Werner Drechsler

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Arrival of prisoners from U 118 in a bus at Naval Station Norfolk on June 20, 1943 . The second from the left is Werner Drechsler.

Werner Drechsler (born January 17, 1923 in Mühlberg (Elbe) , † March 12, 1944 in Camp Papago Park , Arizona ) was a German U-boat driver ( U 118 ) in the Navy during World War II . After his capture by the US Navy off the Azores in 1943, he collected information about submarines from fellow prisoners for the US authorities and was lynched on March 12, 1944 by seven fellow prisoners from other submarines . They were sentenced to death on August 16, 1944 and hanged on August 25, 1945 at Fort Leavenworth . In the only German-language publication on the subject ( Paul Carell and Günter Böddeker ) the act was referred to as Fememord .

life and death

Werner Drechsler was in Mühlberg ( Elbe ) in the Free State of Prussia belonging Brandenburg province near the border with Saxony , the son of a Social and grew up in Chemnitz in the Free State of Saxony. He had two brothers, one of whom served in the infantry of the army in the Wehrmacht , the other in the navy on a minesweeper .

Drechsler, who became conscripted during the Second World War, came to the Navy and was trained in Kiel , in the submarine school in Gotenhafen and the torpedo school in Flensburg - Mürwik for service in the submarine before joining the submarine U 118 came, which was put into service in Kiel on January 6, 1942. Due to icing, the boat could not leave until March 29, 1942. While there was no enemy contact during the first two patrols in the Atlantic, on his third patrol he experienced the sinking of 3 merchant ships with 57 dead seamen and a Canadian corvette with 7 dead. During this patrol in February 1943, the submarine laid mines off Gibraltar and Tangier .

On the fourth war patrol was U 118 in the Canary Islands of Four on 12 June 1943 in the Central Atlantic west Avenger and four Wildcat aircraft intended the US escort carrier Bogue with water bombs attacked when Drechsler and some comrades on the deck of the running water submarine found. A hit on the tower killed the commander Werner Czygan and all the officers. Drechsler was injured in the neck and knee and could only swim with difficulty. After an hour only 17 of the 59 men of the crew were still alive - among them no officer - and they were taken on board by the US warship USS Osmond Ingram , but Corporal Wilhelm Ervin died just minutes later of his wounds and was buried at sea . Thus 43 men of the crew were dead and only 16 survived.

Two seriously wounded prisoners were operated on on board the Osmond Ingram : Drechsler, who had a projectile removed from his knee by the surgeon, and Hans Wosnitzka. On June 20, 1943, the prisoners were brought ashore at Naval Station Norfolk , USA. On arrival Drechsler found it difficult to walk and was assisted by his comrade Herman Polowzyk. Drechsler and Wosnitzka were taken to the naval hospital, while the remaining 14 prisoners were taken to Fort Meade, Maryland and Fort Hunt near Alexandria, Virginia for interrogation .

With the end of his hospital stay nine days after arriving in Norfolk, Drechsler also had to move to Fort Hunt. While his comrades spent about a day to several weeks here - depending on the value of the information obtained - Drechsler was interrogated here for seven months. The interrogating officers saw Drechsler as reliable and willing to cooperate, albeit a conceited anti-fascist, whose Social Democratic father had spent three years in a concentration camp. The Office of Naval Intelligence saw in him a high value, as he could win the trust of prisoners and thus obtain information.

Drechsler was locked in bugged cells with other prisoners and passed on information from conversations to the US Navy authorities. However, most of the prisoners distrusted him and said nothing of concern. In Fort Hunt, Drechsler was sitting in a cell with one of his later murderers, Rolf Wizuy, and introduced himself to him as "Obermaat Limmer". Wizuy, who suffered from appendicitis, distrusted the friendly comrade "Limmer". This introduced himself to other prisoners as "glue". For the US authorities, he drew U 118 and wrote down the submarine operations. He also made maps of his hometown Chemnitz with possible targets. Drechsler improved his English skills considerably. Drechsler asked after seven months to be transferred from Fort Hunt to a prison camp with anti-fascists. An interrogating officer also urged that Drechsler, because of his willingness to cooperate, should never be sent to a prison camp with other prisoners from the Navy who knew him and might know about his role. However, this advice was later ignored by the US military authorities.

The US naval command decided to hand Drechsler over to the army responsible for the prisoner-of-war camp for permanent accommodation , as no further important information was expected from him, and so Drechsler left Fort Hunt on January 8, 1944. Drechsler's wounds healed poorly and he suffered from tuberculosis . He was in Fort Leonard Wood ( Missouri treated) because of his tuberculosis and was therefore separated from other prisoners.

On February 4, 1944, the decision was made to move Drechsler to Camp Papago Park - contrary to the warnings of officers and Drechsler's requests . On the morning of March 12th, he boarded a train that reached Camp Papago Park at 3 p.m. Here he pointed out to fellow prisoners how good the Americans had been to him and that Germany would lose the war. There were prisoners in the camp who Drechsler knew from captivity and viewed him as traitors. After 9 p.m., when Drechsler was already in bed, a group of seven men broke into his barrack and seized him. Despite strong opposition, he was bloody beaten, dragged into the shower room and there just before 22:00 suspended . When Drechsler died, he had not been at Camp Papago Park for seven hours.

The offender

Some of the seven perpetrators knew Drechsler from staying in cells together, during which Drechsler tried to elicit militarily important information from them. However, none of them came from the same submarine as Werner Drechsler, U 118 . There were five men from U 615 : Helmut Fischer (21 years old at the time of the crime), Fritz Franke (20 years old), Günter Külsen (21 years old), Bernhard Reyak (20 years old) and Rolf Wizuy (22 years old). The other two were each a man from U 199 , Heinrich Ludwig (25 years), and from U 352 Otto Stengel (26 years), who was married and had children.

The five sub-drivers of U 615 came weeks before their joint action in a camp in Stringtown ( Oklahoma ) together and talked about Drechsler, they already einordneten as traitors. Rolf Wizuy and Heinrich Ludwig recognized that the two suspicious people they described with different names, Leimi and Limmer, were one and the same man - Werner Drechsler from U 118 , to whom the descriptions matched. These matched descriptions by various captured seamen and officers who had been interviewed about military information by this person.

Sergeant Friedrich Murza of U 487 was among those initially accused of complicity in the murder of Drechsler . This was initially classified by the US authorities as ready to cooperate, but he refused to tell Drechsler ("Limmer") anything about technical submarine details in Fort Hunt.

The Camp Papago Park prison camp

The prisoners of war from the sunken submarines were initially held in Stringtown. In January 1944, however, the order was given, all submarine prisoners to Camp Papago Park ( Arizona to relocate). On March 3, 1944, the US Department of War designated Camp Papago Park as a prison camp for all German prisoners of war from the Navy.

Most of the submarine prisoners who were now concentrated in Camp Papago Park were loyal to the Hitler regime at least until the end of the war. Many of these prisoners openly showed their loyalty to Hitler - for example, a self-made swastika flag was hung from a transport truck on February 7, 1945. They maintained effective communication structures in the camp. Officers and men were housed separately, but they communicated using hidden notes, throwing bottles with notes or using light signals with mirrors. The prisoners in particular feared the sea captain Jürgen Wattenberg (1900–1995) from U 162 , who was held in this camp, and who regarded any kind of cooperation with the Americans as high treason. The expected harsh punishment after the final victory intimidated prisoners as well as direct sanctions by comrades loyal to the regime. Drechsler was the only prisoner who was murdered in Camp Papago Park, but others were hit or threatened, including officers such as Leutnant zur See Hermann Ritter (1891–1968) from the weather observation ship 1 Hermann and the lieutenant captain Hellmut Rathke from U 352 .

The course of events

When Werner Drechler arrived at Camp Papago Park on March 12, 1944 at 3 p.m., he was recognized by prisoners who knew him from the cells in Fort Hunt. Drechsler clearly recognized Rolf Wizuy from U 615 , and Bernhard Reyak from the same submarine secretly made contact with chief helmsman Franz Hox and asked him to contact the camp spokesman, Captain Jürgen Wattenberg of U 162 . At a secret meeting in which, in addition to the later seven perpetrators, Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Guenther Kuelsen, Heinrich Ludwig, Bernhard Reyak, Rolf Wizuy and Otto Stengel, Guenther Bleise from U 513 and several NCOs, including Friedrich Murza, Siegfried Elser, Werner Reinl and Franz Hox took part, had clearly recognized several prisoners turners. While some prisoners saw the “Holy Spirit” as appropriate - beating the victim in a masked manner without revealing their own identity - Wizuy and others insisted that Drechsler should die immediately. Hox, who did not know the wood turner, however, refused to give an order as the senior man and left the decision to the men. Otto Stengel announced that Drechsler will probably not survive the night. Stengel went to Drechsler's barrack and asked about him. Although Drechsler initially suspected, he finally spoke openly and showed his wounds as evidence that he was not a traitor. There was a dispute about the Hitler government, its responsibility for the war and the truthfulness of German-language newspapers in the prison camps. At the same time, the discussion of the other perpetrators continued. While Murza and Elser feared severe sanctions against all prisoners in the event of Drechsler's death and saw the "Holy Spirit" as sufficient punishment for the traitor Drechsler, since he would still receive his final sentence after the final victory , Wizuy insisted that Drechsler hang must. He also argued that an injured woodturner would return with the support of the Americans and name the perpetrators. Fischer, Kuelsen, Franke, Reyak and Ludwig agreed with Wizuy while the others left. At 8.30 p.m. Drechsler's death sentence was passed. The conspirators tried in vain to obtain support from officers and non-commissioned officers, who thus left the "burden" to their soldiers alone. Otto Stengel, on the other hand, returned from Drechsler's barrack and joined them. They put on gloves, broke into Drechsler's barrack after 9 p.m. and seized the turner who was lying in bed. He resisted and bit Fischer's hand through his glove, but he had no chance against the seven who beat him bloody and dragged him towards the shower room. Drechsler screamed, a jeep stopped briefly and a searchlight hit the group, which briefly broke apart. Despite Drechsler's calls for help, the jeep drove on. Drechsler was initially able to return to his barrack, but the perpetrators followed him unhindered. They led wood turner into the shower room with a dog leash tied tightly around his neck and hung him up on a rafter on a tent rope shortly before 10 p.m. Reyak watched the door and sent curious prisoners away. Two stood on a bench in the shower room and the other four handed the victim upstairs. The noose was put around the neck and fastened to the rafter, then the bench was knocked over - Drechsler was dead.

The next morning no one used the shower room. All of the prisoners quickly knew that Drechsler had been hung here. However, the prisoners were sent to work as if nothing had happened.

The interrogations

About 100 prisoners were interrogated over the next few weeks. Captain Jürgen Wattenberg told the interrogation officers that he did not know whether Drechsler had been killed or whether he had committed suicide. The bite wound on Helmut Fischer's hand quickly revealed him to be a murder suspect. The prisoners feared for their lives and quickly contradicted what they said. While Wattenberg claimed that he had no contact with the soldiers on the day of the crime, prisoner Oskar Meyer testified that Wattenberg had said that there were some prisoners who did not think like good soldiers and who therefore had to be treated in such a way that they were couldn't talk anymore. Fischer admitted that he had heard Wattenberg say that he was happy about Drechsler's death and that the other anti-fascists should also be hanged. Johann Neumair and Günther Albrecht stated that Wattenberg had encouraged the soldiers to act or even gave the order. Günther Albert was removed from Camp Papago Park because of his anti-fascist stance.

By the end of April 1944, the group of suspects was limited to 16 men who were brought to a secret camp near Stockton in California : Alfred Friedrich, Friedrich Murza, Siegfried Elser, Werner Reinl, Rudolf Wiemer, Herman Polowzyk, Rolf Wizuy, Otto Stengel, Helmut Fischer, Heinrich Ludwig, Guenther Kuelsen, Fritz Franke, Bernhard Reyak, Walter Newlands, Gerhard Richter and Lothar Mandelkow. Here the prisoners were "brutally and effectively" interrogated, using lie detectors . Friedrich Murza was the first to testify, and shortly afterwards Sigfried Elser. Both NCOs named the seven men who decided Drechsler's death and who had carried out the deed. This was to save Murza and Elser's lives later. Wizuy, Fischer, Kuelsen, Franke, Reyak, Ludwig and Stengel could no longer deny their involvement in the act, so they confessed to the act, but each of them emphasized that they had punished a traitor in their ranks, so it was about an act of war and not a murder .

On June 30, 1944, Coronel Gerald L. Church, Major Francis P. Walsh, and Major Herman J. Zabel reported that Werner Drechsler died on Sunday, March 12, 1944 at 9:30 p.m. in Camp Papago Park. He was murdered by hanging by the German prisoners of war Otto Stengel, Rolf Wizuy, Heinrich Ludwig, Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Bernhard Reyak and Guenther Kuelsen. The German prisoners of war Sigfried Elser and Friedrich Murza helped them and advised them on why they should be charged as accomplices. They recommended that the accused be charged with the murder of Werner Drechsler. On July 11, 1944, the 9th Service Command, under Colonel John H. Wilson, gave orders to convene a military tribunal for these prisoners. The prisoners had killed Werner Drechsler together and in pursuit of common intent, with bad intent, willingly, deliberately, criminally and with forethought by strangling him.

The death sentence of the military tribunal

The trial before the military tribunal began on August 15, 1944 and lasted only two days. On August 16, 1944, Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Guenther Kuelsen, Heinrich Ludwig, Bernhard Reyak, Rolf Wizuy and Otto Stengel were found guilty of the murder of Werner Drechsler and sentenced to death by hanging . Objections by the defense that it was an act of war against traitors were thus rejected. Fort Leavenworth was chosen as the place of execution . The sentence was pronounced in the absence of the defendants, but news of the death sentence reached them quickly. A review committee found the judgment on November 17, 1944 to be lawful.

However, the execution of the judgment should be delayed by more than a year. The Reich government under Adolf Hitler knew about the verdict and, in return, had seven US prisoners of war sentenced to death by hanging. The goal of the Germans was an exchange of prisoners , but this did not happen. After the Wehrmacht surrendered on May 8, 1945, there was no longer any danger of American prisoners of war being executed by the German judiciary. So the seven convicts were placed on Fort Leavenworth death row. The sentence was re-examined and finally upheld, and on June 3, 1945, the President of the United States , Harry S. Truman , signed the sentence and set its execution for August 25, 1945.

Execution of the seven perpetrators

For the first time in the 20th century, seven convicts were executed at the same time, which is why a particularly large gallows had to be built at Fort Leavenworth for seven executions.

The day before the execution , the execution orders were read out to the convicts in their cells, after which they were visited by the Catholic chaplain. On the last day of their lives, they wrote down farewell letters to their families and friends in Germany as well as their last will . Finally, they received religious assistance from the chaplain. The first death row inmate, Helmut Fischer, was called around midnight and said goodbye to his six comrades through the bars with a handshake. On August 25, 1945, shortly after midnight, he was taken to the gallows with his arms and legs tied up and hung over his head with a black hood. No sooner had the hanged man been declared dead than the body was cut off and placed in a coffin . This has now been repeated for all convicts. The last one, Rolf Wizuy, could only tell that nobody was there to say goodbye. He died at 3 a.m. Shortly after sunrise, the coffins were taken to the nearby cemetery and buried without honor.

The seven executed are buried in the US Disciplinary Barracks in Military Prison Cemetery , Fort Leavenworth, Kansas . As a dishonorable burial, only the name, the military rank and the date of death are engraved on their gravestones. The graves are in a back row, separated from the rest of the dead.

literature

  • Richard Whittingham: Martial Justice - The Last Mass Execution in the United States . United States Naval Institute Press, Annapolis (Maryland) 1997. ISBN 1-5575-0945-X .
  • Jane Eppinga: Death at Papago Park POW Camp: A Tragic Murder and America's Last Mass Execution . The History Press, Cheltenham 2017. ISBN 978-1-4396-6086-7 .
  • Paul Carell , Günter Böddeker : The prisoners - life and survival of German soldiers behind barbed wire . Ullstein, Berlin 1990. Chapter A Fememord and Its Consequences , pp. 77–91.
  • Meredith Lentz Adams: Murder and Martial Justice - Spying and Retribution in World War II America . 2011
  • R. Michael Wilson: Legal Executions in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma Including the Indian Territory - A Comprehensive Registry . McFarland, Jefferson (North Carolina) 2014. pp. 87f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 43.
  2. ↑ a b c U-118, Uboatarchive.net: Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Washington, ONI 250 - G / Serial 23, Report on the Interrogation of Survivors From U-118 Sunk on July 12, 1943.
  3. ↑ a b Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 47-49.
  4. ↑ a b Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 60f.
  5. ^ Paul Carell and Günter Böddeker (1990), p. 84.
  6. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 54.
  7. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 50.
  8. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 52.
  9. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 51.
  10. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 58.
  11. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 54.
  12. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 57f.
  13. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 59-66.
  14. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 59-67.
  15. ↑ a b c Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 67f.
  16. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 78.
  17. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 79.
  18. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 68.
  19. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 86-96.
  20. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 98.
  21. ^ R. Michael Wilson: Legal Executions in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma Including the Indian Territory - A Comprehensive Registry . McFarland, Jefferson (North Carolina) 2014. p. 88.
  22. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 104.
  23. ^ Paul Carell and Günter Böddeker (1990), p. 91.
  24. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 107.
  25. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 108.
  26. ^ Heikendorf (Möltenort), Plön district, Schleswig-Holstein: U-Boot-Ehrenmal Möltenort, U-615, type VIIC, 3rd U-Flotilla La Pallice, front boat. Online project Fallen Memorials
personal data
SURNAME Drechsler, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German submarine driver (U 118) of the Kriegsmarine in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Mühlberg (Elbe)
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1944
Place of death Camp Papago Park , Arizona