The Waffen-SS and Americans Meet Up at Melk
On 12 April 1945 Grossadmiral Dönitz had spent 24 hours in Berne, Switzerland, and then returned to Berlin where he spoke to Hitler. 120 In mid-April the Soviet Army had dug in at St Pöllen, only 3 kms from Merkersdorf airfield which served Melk, from where they regularly broadcast over loudspeakers in German warning of the “the greatest treachery in world history” and inviting German troops, in alluring terms describing the unsurpassable treatment they would receive, to “come over and surrender”.
Melk was being defended by the 6th SS Panzer Army with fifteen Jagdtiger tanks.
When Amstetten fell on 8 May 1945 citizens recall that the Waffen-SS were waiting quite unconcernedly in the market square to meet the American forces when they arrived. During the day when there was a Russian air raid American and SS troops sought shelter together. Later the two groups collaborated. The thirty railroad cars were taken westwards across the Enns demarcation line, while a mixed group proceeded to Melk to arrange the ceasefire. The same day the Russians moved forward and encountered American troops near Melk, where a brief exchange of fire ensued before the Americans withdrew. The US forces had examined the contents of the thirty goods trucks and satisfied themselves that the bombs were not primed with the catalyst, which was required by standing orders to be added to the bomb by the SS immediately before the fuse was set prior to take-off.
In April 1945 Otto Skorzeny’s special Waffen-SS intelligence unit was ordered to provide the escort for the transport of 540 crates of documents from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin to the Austrian frontier. All Germany’s atomic and biochemical weapons projects were included in these archives. Eventually, on 21 April 1945, the convoy reached Stechowitz, 30 miles from Prague. A rendezvous was made with the commanding general of the SS Weapons Engineering School, the crates were separated into lots and, together with other material, were interred, the entrances being dynamited. In American custody, the SS-General described how he and another SS-officer were the only survivors after concentration camp inmates and then their SS-guards had been murdered by a regular Wehrmacht execution squad. During his own interrogation the general “came clean” and spoke about a pressure bomb based on firedamp which “was absolutely devastating for everything”. The SS destroyed the catalyst and formula shortly before the Americans arrived.
Did Goering “save civilization” by refusing Hitler’s orders to deploy these bombs? Aside from doctrinal grounds, Hitler’s objection to a full nuclear blast was that it might go on to ignite the hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere. Presumably it was thought this bomb presented the same sort of threat. The orders for its use flowed down through Luftwaffe channels. The SS refused to release the bombs because there was no order signed personally by Hitler. If it became known that Hitler had forbidden the bombs to be used and Goering was disobeying him, one can see how that might have given rise to a Luftwaffe officers’ mutiny. Unfortunately Hitler’s Luftwaffe ADC, von Below, is silent on the matter in his memoirs and so we shall never know.
CHAPTER 11
The First and Last Voyage of the German Submarine U-234
HIDEO TOMONAGA, a Samurai, held the rank of captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy and was credited with the invention of an automatic depth-keeping device for submarines. On 27 April 1943, southeast of Madagascar, he transferred from the Japanese submarine 1-29 under Captain Yoichi to Korvettenkapitän Musenberg’s U-boat U-180. He brought with him a few items of luggage – three one-man torpedoes, a 3-cm gas-pressure self-loading cannon and, in a large number of smaller cases, a quantity of gold ingots destined for the Japanese Embassy in Berlin and said to be payment for German technology. There was in fact so much gold, probably several tonnes of it, that the U-boat chief engineer found it useful to help trim the submarine. In June 1943 U-180 arrived safely at the French Biscay base of Bordeaux, and Captain Tomonaga went off to do whatever it was that he had come for. 121 He would reappear in the story twenty months later on the U-boat quay at Kiel.
The Preparation and Loading of U-234
The seven U-boats of Type XB were the largest in the Kriegsmarine, displacing 2,700 tonnes full load submerged. They had been designed as minelayers, and for this purpose were equipped with thirty mineshafts capable of carrying sixty-six mines, but in general were used as ocean replenishment boats, the so-called Milchkühe. 294 feet long and 30 feet in the beam, the class had diesel-electric propulsion providing a maximum surfaced speed of 17 knots and 7 knots submerged. The most economic cruising speed was 10 knots which gave them a range of 21,000 miles and made them ideal for long-distance cargo missions to Japan, which could be reached from Germany without refuelling.
U-234 had been damaged by bomb hits in 1942 and May 1943 while under construction and was not launched until 23 December 1943. The boat was commissioned by Kapitänleutnant Johann Heinrich Fehler on 3 March 1944 and spent the next five months either in the builders’ yard or working-up in the Baltic. Once the training period had been completed successfully, she put into Germania Werft at Kiel on 30 August 1944 for a major refit and conversion from a minelayer into a transport submarine. The important changes were the installation of a snorkel, an air intake mast enabling submerged travel under diesel propulsion and the removal of the twenty-four lateral mineshafts to create cargo stowage compartments. The outer keel plates were removed and the keel duct remodelled to receive a cargo of mercury and optical glass.
U-234 emerged from the yards on 22 December 1944 for trials. The commander had meanwhile been summoned to OKM in Berlin to be informed that U-234 was to take important war material and twenty-seven passengers to Tokyo. Fehler argued that this number was unreasonable. They would take the place of eighteen crew members and endanger the mission. After some negotiation a compromise was struck in which twelve passengers would travel, one acting as No 1 watch-keeping officer. These would replace eight crew members. It appears from American declassified papers that a special commission, Marinesonderzweigstelle Heimat under Korvettenkapitän Becker, decided in December 1944 what cargo was to be carried. The OKM Liaison officer for Japan, Kapitän zur See Souchon, discussed the cargo with Japanese Military Attaché Kigoishi.
In January 1945 the final preparations were begun for the voyage to Tokyo. A Hohentwiel radar was installed which gave the boat the priceless advantage of detecting an approaching aircraft before the latter could get a fix on the submarine, but it could heat up severely if left working too long. Dr Schlicke, a former Director of the Telecommunications Testing Station at Kiel Arsenal, a passenger who had shipped aboard early, arranged in Berlin a two-for-one swap to eliminate the radar-overheating problem.
The cargo was loaded under conditions of the strictest secrecy. Over 100 tonnes of mercury in 50-lb iron bottles went into the keel ducts. Elsewhere engineering and weapons blueprints, cameras, lenses, fuses, barrels and bales, secret documents in sealed containers, even an Me 262 jet aircraft in its component parts were stowed in the holds amidships. 122 Some of the six forward upright tubes through the foredeck were packed with anti-tank and small flak rockets, and Panzerfäuste.
The most important witness to all this activity was Oberfunkmeister Wolfgang Hirschfeld, the senior radio operator of U-234. A good observer of detail, who kept an illicit diary later published as a book, 123 he described how from a perch on the conning tower he saw an SS-lorry draw up on the quayside alongside the U-boat at Kiel one February morning in 1945 and unload the most important and secret item of cargo, a large number of small and immensely heavy metal cases of uniform size which looked about nine inches along each each side. He saw a military officer whom he later knew to be Japanese Military Attaché Kigoishi looking on.
After a few moments he noticed something which struck him as distinctly odd, for among the small knot of German crewmen working on the foredeck there were two Japanese officers who appeared to be supervising the loading. They were seated on a crate, occupied in painting a description in black characters including th
e formula ‘U-235’ on the brown paper wrapping gummed around each of the small, heavy containers. They were so numerous that he couldn’t count them, but certainly there seemed to him to be well over fifty little cases. 124
These two Japanese, who were to travel aboard U-234 on the voyage to Tokyo, were Air Force Colonel Genzo Shosi, an aeronautical engineer, and Hideo Tomonaga, who had arrived in France aboard U-180 nearly two years before. Once finished, each case would be carried individually to the German officer supervising the loading, third watchkeeping officer Leutnant zur See Carl-Ernst Pfaff, assisted by a bosun, Peter Schölch, for stowage in one of the six vertical loading tubes in the foredeck. They were pressure-resistant steel loading containers about 25 feet in length and six feet in diameter resembling a large cigar tube, designed to fit into each of the six vertical mineshafts set in a line down the centre line of the fore-deck. These were held in place by the original mine-retention mechanism and could have been jettisoned at any time by the pulling of a lever by the commander.
Hirschfeld asked Tomonaga what the cases contained and was told, “It is the cargo from U-235. That boat is no longer going to Japan.” When he enquired at the 5th Flotilla Office, they told him that U-235 was Type VII training boat never intended for operations beyond the Baltic, and so he knew that Tomonaga had lied. He spoke to the commander privately a little later and was told, “For God’s sake, Oberfunkmeister, I must swear you to total secrecy and ask you not to raise the matter again with the Japanese. I will explain everything to you in Tokyo.” 125 Only five persons aboard U-234 knew that the small cases contained uranium: Fehler the captain, Ernst the chief engineer, Pfaff the third watchkeeper and the two Japanese.
The commander of the 5th U-Flotilla arranged a reception for Tomonaga and Shosi, and in a ceremony aboard the hulk of the liner St Louis Ambassador Oshima placed Tomonaga’s 300-year-old Samurai sword into Fehler’s care for the voyage. The other passengers boarding in Germany were:
Kapitänleutnant Richard Bulla, first watchkeeper, Staff Officer to Luftwaffe Attaché.
Oberst Fritz Sandrath (Luftwaffe), chief of Bremen flak defences.
Oberst Erich Menzel (Luftwaffe), technical aide to Air Attaché, communications.
KKpt Heinrich Hellendorn (Navy), naval flak gunnery.
Dr (Ing) Heinz Schlicke, radar, D/F and infra-red scientist.
Oberstlt Kai Nieschling (Luftwaffe), squadron judge.
FKpt Gerhard Falck, buildings and naval architecture.
August Bringewald, senior Messerschmitt engineer, Me 262, Me 163 and rocketry.
Franz Ruf, Messerschmitt procurement specialist.
The last passenger was to board in Norway. Nieschling, the Judge, was travelling to Japan to investigate allegations against Embassy personnel implicated in the Sorge spy scandal and to keep an eye on other passengers during the voyage. Tomonaga, Shosi, Nieschling and Falck slept in the deck below the NCO’s quarters, while all remaining passengers would sleep where they could.
Early on 26 March 1945, in convoy with three other U-boats and under heavy escort, U-234 sailed for Horten in Norway and arrived there next day after surviving an air attack off Frederikshavn. There now followed a period of idleness while Fehler awaited orders to sail. During exercises at Christiansand U-234 was rammed and damaged. Repairs had to be effected with shipboard tools in a quiet backwater. The last of the passengers, General Ulrich Kessler, the new Luftwaffe attaché to Tokyo, came aboard. Hirschfeld went every morning to the signals station to collect messages for the boat and on 15 April he took possession of a signal which read:
“U-234. Only sail on the orders of the highest level. Führer HQ.”
A short while afterwards he was summoned to fetch an urgent signal which stated:
“U-234. Sail only on my order. Sail at once on your own initiative. Dönitz.”
It is interesting to conjecture whether the visit of Grossadmiral Dönitz to Berne, Switzerland, on 12 April 1945 was connected with diplomatic moves following the death of US President Roosvelt that day. In order to provide a leader for Germany should the Reich be divided into two halves, north and south, on 15 April Hitler issued a decree vesting leadership in Dönitz and Kesselring respectively, and the order to U-234 to sail was probably the first important decision in Dönitz’ new role.
On the afternoon of 16 April, U-234 sailed after a brief farewell address from the Regional Commander of U-boats North (FdU) Kapitän zur See Rösing. According to Hirschfeld, Fehler had decided to take the Cape Horn route into the south Pacific because of enemy air and sea superiority in the Indian Ocean. Use of the snorkel was abandoned at the entrance to the Iceland-Faroes Channel because of a heavy swell and on 30 April the North Atlantic was reached sailing surfaced.
On the evening of 4 May 1945 Hirschfeld copied down the order of U-boat Command that all German submarines were to observe a ceasefire with effect from 0800 hrs German time the next morning. All attack U-boats were to return to Norway. In accordance with his secret orders, Fehler could ignore this instruction since he was not commanding an attack U-boat. Once the last long-wave transmitter Goliath shut down, naval telegraphists had to rely on short-wave senders, but when instructed to tune in to the Distel wavelength, Hirschfeld found that he had been supplied with a table of false frequencies.
On 6 May an American news broadcast was heard reporting the official declaration of Japanese Foreign Minister Togo that Japan considered herself free from all contracts and treaties concluded with the German Reich and would fight on alone; on the evening of 8 May Reuters issued a communiqué to the effect that Japan had severed relations with Germany and that, as a consequence, German citizens in Japan were being interned. Taking the two reports together, Fehler took the view that the purpose of his voyage was frustrated and that he should accept the capitulation.
His immediate problem was the two Japanese officers. He assumed they would try to prevent the cargo from falling into the hands of Japan’s enemies, and Fehler, after informing them of the political developments, placed them under arrest. Tomonaga and Shosi expressed understanding for his dilemma and wished him an honourable solution. In asking him to reconsider, Shosi gave his personal undertaking that the crew of U-234 would not be interned on completion of the voyage but would receive especially favourable treatment. Fehler had no confidence in the Japanese Government, however, and, having heard out the plea of the Japanese officers, shook his head with a smile. 126
Hirschfeld discovered that, a short while after, Tomonaga and Shosi had made their way through the boat taking their leave of the crew, Tomonaga distributing among them the watches he had bought in Switzerland.
That same day, Kapitän zur See Rösing, FdU North, signalled Fehler in the Japan cypher:
“U-234. Continue your voyage or return to Bergen. FdU.”
When shown the signal log, Fehler shook his head and said that he was definitely not going back.
Fehler considered that the Allied directive requiring all U-boats at sea to wear a black flag at the periscope head designated them as pirates and he decided to think about the legal position. This suited him because his surrender port based on his current position was Halifax, Nova Scotia, and he was not keen to surrender to the Canadians.
The boat continued to head south while long debates between officers and passengers were held on the question of heading for Argentina or the South Seas, but on 13 May Fehler signalled Halifax for surrender instructions. The Canadian station responded immediately by requesting the position of U-234, and once this had been supplied a course was given to steer for Nova Scotia. Fehler had not the least intention of going there and U-234 now headed at full speed to the south-west in order to cross into the American sea area. At about 2300 hrs, when a Canadian patrol aircraft determined that U-234 was not on the correct course, Halifax sent out more orders to the submarine by radio.
Towards midnight Judge Nieschling reported that Tomonaga and Shosi were lying in adjacent bunks, their arms linked, breathing stertorou
sly and could not be woken. An empty bottle which had contained Luminal sleeping tablets was found on the deck plating nearby. A suicide note addressed to the commander was found during a search of their belongings requesting Fehler “should he find us here alive to leave us alone, please, and let us die”. They had taken their action so as to avoid captivity. In closing they requested that their bodies should not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Americans, and that their diplomatic bag should be weighted and sunk, as it held secret papers useful to the enemy. There was a will confirming the assignment of certain property to members of the crew, and for the captain a sum of money in Swiss francs to be used to inform their relatives that they were dead, but not dishonoured.
Fehler merely said that he would do as they had asked. The game of cat-and-mouse with the Canadians continued over the next day until the signals of the latter were suppressed by American jamming. Because he thought he would get a better deal from the Americans, Fehler had made up his mind to surrender to them, and the Americans were so determined to get their hands on U-234 that they sent their destroyer USS Sutton into the Canadian zone in direct contravention of Allied protocol. The American military authorities were in possession of a passenger manifest for U-234 which they had obtained on occupying the Kiel naval base. The fact that there were two Japanese officers aboard U-234 probably accounted for their unusual interest in the submarine: the first question by the American prize officer on boarding U-234 on 17 May 1945 was not “Where is the uranium?” but “Where are the Japs?”
In fact, not long after the stern lookouts reported the approach of the American destroyer, Fehler sent for the U-boat’s medical officer and said, “Tonight we must get the Japanese overboard. If the Americans get to them, they will do everything they can to bring them round. See to it that they die peacefully.” Dr Walter descended to the lower deck without comment and a few hours later reported the death of Tomonaga and Shosi. Each corpse was sewn into a weighted hammock while the diplomatic pouch and the Samurai sword were bound to the body of Tomonaga after which the bodies were committed to the deep with full military honours.
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