Nazi Millionaires

by Kenneth A. Alford

  Captain Apfelbeck, the assistant who had helped Spacil hide much of the stolen loot, was located and apprehended near Taxenbach. The information he shared with investigators convinced the agents on June 12, 1945, that the time had arrived to officially arrest Spacil. According to one report, the ex-SS bureau chief (who still did not know he was being duped by Schlemmer) was “dejected, on the verge of nervous collapse, and apprehensive of being discovered by the Americans.” Worried that he might commit suicide if he learned what was going on, the CIC men continued addressing him as “Sergeant Aue.” Since he was a non-commissioned officer, they intoned, arrangements were being made for his discharge. Spacil was ecstatic. All released prisoners, they explained, had to submit to a physical examination before being released. A CIC agent posing as a doctor examined Spacil while other agents searched his personal belongings hanging in another room. Their suspicions were confirmed when three cyanide capsules were found sewn into the lining of his clothes. Spacil nearly fainted when the CIC told him he was under arrest for both serving in the SS and running Bureau II of the RSHA. Both Spacil and Apfelbeck, his partner in crime during his last few days in power, were vigorously interrogated by U.S. Intelligence officers. Apfelbeck quickly revealed most, if not all, of what he knew.24

  The same cannot be said for Josef Spacil, who continued to stonewall his captors. He professed to know little or nothing about hidden caches of stolen gold and currency, nor did he know the names and whereabouts of the top brass of criminals with whom he had freely associated for so many years. His tongue loosened a bit over the course of several interrogations. The fascinating (and occasionally fantastic) tidbits of information offered investigators, however, were riddled with inconsistencies, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Assembling them into a coherent mosaic of his final days of the war proved difficult, but not wholly impossible. Interviews with Apfelbeck and others bridged many gaps and filled in a handful of gray areas. Investigators continued rooting about, but they inevitably began running up against dead ends. There were too many other officers to interrogate, too many other leads and rumors to run down. In 1947 they closed the books on Spacil and walked away from the table. Many secrets remained behind. Most of them were locked away inside the former Oberführer. A reasonable estimate of the loot hidden by Spacil is $25,000,000. Nacke’s single jeep and trailer load was valued at approximately $600,000—only a sliver of the whole, all of it buried in the scenic region surrounding Zell am See.

  Officially, nothing more linked to Josef Spacil was ever recovered by U.S. forces.

  Notwithstanding Spacil’s steadfast reticence and verbal roadblocks, he did offer liberal (if occasionally untruthful) testimony regarding two men in particular: SS Captains Franz Konrad and Erwin Haufler. Both, he explained, were carrying valuables, including a mass of personal papers smuggled out of the bunker belonging to Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and others. Was this possible? The daring end-of-war flight engineered by Hanna Reitsch and Robert Ritter von Greim convinced many agents that it was conceivable that vast amounts of documents may have been smuggled into Austria.

  Spacil steadfastly maintained that was the fact, and the Führer’s personal diaries were among them.

  Chapter 9

  “Throughout the four interrogations Konrad has deliberately falsified the majority of his statements. He has only admitted that which he has been forced to admit because of being confronted with the facts. At present this unit is in possession of some of the items which he still insists he burned.”

  — CIC Special Agent Robert A. Gutierrez

  Ghetto Konrad’s Hidden Wealth

  After Hanna Reitsch and Robert Ritter von Greim surrendered to the Americans, SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Franz Konrad was the only former German SS soldier allowed free reign on the grounds of Fischhorn castle. Dressed in civilian clothing he enjoyed hot meals, cigarettes, and liquor, and was on friendly terms with many of the victorious GIs. This comfortable existence stretched into days; two weeks passed without complication. Feigning cooperation, Konrad offered the Americans any assistance he could provide. Gracious to a fault, the chameleon-like captain was a smooth operator indeed, changing with the times in an attempt to distance himself from himself. Initially Agent Robert A. Gutierrez of the Counter Intelligence Corps promised Konrad continued freedom and a job with the CIC. Konrad began to breathe a little easier. The door of freedom beckoned.

  But information from other sources was slowly oozing into the house of cards Konrad had constructed at Zell am See. For the former king of the Warsaw Ghetto, freedom would prove fleeting.

  What Konrad did not know was that Agent Gutierrez was feigning as well. He and his intelligence team already knew a lot about him and his crimes in Warsaw, Poland. They also knew he was withholding valuable information from them. Offers of comfort, friendship and employment were intelligence tactics intended to put him at ease and loosen his tongue. There was very specific information Konrad had that the Allies craved: the location of perhaps millions in gold, silver, jewelry, and currency. And there were other items that intrigued the Allies even more—Adolf Hitler’s and Eva Braun’s personal letters and the Führer’s supposed diaries. When the Americans learned that Polish authorities were also seeking the SS captain for war crimes, their strategy to move slowly with Konrad had to be abandoned. An order for his arrest was issued.

  Without any advance warning, a group of American soldiers arrived at Fischhorn on May 21, 1945. Several people were rounded up for questioning and detention. Konrad had no idea his cover was blown until he asked a simple question.

  “May I retrieve my toilet articles?” he inquired of a young American officer.

  “What is your name?”

  “Franz Konrad.”

  “No, you don’t get anything,” the officer replied sharply. “You will be imprisoned for 10 or 15 years, for sure.” Konrad later reported seeing “hatred in his eyes.”

  At that moment the SS officer knew he was in big trouble. “If even this very young man makes such pre-judgments,” he thought to himself, “what will become of me?” Given his past, Konrad had a pretty good idea. A prison sentence was the best outcome he could hope for once the Poles got their hands on him. If he did not escape his captors he would one day face a firing squad or find himself standing on the trap door of a gallows erected in his honor.1

  Exactly how Konrad managed to slip out of the jail at Zell am See is unclear. What we do know is that four days after his arrest on the night of May 25, Konrad made it outdoors, climbed a steep hill in a pouring rain, and slogged his way to the home of a former SS nurse named Ursula von Bieler. The woman lived in Aufhausen, a small town west of Zell am See. The knock roused her from bed. To her shock, she looked out and saw a saturated Konrad standing in her doorway in the middle of the night. Bieler pulled him inside, listened to his plight, and agreed to help him. She notified a former German soldier the next morning who supplied the SS captain with a gray hat, gray trousers, gray jacket, and a pair of climbing shoes with cleats. Dry and refreshed, Konrad decided to gamble with his luck and hike the few miles to a tavern in Bruck owned by Franz Schutzinger. Konrad had rented a small room there during the American occupation, and his swift arrest had prevented him from retrieving his rucksack. CIC agents later learned that Schutzinger knew Konrad well and was sympathetic to his plight. After eating supper the pair quietly made their way to the small hotel, which was occupied by U.S. soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division. They entered through a back door and walked quietly upstairs to the room. Once safely inside, Schutzinger opened a bottle of wine and the men drank deeply. Schutzinger spoke first.

  “I have heard from several SS men that Polish officials are in the area.” He looked intently at Konrad. “They are looking for you.”

  “Yes, I know. Thank you for the information.” Konrad opened the rucksack and removed 50,000 Reichsmarks. He gave them to Schutzinger. “Thank you again for helping me,” he said before getting up and leaving the same way he had
entered.2

  Konrad’s probable goal was to slip into Switzerland. He walked from Zell am See along the banks of the Salzach River and crossed several fields in order to arrive back near Aufhausen just before dawn on May 27. Ursula von Bieler had directed him to a safe house on the Dollinger farm, not far from her own home. Konrad remained hidden for two days. When he left the farm he had with him his rucksack, together with two other packages, one about eighteen inches long and narrow, and the other about fifteen inches long and square. Someone probably delivered the boxes to Konrad. How he arranged it is not known. No one besides Konrad knew their contents. From the Dollinger farm, the escapee made his way to the former German army barracks at Aufhausen. Officers who had been living at Fischhorn during the war were being housed there. A whispered conversation or two turned up another friendly contact in the form of SS Captain Erwin Haufler, who had been in command of the SS horse farm at Fischhorn Castle. Konrad had given Haufler a cache of Swiss francs, gold coins, and thousands of Reichsmarks before the war ended. An evasive (and probably lying) Haufler told Konrad that he no longer had the money. Disappointed, Konrad asked him to obtain forged German army papers. Haufler agreed to help him and left. A few hours later another officer appeared with “a blank form with a seal and a signature.” Using a typewriter, Konrad typed in the name “Franz Meier,” slipped the paper into his pocket, and left Aufhausen. Haufler, too, was a hunted man. Before the end of the summer he would be arrested and sent to a camp at Bad Aibling, Germany.

  After Konrad left Haufler, he struck out for Kirchberg. There, on or about May 30 he reached the home of his nephew, Rudolf Meier. The Meiers were as stunned to see Konrad as Ursula von Bieler had been. Once safely inside, the exhausted SS man wolfed down a hot meal prepared by Meier’s wife, changed clothes, and then told his hosts for the first time about his plight.

  “I have escaped from the U.S. authorities at Zell am See,” he explained, “and am being hunted. I have good forged papers, and do not think I will be found. My name is now Franz Meier.” Konrad dug into his pocket and produced the forged document, which he handed over for inspection to his dubious nephew. Frau Meier said nothing. An uneasy silence lingered between them.

  The one-sided conversation continued with Konrad working overtime trying to impress his relatives with stories of his wealth. “I have a large Austrian stamp collection—forty folios, worth hundreds of thousands of Reichsmarks,” he said. “These can easily be sold.” He would buy their cooperation if they would not willingly provide it.

  Meier watched nervously as his uncle removed clothing, shoes, canned food, coffee, and tea from his rucksack. His interest heightened significantly when a final pair of items were extracted from the sack. The first was wrapped inside a large German military map. Instead of string, the package was bound with telephone wire. The second bundle was wrapped in black packing paper. Konrad threw this parcel into a coal bucket and handed the map-covered package to Meier.

  “Take good care of this for me,” he cryptically ordered. He did not tell Rudolf how to take care of it or what was inside. “I need a place to stay for a while until I can make a few arrangements. Can I stay here with you and your family?”

  Rudolf wisely declined. “No, you cannot remain here. I cannot risk my family’s safety by sheltering a wanted SS officer—even if you are my uncle.” Or at least that is what he later informed Allied investigators he had told his uncle.

  “Alright, I understand.” Rebuffed, Konrad gathered his few belongings and left, walking towards the hospital in Kirchberg. Whether he simply forgot the package in the coal bucket or intended to leave it behind, Konrad departed without either of the two mysterious parcels.

  Meier opened the package wrapped with the map and almost dropped it on the floor. Inside were four smaller packages of 100,000 Reichsmarks, each with a 1945 value of about $10,000. Meier was examining the fortune residing in his lap when his wife, forgetting about the smaller package in the bucket, lifted the container and shook some coal into the stove. When Meier spotted the black package steaming in the flames he plucked it out and unwrapped it. To his amazement it contained Swiss francs, Swedish kronen, American currency, gold coins, and two rings. Unsure of what to do, he carried the valuables out to the woodshed behind his home and hid them in a stack of firewood.3

  His uncle, by now exhausted and a nervous wreck, made it to the hospital in Kirchberg and checked himself in as a patient. A day or so later Americans arrived, discharged all the patients, and closed the building. No one questioned the ex-SS officer, who simply walked to a nearby hospital at St. Johann and landed a job as an attendant. An attic above an abandoned military barracks that had recently housed German tank personnel served as his living quarters. Konrad blended into the local population. Weeks passed without incident. Gaining confidence, “Franz Meier” made a few day trips to Kitzbühl, a small village lying within the French zone of control. Exactly what he did there is unknown. He also returned several times to Kirchberg to visit the relatives who had shunned him. The large sums of money he left with them on each occasion went a long way toward patching over the awkwardness Rudolf Meier experienced during his uncle’s first nocturnal surprise visit.4

  On August 11, 1945, agent Robert A. Gutierrez and Master Sergeant William J. Conner of CIC Team 970/45 were assigned to apprehend former SS officers Franz Konrad and Erwin Haufler. Both agents had been involved with the interrogation of Josef Spacil, who had revealed that Konrad and Haufler had been in charge of a number of personal items belonging to Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and the family of SS General Hermann Fegelein. These items, Spacil had told them, included correspondence between Hitler and Braun, the trousers and tunic worn by Hitler during the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt, jewelry, gold, and of supreme importance to the Allies, Hitler’s diaries. Lieutenant Walter Hirschfeld, Captain Gerhardt Schlemmer’s former student at the SS officers’ training school in Bad Tölz, Germany, agreed to work with Gutierrez and Conner. Hirschfeld was assigned the mission of hunting down Konrad, and his initial interviews in the region provided him with several viable leads.

  On August 13 Hirschfeld posed as an undercover SS fugitive and paid a visit to Ursula von Bieler. The former SS nurse who had assisted Konrad on the night of his escape from the Zell am See jail trusted him completely. She told Hirschfeld the entire story of how she helped Konrad avoid detection. She also told him his alias was “Franz Meier.” It was now a simple matter for the CIC agents to follow Konrad’s tracks. A trip to the Dollinger farm house produced an additional lead that took the agents to Schladming on or about August 14, where they met and interviewed Konrad’s brother Fritz, his wife Minna, and her brother, Willy Pichler. Other than obtaining the address of Franz’s wife Agnes, who lived in Liezen, wrote the agents, the interviews with the relatives proved “fruitless.” According to Gutierrez, “the wife [Agnes] gave only the address of a relative named Meier, at Kirchberg, near Kitzbühl, Austria.” Rudolf Meier, she told the agent, was Franz Konrad’s nephew. If Gutierrez was concerned his investigation was going nowhere, his anxiety was about to lessen considerably.5

  The CIC agents paid a visit to the Meier homestead on the afternoon of August 21. Both Rudolf Meier and his wife were interviewed. The couple initially denied any knowledge of Konrad, but after repeated questioning broke down and admitted he had paid them a visit three months earlier.

  “He came by with a rucksack at the end of May, I think,” said an obviously nervous Rudolf Meier.

  “What was in the rucksack?” asked Gutierrez.

  “I don’t know, all he took out were a pair of shoes, some clothing, and a shelter half,” he lied.

  “What did you learn in your conversation with him?”

  Meier proceeded to fill in several blanks, telling the investigators about Konrad’s itinerary, a valuable stamp collection he said he owned, and the places he had visited. The man was seemingly forthcoming, but his information was vague enough to be of little use.

  “Did he
ask you to do anything for him?” inquired the agent.

  “Yes,” the nephew answered nonchalantly. “He asked me to stop in Schladming and inquire of his mother, his brother, his sister, and his brother-in-law, and see what had happened to the two truckloads of goods he had sent there.”

  This news electrified the agents. “Did he say what he took there?”

  “Radios, foodstuffs, and liquor. He also said he once sent other items, but he did not explain further. He mentioned in this connection leather-lined trunks.” The agents had struck the equivalent of informational gold.