Death at Nuremberg

by W. E. B Griffin

  “A new religion? Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “It’s not. They even have a Saint Heinrich Himmler Cathedral. Castle Wewelsburg. Cohen showed it to me. Cousin Luther was even married there in a New Nazi Religion ceremony.”

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “As much as I would love to, I don’t have time. I’m off to the Compound.”

  “Goddammit, Jimmy, tell me about it.”

  “You’ve got four of Gehlen’s guys there. Okay, three with Niedermeyer here. I’ll bet at least one of them—probably all three—knows all about Castle Wewelsburg. I know Gehlen does, and that he agrees with Cohen.”

  “I never heard anything about this Nazi religion from them. Why not?”

  “Probably because they didn’t think you’d believe it. Unless I’d seen Castle Wewelsburg myself, I wouldn’t believe it. Ask them to tell you all about it.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Nice to hear your voice, Clete. Tell von Wachtstein I said ‘Howdy.’ Break it down, Fulda.”

  [THREE]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1255 26 February 1946

  There was a BITTE NICHT BELÄSTIGEN!! sign on the closed door of the Senior Officers’ Mess in Kaserne Two.

  Cronley said, “Shit!” under his breath and then opened the door.

  General Reinhard Gehlen, former colonels Ludwig Mannberg and Otto Niedermeyer, former major Konrad Bischoff, Colonel Harold Wallace, and Major Anthony Henderson were sitting at a table about to begin their lunch.

  “What’s that expression?” Mannberg asked. “‘Speak of the devil’?”

  “You’re just in time for lunch,” Gehlen said.

  “I thought you knew enough German to know that bitte nicht belästigen means ‘Please don’t disturb,’” Wallace said.

  “Major,” Cronley said, ignoring Wallace, “if I’d known you were coming here, you could have flown up with me.”

  “I had the staff car,” Henderson said. “I don’t think that would fit in your airplane.”

  “Henderson and I were briefing General Gehlen on the assassination attempt. Trying to make sense out of it,” Wallace said.

  “Sit down and have some lunch,” Gehlen said. “Or have you eaten?”

  “Thank you,” Cronley said, and sat down next to Niedermeyer.

  A waiter almost immediately set his lunch before him.

  “Cletus told me you were here,” Cronley said to Niedermeyer. “Good to see you, Colonel.”

  “And you, James.”

  They shook hands.

  “Why do you think they tried to kill you?” Wallace asked. “And who do you think they are?”

  “I think Odessa thinks I’m getting too close to Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg,” Cronley replied. “That’s why I’m here. I thought that Otto might be able to tell me something about him, or one of the other Argentine Germans could. When I called Colonel Frade, he told me Otto was here. So here I am.”

  “If it’s the same man—Himmler’s adjutant—I knew him years ago in Vienna,” Niedermeyer said. “He’s Austrian. Viennese. Many SS officers were. But I haven’t seen him since . . . since he went to Berlin to be Himmler’s adjutant. That was in 1939 or 1940. What I primarily remember about him is that he had an eye for the ladies. He set up a Vienna Opera ballet dancer, a spectacular beauty, in a villa on the Cobenzlgasse.”

  “You remember her name? What’s the Cobenzlgasse?”

  “No, I remember her, but not her name. I remember the villa, on Cobenzlgasse, but not the number. It’s a street in Grinzing, a Vienna suburb, lined with villas and leading up to the Cobenzl, the top of the hill, from which, legend has it, Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg directed the Battle of Vienna in 1683. That victory kept the Muslims from taking Vienna, and is generally regarded as the start of the end for the Ottoman Empire in Europe.”

  “And the beginning of the Viennese coffeehouse, Otto,” Gehlen said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “How could I, Herr General? James, when the Turks retreated, they left behind bags of brown beans . . . tons of them. Somebody said he had heard that the Turks first roasted and then ground up the beans and finally boiled them in water, which produced an aphrodisiac drink. And much as the Spanish brought the tomato from the New World to Europe—it was originally called ‘the Passion Fruit’—as an aphrodisiac, coffee became an instant success. There’s a coffeehouse—or the ruins of one—on every block in Vienna.”

  Everyone except Colonel Wallace chuckled and smiled.

  “Can we get back to the significance of Odessa trying to kill two DCI officers?” he asked.

  “I think we’ve heard enough from both James and Major Henderson to answer that, Colonel,” Gehlen said. “Odessa wants him eliminated because he’s getting too close to them, to Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg.”

  “How close are you, Cronley?” Wallace asked.

  “Not close enough. General, would you ask all of your people where I can at least start looking for von Dietelburg?”

  “I’ve already asked. We’re as much in the dark as you are. I was—Admiral Canaris, me, Mannberg, all of Abwehr Ost, was—under SS suspicion after the bomb attempt on Hitler’s life. And I suspect Odessa wasn’t set up until after that operation failed. The SS was able to keep everything about Odessa to themselves.”

  “Well, I tried. So I will get back to Nuremberg.”

  “And protect Justice Jackson, which is why I sent you there,” Wallace said.

  Just in time, Cronley shut off his automatic mouth before he said, Oscar Schultz sent me to Nuremberg, not you. Instead he said, “And I have to get out of here right now. Colonel Niedermeyer, can I have a minute in private? I need you to tell Frade something when you get back to Argentina.”

  “Why don’t you send him a message on the SIGABA?” Wallace asked.

  Cronley ignored him, stood up, nodded at everybody, and walked out of the dining room. Niedermeyer followed him. They walked to an empty corner of the main dining room.

  “Otto, Cletus told me about your wife. If there’s anything I can do . . . ?”

  “Prayer might help, Jim. But thank you. I find myself again turning to General Gehlen, and reminding myself how competent he is in solving problems like mine.”

  “Still, there might be something I can do for you.”

  “I can’t think of a thing, but again, thank you. And now that I think about it, there is something I can do for you. I’m going to Vienna. When I’m there, I’ll ask around and see if I can come up with the name of von Dietelburg’s ballerina. And at the very least, I’ll take a ride up to the Cobenzl and get you the address of that villa.”

  “Where are you going to stay in Vienna?”

  “Cletus got me DCI credentials, and told me they’ll get me into the Hotel Bristol. You know it?”

  “When are you going?”

  “Tomorrow, or the day after.”

  “I’ll see you at the Bristol, Otto. You can show me where von Dietelburg stashed his girlfriend.”

  [FOUR]

  The Mansion

  Offenbach Platz 101

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  2230 26 February 1946

  A soldier was walking slowly down Lorenzer Strasse, approaching the medieval twin-towered Saint Lorenz Church, when a Ford staff car turned onto the street and drove up to him. It stopped. The soldier went quickly to the car and jumped into the backseat. The staff car drove quickly away.

  “Wie geht’s, Casey?” Cronley inquired from the front seat. “If I didn’t know what a God-fearing Christian you are, I would suspect you were looking for a little Hershey bar romance.”

  “Not funny,” Max Ostrows
ki, who was driving, said.

  “No offense, Casey,” Cronley said. “Just a little joke.”

  “None taken, sir,” Sergeant Wagner said.

  —

  “Just in case the bad guys are watching, Casey . . .”

  “They are,” Ostrowski said.

  “. . . lie down on the seat. We’re almost there, and we don’t want them to see you,” Cronley finished.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The car stopped before the gate at Offenbach Platz 101. Ostrowski blew the horn three times. The solid twelve-foot-high gate rolled out of the way, and then, when the car had passed, rolled back in place.

  “Okay, we’re home,” Cronley said. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Sir, should I bring the Thompsons?” Casey asked.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Ostrowski said drily. “One never knows when one will have need of a Thompson.”

  —

  Dunwiddie and Augie Ziegler were waiting for them in the library of the Mansion, which quickly had been changed into a bar. Both shook Wagner’s hand, and Dunwiddie affectionately patted his shoulder.

  “Now that you’ve got him here, how are you going to get him back to the Tribunal Compound?” Ziegler asked.

  “Dunwiddie and you are going to take the younger Pennsylvania Dutchman to the Bahnhof—take him a couple of blocks from the Bahnhof—and discreetly drop him off. He will then walk to the Bahnhof and take the Army bus to the Compound,” Cronley ordered. “Verstehen Sie?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Captain.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Ostrowski said. “So let’s get to it.”

  “Casey, we need to know what’s going on in the prison, how it’s done and by who,” Ziegler said. “Start anywhere you want to.”

  “Lieutenant Anderson knows,” Casey began, “and has made the sergeants understand that the guards are teenagers who don’t have a clue how important what they’re doing is.

  “One of them, for example, was caught smuggling in a camera so that he could get a picture of him with Hermann Göring. I was with Lieutenant Anderson when Sergeant Jenkins dragged him in. He asked him—Lieutenant Anderson did—why he wanted a picture of him and Göring. He said he did it because Göring was famous and he wanted the picture to send to his mother. Lieutenant Anderson asked him if he knew why Göring is famous, and he didn’t have a clue.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Ziegler said. “Court-martial? Company punishment?”

  “Company punishment. Busted to PFC and thirty days’ restriction to the barracks. Plus ‘Jenkins punishment,’” Casey said, chuckling.

  “And what is that?” Cronley asked

  “He has to shine the boots of everybody in his squad as long as he’s on restriction.”

  “That’s clever,” Cronley said. “And this guy Anderson, who has to know about that, also knows enough to look the other way. Where’d he come from?”

  Wagner looked at Dunwiddie.

  “Norwich,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Now I’m sorry I asked,” Cronley said. “You knew him there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Casey, how did they catch this guy smuggling a camera in?” Ziegler asked.

  “To keep people from smuggling things, all the pockets on our uniforms are sewed up, except one shirt pocket. That’s for a handkerchief.”

  “That’s clever. Who thought that up?” Ostrowski asked.

  “It was Sergeant Jenkins’s idea. He took it to Lieutenant Anderson, who took it to Colonel Rasberry, who got the quartermaster to issue the guards two more sets of ODs. With sewn-up pockets.”

  “I hate to say this,” Cronley said, “but for a Norwich graduate, Lieutenant Anderson seems very competent. He probably can even read and write.”

  Dunwiddie gave Cronley the finger.

  “Go on, Casey,” Ostrowski said.

  “So when we go on duty, or come off, the sergeants pat us down. The only way to smuggle anything in or out would be to put it in your jockey shorts. Then you would move whatever’s in there between your legs. The sergeants usually don’t pat you down around your private parts.”

  “So they could smuggle practically anything small enough to hide under their balls in and out. Very interesting,” Cronley said. “You went to Norwich with Anderson, Captain Dunwiddie. Tell him to tell his sergeants to start checking their men under their balls.”

  “I’ll do that, Captain, sir,” Dunwiddie said.

  “What else have you learned about your fellow guards, Casey?” Ostrowski asked. “Including the sergeants.”

  “About half the sergeants are married. Off-duty, I guess they go to their quarters. The unmarried non-coms mostly do their drinking at the 26th NCO Club. And the corporals and PFCs go to the 26th EM Club.”

  “What about fräuleins?”

  “Just about all of the unmarried sergeants have one,” Casey replied. “And maybe half of the others.”

  “They have rooms someplace?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how do they pay for the rooms?”

  “With their PX rations and packages from home.”

  “Containing coffee and cigarettes, et cetera?”

  “What I hear is that the APO guys—or the CID, whoever is checking packages for black market stuff—don’t check small packages very much. They’re looking for twenty pounds of coffee, twenty cartons of cigarettes, not a couple of pounds of coffee or a couple of cartons of Lucky Strikes.”

  “Did you see Janice Johansen’s story in Stars and Stripes?” Dunwiddie asked. “They caught a full bird chaplain in Heidelberg getting regular shipments of Bibles and other religious materials that turned out to be coffee and silk stockings.”

  “I saw it,” Casey said. “That was pretty despicable for a man of God.”

  “Well, look at the bright side,” Cronley said. “After his general court-martial, he can save souls in Leavenworth.”

  “Some fräuleins will spread their legs for a couple of Hershey bars,” Ostrowski said. “Others command a higher price for their services. Do you know if any of the sergeants or the others have higher-priced girlfriends?”

  “I’ve only been there a couple of days, Mr. Ostrowski. I’ve been looking for things like that, but so far . . .”

  “Casey, you are a bona fide spook now. Marching in the footsteps of our leader, Super Spook. You can call me Max.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Super Spook Junior, you’re doing a great job,” Cronley said. “Keep it up, and for Christ’s sake, watch your back. We’re dealing—you’re dealing—with some nasty sonsofbitches.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And on that cheerful note, let’s get you to the Bahnhof. Unless somebody has something else?”

  No one did.

  [FIVE]

  The Prison

  The International Tribunal Compound

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0750 27 February 1946

  Luther Stauffer was sitting on his bed when Cronley walked into his cell.

  “Wie geht’s, Cousin Luther? Looking forward to another day of staring at the walls?”

  “Leck mich am Arsch!”

  “‘Kiss my ass’ is language unbefitting a Sturmführer. Shame on you. What would Brigadeführer von Dietelburg think?”

  Stauffer didn’t reply.

  “How’s the food? Did the powdered egg omelet you had for breakfast make you homesick for Strasbourger cuisine?”

  “Geh zur Hölle!”

  “Unless I reform my sinful ways, going to hell is a distinct possibility for me. You going there isn’t a possibility, it’s a sure thing. As is your spending the next fifteen to twenty years staring at the walls of your cell.”

  Stauffer just looked at him.

  “
Luther, Hitler is dead. The oath you took to him no longer has any meaning. Himmler is also dead. He took the coward’s way out. He chose to bite on a cyanide capsule.”

  “Better to die at one’s own hand, Cousin James, than to let the Jews and their lackeys hang you. Lackeys like you.”

  “I don’t think he was worried about being hung. Everybody dies. I almost died a couple of days ago. It was close. Elfriede and her father almost killed me. But they didn’t. Elfriede’s dead. Her father and mother are still alive, and while they stare at the walls of their prison cells for the next twenty years or so, they’ll have plenty of time to wonder if sacrificing their only daughter on the altar of Himmler’s phony religion was worth it.

  “Your idol, Luther, Reichsführer SS Himmler, didn’t bite that capsule because he was afraid of being hung. What he was afraid of was being locked in a cage for the next twenty years while people laughed at him. He was far more afraid of public humiliation than dying.”

  “The German people will never humiliate Reichsführer-SS Himmler. He is the keeper of the faith.”

  “That’s what the German people thought before we showed them what the Reichsführer-SS did at Buchenwald and Dachau and Treblinka and Sachsenhausen, und so weiter. And of course show dem guten katholischen Volk of Bavaria, and dem guten evangelischen Volk of Hesse what Saint Heinrich was up to at Castle Wewelsburg. Both das evangelisch Volk and das katholische Volk regard that sort of nonsense as heresy. And if you practice, or even tolerate, heresy, both believe that gets them a one-way ticket to hell.”

  “The German people will recognize it for what it is, Jewish propaganda.”

  “But it’s not Jewish propaganda, Luther, and you know that. And so did all das gute Volk of the towns near the concentration camps who we forced to pick up the corpses, the thousands of decaying corpses, the SS didn’t have time to bury or burn before they fled to save their necks. Those Germans, those good Nazis, had to face the fact that the day before the Americans and English and Russians had arrived, the SS-Totenkopfverbände had been running the camps. Even we efficient Americans hadn’t had the time to round up thousands of people, move them to the camps, and then murder them. Then who else?