Bureau II: Administration and Finance, under the command of SS Oberführer (no U.S. equivalent) Josef Spacil
This department administrated the funds allocated for all of Kaltenbrunner’s Bureaus, including large amounts of gold and foreign currency. These funds were also used to purchase uniforms and weapons. Spacil’s primary effort was directed at managing Operation Bernhard, a massive counterfeiting scheme designed (at least ostensibly) to flood Europe and Britain with fake notes generated in concentration camps.
Bureau III: Security Service, under the command of SS Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Otto Ohlendorf
This branch of Kaltenbrunner’s organization was directly responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of Jews and others deemed unworthy of life. Ohlendorf was born in Hoheneggelsen, Germany, on February 4, 1907, the son of a peasant. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen and graduated in July of 1933 with a specialty in National Socialism and Italian fascism. Ohlendorf was one of the first members of the newly constituted Nazi Party, which he joined at the young age of eighteen in 1925. He enlisted in the SS a year later and also fulfilled various SA duties in his home district. Highly educated in both law and economics, Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 as an advisor on economic matters and was promoted to major in 1938. The following year he was promoted as chief of Bureau III, a position he retained until the end of World War II.
Ohlendorf’s security services provided rather unique intelligence by prying into the lives and thoughts of ordinary citizens in Nazi Germany and acting as a secret and candid chronicler of public opinion for the benefit of Party officials. Although Ohlendorf’s research workers were secret police agents and they did their odious task well, Himmler disliked Ohlendorf. The Reichsführer described him as “an unbearable Prussian, without humor,” a rather ironic description coming as it did from a cold man also described by others as humorless. Ohlendorf was promoted to SS Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) in November of 1944. He eventually gained a small measure of favor as part of Himmler’s twisted entourage, and suggested during the war’s final weeks that the Reichsführer surrender to the Allies in order to vindicate the SS against the slander of its enemies. Himmler’s right-hand man, Walter Schellenberg, proposed Ohlendorf (one of history’s most heinous mass murderers) as the member of a new German cabinet for presentation to the Allies.
One of the projects of SS Colonel Albert Hohlfelder, who headed up Bureau III B (Public Health) and reported directly to Ohlendorf, was x-raying the German population, including minorities in the Balkan states. X-ray machines were placed into vans so that large numbers of people could undergo the procedure. The x-rays were ostensibly used to study diseases and defects in order to find cures for various illnesses. In reality, Hohlfelder used them to sterilize thousands of Jews so that they could be put to work for the Reich without procreation concerns.12
Bureau IV: Gestapo, under the command SS Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Heinrich Müller
The son of Catholic parents and future head of the ruthless Gestapo was born on April 28, 1901. During World War I, Müller served as a flight leader on the Eastern front and was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class). After Germany’s surrender, he made his career in the Bavarian police department, where he specialized in the surveillance of Communist Party leaders. Much of his tenure there was spent studying Russian police intelligence and investigative techniques. The reward for his expertise in this field arrived when Reinhard Heydrich selected him ashis second-in-command of the Gestapo. From that day onward Heydrich’s right-hand man virtually ran the Gestapo.
Oddly, Müller was not a member of the Nazi Party. This, coupled with the fact that during his stint with the Munich State Police he had worked against the Nazis, made him politically suspect to many influential Party members. Some of the doubts ceased when he was officially admitted to the Nazi Party in 1939. Short and stocky, with a dry wit and often expressionless countenance, the stubborn and opinionated Müller was highly regarded by both Himmler and Heydrich. Both admired his professional competence, blind obedience, and willingness to execute “delicate missions, spying on colleagues and dispatching political adversaries without scruples.” Indeed, Müller was a model for the cold and dispassionate bureaucratic fanatic necessary to carry out the horrendous official state policies underpinning the Third Reich. There sult of his efficient exertions was rapid promotion by Heydrich to Standartenführer (Colonel) in 1937, Brigadeführer (Brigadier General)in 1939, Gruppenführer (Major General) in 1940, and Obergruppen-führer (Lieutenant General) and chief of police on November 9, 1941.13
As the head of Bureau IV from 1939 to 1945, Müller became almost as deeply involved in the “Final Solution” as Heydrich, Himmler, and Kaltenbrunner. Some might argue he was more directly linked to the mass killings, if only because he was closer to the bloodshed in the chain of command. Working under Müller’s direct supervision was Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of Bureau IV B4. The SS officer was the Chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo. On him fell the task of implementing the Final Solution—the total extermination of European Jewry. Because so many later threads of this story intertwine with Bureau IV B4 and Eichmann, a biographical sketch is in order.
The man whose name would one day be synonymous with mass murder came into life near Cologne, Germany, on March 19, 1906. When his mother died, the family relocated to Linz, Austria, where Adolf passed his formative years. The Eichmanns enjoyed a good life in Austria, where a small mining company operated by Adolf’s father generated a comfortable middle class income. The youth led a rather uneventful early life, attending schools without demonstrating any particular distinction. Paradoxically, his dark complexion earned him the nickname “little Jew” by his classmates. Unable or unwilling to complete his studies in engineering, Adolf accepted a variety of positions to earn a living. For a time he worked as a laborer in his father’s establishment, and later as a traveling salesman for an American oil company.
Without significant ties to a career and without direction, by the early 1930s Eichmann was adrift in an uneasy world. On the advice of his friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann enrolled in the Austrian Nazi Party and a short time later was on the rolls as a member of the SS. By 1934 he was serving as an SS corporal at Dachau, a concentration camp for political prisoners twelve miles north of Munich, Germany. The corrupting influence of both the Nazi doctrine and the individuals with whom he associated took a fateful turn for Eichmann that September, when he accepted a position with Reinhard Heydrich’s already notorious SD, a powerful arm of the RSHA.14
Eichmann’s RSHA career began rather inauspiciously, his days consumed as a desk clerk registering information about Freemasons. His assignment to a section investigating prominent Jews, however, seemed more to his liking and marked the beginning of what would evolve into a deadly passion for killing on a scale rarely imagined and never before implemented. As far as was possible, Eichmann immersed himself in Jewish culture. He appeared at Jewish meetings, studied the history of Zionism, and frequented Jewish sections of cities. Friendships and associations were cultivated with members of the community. There was a method to his madness: all the while he appeared interested in their faith and beliefs, Eichmann was busy scribbling copious notes that would one day be used for perfidious purposes. Within a short time, the German from Cologne (by way of Linz) was recognized by his superiors as a “Jewish specialist.” Eichmann had found a direction and purpose in an otherwise aimless existence. The SD had found a dedicated man well suited to its purposes.
In August 1938, Eichmann was placed in charge of the Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, set up by the SS as the sole Nazi agency authorized to issue exit permits for Jews from Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and later Germany. In less than eighteen months, approximately 150,000 Jews were forced out of Austria to centers in the East. By March 1939 he was handling the deportation of Jews and other undesirables to Poland. After the war began that September, E
ichmann was appointed special adviser on the evacuation of Jews and Poles. Before 1939 ended, a transfer to Bureau IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office came about, where he took over Bureau IV B4 dealing with Jewish affairs and evacuation.
For the next five and a half years Eichmann’s office was the headquarters for the implementation of the Final Solution. Initially this manifested itself in administrative efforts, deportations, and the establishment of ghettos. In accordance with Hitler’s order to create a Jew-free Reich, Eichmann began organizing mass deportations from Germany and Bohemia. His system of convoys would eventually be replicated across Europe and carry millions of men, women and children to their deaths. Most would perish in the death camps that Eichmann began establishing in the summer of 1941. The death camp at Birkenau, one of three Nazi concentration camps that came to be collectively known to a horrified world as simply “Auschwitz,” opened its assembly line murder factory in October 1941. Eichmann paid a visit and approved of the gassing technique adopted there. Heydrich’s Wannsee Conference of January 1942, mentioned earlier in this study and attended by Eichmann, solidified his standing as the Reich’s “Jewish specialist.”
Unlike some of the prominent Nazi leaders, Eichmann had never been a fanatical anti-Semite or dedicated Nazi. Indeed, during his trial in Israel in the 1960s, he made a point of claiming that he “personally” had nothing against Jews, and apparently he was telling the truth. His methodical enthusiasm manifested itself in any number of bureaucratic ways. He constantly complained about obstacles in the fulfillment of the quotas set for his death camps, and lamented the lack of cooperativeness of the Italians and other German allies in expediting Jews for death. Nothing better illustrates Eichmann’s zeal for his job than his refusal to comply with Himmler’s moderated views during the war’s final months. Eichmann felt utterly free to ignore the Reichsführer’s order to stop gassing Jews because his immediate superiors, including Heinrich Müller and his old friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, provided him cover to continue the killing.
Eichmann, as he saw it, was just doing his job.
Bureau V: Police Functions under the command of Oberführer (no U.S. equivalent) Friedrich Panzinger
All German police and police forces of occupied countries were under the command of the bureaus of the RSHA. This force, which numbered more than 2,000,000 men, was the eyes and ears of the SD, SIPO, and Gestapo. History has confirmed that some like the Gendarme of France were an enthusiastic group and provided the Germans with considerable assistance. On the other hand, the police of Denmark are known today for their obstinate behavior and obstructionist policies in dealing with the German occupiers.
Friedrich Panzinger, the future head of the powerful Bureau V, was born in Monaco on February 1, 1903. He returned to Germany and obtained a law degree, joined the Nazi party in 1937 and the SS two years later. Panzinger quickly became a Communist espionage specialist. In 1943 he took command of the Security Police and SD in the Baltic states as well as Einsatzgruppen A—one of the mobile killing squads. Panzinger looked as though one might imagine an SS murderer would—medium stature with a high forehead, immaculately groomed hair parted on the side, oval spectacles—and an icy cold mien. At the end of the war he went into hiding, but was arrested in Linz, Austria, in 1946, and imprisoned by the Soviet Union.
Bureau N: M.I. (Abwehr) Armed Forces, under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris, the German admiral of Greek descent who headed up military intelligence for the Armed Forces (OKW), was born in Aplerbeck, Germany, on January 1, 1887. The son of a Westphalian industrialist, Canaris entered the Imperial Navy in 1905. During World War I, he commanded U-boats in the Mediterranean and carried out espionage missions in Spain and Italy. In the early 1920s he was a naval staff officer in the Baltic fleet and rose to command the battleship Schlesien. Like so many during that period, Canaris appreciated Hitler’s anti-Versailles program and apprehension of Russian communists, but disliked the mob violence and street thuggery aspects of Nazism. His resentment of Hitler’s murderous behind-the-scenes politics increased after his appointment as Chief of the Abwehr on January 1, 1935.
Although Canaris was aligned with the anti-Hitler faction, his exact role within the Nazi regime is still debated today. Some argue that he was an incompetent dilettante whose judgment was consistently unsound and whose political and military information about the enemy proved minimal at best. A pessimistic recluse whose nerve failed before each major Nazi offensive thrust, only to evidence itself in effusive praise for Hitler once success resulted, Canaris was said to be constantly beset with doubts about his role. Others, like Abwehr attache and Canaris supporter, Hans Bernd Gisevius, argue that the admiral’s perceived incompetence and seeming insecurity were simply techniques employed to fool Hitler and other high ranking leaders, which enabled him to maintain a powerful position and influence events.
Long suspected of treasonous activity, Canaris’s dangerous game neared its end in February 1944 when the Abwehr was snatched away from him and placed under the control of the SD. A position in the economic warfare department followed, but the appointment was merely a sinecure that allowed Gestapo agents to keep an eye on his activities. The botched attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944 doomed Canaris when a conspirator confessed his involvement. In fact, he was not directly tied to the assassins, but his papers and diaries proved his perfidy against Hitler spanned many years. Canaris was arrested, tortured, and during the final days of the war hanged with several others on a makeshift gallows at Flossenburg concentration camp.
“Canaris hated not only Hitler and Himmler, but the entire Nazi system as a political phenomenon,” wrote fellow Abwehr agent Hans Bernd Gisevius in a memoir published two years after the war. “He was everywhere and nowhere at once. Everywhere he traveled—at home, abroad, and to the front—he always left a whirl of confusion lingering behind him…. Extremely well read, oversensitive, Canaris was an outsider in every respect. In bearing and manner of work he was the most unmilitary of persons.”15
Bureau VI: Military Intelligence under the command of SS Brigadeführer (General) Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg was the head of the Third Reich’s espionage services and Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man during the war’s final years. He was born in Saarbrücken on October 16, 1910, the seventh child of a piano manufacturer. After receiving his law degree at Bonn University (where he developed an ardent interest in Renaissance history and its political implications), Schellenberg joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1933. Within a year he was part of the Gestapo apparatus. Young, handsome, ambitious, and fluent in both English and French, Schellenberg attracted the attention of both Heydrich and Himmler, who eventually made him their personal aide.
At the behest of his superiors, Schellenberg organized the Einsatzgruppen squads for use in the Austrian and Czech campaigns in 1938. Four years later, he negotiated on behalf of the RSHA with the Wehrmacht over the zones of authority in which the Einsatzgruppen could work to “execute their plans as regards the civil population.” In other words, where the killing squads could operate freely against noncombatants without political or military interference.
By November 1939 he was the head of the Gestapo counter-intelligence division (Amt I’VE). The former lawyer had a passion and talent for military intelligence and counter-espionage. He led a detachment of armed Germans across the Dutch border to kidnap two British military intelligence agents. Barely thirty, he was decorated and promoted to the rank of colonel. His attempt to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Spain, however, was unsuccessful. In 1941 Schellenberg was selected to lead Bureau VI, the Foreign Intelligence Service. His efforts in this capacity unraveled the web-like network of Soviet intelligence operating within the Reich.
In February 1944, Schellenberg’s division swallowed the foreign and counter-intelligence Bureau (Bureau N) of the Abwehr under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, which was reduced to a branch of Schellenberg’s Bureau VI o
ffice. His dedicated efforts earned an appointment as head of the SS and Wehrmacht military intelligence. He now stood second only to Himmler in the Gestapo hierarchy.
Bureau VII: Ideological Research, under the command of Brigadeführer (General) Alfred Franz Six
Franz Six was an academic. The Mannheim-born professor of sociology, politics, and philosophy graduated from the University of Heidelberg. Long enamored with the Nazi doctrine, he joined the party in 1930. Membership in the SA followed in 1932, and the SD in 1935. He also pursued a teaching career. As war was breaking out in 1939, he accepted a position as a foreign political science professor at the University of Berlin.
Six clasped hands with the devil in 1941. While Hitler’s war machine was preparing to invade the Soviet Union, the scholarly professor from Mannheim accepted a position as Chief of the Vorkommando Moscow. According to Six, the position was merely one of collecting documents when Stalin’s capital fell. In fact, his role was to oversee mobile killing squads. Vorkommando Moscow, it was later proven, was part of Einsatzgruppen B. On November 9, 1941, Heinrich Himmler personally promoted Six for his “outstanding service in [the] Einsatz.”16
Bureau VII was organized on July 1, 1935, by Himmler as an SS research institution for the purpose of furnishing a scientific foundation for the Nazi doctrine of German superiority. Himmler’s fascination was Germanic prehistory. His political aim was to establish scientific proof of the theory of Aryan supremacy. Although Himmler was no scientist, he did demand facts and scholarly thoroughness. Therefore, the staff that made up Bureau VII was composed of scholars, scientists, and experts—many of them, like Franz Six, were professors of leading universities. Men capable of splitting atoms and designing rockets were engaged in rewriting the record of the past in order to influence the future course of history.
Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold Page 5