Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  88. Aharoni and Dietl, Operation Eichmann, p. 140.

  89. But at the end of May 1960, La Razón managed to find people who admitted that Ricardo Klement’s true identity was known by 1952 at the latest, when his wife and children arrived. Quoted in “Proof That Eichmann Was Living in Argentina. Under the Name Ricardo Klement Since 1950. Inquiries Made with His Employer and Family,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 2, 1960. Details of the statements show that one of the witnesses was Horst Carlos Fuldner.

  2 Home Front

  1. Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends (New York, 2010), p. 106.

  2. Variations of this story can be found in Simon Wiesenthal’s Ich jagte Eichmann (Gütersloh, 1961), p. 224, and Justice Not Vengeance: Recollections (New York, 1990), p. 76. The letter to Arie Eschel is contained in Wiesenthal’s private papers, which Tom Segev has thoroughly analyzed. We therefore know that Wiesenthal did not invent the core of the story, as Isser Harel, the head of Mossad, later claimed he had done. See Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, p. 102.

  3. Simon Wiesenthal to Nahum Goldmann, March 30, 1954, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann.

  4. Simon Wiesenthal to Juniczman, April 18, 1952, Wiesenthal private papers, cited in Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, p. 103.

  5. For the Heinz-Dienst, see the groundbreaking study by Susanne Meinl and Dieter Krüger, “Der politische Weg von Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz,” Vierteljahrsheft für Zeitgeschichte 42, no. 1 (1994), and Susanne Meinl, “Im Mahlstrom des Kalten Krieges,” in Spionage für den Frieden?, ed. Wolfgang Krieger and Jürgen Weber (Munich, 1997). For the connections among the German secret services, see Peter F. Müller and Michael Mueller, Gegen Freund und Feind: Der BND: Geheime Politik und schmutzige Geschäfte (Hamburg, 2002), p. 226, particularly the chapter “Parallelaktion in Österreich,” p. 166. On Gehlen hearing at the start of 1952 that Höttl was working for Heinz, see CIA Pullach Operations Branch to Special Operations, January 9, 1952, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl.

  6. “Re: establishment of an ND [intelligence service] line for Spain—L909,” report from “XG,” the group formed by Heinrich Mast and Wilhelm Höttl, March 1, 1952; quoted in Müller and Mueller, Gegen Freund und Feind, p. 195n653.

  7. Peter Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich (Princeton, 1984), p. xiii.

  8. Höttl tried to play down the incident as an “invitation.” Interrogation of Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, transcripts and notes from February 26–27, 1953 (first interrogation), April 3, 1953, April 9, 1953, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl. See also Norman J. W. Goda, “The Nazi Peddler: Wilhelm Höttl and Allied Intelligence,” in U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, ed. Richard Breitman (Washington, D.C., 2004), pp. 265–92.

  9. CIA Report, April 3, 1953, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl.

  10. Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, p. 104.

  11. Ibid.

  12. A CIA report from January 16, 1950, contains a collection of rumors that arose after Wiesenthal was supposed to have recruited Höttl. The source is classified as unreliable, being based on hearsay. This does not mean that Wiesenthal didn’t recruit Höttl for the CIC—it just means the report should not be taken as hard evidence that he did. NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhem Höttl. Thanks to Martin Haidinger for bringing me a copy.

  13. “The elimination of HOETTL … would be to the general good of intelligence in Austria.” August 11, 1952, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl.

  14. April 9, 1952, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl.

  15. “Intermezzo in Salzburg,” Spiegel, April 22, 1953, p. 17.

  16. Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, p. 105

  17. Wilhelm Höttl, interviews (Bad Aussee, 1996, 1998), and Stan Lauryssens, interview, with the usual caveats. The mythical letter has never been unearthed. Thanks to Martin Haidinger, Vienna, for letting me see his interview with Höttl, and for directing me to Höttl’s estate, ÖStA, B1226.

  18. Höttl never even hinted that Mast had acted against his wishes. Such an act would have been very unlikely, given the bond of trust between Mast and Höttl.

  19. Spiegel, April 22, 1953.

  20. Given in detail in Bettina Stangneth, Quellen- und Datenhandbuch Adolf Eichmann 1906–1962 (unpublished), in the chapter on Wilhelm Höttl (with suggestions for evaluating witness statements). The literature on Höttl remains unsatisfactory, particularly regarding the Nazi period. The most comprehensive publication, though it is too uncritical in places, is Thorsten J. Querg, “Wilhem Höttl—vom Informanten zum Sturmbannführer im Sicherheitsdienst der SS,” in Historische Rassismusforschung: Ideologie—Täter—Opfer, ed. Barbara Dankwortt, Thorsten Querg, and Claudia Schönigh (Hamburg, 1995), pp. 208–30. For his postwar activity with an emphasis on his work for the CIC/CIA, see Goda, “Nazi Peddler.” The most comprehensive attempt to address the subject of Höttl, using the most source material, is Martin Haidinger’s unpublished thesis, Wilhelm Höttl, Agent zwischen Spionage und Selbstdarstellung (Vienna). Thanks to the author for sending it to me.

  21. Goda, “Nazi Peddler.”

  22. The complex web of Eichmann stories that Höttl peddled can now be deciphered and traced back to its sources in minute detail. His knowledge of Eichmann’s behavior in the prison camp came from his co-worker Rudolf Jänisch, though he didn’t reveal that source. Other set-pieces came from Kurt Becher and Dieter Wisliceny. Höttl used his talent for telling stories to make himself more interesting than the original sources. The details are too numerous to list here, but anyone taking the trouble to lay out the original texts side by side and take note of the dates will find that a comparison reveals exactly who was really borrowing from whom in this case.

  23. Friedrich Schwend, one of the organizers of the money-counterfeiting project “Operation Bernhard,” helped Höttl with his second book, by writing letters from exile in Peru, where he also pursued a few (sometimes criminal) financial projects. Schwend to Mader, July 15, 1964, HIS, Schwend Collection, Loose folder I 2.

  24. Originally published in German as Die geheime Front (Linz and Vienna, 1950); English edition The Secret Front: The Inside Story of Nazi Political Espionage, trans. R. H. Stevens (London, 1953). The volume is filled with indiscreet pieces of gossip, which are sometimes so far from the truth you have to marvel at them. In this book, Admiral Canaris blackmails Heydrich using his Jewish grandmother (his grandmother was definitely not Jewish), while Heydrich inveigles Hitler into the extermination of the Jews, and Himmler doesn’t know what hit him. And in case readers get bored, Höttl scatters bordello stories through the book and hints about the sexual proclivities of men he didn’t like. His judgment of the criminals who were close to him is similarly exuberant.

  25. Höttl, Secret Front, p. 41.

  26. The parallels are clear, when you compare Eichmann’s stories in Argentina about Hitler’s “diet cook” Lina Heydrich, Heinrich Müller, and Heinrich Himmler, with Höttl’s book. As we know precisely when Eichmann read Höttl’s book for the first time, the influence cannot possibly have worked the other way around.

  27. A really thorough investigation of Höttl’s estate has yet to take place. Höttl Estate, ÖStA, B1226.

  28. HIS, Schwend collection, in particular loose file I 2. Schwend had relationships with Buenos Aires at the start of the 1950s but no contact with CAPRI or the Dürer circle, apart from Hans-Ulrich Rudel. His documents make it unlikely that Schwend himself was the informant, as he knew nothing about Adolf Eichmann or Alvensleben.

  29. Otto Skorzeny, Meine Kommandounternehmen (Wiesbaden and Munich, 1976), p. 405. According to a letter of December 14, 1956 [!], Höttl let himself be enticed into giving this statement at Nuremberg by “CIC Jews.”

  30. Klaus Eichmann, interview in Quick, January 2, 1966.

  31. Der Weg (1954), no. 1, p. 28. In Der Weg (1952), no. 1, p. 51, there is a reader survey on the acceptance of an exile government.

  32. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Zwischen Deutschland und Argentinien (Buenos Aires, 1954), p. 34.
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  33. Rudel speaks of the “strongest ally we could have, namely our young age, while on the opposing side various gentlemen are gripped by an eleventh-hour panic, as the upcoming election will be their last or their second-last.” Ibid., pp. 246–47.

  34. On the far-right party landscape in West Germany at this time, see Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond the Eagle and Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945, 2 vols. (Middletown, Conn., 1967), which remains excellent to this day; Peter Dudek and Hans-Gerd Jaschke, Entstehung und Entwicklung des Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik (Opladen, 1984); Henning Hansen, Die Sozialistische Reichspartei (SRP): Aufstieg und Scheitern einer rechtsextremen Partei (Düsseldorf, 2007); and Oliver Sowinski, Die Deutsche Reichspartei 1950–1965: Organisation und Ideologie einer rechtsradikalen Partei (Frankfurt am Main, 1998). Details of the contacts described in the following section, where not otherwise indicated, are taken from Adolf von Thadden’s extensive estate. Thanks to Messrs. Krake and Frank and to Sonja von Behrens for their support during the intensive study of the largely unexplored yards of shelves in the Magazin Pattensen of the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv.

  35. In May 1951 the SRP achieved 11 percent of the vote in the Lower Saxony state elections, but then quickly lost votes as the burgeoning economy started to make the idea of a “people’s socialism” seem less attractive. By the time the SRP was banned in October 1952, it had long been finished.

  36. Sassen published this text using the same pseudonym he used for Der Weg, Willem Sluyse, along with a collection of academic titles: “Open letter to the European Commander-in-Chief General Dwight D. Eisenhower, from Dr. Dr. Willem Sluyse, Private First Class (retired),” Der Weg (1951), no. 7, pp. 46–56. The piece also appeared as a separate supplement with illustrations.

  37. Hans-Ulrich Rudel published his books there as well as in German license editions.

  38. The BfV was so alarmed that, in the following year, it was seriously concerned about Fritsch and Rudel’s contacts in Brazil. BfV (i.A. Nollau) to the Foreign Office, December 8, 1953, PA AA. Thanks to Holger Meding.

  39. Fritsch’s presence is the subject of a news article, “Der Weg des Obersten a.D. Rudel,” in Hessische Nachrichten, July 3, 1952. I have, however, found no concrete proof of this trip, even if Fritsch himself announced his first trip to Germany in a letter to Werner Beumelburg. But the cooperation with Karl-Heinz Priester and Nation Europa could have come about by other means than a visit to Germany. Thanks to Frau Klein from the Hessische/Niedersächische Allgemeine archive for her help in researching this article.

  40. Holger Meding interviewed Dieter Vollmer for “Der Weg”: Eine deutsche Emigrantenzeitschrift in Buenos Aires 1947–1957 (Berlin, 1997). Vollmer also provided an insight into his contacts in later articles and books. See for example Nation Europa 11, no. 11 (1961), pp. 37–42. Also see “Aftermath” in this book.

  41. Documents including a telegram to Córdoba, dated August 4, 1953, about the financing that had been secured, Adolf von Thadden Estate, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, VVP 39 no. 45 II, sheet 508.

  42. Frankfurter Rundschau, June 9, 1953.

  43. “On a conversation with Oberst Rudel in Düsseldorf on December 6 (1952),” file note, Adolf von Thadden Estate, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, VVP 39, no. 45 II, sheets 505–7. The New Right’s meetings are documented in several places.

  44. Thadden also clearly knew much more about the recordings than Sassen’s prominent clients like Life and Stern.

  45. German embassy in Chile to Foreign Office, April 18, 1953, PA AA, section III b 212-02, vol. 3; German embassy in Buenos Aires to Foreign Office, December 28, 1953, PA AA, section 3, vol. 74; quoted in Holger Meding, Flucht vor Nürnberg? Deutsche und österreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien 1945–1955 (Cologne, 1992), p. 177.

  46. “German Nationalist and Neo-Nazi Activities in Argentina,” July 8, 1953, declassified on April 11, 2000 (CIA-RDP620-00856 R000 3000 30004-4).

  47. For anyone who doubts that Höttl was a National Socialist anti-Semite who believed in the Jewish world conspiracy until his dying day, his last autobiography is recommended reading. Here you will find almost all the usual theories, including the claim that the Wannsee Conference transcript is a forgery. Wilhelm Höttl, Einsatz für das Reich: Im Auslandsgeheimdienst des Dritten Reiches (Koblenz, 1997).

  48. This oath is on record in the CIA files from March 1952 (source: Erich Kernmayr). Report 1952, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl. For the Langer text: BA tape 03A, 10:00 (corresponding to Sassen transcript 64, though the recording goes into more detail).

  49. A CIA report from September 29, 1952, also says Heinz and Achim Oster denounced their contact Höttl as a con man and fabricator of facts. Höttl’s reputation was certainly terrible by the summer of 1952. He was officially forbidden to claim to be a representative of the Heinz-Dienst in Vienna but was seen not to be observing this ban, which caused the service some concern. CIA report from Frankfurt, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Wilhelm Höttl, declassified on March 20, 2009.

  50. Anti-Semitic clichés can be found in Höttl’s output up to the end of his life, although in a less crude form, as he made a good living from officially recognizing the genocide. He may not have been a Holocaust denier, but he used his final book to cast subtle doubt on the scale of the murder of the Jews. He aimed to represent the Holocaust as the actions of a tiny group, to bring its magnitude into doubt, and to expose documents as forgeries made to benefit Israel—and he was writing in 1997! Höttl, Einsatz für das Reich, esp. p. 410.

  51. Konrad Adenauer himself was one of these representatives. His few pronouncements on the extermination of the Jews were so wooden that, even taking his usual delivery into account, they stand out as formulaic. So do his memoirs, his speeches, and his (relatively few) edited letters.

  52. Guido Heimann (pseud.), “The Lie of the Six Million,” Der Weg (1954), no. 7, pp. 479–87. The volume is still highly sought after on the antiques market and is sadly unavailable in most libraries. Thanks to Carlo Schütt from the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg for conjuring forth the article from the Cologne University library.

  53. Bundestag reports on the first parliamentary term, 165th sitting, Bonn, September 27, 1951, p. 6697.

  54. Survey by the Institut für Demoskopie, Allensbach, August 1952. Forty-four percent of Germans thought the agreement was “unnecessary,” 24 percent thought it was correct in principle, though the amount was too large, and only 11 percent were clearly in favor. Elisabeth Noelle and Erich Peter Neumann, eds., Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1947–1955 (Allensbach, 1956), p. 130.

  55. Myriad far-right websites—untroubled by expert knowledge of Eichmann’s one thousand pages of comments—still hold firm to the belief that “the truth” would have come out if the Israelis hadn’t been in such a hurry to kill Eichmann. This theory is also widespread in the Arab reception of the events. On the latter, see “Old Guilt and New Soldiers” and “Aftermath” in this book.

  56. New York Times, May 29, 1960; Spiegel, June 15, 1960; and Stern, June 25, 1960. For the press roundup in Nation Europa, see Suchlicht, 1960, I no. 7ff.

  57. “Eichmann Fue un Engranaje de la Diabólica Maquinaria Nazi, Dice el Hombre que Escribió sus Memorias en Buenos Aires,” La Razón, December 12, 1960.

  58. Adolf von Thadden, “Eichmann’s Memoirs,” Nation Europa 31, no. 2 (1981), pp. 60–61.

  59. Wiesenthal mentioned this source in his letter to Nahum Goldmann, March 30, 1954, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann. Tom Segev managed to throw some light on this still largely unknown figure in Wiesenthal’s life and documented the letter from Ahmed Bigi to Wiesenthal on September 28, 1952. Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, pp. 88–90.

  60. Bigi, the son of a well-known Islamic intellectual, became a close friend of Wiesenthal’s. Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, pp. 88–90.

  61. Wiesenthal to Goldmann, March 30, 1954, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann.

  62. Illus, the Berlin Telegraf’
s Sunday supplement, reported on the reappearance of Eichmann in Tel Aviv on February 24, 1952. The Frankfurter Rundschau’s headline on March 22, 1952, was “Mass Murderer Is Military Adviser. Dirlewanger and Eichmann Serving in the Egyptian Army.” And the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden reported on April 18 and 25 on an “SS General in the Middle East,” who was suspected to be “Karl Eichmann,” among others. In “German ‘Advisers’ in Cairo Plotting Against Bonn: Former SS and SD Leaders in League with Nagib and Mufti,” Die Welt am Sonntag, on November 23, 1952, Eichmann was said to be one of the grand mufti’s direct associates.

  63. Nahum Goldmann later admitted that he had immediately forwarded the letter to the CIA. The CIA dossier on Adolf Eichmann shows that Goldmann gave the document to Rabbi Kalmanowitz in New York, who used it to try to convince the CIA and even the U.S. president to search for Eichmann. Appeal to DCI by Mr. Adolph Berle and Rabbi Kalmanowitz, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann,. On the correspondence with Wiesenthal and his reaction, see Segev, Simon Wiesenthal, pp. 113–16.

  64. Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance: Recollections (New York, 1990), p. 77

  65. Ibid., p. 74

  66. Bundestag report on the first term, 234. Meeting, Bonn, October 22, 1952, p. 10736.

  3 One Good Turn

  1. Franz Alfred Six to Werner Naumann, “Re: SS UStf Eichmann,” May 16, 1938, prosecution document T/133. See also the notorious staff report from July 19, 1938, in which Eichmann is referred to a little less quotably as a “specialist recognized in his field”; prosecution document T/55-3. Six may have been employed, immediately after the war, in recruiting spies for the Gehlen Organization. See Peter F. Müller and Michael Mueller, Gegen Freund und Feind: Der BND: Geheime Politik und schmutzige Geschäfte (Hamburg, 2002).

  2. Pedro Pobierzym, interview in Neal Bascomb, Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi (Boston and New York, 2009).