Treason is considered one of the lowest acts and traitors make for fascinating stories. This one is as lowlife as they get.
Augustin Přeučil (3 July 1914 – 14 April 1947) was a Czechoslovakian military pilot, who during World War II turned to traitor and worked as an intelligent agent for Nazi Germany.
Augustin Přeučil
Turncoat
After Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 Přeučil attempted to illegally cross the border from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia seeking to leave the country and emigrate to South America, but was arrested by German officials, and whilst imprisoned recruited as a secret agent by the Gestapo, under unknown circumstances or conditions. The officer who recruited him was Oskar Fleischer, who trained him in espionage. He was subsequently freed and sent on an espionage mission with orders to join the emigre Czechoslovakian military personnel that was fleeing for unoccupied areas, with instructions to seek the company of any groups of air force personnel, and report back to his handlers on their activities.
Přeučil, with a group of about 200 Czechoslovakian military personnel, travelled to France in August 1939 intending to enlist with the French Foreign Legion. However, the outbreak of World War II led to the French Government ordering all trained Czechoslovakian aircrew in its territory, who were volunteering to enlist with the French Armed Forces, to be sent to Chartres to train for service with the French Air Force. On arrival, Přeučil received flight training on the Morane-Saulnier monoplane, and reported intelligence information on the French Air Force back via Reich agents operating in France. After the fall of France he continued his role playing and along with other Czechoslovaks was evacuated to the United Kingdom in June 1940, where he joined a newly created Czechoslovak squadron of the Royal Air Force.
In Britain.
In England, Přeučil served in a number of non-combat training and maintenance squadrons of R.A.F.. He fit in so well that he met and in July 1941 married an English woman. Even this however wasn’t enough to derail him from his traitorous ways. Working with the R.A.F. as an Eastern European fighter pilot-instructor in late 1941, he was attached to No. 55 Operational Training Unit, based at RAF Usworth near Sunderland. On 18 September 1941 Přeučil took off from Unsworth's airfield in a Hurricane type MK IIa, Serial number W9147, and flew out over the North Sea in company with another Hurricane flown by a trainee Polish pilot on a training session. Whilst engaged in the manoeuvres, Přeučil reported over the radio that his aircraft was out of control, and breaking away into the clouds, flew to occupied Europe, landing in the countryside near Bastogne, Belgium, the site of heroic defence by the US army in 1944. He was quickly taken in by local Belgian civilians, believing him to be a downed R.A.F. pilot. They sheltered him and handed him over to members of the Belgian Resistance for the purpose of eventually forwarding him down an escape line back to Britain. Přeučil however soon afterwards handed himself to the German authorities in the vicinity, ungratefully and callously betraying the locals who had sheltered him to the Gestapo, who arrested them. Two of them were executed. The Hurricane fighter Přeučil had landed in was recovered in an airworthy condition by the Luftwaffe, for study. The aeroplane later ended up in the Museum of Transport and Technology in Berlin.
At the time of Přeučil's disappearance the R.A.F. assumed he had crashed and died at sea. This would have been beneficial to him, however his treacherous interaction with the Belgian Resistance put an end to his cover, when they reported to London the incident of his arrival in their territory, and the behaviour which had cost the lives of two of their men. Then the true circumstances of his disappearance over the North Sea became apparent to the British authorities.
In September 1941, having been debriefed by the Abwehr with all the information about the British military that he had to give, and been generously financially rewarded for his actions, Přeučil returned to Czechoslovakia to complete his circle of treason on his own people. For the remainder of the war he acted as an undercover agent for the Gestapo there, infiltrating and betraying Czech Resistance movements. He knew full well that many of the ones he betrayed would be executed. As if this wasn’t enough, from March 1943 to May 1944 he infiltrated the Theresienstadt concentration camp where, posing as a captured Czech R.A.F. pilot, he gathered information on Czech political prisoners and spied on American P.O.W.s. In 1944 he was reportedly working for the Gestapo in Prague, and assisted the Wehrmacht in interrogating captured Eastern European Royal Air Force aircrews who had been shot down over occupied Europe.
Post-war trial and execution
On 19 May 1945, eleven days after the end of the war, Přeučil was arrested in Prague, since he was a known Gestapo agent. Why he stayed there is unknown, but probably he thought no one had blown his cover. He was at first tried by military court, but his case was referred to the civilian People's Court in Prague. After two years of investigation he was tried on 3 March 1947 on charges of High Treason against Czechoslovakia, found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed at the age of 32 by hanging at Pankrác Prison on 14 April 1947.
