Up north, Siegfried Knemeyer was captured by the British. Baumbach, Knemeyer, and Speer never escaped to Greenland after all. Shortly after Hitler killed himself, Baumbach was ordered by Grand Admiral Dönitz to go to the small town of Eutin, forty miles north of the city of Hamburg. Hitler had named Dönitz his successor; Dönitz set up his new government in the naval barracks at Eutin because it was one of the few places not yet controlled by the Allied forces.
Siegfried Knemeyer hadn’t been invited to join the new inner circle. Baumbach let him keep the BMW and Knemeyer fled west. On a country road outside Hamburg, Knemeyer spotted a vehicle filled with British soldiers on approach. He knew that the BMW he was driving would be recognized as belonging to a senior military officer, so he pulled off the highway, ditched the car, and fled on foot. British soldiers found him hiding under a bridge and arrested him. Knemeyer was taken to a newly liberated concentration camp outside Hamburg, where hundreds of other German officers and Nazi Party officials were held. He was a prisoner of war now and was accordingly stripped of his valuables and military insignia. Years later, Knemeyer would share with his son that he managed to hide his one remaining meaningful possession in his shoe: a 1,000 Swiss franc note given to him by Albert Speer.
Von Braun and Dornberger were not captured. So confident were they as to their future use by the U.S. Army that they turned themselves in. Since departing from Nordhausen several weeks before, von Braun, Dornberger, and hundreds of other men from the rocket program had been hiding out in a remote ski village in the Bavarian Alps. Their resort, Haus Ingeburg, was located at an elevation of 3,850 feet along a windy mountain road then called the Adolf Hitler Pass (known before and after the war as the Oberjoch Pass). Thanks to the resources of the SS, the scientists had plenty of fine food and drink. There was a sun terrace and, as von Braun reflected after the war, little for any of them to do but eat, drink, sunbathe, and admire the snow-capped Allgäu Alps. “There I was living royally in a ski hotel on a mountain plateau,” von Braun later recalled, “the French below us to the west, and the Americans to the south. But no one, of course, suspected we were there.”
On the night of May 1, 1945, the scientists were listening to the national radio as it played Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 when, at 10:26, the music was interrupted by a long military drumroll. “Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery,” the radio announcer declared. The fight was a fabrication. But Hitler’s death spurred Wernher von Braun to action. Von Braun approached General Dornberger, suggesting that they move quickly to make a deal with the Americans. “I agree with you, Wernher,” Dornberger was overheard saying late that night. “It’s our obligation to put our baby into the right hands.”
At Haus Ingeburg the rocket scientists had been using a network of German and Austrian intelligence sources to keep track of U.S. Army developments in the area. Von Braun and Dornberger knew that a unit of U.S. soldiers had set up a base at the bottom of the mountain on the Austrian side. The two men agreed it was best to send von Braun’s younger brother, Magnus, down the mountain to try to make a deal with the Americans. Magnus was trustworthy. He understood what could be said about the V-2 and what could never be said. Magnus von Braun had been in charge of overseeing slave labor production of the gyroscopes that each rocket required, and he understood why the subject of slave labor was to be avoided at all cost. He also was the best English speaker in the group.
On the morning of May 2, Magnus von Braun climbed onto a bicycle and began pedaling down the steep mountain pass through the bright alpine sunshine. Shortly before lunchtime he came upon an American soldier manning a post along the road. It was Private First Class Fred Schneikert, the son of a Wisconsin farmer, now a soldier with the Forty-fourth Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. When Private Schneikert spotted a lone German on a bicycle, he ordered the man to drop the bike and raise both hands. Magnus von Braun complied. In broken English, he tried explaining to the American soldier that his brother wanted to make a deal with regard to the V-2 rocket. “It sounded like he wanted to ‘sell’ his brother to the Americans,” Private Schneikert recalled.
Private Schneikert escorted Magnus von Braun farther down the mountain so he could speak with a superior at the Forty-fourth Division’s U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) headquarters, located in Reutte, just over the border in Austria. There, CIC contacted SHAEF headquarters in Versailles, which contacted a CIOS team. The CIOS Black List for rocket research included one thousand names of scientists and engineers slated for interrogation. Wernher von Braun was at the top of that list.
It was May 2, 1945, and although Hitler was dead, the German Reich had not yet surrendered. Allies feared members of a fanatical resistance group, the Werewolves, were lurking in Bavaria, planning a final attack. Thinking that the von Braun brother could be part of a trap, the Counter Intelligence Corps told Magnus to go tell his brother Wernher to come down and surrender himself. Magnus headed back up the mountain with the news.
At the Haus Ingeburg ski resort, Wernher von Braun and General Dornberger had selected a small group to join their deal-making team. They were Magnus von Braun; General Dornberger’s chief of staff, Herbert Axster; the engine specialist Hans Lindenberg; and the two engineers who had hidden the V-2 documents inside the Dörnten mine, Dieter Huzel and Bernhard Tessmann. The men stuffed their personal belongings into three gray passenger vans and headed down the Adolf Hitler Pass. Heavy snow gave way to driving rain.
When the group of seven arrived in Reutte later that night, they found First Lieutenant Charles Stewart doing paperwork by candlelight. Their welcome was, by many accounts, warm. “I did not expect to be kicked in the teeth,” von Braun told an American reporter years later. “The V-2 was something we had and you didn’t have. Naturally, you wanted to know all about it.” The rocket scientists were served fresh eggs, coffee, and bread with real butter. Fancy, but not quite as good as what was being provided at Haus Ingeburg. The scientists were given private rooms to sleep in, with pillows and clean sheets. In the morning, the press had arrived. The “capture” of the scientists and engineers behind the deadly V-2 was a big story for the international press. The group posed for photographs, and in the pictures they are all smiles. Von Braun boasted about having invented the V-2. He was “its founder and guiding spirit,” von Braun insisted. Everyone else was secondary to him.
Some members of the Forty-fourth Division Counter Intelligence Corps found von Braun’s hubris appalling. “He posed for endless pictures with individual GIs, in which he beamed, shook hands, pointed inquiringly at medals and otherwise conducted himself as a celebrity rather than a prisoner,” noted one member, “treat[ing] our soldiers with the affable condescension of a visiting congressman.” Second Lieutenant Walter Jessel was the American intelligence officer originally in charge of interrogating von Braun. His first and most lasting impression was the lack of remorse. “There is recognition of Germany’s defeat, but none whatsoever of Germany’s guilt and responsibility.” So confident were von Braun and Dornberger about their value to the U.S. Army, they demanded to see General Eisenhower, whom they called “Ike.”
Another observer noted, “If we hadn’t caught the biggest scientist in the Third Reich, we had certainly caught the biggest liar.”
Hitler’s chemists—sought after as they were—were nowhere to be found. It was early May, and the Seventh Army was in control of the beautiful old city of Heidelberg, located on the Neckar River. Twenty-five agents attached to the U.S. military government’s Cartels Division, including clerks with OSS and the Foreign Economic Division, had descended on the town looking for board members from IG Farben. In addition to being wanted for war crimes, the IG Farben board of directors was being investigated for international money laundering schemes. A number of high-ranking Farben executives were known to have houses in Heidelberg, but to date no one had been able to find Hermann Schmitz
, the company’s powerful and secretive CEO. Schmitz was also a director of the Deutsche Reichsbank, the German central bank, and director of the Bank for International Settlements in Geneva. He was believed to be the wealthiest banker in all of Germany. The reason no one had been able to locate Hermann Schmitz was not because he was hiding out or had fled but because officers were going around Heidelberg looking for “Schmitz Castle.” Despite the vast wealth he had accumulated during the war, Hermann Schmitz was actually a miser. He lived in a modest, if not ugly, little house. “No one would associate the legend of Schmitz with the house he lived in,” Nuremberg prosecutor Josiah DuBois recalled after the war.
Working on a tip, and as part of a door-to-door search for suspected war criminals, a group of enlisted soldiers knocked on the door of a “stucco pillbox of a house” overlooking the city where a short man with a red face and a thick neck answered the door. Behind him, on a placard nailed to the wall, it was written that God was the head of this house. Schmitz had dark eyes and a goatee and was accompanied by his wife, described by soldiers as “a dumpy Frau in a crisp gingham dress.” Frau Schmitz offered the soldiers coffee, but Schmitz intervened and told her no. Schmitz said he had no interest in answering the questions of the enlisted men whom he considered beneath him. If an officer came to speak with him, Schmitz said he might have something to say.
The men conducted a cursory search of the house. Schmitz’s office was plainly furnished and contained nothing expensive or of any obvious value. Searching though his desk, however, the soldiers learned that Schmitz had friends in high places. They found a collection of birthday telegrams sent from Hitler and Göring, both of whom addressed Schmitz as “Justizrat,” Doctor of Laws.
“Doctor of Laws Schmitz,” the soldiers asked, mocking him. “How much money do you have in this house, and where is it?”
Schmitz declined to say, and the soldiers were only able to locate a small stash of about 15,000 reichsmarks, or about half the annual salary of a field marshal. So they left, letting Schmitz know that they would return the following day. On the second day, Schmitz let the soldiers back in. This time the soldiers found an air raid shelter behind the house, where Schmitz had hidden a trunk filled with IG Farben documents. There was still not enough evidence to justify arresting Schmitz. It would be a few more days until an incredible discovery was made.
When CIOS team leader Major Tilley learned that Hermann Schmitz had been located, he rushed to Heidelberg. Tilley and Tarr had been leading the CIOS chemical weapons mission across Germany. Ever since they had discovered the tabun nerve agent cache hidden in the forest outside the Robbers’ Lair, they had been looking for Farben executives. Now they had the man at the top.
If anyone could skillfully interrogate Hermann Schmitz, Major Tilley could. Not only did he speak fluent German, but he was deeply conversant on the subject of chemical warfare. In Heidelberg, Tilley went directly to Schmitz’s house. He suggested that the two men discuss a few things in Herr Schmitz’s private study. Schmitz said that would be fine.
Tilley asked the Farben CEO a series of banal questions, all the while tapping on the walls of Schmitz’s study. Slowly, Tilley made his way around the room this way, listening for any inconsistencies in the way the walls were built. Schmitz grew increasingly uncomfortable. Finally he began to cry. Tilley had found what he was looking for: a secret safe buried in Schmitz’s office wall.
Hermann Schmitz was one of the wealthiest bankers in Germany and one of the most important players in the economics of the Third Reich. What secret was contained in his safe? Major Tilley instructed Schmitz to open it. Inside, lying flat, was a photo album. “The photographs were in a wooden inlaid cover dedicated to Hermann Schmitz on his twenty-fifth jubilee, possibly as a Farben director,” Tilley explained in a CIOS intelligence report. Tilley lifted out the photo album from its hiding place, flipped open the cover, and began reviewing the pictures. On here of the scrapbook, the word “Auschwitz” was written. Tilley’s eyes scanned over a picture of a street in a Polish village. Next to the photograph was a cartoonish drawing “depicting individuals who had once been part of the Jewish population who lived there, portrayed in a manner that was not flattering to them,” Tilley explained. The caption underneath the cartoon read: “The Old Auschwitz. As it Was. Auschwitz in 1940.”
At this point, Tilley wrote in his CIOS report, he was surprised at how “highly emotional” Schmitz became. What Tilley did not yet know was that he was looking at Schmitz’s secret photo album that chronicled the building history of Farben’s labor concentration camp, IG Auschwitz, from the very start. In May of 1945, almost no one, including Major Tilley, had any idea what really had happened at Auschwitz—that at least 1.1 million people had been exterminated there. The facts about the camp had not yet come to light. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, and Red Army photographers took film footage and photographs of the atrocities they discovered there. But that information had not yet been shared openly with the rest of the world. A short report about the extermination camp had appeared in Stalinskoe Znamya, the Red Army’s newspaper, on January 28, 1945. Stalin was waiting to release the bulk of information until after Germany surrendered. What was clear to Major Tilley was that this photo album was important to Schmitz, and that he wanted it to remain hidden. Why, exactly, Major Tilley had no idea.
As CIOS team leader, Major Tilley was on a hunt for Farben chemists who had developed nerve gas. Hermann Schmitz, while important to Farben in the bigger picture, was not a chemist. He claimed to have no idea where the Farben chemists had gone. The scrapbook was taken into evidence, and Tilley moved on in his search. Meanwhile, in southern Germany, in an Austrian border town called Gendorf, the man Major Tilley was really looking for—Dr. Otto Ambros—had just been located by U.S. Army soldiers. The soldiers had no idea who Ambros really was.
When American soldiers rolled into the town of Gendorf, about sixty miles southeast of Munich, they noticed one man in particular because he stood out like a sore thumb. This first encounter with Ambros, later recounted at the Nuremberg trials, stuck out in soldiers’ minds because Ambros had been dressed in a fancy suit to greet the victors. The man hardly looked like he’d been through a war. The soldiers asked the man his rank and serial number.
“My name is Otto Ambros,” he said, smiling. He added that he was not a military man but “a plain chemist.”
Was he German, the soldiers asked?
“Yes, I am German,” Ambros replied, and made a joke. He said that he had so many French friends he could almost be considered a Frenchman. In fact, his true home was in Ludwigshafen, on the border with France. He told the soldiers that the reason he was here in southern Bavaria was because he was the director of a large business concern called IG Farben. The company had a detergent factory here in Gendorf, Ambros explained. As a Farben board member he’d been asked to oversee production. German society might be experiencing a collapse, he told the soldiers, but everyone needed to stay clean.
The soldiers asked to be taken to the detergent factory. Inside, they inspected huge vats of soap and other cleaning products. Work at the factory appeared to have been uninterrupted by the war. Ambros took the soldiers to his office, where someone had taped a rainbow of color spectrum cards to the wall. In addition to cleaning products, the facility made lacquers, Ambros explained. The soldiers looked around, thanked Ambros for the tour, and asked him not to leave town.
I have “no reason to flee,” said Ambros. The soldiers noted how much he smiled.
Over the next few days, more soldiers arrived in Gendorf. These filthy, grime-covered American GIs were delighted when the so-called plain chemist offered them free bars of soap. Some of the soldiers hadn’t washed in more than a month. The chemist’s generosity did not stop there. Otto Ambros gave the soldiers powerful cleaning solvents so that they could wash their mud-covered armored tanks.
Soldiers interviewed Otto Ambros a second time. This time, Ambros voluntarily offere
d up character witnesses. Working at the Farben factory in Gendorf were skinny men with shaved heads. Ambros said they were war refugees and that they could vouch for his kindness as a boss. They were from Poland, just across the border to the east. Ambros told the soldiers that he had personally brought these poor workers here to Gendorf. He’d handpicked the men and trained them how to work hard. This way, when the refugees went home, they would have skills that could help them earn a living, Ambros explained. The skinny refugees were quiet and said nothing to dispute the plain chemist’s claims. Some of them even helped the American soldiers wash their tanks.
Otto Ambros was a talkative man. He regaled the Americans with stories about the joys of chemistry. For example, did the soldiers realize what a miracle it was that man could make one hundred wonders from a single chemical compound like ethylene oxide? Or how amazing rubber was? Ambros told the soldiers that he had been to Ceylon, where the rubber plant grows. Rubber had so much in common with man, Ambros said. He was a rubber expert, so he knew this to be fact. Rubber was civilized. Neat and perfect if kept clean. Ambros told the soldiers that a rubber factory and a man must always be very clean. A single flake of dust or dirt in a vat of liquid rubber could mean a blowout on the autobahn one day. IG Farben had synthetic rubber factories and, like natural rubber, the laboratories and factories must always be kept perfectly clean. Ambros talked a lot, but he did not mention anything about the rubber factory he had built and managed at Auschwitz. The soldiers thanked him for his generosity with the soap and the cleaning agents. Before they left, they reminded Ambros again that it was important he not leave town. He was technically under house arrest.
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