| Franz von Werra | |
|---|---|
Franz von Werra |
|
| Born | 13 July 1914 Leuk in Switzerland |
| Died | 25 October 1941 (aged 27) near Vlissingen in the Netherlands |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Service/branch | Luftwaffe |
| Years of service | 1936-1941 |
| Rank | Hauptmann |
| Unit | JG 3, JG 53 |
| Commands held | I./JG 53 |
| Battles/wars | |
| Awards | Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross |
Franz Xaver Graf von Werra (13 July 1914 – 25 October 1941) was a German World War II fighter pilot and flying ace who was shot down over England and captured. He is generally regarded as the only Axis prisoner of war to succeed in escaping from a Canadian prisoner of war camp and returning to Germany, though a second man, a U-Boat rating named Walter Kurt Reich is said to have jumped from a Polish troopship (presumably the ex-liner Sobieski) in the St. Lawrence river in July 1940.[1] Von Werra managed to return to Germany via the USA, Mexico, South America and Spain to reach Germany on 18 April 1941.[2]
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Franz Graf von Werra was born on 13 July 1914, to impoverished Swiss parents in Leuk, a town in the Swiss canton of Valais. Later he and his sister were given into the care of an aristocratic German family. The title Baron came from his biological father Baron Leo von Werra, who, after bankruptcy, faced deep economic hardship. Because relatives were legally obliged to look after the Baron's wife and his six children, they were not amused about another child with the name Franz. Cousin Rosalie von Werra persuaded her childless friend Louise Carl-von Haber to permit the two youngest the benefits of wealth and education. The Carl-von Habers did not tell the children their true origin.[3]
In 1936, von Werra joined the Luftwaffe. At the beginning of the war, he served with Jagdgeschwader 3 in the French campaign. An able officer, he became Adjutant of II Gruppe, JG 3. He was described as engaging in boisterous 'playboy' behavior. He was once pictured in the German press with his pet lion Simba, which he kept at the aerodrome as the unit mascot.
Von Werra scored his first four victories during the Battle of France in May 1940. In one sortie during the Battle of Britain on 25 August he claimed nine RAF planes destroyed, including five on the ground, but only four airborne planes were credited by the Germans. The particulars of the actions are uncertain as no matching incident has been found in British records.
On 5 September 1940, von Werra's Bf 109 was shot down over Kent by Pilot Officer Basil Gerald 'Stapme' Stapleton of No. 603 Squadron. Pilot Officer George Bennions of No. 41 Squadron may have initially damaged von Werra's fighter before Stapleton administered the coup de grâce. Von Werra crash-landed in a field and was captured by the unarmed cook of a nearby army unit. Initially, he was held in Maidstone barracks by the Royal West Kent Regiment, from which von Werra attempted his first escape. He had been put to work digging and was guarded by Military Police private Denis Rickwood, who had to face von Werra down with a small truncheon, while von Werra was armed with a pick axe. (There is no mention of this escape attempt in the book The One that Got Away). He was interrogated for eighteen days at Trent Park, a mansion in Hertfordshire which before the War had been the seat of the Sir Phillip Sassoon. After the war it became Trent Park teachers' training college. Eventually was sent to the London District Prisoner of War "cage" and then on to POW Camp No.1, at Grizedale Hall in the Furness Fells area of Lancashire, between Windermere and Coniston Water.
On 7 October he tried to escape for the second time, during a daytime walk outside the camp. At a regular stop, while a fruit cart provided a lucky diversion and other German prisoners covered for him, von Werra slipped over a dry-stone wall into a field. The guards alerted the local farmers and the Home Guard. On the evening of 10 October, two Home Guard soldiers found him sheltering from the rain in a hoggarth (a small stone hut used for storing sheep fodder, that are common in the area), but he quickly escaped and disappeared into the night. On 12 October, he was spotted climbing a fell. The area was surrounded, and von Werra was eventually found, almost totally immersed in a muddy depression in the ground. Werra was sentenced to 21 days of solitary confinement and was subsequently transferred on 3 November to Camp No. 10 in Swanwick, Derbyshire.
In Camp No. 13, also known as the Hayes camp, von Werra joined a group calling themselves Swanwick Tiefbau A.G. (Swanwick Excavations, Inc.), who were digging an escape tunnel. On 17 December 1940, after a month's digging, it was complete. The camp forgers equipped the group with money and fake identity papers. On 20 December, von Werra and four others slipped out of the tunnel under the cover of anti-aircraft fire and the singing of the camp choir. The others were recaptured quickly, leaving von Werra to go it alone. He had taken along his flying suit and decided to masquerade as Captain Van Lott, a Dutch Royal Netherlands Air Force pilot. He claimed to a friendly locomotive driver that he was a downed bomber pilot trying to reach his unit, and asked to be taken to the nearest RAF base. In Codnor Park Station, a local clerk became suspicious, but eventually agreed to arrange his transportation to the RAF aerodrome at Hucknall, near Nottingham. The police also questioned him, but von Werra convinced them he was harmless. At Hucknall, a Squadron Leader Boniface asked for his credentials, and von Werra claimed to be based at Dyce near Aberdeen. While Boniface went to check this, von Werra excused himself and ran to the nearest hangar, trying to tell a mechanic that he was cleared for a test flight. Boniface arrived in time to arrest him at gunpoint, as he sat in the cockpit, trying to learn the controls. Von Werra was sent back to Hayes under armed guard.
In January 1941, von Werra was sent with many other German prisoners to Canada. His group was to be taken to a camp on the north shore of Lake Superior, Ontario, so von Werra began to plan his escape to the United States, which was still neutral at the time. On 21 January, while on a prison train that had departed Montreal, he jumped out of a window, again with the help of other prisoners, and ended up near Smiths Falls, 30 miles from the St. Lawrence River. Seven other prisoners tried to escape from the same train, but were soon recaptured. Von Werra's absence was not noticed until the next afternoon.
After an agonizing crossing of the frozen St. Lawrence River, von Werra made his way over the border to Ogdensburg, New York, U.S.A. and turned himself over to the police. The immigration authorities charged him with entering the country illegally, so von Werra contacted the local German consul. Thus, he came to the attention of the press and told them a very embellished version of his story. While the U.S. and Canadian authorities were negotiating his extradition, the German vice-consul helped him over the border to Mexico. Von Werra proceeded in stages to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Barcelona, Spain, and Rome, Italy. He finally arrived back in Germany on 18 April 1941.
Franz von Werra became a hero. Adolf Hitler granted him the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes (Knights Cross of the Iron Cross). Von Werra was tasked to improve German interrogation techniques for captured pilots based on his own experience with the British system.[4] Von Werra reported to the German High Command on his treatment as a POW, and this improved the treatment of POWs in Germany. Von Werra then returned to the Luftwaffe and was initially deployed to the Russian front, raising his tally to 21 aerial victories in July 1941. When his wing, JG 53, was withdrawn from Russia he flew patrols over the North Sea.
On 25 October 1941, just seven months after his return to Germany, von Werra's aircraft disappeared over the North Sea near Vlissingen, most probably due to engine failure. His body was never found.
Werra's story was the subject of a film called The One That Got Away starring Hardy Krüger as von Werra. The film was based on a book by Kendall Burt and James Leasor published in 1956.
In total there were more than 600 individual escape attempts from Canadian internment camps, including at least two mass escapes using tunnels. Many German prisoners were motivated by von Werra's earlier success.
On the night of April 18, 1941, 28 German prisoners of war escaped from Angler, Ontario through a 150-foot-long (46 m) tunnel. Originally over 80 Germans planned to escape, but Canadian guards discovered the breakout in progress.
Most escapees attempted flee to the then neutral United States, though prisoners Karl Heinz-Grund and Horst Liebeck made it as far as Medicine Hat, Alberta before being apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The two men planned to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia and make it out of Canada courtesy of the Japanese Merchant Marine.
Two of the four German prisoners of war killed in the act of escape from Canadian prison camps during the Second World War were shot in the aftermath of the Angler breakout. Three others were wounded.
The Angler breakout was the single largest successful escape attempt orchestrated by German POWs in North America during the Second World War: the December 23, 1944 breakout of 25 Kriegsmarine and merchant seamen from Papago Park, Arizona was the second largest. In both instances all prisoners were recaptured.
On 23 November 1941 Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Ulrich Steinhilper escaped from Bowmanville, Ontario and managed to make it to Niagara Falls within two days. Steinhilper unknowingly spent 30 minutes in the neutral United States clinging beneath a train car as it sat idle in a Buffalo, New York railyard. In less than three weeks, he escaped again and made it as far as Montreal, Quebec.
Within four months Steinhilper would attempt a third escape. On February 18, 1942 Steinhilper and a friend, disguised as painters, used a ladder to escape over two barbed wire fences. The pair would make it as far as Watertown, New York before being arrested by police. Steinhilper was soon sent to Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he attempted two further escapes. Dornier Do 17 bomber pilot Oberleutnant Peter Krug made it as far as San Antonio, Texas after staging an escape from Bowmanville, Ontario POW camp on April 17, 1942. In the aftermath of Krug's escape, similar to Steinhilper's, the young Luftwaffe pilot was aided in his flight by Axis sympathizers in United States whose addresses may have been procured from outside Abwehr sources.
Von Werra's former Swanwick digging partner Luftwaffe Leutnant Walter Manhard successfully escaped from a Gravenhurst, Ontario POW camp while on a swimming excursion. Presumed drowned, he had actually escaped to New York, where he decided to remain. He gave himself up in 1952, and by then he had married an American woman who was an officer in the United States Navy.
Nineteen German POWs escaped through a large drainage pipe from Kingston, Ontario on August 26, 1943. All were soon recaptured.
Karl Rabe of U-35 made four separate escape attempts from Lethbridge, Alberta in 1943 including an attempt using a 24-by-10-foot (7.3 × 3.0 m) home-made hot air balloon. Previously he had escaped from a Toronto hospital, subsequently stealing a small row boat with the intention of crossing Lake Ontario to the American shore, but beached the craft too soon, mistakenly thinking he was already on the American side. He was immediately recaptured by Canadian soldiers.
Afrika Korps soldier Max Weidauer escaped from Medicine Hat, Alberta in the aftermath of the separate murders of fellow DAK prisoners August Plaszek and Karl Lehmann by Nazi elements. After explaining the circumstances of his escape and the fact that he feared for his life, Weidauer was hidden by a local farmer but was soon once again behind barbed wire.
