among the major purposes of the war.’

  These statements in Washington and London should have been the l
ast nail in the coffin of bureaucratic indifference to the fate of war criminals. The contrary seems to have been the case. Officials and their political masters in both the Foreign Office and the State Department now sought to minimise the damage caused by their leaders’ ‘reckless’ promises. Their first problem was to deal with demands from the governments-in-exile based in London, who were dissatisfied with a draft protest prepared by the Foreign Office. According to the French representative, Maurice Dejean, they wanted something ‘more arresting’ and committed. Dejean submitted a new draft whose final paragraphs horrified the British and American officials. A ‘principal war aim’, it said, was ‘the punishment, through the channel of organised justice, of those guilty of or responsible for these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them or participated in them’. It ended by promising that the guilty would be brought to justice.

  Unwilling to commit themselves, the British and American governments attended the solemn declaration ceremony in London’s St James’s Palace on 13 January 1942 – just as observers. In his welcoming speech, Eden even told Britain’s allies that his government did not support their policy. Its implementation, he told the assembled politicians, was the responsibility of their own governments, not of the British government. Each country was to be responsible for prosecuting the crimes committed against its own nationals. The Americans silently concurred and hoped that this might be the end of the subject for some time. It was a vitally important disclaimer which the two foreign ministries clung to until the end of the war.

  Again the politicians ruffled the diplomatic waters. At their July meeting in Washington, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the Allies should set up a United Nations Commission on Atrocities which would investigate and collect the evidence of German war crimes. According to Churchill, by naming publicly those responsible for atrocities, the Commission would ‘let them know that they are being watched by the civilised world, which will mete out swift and just punishment on the judgement day’. The leaders were anxious to respond to public pressure. Here finally was an unambiguous promise to hunt down war criminals. Their officials were less than enthusiastic.

  At the State Department, the immediate reaction was to ignore the proposals. Eden’s reaction was nearly as cool: ‘There may be little harm in the idea. What do we do next?’ Its only virtue seemed to be that it would at least head off their allies’ demands for action and Britain could resist pressure to endorse the St James’s Palace Declaration. But once again the policy-makers’ obstructions were sabotaged by their leaders. On 21 August, President Roosevelt again publicly warned those responsible for ‘barbarous crimes … [which] may even lead to the extermination of certain populations … that the time will come when they shall have to stand in the courts of law in the very countries which they are now oppressing and answer for their acts’. The President’s declaration depressed State Department officials. With the latest news from Europe, this was precisely the result they had feared.

  On 1 August 1942, Gerhard Riegner, the representative in Switzerland of the World Jewish Congress, heard from a German source that the German government had decided to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Numerous reports of mass executions had already emerged from eastern Europe, but this was something different – the Germans wanted to establish production-line facilities for murder, using prussic acid. Convinced that the report was true, Riegner cabled the news to Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress. The cable was sent through American diplomatic channels so that the first recipients were State Department officials in Washington. Their reaction was cynical disbelief and an immediate decision not to pass the telegram on to Wise. ‘Jewish affairs’ throughout the war were handled by Robert Reams, who made no secret that he did not trust the Jews and their ‘atrocity stories’ and for a time successfully prevented their publication in Washington. On this occasion his department’s suppression was short-lived. Riegner had also sent the telegram to a British Labour member of parliament, Sydney Silverman. Silverman alerted Wise on 28 August and the State Department was forced to release Riegner’s message, but only after securing Wise’s reluctant agreement that there should be no publicity until further checks had been made. In the meantime Jewish representatives lobbied every relevant politician in Washington to save the European Jews, but their efforts were fruitless. After the waves of bureaucratic irritation had passed away, Riegner’s message became, for a short while, just another story to be treated with scepticism and caution.

  In London, the Foreign Office could not be so boldly resistant as their colleagues three thousand miles away. Pressurised by the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Allied governments, it had little alternative but to set up the UN Commission. Washington, however, showed little interest. Despite urgent telegrams from its London ambassador, John Winant, the State Department finally confessed that it had mislaid his original letter containing the proposals. During the undignified last-minute rush to meet Eden’s formal announcement, on 7 October, that a United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) would be established in London, the two governments could not even agree on the scope of its work. Both, however, were agreed that it would not include the actual investigation of war crimes.

  The consequences of those limitations were quickly recognised by Lord Simon, a pre-war supporter of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. Speaking as the newly appointed co-ordinator of the British government’s war-crimes policy, Simon told the House of Lords that declarations alone were worthless. Investigative machinery was needed to track down the wanted men, with policemen and detectives recruited to set up an FBI or Scotland Yard style of organisation. But Simon was a discredited politician and his warning was ignored.

  The officials who ignored Simon’s warning were the same who were unwilling to accept the accounts of German atrocities. By autumn 1942, all the death camps were already operational. Nearly one million Jews had been slaughtered. Tens of thousands of Europeans had been forced into labour camps. Klaus Barbie, having left Holland, was about to begin operations in France. All the evidence of Hitler’s genocide policies was available from scores of eyewitnesses in western and eastern Europe, and from radio intercepts and intelligence reports. Yet in the Foreign Office, Roberts wanted the subject left in a ‘dim light’ and another official, Geoffrey Robertson, commented on the Riegner telegram, ‘I am still somewhat sceptical about this story.’ His ministry advised the BBC that it was ‘soft-pedalling the whole thing as much as possible’.

  The administration in Washington had become dramatically split. At the State Department, many continued to treat the whole murder programme as a ‘wild story’. Others, appointed directly by the White House, were convinced by the reports. The divisions were sufficient to provoke considerable arguments when, in December 1942, Eden bowed to overwhelming pressure and sent a Foreign Office draft of a proposed new declaration. The reports of the ‘Holocaust’ were finally accepted unconditionally. Information from Europe, it stated, ‘… leaves no room for doubt that the German authorities … are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people …’

  Robert Reams was aghast. They were, he believed, simply pandering to Jewish scare stories which should be suppressed. To accept the reports would mean that the governments would have to do something to satisfy demands for post-war justice. But he could not prevent publication. Early in October 1943, reports arrived in London of the massacre of a hundred Italian officers by German forces on the Greek island of Kos. Churchill was particularly affected. The Foreign Ministers of America, Britain and Russia were due to meet in Moscow and Churchill proposed that the three governments sign an agreement that after the war those responsible for war crimes, ‘will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of those liberated countries … most assuredly the three Allied powers will pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and deliver them to the a
ccusers in order that justice may be done.’ Despite objections from Eden, Churchill’s draft was signed by the three Foreign Ministers. The Moscow Declaration became the cornerstone of post-war war-crimes policies and should have ensured that Klaus Barbie, for one, was returned to France after the war.

  Declarations alone could no longer stop German atrocities, but there was still time to build the machinery to find the perpetrators – had it not been that the same officials who had been unwilling to accept the atrocity reports were responsible for establishing the War Crimes Commission. The announcement of the Commission’s establishment in October 1942 had been followed by dilatory negotiations between the governments. Its first meeting, twelve months after the announcement on 19 October 1943, was a portentous preview of the future. The Russian government had officially refused to join and the American representative, Herbert Pell, had still not been allowed by the State Department to leave the United States. When the Commission’s chairman, Sir Cecil Hurst, asked Dennis Allen at the Foreign Office for the list of war crimes already accumulated by his department, Allen bluntly rebuffed him. Hurst, he wrote, seemed to have ‘some rather odd ideas’. The Foreign Office, it appeared, did not trust the Commission. Allen omitted to tell Hurst that the British government had not yet initiated a scheme even to collate the flimsy evidence of war crimes it had collected.