The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys: Courage, Tragedy, and Justice in World War II by Gregory A. Freeman

Author:Gregory A. Freeman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-05-23T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

THE TRIAL

July 18, 1945

AFTER A WEEK IN THE HOSPITAL, Hartgen was well enough to be released. On July 18, 1945, eleven defendants—nine men and two women, the sisters Witzler and Reinhardt—were charged with the murders of the six Wham! Bam! crewmembers found in the cemetery. No one had been able to locate the bodies of Adams and Brown. Jaworski assumed they had been buried elsewhere for some reason, and if they could be found, charges might be brought against the same defendants for their deaths.

As the trial date neared, local radio and newspapers picked up the story and gave it wide play. German citizens were being put on trial for killing American servicemen during war, and already Jaworski was seeing a sampling of the arguments that would come up during the trial. Was there really enough evidence to prove what any individual did? Were the witnesses lying, possibly exacting vengeance or carrying grudges against the defendants? How terrible was it, really, for beleaguered citizens to react with anger when an enemy bomber crew marched through their freshly bombed town?

A few days before the trial was set to start, American officials received reports that some people were planning to disrupt the trial with violence. The Americans knew that some diehard Nazis still had hand grenades and other explosives, not to mention the small arms that the Allies could not round up. The threat of violence was very real, and the War Crimes Branch briefly considered delaying the trial. But Jaworski insisted that it go on as planned, because delaying it would not eliminate the threats and because it was vital to show the German people that the Allies valued justice and were determined to make the murderers pay for their crimes. Holding the trial without allowing the public to attend was completely unacceptable to Jaworski and his superiors. Instead, they would post heavily armed guards in and around the courtroom, and they required that all bags be examined before they could be brought into the courtroom.

The trial was moved to Darmstadt, because the Rüsselsheim jail and courthouse had been severely damaged in the bombing. Darmstadt also had been hit hard and was largely abandoned by its residents, but the four-story courthouse building was mostly intact. The courtroom was relatively large, and Jaworski wanted to hold the trial in a space that would allow as many Germans to witness the proceedings as possible, so that they could see its fairness for themselves. A six-member military commission—one brigadier general, one general, three colonels, and one lieutenant colonel—would serve as the jury. The judge was Brigadier General Garrison H. Davidson, a handsome, leading-man type with a head of thick, almost white hair. Davidson had been the West Point football coach from 1932 to 1938 and now served as chief of engineering in the Seventh Army. The Germans were represented not only by American officers equal in rank to their prosecutors but by German defense attorneys of their choosing. Several outstanding members of the

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