Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey and I want to tell you
about a murder that happened here on the 23rd of December 1944,
but first I need to tell you about the events leading up to it.
This isn't so much a whodunnit as a whydunniit. Now
if you're interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history,
then you can click on the subscribe button at the bottom right hand side
of the screen at any time during this video, also don't
forget, that additional information and ways to
support the channel are in the description
below. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
This is Cultybraggan just outside the village of Comrie in Perthshire.
It's now a Community Trust with small businesses, allotments and things like
that, but it hasn't always been that way. The first time I came here was
40 years ago as a boy, when I was in the Air Cadets, and this
place was used for military reserve training. This
was a tuck shop. I spent way too much time in there.
This was a rifle range. Before it was an orchard,
this was an assault course. This is a watchtower, and these were the
mission huts that we lived in. They weren't built for us, they were
built for prisoners of war in the 1940s. At the time it was simply called Camp
21. In autumn of 1944, the allies were pretty
confident. They had landed in Normandy beaches in
the summer, established a beachhead and pushed
German forces back and they were making good progress.
The Germans were finished, they just hadn't admitted it yet.
It meant that lots of Germans were now flooding into places like this
all over the country. Now generally they were beaten, demoralized and just wanted
the war to be over so they could go back to what was left
of their homes. Now some were ideological Nazis, but
others were just soldiers, so they were divided into groups. The
British described them as blacks, the proper baddy Nazis,
and whites, the good guys. Ironically if you can see the subtle
underlying racial element you're probably black, if you can't
you might be a Nazi. The greys might be persuaded either way,
but mostly they just watch bake off! Our story starts in a camp in Devises in
Wiltshire. One of the German prisoners of war was a
Sergeant Wolfgang Rostig. Now before the war, he'd lived and worked
in London. He traveled, he spoke English, French,
Polish, Latvian and Magya. He
was a 'white'. He was used as a translator by Lieutenant Colonel Scotland, the chief
British Intelligence Officer, whose parents incidentally were from
Perthshire here. Rostig hated the Nazis and he could be
counted on for information and help. Then, in the first week of November 1944
a prisoner arrived at Devises who was neither broken, beaten
or demoralized. He was young, confident, belligerent and arrogant. His name was
Erich Koenig, and when he arrived at Camp Devises he
immediately aligned with the 'blacks'. He stirred things up
telling everyone that they were still part of the war effort, and then after
watching people for a bit, he said: "We're going to set up an escape
committee", and then he turned to Rostig and said:
"You won't be part of it"
But an escape was planned, and one day whilst a group of prisoners vigorously
shook their blankets of dust out by the perimeter fence, another
crawled and snipped the wires, and that night when lights were out,
eight of them came back and slipped through the fence unnoticed
until the next day at roll call, and needless to say
a manhunt ensued, and they managed to capture two of these escapees
but a few days later the other six turned up the door and asked to get back
in! That was strange. They were interrogated:
"Ah somebody's taking down the road signs so we weren't sure which way it was back
to Germany". Okay either we're dealing with idiots
or they think they're dealing with idiots, either way
I don't think they're idiots. They were released back into the camp,
but under a cloud. Now it so happened the two Americans from the 17th Airborne
called Brandstetter and Hoelzl appeared in the camp. Now that's not
entirely surprising, the Americans were part of the war
effort. There was a recently established American base nearby.
These guys were coming on board as part of the interrogation team
for captured Germans. Anyway they're wandering around the camp one day
and as they walk in a room Koenig is addressing the group saying:
"It's the ammunition store that's vital". Now he sees the Americans and he stops
talking. Now these newly arrived Americans just
walk through the room and they don't let on that they're here
as interrogators and fluent in German, but very soon it becomes apparent
because the conspirators are called in for interrogation
by the British and the Americans.
Now one of the conspirators, one of the escapees who'd come home
called Schmidt, refuses to cooperate but he points out to his American
interrogators that they might think the war's over but
it's not. All your troops are in the Continent
This country is empty but for old men manning a dad's army.
There are a quarter of a million able-bodied German prisoners of war in
camps up and down the country. Imagine if we all escaped at the same
time? The US 11th Armored Division in the base
up the road wouldn't be able to stop us. We could take arms, ammunition, vehicles,
tanks, even airplanes from the nearby air base.
We've got pilots you know? We could march on London and you
couldn't stop us. He was a bit ballsy, one might even say,
overconfident and loose-lipped. You see the question that came to Brandstetter
and Hoelzl's minds was here's a man who comes back to prison
because there are no road signs in England to tell him how to get back to
Germany, but when he arrives back he's managed to
establish the location, size and function of several allied encampments.
They think we're idiots. Now the conspirators were taken
out of the camp to be interrogated by Lieutenant Colonel Scotland, and his
chums up in London. It turns out there was a
reason that Koenig was more confident and
arrogant than your typical German prisoner.
There was a reason that he'd come in, shook things up and started an escape
committee. There was a reason that the escapees had
come back to the camp with detailed information about military operations
and resources in the surrounding area, because that's what Koenig was sent
to organize.
You see in autumn 1944, when Koenig was captured,
'captured', the Germans were on their last legs.
They had planned one last roll of the dice with a breakout through the Ardennes
Forest. Now you might have seen the film where English-speaking Germans dressed
as American MPs behind the lines and Telly Savalas was the Tank Commander.
It's called 'The Battle of the Bulge'. Anyway Koenig was sent way deep behind
the lines to the British Isles themselves, to
organize the march on London, and it wasn't just
at Devises. At the same times, the Germans launched an
offensive in the Ardennes Forest. There were breakouts and attempted
breakouts from camps in Scotland, England and Wales. This was a concerted
plan as part of the last gasp offensive. The good news is that the forces were
now on alert and the Devises conspiracists have been taken out of the
system all because of a chance hearing of one
sentence by Brandstetter and Hoelzl. On these moments history turned.
Now you can get much more detail in a book called 'The March on London'. I'll
leave a link in the description below. There's also a book called 'Camp 21
Comrade' about this camp. Now the worst may have
been averted, but there were still some prisoners on
the loose. Lieutenant Colonel Scotland certainly wasn't going to put these
conspirators back to the Devises camp where they'd come from,
so he sent them here to Camp 21 on the edge of Comrie.
Camp 21 was divided into four compounds A B C surprise surprise
D; moving from black through to grey to white.
Compound A was for the proper mental Nazis and they weren't allowed to mix
with other compounds. Compound A is now an
orchard and an allotment, how sweet! Compound B has pretty much
disappeared, but you can still see C and D.
Why Koenig and his mates were put in compound B here I don't know.
Certainly Lieutenant Colonel Scotland wanted more information out of them
and he might have thought that they would have talked more openly in that
kind of environment. Scotland's ears would be Sergeant Rostig.
That's right, they sent Rostig from Devises to Comrie to live in B
compound with escape conspirators. Rostig, the man who had never been trusted with
escape plans in the first place. They must have known that they were
signing his death warrant, and so it was that two days after
arriving at Comrie here in compound B, the night before Christmas
Eve of 1944, that Rostig woke up in his bed
to find Koenig going through his affairs, and when he jumped out of bed to grab
Koenig, he himself was grabbed by the waiting arms of several comrades.
He was taken to a seat in front of a desk, where Rostig was beaten,
kicked and struck with iron bars throughout the night of questioning.
The answers didn't matter, it was a beating
he was here for, and when he could no longer use his arm, his hand was held for
him as he was made to sign a traitor's confession. Then a noose was
placed around his neck and he was taken outside here to the
waiting mob who beat him more. By the time they took him to hang from a
pipe in the bath house he was already dead,
but things had to be done right. Eight men were tried in London, five
for the murder, and three with complicity. Five, including Koenig, were hung,
the other three were spared.
Now you know the whydounnit, whoduunit? Who did kill Sergeant Rostig? Was it
the Germans who hung for committing the murder,
or was it Lieutenant Colonel Scotland who sent him here knowing that they
would? Nobody comes out of this story well.
There's neither black, nor white, only shades of grey.
I hope you've liked this. If you have, please give it the thumbs up
and share it. Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh
Tiorridh an drasda