Trial and Execution
In August 1948, he was formally arraigned on charges of war crimes, to which he pleaded not guilty.
- The accused Fritz Knöchlein, a German national, in the charge of the Hamburg Garrison Unit, pursuant to Regulation 4 of the Regulations for the Trial of War Criminals, is charged with committing a war crime in that he in the vicinity of Paradis, Pas-de-Calais, France, on or about 27 May 1940, in violation of the laws and usages of war, was concerned in the killing of about ninety prisoners-of-war, members of The Royal Norfolk Regiment and other British Units.
His trial began in No. 5 Court of the Curiohaus, Rotherbaum, on Monday 11 October 1948, and both Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan were called to testify against him. Knöchlein's defence attorney, Dr. Uhde, claimed that Knöchlein had not been present on the day of the battle, and challenged that the British forces had used illegal dumdum bullets during the battle.
At his war crimes trial Knöchlein claimed that he was tortured during his detention in the "London Cage", which the head of the "London Cage" Alexander Scotland dismisses in London Cage as a "lame allegation". According to Knöchlein, he was stripped, deprived of sleep, kicked by guards and starved. He said that he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. After complaining to Alexander Scotland, Knoechlein alleges that he was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten. He claimed he was forced to stand beside a hot gas stove before being showered with cold water. He claimed that he and another prisoner were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs. "Since these tortures were the consequences of my personal complaint, any further complaint would have been senseless," Knöchlein wrote. "One of the guards who had a somewhat humane feeling advised me not to make any more complaints, otherwise things would turn worse for me." Other prisoners, he alleged, were beaten until they begged to be killed, while some were told that they could be made to disappear.
Scotland said in his memoirs that Knöchlein was not interrogated at all at the London Cage because there was sufficient evidence to convict him, and he wanted "no confusing documents with the aid of which he might try to wriggle from the net." During his last nights at the cage, Scotland states, Knöchlein "began shrieking in a half-crazed fashion, so that the guards at the London Cage were at a loss to know how to control him. At one stage the local police called in to enquire why such a din was emanating from sedate Kensington Palace Gardens."
Upon being found guilty, Knöchlein applied for clemency, arguing that he had a wife and four children that depended on him, but was sentenced to be hanged, a verdict that was carried out on January 28, 1949.
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