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N THE MORNING of May 17, 1924, the sun beat When he reached them he was hardly able to stammer |
warmly upon the high slated roofs of Hanover, news of what he had found. The others laughed.
Germany, and cascaded in golden torrents down “Trying to. pull a fast one, eh Johann?” one of the
‘ the moss-ridden embankments by the calm waters of older boys chided sagely.
the river Leine. “No! I swear it,” Johann whimpered. “There is a skull
A group of blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters raced back there in the bushes.”
down the incline toward the river, shrilly engaged in a The children returned to the junk heap and gasped |
game of “‘Cops and Robbers.” with surprise when they saw the gray, evil-smelling «
Little Johann, the bandit, was trying hard to make a__ bones. Rushing up the bank to the highway, they stopped |
clean getaway: His eyes sparkled with excitement as a passing motorist and told him of their discovery. He |
he scampered through the thick underbrush and found took them into Hanover and notified the police, thus |
himself in what he recognized as an ideal hideout. It precipitating the first investigation that was to uncover
was an old junk heap surrounded entirely by tall, green the most revolting crime horror of modern times.
bushes. As he crept on all fours toward the center of the An autopsy indicated that the skull had belonged toa |
debris he grinned at his own cunning and like a real young man between the ages of eighteen and twenty. It |
gangster chief began to take stock of his surroundings. bore no marks of violence whatever, except—incredibly! |
Suddenly he froze, his pink cheeks drained of color. —it had been cleanly scalped. ‘
w é For not three feet away from him, and exactly on a The police had four theories as to the victim’s fate...
ie 3 level-with his eyes, lay a grinning human skull! He might have been a participant in one of the bloody
vB Spellbound, Johann stared at the grisly object. Then, political uprisings which had afflicted Germany since ©
be with a piercing scream of fright, he turned and fled back the war. Or perhaps he had died in the typhus epidemic
L to his playmates. : i which had recently ravaged the nearby city of Alfeld,
¥. HAAR MAA, facet, a
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¥ 1 CORPSES |
he stove in-
~which the mass
Slaughterer:
* burned smaller.
portions
where corpses were known to have’ been thrown into
the river for disposal. It was also possible that the skull
came from a cadaver used for experimental purposes at
the Goettingen Anatomical Laboratory. Finally, of course,
there was the distinct chance that wanton murder had
been committed.
Yet, strange as it seems now, the Kriminal-polizei di¢
not care to pursue the latter angle too closely.
This phenomenon is explained by the fact that, in 1924,
Hanover, with its 450,000 inhabitants, was protected by
a mere handful of overworked police, who tried des-
perately to cope with an army of criminals of every type.
It was post-war Germany. A Germany slowly being
ground to pieces under the boot of economic and political
ips.
It was a time, too, of complete moral chaos. Prostitutes
openly walked the Streets. Thievery was an accepted
mode of business, and murder a means of acquiring a
pair of shoes. No wonder an anonymous skull was of
little interest to the harassed police.
In fact, it in probable that the case would have been
forgotten in the general welter of rampant crime, had it
STRUCT!
DEVOID OF
AFFECTION.
VERSATILE WiTH STR
MINOICTIVE,M
By Jesse P. Galt
Special Investigator for
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
HORROR PILED UPON
HORROR WHEN GERMAN
SLEUTHS FOUND THE
TRAIL OF THIS SEX-
TWISTED BUTCHER!
not been for a sensational sequel which occurred two
weeks later.
On a balmy May evening, one Hannes Reiner and
Lieselotte Urschel, his fiancée, were sitting ‘on a bench
in the Muehlengraben Park, a crowded rendezvous. of
lovers. They snuggled close together in an effort to forget
for a brief moment the poverty which drove them to a
public place for their only privacy.
“See, darling,” the young man whispered, “only a few
months more and we'll be out of this. The boss promised
me that if I land that contract, the raise is mine, And you
know, then we'll have enough to marry on. ‘Think of it,
a place all of our own. ,, .”
He got no further.
reece
et
*
8
#
ai
i
ie
ae
degenerate sex habits. A surprise raid
on his apartment, covered up under the
direction, Retz shifted the course of the
investigation from Haarman to his
closest friends. and bitterest enemies,
His most intimate friend was a certain
Hans Grans, a young petty criminal
. who was notoriously supported by the
older man’s bounty, much as a youth-
ful mistress is kept by an aging rake.
Dark, sinister Adolf Witkowski, on
the. other. hand, was Supposedly the
stool pigeon’s mortal enemy.
Therefore it was an amazing sight
for the detectives when one night they
. 8aw Witkowski and Grans walking arm
in arm along the Georgstrasse. Detec-
tive Neumann and Lieutenant Probst,
sensing the Significance of this unusual
sight, strolled up to them,
“So,” Probst exclaimed cordially,
“having a good time?”
Grans and Witkowski showed blank
faces, but did not refuse ta join the two
officers in a glass of beer. At the tavern,
Neumann Casually asked “Where’s
your pal, Fritz?”
Hans Grans, sl ghtly drunk, nodded
agreement,
Knowing now that there was some
sort of rift between Haarman and
Grans, the detectives pressed another
point. Having already made mental
note of the strikingly fancy outfit that
Grans wore, Probst said: :
“Say, Hans, you look like a million
marks. Did a rich uncle drop dead for
you?”
Before Grans could answer, Wilkow- ©
ski - quick] interposed with a sneer,
“Yeah—his uncle died. Well, thanks for
the beer.” And with that he got to his
feet, took Grans in charge, and left.
R£%% that night sent out descriptions
of Witkowski’s and Grans’ clothing
to everyone who had reported a youth
missing during the last five years.
While the Witzel skull was still the only
piece among the assortment of bones
identified, and although the forwarded
This news, large enough in itself,
was followed almost instantly by an-
other revelation of even greater pro-
Retz had given veteran Detective
Kommissar Louis Mueller, widely
celebrated sleuth from the homicide
squad of Hamburg, a free hand to work
on the case as he saw fit, and he had
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
chosen to Pursue his investigation
along original lines. For t
had lived disguised as a Jobless laborer
in Rote Reihe, the street where lived
Haarman, Grans, Witkowski, Mrs. En-
rectly. from ‘Haarman, who apparently
had greatly increased his peddling
operations,
Reviewing in his mind these new
revelations in connection with Haar-
man’s business activities, Retz had to
ish mystery of the murdered youths?
t the police chief's suggestion,
Mueller went to “Pop” Engel’s estab-
lishment and purchased several cuts of
“beef” and “pork,” which were immed-
iately rushed to the police chemists’
laboratories for analysis,
store was nothing else than human
flesh! The scientists had conducted ex-
haustive tests and the fact was proven
beyond a doubt,
death!
Yet if the fiend was the peddler
Haarman, could he be trapped before
he visited destruction on other unsus-
~ pecting youths? :
[*™E£DIATELY Retz threw. an even
” heavier cordon of detectives around
Haarman. He had Grans, Witkowski,
Engel, his daughter, a friend named
Wegehenkel, and all their associates
shadowed by the largest force of
Very soon, a telephone call from one
of the men at the station reported that
their ruse was succeeding—that Haar-
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FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
man had just approached the decoy,
The informant was ordered back to his
post to cover the progress of his fellow
detective. For a short time, cheerful
assurances were phoned in, but an hour
later came the disappointing news that
Haarman had relinquished his new-
found companion for another lad. And
a few minutes later Haarman left with
the latter, one Kurt Fromm.
Thus another hope was dashed to
pieces. But more than this, the grave
question of the safety of the lad arose.
Did they dare let Haarman take this
unprotected boy up to his room? Much
as reason directed against this course,
the police. had no alternative but to
allow it.
The following morning, Haarman
and Fromm were trailed from the
house to the Central Railroad Station.
There, a heated dispute broke out be-
tween the two, ending finally with the
enraged Haarman grabbing the youth
by the neck and dragging him straight
into the police bureau located there,
“Arrest this man!” Haarman raged,
anger purpling his contorted face.
“But why—on what grounds, Haar-
man?” the officer on duty; who like
every policeman in Hanover knew the
peddler well, inquired.
“He stole my watch!”
The officer asked Haarman to wait in
the anteroom while he questioned the
“Well, lad,” he asked when they were
alone, “what about this watch. Did you
take it?”
“No. But there’s something else I’ve
got to tell you, officer. Last night I was
up at Fritz’s room. We drank a lot, see?
Well—he keeled over, and I took a look
around. Behind the stove I saw a
heavy-looking package wrapped in
newspapers. When I took the papers
off, I saw .. .” And there the boy hesi-
tated.
“Well, speak up—what was it?”
The boy gulped. “In that package I
saw—a head! Ill never forget it as long
as I live! It was horrible—green eyes,
black hair, bushy eyebrows, and a
mouth awfully screwed up...”
“Boy,” the officer gasped, “sit tight
and shut up!”
He grabbed the phone, informed
headquarters, and was ordered to ar-
rest Haarman immediately.
Meanwhile, the police broke into the
“apartment and made quickly for the
stove behind which Fromm said he had
seen the head. It was not there! They
turned the place upside down, but to no
avail. There was no head anywhere,
What they did discover, however, was a
cot discolored with dried blood; several
butcher’s utensils; some oddly assorted
clothing of all sizes; and, stuffed away
in a closet, two huge earthenware cal-
drons filled with salted flesh.
Laboratory tests of these findings
revealed that the blood on the cot was
human, but—the flesh in the pots was
genuine pork! :
Desperate at this setback, the officers
staked everything on the slight lead
. that the description of the mysterious
head afforded them. A sketch was made
of it tallying as closely as possible with
Fromm’s description, and immediately
reproduced on thousands of news-
papers, billboards, “wanted” signs in
police stations, and post - offices
throughout the country.
In less than 24 hours, the police knew
that the head actually had existed, and
that what: Fromm had called a
“screwed-up mouth” wes in reality the
birthmark harelip of one Gunther
Hanke, who had disappeared recently,
Friends who had seen Hanke last,
testified that he had wandered off in the
company not of Haarman, but of Hans
Grans. This brought about the immed-
iate arrest of Grans, and a thorough
search of his room. And there Gun-
ther’s trousers were found, openly
hanging from a peg.
RE? Von Manteuffel, and’ Mueller
now grilled the recalcitrant sus-
pect by turns. His pale face exuding
Sweat from every pore, his eyes blood-
shot, his thick shock of straw-colored
hair fallen over his forehead, Grans
clung to his story: ‘
“I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Gunther.
I bought those pants from Haarman—
I swear it!” ,
“Who did it then?” they pressed him.
“Haarman,” he shrieked hatefully.
“He did it! He killed him—he killed
them all. I took Gunther to him, but I
Swear to God I didn’t know what Fritz
was up to.”
The officers made him sign his tes-
timony and took it up to Haarman.
“Well, game’s up, Fritz,” Retz said.
“Grans has given us a full confession.
Tell us, why did you kill Gunther
Hanke? And all the others?”
Haarman shrugged his shoulders dis-
dainfully.
“That's old stuff, boys. You don’t ex-
pect me to fall for that, do you?”
“We found Gunther's head, Fritz,
and that alone is enough to knock you
off.” :
“Oh no, you didn’t,” he grinned.
“There’s no such thing as Gunther’s
head. He made for Hamburg and: sold
his clothes to me. I bought them be-
cause Hans liked them.”
Was there no way to pierce the
armor of this mocking rogue? The of-
ficers thought there was. They con-
fronted him with Grans.
It was a tense moment when Grans
accused his former boon companion in
order to save his own skin—accused
him of having assaulted, murdered and
butchered an endless stream of victims.
The sneer on Haarman’s face van-
ished, and he quickly lost his air of
braggadocio. He quailed at the charges
screamed at him by the only person
beside himself whom he held in real
affection. Curious as it was, this mon-
ster who had in cold blood sent count-
less youths to horrible deaths, could .
not bear the duplicity of Grans.
He.suddenly broke down completely,
an unappetizing, sobbing hulk of fear,
and asked.to be allowed to lay his con-
fession before a priest. Since the priest,
bound by his office, would have been
unable to pass his information on to the
police, this request was refused.
Now utterly shattered, Haarman
agreed at last to tell his tale to the
detectives.
and t!
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In the sixty volumes of police records
devoted to-the history of the Haarman
case, the confession stands out as the
‘ most fantastic and weird episode in this
most fantastic of cases:
“T admit that I killed, possibly during
the strange fits of madness and lust that
would overpower me at times, a num-
ber of youths whose names, with the
exception of Robert Witzel, Fritz Wit-
tig, Adolph MHanappel, and Ernst
Spieker, seem now to escape me.”
“I never really wanted to kill them.
They were mostly poor boys and I
honestly took them home with the in-
tention of sheltering and feeding them.
But then we got drunk and suddenly
everything went black. Inflamed with
bloodlust, I would throw my full
weight upon them, sink my teeth deep
into the jugular vein, and while drink-
ing their blood, strangle them to
death...
“Later in the night I would wake up
beside a corpse. To stiffen my nerves
then, I brewed a pot of strong black
coffee and smoked a good cigar.) This
done, I set. about dismembering the
body. Sometimes, when I was too tired
for this, I let it go until morning.
_First I ripped open the abdomen, and
tearing out the intestines, hid them
away in a slop pail. Then with towels
I soaked up all the blood that ran into
the pelvic cavity until it was dried out.
Next I skinned off the ribs, and, insert- :
ing my hands inside the body, squeezed
them until they cracked in the shoulder
region. Now I could take-out heart,
lungs and the rest, slice them up, and
store them away. Finally I chopped off
arms and legs. Thereupon I cut off the
head, and scalped it just like an Indian.
I emptied it of brains and, if I happened
to have the time, hacked it to bits.
“I disposed of the useless parts of the
body and prepared the rest for sale at
the market as wurst and ‘suelze.’ Some-
times I came home to find Grans, who
would show me a corpse under the bed
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
and laughingly say: ‘Fritz, that’s one
of yours. Get busy on it.’ ‘Hans,’ I would
cry, ‘it can’t be mine! Look, it hasn’t got
my teethmarks.’ ~
“He would order me to do as I was
told, and have the suit ready for him
the next morning. But, anyhow, if
Grans hadn’t got to those boys, I would
have. You see, gentlemen, I needed a
million corpses!”
He needed a million corpses. The re-
mark was utterly insane—but the bes-
tial vampire of Hanover, his twisted
mind filled with the most debased cun-
‘ning of the ages, had done his best to
approximate that number.
After a tempestuous trial, during
which enraged citizens screamed abuse
at the prisoner, the jury found Fritz
Haarman guilty of twenty-four mur-
ders. There were more of which he was
suspected, but twenty-four was con-
sidered enough to try him on. ...
Grans, the rouged and powdered in-
timate who had stripped the corpses of
their clothing and worn them proudly
at beer halls, was found guilty of com-
plicity in but one case. Witkowski, the
Engels, Wegehenkel, Krieger, Dora
Mrutzek and Elli Schulz were all
acquitted.
Because of his youth, Grans was
given only a. twelve-year sentence.
but the crafty Haarman, cursed by all
his countrymen, was sentenced to
death.
. It was a gala day in Hanover when
Haarman was taken to the guillotine to
expiate his crimes. The prisoner walked
forward resolutely. The heavy knife
came downward with a swish, the
monster’s neck was severed, and the
head tumbled drunkenly into its
basket. «
Millions in Germany cheered the
news, relieved to be rid at last of Fritz.
Haarman, bloodiest vampire of all time
—degenerate corrupter of youth, mass
slaughterer, and purveyor of human
flesh.
CLUE OF THE
CRIMSON LIPS
(Continued from page 43)
’
and the disposition of a gorilla, John-
son fitted my mental picture of Ange-
lina’s slayer. .
While Johnson’s description was be-
ing broadcast by Martin and Kenney,
sheriff's deputies and my police officers
were cruising the streets. We did not
overlook the possibility that the sus-
pect had been trapped within the city
limits. Trigger fingers were itching
that night, for every officer knew that
if the Negro was cornered he would
put up a desperate fight.
The hours dragged on but no trace
was found of the wanted man. Appar-
ently he had escaped from the city.
Steadily District Attorney Kenney.
kept his post at. the telephone with a
map of New Mexico before him. He
and Detective Martin spent the early
morning hours of November 15 calling
officers at distant outposts on-all roads
loading from Santa Foe,
When Detective Martin figured out
loopholes in the statewide dragnet,
Kenney would plug them with a long
distance call which roused another
sleeping official from bed.
_ Three fast highway routes lead from
Santa Fe, two in southerly directions,
one to the north. The route to the
southwest through Albuquerque,
sixty-six miles distant, seemed to be
the most likely road for the fleeing
killer to take, for it is the shortest and
fastest route to the Mexican border,
which has always held an attraction
for fugitives of the Southwest.
Yet the southeasterly route also pro-
vided an excellent getaway. The main
highway in this direction, U. S. No. 85,
circles the southern fringe of the Cule-
bra Range and turns north into Colo-
rado, but there are a number of side
roads which turn south from it into
the central part of New Mexico, which
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Hans Grans, the butcher’s paramour and
partner in crime. He is wearing a coat belong-
ing to one of the murder victims
20
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born safely. Future pregnancies had been made impos-
sible, that was all. A penalty was fixed for further agi-
tation against the law.
At about the same time in France the Police arrested
three citizens who voluntarily had had themselves ster-
[: THE MIDDLE of the past Summer, a New York
- ilized by a visiting foreign surgeon. They are being
held for trial on a charge of criminal birth control, The
case caused an uproar, with the Government contending
that the spread of sterilization would deprive the coun-
try of soldiers in years to come.
[E is unfortunate that both the above clashes were in-
spired by politics. The problem is one of modern
criminology and social reform. When the Nazis punish
their enemies for even discussing it, while the French
get it mixed up with militarism, the cause of science is
not served. As I have pointed out in this series, sterili-
zation is a weapon which must be calmly, sanely em-
eyed to prevent the unfit from reproducing their kind.
very nation on éarth will be forged to accept the prin-
ciple, for none can afford to be the last hotbed of vice,
crime and moronism. Like vaccination against smallpox,
mae against delinquency will most surely impose
itself.
Germany has the good luck to be on the right side
of this matter now, A seen. the motives of her rulers
may be. She had to cope during the post-war years with
one of the worst epidemics of Jaw-breaking, tinged with
perversion, in the history of the human race. The ex-
treme measures she has taken have already shown re-
sults. Moral conditions in her cities have improved, and
there are fewer arrests for major offenses,
I intend this month to tell the story of a frightful
German monster, whose case directly influenced the
Government in favor of passing the statute for the ster-
ilization of criminals. He was a living proof that no
mad dog, no poisonous snake, is more dangerous to
society than the sex pervert who has developed a blood
lust. All such must be destroyed when caught. But duty,
as this case will show, is to sterilize at the first sign of
malignancy and halt the evil then and there.
4 ad Hotere the close of the world war the city of
Hanover was sunk in poverty, disease and the black-
est despair. The shortage of food had reached so acute
a stage that old people and children were dying of
malnutrition. It was necessary to stand in line for hours
to get a ration of horse-gristle, turnips and imitation
coffee made from acorns. The streets swarmed with
crippled soldiers and homeless children. With the mili-
tary defeat of Germany in sight, -Police discipline large-
ly had broken down.
In September, 1918, there returned to Hanover a
man who had been, born and raised there. His name
was Fritz Haarman. He had been convicted of grand
larceny in 1914, and with time off for good behavior he
lew f Tia
STER
=
Fritz Fioarhen — |.
lf a More In
ists Than Ha
His Foul G
Come to Li
Sterilization
_ticed upon
By. Ex-(
had just completed a five-year jail sentence. This had
prevented him from being conscripted for the army.
He later made the sinister statement that the conditions
he found in war-stricken Hanover had been greatly to
his liking. He felt that it had become a city of adven-
ture, a place where a man of his peculiar talents could
profit from the misfortunes of others.
HAARMAN took a room in the Cellarstrasse. Before
the month was out, he was in trouble with the
authorities. Friedel Rothe, 17 years old, had been re-
ported missing. His father happened to get back from
the front two days later, and the elder Rothe demanded
an energetic search. From a friend of the boy it was
learned that he had been seen with Haarman. There-
upon Haarman’s quarters were visited by detectives. :
They did not find Friedel. He never was found.
But Haarman had been caught: in an indecent position
with another young lad. He was arrested on a homo-
sexuality charge and given a year in jail. There can
be no doubt that this diverted suspicion from the man
as a possible murderer. His intimacy with the missing:
Friedel Rothe was ascribed to degenerate lust,
This is the moment to consider Haarman’s nature,
his heredity and his record. For he had barely entered
on the hideous last phase. The worst would develop
only when he left the Hanover city Prison.
He was born in 1879, the son of a railroad fireman
who threw up his job when Fritz was five, and lived
on his wife’s savings. The mother was an inferior type
mentally. She bore six children, of whom Fritz was
the youngest. One of the brothers was sent to the
penitentiary for a long term: he had assaulted the 12-
need daughter of a neighbor. All the three sisters
came public prostitutes before they were of age.
FRITZ showed from the start that he was queer. He
loved to dress up and to play at being a girl. He
had a collection of dolls. He was fond of cooking and
sewing. Extremely bashful with boys, he yet had a way
of flirting with them which earned him many whippings.
At 5 he was convicted of offenses against children,
and sent to an asylum. The well-known psychiatrist,
Doctor Schmalfuss, examined him there and reported
prised a' prowler. Now the detectives were reconsidering.
Some of the knife wounds were abdominal. Moreover, the
cottage was close to the S-Bahn tracks in the suburb of
Sommerland. :
With two certain and one probable case to worry about,
the detectives pressed the two ‘surviving women for at
least a general outline of the man’s appearance. Just
about the only thing the girls agreed upon was that he was
stocky and wore a uniform. But who didn’t in war-time
Germany? The men in the armed forces, members of
the Nazi party, civil servants, air raid wardens—all decked
themselves out in flashy uniforms and visored caps, dis-
tinguishable only by a multitude of insignia, half of which
nobody was able to identify.
According to the women, the assailant had worn a blue -
or black greatcoat. With brass buttons, said Frieda; plastic
buttons, Ingeborg contended. As soon as Ingeborg got
out of the hospital, the detectives arranged a military
fashion show for the two. In a blue-lighted room, men
of stocky build modeled some twenty different uniforms.
The women reached agreement that a railroad man’s outfit
came about closest. Any other choice would have made the
investigators happier. At the time of the assaults the
“women might have mistaken the man entering’ the com-
partment for an S-Bahn employee, and now their sub-
conscious minds could be playing tricks on them.
Whatever. it was, three attacks in three weeks called
for high-level action. Herr Doktor Bernhard Wehner, chief
of the Crime Prevention Bureau for the entire Reich, was
given a briefing of the facts.
That the Rummelsburg-Karlshorst-Sommerland triangle
was unsafe for women was not news to him. Women
accosted, molested, ravished, numbed by a single blow on
the head—this had been going on since 1938. If a victim
could give any description at all, it was usually of a
stocky man wearing some nondescript uniform. The inci-
dents had been played down by the understaffed police,
the controlled press and Nazi authorities, who wouldn’t
admit that there was such a thing as crime in Hitler’s
Third Reich. While professional criminologists and law-
enforcement officials disagreed with this absurd view, there
was nothing they could do about it. Now that assault with
intent to murder, and murder itself, had entered the pic-
ture, objections to publicity could perhaps be over-ridden.
At least, Dr. Wehner tried to do it. He called in chubby
Wilhelm Liidtke, Berlin’s homicide chief, whom he con-
"We woild be powerless to
stop him from bludgeoning
one of our girls to death,”
“Chief -Liidtke said. "But we
would certainly be able to
catch him right afterward"
Nazi’ authorities wouldn't
admit that crime existed
in Hitler's Third Reich, but
_ Doktor. Bernhard Wehner,
head of. crime prevention,
knew that women were being
beaten and murdered nightly
Xn SAAR. (EAA NNR NRNNE 2A MMR SE EEE nae senate
sidered Germany’s most brilliant criminal investigator.
“Look into a possible connection between minor sex
offenses and the S-Bahn attacks,” he instructed Liidtke.
To suspect a tie-up and be right in a matter involving
a metropolitan area with some seven million people was
either a lucky guess or sheer genius.
While detectives were up to their necks in squeezing
information from the victims of assault cases running back
one or two years, the S-Bahn monster struck again, not
only once, but very. likely twice, on the fog-swept, dismal
night of December 3rd, 1940.
In Simrock Street, which leads off. the Rummelsburg
S-Bahn station, the lifeless body of a woman was found
shortly after midnight, lying alongside the gutter. In the
back of her head gaped a hole. Papers in her purse identi-
fied her as Matilda Hollesch, a pretty, 22-year-old salesgirl.
But this time there had been rape.
The detective squad was returning from Simrock Street
when they were called to a nearby point along the S-Bahn
tracks. The victim was another attractive girl, a 20-year-
old postal clerk, Irmgard Frank. Her skull bore a similar
wound, and her purse was found a short distance away
but intact. Circumstances made it certain that the mur-
dered girl had been thrown from the train. But she had
not been violated.
This time the monster had left a calling card. An S-Bahn
passenger found it when he sat down on something hard:
a. 2-foot piece of electric cable buried in the upholstery.
It was the,thick, lead-sheathed kind used in underground
installations. The hairs and the blood of both victims were
on it.
Berlin’s Criminological Institute compared the lead
cable with a large array of samples, The manufacturers
turned out to be the German Cable Works, in Berlin, who
at once identified the cable as the kind made especially
for the municipal transport administration which operated,
among others, the S-Bahn line.
“Didn’t I see some torn-up track around Rummelsburg?”
Liidtke rumbled. ‘
Yes, he had, came the answer. Repair work going on
there. for months was extensive. The cable could have
come from there. First, the women had agreed the killer
wore a railroad uniform; now the cable seemed to link
him to the S-Bahn.
Willy Zach, a top investigator, all but took up living
quarters at the Rummelsburg S-Bahn station. But as a
at.
o
aS HENRY JORDAN
\
‘ * ,
it HE SEX ATTACKS, knife mutilations -and railroad
| i murders started back in the dismal fall days of 1940.
- » “They had been preceded by a wave of petty assaults
i and molestations, which if checked could have prevented a
' vast. metropolis from coming into the grip of.a long, name-:
i d less horror. But the police had done little or nothing, and
Lt ‘time and place accounted for this.. The city was Berlin,
i Germany, then for the second year under the pall of a
Ih. mad war and doomed to fiery destruction. By that time
j : minor offenses had ceased to matter. :
t On the night of September 20th, 1940, petite Frieda
| Lausche was riding the S-Bahn elevated train on her way
pias home from work, She stiffened nervously-when the shrill
ga ‘blast of the train whistle pierced the stillness of the black-
out. Her pounding heart matched the quickening tempo
of the rail clicks as ‘the train picked up speed ‘along the’
deserted: stretch between Rummelsburg and Karlshorst,
i eastern suburbs of Berlin. The dim blue light in the car
gave Frieda an eerie feeling. She cast a furtive glance at
the man seated across the way, the only other occupant of
the car. The shadow of his sharp-visored military cap
covered his face. ; :
Suddenly, the man sprang up and hurléd open the car
| . door.. He whirled upon Frieda like a tiger, seizing her by
il a Beets the shoulders and jerking her to her feet.. With a tre-
54 mendous shove he pitched her out into the blackness.
Later that evening, Berlin police listened to the young
aoe woman’s story. They raised their eyebrows questioningly.
oa Were they to believe that Frieda Lausche had been thrown
| ‘fb... from a speeding train and had lived to tell about it? Be-
Li} eps, sides, Frieda cauld not explain the man’s motives. She-
ae had. been neither robbed’ nor attacked. She did insist
that she was a gym teacher and knew how to fall without
Ab aN
ey
4
‘The PRETTY DEI
andthe Monster
‘Police recover bodies of five women. How many more did he kill?
serious injury to herself.
scratched some words on a pad, thanked her and promptly
forgot about it.
Two weeks later an attack on,another woman sent the
police thumbing through their files and studying Frieda
Lausche’s story with renewed interest. Ingeborg Goetz, an
attractive secretary, had been the victim ‘of an assault |
around midnight on:October 11th. A man had struck her
over the head_with a club pulled from his coat sleeve and
had slashed her abdomen with a knife. Then he had tossed
her from a fast-moving train. The rail line was the
Schnell-Bahn or “S-Bahn,” the rapid transit system of
Berlin.. The area was the desolate stretch between Rum-
melsburg and Karlshorst. goat
The detectives now listened to Frieda Lausche in earnest.
And as soon as Ingeborg Goetz had sufficiently’ improved
they went to the hospital to get further details from her.
A frustrating fact emerged: The second victim was no
more able to describe the attacker than the first one had
been. Not too surprising, because of the war-time black-
out. Except for dim, blue pin-point lights, the S-Bahn
trains moved along, ghostlike, in complete darkness.
Attacks such’ as these would not have been possible on
’ any but an S-Bahn train. The cars are divided into twelve
separate-compartments which are entered through as many
outside doors. This assures fast service at stations, but in
an emergency passengers can’t move from one compartment
to another. In each instance the woman had been alone
when the man boarded the train and quietly sat down.
The detectives were now ready to link the fiend to a
third, and this time fatal, assault. On October 4th, a young
war widow, Gerda Dietrich, had been slashed to death
in her -cottage. The theory had been that she had sur-
But the officials shrugged, |
ia
DECOY ,
F
5
% ra
OQ RGORZOW, decapitated 7/22/1941, %,
é
;
aw
Crushed. skulls, in wake’ of Berlin's: blackout prowler, substantiated his sworn
vow that "No other woman will ever live to scream again." But the grim trail
provided police with a pattern’ which fingered guilty man with deadly accuracy.
-
clue the cable proved disappointing. It could have come
from a good dozen supply sheds which stored cable in the -
vicinity. Any one of a large number of workmen could
have helped himself to a piece. For a stranger to walk
off with one was less likely, since even left-overs had to
be accounted for and were carefully locked up at night.
At any rate, no quick progress could be expected in tracing
the death bludgeon back to the man who had taken it.
Zach set up a 24-hour surveillance of tracks, depots, and
trains with the help of some fifty detectives, many working
undercover. ‘
Liidtke, meanwhile, stuck to the desk and brain work,
studying the files. He came to know almost by heart the
reports on a large number of old assault cases. He was
after some common denominator in them, such as a detail
of speech or appearance; something buried or so far over-
looked and now likely to offer a clue. Locations where
women had been accosted, molested or attacked, he marked
with pins on a wall map which began to look like a pin-
CUSHION,
Gut before the various phases of the investigation had
borne results, the S-Bahn monster was heard from again,
on December 22nd. He bludgeoned and tossed frorn a
train Maria Bahr, a young housewife en route to pick up
her husband at his place of work. The time: 7 a.m. Still
a dark hour at that time of the year, but the switch from
the middle of the night to morning appeared to be a new
tack. Aside from that, the familiar pattern was repeated.
Money and knickknacks were again found scattered: over
a length of siding as they had dropped from the young
woman’s purse in her fatal tumble into space.
The public was growing panicky. With the men off to
war, offices and workshops were largely staffed by women,
out on the blacked-out streets and in the trains at all
hous Iowas practically impossible always to travel in
sroups. The outrage just had to come to an end,
\
_Liidtke had a talk with Charlotte Wiecking, hefty chief
of the women’s detective corps. “I want fifty of your girls
to ride the trains as decoys—pretty ones,” he said.
“Yes, you can have them.” ‘
“But armed. . .”
No. Strictly against the rules. The purpose of the corps
was supervision and surveillance, not repression and rough
stuff. The rules could not be broken, even in this emer-
gency, Fraulein Wiecking asserted.
“But for their own protection, Fraulein,” Liidtke insisted,
“they must be armed. This man is a monster who already
has killed many women.”
She shrugged. “My girls will travel on the trains. These
are times when chances must be taken: It is their duty.”
Liidtke considered this. “I will arrange for one of my
men to travel in a compartment adjoining each decoy’s,”
he said. “Since there are no connecting doors they will
not be able to stop the monster from killing your girls,
but they will at least be able to catch him after the
murder,”
So fifty attractive German girls became willing prey
for the marauder.
In addition, detectives were posted in rotating shifts
along a 10-mile length of track, in cooperation with the
S-Bahn people. And, since it was very likely that the
slayer was an S-Bahn employee, Willy Zach tried to get
at him through the personnel records. With five thousand
employces to worry about, this proved a long, tedious task.
Zach first eliminated everybody who, at the time of
any of the outrages, had been at work. Then he concen-
trated on those who had been in a position to commit them,
men off duty or on vacation or sick leave. Before he was
through, Zach was checking off-duty periods of as little
as one hour. But it was in vain. Not one man in five
thousand had been free each time a crime had been com-
mitted. Liidtke wasn’t any luckier (Continued on page 75)
uild-
iyed.
; for,
ex-
1e to
was
con-
rried
* this
r lot.
nally
‘ec out
e had
Lewis
‘er in
vhere
red a
been
ad had
of his
Whodunit?
(SOLUTION TO PAGE 58)
.
The following clues enabled Lieutenant
Linden to solve the case:
1. The paintbrush in victim’s right hand.
2. The palette in the victim’s left hand.
3. The fragment “Hil” scrawled on pic-
ture on easel.
4. Baker’s photograph on magazine cover.
5. The fact that the gun was under the
magazine. '
6. The glass coffee pot almost filled with
coffee.
7. The title, Art and Marriage Don’t Mix,
on the magazine.
SoLurion: At first glance, it looked to
Lieutenant Linden as if the artist, in his
dying agony, had tried to write the name
of his slayer with his paintbrush. Were |
this so, the fragment “Hil” scrawled across
the picture on the easel pointed to either
Hilda Hayes or Victor Hilton as the killer.
Linden, however, soon deduced that this
clue was a plant. The brush was in the
artist’s right hand. The photograph on the
magazine cover depicting artist Baker
actually at work shows him painting with
his left hand! In the haste of arranging
the sham death tableau, the killer had
evidently overlooked the fact that Baker
was left-handed and had put the brush
in the dead man’s right hand and the
palette in his left, the reverse of what
Baker would have done! — ‘
Baker, then, had not written the accusing
fragment of a name. But who had? Linden
realized, of course, that no killer would
deliberately fake evidence pointing to
himself. It followed then that neither
Hilda Hayes nor Victor Hilton had con-
trived the spurious clue. This left only An-
nette Carter, the artist’s fiancée.
Seeking to confirm this guess, Linden
spotted other evidence of Annette’s wily
hand in the staging of the deceptive scene.
The two cups on the table held the dregs
of coffee, admittedly prepared by the
actress, yet the glass coffee pot was almost
full! What then of .the girl’s claim that
she and her fiancé each had a cup of
coffee? There could be only one explana-
tion. After committing the murder, An-
nette had wanted to verify her story with |
evidence that her meeting with Baker had
been peaceful. She had poured a small
quantity of coffee into each of the cups
to create the illusion that she and Baker
had coffee together. .
The magazine, too, incriminated Annette,
and also provided her with an added _mo-
tive for murder. Art and Marriage Don’t
Miz is the title over Baker’s photograph.
Annette had admitted bringing the mag-
azine and discussing the article with Baker,
a discussion that could not have been
friendly! Moreover, the fact that the
magazine is lying partly over the gun in-
| dicates it was dropped there after the
shooting. This placed Annette in the studio
'. after Baker’s murder.
Taken into custody and confronted with
the incontestable implications of the clues,
Annette Carter confessed to killing her
fiancé. Baker’s affair with Hildg Hayes,
followed by his published criticism of mar-
riage, touched off a quarrel during which
Annette picked up Baker’s gun and shot
him. To shift the guilt from herself, she
had faked the evidence exactly as Lieuten-
ant Linden had deduced, by writing “Hil”
on the easel and trying to pin the crime
on either the model or the gambler. Lin-
den’s analysis of the planted clues, how-
ever, pinned the motive and the murder
on the jealous young woman.
- (All names used are fictitious.)
Pretty Decoy:
and the Monster
(Continued from page 19)
in trying to get some information from
maps and old records.’
The public was becoming increasingly
more fearful of the shapeless threat that
haunted the inky city at night.
The police decided to organize a guide
service for women forced to make their
way home alone. The guides were re-
cruited among various civil and civic or-
ganizations, and even the S-Bahn em-
vloyees. It worked out rather well until
January: 3rd, 1941, when vivacious Elfie
Schuhmacher, a theatre usher, was trying
to get home from her place of employ-
ment. As most girls jn Berlin late at night,
Elfie was afraid.
‘Official guide, Fraulein,” an authorita-
voi rurmoied
ioillowe:
Eines fears Jett r ana sne
down the dark-
thence onto a}
after, ner guide
and pushed her out
a mud puddle anc
inor. Police pounced
guestions, hoping she
t would solve the
official voice
ine Station,
S-Bahn train. Shortly
struck her with a clui
the door. She landed in
ner injuries were
ypon her
could 1
tell them? The street
had the train. Uni-
Stocky man. She
at the photographs attached to the
Nat COLA sic
been dark and so
, Vicor ¢
yes. Visor Cap.
‘
S-Bahn personnel records. She was shown
pictures from half a dozen voluminous
police files. Her guide wasn’t in any of
the photographs. But then, she never had
had a good opportunity to look at his face.
Despite guide service, track surveil-
lance, decoys, station checks and map pins,
the monster murdered another woman 48
hours later, on January 5th, the third to
be hurled to her death from a racing train.
Sonia Marke, telephone operator, 23 years
old.
There was something uncanny about the
way the monster had moved around all
the police traps to reach his last two vic-
tims. Liidtke had begun to suspect that the
uniform and cable which pointed to S-Bahn
employees were fakes, intended to throw
the police off track. Now he was beginning
to ponder the possibility that the marauder
had an inside track on the _ security
measures. This again indicated an S-Bahn
employee, since large numbers of them
had had to be taken into police confidence.
While Ltidtke and Zach were trying to
figure a way of using their detective forces
vithout knowledge of S-Bahn checkers,
watchmen and the like, one of the blond
decoys nearly trapped
"ersa.
Lotte Hankow, a pretty young police-
woman, alone in an S-Bahn compart-
ment when, at a statign two stops past
Rummelsburg, the door banged open. In a
gust of damp, icy air, a man stamped in.
The blue overhead light drew a few dim
glinis from the insignia on his visor cap:
a wheel Sprouting wings. A railroader;
this partieular size and shape meant S-
Bahn.
Out of the corner of an eye she watched
the man. The cap was pulled deep over
the monster, or vice |
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86
many witnesses who testified that she
was kindly and loving to her stepchil-
dren, a devout churchgoer and good
neighbor, pointed to her as a woman
broken by injustice and persecution.
The state branded her a heinous
murderess through its strong chain of
circumstantial evidence, the photo-
graphs of the arsenic box, and testi-
mony of a witness hinting that the
arsenic was administered to the girls
in soda pop Mrs. Ledford gave them an
hour after the poison was brought into
the house.
Defense showed that the insurance
policy Ledford applied for could have
paid only $50 for the death of one or all
of the family, but District Attorney
Bennett countered with the statements
by Ledford and Mrs. Ledford on Oc-
tober 26, alleging that Mrs. Ledford be-
lieved, even that long after the deaths,
that she would receive $1000.
At the hospital each night, nurses
and guards had their hands full. On
one occasion, Mrs. Ledford was charg-
ed with having added pure cane sugar
to a sample of urine sought by her
physician for analysis. Twice she pro-
duced alarming readings in the ther-
mometer left in her mouth by nurses,
causing apprehension until physicians
arrived and pronounced her tempera-
ture normal. She had a hot water bot-
tle, and is thought to have used that.
The second-floor landing of the court
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
- Grandmothe
he ee _e
Mrs. Maren Jensen, aged mothervof: tne
defendant, is shown holding h aut
ter’s two children.
? Ekatt
building .where a group of defense
witnesses awaited their turns to tes-
tify assumed the aspect of an evangel-
. #aurdersin the first degree.” It added;
Wich is binding on'the court. The sta
of}
istic meeting as they prayed and sx
almgst daily in behalf of “Sister Lal
ford.” Approximately eighty witnese
were called,
The jury of ten men and two wome
deliberated eight hours and returnege
with a verdict the afternoon of Mare
.30,. finding the defendant “guilty ¢
recommendation for life imprisonmex
had not insisted on the death penalty
"Agnes Joan. Ledford, white-facch
and stricken, sat almost motionless 2
her rocking chair for fifteen minute
after the verdict was read. She pai
no attention to the comforting word}
of her husband, father of slain Rut?
and Dorothy, who had remained at he
side throughout the accusations an‘
trial. Finally, she murmured, withou'
the tears which followed freely
throughout the trial:
“IT didn’t do it. I'm not guilty. But!
have to be brave.”
A motion for a new trial was mad
by the defense attorneys but when, i
the end ‘of thirty days, Circuit Judg: &
Howard Zimmerman heard the cay
argued he denied a new trial and pro-
nounced the sentence of life imprison.
ment decreed by the jury. Mrs, Led.
ford was taken to the Oregon Sta:
Prison at Salem where she will serif
the remainder of her natural life fo;
her crime against society.
THE SPY HAD A WAY WITH WOMEN
(Continued from page 59)
Our watchers reported that she left the
War Office that evening together with
Fraulein von Jena and accompanied
her to a fashionable restaurant, where
they were joined by the Baron Sos-
nowski. It is all in order.”
“And that is the only clue you,have
uncovered?” , bay
Karl Riegel smiled rather sadly. “No,
We compiled lists, careful lists, of all
the people who knew each of the
items of information that have cer-
tainly reached Poland. There were four
of these pieces of information—the new
_ tanks, the Green Cross gas, the Siemens
airplane motor and Plan XXIII. Then
we compared the four lists. We thought
that by this means we might discover
who the traitor was who was selling
information. Excellencies, there “were
just four names on all the lists. They
were those of the Reichfiihrer, Adolf
Hitler, Marshal Goring, Marshal von
Blomberg, and General von Fritsch.
If there is a traitor selling Germany’s
secrets to Poland, that traitor must be
in this room.”
For A MOMENT the office was filled
with an enormous silence in which
a clock ticked loudly, ending suddenly
with a silvery clang as it touched the
quarter-hour. Von Blomberg swal-
lowed and seemed about to speak, but
before he could utter a word the silence
was jabbed with the insistent jar of
a buzzer that sounded a warning.
Riegel picked up the instrument on
the desk, listened a moment, and then
said, “Bring her in here. At once.” Then
turning to the rest, he announced
quietly. “The Baroness von Berg. What
she wishes to tell at this hour I cannot
imagine, but it is evidently something
important and probably connected with
the matter We are considering. It is
possible that we arrive at’a solution
after all,” | ne 658
He, had hardly finished: Speaking
when’. the door frdm* the“epbridor
openég; and a’ woman wrapped ,in a
velvetiéloak came into the room with
quick? agitated steps. She was blonde
and even in the dini light it could be
seen’-she ‘was beautiful. On her face
were.Signs of the wildest agitation, and
as she crossed the room straight toward
Riegel, without appearing to notice the
others present, she cried:
“I confess! I don't care if you kill me
for it! Only do something to him; he did
it! I love him! I hate him! I told him I'd.
do it ” and she collapsed into the
chair that was held for her and burst
into tears.
Riegel touched her shoulder after a
moment. “Madam,” he said, choosing
his words carefully. “We do not know
to whom this relates. I assume——”
“Yurek! Baron Sosnowski! He is a
spy! He has made spits, of all of us,”
she cried wildly and threw up her arms
in a sudden motion, oblivious of the
sudden stir around her and the shar
exclamations of interest. “And now he
has gone with that woman, that dancer.
that Lia Niako, who claims to be Per-
sian,but is only a Hungarian.”
Rudolph .had already produced :
notebook from a drawer and was rap-
idly taking down the words as she
poured them forth in a stream.
“T’ll tell you everything. I'll tell you
just how it happened. I met him at the
Karlshorst race course. He was riding
in a gentleman’s race on a horse be-
longing to von Osten-Sacken, who was
a good friend of my husband.”
“Herr von Berg?” inquired Riegel
in a coolly conversational tone. -
_ “No, my first husband, Richard von
Falkenhayn, the nephew of the Herr
General during the world war. Richard
liked Yurek and they became very
good friends. But Richard was always
for business, business, business! He
had no time for amusements, and
Yurek and I used to go riding together.
But Richard was a failure at, business
as at everything else and then be be-
came frantically jealous. I had to di-
vorce him.”
She stopped for a moment and looked
up defiantly. “I make no excuses, I did
not love Richard and I never had. But
when I divorced him I thought Yurek
would marry me. Now I see it all. He
only wanted me to get into a Position
APH mM te Re
olacte >
=)
n
——
. filed it away than one of our men
58 FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE |
matter better than those that have yet been tried.”
“The proof of the leakage is, then, indisputable?” said an - DANCER he u:
one of the Gestapo men, Hauptmann Riegel, little known ao it dr
outside his own country, but one of the most powerful we “*", Another woman’s jealousy | “KS
men within it. om *" towards Lia Niako, shown daug
Marshal von Blomberg gave a laugh that was sale like — Devs ee ino boare |
a snarl. “Our military attaché at Warsaw has reported es special raiding party cloth
that the Poles have begun the manufacture of a new anti- hurrying to Yurek Sosnow- As h
tank gun. It is 42 milimeters in caliber; just enough to Bki’s apartment. A gala that
penetrate the armor of the new fast tanks we began to - : ' party honoring the cele- extr:
manufacture secretly less than a year ago.” ~: brated dancer was in prog- “A
The Gestapo chief cleared his throat. gress when police came. War
“That is not enough? Then, what of that airplane that “J
fell at Breslau on a flight from Poland to Czechoslovakia?
The pilot was killed, Naturally, our people examined the
remains of the machine. They found the motor was almost
an exact duplicate of the new Siemens engine which we
have spent two years in developing and which is not yet
in production. The Poles somehow learned all its details.
And you know already that they have discovered the
contents of Plan XXIII.”
“For the invasion of Poland in case of war with that
country?” inquired Riegel. “The Poles have taken mea-
sures i
“Worse than that,” growled the marshal. “Most of
the Polish frontier is open country, flat plains. They
have been fortifying that part of the frontier for
years; an army would meet great difficulties. But
in the south on the Silesian line there are moun- ’
tains on their side of the border. They had not
thought it worth while to fortify there——”
“In the country between Wielun and Pia-
tokéw,”’ cut in von Fritsch, “there is a pass,
narrow, but practicable. We planned to
drive a column swiftly through that pass
in the event of war. The Herr Marshal
and I drew the plan ourselves. No soon-
er had we committed it to paper and
reported that Poland had suddenly
and secretly begun to build in this
pass concrete and steel gun cupo-
las, mostly underground. It is
indisputable that Poland has secured a copy of Plan XXIII.”
“They also,” continued von Blomberg grimly, “have found
the secret of our Green Cross gas. We have a report from a spy
in Poland saying that those people have recently added to the
cannister of their gas masks one neva:chemical—the only one
in the world that is an antidote for the Green Cross gas, a chemi-
cal useless for any other purpose.”
“And in this department what have you fools done?” cried __.:-
Goring, suddenly dropping his fist on the table. “Nothing!” nid
“We have not been idle,” replied Riegel, defensively. :
“But what have you discovered? I have no reports. We have
come here for an account of the details, Karl. This threatens aie
the existence of Germany. If Poland knows every wastes by
secret we have, so does France, Poland's ally.”
“Rudolph,” said Riegel, gently, ‘and the other Gestapo mah?
spoke for the first time. Wy stra
“Only one fact preserves a touch of mystery. I ‘report it as of u
a matter of form, although it has led to nothing. It came from eno
a woman—I do not wish to take up your Excellencies’ time +)
needlessly ———”” his
“Recount it! We can spare the time better than Germany’s pre
secrets.” ss
sly]
T WAS A WOMAN who called on the Herr Direktor of the offic
office staff at the War Office. She said her name was Frau foll
von Jena, and that her daughter Irene von Jena, was a stenog- be wa
rapher in the office.”” Rudolph rose and went to the wall where mys rj rep
. ba yf i Fra
iy
mele Sek hee B59 Bee
ee a a ed
*
he unlocked one of the cabinets, produced a box and from
itdrew a document, which he read aloud:
“Statement of Frau von Jena. ‘It is very good that my
daughter should make all-this money. Her father and I
are glad that she is able to buy a car and all these nice
clothes. But all the same we are worried about her health.
As her mother I wish to request that you arrange it so
that she does not do so much overtime work, even for the
extra pay.’ ” .
“Ah!” said Goring explosively. ‘A stenographer at the
War Office?”
“Ja, Excellency. The matter certainly seemed very
Among the many glamorous women escorted to gay Berlin night
tlubs by the suave man-about-town before his sensational arrest
by the dreaded Gestapo was cinema actress Maria Paudler.
strange. There is no overtime work‘at: the office, and all
of us know that no stenographer;there or elsewhere; earns
enough to buy a car. We togkeigteps.”>" Re
“By having her watched?.* ‘demanded von Blomberg,
his narrowing eyes showing: that’ the question was the
prelude to an outburst.of criticism. ‘sisi:
“Yes, but not as you might think,” ‘replied Rudolph,
lyly. “Oh, we have had to deal with spieg before In. this.
office. We know that they operate ini chajns,“and that: to.
follow a minor figure in’such a chain’ is to give them
warning and lose the big fish. When the Herr ‘Direktor
reported the matter to us-"I at once asked whether this
Fraulein von Jena was friendly with any of the other girls
c
pvaice:
FRONT. PAGE DETECTIVE , 88
in the office who could be described as both devoted and
intelligent. He named one girl who had been there at one
time but who was there no longer—the Baroness Benita
von Berg. To her we told enough of the story so that she
understood we wished to find the source of Irene von
Jena’s funds. She said she was already in the girl’s con-
fidence and would seek the information.” i
He paused, but Géring made an impatient gesture, so
he hurried on with the tale.
“The report we received through this Baroness von
Berg was a disappointment. The Fraulein von Jena to
make the matter short, had. merely fallen in love with a
yf man. Shé&had become his mistress and it was
he who was furnishing her with the car and
the fine ¢lothes. Naturally, she did not wish
to tell her parents; and at the time she was
supposed to be working late, she was merely
passing the hours with her lover.”
“The name of the man?” demanded von
Fritsch, sharply. ;
“The Baron Yurek Sosnowski.”
“AyPolish name! Why the devil if
Rudtiph held up a detaining hand and
again going to the bookcase, returned with
another document. “Here is the dossier of the
Baron Yurek Sosnowski. Born at Lvov, in
what was then Austrian Poland, of a wealthy
family. Educated at Cracow and Budapest;
noted at school for being violently pro-Aus-
trian, and a compainon ‘of the Austrians in
the university rather than the Poles. Joined
the Esterhazy hussars of the Austrian army
and served with them in Rumania, then later
on the northern front, where he was deco-
rated for courage at the fighting around
Vilna. At the peace treaty his home and
estates fell within the borders of Poland. He
immediately left the country and came to
Berlin. He has been living here ever since.
Is a great frequenter of race-tracks, an ama-
teur steeplechase rider. Moves in the best
and gayest society. Among his intimate
friends are Prince Joachim Albrecht of
Hohenzollern, Baron von Osten-Sacken, Karl
Ernst, leader of a staffel of Nazi stormtroops,
Maria Paudler, the cinema actress, and half
the fashionable women of Berlin. Very gay,
very handsome, a great chaser after women,
very extravagant.”
“It does not satisfy me,” snapped von
Blomberg. “This connection with a stenog-
rapher in the War Office is a trifle too op-
portune. Did you have him watched as
well?”
Rudolph ruffled through a sheaf of papers.
“We did better than that. We tapped his tele-
phone wire, and securing admission to his
house in Zahlendorf West, we installed dictographs in
nearly every room of the place. I omit reading the reports
we received by this means. They constitute nothing but
elaborate information in the best method to conduct a
seduction, and the telephone messages are all missives of
passion.” ,
Riegel broke ‘into the conversation again in his gentle
, ‘Wou must not think we have left anything undone,
Excellencies. We assigned the von Berg girl to watch
Fraulein von Jena, but we also put several of our best
men.to watch von Berg and carefully compiled informa-
tion about her. She is above suspicion, the wifé of an
engineer in the Siemens plant. (Continued on page. 86)
them to a turn, then
TWAS NEARLY half past ten when two big cars where a shadowy form preceded
I whose occupants were invisible pulled up in down another corridor, and finally flung the door open
an i ffice. It was a tall room with
The walls were
front of the squat gloomy puilding on the Kur- before t
furstendamm in Berlin. The puilding.was an old one, only on
ne; it had no name overits door nor any sign + lined with boo
occupied it. But evénin daylight it was tch boxes cont
no German liked; to approach too Two men were i e. They rose aS
s the headquarters of the dreaded newcomers enter the Nazi salute. As they
e of the most silent did so the three dropp ir cloaks, revealing the
ces of its k where in the world. weather-beaten, strong face f the great
dence the nearest street lamp seemed figures of the new Germany—Marshal Hitler’s
o that even if someone had been hand man, Marshal von Blomberg,
o the eyes in mili- the German army, and Genera
watching aS ouded t
tary cloaks, stepped from e would have been i i here were subdued greetings, Gor-
unable to recognize them. i e lack of light nor pig chair in a way that made him
the sinister reputation of the puilding appeared to president ° nd without any other pre-
bother any of the three, however; they went rapidly liminaries, plu purpose of the meeting.
up the steps, and as they reached the top the door swung “We have ca i to determine what
silently open before they could ring. : can be done in the matter rmation that is
Inside their feet sank soundlessly into a soft rug. A leaking to Poland. It is possi our co-oper~
bare trickle of light indicated. the way along 4 corridor, ation we may arrive at a method of procedure in this
. - le * %, Ye - 4 .
ye’
a
| The future Dictator was a favored prisoner in his-
toric Landsberg Fortress, enjoying many privileges
attempted Putsch of November 8th.was
meant to be a revolution. They were
simply assisting the “State authority”
of Governor von Kahr. ‘
General Ludendorff didn’t hold with
what he regarded a pussy-footing atti-
tude on the part of the party leaders.
He had been involved in a revolution-
ary attempt, and it was against his code
as an officer and gentleman to lie about
it. He brushed aside the prosecution’s
attempt to keep him silent and freely
admitted his guilt.
@ “I HAD high hopes for the deliver-
.ance of my country,” he said. “But
these vanished because Governor von
Kahr, General von Lossow and Herr
Seisser lost sight of the common goal.
When the-great hour came, they turned
out to be little men. All these happen-
ings have brought me to the sad con-
clusion that our present rulers are in-
capable of inspiring the German people
with the wish for liberty. Bitter ex-
perience has also taught me that Com-
munism and. Marxism cannot be killed
with the rifle butt. Only a new idea
advocating social justice can destroy
those twin scourges.”
Captain Roehm took the witness
stand in a particularly bitter mood. He
was bitter not only at the von Kahr
forces, but at Adolf Hitler. Roehm was
the only one guilty of direct military
‘activity in bringing about the overthrow
of the old regime..He had stormed the
Officers’ building and had taken pos-
session of it after a gun fight. He
24
blamed the fiasco on
Hitler’s weak attitude
on the Ludwigstrasse.
While Hitler was
serenely swearing
that he had no inten-
tion of using military
force to accomplish
his mission in “unify-
ing” the German peo-
ple, the Captain was
hurling the lie in his
teeth.
It was a military
clared. And what was
more, if Hitler had
acquitted himself in
the same , brave
fashion as some of his
followers, the revolu-
‘tion would have suc-
ceeded.
These statements
were even more em-
barrassing to the
prosecutor than they
were to Hitler. The
former therefore did
his best to slide over
treason.
Captain Roehm split
with Hitler, and after
serving a prison term
for his part in the af-
fair wrote a book
called “Memoirs of a
Man Guilty of High
Treason,” in which he
described the Munich
plot in great detail.
Then he left for South America where
he became military adviser to the Gen-
eral Staff of the Bolivian Army. The
breach with Hitler was not healed until
several years later when the Nazi
Fuehrer, in an hour of great need, ap-
pealed to him for assistance.
On-:the whole, Hitler enjoyed the trial
immensely. It put him in the public
spotlight. People who had never heard
his name before were now reading of
the fine principles for which he swore
he was ready to die. But as the trial
drew to a close the Nazi leader was
filled with a feeling of apprehension. °
What if the lenient attitudes of the
judges and prosecutor during the trial
were just another von Kahr trick to
catch him off guard. It was not with-
out good cause that Hitler dreaded the
coming verdict.
He was an Austrian national, but not
having done his military service in that
country, he had forfeited his citizen-
ship. Although he had served in the
German army he had not yet acquired
German citizenship. A sentence of ex-
pulsion would banish him forever from
his adopted fatherland and would make
him, literally, a man without a country.
I noticed that Hitler trembled slightly
when he rose with the other defendants
to face the judges and hear the verdict
rendered.
Hitler, who denied that he was a
revolutionary, was found guilty. Sen-
tence—five years’ imprisonment in th
Landsberg fortress. :
General Ludendorff, who freely ad-
undertaking, he de-.
Roehm’s admitted’
mitted his réle as a revolutionary, was
acquitted. All other defendants were
found guilty. Poehner, Weber and
Kriebel were also’ given sentences of
five years. Gregor Strasser, Frick,
Himmler and the others were sentenced
to eighteen months’ imprisonment.
While these sentences were far more
severe than the majority of the party
leaders expected, it was the ruling that
accompanied the sentences that struck
the real blow. Henceforth the National
Socialist Party was declared illegal.
Adolf Hitler was forever forbidden ac-
tively to participate in politics on
penalty of deportation.
M@ PRUSSIA, THE great sister province
to the north, issued a: like ruling,
but went one step further: Hitler was
forbidden to enter that state. -
It was a gloomy collection of Nazis
that was herded through the courtyard
of the Landsberg prison. The feeling
that the people were on their side had
buoyed them up throughout the trial.
But now that the entire movement was
smashed, of what earthly value was
public sentiment? The world they had
known had come to an end for these
men. It was a new low in the Nazi
movement. It couldn’t possibly sink
lower.
Hitler carried his pose of a resigned
martyr into the prison with him. He
orated eloquently and at frequent in-
tervals fo his associates, but there can
be a surfeit even to eloquence, and Hit-
ler found his circle of listeners rapidly
dwindling -until only the faithful Hess
was there to lend a willing ear.
I came into this gloomy atmosphere a
few weeks later with Alfred Rosenberg,
the Baltic German who took Dietrich
Eckhart’s place as editor of the Voel-
kischer Beobachter.
The men quickly gathered about us,
anxious for the latest gossip from the
outside. I waited until we had disposed
of these small matters before I spoke.
I knew that what I had to say might
change the course of all our lives, I
had found a way out for all of us and
I tried not to be melodramatic.
“We are now in a more favorable
position than we were a year ago,” I
said to Hitler.
He looked at me as though I had taken
leave of my senses. “We are doomed,”
he spoke gloomily. *
' “Adversity turned to advantage
brings even greater gains,” I quoted.
“It’s a way out for all of us.”
Hitler rose, pushed past Hess, and put
his arm about my shoulder. ‘Tell me,
Herr Otto, what will this plan do?”
“It will place the National Socialist
Party where it belongs—on top of the
political heap.”
The plan was really so simple and
foolproof it was surprising nobody else
had thought of it before. They gathered
in a semi-circle about me and listened
gravely while I explained.
Our greatest problem was to place the
_ Nazi Party on an active political basis
and to secure the release of its leaders
from prison. To be able to do this in
the face of official prohibition would
doubly raise us in the public esteem.
We were, at the moment, being looked
TRUE DETECTIVE
At Warsaw, Hitler reviews his
conquering armies. Yet, despite
the power he wielded and the
adulation he demanded, there
was no person he could trust
ar
upon with favor. Hitler was the perfect
symbol of the suffering martyr. We
were in a position to take advantage of
these circumstances. Hitler couldn’t
see it. .
“How?” he cut in impatiently.
“That’s easy,” I replied. “Since the
Nazi Party is banned, we merely change
the name to, say, The Loyal Sons’ of
Freedom Party. Of course, this is,only
a subterfuge, but legally we have every
right to do it. This will give us a place
on the ballot and, at the same time. we
can run Gregor, Poehner, Hess and the
rest of the prisoners for Parliament.
Those that are elected will immediately
benefit by the law which forbids mem-
bers of Parliament to be in prison. They
would automatically go free and your
nucleus of leaders would be free to
rebuild the party.” :
Hitler followed closely what I was
saying. The brief, brisk nods of his
head showed that the words I spoke
found. faver with him.
“Of course,” I continued, “this could
only help you indirectly; since you are
not a citizen of this country you are
not eligible to run for office.”
_ I expected some discussion of my
proposal, but there wasn’t any. The men
were enthusiastic about it and Hitler
suggested that we set to work at once
to start the new party.
Rosenberg and I enlisted the aid of
General Ludendorff, and while discuss-
ing a new party name a few days later,
ran into Albert von Graefe, founder of
the Popular Liberty Party. This was a
small party of little consequence and
so von Graefe was more than willing
that the National Socialist Movement
merge with his party.
@ WE BARELY had time to get our
slate of candidates on the ballot for
the forthcoming election. I threw all
my efforts into the success of the ven-
ture. During the campaign I became
the principal political writer for the
Voelkischer Beobachter, my articles ap-
pearing under the pseudonym of Ulrich
von Hutten. This was the name of an
old: Bavarian hero, a revolutionary
thinker in the days of the Reformation. ,
It was the beginning of that particular
phase of my life. Soon i was to become
the leading writer of the Nazi Party.
Hitler was elated with our work. It
put.a new spirit in him. Once again he
tuok to making speeches. Two men
were sufficient for an audience and
once again his eloquence became tire-
some, and his fellow prisoners, who
were given a wide range of freedom °
within the Fortress grounds, sought
refuge on a lower floor. It was Hess and
Emile Maurice, his chauffeur and
handyman and a frequent visitor, who
were forced to be the audience.
Hitler, tiring of the same audience,
would invade the privacy of the men
on the lower floor and on one of these
occasions, my brother Gregor inter-
rupted a speech to say: “Adolf, you
should write a book.”
It was this suggestion, made in a half
joking manner, that was seized upon by
the Fuehrer. Hitler liked the idea. He
acted on it. He went back to his own
cell and began dictating the’ book to
MARCH, 1942
Rudolph Hess. It has been published
under the title Mein Kampf. In its
original version Mein Kampf was a
rambling, almost incoherent, expres-
sion of political commonplaces lifted
from the philosophies of a dozen minor
politicians. There were passages taken
from Houston Chamberlain and La-
_garde, men whom Dietrich Eckhart used
to quote. The manuscript was given to
Father Staempflie, a priest of brilliant
attainment who was also the editor of
a newspaper at Meisbach, and he twice
rewrote it. It was he who made it
readable and coherent. Hitler had
Father Staempfie put to death on the
night of the blood purge.
At the Parliamentary elections which
were held in March we succeeded in
voting my brother Gregor and Poehner
into office and they were automatically
released. The Nazi Movement had now
hit its stride.
There was one factor that I found
most disquieting in the success which
brought new members flocking to our
cause. Two persons in particular, Julius
Streicher and Hermann Esser, were
bringing in ‘the lunatic fringe and I
feared that their support would dis-
credit our movement. Streicher was
‘the ugly, sexually depraved rapist who
published a newspaper whose violent
anti-Semitism served as a springboard
for pornographic literature.
Esser was also violently anti-Semitic.
During the war he avoided service by
shamming insanity. When the Com-
munists took control of Bavaria for a
short time as a result of a revolution,
Esser became a member of the Soldiers
Soviet. When the Nazis began growing
in power he quickly switched to them
and today he is Bavarian Minister and
Under-Secretary-of-State for the Min-
istry of Propaganda.
Ludendorff, von
Graefe and I dis-
cussed the problem.
at length and finally
we decided to expel
from the party the
leaders of the anti-
Semitic movement.
Hitler was ex-
tremely fond of
Streicher and the
latter rushed to his
cell and poured out
his woes. Nobody
had a right to expel
him from the party
except the great
leader—Hitler. And
even. though an
order of expulsion
had gone out he
would ignore it until
the Fuehrer gave the
command,
In this quarrel
Hitler took no part
since to make a rul-
ing one way or the.
other might be con-
(Right) Bald Julius
Streicher was fa-
vored by Hitler
strued by the von Kahr faction as
engaging in politics, the penalty for this
being instant deportation.
I gave up my post in the Ministry of
Foods. My work in the Nazi Move-
ment was taking up full time. I had felt
for a long time that the National
Socialist Party as a local unit could
never reach a position of real power.
No provincial party could. Its adherents
had to have a real goal to which they
could look forward—leadership of the
nation.
There was only one way we could
do this and that was for us to move into
Prussia. The importance of this state
could be judged by the fact that in area
it covered the northern three-quarters
of the nation. Within its boundaries it
contained an even higher fraction of the
nation’s industry. Prussia ruled: Ger-
many and by the same token those who
ruled Prussia ruled Germany.
There were other reasons, too, why
I was anxious to shift my. efforts from
Bavaria to the north. In Bavaria, Hitler —
was the head of the party. He had built
in such a way that the loyalties of most
of the members were not directed
toward the party, but toward his person.
They had renounced loyalty of ideals
in the acceptance of him as the all-
‘powerful figure. It had in it the seeds
of dictatorship and I feared it.
@ IN FOUNDING the National Sogialist
Movement in Prussia I could do it
in my own fashion. Social justice rather
than Hitler would be the rallying point.
My: brother Gregor, who was the
active head of the Nazi Party during
this time, was enthusiastic. He shook
my hand, wished me luck and I set off
for Berlin where I set up my head-
quarters. Of course, it was still against
Se SS
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No Re ort ae atic Seer cee
50
Though Adolf Hitler boasted that the German people
adored him and were solidly behind him, officers
of his General Staff were plotting his destruction
Epiror’s Note: The author, serving during the war as a Lieutenant Colonel in the
Military Intelligence Division of the War Department General Staff, watched the
unfolding of some of the most secret aspects of the plots against Hitler. Now the
relaxation of official censorship and the release of hitherto closely guarded docu-
ments permit the publication of this amazing story of intrigue on the highest levels
of the High Command.
A DOLF HITLER, most hated man on earth, tried for years to show the
world that the German people adored him. He boasted that except for a hand-
ful of cranks who were being reformed by Heinrich Himmler, the ranks were
solidly closed behind his program of plunder and aggression.
This portrait of a much-loved Fuehrer was more fanciful than real. The
cold truth, backed up by recently discovered documents, was that plots to cut
down. Adolf Hitler began as far back as 1938 and continued steadily there-
after.
Some failed of success by a hair’s breadth. Had they gone through as planned,
the effect they would have had on world history is incalculable. Others were
spoiled by Hitler’s intuition and ability to act on hunches. All had their focal
point in the place least suspected by the outside world at the time—namely
the conservative, tradition-encrusted General Staff. '
One of the principal murder-plotters was Colonel.General Ludwig Beck,
Chief of Staff of the German Army in 1938. Beck, as the organizing head,
gathered about him high officers on the Eastern Front, in the Home Army and
in the Intelligence Service, who were as convinced as he was that Germany
could not win a general European War and were determined to stave it off at
all costs.
In the summer of 1938 the crisis over the Sudetenland led the members of
the conspiracy to believe that the time to strike had come. Secret approaches
were made to the British informing them of Hitler’s plan to attack the Czechs
and asking for a declaration of British intentions. However, by the time that
the message reached the British Government, the decision had already been
made to send Prime Minister Chamberlain to Munich. As a result, Hitler
gained a bloodless victory and the Army leaders felt the time was unsuitable
for their move.
Not until the fall of 1939, did the question. of eliminating Hitler again come
to a head. ‘ Colonel General Kurt von Hammerstein, who had been commander-
in-chief of the German army from 1930 until 1934, was called from retirement
and placed in command of one of the German armies on the Rhine. He arranged
to have the Fuehrer visit him at his field headquarters and was determined to
‘™~
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, 4 FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
POWDERED AND ROUGED...
It was notorious that effeminate Hans Grans
(above) was kept by an.ex-convict pervert much
as a mistress is maintained by a rake. But how
did Grans acquire his-wardrobe of fine clothes?
Suddenly the friendly darkness of the park was split
_by a glare of searchlights; the quiet of the night was
broken by the gasps of surprised men and women. There
was a crash of overturned benches, a mad stampede of
hurrying. feet, and the shrill sound of police sirens cut-
ting through the. air. The two lovers were in the midst
of one of the police raids which were made periodically
to rid the public parks of unwanted visitors, and to
demonstrate to the populace that the police force was
indeed active. ..
“Quick, this way!” Grasping her arm, Reiner hurried
his fiancée through the brush towards the Brueckmuehle-
bridge, one of several over the river. Here his searching
eyes fell upon a narrow footpath leading down beneath
the arch. Quickly they followed it and crouched together
in the darkness beside the. water’s edge. Reiner placed
his arm around the frightened girl’s shoulders. But she
suddenly drew back from his embrace as a strange
shudder passed through her. body.
“What is the matter, Lieselotte?” the youth asked.
As if unable to contain herself longer, the girl jumped
to her feet with an hysterical exclamation.
“Let’s get out of here!”
“But why?” her companion demanded sharply. “There
is no better place to hide.”
Trembling, the girl pointed to some rough sacks which
were piled near them beneath the bridge.
“Those!” she gasped. “They frighten mex...” .
Young Reiner laughed and stepped over to the nearest
bulging sack. As if to prove that she need have no fear,
he carelessly untied the cord, and thrust his arm into
the opening.
But he pulled it out quickly, and as he did so several
bones tumbled onto the ground. The girl screamed and’
her escort’s hand trembled as he sought to support her.
For the bones were obviously those of a human skeleton,
and shreds of putrefying flesh still clung to them!
ETECTIVES searching the park had no difficulty in
finding Hannes and Lieselotte after that, for as soon
as they could clamber up the bank the couple poured
out their story to the horrified officers.
Again the microscopes of scientists examined grisly
human remains, and their report electrified government
officials and townspeople alike. That these new bones
were definitely linked to the lone skull previously dis-
covered was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As in the former instance, they were the remains of
young men in their late or early ’teens. They had been
scalped in Indian fashion and the bodies dismembered
with scientific. skill. Arms, feet and heads had_ been
GERMANY'S HUMAN ABBATOIR
An investigator probes the .blood-caked closet
where the confessed multiple murderer stowed
the bodies of his victims until he had leisure
to dispose of them.
-severed with diabolical accuracy, and within a time-
range of less than two months.
But even these facts did not indicate the true extent
of the horror which now inescapably challenged the
police of all Germany, For the bones showed.that no less
than ten human bodies had been butchered!
A panic of fear seized Hanover when this information
spread.
Wild rumors circulated to the effect that the city har-
bored cunning» mantraps where hapless citizens were
lured to their destruction simply for the sake of .the
money they carried. It was heard that‘a werewolf ranged
voraciously over the countryside. Parents kept their chil-
dren at home after dark in fear of unearthly peril, and
cases were reported of stray dogs being stoned to death
by the superstitious peasantry who thought bed had
found the werewolf.
Stunned at first, the police were now goaded into swift
~
be
He
t
Ls
‘
action. In desperation, as all clues failed, they conducted —
a search of the Leine River for more remains. This bore
fruit which exceeded the most bizarre imaginings of a
disordered mind. For beneath the river’s surface many
more bones were found, and within a month it was accu-
rately known that twenty-two youths had met a bloody
doom a
600 hu:
The f
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FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE,
of, NEED A MILLION CORPSES!”
(Continued from page 47) -
re
to the statement that truth is stranger
than fiction. For upon entering Retz’s
study they found instead of a quietly-
waiting Mrs. Witzel, a woman who -
was as pale and excited as if she had
seen a ghost.
“HERR KOMMISSAR,” she gasped.
“That man!” Feebly the woman
indicated a young man who was re-
treating down the corridor. “He killed
my Robert!”
The Kommissar blinked in astonish-
ment and suspected some mad hallu-
cination of grief as the cause of this
hysterical charge. Her husband was
equally surprised, and turned to her
quickly.
“Why, Emma,” he protested, “how
can you say such a thing? I saw that
boy’s face and I’m sure we never saw
him ‘before in our lives.”
By this time the strange youth had
reached the stairs at the end of a long
hall. Mrs. Witzel screamed.
“But his clothes—they’re Robert’s!”
Retz waited for no more. Quickly
he raced after the vanishing figure.
The boy suddenly broke into a run
and dashed down the steps toward the
main door of the building. But Retz
reached the landing above in time to
shout a warning to a group of detec-
tives standing near the entrance.
“Stop that man.” Retz roared, and
immediately the detectives plunged
after the fleeing youth.
In an instant the street in front of
headquarters was thrown into con-
fusion. Cars swerved wildly, police
whistles shrilled, and pedestrians
dodged into doorways. But the chase
was ibrief. Faced with the choice of
being run down by a heavy truck or
certain capture, the young man pre-
ferred to give himself. up.
Haled back into the presence of the
Witzels, a dramatic meeting of sus- .
pect and accuser took place. Trucu-
lently the captive denied having had
anything to do with, or even having
known, Robert Witzel.
_ “He’s lying,” Frau Witzel insisted.
“I myself sewed a patch on the inside
lining of the very coat he has on!”
The youth glared balefully at her
while detectives stripped off his jacket
—and found the patch that the woman
had mentioned! hey
“Look here, son,” ‘Chief Retz
snapped, “you’d better come clean.
What. do. you know about Robert —
Witzel?”
“Nothing!” the boy repeated stub-
bornly.
“Look at this, Chief.” Ous of the de-
tectives came forward holding an iden-
tification card in his hand. “I found it
in the breast: pocket.”
The card bore the photo and signa-
ture of Robert Witzel!
It developed that the pale, under-
nourished youth was one Hellmuth
Krieger, jobless linotype apprentice
from Hamburg seeking work in Han-
over. According to his story, he had
been in town for only three months,
living from hand to mouth and sleep-
ing in the city parks. Asked why he
had not: sought aid at the city relief
station, the youth became evasive.
Well, he just couldn't,. he said—he was
no beggar.
“Whose clothes are you wearing?”
Chief Retz demanded. -
“Mine.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Bought ’em from a man down by
the railroad station.”
“Know his amine?”
“No.”
“Could you recognize him again?”
The youth shook his head. It. had
been dark, and he hadn’t had a good
look at the man, he said. He had
bought them because his old ones were
in no shape. to be seen by a prospec-
tive employer, and he insisted that he
had had no idea he was in possession
of Witzel’s identification card.
“It couldn’t have been that you
wanted to get rid of your own blood-
stained clothes?” one of the detectives
asked,
“No sir!” Krieger protested stoutly.
“I have nothing to hide.”
“What did you come to headquar-
ters for?” demanded: Retz.
“No special reason,” and with an
attempt at unconcern, the youth lit a
cigarette. -
Chief Retz and his assistants real-
ized that there was no point in con-
tinuing the questioning until a thor-
ough check of all points of the youth’s
recital had ‘been made, so they de-
tained him for further examination.
PENDING the results of this investi-
gation, the chief held a consultation
with his principal aides. The main
issue was this: Was the boy psycho-
logically constituted to commit a se-
ries of gruesome murders?:
On this question Kriminalkommis-
sar Von Manteuffel, especially dis-
patched from Berlin to aid the short-
handed Hanoverian force, was ada-
mant. No, he insisted, it was impos-
sible. One had just to look at this boy’s
slight physique and the clumsy way
in which he used his hands, to realize
‘that he could not be a murderer who
had lopped off hundreds of limbs with
all the skill of an expert surgeon.
Moreover, he was obviously no sexual
pervert.
Retz and his men were forced to ad-
mit that their colleague from Berlin
was probably correct.
Krieger’s dossier, forwarded to
every police precinct in the country,
confirmed these assumptions. It was
no hard. task for the investigators . to.
determine that Krieger’s real name
was Anton Krausz, and that he had
plenty of reason not to apply for city
relief, being a fugitive from a refor-
matory where he had been pjaced for
thievery. But except for this petty
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FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
criminal record, he was an absolute
unknown to the police.
Confronted with these facts, the
youth confessed that this much was
so, but he maintained that he was in-
nocent of everything else.
As for the Witzel clothes, he admit-
ted now that he had bought them from
a certain Elisabeth Engel, of 4 Rote
Reihe, whom he had wished to protect
out of gratitude for her having har-
bored him during the last two months.
He had merely happened to accom-
pany her to headquarters on some er-
rand on the day of his arrest.
The police, when they questioned
her, found the Engel woman a tough
nut to crack. She said she had bought
the clothes recently from an itinerant
peddler for her own son, but out of
pity for Krausz’s shabbiness, she had
made him a present of them.
“We'll let her go for the present,”
Captain Retz said to his aides in pri-
vate, “but keep an eye on her. There
may be something more to her than
housework.”
A few days later the detective as-
signed to this duty burst into Retz’s
office with startling news.
“Your hunch was right, Chief,” he
said, “We've got something on her now.
This Engel woman didn’t get the Wit-
zel clothes from anybody but Fritz
Haarman. He lives at the same house
with her, you know, and today we saw
him carrying a suit of clothes into her
apartment.” t
. Fritz Haarman was no stranger to
the police. A peddler by trade, he was
both an ex-convict and a stool pigeon.
Despite his long prison record and
some intermittent periods of incarcer-
ation in insane asylums, the police
made use of his very close connections
with the underworld. In addition,
Haarman increased his regular in-
come ‘by a small business in meat and
old clothes.
While orders went out to pick up
Haarman, Retz received a visit from
Dr. Kampe, the dentist who had treat-
ed young Witzel. He made a close in-
spection of the skulls and finally sin-
gled out one of the smallest in the grim
collection.
“This is positively Witzel’s,” he an-
nounced sadly. Producing a dentist’s
chart, he pointed out correspondence
between notations on the boy’s oral
record and dental work in the skull.
“You'll find an incisor in the lower left -
jaw with a gold cap that I myself put
on. And here, take a look at this cavity
in: the wisdom tooth. I myself drilled
that hole, but the boy never came back
to have it filled. This is the poor lad,
all right.” :
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Retz.
“You’ve given us our first identifica-
.tion.”
Later that day, as dusk was settling
over the turreted roofs of Hanover,
Fritz Haarman strode into Chief Retz’s
office and dropped jauntily into a chair.
Stocky, sensual, with narrow, pig-like
eyes that did not hide their contempt,
he slammed his broad-brimmed felt
hat down hard upon the desk. Pulling
out a huge Havana, he leaned patron-
izingly toward Retz and asked:
“Well, Chief, what's up? What can
I do for you today?”
“Haanman,” the captain ‘Answered,
“T'm in a tough spot. Tell me, do you
know bychance a fellow about twenty
Krieger, I think he calls himself?
We picked him up on a theft charge
and I think he has some connection
with a gang of thieves that has been
working us pretty heavily these days.”
‘ Haarman grinned, “Krieger? No,
‘I'm sort of losing contact with all the
old boys now that my selling business
is picking up.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Retz replied.
“Although we’ll miss your help, Fritz.”
Haarman slowly rose to his feet.
“Well, Chief, if that’s all, I guess I'll
be going. Say, by the way—what have
you found about the skulls?”
“Nothing new.”
“That’s too bad,” Haarman sympa-
thized in slight mockery. “You know,
‘Kommissar, you’re a good fellow and
I like you, but I can’t help thinking
that the people around here are going
to get fed up pretty soon unless: some-
thing is done.”
He had almost reached the doorway
when Retz called to him in an offhand
voice:
“Say, Haarman, take a look at these.”
He casually picked up the Witzel
clothes which hitherto had been con-
cealed. “Recognize them?”
Haarman strode back and ran short,
stumpy fingers over’the material. “No.
Never say them before,” he said, and,
left.
]MMEDIATELY Retz summoned be-
fore him young Krausz (Krieger),
whom he had secretly posted in a posi-
tion to survey Haarman’s entrance into
his office. °
“Well, Krausz, is that the man you
say gave the suit to Mrs. Engel?”
“Sure. You see, when I was wearing
this suit for the first time, I ran into
Haarman on the street near the widow’s
house. He looked surprised and accused
me of stealing the clothes from Karl
Engel. But then I told him they had
been given to me by Mrs. Engel, and
he warned me to forget all about the
matter,”
Retz dismissed the boy and sum-
moned his detectives. The shady ped-
dler Haarman, he knew, was obviously
linked to the clothes of Robert Witzel.
Further, he had a criminal background
and was a known homosexual. Could it
be that this same man lay behind Han-
Over’s gruesome murder plague? If so,
the net of evidence which police were
preparing to draw tight, must be strong
and have no flaws. ;
At Retz’s order, detectives watched
Haarman’s every move. He was
‘shadowed constantly. Expert sleuths,
rushed to Hanover from other cities so
that the suspect could not possibly rec-
ognize them, were posted day and night
outside his house. Neighbors were
quietly quizzed on details of the man’s
private life, and it was learned that his
dingy room, whose shades were always
‘carefully drawn at night, was a notori-
ous hangout for jobless perverts.
This was no news to the police, who
had long been familiar with the man’s
a a ae
ee on as
y in
soon
ured
risly
nent
ones
dis-
is of
seen
ered
een
doom at the hands of some unknown fiend. A total of
500 human bones had: been discovered!
The fact that all the victims, apparently without ex-
ception, were young men under the age of twenty, seemed
to indicate that the person or persons responsible for the
terror would be found among the 4,000 homosexuals
known to be at large in crowded, vice-ridden Hanover.
HIS COMFORTABLE, old-fashioned office at police
headquarters sat Herr Kriminalkommissar Retz, head
bent low over a detailed police map of the city, a worried
frown marking his clean-cut features.
There were three red circles on that map, indicating
ata glance Hanover’s worst zones of perversion and crime.
First of all there was the Central Railroad Station,
gigantic clearing house of stolen goods ranging from the
most expensive fineries to the carcasses of dogs whose
fiesh the poor people of the impoverished city did not dis-
» dain to eat. Night after night the waiting rooms of the
‘ station would be crowded with the homeless, jobless,
'. hungry and outlawed, attracted there by some possibility
o eking out a few marks by mean employment.
Next came the Georgstrasse, a wide avenue between
- the renowned Hoftheater and the century-old Cafe
Kroepke. This was known:as an infamous thoroughfare
of sexual degenerates. Along here they met, “courted”
~ @ne another, and departed in couples.
bint
Finally, there remained “Little Venice,” along whose
HOUSE OF DOOM
Above: A Hanover detective points to No. 8
Longstrasse, exposed as the den of the monster
who lured over a score of persons—all of them
young men—up the stairway to horrible doom.
eetwork of alleys, dating back to medieval times, slunk
the worst denizens of the city’s underworld—crooks,
pimps, cutthroats, panders.
Chief Retz knew that any one of these three sectors was
alikely hideout for the perpetrator, or perpetrators, of
this heinous crime. And the likeliest of all, he thought,
was the Georgstrasse, as the murders evidently had been
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE 47
committed by a degenerate of the worst type.
Yet he was nonplused. Confronting him were a score
of deaths, but few clues of any kind, no fingerprints, no
murder weapons. And worst of all, there had been no
identification of any of the victims so far.
This fact was not unexplainable, because of the fan-
tastic number of missing persons being reported not only
in Hanover, but in all Germany, in those fearsome times.
After 1918 the toll of disappearances had risen to such
tremendous proportions that Hanover alone, in 1923,
had more than six hundred persons unaccounted for.
Kommissar Retz paced the room with restless strides.
Was all Hanover to become a charnel house? Today there
were twenty-two corpses. Tomorrow there might be a
hundred!
Suddenly the buzzer on his desk sounded.
“Mr. and Mrs. Witzel to see you, sir,” the sergeant out-
side announced.
The Witzels were parents of a boy who had been miss-
ing for a year. Retz received them courteously. __
“I know how you and your wife have been worrying,”
he said to Witzel, a foreman in a tire company. “Now to-
day it is possible we have something to go on. I want you
to come with me and look at those skulls which have been
found.”
The man agreed, grimly, and leaving his wife behind
in the office, accompanied the chief to the police morgue.
There he could only shake his head sadly.
“There are so many,” he said. “I cannot tell one from
another.”
Retz surveyed the grisly exhibits for a moment. Then
he asked: “Did your son ever undergo any dental treat-
ment, Mr. Witzel?”
“Yes,” said the foreman. “About two years ago he had
three fillings made by Dr. Kampe.”
The officer made a note of the dentist’s name and they
both returned to the office.
At that moment occurred one of those curious coinci-
dences which lend credence to . (Continued on page 123)
EXECUTION CHAMBER.
Below: On this rough cot in a squalid attic room
the slayer butchered his victims piecemeal after
plying them with liquor. But one of them escaped
and told.
ea a So apeseteer
STS
ee enters inate
The house in the Ghost Quarter of Hanover where Haarman and Grans lived together, headquar-
ters for their horrible, illicit. butcher's trade
that I deal with it only because it carries a lesson of
first importance to the public, as well as to State and
Federal officials who still hold out against sterilization
for criminal and other delinquents. There is no sense
in shutting our eyes prudishly to facts. We should know
how to recognize menaces of the Fritz Haarman breed
when we see them.
The man had cash in his pockets fromthe start.
His meat commanded the best Prices, There was never
any danger that he would be arrested as a smuggler, be-
cause he had lost no time. in setting himself right with
the Police. He yolunteered to serve them as an informer
without pay, except for a little graft once in a while.
The Department had fallen on such. evil times—it was
so undermanned and underpaid—that it took on this
degenerate and jailbird to save itself work.
fHAARMAN began to be known as The Detective.
When he was not engaged in spying or delivering
meat, his favorite haunt was the Central Railroad Sta-
tion. An observer of the period has described the place
as follows: ‘
“Here in the huge waiting halls, over the pavement
littered with the refuse of a crowd that never dissolved,
was the headquarters of the floating population, the
homeless, the wanderers, the fugitives, the workless, In
the day they used it for a base. In the night they shared
the heat of its stoves, Runaway boys from the farthest
towns of North Germany, workless laborers from the
factories closed by the English embargo, out-of-heel
professors, sneak thieves who had their stalls in the
Square outside, and all sorts of refugees,”
The method followed by Haarman seldom varied.
He would roam about the station—a fat, grinning man
—until he saw a boy who especially pleased him. He
challenged the boy to show his local Passport and rail-
toad ticket, neither of which the poor derelict Possessed.
Haarman suddenly would pretend to take pity on him
and invite him to his home for a meal and bed. . . The
victims who accepted his hospitality vanished. There
were no exceptions.
HE OPERATED alone for only a short time. At the
end of 1919 he met a frightful young pervert named
Hans Grans,°24, in the notorious Cafe ropcke, a resort
of homosexuals. Grans lived with him thereafter and
helped him at all stages of the game. Off and on he
also employed one Wittekewski, who dropped out of
sight in advance of the expose.
._ It is impossible to hold to the usual lines of detec-
tive narration in telling the story of this case, At no
time were the Police trying to solve the mystery of any
particular disappearance, or looking for a suspected mur-
derer. Haarman never was a fugitive. His arrest was
22
brought about almost by accident. His conviction rested
upon his own confession, buttressed by a long chain of
circumstantial evidence. So [ shall not attmept to build
up artificial suspense. Instead, [ shall list here bluntly
the astounding teatures of his orgy of crime:
He Became a Meat Smug: |
gler . . . Secretive About |
Where He Got His Supplies.
When the Source ‘Became |
Known, All Germany — the
Civilized World Was Aghast
+ Haarman was a mass- murderer and sadist. He
killed none but boys who excited his unnatural passions.
By persuasion or force he got the victim to submit
to physical abuse, and then took the victim’s life.
He cut up: the body, disposed of the head, hands
and feet, and cured the other parts by “means of salting.
He sold the flesh under the name of pork in the
peer Market. He sold or gave some of it to neigh-
ors.
For three years absolutely no official attention was
paid to Haarman’s activities, His early victims are thus
unknown. :
Twenty-seven murders, dated in 1923 and 1924,
finally were charged against him. ‘These brought him
to his doom. .
He was incredibly careless about covering up his
tracks, did not wash the blood from his walls. Openly
he threw human remains in the river. ‘
His starving neighbors in the Rothe Reine became
his tacit accomplices. They accepted gifts of meat and
asked no questions.
ean and other suspicious sounds while he did
his bloody work were not reported until after -he
had been arrested.
In his role of volunteer detective, he often was
asked by parents to find the very boys he had murdered.
The Police closed such inquiries on the strength of
Haarman’s negative reports.
How long would it have been possible for this un-
paralleled nightmare of evil to continue? One cannot
say for sure, but it is my opinion that even as the post-
war degradation of Hanover brought it about, the
dawn of a more wholesome era ended it. Scores of
persons, including the venal Police, must have known
what Haarman was doing from 1919 to 1924. They
refused to act on their knowledge, that was all. But
a count was kept in the last two years of the period.
Hating the business by this time, but afraid to take
Photograph of the very room in which Haarman committed his lust crimes and murders. These are
the cooking pots in which he made his vaunted “soup”
.
V itiscaatient mater *
LATION
e Cannibal Butcher
on vicious boys without even keeping an account
of it, and soon was bankrupt.
In 1914 he was working as a packer in a ware-
house. The temptation was too great. He robbed
on a big scale, was caught and received the term
that kept him behind bars during the War.
Such was the type of thoroughly bad citizen
who reappeared in Flanover in 1918, and was there
sent back to prison for a year, on charges indi-
cated in the foregoing. When he was discharged
in September, 1919, he was forty years old and
seemingly had made up his mind to stop at noth-
ing. He was no longer a mere pervert and thief.
He was an ogre.
H's native city was in still more wretched straits than
it had been while the War lasted.- A weak repub-
lican government was doing little to provide the people
with either work or food. Public morals were at their
lowest ebb, with 30,000 female prostitutes in a popula-
tion of about 350,000, and 500 licensed male Prostitutes!
Meat and bread were doled out to the holders of
cards. There was a special scarcity of meat, and it was
against the law for private persons to trade in it. But
around the railroad station square, the so-called Schie-
ber (Profiteer) Market existed. At thousands of little
stalls a daily business was done in stolen and smuggled
meat, from salt beef.and pork obtained from the com-
missaries of the Allies along the Rhine, to veal and
ducks and geese brought in by. the country people, and
dogs and cats trapped in the streets. Prices were exorbi-
ae Sales were made in packages that bore false
labels.
This sort of thing exactly suited Fritz Haarman.
: He became a meat smuggler,
selling to the Schieber stalls
and to a few trusted retail
customers. He was very se-
cretive about where he got
his supplies. When the
source. became known later
on, all Germany—the whole
that he was “incurably
feeble-minded.” ;
This did not exempt
him from military training.
He was called up at the
regular age of 18, and odd-
ly enough showed great ap-
titude as a soldier. He was
quickly promoted to be a
sergeant.
Thrown back into civil life, he refused to study a
trade. His father wanted to apprentice him to a cigar-
maker. Fritz rebelled against this with a fury that sug-
gested insanity. He had an epileptic fit after one of his
scenes with his father. So the latter had him temporarily
committed to a hospital for a diagnosis. The specialist, civilized world—was to be
Doctor Andrae, wrote the following opinion: + aghast at the revelation.
. -Haarman established
tn ORALLY lacking, unintelligent, rough, easily himself in the Neuestrasse, a
amused, revengeful and entirely selfish; but not miserable alley, and eventu-
in any proper sense mentally ill, so that there are no ally moved to the Rothe
grounds for sending him to a lunatic asylum.” Reine—or Red Row— a still
I need scarcely say that under the present German more gloomy location, which was to be the scene of the
sy$tem, Fritz Haarman would have been sterilized at majority of his crimes. These streets were in the section
this point in his career, The treatment would have of Hanover known as the Ghost Quarter, because of its
checked his evil impulses, and the awful crimes now age and the mouldering condition of the houses. The
written against his name almost certainly would never Rothe Reine was at its center, being the ancient Ghetto
have occurred. main-alley, which ran under the walls of the s nagogue,
But in 1903 the young man was turned loose by It is not to be understood that Haarman lived there
Doctor Andrae, and he immediately started a series of because he was short of funds, or did not enjoy physical
petty thefts and burglaries. He was jailed several comfort. He simply needed secrecy in his business—a
Fritz Haarman: “This
man was the chief mur-
derer, the worst man,
the last of. the human
race”
times. [lis relatives tried setting him up in a shop, hideout where the darkest ‘deeds would pass almost
but the warp in his nature was So, twisted that he. unnoticed. : ‘
actually stole from himself. He squandered the stock Vhis, indeed, is a case so abnormal and revolting
f 21
e
"Why, | Committed at Least
Forty. Good Murders. 1 Can-
not Say Definitely What the
Total Was — Perhaps a Hun-
‘dred... . And Sterilization ‘
Would Have Stopped Him! |
the initiative because of their own Partial guilt, the
Police dallied until their hands were forced. This oc-
curred on May 17, 1924, ‘
Some children playing on the banks of the river
Leine, which runs through Hanover, discovered a hu-
man _ skull. The authorities were notified, and rather
significantly they sent officers to search the spot. We
may assume that in the darker days just ended they
would have ignored such a detail.
HE searchers soon found a smaller skull, and a day
later two more were dug from the mud on the bank.
The medical examiner, an old-timer, announced that
“some ‘medical ' students appear to have been perpe-
trating a joke.” But this sort of explanation no longer
satisfied the head of the Department. He ordered de- .
tectives to check up the movements of a number of
doubtful characters, includin Fritz Haarman, Since
every member of the local Force was well known to
Haarman, the Chief sent to Berlin for two special men
and assigned them to keep on the meat smuggler’s trail.
On the night of June 22, the Berlin sleuths saw
Haarman quarreling in the Central Railroad Station
with a youth named Fromm. They promptly inter-
vened. Haarman complained that he had caught Fromm
trying to travel without a ticket and demanded his
arrest. But the derelict boy countered with the charge
that Haarman had .made an indecent proposal to him.
The detectives took them both to Headquarters,
THis was exactly the kind of break for which the
Chief had been looking, Though Haarman protested
in amazement and quoted his Past services, he was
booked as an offender against public morals. Two de-
tectives were hurried over to his quarters in the Rothe
Reine, with instructions to catalogue the contents and
question other residents about the man’s habits.
The report turned in was extremely damaging.
Traces of blood had been found everywhere, on the
Detectives examining Haarman’s stove, where he burned the
skulls—not taken to the Scheibe
portions of his victims—all except the
r Market
Death closet in. Haarman’s house,. where he
kept the bodies of his victims until a favorable
i time to sell ‘ “
floor, on tables, on the walls and in the sink. Articles
of boys’ clothing and trinkets were stacked in careless
heaps. The landlady’s young son had been wearing a
coat which Haarman had given him. It was seized as
evidence, and that same night the mother of a missing
boy identified. it as her son’s coat.
Asked to explain all this, Haarman merely said that
the bloodstains resulted from his. illicit butcher’s busi-
ness. The Police always had known that he was in that
trade, he stated. Ratting on his homosexual partner,
Hans Grans, he swore that the boys’ clothing belonged
to Grans. .
NDER analysis, blood from Haarman’s lodgings
proved to be human blood. The dragging of the
Leine produced shortly afterwards another skull, as
well as bones in sacks. Somewhat in excess of 500 hu-
man bones, coming from at least twenty-two different
bodies, were taken from the river before the end of
uly,
‘ "The famous indictment of Fritz Haarman for mur-
der, based on twenty-seven cases, was then drawn. Three
of the accusations later were dropped because of insul-
ficient proof. Hans Grans was arrested and charged as
an accomplice in all the killings. The double trial was
set for December, 1924,
Gruesome supporting testimony was volunteered by.
a number of persons. A Frau Seemann, who had lived
on the floor below Haarman, said that she often had te-
ceived presents of meat from (Continued on Page 35)
23
slayer, at Cincinnati . . . General dissatis-
faction over recent New York law making
hangings private comes to a head when
Crine is turned off at Goshen without
benefit of spectators.
MENACES: Police raid New York
prizefights in the later speakeasy manner
... Matilda Penn, Washington hotel maid,
arrested for putting cow itch in the beds
. Eastern cities overrun with pickpock-
ets recently released from Pennsylvania
prisons.
SLAVERY: The South is out to get
Arthur Tappan, wealthy New York mer-
chant and_ abolitionist. Grand Jury of
Frederick County, Virginia, indicts him for
disturbing the peace. Parish of East Feli-
ciana, Louisiana, offers $50,000 reward for
his capture. New Orleans, Charleston,
South Carolina, and Macon, Georgia, also
offer rewards.
LAWSUITS: Duke W. Hullum, father
of one of the gamblers lynched at Vicks-
burg, is seeking damages. No luck... In
Philadelphia the police are on the trail of
Drew the counterfeiter. Raid home of his
relatives. Seize money they believe to be
false. It turns out to be perfectly good.
And the authorities have a suit on their
hands.
CRIME AFLOAT: Captain and Mate
of vessel from Porto Rico charged with
cruelty to sailors. Chaining them to deck.
Forcing them at pistol point, to flog each
cther with wire rods . . . Similar charges
against skipper of the Alexandria in the
China trade. American ship lying off Para,
Brazil, boarded by natives. Crew massa.
cred... The Byron in New York harbor
from Liverpool with most of crew in irons.
Mutinied at sea. Seized ship. Held it four
days... At Trenton the Barnegat pirates
are tried for looting the Henry Franklin
and James Fischer off the Jersey coast.
Guilty. Sentenced from two months to
four years.
STATISTICS OF THE MONTH: Au-
burn Prison reports on reforms: Of 459
convicts discharged in a year, 229 are “de-
cidedly reformed,” 76 “are “much im-
proved,” 63 are “somewhat improved.”
Sterilization—Fritz Haarman, the Cannibal Butcher
him. She assumed that he cut up dead
animals in his room, so paid little atten-
tion to the noise he made. One night she
had heard him chopping away, and as she
was hungry she had rapped on her ceiling
and shouted:
“Am I going to get a bit?”
Hlaarman had answered in_ his high-
pitched pervert’s voice: “No. I'll remem-
ber you next time.”
Before the end of the week he had
brought her a bag of bones, saying that he
already had made soup from them, but
that she might be able to use them again,
The bones were remarkably white. Hlaar-
man had added, according to the woman,
that he had not eaten his soup. The Police
believed that he had said this in order to
cover up his own cannibalism. The one
thing he would never. admit was that he
himself had devoured human flesh.
Frau Seemann’s story and others like it
threw. Germany into a panic of horror.
The name of Werewolf was applied to
Haarman. The newspapers pointed out
that a countryman known as apa Danke
had been convicted as a cannibal not long
before. People feared that this most mon-
strous of vices had been epidemic in the
land since the War, and perhaps could not
be stamped out. .
The State’s case, meanwhile, was solidly
founded on the twenty-four murders re-
tained on its list. To all but one of these
Haarman had confessed. Hans Grans per-
sistently denied that he had had anything
to do with them.
The first murder probably was featured
because the Police felt that they had had
a previous contact with it, and had failed
in their duty. On February 12, 1923, Fritz
Franke had run away from his father’s
house in Berlin after stealing money and
some goods. He had been traced to Han-
over, where he had fallen into Haarman’s
clutches. He was last seen walking with
the ogre towards the Rothe .Reine. Not
long afterwards two prostitutes, friends of
Grans, visited the apartment when both
men were out. They poked in the cup-
boards and were astonished to find great
quantities of meat of a suspicious appear-
ance. They had taken a sample of it to
Headquarters, where they were told by an
unnamed officer that it was nothing but
salt pork.
It would be wearisome to give the de-
tails of all the other killings cited. | se-
lect those which emphasize the callousness
of Haarman and Coane, or which have
some other remarkable aspect. They are
arranged in the order of their occurrence.
The date in each case is that of the dis-
appearance of the boy.
* May 23, 1923—Roland Huch, 16.
June 25, 1923—Ernest Ehrenberg, 13.
October 12, 1923—Wilhelm Erdner, 16,
who failed to return home from a job.
October 25, 1923—Herman Wolff.
November, 1923—Adolf Hannappel, 17.
January 5, 1924—Ernst Spiecker, 17.
February 8, 1924—Hermann Speichert,
15, employed at the electric power station.
April 15, 1924—Hermann Bock, a loiter-
er at the Central Railroad Station, who
had turned thief.
April 29, 1924—Robert Witzel, 18.
May 9, 1924—Heinz Martin, 16.
June 14, 1924 (one week before Haar-
man arrest)—Erich de Vries, 17.
It is clear that avarice was a powerful
motive in Fritz Haarman’s crimes. He had
adopted the trade of butcher; and since
cattle, hogs and poultry were scarce, he
killed human beings for a living, He also
sold the poor belunainns of his. victims
(Continued from Page 23)
for what they would fetch. But it is equal-
ly plain that a tainted sexuality impelled
him to trap boys and dispose of them as
he did. :
On one occasion he said to his confed-
erate Grans: “Hans, why am | different
from other men? Perhaps | have two
souls.” f
He was a true type of the lust-mu rderer,
so ably portrayed and analyzed by Doctor
von Krafft-Ebing in his Psychopathia
Sexualis. According to the great Viennese
psychiatrist, such persons have “an innate
desire to humiliate, hurt, wound or even
destroy others in order thereby to create
sexual pleasure in one’s self.” Lesser cruel-
ties soon cease to provide the kick craved,
The impulse towards murder becomes ir-
resistible. ;
Thus, when Haarman was under twenty,
and before he was entirely perverted, he
became engaged to a youn girl. He se-
duced her. When he learned that she was
going to have a baby he beat her savagely,
then ran away, leaving her to solve her
problem alone. Jt had given him an evil
Joy to do this, he declared years after-
hn to but he had not wanted to kill the
girl.
We have seen into what, he developed.
It is appalling to think that Haarman
should have fathered a child, legitimate or
illegitimate. Such a crime against the race
could have been prevented by the early
sterilization of this fiend,
It should be pointed out that along
with his other abnormalities, Haarman
was a masochist where Hans Grans was
concerned. The monstrous youth domi-
nated him emotionally. He wanted to be
the slave of Grans, squandered money
upon him and would go to any lengths to
please him. Sometimes they quarreled.
Haarman was once so angry at Grans
that he denounced the latter to the Police
for a crime. But the next day he with-
drew the charge, and wept and pleaded
until Grans forgave him.
Apparently Grans was not a lust-mur-
derer in the sense that Haarman was.
Grans acted as an accomplice cold-blood-
edly, and purely out of greed. He lacked
even the excuse of a mania for killing,
though of course he was rotten through ©
and through with the disease of homo-
sexuality.
They should both have been sterilized
oung, or they should not have been al-
owed to live. This is so obvious, in view
of their crimes, that I imagine none but
extremely bigotted opponents of the
theory would care.to deny it.
I have said that this case was a factor
in bringing about the present German ster-
ilization law. Thank God, some good re-
sulted from its welter of horror. The
psychiatrist, Do¢etor Schmalfuss, who had
Pronounced Fritz Haarman “incurably
feeble-minded” at the age of 17, came for-
ward, made a study of his patient’s final
stage of degeneracy, and filed a report with
the central Government in Berlin, He
stated in this able document that crime
was largely due to the breeding of “pro-
tected subnormal types,” which not only
reproduced their kind but tended to get
worse from generation to generation, [le
was also one of the first to point out that
a moron can be turned from crimes of vio-
lence, if sterilized before he has done any
real harm, The Government of the day
was too timid to act on the suggestion.
Ilowever, the Nazis remembered the
Schmalfuss report and acted upon it when
they came to power in 1933,
Haarman and Grans went on trial, as
scheduled, early in December, 1924, The
former proved to be an exhibitionist, ad-
mitting the truth of almost everything
that was charged against him, and élabor-
ating the details. Grans, on the other
hand, insisted that he was not guilty. He
refused to answer questions. He maintained
an attitude of cold contempt toward his
ex-partner in vice and slaughter.
Haarman longed for the limelight of the
witness stand and chuckled with glee when
he was called. ,
He raked up the case of Friedel Rothe,
the boy who vanished in 1918 shortly after
Haarman’s first return to Hanover. When
the Police came to his room and caught
him debauching another boy, they should
really have been more dilligent in making
a search of the premises, he said, At the
very moment of their visit, the head of
Friedel Rothe was lying under the bed
concealed by nothing but.a newspaper.
Whether this was true or a gruesome
boast, it was impossible to prove. Asked if
he had sold the body of Friedel in the
Schieber Market, Haarman answered
“Yes.” But he could not: account for the
final disposition of the head. He had had
no chance to do anything with it before
he was marched off to prison. Why had
it not been discovered and reported to the
Police?
“Oh, I suppose the landlady found it
and threw it into the river!” he suggested
carelessly. “She’d have been scared to re-
Port it, because you fellows might have
accused her of helping me with the kill-
in
Though Haarman may well have mur-
dered Friedel Rothe for reasons of lust
and robbery, it seems unlikely that he
did what he said he did with the remains,
He was not in the illicit meat business un-
til his release from jail in 1919,
ut he gave minute and convincing, in-
formation about many of his later crimes.
A little of this is included in my summary
of the outstanding cases. To attempt a
complete picture, it would be necessary to
write a book.
Haarman was indignant because he was
being tried on only twenty-four counts.
“Why, I committed at least forty good
murders,” he declared. “I cannot say defi-
nitely what the total was—perhaps a hun-
dred. Some of them were unprofitable, or
too easy, and not worth mentioning.”
As the trial drew to a close and Haar-
man saw that he would certainly get the
death sentence, his talk became more and
more grotesque. He shouted to the judge:
“Take my head. | give it to you, But |
want fo be executed on the market-place.
On. my tombstone must be put this in-|4
scription, ‘Here Lies Mass-Murderer Haar- M
tat
man.’ On my birthday, Hans Grans must
come and lay a wreath upon it.”
Both of the accused were found guilty
in the first degree, but for some reason
difficult to explain Grans was let off with
life imprisonment. Fritz Haarman got the
guillotine.
Before the monster was beheaded, on
the morning of April 15, 1925, he made a
new and more detailed confession. It failed
to add anything to the essential horror
of_ his crimes. :
The late William Bolitho, famous jour-
nalist, followed the case closely and made
a comparison between Haarman and other
outstanding ogres, such as Burke and
Hare, the Edinburgh ghouls: Landru, the
French “Bluebeard,” et cetera, Bolitho
wrote: ae
“This man was the chief murderer, the
worst man, the last of the human race.”
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The days and nights that followed passed
quietly, however. ‘Weeks went by without
a single new attack. Many detectives be-
came convinced that, alibi or no_ alibi,
Bauer was the monster and Liidtke was
wrong.
Meanwhile, the detectives, under various
covers, had infiltrated the S-Bahn setup
and the entire triangle area generally, and
had come up with a list of suspects. There
was a man on it with a rather prominent
nose, Paul Ogorzow, an S-Bahn switch-
man. The three or four women who had
laid eyes on the S-Bahn monster had
eliminated Ogorzow. He was married, the
father of two children, and'an employee
with an excellent record who always had
been good-natured and willing when
ordered to be available to escort lone
women. He had no police record, had
never done as much as make drunken
noise. But the simple fact that put him
on the list of suspects was that the Rum-
melsburg station chief always sent him
out for coffee. On these occasions the boss
and Ogorzow would discuss preventive
measures the police were planning. And
the boss would tell Ogorzow what he knew,
because he trusted and liked to talk with
the switchman. Ogorzow had an alibi for
every single night in question, however.
Another man was one who insisted on
taking long solitary walks in the black
damp of these sinister winter nights. Then
there was a railroad, though not S-Bahn,
conductor who resembled the maniac more
than any of the others, and had even been
tentatively identified by the policewoman,
Lotte Hankow, as well as by one of the at-
tacked victims. His alibis, too, seemed
solid. °
Another on the list was an S-Bahn re-
pair crew member, Anton Watzek, who
twice had been stopped when trying to
steal off with cable leftovers concealed in
his sleeve—loot he claimed he wanted to
sell for scrap.
This list of suspects was the poor, some-
what grotesque result of the checking of
two thousand different tips, five thousand
S-Bahn employees, and tens of thousands
of inhabitants of the triangle area. And
this over many months by a larger force
of detectives and agents than had ever been
employed in any other single police action
anywhere.
Unpromising as the list looked, they
were all arrested on the same day, at the
same hour. Their houses were searched
from top to bottom, their clothes subjected
to chemical examination and their alibis
turned inside out. All were back home
before 48 hours were over, free men in
the clear. Peeping Tom Bauer, who was
not free but seemed in the clear, still was
the best bet to some, though they could
not back up their conviction with hard
facts.
Almost five months passed since the
bludgeon attack on the woman found in the
slush, Lisa Novak. Then came the muggy.
storm-ridden night of July 3rd. Passengers
of an S-Bahn train thought they heard a
scream, A search was made. Toward
Karlshorst the body of a woman—Olga
Opell—was found. Her skull was fractured
and she apparently had been flung from
the train, Bauer had a truly iron-clad
alibi: he was in jail. That finished him as
a prospect.
A few days later, an undercover man
working as a night watchman at the Rum-
melsburg S-Bahn yards, picked up a tip.
A station cleaner told him one of the auxili-
ary swifehmen had slipped away from his
job for some twenty minutes about the time
of the last killing. “T saw him climb over
the fence, coming and going,” said the
leaner Affer some prodding he named
Paul Ogorzow, one of the suspects on the
list, who was still toting pots of coffee for
the stationmaster.
Ltidtke had another go at Ogorzow, and
told him point-blank that his escapade
had been noticed. Ogorzow was & congenial
suspect. He admitted: not only having
skipped out that night, but on many other
nights as well.
“I know a Fraiilein in the neighborhood,”
he added, his eyes twinkling merrily.
The Fraiilein existed, and the visits were
a fact. When Liidtke talked to her she first
bashfully denied, later admitted, that Ogor-
zow paid romantic attention to her. The
fence-climbing was a regular feature of
their furtive meetings, the fence being a
‘short-cut to her backyard as well as her
heart. She was sure, too, that on the night
in question—July 3rd—he had paid a tender
call on her, at the critical hour.
With this Ogorzow was again almost free
-and pretty much in the clear, but the lab
now informed Liidtke that some traces of
blood had been found on his blouse.
“What about this?” Liidtke asked the
fence-climber.
“My boy cut his finger the other day.”
“What streets do you take to go home
after work?” ,
A very simple question, and yet it rattled
the man. While his answers up to this
point had _ been straightforward and
prompt, he now began to stammer and
fumble.
Liidtke had him describe the route,
street by street, a 15-minute walk. Two
special pins on the by-now-famous wall
map’ marked spots along his path where a
year before women had been molested by a
man in a railroader’s uniform. Ogorzow
was now less congenial. Still, it took
Liidtke hours to make him admit that on
two occasions he had played his blackout
flashlight on passing women.
Now insatiable, Liidtke demanded details
on these two incidents. But there was
something—some inner compulsion—which
seemed to hold Ogerzow back. He had a
great deal of trouble with concrete details.
But for hours Liidtke insisted on talking
about nothing but the time Ogorzow had
blinded women with his flash. Ogorzow—
plainly for the sake of peace—finally dis-
closed that, “one woman swore at me like
mad.” Which, incidentally, checked with
what one molested woman had told the
police at the time.
That was one incident. Lidtke now
switched the talk to the other. Where did
this one happen?
Ogorzow proved less difficult now. “At
the corner of Scharnhorst and Uhland
Streets.”
Ltidtke didn’t have to consult the map.
At that intersection a brutal, bestial rape
had occurred some 14 months back. Did
Ogorzow know? Or was he just getting his
flashlight pranks mixed up with some-
thing much worse? Lidtke was very
pleased with the strategy he had followed
in not giving Ogorzow any exact data as
to time and place, but instead, letting him
do the talking.
“There were occasions when you accosted
women,” Liidtke next informed him. ‘“‘Let’s
talk about that.”
After an hour-long grind of questions and
answers, Ogorzow said that he had accosted
a lady or two. One of the locales he men-
tioned had never rated a pin, But the other
instance had been the scene of an assault in
which a woman had barely escaped with
her life. Well, Ogorzow was perhaps not
the S-Bahn killer, but it seemed now that
he was guilty of a long’ series of sex
offenses and after a year or two was getting
the seenes of his transgressions badly
mixed up.
“Tell you what,” Ladtke said, “let's drive
out to Karlshorst and Rummelsburg, so you
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77
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Peete em
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51,000.00 REWARD
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: TRUE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES
GLMA NY ORGORZOW, decapitated
can. ine Cxactly Vinove thes
Out in the vicinity, Ogorz:
lose his grip on the city 1 hs
He pointed, “This corner.” *Then, ‘ 5 at
this one.” Then he returned to his earlier
choice, only to decide fo make a ney
one. By the time he had given eight
locations two, prior to the S-Bahn slayings
had been the scenes of near-murderous sex
attacks. :
Ludtke summoned the victims and con-
fronted Ogorzow with them. While one
woman was vague, the other identified him
at once, mentioning that the collar of hi:
coat had been unusually broad—-Ogorzo
had such a coat at home, volice later found
But how much was this identification
worth? Almost two years had passed since
this crime had been committed. In addi-
tion, Ogorzow had to be the S-Bahn killer,
not just a common variety offender, to fit
the sort of diagram Liidtke had drawn up
of this ramified and rambling case.
“There were times when you struck
women,” Liidtke told him now. “What did
you strike them with?”
“With my fists.”
There had been four women, he allowed.
But one he mentioned was Gerda Dietrich,
the woman in Sommerland who had not
only been clubbed but also slashed to death.
Clearly, Ogorzow had slugged, raped and
“murdered too many times to be able to
keep his record straight.
But at one admission he kept balking.
That he ever struck down a woman with
some sort of club—Liidtke again wouldn’t
tell him what kind. And as Ogorzow
seemed firmly determined not to budge
from there on, Liidtke informed him that
he had something to show him.
He put a large cardboard box on his desk
and out of it he rolled several skulls. He
pointed to the circular breaks or length-
wise' cracks in the grim exhibits.
Ogorzow stared. The blood drained from
his face and he began to shake.
“I hit them with a lead cable,” he said
tonelessly.
He was a human rag at this point. He
explained how he had managed to beat all
the police checks and surveillances simply
by sneaking off from work, then quickly
returning again. At the time of two of the
killings, he had worked as a railroad
telegraph operator and it was hard for
Liidtke to understand how he could have
left his post without being found out. .
He had managed, he said grimly. He told
Liidtke of an incident which had happened
a few weeks before the first S-Bahn at-
tack. He'had accosted a woman hurrying
home along a dark street near the Rum-
melsburg station. It was his misfortune that
she lived near by. Her cries of indignation
brought to the scene her husband and
brother-in-law, who gave the ladies’ man
a fearful beating.
Ogorzow had staggered off to spend a
week in bed. With this, he had made an
appalling vow: No woman would scream
for help again, and no husband would
teach him another lesson. From now on,
he would kill.
Asked if it had been a revenge motive
purely, Ogorzow replied that he had
received a thrill in all his S-Bahn slayings.
His eyes glazed and grew feverish at this
point.
“Tossing them out!” he said, excitedly.
“Tossing them out!”
In those days, Hitler’s courts were grind-
ing out death sentences in mass production.
Ogorzow’s was ready on July 2Ist, 1941,
two weeks after his arrest. The following
day a black-frocked, white-gloved execu-
tioner swung a chromium-plated axe aloft,
and carried out the high .court’s desire.
Now women could travel in as much peace
and security as anyone in a warring nation
could have.
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his face. But his broad body slumped in a
corner expressed. relaxation. He might be
an S-Bahn man riding home. Hundreds
of them did every night. Or he might not.
This could be her big chance or the last
moments of her life. Her sole protection
was a steel plate in her silly feather hat.
There was a detective in the compart-
ment next to hers, but to come to her help
he would have to wait till the train stopped,
then step out on the platform and enter her
compartment.
The S-Bahn man seemed to doze off. She
picked up her purse from the seat and
slowly shifted it to her lap. A little test,
but the result was uncertain. It seemed
there had been a slight sidewise movement
of the visored cap, the man’s eyes and head
paralleling the movement of her purse.
Going one step further, she began to
rummage in her handbag.
“Fraiilein, looking for your ticket per-
haps?” he asked broadly, sounding the
way a father does.
“T’ve found it,” she said.
“Good, good,” and he slumped back into
his doze.
Stations passed every three or four
minutes. The train would next grind into
Erkner.
Detective Lotte Hankow jumped to her
feet, for the man in the corner had sud-
denly gotten up. She was Staring at his
hands, his coat sleeves. He threw the coat
back. Out of his blouse he pulled a pocket
watch which he held up and tried to read
in the gloomy blue light, turning his face
away. Then he put it back slowly, pulled
the coat together and sat down again.
“You're nervous, Fraiilein, Mustn’t be.”
Trained to observe carefully, the girl
detective thought that the left arm was
somewhat stiff. A lead cable concealed in
the sleeve would produce just that sort of
effect. Also when he had got up she had
realized, better than when he first entered,
that he was the type of man people would
describe only as of average height and
stocky build.
Erkner. The brakes were beginning to
bite into the wheels. Lotte Hankow stood
up, proud and authoritative,
“Police,” she snapped. “You’re under
arrest.” 5
What followed was a whir of motion, an
echoing of sound. He had dived out the
door, onto the platform, The detective in
the next compartment heard her seream
and fired a shot above the heads of passen-
gers hurrying toward the exit. But the
man had disappeared in the crowd. Police
blocked off the streets around the station
and searched every house, but the man v as
gone.
S-Bahn worksheets, leave records,
sences were checked once more. Detective
Lotte Hankow looked over the personnel
pictures. But just nothing would work out.
Once more the scales had tipped in favor
of the theory that the uniform and the in-
signia were a cover. Unless this one had
managed to sneak away while officially
doing his duty?
This had occurred on January 13th. Six
days later, in a blitz move, a force of six
hundred police officers bottled up the
suburban triangle, including ten miles of
strategic territory along the S-Bahn. On
January 26th, the raiding parties went into
action again. On February 8th, four hun-
dred men concentrated on the suburb of
Karlshorst alone. This section had gathered
the most pins on Liidtke’s map as the scene
of numerous assaults during the past years,
and possibly the monster lived there. The
detectives barged right into the houses,
arrested all sorts of petty offenders, found
electric cable stolen from the S-Bahn, got
a line on some fences and another killer.
But the S-Bahn murderer was not in the
bag.
Some 36 hours later, on February 11th,
between 9 and 10 P.M., he murdered a
young woman named Martha Zernowski,
clubbing her and pitching her off a train,
The body landed halfway between two
guard posts; it seemed as though the man
knew the police blueprints. To prove or
disprove that possibility once and for all,
Dr. Wehner decided to try a new angle.
He called a full meeting of the detective
chiefs and squad leaders. “Everyone
present here is sworn to secrecy,” he an-
nounced. Fifty men took the oath, and Dr.
Wehner went on, “We're licked, and we
must face it. We cannot go on wasting
manpower, time and expense on a hope-
less search. Tomorrow, I start calling in
the special squads, the track and train
guards and the detectives doing the check-
ing in the stations.”
Wehner’s eyes swept the faces before
him. They showed stunned surprise, numb-
ness or anger. Then, relishing the dra-
ab-
TELEPHONE
LH \
F
(mya
(st lia i A eaaaaaaa Ni; =~ eR a tie 80 0 6 Stan
matic effeci, he added, “Tant is. well mat
believe that we're besting a retreat
press release though—we don't want. th
public to get alarmed, but we'll spread thi
news by word of mouth, particularh
around the S-Bahn. That includes the ad
ministration. Tam convineed that the mar
we want is an employee, probably work
ing out of Rummelsburg, and has an inside
track on our moves. By faking defeat, we
ought to give the killer a sense of security
and overconfidence. Of course, we’re not
giving up—far from it. But we'll reor-
ganize the operation, changing entirely
from open action to infiltration and under-
cover work.”
The next few days saw the gradual with-
drawal, with riot even the lower police
ranks knowing the full meaning of it. The
new buildup had hardly gotten underway
when, on February 20th, another fatal at-
tack on a woman occurred. Though not in-
volving a drop from an S-Bahn train. it
clearly bore the monster's signature.
Lisa Novak, a 30-year-old plant worker
had been ravished. and her skull had been
broken by the single characteristic blow
Her huddled form was found on a slush-
covered street in’ Karlshorst. Immediately
around it were a number of footprints and
what appeared to be kneemarks.
Police dogs lost the scent after a block.
The officers examined the footprints. The
brand name of the shoe was swiftly found
out: it was “Salamander.” As shoes were
rationed it was possible for the ration-
ing boards to give complete details on
every man who had purchased a Sala-
mander shoe of a certain size during the
past year. After going through thousands
of these records, Liidtke found one that
looked better than all the others. The man,
Richard Bauer, lived within 100 yards of
where Lisa Novak had been found. More-
over, he was a multiple sex offender with
a prison record.
Now, there was a first-rate trap any de-
tective of minor stature may have’ easily
‘fallen into. This Bauer was a man with
just the right kind of criminal record. And
police discovered his footprints around the
body. But he denied having bludgeoned the
girl.
Liidtke—his guidance a superb hunch,
psychology or experience—was prepared
to listen and perhaps even believe the
man’s incredible story. And this is what he
told:
That night he had been indulging in his
favorite pastime, window peeping. In the
dark, while on his way home, he had
stumbled over the prostrate woman. Then,
with sudden horror, he realized that there
was blood on the back of her head and he
fled in panic.
The skull wound, according to the best
available medical opinion, was similar to
the S-Bahn monster’s bludgeon work. Bauer
was either innocent of this attempted mur-
der or he was guilty of all the S-Bahn
killer’s outrages, including this one. A
‘check of his alibis for the critical nights
was made. The check turned in his
favor. Some nights he had been at work
as an auxiliary factory worker, and one
he had spent in a police drunk tank. So
Liidtke eliminated Bauer as an S-Bahn
suspect.
However, the Peeping Tom served a very
useful purpose: Liidtke, by giving press
and public the impression that Bauer was
the S-Bahn killer, greatly hélped along
the fiction of the halted police search.
Falsely secure from police patrols, the
S-Bahn slayer might strike at any mo-
ment. To prevent a disastrous outcome,
large forces of detectives, unknown to the
public, rode the trains. So did the lovely
decoys, shuttling back and forth along
the dangerous miles of rail line that en-
circle the entire city; watching every male
By FLETCHER PRATT. Bae
Fe
special Investigator For
PAGE DETECTIVE
FRONT
wan SECRETS |e
WERE BOUGHT
id sang
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nalty.
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serve
fe for
where he could make me work for him.
When the divorce was finished he told
me he already had a wife. I ask—what
could I do? I had no income without
Richard and no position, and I was in
love with Yurek. When I told him my
difficulties, he said he could get me a
position in the War Office through a
friend of his me
“And who was this friend?” Riegel -
asked suavely.
“I do not know, but the man I was
to see at the War Office was the Herr
Oberleutnant Hein Briickner.”
“And the price of this position he
obtained for you was that you were
to give him secret information?”
“No.” She was twisting her gloves in
her hands. “It was not like that—I
swear it! He said he had served Austria
in the war and was devoted to the new
Germany since Austria had become
a nothing ‘by the peace treaties. But he
had invented a new attachment for an
anti-aircraft gun that would make it
shoot faster and better. Only he was
not sure it would fit the German anti-
aircraft guns and was afraid that if he
offered it to the government and they
found it was not suitable for their guns,
they would refuse to let him:sell it to
any other country. So he wanted me to
get a blueprint of the new anti-air-
craft gun for him to examine and see
whether his attachment would fit...
“That was why, he said, he got me
the position in that part of the War
Office. I was in charge of the files in
the aviation section, and I soon learned
that matters like the blueprints of the
gun were not often called for. One day,
I dropped a pile of files on the floor,
mixing them all up, and then I had to
stay late and arrange them again. It
was easy to get the blueprint when I
had been left alone in the building and
I let Yurek take it when I, met him
that night. We went to his house. He. __
took the blueprint upstairs for a few:
moments and then brought it right hy
back to me, saying it was evident that:
his attachment would not fit the Ger- “:":
man gun.”
“You did not think, did you, that he
might be photographing it?” snapped
von Blomberg.
“No, not at that time. I learned that
much later. I will tell you. I thought
everything was all right then and
everything was all right between
Yurek and me, oh, for a long time—till
I found out he was having an affair
with Katja Barberian, you know, the
actress, and he set her up in a dress
shop.”
“You did no spying for him at tha
time?” oi
GHE SHOOK her head, with a pair of.
jewelled earrings sparklifjy tinder
her blonde hair. “It was’ about that
time he told me about sme ‘other in-
vention, and he wanted me to get bim
copies of some of the letters between-
the War Office and the heads of tbe
aviation fields along the Rhine fron--.
tier. I did it gladly, the same way with
the blueprints. And then I ;
about Katja Barberian an@ the dress ©
shop Yurek bought for her. My salary,
at the War Office was barely cnough
fotind out |
,
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE
to live onjand I was terribly embar-
rassed for: Funds to buy clothes and
keep up with the kind of society Yurek
took me into, and he knew it, but here
he was giving money to this Armenian
actress.
“I taxed him with it, and we had a
terrible scene. Finally, he told me he
could arrange for me to have more
money, a great deal more money, but
I would have to get him secret papers
from the War Office. I said that would
be treason, and it was dangerous be-
side. He told me there was no danger
if I was careful, and as for being a spy,
I had been one already when I got him
the blueprint of the anti-aircraft gun.
It was then‘he told me that in the few
minutes he had held the plans he had
photographed them, and if IF told any-
one about it, it would be 'suire to come
‘hack to me, because I*had'been in
charge of the files from which the plans
were taken; I would be shot.
“I was so frightened that I agreed to
do what he said, and then after that
87
letters. He insisted that I introduce
him to other girls who worked in the
office, especially the stenographers
there who might have access to copies
of interesting letters. He said he could
persuade them without trouble to work
for him as I had, and I introduced him
to several of them. They——”
‘Their names, Madame,” said Riegel.
She looked at him steadily. “I do not
myself know all of them. I took so
many to see Yurek. Of these I am cer-
tain—Frau Zandersch, Frau Thiel-
.mann, Fraulein von Jena and the
“\ Baroness Renate von Natzmer.’
iS Von Blomberg started and his eyes
seemed about to burst from their sock-
ets. “My private secretary!” he cried.
“But I selected her myself. She comes
from one of the best families of Ger-
many!”
Benita von Berg permitted herself a
smile of malicious disdain. “Yes, but
you forget she has social ambitions and
lacks the money to maintain them.
Otherwise she would not be working
every week he paid’me 300 marks. key in an office at all. Yurek had me find
got him copies of all the important let-'s
ters that passed through the office, and
in return he promised to forget Bar-
berian, and I think he actually did drop
her for a while, anyway. But I could
not keep him from having affairs with
other women and he finally made me
marry von Berg.”
~ “Your husband?” inquired Riegel.
She nodded. “I didn’t want to marry
him. He came with some friend to one
of the gay parties Yurek was always
giving. I don’t know who brought him
there. But he liked me a great dealand
after that he used to come to see me
often. Yurek and I would laugh about
his devotion to me, because he was
like a clumsy bear, not used to society,
you know. Then one day Yurek found
in one of the letters I, took him that
yon Berg was engaged in perfecting
fnew aviation motor, and he told
ve I must try to find out something
pout it from von Berg. I could not
‘make him tell me a word about it.
Finally Yurek said, ‘A husband has no
secrets from his wife. There is only
one way to get this aviation motor,
which is very important. You must
marry this admirer of yours.’ I ob-
jected and fought against it, but what
could I do? In the end I gave in and
married him.”
Rudolph remarked, “I remember it.
It was a sensation in society that she
should have married this quiet engi-
neer and we were asked to make a
little investigation, but the matter was
dropped.” .
The Baroness von Berg seemed to
gather herself together as the little
clock on the’Wall chimed another hour.
Then she went:on. “I got the plans from
my husband:as Yurek wished.”
oat interrupted again. “Did your
cay hes:
wind know about it?” un
“Tam certain he did not.He was-so
“vbsorbed fn ‘his cxperiments that he
had.Jittle time for &nything else. I took
: the plans from his desk at night. But
still Yurek. was dissatisfied. You see,
when I married von Berg I had to leave
my work at the War: Office and there
‘were no longer copies of the important
out something like that about each of
the girls I brought to him. Not only did
he supply the von Natzmer with
money, but he was also able to intro-
duce her into social circles where she
had never entered before. He pre-
sented her to Prince Joachim. Ach, she
would sell her soul for such an intro-
duction alone. He is thorough, Yurek;
he has to be in his business, and he is
right when he says there is some way
to reach any woman.”
Von Fritsch’s smile was a trifle grim.
“That.explains, then, how our famous
Plan XXIII reached Poland,” he re-
marked. “When you said that only
four people knew of jit, you did not
count the stenographer who typed it
out.”
A FROWN had appeared between
Riegel’s brows. “Madame,” he said,
“I do not wish to throw doubt on a
confession so fully and frankly offered.
Two points strike me as requiring
more proof before we can accept them
fully. The first of these relates to a
detail of execution. You have named
four women beside yourself and say
you are sure they all took letters from
the War Office files, with the possibility,
that others still were involved. How
did it happen that all these letters were
never missed, that no suspicion ever
fell on any of them?”
' The woman's face became a trifle
more animated. “That was because of
an experience of mine. One night when
I took a batch of the carbon copies of
letters to Yurek’s house, he took them
away to look them over. Somehow he
must have dropped one of them. As it
happened this letter was one from the
Air Minister himself to the Halske
plant, giving specifications for a new
airplane on which bids were being in-
vited. On the following day the Air
Minister consulted with some of the
technical experts in the department
and as a result decided to change the
specifications. He called for the carbon
of the letter to the Halske plant so that
he might write another one. Of course
it was missing. I knew what must hav
The Nazi Dictator and Strasser
engage in a deadly struggle
swung to Hitler. He was looked upon as
a martyr. The blood spilled by his fol-
lowers was his own blood. Newspapers
termed von Kahr the Ludwigstrasse
butcher. Miraculously, Hitler’s depres-
sion lifted and its place was taken by
. amood of extreme optimism. There was
a chance, after all.
The triumvirate ruling Bavaria found
this change ‘in public sentiment to be
alarming. Whereas before they were
willing to let the conspirators remain
in jail to await trial, now they made
every effort to have the matter disposed
of before it reached too great propor-
tions. The Bavarian Minister of Justice,
Herr Guertner, placed the case on the
court calendar and it went to trial in
Munich in January, 1924. Presiding
justices had been carefully cautioned
by von Kahr not to press the Nazi
‘leaders too hard.
Certain questions were not to be put
to the defendants at all, for the answers
to them might prove most embarrassing
to von Kahr and his’ cohorts. Should
Hitler decide to tell from the witness
stand about the intrigue that preceded
the Putsch, the central government in
Berlin. might become most displeased. .
The main defendants in the treason trials: (Below,
In view of this situation there is little
wonder that what should have been a
serious judicial proceeding degenerated
into a foolish farce. ;
Adolf Hitler was the first witness for
the defense. His face beamed with de-
light. This was a situation much to his
liking. The sympathies of the spectators
in the courtroom were with him. The
prosecutor was allowing him a remark-
able degree of latitude in his utterances
from the witness box. '
It couldn’t have been more obvious
that Hitler had actually conspired to
overthrow the legal German govern-
ment. He had announced it as an ac-
complished fact before five thousand
spectators at the Burgerbrau, yet row
he blandly’ declared:
“I did not plan a revolution. On the *
contrary I wished to aid the authority
of the State to create the unity of our
country.” These words were truly a
masterpiece of évasion.
The prosecutor dared not explore any
further, for “the authority of the State” |
clearly meant von Kahr, and von Kahr
also had no right to pick up arms to
“create the unity” of the nation.
If Hitler were pressed he would
Hermann Kriebel, General Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Bruckner,
simply say that he was joining forces
with von Kahr in order to “unify” all
of Germany. This would place the -
stamp of revolution upon the Bavarian
‘ Government.
Hitler faced the judge. “Our country
is in a most unhappy state,” he said.
“We were only determined to draw up
a great common front so that we shall
be strong when we face the enemies
of our people. I beg of you, do not draw
‘a final barrier between us who stand
before you today and the great masses
of people who, although they do not
understand our purposes now, will join
us in the later ‘struggle.
“T know that you who think you are
our enemies today will one day think
with respect of those National Socialists
who chose the bitter way of death for.
the love of the German people.”
- It is evident, even to the novice, that
what Hitler said from the witness stand
could in nowise be construed as evi- .
dence admissible in a court of law. To -
him the witness box was a soapbox and
_ none of the court officials attempted to
stop him.
Most of the Nazis on trial followed
Hitler’s lead. They*denied that the
left to right) Heinz Pernet, Dr. Friedrich Weber, Dr. Frick,
Captain Roehm, Robert Wagner
Popular feeling ran high during the treason trials of 1924, and
German Army troops had to patrol the streets to maintain order
Foreworp: On the morning after the
famous Beer Hall Putsch of November 8th,
1923, Hitler led his Nazi legions to what he
expected would be a triumphal welcome by
Governor von Kahr of Bavaria, Instead,
however, the Brownshirts were met by a
blast of gunfire from the regular army. Many
were killed and wounded. Hitler and Goer-
ing were forced to flee. A few days later,
the future Dictator, disguised in woman’s
clothes, was arrested by the Munich police.
. 9€T THE same hour that Hitler was
taken, Gregor, Himmler and I
were seating ourselves at the
luncheon table at my brother’s house "
in Landshut. There was a knock at the
door and my brother-in-law, Georg
Hofler, entered. i
“You're just in time for lunch,”
“Gregor said. “Pull up a chair.”
My brother-in-law appeared nervous.
“I—I can’t.” ;
' “What do you mean, you can’t?”
Gregor boomed. He had long since dis-
missed from his mind the inci-
dent at the bridge. :
“I’ve come to arrest you,” he
said somewhat apologetically.
“Orders from Munich, you
. know.”
“Don’t look so tragic about it,”
my brother told him.
Himmler and Gregor rose.
“How about me?” I asked.
‘“Am I under arrest, too?” ’
“No, Otto,” he replied. “Only
Gregor and Heinrich.”
Strangely enough the effect of
this abortive Putsch on my mind
was exactly the reverse of what
22
~
j
}
|
i
v
OTT
might ordinarily be expected. Instead
of alienating me entirely from National
Socialism, it turned me into.an ardent
Nazi.
I had always felt that this party’s
principles were closest to my own be-
liefs for the economic rehabilitation of .
Germany. It was merely my distrust of
Hitler’s leadership that kept me from
joining before. I feared that he would
sell out.the party’s principles to the
highest bidder. :
The success of a Hitler-von Kahr
Putsch would have proved conclusively,
to me at least, that the reactionaries had
taken control of the party. The fact that
von Kahr’s men had blasted down scores
of Brownshirts was convincing proof
that Hitler was. not allied to the forces
of reaction.
I became a Nazi at the party’s lowest
ebb. For a second time it had demon-
strated to Germany that it was a loser.
By Dr.
With
Michael Stern
Ree Derscrve
Mp bet, 99 2,
O STRASSER
. Hundreds of members deserted it.
The party’s leader was now locked in
a cell in the Fortress of Landsberg. A
moody person, he had fallen into a fit
of deep depression. He wasn’t affected
so much by the deaths of his loyal fol-
lowers as he was by the fact that his
Own power and influence appeared to .
be at an end. He could stand anything
- but ridicule, and he felt certain that all
Bavaria was laughing at him,
To make matters worse there were no
party leaders to keep the members to-
gether. Also in the Fortress of Lands-
berg, all awaiting trial for treason, were
.Ludendorff, Poehner, Weber, Gregor
Strasser, Himmler,
Roehm and Hess.
Hitler’s depressed state. was made
even worse when, three days after his
incarceration, word reached him that
his close friend, Dietrich Eckhart, had
died. Eckhart was the ‘editor of the
Voelkischer Beobachter. His
heart gave out as a result of the -
strain he was under during the
momentous days of the revolu-
tion.
Hitler and Gregor Strasser .
were seated in the same cell
when word reached them of this
tragic’ event.
“He was the perfect editor,”
Hitler said. “No one can ever
replace him.”
Just when it appeared that
Nazism must certainly perish, a
peculiar change took place in the
public’s attitude. Sympathy
TRUE DETECTIVE
Frick, Kriebel,
2
88
happened to it, and I spent hours in
dreadful fear that everything would
be discovered, but fortunately for me
it was assumed that it had been filed
in the wrong place, and I escaped with
a sharp reprimand and the notice that
T would be dismissed if it happened
again.
“IT became determined that it was
dangerous to take the copies from the
files and told Yurek so. He would not
relent, so I worked out a system of my
own. There are two different ways
stenographers work, you know, in
making copies of- letters. One is to
slide the carbon out from between the
original and the copy each-time, using
the same carbon for every letter writ-
ten during the day. The other is to
place a fresh sheet of carbon paper
between each original and its carbon
copy, sliding out all the carbons when
the letters are finished and putting
them all back in the box for use the
next day.
’ “Thad Yurek tell the girls who were
working for him in the War Office to
use the second system. When they came
to an important letter of which he
might want a copy they always used a
fresh sheet of carbon paper. The origi-
nal letter would then be signed and
sent off. The carbon copy would go
straight to the files and remain there,
so that everything was in order. But
the sheet of carbon paper, with the let-
ters clearly imprinted in it would be
placed in a box by the stenographer
and later carried off to Yurek. He only
had to hold the carbon paper up to the
light to read everything that was in
the letter.”
- “Very ingenious,” commented Rie-
gel, drily. “But I mentioned two points.
The other one, Baroness, is this: how
did Sosnowski persuade these girls,
good Germans, who were serving their
country in the War Office, to enter upon
so difficult and treacherous a business
as espionage? How is it that he never
encountered one who gave him away,
who refused his offers? You have ex-
plained about your own case, and I can
understand that of ‘the Baroness von
Natzmer. But so many others! I do
not
He halted suddenly. Even in the dim
room the men could see how the girl’s
face had suddenly flushed red and how
in her agitation she was tearing at the
gloves in her hands.
“I—thought it was the money, too—”
she finally ejaculated, as though gasp-
ing for breath. “He—told me it was—
and I believed him—until you asked
me to find out about the Fraulein von
Jena. ;
“All I ever did was to introduce the
others to him and then I used to see
them at the parties he gave, so I knew
he had come to some agreement with
them. Of course, when you asked about
Irene I knew he was working with her,
and that in some way you had become
suspicious of her. I was frightened be-
cause I might also be caught, although
Irene did not know I was in it, too. I
called up Yurek about it at once and. -
warned him, arranging to meet him
and Irene at.a restaurant that night. It
was not so bad as going to his house.
FRONT DETECTIVE
She might be watched going in there.
“I did not wish to speak about the
matter there, but Yurek mentioned it
himself, saying the Gestapo had.asked
me to keep a watch,on-Irene’amd find :
out where her mopey,\was Coriiitig from”
He said we. would have to find some
we
“
“ET don't know—L don't care—no!”
She stamped hexgSfiiall foot. “He had
an appointmengWith me last night, but
called up and talled it off, saying he
tad important business. This morning
_viwent to his house. She was just com-
ing out—Lia Niako, the dancer, I saw
story to tell them.-Irene simply tossed “y. Res 1 still thought I might be mistaken,
her head and looked defiant. d
“Tell them the truth!’ she: said. *":.
“ ‘What do you mean?’ I askeil: .
“She reached across the table and
took Yurek’s hand. ‘Tell therfi- that
Yurek is my lover and I’m getting it
Death Scene
New York detectives are shown standing
over the body of Mary Coyle, 17-year-old
New Rochelle murder victim. The girl
had been attacked and brutally beaten.
from him. I don’t care who: knows it.’
“Then I understood. In spite of all
his gfomises to me after the affair with
Katja.Barberian, he had seduced these
other’ women into spying for him. That -’
was his hold over them; that he was»
carrying on affairs with them. I was:, *;
furious. For a moment I sat in thé rés~"
taurant not trusting: myself to speak,
only continuing to’ smile..After Yurek
had taken Irene’home, I went to his
house and taxed him with. my discov-
ery. He said I was unreasonable; just
like his own dear: wife, and,Jaughed at
mé:for talking of being faithful when
I was married to another man. Then I
became really angry. I swore to him
that unless he broke off with the others
at once, I would tell the whole story to
the police. He promised me that this
would be the last time and that from
now on he would be faithful to me
alone—and I was fool enough to be-
lieve him again!”
SHESTOPPED. For the moment more
interested in the story than in its
-implications, Riegel leaned forward.
“And he has not kept the promise?”
he asked in his soft voice,
~
¢’,. But this evéging I saw Osten-Sacken.
He said Yurék was giving a big party
tonight, ong. ate biggest, and. that it
was imhonor of Lia Niako. They’re all
there. I don't cate what happens——”
Thé*assembled leaders were wit-
nessing a proof of the old saying con-
cerning the danger of the woman
scorned. The Baroness, even though
unwittingly involved at first, had been
willing to give up all that meant most
to her, to lie and steal, and to endanger
the safety of her own country and her
people, for the man she loved. But
when he scorned her for others and
mocked her for being unfaithful to
her own husband, her anger blazed.
She wanted revenge—she would listen
no. longer to his empty promises of
faithfulness,
,.What did she care what happened?
“She ‘could not have Yurek, she could
gotvhave the joy of being with him in
-€d¥ "places, she could have no happi-
ifess!"Therefore she would shout to
the world his unfaithfulness to his
high position and to her. What matter
if he died? What matter if she jeopar-
dized her own life? Without Yurek’s
sweet attentions, every breath was
hateful to her. And now she had bared
her own love, her own shame and
misery.
Rudolph had already seized the
phone and was dictating orders rapidly
into it. “Speciat raiding squad— twen-
ty men — cars — machine guns — resi-
dence of Baron Yurek Sosnowski,
Zahlendorf West. Arrest everyone in
the building.”
The clock chimed two.
Thirty or forty people were taken
in the raid, including some of the big-
gest names in Germany. The trials
were held in deadly secret; an Ameri-
Can newspaper woman who even dared
to send a report on them was arrested
for it.
And not more than three months
‘later, while another clock solemnly
‘eHimed two, the Baroness Benita von
Berg was led through a door to the
room in the famous Plétzenzee Prison,
where a man waited for her, clad in
black, and with a black mask conceal-
ing his features. Beside him stood a
gigantic axe, like those used in medie-
val times, razor ‘sharp. Before him
stood a great wooden block, slightly
hollowed in the center, where the
blonde head was to be laid.
The witnesses held their breath as
the axe rose and fell.
“Justice is done!” proclaimed the
Commissioner of the prison in a hol-
low voice, and the twenty men in dress
suits, who had been assembled by of-
ficial command to witness the execu-
tion of a traitress, filed slowly out, past
the door of the cell where Yurek Sos-
nowski, a prisoner for life, sat praying.
Only he knew for whom the prayers
were offered.
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~
52
To Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtes
garten (above), Count von Stauffenberg,
summoned to a conference, took a bomb in his dispatch case as well as his report
seize and execute the ex-paperhanger
when he arrived. At the last moment,
however, Hitler changed his plans. He
cancelled his promised visit and a few
days later von Hammerstein was sent
back to retirement.
The plot—for it was, in fact, a long,
continuing plot—would not die, and word
went around during the first week of
November that Hitler was to be taken
hostage while on an army-inspection
tour near Berlin. On the 5th of Novem-
ber, one of the key generals, in whose
hands lay the main threads of the plot,
reported to Hitler on a routine army mat-
ter. At the end of his report, Hitler asked
him what else was being planned.
The general, not suspecting anything,
mentioned a few additional technical de-
tails of forthcoming maneuvers,
Hitler waved an impatient hand. “No,
I don’t mean that; I can see by looking at
you that you still plan‘something else.”
The general pretended not to under-
stand. When he was finally dismissed,
he hurried to the General Staff and an-
nounced that the plot had been betrayed.
His fears were contagious. All plans were
abandoned and the conspiracy covered
up. Troops which had been held outside
of Berlin were rushed to the Western
Front. By the end of the week, when
things. had quieted down, it was realized
that there had been no leak of informa-
tion, and that Hitler could not possibly
have been aware of the plot. Instead he
had ‘tried an intuitive shot in the dark
and had struck home,
However, a few days later on Novem-
ber 8th, a bomb did explode in a Munich
beer cellar Shortly after Hitler left the
building where he had made his annual
speech celebrating the Beer Hall Putsch
of 1923. Experts are still at odds over
who planted this bomb. Some hold for
the theory that it was done with the
knowledge of Hitler and Himmler in
order to win the sympathy of the German
people. Others beljeve that it was an
independent attempt by either the Com-
munist or Socialist underground groups.
Early in 1941, a. nucleus of General
Staff officers became extremely skeptical
about the Russian war scheduled for the
coming summer. Especially in Central
Army Group headquarters, designated
for a prominent role in the Eastern cam-
paign, did the movement to murder Hit-
ler gain headway. Principals in this
phase were General Henning von Tresc-
kow, and his adjutant Fabian von Schla-
brendorff. They were forced by events
to bide their time until after the German
defeat at Stalingrad, when the dullest
clod could see that Hitler was a faulty
strategist. Even hitherto reluctant army
commanders began to warm to the idea .
of doing away with him.
THE scheme that evolved, long kept se-
cret from the world, included not only
the leading generals and field marshals
on the Russian Front, but had the active
support of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,
chief of the German Intelligence Service,
who throughout the Second World War
managed to play the complex role of ap-
pearing to serve the Fuehrer while at.the
same time maneuvering his downfall. It
was Canaris who organized a special air
flight between Berlin and Smolensk to
cover up the comings and goings of the
plotters. Finally the incident that was
meant to bring the war to an end was
arranged. Hitler, who always had. re-
mained close to his own bombproof head-
quarters in the forests of East ‘Prussia,
was persuaded to visit the Central Army
Group then located near Smolensk.
When the visit was finally arranged,
Hitler, in accordance with his usual cus-
tom, cancelled it on short notice. Several
times it was arranged, and as quickly
cancelled, but on March 13th, 1943, Hit-
ler finally arrived by air, Although the
Fuehrer could have been shot then and
there, it was decided to make things
easier for those officers who still felt
bound by their oath of loyalty. There-
fore it was decided to eliminate him dur-
Colonel General Ludwig Beck, Chief of
Staff in 1938, tried to stave off the war’
ing his return airplane trip by means of
a delayed-action bomb smuggled into his
plane. Given the appearance of an acci-
dent, the political liabilities of a murder
would be avoided.
Careful study had been given to the
matter of explosives. It was found that
the German variety would not be suit
able as they made a hissing noise and
could be ‘readily detected. However, the
British were in the habit of dropping ex-
tremely compact yet powerful sabotage
bombs to their agents. No bigger than a
medium-sized book, they were capable
of completely wrecking a six-room house.
Even more important was the fact that
the fuse made no sound prior to the ex-
plosion. One merely pressed a button,
and a bottle of corrosive acid began to
eat away ata spring and striker. When
the spring was destroyed, the striker
plunged against a detonating cap and the
bomb was exploded.
When Adolf landed safely from his plane,
plotters knew another attempt had failed
Colonel
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|
|
Colonel General Kurt von Hammerstein
had his own plan to eliminate the Fuehrer
Through German Intelligence channels
von Schlabrendorff and Tresckow ob-
tained several British-type bombs. They
| experimented indoors and out, with stag-
gering results. Finally they made not
jone bomb but two, shaped to look like a
set of cognac bottles. These were locked
away in a vault until the day set for the
visit.
When Hitler arrived at the Smolensk
airfield on the 13th of March, von Schla-
brendorff went to the telephone, called
Berlin to give the code word that the
murder attempt was imminent. Two
generals in charge of the plot at that end
alerted their subordinates for the forth-
coming seizure of power.
In Field Marshal Kluge’s personal
quarters Hitler listened to reports. While
it would have been possible to place the
tomb in the room at the time, the explo-
sion would have killed many of the army
commanders who were slated for im-
fa Braun became Hitler’s wife shortly
kfore the two died in a suicide pact
Above is the Munich beef cellar just after explosion of the bomb that Hitler
narrowly escaped. It has never been decided just who was behind this attack
portant roles in the revolt that was to
follow. Therefore the plotters held back.
Lunch followed. Hitler ate sparingly.
His food was prepared by his personal
cook, and tasted beforehand by his phy-
sician. Eyewitnesses report that he ate
in “disgusting” fashion—left hand on his
thigh, right hand stuffing food into his
mouth.
It was during this meal that the ar-
rangements were made to plant the bomb.
Tresckow, concealing his thoughts be-
hind his impassive face; approached one
of Hitler’s aides, a Colonel Brandt.
“Would you oblige me by taking a small
parcel back to your headquarters for my
friend, General Stieff? There are two
bottles of special brandy inside and I
think he will enjoy them.”
Brandt, little realizing that the package
held extra-powerful explosive charges
carefully molded tq look like bottles,
agreed.
HE dinner was stiff even for a gather-
ing of high officers, for no one dared
smoke in Hitler’s presence, and his choice
of drinks was non-alcoholic. Finally the
Fuehrer pushed back his chair and’ the
group prepared for the return trip to the
airfield. Hitler, accompanied by Kluge
‘and Tresckow, rode in one car. Von
Schlabrendorff, holding the bomb, fol-
lowed close behind. .
At the airfield, two big transports
waited. Fighter planes buzzed overhead
in a protective screen. Hitler dismissed
the assembled officers and got aboard his
private aircraft. While he was entering
the cabin, von Schlabrendorff started the
mechanism of the delayed action bomb,
by reaching into the parcel and breaking
the neck of the bottles which held the
corrosive acid. His eyes met Tresckow’s
and the latter nodded back. With no
further ado, von Schlabrendorff handed
the parcel to Colonel Brandt together
with a few words of personal greeting
for General Stieff.
Brandt saluted and carried the bomb
package into Hitler’s plane. The cabin
doors slammed shut and the motors
roared with full power. A few moments
later the plane took to the air, wheeled
in the direction of East Prussia. The
plotters glanced at their watches. If all
went well Hitler had only thirty minutes
to live. :
The excitement at Central Army Group
Headquarters was intense. Berlin was
notified by long-distance phone that the
bomb had been placed aboard. Although
Hitler’s cabin was armor-plated the ex-
plosive charge would be sufficient to pul-
verize the entire plane. According to
the timetable the crash would take place
in the neighborhood of Minsk, in White
Russia. Logically the first word would
be a flash message from one of the escort-
ing fighters. Radio sets were tuned to
the emergency channel and the death
watch was begun.
Fifteen minutes passed, twenty, then
thirty. Faces were tense, heads bent
close to the loudspeaker. But.there was
only the usual power drone. An hour
passed. Then two. Clearly something
had gone amiss. But what? When word
came back that Hitler had landed safe
and sound at Rastenburg airfield in East
Prussia the conspirators were stunned.
Von Schlabrendorff reached for the
telephone, and got through to Berlin in
time to give the code word indicating that
the attempt had failed. Then he and
Tresckow tried to figure out their next
move. It was bad enough that the plot
had miscarried, but even more serious
was the possible discovery of the bomb, .
and the probable death by torture of the
wide circle of collaborators. :
“There’s only one thing to do,” said
Tresckow, “I’ll call Colonel Brandt at
Hitler’s headquarters and find out
whether he has delivered the parcel for.
General Stieff.”
When the call got through, Brandt
sounded unperturbed at the other ‘end.
“Oh, the package,” he said airily, “yes,
it’s still in my (Continued on page 65)
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Twelve Tries to Murder Hitler
(Continued from page 53) room. Haven’t
had a chance to see the General yet.”
Tresckow breathed relief. “Don’t deliver
it,” he warned. “There’s been some mis-
take. I’m sending von Schlabrendorff over
to see you tomorrow to exchange it.”
The next day von Schlabrendorff was at
Colonel Brandt’s office. With alarming
casualness the latter tossed over the bomb
package, receiving in exchange two genuine
bottles of cognac. Von Schlabrendorff tried
to remain calm, but he admitted later that
he felt the bomb would explode at any mo-'
ment. He got into his car and drove to a
near-by railway junction, took the sleeper
for Berlin. Once aboard the train, he
locked the door of his compartment, took .
out a razor blade and opened the package.
Both explosive charges were untouched.
Carefully he dismantled the bomb mechan-
ism, seeking the cause of the failure. The
mechanism had worked perfectly—the acid
bottle had been broken, the fluid had eaten
the wire, and the striker pin had plunged
forward into the detonator. But nothing
had happened, because the detonator was
a dud—one, out of tens of thousands, that
had slipped by the rigid inspection of the
British manufacturers. Thus Hitler’s life
had been spared by the narrowest of mar-
gins.
This setback did not deter the army plot-
ters. A few days later there was to be an
exhibition of captured Russian weapons at
the Berlin Arsenal. Hitler was scheduled
to attend, and von Schlabrendorff was in-
structed to hand over the bomb to a General
Gersdorff who would be present at the
ceremony. He woke the general at his
hotel and delivered the bomb. But the fuse
was not in working condition and no re-
placement could be found in the short time
remaining. So the new attempt was can-
celled before it could get under way.
Then followed a plan to have Hitler pay
a visit to the Central Army Group where
-all of the officers present would cut him
down with their revolvers. But by now
Hitler’s intuition was working overtime and
nothing would induce him to pay another
visit to that sector of the Russian front.
CCORDINGLY, still another plan was
taken under consideration. For some time
there had been a movement to reform the
German army uniform, and samples of the
new garb were finally ready for inspection
by. the Fuehrer. One officer who was to
model a paratrooper’s outfit agreed to carry
a booby-trap bomb in the generously cut
trouser pockets, leap at Hitler when he ap-
proached and blow himself and the Fuehrer
to pieces. The date for the exhibition was
set and the explosives were sewh into the
uniform. But Hitler postponed his visit
repeatedly, and finally in November, 1943,
when all was in readiness at an armory
near Zossen, an Allied air raid destroyed
the building and the entire performance
was cancelled.
The conspirators tried a new tack. Ata
conference in June, 1944, Tresckow said:
“The assassination must be attempted at
all costs.. Even should that fail, the attempt
to seize power in the capital must be under-
taken. We must prove to the world and to
future generations that the men of the
German Resistance movement dared to
take the decisive step and hazard their lives
upon it. Compared with this objective,
nothing else matters.”
The candidate chosen for the next at-
tempt was Colonel Claus Schenk Count von
Stauffenberg, Chief of the Staff of the
General Army Office in Berlin. Thirty-six
years of age, he had been severely wounded
in North Africa and had lost one eye, his
right hand, and two fingers of his left hand.
By virtue of his official position he had
access to the noonday military conferences
with Hitler. The preparations were made,
and von Stauffenberg in mid-July reported:
“You can expect the assassination almost
any day now.”
Explosives were buried near Hitler’s
headquarters. Here for some unaccount-
able reason they detonated prematurely,
resulting in an investigation by the security
guards. However, the man conducting the
inquiry was also a conspirator and he did
his job so well that the whole affair finally
petered out. But like the events before, it
appeared to be another in the almost in-
credible series of accidents that constantly
played in Hitler’s favor.
| ere the first two weeks in July, 1944,
Hitler was at Berchtesgarten, his Ba-
varian mountain residence. On the 11th,
von Stauffenberg was summoned to a mili-
tary conference. He brought with him not
only his dispatch-case full of notes, but a
sabotage bomb in a special section. His
intention was to start the bomb at the time
he finished his report, and leave the brief-
case behind while the conference .con-
tinued.
However, on the day in question neither
Himmler nor Goering was present and
von Stauffenberg decided to wait for a mo-
ment when he could bag all three of the
Nazi bigwigs. July 15th was the next con-
ference date, and when Himmler showed
up at the meeting the time seemed ripe for
another try. Von Stauffenberg finished his
report and was about to start the bomb
mechanism when Hitler unexpectedly left
his chair and disappeared from the room.
He did not return and once again von Stauf-
fenberg took the bomb back with him.
After two failures, von Stauffenberg swore
that the next time he came face to face with
Hitler he would start that bomb regardless
of which other Nazi leaders were present.
July 20th was the next conference day.
By this time Hitler was once more estab-
lished in his special headquarters deep in
the pine forests of East Prussia. Surrounded
by three control rings through which only
those with special passes were allowed to
enter, it contained every security device
known to modern science. Yet, as in all
such situations, the human element was
always incalculable, and von Stauffenberg,
‘impeccable aristocrat and war hero, pos-
sessor of all the necessary credentials,
walked right through the check points with
the bomb in his briefcase.
To his chagrin, he found that the con-
ference was not to be held in the usual
concrete bunker, where the concussion
would kill every human being present, but
rather in a flimsy wooden structure where
the blast would knock down the walls at
the first impact. Thus, instead of merely
bringing the bomb into the room, von
Stauffenberg was faced with the problem
of placing the explosive close to Hitler.
The briefing on the war situation began
as usual at 12:30 p.m. Field Marshal Keitel
arrived with his entourage and presented
von Stauffenberg to Hitler. The Fuehrer
waited expectantly for the latest informa-
tion on the strength of the Home Army.
Von Stauffenberg rattled through his report
as fast as decorum would permit. When
he finished at 12:40 p.m. he shoved his brief-
case under the table next to Hitler’s leg, and
started the bomb mechanism. Then he left
to take a telephone call from Berlin—part
of the scheme to get him out of the room
at the time the explosion was to take place.
Inside the conference room Hitler got
up from his chair and walked over to a
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wall map. At the same time, an operations
officer, finding the briefcase in the way of
his feet, moved it slightly so that it was
even farther away from Hitler, and one of
the table supports now intervened in the
direct line between the bomb and _ its
planned target.
Outside, von Stauffenberg waited for the
bomb to explode. He did not have long to
wait. Within five minutes there was a roar
of flame from the conference building. The
walls seemed to dissolve into smoke and
bodies tumbled through the air like straw-
filled dummies. Glass and wooden splinters
whizzed past and a pall of yellow smoke
hung over the spot. Von Stauffenberg
waited until he saw first-aid personnel rush
up with stretchers to poke about the pros-
trate bodies, Hitler’s among them. Then,
certain that the bomb had done its work, he
drove to the airfield, and flew to Berlin in
his special plane in order to take an active
part in the revolution.
TO ALL
NEWSPAPERMEN
and Other Fact Writers
While you’re on the job
covering a murder case
for your newspaper, why
not keep in mind that
TRUE DETECTIVE
magazine pays well for
accurately presented fact
detective stories, with ad-
ditional payment for
photographs? In your in-
terviews with witnesses
and police officials, we
suggest that you set down
all the details from which
an intriguing story may
be written for this maga-
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you may decide to write
up a case already closed
in the courts with convic-
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or years back.
Write for Hints Booklet
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Address: Editor, TRUE
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In Berlin, the plan to seize power moved
into high gear. Orders were given to vari-
ous Army Group Commanders to start with-
drawals from exposed positions. Political
proclamations were prepared and action
was commenced against the S. S. and the
Gestapo.
But at the Fuehrer’s headquarters, al-
though four were killed, Hitler was not
among them. Injured and bleeding, his
hands and face blackened and burned, his
hair singed, his uniform ripped to shreds,
Hitler still lived. Led from the wreckage
by Field Marshal Keitel, he was found to
have a paralyzed arm and ruptured ear-
drums.
It did not take much of an investigation
to trace the source of the explosion to the
briefcase, for the floor had been pressed
down at the very spot where it had been
placed. Since it was the only object to have
been put under the table and since von
Stauffenberg was the only one to have left
the room, his role was quickly exposed.
In Berlin, the Chief of the Home Army,
General Fromm, nervous over the way
things were going, finally got a call through
to Field Marshal Keitel. In’response to his
anxious inquiry, Keitel said, “It is true that
there has been an attempt, but fortunately
it has failed. The Fuehrer is still alive and
slightly injured. But where, by the way,
is your Chief of Staff, Colonel Count von
Stauffenberg?”
“I have not yet seen him,” said Fromm.
Later when von Stauffenberg reported to
his superior, he was informed that Hitler .
apparently was still alive.
Von Stauffenberg was shocked. “But I
myself saw his body being carried out with
the others,” he protested. “No one in that
room can be alive. It was as though a fif-
teen-centimeter shell had fallen.”
Said Fromm: “Count von Stauffenberg,
you must shoot yourself immediately. Your
attempt has failed.”
Von Stauffenberg, still hopeful that the
revolt would succeed, refused to obey the
order. By evening, however, the matter
was taken from his hands, and along with
a handful of fellow conspirators he was shot
by a firing squad in the courtyard of the
War Ministry. Tresckow, who had assisted
in the previous attempts, committed suicide
along with General Beck, while through a
series of fortuitous accidents von Schla-
brendorff managed to: survive arrest, tor-
ture, and even trial by the notorious
People’s Court. Eventually he was to relate
his story to United States Army interro-
gators and at the Nuremberg trials.
pe a radio address to the German people,
Hitler gave his version of what happened:
“If I address you today I am doing so for
two reasons. First, that you shall hear my
voice and know that personally I am unhurt
and well, and second, so that you shall hear
the details about a crime that has no equal
in German history. An extremely small
clique of ambitious, unscrupulous and at the
same time foolish, criminally stupid officers
hatched a plot to remove me, and together
with me, virtually to exterminate the staff
of the German High Command. The bomb
that was placed by Colonel Count von
Stauffenberg exploded two meters away
from me on my right side. It wounded very
seriously a number of my dear collabora-
tors. One of them has died. I personally
am entirely unhurt apart from negligible
grazes, bruises and burns.
Hitler and his Third Reich survived for
another 290 days while a blood purge wiped
out scores of generals who were implicated
by the events of July 20th. -
The end finally came in an underground
bunker in the heart of Berlin on the after-
noon of the Ist of May, 1945.
From documentary evidence, interviews
and patient piecing together of scraps of
physical evidence the sequence of events
has been reconstructed by British and
American Intelligence officers. After the ex-
plosion of July 20th, Hitler was put to bed
for four weeks and during that time he
completely recovered from the immediate
effects of the explosion.
Not: shaken off so easily were the effects
of his overstrained life and the peculiar
medical treatments he had been receiving.
In September he was treated for sinus in-
fection, and swollen glands in the neck. He
also complained of continual headaches and
stomach cramps. A specialist called from
Berlin then discovered that the medication
which Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Theo
Morell, had been prescribing for his patient
contained a compound of strychnine and
belladonna, on which Hitler was gorging
himself whenever he felt tired or depressed.
As a result he was slowly being poisoned to
death. However, when the situation was
explained to him, his reaction was to order
the imprisonment of the doctors who made
the discovery, and to assure Dr. Morell that
he relied upon him completely.
Thus, as the end approached, Hitler be-
came, according to eye-witness accounts, a
physical wreck. His face was emaciated, his
complexion gray, his body stooped, his
hands trembling and his voice hoarse and
quavering. .
|| phe ta Hitler, as the Russians closed
in on Berlin, was the fear that some part
of his body might fall into their hands.
Therefore he gave orders that his corpse
was to be destroyed “so that nothing re-
mains.”
On the afternoon of April 30th, Hitler
ordered his favorite dogs shot and handed
out poison capsules to his personal secre-
taries. Plans went ahead for the approach-
ing suicide and cremation of himself and
his newly acquired wife, Eva Braun. On
the morning of the ist of May, the S. S.
guards brought 200 liters of gasoline to the
Chancellory garden. All was in readiness
while Hitler finished lunch. Hitler and Eva
Braun shook hands with those of the Nazis
who were left, and returned to their suite.
The others were dismissed, except for those
whose services would be required in the
final ceremony. “These waited in the
passage,” reported a contemporary ob-
server. “A single shot was heard. After
an interval they entered the suite. Hitler
was lying on the sofa which was soaked
with blood. He had shot himself through
the mouth. Eva, Braun was on the sofa,
also dead. A revolver was by her side, but
she had not used it; she had swallowed
poison. The time was half-past three.”
Wrapped in a blanket, Hitler’s body was
carried upstairs along with Eva Braun’s.
The two corpses were placed side by side
and the gasoline poured over them. From
the shelter of the porch an S. S. man dipped
a rag in gasoline, lit it and flung it towards
the bodies, which were at once engulfed in
flame. From personal accounts of those
who survived in the bunker, it has been
established-that no one paid much atten-
tion to the two corpses sizzling in the gar-
den. Hitler’s death, contrary to his hopes,
seemed to make all of his subordinates
very lighthearted. The first reaction was to
disobey his no-smoking rule.
Although Hitler ordered that his remains
be totally destroyed, the method of burning
by gasoline over a sand bed would not be
sufficient to consume the bones. However,
no benes have ever been found.
Some reports indicated that the ashes
were carried out of the garden in a box.
Others suggest that the bones were broken
up and mixed with those of other bodies
buried in the garden. At any rate Hitler
achieved his last ambition—a death that
has left no trace, save that of monumental
hatred for his memory.
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