After finishing work on the crematorium, Taylor was transferred to cell block 10, which was occupied by a cosmopolitan group of prisoners, including Czechs, Poles, Russians, Germans, and Austrians. They were “old-timers,” survivors who, through “devious means,” consistently obtained the extra food necessary to stay alive. “Bread, margarine, potatoes and occasionally horsemeat, cereal, and schnapps were obtainable through the black market. Czechs, Austrians and Hungarians were allowed a few packages from home until March of 1945. The two French Lieutenants (Maurice and Albert), Krajcovic and I had received bread and margarine for our watches and ring at the rate of two loaves of bread and 1/2 kilo margarine for each Swiss watch. Divided four ways, this food lasted a week. In Block 10, I collected and boiled potatoes peelings and scraps from the more fortunate prisoners but our bread ration was reduced daily.”
Before arriving at Mauthausen, Taylor’s weight had already dwindled to just 130 pounds due to the harsh conditions in Vienna. His stay at the execution camp only increased his emaciation. He reported, “I had terrible dysentery and innumerable small sores on my legs and back, but I continued to work as best I could to prevent being put on the sick-list and transferred to the ‘hospital’ (Sanitatslager) where, believe it or not, five sick people were assigned to each single bunk, rations were half ‘normal’ and infinitesimal amounts of medicine were supplied. Very few ever returned alive from this ‘hospital,’ and the daily death toll at this time from starvation was 400 to 500.”
The conditions and deaths at Mauthausen were unimaginable and largely unknown to most of the world, including the United States. Many of his fellow prisoners approached Taylor, saying, “We’re sorry you’re here, but, IF you live, it will be a very fortunate thing,” they said. “For you can tell Americans and they will believe you, but if we try to tell them, they will say it is propaganda.”
Every nationality “trusted me because I was an American,” wrote Taylor. “Consequently, I was the recipient of hundreds of eyewitness atrocity accounts with first hand evidence in many cases.” He risked his life to bury American GI dog tags as well as the epaulet of a fellow Navy officer from another OSS team, whom his German captors in Mauthausen executed in cold blood. It was too dangerous for Taylor to take notes, but he “kept a mental account of each story.”
Later, he had the opportunity to write down some of the horrific details:
The following examples taken from the enclosed sworn statements are in addition to the normal methods of execution, i.e., gassing, shooting, hanging, etc.: clubbing to death with wooden or/iron sticks, shovels, pick-axes, hammer, etc; tearing to pieces by dogs trained especially for this purpose; injection into the heart or veins of magnesium-chlorate, benzene, etc.; exposure naked in sub-zero weather after a hot shower; scalding-water shower followed by cow-tail whipping to break blisters and tear flesh away; mashing in a concrete mixer; drowning; beating men over a 150 foot cliff to the rocks below; beating and driving men into the electric fence or guarded limits where they are shot; forcing to drink a great quantity of water then jumping on the stomach while the prisoner is lying on his back; freezing half-naked in sub-zero temperatures; buried alive; eyes gouged out with a stick, teeth knocked out and kicked in the genitals, red hot poker down the throat, etc., etc., etc.
In a bizarre twist of fate, some inmates of the camp had the opportunity to become part of the most diabolical part of the Third Reich that had enslaved them—the SS. “About the middle of April, a request was made to the prisoners for volunteers for the Waffen SS (Infantry). It was limited to Germans (Austrians included) and about 1000 volunteered, as they understood that the other alternative was execution (this was later disproved). Some also sought a chance to escape in this way. About 300 were selected from those volunteers, given regular SS rations, including cigarettes, outfitted in old Afrika Korps light khaki, drilled and trained for combat and assigned to minor policing tasks inside the camp. It was a very clear demonstration of the inherent German love for authority and the ruthlessness with which they automatically operate. From fellow prisoners, they overnight became our masters and did not spare the rod.”
The desperation inside Mauthausen represented a microcosm of the entire Third Reich that was crumbling before the Allied offensives.
27
LAST ACTS
IN APRIL 1945, THE ALLIES UNLEASHED their last great offensive in northern Italy. The Eighth Army attacked in the east on April 9, and General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army assaulted the center. To lay the foundation for this effort, seventy-five different OSS teams had been working behind the German lines on missions to sabotage German operations and support the partisan resistance. Many of the most successful operations came from the Eighth Army Detachment and the Maritime Unit of Company D.
The OSS played a key role in the final Allied offensive, supplying weapons, food, and equipment to tens of thousands of Italian partisans; helping tie up countless German troops; and even clearing the Axis forces out of entire regions throughout northern Italy. Agents also continued to provide the Allies with a consistent stream of actionable intelligence, particularly bombing targets. They also conducted hit-and-run raids and ambushed German convoys. As a result, movement of Axis troops became nearly “impossible.” Partisans accomplished “not only the immobilization of enemy columns, but the cutting of potential enemy escape routes to the north and the prevention of demolitions particularly of the municipal, industrial, and transport organizations.”
German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of all Axis forces in Italy, took note of the damage the OSS-supported Italian resistance caused and saw the need for a strong response. “Activity of partisan bands . . . has spread like lighting in the last ten days . . . and is beginning to show clear results,” he wrote. “Speedy and radical counter measures must anticipate this development.”
Throughout the waning months of the war, the MU and the Eighth Army Detachment units continued operating in the Adriatic. One of the more successful MU/Eighth Army efforts to enter northern Italy around this time was the PIA mission. Known as the Fabulous Five, the PIA operatives’ code names were Rolando, Buffalo Bill, Red, Stalin, and Potato. In addition to gathering key intelligence and locating bombing targets, in one of the Five’s great coups involved the capture of a Fascist police department “right under the eyes of the Gestapo.”
Despite the intensity and successes of the operations, OSS headquarters was in the midst of deactivating MU. Lieutenant Kelly and Captain Thiele had to make do with fewer Americans, as several men were already being called home. A month earlier the wounded, badly burned Ward Ellen had returned to the United States for treatment. The OSS was considering plans for the use of MU personnel in the Pacific. However, the war in that theater ended before many of the MU men from the Mediterranean could redeploy.
DURING THE CLOSING WEEKS of the war, the OSS coordinated a general uprising to liberate a heavily defended stretch of fifty miles of Italian coast. Operating with a team of San Marco commandos in a mission near the Po Delta region of the Adriatic Coast, Marine Lieutenant George Hearn, assigned to the MU, led a band of partisans in heavy fighting. It “resulted in the killing of twenty-three enemy and the capturing of 436 prisoners, with a loss of one man killed and twenty-two wounded.” He also forced the surrender of Germans controlling the city of Chiogga, near Venice. “The German city garrison of thirty, though heavily fortified and reinforced by more than one thousand men in the surrounding area, surrendered without firing a shot.”
In yet another operation, the MU planned a special project to capture valuable German technology. “[MU will] move as quickly as possible into enemy-occupied Italy to seize the newest German maritime sabotage equipment for use in some other theater [PTO]. Plans are being drawn up with special teams to rush to the German operational bases, training and experimental areas, to seize this material,” noted one OSS planning document. James Angleton, from X-2 in Rome, the OSS resident expert on Italian underwater operations who h
ad vetted the San Marco men, would assist in capturing high-value targets from Decima MAS.
THE OSS PLAYED THE CRUCIAL role in the surrender of all German forces in Italy. During the final months of the war in Europe, the American intelligence agency engaged in intense negotiations with the SS. In the stunningly successful Operation Sunrise, SS Obergruppenführer und General Karl Wolff der Waffen, commander of the SS troops in Italy, covertly sent word to the Allies in early 1945 that he desired to facilitate a German surrender in the country. In Zurich, he secretly met with Allen W. Dulles, head of the OSS station in Switzerland (and a future director of the Central Intelligence Agency), and offered the surrender of all German and Italian troops in Italy.* As a result of these clandestine discussions, the Germans fighting on the Italian front surrendered on May 2. World War II in Italy ended six days before the capitulation of the remainder of the German armed forces in Europe.
*Shortly thereafter U.S. troops arrested General Wolff at his private villa in Bolzano, Italy, and took him into captivity.
28
GOD BLESS AMERICA
LIEUTENANT JACK TAYLOR WAS SO SICK with dysentery that he could hardly walk. From his normal weight of 165 pounds he was down to about 114. He recalled, “I was so weak that I could not stand at attention . . . for roll call for any length of time without fainting.” Even in his weakened condition Taylor grabbed on to the hope drifting throughout Mauthausen:
Terribly optimistic rumors had been circulated regarding the position of the Russians and we had expected to be over-run by 20 April but, either the Russians turned north from Vienna to Czechoslovakia or they were stopped by superior German forces at the mouth of the Danube valley at St. Polten about 60 km away. About this time the first contact with the International Red Cross was made and all women from the western nations including the American Miss Dien were evacuated to Switzerland. These times became very dangerous as certain streets were walled off with barbed wire and we feared a mass execution. At certain unpredictable times, all prisoners were isolated in their blocks and a general tenseness gripped the whole camp, SS included. We heard rumors that the Commandant and other high ranking officers were discussing our futures as a mass wherein we would all be executed or transported to another area, or left in the lager which would be defended using us for hostages.
Food became impossible to obtain. Our daily ‘bread’ was cut to practically nothing and [inmates] in prominent positions who had not eaten ‘prisoner food’ for two years were at this time forced to. In the Sanitatteslager (hospital) the starving were cannibalizing their own dead comrades, cutting out the heart, liver and muscles. Jews in the tent camp (Zelt lager) were paying a $20 gold piece for two loaves of bread and half kilo of margarine, and two wagonloads of dead were hauled away each day to the mass grave on the hill. Gold, diamonds and jewelry were being accumulated by the SS from the Jews, and our bread was being used for this purpose. One night a lone plane came over and dropped one bomb (some said up to three bombs) in the adjacent Jew tent camp. We all then expected a mass bombing of the whole lager, but it never materialized. In the morning, I saw the upper half of a body, which had been blown from the Jew camp 200 yards and landed on the eaves of one of the bar barracks. About fifteen were killed and forty-seven injured most of whom probably eventually died.
The Red Cross arrived at Mauthausen on April 25 and “started the evacuation of Frenchmen, Dutch, and Belgians.” At least one British officer spoke French well enough that he was able to get in on the evacuation efforts. “The Frenchmen departed singing the Marseillaise, and many were overcome with tears,” recalled Taylor. “Despite their successful efforts to remove some of the prisoners from the prison, the Red Cross workers weren’t allowed within the camp itself, and thus didn’t witness the true atrocities occurring there.” Later Taylor and the others saw evidence that the Red Cross had also delivered packages that the prisoners had never received. “SS troops were noticed eating bars of chocolate and smoking American cigarettes,” wrote Taylor. “Several empty cartons were picked up by prisoners and brought to me.” The SS had stolen all the American goods, and they also pilfered most of the things sent to the Frenchmen, giving each of them only one bar of chocolate. Eventually Taylor received a package meant for Hungarian prisoners that contained Ovaltine, cheese, and sugar. He recalled, “My system was so deteriorated that I could not ‘keep down’ this real food. My Czech and Pole friends did everything they could to help me and with the aid of some opium, I was able to get started again on the cheese and later the Ovaltine and sugar.”
But just as the Red Cross was bringing hope to some of the Mauthausen inmates, the Germans were cruelly ending the dreams of those who were left behind. On April 26, 1945, the day after Red Cross evacuations began, the Germans killed more than a thousand prisoners at the camp. With the Allies marching ever closer, the Reich increased executions and cremations, essentially covering up the evidence of the atrocities they had committed.
Unbeknownst to Taylor until much later, he narrowly escaped execution at that time. Taylor knew that he toiled under a death sentence—he had been in line, a dead man walking, three times before. But Russian soldiers who pushed him out of the way, taking his place, ultimately saved him from death on each of the previous occasions. The Russians sacrificed their lives for Taylor because they wanted the lone American officer to survive. They needed his position and his voice to bear witness to the horrors and atrocities the Nazis committed in the camps. However, Taylor was unaware that camp officials had once again drafted orders for his termination. A fellow inmate and friend of Taylor’s named Dr. Stransky Milos worked in the political department. Seeing Taylor’s name on the list of people to be executed, Milos erased his name as well as that of another friend on April 26. The rest of the people on the list, many of them prisoners transported from Vienna along with Taylor, were executed on April 28.
In the late spring, “American P-38s came over at about 100 feet and really gave us a thrill,” said Taylor. “We never dreamed that Americans would ever be near, but now we heard rumors that they were in Regensburg and coming fast.” At the beginning of May, the SS officers abruptly departed from the camp, bringing an end to the daily executions. On May 4 the prisoners began to hear the sound of battle in the distance, and Taylor began to hope against hope that the Americans would finally arrive and set the camp free.
THE DISTANT SOUND OF an engine put Staff Sergeant Albert J. Kosiek and the rest of his reconnaissance team on high alert. The group had set out before dawn that morning, ordered to scout the bridges in the area, and had no idea what they might find this deep in German territory. Peering through his binoculars, the sergeant saw a white car with a red cross painted on its hood headed right for their position.
Cautious that this might be a trick, the entire group trained their weapons on the vehicle as it slowed to a stop. Two men got out of the car and explained that they were looking for a general because they wanted to surrender a large concentration camp to the Americans. Although taken by surprise, Kosiek immediately determined that liberating the camp should be his next priority. He radioed his CO and requested permission to approach the camp. He “stressed the fact that 1,600 prisoners were depending upon us for fast liberation”* and talked the officer into authorizing the team to go to the camp.
Still on the lookout for a trap, Kosiek first reached the camp at Gusen and then headed for Mauthausen. Along the way he received new orders to return to his original reconnaissance mission. Fat chance! thought Kosiek. He later wrote, “From beginning to end I had to explain the situation impressing my superiors that to return now would possibly be more dangerous than to continue. They realized it was no longer a matter of choice and that the inevitable would have to be.”
At first glance, Kosiek thought Mauthausen looked like a factory, but soon the electric fence came into view and behind it he saw “hundreds of people who went wild with joy when they first sighted us,” said the sergeant. “It’s a sight I’ll never forg
et. Some had just blankets covering them and others were completely nude, men and women combined, making the most emaciated looking mob I have ever had the displeasure to look upon. I still shake my head in disbelief when that picture comes before me, for they hardly resembled human beings. Some couldn’t have weighed over forty pounds.” The German prison guards greeted the newcomers with an American salute, and the crowd of prisoners went wild. “Never before have I felt such a sensation running through me as I did at that moment,” recalled Kosiek. “I felt like some celebrity being cheered at Soldiers Field in Chicago. That was the first time I have had people so overjoyed at seeing me. As I stood there looking out at the mob I realized what this meant to them and I was glad we had made the effort to free the camp.” Kosiek had the former inmates gather in the courtyard of the prison. From somewhere the prisoners found instruments and started playing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Kosiek recalled, “My emotions were so great that the song suddenly meant more to me than it ever did before. Many of the refugees were crying as they watched our platoon standing at attention presenting arms.”
Taylor felt elated when fellow prisoners excitedly broke the news “that an American Jeep and halftrack were at the entrance” of Mauthausen. Though weak with malnutrition and barely ambulatory, Taylor was determined to walk on his own two feet toward his liberators. The OSS operative staggered toward the gates of Mauthausen, where he encountered a crowd of “frenzied” prisoners gathering in front of the fence. Though he could hardly make any headway through the mob, the spectacle gave him hope that the prisoners’ stories might actually be true. He continued to doggedly push and navigate his way through the cheering, emaciated group of inmates until he found himself standing before a tall, burly soldier wearing the uniform and stripes of an American sergeant. The newcomer identified himself as “Albert Kosiek, Troop D, 11th Armored Division, Third U.S. Army.”
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