Death at Nuremberg
Page 24
“And you’re willing to turn your cousin over to Fortin, knowing he’s going to do this?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” Cronley said.
“What I think we should do is bring him here and see if we can make him talk.”
“That’s Cronley’s call,” Greene said.
“Excuse me?”
“Harold, weren’t you listening when Cohen said Schultz told him to keep out of Cronley’s way until he does something really dumb?” Greene asked. “That sounded like an order to me.”
“Cronley’s a loose cannon,” Wallace said.
“Agreed. But a loose cannon out of whose way we have been ordered to get.”
“And you agree with Schultz?”
“I’m a simple soldier, Colonel. When I get an order, I salute and say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re going to do next, Cronley?” Wallace snapped sarcastically “Or have you decided I don’t have the Need to Know?”
“Temper, temper, Harold,” Greene said.
“Sir,” Cronley said, “I’m going to Strasbourg to see what Cousin Luther has decided to do.”
“Take your bodyguard with you, Cronley,” Greene said.
“What bodyguard?” Wallace asked.
“Justice Jackson suggested Cronley needed a bodyguard, Harold,” Cohen said. “Somewhat reluctantly, Super Spook took this as an order.”
“Colonel, I need a minute in private with you and Ostrowski before I go,” Cronley said.
“Whatever your little heart desires, Super Spook,” Cohen replied, and followed Cronley and Ostrowski out of the sitting room and into the foyer.
[TWO]
Entzheim Airport
Strasbourg, France
1255 25 February 1946
“Who’s he?” Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin asked, as Cronley’s bodyguard handed him his Thompson before climbing down from the Horch.
“DCI Special Agent Cezar Zieliński is my bodyguard.”
“You need a bodyguard?”
“All very important Americans have bodyguards. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”
Zieliński reclaimed the Thompson.
“Cezar, this is Colonel—”
“Commandant,” Fortin corrected him.
“—Jean-Paul Fortin. You may have run into him in England, where he was in G-2 at Free French Army headquarters when you were doing the same thing at Free Polish Army headquarters.”
“Mon colonel,” Zieliński said, coming to attention.
“I like people who didn’t surrender,” Fortin said. “I also like people to think I’m a commandant. And I also doubt you’re my American friend’s bodyguard. Who are you really?”
“My chief assigned me to see that no harm comes to Mr. Cronley.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because Justice Jackson suggested I needed one,” Cronley said.
“And, prefacing this by saying I’m already growing weary of your American humor, why would Justice Jackson think you need a bodyguard?”
“Probably because when I returned to Nuremberg from here yesterday, Odessa tried to kill me and Tom Winters as Tom was driving me from the airport to the Farber Palast.”
“Somehow I think you are now telling the truth.”
“Boy Scout’s honor, Jean-Paul,” Cronley said. “First, they used a truck to stop us, and then an Audi pulled in behind us. Former SS-Obersturmbannführer Günther Kuhn got out of the Audi and let loose with his Schmeisser.”
“But missed you. What about Tom?”
“He’s all right. He managed to get out of the line of fire by crawling under my Horch.”
“And?”
Zieliński answered for him. “Mr. Cronley took Kuhn down, and killed the Audi driver.”
“Who, if we needed any further proof that members of Odessa are really not nice people, was his daughter,” Cronley added.
“His daughter?” Fortin asked incredulously.
“His very good-looking daughter. She was nineteen at the time of her demise.”
“Mon Dieu! What kind of swine would involve his young daughter in something like that?”
“The Odessa type of swine,” Cronley said. “But just before we came here, I heard something from Colonel Cohen that I am hoping will mitigate my guilty feelings about shooting a teenaged blonde in the forehead. Morty got the German cops to charge her poppa with murder.”
“He’s alive?”
Cronley nodded. “It seems German law holds anyone involved in a crime guilty of whatever happens during that crime. Since Poppa was committing a crime when his daughter was sent to Nazi Valhalla, Poppa is guilty of murdering her, not me.”
“I find myself agreeing with German law for once,” Fortin said. “James, you are not responsible for that young woman’s death.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself, but I am having a hard time believing me.”
“Why did Colonel Cohen get the Germans to charge Poppa Nazi with murder?”
“The penalty is life at hard labor. Both for Poppa and Momma. She’s charged with being an accessory before the fact. Cohen will offer them reduced charges if they tell us where we can find von Dietelburg.”
“Is Poppa a practicing member of Himmler’s cult?”
“I think so. Because of his daughter. They were doing Saint Heinrich’s good works.”
“Then he probably won’t give von Dietelburg up. And to further ruin your day, I’ve come to conclude that Cousin Luther really thinks of himself as a Mormon.”
“A Mormon?”
“Don’t they call themselves ‘Latter-Day Saints’?”
“And I have a questionable sense of humor?”
“I spoke with your kinsman, told him you were coming. He said, ‘It’ll be a waste of his time.’”
“Let’s go see him anyway. Maybe learning we have Kuhn will change his mind. And if it doesn’t, I have yet another idea on how to deal with the sonofabitch.”
“After we have our couscous.”
“Have our what?”
“Our couscous. Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail has been laboring on it all day in the Hotel Gurtlerhoft kitchen. You and Zieliński arrived just in time to profit from his labors.”
“I gather it’s something to eat?”
“A Moroccan delicacy. Steamed flour particles, onto which a stew—chicken, lamb, vegetables—is ladled, and then sprinkled with almonds, cinnamon, and sugar. In Morocco, they think lamb’s eyeballs should go into the stew, but I told Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail to leave them out. I find them disconcerting.”
“And while we’re eating, I will tell you what lamb’s eyeballs I’m going to put on Cousin Luther’s plate if he doesn’t give me von Dietelburg,” Cronley said.
[THREE]
Sainte Marguerite Prison
Strasbourg, France
1415 25 February 1946
Former SS-Sturmführer Luther Stauffer was led shuffling into the warden’s office. His wrists and ankles were shackled and he was unshaven.
Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin was sitting behind the warden’s desk. Cronley, Zieliński, and the warden were bent over a table, affixing their signatures to documents that the warden snatched from them as quickly as they were signed.
“Put him in that chair,” Fortin ordered.
Two guards put Stauffer in a wooden straight-backed chair facing the warden’s desk.
Cronley and Zieliński took two identical chairs from a row of chairs against the wall and moved them to either side of Fortin behind the desk.
“Can I talk you out of your chair, Commandant?” Zieliński asked. “It’s going to be difficult transcribing this unless I can get my legs under the desk.”
Fortin rose from his swivel chair and waited for Zieli
ński to get out of his. Finally, both sat down. Zieliński picked up a pencil and held it over a pad of lined paper.
“Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Cronley,” he said.
“Final interview of former SS-Sturmführer Luther Stauffer in connection with the case of former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg. Interview held at 1420 hours, 25 February, 1946, at the Sainte Marguerite Prison, Strasbourg, France. Present are Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin, director of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire for the Département du Bas-Rhin, DCI Special Agent Cezar Zieliński, and DCI Supervisory Special Agent James D. Cronley Junior.
“Tell me, Stauffer, are you a married man?”
“You know I am, Cousin James.”
“Were you married when you joined the Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme?”
“No.”
“Then you were married later. After you joined the SS?”
“Yes.”
“Which would mean after you renounced your French citizenship and became German?”
“Resumed my German citizenship, Cousin James. I was born, as your mother was, a German. My father, your uncle Hans-Karl, foolishly chose to be a Frenchman after the First World War when the Versailles Treaty stole Elsass-Lothringen from Germany.”
“I don’t know where you went to school, but I was taught that Elsass-Lothringen—Alsace-Lorraine—was stolen from France in 1871 after the Franco–Prussian War and then returned to France after Germany lost World War One. And then Hitler stole it back just before World War Two. And, when Germany lost World War Two, France took it back again. Isn’t that the case?”
Stauffer didn’t reply.
“But that’s going off at a tangent, isn’t it? I was asking about your career in the Schutzstaffel, the SS. No. Come to think of it, we were talking about you getting married. When did that happen?”
“In 1942.”
“After you returned from your service in Russia?”
“While I was in Germany, in Berlin, on temporary duty.”
“And what was that special duty?”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Not a problem. We already know what that duty was. You don’t have to violate your SS officer’s honor by telling me. But that’s where you first came under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg, right?”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Let’s return to something that doesn’t pose a question you feel uncomfortable answering. Were you married in a Roman Catholic church? Since my mother was raised as a Roman Catholic, I’m presuming you and Ingebord were.”
“We were married in a civil ceremony.”
“In Berlin?”
“No. Not in Berlin.”
“In Castle Wewelsburg?”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“I must confess I’m impressed. I didn’t think you were important enough to be honored by getting hitched in Castle Wewelsburg. Or was letting you get married there sort of a pat on the head? ‘We have plans for you, Stauffer. And to prove it we’re going to let you get married by a senior SS officer in the SS Vatican, a.k.a. Wewelsburg Castle.’”
Stauffer didn’t say anything.
“Do you remember the name of the SS officer who presided over your nuptials? Was it maybe SS-Obersturmbannführer Günther Kuhn?”
Stauffer didn’t reply.
“I just met him. Lousy shot.”
“Wie, bitte?”
“He had a Schmeisser. All I had was my pistol. But guess, since I’m sitting here and he’s in a hospital bed in the Munich prison, who won?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. I think you got word somehow to Odessa that I was asking questions about the Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen that were getting dangerous. That I had connected you with von Dietelburg, for example. And they were already annoyed with me because I was responsible for you getting caught trying to get Heimstadter and Müller across the Franco–German border. So they told Kuhn to take me out.
“He wasn’t at all good at that. He’s lying in a hospital bed with three bullet holes in him. His daughter is dead. And he and his wife are charged with murder because she was shot while involved in the assassination attempt and that makes them liable.”
“Who shot the daughter?”
“Did you know Fräulein Elfriede, Luther? Good-looking nineteen-year-old blonde?”
“Who shot her?”
“So you did know her?”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Interview interrupted at 1435 hours by Supervisory Agent Cronley. Did you get it all, Zieliński?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I shot Elfriede, Luther,” Cronley said. “In the forehead.” He pointed with his index finger.
“You sonofabitch!”
“When I get back to Nuremberg, I’m going to tell the Kuhns that you confessed all, including where I can find von Dietelburg, and as a result have been turned over to the people that deal with unimportant Nazis, instead of being hung as a war criminal. I’m going to offer them the same deal, as I feel bad about taking their only child from them. Give me von Dietelburg or spend the rest of your life in jail.
“And, last chance, Cousin Luther, I’m offering you the same deal. ‘Give me von Dietelburg or go to the gallows.’”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Wrap him up, Cezar. Give him five minutes to say goodbye to his wife, and then put him in the truck. With a bag over his head.”
[FOUR]
The Prison
The International Tribunal Compound
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
2305 25 February 1946
When Second Lieutenant Paul J. Dowsey, a member of the class of 1945 at West Point, had four days before being transferred to the 26th Infantry, 1st Division, from the 18th Infantry of the division, where he had been a platoon leader in Baker Compound, 1st Battalion, Colonel James T. Rasberry, who commanded the 26th Infantry Regiment, had given him a surprisingly cordial and informal welcome.
“Pull up a chair, Dowsey, and have a cup of coffee while I give you the skinny on what we do here.”
He had begun by telling Dowsey that “Jack Mulaney”—by which he meant Colonel Jackson Mulaney III, commanding officer of the 18th—had selected him for transfer because, of the five second lieutenants taken out of the Infantry Basic Officer Course at Benning before graduation because of a severe officer shortage and flown to Germany and assigned to the 18th, he was “the only one who seemed to be able to find his gluteus maximus with either hand and without supervision.”
“While I’m sure the Officer Basic Course is nice to have, I’ve always felt that it was sort of a waste of time for people like you and me, who had already been taught at Hudson High which end of a Garand the bullet comes out of.
“There are a large number of really despicable people in our prison, the most notorious of whom are Hermann Göring and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whom we have been charged with keeping fed, locked up, and alive until the trials are over and we can hang them.
“You will be one of a dozen company-grade officers who serve as assistant wardens. You will be the junior of them, the others having been in the Army about a year longer than you have. You will have the privilege of commanding a fine group of enlisted men, seventy percent of whom are yet to celebrate their nineteenth birthday and fifty percent of whom have yet to learn how to drive.
“But thirty percent of your troops are fine non-commissioned officers. I’m sure you remember being told on the Plain that sergeants are the backbone of the Army, and that a wise second lieutenant is he who keeps his mouth shut and his ears open when around a good sergeant.
Dowsey jumped to his feet, popped to attention, and raised his hand to his temple.
“Permission to withdraw, sir?”
“Welcome interviews like this traditionally end with the commanding officer saying, ‘My door is always open.’ This interview differs from the traditional in that I mean it about my door always being open.”
—
Lieutenant Paul J. Dowsey watched as the ex–U.S. Army ambulance with its red crosses painted over and bearing French Army markings pulled up to the door of the prison.
“Here it comes,” he announced unnecessarily to the soldiers with him, a technical sergeant, a sergeant, a corporal, and two PFCs.
“I can see it, Lieutenant,” Technical Sergeant Woodrow Thomas said, which reminded Dowsey what Colonel Rasberry had said about how second lieutenants should behave in the company of Regular Army sergeants.
And Sergeant Thomas was a splendid example of that breed. A Combat Infantry Badge was pinned to his Ike jacket breast. Below it were colored ribbons representing the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart. The latter two had insignia representing the second award of both medals.
He had seen the sergeant in Colonel Rasberry’s outer office awaiting with three other teenaged soldiers to be welcomed to the 26th. His youthful face did not fit with the sergeant’s chevrons, and Dowsey decided he had to be older than he looked.
The next time he had seen him was when Sergeant Rasberry had introduced him.
“Lieutenant, this is Sergeant Wagner. The colonel assigned him as our interpreter. He speaks fluent Kraut.”
“You’re German, Sergeant?”
“Pennsylvania Dutch, sir.”
“Put those Thompsons at Port Arms, for Christ’s sake!” Tech Sergeant Thomas snapped. The two PFCs obeyed the order.