THE GERMAN ARMY crumbled before the might of the Allies, who rushed to take not just the territory of the former Reich but its art, industrial secrets, and scientists.
BY NOW, THE SWISS AUTHORITIES were becoming increasingly disconcerted by the number of Nazi emissaries and fugitives trying to cross into Switzerland, many of whom were being held by Swiss border guards. The Swiss indicated to Allen Dulles that it would be desirable if his talks could be conducted more discreetly and preferably not on their territory. They were not trying to be obstructive but they wished to maintain the facade of neutrality to the last. Their greatest fear remained a flood of refugees descending on Switzerland, so an early resolution to the war was their chief priority.
As always, Dulles had an elegant solution. Due to a historical anomaly on the maps dating back to 1798, the Italian enclave of Campione d’Italia on the shore of Lake Lugano was totally surrounded by Swiss territory, with only water access from Italy. During the dark night of January 28, 1945, about twenty OSS agents invaded Campione—at that date the sovereign territory of Mussolini’s rump Italian Socialist Republic—and claimed it for the Allies. The six Carabinieri policemen defending the enclave offered no resistance. Thereafter, the Swiss authorities could turn a blind eye to OSS activities in Campione, so long as they were discreet. From the enclave OSS agents were infiltrated into Italy and, in March and April 1945, Campione became the venue for feverish negotiations during Operation Sunrise.
Meanwhile, other members of the Nazi hierarchy were trying to save their own skins by opening negotiations with the Western Allies. It remained the dearest dream of Heinrich Himmler to construct an anti-Soviet coalition or, at the least, a truce in the West that would allow the Nazis to continue the struggle against the Bolshevik hordes. This baffling delusion was shared by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and by Himmler’s trusted subordinate, SS Gen. Walter Schellenberg, the chief of the SD foreign intelligence department. All three tried to seek peace through contacts in both Switzerland and Sweden. In January 1945, Schellenberg was in Switzerland trying to cut a deal with the former federal president of Switzerland, Jean-Marie Musy. While there, he passed word through Gen. Henri Guisan, chief of staff of the Swiss army, that he wished to contact Allen Dulles, but this came to nothing. In March, Ribbentrop was seeking a separate peace with the British through the Swedish banker Marcus Wallenberg, whose business interests had prospered so greatly through trading with the Nazis. Himmler sought a similar agreement through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte. As an inducement, some 17,000 mainly Scandinavian prisoners in Germany’s concentration camps were returned to their homelands in convoys of “White Buses” in a Red Cross humanitarian mission. In return for a prompt peace in the West, Himmler was willing to spare and release the 400,000 Jews remaining in Germany and to this end he ordered the evacuation and destruction of the extermination camps in the east; in the aftermath, however, an estimated quarter million camp survivors lost their lives while being herded westward on freezing death marches. There were conditions to Himmler’s proposals, not the least of which was a demand for an assurance that no black occupation troops would be allowed to enter Germany, in the interests of “racial hygiene.”
The Western Allies were not interested in the deluded Himmler’s grisly deals or in a separate peace. They wanted unconditional surrender and the spoils of war. In particular, they wanted Nazi weapons technology, gold, and loot. (It was Allied policy to restore gold to its rightful owners as well as looted art, but in fact this restitution took many years and some spoliated art has still not been returned to its rightful owners to this day; many museums across the world have artifacts of dubious origin from the Nazi era that do not bear too close a scrutiny as to their provenance.) Martin Bormann was willing to give the Western Allies what they wanted—in exchange for the survival of Adolf Hitler, himself, and a small coterie of the “mountain people.”
THE HUNGARIAN GOLD TRAIN arrived on April 8, 1945, within the confines of the so-called National Redoubt at Werfen in the Salzach valley, where it was hidden from Allied aircraft in a tunnel. SS Maj. Höttl, now code-named “Alperg” by the OSS, revealed the existence of the train during further discussions with Edgeworth M. Leslie. He also imparted information concerning the whereabouts of other repositories of Nazi treasure hidden across Germany and, just as importantly, reinforced the proposal of SS Gen. Wolff to return the treasures of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence—looted artworks were now an inducement in any deal. A radiotelephone link was established between the OSS in Bern and the Austrian SS faction under Gen. Kaltenbrunner centered on the Villa Kerry, his home at Altaussee in the heart of the Bavarian Alps. Bormann now had a direct line of communication to Allen Dulles via Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Operation Crossword.
During the second half of April 1945, events in this shadowy endgame of the European war accelerated day by day. On the fourteenth, Allen Dulles met Gen. Donovan at the Ritz Hotel in Paris to explain his conduct over the peace overtures from the Nazi hierarchy. “Wild Bill” Donovan was anxious to return to Washington in the wake of Roosevelt’s death, to befriend the new president and cement the position of the OSS. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were furious with Dulles and the OSS following the acrimonious exchange of cables between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill concerning Operation Sunrise/Crossword. William J. Casey (later director of the CIA from 1981 to 1987) was present at the Ritz meeting and observed that “Dulles fidgeted in his chair, alternately outraged and embarrassed.… Bluntly put, all hell broke loose.” Dulles protested that as yet nothing concrete had emerged from his discussions with SS Gen. Wolff and that everything could still be plausibly denied as far as the Soviets were concerned. Even so, Donovan closed down Sunrise/Crossword negotiations for the time being, but allowed the negotiations with Ernst Kaltenbrunner to continue since the White House was not yet aware of them. As Dulles ruefully commented about the situation: “It is easy to start a war but difficult to stop one.” Donovan and Dulles decided to keep knowledge of the Kaltenbrunner talks between themselves, as security had become inexcusably lax. Too many interested parties were aware of the various putative peace plans emanating from the Nazi hierarchy via Switzerland or Sweden—including the Soviet spy Kim Philby, who later recalled, “The air was opaque with mutual suspicions of separate peace feelers.”
Chapter 13
“WO BIST ADOLF HITLER?”
ON APRIL 20, 1945, HITLER’S ENTOURAGE dutifully celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday, but it was hardly an auspicious occasion. Himmler and Göring were present at the Führerbunker in Berlin to mark the event, but both quickly left the capital, never to return. Göring departed for Berchtesgaden in Bavaria to supervise the arrival of his art collection in eight railroad cars from Carinhall, though there were few suitable places left to hide it.
The Western Allies were now racing eastward across Germany toward their rendezvous with the Red Army on the Elbe and Mulde rivers. Montgomery’s 21st Army Group had turned northeastward and was advancing toward Oldenburg, Bremen, and Hamburg. On their right, William H. Simpson’s U.S. Ninth Army and Courtney Hodges’s First Army had reached the Elbe at Magdeburg and the Mulde beyond Leipzig. Patton’s Third Army had swung southeastward, forging ahead for the Czech border. Any defended village that surrendered promptly was spared; those that did not were utterly destroyed, to become “Third Army Memorials”—stark reminders that Patton’s men had passed this way. To speed the advance, mayors of towns that had been captured or destroyed were often sent ahead with the leading U.S. reconnaissance units to persuade recalcitrant or dilatory officials that a display of white flags and sheets on every house was in the inhabitants’ best interests. To Patton’s south and inside his wheeling movement, Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army had just reached Nuremberg. To the south again, Jean de Lattre’s French First Army had reached the outskirts of Stuttgart and was heading for the Danube and Austria. The Obersalzberg, the top Nazis’ retreat in the Bavarian Alps, would soon be cut off from nort
hern Germany and from Berlin in particular.
For Bormann the situation was becoming critical, since the Soviets were about to surround Berlin, with Red Army troops extending pincers forward from the north and south. As yet, the Führer was refusing to leave the capital and Bormann’s carefully laid plans for Aktion Feuerland were in danger of collapsing. Aircraft of the Fliegerstaffel (flying squadron) des Führers—Hitler’s personal air transport unit—were standing by at the Berlin airports of Gatow and Tempelhof to fly him to Bavaria, Spain, or elsewhere. But they would soon be within range of Soviet artillery guns. Similarly, long-range flying boats of Kampfgeschwader 200—the Luftwaffe’s special missions wing—were ready to fly the Führer even further, from a base at Travemünde on the Baltic coast. Seaplanes were even stationed by night on Lake Havel, ready to fly the Nazi hierarchy out of Berlin at a moment’s notice. The Ost-West-Asche (East-West-Axis boulevard)—between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Monument, in the heart of the city—had been cleared as a makeshift runway.
On April 20, Bormann instituted Operation Seraglio or Harem, whereby many government staff and records, including Hitler’s private papers, were dispatched to Bavaria. That night ten transport aircraft were assembled at Gatow for evacuation to Munich. Nine arrived safely but the tenth crashed into the Heidenholz Forest while flying at treetop level and disintegrated. Many of Hitler’s personal papers were consumed in the burning wreckage. At that stage it was intended that the Führer and his entourage would fly south two days later, on April 22.
MEANWHILE, ALLEN DULLES RESUMED the Operation Sunrise negotiations with SS Gen. Wolff, despite Donovan’s recent orders to cease the mission. On April 23, Karl Wolff indicated to Dulles that he now had full powers to order the surrender of all German troops in Italy after discussions in Berlin with Hitler and Bormann on April 18–19. On April 24, both Kaltenbrunner and SS Lt. Col. Hans Helmut von Hummel flew south to Austria to take over the negotiations of Crossword from Höttl. Helmut von Hummel was Bormann’s adjutant responsible for maintaining the records of all the Führer’s looted art holdings and the locations where they were hidden. The most important of these repositories was at Altaussee, close to Kaltenbrunner’s home, where an old salt mine now contained the vast majority of Hitler’s art collection; this hoard was to be a major factor in any deal with Dulles.
Events were now moving at such speed that the two originally separate sets of negotiations under Sunrise/Crossword—with Wolff and with Kaltenbrunner—were inextricably linked. On April 26, Höttl reported to Kaltenbrunner on the results of another visit to Switzerland, at which he had agreed with the OSS officer Edgeworth M. Leslie to arrange a personal meeting between Dulles and Kaltenbrunner at Feldkirch in Austria, close to the Swiss border. Dulles realized that Höttl was purely a stooge and that much of his information concerning the National Redoubt was highly suspect. Dulles knew that Austria could not surrender in the same manner as Italy had in September 1943. Despite the formation of a provisional government that month, the country remained an integral part of the German Reich. Whatever emerged from these talks, the sands were running out for Austria, since the Red Army tanks of the 3rd Ukrainian Front were advancing rapidly westward after the capture of Vienna. There had to be an ulterior motive for Kalten-brunner to be negotiating—and that was explained by Martin Bormann’s proposals.
(Italics are used in the following section to identify conclusions based on deductive research; see Chapter 16 for further discussion.)
In Bormann’s characteristic style—the carrot and the stick—Kaltenbrunner and Hummel indicated to Dulles that Bormann was willing to provide the Allies, as an inducement or “carrot,” with information as to the whereabouts of all the Nazis’ looted art. It would be handed over intact, together with the remainder of the national treasure of Germany, including its gold deposits, currency reserves, bearer bonds, and industrial patents—except, of course, for the substantial part of this treasure that Bormann had already secreted abroad. An additional and supremely attractive carrot was Bormann’s undertaking to deliver to the Allies examples of the most modern weapons technology together with the whereabouts of the designers, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 team, and the nuclear scientists of the Uranium Club. Furthermore, the ceasefire in Italy would be ratified immediately. But what was the desired price for such treasures? A blind eye turned to the escape of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Martin Bormann, Heinrich “Gestapo” Müller, Hermann Fegelein, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The rest of the Nazi hierarchy were to be abandoned to their fate.
The “stick” was simple. Germany now claimed to be capable of bombarding the eastern seaboard of the United States with weapons of mass destruction; considerable effort had been invested in selling this disinformation to U.S. intelligence agencies, with some success (see Chapter 16). These weapons incorporated warheads armed with the most toxic nerve agents ever devised, sarin and tabun. In addition, many repositories of artworks hidden in deep mine shafts would be destroyed with explosives and buried forever. A high proportion of the greatest works of art produced during centuries of Western civilization was now held hostage, and this threat was entirely credible following Hitler’s “Nero Decree” of March 19. Officially titled “Demolitions on Reich Territory,” this decree ordered the utter destruction of all German industrial infrastructure and technology; although not included in the official order, it also implied the destruction of cultural assets and the elimination of any key personnel who might be useful to the Allied powers.
The decision lay with the Allies, but the clock was ticking. On the previous day, April 25, the city of Berlin had been surrounded by the Red Army, and troops from Gen. Ivan Konev’s army group had made contact with GIs from Hodges’s U.S. First Army on the Elbe River. Germany was cut in half by a broad belt of Allied-occupied territory, with only the extreme north and south still under Nazi control.
THE LARGEST DAYLIGHT RAID ON BERLIN so far had been launched on February 3, 1945. In total, 937 Flying Fortresses dropped 2,298 tons of bombs, killing thousands of people and inflicting massive damage on the city, including the government quarter.
Among the other government buildings hit that day were the Reich Chancellery on the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Voss-Strasse, where Bormann’s office was badly damaged; the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse and the Reichsbank on Hausvogteiplatz were virtually demolished by a string of bombs. In a letter to his wife on February 4, Bormann wrote:
I have just taken refuge in my secretary’s office which is the only room in the place that has some temporary windows. Yesterday’s raid was very heavy. The Reich Chancellery garden is an amazing sight—deep craters, fallen trees, and the paths obliterated by a mass of rubble and rubbish. The Führer’s residence [in the Old Reich Chancellery] was badly hit several times. The New Reich Chancellery was also hit several times, and is not usable for the time being. The Party Chancellery buildings [offices on the upper floor of the central block of the New Reich Chancellery], too, are a sorry sight. Telephone communications are still very inadequate and the Führer’s residence and Party Chancellery still have no connection with the outside world.
To crown everything, in this so-called Government Quarter, the light, power and water supply is still lacking! We have a water cart standing in front of the Reich Chancellery and that is our only water supply for cooking and washing up! And the worst thing of all is the water closets. These commando pigs [the SS bodyguards] use them constantly and not one of them even thinks of taking a bucket of water with him to flush the place. From this evening I am apparently to have a room in the bunker in which to work and sleep.
By the middle of February, Hitler and his entourage—including Bormann—had been forced to take up permanent residence in the Führerbunker.
The president of the Reichsbank, Dr. Walter Funk, decided to transfer the bulk of the bank’s cash and gold reserves to safety outside of Berlin. The treasure was shipped to Merkers in Thuringia, two hundred miles southwest of the c
apital. There, bullion and currency with a value of about $238 million were deposited deep underground in the Kaiseroda potassium mine, alongside a huge cache of artworks. This was but one of 134 repositories dotted across the Third Reich under the control of Martin Bormann. In accordance with Hitler’s Nero Decree of March 19, many of them were now rigged with high explosives to prevent their falling into the hands of the Allies. In the salt mines at Altaussee were the most valuable pieces in Hitler’s collection, including Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna, Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb or Ghent Altarpiece, and many other priceless treasures. Among the innumerable crates were eight that were marked Vorsicht—Marmor—nicht stürtzen (Attention—Marble—Do Not Drop). Placed underground between April 10 and 13, these contained not statues but half-ton Luftwaffe aerial bombs. Also primed for destruction was the accumulation of most of the artworks looted from France and the Low Countries, now stored in the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Nothing was intended to survive the coming Götterdämmerung of the Third Reich.
AMONG THE ALLIED TROOPS POISED to deny the Nazis the chance to destroy their secrets were Cdr. Fleming’s Red Indians of 30 Advance Unit. Intelligence on where to search was now flooding in from the OSS office in Bern, thanks to the dialogue between Dulles and Bormann. The unit’s Team 4, under Lt. Cdr. Patrick Dalzel-Job, began driving northward between Bremen on the Weser River and Hamburg on the Elbe. Their task was to capture the latest U-boat technology.
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Page 17
