George Spitz, naturally enough, wanted to get his hands on some of the Goudstikker collection and launder some of his counterfeit money in the process. His opportunity arose when he discovered a man who knew Alois Miedl well enough to approach him with an offer. A doctor in chemistry with the surname of Kurz had known Miedl since childhood and introduced him to Spitz in Amsterdam. Acting as an intermediary, Dr. Kurz helped Spitz with the purchase of art and other financial transactions related to the collection. Spitz took full advantage of the introduction, acquiring the invaluable Peasant’s Dance by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, as well as a Rembrandt. Transporting the valuable artwork without threat of robbery or discovery proved relatively simple. Spitz merely affixed SS stamps to a large traveling trunk. Tucked away in his pocket was a special pass personally signed by Himmler forbidding anyone from opening the trunk. The pass also gave Spitz the complete freedom to travel anywhere in Germany or the occupied countries without restriction. Spitz used this authorization to haul dozens of paintings from the Goudstikker and other collections to the Henkel Fabriken complex in Dusseldorf, as well as the Witzig storehouse in Munich. Because photographer Heinrich Hoffmann (for whom Kastner drove a car) was also employed by Reichsmarschall Göring, a large number of the paintings changed hands with Göring and other prominent collectors.26
Operation Bernhard, conducted entirely below Berlin’s radar, was a stunning money laundering success. A large amount of the cleansed currency was eventually turned over to Dr. Höttl and his assistant, SS Captain Froelich. Just as it had dawned on Josef Dauser, Spitz (himself a swindler of the first order) eventually realized to his dismay that Höttl and Froelich were skimming a substantial amount of the money for themselves.27
In addition to being exchanged for other currencies, the counterfeit notes were used to purchase millions of dollars worth of weapons, ammunition, military equipment, liquor, gold, and jewelry. The military goods, including food, were mostly used within Germany proper. The gold and currencies were shipped to the Reichsbank; the chinaware, clothing, shoes, and furniture were shipped to three storage depots in Austria. Wherever the items ended up, once they were shipped an itemized bill was sent to Josef Spacil, who had his secretary, Rudolf Guenther, credit Schwend’s account accordingly.28
In his capacity as the sole overseer for the distribution of the counterfeit currency, Schwend worked closely with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the head of the RSHA and Gestapo, Kaltenbrunner’s assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Scheidler, and Dr. Wilhelm Höttl. All the currency distributed to Italy, Croatia, and Hungary was delivered directly into Höttl’s hands. These mammoth distributions enabled Schwend to satisfy the luxurious demands all three men placed upon him.29
The greatest forgery and counterfeiting enterprise of all time operated smoothly until the final days of the war. Despite its remarkable success it had no real impact on the war effort. The Bank of England suffered enormous losses as a result of the operation, but the British economy was never in danger of collapsing because of it. Operation Bernhard, however, did serve to feather the nests of those officers smart enough to realize the war would eventually end one day, and that Germany was not going to be on the winning side of the ledger. Schwend and company continued utilizing the Sachsenhausen barracks until early April 1945, by which time the advancing Russian army posed a serious threat to Berlin and the surrounding region. Himmler wanted to discontinue the operation altogether. However, Major Bernhard Krüger, who oversaw the project at Sachsenhausen, insisted that the production of the forged currency continue. As far as he was concerned, his efforts were helping the war effort while guaranteeing that high ranking Nazis would be well funded when they made their escape to safety after the war. Himmler relented and agreed to let the operation persevere.
Unbeknownst to Himmler, Krüger had other reasons for keeping the forgery team intact. He had been told that his Jewish staff would be executed when his operation closed shop. Krüger informed his prisoners of the order and advised them to keep working. They did not have to be told twice. The counterfeiting plant would continue, but in another more tenable venue. Twenty large army trucks were loaded with printing presses and equipment and placed onto a train. In that manner the entire operation moved by rail from Berlin by way of Mauthausen to a large underground chamber at Redl Zipf, a small village nine miles from Vokklabruk, Austria, and just thirty miles from Zell am See and Fischhorn castle. Krüger and his team arrived there on April 18, 1945.30
Austria, however, offered only a brief respite from the Allied armies. Seven days later Krüger was notified that American and Russian forces were closing in from three sides. The last thing he intended to do was be captured by the Russians. He and his mistress from Berlin, Hilde Möller, an attractive 24-year-old blond, packed their bags and sped away from Redl Zipf in an Alfa Romeo convertible. The 40-year-old Krüger, 5’ 7" tall and with a nervous twitch in his left eye, was well prepared for flight. He carried with him all the forged documents he would need, together with a large supply of English pound notes. In his glove compartment were two passports, one Swiss and the other Paraguayan.31
The work continued even after Krüger’s departure. According to Oscar Stein, Operation Bernhard’s head bookkeeper and himself a Jewish prisoner, the men were put to work burning incriminating papers and destroying rejected English pound notes with an estimated counterfeit value of 60,000,000 pounds. The perfect English notes were packed into large heavy wooden boxes about 2′ × 2′ × 7′. It took four prisoners to carry and load each box onto a waiting truck. After each truck was fully loaded it rolled in the direction of Zell am See and Fischhorn castle. On the nights of April 30–May 1, 2, and 3, remembered Stein, the trucks hauled away hundreds of boxes containing 61,000,000 pounds of perfect counterfeit English notes. Each wooden container was stamped “In case of danger destroy contents.”32
Some of this cargo ended up at the bottom of Lake Toplitz, dumped in a secret nocturnal rowboat operation witnessed by a single civilian woman who lived to tell the story. Early one morning on or about May 1, 1945, 21-year-old Austrian farm girl Ida Weisenbacher was roused from her bed with a sharp knock and a shout. “It was five o’clock in the morning, we were still in bed when we heard the knock on the door,” remembered Weisenbacher. “Get up immediately hitch up the horse wagon, we need you!” shouted an SS officer. Actually, the Germans needed a wagon more than they needed Ida. Their large four-ton Lancia truck and trailer were loaded full with wooden crates. They had intended to drive it to the edge of the lake and dump the contents into the cold deep water, but the narrow road leading in that direction ended far short of the shore—and near Ida’s home. “A commander was there,” Ida recalled. “He told us to bring these boxes as fast as possible to Lake Toplitz.” Ida saw each box, which was stenciled with bold-painted letters and a corresponding number. The woman hitched up a wagon and organized a trio of wheeled trips to the water’s edge. “When I brought the last load, I saw how they went on to the lake and dropped the boxes into the water… The SS kept shoving me away but I saw the boxes were sunk into the lake,” she said.
The contents of the boxes remained a mystery to her for fifty-five years. In 2000, a search of the deep lake with advanced underwater technology turned up the remains of several wooden boxes as well as thousands of pounds in counterfeit currency. Ida, now 78, still lives in the same small house near the edge of Lake Toplitz where one early morning a truckload of SS soldiers woke her from a deep sleep to play a small role in the dying hours of Operation Bernhard.33
Once the trucks were gone, Oscar Stein and his Jewish comrades were directed to hide a few boxes of currency in a home near Redl Zipf. Still under guard and facing a rapidly-approaching date with death, the prisoners were escorted several miles northeast to Ebensee concentration camp. They were told they would be gassed upon arrival. At Ebensee, the Jews were turned over to Wehrmacht soldiers and their SS guards promptly fled the scene. They, too, had every intention of avoiding Russian captivity. Krüger’s
Jews, it seems, lived a charmed existence. The Americans arrived at Ebensee the next day, May 6, 1945, and liberated them just hours before a one-way trip into the gas chamber. Without the timely arrival of the GIs, none would have lived to tell their remarkable story. A CIC agent asked one of them in a postwar interview what he thought of Bernhard Krüger. The answer surprised him. “He was very decent to us,” he answered.34
What happened to the remaining trucks loaded with counterfeit currency? They were originally headed west and southwest out of Redl Zipf, thirty miles northeast of Salzburg, in the hope of reaching the Zell am See region. Because of the advancing Allies, however, the convoy could not take the direct route through Salzburg. To avoid the enemy, the trucks turned south through a gorge on a narrow road next to the Traun River, and then west on another constricted byway paralleling the Enns River. They never made it to Zell am See. Three trucks, two full of notes and the third crammed with valuable antiques and related loot pilfered from Russia, were purposely driven into a deep narrow gorge, where they plunged into the cold water of the River Inns not far from the village of Pruggern. The cases burst open and the swift water distributed the forged pound notes and loot as far as ten miles down river.
The truck that had made it to Ida Weisenbacher’s home near Lake Toplitz left with its trailer partially loaded for the camp at Ebensee, where some of the notes were burned. Other trucks were driven to Gmündner, their contents dumped into Lake Traun. One of the trucks from Redl Zipf joined a winding line of trucks and cars filled with valuables from Berlin. This particular convoy was under the command of Josef Spacil, the head of RSHA Bureau II who had recently relocated to the state of Salzburg, Austria, to carry out another, more desperate, directive.35
Although some of the counterfeit money was accounted for, the fate of tens of millions of pounds of “perfect” notes remains a mystery. Some of the money was hidden away in attics and barns, basements and fields; crates full of the fake currency were dumped into deep Austrian lakes. Millions were eventually recovered, but most of it was not. Given what we know today, it is likely that a large portion of the remainder was deposited into Swiss and Spanish banks (or otherwise hidden away) and used after the war by those SS officers and others lucky enough to escape arrest and conviction for their wartime crimes against humanity.
Chapter 7
“[I] was besieged by requests for supplies, money, and quarters, most of them impossible to fulfill.”
— SS Oberführer Joseph Spacil, April 1945
A Bureaucrat and His Gold: Josef Spacil’s Final Days of World War II
April 1945. The world was collapsing on the Thousand-Year Reich. With each passing day, it resembled a sinking ship settling a bit further in the water, the rats scurrying from within the dying vessel in a vain attempt to save themselves in the rigging. As the Reich disintegrated, so too did the layers of criminally-imposed “legal” accouterment, which had for so long offered protective cover for the Nazi leaders who had run the machinery of death, enslavement, and plunder. But now, in the spring of 1945, these same men were consumed with the hunger for self-preservation.
SS Oberführer Josef Spacil’s connections with the plunder and killing of European Jewry were suddenly too close for comfort. Like so many of his SS comrades, he had also taken the opportunity to feather his nest in anticipation of a cozy postwar existence. Unlike so many of his comrades, however, his cache consisted of more than just counterfeit notes or stolen liquor. Spacil, it will be recalled, was the head of RSHA Bureau II. He had helped launder millions in fake English pounds. Within his charge were millions in gold, jewels, and currency, both foreign and domestic. He was also burdened with documents and personal items belonging to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, and had close associations with several others bearing similar items of interest to the Allies.
For Spacil, escaping the fusing enemy pincers closing in on Germany and Austria was of no little urgency.
For the first time in many years Ernst Kaltenbrunner was all but powerless. The head of the Reich Security Home Office (RSHA) and chief of the Secret Service keenly appreciated the collapse of the Nazi regime meant certain arrest and a likely death sentence for war crimes. That is, if he were caught by the Allies. At this late date, the only viable means of escape was to change his identity and blend into the population of southern Germany or Austria. Alas, final obligations to the dying State remained, including the dilemma concerning the immense wealth his bureaucrats had managed to steal and hide under a fraudulent account named Max Heiliger. What was Kaltenbrunner to do with these millions? A final decision was made to transport the wealth south into the relative safety of the supposed “Alpine Redoubt.” In April 1945, he ordered Josef Spacil to organize and oversee the transfer of the account. Perhaps as a reward for the impossible task with which he was suddenly burdened, Spacil was promoted to Oberführer on April 20, 1945, a rank between that of colonel and brigadier general, which has no equivalent in the United States Army.1
The Max Heiliger account, the fortune tucked under Spacil’s wing of responsibility, was comprised of funds laundered through yet another account named “Melmer.” This ring of theft was as elaborate as it was macabre. The wealth, long housed in the German Reichsbank, originated in gold looted from the occupied nations of Europe. Most of it was snatched from Jews and others persecuted by the Nazi regime. In order to disguise the origins of this fortune from the wrong eyes, the RSHA created what became known as the Melmer Account, named after SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Bruno Melmer. In stereotypical German fashion, Melmer maintained a precise recording of what was stolen from Nazi Holocaust and other victims between 1942 and 1944. According to Melmer, the gold (which came from watches, jewelry, coins, bullion, and dental fillings pried out of the mouths of the dead and living alike) was collected, inventoried, packaged, and shipped to the Berlin Reichsbank monetary gold reserve. The financial institution logged it in and sent it on to the Degussa smelting company, which processed the metal into bars for easy storage and shipment. Once smelted into bars the SS gold no longer contained the scent of blood, for it was now indistinguishable from other bullion stolen from central banks in occupied Europe. Gold was not the only asset funneled into the Melmer account. Truckloads of silver, diamonds, artwork, antiques, and many other items of tangible value were sold or consigned to pawn shops, and the currencies deposited in the account. As a means of covering the original source of these ill-gotten gains, this wealth was credited, or laundered, into the Max Heiliger account, a phony ledger entry owned wholly by the Reich Ministry of Finance. Some of this gold has today been traced to Swiss bank accounts.2
By April 1945, much of the wealth contained in the Heiliger account had already been removed from Berlin. Allied bombing raids had compelled it. The bulk of RSHA’s non-working assets had been transferred in October 1944 from the Berlin Reichsbank southwest to Bad Sulza, in the state of Thurginia. Packed carefully into small steel safes and stored in a special air raid shelter in Bad Sulza, designed for RSHA employees, the account consisted of gold bars and coins, rings, jewels, Reichsmarks, and other currencies. By late April some of the Bad Sulza loot had already been dispersed. What remained, however, was enough to make even Spacil’s jaded jaw hit the floor. In addition to the gold and coins (200,000 napoleons and Swiss francs stored in ten large jute sacks and small chests), were at least 5,000,000 Reichsmarks in 100 Mark notes, and other foreign currencies—a fortune worth an estimated $25,000,000.3
A much smaller sum remained in Berlin, but Spacil was not about to leave it behind. He dispatched one of his Bureau II subordinates, SS Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) Ertl, to withdraw the remaining RSHA funds housed there in the Reichsbank. Ertl returned on April 21 with gold, pound sterling, American dollars, Swiss francs, Danish crowns and more, all worth more than 1,000,000 Reichsmarks. “The Reichsbank was giving up all its foreign assets,” he reported to Spacil, and Ertl had received “more than what was in the RSHA account.” Three sacks of gold francs and a l
arge amount of mixed funds, worth about 350,000 marks, were given to Otto Ohlendorf, the notorious head of RSHA’s Bureau III (Security Service). The balance, together with a large portion of the Heiliger hoard, was shipped to Austria under the watchful eye of Spacil’s trusted adjutant Kurt Schiebel, who crammed it into sacks and chests and loaded up every square inch of space in three large passenger cars. Spacil also saw to it that some of Eva Braun’s personal belongings were tucked away in the shipment for safekeeping. Accompanied by Gretl Biesecker, Spacil’s mistress of two years, the trio of autos headed south for Salzburg. Another truck loaded to the gills with the balance of the Heiliger gold and currency was driven from Bad Sulza to Salzburg by a securities expert from Bureau II named Pfeiler.4
Spacil did not personally accompany these RSHA valuables. Instead, he and twenty other high-ranking RSHA officials and their families flew from Berlin to Munich on April 22. By that time flying over Germany was a dangerous proposition because of the close proximity of American military forces. That fact was almost fatally confirmed when American fighter planes were discovered in the skies around Munich, strafing everything remotely deemed a military target. Spacil and his party flew low—often at tree-top level—and landed instead in Salzburg, Austria, at 11:00 a.m. Once Spacil set foot in Salzburg the pace of his war picked up considerably. For him and the rest of the high command, one day merged into the next. Each was a disaster and on each passing day their circumstances appreciably worsened.5
Nazi Millionaires Page 12