Given the subject matter, the drastic security measures imposed for the Dachau-Nordhausen trial were not surprising. The defendants in this trial, which lasted from August to December 1947, included Georg Rickhey, General Manager at the Mittelwerk. Rickhey had been high on the list of suspected war criminals sought by OMGUS, but Project Paperclip had spirited him away to work at Wright-Patterson air base. As if that weren’t enough of a potential problem for the JIOA, the prosecution summoned Arthur Rudolph and Wernher von Braun to testify before the court.
Rickhey had only arrived at Wright-Patterson air base in July 1947, but he was already in hot water with his American associates for expressing offensive Nazi political and racist sentiments. Major Eugene Smith, an Air Force investigator assigned to review the case against Rickhey, headed to Fort Bliss to interview the Germans who knew Rickhey. Despite advance notice, on arrival he found that both Wernher von Braun and Magnus von Braun were unavailable.
Major Smith was able to interview Arthur Rudolph. Those interviews revealed many conflicting and self-serving statements that contradicted the information provided in the interviews of lower level German staff members at the Mittelwerk. The discrepancies were noted, but because Smith was supposed to be investigating Rickhey, rather than Rudolph, he dug no deeper. This was the second “free pass” Rudolph received. In 1945, Canadian intelligence officers had interviewed staff at the Mittelwerk and received information implicating Rudolph in war crimes, including the execution of slave laborers. By the time they were ready to interrogate Rudolph, however, he was at Cuxhaven helping the British launch V-2s, and the situation was deemed too politically delicate to pursue at that time. Afterward, Rudolph was spirited away to the US and became virtually untouchable.155
The attitude of the Army on this matter is reflected in a detailed memo requesting that von Braun and two of his associates provide testimony that would exonerate Rickhey and document that he had nothing to do with the working or living conditions, discipline, or punishment of slave laborers at the Mittelwerk. The testimony was to be given by deposition, because the JIOA felt that letting Wernher von Braun or Arthur Rudolph attend the Nordhausen trial was too much of a risk: first, they might reveal something incriminating during testimony, and second, they might be recognized by prosecution witnesses who had been slave laborers at the Mittlewerk. So the decision was made to cooperate without really cooperating. Georg Rickhey was packed up and shipped to Dachau for the trial, but the Army refused to allow either Rudolph or von Braun to leave the US, citing national security concerns. (The Court may not have been aware that Wernher had been allowed to go to Germany to get married a few months earlier.)
Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph testified by answering a list of prosecutorial questions that were vetted by the Army. They also wrote letters attesting to the fine, upstanding character of Mr. Rickhey. Wernher went so far as to mention how much conditions for the slave labor force had improved in 1944 under Rickhey’s management. In that testimonial, Wernher admitted visiting the Mittlewerk 10 or 15 times but stated that he had never seen any bodies, hangings, or signs of prisoner mistreatment. That was quite remarkable, if not miraculous, given that he had visited the tunnels during their hellish expansion phase of 1943-44, in the Spring of 1944 when prisoner abuse by civilians was so bad that even the SS complained, and in the winter of 1944-45, when prisoners hanged for sabotage dangled just outside the windows of Rudolph’s office.
Rudolph’s testimony was almost entirely fabricated. He stated that when he first arrived at the Mittelwerk on September 1943, the tunneling was virtually completed, the air was clean, the floors were paved, sanitary facilities were excellent, and the food provided to the prisoners was as good as what German civilians received. From his description one would assume that the laborers found mints on their pillows when they returned from a shift on the assembly line. He said he had seen no prisoner abuse or mistreatment. Rudolph was committing perjury — the tunneling was just starting in September 1943, conditions for the prisoners were catastrophic, there was neither paving nor sanitation, and the food provided was so poor in quality and quantity that the workers were starving. The Army censors who vetted the questions would certainly have reviewed the responses, but no corrections were made. Further, the JIOA did not provide, nor did they mention, the tons of classified administrative documents from the Mittelwerk and Peenemünde in their possession that would have convicted Rickhey and Rudolph, and implicated both von Brauns. Security concerns thus placed the US government in the curious position of withholding key documentation and facilitating perjury at an international tribunal that was supported by the US, and which ostensibly administered fair and impartial justice.
At the end of the trial, Rickhey was acquitted largely on the basis of his testimony and the glowing recommendations of von Braun and Rudolph.156 The abuse of prisoners was blamed on the SS and on Albin Sawatski, the head of production planning, who had died in May 1945 while in American custody. However, Rickhey’s testimony did include some aspects that made the JIOA uneasy. For example, he testified that von Braun had received reports that included weekly updates on how many deaths were occurring among the labor force, information on the 350 prisoners hanged in the Mittelwerk outside Rudolph’s door, and discussed the fact that practically all of the civilian supervisors carried out beatings, and that some supervisors had asked the SS to hang prisoners for shoddy workmanship. In addition, Wernher had admitted on the record that he had been a frequent visitor to the Mittelwerk.
This was not a pretty picture, and if the press got wind of it, the program might become politically indefensible. So the US government, through the JIOA and the Judge Advocate General’s office, took the unprecedented step of classifying the entire trial record and all related documents as Top Secret. The files were buried and inaccessible in the interest of national security, denying historians and the general public access to detailed descriptions and accounts of the Dora Concentration Camp and the Mittelwerk. For decades the whole complex, and the abuses suffered by the slave laborers, remained out of sight and out of mind.
When reviewing Wernher’s visa application, the State Department felt that it contained insufficient background information. So the FBI was asked to perform security checks on Wernher and the other Paperclip candidates independent of those conducted by the military. The JIOA, at meetings held without the State Department representative, decided that the problem was one of interpretation. After all, what constituted an “ardent Nazi” was just a matter of semantics. So memos were issued, ordering a more thorough investigation of the Paperwork contractees. However, one memo explicitly stated that Wernher should be approved regardless of his Nazi past, and another urged investigators to look for “all extenuating circumstances” regarding his membership in the SS. The Army had Wernher right where Toftoy wanted him, and they weren’t going to give him up.
It is quite clear that the JIOA felt that the real problem facing the country was communism in the future, not Nazism in the past. There were still concerns that some of the Paperclip contractees might be pulled back into war crimes investigations or tribunals in Germany, but that problem was soon solved. In November 1947, the US government announced that war crimes investigations were no longer a priority, and that related extradition requests from Germany would no longer be accepted. Shortly after this announcement, the first batch of rewritten security reports arrived, but the von Braun file was held back as incomplete. Availability of the file notwithstanding, Wernher was given yet another short-term employment contract on 22 November 1947.
In early 1948, a meeting of the minds between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and the JIOA resulted in a policy change regarding the FBI’s security clearances for Paperclip contractees. In the future, membership in the Nazi party and Nazi organizations, including the SS, would no longer automatically make someone a security risk. Assured that his past would no longer be an impediment to his continued employment, the JIOA presented Wernher von Braun
with his first annual contract on 16 February 1948. His starting salary was $9,975 per year, plus a variety of attractive benefits and allowances, and it took effect shortly before Fred’s yearly pension was reduced to $546. The past histories of both men had been classified by the US Government, but only one of them was benefiting from the secrecy.
The Paperclip program was still actively engaged in bringing German specialists to the US for the military and for commercial companies that had military contracts. In some cases, the Paperclip team had to work fast, spiriting their targets out of Germany before a scheduled hearing before a denazification court. In April 1948, the German government, concerned about a major “brain drain,” prohibited its citizens from signing military contracts with foreign powers. The JIOA fought against its implementation. A 2 April 1948 memo said, “Since such a regulation would involve all Germans including Paperclip, which are working for intelligence agencies, suggest that you take such necessary steps to inform the proper authorities of the possibility of enactment of such a law. Col. Liebel proposes Office of Military Government for Bavaria be allowed to advise German authorities such regulation will not receive approval of US authorities.” Although the regulation passed, it was blatantly ignored.157
In May 1948, Wernher’s revised-revised security file went for State Department review, but it got bounced back because the State Department felt that his Nazi party membership and SS rank would make approval by the Department of Justice impossible.158 The file needed further revision.
Wernher, meanwhile, thought that he wasn’t being given enough resources to achieve his goals. It reminded him of the early years with the VfR, the amateur rocket society he had joined in college. What he needed was public interest that would encourage, if not mandate, military involvement in the space program. So he decided to write a novel about the colonization of Mars, hoping it would galvanize public support for rocketry.
The story, set in 1984 and ultimately titled The Mars Project, described a colonizing trip to Mars involving ten ships, 100 men, and a few women to do the housework. It was filled with technical details such as calculations of thrust and payload that made for heavy reading. He included a cost analysis that indicated it was beyond the capabilities of individuals or companies. Only governments could afford to underwrite such a program. Notably, the voyage to Mars was undertaken only after a lengthy and disastrous war that ended after the Communist Eastern countries were nuked into oblivion by atomic bombs raining down from orbiting US space stations.
There was the real message: military supremacy in space would make the US safe from the Communist hordes, and only then would it be possible to explore other planets. The fact that this required the obliteration of millions of people by atomic weapons was glossed over — a regrettable but necessary prelude to further progress. The parallels to his missile work for the Third Reich were chilling, but they apparently never occurred to him.
150 Before the program ended, it would bring over 1,700 German scientists and technicians into the US. In addition to the rocket team working for the Army, there would be teams working with the Air Force, the Navy, and various military contractors.
151 A single carbon copy of the manuscript was found in private hands in 1987, and it was painstakingly translated and published by Mr. David Hackett. Publication details are in Appendix 7, but the text associated with the heading Allied Airmen in Buchenwald was omitted.
152 The manifest can be obtained from the International Tracing Service; the original German document ends at page 49, with prisoner 1574. At some later date pages 50-53, which contain the names of the Buchenwald airmen, were retyped, annotated, and appended. The last listed airman is James Zeiser, prisoner 1750. The fate of the original German pages, which would have included the airmen and several hundred additional French prisoners, is unknown.
153 The US government vehemently denied that the surviving POWs were telling the truth about their experiences in Japanese hands until the associated memos and records were declassified in 2007.
154 Paperclip recruited several Nazi researchers who experimented on concentration camp prisoners. The most prominent was Dr. Hubertus Strughold, a Colonel in the Luftwaffe, who was responsible for lethal high-altitude, oxygen deprivation, and explosive decompression studies on prisoners, including children. After a long career in the US he became known as the “Father of Space Medicine.”
155 As a result, questions that should have been asked in 1945 about his involvement in war crimes at the Mittelwerk were not posed until the 1980s.
156 Although it seems hard to believe, the testimony of one von Braun team member was routinely accepted without question as sufficient grounds to exonerate another team member accused of war crimes.
157 The US assured the Germans that the acquisition phase of the program had ended, eventually changing the name of the program, but the recruitment of German specialists continued until 1973.
158 Wernher’s visa application had to be approved in principle by the State Department, pass a detailed review by the Immigration Department, and then be cleared by the Department of Justice before returning to the State Department for issuance of a visa.
CHAPTER 21
Divergence
1949-1951
FRED MARTINI
IN 1949, THE WAR CLAIMS Commission was accepting applications for POW compensation payments of $1.50 per day. Fred carefully filled out all of the related forms, outlining his capture and the beatings, abuse, and forced labor that followed in Buchenwald, Stalag Luft III, and Stalag VIIA. He sent the forms off, but a response was not immediate because processing was slow.
With his pension soon to be cut to $13 per month, Fred filed another rating appeal, recapping his medical history and adding that he had been unable to find steady work over the last four years. His application was denied. When Fred went to bed each night, he tossed and turned, thinking about his options. Should he just give up? In the years since he left the Army, he had gotten nowhere — he seemed to be beating his head against a brick wall. But Fred was far too stubborn to give up. If he got through Buchenwald, he could get through this as well. He needed money, and a pension increase would be a lifesaver. But he also wanted the VA to admit they were wrong about him. His illnesses were real, not imaginary, and he wasn’t a delusional nutcase who “alleges he was in Buchenwald.”
By June of that year, Fred had completed 18 months of the two-year business program at Rider College, with a grade of A or B in every course. But money was tight, and Betty was a stay-at-home mom. So Fred reluctantly left the Rider program when he was offered a job as a clerk at Wilcox and Gibbs, a company that manufactured sewing machines. It was his first chance for a desk job, one that would keep him off his feet. He and Betty moved into their own place, a rented home in Nanuet, New York, a few miles from the company’s facility in Nyack.
Fred’s next VA rating evaluation was conducted in May 1951 at the VA offices in New York City. The physician noted his present complaints as pains in the feet, nervousness, occasional pain in the abdomen, heart palpitations, jumpiness, and being easily upset. Notes indicated that he was losing days at work due to nervousness, and observations included that Fred was very tense, anxious, and restless, all consistent with a chronic severe anxiety reaction. However, the physician felt he had made a “good social adjustment,” and after review, his pension was cut to 10%, or roughly $14 per month. It was not what Fred and Betty had hoped for and desperately needed.
In June 1951, Fred finally received a response from the War Claims Commission regarding his application for POW compensation. They agreed to pay him $1.50/day for the period of 21 October 1944 to 29 April 1945, while he was at Stalag Luft III and Stalag VIIA. They refused to issue compensation for the period he spent at Buchenwald because he could not prove that he had been there. The commission did not go so far as to say Fred was lying, but they did say, “The above dates were determined after comparing the statements in your application. . . . with official records on
file in the War Claims Commission.”
Fred was furious, and tired of being treated as a liar or a lunatic, so he filed a formal appeal with the War Claims Commission. The anxiety reaction, the pains in his feet, his jumpiness, and his nightmares were bad. Having to explain what had happened to him to a system that seemed either to ignore or dismiss his problems was even worse. The more he thought about his treatment by the US government, the angrier he got.159
Over the next week or so, Fred and Betty reviewed their finances. Without a better job, they would be broke in six months. So Fred, Betty, and Ricky had no choice but to move back into the Hover family home in Trenton, leaving Fred with a long commute by train to Nyack (2.5 hours each way). His feet pained him, and once home, Fred was distracted and depressed about his situation and his failure to support his family adequately. Sometime in November, something snapped, and shortly after midnight on a cold night, Fred gathered up everything that reminded him of the military, including his uniforms and his medals, and burned them in the back yard. Betty saw this, but didn’t try to stop him — she may actually have been relieved.
Fred got along well with Betty’s mother and brother, but he was still desperate to get back out on his own. He started looking for a job closer to Trenton, filling out job applications without providing full details. For example, in the space for high school, he gave the name of the high school he’d attended (Abraham Lincoln High). That was accurate even though he had only completed year 11. Similarly, under tertiary education he indicated that he had attended Rider College enrolled in a two-year business program, without adding that he hadn’t graduated.
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 33
