The Charlemagne Murders

by Douglass, Carl;

  By 1946, there were hundreds—perhaps several thousands—of Nazi war criminals in Spain; and thousands of outwardly former Nazis and fascists. Vatican cooperation in turning over asylum-seekers in those Catholic countries was negligible. Pope Pius XII was active in the efforts to put former Nazis and other fascist war criminals on board ships sailing to the New World. He was instrumental in getting ex-Nazis out of the terrible conditions in Allied POW camps in zonal Germany, and there was a trickle-down hierarchal support system to keep the Vatican or Roman ratlines effective. Similarly, the Vatican emigration ratline operation in the ratlines of Spain was fostered by the Vatican.

  Archbishop Carlo Romani of Graz was an outspoken rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests. He was often refered to as the “Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy.” After the end of the war, he became active in ministering to German-speaking prisoners of war and internees then held in camps throughout Italy and assisting them in ways the Vatican at first denied. However, in 1944 the Vatican Secretariat of State received permission from the pope to appoint a representative to attend to the needs of the German-speaking civil internees in Italy—an assignment enthusiastically filled by the archbishop.

  Romani used this position vigorously to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals, including some of the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camp officers. He made no attempt to conceal that activity on his part, never expressed regret or shame. One of the means he employed to conceal the identity of these wanted men was to ensure that they had no identity papers; so, they could be enrolled in camp registers under innocuously false non-Germanic names.

  The financial cost of maintaining the ratlines was enormous, and the Vatican assisted Nazi organizations in establishing an efficient system. A growing source of precious metal came from Nazi concentration camps and death camps, where all property was taken from the victims, and included personal effects such as wedding rings, pocket watches, cigarette cases, jewellery, and gold teeth. The Swiss National Bank—the largest gold distribution centre in continental Europe before the war—was the logical venue through which Nazi Germany could dispose of its gold. During the war, the SNB received $440m in gold from Nazi sources, of which $316m is estimated to have been looted.

  By 1945, the Vatican had confiscated 350 million Swiss francs in Nazi gold for what it termed “safekeeping.” Of that massive treasure, 150 million Swiss francs were impounded by British authorities at the Austro-Swiss border, thus confirming the Vatican and Swiss culpability. The balance of the Raubgeld [“stolen gold”] was held in one of several of the Vatican’s numbered Swiss bank accounts. Postwar intelligence reports found that more than 200 million Swiss francs—mostly in the form of gold coins—were eventually transferred to Vatican City or to the Institute for Works of Religion (aka the Vatican Bank), with the assistance of Roman Catholic clergy and the Franciscan Order. In the late 1950s, leading ex-Nazis later publicly thanked the Vatican for its vital assistance.

  The financial arrangements for assistance to the escaping Nazis were rigid and formal. In return for providing safe haven and new identities, the involved organizations and nations were provided massive loans from the plunder of the conquered and occupied nations and from the Jews of Germany and the lands of occupation. There was at least an implicit “pay-it-forward” pact with those who were saved that they would reimburse and help to finance future ODESSA projects when they could, and the occasion required them to do so.

  It was a win-win arrangement for both the lenders and the borrowers. The SS recognized that Germany’s ill-gotten assets would fall into the hands of the rapidly approaching enemies if they were not transferred and hidden to be retrieved and used in the future. Out of the 1944 meeting in Salzburg, a pact with the devil was made. The party lent huge sums of money to industrialists all over the country and to sympathizing financiers in the former occupied countries.

  This enabled them to set up separate and secret postwar organizations abroad, which provided an additional layer of hidden assets to facilitate the saving of the SS members and allowed for the enrichment of the industrialists and the subverted friends and political officers in the targeted countries. As collateral, the industrialists paid back to their Nazi benefactors an ongoing portion of their earnings from abroad. Together the corrupted industrialists and the Nazi hierarchy built well-funded and protected resources abroad, so that a strong German Reich would reemerge after the defeat and would be manned by zealots even more jingoistic that those of the vanquished Third Reich.

  As the war drew towards its close, Nazi treasure began to be distributed to 750 corporations around the world, all of which were sympathetic or at least cooperative with the Third Reich. In 1944, George W. Merck was a senior advisor for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his capacity as the American biological weapons industry director. His input related to strategies for employment of that kind of weaponry. He retained his position as president of Merck and Company, Incorporated, and in the spring of that same year, the company received a very large cash contribution from Martin Bormann. That infusion of cash allowed Merck to secure a virtual monopoly over the world’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Publically, the money was contributed to provide for Germany’s economic recovery. Quietly, the massive monetary contribution was targeted towards the assurance of the rise of the hoped-for the Neuordnung [New Order]—the Fourth Reich.

  The Rockefeller partner company, IG Farben, received huge sums of money from the Nazi war chest to actualize Hitler’s proclaimed vision of a Third Reich and world empire, and subsequently towards the putative Fourth Reich. The project and the money originated from Martin Bormann as head of the Nazi Ministry of Economics. This was outlined with clarity in a document that was accompanied by a letter of transmittal from the Führer to the Bormann-led Ministry of Economics

  The head of Perónist government’s Information Bureau coordinated the work of intelligence and immigration officials in Argentina and throughout South America directly from from his office in the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s White House. Incoming SS officers, one named Hörst Dietsel, but better known by his new name, Carlos Aguillara-Dominguez, was recently murdered, Lieutenant Schäfer learned. Such officers were willing conduits and facilitators for the flow of gold and Nazi fugitives. The Argentine connection was powerful, diverse, and ruthless.

  In addition to the Argentines, there was a multinational and polyglot cabal of Vichy French, Belgian Rexists, Croatian Ustashi, and Roman Catholic cardinals from several countries, acting with the blessing of the Vatican. According to interviews with some of the people apprehended over the years, they were all motivated by the vision of an international brotherhood of Catholic anti-Communists, and not by greed or vindictiveness. Schäfer read that information with more than a grain of salt and with a healthy dose of world-weary police skepticism.

  Carefully husbanding the treasure they sent to Argentina, the SS organizations purchased huge tracts of land in South America and elsewhere. Large, apparently legitimate corporations were established which conducted research begun in Germany to create the master race by careful pseudoscientific eugenic protocols and by developing profitable industries. Sperrgebiete [secure areas] grew up in the welcoming atmosphere and created whole towns, airfields, highways with all the amenities of civilized German life—free of Jews, Negroes, Gypsies, retarded people, or homosexuals. Fascist countries, including Spain under Franco, and Italy under Mussolini–as well as those in South America–became secure and safe havens.

  The establishment of the state of Israel after World War II led several Middle Eastern Arab nations to welcome Nazis who shared their hatred of the Jews. The ulterior motive of the Islamic world was that the unreformed Nazis would use their expertise in rocket science to enable the final annihilation of the Jews who—at the time—were gaining the upperhand in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflicts. The Allies—including the United S
tates—were eager to the point of near frenzy to exploit the knowledge and work of Nazi war criminals.

  America created a pattern of postwar SS relationships with South American governments and formed false corporations to keep Nazi scientists out of the clutches of the communist governments which were also on a frantic crusade to gather in the bomb makers, rocketiers, and weaponized poison makers to their side.

  For all of that massive expenditure and complexity of maneuvering, some war criminals—including Heinrich Rudolf Gajewski, aka Gunther Emil Sondregger—failed to find a way out, and—during the chaos—ODESSA found ways for them to remain in Germany and take on new identities and to manage to get themselves successfully and unobtrusively reentered into postwar German society.

  “The question for us Kripos is how did they do that?” Schäfer asked himself. “And who cared? That question has to relate to who killed the man.”

  Recipe

  Großmutter’s Dumpfnoodles—Serves 8

  Ingredients

  -Dry—4 cps all-purpose white flour, 2 pkgs dry yeast, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder,

  1 large Russet potato, 2 lbs ground sausage (your choice as to spiciness).

  -Liquid—1 cp lard, 2 cps potato water, 4–5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil

  -Sauerkraut: just buy packaged product—will cut time significantly.

  Preparation

  -1. Mix yeast and potato water (boil the potato until it is soft enough to fall apart) using sufficient amount for proper dough consistency.

  -2. Add salt and lard, mix very well.

  -3. Add flour. Knead until it sticks to your skin.

  -4. Place in warm area of the kitchen or in very low setting of oven, let dough rise to double its size.

  -5. Punch dough down, let it rise once more, and punch it down a second time.

  -6. Let dough rise a third (and final) time to double the original size.

  -7. While dough is rising, fry sausage on medium heat. Add sauerkraut, may pour off excess moisture. Add garlic powder to mix of meat and sauerkraut.

  8. After the dough is done, make 2–3 inch balls and roll them out into medium-flat circles.

  9. Fill fairly full with sauerkraut and meat mixture; and squeeze the edges of the dough together to make pouches.

  10. After the pouches are made, let dough rise again for 30 min.

  11. If dough is sticky, use wax paper during preparation.

  12. Heat medium high 2 tbsps oil for each high sided, nonsticking frying pan. Test heat by splashing a little water in the pan. It should skitter and make sounds of frying. Then add ¾ cp water.

  13. Place fully risen pouches in pan—as many as will fit.

  14. Once in the pans, place lid on and fry until there is no water left, About 30 min. Smell the fried dough to be sure cooking is complete.

  15. DO NOT take off the lid until it smells fried and no water sloshes.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Landespolizei [Bundeslandt State Police] Kriminalpolitzei, Detective Branch, Wittelsbachstrasse. 3, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, late evening, August 28, 1962

  Oberwachtmeister [Senior Constable] Eberhard Zimmerman, Schäfer’s working partner, and Hilda Weiss-Krüger, the most experienced and well-respected analyst/secretary in the Kriminalpolitzei forensic sciences division, had a breakthrough after a grueling twelve-hour day. Both officers were sure they would go blind from the eyestrain after pouring over the prodigious amount of documentation Chief Schneider had delivered by courier from headquarters in Wiesbaden.

  Unable to contain themselves, they interrupted Lieutenant Schäfer’s late evening lunch—leftovers of a sandwich he started at lunch the previous day. He was weary but happy, because he, too, had made a breakthrough which would send him on what he hoped would be a productive search.

  “Horst!” Zimmerman called out to his boss in a burst of enthusiasm. “We hit a great lead!”

  “All right, Eberhard, you and Hilda go first; then I will tell you my little success.”

  “We have a list of four names that Leopold Boehm in the FIU [Financial Intelligence Unit] here in Ludwigshafen gave us; they are his paid confidential informants. Their specialty is informing on former Nazis, especially the SS; and Kriminalkommissar Boehm says these people—one of whom is a woman—know a great deal about the inner workings of modern-day ODESSA. They are all risk takers, and informing on the SS and ODESSA is very much a risk; so, they expect to be paid handsomely.”

  “I know Leopold. We talked about our decision back when we were first approached whether we would go SiPo or stay Kripo. We both knew that our careers would never amount to much, but we have both been able to sleep nights. He knows as much as anyone in Germany about organized crime since it is so money-driven,” said Schäfer.”

  Hilda added, “Leopold was willing to arrange a meeting with all four of them—separately, of course; so, Eberhard and I scheduled meetings all over Ludwigshafen for tomorrow morning.”

  She grinned in triumph and with the knowledge that she and Eberhard had scored a serious point in the ongoing one-upmanship battle with their usually successful lieutenant.

  “So, what have you got, boss?” Eberhard asked.

  “I only have one name, but it came from Chief Schneider himself. He called me this afternoon. This is a man that the headquarters office knows all about and has considerable leverage over. In exchange for information about anything going on in the organized crime world here and abroad or about the ODESSA, the entire Kriminalpolitzei turns a blind eye to his very lucrative enterprises that include human trafficking, gambling, illicit drug trafficking, prostitution, and a host of white collar crimes. The chief thinks it is a good trade and said he would make the arrangements for us to interview him if we promise not to use anything he tells us against him, and he never gets connected to any arrest that might take place as a result of the information he shares.”

  “Who do we go after first, Horst?”

  “Let’s flip a coin.”

  Eberhard laughed out loud. He had been through this several hundred times—long enough and often enough that it had become a tradition and a standing joke.

  Horst smiled back, extracted a coin, flipped it, and gave it a quick glance as it sat out of range of Hilda and Eberhard.

  “Heads,” he said. “I win. We go and see my hot prospect first.”

  Eberhard laughed heartily, but Hilda looked like she had been violated.

  “Hey,” she demanded, “I didn’t get to see that! What I did see was a magician’s trick. That’s not fair.”

  Horst pushed the dorsum of his hand towards Hilda and smiled, “See—heads.”

  She gave him a stern look which she could not maintain and started to laugh with her two male partners.

  “How come I think I have just been had?” she said.

  Both men shrugged and gave her an affectionate smile.

  §§§§§§

  Suite 2212, Haus Cumberland Office Building on the Kurfürstendamm Avenue between Bleibtreu and Schlüterstrasse, Charlottenburg, Berlin, August 29, 1962, three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Horst, Eberhard, and Hilda were fully aware of the activities of the Rebscher crime syndicate of which the man they were to meet—business executive Herr Kohler—was a leading executive. West Germany did not have a fully professional international criminal organization in comparison with the Allies. However, the Rebscher German crime syndicate profited significantly from their loose connection with the Sicilian and Russian Mafias, the Camorra, the Triads, and the Yakuza. They were tolerated by those better-established organizations because they provided a conduit into the newly growing German economy and assisted in helping the other syndicates gain a toehold in a new market.

  On their own, the Rebschers became rich as partners of the ODESSA, with all of the Third Reich’s hidden treasure at the ODESSA’s disposal when needed. Those monies allowed the legal front company, the WestBerlinImportExport GmbH Corporation to prosper by pursuing a legitimate export business involve
d in the moving of commodities such as motor vehicles, machinery, chemicals, electronic products, electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals, metals, transport equipment, foodstuffs, textiles, rubber, and plastic products. The ODESSA and its remaining secretive SS officer directors reaped a very acceptable harvest from the twenty percent portion of the company’s profits which reverted back to them. Neither the ODESSA nor the corporation were likely to be forthcoming about their own involvement, but Chief Schneider assured his Kripo squad from Ludwigshafen that a trip to Berlin would be useful.

  The three Kripo officers were shown to comfortable handcrafted leather swivel chairs in the sumptuous conference room of WestBerlinImportExport GmbH Corporation. Stellvertretender Direktor [Deputy Director] Heinrich Kohler entered the room within minutes. He was a tall, handsome, Aryan gentleman—every bit the personification of the ideal German mensch envisioned by the leaders of the Third Reich. Kohler was all blond, blue-eyed, authoritarian, and unquestionably in charge of the proceedings about to take place. He was dressed in the latest Parisian fashion—custom-tailored, conservative, charcoal gray, form-fitting, three-button silk and wool blend suit, crisply starched white shirt, and hand-knotted bow tie. His black shoes gleamed with a shine applied that morning. Horst thought he was nearly a clone of Chief Schneider Graf von der Lippe.

  “Welcome. You are here because Chief Schneider asked us to see you. A few ground rules: you may not inquire as to our business except as it directly applies to the search for individuals associated with one Heinrich Rudolf Gajewski, former SS officer whom I understand is deceased. You may only be given information regarding his associates and particularly his actual or putative enemies. A few documents pertaining to the man have been prepared and copied from certain files to which we have access. You may not have access to any other documents, and understand at the outset that no subpoena will be honored that demands more, as per the directive of the chief of the Federal Police of West Germany.