Oppenhoff’s fate had nothing to do with his personal beliefs. These, however, indicate the mentality of dignitaries regarded as “non-Nazis.” A new elite had emerged in Aachen before the city’s capture. As described by CIC agents, it was: “Shrewd, strong-willed and aggressive, made up of technicians, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, manufacturers and churchmen, … In the last ten years under Hitler their earnings ranged from 7,000 to 200,000 marks yearly (representing an upper-middle-class bracket). None of them suffered under the Nazi regime or ever, by word or deed, opposed it.”
From this elite, the U.S. Twelfth Army selected Oppenhoff to become chief burgomaster under American control. He was backed by Bishop Van der Valden, who, according to Captain Saul Padover, a professor of history and a member of the Twelfth Army’s psychological-warfare section, “endorsed Oppenhoff’s view that the American Military Government would give them time to reconstruct the economy without interference from political parties and trade unions…. If the United States knew its own interests, it would join Germany against the Soviet Union,” according to the Bishop and Oppenhoff.
Oppenhoff, a right-wing Catholic lawyer, said: “Germany can be divided into two categories: those who obey and those who command.” There had been chaos before Hitler, with forty political parties at each other’s throats. “Heaven help us,” the new Burgomaster told Padover, “if Americans permit the existence of political parties.”
This was the German singled out by the Nazis for execution. The effect can be imagined. He had recruited men who sounded equally fascist. They certainly offended Padover’s sense of democracy: “One or other repeats the slogans and clichés that Germany was dishonored by the Versailles Treaty, that the latter was too harsh … that the poor Reich is without space and must expand…. Nazi sympathizers, party members or German nationalists are appointed by military governments as the only available specialists. They look extremely presentable and have professional backgrounds similar to those of American Military Government officers. They place their likeminded friends in secondary positions. Our initial indifference to the politics of the situation leads in the end to a political mess.”
The Werewolves demonstrated that the Nazis would never be guilty of such laxity. (Fifteen years later, a Werewolf leader was arrested in Hanover: Gunter Welters was charged with promoting neo-Nazi activities. Other Werewolf leaders persist, but seldom get caught. They were handled more firmly during the Allied occupation. In the Communist East, they were simply shot.) Their first prominent victim, ironically enough, could have been expressing their own political instincts when he told Padover that an authoritarian system like that of Mussolini or Franco was best suited to the German “cadaver-obedience” mentality.
Gehlen’s plans for Werewolf read now like the paper plans of a desk-bound general, but he said they were based on his secret intelligence on the Polish resistance to the Nazis. More to the point, he proposed secret hide-outs for German Army weapons and preservation of important documents which would enable the military caste to reconstitute itself. He maintained later that these more prudent and less militant preparations were directed against the Bolsheviks, whom he had always known to be the ultimate enemy. For weeks, however, military trucks conveyed other papers vital to perpetuation of a Nazi myth, including the final Table Talks of Hitler as set down at Bormann’s direction. Microfilm copies were deposited in banks, from which they were rescued only years later, the originals having by then served their purpose.
Nazi propaganda had been exploiting a proposal by Henry Morgenthau to turn Germany into an agricultural nation. “This means the destruction of German industry!” Radio Werewolf huffed and puffed. “Germans will starve or be forced to migrate as working slaves. The Jew Morgenthau sings the same tune as the Jews in the Kremlin.”
While small boys joined his P-men, SS General Pruetzmann made his dash for safety in the rags of a refugee. Gehlen had already provided himself with false documents: “A simple matter for my intelligence organization. They forged the orders. We faked a Gauleiter’s signature. Hitler had strictly forbidden us to evacuate families but it was vital for my future mission that I transfer my wife and children to the Alps.” He had started to make arrangements back in midwinter. With Skorzeny operating on similar errands, he buried in the Alpine Fortress the papers that served him so well when the Americans arrived.
Martin Bormann at this time stayed in the Führer’s bunker. His ally Erich Koch, no longer boasting of how he would handle Ukrainians with vodka and whip, had requisitioned an icebreaker to flee through “that flooded field” the Baltic, for a rendezvous with an escape submarine at Kiel, where Bormann was presumably to meet him.
The Werewolves and the Alpine Fortress, the convincing reports that Skorzeny was out to kill Eisenhower, and the broadcasts threatening to hang and bury collaborators in the middle of the night, all combined to confuse and distract attention from Berlin, where Hitler in his bunker was not quite as embattled a figure as he seemed. Reports about an Alpine Fortress could not be ignored by Eisenhower, who wrote later: “If the German was permitted to establish [it] he might possibly force us to engage in a long-drawn-out guerilla type of warfare…. The purpose of the Werewolf organization was murder and terrorism.” He received from Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, in Washington, a proposal for “rapid action which might prevent the formation of organized resistance areas. The mountainous country in the south is considered a possibility.”
Churchill feared any diversion from Berlin, and there were sharp Btitish objections to a change in plan that would alter the shape of Europe. Eisenhower cabled that his decision was to concentrate upon reducing the Alpine Fortress before it became a Werewolf stronghold.
Werewolf schools were reported all over the place, and CIC estimates put the number of youngsters training under SS officers at some 5,000 in one particular week. A booklet appeared that reinforced a general sense of apprehension: Werwolf: Winke für Jagdeinheiten (Tips for Hunting Units). In reality, Chief Werewolf Pruetzmann was now bargaining through the Danish underground with British contacts in the hope that he might be given a safe-conduct in return for the betrayal of his friends.
The Vogelfrei legends, revived by the Werewolves, were particularly welcome to Bormann. The word meant “bird-free.” It derived from the medieval-style courts of revenge, which declared that anyone found guilty became like a game bird during the open season for hunters. The young Martin Bormann after World War I had busied himself with such tribunals, taking vengeance against the “November criminals” who negotiated in 1918 with the Allies. The medieval vigilantes swore on pain of death to hold and conceal their holy cause “from wife and child, from father and mother, from sister and brother, from fire and wind, from everything upon which the sun shines or the rain falls, from everything between heaven and earth.” Anyone found guilty, and not present at the ritual trial, became “bird-free,” and any member of the court could kill that person withont penalty. In the debased form of the post-1918 Freikorps such as Bormann had joined, there was no pretense of chivalry; the knights were ill-tempered soldiers, the victims were selected less for betrayal and treason than because of their supposed resistance to the demands of the roving gangs. Early Nazis revived the folklore and honored the composer of a ballad to the Werewolf, which in German mythology was protected by the Devil and had the power of turning from man into wolf and back again.
A Reorientation of Strategy, by General Omar Bradley, took all this seriously enough to advise that “the plans we brought with us over the beaches” had been rendered obsolete. “All indications suggest that the enemy’s political and military directorate is already in the process of displacing to the Redoubt [the Alpine Fortress] in Lower Bavaria.” Air cover, according to a SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) Intelligence Summary of March 1945 showed at least twenty areas of underground activities and numerous caves around Berchtesgaden. Allen Dulles reported from his observation post in Switzerland that
fanatical Nazis would make a last-ditch stand there. He had evidence of frenzied preparations under Major General von Marcinkiewitz to construct a mountain fortress.
Goebbels’s broadcasts and those of Radio Werewolf flooded the nation with hysterical warnings: “God has given up the protection of the people…. Satan has taken command. Horrible, unmentionable things are happening to our women and children.” There were secret recognition signals for boys and girls (some as young as nine), and the Wolfsangel, a runic letter to be painted on buildings occupied by those marked for vengeance. Goebbels gave speeches of incredible asininity: “We Werewolves consider it our supreme duty to kill, to kill and to kill, employing every cunning and wile in the darkness of the night, crawling, groping through towns and villages, like wolves, noiselessfy, mysteriously.”
Bormann diverted Allied military operations in a maneuver of magnificent deception. The bogus fortress was a flight of imagination. It provided cover for the large numbers of Nazis who were planning for the future: those who would conceal negotiable securities ranging from priceless police files to stolen foreign stocks and bonds before going into prison camp as military prisoners; those who would hide until they saw which way the Allied winds blew politically; those who knew without a doubt they were doomed to hang if caught. All these figures flocked to the area, knowing they could take their time. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before Allied search parties became a menace. Many of the trails could be traveled only by mule or on foot.
For years afterward, Eisenhower continued to demand a full-scale inquiry into the whole affair. While he was Allied Supreme Commander, the panic reached such proportions that he was obliged by his security men to stay inside the Paris compound of SHAEF because “Scarface Skorzeny and SS Air Troops are on a mission to kill you.” As Eisenhower’s intelligence chief commented later: “There were reports of German gunmen parachuting down as priests and nuns. Paratroops always seemed to come as priests and nuns.”
By this great diversion, Bormann made it easier for the Russians to overrun the area around Berlin. This was later given as a reason for suspecting that Bormann all along worked for the Russians. Gehlen, after his retirement as West German intelligence chief, insisted that Bormann intended Berlin to fall into Russian hands. It is worth remembering, however, that Bormann was not alone in being skilled at deception. He had property in the area of the Alpine Fortress that shortly became the residence of Gehlen’s new spy network. It was there that Gehlen concocted the report for the Americans that his fear of a Russian spy in Hitler’s inner circle had been confirmed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the “Grand Prince of Espionage” and onetime director of German military intelligence.
Bormann as a Russian spy was a diverting thought and also a good ploy. As to the Admiral, there is evidence that he collaborated in some way with the British; but it can be safely assumed, from what is known today, that he never identified Bormann as the spy in Hitler’s camp. He did claim that the Kremlin was receiving top-level intelligence and this worried him. Canaris was never a traitor. He warned the British of invasion plans after the fall of France in the hope of preventing a direct clash with a traditional enemy which he did not underestimate. He was hoping, even at that late stage, to form a Western alliance against Russia. The secrets of his overtures are locked in his diaries, which are yet to be made public, though some of the contents have filtered into the public domain.
The decision to remain with the Führer was made by Bormann because he understood better than anyone the need to keep within the bounds of German law. The later intelligence studies of Bormann’s mind make clear his meticulous approach to quite startling concepts. What first appeared to be lunatic schemes were seen, in retrospect, to have been carried off with such cool detachment that he got his reputation for being insensitive and a rural clod. He put in the order for the gasoline required to consume the bodies of Hitler and Eva with the same attention to detail that he put into getting the Führer’s written order that he was to be Nazi Party Minister. All the appointments of others meant nothing. He had demonstrated his control over propagandist Goebbels, and so accepted with his usual equanimity the appointment of that demented little man as Reich Chancellor; he knew Goebbels would be dead within a few more hours of Hitler drawing up his will.
It was inevitable that Bormann would stay to make everything legal. He was hated by almost everyone who saw him operate; but it was the kind of hatred that gives birth to fear and then to obedience. Once he had the Führer’s seal stamped upon him, there were still, a few last intrigues to be carried out in tidy fashion. The last effective enemies had to be conquered. Death for Hitler, certainly. Death for Goebbels, who had become Bormann’s lackey and served no further useful purpose. Himmler’s disposal was arranged (“Fresh treachery afoot!” Bormann cabled Hitler’s successor, Doenitz, even before Hitler was dead. “Himmler offering surrender … take instant and ruthless action….”) Death for archenemy Göring (“Are you familiar with Reich Leader Bormann’s intrigues to eliminate me?” wailed Göring to Doenitz). There were precious notes to be packaged and sealed, and all the records Bormann had kept of his first stage in the saga of the National Socialist reformation of the world. He was seen by Hanna Reitsch “recording the momentous events for posterity” before spiriting the accounts out. There were scores to be settled, knots to be tied, before Bormann crawled out of the rubble.
The rubble today in Berlin is called the “Collected Works of Hitler.” These are mountains of rubbish (Monte Klamotten), seventy million cubic meters of ruin. Eight million Germans perished in the war. The stench still lingers in Berlin. East and West zones smell to high heaven of operatic tragedy and boiled cabbage.
An earnest inquirer can still discover there some surprising modifications to conventional history—Artur Axmann, for instance.
Axmann was, when discovered again in 1972, a plump and clearly most successful “businessman.” He lost an arm fighting the Russians and is hardly enthusiastic about Communism. Nonetheless, he pours scorn on revised versions of the Battle of Berlin, in which it is said the Russians walked into a virtually undefended city.
Axmann is the single authoritative eyewitness quoted by those who say Bormann died under fire in the early hours of May 2, 1945. Yet a respected authority on Nazi Germany, Hugh Trevor-Roper, commented at the time that “whether we believe Axmann or not is a matter of choice…. If he wished to protect Bormann his natural course would be to give false evidence of his death.”
That was said when Axmann appeared as the only person claiming to have seen Bormann’s dead body.
But now he is not positive at all.
Artur Axmann, a Berliner, was leader of the Hitler Youth thrown into the defense of Berlin. Events when he was thirty-two years old still have the familiarity of a neighborhood event. The names of places that assume a particular significance in all the histories written about this period are, for him, part of everyday life. They are incidents along the block where he lived.
His description of the bombardment of Berlin and the crossfire that night is vivid and detailed. There was never any question, he says, of taking a casual stroll out of the Führer’s bunker, even if the Russians had not yet zeroed in upon it. “You need to have been a soldier to understand the Russians weren’t fooling around. They were moving into a city that symbolized everything they hated, with as much obsessive ferocity as we attacked Stalingrad—not for its strategic value, but for what it represented. The Russians had heard our broadcasts that Hitler was in Berlin. They knew also that the British and Americans believed reports of a last stand in Bavaria. They took their time moving in, but they had no mercy. They shot everything that moved.”
So Bormann could have been killed? At fifty-nine, Axmann was less certain. He thought he saw Bormann lying dead alongside Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger. The two men, he thought, were bowled over by an explosion on the bridge over the railroad tracks to the Lehrter Station. Now he recalled only that he passed two unconscious men in the dar
k of night among many dead and dying. He had since been told that Stumpfegger broadcast from Russia. So he was not sure about anything. He had made his way to the Alpine Fortress, knowing there would be nothing in the way of fortifications but having been instructed to join one of the Hitler Youth units hiding in the mountains. He was less fortunate than others, who found safety in Italy; but then, he was not intent upon fleeing Germany altogether. His record was clean, and he could serve the cause better at home. When he moved down to an American military base, he was prepared for the interrogators. The story of Bormann’s death put them off other lines of inquiry.
Doubt was cast on his story when, in 1965, an attempt was made to uncover Bormann’s body. Axmann had said he lay dead beside Hitler’s personal surgeon, Stumpfegger. Berlin Post Office No. 40, the Lehrter Station branch, had notified Frau Gertrud Stumpfegger of her husband’s death on the railroad bridge. Four mailmen were said to have buried him, along with a shorter and thickset man, in Exhibition Park. Finally, the park was dug up. Nothing was found to corroborate the report; certainly there was no evidence of Bormann’s decayed corpse. A repeat performance in 1973 produced skulls and bones, which by that time were regarded with a jaundiced eye by the general public.
It boiled down to this. Axmann, a fervent Nazi with a responsible position in the Hitler Youth, the successor to Bormann’s homosexual old crony Baldur von Schirach, went hotfoot to the Alpine Fortress, some four hundred miles by road through extremely dangerous territory occupied by enemy armies. He traveled fast, knowing Hitler was dead and Germany on the point of surrender. He headed where others were gathering—men wanted as major war criminals. By the time these guilty men had assembled, the Allies knew there was no mountain fortress with Hitler directing guerrilla armies in a new campaign that might last years. Hitler was dead in Berlin. Bormann had vanished. Allied soldiers relaxed. By the time Artur Axmann came out of hiding, there was a general willingness to believe his account of Bormann’s death.
The Bormann Brotherhood Page 15