The Nazi Acid Bath Murders

On November 11, 1933, the Polish newspaper the Illustrated Daily Courier published a horrendous piece of atrocity-propaganda in which it claimed the Polish police had uncovered a Nazi-affiliated group operating in Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia, which sought to entice army officers and soldiers into becoming spies for the Nazi movement with money, gambling, orgies, and specially trained attractive female agents who would seduce the men.

Should the men refuse the offer of becoming a Nazi agent, or if they were ineffective agents, the paper insisted, they were murdered and their bodies were dissolved in acid. So far 505 men had been murdered by the group known as the German Patriotic League.

Following is a British newspaper article which reported on the story in the Polish paper, and then a translation of the full article from the Polish newspaper: 

Telegrams

“Depali” – A Bloody Clandestine Murderers’ Organization

(by telephone from our correspondent) 

Warsaw, November 9 (Pm.). The Warsaw investigation authorities are dealing at the moment with a matter that undoubtedly will have strong reverberations in the international arena. 

It is about a long series of clandestine murders perpetrated in Germany during the last ten years. In many cases scores of Polish citizens were victims of these murders, and therefore the matter is investigated in Warsaw at the moment.

Recent investigations by the authorities in Warsaw are throwing a glaring light on dozens of secret murders, perpetrated by the Germans, which until today have been covered by an impenetrable fog.

The shocking story reveals certain conspiratorial methods, used by Nazi organizations already before their takeover in Germany.

What is “Depali”? Horrible confession of a convict in a prison cell.

For many years, a certain Wilhelm Wagner, a Polish citizen of German nationality, had a shop in Bydgoszcz [Bromberg]. In 1928 Wagner went bankrupt. He then moved illegally to Germany, where he posed as “a victim of the Poles.” 

In Germany Wagner joined a burglar’s gang, for which he was sentenced to four years of imprisonment. To serve his sentence, he was sent to Waldheim, where he was put into a prison cell together with Ernst Hening, a German citizen, sentenced by a court in Dortmund to death for committing two murders, but the sentence was commuted to lifelong imprisonment.

When time for Wagner’s release from prison was approaching, Hening who knew that Wagner, as a Polish citizen, would leave Germany, told him a shocking story concerning Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia, wanting that Wagner should report about this matter to the authorities in these countries. Before we will give details of this confession, we are stressing that Hening’s confession was supported by certain clues, which have found complete corroboration by the investigation made by the Warsaw authorities.

The following was told by Hening: 

Espionage head offices.

Since the first years of Nazism, in its bosom an institution has grown with the name “Deutsche Patrioten-Liga,” short “Depali.” This institution’s task was to inflict damage on Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia by all means. 

Special agents of “Deptali” established head offices in various towns of these three countries, the task of which was to recruit professional soldiers and draftees to spying for Germany.

These espionage head offices were very precisely organized. There were special departments and divisions, at the services of which stood individuals from various fields.

Particularly strongly developed was the propaganda net, which had the task to make the soldiers desert. Easygoing people were chosen, and the soldiers were seduced by various methods, e.g. by hypocritical revolutionary propaganda, money, gambling, orgies, or by female secret agents specially put onto them. Young and pretty women made selected soldiers fall in love with them and persuaded them with promises to desertion and helped them to cross the border to German territory, where they were enlisted to the German espionage service. Quite often the families of the deserters suddenly lost all information about the disappeared and never found out what happened to them and what was their fate.

With bestial cruelty hundreds of useless secret agents were murdered.

Only now it has come out that their fate was cruel. It happened that the recruited deserters did not want to do spy work, or that they were not suited for it. In this case they disappeared for ever. Such was also the fate of those deserters who, after some time, turned out to be useless.

Before their liquidation the candidates were exposed to sadistic orgies against the background of a certain sexual deviation that was strongly developed in Germany. After these orgies the poor man disappeared for ever. Orgies and entertainment took place in fashionable nightclubs and casinos, where rooms were specially reserved for the members of this organization. An owner of such a facility was the prisoner Hening with his life sentence. The perverts used to come to his establishment.

Government subsidies and prominent personalities.

Many prominent personalities, who up to the present have held high positions in office, belonged to the “Depali” organization.

As Hening wanted to blackmail the vehme organization in order to get more money, he stole the organization’s files which contained many secrets of their members in high positions and the list of the victims murdered by “Dopali.”

The list contains the names of 250 French deserters, murdered at Wiesbaden, 198 names of Polish deserters, killed at Breslau, 11 Czech names, and 46 names of Germans murdered as enemies of the Hitler movement.

The corpses of the murdered were thrown into caustic acids, under whose influence they were completely destroyed, and then thrown into the sewers. This way no traces of the crimes were left.

Besides that the list which Hening acquired contained many names of high-ranking personalities from society and state administration. 

Hening did not succeed in blackmailing. With the help of influential personalities he was committed to prison, accused of the murder of two individuals, who, indeed, had been murdered in his establishment by the criminal organization “Depali.” Hening was sentenced to death. He succeeded, however, in hiding the stolen documents in a safe place. He, therefore, was left alive to find out from him the hiding-place of the documents. In the meantime Hening tried to get a revision of his trial. There was a time when the rulers were prone to this revision and were preparing for it.

But at this moment the Hitler coup d’état took place, which foiled all preparations. Hening initiated Wagner into the secret. He should try from abroad to get Hening out of prison. Then Hening would hand over the documents to the respective governments.

The investigations of the Polish authorities corroborate the revelations.

The question arose whether Hening’s revelations were based on facts.

Hening gave Wagner the names of several dozens of deserters from Poland, who had been killed by “Depali.” After his return to Poland, Wagner gave the Polish authorities the names of those deserters. 

The investigation in this matter confirmed that in the period of time mentioned by Hening, individuals whose names were mentioned, indeed, deserted,. Some families of these deserters were already interrogated. They confirm that all traces of the escapees had been lost, and that the families regard  them as having died.

These circumstances let the authorities treat the matter very seriously.

At present the investigation wants to establish how many deserters from Poland to Germany were recruited by the organization “Depali” and how many vanished from the surface of the planet.

At the same time the authorities have already exposed some threads of the central office of this criminal organization that acted, and probably is still acting, on Polish soil.

With regard to Hening who is sitting with a life sentence in prison for a crime he did not perpetrate, it would be better if the Human Rights League’s took up the issue, if not for Hening himself, then at least in order to acquire the documents which could reveal the secrets behind a shocking crime, committed without punishment against some hundred citizens of Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia.

[Emphasis in original]