The real information bombshell, delivered “reluctantly,” came about when Schellenberg admitted “my friend, Count [Folke] Bernadotte is keeping 3 or 4 thousand Swedish kronen of my personal money for me, which I did not wish to take into captivity.” The news shocked the Americans. The internationally respected head of the Swedish Red Cross was holding illegal loot for an SS war criminal complicit in the liquidation of Jews? Was such a thing possible?
Following the shocking disclosure, wrote one agent,
Schellenberg … deftly combined fact and fiction in describing the source of these funds, the manner in which possession was acquired by Count Bernadotte and the circumstances under which he was holding the Swedish crowns. He intentionally left vague the subject of whether ‘my friend’ Count Bernadotte was holding the Swedish crowns as a personal favor to Schellenberg or officially on behalf of the Red Cross.
As far as Agent Minskoff was convinced, it was the former and not the latter.3
The SS officer was interrogated a second time on the Bernadotte revelation. “Schellenberg, still clinging to his attempt to make it appear that Count Bernadotte was acting in some official capacity in holding the funds for [him], nonetheless was compelled to admit that to the extent that such funds have not been dispersed by Count Bernadotte, he is holding the money for Schellenberg.” It was a damning disclosure.
“This was purely a friendly arrangement?” asked one agent.
“Yes,” admitted an exhausted Schellenberg.
After additional questioning, Schellenberg claimed he no longer recalled how much money Bernadotte was holding. Speculation put the sum at 10,000 Swedish kronen. When his interrogators asked him to prepare a sworn statement to that effect, Schellenberg experienced an epiphany: the funds were not Swedish kronen at all, but had been converted into Swiss francs by Swedish authorities. American investigators eventually extracted and pieced together this fascinating end-of-war saga.
Count Bernadotte and the 35-year-old Schellenberg had become good friends during their several wartime meetings. On May 4, 1945, Schellenberg left Germany for Sweden. His secretary, “Miss Schinke,” followed him there the next day. In her possession, wrote the agents, was “Schellenberg’s cash box which contained his private papers and also ‘a small money reserve’ which Schellenberg had always taken into the air raid shelter.” According to Schellenberg, “Miss Schinke did not have specific instructions to bring the box to Sweden,” but that she had permanent standing orders from him to bring the box any place he went. Inside the small chest was almost 30,000 Swiss francs and $28,000 in U.S. dollars. The francs, explained Schellenberg, “were my personal funds which were at my disposal as Chief of the Bureau VI, and I did not have to account for it in detail.” When asked about the American money, Schellenberg offered the “somewhat cryptic remark” that the dollars “would be in excess of the moneys I was entitled to dispose of personally.” Beyond that he would not elaborate. He had earlier told investigators that the “U.S. dollars were Amt. [Bureau] VI funds,” and that Kaltenbrunner had “ousted” him from his high bureau perch several weeks before the end of the war. In that case, he would have no right of office to claim the money. When confronted with these seemingly incongruent details, Schellenberg launched into a contorted explanation of how he had obtained the currency. “[He] claimed that he was entitled to draw one year’s salary in advance,” apparently for his new function in the Foreign Office, reported Agent Minskoff. Further explanation included that his intent was to pay his secretaries and small staff out of that sum; whatever remained he described as his “personal property.” Minskoff was an experienced intelligence officer and he did not buy any of Schellenberg’s prevarications.4
Upon further questioning, Schellenberg told investigators that on the day Germany surrendered, May 8, 1945, he turned over the money in the box (28,000 Swiss francs and $28,000 American dollars) to the Swedish government—through Count Folke Bernadotte. The money, claimed Schellenberg, was intended to pay for the costs of internment in Sweden for his staff of seven, including Schellenberg and his secretaries, for a period of three months. The Swedish government, he continued, authorized the Count to “release” back to Schellenberg some 19,000 Swedish kronen, which he in turn distributed to his staff members. The balance remained with Bernadotte. “Schellenberg,” explained Minskoff, “tried to elude the fact that this balance was being held for him personally” by lying about how the balance would be spent. “Pressed further, he admitted that Count Bernadotte was holding the money for him.” In his final statement, Schellenberg concluded that his friend Bernadotte was holding “the approximate sum of 10,000 crowns [kronen].”5
Minskoff’s gut told him that Schellenberg was lying, or at least was not fully forthcoming, about his activities. Ernst Kaltenbrunner’s justification for canning Schellenberg seems to confirm Minskoff’s suspicion. The former head of RSHA “had accused Schellenberg of establishing a fund abroad to use for private income after defeat.” Minskoff sought out others who knew Schellenberg. Former SS agent Dr. Theodor Paeffgen, who knew the counter-intelligence chief well, “did not believe [Kaltenbrunner’s] accusation.” However, Paeffgen clarified, “if Schellenberg had made such a transfer, it would probably have been to Switzerland since Schellenberg was supposed to have a Swiss passport and the necessary papers to get across the Swiss border as a Swiss citizen.” Schellenberg scoffed when confronted with these statements. “They were only used as an excuse for removal [by Kaltenbrunner],” he explained.6
More damning evidence, however, was soon uncovered. On September 11, 1945, the American Legation in Bern, Switzerland, sent an air gram to CIC agents investigating Schellenberg. A former “anti-Nazi German national” testified that Schellenberg, Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and power broker, “without the knowledge” of other authorities, “arranged to procure and place free currency in secret deposits in Switzerland, Turkey, Spain, and Sweden in order to carry on special Nazi political tasks.” Schellenberg, claimed the informant, “directed the operations from within France.” The informant included names, dates, locations, and specific details about numerous transactions. Intense questioning of Schellenberg on this issue only served to further frustrate the agents. Yes, he admitted, he did know many of those allegedly involved in this scheme. But, he explained, “this seems to be a chapter with which I never had any connection.”7
Like Josef Spacil and Franz Konrad, Walter Schellenberg was a magnificent liar and smooth operator. The master of facts used his quick mind to confuse and shade the truth. He knew enough not to deny the undeniable, and yet obfuscate any role he might have played in the event in question. Did he transfer wealth generated as a result of illegal activities abroad for his own benefit? The money carried by Count Folke Bernadotte proves he did so at least to the extent of 10,000 Swedish kronen and $28,000 in U.S. Dollars.8 Was this Swedish link but one of his threads of gold? How much more did he hide away?
Unless or until other documents surface, it is doubtful we will ever know.
Postscript
“I have not, contrary to some sensational reports in the German weekly press, managed to discover and squander the buried treasure that they [Nazis] are said to have left here in Aussee…. All I have found here has been solitude and peace.”
—Wilhelm Höttl, The Secret Front: The Story of Nazi Political Espionage
Loose Ends
SS Colonel Emil Augsburg’s life after World War II was much better than he deserved. After the former Einsatzgruppen leader-turned-informer filed his reports on Walter Hirschfeld, Augsburg joined German Federal Intelligence. This outfit is better known as the Gehlen Organization, and a brief history of this infamous association is now in order.
Brigadeführer Reinhard Gehlen was the chief of Adolf Hitler’s Soviet intelligence unit. He had organized and maintained a vast network of undercover agents, and by war’s end was in possession of a mountain of information about Soviet personalities, organizations, mil
itary secrets, and the like. He hid his files and offered them to his captors. With the Cold War heating up, American Intelligence officers fully realized his value and the CIA hired him. In one fell swoop the entire Gehlen network (about 350 agents) fell into the anti-Soviet camp. On his orders hundreds of German army and diehard pro-Nazi SS officers were released from internment camps to serve under him—employed with American tax dollars. Gehlen’s unit operated out of a headquarters near Munich under the name South German Industrial Development Organization. It eventually numbered more than 4,000 agents, most of whom worked behind the Iron Curtain. Gehlen was instated as the new head of West German intelligence in 1955, and maintained this powerful post until 1968. He died in 1979.
Gehlen’s expertise proved invaluable during the early postwar years, but as one writer put it, “the vilest of the vile” worked within his ranks. Dozens were wanted war criminals, including Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s chief deputy—and Emil Augsburg.
By the late 1950s, it was known that Soviet agents were trying to contact Augsburg. In the early 1960s, many people operating in intelligence circles believed Augsburg was working as a double agent. Perhaps he was blackmailed by his murderous past, a tactic routinely employed by the Russians to turn foreign agents. Ironically, Augsburg suffered the same fate he had helped mete out to Walter Hirschfeld. He was increasingly viewed as a liability and a record of his nefarious wartime activities was compiled to force his quiet resignation. In 1966, Augsburg was dismissed for “unauthorized intelligence activities.”1
“The Butcher of Lyons,” Klaus Barbie, was also a survivor. Like so many jackbooted thugs, his journey through the rest of his life was smoother and easier than his deeds warranted. His employment with the CIC, CIA, and Gehlen Organization protected him for many years. How ironic that a man sentenced to death in absentia by the French worked for the Americans during the postwar years just a few hundred miles away from French soil. Soon after the war, Father Krunoslav Draganovic, a Croatian Roman Catholic priest, moved to Rome and labored there as a secretary at a training seminary for new priests. When not training priests Draganovic operated what is now known as the “ratline,” a clandestine escape route into South America for Nazi war criminals seeking freedom from their would-be hangmen or jailers. There is some evidence that the ratline was supported by the Catholic Church and endorsed by Allied intelligence. Eventually, Barbie’s presence in Europe became problematical. With the help of Draganovic’s ratline, Barbie and his entire family emigrated to South America in the early 1950s.2
He eventually settled in Bolivia and obtained citizenship there in 1957. Under the alias Klaus Altmann, he worked in his element as an interrogator (and worse) for several far-right governments. His cover was blown in 1971 when he was discovered and identified in Bolivia. Thirteen years passed before he was finally extradited to France to stand trial for his crimes. By that time the French had become too politically correct to implement the sentence Barbie so justly deserved (and had been given almost four decades earlier). Instead of death he was sentenced to life in prison in 1987. He died of cancer four years later.
Kurt Becher’s black star followed him to his grave. Rezsö Kastner’s testimony at Nuremberg may have brushed away the Sword of Damocles that had been hanging over Becher’s head, but the stench of his activities lingers to this day. When he was finally released from Allied custody at the end of 1947 or early in 1948, Becher returned to his native Hamburg. Within a few months, Bremen beckoned. Becher moved to the historic seafaring city and set himself up as an exporter of wheat in the autumn of 1948. Still, the threat of prosecution lingered in the shadows. As the years passed, the chance he would ever be indicted receded. Becher went on to become the president of several corporations and headed up the sale of grain to, of all places, Israel. His corporation, the Cologne-Handel Gesselschaft, ended up doing extensive business with the Israeli government. By the late 1950s, he was considered by many to be one of the richest men in West Germany.
As those in attendance at the Bremen Seafaring Association discovered, Becher’s failure to appear at the annual meeting was somehow related to Adolf Eichmann’s recent arrest in South America and trial in Israel. There is sketchy evidence to support the charge that Becher was about to be indicted, and that someone moved to quash the attempt. Eventually he provided written testimony in Bremen on May 23, 1961, which was submitted for use in the Eichmann trial. Perhaps that was his ace in the hole. He was never sent to Israel to testify in person.3
Becher died a rich old man in August 1995. It is left to the reader to determine whether all of his wealth was the result of outstanding business acumen.
Count Folke Bernadotte survived World War II only to perish as a martyr in western Jerusalem three years later. Or so popular history has written.
On September 17, 1948, Bernadotte found himself in the center vehicle of a three-car convoy stopped at a roadblock in the Katamon suburb of Jerusalem. He was in the Middle East at the request of the United Nations in an attempt to broker a peace in the four month old Arab-Israeli war. This first of many conflicts was triggered when the United Nations partitioned a geographic area referred to as Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Five Arab armies opened aggression the day after Israel declared itself a nation. While two gunmen shot out the tires of the convoy’s vehicles a third man trotted along the sides of the cars peering inside to examine the occupants. When he spotted Bernadotte, he stuck an automatic pistol through the open rear window and sprayed the interior with bullets. Six of them dug deeply into the 54-year-old diplomat. Bernadotte and French United Nations observer Andre Seraut, seated beside him, were killed outright.
The killers belonged to an organization called Lehi (Lohamei Herut Israel, or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel). History knows the group as the Stern Gang. According to the world press at the time and historians thereafter, the Swedish diplomat was executed by “Jewish zealots” because (generally speaking) he favored and was pushing a partition of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule that favored the Arabs. However, before the assassination Lehi had called Count Bernadotte a British agent and accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. Hyperbole? Rhetoric? Contemporary news agencies, and historians thereafter, casually brushed aside the seemingly ridiculous accusation leveled by what they viewed as nothing but a bunch of murderous thugs.
The assassination was strongly condemned by the Israeli government and arrests were made. The indictment and trial, however, does not appear to have been vigorously pursued. When international outrage died down rather quickly and the United States failed to act in any meaningful way, the members of the Lehi organization were quietly released. It is widely claimed that future Israeli prime minster Yitzhak Shamir had a hand in the assassination. Sweden launched an official inquiry and in 1950 accused the Israelis of “gross negligence” and failing to “bring the inquiry to a positive result.” Tempers flared on both sides. What is generally not known is that Israel formed a committee to study the charges, and a report of the matter was made available to a few ranking Swedish officials. Israel apologized for the death, conceded some of the Swedish accusations, and paid the United Nations $54,628—ostensibly for its negligence in handling of the matter. Thereafter the Swedes dropped the matter. The full content of the Israeli report to Sweden has never been made public and is today unavailable.
Recently declassified documents (see Chapter 17, “The Bloody Red Cross: Walter Schellenberg’s External Assets,”) prove that Bernadotte did indeed collaborate with the Nazis—just as the “Jewish zealots” alleged a short time before his murder. The New York Times eulogized Bernadotte as a “man of integrity.” It now seems as though the former Swedish Red Cross diplomat had a price. Was there a connection between his actions with Walter Schellenberg and Company during World War II and his assassination in Israel? How extensive were Bernadotte’s ties with the Nazis? The manner of the diplomat’s death fits the modus operandi traditionally employed by the Israelis as retribution
for past wrongs.
It is time historians dig deeper into Count Folke Bernadotte’s World War II activities to determine the breadth and depth of his collaboration with the Nazis, and whether a connection exists between his actions and sudden demise in a Jerusalem suburb.4
After the war, Adolf Eichmann aide and champion skier Anton Burger was arrested and interned at Camp Marcus Orr. He escaped in the spring of 1947, went underground, and was never rearrested. As the years passed, interest in him waned. Burger deposited large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts following the war and continued to live in Germany under the assumed name of “Willi Bauer.” He died at the age of 79 in 1992 in Germany.
Adolf Eichmann’s race into the snowy hills of Austria was unsuccessful. He was arrested shortly thereafter and placed into an American internment camp—but only because of his membership in the SS, not because anyone recognized who he really was. As amazing as it seems today, his name was not yet widely known through Allied circles. The next year he was mistakenly released. He eventually fled to South America and ended up in Argentina. He lived there in a suburb of Buenos Aires under an assumed name until Israeli agents found him in May 1960. He was kidnapped and sent to Israel, where he was the subject of one of the most sensational trials of the century. On December 2, 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death for his heinous crimes against the Jews and against humanity. He was hanged on the last day of May 1962. The preface of this book details his final minutes.
Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold Page 33