Secrets of the Great Escape PoW murders
War papers on quest for justice up for sale
FILES showing how the RAF fought to avenge the murders of 50 Great Escape PoWs are up for auction.
The dossier was compiled by the RAF Special Investigation Branch tasked with finding the Nazis behind the murders.
Of the 76 Allied airmen who fled Stalag Luft III in 1944, 50 were caught and executed by the Gestapo on Hitler’s orders.
Britain vowed to bring the killers to justice after the war.
But the files show the difficulty investigators had getting help from the US, which held many of the suspects.
A memo dated April 25, 1946, names SS officers who the Americans refused to release from custody.
The file says: “They will be handed over when their usefulness to the Americans has been served.”
Another document details the transfer requests for 63 suspects held in the US zone of Germany. The papers also include the custody mug-shots and fingerprints of some of the suspects.
The breakout from Stalag Luft III was made famous by the 1963 film The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen. Bernard Pass, of Bosley’s Auctioneers, in Marlow, Bucks, said: “Anything official that relates to the Great Escape story is very soughtafter.” The files are set to fetch up to £1,500 on July 4. The Germans deployed 50,000 soldiers to search for the airmen, and 73 of the 76 were caught. Gestapo officers then had the job of escorting the PoWs back to the camp, but stopped off in remote woodland and shot most of them.
Each hit-squad had to file a report to Berlin stating the 50 men were shot trying to escape.
In 1945, an RAF investigation was set up, headed by Squadron Leader Frank McKenna.
Historian Robert Radcliffe, said: “He was very dogged.”
McKenna and his team wen on to identify 69 Germans involved in the Great Escape murders. Of these, 21 were eventually executed.