The Chairman
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There is no indication that McCloy was aware of such rogue operations, but, given his tacit approval of the growing intelligence establishment, one had to expect such things to happen, particularly when the CIC and the CIA began sponsoring paramilitary activities. Though McCloy himself was not enamored of the rollback strategy, and did not think the Soviet Union was vulnerable to such attacks, as high commissioner he signed off on these ventures. They were sold to him as “pinprick” activities: the overflights of the Soviet Union gleaned valuable information on Soviet air defenses, and even if the Ukrainian agents might not be able to spark a mass uprising, they could send back economic and political intelligence. Given the Cold War atmosphere of the times, it would have required a major critique for McCloy to have overruled Washington’s authorization of such activities, and he was not inclined to run against this tide.
On the contrary, there were many things about the burgeoning intelligence establishment that he fully endorsed. Throughout his tenure, he repeatedly defended surveillance operations using mail interception and wiretapping of a wide variety of individual German citizens, including some SPD Bundestag members. Such practices, he told Washington, were necessary in order to monitor “communist activities.” The largest chunk of the CIA’s budget in Germany during these years went to financing Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, whose propaganda activities McCloy strongly supported. Even in the summer and fall of 1950, when many officials feared the Korean War was a test run for an invasion of Europe, McCloy still believed the Cold War would be won mainly with ideas, not arms. First Radio Free Europe, and a year later, in 1951, Radio Liberty, began beaming a blend of objective news and propaganda into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Though the cover story for both was that they were privately funded, the CIA in fact provided the bulk of their $30–35-million budget.41
McCloy also promoted other covertly funded informational activities, including subsidies for the publication of various books—both German and American books in translation—that might stimulate “good and positive thoughts in Germany.”42 In February 1951, he proposed an elaborate psychological-warfare offensive to fund “specific newspapers, magazines, film producers, labor organization, churches, farm organizations and refugee groups on a selected and confidential basis.” Such funds, McCloy told a meeting of U.S. ambassadors in Frankfurt, “would make it possible for these groups to undertake projects considered desirable and necessary in an all-out psychological offensive but which might not be financially remunerative.” The “closest coordination” between public affairs and intelligence officers “would be required to organize such activities.”43 About this time, the CIA began to buy newsprint for Axel Springer’s publishing firm, and similar subsidies were given to Melvin Lasky’s Berlin magazine, Der Monat.44 McCloy took a personal interest in Lasky’s publication precisely because he could see that its anticommunist but left-of-center intellectual stance was making inroads with German Social Democrats and the intellectual community in Berlin. Lasky was able to publish such well-known authors as Arthur Koestler, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, and even Jean-Paul Sartre. The magazine dealt with a broad range of cultural affairs, but every issue contained articles criticizing the totalitarian nature of the Soviet system. McCloy recognized that Der Monat’s editorial formula gave it a credibility that other American propaganda outlets did not have with the typical European intellectual. Nothing was more important, he thought, than to discredit neutralist sentiments in the SPD, and there was no better way to do this than to win the battle for Germany’s intellectuals.
To this end, in June 1950, the CIA funded the inaugural convention in Berlin of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Lasky’s Der Monat helped promote the event, which was organized by a salaried CIA officer, Michael Josselson. The two men managed to gather more than a hundred European and American intellectual celebrities—including Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler, and Hugh Trevor-Roper—for four days of oratory celebrating the noncommunist left. The SPD mayor of West Berlin, Ernst Reuter, McCloy’s favorite politician in Germany, gave the opening speech.45 One writer denounced the “clever imbeciles” on the left, who preached neutrality in the face of the bubonic plague. The largely German audience applauded wildly when it was announced that President Truman had ordered American troops into Korea. At the open-air closing ceremonies, attended by some fifteen thousand West Berliners, Koestler, the forty-five-year-old author of the anticommunist novel Darkness at Noon, read aloud a “Freedom Manifesto” which rejected neutralism and called for a peace based on democratic institutions. He concluded by shouting, “Friends, Freedom has seized the offensive.”46
A permanent organization was established out of this first Berlin meeting, and over the next seventeen years it would build offices in thirty-five countries, employing a staff of 280.47 In the early years, it sponsored any number of arts and writers’ “festivals” as part of a sophisticated campaign of psychological warfare against communists and fellow-travelers. A half-dozen magazines were sponsored to spread the message, the most prominent and long-lasting of them being Encounter, in London, of which Melvin Lasky became editor. All of these activities were funded by the CIA, and in some years the cost was as high as $900,000. McCloy thought this money well spent. Later, when he was about to leave Germany, he took the trouble to write the Ford Foundation and, referring to Der Monat, encouraged the Foundation to “help to carry on certain operations which the future [U.S.] Embassy may find it difficult to continue, but which are of great significance to United States objectives in Germany.”48 The Ford Foundation obliged.
He was also aware that the CIA in these years was funding dozens of individual German politicians, labor leaders, and journalists. These payments were made out of “unvouchered funds” available to the director of central intelligence. Tom Braden, who was a senior Agency officer in the early 1950s before turning to journalism, recalled that in some instances these payments could be as high as $50,000: “Politicians in Europe, particularly right after the war, got a lot of money from the CIA. . . . There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war—the secret war.”49 Such payments became common in West Germany during McCloy’s tenure, and led in later years to the funding of such anticommunist men of the left as Willy Brandt.50 Though McCloy was not necessarily apprised of each and every payment, he certainly condoned the policy. In his mind, such intelligence activities were a necessary tool to be used in creating a democratic West German state.51
* * *
I. During this same period some ten thousand Nazi war criminals of one stripe or another gradually made their way out of Europe and into the United States.23 Many of them used the same “rat-line” operated out of the Vatican that rescued Barbie. Most managed to emigrate to America illegally, by lying about their backgrounds. But hundreds were brought into the United States by the CIA on grounds of national security, or for reasons similar to the ones given by Barbie’s CIC handlers. Dozens of Nazi rocket scientists who had committed war crimes in the course of their service to the Third Reich were also brought to America during the early postwar years in a program code-named “Operation Paperclip.” McCloy was well aware of this operation and others that served to enlist the services of war criminals. Operation Paperclip, in fact, was suddenly reactivated right after the start of the Korean War, when the Pentagon approved “Project 63,” a million-dollar program to evacuate up to 150 German scientists in the event of a Russian invasion of Western Europe. The purpose of Project 63 was to deny the Soviets access to this scientific talent, and even the most ardent Nazis were recruited.24
CHAPTER 18
The Clemency Decisions
“Why are we freeing so many Nazis?”
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT TO MCCLOY, 1951
At dawn each morning, Alfried Krupp, once the sole proprietor of a half-billion-dollar industrial realm, rose from his cot in Landsberg Prison and don
ned the red-striped denim uniform of a convicted war criminal. In 1950, the eldest son of Gustav Krupp seemed to have lost everything the family dynasty had acquired in over three hundred years of empire-building. At Nuremberg, the Allies had wanted to put Gustav in the docket, but the old man had no longer been of sound mind. Since the prosecutors had intended to try the son as well, they made him the centerpiece of their case against the Nazi industrialists. In the course of the trial, it became clear that he was not merely a stand-in for his father. The trial took nine months and generated over four million words of transcript. Alfried had been a particularly enthusiastic young Nazi. At the age of twenty-four, in the summer of 1931, he had joined the SS Fôrdernde Mitgliedschaft as a sponsoring member and began contributing money to the Nazi Party.1 Throughout the 1930s, when Germany was engaged in its massive and illegal rearmament program, Alfried supervised the Krupp firm’s production of artillery, submarines, and other war materials. From 1937 on, Alfried and his father regularly had access to state secrets and traded intelligence information with Hitler’s Abwehr. In those years, he was an even more devoted admirer of the Führer than his elderly father. In 1943, soon after Gustav suffered a crippling stroke, Alfried was elevated to the position of chairman of the board and sole owner of all Krupp properties. At this time, he issued a directive assuming “full responsibility” for the family enterprise.2
That same year, he actively pushed the firm into producing fuses at a plant in Auschwitz, where concentration camp inmates were used as slave laborers. It was not a matter of accepting slave workers thrust upon the firm by the SS; in many instances, Krupp initiated the request for such labor, and he signed detailed contracts with the SS, giving them responsibility for inflicting punishment on the workers. Thousands of such slave workers died of malnutrition, beatings, and disease.3 The Nuremberg tribunal was given overwhelming evidence, in the form of Krupp internal memorandums, placing direct responsibility for such practices on the sole owner of the firm. In 1948, Alfried was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment and stripped of all his property. Convicted and imprisoned with him were nine members of his board of directors.
After more than two years in prison, however, Krupp’s prospects began to improve. On paper, the Americans had confiscated all his property, but veteran Krupp managers loyal to the family still ran the firm, ostensibly awaiting decartelization and the distribution of Krupp assets to new owners. Then, in June 1950, North Korean troops stormed across the 38th parallel; on the Korean peninsula, at least, the Cold War had suddenly turned hot, and many in the West feared Korea was only a prelude to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. At a minimum, the war in the Far East gave added urgency to rebuilding West Germany’s economy, which in turn would enhance the military strength of Western Europe. And because German steel was needed for armaments bound for Korea, late in October McCloy lifted the eleven-million-ton limitation on German steel production.
Ten days later, Alfried Krupp met with his board of directors for the first time since his arrest. McCloy allowed the Landsberg Prison warden to reserve a conference room on the prison grounds where the Krupp Direktorium could gather. Alfried entered the room in his red-striped prison denims and took a seat at the head of the table. In this surreal atmosphere, smoking American cigars and eating fruit brought in from the outside, Krupp discussed the finances of increasing the Ruhr’s production. By this time, he and his lawyers had been quietly told that his release from Landsberg was “only a question of a short time.” His family was hoping that he might be home by Christmas.4
The rumors were true. McCloy’s clemency-review panel, led by Justice Peck, had submitted their report on August 25, 1950. They had worked long hours each day for six weeks, including Saturdays and Sundays, to read all the judgments. And despite the complicated nature of the evidence, the three members of the clemency panel quickly decided that their task was not so difficult as they had anticipated.5 A consensus had developed whereby they found it easy to recommend substantial reductions of sentences in most of the cases. To do so, they disregarded many of the Nuremberg judges’ conclusions. After reading through their report, John M. Raymond, one of the lawyers who had conducted General Clay’s review of the sentences, wrote McCloy’s chief legal counsel, Robert Bowie, and warned him, “The basic difference in the approach adopted by the [Peck] Board from the one that we took in reviewing the cases is that the Board, while accepting specific findings of fact, did not feel bound by the findings drawn as conclusions from the facts. . . . We felt that where the Court had seen the sentences and heard all the evidence, the bulk of which necessarily was not referred to in the judgment, it was in a better position to draw conclusions than we were.”6 In other words, the Peck Panel second-guessed the conclusions of the Nuremberg judges without having heard all the evidence. This should have set off alarm bells for Bowie, but it did not, perhaps because Raymond himself concluded that he basically had no quarrel with the Peck Panel’s approach.
So Bowie and his deputy, John Bross, passed on the panel’s recommendations to McCloy. They also told the high commissioner that Judge Peck wanted a chance to present his conclusions in person, and pointed out that, though it would be impossible to explore the details of each of the ninety cases, they thought McCloy could “cross examine Judge Peck on a number of individual cases selected at random. The purpose would be to attempt a spot check of the validity of their recommendations.” Bowie suggested that McCloy should set aside a half-day to review the matter.7
In the end, McCloy met with the Peck Panel for a couple of hours on the afternoon of August 28 to discuss their report, which recommended the reduction of sentences or immediate clemency in seventy-seven of the ninety cases, including commutation of seven of the fifteen death sentences. Judge Peck acknowledged: “. . . if we have erred we have erred on the side of leniency.”8
Regarding Krupp, the Peck Panel suggested that his twelve-year sentence be reduced to seven years and that the order confiscating his property be rescinded. Peck argued that the Krupp sentence was disproportionate and unfair when compared with similar sentences given other German industrialists. Friedrich Flick, who had been convicted of similar crimes, had been sentenced to only seven years, and none of his property had been confiscated. (The Flick case must have been on McCloy’s mind that week, since he had released the former steel baron just three days earlier for good behavior, after Flick served only five years.9) More important, the Peck Panel directly challenged the Nuremberg judgment case by arguing that the Krupp firm was not directly responsible for the use of slave labor. Because the Peck Panel had not discussed the evidence with Telford Taylor or other prosecutors of the original case, they found it easy to accept the representations of Krupp’s defense counsel, and concluded that “Hitler ordered concentration camp inmates assigned to the [Krupp] concern . . . and that concentration camp inmates allocated to the concern were under the strict control of the Gestapo, and their food, billets and discipline beyond the jurisdiction of the firm.”10
McCloy decided to reserve final judgment until he could consider the matter at greater length, but he left the meeting impressed by the arguments made in behalf of Krupp. He was more concerned about the Peck Panel’s other recommendations, regarding the commutation of death sentences and the reduction of so many sentences involving men who had been concentration-camp guards or had otherwise participated in the Nazi killing machine. Over the next two and a half months, he meditated on various cases. Inevitably, word leaked that the high commissioner was weighing the merits of a general or partial clemency. When a German newspaper editor wrote him protesting the possibility, McCloy quickly responded, “Any clemency action I take will not come as the result of pressure from any organized campaign, Nazi or otherwise.”11
But there was a campaign, and the political pressure brought to bear on McCloy was enormous. In mid-November, Adenauer wrote him asking for a “commutation of all death sentences” and the “widest possible clemency for persons sentenced to confine
ment.”12 Early in January 1951, a Munich organization calling itself the Christian Aid Committee inundated McCloy with letters and cables pleading for the commutation of all the Landsberg inmates. He received personal pleas from former German resistance figures such as Inge Scholl, whose own sister and brother were executed by the Nazis. Many of these pleas, like that of Kurt Schumacher, were based on a principled opposition to capital punishment, which had been outlawed under the German Constitution. A Bundestag delegation visited McCloy’s office and bluntly told him that he should modify the death sentences, given the “political and psychological factors at a time when Western Germany was being called upon to make a military contribution to Western defense.” McCloy bristled at this argument and told the German parliamentarians that, though he would make every effort to temper justice with mercy, “If our relations depend on these individual cases, then our friendship hangs on a thin thread indeed.”13 He said that the many petitions he had received had only “convinced him that the German people did not understand what the trials were about or what the defendants had done.”14 At one point that autumn, his mail began to contain occasional death threats against him and his family. He had to acknowledge that he faced “a well organized conspiracy to intimidate me.”15