Meeting the Enemy (48 page)

Such terrible problems as these are often put before the visitors who have become very valued friends to many desolate women. Indeed our visitors form a most important personal link between committees and their cases in all manner of vicissitudes, and a wonderful work has been done by them in ministering to moral and spiritual needs, in addition to physical wants. When, in consequence of talks with some of the mothers who were going to rejoin their husbands, it was realised how greatly they dreaded the plunge into the unknown which they were yet determined to make, a series of teas, with talks from helpers who knew Germany, were arranged in the office. At these, Mrs Schmidt, shall we say, a native of East London, gleaned some details of such mythical places as Hanover or Berlin, and of everyday life there. Classes for simple conversational German were also arranged, so that the women should be able, on arrival in their new homes, at least to ask for the necessaries of life. Expressions of gratitude from the women we have helped grow more frequent, as they realise what benefits they receive from ‘St. Stephen’s’ friends.

Ethel Druhm and her eight-year-old daughter Elfreda were resigned to leaving London for a new life in Germany. Since their hairdressing shop had been smashed by a baying mob in autumn 1914, the family had lived with chronic hardship. Richard Druhm was interned and his wife and child largely abandoned by the rest of her English family, a family that had always disapproved of Ethel’s pre-war marriage. By reverting to her maiden name of Norris, Ethel found work in London but while she was willing, temporarily, to give up her married title, she was not about to give up her husband, as Elfreda recalled.

When the war was over, my father was sent back to Germany, directly. Now the wives could easily have divorced their husbands and stayed in England. Some did and some didn’t. My mother wouldn’t, so she left for Germany, and of course I went with her. I was very close to my mother, and very trusting, and what she did was right.

It was February, and it was really cold, making it a terrible journey. Miss Elsie Hope, my mother’s one dear friend, came and saw us off from the station. She loved me as if I was her daughter and she brought me an eiderdown, a coat and a pair of boots because she knew it would be cold. But my grandmother and my mother’s sisters didn’t come to the station to wave goodbye. There was bad feeling about that for many years; they knew we were being sent to Germany.

When we were in Germany in 1919 we kept contact with some of the families Father had met in the internment camp. Stalenbrusher was one family we met up with, another family was the Stemlers. They used to live nearby and they had a daughter whom I used to meet. But she went back to England. Germany was terrible in those days with the riots and skirmishes and the food situation being so awful, that Frau Stemler left her husband and went back home taking their daughter with her. She couldn’t stand it any longer.

I do not recall the crossing but the trains we went in on the other side were war-damaged, with their windows all broken and no heating; it was pretty bleak and freezing. We went through Holland and each evening we got out of the train where the Quakers or Dutch Red Cross helped us until we got into Germany. It took nearly a week to get there, waiting in Germany for trains to take us on towards Berlin and the little town of Lugenwaldt, about 50 kilometres south of the city.

We went to the place where my father’s parents were, and they welcomed me. My grandfather sat me on his lap and tried to teach me a few words of German. They said the best way for me to learn the language was to go to school, so the week after, they took me to school. The first lesson we had was French, imagine, out of German into French, and I only knew English. Yet the children were so nice they rivalled each other to take me around, there was no anti-English feeling whatsoever. They really couldn’t do enough for us.

It was nearly a year since Richard Noschke had chosen to be repatriated. He missed his wife and five children and was unsure when he would see them again even though there was peace. In his memoirs, written after returning to Germany, he had had time to think.

Now that I am here safe, away from all the horrors of this terrible war I have time for reflection. I often wonder how was it possible that the English people, after being resident in that country for 25 years with an English wife, a grown up family, the best of character, 20 years in one situation, could be so bitter, but the answer I have never found. I have made many friends, as I had spent the best part of my life over there, but I am sorry to say, that nearly all, with very few exceptions have turned against me . . .

I am now over three years torn away from my family, and no sign that I shall ever see them again. By these few lines I give my children a clear impression of what I have gone through, how many sleepless nights I have had, and hoped against hope.

Noschke’s memoirs were written for his children, including his eldest son, William, conscripted to serve in one of the Infantry Labour Companies, in his case the 6th ILC. Interestingly, although written in Germany the diary is in English, not presumably because Noschke was so anglicised that English came more naturally, but probably because his children could not read German particularly well and perhaps not at all.

Richard Noschke did return to England and a home in East Ham, London, although precisely when this was permitted is not known. He was still living there when the Second World War broke out.

Too many British MPs were rabidly keen to purge Britain of almost anything German or German-tainted. The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act of August 1918 had contained many anti-German provisions including the right to revoke a certificate of naturalisation, and cases of revocation, as already noted, were pursued before the Armistice.

It is not known how many civilians lost their British citizenship, although if the cases reported in
The Times
were
all
those on which the Home Secretary revoked certificates, then it would appear that fewer than a hundred men were affected, excluding wives and children. The majority lost their certificates in the two years following the war, although there were cases as late as October 1923.

If the law as exercised against German-born Britons appeared harsh and even vindictive, it was benign in comparison to the way it made victims of those women whose only crime was to marry enemy aliens. Back in 1870, the debate in the House of Commons about women’s nationality was considered largely a matter of sentiment.

During the war, the likely humiliation and punitive restrictions placed on these women became abundantly clear: they lost their rights as British citizens, and to diplomatic protection when travelling overseas. An Act passed in 1918 forbade the employment of these women in the Civil Service. And when the franchise was extended these women were ineligible to vote even if they fulfilled other criteria. It was hardly surprising that pressure grew to change the law so as to revert to the status quo pre-1870, in other words that status in respect of nationality was unaffected by marriage. By 1923 the House of Commons appointed a Joint Select Committee to look into the issue, but it failed to agree on the best path to take. Six years later, the Nationality of Married Women Bill was put before the House but, despite cross-bench support from 222 MPs, it fell by the wayside. Only in 1946, after twenty-five years of agitation, did the government finally agree that women should keep their own nationality on marriage, and all the protections that naturally accrued with citizenship.

In May 1920, a final list of alleged German war criminals was sent to Berlin but owing to legal technicalities – and German foot-dragging – the cases were not brought to court for another year. In the end, the British authorities put forward seven cases, a ludicrously small number reduced to four owing to an inability to locate three of the accused. Those due for trial were low-ranking officers and men who were directly implicated in acts of criminality, the cases being taken forward owing to the strength of the evidence. Of the four cases, three were for the mistreatment of prisoners of war: Sergeant Karl Heinen, Private Robert Neumann, and finally Captain Emil Müller, whose brutality at Flavy-le-Martel POW camp was witnessed by many men, including former Private Nathan Sacof, captured in March 1918 and interpreter for Müller.

Most of the British witnesses taken to Germany had resumed civilian lives and wished to forget about the war. Former Private Arthur Hoyland was to give evidence against Robert Neumann, but Hoyland ignored the notice requiring him to go to Leipzig until two Scotland Yard police officers were sent to collect him. As a prisoner, Hoyland had been hung by his thumbs and whipped with wire after trying to escape. He had also been put through a mock execution and starved.

Several government representatives including the Solicitor General, Sir Ernest Pollock, joined the witnesses on their journey to Leipzig. Two police sergeants under the command of an Inspector A. C. Collins gave added security, Collins speaking to the witnesses before they left. ‘They were addressed by me regarding the importance and serious nature of their mission to Germany, and the necessity of conducting themselves in a proper manner whilst on the journey and during their stay at Leipzig in order to prevent any hostility, and not to provoke any ill-feeling on the part of the Germans.’ Collins’s words were eminently sensible but if anything was indicative of the government’s melting attitude to the Germans, then the last sentence was abysmally illustrative and may well have caused bitter reflection among the party.

Those giving testimony would be in Leipzig only a matter of days. In the meantime, ‘in order not to attract the attention of the populace it was considered desirable’, wrote Inspector Collins, ‘that the witnesses should walk the street in small numbers with observation of their movements being kept by [both British] and German police officers.’

The Supreme Court consisted of a long assembly room adorned with giant imperial paintings of Frederick the Great and Kaiser Wilhelm I. There were seven judges and two prosecutors, all dressed in full regalia. The court was packed with journalists from eighty newspapers from across the globe and the judges sat at a horseshoe-shaped table within which space witnesses stood to give testimony.

The first witnesses attended court on 23 May. The case concerned Sergeant Karl Heinen who ran the Frederick-der-Grosse coal mine. He was charged with cruelly and inhumanely treating prisoners of war under his charge. Witnesses gave their evidence and then the defence rose to argue that the POWs were refractory in refusing to work and that no more violence was used than absolutely necessary. The German Attorney General said the case was proven and asked for a sentence of two years. The President in giving judgement praised the manner in which the men gave their evidence and proceeded to sentence Heinen to just ten months in prison. The German court had treated each assault as individual infringements of the law and, as one observer noted, ‘sentence merely represented the aggregate punishment for a series of assaults, and gave no consideration to the long course of brutal conduct involved’.

As the case was concluded, witnesses were permitted to leave Leipzig for London. On their arrival, the second batch of witnesses was sent out for the trial of Captain Emil Müller. Deaths at Flavy-le-Martel camp had been frequent, averaging six men each day, the court was told. The deaths were directly or indirectly attributable to the camp’s appalling conditions, caused by a lack of food and water, dire sanitation, excessive work and brutal treatment.

Several German sentries under Müller gave evidence for the prosecution, including one who directly contradicted Müller’s testimony. In his defence, the former commandant claimed he had no control over conditions (rather embarrassingly it was revealed that the camp was British-built and had been overrun by the Germans) and that chaos reigned owing to the number of prisoners. He claimed to have reported conditions to his superiors but that nothing was done. Müller was found not responsible for conditions but guilty of cruelty. The Attorney General called for fifteen months in prison; the President awarded six months for crimes that, British observers noted, were substantially the same as those committed by Sergeant Heinen.

Of the other British cases, Private Robert Neumann was found guilty of beating British prisoners and received six months in prison, while the last case, that of U-boat commander Lieutenant Karl Neumann, descended into farce when the whole case was dealt with in two hours. Neumann was accused of sinking a hospital ship. He claimed that he was acting on orders, a lawful defence the court accepted. No witnesses were called and Neumann was released. The British cases were done and dusted in a week.

Despite the unsatisfactory outcome of the Karl Neumann trial, the British cases were expedited without rancour, unlike those of the Belgians and French that descended into courtroom mayhem, such was the depth of mutual hatred and recrimination. Outside, crowds spat at and taunted members of the French and Belgian missions, and trials were abandoned.

The Germans understood that their own best interests were served by treating Britain’s handful of cases with respect: witnesses and observers were not jostled outside court. It was relatively easy to sentence two other ranks to short periods in prison, and the one officer convicted of crimes had had his professional character protected during the President’s summary.