by Nick Mariano
Barbi, who had taken a route to the south of his partner, could hear gunfire and at one point he thought he also heard a loud explosion. He didn’t know what to make of the situation although he began to think his chances of successfully escaping were quickly decreasing. He could also hear aircraft circling overhead and knew that he would be spotted shortly. He didn’t know if he would elect to fight if discovered or just give himself up. Rumors circulating in Berlin made him to believe that the war was quickly shifting in favor of the Allies and that hopefully this war that Hitler had started would soon be over. He didn’t think a POW camp would be a bad way to end the war. He was sure the Allies would eventually send him back to Germany and he would reunite with this family.
As Barbi made his way through the dunes the patrol plane did in fact spot him and relayed his location to an advancing patrol. Moments later the patrol came over a rise and saw Barbi moving towards them. They ordered him to stop and drop what he was carrying. He had already decided that the war was over for him. Barbi dropped his weapon and bag, raised his hands and surrendered to the patrol.
DAY 14 FINALLY ENDS
As firefights erupted on shore and spies were shot and killed or captured, the U-751 lay on the ocean’s bottom waiting for a signal from the landing party. Captain Salman had begun to worry as the commandos should already be on their way back to the sub by now and he should have received their signal long before now. He would give it another two hours and then head to periscope depth and try to radio his men. In the meantime the U-boat rested in about 120 feet of water while the crew slept or relaxed. The men on the bridge saw some sonar activity but it didn’t appear that they had been discovered.
The Icarus and USS Roper had continued to steam along the coast but when they had received the radio transmissions concerning the discovery of the would-be German spy, they changed their course for the immediate area of all the recent shore activity. If a raft and two operatives had landed near Sea Breeze, then it was possible that they had recently been discharged from a German U-boat. They had decided to converge on the area and begin a crisscross pattern off shore in hopes of discovering the lurking sub.
Meanwhile on shore the bodies of the two killed operatives and their equipment had been recovered by shore parties with the hope that something about their mission might be discovered. The captured operative was already being moved to the Naval Stockade in Charleston, SC, so Intelligence Officers could interrogate him. The day worn on and the Navy patrol planes returned to their base in Charleston for refueling and a change of crew but were back on station within a little more than an hour. They would continue their patrol until dusk and then return to base.
1500 hrs-Almost ten hours had passed since the Waffen-SS commandos had disembarked the sub for their rendezvous on shore. Captain Salman decided that it was time to try to contact his men and ascertain their status. The Captain ordered the ballast tanks blown and the sub brought up to periscope depth. He scanned the area and had the radio mast raised so he could try to make radio contact.
Overhead a pilot spotted the periscope break the surface on the glass-like surface. He radioed the two Naval ships below of his sighting. The Icarus and USS Roper immediately changed their course and steered for the location of the reported sighting. Both Captain Jester and Sims ordered their crews to battle stations as their sonar men attempted to located the U-boat.
The U-751’s sonar operator suddenly picked up the turning propellers of a ship rapidly approaching their location. He notified Captain Salman of the new sightings and the sub jumped to activity. The Captain manned the bridge and ordered the sub to periscope depth. Salman knew that it was much too shallow where he currently was to just lie low and try to sit out an attack from above by these ships.
U-751 blew its ballast and rapidly rose to periscope depth. The Captain was scanning the surface even before the scope broke the surface.
The sonar on board the Icarus picked up a mushy sound contact. The sound came from off the port bow at a range of about 2000 yards. Captain Jester, on board the Icarus, immediately ordered the crew to begin dropping depth charges as they approached the contact. Captain Salman saw the speeding cutter in his periscope and knew that his vessel had been detected and that he had to try to escape. He decided to fire two quick torpedoes at the cutter in the chance that he got lucky and hit it. Icarus’s sonar picked up the sound of the two torpedoes and Captain Jester immediately ordered his ship hard to the port side in an effort to avoid the approaching fish. The torpedoes narrowly missed Icarus and Jester maneuvered his ship into an attack pass, ordering the crew to begin firing their Mousetrap antisubmarine rockets as they made a pass on the U-boat’s last location.
Captain Salman ordered an emergency dive to the bottom. U-751 tilted hard and began a crash dive. The nose of the submarine pushed into the soft bottom where Salman planned to wait until the cutter made one pass. Since his adversary was only a patrol craft, he thought he might escape or surface to periscope depth and again use torpedoes or possibly even the deck guns to destroy the Coast Guard vessel. The spot where the torpedo struck, however, was where Jester and Icarus began the search. The U-boat’s sonar suddenly picked up a second sonar contact approaching from their starboard side and even before the operator could tell the Captain of the new contact, he heard the sickening sound of depth charges being dropped from the vessel. The USS Roper had finally arrived to assist Icarus in the hunt for the U-Boat. The ships began a crisscross pattern and both dropped depth charges while the crew of Icarus also fired their Mousetrap rockets. The U-751 shock from end to end while the attack continued. Captain Salman decided he would try to wait it out and if worst came to worst, surface and man the deck guns in a last ditch effort to survive. Dusk was rapidly approaching and he thought he might be able to escape under the cover of darkness.
The surface attack continued and momentarily the ships moved off trying to reestablish contact with the U-boat. Captain Salman decided it was now or never. He ordered the crew to their battle stations and the U-751 to the surface. He had decided that he would fire a volley of torpedoes at one of the ships and engage the other with his deck guns while making a surface run under the approaching darkness. He brought the sub to periscope depth, scanned the surface, took a bearing on the smaller ship and fired two quick torpedoes while ordering the sub to fully surface. He scrambled to the conning tower while his crew readied more torpedoes and others manned the deck guns.
Sonar on both the Icarus and Roper picked up the surfacing U-boat and the Captains ordered their deck crews into action. Captain Salman ordered another torpedo volley and his deck crew was already firing on the smaller coast guard ship. Captain Sims on the Roper swung hard to the port side and his deck crew opened up with their 102-mm canons. The first two shots missed the sub but the third shot ripped the sub in two and the U-751 quickly sank to the bottom of the sea with all hands. The flying scrap metal killed Captain Salman and those members of the deck crew instantly.
Icarus and Roper circled the area for survivors but found only dead bodies and a few submarine parts. One recovered body wore the German Cross in Gold around his neck.
DAY 15-AND THEN THERE WAS NONE
And then there were None. Just a little more than two weeks before, three German U-boats had left from Germany and France en route to the East Coast of the United States on a very special mission. Now all three lie on the ocean’s bottom along with their Captains and crews. Only one man managed to survive the ordeal and he was on his way to a Naval brig in Charleston, SC, to spend the rest of the war imprisoned there. Although the Americans had detected and stopped the three boats, they still did not know what their missions were. The captured operative refused to give them any information except his name and ID number as set forth in the Geneva Convention. Two of the ships’ special cargoes lie on the ocean’s bottom in sealed containers. One container lie buried among the dunes of North Carolina. One spy had been killed and two had returned to their cover identities una
ware as to what had happened to the U-boats, the landing parties or the special cargoes.
Berlin was finally notified by the German intelligence agents and advised that the two boats had failed to rendezvous with them as originally planned. They had no idea about the fate of the subs and local news media carried no stories about sunken German U-boats, although the Americans usually censored the wartime news to exclude such information. They feared that the American public might panic if they knew U-boats were in the waters just off the coast and that German commando parties were landing on American soil.
Himmler received the disappointing information and thought about what his next move would be.
THE AFTERMATH
Himmler debated what his next move would be; however, he knew he had to inform the Fuhrer of his failure. Hitler would be in a rage over the failure and so he had to think about how he could turn this around in order to avoid the Fuhrer’s wrath. It troubled him to think that he had lost three U-boats and their crews along with six of his Waffen-SS commandos. It was also believed that one secret operative had been lost after having been undercover in the United States for almost two years. The operation was a disaster and remounting it was out of the question. The war was going badly for Germany and even Himmler felt it was just a matter of months before Germany had to rethink this war. The war was driving Germany into poverty. People and troops were without food and many of the manufacturing plants were being destroyed or badly damaged by the continual Allied air raids. Only Germany’s air war was having any success. The Russians were advancing on the Homeland and losses in Europe were starting to mount up.
Himmler decided to meet with the Fuhrer in a week’s time to see what ideas he may have on trying to turn this around. He knew, however, that as the war worsened Hitler had become more and more fanatical and irrational and Himmler dreaded what he might hear during their meeting.
THE POW
Sturmman (Corporal) Heinrich Barbi had fought on the Russian front before his company had been forced to retreat from the advancing Russians. He had later been accepted into the Waffen-SS and took part in special operations before leaving on his assignment on the U-751. He never thought that he’d be sitting in a US Navy brig in Charleston, SC, instead of returning to the U-751 and heading back to Germany. Intelligence officers had interrogated him, however, he gave only his name, rank and ID number to them. He later told them that he had no idea what the mission was once they reached land. That information was to come from their contact, who he believed was either dead or also captured. After a week of daily interrogations he was told that he would be moved to the maximum-security prison at Portsmouth, Massachusetts. The prison had been constructed between 1905–1908, and was modeled after Alcatraz and set on an island with strong currents to deter escape. Many other U-boat prisoners had been interred there since the start of the war. Once at Portsmouth the interrogations continued with officers from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) grilling Barbi daily. He stuck to his story and eventually they left him to sit in his cell and wait out the war. He still had the coordinates for the spot where their cargo was buried committed to memory and planned to record the information once the war was over and he was back in Germany. He thought this information might be important someday.
THE WAR ENDS
The final battles in Europe took place in 1945 and Germany would surrender to the Allies and the Russians in early May 1945. The Allies took prisoners numbering over 1,500,00 on the Western Front. In the last 3-4 months of the war over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front. Hitler’s alley Benito Mussolini would be captured on April 27, 1945, and hung the very next day. Hitler could see the end coming and although he believed that his forces could turn a corner, there was nothing Germany could do to escape defeat. On April 30th while the Battle for Berlin raged throughout the city, Hitler decided to take his own life and was joined in death by Eva Braun, a woman he had just married 40 hours before. Hitler had dismissed Heinrich Himmler after he had tried to bring the situation under control. Himmler had tried to reach an agreement with the Allies and even proposed that they unite with Germany in defeating the Russian war machine. Himmler would witness the fall of one after another of Germany’s High Command and finally realizing that the end was near and fearing a death like Mussolini, he took his own life by biting down on a cyanide tablet that was embedded in one of his teeth. Thus the German war machine came to a halt.
As the war came to an end and the Allies recaptured Europe, Allied soldiers began to discover the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, which had held and executed over 11 million people in the course of the war. The best-known death camp was Auschwitz, which killed over 1 million prisoners under the oversight of Mengele.
THE SECRET IS SAVED
Knowing that the end was near and watching Germany begin to fall on both the Western and Eastern Fronts, Mengele decided that it was time to destroy many of the files concerning his experiments at Auschwitz and so he ordered the SS guards to gather all the files and destroy them. He decided, however, to save the files regarding the super virus that he and his doctors had perfected in the event that it might become useful to him later on. He altered some of the data and inserted the files into some of the routine files that were held at the camp. When it finally became inevitable that Germany would fall, Mengele decided that it was time to depart his beloved Auschwitz and move west away from the advancing Allied and Russian armies. He had heard about the Fuhrer’s suicide and that his boss Himmler also taken his life. He had no desire to join them anytime soon. He dressed himself as a lowly German infantry soldier and headed westward. He traveled alone and worked along the way at some of the camps. He was eventually captured near Munich but quickly released as the Allies had better things to do than arrest a common German infantryman. So far his disguise seemed to be working very well. He kept a low profile and avoided further arrest while he moved through Germany. He took up residence at one city after another, but never for very long time. As the years passed he knew that he was on borrowed time and that the Allies and the Jews were actively hunting for him and other war criminals. Finally, in 1949, using false identification that he had managed to obtain, he received travel papers through the International Red Cross and relocated to Argentina. Once he arrived in South America he took up residence in one country and then another to avoid being captured as the war crimes hunters were actively pursuing Nazis throughout South America. He still had many of his experiment papers with him and he safeguarded them for a later date.
GOING HOME AGAIN
1946 - Heinrich Barbi had spent the last three years at the maximum-security prison at Portsmouth, Massachusetts. The prisoners were put to work while there and were expected to put in a full day’s work. The Geneva Convention’s mandate concerning prisoner treatment required that the U.S. pay the prisoners American military wages. Barbi worked daily on a near-by farm and was glad to get outside daily and move around rather than sit in his small cell. Portsmouth prison was build on a small island and so prisoners were transported daily to the shore by boat. Barbi thought about trying to make an escape, however, he had no idea where he would go if he managed to get away. He heard stories about how bad conditions were back in Germany and he figured that he was probably much better off here than being back home. Prisoners were also provided writing materials, art supplies and musical instruments. Barbi decided to make a diary of his experiences and also to write down the information he had registered in his mind about where they had buried their special cargo. He devised a special code to write the information so that if the jail keepers inspected his book it wouldn’t reveal anything. The prisoners knew that Germany had finally surrendered in 1945 and as 1946 moved from month to month they wondered when they would finally be released and be allowed to return home. The Americans also required all the prisoners to watch documentaries about what the Allies had found when they liberated the concentration camps that the Nazis had run. Barbi couldn’t believe the at
rocities that had taken place in his homeland and even though he had originally believed in Hitler’s cause and course of action, he was sickened by what he saw.
Barbi still despised the Americans and although he was an ideal prisoner he hoped that at some future date he could strike a blow at them. Himmler had briefed the six commandos about their special cargo and he knew that it was some sort of special virus that was capable of killing thousands of people if it was ever unleashed. He didn’t know how, but he knew he would get a chance to use this weapon against the Americans someday for what they had done to his country and its people.
Finally on October 15, 1946, Barbi was told that he was to be released from Portsmouth and that the American Red Cross would provide him with the appropriate papers to return home. Later that month Barbi and several other prisoners boarded a ship for their journey back to Germany. Three weeks later the ship arrived at the Port of Bremen, Germany. Barbi would then find the Red Cross station and arrange overland travel to his home in Frankfurt. Although he didn’t know the status of his family, he hoped that he could eventually find them and that they had managed to survive the war.
Two weeks later he arrived in Frankfurt and began the search for his family.
THE REUNION