Authors: Anne Nelson
But those days were over. “I regret nothing more than being dragged into this business, and that I promoted your son-in-law into the officer corps and brought him to work in the Ministry,” the field marshal told her brusquely. “I have no intention of being of any assistance to you.”
24
Surprises emerged along the way. The prisoners learned through their interrogation that the Gestapo had been closing in on them for months. The police even had a name for their unruly association: the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra). This notion was all the stranger because the group had never thought to create a name for themselves.
There were other revelations as well. Most of the circles had only included five or six contacts, few of whom overlapped with other groups. Now friends, neighbors, and professional colleagues passed each other in the hallway, startled at the possibility that the familiar faces might be connected to their secret activities.
By mid-October the Gestapo was satisfied that its investigation was complete. It was time to move toward the trials, and there were many legal niceties to pursue. In order to secure a death sentence, the prosecution had to produce either a confession or two witnesses' testimony against the accused. A strange arithmetic ensued.
Günther Weisenborn learned that one accusation had been made against him by an unnamed “young woman.” If it stood alone, he might escape with a prison sentence. Then he learned that he had also been incriminated by sculptor Kurt Schumacher, who occupied the cell next to his. The second statement meant death.
Weisenborn's first move was to take precautionary action, slitting his bedsheet so he could fashion it into a quick noose if he needed to. Then he began to try to communicate with Schumacher, through the crude alphabet of knocks that prisoners have utilized throughout history. He finally managed to let Schumacher know that his statement constituted a death sentence against him, and Schumacher immediately promised to
take it back. Weisenborn asked what he could offer in return. A pencil, Schumacher responded. The next day, on the way back from his daily walk around the courtyard, Weisenborn managed to slip a forbidden stub of pencil into the opening to Schumacher's cell.
25
Most of the women remained at the prison at Alexanderplatz. (This was usually a men's facility, but the sudden influx of prisoners had created space problems.) Soon the women were given the fifth floor to themselves, where their conditions were less harsh than the men's.
26
The women were allowed to sing and talk into the night. Greta Kuckhoff had the opportunity to get to know some of the other women in the group for the first time. She and Marta Wolter Husemann would talk late into the night. Greta admired the young Communist actress, “a slim woman in black pants and turtleneck sweater, with really pretty blond hair.”
Cato Bontjes van Beek kept her hands busy darning socks for the male prisoners. She worked out a system to lower consoling notes to Walter Küchenmeister's frightened teenage son, imprisoned on a men's floor below.
Greta also grew close to Elisabeth Schumacher, whom she had known before the arrests. The two women usually talked after the lights were turned out. As Christmas approached, Elisabeth's family sent her an advent wreath, which she installed in her window to cheer up the other prisoners.
27
The Nazis had a difficult time absorbing the shock, which traveled all the way to the top. Hitler had no difficulty comprehending an act of sabotage from a Jewish Communist such as Herbert Baum, who had led the attack on the “Soviet Paradise” exhibit. In fact, such actions confirmed his worldview. But the Schulze-Boysen group was something else again. It was led by the great-nephew of Admiral von Tirpitz, riddled with uniformed military officers, and guided by high-ranking officials from a half-dozen ministries. Most of its prominent, educated members stood to gain from the regime, if they would only play along.
The Führer was “highly indignant,” an aide reported. He wanted “the Bolshevists within our own ranks” to be executed immediately and without mercy
28
But no aspect of the case was to be disclosed to the public under any condition. The prisoners' families were forbidden to discuss it under threat of concentration camp.
29
By late October, the Gestapo was in the final stages of the arrests and investigation. Now came the question of the trial. Most sedition cases were directed to the
Volksgerichtshof
(People's Court), known for its swift judgments and frequent death sentences. However, the involvement of Harro Schulze-Boysen and other uniformed defendants argued for this case to go before a
Reichskriegsgericht
(Reich Court Martial).
Hermann Göring understood that, as the man who brought Harro Schulze-Boysen into his air ministry, he needed to choose his prosecutor carefully. On October 17, 1942, he summoned judge advocate Manfred Roeder, chief legal officer for Luftwaffe Air Fleet IV, to the command car of his special train. They met near the Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa, where Hitler and Göring had both recently established field headquarters.
It was a devastating year in Ukraine. Luftwaffe Air Fleet IV was pounding the region in thousands of bombing missions. The Nazis had scheduled the extermination of three million Ukrainian Jews over 1942, and some 80,000 were shot in the infamous extermination pits that October alone. One surviving photograph in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shows a lone man kneeling in front of a pit full of bodies, while a member of
Einsatzgruppe
D prepares to shoot him in the head. The back of the photo bears the inscription: “The last Jew in Vinnitsa.”
*
Part of the job description for military judge advocates such as Manfred Roeder was to prosecute soldiers who balked at their orders, among the three million Germans serving on the eastern front. The Nazis made an example of those who challenged their authority, such as Michael Kitzelmann, a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant who had won the Iron Cross second class for bravery. Kitzelmann, a Catholic from Bavaria, wrote agonized letters from the Russian front to his parents and told his fellow officers, “If these criminals should win, I would have no wish to live any longer.” He was denounced, tried by field court martial, and convicted of
Wehrzersetzung
(damage to military capability). Kitzelmann was shot on June 11, 1942. Göring could trust that Roeder, as a judge advocate
on the eastern front, was unlikely to sympathize with any humanitarian motives expressed by Rote Kapelle defendants.
30
The forty-two-year-old Roeder was a veteran in the military justice system, known for his aggressive courtroom style and his handsome profile. (He bore a passing resemblance to Dirk Bogarde.) His new assignment led him to combine creative legal arguments with political expediency. He would decide which of the 117 Rote Kapelle prisoners in custody would be tried, aware that Hitler had reserved the right to overrule the more important sentences, regardless of the court's decision.
31
Within the legal maze lay a political minefield, and the only fatal error was leniency.
Roeder was frustrated by the Gestapo's delay in sharing its investigation. Finally, in early November, he received the files of Harro Schulze-Boysen, Arvid Harnack, John Graudenz, and Hans Coppi. The Schu macher files arrived a few days later. But Roeder had a hard time understanding the case, given that he hadn't seen the files on Leopold Trepper's lieutenant Anatoli Gourevitch (“Kent”), who was undergoing Gestapo interrogation over the same period in Belgium. Gourevitch was the Soviet piece of the puzzle.
Shortly afterward, Gourevitch's files arrived on Roeder's desk, and were followed by the delivery of Gourevitch himself at the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse interrogation center. Then Roeder (or, as Greta Kuck-hoff called him, “the bloody judge”) set to work.
32
Gourevitch nervously told the Gestapo the dates and details of his meetings with the Schulze-Boysens, and identified their pictures from a photo album. He added a detailed overview of Soviet intelligence operations in Western Europe.
33
Roeder immersed himself in the files, piecing together a narrative that sought to explain how members of the Reich's gilded youth could partake of such treasonous affairs. Unsatisfied with the Gestapo interrogations, he questioned the prisoners himself, playing, for the moment, the “good cop.” Helmut Himpel commented that he “seemed like a nice guy.”
34
But Roeder was using his interviews to fashion a prurient soap opera of corruption and vice.
Harro Schulze-Boysen, Arvid Harnack, and Adam Kuckhoff had already confessed to their work for the Soviets, so those basic facts were no
longer in dispute. Military espionage was classified as “high treason” and the penalty was death. That much was settled.
But Roeder had to address their motives, and in doing so, he decided to take a moralistic high ground. Harnack and Kuckhoff, he charged, had received money from the Soviets. This was true, though it had been early on, and in negligible amounts. Nonetheless, Roeder presented this as evidence that the men were traitors for hire. Some members of the group had affairs out of wedlock, not an uncommon phenomenon. Roeder relished this evidence for his sex angle. The Gestapo found nude photos of Libertas taken by one of the Schumachers. Although Libertas's father was an art professor and both Schumachers were professional artists, Roeder decided that this was hard evidence of depraved lives.
Curiously enough, Roeder took a more tolerant view of the working-class members of the KPD. His true vindictiveness was reserved for traitors to their class and to polite society, namely the Schulze-Boysens and Arvid Harnack.
35
Roeder determined that of the original 117 cases, 76 would stand trial; the rest were released for lack of evidence. The list was broken down to be tried in groups. The trials were a legal travesty. Prisoners were not allowed to read the cases against them, and in some instances, they met their lawyers for the first time five minutes before the trial began.
36
Most of the trials lasted only a few hours, and a verdict was produced the same day.
The families of the Schulze-Boysens and Arvid Harnack tried to help. They still occupied influential positions throughout German government and industry. Harro's father was a high-ranking naval officer, while Arvid's cousins served in half a dozen different ministries. The arrests came as a shock, but the families held firm. Harro's parents lobbied energetically on his behalf, while Arvid's younger brother Falk wrote reams of letters and struggled to get his brother legal representation. Falk asked his cousin Klaus Bonhoeffer to defend Arvid, but he had to refuse. He was too deeply involved in his own resistance work, and raising his profile would damage them all. In the end, only four lawyers were found to represent some eighty defendants in over twenty trials.
37
On December 16, 1942, a trial was called to order for thirteen major
Rote Kapelle defendants, among them the Schulze-Boysens, the Har-nacks, and the Schumachers. Other defendants included journalist John Graudenz, radio operator Hans Coppi, and Erika von Brockdorff, Greta's neighbor who had helped to hide the radios.
Roeder's prosecutorial style was aggressive and bombastic, even by the standards of the time. He spent much of the trial haranguing the defendants and often cut them off before they could even answer his questions. The judges were privately critical of his legal arguments, and remarked on the dignity of the defendants. One by one, in statements that ranged from calm to impassioned, the prisoners declared that they had been motivated by common decency and hatred of the regime—not by money or sex.
38
Only Libertas Schulze-Boysen broke ranks. Up to the end, she trusted in her connections. She broke down in the courtroom and started to shout that everything was Harro's fault. She wanted a divorce. Her defense counsel asked for an adjournment.
39
The verdicts were delivered on December 19. Most of the defendants were sentenced to death. The court declared that Harro Schulze-Boysen “never honestly served the National Socialist state.” Harro's younger brother Hartmut heard this statement with pride.
40
Arvid Harnack's relatives reported that when he heard his death sentence, he was “radiant with joy,” because he was told at the same time that his wife, Mildred, had been spared the death penalty.
41
She and Erika von Brockdorff were sentenced to ten and six years hard labor, respectively. Mildred, in the view of the judges, “had acted more out of loyalty to her husband than of her own volition.”
42
But Hermann Göring exploded when he heard the news, stating that Hitler would never settle for imprisonment. He was right. When Hitler received the two women's files, he sent them back without signature or comment, a clear sign that they were to be retried until the court came up with the desired result.
Now the Nazis faced scheduling problems. German tradition held that all executions were suspended between Christmas Eve and the Day of the Epiphany on January 6. They needed to hurry. There were also complications regarding the manner of execution. The Nazis had escalated the number of death sentences many times over since they took
power, and the guillotine shed at Plötzensee had dispatched thousands of members of the German, Czech, and Polish undergrounds, as well as common criminals. Now Hitler decided that the leaders of the Rote Kapelle required a more degrading form of execution.
The firing squad was the method of choice for military men, affording them a measure of dignity. The guillotine was quick and relatively kind, suitable for young people and ladies. Hanging was the least honorable end, reserved for partisans and spies. With certain modifications, it could also be a particularly slow and painful way to die. Laborers set to work installing a long steel beam with eight meat hooks in the execution shed at Plötzensee prison. Designed especially for the men of the Rote Kapelle, it would be called into use many times in the future for other resisters.