V
[ONE]
The Press Club Bar
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1725 21 February 1946
Colonel Mortimer Cohen walked up to the table where Cronley was sitting with Dunwiddie, Ostrowski, Hessinger, and Ziegler. Everyone at the table started to get to their feet. Cohen waved them back down, and slipped into a chair.
“Who are they?” he asked, indicating Dunwiddie and Hessinger.
“Colonel Cohen, this is Captain Chauncey Dunwiddie, my deputy. If you call him ‘Chauncey,’ he will tear your arms off. And Friedrich Hessinger, my chief of staff.”
“Jesus, Jim!” Dunwiddie complained. Then he said, “How do you do, sir?”
Cohen extended his hand to both men.
“Why do I think you’re a coreligionist, Friedrich?” Cohen asked.
“I’m Jewish, if that’s what you mean.”
“Born here, or in the land of the free and home of the brave?”
“Here, sir.”
“And may I hazard the guess you were CIC before Super Spook here seduced you into the DCI?”
“Yes, sir.”
“‘Super Spook’?” Cronley asked. “I thought you were Super Spook, Colonel Cohen.”
“That was before Mr. Justice Jackson dubbed you that.”
“You heard about that, did you?”
“I’m in the CIC, we know everything. Chauncey, I trust the quarters Mr. Justice Jackson asked General Kegley to get you to house your people sent to protect Chief Judge Biddle and himself are adequate?”
“Jesus, you do know everything!” Cronley said.
“Very nice, sir,” Tiny said. “A twenty-eight-room fenced-in mansion that had been home to a Gauleiter who is now in the Justice compound prison awaiting trial. It had been reserved for an incoming brigadier general.”
“Haverty, Richard C.,” Cohen said. “As he’s to be General Kegley’s deputy, I’m sure they’ll find suitable accommodations for him.”
At that moment, just about simultaneously, a waiter and Janice Johansen walked up to the table.
“Ah, Miss Johansen,” Colonel Cohen said. “Why do I think I’m not going to be able to have the private conversation I had hoped to have with these gentlemen?”
“Maybe you’re clairvoyant,” she said. “I’m not leaving until somebody tells me what’s the skinny on Bonehead Moriarty getting shot in the Compound.”
“None of us know what you’re talking about,” Dunwiddie said.
“Oh, come on, Tiny,” Janice said.
“We can’t talk about that in here, Janice,” Cronley said. “So what I suggest we do is give the waiter our order and have it delivered to the Duchess Suite.”
“You’re really going to tell her, Captain Death Wish?” Dunwiddie asked.
“You’re really going to have to learn, Captain Dumb-Dumb, who you can trust and who you can’t. Janice, for example, falls in the former category. Everybody drinking beer?”
[TWO]
“Curiosity overwhelms me,” Cohen said, indicating a man in triangled ODs who had a Thompson submachine gun in his lap. “Why do you have an armed guard in your bedroom?”
“Because there’s a SIGABA system in the closet, and General Greene would order my castration if he learned I’d left it unguarded,” Cronley replied. “As soon as the waiter shows up with the beer and then leaves, I’ll show it to you.”
“On that subject,” Hessinger said, “Miss Miller called from the Mansion just before you showed up. She suggests we put the SIGABA in her room there.”
“Is that what we’re calling it, ‘the Mansion’?”
“That’s what it is,” Hessinger said.
“Do it,” Cronley ordered.
“Miss Miller is who?” Cohen asked.
“Formerly one of General Greene’s finest. Now a DCI cryptographer, SIGABA operator, room debugger, und so weiter,” Cronley answered.
The waiter appeared pushing a rolling cart on which sat silver wine coolers holding enough Berliner Kindl beer to serve three bottles of each to everyone. He served theirs first, and left.
“Not to worry, Colonel,” Cronley said, “Hessinger will charge it to DCI under the ‘miscellaneous expenses, hospitality’ category. We are plying you with suds to get you and Janice to tell all.”
“I know what I want from you,” Janice said, “but what do you want from Morty here?”
“Only my friends get to call me ‘Morty,’ Miss Johansen.”
“Then let’s be friends, Morty,” she said. “What does Jim want you to tell him?”
Cronley held his hand up to keep Cohen from replying.
“When the waiter’s finished, Sigmund,” he said, “show him out, and then guard the premises from the corridor.”
“As you wish, sir,” the man with the Thompson said.
When they had left, Cohen said, “He sounds British.”
“Sigmund Karwowski served five years in Old Blighty as a Free Polish Army major,” Cronley explained. “When we recruited him, he was a watchman—private—in the Provisional Security Organization, guarding groceries in the Giessen Quartermaster Depot. Once the SIGABA is moved, I’m going to put him in charge of Judge Biddle’s security team. Good man.”
“The Poles really lost the war, didn’t they?” Cohen said.
“Turning the conversation to what happened to Bonehead?” Janice said.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Cronley said, and did so.
—
“Okay,” Janice said, when he had finished. “I’ll sit on it.”
“Thank you.”
“And now what are you trying to get out of Morty here?”
“I don’t think the colonel would like you to know that.”
“I’m about to continue my lecture on the real problem of Nazism,” Cohen said. “If you’re willing to restrain your journalist’s tendency to ask a question every fifteen seconds, you might find it interesting.”
“The ‘real problem of Nazism’? Lecture away, Morty.”
“You missed ‘Real Problem 101,’ Janice,” Ziegler said. “That was a visit with Kaltenbrunner, followed by Colonel Cohen telling us what a three-star bastard he really is. That was followed by the colonel saying, ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet.’”
“And you haven’t,” Cohen replied. And then continued: “There is a castle not too far from here near Paderborn I’d like to show you—”
“Wewelsburg?” Hessinger interrupted.
“Yes. What do you know about Wewelsburg Castle?”
“Not nearly as much as I would like to.”
“What’s the source of your curiosity?”
“Well, I read somewhere that in 1939, Himmler forbade publishing anything about the castle . . .”
“He did.”
“And I wondered why, so I started looking into it.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t find much, except a few vague references to it being . . . I don’t know what. Somewhere the high SS brass used to go. I even heard they held marriages and christenings there, according to some Nazi ritual.”
“And?”
“I even drove down there. I couldn’t get in. There were some CIC people who said it was off-limits, even after I showed them my CIC credentials.”
“And what did you think about that?”
“Well, I decided that something was going on there that was highly classified. CIC credentials won’t get you into Kloster Grünau or the Compound, either. So I left. I kept looking, but the only thing I came up with is that Himmler ordered that Wewelsburg Castle should become the ‘Reichshaus der SS-Gruppenführer,’ and I don’t even know what that means.”
“Well, let me try to fill in s
ome of the blanks in your knowledge—”
“Pay attention, everybody, as one professor delivers a lecture to another,” Cronley’s automatic mouth said.
“You’re free not to listen, of course,” Cohen said.
“Sorry, Colonel, that was my automatic mouth.”
“The one that seems to get you so frequently in trouble? Perhaps you should consider putting a zipper—better still, a good padlock—on it.”
“Sir, I’m really sorry.”
Cohen snorted, and then went on: “Wewelsburg Castle is near Paderborn, Westphalia, a little over two hundred miles from here, along some really bad roads. I think, presuming when I finish the lecture and Super Spook wishes to have a look, we’ll go there in his illegal airplane.”
“Fine with me,” Cronley said.
“Much of what is the castle now,” Cohen went on, “was built near the site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 1603 dash ’09 for the prince-bishop of Paderborn, Dietrich von Fürstenberg. That battle, in 9 B.C., saw a cluster of German tribes assembled under a man named Arminius annihilate three Roman legions. Most historians agree—”
“That the battle was the greatest defeat the Romans ever suffered and was one of the most decisive battles in history. After it, the Romans never tried to take territory east of the Rhine,” Hessinger furnished.
“Correct,” Cohen said. “And if you hadn’t interrupted me, Friedrich, you would have had a gold star to take home to Mommy.”
Cronley laughed aloud, earning himself a withering look from Hessinger.
“Two things are germane here,” Cohen went on. “The German victory near where the castle was built, and, two, that after being hailed as a hero for a while, Arminius was assassinated by jealous fellow tribesmen. Victory and death by assassination.
“During the Thirty Years’ War, in 1646, the castle was razed by the Swedes. Death, in other words. In 1650, the Swedes having been chased away, Prince-Bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg rebuilt it. Death followed by resurrection. Anyone see where I’m going with this?”
“The castle rose phoenixlike from the ashes?” Hessinger asked. “The first Operation Phoenix?”
“Something like that,” Cohen replied. “During the Seven Years’ War—1756 to 1763—the basement rooms were used as a military prison. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was rarely repaired and became nothing more than another ruin. Such ruins were—are—all over Germany.
“From what I have been able to learn, during Hitler’s election campaign in January 1933, Himmler came up with the idea to use a castle to serve as a place—a Reichsführerschule—to train senior SS officers.
“On his very first visit to Wewelsburg on November 3, 1933, Himmler decided to buy the castle. When the local government asked what Himmler thought was too much money, he leaned on them, which saw the SS signing a one-hundred-year lease, one reichsmark per annum, for the castle. The SS then moved in, so to speak, with an elaborate ceremony in September 1934.
“Himmler then dubbed the castle the ‘Reichshaus der SS-Gruppenführer,’ which means something like the national spiritual or symbolic home for SS lieutenant generals and up. Anyway, he began to hold conferences of senior SS brass at Wewelsburg.
“At about this point, the occult enters the Wewelsburg scenario. Irminenschaft—Irminism—starts to raise its ugly head—”
“What the hell is that?” Cronley asked.
“A pre-Christian German religion,” Hessinger furnished.
“Correct. Another gold star for you, Friedrich,” Cohen said. “Tacitus, the great historian, wrote about it. Irminenschaft comes into the picture via a very interesting character named Karl Maria Wiligut, an Austrian occultist.
“Karl Wolff, chief adjutant of the SS, introduced him to Himmler. Himmler liked what Wiligut had written about the Roman Catholic Church, the Jews, and the Freemasons being responsible for both the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the downfall of the Habsburg Empire.
“Himmler also became fascinated with Wiligut’s views on ancient German history, most important that Irminism was the pre-Christian German ancestral religion.
“Himmler took Wiligut into the SS in September 1933, in the rank—colonel—Wiligut had earned by distinguished service in World War One. They quickly became close friends, which resulted in Wiligut’s promotion to SS-Brigadeführer three years later.
“Wiligut designed the runic symbols used on black SS uniforms and flags, and designed and supervised the manufacture of the gold SS Totenkopfrings, which were passed out to SS officers who had distinguished themselves in some way.”
“He’s the guy who came up with that skull and crossbones hat insignia?” Ziegler asked.
“I presume you mean the Totenkopf,” Cohen replied. “No. That goes back at least to the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, when Frederick the Great formed a regiment of Hussar cavalry in the Prussian Army. They wore black uniforms and tall headgear—mirlitons—with a silver skull and crossbones insignia pinned to them.”
“Colonel, how the hell do you know all this stuff?” Ziegler asked.
“Some intelligence officers, such as myself, and I suspect Mr. Hessinger and Captain Dunwiddie, find it useful to read military history rather than comic books or novels with strong sexual content. You might want to keep that in mind.”
“You have just been cut off at the knees, Augie,” Cronley said, laughing. “Throw away all those Superman comic books.”
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, Cronley,” Cohen said. “And, if I may now continue?”
“In the Civil War, the 41st New York Volunteer Infantry, made up of mostly Germans who had emigrated from Prussia, wore a skull and bones insignia,” Hessinger said.
“One more gold star, Friedrich, for that historical footnote and for proving my point about the value to intelligence officers of reading military history. I hope you and Ziegler were listening, Super Spook?”
“Augie and I are all ears to just about anything you have to say. Pray continue, Colonel, sir.”
“Wiligut had some other noteworthy ideas about history and religion,” Cohen said. “He believed, for example, that Germany was settled by people from the lost continent of Atlantis about two hundred and twenty-eight thousand years before Christ, their first settlement being in what is now Goslar.
“He also believed that the events chronicled in the New Testament had occurred in Germany, rather than Palestine. And that Krist—with a K—who had founded the Irminist religion about 12,500 B.C., was the man we now think of as Jesus Christ. He claimed the Wiligut family was directly descended from Irminist wise men whom rival sorcerers had driven into northern Europe, then a wilderness, now Germany, about 1200 B.C.”
“This guy sounds like a real candidate for the funny farm,” Ziegler said. “And he was pals with Himmler?”
“Wiligut was indeed pals with Himmler. What I haven’t been able to find out is whether Himmler knew that Wiligut had been committed at the request of his wife to the Salzburg mental asylum in November of 1924 as a paranoid schizophrenic liable to cause harm to himself and others. He was released from the asylum in 1927, on condition that he leave Austria. He then moved to Munich.
“What I have learned is that ‘under the guidance’—which means with the support of—SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, Himmler’s chief adjutant, Wiligut developed the plans to turn Wewelsburg Castle into something like an SS holy place.”
“Holy place?” Janice asked.
“Holy place,” Cohen confirmed. “This is the point of the lecture, so pay attention. Starting in 1934, the plaster on the exterior walls of Wewelsburg was removed to make the building look more castle-like. They opened a blacksmith operation to make wrought-iron interior decorations. The blacksmiths, and the plaster removers, were concentration camp inmates, mostly Russian POWs, but ab
solutely no Jews, as Jews would obviously contaminate the place.
“The first official Irministic ceremony at Wewelsburg was a baptism rite for Obergruppenführer Wolff’s son, Thorisman—rough translation, Man of Thor, or Thor’s son.”
“Who is Thor?” Ziegler asked.
“The Nordic warrior god of power, strength, lightning, et cetera,” Hessinger said. “That’s where we get Thursday—Thor’s Day.”
“I never knew that,” Ziegler said.
“Present at the baptism,” Cohen said, “were SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich and Professor Karl Diebitsch, an artist and, to be fair, soldier—he was an Oberführer in the Waffen-SS—who had designed the all-black SS uniform, and was sort of Himmler’s artist-in-residence.
“He was also a businessman. He owned the Porzellan Manufaktur Allach, which manufactured not only what one might expect, but also porcelain busts of Adolf Hitler, which good Germans were expected to buy at a stiff price and display on their mantelpieces. The factory was next to the Dachau concentration camp, which provided its labor force.”
“Jesus Christ!” Cronley muttered.
“At the risk of repeating myself, Super Spook, you ain’t heard nothing yet,” Cohen said. “Diebitsch also designed the gold Totenkopfring that Himmler awarded to SS officers and enlisted men who somehow pleased him. I think it was the SS equivalent of our Army Commendation Medal, as they were passed out by the tens of thousands.
“In 1938, at Himmler’s order, the Totenkopfrings of SS personnel who had died—the custom was to take the rings from the corpses of the deceased just before burial, so they could be suitably framed and proudly displayed by the family next to the bust of Hitler—were ordered to be sent to Wewelsburg and stored in a ceremonial chest. This was to symbolize the deceased’s perpetual membership in the SS-Order. There were approximately twelve thousand such rings. My men have so far been unable to find them.”
“Your men?” Hessinger asked.
“My men, Friedrich,” Cohen confirmed. “The ones who ran you off. They are now the custodians of Wewelsburg.”
Death at Nuremberg Page 11
