The following are excerpts taken from the book, A Domain of Heroes:
"One of the most brutal documented cases of barbarous treatment of American air crews shot down over Germany was that of Wham-Bam, Thank You Ma'am. The B-24 crew was shot down on Thursday, August 24, 1944, near Hanover. The engineer of the crew, Forrest W. Brininstool was seriously wounded and was sent by his captors to a hospital. Two days after their capture the rest of the crew, Norman J. Rogers, Jr., pilot, John N. Sekul, co-pilot, Haigus Tufenkjian, navigator, Thomas D. Williams, Jr., radio operator, William M. Adams, nose gunner, Elmer Austin, waist gunner, Sidney Brown, tail gunner, and William A. Dumont, ball turret gunner, were placed on a train to Frankfort." Because of damaged tracks, at Russelssheim near Frankfort, Luftwaffe guards order the crew from the train. "As the prisoners walked past the Park Hotel in the bombed-out town they were seen by three women who worked in the tobacco store next door. the women, Kathe Reinhardt, her sister, Margarete Witzler, and Margarete's daughter, Lilo, ran out of the shop shouting obscenities and threats, 'These are terror flyers! Beat them to death!' Other people nearby heard the shouting and crowded around the airmen. The hysterical women pelted the crew with stones. Kathe Reinhardt struck one of the men with a large piece of slate knocking him down. Phillip Gutlich, a tavern keeper, joined in the tumult. He beat Dumont with a club and broke his ankle. ... Dumont was picked up by one of he fellow crewmen and they all started running down the street with the mob in hot pursuit. Joseph Hartgen, the local Nazi Party leader, joined the crows and shouted, 'Beat the schweins to death!' He then fired his pistol in the air to incite the mob. As the flyers rand down the street, they were showered with bricks and rocks. As they turned into a side street, Johannes Seipel, a farmer, who had joined the agitators, ran along beside the crew hammering them with a club. George Daum, a factory worker, joined in and beat them with a shovel. .... The fleeing prisoners came to a dead end of the street at a stone wall of an elevated railroad crossing. They had no line of retreat. The battered Americans huddled together against the wall trying to ward off the blows, resigned to their fate.""Three factory workers... attacked the men from the top of the wall ... and clubbed the men on their heads with a large hammer. .... They did not stop their deadly blows until all signs of life were gone from their battered, broken and bloodied bodies. The Nazi leader then stepped up and emptied his pistol into the heads of several of the motionless airmen. .... The bodies, taken for dead, were thrown into an old farm wagon and hauled to the local cemetery. Miraculously, Adams, Brown, Sekul and Williams were still alive. .... One of the murderers apparently saw some signs of life in Sekul for he began beating him on the head with a club [and he died]. Williams was beaten on the head again and he died. Brown and Adams ... still lived. " [Excerpts from A Domain of Heroes.]The Germans , thinking all the men were dead left. After a long wait Brown and Adams took off toward the Rhine river. They were recaptured in their bloodied and beaten condition, but this time sent to Dulag Luft. After the war, a military court convicted seven of the Germans for the murders. Five were hanged. Fifty-seven years later, the 76 year old Brown accepted an invitation from the residents of Ruesselsheim to return and receive an apology. At first, he didn't want to go but felt that he had to do so in order to put the event behind him. The mayor of the city apologized and said that the event must not be forgotten. Walter Willnow, a boy of 14 on that Saturday morning saw the mob surround the airmen and attack them. He said, "We were angry at the relentless bombing. And I remember how Goebbels had said, 'If you find the flying murderers, you can do with them as you like.'" Adams died in 1984. Sidney Brown survives and lives in Gainesville, Florida. There are a number of documented cases of flyers being beaten to death on capture but probably just as many, if not more, cases went unreported. The SS and Gestapo were notoriously guilty. A German policeman testified at the Nuremberg trials that in the middle of August 1944, he received an order that all prisoners, instead of being turned over to the military, were to be shot regardless of the circumstances. Usually the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe treated POWs according to the rules of war. Once the POWs were in the hands of the Luftwaffe, they were taken by public transportation to Dulag Luft to be interrogated. However, the prisoners were exposed to great risks from enraged citizens while being transported to Dulag Luft. The danger was increased because of Hitler's disposition towards prisoners. He demanded that the Luftwaffe not protect prisoners from enraged citizens. Sergeant Harold L. Dillon one of a small group of captured airmen arrived at the Frankfort station by boxcar on November 23, 1944 escorted by one guard. As they moved through the station, hostile Germans approached shouting, "Luft Gangsters ! Terror Fliegers! Schweine!" They kicked and spat at the POWs. One threw a rock striking one of the airmen. Another lunged at Dillon with a pointed umbrella but was warded off by the guard. The sergeant was wearing his leather flight helmet. He removed it from his head and tried to cover up his Air Force insignia on his jacket. But, they maneuvered through the crowd and managed to get on a public tram for Oberursel. Dulag LuftAir Force prisoners were sent to Dulag Luft for the express purpose of obtaining intelligence information from them. Various and sundry methods were used to obtain this information, many of which did not comply with the rules of the Geneva Convention. Sergeant Dillon was before an interrogator seeking information about his bomb group, squadron, and details of the mission. When he refused to give any information other than his name, rank and serial number, rifles were fired outside of the window. He was told that prisoners were being shot that had refused to answer the questions and he would be shot if he continued to refuse. All airmen had been ordered to not give any information other than their names, rank and serial numbers. Dillon was apprehensive about the threat but stuck to his refusal. After a while, he was ordered removed from the room. But, instead of being shot, he was returned to his one man cell of solitary confinement. When the new POW arrived at Dulag Luft, he was visited by a fake Red Cross agent all decked out in a Red Cross uniform. He informed the POW that it was necessary to get certain information from them in order to notify the family back home that the airman was a prisoner of war. Most of the POWs quickly recognized the ruse and refused to give the information or fill out the phoney form. Solitary confinement in a shoe box cell with no windows was one of the main tactics used in an attempt to soften up the POWs. Being alone in a small cell with nothing to read and no one to talk to for long periods of time plays tricks on one's mind. There were several instances when heat was applied to the cell in an attempt to induce the prisoner to supply intelligence information. Staff Sergeant J. P. Roebuck said that on May 17, 1943 when he refused to fill out the phoney Red Cross form, the heat was turned on in is cell until it became "unbearably hot and remained so until dusk." The heat was turned on again the next day and "was so great that although I was wearing only shorts, they were wet through with perspiration." This treatment was applied again for the third day but since it wasn't working the interrogators gave up.Probably the most successful approach was the nice guy approach. The interrogators approached the POW armed with an enormous amount of information gleaned from hometown newspapers, documents found in bombers shot down, and other sources. The American press supplied Auswertestelle West with an enormous amount of information. The interrogator would talk to the airman about when he graduated from pilot training or gunnery school, combat awards. friends and associates, and many other subjects printed as news. The object was to convince the flyer that there was no need for him to be stubborn for they already knew all about him . If the interrogator was able to get the POW to relax and engage in a casual conversation, there was a possibility that he would inadvertently confirm some bit of information. AAF Intelligence found that officers were more informative: "Officers were usually more informative than inlisted men. This was not only because they knew more but also, according to German interrogators, because they were more susceptible to flatters and responded more wholeheartedly to equal-basis treatment. Enlisted men were thought to be greater realists about interrogation...." Furthermore, the POWs that gave "only name, rank and serial number (and gave it in a polite and military manner), had the shortest stay, almost without exception, at Dulag Luft." [Headquarters AAF Intelligence Summery, 15 Aug. 1945, 45-14, pps 3-4, 142.034-1, 15 Jan - Aug 1945, Air Force Research Center, Maxwell Field, Al.] Once, the interrogators concluded that they were wasting their time with the POW, they sent him to Wetzlar, a transient camp for assembling POWs for shipping to a permanent Stalag Luft. At this point, the Germans also gave the POW a form postcard, such as the one below, that he could use to notify the folks at home that he was a prisoner of war. 
