‘Counter-intelligence is partly a branch of show business. The scenario called for imagination, and throughout the trip my team had to make it seem that they were not just a handful of men but a giant military organisation. I employed about thirty people in the charade and their performance was geared to stimulate the SS officers’ imagination through the auditory senses, heightened as a result of being blindfolded. I calculated correctly that these men were so disciplined they would not dream of removing their blindfolds without being ordered to do so. The cars were driven in circles so that a small group of agents was able to double and triple their roles. All along the route the cars were stopped and passwords exchanged. The five roadblocks were in fact just one encountered again and again. What sounded like the movement of trucks and equipment increased further the illusion of size and strength.’
The coup de théâtre was the lodge itself, and the formidable figure of the commander of the Grossorganisation, the renowned and much anticipated Dr Frundsberg. ‘Before my men brought the shivering audience in from the cold and wet, they led them in circles through puddles of deep water just for the sport of it, thoroughly wetting their feet. Ted Kraus was hidden in an adjoining room to tape-record the conversation. We had installed agents to record everything. As in any well-staged drama, our actors had memorised their lines and rehearsed their movements before we raised the curtain for our momentous opening night.’
Once inside the lodge and before the commander, Schelkmann attempted to establish his importance by mentioning various SS acquaintances who had been members of RSHA. ‘The names did not catch me by surprise. I was thoroughly familiar with the files of these men and could discuss them with considerable authority.’
Schelkmann’s adjutant, Gerhard Laufer, from Bad Pyrmont - codename Herzog - had been an SS Unterschar-fiihrer and had escaped from a French prisoner-of-war camp. The other two men present at the lodge, twin brothers Siegfried and Johann Weber, had escaped from an SS camp. Siegfried’s role in the group was head of intelligence, while Johann was the head of the organisation for Rheinland-Westfalen. The centre of operations was in Fulda.
There were a couple of difficult moments for Michel at the lodge. He was unprepared when Schelkmann requested that he be made head of intelligence of the Grossorganisation. ‘I had not anticipated this. I could hardly grant the man’s request without bringing him into the organisation, which was obviously impossible. I pointed out the weakness in his operation, which in reality I was forced to admire, and sketched an overall picture of the workings of my own highly advanced but non-existent system. He was speechless with admiration.’
The most dangerous time came when Schelkmann handed Michel the power with the words, ‘What do you order us to do now?’ It was a critical psychological moment, and as Michel hesitated he feared his mask had momentarily slipped and that he had stepped out of character. ‘Oddly, I was not prepared. I had trained myself mentally for everything up to this point. Now, suddenly, for a split second, I was thrown.’ If the flicker of doubt showed, it was not picked up by Schelkmann, who sat eagerly awaiting the new commander’s orders. ‘There were no more discussions, no more questions. Schelkmann expected nothing but orders. And orders were given.’[194]
Michel and Kraus now sent a report and the recording of the meeting to CIC HQ, which was ready to make immediate arrests. But Michel argued forcefully to hold off until he had made the inspection tour of the various SS units and pulled more people into the net. And in the back of his mind another elaborate concept was formulating: he would employ the SS intelligence officers to work unwittingly for CIC.
He needed to give his new employees something to do while they awaited their formal amalgamation into the Grossorganisation. It had been established that the bomb planted in the de-Nazification court in Stuttgart had been stolen from one of the US ammunition dumps, and Ulm CIC had been given the assignment of surveying the security of all dumps in the area. He decided to turn the job over to the SS organisation as a test of their prowess. Michel, as Dr Frundsberg, explained to his now devoted followers that the survey was important so that they would later be able to penetrate the dumps. A deadline was set.
The SS intelligence operation proved to be more than efficient. At the time of the designated deadline Michel was provided with a detailed report, including accurate maps and a complete inventory of munitions at the various dumps. And as an added bonus, a live American bomb from the US dump at Amstetten was delivered to the lodge and placed on Dr Frundsberg’s desk. It was Michel’s turn to be impressed, and he complimented the men fulsomely on their work. He forwarded the report to CIC HQ, adding only that the entire survey had been conducted by the SS. HQ was thoroughly unnerved. Without giving his superior officers time to gather themselves, he outlined his daring new plan.
‘My mind had been whirling ever since the SS had completed their assignment. Would it not be possible for these men to be used in far more important jobs? There were many Nazi organisations actively working against the Allies. Why not use the advanced skills of SS intelligence to track down war criminals and other wanted persons? They could obviously operate far more effectively than US intelligence for they were beyond suspicion, the real thing.’
He was given grudging permission to go forward with this plan, but took it on himself to release intelligence to Schelkmann gained during his own investigative work. Believing this to be privileged intelligence gleaned from Dr Frundsberg, the SS men went to work.
Things progressed alarmingly well for a number of weeks until there was a hitch. Michel was called at three in the morning by CIC in Fulda and told that five SS Officers had been arrested by the Military Police and were being held in jail. One of them, by the name of Hans Meyer, had insisted the police call CIC. The men had been picked up at a railway station where they had gone to meet a number of Nazi group leaders. These failed to show up, but one of the SS officers recognised three old comrades as they got off the train. He approached them and struck up a conversation in which he dropped broad hints about the nature of the work he was involved in, and wondered if they might be interested. One of the SS men had undergone a change of heart since the end of the war and quietly went to the Military Police on duty at the station. Meyer and his men were promptly arrested.
Michel knew that if he secured their immediate release it would arouse suspicion, so he made contact with Meyer through his ‘shadow’ and outlined a plan in which the agent would initiate an escape with the help of CIC in Fulda. When they were transferred from the local jail to a detention camp their truck was held up by armed men outside the town and the prisoners were freed and bundled into waiting cars. If there had been any vestige of doubt concerning the extent of Dr Frundsberg’s power in the minds of the SS men, it was now eradicated completely. The commander’s reach seemed to know no limits.
Michel also took advantage of the situation to cut his new conscripts further down to size. Dr Frundsberg refused to receive Schelkmann, but raged at him over the phone. He berated him for taking risks and making foolish mistakes, accusing him of endangering the security of the entire organisation. Schelkmann was now entirely submissive, and was issued with a new set of orders to incorporate the small neo-Nazi groups he had listed into the Grossorganisation.
Ted Kraus returned to the United States at the end of the year before the final act of the drama was played out. ‘Towards the end of that year we lost most of our veteran CIC agents, who were irreplaceable,’ Kraus said. ‘They had been an erudite group of people with many skills - lawyers, educators, administrators. They were being demobilised, having put in their time, and were ready to go home. Some of them were replaced by very second-rate people in my opinion, including untrained personnel who did not even speak German. The whole operation began to go downhill.’ Kraus himself was replaced by an officer whose only concern seemed to be horseback riding. He freely admitted knowing nothing about intelligence work and showed no interest in learning about it. He rarely showed up at the Vill
a Kauderer during the day and left Michel alone to do as he wished.
And within weeks a new regional commander was also appointed to CIC HQ in Stuttgart, and his way of doing things was to prove diametrically opposed to the unorthodox nature of Michel’s methods. The new man was a career soldier, who had been posted to Germany after the end of the war, and was determined to do things by the book. On the commander’s first inspection tour of his realm, he dropped into the Ulm office unannounced. The new officer in charge was out riding, as usual, and Michel was also absent. One of the agents present attempted to put the new commander in the picture: Mike pretty much ran the operation, and everybody else stayed out of his hair or lent a helping hand as needed.
‘Mike?’
‘Captain Mike. Michel Thomas.’
The commander said nothing, but returned to Stuttgart determined to impose military structure and discipline upon an operation that seemed to be on the verge of becoming a rogue outfit. The more he learned about ‘Captain Mike’ - that he ran elaborate, unsupervised sting operations, used Nazis and SS men in intelligence work, sometimes operated in conflict with other CIC offices, had a web of his own informants and was not even American - the more the commander became convinced of the need for oversight and control. He assigned a ‘specialist’ from CIC HQ to monitor activities involving the Grossorganisation. Although the new agent spoke fluent German, he lacked imagination and had a wooden quality that made him singularly ill-equipped for a role that demanded lightning reflexes and a talent for improvisation.
‘I was less than receptive to having a newcomer enter the picture at this critical time. I was frightened that the arrival of a new man would endanger the whole operation, particularly someone whose declared approach to intelligence techniques and operational methods was in direct conflict with my own. Moreover, the job called for an actor who could carry his role convincingly, and I felt the new agent fell far short in this department.’
The ‘specialist’, backed by the regional commander, insisted that he accompany Michel to the next meeting of the Grossorganisation, posing as Dr Frundsberg’s deputy. ‘I could not indulge him. If the “specialist” was so determined to serve in this capacity, he would have to do it without me. I became very upset. Up to that point, CIC knew exactly who I was and what I was doing. They may not have known the details, but they were happy with the results. And suddenly here’s a man intent on running intelligence operations by the regulation book in the chaotic, complicated world of that time. I could not carry on.’
Michel promptly resigned from CIC and was out of the office within days.
The Grossorganisation came to an anti-climactic and disappointing conclusion. The new agent sent to oversee the operation unwisely took up the challenge to go ahead on his own. Abandoning the Teutonic set of the hunting lodge and its Nazi paraphernalia, he arranged a meeting with the SS men at a beer hall, and even allowed wives and girlfriends to be present. ‘This immediately broke the psychological pattern of making the men journey blindfolded to Frundsberg’s HO. The ritual of the trip, the sense of awe at being summoned by the commander, and the physical impact of the Nazi hunting lodge were all gone.’
At the meeting, the SS Commando leaders submitted a ten-point terror programme for immediate action. High on the list was the bombing of the Bavarian Diet, planned to be executed within ten days. This unnerved the new agent and his performance wavered badly. Inexplicably, Dr Frunds-berg’s right-hand man seemed indecisive and unsure of himself. Instead of expressing enthusiasm and resolve over the ambitious attack, he appeared on the edge of panic.
The SS men sensed something was wrong and suspected foul play. Fearing for the safety of Dr Frundsberg, they demanded to be taken to him. Tempers flared, and the agent was accused of betraying the commander. Schelkmann angrily demanded proof of the man’s affiliation to the Grossorganisation. The CIC officer lost the little composure he had left and pulled a gun. There was pandemonium as other undercover CIC agents present in the beer hall were given no alternative but to move on the group. After a brief struggle, the unarmed SS men were arrested. ‘There was nothing left to do but for CIC to roll up those SS organisations already known through the deception, and pick up whatever SS men they could.’ Only a fraction of the potential haul of Nazis active in the underground was caught.
The High Military Court of Würtenberg-Baden, in Göppingen, sentenced Schelkmann to fifteen years in prison; Laufer, his deputy, received eight years. Four other associates were given lesser sentences. (Michel later investigated Schelkmann’s fate: he served twelve years in prison, moved to Dortmund on his release, changed his name and ran successfully for political office.) Passing sentence, the judge declared: ‘The primary object of the occupying powers in Germany is to keep Nazism down. The schemes of the SS underground might easily have had disastrous consequences for the occupying forces as well as for Germany. Every Nazi movement has to be mercilessly crushed and the occupation army is going to stay in Germany until this is done.’
Fine words, but they expressed the objectives of a policy that in reality had already been abandoned. Michel had suppressed his own desire for revenge at the end of the war and had sought a moral reckoning. He had believed that the Allied military authorities of occupation genuinely intended to work to prevent Nazis from entering new government positions, and that war criminals would be prosecuted. In this he was to be bitterly disappointed, as Nazi Party members returned to positions of power throughout the country. German scientists who had held senior SS rank and employed slave labour had their records rewritten and sanitised to make them eligible for US citizenship, while war criminals not only went unpunished but were recruited by western intelligence.
Michel understood that the original mission of CIC had gone awry. ‘If I want to be kind, I’d say that CIC became incompetent. A mess. It did not know what it was doing. It was naive. Period. But out of that incompetence and ignorance, out of that naivety, came a betrayal of everything those brave young men of the Thunderbirds fought for, and some two hundred thousand Americans died for. It is a shameful legacy.’
Michel’s entire family had disappeared in the course of the war, along with his world. He had adopted so many identities and lived so many lives since Hitler came to power in 1933 that it seemed as if he had passed through eternity. He could scarcely remember anything but war, and although he was still a young man with everything ahead of him, he found it difficult to imagine a world at peace. It seemed that Europe was in moral as well as physical ruin, and he felt isolated and powerless amid the wreckage.
Inspired by American friends he had made in the war, he contemplated working for the United Nations and turned away from the catastrophe surrounding him. In July 1947 he took a ship from France - together with Barry, the SS dog - and crossed the Atlantic to the New World and the future.
VIII - Disconnected
One weekend, after Michel had been in America for almost a year, he arranged to go to the beach with friends. It was a beautiful summer’s day and the top was down on the convertible as they drove north on the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu. Somebody made an amusing remark and everyone laughed. Michel joined in. A sudden, awkward silence fell and an uneasy atmosphere enveloped the group. After a pause, one of the friends explained gently that no one had ever heard him laugh.
It was only then that Michel realised that at some time during the war he had lost the ability to laugh or cry. The insight shocked him. And while the gift of laughter had returned, he feared surrendering to the sadness within him. ‘I realised I was filled with unhappiness and yet I was unable to cry. It was as if inside of me I had a chest filled with tears. As long as the chest remained closed I could have fun and be happy. But if it was opened, even a little, it would not be a release but disintegration. My fear was that there would be an explosion of tears. It would be a flood, and I would drown.’
The prosperity and ease of post-war life in southern California lacked reality, and Michel felt detached a
nd remote in the comfortable world of peace. ‘I identified with Gulliver, from Gulliver’s Travels, moving alone through a strange land. But at least for Gulliver there was a visual difference when he looked about him. I was a Gulliver who looked like everybody else, but I was utterly different and removed from the people around me because of what I had been through.
‘After the action of war, life was very dull. There was no real connection. As a young man I had often been in danger and always felt in charge. I was used to swimming in shark-infested waters, and I knew how to survive in that hostile environment after years in camps and in combat. It was natural to me. Suddenly, I had come from a cold, shark-infested ocean into a warm, calm lagoon and found it difficult. It was not just the adjustment from military to civilian life, which is quite an emotional upheaval, but the sense that nobody understood, or tried to understand, who I was or what I had been through. I was different and alone - Gulliver in an alien world. It took years to reintegrate.’
Michel had set sail from Le Havre in July 1947 for the USA with a wad of signed letters in his pocket from senior officers in the US Army recommending him for citizenship.[195] But although he had served and fought in the American uniform, the process was complicated because he had been unconventionally taken into the army during combat, rather than signed up on US soil. He remained stateless.
His departure from Europe had been delayed when he learned that he could not take his dog, Barry, on a military transport plane. ‘They would have taken him in the hold, but I didn’t want that.’ He went from one shipping company to another in Paris in search of one that would agree to take the dog. Almost all of them had rules forbidding animals, but one that carried a mixture of freight and cargo agreed, subject to the captain’s consent. Michel travelled to Le Havre and went to see the captain. ‘I showed him Barry’s glowing recommendations from the US Army and he agreed to take him as long as he remained in a certain section of the ship and did not enter the passenger cabins or the dining room. When I brought Barry on board the captain was amazed to see this giant of a dog.’
The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas Page 33