A mob of about 50 to 60 people kicked and beat the defenseless airman with iron bars, among other things, and he was left lying in a ditch, covered in blood and with his skull crushed. A nurse would later testify, when the case was tried in the postwar Military War Court in Dachau, that his face was "just a lump of blood." The investigating prosecutor recognized, as he noted in a memorandum during the trial, in fact "a clear case of murder by mob violence." Even in the hospital, the unconscious soldier was initially denied any help; indeed, the mistreatment continued at the medical level: a nurse deliberately administered a dose of morphine that was far too high.
The Wolfsburg case is one of a whole series of comparable "Fliegerlynchjustiz" murders, and far more than 300 cases have been handed down. They attest to an increasing radicalization of German society at the time. The collective lack of a sense of injustice, which made such acts of self-empowerment possible in the first place, was a consequence of successful Nazi propaganda, which made it clear that in cases of "lynch law," police and criminal prosecution would be discouraged. By depriving the bomber pilots of their status as soldiers, it acted contrary to current international law.
Those responsible for the death of Sidney A. Benson, with few exceptions, were able to continue their lives unmolested. Even the two who were tried and convicted at Dachau in the postwar period did not have to serve their sentences and were released early from prison.

Text: Dr. Alexander Kraus

The events took place, transferred to today's city map, at the following locations: between the western edge of the Windberg settlement, about 200 m south of the road, according to the version of one of those involved in a field where the allotment "Am Schäferbusch" is located today, as well as on Reislinger Straße up to Kiebitzweg (west of Reislinger Markt, opposite Rosenweg and the health office), where the city hospital was located at that time.
Sidney A. Benson unbuckled his belt, to which the parachute was attached, and removed his flight suit. At the same time, a German anti-aircraft soldier approached him with a firearm. Sidney A. Benson walked toward the soldier with his hands up and surrendered to him voluntarily. He was then searched by two policemen.
The events that follow can be divided into three circles of action that are intertwined. They are indicated by the red line:

1. the way to the hospital on Reislinger Street,
2. the abuse in front of the entrance to the hospital grounds (marked M), and
3. the treatment of Benson in the hospital.

Lippmann, who was riding his bicycle and had his pistol pointed at the airman running a few meters in front of him, called him to stop, but the American soldier did not comply. Lippmann then fired. The airman, however, continued to run. Four more shots did not stop the airman either, although three shots had hit him. At the slaughterhouse, Lippmann caught up with the airman, walked him back to his bicycle, and then continued on Reislinger Street to the entrance of the hospital grounds.

According to Lippmann, even after being hit by the gunfire, Benson was able to continue walking without any ill effects. There had been no physical reactions as a result of the gunshots. After catching up with the airman, Lippmann saw three bullet holes about ten to twelve inches apart from the rear on the outer left side of his clothing, but no blood. Thus, according to Lippmann, he could not determine whether he had hit the airman's body. Only on the basis of the fact that Benson on the way to the hospital did not hold his hands as high as before, he assumed that the pilot was injured -__-0000-__-.


This account of the events of the HJ leader is contrasted with the statements of an eyewitness R., who claimed to have heard and seen the shots from a distance of about 300 meters. He had not observed an attempt to escape, so Lippmann had shot at the airman for no reason.
These two differing accounts played a decisive role in all proceedings against the defendant Lippmann: The defense of the defendant stuck to his version of the escape attempt, the prosecution stuck to the account of the eyewitness, according to which Lippmann had fired for no reason.
When Lippmann, according to his report, arrived with the plane in front of the hospital, he asked some air-raid wardens standing there to watch out for Benson, since he wanted to telephone the police at the hospital to ask them if he could leave the plane at the hospital. After a few minutes he came out of the hospital undone, saw that the airman was being mistreated, immediately turned around and got the head orderly E., who now took care of the prisoner -__-0001-__-. Lippmann drove to the police to make a report about the events.

Eyewitness R., according to his testimony, after spending a few minutes in his apartment, noticed a crowd of about fifty to sixty people, including air-raid wardens, in front of the entrance to the hospital grounds, to which he went. The airman lay severely injured in the ditch, maltreatment no longer took place. When he said that this was Bolshevism, Lippmann replied that this was an order from Goebbels and that they should do this. Air-raid wardens then carried the airman to the hospital and Lippmann left the scene -__-0002-__-.

They must also have kicked him with their feet, with one air raid warden particularly distinguishing himself "by kicking the airman in the face and stomach with his boot heel." -__-0000-__- There are reports of statements from the crowd that such people should be beaten to death -__-0001-__-. Lippmann himself spoke to the head guard about people being able to kill the prisoner -__-0002-__- who was lying in the ditch covered in blood and unconscious -__-0003-__- when the head guard took him over. A nurse reported that, based on features on the neck, someone must have tried to strangle the airman -__-0004-__-. An air-raid warden boasted at the Volkswagen plant that afternoon that he had strangled or slain the airman -__-0005-__-.

With the arrival of the head orderly at the scene of the abuse in front of the entrance to the hospital grounds, the airman was handed over to the responsibility of the hospital staff. Master of the proceedings was now the head nurse. However, the mistreatment did not end there.
According to his own account, the head orderly asked the air-raid wardens to take the airman to the hospital -__-0006-__-. They carried the severely injured man "by his hands and legs, so that the buttocks dragged across the floor." -__-0007-__- Not only were the buttocks hanging down, but so was the head -__-0008-__-. A witness echoes a statement by an air raid warden that the men "even grabbed the airman by the feet and dragged him like a dog -__-0009-__-." The chief warden, according to his own statement, "had to send for a stretcher because of the roughness of these four bearers, with which (the airman) was then transported to the hospital. -__-0010-__-" However, a nurse accused the head orderly of having participated in the mistreatment -__-0011-__-. An air-raid warden admitted (and this was the only confession of the air-raid wardens) to "brutally putting the American airman on the stretcher. -__-0012-__-" He also confessed to having attacked the injured airman with an iron bar during transport to the hospital, saying, "I'll beat that dog to death. -__-0013-__-" Only the intervention of the nursing staff had prevented this -__-0014-__-. The destination of the transport was not an infirmary, but the morgue. A passing nurse was indignant, "that a living person could not be taken to the mortuary after all." Thereupon they took the airman to a shed -__-0015-__-.

A nurse and an air-raid warden claimed that two nurses refused to admit the American airman to the hospital, saying, "We don't treat an enemy airman." -__-0016-__-. Sara Frenkel, who worked as a nurse at the city hospital, also wrote sixty years later, "A German nurse refused to care for his severe wounds - she wouldn't nurse an American after all -__-0017-__-." The two accused nurses denied this -__-0018-__-.

The doctor Dr. Karl Riffelmacher was called and examined the American pilot with the result that he had severe injuries on his head as well as small lacerations and large bruises all over his body and nothing more could be done for him -__-0000-__-. He gave orders to take care of the airman, bandage his wounds and take him to the hospital -__-0001-__-. He also ordered that the very agitated patient be injected with "the usual morphine dose of 1cc, a 2% solution") -__-0002-__-. The senior nurse administered this injection to the pilot -__-0003-__-, according to nurses, at ten times the usual dosage and with the intent to kill him -__-0004-__-. The transfer to the surgical ward of Dr. Riffelmacher did not take place. The unconscious pilot was taken to a neighboring garage -__-0005-__-. The head nurse explained this by saying that "another room had to be cleared first and we assumed anyway that the airman would die soon. -__-0006-__-"

Between 2 and 4 p.m., Dr. Riffelmacher and the chief physician, Dr. Körbel, came to see the American airman -__-0007-__-. Dr. Körbel, just back from Lüneburg, "made a hell of a racket about taking a seriously injured man to a garage -__-0008-__-." He "arranged for the transfer to the ward -__-0009-__-." Dr. Riffelmacher expressed surprise during the interrogations that his instructions of the morning had not been followed -__-0010-__-. Apart from the injection, no further treatment, either medical or nursing, took place until the second visit, i.e. for at least two hours -__-0011-__-.

The unconscious airman was prepared for admission by the nursing staff in the garage and then transferred to Dr. Körbel's infection ward -__-0012-__-. There, wet compresses were placed on his face to help the swelling go down -__-0013-__-.

Polish nurses Lea and Charlotte Bass (Sara Frenkel and her sister) reported that they wanted to take care of the injured man, but were prevented from doing so and punished for it -__-0014-__-.

Sidney A. Benson died alone in a room at approximately 11:00 p.m. There is no record that he had regained consciousness. The doctor's death certificate stated the cause of death as "Consequences of severe skull injury, suspected basal skull fracture -__-0015-__-." The municipality's loss report to the Wehrmacht Commandant's Office included the following as the cause of death: "crashed by plane (severely wounded) -__-0016-__-".

Sidney A. Benson was terribly mauled. As one nurse described him, "The airman's face was just a lump of blood and his knees were completely smashed -__-0017-__-." Another nurse testified "that the severely injured man's face had been totally beaten beyond recognition and his neck was thickly swollen from choking -__-0018-__-." Because the neck was very swollen, the face and neck formed one unit. There was a cut on the upper lip. The whole face was swollen and the eyes were swollen shut. Another cut was above the right eye. The airman was bleeding from the ears and breathing heavily -__-0019-__-. Another nurse confirmed that the neck was swollen and blue due to strangulation, "A dent could be seen on the head, he was bleeding from the nose, mouth and ears. The eyes were swollen, the lip was severely torn. The face was bluish, the neck badly swollen. He had graze marks on his side -__-0020-__-." In further questioning, she stated that the skull was crushed and the forehead was quite soft. In addition, irregular breathing was present -__-0021-__-. She referred to the injured Sidney A. Benson as a "shot and completely trampled airman" as well as a "half-dead" -__-0022-__-.

The events of the airmen's murder of June 29, 1944, as briefly described here, can only be an approximation of the truth due to the contradictory and differing statements of the defendants and witnesses, which are naturally guided by interests. This case clearly shows the aggressive mood in the last year of the war, which was directed at surviving Allied airmen and which cost the lives of well over 300 of them.
In the "city of the KdF car", in addition to the HJ leader Lippmann, air-raid wardens as well as nursing staff of the hospital, others were probably involved in the attacks on the American airman. If they did not actively participate, they at least tolerated it. The acts of violence committed against the Allied airmen were, as Klaus-Michael Mallmann puts it, "crimes that are largely to be seen outside the context of command and obedience, where it is hardly possible to distinguish between decision-makers and henchmen. Lynch law could not simply be ordered from 'above' even in the Third Reich. Not the 'you must' ruled here, but the 'you may'. -__-0000-__-"

Here was a new quality of violence in the "Third Reich" that was not decreed by the state or took place within state-imposed structures, but was exercised voluntarily by citizens in the sense of "self-empowerment."
There was no punishment to fear for this serious crime, as the Nazi leadership incited the people to murder Allied airmen. On May 28, 1944, an editorial by Joseph Goebbels, agreed with Hitler, appeared in the "Völkischer Beobachter" entitled "A Word on Enemy Air Terror." In it, it is made clear that lynchings of enemy airmen are approved by state authorities: "It hardly seems possible and tolerable to us to use German police and Wehrmacht against the German people when they treat child murderers as they deserve -__-0001-__-." This was also announced by Goebbels on the radio -__-0002-__-. In his diary of May 30, 1944, he wrote unequivocally, "The great pilot hunt will soon begin in Germany -__-0003-__-."

Nazi propaganda against Allied aviators was also reflected at the local level. Goebbels' article was printed on the front page of the "Aller-Zeitung" on May 30, 1944, two days after it appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter. The NSDAP district leader Lütge gave a speech at a staff roll call at the Volkswagen factory in June 1944, in which he said, mutatis mutandis, that he did not expect any member of the party to hand over one of these "terror fliers" to him alive -__-0004-__-. In the city of the KdF car, the murder of the American pilot Sidney A. Benson happened a short time later.