Tom Wall - Himmlers Hostages: The Untold Story of Himmlers Special Prisoners and the End of WWII

Himmlers Hostages

Tom Wall is a retired trade union official and is a graduate of University College Dublin. He has contributed essays and reviews on historical themes for the Dublin Review of Books .

TOM WALL

First published as Dachau to the Dolomites: The Untold Story of the Irishmen,

Hitlers Special Prisoners and the End of WWII

Merrion Press, 2019

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright Tom Wall, 2021

ISBN 978 1 52678 585 5

eISBN 978 1 52678 586 2

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52678 587 9

The right of Tom Wall to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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For Berni, Ciara and Ronan

A t the entrance to the exhibition in the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, there is a large wall map listing the numbers of prisoners from each country held in that notorious place. The figure 1 is superimposed on the map of Ireland. On a visit, intrigued by who this fellow Irishman might be, I began a journey of discovery. I soon learned that he was John McGrath, from County Roscommon, a First World War veteran who, between the wars, had managed cinemas and a theatre in Dublin before reenlisting in the British Army in 1939. It was a rare stoke of good fortune, on my part, to establish contact with Tom Callan, who had met John McGrath. I am forever indebted to him, and to his good friend John Kelly, for their assistance, and for the research they themselves undertook on my behalf concerning McGrath and his family background. I am also grateful to the Historical Disclosures Unit of the British Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow for providing me with his military file. The man himself, though, left few accounts of his adventures. However, I learnt that aspects of his time as a German prisoner have been recounted by others, including a number of fellow British officers, survivors of the renowned Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. In all, ten British officers and a number of orderlies, were held in Nazi concentration camps and in the final weeks of the war, were integrated into a VIP prisoner group, known as the Prominenten , assembled for hostage purposes by Himmler.

The origins and odyssey of this extraordinary group, containing leading statesmen, clergy, aristocrats and generals, then became the focus of my research. A number of books containing reminiscences of some of the survivors were published after the war. These include works in English by Sigismund Payne Best, Peter Churchill, Bertram Jimmy James, Kurt Schuschnigg, and Fey von Hassell as well as a biography of Harry Wings Day. I have drawn extensively from these memoirs. Other Prominenten reminisces I have relied upon include Leon Blums Le Dernier Mois and Isa Vermehrens Reise durch den letzten Akt . Payne Bests book, The Venlo Incident , contains the most extensive description of the events dealt with here, but it is not always an accurate account, as will become evident in the first chapter.

The British National Archives contain a number of relevant files and I benefited greatly from the helpfulness and efficiency of the staff at Kew and likewise at the Imperial War Museum in London. Some relevant US and German archive material was sourced on-line. Newspaper reports and rare books were accessed in the National Library in Dublin. I am also grateful to Dr Caraline M. Heiss and Jens Kappel of the Pragser Wildsee Hotel in Italy for granting me access to their archive on the Prominenten who were deposited in that hotel. Georg Grote of University College Dublin generously gave me the benefit of his extensive knowledge of the history of the South Tyrol, the final wartime location of the hostages.

A number of friends provided assistance and encouragement. Tom McCaughren shared with me his expertise as a writer and Stephen McCarthy, who accompanied me to Dachau and the South Tyrol, was a constant source of knowledge about the Second World War. Martin McGarry generously assisted with some German translations. Maurice Earls and Enda Doherty, co-editors of Dublin Review of Books , allowed me to develop my writing skills through contributions to their excellent journal. Margaret Geaney provided valued advice on draft manuscripts. Last, but far from least, I am eternally grateful to my wife Berni who provided sound advice and encouragement and to Ciara and Ronan for their support.

On a technical point, in the text I have used British equivalent ranks instead of burdening the general reader with German military and SS titles. Endnotes provide information on sources. Below is a key to the abbreviations used in respect of the principal archival institutions.

INA Irish National Archives

IWM Imperial War Museum

UKNABritish National Archives, Kew

O n 6 May 1945, a posse of reporters and photographers was transported by American troops deep into the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy. They were told they were about to meet a large number of important prisoners of the SS, among them politicians, statesmen, nobility, clergy and military leaders from a number of countries. The destination was a remote hotel, the Pragser Wildsee, located on the shores of a lake overhung by high cliffs. On arrival, as the occupants of the hotel emerged, the newsmen would have recognised Lon Blum, the former premier of France; Kurt Schuschnigg, former Austrian Chancellor, and probably Mikls Kllay, until a year before the Prime Minister of Hungary. Another familiar face would have been that of Martin Niemller, the renowned Lutheran pastor who had been imprisoned on Hitlers orders. They interviewed a spokesman for the group, an Englishman, wearing a monocle, who introduced himself as Captain Sigismund Payne Best, a British secret service officer who had been kidnapped by the Germans during the early weeks of the war. Other British officers present included survivors of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III in 1943. It must have surprised the press group to find among them a group of German aristocrats and former high ranking Wehrmacht generals.