The Reichsbank Robbery

by Colin Roderick Fulton

  “I’m afraid you are going to have to be careful, my hero, and let me take charge. But first, let us just lie for a minute.”

  She dropped her head onto his right shoulder and let her right hand slide down to his member, which was creating a sizeable mountain out of the bed covers. She began to caress it, running her thumb over its head until he began to move. She lifted herself slightly so the nipple of her left breast pressed against his face. Bringing his right arm around so that he could caress her back, he gently took the nipple in his mouth and rolled it between his teeth and tongue. She moaned and murmured an endearment. After a few minutes, she pushed the bedclothes right back and kneeling, looked down at him. Although the effort hurt, he moved his left hand to her vagina, gently caressing, feeling her wet and pliant.

  “Lie back,” she said with a throaty whisper, moving her leg and crouching over him. She gently guided his entry and then sat back with a smile and began to move, her body rising and falling to his thrusts. He held her waist with his left hand, the pain almost unfelt, while with his right he cupped her breasts and caressed her nipples.

  Thus joined, they continued for five minutes or so until their shared urgency quickened the pace to a mutual climax, hers first and he following seconds later. She stayed upright for half a minute, her groin muscles flexing as the tremors coursed through her body and her breathing slowly returned to normal. Only then did she divest herself of his still half erect penis and lie next to him.

  “Oh, Colonel,” she sighed with a satisfied smile. “If I could, I would give you the Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds to your Knight’s Cross.”

  Hundreds of miles away in Berlin, fate was taking a hand. As the lovers lay soporific and satisfied in each other’s arms, a large force of American bombers crossed the Channel heading across the Zuider Zee and the Low Countries towards the German border.

  The weather during that winter was bad, so much so that many German cities were spared the incessant air attacks that had marked the last half of 1944. Even Berlin had gained a respite from the attention of the Allied bombers. There had been no major raid since early December because heavy cloud had covered much of the city for most of the time.

  Unfortunately, on this Saturday, the Allied weather forecasters had predicted clear skies in the morning, followed by intermittent cloud and rain. This window in the sky was just what the American Air Force chiefs wanted. They dispatched no fewer than 1,003 bombers escorted by almost 600 fighters to attack the Nazi capital.

  Almost the entire force reached Berlin. For those few Berliners who had not obeyed the air-raid sirens and run for the shelters they were a magnificent sight. At 26,000 feet they appeared like silver arrows at the head of hundreds of long wispy vapour trails. The blue sky was clear except for the black sooty balls of the flak bursts, which soon appeared even more numerous than the marauding bombers as 1,200 anti-aircraft guns began to spew forth tracer, shell and high explosive.

  Many of the bomb aimers in the B17s and B24s now in control of their respective aircraft used the Unter Den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate as aiming points from which to bomb their chosen targets, or just emptied their loads into the heart of the city.

  It was to be the heaviest raid on Berlin so far with 2,250 tons of bombs landing on the city wreaking havoc. The force of the explosives destroyed what little of Berlin had been left standing by the earlier raids, reducing tall buildings to piles of rubble only a few metres high and choking the city into a maelstrom of fire, debris, dust and smoke.

  Those few Berliners caught out in the open had no chance. They were killed by the force of the explosions, suffocated as the fires consumed all the oxygen, crushed under piles of bricks and concrete or burnt alive by the intense heat, their bodies literally melting on the pavement.

  Some of those in the air-raid shelters and cellars faired little better. If they survived the horrors of the raids they found they were trapped, the entrances to their boltholes covered by thousands of tons of rubble.

  Major buildings either hit or destroyed included some of the most important to the function of government for the Third Reich. The Gestapo headquarters, the People’s Court, Hitler’s Chancellery and the Berlin headquarters of the Reichsbank.

  Klaus Heger had joined the other 5,000 or so staff of the bank in the building’s basement bunker, where they huddled in terror as the concussion from the bombs shook the concrete walls, filling the air with cement dust. Then the lights went out and women began to shriek in terror as they were left in the dark. Many people, both men and women, involuntarily urinated in their clothes in fear, or vomited as they attempted to breathe the fetid air.

  Heger had remained relatively calm until the lights failed. Now he also joined the chorus and shrieked in pain, alternately calling his wife’s name and that of God to help him. A naval officer who had been caught in the bank when the raid started flicked his lighter to find the origin of the noise and on identifying Heger punched him hard on the face, at the same time ordering him to, “Halt’s Maul, Du verdammter Feigling!”

  The banker lapsed into silence, but even as he struggled to re-gain his composure the basement reverberated with the crashing sounds of some direct hits on the building above them. The Reichsbank’s president, Dr Walther Funk, seated on a bench only metres away from Heger, winced as he felt and heard the explosions. A banker even under these extreme conditions, he realised what they represented both to his bank and to the finances of the German government.

  In all, twenty-one 1,000-pound, high-explosive American-made bombs hit the Reichsbank and its immediate surrounds. It was a credit to the builders of this solid and imposing structure that the whole building had not immediately collapsed into rubble. Nevertheless, to all intents and purposes, it was now virtually a shell.

  To the staff emerging from what had almost been their tomb, it seemed as though their world had come to an end and they were in hell itself. It had started to rain, a slow drizzle, which helped lessen the fires without actually quenching the flames. The whole city was covered in a thick, black, acrid smoke stretching skywards to more than 20,000 feet.

  Heger stared in shocked horror at the shattered, blackened remains of his office. Much of the bank’s roof had gone, some of the exterior walls were partially destroyed with the interior walls leaning on their neighbour or simply too badly damaged to hold up their section of the ceiling. There were no windows, few doors remained on their hinges and most of the bank records were spread amongst the rubble like confetti.

  He picked his way through the broken glass and broken partitions to his desk. His filing cabinet had split open like an orange from the weight of a huge steel beam, which had dislodged itself from one corner of the ceiling. Half the cabinet’s contents were lying on the floor or buried under plaster and other rubble.

  Es ist zu ende – wir sind alle vetloren, he said to himself. His thoughts echoed his words. Everything was finished: Germany, their secret account and with it their escape plan.

  Dismally, Funk and his senior staff picked their way through the rubble and tried to assess the damage. For the Reich, it was catastrophic. The printing presses used for printing German bank notes had been completely destroyed, as had much of the information vital to the running of an economy. Unless they had been stored in the vaults and strong rooms, most details of individual accounts, loans and major transactions had either disappeared or were so hopelessly mixed up that it would take months, even years to re-collate.

  The only positive thing was the survival of the strong rooms and vaults, but Funk quickly realised another major raid would destroy even these hardy structures. Quite simply, it was imperative to have the nation’s assets, the deposits, reserves of gold, other precious metals, diamonds, cash currency and bonds moved out of the capital and moved quickly.

  The question was, by what means and to where?

  Schonewille had been lounging half-dressed on a sofa reading through some documents when the raid started. He had been feeling very p
leased with himself, because he had managed to clear up a problem that had been worrying him for months: namely, Sophia’s identity papers. Originally he’d been able to gather together some convincing civilian papers, but with security checks becoming even more frequent he had decided to strengthen his mistress’s identity.

  For weeks he had been keeping a watchful eye on the staff records of various SS departments, searching for any members of the various SS female auxiliaries, or female officers in certain SS administrative departments who looked like Sophia and whose age and other statistics matched those of his lover.

  Finally, he had a stroke of luck. He intercepted an official death notice, which informed the head of the personnel section, the personalamt, that SS Untersturmführer Käthe Haushofer had been killed in an air-raid. The second-lieutenant had been one of those on Schonewille’s list. She had looked very similar to Sophia, was only two years younger, less than two centimetres shorter and, most importantly, as an officer with the personnel section was, like Schonewille, under the same overall command: the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office.

  Schonewille simply destroyed the document and had a fresh set of identity papers made up under the pretext that Untersturmführer Käthe Haushofer’s had been lost in an air-raid. A uniform was even easier to obtain. Although Sophia had at first refused to even contemplate wearing the uniform, it took little persuasion for Schonewille to convince her it would immeasurably strengthen her ability to pass through security and identity paper checks. He also hinted how the uniform would be helpful if they wanted to escape the Reich.

  Any further questions by the Jewess were halted by the air-raid sirens, so they went to the cellar with two other residents.

  When the all-clear sounded they emerged from its confines and immediately went outside. Already their suburb was covered in smoke and they could see the fires, which were engulfing the city. They were both horrified at the enormity of the flames and despite the light rain stood and watched the swirling black clouds turn the day into an eerie half light.

  Finally, the acrid smoke became too much and they retreated inside their apartment, shutting the windows to keep out the pungent odour.

  Schonewille was off duty, having been granted forty-eight hours leave, but he wondered whether he should report in. He attempted to phone his office, but was unable to get through, so he abandoned any thought of going into the city.

  Shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon he received a phone call from Heger. His friend sounded pathetic. Scarcely watching what he was saying, he informed the SS colonel how their plan was now in disarray and that there was little chance of using their secret account.

  “It’s all finished, Friedrich, it’s all finished,” he repeated. “I cannot locate the account. All the records relating to it were in my office and that’s a mess. We might be able to go through the central records if they have survived, but it will be difficult. I’m not sure what to do,” he finished lamely.

  Worried and angry, Schonewille tried to keep his temper in check. He half-succeeded, the effort causing his voice to choke. “Shut up, Klaus. Shut up, do you hear? Find out what the Brigadeführer thinks and report back to me, but not on the phone. Do you understand”?

  He replaced the receiver and stood silent, shaking his head. If ever he had doubted the reality before, now he knew. The Reich would not last long, maybe a few weeks, at best two months. He had to get a message to his brother immediately informing him what had happened.

  He still did not know what his father and brother had planned and the realisation that his life was dependent on so many people almost choked him.

  They all have their own agendas, he thought. Grauwitz, his family, even that fool Heger, while he was the man in the middle with no escape route. A tide of helpless rage threatened to engulf him. With an effort he managed to control what was threatening his equilibrium for he realised there was nobody near who he could vent his rage on. Sophia was out of the question. He needed her and she had never done anything to hurt him.

  Chapter Twenty

  10 February 1945

  The events of 3 February had completely changed the plans of the plotters. For a time there was no follow up, no new direction. To a degree, each of the parties now had to wait and see how events unfolded.

  The bombing changed little for the Wencks. Norway was now a relative backwater in the wider conflict. For General Helmuth Wenck it was quite clear he had a command and orders to follow. For Peter Wenck it was also simple. Without a command of his own he was a relatively free agent so, as before, he was engaged to fly transport missions to and from Germany while under the guise of preparing for a secret mission.

  For those in Germany, however, it was much more difficult. Schonewille’s superior, Obergruppenführer Dr Oswald Pohl, the Head of the Economic and Administrative Department of the SS, made sure his role of concentration camp auditor continued. Although the amount of valuables that could be gleaned from those pathetic wrecks who remained was small, there was still sufficient to make certain Schonewille was gainfully employed.

  Fret though he might, Heger was also too busy to worry over much. While Grauwitz remained his shadowy, elusive self, Heger was busy helping supervise the transfer of the Reich’s reserves from the shattered remains of the Reichsbank.

  As both Reich Minister of Economics and president of the Reichsbank, Dr Walther Funk was able to look at the disaster that had befallen his bank in two minds: that of a banker and that of a loyal servant of the Third Reich. Consequently, the decision he made as to the future of the bank’s contents fitted in very neatly to the needs of Germany.

  It fell on his second-in-command, Reichsbank Deputy President Emil Puhl, to implement the decision. The move was designed to fulfil two strategic aims. Create a safe haven for the bulk of the Reich’s monetary reserves and provide the necessary finances to continue the war. Funk and his cohorts decided to evacuate the officials of the most important departments to Weimar and Erfurt to run the Reichsbank from there. A few middle managers would be promoted and would run the Berlin operations from some of the other smaller branches that had so far survived the bombing. One of these managers was Klaus Heger. The reserves were to be transferred as far from Berlin as possible. The site chosen was a potassium mine at Merkers just over 300 kilometres south-west of Berlin, well clear of any of the front-lines.

  Normally the promotion would have pleased Heger, but now he could not have cared less. If the truth be known, he would have preferred being one of those transferred to Weimar or Erfurt and therefore away from the horrors of Berlin. Despite this, he dutifully did as he was bid and helped dispatch the Reichsbank’s treasures from the battered capital.

  On 9 February the first consignment left Berlin by train. The next day after work, Heger met with Schonewille.

  “Over a thousand million reichsmarks, our entire paper currency reserves has been sent by train to the south,” said Heger. “Would you believe it, Friedrich?” said the banker, shaking his head in disbelief. “There were more than a thousand sacks of paper money being tossed about like bags of wheat.”

  Schonewille nodded his head solemnly and asked, “Anything else? Is that all that’s gone?”

  Heger shook his head and explained how over four million American dollars had also been dispatched. Currency from other countries, including British Sterling and Swiss Francs, were to follow shortly.

  The SS colonel questioned his friend further, asking if there was any way of extracting money from the Reichsbank in the future. Heger shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure, Friedrich. I now have much more authority than previously, and I certainly have the ability and the wherewithal to lay my hands on quite large quantities of reichsmarks, but certainly not large amounts of foreign currency, or for that matter any gold bullion. Deputy President Puhl informed me our reserves of bullion and foreign currency are also being shipped south, possibly in a few days.”

  Schonewille cursed softly. German paper money was
useless. What they needed was foreign currency and bullion, things of use to them when they fled Germany’s borders. His only asset was the diamonds he had received at Auschwitz and they were not readily convertible to foreign cash here in Germany. However, they were easily transported and for this he was grateful.

  He asked about Grauwitz, but Heger shook his head, explaining how he’d had no word from the SS lawyer.

  Returning home, Schonewille began to pack for yet another trip to those few camps remaining in northern Germany. As usual the visits would be utilised to mask his other activities. Once clear of Berlin, he planned to contact his brother and arrange a meeting in Hamburg.

  His business completed, he reached Hamburg on 12 February, but was forced to travel onto Kiel for the rendezvous. They met in one of the city’s more down-market hotels and sat in the corner of the foyer talking in undertones so they were not overheard.

  Wenck gave his brother a new radio frequency and call-sign so he could be contacted in an emergency and suggested he should sit tight for a while. “Look, Friedrich, although I have never met him, I believe from what you’ve told me that Grauwitz is much too devious and hard-nosed to give up so easily. I bet he has a contingency plan up his sleeve. Not only is he a member of the SS but he’s a lawyer to boot. That type always plays two ends against the middle.”

  Schonewille could not help smiling at his brother’s reference to the devious nature of SS officers. Wenck, catching the smile, said half mockingly, “Present company excluded of course.”

  They grinned at one another and for a moment there was a bond between them. When they parted Schonewille hurried to catch a train south while Wenck went to a dilapidated office building near the docks to meet with Meunier. The reason he had not been able to travel to Hamburg for his rendezvous with Schonewille was because of Meunier who was in Kiel on official business and could not leave the city’s environs.

  The diplomat was all smiles. “My boy,” he said breathing schnapps fumes over the pilot. “I have fitted the last pieces into the jigsaw.”