Werner Drechsler
Encyclopedia : W : WE : WER : Werner Drechsler
Werner Drechsler (born January 17, 1923, in Muhlberg, Germany - died March 12, 1944 in Papago Park, Arizona) was a German U-boat crewman during World War II. He was stationed on U-118 which was sunk off the Azores in 1943. When he was taken prisoner he enthusiastically cooperated with his captors due to the fact that his father had spent time in one of Hitler's Concentration Camps as a political prisoner.
Eventually, navy intelligence officers convinced Drechsler to become a stool pigeon and placed him in a POW camp near Fort Meade, Maryland with other U-Boat sailors, where he discussed their submarines with them and presumably collected information for his interrogators.
On March 12, 1944 Drechsler was transferred to a camp in Arizona which was mostly filled with other Submariners, including some members of the U-118 crew. This transfer occurred even though he was supposed to be segregated from other naval prisoners. Unfortunately for Drechsler, many of the other POWs had caught wind of his collaboration with their enemy, and held a Kangaroo Court Martial while he was asleep. The other prisoners eventually decided that it was necessary to kill Drechsler to be sure he could no longer spy on them, and to warn other POWs who might be inclined to engage in the same actions. The next morning Drechsler was found hanging in the shower room, he was murdered only a matter of hours after he had arrived.
Seven men (Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Gunther Kuelsen, Heinrich Ludwig, Bernard Ryak, Otto Stenger and Rolf Wizuy) were executed for the beating and hanging of Werner Drechsler. These men were hanged in August 1945 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This was the last mass execution in the United States.
See also
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.