August Eigruber, the vicious SS Governor of the Upper Danube in Austria, worked tirelessly during the war’s final months to prepare the Alpine Redoubt for Hitler’s expected arrival and the final, cataclysmic, campaign of the war. He was tried after the war for war crimes and sentenced to death. On May 28, 1947, the Americans stretched his neck at Landsberg Prison just a few yards from where his beloved Führer had penned Mein Kampf two decades earlier.
Little is known of Gretl Braun Fegelein’s life after the war. Eva had nicknamed her “Mogerl” because she sulked so much. It is likely her remaining years were unhappy ones. According to popular rumor, the name Fegelein was never mentioned again in the Braun household. The daughter Gretl gave birth to on May 5, 1945, was named Eva after her dead aunt. Tragedy (and one might posit, mental instability) seems to have coursed through the Braun genes. When a love affair ended in failure in 1975, the despondent younger Eva committed suicide. She was just thirty—three years younger than her aunt when she, apparently, killed herself in the Berlin bunker. In March 1965, Gretl was living in Munich under the name Gretl Berlinghoff. She is probably deceased, but when and how she met her end is not known.5
CIC agent Robert Gutierrez conducted and oversaw some of the most productive investigations during the early postwar period. He also managed to profit from his experiences in Austria. At the close of the war, former SS members, regardless of rank, were incarcerated. In an effort to forge a better existence, many wives of these imprisoned men took American soldiers as lovers. When SS Sturmbannführer (Major) Johannes Göhler was interned in a POW camp in Germany, rumor has it that his eye-catching young wife Ursula serviced agent Gutierrez as his mistress. Twenty-five years later, Frau Göhler told British historian David Irving that she had personally packed Adolf Hitler’s and Eva Braun’s diaries into Gutierrez’s suitcase just before his departure to New Mexico. It will be recalled that CIC agents searched high and low for these journals and questioned Franz Konrad, Josef Spacil, and many others repeatedly without success. This subject ignited the historical community in the 1980s when the German magazine Der Stern foisted the fake Hitler diaries onto the world’s stage. To this day, historians still debate whether Hitler even kept diaries.
There is no doubt, however, that a considerable body of his personal papers survived him. In a phone call just ten years ago, Gutierrez confirmed to author Kenneth Alford that he had indeed acquired “a large quantity of valuable documents,” but that years ago his sister-in-law had “burned them.” Willi Korte, a representative of the German Government, traveled to Gutierrez’s home and, through sympathetic persuasion, obtained from him a handmade silk dress that had once belonged to Eva Braun, together with some of her silverware. On March 13, 1993, the New York Times published a report that Michael Walsh, a writer for Time and Life magazines based in Munich, Norman Scott of Global Explorations, and Marian Earnest, a London specialist in the authentication of documents, flew to Gutierrez’s home to copy Hitler and Braun correspondence that was reported to be in his possession. Scott told the former CIC agent that they would pay him “a substantial sum in the neighborhood of two or three million dollars” if the letters could be authenticated. (Author Kenneth Alford had furnished Scott with 642 pages of documentation regarding Gutierrez’s activities during the closing days of World War II and the postwar months that followed.) Gutierrez may have obtained these precious historical documents during the early postwar period while acting for the CIC. He declined Scott’s offer.
In the middle of the 1990s, Gutierrez offered to sell the coat that Hitler was wearing during the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt. This was the same coat that had so excited Josef Spacil and Franz Konrad. Gutierrez’s asking price was $25,000. A prominent Texas collector and real estate dealer, Mike Bauman, immediately flew to Albuquerque with cash in hand, but Gutierrez turned down the offer.
Gutierrez’s son, retired astronaut Sidney Gutierrez, reportedly told several people, including Mike Bauman, that he will talk freely with them after his father’s death. At last report the elderly and ailing Gutierrez was in a nursing home, where he has been for several years.
SS Captain Erwin Haufler’s postwar life is a blank slate. The privacy laws in Germany are extremely strict, and tracing former SS officers who don’t wish to be found is almost impossible.
Heinrich Himmler, whose power grew as Germany’s military circumstances waned, was captured by the British and eventually admitted his identity. Not man enough to stand trial for his horrendous crimes, the former chicken farmer instead snapped an ampule of cyanide between his teeth.
Like Himmler, Adolf Hitler was also too cowardly to face the world after his grand plans fell away to ashes. He died in his dank Berlin bunker, probably by his own hand, on April 30, 1945.
When we last left this disreputable character, Walter Hirschfeld had been blackmailed and booted out of the CIC. Unemployed and now trusted by no one (courtesy of Emil Augsburg and Klaus Barbie), Hirschfeld married an English woman named Josephine Gratius in 1948. For a time he managed a small studio owned by his peroxide-blond wife, who worked as a sales lady in the American House in Heidelberg. Hirschfeld was under constant CIC surveillance. British intelligence agents were also keeping an eye on him. Unbeknownst to the Americans, Hirschfeld’s activities had been much wider and deeper than previously believed. MI5, the British security intelligence agency, revealed a very embarrassing fact about their former employee: Walter Hirschfeld was a double agent. He had been working for the CIC and the Soviets at the same time. His aliases, none of which were previously known to the CIC, included “Alois Hirschfeld,” “von Bredus,” “Eberling,” “Wittgenstein,” and “Herr Blaw.” Official documents dealing with Hirschfeld’s actions have been redacted or withheld from the authors by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Government bureaucrats have invoked the Executive Order for National Security for documents withheld in their entirety.6
Hirschfeld’s later years are like a chalk board wiped clean. He disappears from the record in the 1950s and nothing more of his whereabouts or activities have been located. In 1990, author Ken Alford was told by a German friend that Hirschfeld had died in Innsbruck, Austria in the late 1980s.
Wilhelm Höttl is one of the war’s mystery men. He is difficult to evaluate because we know he played so many different roles both before and after the war. Immediately after hostilities ended, Höttl was interrogated closely about his experience in Germany’s intelligence service. He apparently cooperated fully with CIC agents, who realized his expertise would be of great assistance in setting up a network of former German agents to use against the Soviets in postwar Europe. He was directed to contact his former agents in Budapest by wireless transmission, a technology with which the CIC was absolutely fascinated, and one often used by Höttl’s agents. With Höttl’s assistance, and under the supervision of American soldiers, the CIC established a working network in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe.
His cooperation, however, did not prevent his arrest and imprisonment in Dachau because of his prior service with the SS. The figure of 6,000,000 Jewish dead, so often repeated in literature published on the subject, originated with Wilhelm Höttl. How he obtained the information is an interesting story. His path crossed Adolf Eichmann’s in Budapest in August 1944 when Eichmann dropped by Höttl’s residence seeking information about the deteriorating situation on the Eastern Front. Höttl was in communication with front line agents because of his position with SS Intelligence. He told Eichmann frankly that there was nothing the Germans could do to stop the Russian advance. “Then we shall probably never see each other again,” was Eichmann’s reply.
Eichmann was convinced that if Germany lost the war he stood no chance of survival because the Allies would consider him to be a major war criminal. Höttl took the opportunity to ask him for reliable information about the extermination program—and particularly about the number of Jews that had been killed. To his surprise, Eichmann answered his inquiry. The number of murdered Jews
, he explained, was a top Reich secret, but given the situation he was facing he could tell Höttl something about it—particularly since Höttl was a historian. According to sworn testimony, Höttl later submitted testimony at Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1961, that the SS officer told him that “approximately 4,000,000 Jews had been killed in the various concentration camps, while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways, the major part of whom were shot by operational squads of the Security Police during the campaign against Russia.” When Höttl displayed shock at the number, Eichmann responded that Heinrich Himmler thought the figure of 6,000,000 was “not correct,” and that the figure had to be higher. Eichmann displayed neither emotion nor excuse; he simply answered Höttl’s question and left it at that.
What to do with this important former SS intelligence officer? A memo written by an American agent on February 19, 1947, and sent to Third U.S. Army recommended that “Höttl be denied any facilities to resume outside contacts with Allied Intelligence Agencies. He is a dangerous man; thoroughly unprincipled and likely to cause a lot of damage if left to his own devices.” The author of this memo had no idea just how prescient his observation would turn out to be. Höttl was released later that year and took a job with the CIC monitoring Soviet activities in Eastern Europe and keeping American agents fully briefed so they could prevent the Communists from sabotaging U.S.-backed interests in that region. Höttl organized a team of former members of the SD, Waffen-SS, and refugees from Eastern Europe. His network turned Salzburg into the central intelligence hub of Western Europe. Höttl and his CIC-financed agents burned through American money like there was no tomorrow. The CIC directed Höttl to cut back on spending and fully account for his organizational expenses. To the astonishment of the CIC, Höttl instead resigned and his network of experienced agents disappeared with him. Salzburg CIC agents swore they would one day have their revenge.
In one connection or another Höttl was, or had been, in contact with virtually every intelligence organization operating in Europe. After he dropped out of CIC ranks, he began working with the West German agency headed by super spy and former SS General Reinhard Gehlen (see Emil Augsburg entry). His contact was through his friend Baron Harry Mast, whose wife Edith Berndt was involved with the Czech intelligence service. Information gleaned by Höttl or his agents was sent back and forth between Salzburg and Munich twice a month. Baron Mast supervised Höttl’s network while posing as an employee in Höttl’s Nibelungen publishing house. Höttl once told an intelligence officer in Munich that he considered himself to be “the administrator of the [Walter] Schellenberg legacy.”7
About the same time Höttl also began spying for the French. His contact was French Captain Maurice Blondell, who was stationed in the French Occupation Zone. The captain provided Höttl with fake identification papers so that he could travel without hindrance in Switzerland and Italy. He was also provided with a French army truck so that he could ship illegal cigarettes, coffee, and other items across the German-Austrian border without fear of inspection. Two of the recipients of this illicit largesse were Höttl’s friends Kurt Ponger and Otto Verber, both of whom he had met while interned in Nuremberg.
Was Höttl also a Soviet spy? The U.S. Army thought so. In March 1953 he was arrested for his involvement with two former OSS officers who also happened to be Communists and Russian agents: Lieutenant Kurt Ponger and Lieutenant Otto Verber. Both Austrians had fled to America in 1938 to escape Nazi oppression. The brothers-in-law became citizens and served in U.S. Army Intelligence units during the war. Both also served as interrogation officers for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (and had helped Kurt Becher by sabotaging his pending indictment). After they played their parts exposing Nazi atrocities to the world, Ponger, Verber, and their wives settled down in a luxurious apartment in their old home town of Vienna. All of them were up to their necks in felonious activities. Their extravagant lifestyle was made possible by a scholarship from the U.S. Army for studies at the University of Vienna, jobs as analysts for Eastern affairs with the CIA, the sale of CIA information to Soviet agents—and an extensive black market operation courtesy of Wilhelm Höttl. When they were arrested and confronted with their guilt, both men waived trial and entered guilty pleas. Ponger was sentenced to a prison term of five to fifteen years; Verber received three to ten years. Höttl was the key to their arrest.8
Höttl, too, was apprehended. Members of the U.S. Army searched his home in Altaussee. Inside they found four blank Austrian identity cards, 1,265 British pound notes (curiously, these notes were issued between 1935 through 1937), 20,000 pages of written material (some of it classified), and more than 100 letters written between Ponger, Verber, and Höttl. Höttl was placed in solitary confinement. Grueling interrogations and at least one polygraph test followed. The CIC was unable to determine to its satisfaction whether the master spy was in fact a Soviet agent. They concluded he was not “physiologically testable by polygraph.” The CIC extracted some measure of revenge by releasing a press report “to insure that Höttl is discredited once and for all with German Intelligence Services, and thereby to prevent his continued harassment of the United States by processing through various channels fabricated intelligence.”9
Höttl hailed from a very modest background (his university education was paid for by the Nazi party), yet he maintained a lavish postwar lifestyle. In their ongoing quest for Nazi loot CIC agents monitored Höttl’s movements closely in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They estimated his monthly expenses topped $1,000—an extravagant sum for that period. He purchased a home for his mother, supported her and his wife’s parents, and had a housemaid, nursemaid, and private secretary. From humble SS origins Höttl was now a sleek figure in canary yellow leather coats and hand-painted neckties. How, exactly, did he support himself?
In the early 1950s Höttl established (or purchased) the Nibelungen Publishing House. The business was registered in his wife Elfriede’s maiden name. Writing under the pseudonym of Walter Hagen, he published his first book entitled The Secret Front: The Story of Nazi Political Espionage (London, 1953). Höttl eventually admitted he was the author of this remarkable book. Knowing of the suspicions that surrounded his postwar life, he ended the book thusly:
I have not, contrary to some sensational reports in the German weekly press, managed to discover and squander the buried treasure that they [Nazis] are said to have left here in Aussee. I have taken to publishing and printing. All I have found here has been solitude and peace…
Wilhelm Höttl lived comfortably in Altaussee until his death in 1997. His wife predeceased him by many years.
Polish Countess Barbara Kalewska vanishes from the world’s stage after leaving Kitzbühl for Vienna—allegedly with a fortune in gold removed from the burned ruins of her small house.
Rezsö (Rudolf ) Kastner did not live long enough to extract whatever small satisfaction there was to be gleaned from the paper-thin legal victory awarded by the Israeli appellate court—or to face charges for his wartime decisions and subsequent perjury. In early March 1947 he was shot and killed outside his flat in Tel Aviv. The shooter, Israeli Ze’Ev Ekstein, was driven away by Dan Shemer in a stolen jeep. The police arrested them in their homes that same night. Confessions quickly followed. A third man, Joseph Menkes, was arrested a short time later. Shemer and Ekstein were former employees of the Israeli Secret Service. On the day of the assassination an agent of the Secret Service warned his superiors that Kastner would be killed that night. No precautions were taken.10
Ben Hecht, a prominent son of Russian Jewish immigrants and a native of New York, is the author of a remarkable book called Perfidy (New York, 1961). Perfidy chronicles the Greenwald-Kastner trial and its far-reaching implications. The book outlines in great detail the 1953 court case and indicts not only Kastner but many wartime leaders of the Jewish Agency for their actions in Hungary during World War II. Hecht’s study was banned in Israel for almost three decades. The public exhibition involving Greenwal
d and Kastner, coupled with the appearance of Hecht’s book a few years later, wove a trail of collaboration deep into Israel’s ruling Labour Party. Another, more thorough hearing would have been disastrous for many prominent politicians. According to one source, one of Israel’s leading political journalists investigating the Kastner case, Dr. Moshe Keren, was murdered because of what he might discover; Kastner was shot dead before he could stand trial for collaboration; and Hecht may have been the last victim. He died in 1964 in what has been described as a “suspicious death” by some. Whether one believes in conspiracy theories or not, the implications of the Kastner case are substantial.11
Captain Franz Konrad’s ticket to Poland was stamped “one-way.” This time there was no escape, no loose floorboards, no midnight runs through open countryside. Unfortunately, at this point in his story the stage curtain descends almost completely to the floor. Little is known of Konrad’s journey through the Polish justice system. We do know he stood trial for war crimes, but the full transcript and record of the proceeding have never been released. On a date uncertain, “Ghetto Konrad” was convicted and sentenced to death. The deed was carried out, probably by firing squad, in 1951. The only surprise is that it took the Poles that long to dispatch him. His widow Agnes had assumed he was already dead and had applied for a death certificate two years earlier. It is doubtful whether Polish officials even bothered to respond to her request.
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