Invisible Ink

by Guy Stern

  Schübbe: We were clear, in the circles of German physicians in Kiev, about the effects of this assignment, which we were carrying out under orders of the chargé d’affair . . . I still maintain the point of view that just as one prunes a tree of bad, decayed branches during springtime, in just the same way, a certain hygienic watchfulness, alertness is necessary regarding the body politic. Pruning is essential. We also count sterilization as a means to that end.

  Time magazine summarized our report in the May 7, 1945, issue under the heading “Out of the Pit.”

  To US Army questioners a captured German doctor, Gustav Wilhelm Schübbe, casually admitted that the Nazi Annihilation Institute at Kiev had killed from 110,000 to 140,000 persons “unworthy to live” during the nine months he had worked there. Schübbe, a crippled drug addict who was head of the institute and scientifically detached from his motives, added coolly that he himself had killed twenty-one thousand people.

  You may well ask what happened to the Doctor of Evil? My colleague and fellow researcher Stephen Goodell found that Schübbe was sent to the Dachau internment camp in September, 1946. He was held there as a war crimes suspect and was interrogated twice by Ritchie Boys. It was determined that he was irrelevant to the trial proceedings of German physicians at the so-called Doctors’ Trial, which began in December, 1946. Hence, he was released from the Nuremberg Jail, and was returned to Dachau on May 1, 1947. Two months later he was discharged from Dachau and returned to the custody of his wife in Hamburg.

  Fate or justice was to catch up with Schübbe. He was indeed an unreconstructed Nazi. His daughter reported that he would regurgitate the glories of the Third Reich and of the Nazi ideology at every meal. Apparently his son was traumatized by these recitals. The Hamburger Abendblatt of April 12 and 13, 1976, reported that after one such diatribe, the son took a shovel and killed both of his parents. The total extent of Schübbe’s involvement in Nazi war crimes has never been cleared up, neither to Fred’s nor my satisfaction.

  But we have certainty about the crime and punishment of still another trial of a German war criminal, whose crime had outraged us both as humanitarians and as soldiers. We at First Army Headquarters Interrogation Cage received a command from the Judge Advocates Office. They had found out that a US pilot, forced to bail out, had been summarily shot by a German infantry lieutenant. “If you find out his name and can take him prisoner, obtain further proof.” Through members of his unit, we quickly identified him and found he was among a recently arrived batch of prisoners. He was, of course, in denial. At the suggestion of our Trustee Korn, we put the suspect in solitary with Korn. In the morning Korn came out of that meeting with every conceivable piece of incriminating evidence in place, and he told us the story. Upon entering the German lieutenant’s makeshift quarters, he didn’t so much as acknowledge the presence of the lieutenant. He started looking for a convenient hook and started to hang himself. The startled German officer asked him what on earth he was doing. Korn explained that he had committed several crimes upon American soldiers and that he feared the worst possible treatment, since apparently the Americans had the goods on him. “Better to make an end of it,” Korn said to the lieutenant. The latter tried to dissuade him, but Korn faked proceeding with his suicide. Finally, the lieutenant blurted out that he himself was guilty of a war crime, but that he would tough it out. He urged Korn to follow his example. In the course of their debate, he told Korn the details about the shooting of the American pilot. We turned that evidence over to the Judge Advocates Office and were reliably told that the German war criminal was tried and executed.

  I should like to lift out one more successful interrogation, which in all likelihood hastened my being awarded a Bronze Star. Toward the end of the war, Hitler swooped up every man still capable of carrying a weapon or merely of marching, if haltingly, in formation. Hitler called it “Der Volkssturm” [The People’s Attack], but in reality, they were a ragtag group of over- and underage men and boys, or others who were suffering from a disease that had prevented their having been drafted previously. An order came down from G-1. “We have no book on these Volkssturm members. What is their fighting capability?” I was charged with providing that information, and I sensed that routine interrogations, one-on-one, would yield no conclusive answers. So I started mass interrogations. After the newly arrived POWs had jumped off the trucks, I had them line up by units, down to regiment or ancillary battalion. By following my command they were already committing a breach of security. Then assisted by one of our trustees, a tough German noncom, I commanded them to raise their hands in response to my questions: “How many of you had training at the rifle range? How many of you were trained with a machine gun? How many of you had training with howitzers or mortars?”

  Then came a crucial question, prompted by the G-1’s query as to whether the German Army was ready for gas warfare. Hence, I asked “How many of you carry gas masks? How many of you were issued protective clothing? How many of you passed through a gas chamber?” Without the slightest hesitation, the prisoners did as they were told and raised their hands, if the question applied to them. I had our trustee record the results. For example, only twenty POWs of the 129 members of the 62nd VG Division [Volkssturm] had received gas mask training. I sent in my first analysis to First Army Headquarters that evening and followed this stocktaking as soon as new truckloads of prisoners came in. An almost spontaneous order came back from headquarters. “Sgt. Stern is to report immediately to Warrant Officer Gold this afternoon for instructions.” I was puzzled. When I reported to Gold, the paymaster of 1st Army, he said, “Sergeant Stern, I have orders to teach you statistics this afternoon,” and he did, though handicapped by a slow learner in mathematics, to wit, me. I was now able to support the finding of my mass interrogations in terminology borrowed from statistical vocabulary.

  I surmise that these statistical reports, later proven to be completely accurate, alleviated the minds of our High Command. A sentence in the citation accompanying the Bronze Star and signed by General Courtney H. Hodges seems to confirm this. It contained the following sentence: “[Stern’s] detailed statistical analysis of enemy divisions facing First Army were of inestimable value to both higher and lower headquarters.”

  Of course, I am only one of many hundreds of Ritchie-trained interrogators who contributed to the war effort to the best of their abilities. A high-ranking army officer, who was charged with writing the history of military intelligence during WWII, asserted that sixty-seven percent of essential information was supplied by the Ritchie Boys. We ferreted out information about enemy positions; details on German research on atomic weapons; German plans, for example after we captured and interrogated General Schrimpf of the 5th German Parachute Division; and the ups and downs of German morale. Our unit at First Army alerted higher headquarters to the machinations of Einheit Stielau, with its scheme of penetrating our lines with English-speaking spies wearing GI uniforms. We also learned that Einheit Stielau had made tentative plans for an assassination attempt on General Eisenhower.

  You might gather from all this that the Ritchie Boys were a group of obsessive workaholics and not much fun. Let me disabuse you of that notion by telling you of the time that Fred was able to persuade a world-renowned movie star to share a jeep ride with us to our prisoner of war enclosure. It happened at a time when our mood was at its bleakest. We had retreated, as a result of the German counterattack, during the winter of 1944 to 1945. One wintry morning a message came down from First Army Headquarters: Marlene Dietrich was bringing her USO show to a catering hall within twenty miles of our encampment.

  We knew of her courage. Unlike us, she had not been driven out of Nazi Germany, but to the contrary, had been consistently importuned by ruling Nazis, especially Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, to return to Germany and become the idol of German filmgoers. She didn’t tell Goebbels, via vulgarisms of which she was quite capable, to “shove” his offer, but she came close. Instead of returning to German studios, s
he volunteered to entertain US troops.

  My buddy Fred, always ahead of me as an initiator of adventurous enterprises, took the lead: “Let’s get over there, Guy!” he bellowed when he heard about the show. Our commanding officer, Captain Ed Kann, did not object when we asked for the use of one of the jeeps. The show was taking place at a catering hall, part of a rural inn. It was already overcrowded when we arrived. No chairs, of course. We squeezed into a row past the middle and, like everyone else, sat down on our steel helmets. About fifteen minutes later Marlene Dietrich appeared on a podium only a few steps from her audience, astride an upright piano manned by her regular accompanist. The glamorous star of films and concert halls was dressed most unglamorously in the same olive drabs we sported as a dress change from our fatigues. Yet the allure, no telling how, was there undiminished. She stepped up to the microphone and said something that established a bond, a sense of camaraderie between her and the GIs, officers, and the men sitting in front of her. During our unforeseen retreat, our water supply had been contaminated; virtually all of us were suffering from diarrhea, an affliction known in army parlance as “GIs.” “Fellows,” Marlene Dietrich said, “if I should suddenly disappear, even in the middle of a song, you boys will know why.”

  She sang, mostly in English, the songs that would later fill her so-called OSS albums, some Cole Porter songs and hits from her films. Deprived of alcohol ever since the German breakthrough, we really identified with those boys in the backroom in a ditty from “Destry Rides Again,” entitled “Let’s Hear What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have.”

  After her performance Fred again took the initiative. “Let’s meet her,” he suggested. I discouraged him. “She’ll be surrounded by all that brass we saw during the show.” Fred wasn’t to be dissuaded. And he got her attention by addressing her in German. “Mrs. Dietrich, I bring you greetings from my mother in New York!” “Thank you,” she said, “and who is your mother?” “Paula Erickson,” Fred shouted. The Hollywood legend walked over to us. Paula Erickson, having come to the United States responsible for an adolescent son, had acquired the skills of a masseuse. Dietrich, when in New York, had become one of her clients. She returned the greetings.

  Fred was not satisfied with his temporary triumph: “Mrs. Dietrich, have you ever seen a prisoner of war enclosure? No? Our prisoner of war enclosure is only a short distance away. Perhaps you would like to see it?” A few minutes later Marlene Dietrich had informed her pianist that she was taking a little side trip.

  We filed into the jeep, just the three of us, and drove through the fortress town of Huy and up a winding road that led up to the fortress. On the left-hand side of this huge fortress, there were barbed-wire enclosures on both sides, with a walkway in between. On the left side were the captured enlisted men, and on the right side, the captured German officers. Scarcely had she taken a few steps, ascending the walkway, when the word spread like wildfire: “Marlene Dietrich is here.” The officers as well as the enlisted men rushed to the barbed-wire fence to get a look at her.

  After a few moments, the enthusiastic outcries of the German prisoners reached the command post. The captain of our military police detachment, Captain Amacher, came storming out. “What the heck is going on?” (He used stronger language.) As he saw what was going on, he shouted at us, “Get her out of here! We will have a riot on our hands right here in the prisoner of war enclosure.” So we drove her back to the inn, to the catering hall, where her accompanist was at the stray piano, waiting for her.

  But on the way back, she told us a wonderful story. She had decided to stay in America and to embrace the cause of the Allies. She had been placed by the US Army into its entertainment branch known as the USO. Throughout World War II she entertained US troops, often not far from the front lines. In the spring of 1945 she had entered Stolberg, the first German city taken by US forces. The town was gutted and the people of Stolberg, all women, had little to eat. She had entered with apprehensions as to how she would be received by her former countrymen, because it was well known that she had changed allegiances. But she left with a sense of triumph. The first woman she encountered on the street immediately recognized her, and went from house to house to collect the ingredients for a cake. She told us she ranked that impromptu baked cake above the gourmet food she had enjoyed in Paris.

  We left her off at the same inn and said goodbye. I didn’t expect to ever see her again. But my luck with chance encounters prevailed. As an instructor at Columbia some dozen years later, I became a close friend of famous stage and screen actress Lotte Lenya, who was also the widow and foremost interpreter of the works of composer Kurt Weill, and George Davis, her second husband. In the summer of 1956, Lenya asked me to escort her to one of her performances at the City College of New York. En route from her apartment in Tudor City, I learned that I would be seated next to Dietrich. She had no personal recollection of Staff Sergeant Stern, of course, but she remembered clearly, as we reminisced, many of the details of that memorable day in the vicinity of a provincial town in Belgium during that winter of our despair. After Dietrich and I had clapped for Lenya in unison and left for intermission, she said, “There is no audience with whom I have been more in tune than you boys in the US Army.”

  I have been an aficionado of Marlene Dietrich ever since and was thrilled years later when I was granted the opportunity to share the story of my encounter. I received a call from Dr. Heike Klapdor, a well-known scholar and old friend and, incidentally, a trustee of Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin’s famous film museum, which is home to the largest collection anywhere of Dietrich’s films, costumes, and props. “Guy,” she said excitedly, “we had a call from David Riva, the grandson of Marlene. He asked for the use of our archive for his project about her. And he also requested names of US soldiers who may have wartime recollections of her. We gave him your name.”

  The expected call from Los Angeles came several months later. “Could we interview you?” David was at work on a collection of essays and interviews with people who knew his grandmother. He had thus far been disappointed by prospective publishers all wishing to sensationalize Marlene. I recommended his project to Wayne State University Press, which turned out to be more than appropriate. David’s own father, William Riva, was unbeknownst to him and me an alumnus of Wayne State, and his mother, Maria, was thrilled to have her late husband’s university involved in the project. David later sent me a very flattering note, which gratified me as much as any academic accolade: “You have added the kind of magic to our story which she would have appreciated.” My one-day wartime visit with Dietrich, similar to the experience shared by thousands of American soldiers whom she entertained and fascinated during World War II, had a surprising consequence. Our brief encounter found its way into her grandson’s remarkable prize-winning documentary, Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song.

  Of course not all of our entertaining and humorous encounters, needless to say, included glamorous movie stars. A rather different episode involved the most entrepreneurial member of Team 41, Sergeant Paul Rabinek. One of his unconventional initiatives almost got members of Team 41, including me, captured by the enemy. We were returning from an assignment at First Army Headquarters. Paul, who had deservedly earned for himself the nickname of “Shortcut Rabinek” was at the wheel. His penchant for finding shortcuts was working overtime. “I am taking a different route that will get us back much quicker,” Paul tried to assure us. As he was speeding along, we suddenly heard voices, German voices.

  Kurt Jasen, the ranking noncom, was getting agitated. “G-d damn, turn this frigging jeep around!” Paul, now upset himself, hastened to comply. But, alas, the jeep stalled. “What the hell is going on?” Jasen was heard to shout.

  “Out of gas,” muttered a subdued Shortcut Rabinek.

  “Well, you got that canister in the back of the jeep,” cursed Jasen. “Put it in that frigging tank.”

  Rabinek was down to a whisper. “It isn’t filled with gasoline. I traded that in for Calvados.
” He was referring to a wartime variation of a French liquor distilled from apples, which he had acquired in a trade-off for gasoline from a French farmer and was selling to GI customers at an inflated retail price.

  Jasen was having apoplexy. “Then pour that rot-gut in the tank!” he ordered. Shortcut Rabinek poured Calvados at lightning speed. Bless the Lord, a miracle happened. The jeep started again and we reached our quarters without further mishap, safe among our buddies rather than in a German POW camp. We blessed the efficacy of that Normandy firewater.

  As a further indication of our wayward sense of humor, I could also share the nicknames we bestowed on German generals during our years in the field or my interrogation of Colonel von der Heyde. It was an interrogation by insults. Every one of my questions subtly implied a derogation of his leadership. He took the bait. Out of wounded pride he told me his entire military history.

  The whole encounter with him in Huy started innocuously enough. “Stern,” said Captain Kann to me, “We captured that whole outfit under Colonel von der Heyde without firing a shot. No point to interrogate any of them. But if you want to ask him a few standard questions, go for it!” I dutifully put on a set of captain’s bars and led the colonel into an interrogation tent. Then I shot a question at him.

  “Captain,” von der Heyde snarled by way of a reply, “I have the right of being interrogated by someone of equal or higher rank.”

  I first marveled at, then resented his arrogance. “Fine with me,” I answered. “We aren’t really interested in you. Why, yours was the most incompetent maneuver I have witnessed during the entire war.”

  The colonel’s face reddened. “Well, that was the pilot’s mistake that we landed miles away from our target!”

  “That’s not what he says,” I lied.

  “I’ll have him court martialed!” Von der Heyde, now in full fury, bellowed out as an ineffective threat. He added, “I personally trained my entire unit back in Paderborn.”