GERMANY: The Prisoners of Werl

Behind the bleak, high-walled jail at Werl, the British hold reluctantly to the remnant symbols of a once-firm resolution. The remnants are 130 convicted Nazi war criminals. They are the surviving handful of men the British once vowed to punish. That British passion is now spent; in its place is a German passion to set the criminals free. Last week Henri Nannen, editor of a Hamburg picture weekly, Der Stern, shockingly dramatized the issue.

With great relish he broke a story that two war criminals had escaped from Werl. Luftwaffe Pilot Hans Kühn had murdered three Allied flyers who parachuted down in 1943; Private Wilhelm Kappe had killed a Russian prisoner of war. According to Der Stern, the two escaped while working outside the jail walls, and were given a ride by a passing motorist who gladly picked them up though he could not help but recognize their war-criminal insignia.

Nannen’s reporters found Kühn living with some vacationers in a tent along the Rhine. The editor boasted that he personally sent Kühn a change of clothes, including a pair of shoes Editor Nannen had purchased in New York while on an exchange visit financed by the U.S. State Department. Moreover, he knew where K¶hn was hiding—a resort island in the North Sea where he was being lionized as a hero and bought all the free beer he could drink. Editor Nannen dared the British to arrest him as an accessory.

Fugitive Kappe was also having a grand time. While Kappe was visiting old friends in the north German town of Aurich, a nosy town councilor recognized him and informed on him. But soon it was all right. The police left Kappe in a room with invitingly unbarred windows, and in a jiffy Kappe was free. As for the town councilor, angry crowds surrounded his home, shouting lynch threats. He is now in hiding.

That was Editor Nannen’s story. What were the British going to do about it? Last week they opened the doors of Werl and liberated another war criminal, former Colonel General Eberhardt von Mackensen, whom they had sentenced to death only six years before. Mackensen had transmitted the orders to the SS for the infamous Ardeatine caves massacre of 335 Italian hostages. Mackensen’s boss in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, also sentenced to die for the Ardeatine massacre, were already out, released to secure medical treatment. So was Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein, who drew 18 years for the murder of Russian prisoners. It was unlikely that either would ever return to jail.

The British hoped that this display of clemency would satisfy the West German Deputies and speed Bonn’s ratification of the peace contract.