Finds it difficult to adjust to noise or excitement. Psychoneurosis, anxiety state. Fear of Nazi soldiers or overhead planes, bad dreams of German atrocities, nervousness over waiting to be executed.
Nevertheless, the physician did not see residual signs of malnutrition, and he concluded that there was no organic basis for Fred’s foot problems.146 The conclusions of the VA physician as to Fred’s status mirrored those of the original committee: psychoneurosis and anxiety neurosis, with somatic complaints, referable to his feet. In other words, the pain in his feet, like his claims to have been in Buchenwald, were all in his mind.
There had been hundreds of thousands of pensions paid in England and the US after extreme hardships and combat in WWI. The symptoms were classified as “shell shock,” “effort syndrome,” “war neuroses,” or “neurasthenia.” At the start of WWII, there were still servicemen institutionalized for these conditions. These diagnoses were not considered appropriate for Fred, because with his Buchenwald history classified, there was nothing to distinguish him from the hundreds of thousands of RAMPs who had been held in POW camps. His physical and mental problems seemed so different from what the VA had come to expect, that they interpreted his claims to be exaggerations or fabrications.
The long-term pattern was now set in stone. As with any large bureaucracy, once a VA determination was made, it developed an inertia of its own. Each denied appeal would be cited as grounds for future denials, regardless of what new medical understandings or historical documentation Fred might provide.
In that same 1946 evaluation, the VA dentist recommended that seven of Fred’s remaining teeth be removed due to the level of gum disease present. However, in his opinion, the dental problems were not service-related, so Fred was told that he would have to pay for the treatment. Fred put off the procedure while he filed an appeal to the VA.
In the late spring, Fred and Betty set the wedding date for 28 December 1946. The marriage was a Big Deal for Betty’s family for many reasons. She was of English/Scottish descent, and one of her antecedents had arrived on the Mayflower. Before they met Fred, Betty’s mother and father, Mildred and Harry Hover, had grave reservations about their daughter marrying an “Eye-Talian,” and they tried to talk her out of such a rash step. When they met Fred, however, that problem disappeared — they were totally charmed by him. The only other potential problem was that the Hovers were Episcopalian, and Fred’s family was Roman Catholic. This was really a non-issue, as Fred had turned his back on religion while at Buchenwald. As a result Fred had no objection to being baptized into the Episcopal Church at the cathedral in Trenton.
Fred had continued to correspond with the Raulins after the war, and over the summer he got a nice letter thanking him yet again for not betraying them to the Gestapo. They also thanked him profusely for the portable AM radio he had purchased and sent them. In closing, they told Fred that little Lionel kissed his picture each night before going to bed. They hoped he would visit them at some point, but Fred had no intention of ever returning to Europe.
It took less than two months for the VA to deal with Fred’s appeal regarding the coverage for dental work. After reviewing his dental record prior to his departure for the ETO, the Chief of Dental Service at the VA reversed their decision and authorized the procedure. When Fred finally braced himself and went into the dental clinic they removed nine teeth, rather than seven, and he was given upper and lower dental plates. At 28, Fred had literally given his eye teeth for his country, and by the end of the year he would have only six remaining teeth.
Betty got her discharge on 26 June 1946, leaving the SPARS and moving in with her parents in Trenton. She had been conservative with her pay while in the service, so when discharged, she had savings in the bank. Although Fred initially objected, Betty started picking up the tab when they went out, which helped him stretch his disability income.
In the fall, Fred read an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about the German scientists that had been brought to Texas to work for the US government. He found the article interesting, but it didn’t seem personally relevant as Buchenwald wasn’t mentioned and these were intellectuals rather than Nazis. He had a deep distrust of Germany, but he knew that almost everyone in Europe was struggling to find work just as he was. These scientists had survived the war and were making the best of it.
Fred found work on the factory floor of a mattress company in mid-November. He lasted only two weeks because he could not stand for hours to operate machinery or lug heavy mattresses around all day. Shortly after leaving that job, in December 1946, Fred filed another disability rating appeal, citing his inability to work and his continuing problems with nightmares, anxiety attacks, and pain in his feet.
A week later, he was rushed to the emergency room at Mercer Hospital with acute abdominal pains and a high fever. He was put directly into surgery for acute appendicitis, but that was not what they found upon opening the abdomen. Fred’s appendix had obviously burst more than a year before. The only reason a lethal infection had not developed was because the ruptured appendix had become trapped in a pocket of mesentery, created by scar tissue and fused to the abdominal wall.147 Because the bacteria from his gut were released into a small sealed compartment, they were not free to cause lethal havoc in the abdominal cavity, and his immune system had been battling to prevent the bacteria from spreading through the bloodstream or into surrounding tissues. The ongoing battle accounted for the periodic attacks that he had suffered since the major incident in Buchenwald in the fall of 1944. Over the years since the appendix ruptured, Fred’s body had continued to try and seal the area completely, and the scar tissue had thickened to the point that the surgeons found it extremely difficult to access and repair the damage to his gut. An uncomplicated appendectomy takes around 30 minutes, but Fred was in surgery for four and a half hours.
After the surgery, while Fred was in recovery, the Hover’s family doctor, who had sent Fred to Mercer Hospital, had a heart-to-heart with Betty. He told her that Fred would make it, but that given Fred’s condition and his war experiences, especially the malnutrition and physical abuse, that it was unlikely that Fred would be able to father children. Betty kept that information to herself, and decided to hope for the best. Fred was discharged and recuperated in Brooklyn, with Betty a regular visitor. He was back on his feet in time to be married on schedule, and in January 1947, Fred moved from Lucille’s place in Brooklyn to Betty’s family home in Trenton.
On 28 January 1947, Fred’s appeal to have his pension increased was denied. Paying the hospital bill for abdominal surgery had exhausted their savings, but Fred was confident that the VA would reimburse them. Three months later, he received a letter telling him that because his appendicitis was not service-related, the VA would not reimburse him for the surgery. He appealed, but the appeal was immediately denied. His description of his POW experiences and the surgical report he had submitted were both ignored. Fred and Betty were back to square one. This made them very anxious, because their savings were exhausted, Fred had no job, and Betty was pregnant.
For several months, Fred tried to find work without success. It was terribly frustrating. He spent hours each day walking, or standing on the train to get to interviews. The pains in his feet, the crowds, the uniforms of the conductors or policemen — by the time he got to the interviews he was in a sorry state. Again and again, he endured the stress and the pain only to find that nobody had a job for a high-strung, partially disabled veteran who hadn’t finished high school. He had one really good lead, and the interview was going well, when a forklift on the factory floor dropped a pallet-load with a bang. Fred could remember the interview and the conversation up to that moment. The next thing he knew he was cowering underneath the desk looking at the legs of his interviewer. The rest of the interview was very brief.
In March 1947, Fred finally found a desk job of sorts as a shipping clerk earning $50 per week. It wasn’t much, but his boss gave him a flexible schedule and tolerated his
missed workdays. Things gradually got more difficult as the year progressed. Betty was having a difficult pregnancy, and over the summer, her doctor told her that she must quit work and stay in bed or risk losing the baby. That cut off their primary source of income. The situation became critical in November 1947, when Betty was rushed to the hospital for a premature delivery. Their son weighed just 3 lb 2 oz at birth, and the odds of his survival in 1947 were extremely low. He was in intensive newborn care for over a week, but somehow took a cue from his dad, beat the odds and survived. Fred and Betty named their son after their respective fathers, making him Frederic Harry Martini.148
Fred’s physical and mental problems showed no signs of abating. At the March 1948 disability review, the VA doctor noted:
Gets occasional nightmares. At times becomes tremulous. Irritable at times. Has a tendency to minimize his complaints. “I get tired but I think that is normal.” States that . . . he develops pains in his feet while riding on the train. States his pains do not interfere with his work because his employers are considerate and don’t care when he loses time or lays down to rest. Marked tremors of extended fingers. Tremors of eyelids. hyperhydrosis,149 sensation to pin pricks, touch, and vibration reduced.
Despite these observations, his disability pension was cut to 30% on 18 April 1948, lowering the benefit to $41.40 per month. Compounding the financial strain, he lost his job when business picked up and his employer needed someone full time who could work on his feet.
It had become abundantly clear to Fred that he needed better skills to get a better job that relied more on brainpower than physical stamina. Betty had attended Rider College after graduating from high school, and Rider offered night school programs in various subjects. The college was not far from the Hover household, so in February 1948, Fred enrolled in a two-year program in Commercial Science. The curriculum was heavy on accounting and business management.
Although he had been home less than three years, Fred had already learned not to discuss specifics of his experiences overseas, and especially not to mention Buchenwald to anyone. He had learned that if he did, the response would usually be scornful disbelief — “Gee, Fred, I didn’t know you were a Jew!” and “So where’s your tattoo?” were typical comments he received. So except when attempting to sway the VA or when sharing a beer with Eddie Virgilio, Fred kept his experiences to himself.
145 The film made no mention of Dora or the Mittelwerk, although the discussion of Buchenwald mentioned that 34,000 prisoners from there had been relocated to work at a remote “munitions factory” without providing any details.
146 Although the condition of peripheral neuropathy wasn’t recognized by the VA in 1946, its relationship to vitamin deficiencies and frostbite would later be well established.
147 The survival rate for untreated appendicitis, with adequate supportive care, is roughly 25%. The survival rate under Buchenwald conditions must have been near zero.
148 Fortunately he survived to write this story.
149 Excessive sweating; all of these symptoms indicate autonomic ‘fight or flight’ reactions. All would now be considered evidence of severe PTSD.
CHAPTER 20
Project Paperclip, 1946-1948
One lie leads to another lie that always is the case
Your first lie for deception and your second to save face
And when you are faced with the truth the truth you will deny
And to lie to you comes easy so you tell another lie.
FRANCIS DUGGAN
THE ROCKET TEAM MEMBERS AWAITING transfer to the US were living in and around Landshut, primarily in Camp Overcast. By early 1946, Wernher had orchestrated the transfer of another 90 engineers and technicians from his Bleicherode team who had traveled from Landshut to Le Havre to Fort Strong before heading to Fort Bliss. It was an odd assortment of people, united simply by the fact that von Braun wanted them. Of the 90, only fourteen held doctorate degrees, and the others included engineers and technicians, an artist, a lawyer, a few workshop foremen, and some skilled laborers. Roughly half of the men had been members of the Nazi party, 21 had been in the SA (storm troopers), and two were former SS officers. The inclusion of SS members also raised red flags at the Office of the Military Government, US (OMGUS), as those who were in the SS after 1 May 1939 were supposed to undergo a comprehensive review for potential war crime involvement. Moreover, government regulations explicitly prohibited military employment of former SS members. These discrepancies were noted by OMGUS in their Operation Overcast communications. In response, the two SS members were taken off the list and replaced by specialists with less controversial histories. Significantly, von Braun was not involved in these personnel changes, and nothing was done about SS officers who, like von Braun, were already in the US.
The main attraction of the Fort Bliss facility was the presence of the White Sands Proving Ground nearby. It was at White Sands that Wernher’s hand-picked team would try and teach General Electric (GE) employees to assemble and launch V-2s, much as they had taught the British at Cuxhaven. Their main problem was that the scrounged parts that Major Hamill had taken from the Mittelwerk were not in the best of condition, after sitting around for nine months in a windswept, dusty environment.
Progress was slow, and Wernher was dissatisfied with his treatment. This was not the life he had bargained for — it was stiflingly hot, the air-conditioning wasn’t always operational, and living conditions were primitive. He was continually being pushed to get the job done, and the fact that he had promised Toftoy things he couldn’t deliver anytime soon didn’t help a bit (as in Nazi Germany, Wernher’s promises invariably outpaced his ability to deliver results). His family members, stuck overseas in the Overcast compound, were also unhappy with their lot. Food was scarce in postwar Germany and everyone chafed at the short rations. His six-month contract would expire soon, and he still wasn’t sure whether he would be staying in Fort Bliss, tolerating the unpleasant environment, or returning to an uncertain future in Germany.
The JIOA was equally uncertain about how to proceed. LtC. Toftoy, in charge of the rocket team imported under Operation Overcast, could easily imagine what would happen if the rocket men went back to Germany: they would probably be hired or kidnapped by the Soviets. As none of the other JIOA programs relying on imported German specialists felt any more comfortable with the prospect of their repatriation, the JIOA decided to review and reconfigure the structure of Overcast, making it more flexible and giving them more control. What emerged was called Project Paperclip. The German contractees would be put on renewable annual contracts, rather than the current six-months-then-leave terms under which they had entered the country. The wrinkle in this plan was that for the German contractees to stay longer, they would have to apply to the Department of State for entry visas. They decided to move ahead anyway, on the assumption that something could be worked out.
Project Paperclip was proposed in March 1946. The JIOA was now thinking big. The project would cover not only the Germans already in the US, but allow the importation of another 750 specialists. Their list included the rest of von Braun’s team collected at Bleicherode and Nordhausen, who were still warehoused in limbo at the Operation Overcast facility in Landshut.150
Wernher was unaware of the Paperclip proposal, but he knew that his future employment, not to mention his salary, depended on a perception of the potential military value of his team. Once again, he donned his showman’s hat and put his marketing savvy to good use. Wernher had an intuitive sense of what buttons to push to achieve the best results from a particular audience, as evidenced by his pitch to the Nazi military about the Peenemünde project and the promotional essay written in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Wernher used a more subtle and gradual approach in his seduction of the American military. He started with a tantalizing memo stating that an A-10 rocket could be used to deliver an atomic warhead, and then in July, he provided a detailed report that concluded that it was likely that the Soviets c
ould produce A-9 or A-10 intercontinental missiles using the materials obtained at the Mittelwerk. Then as a closer, Wernher promised that if he had his old rocket team working with him, he could deliver a functional A-10 intercontinental ballistic missile and an A-11 that could launch a satellite, both within ten years. Wernher knew he was ringing all the right bells, because the US was becoming increasingly paranoid about the Soviet threat. So he agreed with the military assessments that predicted a full-scale war within five years.
In early September 1946, President Truman approved the hiring and importation of up to 1,000 German and Austrian scientists and technicians of vital interest to national security. The unfortunate part, from the perspective of the JIOA and LtC. Toftoy, was that the SWNCC policy statements were too restrictive. Policy 257/22 stipulated that the War Department must screen the backgrounds of those selected, and that reports would be submitted to the State and Justice Departments who would then decide if the specified individuals were qualified to receive US visas. Those not qualified would be ineligible, and if already in the US, they would immediately be deported to Germany. It included a very problematic clause stating that no person who had been “a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism shall be brought to the US hereunder.” Policy 257/24 was also a potential problem, as it stipulated that “active Nazis,” a term difficult to define, were ineligible for hire under Project Paperclip,
The JIOA was now between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they had the authority to bring Germans to the US, but on the other hand, many of the people they wanted, including von Braun, would fall afoul of SWNCC Policies 257/22 and 257/24. There were also problematic security leaks, and rumors were circulating in the US press corps that the Army was collecting Nazis and corralling them at Fort Bliss, Wright-Patterson, Aberdeen, and elsewhere. Before the rumors turned the issue into a public relations nightmare, jeopardizing Project Paperclip, the War Department approved a press conference at Wright-Patterson air base to showcase advanced German technology and representatives of the German rocket team. It was be stage-managed, carefully controlled to conceal the truth under the guise of full disclosure.
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 31
