Nazi Millionaires

by Kenneth A. Alford

  Once back in Heidelberg, Hirschfeld told Dr. Six—who was still completely unaware of his duplicity—that he could get her brother, Franz Six, a job at Leather Firm Christian in Schorndorf, a small company owned by his uncle Gerhardt Schlemmer. The shop was a front for CIC clandestine operations, and Schlemmer was Hirschfeld’s former SS instructor. Like Hirschfeld, Schlemmer was also employed by American Intelligence. “All I need to know is how to contact your brother,” explained Hirschfeld. Marianne hesitated revealing his whereabouts. Six had admonished her not to reveal his secret address in a small village south of Hannover because he was wanted as a war criminal. By the time Hirschfeld left, however, Dr. Six’s brother’s new alias and secret address were tucked away in his coat pocket.3

  On January 17, 1946, Hirschfeld drove to Franz Six’s hideout near Hannover in the company of another CIC agent. They found Six binding a broom in a shed. “A gentleman in a leather coat came in and asked me to come out,” Six later remembered. “He said there was a friend from Heidelberg [waiting].” The “friend,” remembered Six, was seated in the car and “looked at me very silly, and when I turned around … I found myself looking silly into the muzzle of a Colt.” Hirschfeld handcuffed Six’s hands behind his back, threw him into the backseat and drove into a nearby forest. Six was in serious trouble and he knew it.

  “Which department are you from? American, British or Russian?” he asked in an effort to discover whether he was being officially arrested or about to be killed to satisfy an outstanding vendetta. Hirschfeld looked at him but did not answer.

  “Maybe you are just going to complete it right here, in the forest?” asked an obviously distressed Six.

  “We are not going to kill you,” Hirschfeld told the pathetic bespectacled and deceivingly harmless looking man. “Taking you here is just a precaution.”

  In addition to the handcuffs the men shackled their captive with foot cuffs, stuffed him into a large sack “closed at the neck,” and tied a heavy rope around his belly. Hirschfeld, however, was a better kidnapper than navigator: he got lost on the way back to Heidelberg and Six had to “show him the way.” Six was turned over the American Intelligence agents as soon as they arrived.4

  Marianne had no idea her brother had been secretly arrested. As far as she was concerned, Hirschfeld had taken him to work with Schlemmer at the leather firm. Proving again that love is indeed a blinding emotion, the young doctor continued aiding the undercover agent. At his request she provided additional names and addresses of SS fugitives. The dogged Hirschfeld hunted them down one by one. Sometimes he did the work alone, sometimes with the help of their friends and relatives. His modus operandi was always the same: he offered his services as friend, helper, negotiator, or representative. When they accepted his assistance he set a trap and arrested them. Hirschfeld loved his work. Although on occasion the former SS men were taken by American CIC agents, he often went into the field personally to apprehend his victims. But none of these arrests measured up to the capture of Franz Six, who was anything but a “harmless looking” SS officer.5

  Alfred Franz Six was a native of Mannheim, Germany, born on August 12, 1909. After he graduated from the classical high school at Mannheim in 1930 he entered the University of Heidelberg. The study of sociology and political science fascinated the young man, who earned both high grades and a doctorate in the study of philosophy. For a time the paunchy scholar with a rapidly receding hairline and large, thick glasses taught college. Within four years he was a full professor at the University of Königsberg in 1938, and a year later was awarded the prestigious chair for Foreign Political Science at the University of Berlin. Later he served as that institution’s first Dean of the faculty for Foreign Countries. He seemed destined for a stellar academic career.

  But like so many who served the Third Reich in high places, Six had a dark side fighting to emerge. He had long been taken with the Nazi doctrine as espoused by Hitler and had joined the party in 1930. Voluntary membership in the SA followed two years later, and the SD three years after that. The onset of war only meant greater opportunity for advancement. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, Six followed just behind the front lines as Chief of the Vorkommando Moscow. According to postwar court testimony, Six’s bureau was organized well in advance of the campaign and his task was merely to collect important documents in and around Moscow after that city fell to the unstoppable German juggernaut. But this was a facade—a giant lie. In fact, Six and his underlings oversaw mobile killing squads. “Vorkommando Moscow” was a division of Einsatzgruppen B, which shepherded tens of thousands of men, women, and children to their brutal deaths. On November 9, 1941, Heinrich Himmler personally promoted Six for his “outstanding service in [the] Einsatz.” After months of this odious work the Mannheim native accepted a prominent position in RSHA Bureau VII, the SS research wing that worked overtime furnishing a spurious scientific foundation for the Nazi doctrine of Germanic superiority. Marianne Six’s beloved brother, the shy and studious scholar with an advanced degree from the University of Heidelberg, was a mass murderer.6

  By the time 1945 rolled around Franz Six knew he was in serious trouble. He moved his beautiful blond wife and young baby out of Berlin to Mannheim to live with his parents. Just before the Russians arrived in April, he packed his personal belongings into his car and his chauffeur hauled them away. Six and two others donned civilian clothing and left. One witness described him as near “total nervous collapse” when they decided to go underground. The once-powerful and feared officer was on foot with a knapsack and empty briefcase looking for a place to hide when Germany surrendered. Dressed in a common laborer’s clothes, Six hiked his way south toward the Austrian border and then headed northeast through American checkpoints passing himself off as “George Becker.” Americans were too busy to check for SS blood tattoos. He eventually reached Heidelberg, obtained papers there from his brother (who worked for the British Army), and then moved north and east about 80 miles to the small village of Kassel, where he performed menial labor until his path crossed with Walter Hirschfeld.

  On February 13, 1946, almost four weeks after her brother had been arrested, Marianne and her father left Mannheim to return home to Heidelberg with a load of American cigarettes they had obtained on the black market. According to her father, Marianne was “happy and in good spirits.” That evening her optimistic outlook began to crumble when the words shouted by her mother, “Marianne! There is a man who wants to arrest you!” greeted her return. “Come along,” was all Walter Hirschfeld said to the confused woman, as he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her into his BMW.7

  The next morning Marianne’s other brother, Gustav Six, drove to his sister’s rented flat to get the cigarettes she had obtained for him in Mannheim. Frau Martin answered his knock with bad news: Marianne had left the previous day with her father but never returned. Neither were yet aware that she had been snatched away by Hirschfeld in front of her parent’s bombed-out home. Unsure of what to do, Martin and Gustav decided to walk downtown and ask around in an attempt to locate her. By sheer coincidence they spotted a nervous-looking Marianne walking quickly in and out of several stores.

  “Where are you coming from, Marianne?” asked Gustav, who was troubled by her odd behavior. “We have been worried about you!”

  Her baffling answer stunned both Martin and her brother. “I came from the American CIC [building.]. I was there last night and they gave me something to eat. I must return to the CIC.”

  “I will come with you,” said Gustav. He could tell something was wrong, but did not know what it was.

  “No! I have a feeling I am being observed. Go to my room and wait for me. I”ll come soon. Franz is arrested!” She hesitated a moment before adding, “Remember the name of Hirschfeld.”

  Gustav and Frau Martin watched as she walked away in the direction of the CIC building on Hauptstrasse. They, in turn, walked back to her rented room and waited for her there as she had asked them to
do. She never returned.

  Less than two hours later an elderly man noticed a young woman lying on the ground. She seemed intoxicated. Another woman approached and asked the man who she was. He shook his head and replied, “That is a GI sweetheart. She is stewed in typical American fashion.” The half-conscious woman was alert enough to overhear his observation. She slurred in return, “I did not drink, the others drank.” After uttering those few words she passed out.

  The couple helped the woman up, leaned her against a nearby wall in the sunlight, and walked away. The owner of the wall watched from a window as the unconscious woman fell backward into her yard. The Red Cross and police were called to investigate. The authorities found the young woman senseless and seemingly paralyzed, her pulse barely discernable. Information obtained from her handbag revealed her identity: Dr. Marianne Six.

  The police notified her parents, who contacted Frau Martin and a close family friend, Waldemar Hellweg. All of them hurried as fast as they could to the Ludolf Krehl Hospital. There, doctors told them Marianne was “in grave condition due to intoxication.” The head of the clinic asked whether anyone knew what she had eaten or drunk in the last several hours. “It is a case of poisoning,” he told them. “But I don’t know what it is.” The mystery deepened when Hellweg left the sick room and walked into the hall. There, he collided with a person he later described as “a tall, dark man.” It was Walter Hirschfeld. According to a nurse, he had been inquiring about Marianne’s condition. “Remember the name of Hirschfeld” Marianne had whispered to Martin and Gustav just a few hours earlier. The fives words rang in their ears when Hellweg explained that the mystery man was nosing around the hospital asking questions.

  Marianne Six died three days later without regaining consciousness. The immediate cause of death was listed as “pneumonia.” As far as the CIC was concerned she had taken her own life. Agent Rickmann of the Heidelberg CIC classified her death as a suicide. “We should also like to know what the matter was,” he wrote. “Marianne had threatened to commit suicide when she learned of her brother’s arrest. We did not believe her. It is my honest opinion that Marianne committed suicide.” Everyone who knew Marianne strenuously objected to that conclusion. “It is out of the question that Marianne would have given up the idea of avenging the betrayal to which her brother had been subjected,” retorted her surviving brother Gustav. “She had a lot of fight in her.”

  Herr Six was absolutely sure foul play was involved in his only daughter’s death. Three days later he walked into the German police headquarters and asked authorities to file murder charges against Walter Hirschfeld. “Walter Hirschfeld murdered my daughter,” he told them tearfully. They agreed to look into the case. Weeks passed without any further word from them. When the old man inquired as to the status of the investigation he was told “the case had been quashed under orders of the Americans.” The Americans? Why in the world were they interested in his daughter’s death? News that the autopsy had been botched and that the results were “inconclusive” only confirmed his suspicions that someone was hiding something. Dr. Messemer, the pathologist who had conducted the post mortem, explained that they had only examined the contents of her stomach, blood, and urine. Trace amounts of a chemical found in sleeping tablets was found. In all likelihood, however, Marianne’s healthy body “had already excreted a considerable part of the toxin.” In the case of suspected poisonings, Messemer told him, it was common practice to carefully examine the liver, gall bladder, and other parts of the body, including the roots of skin hair. These parts harbor poisons longer than other organs in the body. Unfortunately, Messemer explained, the procedure was not conducted “with the usual thoroughness,” because investigators “did not care for such thoroughness.” Messemer was never asked to provide a final opinion as to the cause of Marianne’s death. The distraught family was outraged.8

  CIC files contain an official record entitled “The Violent Death of Marianne Six”—an odd name for what the CIC officially proclaimed a suicide. No mention is made of the fact that Marianne’s father accused Walter Hirschfeld of murdering his daughter. Nor is there any record or proof that Hirschfeld was ever interrogated by the police or CIC. When these facts are bound together with the botched autopsy, the utter absence of any record requesting the arrest or detainment of Marianne Six, or any record of any inquiry by the CIC into her affairs, one can not help but suspect that some powerful hand was stirring the pot to disguise what really happened to the young doctor. Was it murder or was she so distraught over playing a role in the discovery of her brother that she committed suicide? Since most or all of the participants in the affair are now deceased, it is unlikely a definitive answer will ever be reached.9

  SS Standartenführer (Colonel) Emil Augsburg’s war record was not one designed to make parents proud. The German native of Lodz, Poland, was born in 1904. Studious and dedicated, Augsburg earned a doctorate three decades later studying about the press in the Soviet Union. In 1934 he joined the SD; membership in the SS followed. In 1937, Augsburg became associated with the Wannsee Institute, the infamous SS institution that performed ideologically-based research on eastern Europeans. The Institute helped plan the logistics behind the “Final Solution.” Augsburg was one of its departmental directors. In 1939-1940 and again in the summer and fall of 1941, he joined the Security Police to carry out what were called “special duties (spezielle Aufgaben), a euphemism for the executions of Jews and others the Nazis considered unworthy of life. Augsburg’s superior officer was none other than SS Brigadeführer (Brigadier General) Franz Six. After Augsburg was wounded in an air attack in Smolensk in September 1941, he returned to Berlin to conduct research on Eastern European matters. The RSHA foreign intelligence branch formally absorbed the Wannsee Institute in 1943.

  Augsburg realized long before Germany’s final collapse that the writing on the wall was not a friendly message, and that surrender would expose him to charges of war crimes. He disappeared before the surrender. In order to escape capture, Augsburg slipped underground into the Benedictine cloister at Ettal, Germany, where he served as the private secretary to a Monsignor of Polish origin with connections to the Vatican and the SD or German Secret Police. Fearing the worst, the Monsignor and Augsburg fled to the Vatican in Rome during the final days of the war with important political documents. Empathetic to Augsburg’s plight, the Monsignor obtained a commission for him (Augsburg spoke Polish and Russian fluently) in the Polish army of General Wladyslaw Anders, an organization popularly known as the 2nd Polish Corps. Anders’s men were stationed nearby in northern Italy.10

  Augsburg was still working (and hiding) inside the Vatican almost a year later in early 1946 when a surprise letter arrived for him. It was from his former commander Brigadeführer Franz Six. “I have important missions in South Germany. I need you very quickly. Come.” A secret place of rendezvous was noted in the letter. Augsburg, still a proud and devoted Nazi, dutifully answered the call by doffing his Polish uniform and leaving Rome. He arrived at the appointed rendezvous in southern Germany right on time. Franz Six was nowhere to be found. Waiting for him instead was Walter Hirschfeld. The CIC agent identified himself as one of Six’s deputies and produced orders signed by Six. They were going to work together to help former SS officers go underground or escape Europe. The papers satisfied the normally suspicious Augsburg. He worked hand-in-hand with Hirschfeld to gather together his former associates. Resistance movements were planned, secret committees were established, and “desperate deeds were performed” to help a number of former Nazis escape detection or relocate in other countries. All the while Augsburg and his friends believed they were helping their old chief Franz Six, who continued demanding, via written orders, absolute secrecy and silence. One directive followed another, all signed by Six. Each time Hirschfeld acted as Six’s courier. Augsburg obeyed each order.11

  The entire Six-Augsburg affair was a fraud organized by Hirschfeld on the orders of the CIC. The scam, officially known as “Operation
Flower Box,” was managed out of the CIC’s Leather Firm Christian. Its purpose was to penetrate the shadowy Nazi European underground and arrest those who appeared on lists of war criminals. After many months had passed Augsburg began to suspect something was not right. “Why don’t I ever hear directly from Franz?” he asked Hirschfeld. “Why am I not allowed to see or hear from him?” Hirschfeld advised him to be patient. But Augsburg was not a patient man. Smelling a rat he dispatched a trusted courier to Franz Six’s wife’s residence to bypass Hirschfeld and set up a personal meeting with his former friend. Franz’s wife was as tounded when she learned what had been going on over his husband’s name. “My husband has been confined for over a year in Oberursel, Nuremberg, and Dachau!” she told the equally shocked courier, who returned and broke the bitter news to Augsburg.12

  An angry (and probably embarrassed) Augsburg confronted Hirschfeld and demanded an explanation. To Augsburg’s surprise Hirschfeld did not deny the charges. Instead he “grinned” and admitted that every Franz Six signature and order had been forged. Without knowing it, Augsburg and his team had been carrying out orders for the CIC for more than one year. They were American agents and did not even know it. Several other notable Nazis, among them Klaus Barbie, had also been recruited into Operation Flower Box. Barbie, too, had joined the team believing he was working for Franz Six. Augsburg and his criminal pals were outraged by the deceit, but Hirschfeld had actually done all of them a lifesaving favor. Few of the former war criminals could have guessed that their illicit association was about to transmogrify into official employment with United States Intelligence. Fewer still could have known that their forthcoming relationship with the CIC and CIA would keep them out of prison and off the gallows, where so many of them belonged.13