Chapter 9
CASH, ROCKETS, AND URANIUM
THE SIMULTANEOUS DESTRUCTION of Army Group Center in Byelorussia and Army Group B in Normandy convinced Martin Bormann of the need to accelerate his projects Eagle Flight and Land of Fire. He accordingly convened an extraordinary meeting of German industrialists, business leaders, and selected party officials that took place on August 10, 1944, at the Hôtel Maison Rouge on the rue des France-Bourgeois in the eastern French city of Strasbourg. Bormann was not present in person, since he needed to be at the Führer’s side, but the conference was chaired by his personal emissary, SS Gen. Dr. Otto Scheid. Among those present were representatives of Krupp, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Büssing, Volkswagen, and a host of other companies—including, of course, IG Farben.
In an opening statement, Dr. Scheid announced that
the steps to be taken as a result of this meeting will determine the post-war future of Germany. German industry must realize that the war cannot now be won and must take steps to prepare for a post-war commercial campaign, which will in time ensure the economic resurgence of Germany, with each industrial firm making new contacts and alliances with foreign firms. This must be done individually and without attracting suspicion. However, the NSDAP and the Third Reich will stand behind every firm with permissive and financial support.
The shifting of capital abroad was to ratchet into high gear and the “permissive” support took the form of Bormann’s declaring some provisions of the 1933 Treason Against the Nation Act null and void. This law had mandated the death penalty for violation of foreign exchange regulations, for the export of capital, and even for concealing foreign currency. The steel magnate Fritz Thyssen had actually fallen victim to this legislation, but, unsurprisingly, had escaped execution; he and his wife had been detained in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, but in some comfort. In January 1950, Thyssen and his wife would emigrate to Buenos Aires, from where he controlled his business empire until his death in 1951.
With exquisite hypocrisy, Bormann made use of the Thyssen family’s private bank in Rotterdam, Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., which had originally been founded by August Thyssen in 1918 in order to send illicit funds out of the Kaiser’s Germany as defeat in World War I approached. Money was channeled from this bank to the Union Banking Corporation of New York, which was wholly owned by Fritz Thyssen’s Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG (United Steelworks). From there it was disbursed to accounts in other American banks, including National City Bank, Chase National Bank, and Irving Trust, and used to buy stocks in U.S. companies and corporations. The flow of capital from Germany now became a flood, as massive amounts of the reserve equity of German industry were routed through the Deutsche Bank AG to Switzerland and beyond. Hoards of precious metals, gems, stocks, patents, and bearer bonds were transferred to anonymous bank accounts and safety deposit boxes around the world, from Ankara to Andorra and from Vigo to Valparaiso. In 1938 the number of industrial and commercial patents registered to German companies was 1,618. After the Maison Rouge conference, this figure rose to 3,377. These patents were transferred to foreign shell companies so they were beyond the reach of the Allies but still valid to protect the merchandise and production processes of German companies. There was to be no repeat of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, when Germany’s national assets had been laid bare to the victors as spoils of war.
At a later session of the Maison Rouge conference, Dr. Kurt Bosse of the Reich armaments ministry advised the industrialists that the military situation was grave and the war effort faltering “but that it would be continued by Germany until certain goals to ensure the economic resurgence of Germany after the war had been achieved.” Dr. Bosse continued, “From this day, German industrial firms of all ranks are to begin placing their funds—and, wherever possible, key manpower—abroad, especially in neutral countries.” In closing the meeting, he observed that “after the defeat of Germany, the Nazi Party recognizes that certain of its best-known leaders will be condemned as war criminals. However, in cooperation with the industrialists, it is arranging to place its less conspicuous but most important members with various German factories, as technical experts or members of research and design bureaux.”
AMONG THE KEY FIGURES involved in Project Eagle Flight was the chairman of Deutsche Bank AG, Dr. Hermann Josef Abs, with whom Martin Bormann maintained a cordial relationship. Another was the former president of the Reichsbank and current director of the Bank for International Settlements, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. He was a leading coordinator of the export of capital through various Swiss banks, particularly Schweizerische Kreditanstalt of Zurich, Basler Handelsbank, and of course BIS. As part of the dispersal of personnel, a director of IG Farben, Baron Georg von Schnitzler, was sent to Madrid. His cover story was that he was fleeing arrest by the Gestapo, but Schnitzler’s true role was to coordinate the movement of monies and company assets via Spain to South America. This was achieved through the good offices of the Spanish banks Banco Alemán Transatlántico and Banco Germánico, both of which were owned by Deutsche Bank. It is estimated that some $6 billion flowed to Buenos Aires by this means, for investment throughout Latin America. Particular funds set aside for the personal benefit of the Nazi leadership were transferred to South America as gold bullion, precious stones, and other valuables in the diplomatic bags of the Reich foreign ministry. Göring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, and other Nazi officials all had deposit accounts in Argentina, but in fact Bormann had no intention of ever allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their kleptocracy—in his view this was money that belonged to the Nazi Party.
Similarly, Bormann orchestrated the placement of all the financial officials, scientists, technicians, and security personnel associated with Eagle Flight. The powerful companies that attended the Maison Rouge conferences, and their subsidiaries, provided Bormann with information concerning all their research programs and the innovative weapons technology then coming into service or under development. These weapons programs were documented as to viability, location, and associated key personnel. Nothing was to be left to chance in order to preserve the Nazi Party. As early as November 7, 1942, the day before the Allied landings in French North Africa, Himmler and Bormann had met—in spite of their intense personal rivalry—to discuss the future of the party. Himmler later recounted their conclusions to his closest associates: “It is possible that Germany will be defeated on the military front. It is even possible that she may have to capitulate. But never must the National Socialist German Workers’ Party capitulate. That is what we have to work for from now on.” It was soon after this meeting that Himmler extended his first peace feelers to Allen Dulles in Bern through his intermediary Prince Hohenlohe (see Chapter 2)—a fact duly noted by Bormann.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1944, THE RIVALRY between Bormann and Himmler was as acute as ever. The SS—soon to be basking in its enhanced status after the July assassination plot—was already muscling in on some of the most prestigious weapons programs. Now that Himmler was also Reich minister of the interior, his empire-building was insatiable, and on August 8, 1944, the SS took over the V-2 rocket program from the army. This was a severe blow to Bormann, since he wished to control the major Nazi weapons programs and their personnel for his own devious ends—as possible bargaining tools for negotiations with the Allies as part of Aktion Feuerland. This development also marked a significant shift in the power balance within the Nazi hierarchy, with Himmler now firmly allied with Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production. Speer, who never lost Hitler’s favor until the very last days, was determined to reverse the fortunes of war by the mass production of “wonder weapons.”
Exactly a month after the SS annexed the V-2 program, the first of these rockets fell on an Allied city, heralding the start of Hitler’s Unternehmen Pinguin (Operation Penguin). At 11:03 a.m. on September 8, 1944, a deafening explosion occurred near the Porte d’Italie metro station in southeastern Paris. It was followed by the roaring noise of a rocket engine and then, a fract
ion of a second later, by the sound of a double thunderclap. This was the sonic boom of a ballistic missile reentering the Earth’s atmosphere from space at three times the speed of sound, leaving a vertical, lingering vapor trail to mark its flight. Six Parisians were killed and thirty-six others were injured.
At 6:37 that evening, Artillerie Abteilung (battalion) 485 fired two more V-2 missiles from a launch site in the prosperous, leafy suburb of Wassenaar in the Dutch seat of government, The Hague. Their aiming point was London Bridge railroad station in the British capital. One fell into Epping Forest some thirteen miles northeast of London at 6:40; sixteen seconds later the second struck Staveley Road in Chiswick, West London. The explosion burst gas and water mains, collapsed eleven houses, and seriously damaged twelve others. Three people were killed and seventeen others seriously hurt. There was a complete news blackout; to explain this mysterious explosion without any prior warning sound of an engine, the national press was told that the cause was a ruptured gas main. London suffered 22 more V-2 attacks that month, 85 in October 1944, and 154 in November. It was not until November 8 that the Germans finally announced the bombardment of Allied cities with the Vergeltungswaffe 2. Two days later Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood up in the House of Commons and admitted to Parliament that “Britain had been under rocket attack for some weeks.”
IN 1931, THE GERMAN ARMY WEAPONS OFFICE had established a rocket research facility at Kummersdorf near Berlin, since rocket development was not specifically excluded by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. At that time, artillery officers dominated the army and much effort was devoted to improving the range and explosive effects of weapons to supersede the most powerful World War I technology. The first civilian allowed to work at Kummersdorf was the twenty-year-old Wernher von Braun, who began working there in late 1932. In May 1937, a secret test site was opened at Peenemünde on the island of Usedom off the Baltic coast. At the same time, Braun joined the Nazi Party; three years later he became a major in the SS. Development of long-range rockets continued apace, under the command of Gen. Dr. Walter Dornberger, with Braun as his technical director. Typical of the divisive organization of Nazi programs, the air force was in charge of the design of the Vergeltungswaffe 1 jet-propelled flying bomb, while the army was responsible for what became the Vergeltungswaffe 2 rocket. The rocket’s specification called for a range of 170 miles with a payload of one ton, and it was envisaged that it would enter service in 1943. Initially Hitler was lukewarm, but Albert Speer recognized its potential and surreptitiously channeled funds to Peenemünde.
The first full-size A-4 test missile was launched on March 18, 1942; it failed, as did the second and the third. On October 3 the fourth prototype gained an altitude of fifty-three miles before landing some 120 miles away in the Baltic, only two miles from its intended target. It had also reached just three miles into space itself—the first rocket ever to achieve this goal, prompting Gen. Dornberger to declare, “We have invaded space with our rocket. For the first time we have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth.… This third day of October 1942 is the first of a new era … that of space travel.” On November 22, Hitler gave permission for series production to begin.
Such activity did not escape RAF photoreconnaissance; the first actual record on film was taken on June 12, 1943, showing both a rocket lying horizontally and one standing vertically. By then British intelligence was receiving information about the rocket-testing facility from various sources. In December 1942, a Danish chemical engineer had passed to MI6 the broad specifications of a “large rocket.” This was confirmed on March 22, 1943, by a conversation between two German tank generals captured in North Africa—Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma and Ludwig Crüwell—that was secretly recorded by MI19 at the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre at Trent Park in England. Thoma revealed many details of the rocket program, and by now more information was filtering in from MI6 and the OSS in Switzerland.
In April 1943, two Polish workers with the Organisation Todt, the Third Reich’s civil engineering and construction group, smuggled photographs and plans of Peenemünde to the Polish Home Army. These documents reached the Polish government in exile in London. On May 20, 1944, Polish Home Army partisans actually captured an almost intact V-2 that landed in the soft ground of the Sarnaki marshes, some eighty miles east of Warsaw, after a test flight. After the crew of an RAF transport aircraft undertook a perilous mission into Poland to collect the parts, the precious cargo arrived in London on July 28, to be reconstructed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), Farnborough, together with other parts obtained from Sweden. On June 13, 1944, another rocket went out of control during a test flight over the Baltic Sea and exploded over the town of Bäckebo, Sweden. After some negotiation, the Swedes provided the British with a technical report and wreckage in exchange for a consignment of Spitfire fighter aircraft. Unfortunately, RAE Farnborough discovered nothing about the V-2 that could suggest effective countermeasures.
Nevertheless, the British war cabinet’s Defense Committee (Operations) authorized Operation Hydra, a strike by RAF Bomber Command on the night of August 17–18, 1943, when 1,875 tons of incendiaries and high explosives were dropped on the rocket production buildings and living quarters at Peenemünde. This raid probably delayed full-scale deployment by three to four months, and both Speer and Hitler realized that production at Peenemünde itself was no longer feasible. It was decided to establish an assembly plant in an underground gypsum mine, near Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains of Thuringia, which was currently used for the storage of fuel reserves and poison gas munitions. The task of converting the mine for missile assembly was given to SS Gen. Dr. Hans Kammler of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. Kammler was an engineer who had been involved in the construction of several concentration and extermination camps, including the gas chambers and cremation ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and also in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in April–May 1943. Kammler now presided over the building of the underground rocket assembly facilities, known as Mittelwerk (Central Works), using slave laborers—mostly French, Polish, and Russian—provided by the SS from the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp. Construction began on August 23, 1943; the laborers were treated with great brutality, living and working in inhuman conditions, and the work went on around the clock. Soon epidemics of dysentery, typhus, and tuberculosis, as well as widespread pneumonia from the damp conditions, were contributing to a death toll averaging twenty-five slave workers every day.
Rocket production began on December 10, 1943. Both Himmler and Speer were highly impressed, and Speer wrote to Kammler on December 17 with ringing praise for his accomplishment, one “that far exceeds anything ever done in Europe and is unsurpassed even by American standards.” Production was originally projected at a rate of 900 rockets a month, at a cost of 100,000 reichsmarks each—ten times the cost of a V-1 flying bomb. However, peak production only reached 690 units, in January 1945; a total of 6,422 V-2s were built.
Hitler authorized Operation Penguin on August 29, 1944. By late March 1945, the German had launched 3,172 V-2s, of which 1,402 were fired at cities in England, 1,664 at targets in Belgium, 76 at France, 19 at Holland, and 11 against the Ludendorff Bridge after it was captured by American troops. It is estimated that Operation Penguin killed some 7,250 people over a period of seven months. Again, though the toll in human misery was immense, this average of 2.28 deaths per rocket launched at Allied targets was a remarkably low return for the investment. Of course, to that total must be added the deaths of some 20,000 slave workers at Mittelwerk and about 2,000 Allied airmen who were killed during Operations Crossbow and Big Ben in the hunt for V-weapons facilities and launching sites. At the peak of Operation Penguin in March 1945, about sixty missiles per week were striking England, carrying a grand total of 250 tons of explosives that randomly destroyed suburban streets. In the same month, the Allied air forces dropped 133,329 tons of bombs on Germany, laying waste whole cities.
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nbsp; The true money cost of the Vergeltungswaffen program is impossible to ascertain, but a postwar U.S. intelligence assessment put the price at almost $2 billion—about the same amount as the Manhattan Project. For the same cost as 6,422 V-2 missiles, German industry could have produced 6,000 Panther tanks or 12,000 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft that would have been immeasurably more useful in the defense of the Reich. Nevertheless, the Americans were quick to appreciate the significance of the ballistic missile. It was technology they wanted for themselves at any price.
FOLLOWING THE LIBERATION OF PARIS in August 1944, the Allied armies fanned out across France in headlong pursuit of the retreating German forces. The British Second Army liberated Brussels on September 3 and the port of Antwerp the day after, just as the U.S. First Army reached Luxembourg and Patton’s Third Army arrived at the Moselle River. Confidence was so high that Gen. Marshall even advised President Roosevelt that the war in Europe would be over “sometime between September 1 and November 1, 1944.” The various specialized Allied search units tried to keep up with the advancing armor and infantry. The Germans’ retreat was so rapid that their army was rarely able to implement the scorched-earth policy demanded by Hitler. Nevertheless, many bridges and buildings were mined and booby-trapped, among them Chartres Cathedral, the twelfth-century Gothic masterpiece in Chartres, France. Capt. Walker Hancock, the “Monuments Man” for the U.S. First Army, was quickly on the scene with MFA&A demolitions specialist Capt. Stewart Leonard. With infinite patience, Leonard defused the twenty-two separate demolition charges. When asked by another Monuments Man whether it was right to risk his life for art, Leonard responded, “I had that choice. I chose to remove the bombs. It was worth the reward.” “What reward?” “When I finished, I got to sit in Chartres Cathedral—the cathedral I helped save—for almost an hour. Alone.”
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Page 12