90 Romano, Giuseppe Volpi, 235–36.
91 Ibid., 236.
92 See generally Headquarters Allied Commission, Finance Sub-Commission, APO 394, Confidential, RG 59, Department of State, Rome Embassy, File 851, Box 161, NARA.
93 Headquarters Allied Commission, Finance Sub-Commission, APO 394, Confidential, RG 59, Department of State, Rome Embassy, File 851, Box 161, NARA; also Memo, Saint JJI to Saint BB, Response to Questionnaire by Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, October 25, 1945, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA, 24–26. See also Claudio Lindner and Giancarlo Mazzuca, Il leone di Trieste: il romanzo delle Assicurazioni Generali dalle origini austroungariche all’era Cuccia (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer), 1990.
94 See Giorgio Bocca, La Repubblica di Mussolini (Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1977); Romano, Giuseppe Volpi, 236.
95 Romano, Giuseppe Volpi, 237. The Allied High Commission for Sanctions Against Fascism later seized whatever Volpi assets the Germans had missed, and charged him with crimes for aiding the fascists. He stayed in Switzerland during the trial that resulted in a guilty verdict in January 1947. The court, however, extended amnesty to him. By then it was clear that few German or Italian businessmen would pay any price for having helped the Axis war effort. The American embassy had complained at the end of the war to the Secretary of State, “there are some forty-five high ranking insurance executives in Rome whom the Allied Commission consider ‘undesirable elements.’ ” The Italians were resistant to putting any on trial. In Germany, General Lucius Clay, the U.S. Military Governor, aborted all the war crimes trials of the German insurance industry executives. Volpi’s German counterparts walked free, many returning to the only business they knew, insurance.
Chapter 11: A Nazi Spy in the Vatican?
1 Declaration on Gold Purchases, February 22, 1944, Documents Pertaining to Foreign Funds Control, U.S. Treasury Department, Washington: March 30, 1944, 15–16, Papers of Bernard Bernstein, Subject File, Box 23, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO.
2 BIS was the subject of furious wartime debates inside the U.S. and other countries. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau pressed the case that since BIS was effectively controlled by the Nazis, there should be no U.S. delegates. Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 26–33.
3 BIS attracted prominent names from its inception. Its first president was Gates McGarrah, who had previously been the president of Chase National Bank before becoming chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau worried that at the very start of the war that BIS was Axis-controlled. William C. Bullitt to Henry Morgenthau, May 9, 1939, Telegram 907, Charles Higham “Trading with the Enemy” Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library.
4 Schröder managed J. H. Stein Bank, the German side of an international banking family that included one of London’s oldest merchant banks, Schrobanco. John Foster Dulles, as a Sullivan and Cromwell partner, represented Schrobanco’s American subsidiary. There were concerns in both the British and American governments about whether Schrobanco did business with some blacklisted companies. Published reports in 1944 in Britain suggested the company was loyal to Germany. Still, one senior Schrobanco executive worked for the OSS in Cairo and Zurich. After the war, when U.S. forces detained Kurt von Schröder, he provided information that helped prosecutors prepare some of their war crimes trials. In return, he was not personally charged with any crimes although the Allies knew the SS had freely used his bank, J. H. Stein, as a repository of plundered assets throughout the war. See Richard Roberts, Schroders: Merchants and Bankers (London: Macmillan, 1992), 292–97; U.S. Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality 1945–46, Miscellaneous Reference Materials, Transcripts of Interrogations, Baron Kurt von Schröder, RG 238, World War II War Crimes, Box 2, NARA.
5 See generally Murphy to Mowinckel, Records of the OSS, Office of the Director, RG 226, Entry 116, June 4, 1945, NARA.
6 The Independent Commission of Experts was a group of financial, political, and historical researchers who for six years, starting in 1996, reviewed and prepared a report on the armaments industry/trade; Swiss insurance companies in the Third Reich; use of Switzerland as a financial center; gold transactions and Aryanization in Austria; and Franco-Swiss financial relations. Their final report was issued in 2002. Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War (Zürich: Pendo Verlag GmbH, 2002); see also Jean Ziegler, Die Schweiz, das Gold und die Toten (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1997); and Werner Rings, Raubgold aus Deutschland. Die ‘Golddrehscheibe’ Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Piper, 1996).
7 Die Schweiz und die Goldtransaktionen im Zweiten Weltkrieg Überarbeitete und ergänzte Fassung des Zwischenberichts von 1998: http://www.uek.ch/de/publikationen1997-2000/gold.pdf. Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz—Zweiter Weltkrieg—Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War, Final Report, the Independent Commission of Experts, Switzerland, March 22, 2002.
8 Interrogation of Walter Funk, July 6, 1945, Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, RG 238, 1933–50 and 1943–50, Box 73, NARA.
9 Elizabeth White, “The Disposition of SS-Looted Victim Gold During and After World War II,” American University International Law Review, 14, no. 1, Article 15 (January 1998): 212–13; see also Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 39–40.
10 Interrogation of Walter Funk, October 22, 1945, Box 186, PS 3544, Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, NARA. For an in-depth investigation of the disposition of looted Nazi gold during and immediately after the war, as well as the question of the missing files about gold and the Reichsbank, see the two reports issued by the Interagency Task Force on Nazi Assets Directed by Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat: U.S. Department of State, “U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II: Preliminary Study (1997),” and U.S. Department of State, “U.S. and Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations with Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey on Looted Gold and German External Assets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the Wartime Ustaša Treasury (1998).”
11 “Jewish Group Rejects Report On Nazi Gold,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1997; author interview with Elan Steinberg, April 2, 2006.
12 “BIS Archive Guide,” Bank of International Settlements (Basel: 2007), 2, https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bis.org%2Fabout%2Farch_guide.pdf; see also Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 296.
13 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 276.
14 Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 32–33, citing Interrogation Statement of Heinrich Otto Abetz to U.S. military, June 21, 1946. See generally Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 100, 108, 124; Roland Ray, Annäherung an Frankreich im Dienste Hitlers? Otto Abetz und die deutsche Frankreichpolitik, 1930–1942 (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000); Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 276–77. Statement of Heinrich Otto Abetz to U.S. military, June 21, 1946. Abetz, the German ambassador to Vichy France, was tried and convicted of war crimes for his role in sending French Jews to death camps. He served five years of a twenty-year sentence.
15 Heinrich Otto Abetz told American interrogators that in return for a share of the profits, the Vatican’s espionage unit had divulged the secret to Pierre Pucheu, a Vichy cabinet minister and director of a private bank in Paris. Pucheu in turn passed the secret to Yves Bréart de Boisanger, the governor of the Bank of France and a BIS director. Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 32–33, citing Interrogation Statement of Heinrich Otto Abetz to U.S. military, June 21, 1946. See generally Paxton, Vichy France, 100, 108, 124; Ray, Annäherung an Frankreich; Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 276–77. Statement of Heinrich Otto Abetz to U.S. military, June 21, 1946.
16 The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, known as the Bretton Woods Conference, recommended
in 1944 that BIS be dissolved since it had operated as an Axis-dominated entity in outright violation of its neutral charter. But its solid business and government connections, chiefly through Allen Dulles, helped it successfully resist the dissolution order. Today, BIS thrives in a role that mirrors the International Monetary Fund. See generally “BIS Archive Guide,” 2.
17 U.S. State Department Post Files, Switzerland, 1945, Interrogation of Allen Dulles, NARA; see also Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 277.
18 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 277–78.
19 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 295.
20 SCI Unit Memo, May 27, 1945, supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, Abwehr II Recruiter, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A; the document is an attachment to a longer memo dated October 25, 1945, “Subject to Questionnaire by Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme,” NARA.
21 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 38.
22 There is a May 27, 1945, two-page summary of an interrogation with Reme. Another one-page summary dated June 6, 1945. That document notes “attached herewith Supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm REME,” but all that is attached to that sheet is “Appendix C.” And there is also a twenty-six-page questionnaire answered by Reme dated October 25, 1945. The National Archives declassified all three documents on April 28, 2006. On June 22, 2006, the National Archives released supplementary documents related to Reme, including an intelligence twelve-page “Top Secret” summary about Reme and his intelligence service, complete with drawings of his Milan office. On June 27, 2006, the National Archives declassified a fifteen-page OSS file on Reme, including notes again about his supplementary interrogation. American intelligence determined that SD agents—Sicherheitsdienst, the SS spy agency—had penetrated Jauch and Hübener: “Eilers, Edith, PF 608.624,” OSS Archives, London, RG 226, DSS E119A, subdocument “Eilers, Edith Ida Johanna,” June 6, 1945, Folder 309, 2, NARA. The SD had in fact inserted into the firm in 1941 one of its own operatives, Dr. Herbert Worch. See also Memo, Saint JJI to Saint BB, Response to Questionnaire by Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, October 25, 1945, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA, 12.
23 Report on “FIDE Group, Abwehr II, Background Notes, Top Secret, RG 226, Box 13, File 79, 2.
24 Appendix C of SCI Unit Memo, May 27, 1945, supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, Abwehr II Recruiter, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA.
25 Preliminary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, SCI Unit Rome, Top Secret, May 18, 1945, OSS Archives, RG 226, OSS E119A/File 1359, NARA.
26 Supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, May 27, 1945, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA, 2.
27 Preliminary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, SCI Unit Rome, Top Secret, May 18, 1945, OSS Archives, RG 226, OSS E119A/File 1359, NARA. Elsewhere, in the typed notes in the same file, unattributed comments say Reme “recruited agents for Italian Sabotage Agency in Milan” based on information from “Antonio Calrari [a] captured saboteur.”
28 An Argentine insurance company, Mackenzie Limitada, was blacklisted by the United States Treasury for its business dealings with the Axis powers. The firm was reported to have operations in Genoa and Milan. During his interrogation and investigation of Reme, Angleton discovered that Reme’s operating alias was Carlo Mackenzie. Angleton did not know about the eponymously named blacklisted firm in Argentina, operating in the same industry–insurance–in which Reme was a senior executive before his transfer to Milan. Declassified files reviewed by the author do not answer whether the Mackenzie/ insurance overlap between a blacklisted firm and Reme are simply a coincidence or are somehow linked. See generally “Memorandum for Listing, Insurance,” British Embassy, Washington, DC, February 6, 1942, RG 131, Box 15, Folder 48B, 230/8/34/4, NARA.
29 Some Abwehr files about its battle with the SS are available in the so-called Himmler Collection, about nine thousand pages of Gestapo intelligence and counterintelligence files released by the National Archives in 2002; Interagency Working Group, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.
30 Reme told his interrogators that “some agents” of SD’s Ämter VI had approached his senior partners in Jauch and Hübener in 1941. The work they requested got the firm “into serious difficulties.”
31 “Zeidler, PF. 602.690,” OSS Archives, London, RG 226, DSS E119A, subdocument “Obtaining of Technical Intelligence,” Folder 1617, NARA.
32 Interim Report of Dr. Hans Martin Zeidler, AMT VI Wi, Secret, “Incorporation of OK/AMT AUSLAND u ABWEHR I Wi IN AMT VI Wi (Feb 44), No. 15, RG 319, Entry Oskar Turina XE1G186, Box 469, NARA. Angleton says that Reme did not leave Italy because he thought it “would have been suicide.” Supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, May 27, 1945, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA, 2
33 Schellenberg also said that the Abwehr agents in the Vatican had been “broken when the Allies took Rome.” But that was only an assumption by Schellenberg, since his group had no way of knowing what the embedded Abwehr units did after the occupation of Rome. Report of Interrogation of Walter Schellenberg, June 27 to July 12, 1945, Top Secret, RG 226, E119A, Folder 2051, NARA. See also Reinhard R. Doerries, ed., Hitler’s Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg (London: Cass, 2003).
34 London, OSS Archives, Appendix F, RG 226, OSS E119A, Folder 1359, NARA.
35 Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 252, discussing how during the time Nogara was there “Constantinople became a center of international agents, influence peddlers, and journalists selling their pens, in addition to the customary concession-seekers and promoters who claimed foreign backing.”
36 Ibid., 252–53; Roman, Giuseppe Volpi, 37–38. Nogara had worked closely in 1912-13 in Constantinople with German businessmen on a plan for a rail link from Turkey to the new state of Albania.
37 See generally Report of Interrogation of Walter Schellenberg, June 27 to July 12, 1945, Top Secret, RG 226, E119A, Folder 2051, NARA.
38 Schellenberg was one of the highest-ranking Nazis to testify against other German officers in exchange for a light sentence—he was set free after serving two years of a six-year sentence.
39 Given that there are millions of files in the national archives of the three countries, and an equally large amount in private archives of companies, banks, and independent international charities and political associations, it is not possible for a single author to have reviewed every wartime document. All major government archives have finding tools, although there is no universal name search since no government has fully digitized all its files. Still, excluding someone—such as how many Nogaras are mentioned—is easier than finding a specific document on a particular subject. While it is not possible to say with absolute certainty that there was no unrelated Nogara who might have been an Abwehr agent in Italy during World War II, the author has not found evidence of one.
40 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 301–02.
41 Frattini, The Entity, 277–79.
42 One of Angleton’s informants was Virgilio Scattolini, who was also providing intelligence to the Germans. Although he was an opportunist and a writer of pornography, he had excellent connections inside St. Peter’s. Another Angleton source was Monsignor Enrico Pucci, the Vatican aide who gave daily press briefings. Pucci secretly sold to the fascists the same reports he peddled to the Allies. Cooney, The American Pope, 144. See also Frattini, The Entity, 278.
43 Two-page letter wit
hin the SCI Unit Memo, May 27, 1945, supplementary Interrogation Report of Reinhard Karl Wilhelm Reme, Abwehr II Recruiter, Washington Registry SI Intel Field Files, records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226, Box 214, NND 897108, Entry 108A, NARA.
44 Ibid.
45 When Angleton left Italy, the CIA’s William Colby became the Rome station chief. Like Angleton, Colby was a rising star in American intelligence. He went on to become the Saigon station chief during the Vietnam War, before finally becoming the CIA’s Director in 1973.
46 A 1958 Italian obituary of Nogara, listed him as the Vatican’s representative to the Committee of National Liberation, Rome’s underground resistance movement. The author could not substantiate any such affiliation from government archives about Nogara nor from available files concerning the history of the Committee of National Liberation. The listing could have been inserted by the Vatican or by Nogara’s family as a way to posthumously create antifascist credentials. Or it could have been added to his biography by a Western intelligence agency as a way of further burying any link to the Abwehr. Finally, it is also possible that Nogara belonged to the Abwehr as well as the Committee of National Liberation, serving both in order to best protect his Vatican investments.
Chapter 12: The Ratline
1 Generally Briefing by Stuart Eizenstat, Undersecretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, regarding release of the report, U.S. and Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations with Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey on Looted Gold and German External Assets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the Wartime Ustaša Treasury, June 2, 1998.
2 Report of Interrogation of Walter Schellenberg, June 27 to July 12, 1945, Top Secret, RG 226, E119A, Folder 2051, Section 107, “Faked Pound Notes,” NARA. Schwend’s name is also spelled as Schwendt in some U.S. military files as well as in some books by historians. The first spelling is used here because on documents in which Schwend signed his name, he did so without the t. For more on Schwend and his counterfeiting plot—Operation Bernhard—see Auszug aus den Akten Friedrich Schwendt, RG 242, T-120, Roll 5781, Frame FH297319-55, NARA. See Dr. Kevin C. Ruffner, “On the Trail of the Nazi Counterfeiters,” The Daily Beast, September 20, 2014.
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