Luftwaffe at Buchenwald

I really look forward to hearing from you!

 

Hello,
If you wish to learn more about this Airmen sent to Buchenwald, you should watch "The Lost Airmen of Buchenwald". Mike Dorsey made a great documentary, interviewing 7 airmen last year. Their memories are quite precise.
Lost Airmen of Buchenwald
Best regards,
Sandrine Martin, France

 

Hello Sandrine, nice to meet you Mike is a friend . I met him in Normandy with Joe Moser.

 

Hi, Diablo, Thank you for your reply. I was actually a researcher who helped with that documentary and know some of the men in it. Small world! Kind of you to reply.

 

Skipper, Turns out I work next to the business of Chasten "Chat" Bowen one of the Buchenwald 168 who made the journey from Fresnes and lived to be liberated from the Stalag by Patton's Army.
I just gathered this information from Chat's son, Troy, today and had to find this thread.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bowen-328324-airmen-one.html

There are some great pictures embedded in the article that you need to open.

This local news story includes some interesting details about the man, posing as a Maqui member, who sold a dozen of the men to the Gestapo for 10,000 francs per man that started their journey to Buchenwald. Mr. Bowen did have a return tour to Buchenwald and Frankfurt a few years ago. The U.S. Government flies him around the country to speak at official functions and he is heading out to Washington D.C. next month. I will see if I can ascertain some more details of this ordeal although his wife recently passed away and this may not be the best time. I will see if I can get Troy on the forum. He is burning me a copy of the Documentary of "The Lost Airmen of Buchenwald".

Hopefully Mr. Bowen remembers the name of the Luftwafte man who saved them from Buchenwald. This excerpt from his intervieiw with the Orange County Register reporter provides a clue.

I helped Mr. Bowen's wife a few times when she wasn't feeling well and have only spoken with him briefly over the years. He is a quiet man and runs a high performance Ford engine shop in Anaheim,CA with his son. I speak with Troy more often. They build some nice racing engines and have a fine reputation in the area.

 

Thanks for the link, I know these pictures very well and there are mostly taken from Mike's work.

I doubt anybody would remember the name of the Luftwafe officer, because he probably never told any of the POWs, who, with the exception of one or two, didn't speak Gemran for a start and never talked to the man.

Many have been working on this before and the topic comes back on the field fro mtime to time. it doesn't even mean he was stationned near Dora. He was most likely an officer from a Luftstalag . I think you should look in that direction. There maybe a written order in some archive .His mission was to find out what happened to the men who were supposed to reach his Stalag and didn't. When he found out where they were, he managed to get them all (but 2 who did not survive) out

 

Skipper,

I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Mr. Chasten Bowen today from the Lost Buchenwald Airmen. It seems, and Mike Dorsey should be able to confirm it, that the Luftwaffe Officer has been found. Just last week apparently. Grand coincidence. The Gentlemen who was able to wrest the Buchenwald POW's from the claws of the SS was the pilot who escorted the Allied Pilot, Charlie Brown, across the channel from the book A Higher Call. There are so many people who know the details of this story we should be able to confirm that this is true. Mr. Bowen has ordered his copy of the book. He (Stigler see correction below Trautloft) was investigating the bomb damage as a pretense to investigate for his Commanding Colonel. I believe you are most likely correct when you say the higher order clearing the transfer may have come from the Air Reich Marshall himself.

Mr. Bowen said that when the Sgt. who spoke German was saluting and talking to Herr Trautloft, the SS Guards and Officer were trying to push him away. LT. Stigler had to pull rank on the SS just to be able to finish the conversation. He (Trautloft) said he could not promise anything but that he would see what he could do. Mr. Bowen confirmed that they were set for execution within three days and just made it out in time.

Mr. Bowen identified the French Belgian as Jacques who turned him over to the Gestapo. He said there was also a young boy and a girl in the Citroen but they were dropped off in Versailles prior to him being turned into the machine gun wielding Gestapo guards. The escape plane was supposed to have been an A-20 and was to be called in by a French Partisan. He estimated her age to have been 16.

Mr. Bowen also shared with me that during the close bombing raids in Normandy in 1944 his Squadron lost 11 of 18 bombers during the runs that ran parallel to the Allied lines to avoid friendly fire damage to allied troops. I remember an account of Bradley calling for this raid somewhere around Falaise or Caen. The Air Commanders fought tooth and nail for their pilots but were over ruled by high command.

The interesting coincidence is that he is best friends with Richard Simpson who served in the 37th ID in Bougainville and Manila. The same unit my friend SSGT Jim Underwood and my Great Uncle Paul Glasgo served in on Hill 700 against the major Japanese counter-offensive on Bougainville. The unit whose Association recognition group I am lucky enough to be a member of. :S!

 

Wow this is great news, if the identity of this Luftwaffe officer is confirmed then this gentleman will have saved 166 allied airmen.

Regarding the woman and the young boy. They were Jacques's wife and son. Both are innocent. Jacques was having love affairs whenever he could (for instance with the red haired woman) and he would visit his family from time to time to give them some money.
After the war he fled to Germany after having stabbed the red haired woman and abandonned his family west of Paris.
A brave Resistance fighter offered the woman and the boy shelter after the war. I shall not mention his name for privacy reasons.
I know these details from interviews of people who sheltered the KLBs before Jacques betrayed them .

 

I just read this thread for the first time. I've never heard the story, thanks for everyone's posts and the research you've done.

 

There has been some misunderstanding I see, regarding the identify of the Luftwaffe officer who came into Buchenwald. It was NOT Franz Stigler. The name of the officer was mentioned in the book, A Higher Call, about Charlie Brown and Hans Stigler. The name of the man was Hans Trautloft, a German figher ace.

 

I, too, can confirm that it was Hannes Trautloft as Rhapsody sent me this same information 19 March, 2013. It was she who provided the name to Mike Dorsey.

Rhapsody and I have had a frriendly wager for the past three years on this mans identity. Like most I did not think it was possible at this late date to ID this Luftwaffe gentleman. I am happy to be proven wrong. Congrats on all the hard work, Rhapsody!

The attachments are from "A Higher Call"

http://s616.photobucket.com/user/alieneyes1/media/03-19-201307_52_55AM-1.jpg.html

http://s616.photobucket.com/user/alieneyes1/media/03-19-201307_52_55AM2-1.jpg.html

http://s616.photobucket.com/user/alieneyes1/media/03-19-201307_52_55AM3-1.jpg.html

 

It is most amazing thes emen were possibly saved by such a celebritry. What is sad is that Herr Trautloft survived the war and died in 1995, which isn't so long ago. I wonder whether he ever mentionned this himself.

I have been reading quite a lot about his career and there are some shadows , for instance, after his revolt following Bodenplatte , he is said ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Trautloft) to have been sent to a Fliegerschule in Strassburg in 1945. The trouble is that the city was Liberated by the French 2nd armored Division on November 27th , so it's either a different place with the same name or a mistake.

 

Thanks to our esteemed members for digging out this information. Mr. Bowen is a soft spoken man and when he mentioned the book "A Higher Call" perhaps I assumed he meant Herr Stigler. He did mention that he had ordered the book so he probably mentioned that he was going to research it there for himself? :ww1ace:

Rest in Peace Herr Trautloft. The relief you provided to so many men and their families by your honourable actions reflects great credit upon yourself and your command during a dark and terrible time. Your greater angels steered your actions in this event and perhaps so many more.events throughout this time. I am very happy that your actions are now part of the database and can be used by researchers, persons interested in this epic struggle and amateur historians.

Skipper, good catch on the misquote in wikipedia regarding the liberation of Strassburg in 1944 and Herr Trautloft's assignment there. I am sure the French and Allied Air Commanders would have been happy to debrief such an accomplished pilot and commander, had he in fact arrived there.

 

This provides interesting leads. Firstly , it confirms Herr Trautloft was sick and tired of the actions of high command and could no longer stand the waste of human lives. This perfectly matches his humanitarian endaveour to get pows from the claws of the SS. It was no doubt a risky businness , even for a Luftwaffe airman. Most pilots hated the SS for a start. I have the testimony from one of them , who after being shot down, managed to reach an SS based at Kassel and asked for shoes because his had been damaged .He was sent away like dirt ,despite his burns and had to borrow a pair from a school teacher instead.
Secondly, if he was to go Strasbourg, it would be interested to find out where this Lehrschule was. I know Leclerc set up a French training center there for his men in February 1945 . They were either veterans from Africa, Italy , FFI or others and he wanted to harmonise ranks and habits. This place was initially at Rouffach . It was infantry though, not airforce, but it deserves to be looked at , because I doubt any German pilot would "waste" petrol in training at the end of 1944, when so much was ned at the Bulge at the same moment.
This is why I think Trautloft would have been sent to teach theory and strategics on paper, (it was also to "punish" him for his protest after Bodenplatte. ).
Another question is where did he in fact go in 1945 then?

 

I was in touch with the author of A Higher Call, and he gave me the name of his contact, who gave him the information. That contact knew Trautloft. Trautloft never told his daughter what he saw when he went to Buchenwald, as he was too ashamed at what his countrymen were doing. Trautloft became a general in the German Air Force after the war, and he was active in a group of Canadian pilots, who had great respect for him. Nice end to a good story.

 

It shows that even when facing the hardest fascist regime , the will of one single man can do some good. He certainly saved the KLBs , you are certainly aware that the poor SOE lads who were with them ended murdered and that at several times the SS had threatened them , telling they'be next.

Also I am pretty sure there wouldn't have been a second chance for the KLBs. Herr Trautloft certainly had guts to venture inside hell and saving these brave people.

Other good people ought to be found as well. I'm thinking of the nurse who helped one man to escape at the station, those who mailed the letters that were dropped from the wagons and the French (or Belgian?) doctor at the nursery who helped the weakest.

 

This thread makes me wish we had a "like" button for threads as well as individuals. Well done all who contributed.

 

Wish granted , I rated it five stars for you . :S!

 

We have some trheads about herr Tautloft on the forum , including a signed picture

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/33153-multi-signed-photos-of-luftwaffe-aces/?hl=trautloft

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/31800-last-interview-with-erich-hartmann/?hl=trautloft

 

I din't know we could do that ...
Amazing what I'm learning on this topic.