On this date in 1946, the British hanged 10 convicted war criminals at Hameln Prison, notably including seven for the “Dreierwalde Airfield murders” of four Allied prisoners of war.
In that case, two British and three Australian airmen had been captured after bailing out during a March 21 raid. Taken to the nearby aerodrome between Dreierwalde and Hopsten in Westphalia, they were marched out the next day ostensibly for transport to a POW compound. Instead, they all ended up shot by their guards — although Australian Flight-Lieutenant Berick was able to escape, wounded, and survive the war.
The nub of the case was whether the guards cold-bloodedly murdered their prisoners (prosecutors’ version), or whether there was an escape attempt by the airmen that caused the guards to start shooting (defense version).
Berick’s affidavit to the effect that no escape had been attempted weighed very heavily here — that nothing was afoot until he suddenly perceived the guards cocking their weapons. Karl Amberger would testify on behalf of himself and his men that the five had been suspiciously taking their bearings as they marched and suddenly broke off running in different directions.
The defense counsel’s attempt to reconcile these accounts in the haze of war was not fantastical — “saying that the cocking of the action of a weapon by one guard was not unnatural given the fact that five prisoners had to be guarded in a lane in the growing dusk … [while] Berick and the other prisoners probably regarded it as likely that they were to be shot, as others in their position had been, and began to run when it was not necessary.” But it did not carry the day.
Three other Germans joined this bunch on the scaffold, for similar but unrelated POW abuses.
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Erich Hoffmanm, condemned by a joint British-Norwegian court in Oslo for the murder of Allied POWs in occupied Norway.
Friedrich Uhrig, for murdering a downed Royal Air Force pilot at Langlingen.
Franz Kircher, for killing three airmen at Essen-West.
On this day..
- 1920: Four denunciators of Laon
- 1903: Victoriano Lorenzo, cholo
- 1863: Zygmunt Padlewski, January Uprising rebel
- Daily Double: Hameln after the war
- 1815: William Sawyer, guns and roses
- 1945: George Green, Jr.
- 1702: Dick Bauf, executioner of his parents
- 1863: William Francis Corbin and Thomas Jefferson McGraw
- 2012: Majid Jamali Fashi
- 1976: Lt. Col. Bukar Dimka and six coup confederates
- 71 B.C.E.: The followers of Spartacus
- 1381: Eppelein von Gailingen
- 1916: Jesse Washington lynched after conviction