Blunder How the US Gave Away Nazi Supersecrets to Russia.Pdf
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In May 1945, as the Iron Curtain was about to be rung down across Europe, there occurred one of the worst blunders of World War II, a blunder still little understood. It involved the passing of certain extraordinary secret informa- tion from the Americans to the Russians. The incident had begun when Hitler, anticipating a "Greater-Greater Reich," recruited Nazi Germany's top scientists for the development of a technocracy far in advance of anything that the rest of the world had conceived. To oversee this crucial project, he promoted as his most trusted aide SS General Hans Kammler. Then, with the unexpected swift advance of the U.S. Army, certain of these Nazi supersecrets were suddenly in the possession of the Americans. With equal swiftness, this wealth of technological information was passed by the Americans, unaware of its significance, to the Red Army. These secrets provided the Soviets an invaluable boost to their still-trailing military research. The extent of the advantage that this knowledge gave to the Reds has not been completely evaluated. Meanwhile, Washington has resolutely suppressed all attempts to probe the story for its embarrassing truth. The mysteries clouding this blunder were compounded by the simultaneous disappearance, on the eve of Hitler's suicide, of the powerful General Kammler, whose fate remains a source of speculation. In this revealing book, a distinguished correspondent, who is familiar with the scene and the participants, explores the stories behind one of World War II's most closely guarded secrets. Tom Agoston, a veteran British correspondent, is a specialist on Germany and spent more than a decade as Chief of Bureau and diplomatic correspondent in Bonn for the International News Service (INS) for America. This experience has brought him in touch with the few people who could enlighten him on the background of these mysteries, which have been shrouded in secrecy for four decades. FOR GENERAL CLARENCE R. HUEBNER whose intrepid generalship took the First U.S. Infantry Division, the "Big Red One," and later the Fifth U.S. Corps, from a slender D-Day landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy to the capture of Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, the locale of the story here told, on the eve of the German capitulation in May 1945. IN grateful thanks for his helpful advice and background briefings on the military aspects of cold war newsbreaks, during his postwar tour of duty as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army in Europe. We went to Berlin in 1945, thinking only of the Russians as big, jolly, balalaika-playing fellows, who drank prodigious quantities of vodka, and liked to wrestle in the drawing room. We now know—or should know—that we are hopelessly naive. You can't do business with the Russians except on their own terms. U.S. BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANK HOWLEY Berlin Command It is our good fortune . that the British and the Americans in their attitude towards us have still not emerged from their calf-love . all their slobber plays into our hands and we shall thank them for this in the next world with coals of fire . the whole of the free western world will burst apart like a fat squashed toad. JOSEPH STALIN in 1945 quoted by Nikolai Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War Contents Author's Note xi Acknowledgments xiii ONE TWO "PRINCES" OF THE SS 1 TWO KINGDOM LOST 10 THREE KAMMLER'S METROPOLIS 16 FOUR SAMURAI CARGO 32 FIVE KAMMLER'S NEXT MOVE 41 six UNEXPECTED PRIZE 60 [ix] CONTENTS SEVEN STONEWALLING 71 EIGHT FAILED MISSION 79 NINE VARIATIONS ON A THEME 90 TEN UNFINISHED FINALE 102 ELEVEN PHOENIX 110 TWELVE EPILOGUE 126 Appendices 1-7 133 Select Bibliography 144 General Background Reference Works 148 Footnotes 151 Index 162 [x] Author's Note Library shelves are loaded with historical and technical accounts that studiously tell almost all there is to know about the Gotterdammerung of the Third Reich; the loyalty dilemmas of the men who rose within shoulder-rubbing distance of Hitler; and the pioneer Nazi scientists who developed the V-2 rocket, paving the way for the intercontinental, conventional, and nuclear missiles that today contribute to the nightmare of a space-age star war. This is not intended to be that type of book. Nonetheless, inclusion of some of this background has been necessary, to provide the backdrop for this never-before-told story. In May 1945, as the Iron Curtain was about to be rung down across Europe, a U.S. Army combat officer in a remote corner of the collapsing Reich naively, and contrary to strictest U.S. directives, handed over the nest egg of Nazi Germany's long-range military research to the Red Army. The secrets, developed by the SS for a projected Greater-Greater Reich, provided the Soviets with an incalculable boost to their then still-trailing military research and development. The naivete that prevailed at the time has had a lasting impact. Washington has resolutely suppressed all attempts to probe the story for almost four decades. A parallel four-decade mystery is the simultaneous disappearance, on the eve of the collapse, of Hitler's most [xi] AUTHOR' S NOTE trusted, all-powerful aide, the Reich's missile and jet aircraft Supremo, who had himself set up the undercover SS operation and who was privy to all the lost research secrets and their potential to the Soviets. The curtain is raised on both subjects for the first time. TOM AGOSTON Hamburg, 1984 [xii] Acknowledgments Those who routinely work with archives invariably observe the golden rule that one should never, ever, send archivists on a "fishing expedition." Yet, in researching this book, I was amazed to find that many archivists went out of their way to find hidden pools of information, the existence of which I had been totally unaware. This was all the more appreciated as some of the material that I sought meant probing archives on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the Atlantic, in West and East Germany, the United States, Britain, Austria, Switzerland and Egypt. I am especially in the debt of the following: Frau Hed-wig Singer of the German Federal Archives at Koblenz, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the whereabouts of material on Third Reich armament minister, the late Albert Speer, was invaluable in tracing long- forgotten documents relating to the Skoda Armament Works at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia; Herr Wilhelm Albinus, of the German Federal Military Archives at Freiburg, for unearthing unpublished documents on SS General Hans Kammler; Frau Gisela Eckert, head archivist of the former Krupp and Skoda affiliate, Salzgitter AG; Mr. Daniel P. Simon; head of the U.S. Document Center, U.S. Mission Berlin, for background material on SS General Kammler; Mr. Keith H. Jantzen, archivist of the Hoover Institution of Stanford, California, [ xiii ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS for culling the private archives of Reichofuhrer SS Hein-rich Himmler, co-mentor with Hitler, of General Kammler and for selecting an exchange of letters between Himmler and Kammler and other relevant documents; Mr. Philip H. Reed of the Imperial War Museum Archives in London, for making available postwar U.S. interrogation reports, recorded at Nuremberg, of former Skoda president Dr. Wil-helm Voss, untraceable at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, and for providing copies of two 1945 British technical intelligence reports on the Skoda Works; Mr. Nicholas Cox of the Public Record Office in London, for scanning considerable material for relevant information; the various departments and divisions of the U.S. National Archives in Washington, for doing their best to provide unpublished material and unindexed information within the framework of the oversensitive ground rules of the U.S. government information policy that exists even for material one expects to be made available under the thirty-year rule of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act; Frau Petra Seidel of the Hamburg State University Library and her team; Frau Christiane Schaffer of the Amerika Haus Library at Hamburg and her staff; the libraries and librarians of the German Armed Forces Staff College at Blankenese, Hamburg, and the university libraries of Hanover and Munich. Invaluable help was also forthcoming from the following: the German Red Cross, Herr Director Emanuel Witter, and the Austrian Red Cross, Herr Robert Petertill, both providing documentation and background material; West Pointer Colonel Truman E. Boudinot, Jr. of Honolulu and his brother Lieutenant Colonel Burton E. Boudinot of Rad-cliffe, Kentucky, for kindly supplying private photos of the Nazi concentration and labor camp Dora; Captain Johann H. Fehler, German Navy retired, World War II commander of the U-234 submarine; Herr Herbert Gurr, attorney at law, Unna, Ruhr, for background material on General Kam- [xiv ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS mler; the late Frau Irmgard Hansen of Munich for providing background material on Dr. Wilhelm Voss; William Hicklin, U.S. Army, public affairs officer of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, for helping trace the family of the late General Boudinot; Nabila Megalli, foreign correspondent, Cairo; Madame Lydia Osswald, foreign correspondent, Zurich; the late Franz von Papen, Jr., legal adviser to Dr. Voss during his attendance at Nuremberg and Frankfurt as an expert witness on Skoda; State Prosecutor A. Plitt of Arnsberg and State Prosecutor B. Tonges of Hagen, for kindly supplying relevant court records linked to General Kammler; Herr Gustav von Schmoller, Skoda expert and author, who had kindly supplied key material on Skoda and Dr. Voss; the late William Schott, retired U.S. diplomat, who recalled the wartime Berlin scene until 1941, and that his predictions of things to come, highlighted in the offical U.S. embassy diary at the time, were ignored; Herr Helmut Thole, publisher of the Waffen SS veteran's journal Der Freiwillinge; Herr Wolfgang Vopersal, search service of the veterans organization of former Waffen SS members, for opening the files on Kammler; and Herr Egon von Wolmer, Munich, a former Skoda executive in Prague until 1945.