Farewell to Spandau E-Book

Tony Le Tissier

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 221

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'Crisply authoritative first-hand account . . . The odd story of Hess' imprisonment and death is one of those fascinating footnotes of history and readers will not find a better account of them than this book.' - The Washington Times On 17 August 1987, Rudolf Hess, Allied Prisoner No. 7, died at the age of ninety-three. This 'profoundly evil man' had taken his own life after being in captivity for over forty-eight years, ever since his spectacular flight to Scotland in May 1941. He had spent the last twenty years as the only inmate of Spandau Allied Prison. In Farewell to Spandau the last British Governor of Spandau Allied Prison puts the record straight about the final years of Rudolf Hess's life, and his ultimate suicide while in Allied custody. Tony Le Tissier authentically counters the many allegations that the prisoner was an imposter, that he was kept in isolation and even that he was murdered.

Leseprobe

First published in 1994 by Ashford, Buchan & Enright, Leatherhead, Surrey

This edition published 2021 by

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Tony Le Tissier, 2008, 2021

The right of Tony Le Tissier to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9925 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

List of Plates

Map of Allied Occupied Berlin

Plan of the layout of Spandau Allied Prison

Preface

     I Spandau Allied Prison

    II Changing the Guard

   III The Administration

   IV Allied Prisoner No. 7

    V Conditions

  VI The Family

 VII Developments and Surprises

VIII The Last Lap

  IX Death in the Afternoon

   X Two Autopsies, Two Burials

  XI Clearing Up

 XII Aftermath

Glossary

To my wife and childrenand all those friends and colleagueswho have made life in Berlinso full and so interestingover the years

List of Plates

1. Barrack block used by Allied guards during their duty months.

2. The Main Gate used by the Soviet guards for their accommodation

3. Aerial view of Prison taken shortly after Hess’s death with the new perimeter fence and gate installed. The ruins of the old prison laundry with its chimney can be seen on the left with the disused workshops behind. Hess’s lift is hidden by the trees left of the main cell block. The ruins of the prison hospital can be seen bottom right and part of Brooke Barracks top right.

4. Watching a ParadeLt Col Savin, Tony Le Tissier, the Adjutant of the 2nd Bn The Royal Irish Rangers, Lt Col Durofeyev, Michel Planet and Darold Keane on the 1st July, 1984.

5. Michel Planet Gendarmerie Lt Col, Captain Francis Hobbs (ADC to GOC),Tony Le Tissier, Lt Col Chernykh, Lt Col Rory Forsyth and some officers and a warrant officer of the 1st Bn The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire on 1 February, 1983.

East-West relations

6. & 7. Tony Le Tissier sharing a joke with Yuri Prontchev and a colleague from the Soviet Embassy.

8. Adjourning to the Mess after a Parade.

9. The Main Building seen from the top of the Mess. The Administration Block with the chapel above, the Tower over the cruciform centre of the Cell Block and a dormitory wing. Tower No.6 and the ruins of the prison hospital are in front.

10. The Governors’ Mess, No.21 Wilhelmstrasse.

11. Hess in the second position on the cabinet bench at a session of the Reichstag held in the Kroll Opera, enraptured by his Führer. (ATB)

In the Mess

12. Lt Col Savin with Valentina.

13. Major Yuri Pliev, Tony Le Tissier and Lt Col Gennady Savin.

14. Tower No.3 seen from the prisoner’s exercise path with evidence of the previous Allied prisoners’ work showing under the trees on the right.

15. The guards’ track leading into the broader prisoner’s path in the north-western corner of the garden with the Portakabin beyond.

16. Christmas in the Governors’ Mess 1985, with Michel Planet, ‘Katya’, Tony Le Tissier, Lt Col Chernykh flanked by two BRIXMIS interpreters, Darold Keane and Senior Lieutenant Dmitri Naumenko.

17. Explosion in the Governors’ Mess, 23 October 1986, the wrecked dining room.

18. The Portakabin in the garden. (SIB)

19. The state of the Portakabin following the evacuation. (SIB)

20. The suicide cable in place with the secure knot to the window handle. (SIB)

21. The slip knot (in line with the top of the skirting board) and abandoned medical kit. (SIB)

22. Inside the Cell Block after clearance – the view from the entrance with the Medical Orderly’s Room on the left and the Duty Chief Warder’s Office on the right.

23. Inside the Cell Block after clearance – the view from the prisoner’s end with all the cell doors open.

24. Inside the Cell Block after clearance – the prisoner’s main cell and the entrance to the spiral staircase.

25. Inside the Cell Block after clearance – the prisoner’s television room, outside which the Duty Warder would normally be stationed.

26. Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, here seen in Towers Nos. 4 and 5, continued to guard the empty prison until demolition.

27. The clearance bonfire site where the Portakabin and other items associated with Hess were later destroyed.

28. & 29. The prison site completely cleared except for trees.

30. The temporary mess in No.24 where the run-down of the prison administration was completed after the Royal Engineers had surrounded the building with Dannert wire on Soviet request. Nos. 25, 25A and Smuts Barracks in the background. The low wall on the right once carried an electrified fence.

31. Aerial view of the Britannia Centre in 1991. The two trees growing out of the patio are the horse chestnuts of the old prison courtyard. The clusters of trees to the rear are relicts of Hess’s garden. (ATB)

Guard Changing – 1st Bn The Royal Highland Fusiliers handing over to a Gendarmie Nationale guard on the 1st February 1987.

Preface

The mischievous propagation of certain myths in connection with the fate of Rudolf Hess has prompted me to try to put the record straight with an account of my own experiences in Berlin as the last British Governor of Spandau Allied Prison.

I must emphasise that this is a very personal view of the subject, and that the opinions and attitudes expressed are entirely my own and should not be taken as expressions of official government policy.

The atmosphere in which the events in this book occurred has vanished for ever with the winds of change that blew away the Cold War. The prison site gave way to ‘The Britannia Centre,’ a shopping and social services precinct for the British garrison, whose days were numbered, but the peripheral buildings have been beautifully restored as part of the same complex.

I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Bernard Levin of The Times and Miss Catherine Field of the Observer for their most kind permission to reproduce extracts from certain articles, and to the Special Investigation Branch (Royal Military Police), the Ullstein Bildesdienst, and After the Battle magazine for permission to reproduce some of their photographs.

To avoid unnecessary embarrassment, I have deliberately omitted those names of people not publicly disclosed during the course of events related here.

AHLeT

Berlin, 1994

I

Spandau Allied Prison

On 17 August 1987, Allied Prisoner No. 7, Rudolf Hess, died at the age of ninety-three. This ‘profoundly evil man, justly convicted and condemned . . . at Nuremberg,’ had taken his own life, confounding all the quadripartite contingency plans covering his demise. He had been in captivity for over forty-eight years, ever since his spectacular flight to Scotland in May 1941, the last twenty years as the only inmate of Spandau Allied Prison.

For the last few years of his life I was the British representative on the Board of Governors of Spandau Allied Prison. As such I was responsible to the British government for the custody and welfare of this extraordinary character, whose career, actions and fate have aroused so much worldwide curiosity and speculation over the years.

I was serving as a lieutenant-colonel in the then Corps of Royal Military Police (RMP) when I came to Berlin in January 1976 to take up the appointment of Assistant Provost-Marshal (APM) at the British Sector Headquarters. As APM – the confusing use of the prefix ‘Assistant’ for lieutenant-colonels’ staff appointments was later dropped and the RMP organisation in Berlin changed – I was responsible to the British Commandant (the Major-General in charge of the British Sector) for both 247 (Berlin) Provost Company and its Helmstedt Detachment, which had been my first command as a major back in 1968–70. This role also entailed responsibility for officially sponsored British traffic on the autobahn corridor connecting Berlin with the Federal Republic (West Germany), liaison with the Soviet traffic control organisations at either end of the corridor and also with the guard detachment at the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, as well as dealing with incidents involving the East German authorities on the British Sector boundaries.

Unfortunately, the role of APM had diminished in interest since 1970 as the consolidation of the Wall and the wire fencing around the Western Sectors of Berlin reduced the number of border incidents that had previously added zest to the responsibilities involved. Then, in 1977, at a time when the British Army was terribly badly paid, with my financial resources exhausted, three children at boarding schools, and my car in urgent need of replacement, I received the offer of a post of equivalent rank with the Public Safely Branch of the British Military Government (BMG). Acceptance made me financially viable once more and gave me the chance of continuing to live and serve in a city that fascinated me, and still does.

Of course, ‘Murphy’s Law’ applied, and a few months later armed services pay and pensions were dramatically increased. However, the prospects of continuing staff duties within the then strictly limited sphere of the RMP, whatever the promotion prospects, held no attractions for me, so I had no regrets on that score. Also my ‘civilianisation’ involved no dramatic severance from the more pleasant aspects of Army life, as I was to continue in close daily contact, making and retaining even more friends among the military as I stayed and others came and went over the years.

At this point I should explain the basic structure of government in Berlin under Allied occupation, which was not only unique but also somewhat complicated.

The supreme authorities were the ambassadors of the four victorious powers, these being the British, French and American Ambassadors to the German Federal Republic and the Soviet Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). This was a residual capacity from the old, post-war, Allied Control Authority (ACA) days, when Germany was governed from the ACA building in Heinrich von Kleist Park (where in my time the quadripartite Berlin Air Safety Centre [BASC] continued to operate, and would do so until the reunification of Germany).

In 1948 the Soviets walked out of both the ACA and the Allied Kommandatura, the latter establishment being responsible for Greater Berlin, vainly hoping that the system would collapse. This failed to occur, so next in line of seniority in the Western Sectors came the British, French and American Commandants (of major-general rank), each of whom had a Minister as his Deputy Commandant and supporting staff provided by their respective foreign offices to assist and advise them in the governing role. Also directly under the individual Commandants were the military headquarters necessary for maintaining their respective garrisons. By these means, and working within the spirit of the Quadripartite Agreement of 1971 (QA), despite differences of interpretation of its meaning with the Soviets, the Western Allies persistently continued to maintain those basic rights in Berlin which enabled the democratically elected city government at Schönberg Town Hall to function under the Governing Mayor.

Soviet political interests in the Western Sectors were covered from the Embassy on the Unter den Linden, and commercial and consular interests by a Consulate-General introduced under the terms of the QA and located in the American Sector of the city. Both these establishments naturally provided bases for the ubiquitous KGB, the Soviet espionage service.

However, the British Military Government, le Gouvernement Militaire Français de Berlin and the US Mission, each continued to field members of the various controlling Committees of the Allied Kommandatura in the political, economic, legal and public safety areas, to cover their residual roles in the administration of the city.

My work as Number Two in the Public Safely Branch brought me into close contact with the Berlin Police, as well as my French and American colleagues, and gave me a greater insight into the complex workings of the city, all of which was to prove very useful in my next appointment. Like many others before me, I was fascinated by the genuine spirit of co-operation and commitment to the well-being of the city that existed at all levels among the Western Allies.

This was particularly true of the British Headquarters, where the Commandant’s thrice-weekly ‘morning prayers,’ attended by all the senior staff officers and departmental heads of the British Military Government and Sector Headquarters, enabled an open exchange of information and co-ordination of effort in the common cause.

Both as APM and in Public Safety, I had some limited contact with Spandau Allied Prison in rehearsing and conducting convoys for the escorting of an ambulance conveying Hess between the prison and the British Military Hospital (BMH). These convoys were intended to deter any attempt to rescue him from captivity, very much as was described in Daniel Carney’s The Square Circle and later depicted in the film Wild Geese 2. Although the route we used did not provide such ready facilities for a rescue attempt as the film suggested, the distance travelled being barely two miles and that mainly on the broad, open expanse of the Heerstrasse, the filming locations used drew my admiration or ingenuity in portraying the story of the book. As a coincidence, I was leaving the famous Pariser Bar restaurant in Kantstrasse in the early hours one morning, when a convoy of ambulances and staff cars, driven by what looked like Royal Military Policemen and escorted by Berlin Police, drove past. For a moment I thought there must have been a hideous accident involving British personnel in East Berlin. In fact these were actors on their way to film the switch scene in the Budapester Strasse tunnel.

Then in 1981, as an economic measure, it was decided to localise the appointment of joint Prison-Governor-cum-Allied-Liaison-and-Protocol-Officer-cum-British-Resident, which had for some time been occupied by a series of FCO Grade 6 officers, usually ex-Consul-Generals, on their last appointments before retirement. In effect the Treasury transferred the cost of the incumbent’s salary to the Occupation Budget financed by the German Federal Government.

The Allied liaison and protocol aspect was a residual role, like that of the ambassadors, these officers too having been originally based on the ACA building. Their role involved the accreditation of diplomats to the British Sector of Berlin, national representation at official functions in diplomatic circles, and low-key exchange of protests and so on, with the equivalent-ranking Protocol Officer at the Soviet Embassy on the Unter den Linden in East Berlin. It also involved the preparation of guest lists for the annual Queen’s Birthday Parade on the Maifeld; the seating plans for it, allowing for all the complications of precedence that protocol in this city entailed; the guest lists for the reception at the Headquarters afterwards; and, every second year, the protocol arrangements for the British Berlin Tattoo in the Deutschlandhalle.

The British Resident aspect was another residual role from the early days, when the Resident had been the key man linking the destitute local authorities with the military government. It still involved liaison with the mayors of all four districts in the British Sector, but otherwise had diminished to the issue of game licences to the few in the British community requiring them.

I was offered this post – British Governor of Spandau Prison (plus all the rest of it) – under local contract with equivalent to UK-based status, and eventually started in my new office on 1 October 1981. From then on my working life was to be far more complicated than ever before, if also utterly fascinating and often highly enjoyable.

My retiring predecessor introduced me to the prison by taking me along to his final Governor’s meeting at the prison on Thursday, 25 September 1981. Charles was a loner, a very private person with a poker face and a wicked sense of humour. He spoke laconically, and it was often difficult to tell whether he was being serious or simply pulling your leg. I liked him, but I knew he was not an easy person to work with, mainly because others lacked his pithy wit and, failing to match him, misunderstood his manner. It was only on that morning that I discovered that he had arranged with BMG to stay on for a while on contract as a warder, a decision that led to some upset and misgivings among his contemporaries, but in fact was eventually to work out quite well.

Together we were driven from the British Sector Headquarters in a BMG staff car and dropped off in front of the prison’s forbidding entrance. We were standing on a short cobbled driveway at rightangles to Spandau’s Wilhelmstrasse. A plate on the side of the gatehouse door marked the building as No. 23. The old prison perimeter walls extended either side with a more modern watchtower capping the far corners, from each of which an armed British soldier eyed us curiously. Outside the walls a tall wire fence boxed in a narrow grassy area through which ran the concrete foundations of the electrified fence that had once been there. Outside the existing fence a parallel drive connected some three-storey buildings either side with their gardens, Nos. 21 and 22 to the right and Nos. 24, 25 and 25A to the left. Beyond No. 25A lay Smuts Barracks, containing the garrison’s armoured, engineering, and educational elements.

We rang the bell beside the metal-covered wooden Main Gate and were admitted by a warder through a wicket inset on one side. I found myself within the high-ceilinged passage of the gatehouse leading to a cobbled yard beyond. A British sentry with his back to the light held his rifle aimed above our heads while the postern was open, then slammed into a ‘Present Arms’, the sounds echoing between the flagstones and the beamed ceiling above. Charles explained that the Governors were entitled to such a salute, something neither of us had been senior enough to experience during our military service. He then led me into the gatehouse, where I had to sign in against a provisional pass previously signed by all four Governors.

We went out again into the archway past the rigid sentry and on into the cobbled yard, where two large horse chestnut trees, one on either side, were already dropping their conkers. The grim façade of the Administration Block rose before us, its windows barred to the second floor, above which the dirty windows of the chapel rose a further two stories, the sills heaped and stained with pigeon droppings.

We pushed open a heavy, barred-and-windowed double door and went up a flight of stone steps to a further set of doors at the top. A polished stone floor led forwards under a vaulted ceiling to where a painted metal wall cut across the broad passageway, beyond which lay the Cell Block. We turned right into a short corridor with wooden doors on either side and a larger door across the end.

Charles opened the door on the right and led me into the Secretariat, two small, cluttered offices furnished with old-fashioned cupboards and desks. I was introduced to two elderly gentlemen, one of Yugoslav and the other of Belgian extraction, who were the prison’s long-serving secretaries, both then long overdue for retirement.

From the second office we turned left into the Governors’ Room, a large room with a vaulted ceiling lit by a window bay forming the northern end of the Administrative Block. Immediately before the door was a long green-topped conference table lined by cane-back wooden chairs. In the centre on the left were double doors leading to the corridor, which were backed by the wide single door that I had seen from the other side. In the left far corner was a small oldfashioned safe on a stand and next to it a metal door leading to the Archives. Between the conference table and the bay windows was a battery of four identical, modern desks. On the far wall hung a large map of Berlin and the only picture in the room, showing Soviet troops marching out through the prison gate and American troops marching in, which on close inspection turned out to be two photographs joined together to make the action look simultaneous.

I was introduced to the people sitting around the table. At the near end sat Lieutenant-Colonel Savin, the Soviet Governor, wearing Artillery insignia on the black facings of his khaki uniform, and next to him his interpreter, Senior Lieutenant Roshkov, wearing Infantry insignia on red facings. On the left, with his back to the double doors, sat the French Governor, Michel Planet, and opposite him Darold W. Keane, the American Governor, sitting beside the BMG interpreter. Charles sat down in a modern swivel chair that looked quite incongruous in these surroundings and invited me to sit alongside him.

One aspect of the Soviet walk-out from the Allied Kommandatura was that the sequence of the monthly rotation of chairmanship among the Four Powers, commencing each January, subsequently operated on two different cycles, the tripartite one for the Western Sectors being British-American-French, the quadripartite one, by which the prison continued to operate, following the sequence British-French-Soviet-American. September being a British month, Charles called the meeting to order and set about business, which mainly concerned the administration of the prison with items such as replacement of staff, the prisoner’s requests, approval of passes for visitors, coke deliveries, and so on. A strict sequence was followed round the table on every point, calling first on the French, then the Soviet and lastly the American Governors. The vaulted ceiling presented considerable acoustic problems, and it was soon obvious to me that the Chairman had to be careful to ensure that translations were complete before the next person spoke, as whenever two persons spoke simultaneously all distinction was lost. Fortunately the French had long since agreed to work in English at these meetings, thereby saving much time as well as the need for another interpreter.

Once the meeting was over, Charles took me to meet the prisoner. We went back to the steel door in the hallway, where he pressed a bell. A warder in plain grey uniform and bearing a bunch of enormous keys opened the door and let us into the Cell Block. The broad passageway continued a few yards and then opened out even wider at a point under the main tower forming the crux of the building. In a corner stood a curious kind of stretcher designed to carry a patient in a seated position. A set of steel doors, one of them open, led through to the Cell Block proper beyond. We walked along a non-slip mat laid on the highly polished stone floor, passing rows of cell doors painted a light brown against the dark cream of the walls. At regular intervals, brackets supported the walkways above, which were otherwise hidden by a white-painted metal ceiling. At the end of the block a curious half-octagonal structure covered the spiral staircase leading down into the garden, and windows high in the wall on either side admitted some daylight. There was a small table and an armchair in the passage for the use of the attendant warder, at that time absent for lunch.

Charles knocked on the penultimate door on the left. ‘Herein!’ We went into the first of what had obviously once been two cells. Hess was eating his lunch, sitting up on a hospital bed that almost filled the end cell. The bed was canted to keep his feet higher than his bottom and to support his back. It was flanked by two small tables on which were arranged several covered dishes of food and a collection of spectacles and alarm clocks. Stuck to the wall behind the bed were two maps depicting either side of the moon’s surface. In the near cell were two small tables covered in books and newspapers, and a small record-player.

Hess made as if to get up but Charles signalled him to stay where he was. Hess put his dish and spoon to one side and looked at me curiously from under his deep brows. Charles then introduced me and said I would be taking over from him at the end of the month. Hess nodded amicably, and expressed surprise when Charles announced that he would be staying on as a warder. We then left him to get on with his lunch.

Charles explained that Hess ordered his meals by means of a modern child’s slate, on which he wrote his menu with a stick. Once the meal had been prepared the ‘slate’ was returned clear of his impressions. (In fact he had several of these slates for communication with his kitchen, and with the Secretariat for his everyday requirements of paper handkerchiefs and so on, whereas formal requests to the Governors, Gesuche, had to be made in writing on sheets of paper such as those issued to him for his weekly letter.) Two cooks were employed solely to cater for him. He was pernickety about his diet, which was mainly vegetarian and contained no salt.

Charles then showed me round the prisoner’s exercise area. We went down the very narrow spiral staircase to the garden. The prison cellars were only sunk about a metre below ground level, so access to the garden was by means of a glass-panelled door one full spiral down the stairs, halfway to the cellar. Just inside this door was an old telephone, connected to the gatehouse, for emergency use. From the door a concrete path with a railing led down to a dirt path running parallel to the outer wall along the centre of the garden for its entire length. This path also formed part of the guards’ perimeter track within the walls, and both ends of the garden now lacked the gates that had originally sealed it off. The only obtrusion was Tower No. 3, overlooking the garden halfway along the rear perimeter wall but almost completely obscured by the trees.

This area always struck me as a delightful haven of peace in Berlin. First, there was a variety of trees and bushes, seemingly unkempt but in fact pruned annually, some of them having forced their way through the traces of the garden patches made and tended by the other six Nuremberg prisoners so many years before. There were plenty of wild flowers, and even the remains of a trellis with wild roses still growing around it. I could readily accept Charles’s comment that Hess rarely missed the opportunity to exercise here morning and afternoon.