A Dangerous Woman

by Susan Ronald

  What was not in the published article by Kennedy was his private interview with Donald L. Daughters, lead investigator in the postwar allegations against Florence. Kennedy explained that Florence told him that the “commanditaire” arrangement at Banque Charles was one “whereby an investor might participate in the bank without liability in the case of its insolvency.”30 It begs the question why Florence should have been concerned it might become insolvent when it had the backing of the Reichsbank. What Kennedy did not know was that the commanditaire arrangement also meant that she could not make decisions on behalf of the bank.

  The Daughters report includes a more tempered assessment of Florence’s activities from Source D, or the files of the DGER. They state that “the Subject displayed an understanding and cooperative attitude toward persons working in the French Resistance. On occasions [sic] she is said to have offered shelter to individuals sought by the German authorities and to have offered sums of money for use in Resistance activities. Subject is reported to have accumulated important information and to have communicated it to Resistance leaders, particularly information concerning the manufacture of arms in French plants, movements of German troops, war materiel, and plans of the German attacks on the French Maquis.” She reportedly gave the sum of 1,200,000 francs to Resistance causes. Yet at the bottom of this shining paragraph—with no other mention elsewhere in the report—is the name Mr. Mandel, among many others, as having been a source of the information.31 This was one of the aliases of Michel Szkolnikoff.

  * * *

  The month of March was spent obtaining testimonials of Florence’s good character from the likes of Marie Bell, General Georges, Robert de Thomasson, Jean Paulhan, the princesse Sixte de Bourbon-Parma, and even Florence’s butler Diego Zanini, who swore how both Florence and Vogel had saved him from being sent as a slave laborer for Organisation Todt—the very organization Vogel worked for. Magdeleine Homo wrote a letter attesting to Florence’s generosity in giving to all the right causes, including 800,000 francs to the 8th Battalion of Zouaves fighters; 400,000 francs to Marie Bell for the Résistance; gifts of ambulances and the generous donation of her time as a nurse. Homo also outlined in the letter how Florence had been threatened with arrest by the Gestapo on August 20, 1944, and “destroyed all the compromising papers.”32

  What Homo writes was undoubtedly true, and the purpose of writing about “compromising papers” was to infer that Florence had been actively working with the Résistance. What Florence hadn’t realized was that the FBI already understood that the October 19, 1944, testimony under oath to the OSS bore little resemblance to her several later declarations to the Americans, most notably the statement that she was afraid of what the Germans would do to her husband.

  Based on the recommendations of all the departments investigating Florence’s activities with the Germans during the occupation, J. Edgar Hoover sent forward Florence’s treason file to the attorney general for advice and/or action. How or when Florence employed the services of John T. Cahill as her lawyer—the same lawyer who had outsmarted Hoover in the Chase National Bank case—is not in the files, only that he was her lawyer in this matter. Weeks passed without further written documentation. Those weeks became months before Hoover received Assistant Attorney General Theron L. Caudle’s reply, dated November 2, 1945: “Reference is made to your memorandum dated September 17, 1945, and its enclosures. The Criminal Division is of the opinion that no further efforts are justified in order to develop a possible treason case against the subject. You are requested, however, to furnish this Division with any further information which you may receive concerning this case.”33 The case was marked “pending.”

  Though the war had been over for nearly six months in Europe, experience had already taught all those who were investigating war crimes, looting, or collaboration that they did not know all the facts—yet. Besides, there were far bigger fish to fry than Madame Gould. After more than a year under investigation, Florence knew there would be no further action. Not only had she evaded treason charges, but to her mind she had also succeeded in convincing the American military to take on Ludwig Vogel, albeit in the fighting X-2 multilingual unit. While she turned fifty in July 1945, her powers of persuasion seemingly had not dimmed with the years. The only real casualty of her living dangerously was her relationship with Frank.

  Florence could be thankful that no one twigged how she fit into the gigantic puzzle which Michel Szkolnikoff and his Nazi holdings represented. No one had connected Benvenuti and Szkolnikoff. While a few newspapers like The New York Times had picked up the story that “Frank J. Gould” was seeking to buy the former Ruhl empire along with SBM and thereby corner the luxury gambling and hotel market in France and Monaco at the end of the war, no journalist or investigator understood what that meant. Yet if Florence kidded herself that somehow the DGER or FBI would forget what she had done, or even that her RG 65 file for treason in America could be put behind her, she was seriously mistaken.

  PART FOUR

  STILL A GOULD

  I mock everything, except myself.

  —Florence Gould to Marcel Jouhandeau

  26

  NO SAFE HAVENS

  It’s true, it’s true, I love money.

  —FLORENCE GOULD

  While France tried to come to grips with its divisive collaborationist and resistant recent pasts, Florence’s salon continued as though nothing had happened. German officers were replaced seamlessly by Americans. In the months that followed, Florence, Léautaud, and Jouhandeau periodically mused whether Heller and Jünger had survived the war in Germany. Marie-Louise Bousquet and Marie Laurencin remained fixtures, always sparring with their hostess. Artist Georges Braque joined in the festivities. Florence’s old flame, resister Robert de Thomasson, came back into the limelight. Jean Paulhan, who had been in hiding in the final days of the occupation, was again in attendance, and inspired Florence to pay for printing a book by Jouhandeau.

  Chronique d’une passion, financed by Florence,* appeared in 1944, but was beset by problems. Jouhandeau, who feared arrest like Brasillach, had gone into hiding. By the end of October, he resurfaced, thinking he’d somehow escaped censure. That December he was cited in Les lettres françaises—an index of dishonor—pinned to the chests of fascist writers that included Drieu de la Rochelle, Brasillach, and many others. Academician François Mauriac urged writers like Albert Camus in his Combat to denounce calls for denazification in France. The country had suffered quite enough and needed to heal itself.

  Still, retribution took its various forms. January 1945 brought Robert Brasillach to trial for inciting to murder through his articles in Je suis partout; denunciation of individuals; and all sorts of collaborationism. Sensationally, Brasillach’s homosexuality was linked to his collaboration horizontale with German officers. Despite hundreds of signatures by the literati of France, including Camus, de Gaulle refused to pardon him. Brasillach became the first writer to be executed for the crime of supporting the occupation. That March, Drieu de la Rochelle finally succeeded in committing suicide. Although he had usurped Paulhan’s position at the NRF, Paulhan was devastated.1 In May, Jouhandeau’s “collaboration dossier” was reviewed by the judicial police. A month later, Jouhandeau went into hiding once more.

  * * *

  None realized that the investigation into Banque Charles, Florence Gould, and Ludwig Vogel continued in secret in both France and the United States. The Allies, during 1944, worked together to annihilate the Axis Powers through shared intelligence. Investigators knew that the Goulds had over 300 million francs in assets sequestered by the Germans in 1940. Yet their businesses were only Aryanized as “enemy assets” after the American declaration of war. Unless and until the Allied sleuths could question Hans Dietrich Warzinski, however, they did not have absolute proof whether this was a “soft” maneuver to protect the Goulds or no. Then came the revelation that, in January 1944, Warzinski advised Florence that her assets had been transferred to Aerobank.2 Th
e Americans believed that this may have been the real impetus behind the investment in Banque Charles. Given the Gould name and connections at the highest levels of society, believing was one thing, proving quite another.

  The French, however, became increasingly concerned with the scandals engulfing Monaco and the role their own plenipotentiary minister, Du Pasquier, played. Du Pasquier’s cohorts, including Jean Guisan and Szkolnikoff, were trying to take over the French luxury hotel and casino industry. Had Szkolnikoff also used Guisan to squirrel away his 2 billion francs in Switzerland? investigators asked. Banque Charles was a second scandal somehow linked to the first, but just how, puzzled them. Evidently, Banque Charles was the vehicle through which German flight capital would be laundered before being converted into dollars, and Szkolnikoff’s empire was part of that scheme.

  To make matters even trickier, Szkolnikoff allegedly absconded with some crucial and embarrassing papers to assure his own safety. The French were determined to find these documents. With the endgame of the war in play, and more war crimes coming to light, the DGER decided it needed help, but not from the overstretched Americans. In all innocence, they employed the services of Experta—which controlled Szkolnikoff’s companies on behalf of the Reich through Deutsche Waren Treuhand-Aktiengesellschaft. It also formed part of eighteen trust companies dedicated to auditing the Reich’s accounts.3 At the time the investigation was undertaken by Experta, France was still at war with Germany.

  No road runs smoothly in war, but the decision to use the German-controlled Experta with strong links to Florence’s go-to man for Switzerland, Jean Guisan; the French plenipotentiary minister to Monaco, Du Pasquier; and Szkolnikoff showed a clear lack of understanding of the interplay between them. Experta, originally set up for the protection of French and white Russian loans against the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, had moved with the times and was—during World War II—one of the main vehicles used for the Aryanization of French property. Experta also handled Aryanization of American assets in France. Helena Rubinstein’s French cosmetics subsidiary’s audit was carried out by Experta in 1942, despite Rubinstein having transferred ownership of the business to her French lawyers.4 That said, Experta apparently did not handle the audit of the Goulds’ properties for the Nazis.

  Prince Louis’s closest confidant, Émile Roblot, also linked to Experta, had been stripped of his official standing by then, but was, nonetheless, tasked with helping Experta and the DGER to discover the truth. From that moment, Szkolnikoff, still on the run in neutral Spain, was doomed to take the fall for his German masters. His body was found by the roadside, beaten and drugged, on June 10, 1945, around twenty-two miles from Madrid, in an alleged bungled French secret service attempt to repatriate him to France.5 The incriminating papers he had stolen were never discovered.

  American military investigators inadvertently led Szkolnikoff’s assassins to him, advising the DGER of his whereabouts. Only the British and Americans felt that Szkolnikoff was a key to unlocking the mystery of Banque Charles; Florence Gould’s shareholding; and ties to Argentina for Nazi flight capital. Precisely how they were intertwined was crucial to the success of unraveling this particular thread for Operation Safehaven. Szkolnikoff’s surprise appointment as Argentina’s vice-consul in Spain enabled the U.S. Secretary of State, Joseph Grew, to lodge an official complaint with the government of Argentina and U.S. ambassador Jefferson Caffery in Paris regarding the seriousness of this link in British and American eyes. Lodged in the Operation Safehaven files, there was a serious and credible link between Banque Charles, Argentina, and Szkolnikoff.6

  Safehaven investigators also worked on this network from other angles. They listed Florence’s contacts within the Nazi hierarchy, which when considered plainly, made for damning reading:

  That her participation in the Banque Charles was an outgrowth of many close and congested relations she had with the Germans (including the Gestapo) and notorious French collaborators during the occupation. That her explanation of her participation in the bank (as set out before) does not correspond with the explanation she gave to the OSS, Paris, on October 18, 1944. “During the occupation, Florence Gould had social relations with the following principal German and French collaborators: Werner Klingeberg, Director of the Deutsches Nachtrichten Buro [sic], Paris (German Newspapers); Willy Praeger-Gretsch of the Abwehr; Walter Steffens of the Abwehr; ‘Colonel Patrick’ Garthe of the Abwehr; De Lestandi of the Le Pilori, one of the most fascist of French newspapers; Marcel Peter, director of Le Petit Parisien; Odewald of the Gestapo; General Medicus; Knochen of the German Secret Service; Countess de Chambrun, daughter of Laval; Carbuccia of the collaborationist newspaper [Le] Gringoire.”7

  Hoover had been told to close the Florence Gould RG 65 file, but the OSS and British and American officers working in Operation Safehaven were actively pursuing the Gould-Charles-Szkolnikoff lead. Florence had the Soviets to thank for saving her skin. The heating up of the Cold War, rather than Florence’s cunning, meant investigators were called off the case. But none of this information appeared in Florence’s OSS or FBI files. It resided in the Ludwig Vogel file dated June 6, 1946.

  27

  PAPER CLIPS AND FRIENDS CAST LONG SHADOWS

  When one has friends, it is to defend them, not to attack them.

  —FLORENCE GOULD

  Vogel had been successfully employed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Cincinnati, Ohio, since September 15, 1945, some nine months before FBI agents reported back to Hoover on June 6, 1946, in writing. Florence had succeeded in getting Vogel sent to America as part of the secret program called Operation Paperclip, to bring German scientists to America.

  Vogel joined the company of the elite scientists such as rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who was instrumental in the NASA space program; Dr. Hurbertus Strughold, who developed manned space flight; General Reinhard Gehlen, former head of Nazi intelligence in the Soviet zone, who continued his work for the U.S. at the outset of the Cold War; and Dr. Gerhard Schrader, a scientist at I.G. Farben, which manufactured the Zyklon-B gas used in the concentration camps, and who was also one of the two inventors of the deadly gas sarin. These were just a handful of the hundreds of top German scientists brought to America for Operation Paperclip.1 Even the former German General Franz Medicus, who worked from Florence’s sequestered Maisons-Laffitte estate, was part of the program as a valued medical man.* Yet Vogel was no scientist.

  Hoover was unamused that Vogel, who was termed a “glider instructor and pilot” in his FBI files, should be among the illustrious and notorious list of Paperclip scientists. Indeed, Hoover discovered shortly after Vogel’s arrival at Wright-Patterson in Ohio that he had been of very limited assistance to the Allies as part of the X-2 unit. Vogel interpreted interrogations of German prisoners, but didn’t reveal significant information regarding air force bases, number of planes, or armaments, as promised by Florence. To boot, after three years in the United States, Vogel applied for American residency. This was behind Hoover’s launching on October 5, 1948, a “SPECIAL INQUIRY—DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE—GERMAN SCIENTISTS UNDER THE PROTECTIVE CUSTODY AND CONTROL OF THE JOINT INTELLIGENCE OBJECTIVES AGENCY” with a “particular emphasis on the internal security aspects of the immigration of Vogel to the United States for permanent residence.… All offices should be alert in obtaining information concerning the activities of Vogel prior to his coming to the United States and fully develop any allegations of a derogatory nature against Vogel.”2 Along with Hoover’s letter was an enclosure of Vogel’s relationship with Florence, and her derogatory information.

  The bulk of the information of a “derogatory nature” unsurprisingly regarded Vogel’s joining the Nazi Party in 1932, and Florence Gould. Vogel signed an affidavit attempting to explain away his membership to the Nazi cause, which, given that no one could testify to the contrary, had to be taken at face value—for the time being. A letter from the War Crimes Office in Berlin dated June 21, 1947, stated that they had no record of V
ogel. His old boss at Standard Oil in Hamburg wrote that Vogel had been an exemplary employee.

  Only Wolfram Hirth, Vogel’s glider pilot trainer who had known Vogel since 1933, gave a full picture of Vogel’s personality in his affidavit of February 1948, reproduced here in part:

  Vogel pursues his aims with great energy and tenacity. In order to reach his goal he unscrupulously applies any means, as far as they are not expressly violating existing laws. His effort to exert himself successfully, to play an important part and create [for] himself a distinguished and profitable position are the motives for all his thoughts and activities. Here he possesses a sound egotism. He clearly and steadily pursues his aims and tries to eliminate all his competitors and enviers with relentless energy. Yet none of his efforts was prejudicial to his looking [an] adroit and sociable person, who is sure to make a good impression everywhere, in particular with women. Most of his comrades and collaborators did not like him, as his cool-blooded endeavors were often interpreted as unfair to his associates. Yet I do not think that this was the case. He possesses a sound ambition and business ability of a strong man who disregards the weaker, and who follows his way knowing about his own abilities and the right of the strong. After all, I think him an honest, respectable and valuable man.… Vogel has no political interests at all.… His attitude is liberal. There is no room for narrow national policies in his cosmopolitan mentality. As he disregards everything beyond his own success, he never took any interest in National Socialism, for the latter could be of no use to him.3