The Reichsbank Robbery

by Colin Roderick Fulton

  Schonewille jumped from the back of the truck, his face flushed. The man’s quick thinking had undoubtedly saved them, but before anybody could thank him, he strode up to Kiefer, raised his automatic and fired three times into the man’s body. Kiefer stopped moaning. Sophia screamed and Helmuth Wenck yelled at him to stop.

  Schonewille whirled round, his face hostile. “Do not order me around, Father,” he said in German. “That Schweinehund deserved to die. Do you think they had any intention of letting us live? Well, do you?”

  There was silence for a moment and then the SS officer moved forward to the third man who was by now sitting up, a look of abject fear on his face.

  “Stehen Sie auf Sie Schwein,” said Schonewille, jerking his gun upwards. The man did not understand, so Schonewille had to repeat his order in English before the man did as he was told.

  He rose unsteadily staring at Schonewille in hapless terror.

  “Now tell me what you were going to do with us.” His heavily accented English leant a measure of menace to the interrogation.

  The man began to stammer, claiming he wanted nothing to do with any killing, that the others had planned the whole thing.

  Schonewille’s face went blotchy with rage and his voice dropped to a low hiss. “Tell me, my friend. Where were your comrades planning to dispose of the bodies?”

  For a moment the man misread the menace in Schonewille’s voice. “In there, they planned to put you in there and blow the entrance.” He pointed to the entrance of a mineshaft sunk into the wall of a cliff some fifty metres away.

  “But I tell you … no, no,” he screamed as Schonewille lifted the Walther and quite calmly sighted the barrel before firing twice. The man was dead before his body hit the rocky ground.

  “Jesus, Friedrich, stop this at once! Now give me your gun,” roared his father. He moved towards his son who took a step back and again raised the weapon.

  “No, Father. You stay clear. From now on we will do things my way, I have had …”

  Nobody knew what made Swabisch move forward. He was more than five metres away and never had a hope of bridging the gap before Schonewille shot him.

  Peter Wenck yelled in horror as his friend sank to his knees, a comical look of surprise on his face. Ignoring his brother, he moved forward and, kneeling down, caught his friend just as he pitched forward. Gently turning him round he laid him on his back, but just as he completed the act the surprised look went out of Swabisch’s eyes and he died.

  For a moment there was a horrified silence, and then Peter Wenck raised his head, his face stone hard and his eyes the colour of winter sleet.

  “You fucking turd, you fucking miserable lump of shit,” his voice choked as he rose.

  Schonewille’s face was deadly white. Whether he had intended killing Swabisch or had acted without thinking would never be known. Now, confronted by the implacable wrath of his brother, he made as if to raise his weapon again when a shot rang out. Schonewille staggered backwards and dropped the Walther. They all turned in the direction of the shot.

  Sophia was standing quite still, her left hand holding her right wrist and her right hand holding a small automatic. She lowered the gun as Schonewille coughed, a reddish froth on his lips. Slowly his legs buckled and he half fell, half lowered himself to the ground like an athlete exhausted after a long run.

  The Jewess let the weapon fall from her hands and quickly moved to the stricken man. She knelt beside him and cradled his head in her lower body. Schonewille attempted to speak, the effort bringing about another paroxysm of coughing, bubbles of blood welling at the corner of his mouth.

  The woman was now crying and tenderly she used the hem of her skirt to wipe the froth from his mouth.

  Schonewille looked up, the hurt went from his eyes and he attempted to reach up and touch her hair.

  “Liebchen,” he said faintly and then died.

  Helmuth Wenck also knelt next to his son, his face drained of all colour and the tears welling up in his eyes. His other son and Meunier stood shocked amidst all the carnage, absolutely bereft of words.

  Peter Wenck walked away and sat down with his back against a piece of rusting machinery. He felt absolutely drained and too exhausted to think any further. The strain of the past few days had finally caught up in the shock of what he had just witnessed.

  He started to shake, his whole body trembling as though from the ague. It was Meunier who came over and gently held his shoulders, trying with his touch and soothing words to ease the shock. It took almost five minutes for the shaking to cease and when at last his body had re-gained some sort of control over itself, he stood up and went to his father who was comforting Sophia. In turn the woman was crying and apologising to the general for what she had done.

  All four then walked with unsteady feet away to where they could see the uninterrupted desert, blocking out the horror at their backs.

  Peter Wenck sat down cross-legged like a Buddhist monk and was joined a few moments later by Sophia, although she kept her distance. Nobody spoke, they just stared off into the distance.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  There were two vehicles parked behind the shack, roughly hidden by two dirty tarpaulins. One was a 1939 wooden bodied Chevrolet station wagon in immaculate condition and the second, a rather battered two-ton Ford truck circa 1935.

  “Good,” said Helmuth Wenck. “Now we won’t have to rely on that behemoth,” meaning the M32.

  After they had watched the desert silently for nigh on ten minutes Helmuth Wenck reluctantly told everybody except the woman that they had better plan their next moves.

  They left Sophia sitting with her back to the old mine as they went to reconnoitre, each man trying hard to avert their eyes from the dead lying by the air force lorry.

  It was Meunier who first examined the two vehicles and who called for the Wencks to come and see.

  “Now that we know there is alternative transport, I believe our first move should be to unload the lorry and then see what we can do to get rid of the bodies,” he suggested.

  The other two offered no argument, so he continued.

  “Peter, go to the mine shaft and see how far into the hill it goes and, while you are at it, see whether it’s wide enough to take the lorry.”

  The pilot moved off as his father added, “And be careful, it could be in bad condition.”

  While the diplomat and the general set about unloading the Reichsbank treasure, the pilot ventured into the shaft. At first there was sufficient light to see clearly, yet as he went deeper inside he had to pause so his eyes could become accustomed to the growing gloom. There had originally been two separate sets of tracks running into the shaft and about seventy metres in they converged into one. There were still half-a-dozen ore trucks standing on the rails at this junction, and from here the shaft rapidly became narrower and the roof lower.

  He walked back towards the dim light of the entrance and then stopped, turned and began pacing out the width of the tunnel before looking up at the ceiling, estimating its height.

  When he emerged into the sunlight he went to the front of the truck, scraped two lines parallel with the widest part of the vehicle and then paced out the width.

  He thought for a moment and then yelled out to the two men.

  “It should just fit. It’ll be a tight squeeze and I’ll have to be careful I don’t bring down any of the props on either side of the tunnel.”

  “That’s good, now come and help us unload. Jesus, some of this stuff is heavy.”

  When the job was completed, they discussed what to do. It was decided to place all the bodies in the back of the lorry and drive the vehicle as far down the tunnel as it could go.

  “What then?” queried Meunier. “I mean we cannot leave it just like that. Somebody is sure to come here one day.”

  Helmuth Wenck nodded. “You’re right. Let’s search the other vehicles and the shack. I would expect those bastards had brought some explosives with them so they could s
eal the entrance.”

  It did not take them long to find what they were looking for. Inside the shack was a box, clearly marked explosives. Inside there were several dozen sticks of dynamite.

  “I told you so,” he said in a low voice to no one in particular.

  They turned to the grizzly task of moving the bodies into the back of the truck. The three would-be assassins were loaded in first and placed near the front of the tray and covered with some canvas.

  Then Leo Swabisch was placed inside. They were just about to pick up Schonewille when Sophia walked up. Her face was impassive and she motioned for them to stop. Without a word she unbuttoned his jacket and reached inside to one of the garment’s breast pockets extracting a small package wrapped in a handkerchief held in position by two rubber bands. She then gently caressed his face and turned away.

  Father and son picked up their son and brother and as gently as they were able placed him face-up next to the co-pilot.

  Peter Wenck climbed inside the cabin and started the engine. He carefully aligned the vehicle with the entrance to the shaft and as slowly as he could entered the tunnel with his lights on. He almost made it to the junction of the rails. When one of the outside mirrors brushed one of the wooden props he stopped and turned off the engine, though he left the lights on. Since the cargo tray was wider than the cabin he was able to open the door sufficiently to be able to climb out, though it was a tight squeeze to negotiate the length of the lorry.

  Once past he called for his father who came up carrying a dozen sticks of dynamite and a large coil of fuse. It was not wire, but simple, old fashioned fuse, the type one lit with a match.

  They carefully wound the wicks of several sticks around a length of fuse and placed them at the foot of the tunnel wall near the rear of the truck. They repeated the exercise on the other side and joined the two long pieces of fuse to the main coil that they gradually unwound as they made their way back to the entrance.

  Once outside they gathered more sticks of dynamite and returned to the tunnel. About ten metres from the entrance they placed the dynamite by each wall and ran a separate fuse wire outside to where the first one ended.

  Peter Wenck looked at his father. “Sufficient, do you think?”

  “I should bloody well hope so. At any rate, we’ve used all the sticks so it had better be enough.”

  The pilot held out his hand and Helmuth Wenck handed him his lighter. He knelt down and, picking up the length of fuse that was attached to the explosives next to the truck, applied the lighter’s flame. He dropped it onto the ground and watched as the flame ate along its length and disappeared into the tunnel mouth.

  He waited for thirty seconds and then lit the other fuse. Satisfied it too was alight, he clapped his father on the back and they ran past the shack to where the vehicles were parked, a hundred metres away.

  They reached the truck and turned round expectantly. They did not have to wait long. There came a muffled roar followed by the deep rumble of an explosion. Just as a fountain of dust gushed from the entrance there was another, much sharper explosion, followed almost immediately by a third as the nearest dynamite went off. The face of the hill trembled and a section of its side slid away covering what was left of the entrance.

  They waited for the dust to clear and surveyed their handiwork. They had done their job extremely well. The tunnel had completely disappeared and to the unknowing it would be impossible to tell if there had ever been one. True, the face of the hill had a fresh scar on its flank, but with time it would give the impression of an old wound, or even fade entirely.

  Sophia appeared almost silently besides them and remarked in a surprisingly firm voice, “A fitting tomb to at least four of them. Sadly your friend Leo I did not know enough about.”

  Peter Wenck turned and said harshly, “He was a fine man. Murder was not in his line. He even found it hard being a bomber pilot.” She blanched at the severity of his words and he immediately regretted having spoken. “Please forgive me,” he said.

  She did not look at him, and though her voice was soft, its message was harsh, “My words for Leo may have been unfair, yet, as a German he, as well as you three, don’t deserve any forgiveness. I know you might plead ignorance of what abominations have happened in Germany, but you were all part of the machine that perpetrated those crimes.”

  Her voice broke and she swung away. Peter Wenck started to remonstrate, but was stopped by his father who laid a hand on his arm.

  “Don’t, don’t my son. Let her get it out of her system. She is right, of course. Collectively, we all share the guilt.”

  Sophia disappeared inside the shack and they followed. Kiefer and his band must have been in the place for some time for there were three makeshift beds at one end of the dilapidated structure each covered in a sleeping-bag. Their culinary habits had been confined to tins, a large supply of which were stacked on some boxes with the empties simply thrown in the corner.

  There was a kerosene refrigerator standing in the other corner. To their delight there were several cold bottles of beer inside. As he handed them round, the pilot noticed a newspaper lying folded on top and picked it up. It was dated the day before, 26 March.

  The front page was devoted to the war. In northern Germany, Field Marshall Montgomery’s crossing of the Rhine had been successful while further south the US Third Army had made still further crossings. From the River Sieg south as far as the town of Mannheim the American troops were cutting across Germany in a speeding swathe.

  In the east there were reports of fierce battles around the town of Kuestrin barely sixty miles from Berlin.

  It’s only a matter of time, he thought to himself, shaking his head. For a while he had forgotten the war and what was happening in Germany for it all seemed so far away. What surprised him was how detached he had become from the events in Europe.

  “Here, Father. Are you interested?”

  The general made as if to reach for the paper and then changed his mind, shaking his head.

  They sat in silence finishing their beer. Sophia went outside and Peter Wenck followed.

  “Are you feeling well, Sophia?” he asked.

  “Yes Peter.” She hesitated and then continued. “Forgive my words a few minutes ago. I do not hate you, or your father, or even Conrad for that matter. It’s just … I mean, I cannot describe what it feels like to be here, to be free, not to be in danger any more.”

  She looked at him searchingly and although her face was clear her words and intonation were scathing. “You might not really have known what went on in the concentration camps, but you certainly knew what it was like to be a Jew or any other minority in Germany over the past ten years. Our persecution was there for all good thinking Germans to see … and did you or your father do anything to halt it?”

  The pilot was silent, for there was no answer and he knew it. She went on softly. “You are a brave and decent man, Peter. Your Knight’s Cross and your demeanour is proof of that, yet as I said, you are still guilty of what went on under Hitler and his cronies.”

  Another pause and he shifted uncomfortably under her steady gaze. She looked beautiful and unattainable. “One last thing, Peter. I killed your brother to stop him killing you, for I’m certain he would have shot you like he did your friend. I feel no guilt about what I did, even though Friedrich saved my life and I did feel something for him. He was a tormented person and his link with the concentration camps meant he did not deserve to live. I hope you understand.”

  He understood completely and left her standing alone with her thoughts.

  “Come on, Father, we had better divide the loot. I don’t think we should stay here any longer.”

  His parent disagreed. He argued that Kiefer had chosen the spot for its remoteness and he would not have stayed if there was less than a remote possibility of someone coming. Nevertheless, he agreed it would be prudent of them to divide the money and valuables and stow them safely in the back of the vehicles as quickly as po
ssible.

  The division took much longer than they estimated.

  At first they tried to divide it evenly, but this proved to be too difficult.

  It was made harder by Sophia’s attitude since at first she refused to take anything except some American dollars and some Swiss francs. She had the diamonds that had been given to Schonewille at Auschwitz and reasoned they would be worth a good sum, so any further share of the treasure was not necessary.

  Perversely, she did not want any of the Reichsbank valuables because she felt they were tainted, yet she was quite prepared to take the diamonds that had quite obviously been stolen from some unfortunate inmate. After this was pointed out to her she agreed with the reasoning, although at first refused to change her mind.

  Eventually, she told the Wencks she wanted to travel to Mexico with Meunier and it was up to them to give her as much money as they felt she would need to protect herself and survive.

  After further discussion they divided the gold and boxes of gold coins sixty-forty with the Wencks taking the lion’s share. The extra percentage given to Meunier was for Sophia if she decided she either wanted, or needed more. The gems were divided into thirds, one third again in the Wenck’s favour.

  Meunier elected to take the Chevrolet station wagon so they helped him load his portion into the back and covered it with several blankets and a sleeping-bag.

  They decided it would be prudent if everyone remained armed, so Meunier took a couple of automatics. One he hid underneath his seat and the other he stuck in his trouser belt near his left hip. The old diplomat knew how to use the weapon and the Wencks knew he would not hesitate if necessary.

  The remaining valuables were loaded into the back of the Ford and were covered with various other sundry boxes of materials filched from the cabin. The two airmen also took the M1 carbine and the remaining automatics.

  “A word of caution, my friends,” warned Meunier. “Don’t try to pass any of the gold or coins until you are well settled and there is no chance of it being recognised as Reich treasure. I am going to Mexico where it is much easier to pass off valuables, for many do not trust banks or the tax man. In the United States it is much more difficult. So please be very circumspect.” Both said they understood. “There should be no need for us to start hocking the heavy stuff for some time since all four of us have almost $60,000 in cash each.”