Exposure meant: CDC Fact Sheet, “Chemical Emergencies, Facts about Tabun.”
where accidents had happened: Tucker, 48.
last moments of an ant: Harris and Paxman, xiv.
Sachsenheimer’s commando force: Groehler, 11.
first cleared of pine trees: Gross-Rosen Museum, Rogoznica, Poland. The concentration camp was established in August 1940 as a subcamp of Sachsenhausen. Prisoners were assigned slave labor in a local granite quarry, which belonged to the SS.
largest corporation in Europe: Dwork and Van Pelt, 198.
chairman of Committee-C: RG 319 Otto Ambros, SHAEF file card, WD44714/36.
prestigious title: Ibid.; Stasi records (BStU), Dr. Otto Ambros file, MfS HA IX/11 PA 5.380. In German, the medals are Kriegsverdienstkreuz and Ritterkreuz des Kriegsverdienstkreuzes.
official car and airplane retrofitted: Stasi records (BStU), Dr. Walter Schieber file, MfS HA IX/11 AS 253/68.
Their reliability: Groehler, 246, 268–69.
Dr. Walter Schieber: Nuremberg Trial Testimony, February 10, 1947. Transcript, 2788.
similar to deep-sea diving suits: Tucker, 51.
Witnesses in nearby villages: Groehler, 9–10; Tucker, 70–71.
void of people and tabun: Tucker, 71–72.
Sixteenth and Eighteenth Chemical Brigades: RG 218 Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Intelligence Group Report, “Intelligence on Soviet Capabilities for Chemical and Bacteriological Warfare,” 15–16.
The factory was dismantled: RG 319 Otto Ambros, “Report on Chemical Warfare Based on the Interrogation and Written Reports of Jürgen E. von Klenck, Also Comments by Speer and Dr. E. Mohrhardt,” 25, 34–35.
Chemical Works No. 91: Tucker, 402.
Red Army’s stockpile: Tucker, 107.
Stalin, rather unexpectedly argued: From the Telegraph, January 1, 2006, “Churchill Wanted Hitler sent to the electric chair,” based on the notebooks of Sir Norman Brook, the former deputy cabinet secretary to Churchill, who kept a shorthand account of the proceedings.
“If the war is lost,” Hitler famously told Speer: Shirer, Rise and Fall, 1104.
“What will remain”: Kershaw, The End, 290. This famous passage is translated from German in a variety of ways and has been cited many different ways.
He told Speer: Sereny, Albert Speer, 475.
Demolitions on Reich Territory: Ibid., 475–76.
death marches from Auschwitz: Aalmans, 10–11.
given a promotion: Mittelbau was the parent corporation to Mittelwerk and operated additional weapons factories in the area.
Jewish factory owner: The businessman had fled to South Africa to avoid being deported to a concentration camp.
launch ramps for the V-2: Neufeld, Von Braun, 194.
“dug by workers”: Ibid., 195.
he commandeered: Ibid., 194.
Von Braun had to have known: United States v. Kurt Andrae et al., trial records.
To send a message: Neufeld, Von Braun, 165.
one war crimes report: Aalmans, 11.
get their crane back: “Interview with Rudolph by Major Eugene Smith of the U.S. Army Air Force, June 2, 1947,” (DOJ monograph); Feigin, 333.
benefits: Neufeld, Von Braun, 193–94.
facilities designer Bernhard Tessmann: McGovern, 108. Tessmann had been chief designer of the test facilities at Peenemünde.
transported von Braun: Neufeld, Von Braun, 195, citing a letter that von Braun wrote to his parents after the war.
personal aide, Dieter Huzel: McGovern, 108.
last V-1s were fired: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 263.
taken to the Alps in a private car: McGovern, 111; the rocket engineers were under guard by the SD (Sicherheitsdienst).
wearing blindfolds: Huzel, 151–61.
Nazi documents hidden: Huzel, 159.
decided to make an exception: This is from Huzel’s memoir. There are different versions of the story, concerning whether or not the two men were supposed to tell Fleischer.
Chapter Three: The Hunters and the Hunted
their next scientific intelligence mission: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 160–62. Pash had done several reconnaissance-type missions, including in Italy, without Goudsmit, before Normandy.
apartment belonged to IG Farben: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 161.
largest task force to date: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 171; Goudsmit, 77.
Montgomery’s famous words: Lasby, 23.
it truly meant plunder: Associated Press, March 24, 1945.
Representing the United States: Gimbel, 3–17.
Black Lists: Ibid., 3, 9.
Frontline requests: Ibid., 8; SHAEF sent CIOS requests through the London secretariat for coordination.
bright red T painted: RG 165 “Code Name: Alsos Mission, Scientific Intelligence Mission, M.I.S., G-2, W.D.,” photographic history compiled by Colonel Boris T. Pash, 20.
dispatched his team to Europe: McGovern, 101–2. Major Staver was already in London.
“30 Assault Unit”: Bower, 75–76.
CHAOS for CIOS: Lasby, 66.
one of the greatest competitions: Ibid., 18–19.
“not in good shape”: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 172.
“A single salvo”: Ibid., 173.
the factory been heavily damaged: RG 165 “Code Name: Alsos Mission, Scientific Intelligence Mission, M.I.S., G-2, W.D.,” photographic history compiled by Colonel Boris T. Pash, 18.
destroyed or removed: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 174–75.
Lieutenant Colonel Philip R. Tarr: In much of the existing secondary literature, Philip R. Tarr is misidentified as Paul R. Tarr; Kleber and Birdsell, 40, 45, 454.
CIOS team: Kleber and Birdsell, 40, 45, 79.
raw materials were coded: Tucker, 49.
always said the same thing: DuBois, 37–38.
“lied vigorously”: Tilley and Whitten, “Scientific Personnel I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G., Ludwigshafen,” 45.
Alsos had been trailing: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 174.
flushing documents down the toilet: McGovern, 104.
assigned by Göring: Goudsmit, 187–89; NMT Case 1, Document No-897, “List of Plenipotentiaries.”
“Leading men of science”: HLSL Item No. 2076.
led to the release: Goudsmit, 188.
weapons-related research programs: Goudsmit, 80–85; Osenberg also worked with the Gestapo to learn and record the habits of the individual men, their weaknesses and their strengths—if they had a drinking problem, a mistress, or were homosexual.
captured Osenberg: Goudsmit, 93, 197.
index of cards: Dowden, “Examination of Dr. Ing. W. Osenberg and Documents,” 4, Appendix II.
appalled by the hubris: Goudsmit, 198. In German the sign read: “z.Zt.Paris.”
“[O]ne cannot trust you”: Ibid., 200.
85 percent of the city destroyed: O’Donnell, 31.
“as Berlin awaited”: Beevor, 173.
“The deadly Jewish-Bolshevik”: Quoted in Evans, 683, 685.
four thousand Nazi bureaucrats: Beevor notes that ironically, in April 1945, there were more than double the number of those assigned work here.
adored Knemeyer: Knemeyer, 23.
lost more than twenty thousand airplanes: Evans, 683.
didn’t mean much: Shirer, Rise and Fall, 1099.
Speer and Knemeyer had agreed: Knemeyer, 23, 34; Letter from Albert Speer to Sigurd Knemeyer, February 7, 1981.
escape to Greenland: Knemeyer, 31; Speer, Inside, 494. “It was a plan hatched in a combination of panic and romanticism,” Speer claimed after the war, telling the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Greenland is simply wonderful in summer and May” (Trevor-Roper, 178).
made the first high-altitude sortie: Knemeyer, 39.
Baumbach and Knemeyer began gathering: Ibid., 31; Baumbach, 230.
Speer’s command: Knemeyer, 31.
Chapter Four: Liberation
Jones’s: Collection at Huntsville, AL, Compan
y L, 414th Regiment, 104th Infantry Division.
“It was a fabric of moans”: Bower, 109.
seven war crimes investigators: Dora-Nordhausen memorial. Aalmans’s photographs have become iconic images of the liberation of Nordhausen.
“Four people were dying every hour”: Bower, 119.
“The building and sites”: RG 319 Kurt Blome, “Alsos Mission Report by Cpt. William J. Cromartie and Major J. M. Barnes,” July 30, 1945.
Dr. Gross’s possessions: Ibid., 9.
“Russian contributions on plague”: Ibid., 10.
the Alsos scientists noted in their report: Ibid., 11.
Hermann Göring Aeronautical Research Center at Völkenrode: Samuel, 147. This institution (Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt) is referred to a number of different ways; I use the U.S. Air Force term.
Operation Lusty: It stood for LUftwaffe Secret TechnologY (Operation LUSTY fact sheet, National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, World War II gallery).
When Putt arrived: Samuel, 105–6.
a legendary test pilot: USAF biography, Lieutenant General Donald Leander Putt, U.S. Air Force website; Thomas, 219–40.
“He displayed the ability”: Thomas, 224, quoting Lieutenant General L. C. Craigie.
payload was eventually revealed: Thomas, 226.
still unknown to American fliers: Samuel, 150.
When Putt learned: McGovern, chapter 15; History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip; Samuel, 4–5.
“the most superb instruments”: Samuel, 143.
Why not also fly: McGovern, chapter 15; Samuel 4–5.
“If we are not too proud”: Samuel, 4, cites Colonel Putt’s “Technical Intelligence Speech” given to the Dayton Country Club, May 7, 1945.
Knerr and Putt believed they could: Lasby, 76.
“Pride and face saving”: History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, 0920.
dispatched to Raubkammer: CIOS Report 31: “Chemical Warfare Installations in the Münsterlager Area, Including Raubkammer.”
single yellow ring: Tucker, 85; Photographs, Loucks papers (mustard, sarin, and tabun munitions).
extracting the liquid substance: CIOS Report 31: “Chemical Warfare Installations.”
rabbit’s skin: Ibid.
menacing new breed of chemical weapons: Tucker, 85–86; Groehler, 323–24; Bower, 94–95.
set up in a subway tunnel: RG 319 Walter Schreiber, “Capture and Preliminary Interrogation,” December 17, 1948.
not necessarily the truth: RG 319 Walter Schreiber, “Agent Report,” October 27, 1948.
Goebbels’s Happy Birthday broadcast: http://archive.org/details/Hitler_Speeches.
Hitler said a few words: Beevor, 251.
final assault on Berlin: Beevor, 255. Beevor notes that the Red Army was still outside Berlin proper, and the artillery fire actually hit the Berlin suburbs in the northeast.
Soviet operation to capture Berlin: Beevor, 147.
1.8 million shells: Ibid., 262.
Knemeyer and Baumbach would flee Berlin: Knemeyer, 34; Baumbach, 233.
Baumbach later explained: Baumbach, 233.
through an intermediary: Pogue, 476.
escape with Speer: Baumbach, 230.
manor of Dobbin: Knemeyer, 34, 35–36; Baumbach, 234–37.
“In the very near future”: Baumbach, 236. Baumbach says he told Himmler, “I was examining a map of the world yesterday to see where we could fly to. I have planes and flying boats ready to fly to any point at the globe. The aircraft are manned by trustworthy crews. I have given instructions that nothing is to take off without a verbal order from myself.”
where Knemeyer waited: Knemeyer, 35–36.
was still on hold: Speer, Inside, 494. Knemeyer, Baumbach, and Speer met up in the interim in Hamburg. In his memoirs, Speer claims that Baumbach pressed him to escape, but Speer says he “rejected this idea” because he had other things to do first. Speer also says the plan was Baumbach’s idea but then contradicts himself by explaining how he had wanted to go to Greenland since seeing the Udet film.
“overwhelming desire”: Ibid., 476.
Driving alone in his private car: Ibid., 477.
landing amid rubble piles: Ibid., 478.
Speer’s final meeting with Hitler: Ibid., 485. Speer does not specify a date on his last visit to the FHQ but writes that “six days later” Hitler wrote his political testament, which was recorded on April 29, 1945, at 4:00 a.m.
The post was surrounded: Author tour of Dachau concentration camp memorial site; maps and old photographs in the archive and library.
several thousand corpses: NMT Evidence Code PS-2428; War Crimes Investigation Team No. 6823.
“concentrated” in a group: Lifton, 153.
“legally independent administrative units”: Martin Broszat, “The Concentration Camps, 1933–1945,” in Anatomy of the SS State, edited by Helmut Krausnick, Martin Broszat, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (London: Collins, 1968), 429–30.
cold and gloomy: Smith, 79.
“One of my men weeps”: Ibid., 91.
“I cannot believe this is possible”: Ibid., 92.
“On one of these walks”: Ibid., 178.
freestanding barracks: Author tour of Dachau concentration camp memorial site, archive and library, postwar, witness drawings.
Experimental Cell Block Five: Technical Report No. 331-45, “German Aviation Medical Research at the Dachau Concentration Camp,” 6; Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 17. The facility was also called “Block 5, Experimental Station.”
Reich’s elite medical doctors: HLSL Item No. 995; HLSL Item No. 80; HLSL Item No. 4.
Chapter Five: The Captured and Their Interrogators
planned their final assault: To the Soviets, the Reichstag symbolized the “fascist beast.” To fly the Soviet flag from the top of the Reichstag on May 1, a national holiday in the Soviet Union, would be a Red Army propaganda coup.
Sometime around 3:30: Beevor, 359.
given to him by Albert Speer: Knemeyer, 37.
Their resort, Haus Ingeburg: Neufeld, Von Braun, 198.
“There I was living royally”: Lang, “A Romantic Urge,” 75.
the radio announcer declared: McGovern, 141.
make a deal with the Americans: Neufeld, Von Braun, 199.
Dornberger was overheard saying: McGovern, 142, citing his own interviews with Dornberger and von Braun about their time at Oberjoch.
German and Austrian intelligence sources: von Braun, Space Man, 12–13.
When Private Schneikert spotted: Burrows, 116.
CIOS Black List: McGovern, 123. “Staver had placed von Braun’s name at the top of his Black List.”
“biggest liar”: Neufeld, Von Braun, 199–201.
Twenty-five agents: DuBois, 40; Jeffreys, 354.
wealthiest banker in all of Germany: DuBois, 40; Wollheim Memorial IG Farben, biographies of key executives of IG Farben, Hermann Schmitz (1881–1960).
“the legend of Schmitz”: DuBois, 40.
“a dumpy Frau”: Ibid., 40.
“Doctor of Laws Schmitz”: Ibid., 41.
justify arresting: Jeffreys, 356.
Major Tilley could: Affidavit of Major Edmund Tilley, November 21, 1945; DuBois, 6–20.
buried in Schmitz’s office wall: Tilley, “Report on the Finding of Evidence of Hermann Schmitz’s Connection with and Knowledge of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.”
cartoonish drawing: DuBois, 43–44.
Tilley did not yet know: Beevor, 46. Three months earlier, on January 27, 1945, Soviet reconnaissance troops with the 107th Rifle Division discovered the Auschwitz concentration camp. Red Army photographers took pictures of the atrocities they found, all of which were sent back to Moscow. A report about the liberation of Auschwitz was published on February 9, 1945, in Stalin’s Banner (Stalinskoe Znamya), the Red Army newspaper, but as for news for the outside world, that was being withheld by the propaganda ministry in Moscow until Germany surrendered.
Sta
lin was waiting: Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, published a small report on January 28, 1945, and on February 1 printed a thirty-line article about the liberation of Auschwitz, stating only the size of the camp, the number of inmates left, and the nutritional condition of the prisoners left behind.
Tilley had no idea: DuBois, 44; Tilley, “Report on the Finding of Evidence of Hermann Schmitz’s Connection with and Knowledge of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.”
at the Nuremberg trials: DuBois, 4–10.
“a plain chemist”: Ibid., 4.
triggered an alert: RG 319 Kurt Blome, Arrest Report, May 17, 1945.
searching for Dr. Blome: RG 330 Kurt Blome, Preliminary Interrogation Report (PIR) No. 1; RG 319 Kurt Blome, File No. 100-665, War Crimes Office, Judge Advocate General’s Office.
a dedicated and proud Nazi: RG 330 Kurt Blome, PIR No. 1.
His book: Kurt Blome, Arzt im Kampf, 138–39; chapter 7, “Kampf für Adolf Hitler und der Sieg” (Battle for Adolf Hitler and the Victory). Blome also wrote Der Krebs (The Cancer), and conducted extensive cancer research for the Reich before the war.
trying to piece together: RG 330 Kurt Blome, Extract from 12 Army Group Interrogation Centre, June 22, 1945; Interrogation of Doctor Kurt Blome, July 1, 1945.
“special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung): Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Dr. Kurt Blome file, B162/28667.
hierarchy of the Reich Hygiene Committee: Conti hanged himself in his cell in October 1945, thereby becoming a convenient scapegoat for Blome and others during the doctors’ trial.
“[I] can not approve”: RG 330 Kurt Blome, PIR No. 1.
“mass sterilization, gassing of Jews”: Ibid.
Major Gill pressed Blome for information: all the information in the Gill-Blome interview comes from RG 330 Kurt Blome, Interrogation of Doctor Kurt Blome, July 1, 1945.
Blome denied having any idea: Ibid.; Goudsmit, 73.
Beasley asked around: Beasley, 76.
“I made daily visits to the jails”: Ibid.
“a nervous little man”: From Norman Beasley, “The Capture of the German Rocket Secrets,” American Legion, October 1963. The piece was later compiled by Diane L. Hamm in Military Intelligence: Its Heroes and Legends (U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command History Office, October 1987; rev. ed. Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 73–83.
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