Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler
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95 “Deny the enemy his brain”: Baggott, Atomic.
95 “Nothing spelled out”: Ibid.
96 “pistol remained in Moe Berg’s pocket”: Ibid.
Chapter 10: THE FOG OF WAR
97 “There is no reason why”: Arieh Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998).
98 Morgenthau Plan: Yeadon and Hawkins, Nazi Hydra.
98 Dr. Harry Dexter White: Whiting, Hitler’s Secret War.
98 “Two of the Abwehr agents”: Ibid.
98 “potato field”: Berliner Morgenpost, October 5, 1944, reporting a speech by Goebbels that concluded with the words, “The enemy’s destructive desires make us even harder and more determined to fight.”
99 “ten fresh German divisions”: William J. Bennett, America: The Last Best Hope, 2 vols. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).
99 “barely able to contain his indignation”: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY; OSS Official Dispatch Ref No. 250.
99 “process of money-laundering”: Loftus and Aarons, Secret War Against the Jews.
99 Operation Safehaven: Loftus and Aarons, Secret War Against the Jews; Higham, Trading with the Enemy. See also Yeadon and Hawkins, Nazi Hydra in America, for Roosevelt’s plans to use British illegal wiretaps against corporate villains in postwar trials of treason.
100 Federal Economic Administration: von Hassell et al., Alliance of Enemies.
101 “embarrassment to the Swiss government”: Whiting, Hitler’s Secret War.
101 “National Redoubt”: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
101 “another conduit to the Nazi leadership”: Breitman, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Wilhelm Höttl had organized the transportation of 440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were put to death in the gas chambers between April and June 1944. Höttl was employed by various Allied intelligence services after the war as a reward for the part he played in Operation Crossword (see Chapter 12). He proved to be a useless informant and agent in the Cold War period.
102 “Luftwaffe code-breaking unit”: Loftus and Aarons, Secret War Against the Jews.
102 “Dulles also exposed Henry Wallace”: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
103 “we must fish in troubled waters”: NARA, College Park, Maryland; NA RG 226 Entry 134, Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Director’s Office and Field Station Records.
103 “similar remit”: OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit Final Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1946).
103 Madonna of La Gleize: Edsel, Monuments Men.
104 “Eagle’s Nest”: Franz W. Seidler and Dieter Zeigert, Hitler’s Headquarters: The Führer’s Wartime Bases, from the Invasion of France to the Berlin Bunker (London: Greenhill Books, 2004).
105 German battle group in La Gleize: Bruce Quarrie, The Ardennes Offensive: VI Panzer Armee (Oxford: Osprey, 1999).
105 “We can still lose this war”: Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
105 “If Germany beats us”: The Eventful 20th Century: The World at War 1939–1945 (London: Reader’s Digest Association, 1998).
105 “Hitler’s last gamble”: Michael Veranov, The Third Reich at War: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Military Machine (London: Magpie Books, 1997).
106 “She stood just as he had seen her”: Edsel, Monuments Men.
Chapter 11: RAIDERS OF THE REICH
107 “too much reliance on Ultra”: Lewin, Ultra Goes to War.
108 “return cylinder that made decryption much more difficult”: Ibid.
108 “Enigma Hour”: Cornwell, Hitler’s Scientists.
108 “TICOM teams”: Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper Press, 2010).
109 “German intellectual property”: John Gimbel, Science, Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).
110 “thanks to Ultra”: Lewin, Ultra Goes to War. The Me 262 gained its first victim on July 26, 1944, in an action against an RAF de Havilland Mosquito photoreconnaissance aircraft. It was not until February 1945 that it became truly operational as a fighter, but by then it was too late to have any significant effect on Allied air operations.
110 “Hitler’s Wunderwaffen”: Steven J. Zaloga, Remagen 1945: Endgame against the Third Reich (Oxford: Osprey, 2006).
110 “considerable lead in weapons technology”: Zaloga, V-2 Ballistic Missile.
110 “Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments”: “Operation Paperclip,” from “History of Rocketry” at http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/Paperclip.html.
110 Operation Lusty: Gimbel, Science, Technology and Reparations.
111 “exploitation of German technology”: Ibid.
111 “The Big Three”: Jonathan Fenby, Alliance: The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One War and Began Another (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
112 “our inflexible purpose”: Thacker, End of the Third Reich.
112 “their common hate”: von Hassell et al., Alliance of Enemies.
112 “Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg:” Baggott, Atomic.
113 Operation Big: Kelly, Manhattan Project.
113 “all the German scientists”: Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb.
113 “Soviet atomic research facility”: Baggott, Atomic.
113 “unidentified black substance”: The National Archives, Kew, London; File ADM 223/214.
114 “To hell with the Russians”: After-action report by Col. John Lansdale Jr., quoted in Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb.
114 “advanced aviation designs”: After the war, the renowned German aircraft designer Prof. Kurt Tank, famous as the creator of the Focke-Wulf Fw.190 fighter, emigrated to Argentina under the name of Pedro Matthies to avoid prosecution by the Allies. There he was engaged to design the Pulqui II or Arrow jet aircraft at the Instituto Aerotécnico in Córdoba, first flown on June 27, 1950, soon after the outbreak of the Korean War. Although largely successful, the Pulqui project was canceled in 1960 due to escalating costs and the availability of surplus F-86 Sabre jet aircraft. After the Perón regime fell in September 1955, the German design team was disbanded, and many of its members found employment in the U.S. aeronautical industry.
Similarly, soon after Bormann’s arrival in Argentina, the Perón government hired Nazi scientist Dr. Ronald Richter in October 1948 to develop a nuclear fission reactor for peaceful objectives. Instead, Richter persuaded Perón to fund the more advanced technology of nuclear fusion with the promise of producing limitless nuclear energy in milk-bottle-size containers to power all manner of household devices and vehicles. Construction of the fusion facility began in June 1949 on isolated Huemel Island in cold-water Nahuel Huapí Lake, not far from Hitler’s lakeside house at Inalco. On March 24, 1951, the Perón government announced that “On February 16, 1951, in the … Isla Huemel … thermonuclear reactions under controlled conditions were performed on a technical scale.” This would have made Argentina the first country in the world to harness nuclear energy for peaceful applications. It was, of course, all nonsense; controlled nuclear fusion remains the holy grail for scientists to this day. Richter and his team were sacked in November 1952 after Argentina had spent the equivalent of approximately $1 billion in today’s money and some 150 times the amount that the United States was spending on nuclear fusion research at the time. Nevertheless, the Centro Atómico in nearby Bariloche remains the focal point of Argentine nuclear research. Proyecto Huemel or Project Huemel lives on in the Argentine pun Huele a mula, which means “It’s a rip-off!”
115 “massive discrepancies in military funds”: Baggott, Atomic.
Chapter 12: BORMANN, DULLES, AND OPERATION CROSSWORD
116 “Eagle’s Nest”: Seidler and Zeigert,
Hitler’s Secret Headquarters.
116 “33,000 telex messages”: von Lang, Bormann.
117 “The more difficult the situation”: Seidler and Zeigert, Hitler’s Secret Headquarters.
117 “I will have you shot”: Seidler and Zeigert, Hitler’s Secret Headquarters.
117 “Germany will rise like a phoenix”: Ibid.
117 “whole senior Nazi hierarchy was present”: Ibid.
117 “Operation North Wind”: Ken Ford, The Rhineland 1945 (Oxford: Osprey, 2000).
118 “the Führer was unhappy”: Seidler and Zeigert, Hitler’s Secret Headquarters.
118 “treue Heinrich”: von Lang, Bormann.
119 “Uncle Heinrich’s offensive did not work out”: Ibid.
119 Heinrich Hoffmann: Ibid.
119 Dr. Karl Brandt: Ibid. After his trial at the Nuremberg International Tribunal, Brandt was hanged for crimes against humanity.
120 “National Socialists! Party comrades!”: Ibid.
121 “best news we have had in years”: Ibid.
121 “clear and present danger”: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
122 “last physical barrier”: William I. Hitchcock, Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1944–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2008).
123 Operation Sunrise: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
123 “Soviet spies in the OSS”: Robert W. Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis 1941–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
123 “Germans have on the Eastern Front 147 divisions”: Susan Butler, ed., My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
124 “U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff expressly forbade”: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
124 Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Peter R. Black, Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
124 “ingratiate themselves with the Americans”: Breitman, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis.
124 “transportation of Hungary’s Jewish population”: NARA, College Park, Maryland; Hüttel [Höttl], SS Officer File, NA-BDC RG 242, A-3343.
125 “valuable crates were offloaded”: Ronald W. Zweig, The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungary (London: Harper Collins, 2003). At this time, it was common practice for gauleiters to hijack trains going through their territories—particularly coal trains, to provide for their freezing populations. This was often at the expense of the power stations supplying the war industries.
125 “fanatical anti-Russian”: Breitman, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis.
125 Dulles and Donovan quotes: Ibid.
125 “guerrilla movement known as Werwolf”: Timothy J. Naftali, “Creating the Myth of the Alpenfestung: Allied Intelligence and the Collapse of the Nazi Police State,” in Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity, ed. Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997). The National Redoubt was intended as the last bastion of Nazi resistance even after conventional hostilities ceased with the capture of Berlin. Because of Allied airpower, a lack of troops, and little fuel to move supplies, it never materialized except in the fevered imaginations of Joseph Goebbels and other fanatical Nazi diehards. Known as the Alpenfestung or Alpine Fortress, it supposedly extended across the Alpine regions of Bavaria, Austria, and Italy with Hitler’s home of Berchtesgaden at its heart. With the collapse of Germany, the Nazi hierarchy was to retreat to the Alpenfestung where they would be protected by Skorzeny’s zealous Werewolves, but in fact Hitler never endorsed the plan and the idea faded as Nazi Germany crumbled. Thanks to Martin Bormann and Operation Feuerland, Hitler had no intention of hiding in the Alps.
126 “their last stand”: “Eisenhower’s Six Great Decisions,” Saturday Evening Post, July 13, 1946. In retrospect, it is difficult to understand how the Allied High Command was so thoroughly duped by the notion of the National Redoubt. In his autobiography, Gen. Omar Bradley ruefully recalled, “The Redoubt existed largely in the imagination of a few fanatical Nazis. It grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend … shaped our tactical thinking.” In reality, the “tactical thinking” deliberately overstated the threat of the National Redoubt so that the U.S. armies could occupy the region with its vast caches of Nazi loot and high technology facilities and so deny them to the Soviets.
126 “three cables”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948).
128 Campione d’Italia: Dulles, Secret Surrender.
129 “tried to seek peace”: Richard Breitman and Shlomo Aronson, “The End of the Final Solution? Nazi Plans to Ransom Jews 1944–1945,” Central European History 25, no. 2 (1992).
129 “White Buses”: Meredith Hindley, “Negotiating the Boundary of Unconditional Surrender: The War Refugee Board in Sweden and Nazi Proposals to Ransom Jews 1944–1945,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 10, no.1 (1996).
129 “no black occupation troops”: NARA, College Park, Maryland; NA RG 266. This grotesque condition is to be found in Walter Schellenberg’s draft autobiography, written in Sweden in June 1945.
129 “The Hungarian Gold Train”: Zweig, Gold Train.
130 “looted artworks”: NARA, College Park, Maryland; NA RG 263, Wilhelm Hüttel [Höttl], CIA Name File, Vol. 1.
130 “Villa Kerry”: Robert E. Matteson, The Capture and the Last Days of SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Nazi Gestapo, Criminal Police, and Intelligence Services (Saint Paul, MN: Private publication, 1993). Matteson was a member of the 80th Company, Counter Intelligence Corps, U.S. Army, who led the team that captured Kaltenbrunner on May 12, 1945, after searching the Villa Kerry.
130 “acrimonious exchange of cables”: von Hassell et al., Alliance of Enemies.
130 “Dulles fidgeted in his chair”: William J. Casey, The Secret War Against Hitler (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1988).
130 “It is easy to start a war”: Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
130 “The air was opaque”: Kim Philby, My Silent War: The Story of Kim Philby (London: Modern Library, 2002).
Chapter 13: “WO BIST ADOLF HITLER?”
131 Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday: Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, In the Bunker with Hitler (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006).
131 “Third Army Memorials”: Charles Whiting, Patton’s Last Battle (New York: Stein & Day, 1987).
132 “Hitler’s personal air transport unit”: Glen Sweeting, Hitler’s Squadron: The Fuehrer’s Personal Aircraft and Transport Unit 1933–1945 (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 2001).
132 “burning wreckage”: Geoffrey J. Thomas and Barry Ketley, KG 200: The Luftwaffe’s Most Secret Unit (Crowborough, UK: Hikoki, 2003).
133 “Karl Wolff indicated to Dulles”: Srodes, Allen Dulles.
133 Hummel and Operation Crossword: Consolidated Interrogation Report regarding Hans Helmut von Hummel, by Capt S. L. Faison Jr., OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit, dated October 11, 1945; from Prisoner of War Papers, Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Center, Bad Nenndorf, Germany. At the time of his arrest by the Americans, Hummel was carrying a hoard of gold reichsmark coins from the largest bank robbery in history. Intriguingly, so was Martin Bormann’s wife, Gerda, when she was apprehended, but she was grievously ill with cancer and died on March 23, 1946, poisoned by the mercury used as part of her medical treatment.
133 “personal meeting between Dulles and Kaltenbrunner”: NARA, College Park, Maryland; Wilhelm Hüttel [Höttl], Third Army Preliminary Interrogation Report No. 17, June 1945, NA RG 263, Wilhelm Hüttel CIA Name File, Vol. 1.
133 “purely a stooge”: Dulles, Secret Surrender.
134 “national treasure of Germany”: Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, Nazi Gold (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1998).The final reserves of the Reichsbank arrived at the “Bormann Bunker” in Mun
ich from Berlin and outlying branches, by two special trains and a road convoy, on April 28—just two days before the city was captured by Patton’s Third Army.
134 “most modern weapons technology”: Neufeld, Rocket and the Reich. The principal scientists and technicians of the ballistic missile program, together with fourteen tons of documentation, were moved from Peenemünde by road to Nordhausen. They were under the close guard of SS troops commanded by the ruthless SS Gen. Dr. Hans Kammler, who was under strict orders from Bormann to kill the scientists and destroy the documentation if need be.
134 “weapons of mass destruction”: Cornwell, Hitler’s Scientists. Although the Allies maintained large stocks of chemical weapons such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas, they lagged far behind in the procurement of biological agents based on organophosphate compounds. In 1936 Dr. Gerhard Schrader of IG Farben had developed a highly lethal substance called tabun that attacks and paralyzes the human nervous system, resulting in death from asphyxiation in some twenty minutes. Production of an even more lethal agent known as sarin began in September 1939. By 1945, some 12,500 tons of tabun had been manufactured at Dyhernfurth in Silesia (present-day Brzeg Dolny, Poland) for a variety of delivery systems, including mines and artillery shells, many of which were stored in the underground tunnels of Mittelwerk at Nordhausen, where the V-2 missiles were assembled. A tabun and sarin payload was also developed for the V-1 flying bomb; this was the potential weapon to be used against the United States, launched from U-boats (see Chapter 16). It would also have been used in the A-9/A-10, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, which was still on the drawing board at Peenemünde. Its design specifications formed part of the fourteen tons of research documentation in the hands of SS Gen. Kammler—see previous note.