Exorcising Hitler by Frederick Taylor Page B

their alleged crimes ‘in holy anger’, and repeating that the German people would bear any suffering and create a new world. ‘We all know,’ he thundered, ‘that this girl spoke in our name, and that this child of our people spoke for the whole Volk .’ His pronouncements were illustrated with ‘artist’s impressions’ of the Aryan maiden staring down her would-be executioners.
    If Goebbels’ shameless misrepresentation of the facts about Maria Bierganz’s rather mild two-month spell in custody was supposed to rouse the Reich’s youth against the wicked Allies, there is little sign that it was widely successful. There were, however, exceptions, and three weeks later, on 19 March, two of them joined their comrades aboard a captured B-17 at Hildesheim air base and took off in the direction of the Dutch border.
     
    It was dark when the team parachuted, successfully, close to the drop zone on the Dutch side of the German border. They hid their parachutes and collected food – canned goods, pumpernickel bread, chocolate and two bottles of water each – from the supply canisters that had also been dropped nearby. Then they settled down within a clump of fir trees to wait out the remainder of the night and the dangerous hours of daylight. 14
    As the light faded the next day, the group set off, on a zigzag path aimed at taking them unobserved, by woodland trails and logging paths, across the border into Germany. Their goal was to be at a pre-arranged hiding place just outside Aachen by morning.
    It was late in the evening when the team rounded a bend in the trail and encountered a uniformed member of the Dutch border police. The guard, a young man called Jost Saive, from a German-speaking village just inside Holland, levelled his rifle and called on them to halt. After a few moments of shocked silence, the frontier guard’s challenge was answered with a hail of fire. Some reports maintain that it was Morgenschweiss, the sixteen-year-old Hitler Youth boy, who fired first. 15 Saive collapsed and lay bleeding on the path.
    Ilse Hirsch, who was unarmed, had already fled. Suspecting that there would be other police in the vicinity, her male companions did not look for her but quickly plunged into the woods, eager to distance themselves from the scene.
    Saive’s comrades had heard the shots and rushed to his aid. The grievously wounded young man was carried back to the Dutch border post, where he was able to tell his superior little, other than that the perpetrators had been German. He bled to death at around a quarter to ten that evening. Operation Karneval had already cost one life. Jost Saive’s would not be the last.
    Ilse Hirsch reached the outskirts of Aachen much more quickly than the men. Instead of resting up until morning, she stepped out of the coveralls she had worn for the jump and hid them on the thickly wooded hillside. Now underdressed for the chill of a March dawn, she tramped down into Aachen wearing just a skirt and blouse, with a knapsack slung over her shoulder. Although she had no idea where the rest of the team had got to, Hirsch set about identifying and locating the collaborationist Lord Mayor.
    For their part, the men, having evaded capture, duly arrived a little later at the so-called ‘Three Country View’ ( Dreiländerblick ) outside the city. From there it was possible to gaze out over the frontier areas of Germany, Belgium and Holland.
    Heidorn, whose family home was very close to the border, suggested they take refuge in thick forest just on the Belgian side. This was where they spent the risky daylight hours. At nightfall, they moved back into the Aachener Wald, the forest immediately around the city, near the suburb of Köpfchen. Leitgeb, the radio operator, and the boy Morgenschweiss were delegated to go into the city and carry out the reconnaissance work that Ilse Hirsch, whereabouts unknown, had been earmarked to perform.
    Hirsch had neither been captured nor lost her nerve, as her