Operation Paperclip

by Annie Jacobsen

  CIOS field agents wrote up a Top Secret report for their superiors at SHAEF. A menacing new breed of chemical weapons had been discovered. Aerial bombs “found to contain a markedly potent and hitherto unknown organophosphorus nerve agent” had been developed by the Nazis during the war and stashed in two hundred bunkers in the forest nearby. No chemical this lethal to man had ever been developed before. CIOS agents did not know it yet, but this nerve agent was tabun. The three green rings had been painted on the Luftwaffe bombs at Farben’s Dyhernfurth facility in Poland.

  Allied chemical weapons experts were suddenly in possession of one of the most dangerous wonder weapons—and one of the best-kept secrets—of the Third Reich. That these weapons were never used was astonishing.

  Who were the scientists who had discovered this nerve agent, and where were they now?

  Underground in the center of Berlin, in a makeshift hospital set up in a subway tunnel beneath the Reich Chancellery, Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber performed emergency surgeries on wounded Wehrmacht soldiers. He gave blood transfusions, performed amputations—whatever it was that needed to be done. As surgeon general of the Third Reich, Schreiber was not a hospital doctor accustomed to dealing with triage. But, as he would later testify at Nuremberg, all of his physician-colleagues had fled Berlin; this was not necessarily the truth. Schreiber was a short, squat man, five foot six, with blond hair, blue eyes, and a nose that ended in a fleshy point. A man of great willpower and stamina, he prided himself as setting his mind to a task and getting it done.

  Today was the Führer’s fifty-sixth birthday, April 20, 1945. And because it was Hitler’s birthday, this Berlin morning began with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s Happy Birthday broadcast, calling on all Germans to trust Hitler and to follow him faithfully to the bitter end. While Major General Dr. Schreiber performed surgeries in his makeshift underground hospital, a group of his Nazi Party colleagues had gathered for a party almost directly above where he was located, in the half-destroyed Reich Chancellery building. Around noon, Hitler’s inner circle made its way into a cavernous room with polished marble walls and floor-to-ceiling doors: Speer, Göring, Himmler, SA-Obergruppenführer and police and Waffen-SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Nazi Party foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz of the navy, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, military commander Alfred Jodl, and SS-Brigadeführer Hans Krebs. The men gathered around an enormous table covered with bottles of champagne and a spread of food. Hitler said a few words and promised that the Russians would soon suffer their most crushing defeat yet.

  That morning, the Red Army had in fact begun its final assault on Berlin. Before dawn German soldiers had retreated from the Seelow Heights, fifty-five miles from the center of Berlin, leaving no front line. The Soviet operation to capture Berlin was colossal, involving 2,500,000 Red Army soldiers, 41,600 guns and mortars, 7,500 aircraft, and more than 6,000 tanks.

  Rumor, panic, and chaos enveloped the city at an unstoppable pace. The majority of Berliners were now living underground, in cellars and air raid shelters, appearing aboveground only to scavenge for food. Every road out of Berlin leading west was overwhelmed with refugees. Casualties were skyrocketing. To the south, a detachment of Hitler Youth fighting near the Buckow Forest became trapped in a forest fire; most were burned alive. Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber’s makeshift hospital could not keep up with the wounded. During the course of the next twelve days the Red Army would fire 1.8 million shells on the city.

  Hitler’s birthday was also the day Knemeyer and Baumbach would flee Berlin for good. In the morning, Baumbach had received a cryptic message from Göring, who instructed him to go meet with SS-Brigadeführer Walter Friedrich Schellenberg, the notorious chief of military intelligence and Himmler’s number-two man. The end was near and everyone seemed to know it, so what did Schellenberg want from Baumbach now? Schellenberg told Baumbach that a warrant had been issued for his arrest and that he was scheduled to be taken into custody during the Führer’s birthday party. Baumbach should leave the city immediately, Schellenberg said. Anyone close to Hitler who was arrested this late in the war—usually suspected of treason—faced a quick execution. This was happening all across Berlin. Had Hitler found out about the Greenland escape plan?

  “Schellenberg, whom I had known for years,” Baumbach later explained, “was a clever man.” Baumbach interpreted the tip-off to mean only one thing: Schellenberg needed Baumbach alive to help facilitate an escape. “It was known among a core group of SS officers that Himmler had been trying to use concentration camp inmates as bargaining chips for clemency, through an intermediary, the Swedish Red Cross,” Baumbach explained. Of course Himmler would never be granted clemency; Baumbach figured that Schellenberg and Himmler wanted him alive so he could help them escape somewhere overseas.

  Baumbach located Knemeyer and the two pilots agreed to flee Berlin immediately. They got in Baumbach’s BMW and headed north to the Travemünde airfield, two hundred miles north of Berlin, on the Baltic Sea. The long-range aircraft they planned to use for their escape with Speer sat stocked and fueled on the tarmac. “We were supplied with everything we needed for six months,” Baumbach explained after the war. Knemeyer and Baumbach found many Luftwaffe officers packing up their belongings, stripping themselves of military identification, and preparing to disappear among civilians. An aide delivered an urgent message to Baumbach. This time it was from Himmler himself. The Reichsführer-SS wanted to see Baumbach immediately. Baumbach was to come to Mecklenburg, halfway back to Berlin, where Himmler was staying. Baumbach asked Knemeyer to accompany him.

  The road leading to Mecklenburg was swamped with refugees. This part of Germany was one of the only regions still in German control. SS guards herded concentration camp prisoners along the roads like cattle in a last-ditch effort to keep them out of the liberators’ hands. The roads were almost impassable, and it took five hours for Baumbach and Knemeyer to drive a hundred miles. When they finally arrived at a large country home referred to as the manor of Dobbin, Himmler’s SS-guards escorted them inside.

  “The Reichsführer will receive you now,” a guard said. Knemeyer was told to wait outside Himmler’s office, while Baumbach was led down a long, narrow corridor, up a winding staircase, and into Himmler’s study. Behind the desk, Himmler sat alone. He wore a gray field uniform covered with SS insignia, the death’s head (Totenkopf). The sleeves on Himmler’s uniform were too long, and Baumbach noted a cheap ring on the pinkie finger of his left hand. Himmler sized up the general of the bombers from behind his signature pince-nez and got to the point.

  “I’ve sent for you to clear up some Luftwaffe problems,” Himmler said, as recalled by Baumbach after the war. “The war has entered the final stage and there are some very important decisions I shall have to take.” Baumbach listened. “In the very near future I expect to be negotiating with our enemies probably through some neutral country,” Himmler said. “I’ve heard that all aircraft suitable for this purpose are under your command.” Baumbach looked out the windows and across the carefully pruned gardens outside, considering his response. Yes, Baumbach told Himmler, he had aircraft at his disposal, ready at any time. Himmler assumed an even friendlier tone, Baumbach recalled, and asked where he could get hold of Baumbach in the coming days. At the Travemünde airfield, Baumbach said. An aide interrupted to announce the arrival of Field Marshal Keitel. Baumbach was dismissed.

  Baumbach made his way back to the sitting room, where Knemeyer waited. By now Knemeyer had figured out whose fancy manor Himmler was living in. The home once belonged to Sir Henry Deterding, the English lord known as the Napoleon of Oil. Next to Knemeyer on a side table were two portraits in silver frames. One showed Göring wearing a medieval hunting costume and holding a large knife. It read, “[T]o my dear Deterding in gratitude for your noble gift of Rominten Reichs Hunting Lodge,” a detail Knemeyer shared with his son decades after the war. The second photograph was a portrait of Hitler. “Sir Hen
ry Deterding,” it read, “in the name of the German people for the noble donation of a million reichsmarks. Adolf Hitler.”

  Knemeyer and Baumbach headed outside. The SS officer posted to guard the hallway gave the two men a stiff salute. He told them that the Reichsführer-SS had arranged a tray of coffee and sandwiches for them to enjoy before they headed back to Travemünde.

  The reason that the Greenland escape plan was still on hold was because Speer decided to visit Hitler one last time at the Führerbunker, compelled by an “overwhelming desire to see him once more.” Driving alone in his private car from Hamburg back into Berlin, Speer was fifty-five miles outside the city when the road became impassable, clogged with what Speer later recalled to be “a ten-thousand vehicle traffic jam.” No one was driving into Berlin anymore; everyone was getting out. All lanes in both directions were being used for travel west. “Jalopies and limousines, trucks and delivery vans, motorcycles and even Berlin fire trucks” blocked the road. Unable to advance, Speer turned off the road and drove to a divisional staff headquarters, in Kyritz, where he learned Soviet forces had encircled Berlin.

  He also learned that there was only one landing strip inside Berlin that remained under German control, Gatow airport, on the bank of the Havel River. Speer decided that he would now fly into Berlin. But the nearest aircraft with fuel were parked on the tarmac at the Luftwaffe’s Rechlin test site, near Mecklenburg. Jet fuel was now as rare as hen’s teeth, and the aircraft was undoubtedly needed for other things. Speer insisted that the commandant at Rechlin locate a pilot capable of flying him into Berlin. The commandant at Rechlin explained that from Gatow, Speer would never be able to get to the Führerbunker if he traveled by car or by foot; the Russians controlled the way there. In order to get to the Führerbunker under the New Reich Chancellery, Speer would need a second, smaller aircraft to fly him from Gatow to the Brandenburg Gate. He would need a short takeoff and landing aircraft, or STOL, like the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (Stork).

  “Escorted by a squadron of fighter planes, we flew southward at an altitude of somewhat over 3,000 feet, a few miles above the battle zone,” remembered Speer. “Visibility was perfect.… All that could be seen were brief, inconspicuous flashes from artillery or exploding shells.” The airfield at Gatow was deserted when they landed, with the exception of one of Hitler’s generals who was fleeing Berlin. Speer and his pilot climbed into a waiting Stork and flew the short distance over Berlin, landing amid rubble piles directly in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Speer commandeered an army vehicle and had himself driven to the Chancellery, or what was left of it.

  American bombers had reduced the building to ruins. Speer climbed over a pile of rubble that had once been a ceiling and walked into what used to be a sitting room. There, Hitler’s adjunct, Julius Schaub, stood drinking brandy with friends. Speer called out. Schaub appeared stunned by the sight of Speer. The companions dispersed. Schaub hurried off to inform Hitler that Speer had come to see him. Speer waited next to a rubble pile. Finally, he heard the words he had come to hear: “The Führer is ready to see you now.”

  Speer walked down into the bunker, where he was met by Martin Bormann, “Hitler’s Mephistopheles,” holding court. Bormann wanted to know if Speer had come to try to get Hitler to fly with him out of Berlin. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, were also in the bunker, plotting the murder-suicide of their six children and themselves. Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, invited Speer into her quarters to eat cake and drink Moët & Chandon until Hitler was ready to see him. At 3:00 a.m. Speer was told he could come in. “I was both moved and confused,” Speer later recalled. “For his part he [Hitler] showed no emotion when we confronted one another. His words were as cold as his hand.”

  “So you’re leaving?” Hitler asked Speer. Then he said, “Good. Auf Wiedersehen.” Good-bye.

  Speer felt scorned. “No regards to my family, no wishes, no thanks, no farewell.” For a moment, Speer lost his composure and mumbled something about coming back. But Hitler dismissed his minister of war and weapons, and Speer left.

  Six days after Speer’s final meeting with Hitler, the U.S. Army liberated Dachau, a concentration camp located twelve miles outside Munich. It was 7:30 in the morning on April 29 when fifty tanks from the Seventh Army, Third Battalion of the 157th Infantry Regiment, pulled up to what at first seemed like an ordinary military post, located adjacent to an SS training camp. The weather was cold and there was a dusting of snow. The post was surrounded by high brick walls, an electrified barbed-wire fence, and a deep ditch. Seven fortified guard towers loomed overhead. The large iron front gates were closed and locked. A few American soldiers scaled the fence, cut the locks, and opened the gates. The soldiers rushed inside. A brief exchange of rifle fire ensued. Turkish newspaper correspondent Nerin E. Gun, imprisoned in Dachau for his reports on the Warsaw Ghetto, bore witness as some of the SS guards in the watchtowers began shooting at prisoners. But the American soldiers, Gun said, put a quick end to that. “The SS guards promptly came down the ladders, their hands raised high in surrender.” Other accounts describe brutal acts of vengeance inflicted by prisoners against their former SS guards. More gunfire ensued as a second unit, the Forty-fifth Thunderbird Division, approached Dachau from the southwest. They discovered fifty open freight cars abandoned just outside the garrison. Each train car was filled with emaciated bodies. There were several thousand corpses in all.

  Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, had been established by Himmler on March 20, 1933. It was originally a place where Communists and other political enemies of National Socialism, the ideology of the Nazi Party, were sent. The name came from the fact that prisoners could be “concentrated” in a group and held under protective custody following Nazi law. Quickly, this changed. Himmler made concentration camps “legally independent administrative units outside the penal code and the ordinary law.” Dachau had served as a training center for SS concentration camp guards and became a model for how hundreds of other concentration camps were to be set up and run. It was also a model for Nazi medical research programs involving doctors who would later become part of Operation Paperclip.

  A young U.S. Army lieutenant and physician, Dr. Marcus J. Smith, arrived at Dachau early on the morning of April 30, 1945, and in his journal Smith noted how cold and gloomy the thousand-year-old city was. Before noon it started to hail. Dr. Smith was the sole medical officer attached to a ten-man displaced persons team sent to the concentration camp the day after it was liberated. He and his fellow soldiers had instructions to do what they could to help the 32,000 starved, diseased, and dying camp survivors as they waited for Red Cross workers to arrive. The newly liberated suffered from dysentery, tuberculosis, typhus, pneumonia, scabies, and other infectious diseases in early, late, and terminal stages, Smith wrote. “Even my callous, death-hardened county-hospital exterior begins to crack.… One of my men weeps.”

  During breaks, Dr. Smith walked around Dachau’s gas chamber to try to make sense of what had gone on there. “I cannot believe this is possible in this enlightened age,” he wrote. “In the rear of the crematorium is [a] sign, depicting a man riding a monstrous pig. ‘Wash your hands,’ says the caption. ‘It is your duty to remain clean.’ ”

  In his spare time, Dr. Smith wandered through the camp. “On one of these walks I enter a one-story building that contains laboratory counters and storage shelves,” Smith wrote, “almost everything in it has been smashed: I step over broken benches and drawers, twisted instruments and shattered glassware. In the debris, I am surprised to find a few specimen jars and bottles intact, filled with preserved human and insect tissues.” Smith asked questions around the concentration camp to try to learn more. Prisoners told him that the laboratory had served Nazi doctors as an experimental medical ward, and that everyone was afraid of it because it was a place “where selected prisoners [were] used as experimental subjects without their consent.”

  Although it was not yet known by American or Br
itish intelligence at the time, what Dr. Marcus Smith had come upon at Dachau was the place where a group of Luftwaffe doctors had been conducting medical research experiments on humans. This work took place in a freestanding barracks, isolated from the others, and was called Experimental Cell Block Five. Many of the Reich’s elite medical doctors passed through the laboratory here. The work that was performed in Experimental Cell Block Five was science without conscience: bad science for bad ends. That at least six Nazi medical doctors involved in this research at Dachau would be among the first scientists given contracts by the U.S. Army would become one of the darkest secrets of Operation Paperclip.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Captured and Their Interrogators

  The capturing of Nazi scientists would now become a watershed. One by one, across the Reich, Hitler’s scientists were taken into custody and interrogated. The day after Dachau was liberated, 375 miles to the north, Soviet commanders planned their final assault on the iconic Reichstag building, in Berlin. Sometime around 3:30 in the afternoon, inside the Führerbunker, Hitler fired a bullet into his head. The Russians were just five hundred meters from the Führerbunker’s emergency exit door. Around the corner, under the Reich Chancellery, Red Army soldiers took over the underground subway tunnels, including the one Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber had been using as a hospital. Soviet film footage—alleged by Schreiber to have been filmed days later as a reenactment—shows Schreiber coming out of a cellar with his hands over his head.