Hitler's Generals in America
Page 18
Amazingly, Ramcke’s escape did not mark the first time that residents of Jackson, Mississippi, had seen a German general walking the streets. In fact, American authorities periodically allowed the generals to go into Jackson accompanied by an armed American guard, which may explain why Ramcke did not seem to arouse any suspicion despite his poor English skills. Sergeant R. B. Howard served as a guard at Camp Clinton from mid-1945 until the camp closed in March 1946. He recalled that the generals were allowed daily walks outside the camp. One of them—Howard did not provide the general’s name—rose early one morning, “dressed himself in his finest Nazi uniform, had his aide polish his boots to a mirror finish, and started walking.” The generals frequently walked outside the camp for several hours at a time, so it did not cause much alarm when this particular prisoner did not return for quite some time. He eventually reemerged later in the day bearing a receipt for breakfast at the Walgreens drugstore in downtown Jackson. The general proudly proclaimed that he had paid for breakfast with a dollar bill he had hidden in his shoe. Howard and his fellow guards had no idea how he got to town or “how Jacksonians had allowed a German officer, in full uniform, to stroll through the streets and visit a downtown store unmolested.”54
It is possible that Howard’s story refers to Ramcke’s “escape.” The details about a hidden dollar bill and breakfast at a downtown Jackson drugstore in the two stories are quite similar. Perhaps Ramcke took advantage of the opportunity provided by a daily walk to hitchhike into town and mail his letters. He may not have wanted to admit this to camp authorities for fear that they would curtail the generals’ daily excursions.
The American Lieutenant Frank Venturini served at Clinton until early 1945. In regard to Ramcke’s visit to Jackson, he stated that “earlier in the war, when things were a lot tighter, he would not have gotten away with that.” But by 1945, Americans were beginning to view German military personnel, high-ranking officers in particular, in a different light.55 Remarkably, Harold Fonger, a member of the American 459th Military Police Escort Guard Company stationed at Camp Clinton until mid-summer 1944, related another such incident. According to Fonger, General von Arnim requested to see a movie in Jackson on one occasion, and Fonger was instructed to take von Arnim into town. “I was provided with a staff car and a pistol,” recalled Fonger, and “the general was in full-dress uniform, swastika and all.” Fonger described how nervous he felt as he escorted von Arnim to Jackson and parked the car several blocks from the theater. Would he be able to properly protect von Arnim, wondered Fonger, should local residents be angered by this Nazi general’s presence in town and attempt to confront or even assault him? Much to Fonger’s relief, the two men went to the movie, even followed it up with a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at Walgreens, and returned to Clinton without incident. Astonishingly, “no one noticed,” remarked Fonger. “No one even looked.”56
Apparently, Americans had grown so accustomed to German prisoners of war in the United States by the fall of 1945 that some even invited them to public functions. An American couple, Mr. and Mrs. W. K. von Uhlenhorst-Ziechmann, wrote the War Department in October 1945 requesting that American officials temporarily parole General von Choltitz so he could visit them in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Mrs. Uhlenhorst-Ziechmann was the niece of von Choltitz’s wife and, because of this relationship, she wanted the general to “stand as sponsor” at the baptism of the couple’s son. Colonel A. M. Tollefson, director of the PMGO’s Prisoner of War Operations Division, politely informed the Uhlenhorst-Ziechmanns that it was “the policy of the War Department that no prisoner of war held in the United States may be paroled or released into the custody of a relative or friend for a visit, or for any other purpose.” Thus their request was denied.57
Following the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, the general officers at Clinton remained in the United States as prisoners of war for almost another year, waiting for various administrative matters to be settled. The War Department, however, reduced Camp Clinton’s status to that of a branch camp subordinate to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, in August 1945. Along with this change came a new commanding officer, Captain Laurence O. Cherbonnier. Despite having a significantly lower rank than that of his predecessor, Colonel Mc-Ilhenny, Cherbonnier was well received by both the camp inspectors and the prisoner-of-war generals alike. In fact, the International Red Cross inspectors who visited Clinton in November 1945 “expressed their pleasure at finding the camp so well administered” and “paid Captain Cherbonnier the unusual compliment of congratulating him.” Remarkably, they further stated that “other camp commanders might well receive training under him.” Charles Eberhardt of the U.S. State Department, who accompanied the International Red Cross inspectors, observed that Cherbonnier had “gained the confidence and good will of practically the entire camp” and that even the irascible von Arnim was “especially complimentary” of the treatment he had received from this new commanding officer.58 Captain B. H. Glymph replaced Cherbonnier in January 1946 and oversaw the closure of the camp and the departure of the prisoners in March 1946.59
Ultimately, the American reeducation program for German general officers never really came to fruition. U.S. War Department officials chose not to utilize the generals in Mississippi, Arkansas, or Louisiana for any special purposes, and the specially established camp for cooperative generals at Dermott did not turn out any better than the ordinary generals’ compound at Clinton. Yet a collaborative relationship between American authorities and Wehrmacht prisoner-of-war generals did develop. But the generals who most interested Washington were not the ones who had been in American custody during the war. U.S. officials had designs on those Wehrmacht officers captured during the final days of the war in Europe or in the weeks immediately following Germany’s surrender. These men, brought to the United States in the summer and fall of 1945, had the most to offer in regard to America’s burgeoning postwar national security interests and were asked to play significant roles in American postwar planning.
5
Cold War Allies
On April 15, 1945, a German U-Boat embarked from Kristiansand on the southern tip of Norway. U-234 carried Lieutenant General Ulrich Kessler, the German air attaché and head of the German Air Force liaison staff to Tokyo. Kessler led a “mission of specialists for the purpose of acquainting the Japanese with the latest developments in German radio, radar, V and other weapons, and aircraft and assisting them in reproducing such equipment, weapons, and aircraft for Japanese use.”1
En route to Japan, U-234 received word of Germany’s unconditional surrender. Following a great deal of discussion about the best course of action, and after receiving a message from German grand admiral Karl Dönitz urging all U-boat captains to surrender, U-234’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Johann Heinrich Fehler, radioed his position to the U.S. Navy and unconditionally surrendered. The U-boat also carried two Japanese passengers, Lieutenant Commander Tomonaga Hideo and Lieutenant Shoji Genzo, serving as part of the Japanese liaison staff. The German officers allowed these men to destroy their documents and then buried them at sea after the two Japanese men entered the stateroom of U-234 and committed hara-kiri. Arriving shortly thereafter, the U.S. Navy then escorted the submarine and its distinguished passenger to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Kessler was officially taken into American custody as a prisoner of war.2
Kessler later claimed that he had never intended to fulfill his mission to Tokyo. Rather, he planned to go ashore on the coast of Florida and contact American officials about the possibility of collaborating. This appears to have been a distortion of the truth. In fact, Lieutenant Commander Fehler later stated that Kessler argued adamantly against surrendering to the Allies, contending that the U-boat should be sailed to South America instead.3
Regardless, Kessler’s capture marked a notable point in the American relationship with Wehrmacht generals. Rather than placing the general with his colleagues in either Clinton, Mississippi, or Dermott, Arkansas, American authorities sent h
im to Fort Hunt, Virginia, the secret U.S. military intelligence facility near Washington, D.C. Here the American staff interrogated and eavesdropped on Kessler in a manner that reflected British practices at Trent Park. The U.S. War Department’s Military Intelligence Service had been engaged in this type of activity throughout the war, but this was one of the few instances when its operation focused on a German general officer. In fact, Kessler was the first German general to be targeted by this kind of activity on American soil since the departure of von Vaerst, Köchy, Borowietz, Bülowius, and von Quast from the other secret U.S. military intelligence facility at Byron Hot Springs in July 1943. Why, with the war in Europe over, would Washington now find it important to initiate interrogations and eavesdrop on high-ranking Wehrmacht officers when it had shown so little interest in the dozens of German generals and admirals who had been in its immediate custody for months?
With the war against Germany concluded, the United States could now turn its full attention to the war against imperial Japan. Kessler had maintained contact with Japanese navy pilots during the war. More importantly, as Germany’s chief liaison to Japan for the past year, he was able to provide the Americans with a great deal of information about Japanese military capabilities, especially the type of German technology and training the Japanese had received from Berlin.
Kessler agreed to provide the War Department with information about “Japanese capabilities in regard to the use and employment of German technical equipment, technicians and other experts.” Indeed, he detailed the German-Japanese liaison from its inception in the spring of 1941, including the number and type of officers exchanged between the two Axis powers and the specific types of information and technology provided, such as the German air defense system and 88-mm flak gun. American interrogators seemed particularly interested in Kessler’s “Mission to Tokyo.” More specifically, Washington wanted to know exactly what weapons and communications technology the Germans had shared with the Japanese. It greatly relieved the War Department to learn that Kessler had not been able to maintain a direct exchange of technology with the Japanese owing to some dispute over the route any potential flights would take. The Japanese objected to the most direct route over Russia out of fear of angering the Soviets, and thus the German cargo aboard U-234 would have been among the first large shipments to arrive in Tokyo since earlier in the war.4
Kessler also offered the Americans information about German and Japanese relations with the Soviet Union. Fort Hunt interrogators expressed great interest in Kessler’s assertion that “the relationship between Russia and Japan was not as cool as it appeared.” Based on information received from the Japanese naval attaché to Germany, Rear Admiral Kojima Hideo, Kessler claimed that the Soviet and Japanese intelligence services had “collaborated against the Americans in Turkey by exchanging information.” He pointed out that the Japanese never made this information available to the Germans, so he could not speak to its nature or credibility. The general also reported that the Japanese government had executed twelve German agents for working against the Soviet Union from within Japan. Despite Japanese claims that these agents had provided Japanese secrets to the Russians, Kessler believed that the Japanese executed these men to appease the Russians because “the reports on Russia received from these agents were considered to be of great value” to the German government.5
Incredibly, Kessler also stated that “the Japanese [had] approached the Russians as early as 1943 and carried on conferences as late as 1944 with the purpose of creating a new Axis, incorporating Berlin, Tokyo and Moscow.” According to Kessler, the Soviets initially approved of the idea. It never came to fruition simply because Hitler “flatly declined any political solution” with the Soviet Union and declared that any “settlement with Russia would be accomplished by military force.” Likewise, with victory in the east appearing likely by the fall of 1944, the Soviets too lost interest in any kind of reorganized Axis coalition.6
If accurate, these were astonishing claims; in fact, they were ones that might have contributed to Americans’ suspicions of their Soviet allies. News that Russian intelligence had collaborated with the Japanese and that Moscow had at one point considered approving of an alliance with Germany and Japan during the course of the war must have given American intelligence pause. Moreover, Washington believed Kessler’s information to be reliable, largely because of his past relationship with the Nazi regime. First, in September 1938 Hermann Göring had considered offering Kessler the position of chief of the general staff of the air fleet, a unit designed by the Reichsmarschall himself for the purpose of attacking Britain. He demanded that Kessler state “on his honor” his “conviction that Germany would smash England.” When Kessler refused to give Göring what he wanted and even intimated that invading England might be ill advised, Göring decided against offering Kessler the position and allegedly never forgot his attitude of “inferiority toward the English.”7
Of even greater weight, Kessler had ties to Carl Goerdeler. The former mayor of Leipzig and a long-time political opponent of Adolph Hitler, Goerdeler became involved in the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt against Hitler and was later tortured and executed for his role in the plot. Kessler’s brother-in-law, Dr. Kurt Weber, maintained constant contact with Goerdeler because of their close friendship and similarly intense hatred of the Nazis. Goerdeler, who planned to serve as German chancellor once Hitler had been removed, had apparently slotted both Weber and Kessler for important posts in his administration. Kessler came under suspicion from the SD and later discovered that his mail was regularly monitored by German authorities. He used this to try to redeem himself politically after the July Plot in letters to his family, however, by referring to the would-be assassins as “vipers” and appearing to delight in their execution. This ploy appears to have been somewhat effective. Kessler had remained more aloof from Goerdeler than had his brother-in-law and he believed that the SD later dropped any serious suspicions. Kessler remained unpopular with other high-ranking Nazis, including Göring and Admiral Karl Dönitz, however, and his appointment to Japan appears to have been Göring’s final attempt to get rid of him.8
As one of the first targets of renewed American interest in senior Wehrmacht officers, Kessler provided American intelligence with some valuable information. But Kessler was not the only German general who arrived at Fort Hunt during the summer of 1945. He eventually shared a room with Major General Heinrich Aschenbrenner. Aschenbrenner, former chief of intelligence for the German Air Command, served as commander of foreign personnel in the east at the time of his capture in May 1945. It is most likely this latter position, with responsibility for foreign personnel fighting the Soviet Army, that made Aschenbrenner most valuable to American intelligence.9
Overall, the conversations between Kessler and Aschenbrenner that were “overheard” by American microphones were of little intelligence value. Indeed, the conversations again support the notion that both men knew the Americans were listening. At times, the two men seemed to be “playing” the American eavesdroppers to some degree. On one occasion, American intelligence officers reported that the two prisoners spoke “in very low voices so that it [was] impossible to understand them.”10 On another occasion, in a discussion about the causes of the war and the reasons for Germany’s defeat, Kessler boldly proclaimed that Hitler “alone made all the decisions and he made wrong ones,” which sounds a lot like later German protestations of a “clean Wehrmacht.” Kessler later made an even more curious remark by suggesting that he and Aschenbrenner “stop reading this nonsense in English and go over to Russian. Russian is the language of the future.” Given Kessler’s insistent pronouncements about American responsibility for the postwar world and the U.S. obligation to establish “a democratic Pan-Europe” to fight off the Bolshevist influence, this comment appears to have been either a joke or a well-placed prod to his American listeners.11
Like Kessler and Aschenbrenner, Major General Walter Vierow had likely also been brought
to Fort Hunt because of his service on the Eastern Front. Vierow, a general officer from the German engineering corps, had been in charge of all road and bridge construction and repair on the south Russian Front between the eastern border of Romania and the Caucasus Mountains. Vierow had also served as the commandant of Kiev, Belgrade, and Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, where he was captured by the Americans. Vierow devoted most of his brief stay at Fort Hunt to preparing engineering studies for his American captors, including reports titled “Preparations for the Attack on Sevastopol,” “The Road Net of Eastern Crimea,” “Winter Road Service in the Crimea,” “Crossings of the Don,” “The Road Net between Rostov and the Caucasus,” and “From the Dnieper to the Crimea.” His reports illustrated “the importance of the road net in the planning and execution of campaigns and the difficulties of maintaining roads with local material of untested qualities.” He also provided hand-drawn, detailed maps of the road networks in the areas under his command.12