SINCE HE HAD JOINED THE PARTY in 1926, Bormann had raised many millions of reichsmarks for the NSDAP and for the various funds that supported the lavish lifestyle of the Fuhrer. It was a skill he never lost in all his many years of service to Adolf Hitler. His business ac.u.men was legendary and he was quick to recognize any moneymaking opportunity. It was Bormann who organized some of the sales of "degenerate art," of which one was an auction held on June 30, 1939, at the Grand Hotel National in the Swiss lakeside town of Lucerne. Some 126 paintings and sculptures were on offer, including works by Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Pica.s.so that had been stripped from museums in Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Dresden, Essen, Frankfurt, and other collections. Pablo Pica.s.so"s masterpiece from his Blue Period, The Absinthe Drinker, which had been looted from the Jewish Schoeps family, was auctioned for just 12,000 Swiss francs (equal to US$2,700 in 1939, equivalent to about $42,000 today; in June 2010, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation sold it for $52.5 million). All the proceeds from this Swiss auction, about 500,000 Swiss francs, were converted into pounds sterling and deposited in the J. Henry Schroder & Co. bank in London for Bormann"s exclusive use; the German art museums did not receive a single pfennig.
With the outbreak of war, Bormann was determined that the n.a.z.i Party should receive its fair share of any plunder from the occupied countries. Following the invasion of the Low Countries, the diamond district of Amsterdam fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht. Some 940,000 carats of cut and industrial diamonds, with a further 290,000 carats of diamonds from Belgium, were confiscated and processed through Johann Urbanek & Co. of Nuremberg. Such high-value, low-volume items were especially useful for Bormann"s plans to spread the party"s tentacles around the world. In particular, they allowed him to exert complete control over the NSDAP Auslands-Organisation (Foreign Organization) of party members living in countries outside the German Reich, such as the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. The Foreign Organization also provided excellent cover for intelligence-gathering and the means to manipulate or bribe foreign politicians to support the n.a.z.i cause.
To this end, Bormann acquired his own air and shipping lines to disperse his peddlers of influence and financial a.s.sets around the world. These included the previously mentioned Spanish shipping line Compania Naviera Levantina and the Italian airline Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane (LATI). The latter had run a prewar service to South America from Rome, via Seville in Spain to Villa Cisneros in the Spanish Sahara, then on to Sal in the Portuguese Cape Verde islands, and across the Atlantic to Natal or Recife in Brazil, with final legs to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. By these means, Bormann acquired a regular pipeline for people and freight to Iberia and South America without using Luftwaffe aircraft or compromising the national airline, Lufthansa. The aircraft of choice was the trimotor Savoia-Marchetti 75 GA (for grande autonomia or "long range"), with a payload of a little over one ton and a range of 4,350 miles. This made it an ideal carrier for such items as artworks, gemstones, or large consignments of cash for the German emba.s.sies and consulates in South America. On their return flights the aircraft carried high-value minerals and other resources.
Much of the money sent to German emba.s.sies around the world to underwrite Bormann"s conspiracies was, in fact, in the form of counterfeit British five-, ten-, twenty-, and fifty-pound notes that were less likely to be identified as fakes when circulated in far-flung places. The counterfeit notes were produced from December 1942 to February 1945 during Operation Andreas by 142 Jewish prisoners in Blocks 18 and 19 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. The program was also known as Operation Bernhard after the man in charge of the scheme, SS Maj. Bernhard Krueger. Once the requisite type of paper was finally obtained, various denomination pound notes were forged, with a face value of 134,609,945, equivalent to $377 million in 1944 or $4.6 billion today, representing some 10 percent of all British banknotes in circulation. The original scheme was to drop bundles of counterfeit notes from aircraft over the British Isles in order to destabilize the British economy, but from 1943 Germany had insufficient aircraft available for the operation. Instead, the notes were laundered through Swiss banks or foreign companies, particularly in Holland, Italy, and Hungary.
The imperative for Bormann was now to transfer monies in every shape and form-counterfeit, stolen, or even legitimate government funds-to safe havens abroad. This was achieved as part of an operation code-named Aktion Adlerflug-Project Eagle Flight-which involved setting up innumerable foreign bank accounts and investing funds in foreign companies that were controlled by hidden German interests. For example, between 1943 and 1945 more than two hundred German companies set up subsidiaries in Argentina. Money and other a.s.sets, such as industrial patents, were transferred through sh.e.l.l companies in Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal to the Argentine branches of German banks such as the Banco Aleman Transatlantico. The funds were then channeled to the German companies operating in Argentina, such as the automobile manufacturer Mercedes Benz-the first Mercedes Benz factory to be built outside Germany. These companies were in turn charged by their German head office higher production costs for products made in Argentina; for instance, the true production cost of a Mercedes truck might be $5,000, but Mercedes Benz Argentina was required to pay Mercedes Benz Germany $6,000 for the components. The difference between the actual cost and the prices paid was then secreted in Argentine bank accounts to be drawn upon after the war, without any fear of scrutiny by the Argentine authorities, let alone the Allies. These same companies became a source of employment for fleeing n.a.z.i war criminals after 1945. For example, Adolf Eichmann worked in the Mercedes Benz factory at Gonzalez Catan in the suburbs of Buenos Aires under the name of Riccardo Klement from 1959 until agents from Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency, abducted him on May 11, 1960.
Bormann"s money-laundering process was repeated with companies in Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey as well. By 1945, he had ama.s.sed some $18 million in Swedish kroner and $12 million in Turkish lira, with major deposits in the Stockholms Enskilda Bank and in the Deutsche Bank and the Deutsche Orientbank, both in Istanbul.
Another major aspect of Project Eagle Flight was the acquisition of shares or equity in foreign companies, especially in North America. For this, Bormann turned to the past master of the game, IG Farben. Since the time of its formation in 1926, IG Farben had acquired numerous American companies as part of its worldwide cartel. By the time Germany declared war on the United States shortly after Pearl Harbor, IG Farben held a voting majority in 170 American companies and minority holdings in another 108. Bormann turned for advice to its president, Hermann Schmitz, and to the former Reich economics minister, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Together they were able to coordinate the transfer of n.a.z.i funds through Swiss banks, via the Bank for International Settlements, or through third parties and companies. As a case in point, through their Stockholms Enskilda Bank (SEB), the Swedish brothers Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg purchased the American Bosch Corporation, the U.S. subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH of Stuttgart, on behalf of the Bormann "Organization" but with the Wallenbergs as nominal owners. For their pains, they were paid with 2,350 pounds of gold bullion deposited in a Swiss numbered account on behalf of SEB. This Stockholm bank also bought stocks and bonds for Bormann on the New York Stock Exchange and made substantial loans to the Norsk Hydro ASA plant in Rjukan, Norway, which was crucial in the manufacture of "heavy water" for the n.a.z.i atomic weapons program. Needless to say, IG Farben was the majority shareholder in Norsk Hydro ASA.
By these means, Bormann was able to create some 980 front companies, with 770 of these in neutral countries, including 98 in Argentina, 58 in Portugal, 112 in Spain, 233 in Sweden, 234 in Switzerland, and 35 in Turkey-no doubt there were others whose existence has never been revealed. Every single one was a conduit for the flight of capital from Germany, just waiting for Bormann to give the order when the time was right. In the best IG Farben tradition, ultimate t.i.tle to the companies was a closely guarded secret maintained through a number of subterfuges, as described succinctly by the celebrated CBS Radio journalist Paul Manning, author of Martin Bormann: n.a.z.i in Exile: "Bormann utilized every known device to disguise their ownership and their patterns of operations: use of nominees, option agreements, pool agreements, endors.e.m.e.nts in blank, escrow deposits, pledges, collateral loans, rights of first refusal, management contracts, service contracts, patent agreements, cartels, and withholding procedures." The most important of these instruments were bearer bonds. These are securities issued by banks, companies, or even by governments, often in times of crisis, in any given value. They are unregistered; no records are kept of the owners or of any transactions involved, so they are highly attractive to investors who wish to remain anonymous. Whoever physically held the paper on which the bond was issued owned the investment security, so a bearer bond issued in Zurich could be cashed in Buenos Aires or elsewhere with impunity. As. .h.i.tler declared to Bormann: "Bury your treasure deep, as you will need it to begin the Fourth Reich."
INSEPARABLE FROM SECURING THE FINANCIAL a.s.sETS of the Third Reich was the need to preserve the n.a.z.i leadership, in particular Adolf Hitler and his immediate entourage. Any refuge for Hitler had to be chosen with care. When the British were faced with a similar situation in the summer of 1940, it had been a relatively simple matter; if the threat of invasion from across the Channel had become a reality and the plans for containing the German beachhead had failed, then the powerful Royal Navy would have transported the royal family and the government to Canada, to continue the war from the dominions and colonies. Germany, on the other hand, no longer had an overseas empire, since the Treaty of Versailles had stripped her of her few colonies in Africa and the Pacific in 1919.
However, there was still a kind of de facto German overseas colony in Latin America, where many thousands of Germans had emigrated in previous generations. These communities were cohesive and commercially active, and Bormann had access to them through the NSDAP Auslands-Organisation. A file was brought to his attention that had been written during World War I by the young naval intelligence officer Wilhelm Canaris, describing his escape in 1915 from internment in Chile via Patagonia-the vast, spa.r.s.ely inhabited region of southern Chile and Argentina that had a predominantly German settler population.
Lt. Canaris had been sheltered by the German community around a small town in the foothills of the Argentine Andes. Its isolation and the strongly patriotic German influence among the local population were significant factors. However, if this place was to be selected for such an all-important and top-secret project, then the att.i.tude of the Argentine national government would be equally important. Fortunately, a military coup d"etat in Buenos Aires in June 1943 brought to power a regime sympathetic to n.a.z.i Germany-indeed, a highly placed member of the new government, Col. Juan Domingo Peron, had already been on the German intelligence payroll for two years. With ma.s.sive funds already deposited in Argentina, a cooperative regime in power, and a significant part of the nation"s industry and commerce owned by people of German extraction, the pieces were now in place for the execution of a concerted plan.
Bormann"s scheme was code-named Aktion Feuerland (Project Land of Fire) in reference to Patagonia"s southern tip, the archipelago Tierra del Fuego (Spanish for "Land of Fire"). The plan"s object was to create a secret, self-contained refuge for Hitler in the heart of a sympathetic German community, at a chosen site near the town of San Carlos de Bariloche in the far west of Argentina"s Rio Negro province. Here the Fuhrer could be provided with complete protection from outsiders since all routes in by road, rail, or air were in the hands of Germans. In mid-1943, Bormann"s chief agent in Buenos Aires, a banking millionaire named Ludwig Freude, put the work in hand.
PART II.
THE HUNTERS.
In April 1945, the U.S. 90th Infantry Division discovered a trove of n.a.z.i loot and art in a salt mine in Merkers, Germany.
Chapter 7.
RED INDIANS AND PRIVATE ARMIES.
AMONG THE BRITISH FORCES that landed in French North Africa during Operation Torch in November 1942 was a new unit on its first major operation-30 Commando Unit (CU). Primarily, 30 CU was tasked with gathering military intelligence doc.u.ments and items of enemy weapons technology before they could be hidden or destroyed. The unit had been conceived in the British Admiralty, and the Royal Navy was particularly anxious to gather any intelligence concerning the sophisticated Enigma encryption machines that were used to communicate with Adm. Donitz"s U-boats at sea. The Naval Intelligence Commando Unit was the brainchild of Lt. Cdr. Ian Fleming of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR)-the future creator of the quintessential fictional spy James Bond. Fleming was recruited in 1939 by Vice Adm. John G.o.dfrey, director of naval intelligence, as his personal a.s.sistant. On March 24, 1942, Fleming"s proposal for the new unit landed on the admiral"s desk.
Fleming had been influenced by the exploits of the Abwehr-kommando-German clandestine special forces, often disguised in Allied or neutral uniforms. The Abwehrkommando had performed most effectively against the Allies during the invasions of Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, and the USSR. Formed on October 15, 1939, as part of Adm. Canaris"s Abwehr, the obscurely t.i.tled Lehr und Bau Kompanie zbV 800 (Special Duty Training and Construction Company No. 800) was commanded by Capt. Theodor von Hippel and based at the Generalfeldzeugmeister-Kaserne barracks in Brandenburg, Prussia. Thereafter the unit adopted the name of that town as its informal t.i.tle-the Brandenburgers. On May 20, during the initial German paratroop drop at Maleme airfield during Germany"s airborne invasion of the island of Crete, a special forces unit led the a.s.sault on the British headquarters, with the specific task of capturing military intelligence doc.u.ments and codebooks-fortunately, it found nothing related to Ultra intelligence (see Chapter 1). It was reports of this mission that prompted Ian Fleming to write his missive to G.o.dfrey proposing a similar raiding force.
At the outset, Fleming"s "Red Indians," as he liked to call them, were given the cover name of the Special Engineering Unit of the Special Service Brigade, which was under the operational control of the Chief of Combined Operations, Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten. Accordingly, after completing training, its personnel were ent.i.tled to wear the coveted green beret, as well as drawing a daily special-service allowance to enhance their pay. Subsequently, the group"s t.i.tle was changed to 30 Commando Unit; the "30" related to the room number at the Admiralty in Whitehall, London, occupied by Fleming"s legendary secretary Miss Margaret Priestley, a history don from Leeds University and the inspiration for Miss Moneypenny in his James Bond novels.
The unit comprised three elements: No. 33 Royal Marine Troop, which provided the fighting element during operations; No. 34 Army Troop; and No. 36 Royal Navy Troop. Originally there was to have been a No. 35 RAF Troop, but the Royal Air Force never seconded the necessary personnel. Like all such special forces units, 30 CU attracted some extraordinary characters. Its first commanding officer was Cdr. Robert "Red" Ryder, Royal Navy, who had just been awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain"s supreme decoration for gallantry in battle, for his exceptional valor and leadership in the destruction of the vital lock gates of the Normandie dock at St. Nazaire during Operation Chariot earlier in the year. This brilliant but costly raid denied the Kriegsmarine any docking facilities on the Atlantic coast for its capital ships such as the Tirpitz.
Despite coming under Combined Operations, 30 CU reported directly to Fleming in his capacity as personal a.s.sistant to the director of naval intelligence. The unit was first deployed during Operation Jubilee, the ill-fated Dieppe raid on August 12, 1942, but their gunboat HMS Locust was struck several times by gunfire on entering the harbor and was forced out to sea before any troops could be landed. One of the primary reasons for the failure of Operation Jubilee was the fact that German signals intelligence had broken Royal Navy codes and had full knowledge of the planned raid some five days before it was launched.
FOR OPERATION TORCH, 30 Commando Unit landed from HMS Malcolm on November 8, 1942, at Sidi Ferruch in the Bay of Algiers, together with an a.s.sault force of American troops from the U.S. 34th Infantry Division. Advancing with the leading infantry, No. 33 Troop, commanded by Lt. Dunstan Curtis, RNVR, captured several buildings in their quest for intelligence. Because of the peculiar terms of the armistice that was soon concluded with the Vichy French authorities, Curtis and his men needed all their ingenuity to uncover material from places guarded by the French police. In addition, 30 CU captured an Abwehr officer named Maj. Wurmann, who, already disillusioned by the war, provided a ma.s.s of information on the structure and organization of the Abwehr, as well as character a.s.sessments of its key personnel. This intelligence was rapidly disseminated throughout MI6 and the OSS. In all, some two tons of doc.u.mentation were collected and shipped back to London. Most importantly, another Enigma encryption machine was captured, which proved immensely helpful to Station X at Bletchley Park in the long task of cracking the Shark U-boat cipher.
The unit"s Nos. 33 and 34 Troops were sent back into the line in February 1943 during the middle of the Tunisian campaign-courtesy of Cdr. Fleming, the Royal Marines troop now had jeeps to increase their mobility. During the following months, they met up with several other colorful special forces units that had been operating throughout the North African campaign, including Col. David Stirling"s Special Air Service (SAS), the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), and Popski"s Private Army. The jeeps of No. 33 Troop were soon bristling with multiple machine guns in the manner of the SAS, and 30 CU also copied the LRDG in obtaining supply trucks to increase their radius of action and independence of movement.
While 30 CU was now able and ready to fight for the spoils of war, the British First Army in Tunisia had created its own ad hoc intelligence-gathering unit, known as S-Force. This had no permanent organization but was commonly configured around a company of infantry and a military police detachment, with any other miscellaneous attachments judged necessary for the task in hand. Accordingly, S-Force was slow to deploy and c.u.mbersome in action. The quicker reactions of the self-sufficient 30 CU were graphically demonstrated on the night of April 21, 1943. During that day a German Tiger heavy tank-a formidable new threat to Allied armor that was the subject of much fearful speculation-was disabled at Medjez-el-Bab. Any captured example would be of immense value for technical a.n.a.lysis, as neither Britain nor the United States had any comparable tank even on the drawing board. As dusk fell, British troops attempted to drag away the fifty-six-ton behemoth but were driven off by German forces with the same intention. The recovery team called for infantry support but none was forthcoming; S-Force was alerted but was slow to react. Fortunately, 30 Commando Unit was on hand. They arrived quickly in their heavily armed jeeps, recaptured the Tiger, and protected the troops as they hauled their trophy away. This Tiger, undoubtedly the greatest technical prize of the Tunisian campaign, provided stark proof of the superiority of German weapons technology.
Following the Axis surrender in Tunisia, elements of 30 CU went on to serve during Operation Corkscrew on the island of Pantelleria in the Strait of Sicily, on Sicily itself during Operation Husky, on the Greek islands, in Corsica, and in occupied Norway. In November 1943, the unit returned to Britain to begin preparing for the next year"s landings in Normandy. The following month it was renamed 30 a.s.sault Unit, Royal Navy. This decision was in reaction to Hitler"s infamous October 1942 Kommandobefehl (commando order), which demanded the immediate execution after interrogation of all British commandos captured by German forces under any circ.u.mstances, even if surrendering. The mere change of t.i.tle was not, of course, recognized by the SS as legitimate protection. Nevertheless, 30 a.s.sault Unit was now ready for its most extraordinary campaign of the war.
ON JANUARY 11, 1943, DURING THE a.s.sAULT on Tripoli in North Africa, a pair of British Eighth Army armored cars of the 11th Hussars slowed to a halt at the center of the Roman amphitheater at Leptis Magna. There was just time for a photograph of the crews against the extraordinary backdrop of one of the world"s most magnificent cla.s.sical ruins. However, Lt. Col. R. Mortimer Wheeler of the Royal Artillery looked on in dismay as the heavy armored vehicles cracked the ancient Roman flagstones under their weight. As a peacetime archaeologist and keeper of the London Museum, Mortimer Wheeler winced at the damage that was being inflicted on one of the wonders of antiquity. He immediately consulted Brig. Maurice Lush, a civil affairs officer (CAO) at the British Military Administration in Tripolitania. Although Lush was baffled that anyone should be concerned about the "broken buildings," he prudently delegated the protection of the site to Mortimer Wheeler and another gunner officer and colleague from the London Museum, Maj. John Bryan Ward-Perkins. This decision proved to be the genesis of an extraordinary organization consisting of specially qualified British and American officers with the remit to identify and, if possible, prevent the destruction of cultural buildings and monuments in the path of the Allied armies. They would be known as the "Monuments Men."
In the same month, George Stout, an art conservator at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, wrote a letter to Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery in London, suggesting the creation of a "conservation corps" to accompany the frontline troops and forestall the destruction of important historical buildings and monuments. This letter coincided with the arrival on the desk of Lt. Col. Sir Charles Woolley-a world-famous archaeologist and a former colleague of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)-of a report by Wheeler and Ward-Perkins about their efforts to protect Leptis Magna. Woolley approached senior figures at the Casablanca Conference, urging the formation of a conservation unit before the next campaign was undertaken. In Woolley"s words: Prior to this war, no army had thought of protecting the monuments of the country in which and with which it was at war and there were no precedents to follow.... All this was changed by a general order issued by [Gen. Eisenhower] just before he left Algiers, an order accompanied by a personal letter to all Commanders.... The good name of the Army depended in great measure on the respect which it showed to the art heritage of the modern world.
On June 23, 1943, President Roosevelt established the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas-later known more succinctly as the Roberts Commission after its chairman, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. At the outset, equipment and transport were sorely lacking, and the aim of accompanying the frontline troops was not achieved during the invasion of Sicily on the night of July 910, 1943. The first of the Monuments Men, Capt. Mason Hammond, USAAF-a cla.s.sics professor from Harvard-landed on July 29. Fortunately, the damage to most of the cla.s.sical sites had been slight; Gen. George S. Patton, commanding the U.S. Tenth Army and himself a keen military historian, had taken Hammond"s directives seriously. Dismayed by the sight of the roofless Greek temples at Agrigento, Patton demanded to know if this damage had been caused by American firepower. A local farmer replied through an interpreter that this was not the case-it had happened during "the last war." When Patton asked which war he meant, the interpreter said that the farmer was referring to the Second Punic War of 218201 bce.
On September 3, 1943, the Allies landed on mainland Italy. The Fascist regime was simultaneously overthrown and Italy capitulated, but the country was immediately occupied by German troops under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. After fierce resistance, the Allies entered Naples on October 1, 1943, at a cost of much damage to the city. Both the Allies and the Germans now accused each other of atrocities and cultural vandalism, but it was the Hermann Goring Panzer Division that had looted many of the greatest Neapolitan works of art.
The Allies" eighteen-month advance northward would be delayed repeatedly by a succession of skillfully sited and stubbornly held defensive lines in difficult mountainous terrain. By January 1944, the Allied armies were stalled in front of the Gustav Line that guarded the approaches to Rome. The defensive emplacements were dotted along the ridgelines and mountaintops where the ancient Benedictine abbey of Monte Ca.s.sino towered over the strategic Rapido valley and Highway 6 to Rome. Built in 529 ce, the abbey was a symbol of everything that the Monuments Men were trying to protect from destruction, but their hopes were to be dashed. Although not actually incorporated into the Gustav Line, the dominating heights of Monte Ca.s.sino allowed observation over many miles. Despite pleas from the Vatican and after two major ground a.s.saults had failed to capture it, the abbey was pulverized by 1,400 tons of bombs by the U.S. Fifteenth Army Air Force. This was greatest failure of the Monuments Men during the war. Despite the sacrifice of the abbey, it still took several more months of heavy fighting before the position finally fell to Polish and French North African troops on May 18, 1944.
With the breaking of the Gustav Line, Rome was now within reach of the Allies, but there seemed to be every likelihood that the city and its millennia of treasures would be destroyed in costly street fighting. Uncharacteristically, Hitler declared both Rome and Florence "open cities"-meaning that Germany would abandon its defensive if necessary to prevent the destruction of those cities, which he held in cultural awe. Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, was the inspiration for his vision of Linz, and in May 1938, he had spent over three hours in the Uffizi Gallery in the company of his Axis partner Benito Mussolini. The Fuhrer was utterly enraptured but Il Duce less so. As he trailed behind Hitler, he was heard to mutter "Tutti questi vaffunculi quadri!" ("All these f.u.c.king paintings!") With the Allied landings in France now imminent, it would be the task of the Monuments Men not just to protect Europe"s historic heritage but also to find Hitler"s immense h.o.a.rd of artistic plunder and return it to its rightful owners. In the spring of 1944, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) teams congregated at Shrivenham in southwest England in readiness for D-Day. Other specialized units of military hunters were also being prepared to cross the Channel; in the fog of war, the trails they followed would eventually cut across those of Bormann"s conspiracies at several points. One of these organizations would be searching for signs of Hitler"s atomic weapons program and another for his looted gold.
IN AUGUST 1939, A MONTH BEFORE THE OUTBREAK of World War II, a group of concerned scientists, including Albert Einstein, had written to President Roosevelt to warn him of the dangers inherent in Germany"s lead in the field of theoretical physics. Their expressed concern that "extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed" led to the formation of the Uranium Committee to undertake nuclear research, but progress was dilatory. On October 9, 1941, Roosevelt was apprised of the findings of the British nuclear research program, code-named the MAUD Committee, later Tube Alloys, on the feasibility of the use of uranium for a bomb. The U.S. government displayed little interest until Pearl Harbor wrenched it into the war in December 1941. The Office of Scientific Research and Development was established the following month, resulting in the creation of the Manhattan Project into which the researches of the MAUD Committee were subsumed.
The first experimental nuclear reactor, built at the University of Chicago and named Chicago Pile-1, achieved a successful self-sustaining chain reaction on December 2, 1942, under the direction of Enrico Fermi, an emigre from Fascist Italy. By now, the scale of the scientific and industrial effort required to devise and construct an atomic weapon was recognized by the military director of the program, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, and his scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Numerous universities across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain embarked upon pure and applied research into the separation of uranium isotopes to produce weapons-grade material capable of nuclear fission and to investigate the properties of plutonium for an alternative type of atomic bomb. Over three years, some $2 billion and 130,000 personnel were devoted to the Manhattan Project, the largest military and industrial undertaking of World War II. It was comparable in size to the entire American automobile industry at that time.
Meanwhile, Gen. Groves and other military leaders were increasingly concerned as to the pace of atomic weapons development in Germany. At the instigation of Gen. George C. Marshall, an intelligence-gathering unit was established to determine the level of German progress and to disrupt any atomic weapons program. By early 1943, OSS sources in Europe were reporting rumors that German Wunderwaffen or "wonder weapons" would soon enter service, so it was logical to a.s.sume that the Germans were at the forefront of atomic weapons technology. For much of World War II, those entrusted with the direction of the Manhattan Project firmly believed that the Allies and Germany were engaged in a life-or-death race to develop the atomic bomb. There was no doubt that if Germany won, then London would be the first target for nuclear annihilation.
In reality, the Germans lagged far behind, due largely to the divisive nature of n.a.z.i governance (see Chapter 3). Unlike the Manhattan Project, with its strictly centralized control under Gen. Groves, German nuclear researchers were overseen by several bodies, including the Army Ordnance Office, the National Research Council, and even the Postal Ministry. Furthermore, the scant resources were divided between nine competing development teams all pursuing different agendas. Before the war, Germany had been the world leader in theoretical physics, culminating in the discovery of the theory of nuclear fission in December 1938, but since many of the leading figures in this field were Jewish, their work was increasingly dismissed as "Jewish physics." Of about twenty-six nuclear physicists at work in 1933, more than half would soon emigrate, including fourteen past or future n.o.bel laureates. Several of these Jewish refugees joined the Manhattan Project.
By January 1944, Bletchley Park had deciphered several messages concerning ballistic rocket development, but none referring to a uranium bomb. Taking these together with information from their other a.s.sets on the continent, MI6 and the Directorate of Tube Alloys (which had superseded the MAUD committee in late October 1941) concluded that there were no concerted plans for a German atomic bomb, but the Americans were not convinced. Understandably, as Groves later wrote, Unless and until we had positive knowledge to the contrary, we had to a.s.sume that the most competent German scientists and engineers were working on an atomic program with the full support of their government and with the full capacity of German industry at their disposal. Any other a.s.sumption would have been unsound and dangerous.
Lt. Col. John Lansdale Jr., head of security for the Manhattan Project, appointed Col. Boris T. Pash to form an intelligence-gathering unit that was designated Alsos-the Greek word for "grove" and thus a play on words of Gen. Groves"s name. Born to a Russian emigre family and a fluent Russian speaker with a visceral loathing for the Soviet Union, Pash worked for the U.S. Army"s G-2 intelligence division. Samuel A. Goudsmit, a Dutch-born Jewish physicist at the University of Michigan, was chosen as the scientific director of the Alsos Mission, and the team was in place in London by the time of the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944.
ALTHOUGH CDR. FLEMING"S 30 a.s.sault Unit (30 AU)-had worked alongside other British and American special units during the Sicilian and Italian campaigns, the groups had never had a truly harmonious relationship, and before the invasion of France all parties rea.s.sessed the roles of their respective units. Significant changes in operating methods were implemented, but, above all, cooperation rather than compet.i.tion was now the watchword. The priority was the identification of potential targets in northwest Europe, itemized in "black books" carried by 30 AU. The most pressing problem in the early summer of 1944 was to discover the launch ramps for V-1 flying bombs-the real inspiration for the rumors about German "wonder weapons." These sites were now proliferating in northern France despite a concerted Allied bombing and interdiction campaign to destroy them.
The individual training of 30 AU personnel was intense, embracing many skills, including languages, parachuting, demolitions, photography, street fighting, and even lock-picking and safecracking, courtesy of special courses at Scotland Yard. By now, 30 AU was privy to all the plans for Operation Overlord and the invasion of France. Prior to D-Day, all the 30 AU field troops were issued with a "get-out-of-jail-free" card signed "By command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Eisenhower"-the overall commander for the invasion of Normandy-and bearing in bold block capitals the order that "The bearer of this card will not be interfered with in the performance of his duty by the Military Police or by other military organization."
After the disappointing performance of the ad hoc S-Force units in North Africa and Italy, a new organization was created with the task of securing specific targets of military or scientific importance and safeguarding doc.u.ments, equipment, and any other objects of strategic value before the enemy destroyed them-or, more commonly, before they were looted by liberated foreign slave workers or even by Allied troops. For this purpose, specialized Consolidated Advance Field Teams (CAFT) were formed from experts in particular areas of science and technology, to form part of a new Target Force or T-Force organization. Each of the American, British, and Canadian armies committed to the liberation of northwest Europe would have its own T-Force. Their organization incorporated a truck-mounted infantry unit to capture and secure the chosen targets, while the CAFT investigation teams or "a.s.sessors" searched each location for items of scientific interest or technological value.
While military and scientific technology was the primary objective of the T-Forces, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) also established teams to search for n.a.z.i gold and other valuables. Known as "Gold Rush" or "Klondike" teams, these came under the control of the formidable Col. Bernard Bernstein, the financial adviser to Gen. Eisenhower for civil affairs and military government. There was hardly a high-ranking officer from Eisenhower downward who did not defer to Col. Bernstein when it came to n.a.z.i loot and his scrupulous procedures for dealing with its correct disposal. All these measures were part of the meticulous planning for the invasion of Hitler"s Fortress Europe in the summer of 1944.
Chapter 8.
THE HUNTING TRAIL TO PARIS.
AMONG THE FIRST GROUPS TO LAND on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, D-Day, were elements of both 30 a.s.sault Unit and the British Second Army"s T-Force.
On June 10, Woolforce-named after the commanding officer of 30 AU, Lt. Col. A. R. Woolley, Royal Marines-landed in the American sector on Utah Beach at Varreville and moved inland toward St. Mere eglise, where the troops encamped in a field without digging protective trenches. An enemy aircraft flew over and dropped two devices that exploded overhead, dispensing submunitions that made a peculiar fluttering noise in the air.... For a while nothing else happened; then the whole field was lit by sharp flashes and explosions, like heavy machine cannons firing sporadically around us. The explosions did not last more than half a minute. In that time, the Unit lost 30 percent of its strength in killed and wounded. The aerial weapon was a large canister that burst in mid-air to release a quant.i.ty of "b.u.t.terfly bombs" that then fluttered down to land all over the field before exploding in a vicious shower of splinters.
These casualties were caused by the SD2 Sprengbombe d.i.c.kwandig-the first cl.u.s.ter bomb munition ever to be deployed on the battlefield and typical of the advanced German weapons technology that 30 AU was established to uncover.
Besides pursuing their customary task of searching out naval intelligence in the ports of Le Havre and Cherbourg, one of the primary missions of 30 AU was to capture a V-1 launch pad. Intelligence reports indicated that the rumored Vergeltungswaffe 1 (V-1 Vengeance Weapon) was almost ready for deployment-the first of several advanced weapons systems that Hitler believed could still win the war for Germany. Sketches and information had reached the British authorities in November 1943 from the OSS via the MI6 staff at the emba.s.sy in Bern, thanks to the courageous efforts of a French Resistance fighter, Michel Hollard. They showed the construction of a concrete launch pad in northern France, with a "ski-ramp" for an unidentified weapon. By December 1943, aerial reconnaissance had identified 103 "ski-ramps," all of them pointing ominously toward London. These were the first visible portent of Hitler"s Unternehmen Eisbar-Operation Polar Bear.
A concerted bombing campaign against all targets believed to be a.s.sociated with the V-weapons program had begun with Operation Hydra in August 1943-raids on the V-weapon design center at Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea-followed that November by Operation Crossbow against the heavily protected V-2 bunkers at Watten and the V-3 "supergun" site at Mimoyecques, both in France. After November 15, 1943, all bombing sorties against the V-weapons program came under Operation Crossbow. Despite a ma.s.sive effort, the ski-ramps proved difficult to hit, let alone destroy. By the summer of 1944, the whole northern tip of the Cherbourg (Cotentin) Peninsula was thick with launching sites, many of them pointing toward the invasion ports of Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Southampton. Fortunately, Operation Crossbow was sufficiently successful to disrupt Polar Bear and postpone its scheduled start date of March 1, 1944, when it could have seriously disrupted preparations for the Normandy landings.
In the early morning of June 13, 1944, Team 4 of 30 AU, led by Lt. Cdr. Patrick Dalzel-Job, Royal Navy, crept out through the American front lines to find a V-1 launch site that had been identified by the French Resistance some fifteen miles beyond the American beachhead. As the patrol moved out into the French countryside, the very first V-1 flying bomb landed on Bethnal Green, East London, at 4:18 a.m. Once the ski-ramp was secured, technical experts were able to inspect the site and captured examples of the flying bombs, so that new countermeasures could be implemented. These included the activation of the Diver air-defense plan for southern England, combining interception by high-speed fighters and antiaircraft guns aided by new American radar technology. By July 1944, almost half of all flying bombs that pa.s.sed over the Diver defenses were being destroyed. By the end of August, that figure rose to 83 percent with the first Gloster Meteor jet fighters of No. 616 Squadron RAF coming into action against the V-1s.
Another target for 30 AU was the crucial German radar installation around Douvres-la-Delivrande to the south of Caen. The Germans defended the facility with fierce determination for more than ten days, even receiving a nighttime parachute drop of ammunition and supplies by the Luftwaffe. It was finally captured, at the cost of heavy casualties, on June 17, after a combined a.s.sault by 41 Royal Marine Commando, divisional artillery, and tanks. 30 AU was quickly on the scene and recovered not only much useful intelligence on the capabilities of the radar system itself, but also a map showing the location of all radar stations across Europe and their exact specifications. A subsequent intelligence report stated that this was "a.s.sessed in the Admiralty as the greatest single technical capture of the war."
On the day before, June 16, Hitler"s Operation Polar Bear had begun in earnest, with 244 flying bombs launched from across northern France. Of these, 45 crashed on takeoff, 144 reached England, and 73 actually fell on London. The British population had stoically borne the Blitz of 194041 and nuisance raids up to 1943, but this attack was different. Quickly nicknamed the "buzz bomb" or "doodlebug," the V-1 carried a warhead of 1,870 pounds of amatol, which caused ma.s.sive blast damage. This was compounded by the traumatic psychological effect when the loud spluttering noise of its pulse-jet engine suddenly cut out over the target: there was then just twelve seconds of silence before the bomb crashed to earth, and that sudden silence meant that someone, somewhere in London, was going to die. After five years of deprivation and rationing, the morale of Londoners suffered severely under this new threat. Many left the city, while the government organized the evacuation of 360,000 women and children as well as the elderly and infirm. It was the dawn of a new era in warfare-the birth of the cruise missile-and the Germans were once more at the forefront of weapons technology.
Over the coming months, 30 AU spent much of their time in pursuit of the V-1 and V-2, often working in concert with local Resistance fighters who provided much valuable intelligence. Before the last V-1 launch site within range of London was overrun in October 1944, 2,515 flying bombs-or only one-quarter of those launched-had actually hit the target area, causing 22,892 casualties, including 6,184 deaths. Each one was a personal tragedy. However, at just 1.39 deaths per bomb launched, the V-1 bomb was hardly going to tilt the balance of the war back in Germany"s favor, given the inexorable buildup of Allied forces on both the Western and Eastern Fronts.
The Western Allies now enjoyed a superiority of 20 to 1 in tanks and 25 to 1 in aircraft; their air forces possessed 5,250 bombers, capable of delivering some 20,000 tons of bombs in a single lift. Germany was fighting on three fronts, while its cities and industries were being pulverized from the air. Between June and October 1944, the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces would drop half a million tons of bombs on Germany-more than the entire amount during the war up to that time.
AFTER THE MILITARY DISASTERS OF 1943, Hitler had a.s.sumed the mantle of supreme war leader and was increasingly contemptuous of his Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces or OKW). His immediate military staff was by now reduced to compliant sycophants, headed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, commander in chief of OKW, and Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff. The Fuhrer became increasingly dismissive and intolerant of any questioning of his military decisions-decisions that were ultimately disastrous for the Wehrmacht due to Hitler"s impatience with the necessary staff work, his poor grasp of the realities on the ground, and his obsession with holding territory at all costs regardless of tactical considerations.
To Martin Bormann, such matters were of little concern, and he was usually excluded from military briefings or conferences. He was thus saved from death or serious injury when, at 12:40 p.m. on July 20, 1944, German Resistance leader Col. Claus von Stauffenberg placed a briefcase carrying a bomb under the oak table around which Adolf Hitler was holding a military conference at his Wolfschanze headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia. The bomb exploded as planned, killing three staff officers and a stenographer and wounding several others, but Hitler survived, despite burns, numerous wooden splinters driven into his legs and face, and a perforated eardrum. Operation Valkyrie, the latest of several plots to a.s.sa.s.sinate Hitler, had come the closest to success, and after its failure the regime exacted a terrible revenge. Some 5,000 people were arrested and nearly 200 executed; under the new laws of Sippenhaft or "blood guilt," the Gestapo swept up relatives and even friends of the plotters on the grounds of guilt by a.s.sociation. Hitler ordered that the conspirators were to be "hanged like cattle," and many of them died by slow strangulation while suspended from meat hooks in Plotzensee Prison in Berlin. The Allies did nothing while every vestige of the resistance movement in Germany was ruthlessly eradicated. Since the leading figures in the plot had been old-school military officers, Hitler"s lack of confidence in the traditional Wehrmacht leadership cla.s.s turned to actual suspicion. Henceforward, he would withhold his trust from all but the SS and his immediate circle-and particularly, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.
Despite the Allies" material superiority, their progress in Normandy was dispiritingly slow and costly; they had hoped to break out of the beachhead within two weeks of D-Day, but in fact it took two months. On the same day that Col. von Stauffenberg"s briefcase bomb exploded, Operation Goodwood, Gen. Bernard Montgomery"s offensive around Caen at the east of the beachhead, failed with heavy losses. Operation Cobra, Gen. Omar Bradley"s planned American breakout from the west of the beachhead, had been scheduled for July 20, but was postponed for five days. On the Eastern Front, however, the largest land battle of World War II was bleeding the Wehrmacht to death.
ON JUNE 22, 1944, THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY of Hitler"s Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army launched its greatest offensive of the war so far. This Operation Bagration was a brilliant example of maskirovka-literally, "deception through camouflage": a system of sophisticated signals procedures whereby whole phantom armies were created to deceive the Germans thanks to bogus radio traffic, false troop movements, and disinformation via Red Army "deserters." The Soviets covertly a.s.sembled a force of 118 rifle divisions, eight tank and mechanized corps with 4,080 tanks and a.s.sault guns, six cavalry divisions to negotiate the treacherous Pripyat Marshes, and thirteen artillery divisions with some 10,563 guns and 2,306 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers. These combined armies of 2.3 million troops were covered and supported by 2,318 fighters, 1,744 Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft, and 1,086 a.s.sorted bombers, with another 1,007 in reserve.
Because of the success of maskirovka, the Germans had no real intelligence as to the time or place of this Soviet summer offensive. It was thought that the main a.s.sault would strike their Army Group North Ukraine, but the target was in fact Army Group Center in Byelorussia. This command had some 800,000 troops supported by 9,500 artillery pieces but only 553 tanks and a.s.sault guns. Worse still, only 20 percent of the Luftwaffe was now deployed on the Eastern Front, since the bulk of its fighters were needed for air defense over Germany. Army Group Center had just 839 aircraft in support. The battle raged for two months and ended with the destruction of Army Group Center in Byelorussia and the arrival of the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw. German casualties rose from 48,363 in May 1944 to 169,881 in July and a staggering 277,465 in August-higher even than the slaughter at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Bagration was the most calamitous defeat suffered by the Wehrmacht in World War II; it lost more men in three months than it had in the whole of 1942.
On August 15, 1944, the Allies conducted a successful amphibious a.s.sault in the south of France-Operation Dragoon. On the following day, Hitler finally gave permission for Army Group B to withdraw from Normandy, but it came too late. The bulk of the army group"s forces were surrounded in the Falaise Pocket, where resistance ceased on August 22 after a sustained bombardment by Allied tactical airpower.
THE DAY BEFORE THE BOMB ATTEMPT on Hitler"s life, on Sunday, July 19, 1944, Lt. Cdr. Dalzel-Job"s Team 4 from 30 AU entered the ruins of Caen on the hunt for enemy doc.u.ments and equipment. Approaching the Ba.s.sin Saint-Pierre (St. Peter"s Basin), Team 4 came across a group of armed Frenchmen and a man in rough peasant clothes who spoke excellent English. The man proved to be S.Sgt. Maurice "Jock" Bramah of the Glider Pilot Regiment, whose aircraft had crashed into an orchard behind enemy lines on the night of June 56. Bramah had been shot through the lungs by a German machine gunner and left for dead, but was found by some Frenchmen and cared for in a local village. The Germans learned of his whereabouts and sent two soldiers to capture the wounded pilot on June 16. Bramah killed them both, escaped, and joined the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Now, just three weeks later, Bramah introduced 30 AU to the FFI and the wider French Resistance network.
Their a.s.sistance and local intelligence would prove extremely valuable in the later stages of the French campaign. In particular, their knowledge of the German dispositions in and around Paris allowed 30 AU to enter the city undetected from the east. On August 25, 1944, Woolforce was able to travel via unguarded roads and streets indicated by the French Resistance on a mission to attack the Kriegsmarine headquarters in the Rothschild mansion on the Boulevard Lannes. Marine "Bon" Royle began systematically to blow open the various safes with plastic explosives. As he recalled, I had blown over 80 safes by now and was running short of plastic and fuse and I"d been using potato masher [German hand grenade] detonators for some time.... The safes were proving disappointing and yielding very little. One had a pair of black dress shoes inside that actually fit. I got married wearing them. Another contained a list of German admirals" birthdays but beyond revealing that some of them were octogenarians it did little else for the cause.
Other targets were more productive. At the torpedo store at Houilles outside of Paris, 30 AU discovered a new experimental eight-bladed torpedo propeller, a revolutionary powered aircraft gun turret, high-speed Morse and burst-transmission radios, and cipher equipment. In September 1944, 30 AU moved to the Pas-de-Calais in its continuing quest for V-1 and V-2 sites and to track down French scientists who had worked on the V-3 Fleissiges Lieschen (Busy Lizzie) supercannons at Mimoyecques; these were designed to bombard London with 300-pound high explosive sh.e.l.ls at a rate of 300 an hour. By then 30 AU had recovered some 12,000 doc.u.ments dealing with innumerable subjects, from the complete order of battle of the Kriegsmarine to the capabilities of revolutionary new U-boats, and from the latest communications equipment to maps of German minefields in the North Sea.
AS 30 AU WAS APPROACHING PARIS from the east, Col. Boris Pash and the Alsos Mission were entering the city from the west, at 8:55 a.m. on August 25. So keen was Pash to reach his objective that his jeep was the first American vehicle into the city, following closely behind the tanks of the Free French 2nd Armored Division. Under sporadic sniper fire, Pash"s unarmed jeep was the fifth vehicle in a column of tanks that rolled into the center of Paris. In the late afternoon, Pash reached his destination, the Radium Inst.i.tute on rue Pierre Curie, where he met the man he desperately wished to interview. Frederic Joliot-Curie, a n.o.bel Prize winner in chemistry and the son-in-law of the Curies, was in charge of the only cyclotron-particle accelerator-in Europe and was also a leading authority on nuclear chain reactions. Over a celebratory bottle of champagne that evening, Pash learned that Joliot-Curie knew remarkably little about German research into uranium, but he did disclose that there was a research facility at the University of Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine, then still far behind enemy lines.
Paris also saw the debut of a joint Anglo-American T-Force of some fourteen inspection teams attached to the U.S. 12th Army Group; a comprehensive, coordinated intelligence-gathering organization would become ever more important as the Allied forces approached Germany itself. In Paris, T-Force activities were compromised by the fierce rivalries between Gaullist and communist factions that on occasion bordered on shooting wars. A further problem was a lack of infantry to secure the targets, as the French population was bent on "les arrestations et l"epuration" (arrests and purges) of perceived collaborators, ransacking many properties in the process.
Yet another of the specialized search units to enter Paris on August 25 were the Monuments Men. Second Lt. James Lorimer of the MFA&A program was attached to the logistical units of the U.S. 12th Army Group, so he was able to enter Paris that day with the first U.S. Army supply convoy to reach the city. Lorimer immediately went to the Louvre, where he stared in despair at the museum"s long, empty galleries, now quite bare of paintings and sculptures. It was there that he met Mademoiselle Rose Valland, a true heroine of the French Resistance.
Throughout the n.a.z.i occupation, this forty-six-year-old art historian had played on her dowdy appearance to remain in the background at the Jeu de Paume, where she acted as curator. This outstation of the Louvre was used as the main repository for all the artworks looted by Alfred Rosenberg"s ERR (see Chapter 4) in France, where every item was meticulously cataloged and photographed before shipment to Germany. Every night, Rose Valland removed the negatives, which were then printed by a colleague in the Resistance while she transcribed the notes on every item and its proposed destination in Germany. Early each morning she returned the negatives before the start of the working day. Accordingly, she was able to pa.s.s to the Free French government in London lists of almost all the looted treasures that left for Germany. The regular flow of information from the various Resistance movements across Europe was routinely acknowledged by cryptic messages broadcast over the BBC radio service-for instance, a typical communication for Rose Valland might be "La Joconde a le sourire"-"The Mona Lisa is smiling." She herself had little to smile about: discovery of her activities would result in certain death, either by firing squad or by lingering maltreatment in a concentration camp.
Even as the Allies were approaching Paris, hundreds of artworks were still being packed into crates at the Jeu de Paume for onward shipment. On August 2, 1944, 148 crates of looted paintings were loaded aboard freight cars attached to Train No. 40044 at Aubervilliers railroad station. As usual, Valland had details of the shipment orders and the destinations in Germany. She provided these to the Resistance and asked if there might be some way to delay the train"s departure, hopefully until the arrival of the Allies.
By August 10, Train No. 40044 was fully laden and ready to start its journey to Germany. Coincidentally, the French railroad workers in the area went on strike that day. Within forty-eight hours they were cajoled back to work. The train departed only to be mysteriously shunted into a siding. There the engine inexplicably developed mechanical problems; these were eventually rectified, but then broken couplings and seized brakes caused a further forty-eight-hour delay. Eventually, Train No. 40044 got on the move again-only to be halted when two engines collided and became derailed at a notorious bottleneck in the railroad system. The art train was trapped, never to leave Paris.
Chapter 9.
CASH, ROCKETS, AND URANIUM.
THE SIMULTANEOUS DESTRUCTION of Army Group Center in Byelorussia and Army Group B in Normandy convinced Martin Bormann of the need to accelerate his projects Eagle Flight and Land of Fire. He accordingly convened an extraordinary meeting of German industrialists, business leaders, and selected party officials that took place on August 10, 1944, at the Hotel Maison Rouge on the rue des France-Bourgeois in the eastern French city of Strasbourg. Bormann was not present in person, since he needed to be at the Fuhrer"s side, but the conference was chaired by his personal emissary, SS Gen. Dr. Otto Scheid. Among those present were representatives of Krupp, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Bussing, Volkswagen, and a host of other companies-including, of course, IG Farben.
In an opening statement, Dr. Scheid announced that the steps to be taken as a result of this meeting will determine the post-war future of Germany. German industry must realize that the war cannot now be won and must take steps to prepare for a post-war commercial campaign, which will in time ensure the economic resurgence of Germany, with each industrial firm making new contacts and alliances with foreign firms. This must be done individually and without attracting suspicion. However, the NSDAP and the Third Reich will stand behind every firm with permissive and financial support.
The shifting of capital abroad was to ratchet into high gear and the "permissive" support took the form of Bormann"s declaring some provisions of the 1933 Treason Against the Nation Act null and void. This law had mandated the death penalty for violation of foreign exchange regulations, for the export of capital, and even for concealing foreign currency. The steel magnate Fritz Thyssen had actually fallen victim to this legislation, but, unsurprisingly, had escaped execution; he and his wife had been detained in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, but in some comfort. In January 1950, Thyssen and his wife would emigrate to Buenos Aires, from where he controlled his business empire until his death in 1951.
With exquisite hypocrisy, Bormann made use of the Thyssen family"s private bank in Rotterdam, Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., which had originally been founded by August Thyssen in 1918 in order to send illicit funds out of the Kaiser"s Germany as defeat in World War I approached. Money was channeled from this bank to the Union Banking Corporation of New York, which was wholly owned by Fritz Thyssen"s Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG (United Steelworks). From there it was disbursed to accounts in other American banks, including National City Bank, Chase National Bank, and Irving Trust, and used to buy stocks in U.S. companies and corporations. The flow of capital from Germany now became a flood, as ma.s.sive amounts of the reserve equity of German industry were routed through the Deutsche Bank AG to Switzerland and beyond. h.o.a.rds of precious metals, gems, stocks, patents, and bearer bonds were transferred to anonymous bank accounts and safety deposit boxes around the world, from Ankara to Andorra and from Vigo to Valparaiso. In 1938 the number of industrial and commercial patents registered to German companies was 1,618. After the Maison Rouge conference, this figure rose to 3,377. These patents were transferred to foreign sh.e.l.l companies so they were beyond the reach of the Allies but still valid to protect the merchandise and production processes of German companies. There was to be no repeat of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, when Germany"s national a.s.sets had been laid bare to the victors as spoils of war.
At a later session of the Maison Rouge conference, Dr. Kurt Bosse of the Reich armaments ministry advised the industrialists that the military situation was grave and the war effort faltering "but that it would be continued by Germany until certain goals to ensure the economic resurgence of Germany after the war had been achieved." Dr. Bosse continued, "From this day, German industrial firms of all ranks are to begin placing their funds-and, wherever possible, key manpower-abroad, especially in neutral countries." In closing the meeting, he observed that "after the defeat of Germany, the n.a.z.i Party recognizes that certain of its best-known leaders will be condemned as war criminals. However, in cooperation with the industrialists, it is arranging to place its less conspicuous but most important members with various German factories, as technical experts or members of research and design bureaux."
AMONG THE KEY FIGURES involved in Project Eagle Flight was the chairman of Deutsche Bank AG, Dr. Hermann Josef Abs, with whom Martin Bormann maintained a cordial relationship. Another was the former president of the Reichsbank and current director of the Bank for International Settlements, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. He was a leading coordinator of the export of capital through various Swiss banks, particularly Schweizerische Kreditanstalt of Zurich, Basler Handelsbank, and of course BIS. As part of the dispersal of personnel, a director of IG Farben, Baron Georg von Schnitzler, was sent to Madrid. His cover story was that he was fleeing arrest by the Gestapo, but Schnitzler"s true role was to coordinate the movement of monies and company a.s.sets via Spain to South America. This was achieved through the good offices of the Spanish banks Banco Aleman Transatlantico and Banco Germanico, both of which were owned by Deutsche Bank. It is estimated that some $6 billion flowed to Buenos Aires by this means, for investment throughout Latin America. Particular funds set aside for the personal benefit of the n.a.z.i leadership were transferred to South America as gold bullion, precious stones, and other valuables in the diplomatic bags of the Reich foreign ministry. Goring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, and other n.a.z.i officials all had deposit accounts in Argentina, but in fact Bormann had no intention of ever allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their kleptocracy-in his view this was money that belonged to the n.a.z.i Party.
Similarly, Bormann orchestrated the placement of all the financial officials, scientists, technicians, and security personnel a.s.sociated with Eagle Flight. The powerful companies that attended the Maison Rouge conferences, and their subsidiaries, provided Bormann with information concerning all their research programs and the innovative weapons technology then coming into service or under development. These weapons programs were doc.u.mented as to viability, location, and a.s.sociated key personnel. Nothing was to be left to chance in order to preserve the n.a.z.i Party. As early as November 7, 1942, the day before the Allied landings in French North Africa, Himmler and Bormann had met-in spite of their intense personal rivalry-to discuss the future of the party. Himmler later recounted their conclusions to his closest a.s.sociates: "It is possible that Germany will be defeated on the military front. It is even possible that she may have to capitulate. But never must the National Socialist German Workers" Party capitulate. That is what we have to work for from now on." It w