by Sam Kean
After five miles of trudging, Lightning-A reached the town of Urfeld, an idyllic mountain village overlooking a cold, clear lake. An innkeeper waving a white tablecloth pointed them toward Heisenberg’s cabin up the road. Pash assigned several men to guard the town while he pursued the physicist. Somewhat rashly, he then divided his forces further, thanks to a hot tip. A Nazi propagandist named Colin Ross—who had traveled widely in the United States, and whom Goebbels had employed to urge Americans to embrace the master race—had also fled to the area with his family, and Pash decided it would be a feather in Alsos’s cap to arrest him. He sent three men in that direction and went to look for Heisenberg with just one companion.
Although less nerve-racking than the approach to Joliot-Curie’s cottage, the trek to the Eagle’s Nest was more arduous—a long uphill slog through snowdrifts. But at 4:30 p.m. on May 2, Pash finally arrived. The six Heisenberg children gawked at the Americans, and a bemused Elisabeth informed Pash that her husband had gone to visit his mother. She telephoned Werner and told him to hurry back.
A few minutes later Pash finally laid eyes on the man he’d been stalking for months. Far from looking like the most dangerous scientist in the world, Heisenberg seemed haggard, already defeated. Pash was cordial but firm in placing him under arrest. “At that moment, I took a deep breath,” he said. “Alsos was about to close the book on one of the most successful intelligence missions of the war—or so I thought.” That qualifier was necessary, because as soon as he and Heisenberg sat down to discuss what would happen now, gunfire erupted in the distance.
Not wanting to risk Heisenberg’s life, Pash left him behind and raced back to Urfeld. He found several bloody bodies lying in the village square. A group of German soldiers had attacked the Alsos guards there, but the Nazis got the worst of it, with two killed, three hurt, and fifteen taken prisoner. The remaining Germans had escaped into the forest to regroup—and possibly rally more troops.
Coincidentally, the trio Pash had sent to Colin Ross’s cabin returned to Urfeld around this time. They were ashen, shaken. The propagandist had remained loyal to his Führer to the very last, they reported: after hearing of Hitler’s death, he’d poisoned his wife and young son before shooting himself in the head.
As if the little stage of Urfeld needed more drama, a German general marched into town at this point and told Pash—in excellent English—that he had seven hundred soldiers nearby and wished to surrender. Not wanting to reveal how few troops he had, Pash accepted the surrender but said he’d have to wait until the next day to round up the Germans, given all his other responsibilities. In another bluff, Pash then turned to his lieutenant and told him to double the number of men on watch duty. The lieutenant, a little slow on the uptake, blurted out, “But we only have seven men, Colonel.” Pash groaned—the general was standing right there. It wasn’t clear whether he’d caught the blunder, though, so Pash feigned calm. He took the lieutenant by the arm, squeezing so hard he left a bruise, and repeated his order before shoving him off.
After dismissing the general, Pash ran to a local hotel, grabbed a phone, and demanded to be put through to a nearby town where American troops were stationed. He needed reinforcements on the double. But during the wait, the telephone wires got crossed, and a familiar voice with a German accent came on the line: “Ve know zere are not many uff you… Ve die for der Führer. Heil Hitler!” That answered that: the general had caught the blunder. Pash had to get the hell out of town, and as much as it killed him, he couldn’t risk taking Heisenberg along.
Furious, Pash hurried back to the blown bridge. If he could just get a few armored vehicles across, he might be able to dart over and nab Heisenberg. The engineers had arrived by then, and Pash drove them mercilessly, begging them to erect something, anything. It only had to hold for a few hours.
While they worked, a scout returned with ominous news. Back in Urfeld, a hundred SS troops had stormed the village square a few hours ago to hunt down the Americans. Finding none, they’d instead butchered some local townsfolk who’d cooperated with Alsos earlier that day, accusing them of collaborating with the enemy. Then they dumped the bodies in the lake and disappeared.
The scout had no idea where the Germans were now—perhaps lying in ambush. Pash didn’t hesitate. The engineers got a makeshift bridge erected around 4 a.m., and practically before the last boards were in place, Lightning-A rattled across in a convoy.
They crept along the road for several miles in the dark, stopping regularly to check for booby traps. But upon reaching Urfeld they got aggressive, making a show of force by sending in several armored vehicles with mounted machine guns. The bravado worked, and shortly after dawn the rogue German units in the forest began dribbling into the village to surrender.
Alas, this included a mountaineering unit with an ornery mule. No one could calm it down, and with the village square growing more chaotic by the minute, it finally reached its limit. Rearing up and kicking, it lashed out at the most convenient target in the vicinity—Boris Pash, who happened to be standing nearby. “The two hoofs came at me like pistons,” he recalled, catching him square in the back. “I landed ten feet farther away than I could have jumped under my own power.” The blow broke three ribs, and a gasping Pash was dragged to a local inn for treatment. Somewhat anticlimactically, then, the colonel did not make the final trip up the mountain to take Werner Heisenberg into custody.
Still, the pain couldn’t dampen Pash’s triumph, not after all he’d been through—not only that day, but stretching back to those long, futile months in Italy when Alsos seemed destined to be disbanded. He knew that Kurt Diebner had been arrested near Munich the previous day, and when his men returned an hour later with Heisenberg in tow, he felt a wave of satisfaction: every last member of the original Uranium Club was now in American hands. Lightning-A had struck Germany.
Noting the number of troops and vehicles the Americans had risked to capture this one man, Heisenberg’s neighbors in the village were awed. “Even Stalin could not have been better escorted,” one marveled. He wasn’t the only one who was impressed. As the retreating convoy left Urfeld, Heisenberg asked one of his American captors what he thought of this place. The soldier turned and took in the view—the forest, the mountains, the cold, clear lake nestled in the valley. He’d been all over the world, he finally said, but this was the most beautiful spot he’d ever seen.
The war in Europe ended five days later with Germany’s surrender. Alsos celebrated by getting stinking drunk with the wine they’d looted from Weizsäcker’s basement—all of excellent vintage. Having shot the moon with the Uranium Club, the bastard brigade could afford to be magnanimous to the Soviets, too, and invited a nearby platoon to their party. A thoroughly lubricated Boris Pash—his ribs apparently healing well—broke into a traditional dance “in the Russian manner,” squatting and kicking up a storm.
Not every member of Alsos, however, was feeling so cheerful. Samuel Goudsmit could be grouchy at the best of times, and he’d had an especially rough go of things that week. Two days earlier he’d had to interrogate his onetime idol Werner Heisenberg, an unpleasant but unavoidable duty. Despite Germany’s defeat, Heisenberg remained as arrogant and oblivious as ever, and when Goudsmit began asking questions, he launched into an enthusiastic account of all he’d achieved with his Uranium Machines, especially the 670 percent increase in neutrons. He then asked Goudsmit if the Americans had dared attempt such sophisticated research. For security reasons Goudsmit couldn’t tell Heisenberg the truth—that the Manhattan Project had lapped the Uranium Club, that scientists in Los Alamos would laugh at his puny 670. He nevertheless hesitated to lie to his old friend. He finally muttered that “certain features of the German experiments were new” to him and let Heisenberg draw his own conclusion. Heisenberg did—the most flattering one possible. He told Goudsmit not to worry: he’d catch the world up on this reactor business soon enough. The soul of generosity, Heisenberg even offered to give the Americans a tour of his a
tom cellar—the one Pash had dynamited.
This “sad and ironic” encounter left Goudsmit feeling queasy. And yet, perhaps trying to rekindle their old friendship, Goudsmit offered Heisenberg a job in the United States at one point, just as he had in Michigan six years earlier. “Wouldn’t you want to come to America now and work with us?” he said.
Heisenberg refused. “Germany needs me,” he insisted. Goudsmit could only sigh. It was the exact response Heisenberg had given back in Ann Arbor, word for word. After six years of war, Werner Heisenberg hadn’t changed in the slightest.
Goudsmit had another bitter pill to swallow that week. A few days before the Heisenberg interview, while still in Haigerloch, he’d had a poignant conversation with Max von Laue, one of the nuclear physicists arrested there. Von Laue had long been friends with Dirk Coster, the Dutch physicist who was trying to save Goudsmit’s parents. As with Heisenberg, in fact, Coster had written von Laue a letter begging him to intercede with German authorities on their behalf. Goudsmit knew this, and he once again violated the rules for fraternizing with the enemy by pulling von Laue aside one day to ask, sotto voce, if he’d heard any definite news about Isaac and Marianne.
Von Laue had. I’m sorry, he said.
Goudsmit later learned that they’d both died in Auschwitz on February 11, 1943—his father’s seventieth birthday. Although he’d long suspected the truth, hearing von Laue confirm it tore the scab off his heart again. The pain hadn’t dissipated days later, and prevented him from joining fully in the revelry of V-E Day.
Months later, Goudsmit heard something else that made the week even more painful—poisoned it in retrospect. For he finally heard the full backstory of the letter Dirk Coster had sent to Heisenberg, begging for help on behalf of his parents. The exact date remains unknown, but Heisenberg received the letter either in late 1942 or very early 1943, and despite the urgency of the plea, he did nothing. He dithered, he dallied, letting several weeks pass before replying to Coster in a short, tepid note. He began it by praising Goudsmit’s scientific work. Then, in a calculated fib, he declared that Goudsmit had always championed German scientists in America. At last Heisenberg came to the crux of the matter, writing that it would be “highly deplorable if [Goudsmit’s] parents, for reasons unknown to me, experienced difficulties in Holland.” The note was dated February 16, five days after the Goudsmits died.
When Goudsmit finally learned of the note, he was dumbstruck. Difficulties? For reasons unknown to me? Was that what Heisenberg thought the Holocaust was, some bureaucratic blunder? It was mealymouthed, cowardly bullshit. Moreover, his old friend hadn’t even tried to contact German authorities. He’d merely penned a private letter to Coster and washed his hands of the matter.
It’s hard not to compare Heisenberg’s behavior here to his vigorous defense of himself during the “Jew physics” debacle. In that case he’d appealed straight to Himmler, enduring a full SS investigation and risking his family’s freedom and reputation to preserve his honor. With his friend’s parents’ lives at stake, he could barely be moved to put pen to paper. Goudsmit was worldly enough to know that Heisenberg probably couldn’t have saved his parents no matter what. But he never forgave his friend for not trying. As Goudsmit later said, Heisenberg tried to save “‘Jewish physics’ with more vigor and success than he tried to save Jewish lives.”
CHAPTER 58
Goimany
Moe Berg stuck around Switzerland after the aborted assassination attempt, and soon became fast friends with his fellow undercover agent Flute. They took long swims and bicycle rides together and spent whole days devouring newspapers in the cafés of Zurich. Flute’s wife and children adored the big lug, too, nicknaming him “Bushie” and inviting him on skiing holidays. Berg in turn wrote musical ditties about the family, which he belted out with tone-deaf bravado. Ted Williams once said of his Red Sox teammate, “I don’t ever remember seeing him laugh,” but one of Flute’s children remembered a different Berg: “We never saw him sad.”
Beneath the revelry, however, Berg was still working as a spy in Zurich. He was preparing to infiltrate Germany, in fact, and in the meantime began stalking some pro-Nazi physicists around town. In one case, Berg powdered his hair white, followed a scientist into a library, and snooped on what books he was reading. When it became clear that the man was sketching plans for a cyclotron, Berg somehow swiped copies of his blueprints and shipped them to Washington.
Eventually, though, the old wanderlust got to Berg. And when General Leslie Groves abruptly canceled the Germany mission, the catcher abandoned his post in Zurich and began drifting around Europe. Some of his stops had potential intelligence value: he happened to be visiting Buchenwald the day the concentration camp there was liberated. Other stops didn’t: at one point he dropped in on a linguist whose work on Celtic and Roman place-names happened to amuse him. Most of the time Berg simply went AWOL, slipping into various cities to see friends by night and disappearing on the morning wind.
During these months Berg indulged in a little chicanery to keep himself traveling in style. In each new city he’d find the local OSS branch and ask the special funds office for an advance, explaining that they could transfer the debt to his account in Washington. He regularly walked away with $100 or $200, and occasionally up to two grand ($30,000 today). He’d also have people check out of hotels for him and send those bills to Washington, knowing that the poorly managed OSS would never catch on.
Berg did consent to do some actual work during these months, including couriering a sheaf of espionage documents to the United States in April. But after returning to Europe in May, he resumed bouncing around the continent—London, Paris, Zurich, Marseille, Rome, Florence, Salzburg, Munich, Frankfurt. (Of those last few places, he gloated, “Germany is beaten, suffering, and how I love it.”) He had no real agenda, just a vague hope that OSS or Groves would think of something for him to do. He felt cast aside.
Still, a famous baseball player was hardly anonymous in Europe then, given the hordes of American soldiers in every city. More than one stranger rushed up to him on the street and brayed, “Ain’t you Moe Berg?” He usually either ignored them or feigned surprise and muttered something in the local French or Italian dialect before scurrying away. Every so often, though, Berg couldn’t resist a little mischief. One time he came across a group of soldiers organizing a ball game. They needed a catcher to fill out their roster, and they asked the tall, dark stranger hovering nearby if he could play that position. Berg said he’d do his best. Pretty soon some cocky GI on first decided to test the old man’s arm by stealing a base. He took off with the next pitch. Berg snapped up and smoked one across the diamond; the runner was out by ten feet. It finally dawned on another player, a lad from Brooklyn, who this mystery man was. “Jesus Christ, Moe Boig!” he yelled. “And here you are in Goimany.”
In June 1945, Groves finally scrounged up a job for Moe: spying on the Russkies, America’s new enemy. Groves was worried about German scientists defecting to the USSR and turning against the United States. So Berg crept into Rome to investigate rumors that Edoardo Amaldi and Gian-Carlo Wick were entertaining offers. He also snuck into Sweden to check on Lise Meitner, the physicist who’d fled Berlin in 1938 and later convinced Otto Hahn of the reality of fission. Meitner had endured seven miserable years in Stockholm, and even the conclusion of the war brought her little relief: upon hearing about the horrors of Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen on the radio, she broke down sobbing and couldn’t sleep. Despite her age (sixty-six), she was still one of the foremost minds in Europe, and Groves feared that Russia would scoop her up. He dispatched Berg to sound her out.
Berg arrived at Meitner’s door with a letter of introduction from Flute, and spent several hours chatting with her over tea to win her trust. He returned the next day and only then proceeded to ask some questions. Meitner probably would have talked to a tree stump at that point—she was desperately lonely—but that old Berg magic had her bouncing like a schoolgirl. She au
tographed a paper of hers for him (“With many thanks and kindest regards, L.M., Stockholm”) and in a letter to Flute afterward, she gushed, “Dr. [sic] Berg was extremely friendly. This does one so much good after the long years of isolation.” She also entrusted Berg with a letter for Otto Hahn, then in custody. Berg promised to deliver it.
He didn’t. Instead he tore it open the moment he’d turned the corner. It was an emotional and highly personal note, the product of several years’ resentment. Among other things, Meitner accused Hahn of de facto collaboration with the Nazis for not standing up to them more forcefully. (“Your pacifism made you an accessory.”) Although it made for salacious reading, it had zero intelligence value. Berg nevertheless forwarded it to Allied officials, and it ended up on the desk of General Groves.
As summer gave way to fall, Berg changed employers, albeit not by choice. In September 1945, President Harry Truman abolished OSS. The agency had never been popular with the American public, who feared the rise of a domestic Gestapo, or U.S. intelligence analysts, who hated its footloose ways. (Washington eventually founded a more professional spook service, the Central Intelligence Agency, which had little patience for eccentrics like Berg.) Berg got shifted over to the State Department, although he remained under the control of Leslie Groves.
The general soon attached Berg to a team of technical experts headed for Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. They planned to investigate rumors that the Soviets were dragooning scientists there—packing them into trucks and trains emblazoned with the Soviet red star and forcing them to Moscow at gunpoint. The seizure of nuclear scientists was especially worrisome.
To get through checkpoints, Berg’s team would flash phony passes or bribe hungry Russian guards with Spam and Hershey bars. When the bribes didn’t work, they resorted to Pashian ruses. At one point near Prague, a band of angry Russian soldiers chased down Berg’s jeep and surrounded it. Berg calmly fished a letter out of his pocket and unfolded it, tapping the bright red star at the top. The soldiers saluted this symbol of Soviet might and waved the Americans on, apparently unfamiliar with the Texaco oil company logo. Over the next few weeks Berg confirmed that the Soviets, gearing up for the Cold War, were indeed kidnapping scores of scientists.