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Sainte Marguerite Prison
Strasbourg, France
1415 25 February 1946
Former SS-Sturmführer Luther Stauffer was led shuffling into the warden’s office. His wrists and ankles were shackled and he was unshaven.
Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin was sitting behind the warden’s desk. Cronley, Zielinski, and the warden were bent over a table, affixing their signatures to documents that the warden snatched from them as quickly as they were signed.
“Put him in that chair,” Fortin ordered.
Two guards put Stauffer in a wooden straight-backed chair facing the warden’s desk.
Cronley and Zielinski took two identical chairs from a row of chairs against the wall and moved them to either side of Fortin behind the desk.
“Can I talk you out of your chair, Commandant?” Zielinski asked. “It’s going to be difficult transcribing this unless I can get my legs under the desk.”
Fortin rose from his swivel chair and waited for Zieli
nski to get out of his. Finally, both sat down. Zielinski picked up a pencil and held it over a pad of lined paper.
“Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Cronley,” he said.
“Final interview of former SS-Sturmführer Luther Stauffer in connection with the case of former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg. Interview held at 1420 hours, 25 February, 1946, at the Sainte Marguerite Prison, Strasbourg, France. Present are Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin, director of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire for the Département du Bas-Rhin, DCI Special Agent Cezar Zielinski, and DCI Supervisory Special Agent James D. Cronley Junior.
“Tell me, Stauffer, are you a married man?”
“You know I am, Cousin James.”
“Were you married when you joined the Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme?”
“No.”
“Then you were married later. After you joined the SS?”
“Yes.”
“Which would mean after you renounced your French citizenship and became German?”
“Resumed my German citizenship, Cousin James. I was born, as your mother was, a German. My father, your uncle Hans-Karl, foolishly chose to be a Frenchman after the First World War when the Versailles Treaty stole Elsass-Lothringen from Germany.”
“I don’t know where you went to school, but I was taught that Elsass-Lothringen—Alsace-Lorraine—was stolen from France in 1871 after the Franco–Prussian War and then returned to France after Germany lost World War One. And then Hitler stole it back just before World War Two. And, when Germany lost World War Two, France took it back again. Isn’t that the case?”
Stauffer didn’t reply.
“But that’s going off at a tangent, isn’t it? I was asking about your career in the Schutzstaffel, the SS. No. Come to think of it, we were talking about you getting married. When did that happen?”
“In 1942.”
“After you returned from your service in Russia?”
“While I was in Germany, in Berlin, on temporary duty.”
“And what was that special duty?”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Not a problem. We already know what that duty was. You don’t have to violate your SS officer’s honor by telling me. But that’s where you first came under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg, right?”
