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THE CAST

The following is a summary profile of the members of the hostage group and associated characters who will feature in a number of chapters.

Austrian

Kurt von Schuschnigg was Chancellor of Austria until the Anschluss. He was voluntarily accompanied in captivity by his wife Vera. Their child, Maria (known as ‘Sissi’), was born in captivity. He was arrested for his opposition to union with Germany.

British Military Contingent

Captain Peter Churchill was an intelligence officer with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who was captured in France while assisting the French Resistance. He had fallen in love with his courtier, Odette Sansom, who was arrested alongside him. In the hope of saving both of their lives he pretended to be a relative of Winston Churchill, and that he and Odette were married.

Lieutenant Colonel Jack Churchill was known as ‘Fighting Jack’ or ‘Mad Jack’. He was a commando renowned for going into battle with a Scottish broad sword, a longbow and a set of bagpipes. He was captured in Yugoslavia in 1944 while leading a group of partisans and fellow British commandos in battle against the Germans who believed, wrongly, that he was related to the British Prime Minister.

Sergeant Thomas Cushing liked to be known as ‘Red’ – due to the colour of his hair, not his politics. As with all members of the Irish group, he was captured after Dunkirk in 1940. He was among a small group detained in a special Irish camp who volunteered for training by the Germans for sabotage missions. He had previously been in the US army.

Wing-Commander Harry Day was generally known as ‘Wings’. Day was captured while leading an RAF squadron on a mission in 1939. As a senior British officer he led numerous escape attempts, including what became known as The Great Escape, following which fifty of his comrades were executed.

Major Johnnie Dodge was an American-born officer of the British army who was related, through his mother’s second marriage, to Winston Churchill.

Flight Lieutenant Sydney Dowse was captured after being shot down in 1941. Alongside Harry Day, he was a serial escaper and a survivor of The Great Escape.

Squadron Leader Hugh Falconer was an SOE agent captured in Tunis during a covert operation. He joined some of the British group during their journey to Dachau.

Flight Lieutenant Bertram James was known as ‘Jimmy’. James was another survivor of The Great Escape who was reunited with some of his colleagues in Sachsenhausen.

Lieutenant Colonel John McGrath was an Irish First World War Veteran, recalled to the colours in 1939. Up until then he had been manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin. After a period in an officers’ POW camp, he acted as senior officer in a camp established by the Abwehr in the hope of winning Irish recruits for anti-British espionage and sabotage. McGrath secretly set about sabotaging the project.

Private Patrick O’Brien volunteered or pretended to work for the Germans while in the Irish camp.

Captain Sigismund Payne Best was a Secret Service officer kidnapped by the Germans in the Netherlands, in what became known as the Venlo Incident.

Gunner John Spence worked for a German propaganda radio station beamed at Ireland. He joined the other Irish in Sachsenhausen, where he came under suspicion of being an informer.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Stevens worked for MI6 and was captured, along with Payne Best, in Venlo on the Dutch–German frontier. The two were probably the earliest British spies captured by the Germans during the war.

Corporal Andrew Walsh was trained by the Germans, like Cushing and O’Brien, to undertake sabotage missions until it became clear that he planned to double-cross them.

French

Léon Blum was a former French Premier and leader of the Socialist part. He was accompanied by his wife Jeanne who voluntarily joined him in detention. He had been put on trial by the collaborationist Vichy government before being taken into captivity in Germany.

Monsignor Gabriel Piguet was arrested by the Gestapo for sheltering a wanted priest. The Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, he had also arranged for Jewish children to be hidden in a school in his diocese.

Flight Lieutenant Ray Van Wymeersch was a member of the Free French Air Force under the command of the RAF. He joined the other RAF continent in the Sachsenhausen after being recaptured following The Great Escape.

Prince Xavier de Bourbon lived in France most of his life and fought with the Belgium and French armies. A Spanish aristocrat, he was the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne.

Italian

Mario Badoglio was the son of Marshal Pietro Badoglio. His father was the head of the Italian Armed Forces and Prime Minister for a period after the overthrow of Mussolini.

Colonel Davide Ferrero was the founder of an Italian partisan group. Ferrero was arrested by the Germans and detained in Dachau.

General Sante Garibaldi was a grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the renowned Italian liberator. Sante took up residence in France where he linked up with the French Resistance, resulting in his arrest by the Gestapo in 1943.

Tullio Tamburini was Chief of Police in Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic prior to his arrest and detention in Dachau.

Greek

General Alexandros Papagos was Commander in Chief of the Green Army. He was accompanied in detention by members of his former high command and two orderlies.

German Military Prisoners

Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin had been chief of the operations section of the German army’s general staff. He was arrested for making a tactical retreat near Warsaw, thereby contravening Hitler’s orders. Despite this, he maintained his military rank and honours while in captivity.

General Alexander von Falkenhausen was a former Governor of Belgium during its occupation. He was arrested on suspicion of being associated with a plot to kill Hitler.

General Georg Thomas bore some responsibility for the Nazis’ brutal treatment of the inhabitants of occupied Russian territory, even while involved in some anti-Nazi plots.

General Franz Halder was involved in plots to overthrow Hitler during the early years of the Nazi administration. The former Chief of the Army General Staff, he was accompanied by his wife Gertrud in captivity.

Colonel Fabian von Schlabrendorff was a cousin and adjutant to Major General von Henning von Tresckow, and directly involved in plots to kill Hitler.

German Civilian Prisoners

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed the Nazis.

Georg Elser was a would-be assassin of Hitler. He planted a bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, which exploded soon after Hitler had left.

Friedrich Engelke claimed to be a civil servant but was almost certainly an SS colonel stationed in France during the occupation.

Wilhelm von Flügge was an executive of I.G. Farben with links to the German opposition.

Dr Erich Heberlein was a former German ambassador to Spain who was detained along with his wife Margot.

Fey von Hassell was a daughter of the former German ambassador to Italy and opposition leader, she was arrested soon after the execution of her father.

Heidel Nowakowski was purported to be a lover of an SS officer before being interned in Dachau for reasons unknown.

Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia was a cousin of the Keizer and was arrested in 1944 along with his secretary and partner, Baron Fritz Cerrini, because of their homosexuality.

Josef Müller was a Bavarian lawyer and leading Catholic politician. He was a link man with the Vatican in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler.

Martin Niemöller was an evangelical pastor and renowned opponent of the Nazi regime who was arrested on Hitler’s orders.

Prince Phillip of Hesse was an active Nazi who considered himself to be an intimate of Hitler until he was arrested in 1943. He was closely related to German and British royalty and his wife was a sister of the King of Italy.

Sigmund Rascher was a doctor in Dachau who conducted appalling, cruel experiments on prisoners.

Hjalmar Schacht was president of the Reichsbank and economics minister in the Nazi administration before he fell out of favour.

Alexander von Stauffenberg was a brother of Clause and Berthold von Stauffenberg, both of whom were executed for their roles in the attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Alexander was arrested under the Sippenhaft (‘kin liability’) laws.

Fritz Thyssen was a leading German industrialist and financier of the Nazi regime. He was arrested after announcing his opposition to the invasion of Poland.

Isa Vermehren was a popular cabaret artist who was arrested after her brother, who was a German intelligence officer, defected to the British.

Wilhelm Visintainer was a former circus clown who became a prisoner trustee assigned to service the needs of the special prisoners.

Paul Wauer was a Jehovah’s Witness who, like most of his fellow co-religionists, was imprisoned and later assigned as a trustee to service the special prisoners.

SS Guards

Ernst Bader was an SS lieutenant in charge of one element of the SS guards that were believed to have earlier been part of an Einzsatzgruppen unit involved in the murder of civilians behind the lines in Poland and Russia.

Edgar Stiller was the Lieutenant in charge of the special prisoners in Dachau, and assigned the duty of escorting the Prominenten to the Alps.

Hungarians

Miklós Horthy was the son of Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary.

Miklós Kállay was formerly the Prime Minister of Hungary.

The Soviets

General Ivan Bessonov was a senior NKVD officer, who, after his capture in 1941, agreed to work for the Germans. Before falling into disfavour, the Germans intended that he would command a group of turned Russian POWs to act as anti-Soviet partisans.

Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili was Stalin’s son from his first marriage. He was captured and used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. He was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen with some of the Irish captives.

Lieutenant Vassily Kokorin was a nephew of the Soviet Foreign Minister. An officer in the Soviet Air Force, he was a close friend of Stalin’s son, with whom he shared a cell at Sachsenhausen.

Major General Pyotr Privalov was a former university lecturer and decorated solider. The highest-ranking among the Soviet contingent, he was captured near Stalingrad.

Yugoslav

Colonel Hinko Dragic was an officer in the Yugoslavian Army. He was arrested after the German invasion and imprisoned in Flossenburg Concentration Camp, where he managed to become part of the Prominenten.