“The bulk of what we know about—that Antoine and I and the Charlemagne Division had responsibility for—came from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Others undoubtedly had responsibility for other areas of funding and protection of the treasury they procured.”
“We read of the Allies finding many caches of treasure hidden by our people. Is that true?”
“Unfortunately, it is true. There have been some traitors among us who alerted the enemy to where the treasures were hidden in order to serve themselves and their escapes. Never forget the names of Hörst Dietsel and Heinrich Rudolf Gajewski to name but two. Those two men were able to make good their escapes to no one knows where by telling the Allies about Schloss Neuschwanstein, Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris, Nazi headquarters in Munich, and the mines in Merkers, Altaussee, and Siegen. Their day will come, you can be certain of that.”
“Surely there are more such places still hidden, Oberführer. This place cannot be the only one.”
“Indeed, you are right. In time, as the Fourth Reich comes into its own, we will be free to return to them and to use the Raubgeld funds for their proper purposes.”
Raubgeld constitutes the gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks before, during, and after World War II. The regime executed a policy of looting the assets of its victims early on to finance the war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories. The occasional transfer of gold in return for currency took place in collusion with many individual collaborative institutions including the Vatican, Swiss, and American banks. The precise identities of those institutions–as well as the exact extent of the transactions–remain unclear to the present day. During World War II, Nazi Germany continued the practice on a grand scale. Germany expropriated some $550 m in gold from foreign governments, including Belgium and the Netherlands. Over and above those thefts from national governments, there was a massive fortune—including gold, jewelry, and precious artifacts—taken from private citizens or companies.
As Germany’s outlook diminished drastically after 1943 and especially after 1944 and through to the war’s end, many thousands of Nazis and wartime collaborators from France, Croatia, Belgium, and other parts of Europe looked frantically for a new home—preferably one as far away from the Nuremberg Trials as possible and as hospitable as could be made available. Argentina welcomed onto its bosom thousands of them; the country and its government publically agreed with the vicious anti-Semitism of the Nazis; and the Perónist regime actively courted them, especially the wealthy ones. Argentina was full of Nazi spies, and Argentine officers and diplomats held important positions in Axis Europe. Argentina sent agents to Europe to provide easy passage—including provision of authentic travel documents and in many cases covering expenses temporarily—usually on a loan basis.
Many influential Argentines—including wealthy businessmen and members of the government—were openly supportive of the Axis cause, none more so than Perón himself, who had served as an adjunct officer in Benito Mussolini‘s Italian army in the late 1930s. Even criminals–including those accused of the most heinous crimes–such as Ante Pavelic—whose Croatian regime murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies—Dr. Josef Mengele—whose sadistic medical experiments were the stuff of nightmares—and Adolf Eichmann—Hitler’s architect of the Holocaust—were welcomed with open arms into the Argentine society and economy.
Eva Peron alone had an estimated $800 million dollars in bank deposits in 1945, 4,600 carats of diamonds and other precious stones, 90 kilograms of platinum, and 2,500 kilograms of gold. The total value of all assets stolen by Nazi Germany remains uncertain, but it is clear that only a fraction of the stolen treasures has ever been returned to the rightful owners. For example, best estimates indicate that almost 100 tons of Nazi gold produced in Portugal—not a small fraction from gold teeth extracted from murder victims—were laundered through Swiss banks, with only four tons being returned at the end of the war.
Even after Germany was defeated, there were many powerful men in Europe who had favored the Nazi cause and continued to do so. Spain was still ruled by the fascist Francisco Franco and had been a de facto member of the Axis alliance; many Nazis would find safe–if temporary-haven there. Switzerland had remained ostensibly neutral during the war; but many important leaders had been outspoken in their support of Germany; these men retained their positions after the war and were in a position to help the ODESSA. Swiss bankers–out of greed, sympathy, or both–helped the former Nazis to move and to launder funds. Many more of those outspoken Nazi/Fascist supporters were allowed to go to Argentina instead, because the Allies were reluctant to hand them over to their new communist rivals, where the outcome of their war trials would inevitably result in their executions. The Catholic Church also lobbied heavily in favor of these individuals not being repatriated. The Allies did not want to try these men themselves—only twenty-three men were tried at the Nuremberg Trials—nor did they want to send them to the communist nations that were requesting them; so, they turned a blind eye to the ratlines carrying them by the boatload to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay.
To be cynical, it was clear that there was a financial incentive for Argentina to accept those criminals. Wealthy Germans and Argentine businessmen of German descent were willing to pay the way for escaping Nazis. Nazi leaders plundered untold millions from the Jews they murdered, and a significant amount of that money accompanied them to Argentina. The ex-Nazis were given landing permits and visas, and many of them were even given jobs in Perón’s government.
Pragmatic Nazi officers and collaborators saw the writing on the wall as early as 1943 and began setting aside gold, money, valuables, paintings, statuary, coin collections, etc., usually in Switzerland for later transfer to the coffers of accepting countries and benefactors. Ante Pavelic and his criminal cronies had multiple chests full of gold, jewelry, and art they had stolen from their Jewish and Serbian victims: this eased their passage to Argentina considerably. They even paid off British officers to let them through Allied lines. The cynicism of Argentina was revealed when—in the last month of the war—she declared war on Germany to end up on the victors’ side. The main reason for doing so—in reality—was to be able to plant Argentine agents in Europe who were in a very advantageous position to continue the Argentine assistance for ODESSA. Antoine, Michaele, and their Gebirgsjägers fully intended to emulate those predecessors.
The effort of transferring the Nazi loot to the trucks required both a prodigious amount of physical work and a great deal of careful calculation. Michaele had considerable experience in dealing with the problems of moving bulky treasures around Europe and finding hiding places for them. This was not much different from his war assignments. He and Antoine had several important administrative experiences during their SS careers. They handled problems in the “solution” camps that many of even the hardest of the other SS men shied away from. They moved the gold, art treasures, and money, and killed anyone whom they suspected was about to betray the great secret of the Third Reich. They managed the almost impossible problems of supervising the obtaining, transporting, and managing the local slave labor forced to move 600,000 horses for use by the SS and the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Russia. Oberführer Dupont could handle this one treasure trove with relative ease.
He relegated all final decisions to himself. Time was short, and space in the trucks was finite. This required a process of rapid triage on Michaele’s part. His first painful decision was to leave behind all of the beautiful frames from the paintings and only to take the most valuable canvasses. He was angry with himself that his knowledge of the value of art was so inadequate, but one does the best one can. The next choice was to sift quickly through the trunksful of jewelry and to limit the transport to only one large trunk. He was better educated in jewelry and was sure that he had made good choices. The boxes full of gold wedding rings, exterminated concentration camp internees’ gold teeth, and the bales of currency were all lo
aded onto the trucks with dispatch because they were relatively light and manageable.
The gold ingots had to go into the trucks, but they were extraordinarily heavy. Two fork lifts were employed to lift down the heavy pallets and move them into position for loading onto the ramp. It took all of the men in a tug-of-war with just one pallet to drag it into position on the exit ramp they had created where the truck could then pull it out of the ground. With several dozen pallets, the work proceeded with glacial celerity. In the back of the cache, under bales of fine silks, the men discovered ten more pallets piled high with silver ingots. An additional half a day of effort was required to get those pallets out and onto the trucks. The trucks were beginning to groan under the weight.
Finally, the best silks, furs, and fine linens were added. The carpenters made oaken boxes to store the tons of gold and silver artefacts, much of which was in the form of useless religious artefacts such as Passover candlesticks, whose only value—so far as Michaele was concerned—was what they could bring when melted down into ingots. Of course, there was no time for that at the moment; so, they were dumped haphazardly into the boxes. Michaele could not help but think that it was rather like the way the former owner’s bodies had been piled in trenches or burned with no record of who was who or what belonged to them.
One of the ODESSA assistants came to Michaele on the twelfth day of backbreaking and psychologically stressful work.
The assistant reported, “Herr Oberführer, we cannot add anything else to the trucks. The only way to transfer more is to get more trucks. To do that, we will have to steal from the farmers. My superiors are afraid that will attract attention to us before the trucks can get out and onto the road to Switzerland.”
“I agree,” Michaele said without a moment’s hesitation.
He had been worrying about that possibility for several days now.
“We will move the trucks out tonight. You and your men dismantle the ‘construction project,’ and when the area is clean, plant the explosives. Be absolutely certain that no busybody can find a way in to have a look at the treasure we have to leave behind. Perhaps, we will be able to come back again and remove what is rightfully ours.”
The irony was lost on him.
“We move out as soon as it is dark,” he told the ODESSA truck drivers and security men.
He and Jacob poured over Jacob’s maps to plot the best routes from Bavaria to the Swiss border which would avoid major throughways.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Konstanz Cathedral in Konstanz, Baden-Wurttemberg, Lake Constance Border Region, September 25, 1954
Michaele, Jacob, and the ODESSA volunteers did not hear any explosion as they drove through the night with the final goal of making it to the Swiss bank that was the repository for the Nazi Raubgold already accumulated. The presumption was that the men left in Ellingen would destroy the entryway and any access to the basement of the old Romanesque and Gothic Schlosskirche [Palace Church]. They were extremely tense as they wound their way through the city streets, expecting at any time to encounter police which would provoke a firefight. They headed west on Veterinärstrasse, then left onto Professor-Huber-Platz, then right onto Ludwigstrasse, then left on Leopoldstrasse.
To confuse anyone who might be following them, they turned on Odeonsplatz, then onto Brienner Strasse, then Maximiliansplatz der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, then Lenbachplatz; then—in a dizzying set of left and right turns—they drove onto Elisenstraße, Marsstraße, Arnulfstraße, and finally Landshuter Allee at the edge of the city. They pulled into a vacant lot by an abandoned building and waited until it was sure that all six trucks had been able to keep with the erratic pattern. The ramp to Salzburg was in view.
They waited an hour before deciding that they had not been followed before driving as fast as possible to Saarbrücken. Predawn light made Michaele nervous; so, he ordered Jacob to find a place to spend the rest of the night and the next day where they would not create any reason to be noticed. That was not difficult. There were still many bombed out buildings where once business thrived before the Nazis came, then the Americans came after them with a vengeance.
In the morning, Jacob left the convoy to make contact with the priest in the Church of the Twelve Apostles. He was the ODESSA’s conduit to the Vatican and from the Vatican to the bank in Switzerland where they could deliver the treasure. At the time, the Vatican was acting as a crucial way station to provide forged documents for Nazi fugitives. Pope Pius XII considered the entire communist movement to be atheistic and antithetical to the beliefs, aims, and purposes of the Church to the point of being the Antichrist. As a result, he was sympathetic to the violent anticommunism of the fascists and especially the Nazis whom he felt were serving the ends of the Church. Publically, he kept his distance from Hitler and his senior cronies; but privately he condoned, and, in fact, supported the Nazis before, during, and after the war. During the war, Pope Pius displayed an implacable public stance of indifference to the German Holocaust and to all of the other atrocities committed against the defenseless Jews. He turned away thousands of pleas from the Jews, telling them that his hands were tied, because the Vatican had to remain neutral like Switzerland. He was instrumental in setting up the network to move Nazi treasure from Germany and Nazi-occupied countries and aided the ODESSA in its efforts to move SS personnel to Switzerland, Italy, and Argentina.
The US State Department described the Vatican’s participation as “the largest single organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants.” That was rank hypocrisy given the immense effort by the Americans to save Nazi scientists and to incorporate them into the warp and woof of American scientific and engineering life via Operation Paperclip. The facilitator of the Vatican’s activities was a rich and enthusiastic Swiss Nazi collaborator named François Caussidière.
The Vatican was very efficient the day Jacob contacted the priest at the Church of the Twelve Apostles. Through the mediation of the Vatican’s Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome—a seminary for Austrian and German priests and the Roman conduit for the Swiss/Argentine Ratline—Jacob was able to speak directly to Caussidière.
“Caussidière here,” the Swiss collaborator answered.
“ODESSA code ‘SpecialSwissEmigration No. 1945,’” Jacob answered.
“What is needed?”
“Documents for twenty-four to allow safe transit into Switzerland, avoidance of search of my six trucks, and a warm welcome at the UBS in Geneva.”
“Your documents will be prepared by the Vatican Emigration Service and the Commissione Pontificia d’Assistenza [Vatican Refugee Organization] and will be ready in six days. Stop at the Konstanz Cathedral in Konstanz, Baden-Wurttemberg, Lake Constance region. Pope Pius XII raised it to a papal Basilica Minor. You cannot miss it. Lake Constance is the only area in Europe where no borders exist, because there is no legally binding agreement as to where the borders lie between Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. You will have no difficulty.”
“And, once we are in Switzerland?”
“Immediately across the border, you will be met by trusted men who answer to me. They will see to your safe passage.”
“I cannot thank you enough, Herr Caussidière.”
“It is my humble duty. Heil Hitler!”
“Seig Heil [Hail, my Leader]!” Jacob answered and ended the call.
Dusk was approaching by the time Jacob returned to the convoy. He knew the men would not have been able to get out for food and water and had to be famished. He stopped at a restaurant and bought twenty full meals. He was received with enthusiasm.
Jacob conveyed all he had learned to Michaele, then asked, “What next, Oberführer?”
“We head to Brienne le Chateâu to get Antoine and the others out of that hellhole.”
“It is possible that we will run into trouble and will endanger the mission, Oberführer.”
“Saving Antoine and the ‘Gebirgsjägers’ is every bit a part of the mission, Ob
ersturmführer [SS-Senior Storm Leader] Bunnemann. Never under any circumstances ever think differently.”
“Ja wohl!” Jacob replied vigorously.
“Have the men check the weapons and ammunition, Obersturmführer. We will be ready for whatever comes. We are SS.”
Jacob nodded without demurrer and gathered the other men. When it was fully dark, they moved out and drove to the preplanned rendezvous for restocking and planning their crossing into Switzerland. They stopped in a copse of trees to the north of the Konstanz Cathedral in Konstanz, Baden-Wurttemberg. The cathedral was run by priests who were part of the Vatican Refugee Organization and who were waiting for them.
Michaele insisted that they trust no one at this point. He ordered the men to hide their trucks, and he went alone to the rear door of the cathedral. He reasoned that—if he were taken—the mission still had a chance to succeed. He rapped softly on the door in a pattern which had been agreed upon during Jacob’s telephone conversation with François Caussidière—the Latin Gregorian chant, Adoro Te Devote. The rhythm of the chant was simple, easy to remember, and so familiar that any priest throughout the world was familiar with it. Michaele and Jacob had practiced the beat repeatedly to avoid confusion.
It was obvious that he was expected. A man’s voice came from behind the heavy oak door.
“What is wanted?”
“I come with the Holy Father’s blessing,” Michaele said, repeating the prearranged identification code.
“State your purpose.”
“We are émigrés with intent to travel into Switzerland to obtain religious freedom and to fight godless Bolshevism.”
“You may enter, Brother.”
With that invitation, the great door swung open; and five bearded young men in Franciscan Friars Minor Capuchin brown cloaks and hoods stood facing Michaele with automatic rifles pointing at his chest.
“Pardon our caution, Brother. With the Americans and the communists, one can never be cautious enough. Are you alone?”
The Charlemagne Murders Page 25