'Five-star jails' used for Hitler's 'special' prisoners of war, reveals tell-all

A new book has revealed the secret SS 'luxury jails' that became home for prominent prisoners during the Second World War.

While most enemies of Adolf Hitler languished and died in Gestapo cellars and concentration camp huts, there were hundreds who received a bottle of champagne every day, plus whisky, cigarettes, chocolates and books, reports the Scotsman.

For these 'special and honoured' opponents of the Reich the only thing missing was freedom itself. But almost all of them survived the war.

'In Hitler's Hand; Special and Honoured Prisoners of the SS' by historian Volker Koop has revealed in detail the chain of 'five-star jails' set up in castles, former luxury hotels and country estates.

The high-society inmates included diplomats, state representatives, industrialists, manufacturers, high-ranking clergymen and aristocrats who Hitler wanted held as hostages.

French diplomat Andre Francois-Poncet was interned at the Ifen Hotel in Austria, a pre-war watering hole of the rich and famous. He was allowed to study theatre, walk unguarded round a lake and listen to foreign news broadcasts - something that earned Germans a death sentence if caught.

Belgian king Leopold III was interned in a castle near Brussels and later at Schloss Hirschberg in Saxony, where the SS allowed him to set up a miniature court.

At Schloss Itter in Austria, the Nazis interned most of their prominent French prisoners, including the last premier of the Third Republic, Eduard Daladier, and General Maurice Gamelin. Alongside them were regular concentration camp prisoners with none of their privileges.

The special prisoners were allowed to attend Mass on Sundays with their wives, to choose menus for dinner and received salutes from the SS guards.

When the ordinary prisoners of the camp formulated an escape plan in 1944, the French internees wanted no part in it.

Koop discovered in SS archives the details of a secret search for an island prison to mirror Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, from which escape for the illustrious jailbirds would be impossible. (ANI)