Chapter 10 Notes
1. “Top Secret, Report by Walter Hirschfeld,” September 19, 1945.
2. “Top Secret, Report by Walter Hirschfeld,” September 19, 1945.
3. 307th Counter Intelligence Corp Detachment, CIC Team 970,“Recommendation of Walter Werner Hirschfeld,” by Robert Gutierrez, November 15, 1945.
4. Padfield, Himmler, p. 294; CIC, “Report of Conversations of Mr. andMrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld, Acting as Undercover Agent,”September 22, 1945.
5. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld, Acting as Undercover Agent,” September 22, 1945. The statements are all contained in the detailed reports filed by Walter Hirschfeld. The conversations are reconstructed from these detailed reports. The CIC was well aware that General Fegelein’s parents had spent a substantial amount of time living with Hofer near Fischhorn castle. American agents also knew that an SS sergeant named “Reinicke” had left Berlin with some of General Fegelein’s personal possessions on one of the last flights out of the embattled city. The son’s possessions were delivered to the Hofer place and eventually turned over to Hans Fegelein. The CIC had already searched the farm and recovered some of the general’s valuables.
6. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld,” September 22, 1945. Gretl Braun Fegelein gave birth to her daughter, whom she named after her sister Eva, on May 5, 1945. Despondent in the wake of a failed love affair, Eva Braun Fegelein committed suicide in 1975 at the age of thirty. O’Donnell, The Bunker, p. 186. It is said that after the war the name Fegelein was never again uttered in the Braun household.
7. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld,” September 22, 1945.
8. The mystery woman was almost certainly Polish Countess Barbara Kalewska. Whether Hirschfeld had learned of her earlier visit to Rudolf Meier’s home, and put two and two together, is unknown.
9. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld,” September 22, 1945. The currency used by Hirschfeld was obtained from Captain Erwin Haufler’s wife, and represented part of the money Haufler had received from Franz Konrad for safekeeping.
10. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld,” September 22, 1945. Fegelein’s observation about Russian knowledge of the nuclear program is very interesting. It was not publicly disclosed for many years that the American atomic program had been infiltrated by Russians spies. Was the German high command aware of this in 1945 as the old man’s comments suggest? And if so, had the information, through General Fegelein, been passed on to his parents?
11. “Report of Conversations of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein with Walter Hirschfeld,” September 22, 1945.
12. “Report of Conversation Among Gretl Fegelein, Frau Herta Schneider, and Walter Hirschfeld,” on September 23, 1945. The report itself is undated.
13. “Report of Conversation Among Gretl Fegelein, Frau Herta Schneider, and Walter Hirschfeld,” on September 23, 1945. The will was seized on November 6, 1945. It was dated April 23, 1945.
14. “Report of Conversation Among Gretl Fegelein, Frau Herta Schneider, and Walter Hirschfeld,” on September 23, 1945.
15. “Report of Conversation Among Gretl Fegelein, Frau Herta Schneider, and Walter Hirschfeld,” on September 23, 1945; O’Donnell, The Bunker, p. 186.
16. “Walter Hirschfeld, Report of Conversation with Hans Fegelein,” September 22, 1945.
17. This brief reconstruction of General Fegelein’s final few days is primarily (and shamelessly) lifted from O’Donnell’s, The Bunker, pp. 177–215. Of all the accounts surrounding the Fegelein mystery, O’Donnell’s remains the most compelling. The chapter devoted to this affair, “The Lady Vanished,” is a model in historical detective work and the best effort in the book.
18. Folke Bernadotte, The Curtain Falls: Last Days of the Third Reich (NewYork, 1945), pp 105, 110, 144, 145; Padfield, Himmler, pp. 592–593.
19. O’Donnell, The Bunker, pp. 177–215. 180–183, 192–195.
20. O’Donnell, The Bunker, p. 197. O’Donnell presents substantially more detail corroborating the woman’s ties with espionage and confirming her identity as das Leck.
21. Padfield, Himmler, p. 596; “Interrogation of Hanna Reitsch,” October 8, 1945. The BBC learned of the Himmler-Bernadotte meeting after Winston Churchill’s Foreign Secretary mentioned it to another British official, who in turn informed Reuters news service. Padfield, Himmler, p. 596; O’Donnell, The Bunker, pp. 214–215. Hanna Reich provided her interrogators with news of Fegelein’s execution by firing squad, but admitted years later that all the details were hearsay. “Interrogation of Hanna Reitsch,” October 8, 1945.
Chapter 11 Notes
1. Headquarters, XV Corps, CIC Detachment 215, “Gold and Jewelry Found in Weissenbach,” Major Theodore H. Possieck, May 30, 1945; Von KurtEmmenegger, Sie und Er (April 1963), p. 29, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.]
2. “Subject: Gold and Jewelry Found in Weissenbach,” May 30, 1945. This document incorrectly lists May 12, 1945, as Becher’s arrest date. The official arrest report lists the date as May 18, 1945. See “Kurt Becher Arrest Report,”dated May 18, 1945.
3. Von Kurt Emmenegger,“Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der Schwarzen SS?”(The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 19, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
4. National Archives, Record Group 260, Austrian National Bank1946–1950, Box 301; Verbal: American Legation, Budapest, April 12, 1947.
5. “Valuables Taken From SS Standartenführer Kurt Becher,” February 1,1946, by J. H. Hild ring, Internal Affairs Division, Washington, D.C. See also, Tom Bower, Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions From Europe’s Jews and Holocaust Survivors (New York,1997), p. 62. Becher’s claim to have worked closely with Dieter Wisliceny was quite a gamble, especially since their wartime roles were so eerily similar. Wisliceny, Eichmann’s deputy, was responsible for the mass deportation and murder of Jews in Slovakia, Greece, and Hungary. He was born on January 13,1911, the son of a landowner. He failed as a theology student and worked briefly as a clerk in a construction firm before joining both the SS and SD in 1936. At that time Wisliceny was Eichmann’s superior in the SS. As Eichmann rose through the ranks Wisliceny became one of his “Jewish experts” serving as anofficial in the Reich Central Office of Jewish Emigration. Like Becher, Wisliceny was more concerned with money than his career. He acquired a reputation in Slovakia and elsewhere for accepting bribes in exchange for lives. In 1942, he accepted $50,000 from the Jewish Relief Committee in Bratislava for delaying deportations from Slovakia. In Hungary, where he demanded the Jews address him as “Baron,” Wisliceny was actively involved in the bargaining for Jewish lives. He readily took the money—and sent the people to Auschwitz anyway. Wisliceny and Becher were close acquaintances in Hungary, performed many similarly odious tasks there, and accepted gold in exchange for saving lives.
6. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der Schwarzen SS?”(The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 19, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
7. Von Kurt Emmenegger,“Mord of Dr. Billitz?” (“Murder of Dr. Billitz?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #10, 1963), p. 19, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary; CIC Memorandum, “Investigation of War Crimes,” September 26, 1945.” It is interesting to note that the Communist Chinese have done the same thing with their archives. As far as their official records indicate, World War II was almost a non-event. Chinese history is largely blank from the early 1930s to 1948.
8. Von Kurt Emmenegger,“Mord of Dr. Billitz?” (“Murder of Dr. Billitz?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #10, 1963), pp. 19–20, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Buda
pest, Hungary. Elisabeth Billitz survived the fall of Budapest, the withdrawal of the German occupying troops, and the ensuing Russian occupation. For several months she lived without knowing what had happened to her husband. Finally, on May 4, 1945, Geza Varga, her husband’schauffeur, returned from Vienna where he had been detained by both Becher and the general course of the war. Billitz, he explains as gently as possible, was dead. All that was left was a small suitcase of his personal belongings. Varga told herthat her husband had been feeling quite well during the trip to Vienna, and only fell ill with a high fever two days later. Ibid.
9. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der Schwarzen SS?”(“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p.19, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
10. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 19, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
11. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 20, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary. Lieutenant Kurt Ponger, one of the interrogators from the American delegation, also has dirty linen to conceal: he was getting his instructions from Moscow, i.e., he was a spy. The last thing the Soviets wanted was a clear picture of what had exactly transpired in Hungary during World War II because they intended to pillage the country of its remaining wealth and blame it on the Germans. Thus Ponger had a strong incentive to see that Kastner’s wish that Becher go free was acted upon. History of the Counter Intelligence Corps,“Occupation of Austria and Italy” (Vol. XXV, March 1959.)
12. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 20, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
13. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 90, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary. A March 1947 list of war criminals states that “Becher, Kurt, is wanted for torture at Budapest and Mauthausen.” Yet, someone pulled enough strings to spring him from custody.
14. CIC “Informal Routing Slip,” February 20, 1947; CIC Letter, Walter M.Treece, “Release of Looted Property to Jewish Agency for Palestine,” March 3,1947.
15. As it turns out, Kurt Becher was not the only SS officer who may have benefitted from Dr. Kastner’s intervention. While at Nuremberg he had tried, unsuccessfully, to use his influence to assist the detestable Dieter Wisliceny. As noted earlier in this book, Wisliceny (Eichmann’s subordinate) was wanted for his heinous behavior in Slovakia and Greece. Kastner also put in a good word for SS Haumptsturmführer (Captain) Hermann Krumey by way of affidavit. Research into recently released documents also uncovered evidence that Kastner helped SS Gruppenführer (Major General) Hans Juettner in 1948 by confirming the officer had not been responsible for a massive deportation of Jews on foot from Budapest from Vienna. Von Kurt Emmenegger,“Das Einzige Weisse Schafder Schwarzen SS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 94, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
16. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 94, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
17. Von Kurt Emmenegger, “Das Einzige Weisse Schaf der SchwarzenSS?” (“The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?”), in Sie und Er (n.d., #14, 1963), p. 94, Magyar Országos Levéltár, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest, Hungary.
Chapter 12 Notes
1. CIC, “Recommendation of Walter Hirschfeld for Further Work with U.S.Intelligence,” by Robert A. Gutierrez, November 15, 1945.
2. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation of DerSpeigel (December 9, 1949), pp. 7–8.
3. “Translation and Interpretation of Der Speigel (December 9, 1949), pp.7–8.
4. “Translation and Interpretation of Der Speigel (December 9, 1949), pp.
5. “CIC Intelligence Report Number 98,” N.A., September 17, 1951. Sixlater lamented having told his sister anything. “I did always have the funnyfeeling that one should not give addresses about illegality no matter whether sheis the wife or the sister…” Ibid.]
6. Michael Musmanno, U.S.N.R, Military Tribunal II, Case 9: Opinion andJudgment of the Tribunal. Nuremberg: Palace of Justice. April 8, 1948, pp.146–151. Ibid. If Operation Sealion (the invasion of England) had been a success, Franz Six would have been unleashed to murder innocent people one yearearlier. In May of 1940, SS officer Walter Schellenberg put together the “BlackBook,” a list of 2,820 British subjects and exiles tagged for arrest—or worse. Franz Six was chosen to head the operation. Six was to have been based inLondon and provided with six Einsatzgruppen (killing squads) to murder hisvictims. Dear, Oxford Companion to World War II, p. 134.
7. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation of‘Remember the Name Hirschfeld,’” (no date).
8. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation of‘Remember the Name Hirschfeld,’” (no date).
9. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation of‘Remember the Name Hirschfeld,’” (no date).
10. Folder of Emil Augsburg papers, in IRR Personnel File, Franz Six, Record Group 319, National Archives.
11. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation ofDer Speigel (December 9, 1949), pp. 7–8.
12. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation ofDer Speigel (December 9, 1949), pp. 7–8; 66th Counter IntelligenceDetachment, “Subject: Walter Hirschfeld,” by Eugene Whitaker, April 5, 1950.This document is stamped “Highly Secretive.”
13. 307th Counter Intelligence Corps, “Translation and Interpretation ofDer Speigel (December 9, 1949), pp. 7–8; 66th Counter IntelligenceDetachment, “Subject: Walter Hirschfeld,” by Eugene Whitaker, April 5, 1950.This document is stamped “Highly Secretive.”
14. 66th Counter Intelligence Detachment, “Subject: Walter Hirschfeld,” byEugene Whitaker, April 5, 1950. This document is stamped “Highly Secretive.”
15. 66th Counter Intelligence Detachment, “Subject: Walter Hirschfeld,” byEugene Whitaker, April 5, 1950. This document is stamped “Highly Secretive.”The backgrounds and war careers of both men were fully available to the CIC. The Americans knew exactly who they were hiring.
16. For in-depth information on Barbie, see Brenda Murphy, The Butcher ofLyon: The Story of Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie (New York, 1983), pp. 193–199.
17. Murphy, The Butcher of Lyon, pp. 193–199.
18. CIC, Agent Report: “Barbie Klaus,” October 19, 1949; 66th CounterIntelligence Detachment, “Subject: Walter Hirschfeld,” by Eugene Whitaker, April 5, 1950.
Chapter 13 Notes
1. CIC Memorandum, “Buried Treasures in the U.S. Zone of Austria,” June5, 1947, prepared by Robert Kauf.]
2. “Buried Treasures in the U.S. Zone of Austria,” June 5, 1947.
3. “Buried Treasures in the U.S. Zone of Austria,” June 5, 1947.
4. CIC “Unsigned Statement of Mrs. Iris Scheidler,” dated April 1947. InMarch of 1945, Countess von Westarp gave birth to twins fathered byKaltenbrunner.
5. CIC, “Final Interrogation Report of Arthur Scheidler,” July 11, 1945.
6. “Final Interrogation Report of Arthur Scheidler,” July 11, 1945.According to Scheidler, “Its [Bureau III] personnel was of a higher caliber thanthat of the other bureaus, and many of its members had university degrees.”Many of these well-schooled officers were also tried after the war as criminalsand either e
xecuted or imprisoned.]
7. “Final Interrogation Report of Arthur Scheidler,” July 11, 1945; “Assets of Gold and Foreign Currency of the RSHA Berlin/Dislocation in theSalzkammergut, Salzburg and the Tyrol,” April 26, 1947; “Statement of Mrs. Iris Scheidler, Given to Hofrat Reith,” April 4, 1947. The sources conflict as towhether each sack of Kaltenbrunner’s gold weighed 30 kg., or whether the entirecache weighed 30 kgs. We believe the former is correct, for reasons that willbecome clear in the text.]
8. CIC Memorandum, “Concealed Gold, Jewelry, Foreign Exchange, andWeapons, Believed to be Located in the Salzkammergut, Zell am See, Salzburg, and in the Tyrol,” July 3, 1947; Emanual E. Minskoff, “Preliminary Report onExternal Assets of Ernst Kaltenbrunner,” 1945.]
9. “Concealed Gold, Jewelry, Foreign Exchange, and Weapons, Believed tobe Located in the Salzkammergut, Zell am See, Salzburg, and in the Tyrol,” July3, 1947.
10. CIC Memorandum, “The Capture of Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, NaziChief of Gestapo, Kripo and All German Intelligence—and his AdjutantScheidler,” May 13, 1945.
11. “The Capture of Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner,” May 13, 1945.
12. “Concealed Gold, Jewelry, Foreign Exchange, and Weapons, Believedto be Located in the Salzkammergut, Zell am See, Salzburg, and in the Tyrol,”July 3, 1947.
13. “Concealed Gold, Jewelry, Foreign Exchange, and Weapons, Believedto be Located in the Salzkammergut, Zell am See, Salzburg, and in the Tyrol,”July 3, 1947.
14. “Assets of Gold and Foreign Currency of the RSHA Berlin/Dislocationin the Salzkammergut, Salzburg and the Tyrol,” April 26, 1947. Even the smallamount of cash and jewels taken from Kaltenbrunner when he was capturedvanished. According to the foregoing CIC memorandum, “it is not known whathas become of these.”
Chapter 14 Notes
1. “First Progress Report: Concealed Gold, Jewelry, Foreign Exchange, andWeapons, Believed to be Located in the Salzkammergut, Zell am See, Salzburg, and in the Tyrol,” July 3, 1947.]
Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold Page 38