Lynching of RAF and 8th Air Force crewmen

By summer 1944, confirmed reports of hangings, shootings, and beatings to death of Allied airmen captured by angry mobs and police had so increased that the U.S. government warned the Nazis through Switzerland that those atrocities must cease. The Nazi reply was the reports were exaggerated and in every case the people acted in self defence.
In September 1944 orders came down from 8th A F Headquarters for all officers on combat crews to turn in their sidearms (Colt .45 pistols).
In September 1945 many of those found guilty of these lynchings were executed.
b17sam

 

Greetings Sam: Thankyou for all you did so many years ago.

I have read numerous accounts of downed airmen being lynched by angry soldiers and citizen's including one of an RAF crewman who saw one of his fellow crew hanging on a lamp post. All i whish to say about this behaviour is that i hope ALL the perpertraitors have been caught and dealt with apropriately. Knowing history i doubt that they have though. Do you know if there is still any open investigations into these murders?

Why on earth would high command deem it prudent to strip Crew members of their ability to defend themselves?

 

I believe the rationale was that if the airmen did not carry sidearms, the German government was going to have a harder time defending the lynchings and beatings as matters of self defence. A sidearm would not be of much use against a mob, anyway.

 

I guess I would still want a sidearm for my own personal protection. Even firing a warning shot might have stopped a mob long enough for the local military to show up.

Sam, were you or any of your friends ever forced to bail out? (I'm ordering your book btw. it looks like it will be a great read!)

 

Before we all rush to judgment on this issue ( and I agree, it is very unpleasant to contemplate ) please bear in mind that there are documented instances of this happening to Luftwaffe crews shot down over London during the Battle of Britain.

The issue of American and British 'terrorflieger' being incarcerated and killed in camps such as Mauthausen is of course very different - this was officially sanctioned.

 

Very true. I guess it was quoted in military books for pilots post WW2 but I thought it was a wise quote " Don´t parachute close to the area you have just bombed!"

BTW, I also recalled readin that during one phase of BoB German Bomber crews were forced to give their hand weapons away mainly because many crews had committed suicide after having been floating in the sea for a long time? Wonder if this was used as one reason to take away hand guns from the Allied pilots.

 

One being quoted in Their Finest Hour....Locals got to him before police got on scene. Not much pity shown. I wasnt there....Cant blame em...But I know what I would do to any one bailing out of an aircraft that had just been bombing my family.

 

For that matter, there were also instances of attacks against African American soldiers who went to the American South for basic training.

 

I can very well understand and empathize with the emotion of a person who has seen his family destroyed by aerial bombardment. The strong feelings of hatred and revenge must be close to uncontrollable. However, leading an angry mob to kill a defenseless man is what I call lynching and murder. And it was not always the case that the leader of these mobs were those who had suffered personal loss. They were the ones who were hanged by the U.S. Army after the war. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of these fiends were caught and prosecuted. Most got off with short jail time.
b17sam

 

I agree with the sentiments Sam, but the base human condition cannot always be controlled by rules and regulations made by someone at a distance and who may never be affected.

Regarding ww2 crew, we cannot on the one hand state this was total war and all the ramifications of that and then on the other think folk should act by decent standards of behaviouf. This is not me excusing any horrors by anyone. Just understanding the base human instincts.

As I say, I was not there, I have though been attacked whilst in uniform and on duty, and will say that I understand no matter what rules of engagement even in small or police actions, the chaos of the moment will mostly always be the first thing that most folk will go with. Even disiplined uniform services if they see comrades or even self become a casualty.

This next statement is not to belittle either, as I say I was never bombed from above, but the bombing of the UK in ww2, however much it was not on same scale as others was still that, death and destruction to many. The UK was bombed, our history, friends, relatives of days past, own parents included...mother bombed out in Liverpool blitz, give those nations that have been bombed a unique insight into how folk react. If you are from the States, I dont know? See 9/11 for example....Im sure if the perpatrators had been found in the wreckage downtown outside a dust filled cafe...their chances of being handed over to any law enforcement would have been negligible.

 

To urqh --- Yes, since you asked, I was born in the U.S.A, and any civlians who might have been stupid enough to kill the perpetrators of 9/11 would have to answer the wrath of the combined forces of the police, FBI, and CIA who could not interrogate a dead body. Revenge may yield a false sense of satisfaction, but it us of short duration. Any loudmouth coward who would urge a mob to brutally kill defenseless individuals deserves punishment of the most severe sort. That applies to us as well as any other country. Our boys who were beaten to death, or strangled from lampposts shall never be forgotten, they were not KIA, they were murdered.
Now, it may be none of my business, but permit me to ask the meaning of urqh, also repel all borders. Just asking.

 

Propaganda urged civilians to lynch allied crews. This did happen, no doubt about that, but in fact far less than the Nazis expected. Not only did the regular military protect the pows (most of the time they did, sometimes they did not) , but I have an instance of civilians bringing an airman to the local Mayor who would have a cup of tea with the flyer and a nice conversation in proper English until he was arrested by the Luftwaffe.
I trust those who committed crimes were arrested in 1945 and faced their judges.

 

Sam there are at least two exerpts from US bomber crews of the murdering of crewmen during the downing's on 21 November 1944. 6 B-17's were lost on a slashing attack by Fw 190A's from JG 301.

look up 21 November Merseburg mission, one story is a bit lengthy but it is included within

398th Bomb Group Web Site

and from doing much research on the Kassel mission September 27, 1944 several bailed crews from the 445th bg B-24 outfit were also brutally handled by civilians, police and Gestapo.

Erich

 

Not to mention those caught in France, who were send to Buchenwald in August 1944 where at least two of them died

 

or to Poland and beyond, time to march back into the Reich in horrible weather conditions ........... aka 1945

 

A note on those who were "lucky" is the story of Tony Burcher the Tail gunner on Fl. Lt Hopwood's lancaster during the Dams Raid. The lancaster was badly damaged during the attack and crashed near the target. Only Burcher and one other managed to get out and whilst bailing out Burcher was struck across the back by the tail. His parachute carried him to earth but a broken back prevented him from moving. He lay there for three days untill some hitler youth found him. They tied a rope around his feet and dragged him to the nearest gestapo station who beleiving he was going to die gave him over to the care of a man they beleived was the local vet. This man was, prior to the war a back surgeon who had lied to the authorities so as to not have to do war work. This man set Burcher in a body cast of concrete for three months untill his back was healed. Then he was intered in Luft Stalag III Sagan where he found an old polish friend from the RAF. The two took part in thre famous tunnel escape from that prison and headed towards the polish frontier. Shortly before crossing the front the Germans captured them realizing who they were they were to be executed as per hitler's orders the next day. That night the lines shifted and in the morning the Russians were in charge of the prison. For reasons unknown the Russians decided they too should hang on to these two and so they were sent into internment in Russia. Burcher wasn't repatriated untill 1947.

As always folks this is from memory so all corrections gladly accepted.

 

It happened on any side, any war, human nature, even if defenceless.
Should not have happened but it did, as many other things did.

Thank you Sam for that info,although I am sure it was not your intention for the discussion to lead this way.

I highly respect ANY vet, NO matter what side.
The hell many went through ....

Regards

Herr

 

b17sam
WWII Veteran

Question for you that the answer to was bandied about many times after the war ended.

As I was with a 3rd Army unit that released men from two different camps,is it a truth that while the Luftwaffe had charge of the camps our Airmen were treated much better than they were after the SS took charge of the camps?

From what we heard the Luftwaffe went by the rule book for prisoner treatment but with the SS there were essentially no rules.

Before I forget it, we were estactic to see you guys overhead when the
skies cleared in December 1944 over the Hurtgen Forest(the Bulge)!!!! and
for that I'd like to say Thanks even though many years have passed.

Sgtleo

 

By all means, Urqh, short for General Urqhuart of Arnhem fame. Repel all borders, or rather prepare to repel borders, a statement assigned to medal of honour recipient commanding USS Liberty.

As to any civilians killing the 911 perpatrators, I would think they would then be answerable. But thats not the point, the point is the initial base human instinct of revenge that resides in most folk I would hazard to guess. And yes any perpertrators of a mob leading to the killing of anyone should pay for their actions. Again though not the point, the point is humans do those things. They may get punished afterwards, that doesnt stop them, and as proved by your own posts on the matter didnt stop them.

As to forgetting your boys, who said anything of the sort? No allied soldier sailor or aiman or civilian from ww2 should be forgotten. We have enough military cemetaries over here to remind some of us on a daily basis. Your own bomber colleagues are most certainly not forgotten judging by the amount of folk walking round the cemetary in East of England that I attended myself only last week.

I thought this was about lynching and war crimes or similar....Indeed they are war crimes in my view. But Im not going to sit and say I dont understand the base human instinct for revenge. Bombing is not and I know you know this, not just a one off thing. Folks lived with the daily and nightly threat, the stories of freinds and relatives, the sights of the next day, the thought in shelters when looking at own kids if they will see next day. I personally beleive that bombing itself in ww2 was a necessary weapon to use, if only for our own morale in Britiain, it was no idle shout to Churchill in ruins of city when folk shouted out give it back to them...it was wanted by our own side, it helped morale even if we were not aware of what, who or if attacks were successful. It was hitting back... But as my own mother told me many times before I joined the RAF, living every night with the threat or thought of bombing turned even her as a child to thoughts of kill the b...s... and Im sure if a German aircrew had landed in the field opposite her house in Long Lane Liverpool after it was bombed and the neighbours she knew a few hours before were killed with schoolfriends too she wouldnt have much cared if men folk had beaten them to death...Its a base human instinct...the payment afterwards though is another matter.

 

I can only but confer with this assesment, the a ctions of the mob are deplorable and as always we try "to apeal to the angels of our better nature".
The actions of people pushed to base survival instincts are by their very nature our most primitive.

My mother also suffered from in the Blitz living in Plymouth as she and her family did. She even today still refers to "Those Bastards" and i'm sure as a teenager would of been capable of acts of violence after friends died in school bombings.

I also have a friend whose grandmother lived through the "Battle of Berlin" on the ground, one morning she calmly returned from the shelter to remove an undetonated incindiary device from the upstairs room, carry it downstairs and place it in a bath tub full of water in the back yard which had been prepared for such a purpose. Apparently she was almost resigned to the fact that the bombs would come nightly. This same woman however was so terrified at the thought of the wall comming down in the late eighties, that the family feared she might do herself some harm. Stories from her family in the east as the russians swept in terrifying her and staying with her for fifty years.

The point i'm making is the actions of people scared out of their wits is often cruel and brutal never to be excused but we should never stop trying to understand!

To the two Veterans who are on this thread again thankyou for all you have done.