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EPILOGUE Meanwhile, the end of hostilities saw the victorious forces move into and occupy their zones of occupation. Borkum was under the administration of the British. POWs on the island were liberated and sent home. One, a frenchmen, told his liberators that he had witnessed the deaths of the Americans. This launched a full scale investigation. The graves would eventually have been found, but the lack of suspicion may have resulted in close inspection of the remains. Time was of the essence and the Americans were called in to participate in the investigation and reclaim the bodies; each, found to have been shot in the head, most at close range. Injuries inconsistant with combat. Interrogations on the island found enough evidence to indict 22 men for violating the "Customs of War", and the Geneva Convention Article 2, for their assault on prisoners of war. 16 men were arrested and held at Landsberg Prison. The remainder were tried in absentia. Those arrested include the mayor, police chief, and the senior officers of the naval garrison on the island. Länger had been reportedly transferred to the Eastern Front where he is alleged to have been killed in action. The trials that that began on 6 February 1946 included material evidence, and testimony that pitted German against German, each with the own agenda and life riding on the line. The defense based its arguments of "Superior Orders" for both the civilians and military personnel. Specifically, a 1944 decree by the Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, stating that military guards were not to protect Allied airmen (considered to be murderers) from civilians. This decree was reportedly sanctioned by the NAZI party, and the German High Command. The Naval commanding officer, Kapitän Kurt Goebell received a copy of this order via teleprinter from General Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht). The trial lasted 6 weeks. The US Governor of the Island of Borkum, GEN Lucius D. Clay, confirmed the sentences in 1947. However, in the following year he commuted the sentences of two to life. Of those two, Fregattenkapitän Dr. Kurt Goebell was one. Mayor Jan Akkerman was hung on 15 October 1948. Oberleutnant Kurt Wentzel on 3 December 1948. The senior enlisted man of the guard detail, Johann Schmitz, was also hung on 15 October 1948. There was one acquittal, with other sentences of varying lengths of imprisonment handed down. As a consequence of the Cold War, many of these sentences were later reduced. In 2002, the 486th Bomb Group Association had received a package from Dr. Bryan Vansweringen, a US Army liaison working in Berlin, who had become aware of the Borkum incident while interning at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD. He had visited the island earlier that year with his girlfriend and had learned of a memorial to be built and erected on the island. He worked the the planners and wrote the association for help in locating next of kin and the survivors. That task was handed to me, and I got to work. Fortunately, both men had unique names and they were found in short order. |