American airmen beaten and murdered by German citizens during August 1944.

On 24 August 1944, a B-24 Liberator bomber nicknamed “Wham Bam. Thank you, mam,” of the 84th Bomb Group, 491st Group, US Eighth Air Force, based at North Pickenham (Station 143) in Norfolk, England was one of several aircraft bombing strategic targets in Germany.

After being hit by heavy flak over Hanover, Germany, the crew parachuted from the aircraft and landed safely but were quickly captured by German troops and the nine Americans were kept overnight at a deserted Luftwaffe base before being transported to a prisoner of war camp. Staff Sergeant Forrest Brinin who had been wounded by flak, was taken to hospital for abdominal surgery. The following morning, they were put on a train with armed guards but were forced to leave the train near the town of Russelsheim, an industrial city in the district of Hesse, which had been heavily bombed by the RAF and as they continued their journey on foot, the airmen were surrounded by an angry mob who began spitting on them and calling for them to be killed.

After the airmen were hit with bricks and beaten with iron bars, the mob was joined by an air raid warden named Josef Hartgen who shot six of the airmen in the head with a pistol. After running out of ammunition, two airmen, William M Adams and Sidney E Brown, though badly injured from the severe beatings, were still alive.

Memorial at Russelsheim.

The mob then put the airmen on a cart and took them to a cemetery, Adams and Brown were semi-conscious when they received further beatings. Fortunately for Adams and Brown, during their beating, the townspeople heard air raid sirens and ran away to take cover, and the two airmen were able to crawl from the cart and make their escape. Four days later, they were again fortunate to be found by a police officer who took them to a prisoner of war camp in Oberursel, where they remained until the end of the war.

During May 1945, Russelshem was occupied by the US Army and the military police began investigating allegations about war crimes against American airmen which led to the Exhumation of the murdered aircrew.

The remain of six US airmen.

Further investigations led to the arrest of eleven residents of Russelsheim including Josef Hartgen who had shot the airmen and they were put on trial in the town of Darmstadt during late July 1945.

The men and women arrested claimed they had been incited to commit the murders by Goebbel’s, the Reich Minister of propaganda, who encouraged civilians to take reprisals against allied airmen who had been shot down and their defence council claimed they should not bear the guilt for their actions. An American Lieutenant Colonel named Leon Jaworski insisted on the individuals being responsible for the murders and added “They are all grown men and women. If they are called on to commit murders, and they do, they are just as responsible as any other murderers.”

The chief investigator, Luke Rogers, added, “The townspeople committed the massacre out of a sense of entitlement… There had been countless instances of allied towns being bombed just as badly as Russelsheim, every single case of downed aircrew being beaten and murdered had come from Germany.

On 2 August, Joseph Hartgen, Johannes Siepel, Phillip Gutlich, Friedrich Wust, Johannes Opper, Margarete Witzer, and Kathe Reinhardt were found guilty and sentenced to death. Two others, Heinrich Barthel and August Wolf, were sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour. Georg Daum was sentenced to 25 years with hard labour.

The death sentence of Margarete Witzler and Kathe Reinhardt was later commuted to 30 years in prison with hard labour after it was decided their only crime was screaming at the airmen and inciting violence.

On 10 November 1945, Hartgen and four others were hanged at a prison in Bruchsal. In 1946, Franz Umstatter was tried for his participation; witnesses said he stomped on the victim’s head so hard his boots broke. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but due to a legal technicality, his conviction was overturned. In May 1947, Otto Stolz was also convicted and sentenced to death and was hanged at Landsberg Prison on 14 November 1947.

Witzler and Reinhardt were paroled on 19 December 1953. Reinhardt died on 11 November 1958 and Witzler died on 7 January 1976.

Barthel and Wolf were paroled on 21 December 1953. Barthel died on 11 May 1981. Daum was paroled on 5 February 1954 and died on 27 July 1955. All the defendants returned to their homes.