Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Part 4

Hitler authorized Operation Penguin on August 29, 1944. By late March 1945, the German had launched 3,172 V-2s, of which 1,402 were fired at cities in England, 1,664 at targets in Belgium, 76 at France, 19 at Holland, and 11 against the Ludendorff Bridge after it was captured by American troops. It is estimated that Operation Penguin killed some 7,250 people over a period of seven months. Again, though the toll in human misery was immense, this average of 2.28 deaths per rocket launched at Allied targets was a remarkably low return for the investment. Of course, to that total must be added the deaths of some 20,000 slave workers at Mittelwerk and about 2,000 Allied airmen who were killed during Operations Crossbow and Big Ben in the hunt for V-weapons facilities and launching sites. At the peak of Operation Penguin in March 1945, about sixty missiles per week were striking England, carrying a grand total of 250 tons of explosives that randomly destroyed suburban streets. In the same month, the Allied air forces dropped 133,329 tons of bombs on Germany, laying waste whole cities.

The true money cost of the Vergeltungswaffen program is impossible to ascertain, but a postwar U.S. intelligence a.s.sessment put the price at almost $2 billion-about the same amount as the Manhattan Project. For the same cost as 6,422 V-2 missiles, German industry could have produced 6,000 Panther tanks or 12,000 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft that would have been immeasurably more useful in the defense of the Reich. Nevertheless, the Americans were quick to appreciate the significance of the ballistic missile. It was technology they wanted for themselves at any price.

FOLLOWING THE LIBERATION OF PARIS in August 1944, the Allied armies fanned out across France in headlong pursuit of the retreating German forces. The British Second Army liberated Brussels on September 3 and the port of Antwerp the day after, just as the U.S. First Army reached Luxembourg and Patton's Third Army arrived at the Moselle River. Confidence was so high that Gen. Marshall even advised President Roosevelt that the war in Europe would be over "sometime between September 1 and November 1, 1944." The various specialized Allied search units tried to keep up with the advancing armor and infantry. The Germans' retreat was so rapid that their army was rarely able to implement the scorched-earth policy demanded by Hitler. Nevertheless, many bridges and buildings were mined and b.o.o.by-trapped, among them Chartres Cathedral, the twelfth-century Gothic masterpiece in Chartres, France. Capt. Walker Hanc.o.c.k, the "Monuments Man" for the U.S. First Army, was quickly on the scene with MFA&A demolitions specialist Capt. Stewart Leonard. With infinite patience, Leonard defused the twenty-two separate demolition charges. When asked by another Monuments Man whether it was right to risk his life for art, Leonard responded, "I had that choice. I chose to remove the bombs. It was worth the reward." "What reward?" "When I finished, I got to sit in Chartres Cathedral-the cathedral I helped save-for almost an hour. Alone."

But the Monuments Men were not always able to reach their objectives in time. On the night of September 7, just hours before the arrival of the Allies, the Bruges Madonna sculpture by Michelangelo was stolen from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Bruges and shipped off to Germany. The task of the MFA&A teams was immense; the U.S. First, Third, Ninth, and Fifteenth Armies, with some 1.3 million troops, had just nine frontline MFA&A personnel, and in all there were only 350 people working for the organization in the whole European theater of operations.

Moreover, in the fall of 1944, the Allied advance faltered due to a lack of supplies-particularly gasoline-reaching the frontline troops. The railroad system of northern Europe had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing, and the failure to capture a major port intact was proving critical; the approaches to Antwerp from the sea were still in German hands and the city was now under constant bombardment by V-1 and V-2 missiles. Lacking the resources to advance on a broad front, but heartened by the apparent imminence of German defeat, SHAEF embarked on Operation Market Garden, a bold strategy of using the three divisions of the First Allied Airborne Army to seize vital bridges along a narrow corridor through Holland and on to the River Rhine, the last natural obstacle protecting the Ruhr and the heartlands of Germany. Despite worrisome Ultra decrypts, aerial reconnaissance photos, and warnings from the Dutch Resistance suggesting that major SS tank units stood in the path of this attempt, the high command went ahead with Operation Market Garden on September 17, 1944. Despite the skill and bravery of the American, British, and Polish paratroopers, the operation failed, ending in the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.

By October 1944, the mood of the Allied high command had switched from euphoria to despondency, just as the weather turned foul. In the north, the British and Canadians fought a wretched, muddy campaign to clear the banks of the Scheldt Estuary in order to open Antwerp to Allied shipping. The U.S. First Army was to be held up by the battle for the Hurtgen Forest from September 1944 to February 1945. Further south, the U.S. Third Army ground to a halt in Alsace-Lorraine, just short of Metz on the Moselle River, purely due to a lack of fuel; this delay allowed the Germans to reinforce that heavily fortified city for another grueling battle. In the breakout from Normandy, Patton's Third Army had advanced 500 miles in less than a month, and suffered just 1,200 casualties; over the next three months it would advance one-tenth that distance and suffer forty times the casualties. The war would by no means be over by Christmas.

GEN. LESLIE GROVES, THE DIRECTOR of the Manhattan Project, remained highly concerned as to the whereabouts of 1,200 tons of uranium ore belonging to the Union Miniere-a Belgian uranium mining company based in the Congo-that the Germans had captured in 1940. Once processed into the isotope uranium-235, such an amount was sufficient to make several viable atomic bombs, which required about 140 pounds of enriched uranium each. After their foray into Paris in late August 1944, Col. Boris Pash and the Alsos team traveled to Toulouse in southern France to follow up on a tip-off. There they found 31 tons of the uranium ore stored in a French naval a.r.s.enal. The haul was immediately shipped to the Manhattan Project's production facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to be processed through the electromagnetic separation calutrons into enriched uranium for "Little Boy," the uranium bomb being developed at the project's ma.s.sive laboratory in Los Alamos, Nevada.

Back in southern France, Col. Pash had procured several half-tracks, armored cars, and armed jeeps; thus mounted and armed, the Alsos unit followed the advance of the Allied forces toward the German border. In November 1944, the team arrived in newly liberated Strasbourg, in whose university they found a nuclear physics laboratory and bundles of doc.u.ments. These revealed that the German nuclear weapons development program-known as Uranverein, the "Uranium Club"-was not only in its infancy, but based on flawed science. This confirmed the earlier British intelligence a.s.sessment, but Gen. Groves was still not satisfied. Fortuitously, other doc.u.ments revealed the locations of all laboratories working with Uranverein, greatly simplifying Col. Pash's mission once the Allies advanced into Germany.

Groves was equally determined to forestall the chance of any Uranium Club scientists or their doc.u.ments falling into the hands of the Soviet Union-whose own nuclear program, as we now know, was only a matter of months behind the U.S. research, thanks to the comprehensive penetration of the Manhattan Project by Soviet spies. Germany's leading theoretical physicist was Werner Heisenberg, who occasionally traveled to occupied Denmark or neutral Switzerland to give scientific papers and lectures. Groves proposed that Heisenberg be kidnapped during one of these trips and interrogated to ascertain the extent of German progress. If that was not possible, then Heisenberg should be a.s.sa.s.sinated-in Groves's telling words, "Deny the enemy his brain." The task was given to an OSS agent named Morris "Moe" Berg, a former catcher and coach with the Boston Red Sox. Berg was also a graduate of Princeton who had studied seven languages, including Sanskrit. Now he immersed himself in the theory and practice of nuclear physics so that he would be able to follow Heisenberg's next university lecture, to be held on December 18, 1944, at the Physics Inst.i.tute of the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland.

During the last week of November, Moe Berg arrived in Bern to be briefed by the OSS station chief, Allen Dulles. Like Groves, Dulles was now firmly convinced that the Soviet Union posed a greater threat to Western interests than the death throes of the Third Reich, so, given the danger that the former might inherit the latter's resources in this field, he was happy to a.s.sist. It seems that by this time the kidnapping mission had turned into an a.s.sa.s.sination mission. Berg noted at the time, "Nothing spelled out, but Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat. Gun in my pocket." This was a .22-caliber Hi-Standard automatic with a sound suppressor; he was also given a cyanide pill in case escape became impossible after the a.s.sa.s.sination. Admission to Heisenberg's lecture was not a problem, since one of Dulles's innumerable contacts was Dr. Paul Scherrer, the director of the Physics Inst.i.tute at ETH. Scherrer had organized many such lectures and always pa.s.sed on any pertinent information to the OSS and MI6.

Heisenberg's presentation concerned quantum mechanics rather than nuclear physics; it did nothing to help Berg decide his course of action so he arranged to have dinner with Heisenberg at Scherrer's home. During the course of the conversation, Heisenberg reveled in the success of the ongoing German offensive in the Ardennes, but when asked if Germany was going to lose the war, he replied, "Yes-but it would have been so good if we had won." This comment probably saved his life, as it showed that Germany did not possess any weapons of ma.s.s destruction that might contribute to another outcome. The pistol remained in Moe Berg's pocket.

A YOUNG ALLEN WELSH DULLES in his office at the State Department, 1924. Allen Dulles joined the OSS in 1942 before moving to Bern in Switzerland in October, where he became one of the most successful spymasters of World War II, with numerous contacts across occupied Europe and with the n.a.z.i high command.

ALLEN WELSH DULLES [left] greets his brother John Foster Dulles after a flight on October 4, 1948. After the war, Allen Dulles became the director of the Central Intelligence Agency while John Foster Dulles became secretary of state during the Eisenhower administration. Together, they were among the most influential American officials of the immediate postwar period and leading figures in the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union.

REICHSLEITER MARTIN BORMANN stood in the shadow of his beloved Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, and served him faithfully from 1933 for the rest of his life. It was Bormann's business ac.u.men that made Hitler immensely wealthy and allowed the creation of Aktion Feuerland to effect the escape of the Fuhrer to Argentina.

WILHELM "OLD FOX" CANARIS headed up the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization, from 193544. He was a brilliant spymaster but he also ensured that his closest colleagues were not members of the n.a.z.i Party. Since before the outbreak of war, Canaris had been active in the resistance movement of Germans attempting at first to frustrate and then to overthrow Hitler-a group known to the Gestapo as the Schwarze Kappelle (Black Orchestra) and to the OSS as "Breakers."

HEINRICH HIMMLER AND HERMANN GoRING shake hands at a n.a.z.i Party event, April 1934. By 1943, the two would be embroiled in a plot with Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer to thwart Bormann's Council of Three plan; at the same time Himmler would take part in a separate plot with Bormann to gain more power at the expense of Goring. Such divisions in the n.a.z.i hierarchy allowed Hitler to rule the Third Reich with undisputed absolute power.

A BERLIN STREET after Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938: One of the many Jewish businesses with shattered storefronts. That night Jewish homes, properties, and synagogues across Germany and parts of Austria were attacked in an orgy of destruction-the clearest warning yet to German Jewry of their peril.

HEINRICH HIMMLER, center, briefs SS commanders Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Muller, Artur Nebe, and Franz Josef Huber on the day's work at Gestapo headquarters, Berlin, c. 1939. These n.a.z.is were among the princ.i.p.al architects of the Final Solution-the extermination of European Jews, together with other "untermensch," a term the n.a.z.is used to refer to what they called "inferior peoples."

AFTER THE FALL of France, Adolf Hitler made a triumphal tour of Paris on June 23, 1940. Here he poses for the camera in front of the Eiffel Tower in company with his favorite architect, Albert Speer (left), and his favorite sculptor, Arno Breker. His visit to Paris marked the start of the n.a.z.i rape of artworks from France and the Low Countries to feed Hitler's l.u.s.t for the greatest works of art of Western civilization.

ADOLF HITLER RELAXES at his favorite mountain retreat at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps together with his mistress Eva Braun and their dogs, c. 1940. Hitler holds the leash of his German shepherd, Blondi. Hitler declared that "a woman must be a cute, cuddly, naive little thing-tender, sweet, and dim." Eva Braun was all of these.

URSULA "USCHI" HITLER was the daughter of Hitler and Eva Braun. Here, Hitler and Uschi pose for a picture taken at the Berghof, c. 1942. The press was told that this girl was Uschi Schneider, the daughter of Herta Schneider, a close childhood friend of Eva Braun's. Frau Schneider and her "children" spent a great deal of time at the Berghof, Hitler's Bavarian estate.

ADOLF HITLER, WITH BORMANN behind him as always, stands surrounded by officers after the failed a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on July 20, 1944, at Wolfschanze or Wolf's Lair, the Fuhrer's field headquarters in East Prussia. Gen. Alfred Jodl, with a bandage around his head, is on the right.

A GROUP OF senior n.a.z.i officials congregate in 1944 at Wolfschanze. On the far left is Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Next to him is Luftwaffe Gen. Bruno Loerzer, a friend of Field Marshal Hermann Goring, who is standing in the center. Next to him is Adm. Karl Donitz, who became Reich president following Hitler's departure for Argentina. Key to the escape plan was Gen. Hermann Fegelein, shown with his arms crossed at the far right, and displaying the sleeve band of the Waffen SS unit he commanded in summer 1943, the 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer."

THE BIG THREE-Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin-at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea during February 1945. By now Roosevelt was gravely ill and still did not realize the dangers posed by the Soviet Union and its destructive communist regime to Europe and the world, in spite of the warnings of Churchill and others such as Allen Dulles.

IAN FLEMING, 1960. Fleming, popularly known as the creator of the fictional spy James Bond, was a British naval intelligence officer during the war. 30 Commando Unit (30 CU), which was tasked with gathering military intelligence doc.u.ments and items of enemy weapons technology before they could be hidden or destroyed, was another Fleming brainchild.

GEN. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., inspects some of the paintings from the salt mine stash, April 1945. In February 1945, the bulk of the remaining German gold reserves and monetary a.s.sets, including one billion reichsmarks, had been transferred to the salt mine at Merkers. The rest remained in the Reichsbank in Berlin, where it was ransacked by Gen. Ernst Kaltenbrunner in the largest bank robbery in history.

INMATES IN A slave labor barracks at Buchenwald, photographed April 16, 1945, when the camp was liberated by American troops. The concentration camp at Buchenwald provided slave labor for the construction of V-2 rockets at the Mittelwerk underground a.s.sembly lines at Nordhausen. Between 20,000 and 30,000 workers died under conditions of the utmost b.e.s.t.i.a.lity making Hitler's vengeance weapons. Of particular note, the prisoner in the second row from the bottom and sixth from the left is Elie Wiesel, the Jewish-American winner of the n.o.bel Peace Prize in 1986, renowned as a "messenger to mankind."

Chapter 10.

THE FOG OF WAR.

WHILE THE ALLIED ARMIES were still rampaging across northwest Europe, creating the deceptive prospect of peace before Christmas 1944, the Roosevelt administration was laying plans for the structure of a postwar Germany. Both President Roosevelt and his longtime secretary of the treasury, Henry J. Morgenthau Jr., were vehemently anti-n.a.z.i and had little regard for the Germans as a nation. For months they had deliberated over a plan for a demilitarized Germany that would never again be able to wage war. The country was to be divided into northern and southern zones that were to be completely "deindustrialized" and turned over solely to agriculture in order to feed the German people on a subsistence level. In Roosevelt's words, "There is no reason why Germany couldn't go back to 1810, where they would be perfectly comfortable, but wouldn't have any luxury." The industrial Ruhr was to be administered as an international zone, with its products benefiting those countries that had suffered at the hands of the n.a.z.is.

The Morgenthau Plan was presented to Winston Churchill at the Second Quebec Conference on September 16, 1944. Churchill yielded to no one in his loathing for the n.a.z.is, but he did have an instinctive understanding of history and he dismissed this more draconian repet.i.tion of the Treaty of Versailles as "unnatural, unchristian and unnecessary." However, after the secretary of the treasury extended another line of credit to Britain to the tune of $6 billion, Churchill agreed to consider a somewhat modified version of the plan.

Details of the Morgenthau Plan were soon in the hands of both the Soviets and the Abwehr. Moscow was informed immediately, since the author of the plan was Morgenthau's deputy, Dr. Harry Dexter White-a Soviet spy, code-named "Jurist." By reducing Germany to an impotent pastoral society, the plan would render the country more vulnerable to a communist takeover in the near future. The information reached Adm. Canaris by a more devious route. Two of the Abwehr agents he had activated in Switzerland in 1940 were "Habakuk," in the Swiss Foreign Ministry, and "Jakob" in the Swiss Secret Service. Both organizations received a ma.s.s of high-value intelligence via the Swiss amba.s.sador to Washington, Dr. Charles Bruggmann. Yet Bruggmann was no spy: his source was his brother-in-law, Henry Wallace-who happened to be the vice president of the United States. Wallace was a popular, left-wing New Dealer; privy to many of America's most important secrets, he was also notoriously indiscreet.

By autumn of 1944, Canaris had long been dismissed as chief of the Abwehr and was being held under house arrest under suspicion of involvement in the July bomb plot against Hitler. Nevertheless, as a German patriot, he was horrified at the prospect of his country being reduced deliberately to abject poverty after unconditional surrender and he quickly pa.s.sed details of the Morgenthau Plan to Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels. The propaganda minister used the information to galvanize the German people to greater resistance, to avoid their country being turned into a "potato field," in Goebbels's telling phrase.

Soon afterward, details of the plan appeared in the Wall Street Journal; this revelation caused serious divisions within the Roosevelt administration and in corporate America, whose investments in Germany were now at further risk. Both Gen. Marshall and Gen. Eisenhower complained bitterly that German resistance stiffened appreciably, with the result that the front lines became stabilized along the Siegfried Line just as winter was closing in. Roosevelt's opponent in the presidential election of November 1944, Thomas E. Dewey, said that the Morgenthau Plan was worth "ten fresh German divisions" to the enemy. In a cable from Bern, Allen Dulles was barely able to contain his indignation at the scheme's propaganda value to the n.a.z.is: [The average German] now trembles at the idea of what the foreign workers and prisoners of war would do, when disorder comes, and these millions of aliens are let loose to plunder and ravage the cities and land.... The soldiers at the front, the workers in the ammunition factories, and the inhabitants of the bombed cities are holding out because they feel that they have no choice, and their existence is at stake. The n.a.z.is are profiting by this state of mind for their own purposes.... So far, the Allies have not offered the opposition [inside Germany] any serious encouragement. On the contrary, they have again and again welded together the people and the n.a.z.is by statements published, either out of indifference or with a purpose.

HENRY MORGENTHAU'S TREASURY DEPARTMENT was also the architect of Operation Safehaven. The Bretton Woods Agreement of July 1944, intended to establish a liberal capitalist economic system throughout the industrial nations in the aftermath of the war, had also called on neutral countries to cease the transfer of a.s.sets across occupied Europe. In order to choke off the flight of capital from the Third Reich, on August 14 the United States and Britain brought severe pressure to bear on Switzerland to sign a trade agreement that would reduce its dealings with n.a.z.i Germany. Now that the tide of war had turned in favor of the Allies, Switzerland was willing to comply, but in reality, the process of money-laundering was so pervasive that little was achieved to halt it. Furthermore, almost two-thirds of Switzerland's trade was with n.a.z.i Germany and in the midst of a world war it was difficult to judge what was illegal and what was legitimate.

Operation Safehaven was implemented on December 6, 1944, with the aim of tracking the movement of n.a.z.i loot and a.s.sets around the world and locating those hidden in neutral countries. However, for Roosevelt and Morgenthau this plan had a wider purpose. They needed concrete evidence of illegality to bring against the major American corporations that had traded with n.a.z.i Germany and those members of the political establishment who were sympathetic to the n.a.z.is: men such as the crypto-n.a.z.i Henry Ford; Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., former U.S. amba.s.sador to London; and John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of John D. Rockefeller Sr., the founder of Standard Oil and advocate of eugenics. Some of these corporations and individuals had tried to undermine the New Deal and destabilize Roosevelt's administration during the 1930s.

This ambitious operation sought the prosecution as war criminals of all those who ran the n.a.z.i war machine and the industrial concerns that sustained it. Bankers and industrialists such as Abs, Schacht, Schroder, Krupp, Flick, Schmitz, and a legion of others were to stand in the dock of an international tribunal and be judged for their actions. Once they were in open court, Morgenthau would reveal years of intercepted doc.u.mentation, wiretap evidence, and decrypts of Swiss bank codes and cables, courtesy of Ultra intelligence via MI6. In order to redeem themselves, the defendants would have to reveal their dealings with American corporations such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Standard Oil. All the companies and banks found to have traded with the enemy would then face the full rigor of the law in the United States. It was an elegant plan for revenge, legitimized by the victory of good over evil on the battlefield.

Since Morgenthau was distrustful of both the Justice Department and the State Department, Safehaven was entrusted to a select handful of personnel in the Federal Economic Administration (FEA) of the Treasury Department. The president, through the FEA, instructed a new offshoot of X-2 counterintelligence within the Special Intelligence division of the OSS to uncover and collect evidence, particularly in neutral countries, concerning the transfers of n.a.z.i loot and gold. However, this effort required the cooperation of OSS agents already on the ground, and in Switzerland this was problematical-since one of the suspects of Operation Safehaven was Allen Dulles himself, because of his extensive corporate connections and his links with various n.a.z.i groups. Despite this difficulty, the investigation necessarily focused on the gold dealings undertaken by Swiss banks. This became of major concern to Swiss amba.s.sador Bruggmann once he learned of Operation Safehaven through his indiscreet brother-in-law, vice president Henry Wallace. The exposure of the explicit links between Swiss banks and n.a.z.i Germany would be a major potential embarra.s.sment to the Swiss government once the war was over; accordingly, the Swiss Secret Service alerted Allen Dulles about the Safehaven investigation into his affairs.

BY FALL OF 1944, ALLEN DULLES was increasingly frustrated by Washington's policy decisions that, in his opinion, were prolonging the war. His main concern now was to minimize the encroachment of the Red Army into Western Europe, and the best way to do that was to end the war as soon as possible by any likely means.

His volume of work remained high, and his latest coup in September 1944 was the acquisition of information about the Germans' creation of what was termed a "National Redoubt" in the Bavarian Alps, where the n.a.z.i leadership would hide and its fanatical supporters would wage guerrilla warfare even after the military defeat of Germany. The information came from an Austrian SD officer, SS Maj. Wilhelm Hottl, via an Austrian lawyer who lived in Switzerland, Kurt Grimm. Through his law firm, Grimm had excellent contacts throughout occupied Europe; Dulles's firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, shared business clients with Grimm and now the two men even shared the same tailor. According to a senior British intelligence officer, Grimm was "one of the three major sources of Allen Dulles's rather remarkable operation in Bern." Of particular interest to Dulles was the fact that Hottl was on the staff of SS and Police Gen. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the RSHA and second only to Heinrich Himmler in the SS hierarchy; Hottl thus represented another conduit to the n.a.z.i leadership.

Although doubtful about the notion of a National Redoubt, Dulles duly pa.s.sed the information to Washington. By this time, OSS communications from Bern were far more effective, thanks to another canny deal. Dulles had struck a bargain with Gen. Roger Ma.s.son, head of the Swiss Secret Service. Allied aircrews who had been obliged to make forced landings in Switzerland were held in internment camps, which by the end of the war held some 1,500 American airmen. Now, each day, up to a dozen of these USAAF personnel were allowed to work at the U.S. legation while on parole, returning to their camps in the evening. They provided a useful pool of technical expertise to Dulles and the OSS; this contravened the rules of war, but then, so did the German employment of crewmen from the Admiral Graf Spee in neutral Argentina. Communications are vital to the rapid flow of intelligence back to the decision-makers, but there was always a disconnect between the intelligence services and the Roosevelt administration. Often, current and timely intelligence a.s.sessments were ignored in favor of preconceptions and policy, not the least of which was the continuing appeas.e.m.e.nt of Stalin. No matter how often Allen Dulles reiterated the growing threat of communist expansionism in Eastern Europe, his advice was ignored.

Dulles was also targeted by German intelligence, including an elite Luftwaffe code-breaking unit designated Luftfahrtforschungsamt (Luftwaffe radio intercept unit). When Abwehr agents learned of Operation Safehaven through their agent Habakuk, they set about frustrating its efforts, particularly in Switzerland, where it was potentially most dangerous to the ongoing German capital transfers. The Abwehr agents pa.s.sed the word to Dulles that both the British and the Americans were intercepting his communications-as they themselves had been, but would now no longer be able to, thanks to their revealing their hand in this way. They, too, told Dulles that he was a subject of investigation by the Treasury Department through Operation Safehaven. He immediately changed his encryption methods to the more secure "one-time pad" system and from then on his message traffic remained secure. Transcribing the messages from the Vernam cipher is a laborious handwritten process, hence Dulles's need for the services of interned USAAF personnel for encryption.

Dulles also exposed Henry Wallace as the source of the revelation of both the Morgenthau Plan and Operation Safehaven to Amba.s.sador Bruggmann and ultimately to the Germans. President Roosevelt had no choice but to ditch Wallace and nominate the senator from Arkansas, Harry S. Truman, as his candidate for vice president in the upcoming presidential election. As a committed opponent of communism, Truman was far more acceptable to Dulles. At the same time, in responding to the instructions for Safehaven dated December 6, 1944, Dulles stated with casual insouciance: Work on this project requires careful planning as it might defeat direct intelligence activities and close important channels.... Today we must fish in troubled waters and maintain contacts with persons suspected of working with n.a.z.is on such matters.... To deal effectively ... would require special staff with new cover.... At present we do not have adequate personnel to do effective job in this field and meet other demands.

AMONG THE "OTHER DEMANDS" on Allen Dulles's time and personnel was the creation, as of November 21, 1944, of the OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit. This had a similar remit to the Monuments, Fine Art, and Archives (MFA&A) branch already working with the field forces, but, backed by the full apparatus of the OSS, it had far greater resources.

As well as their primary task of protection, the Monuments Men catalogued all artworks found in the territories that had been recaptured from the Germans, in order to identify their true ownership and return them in due course if they had been stolen. Capt. Walker Hanc.o.c.k of the MFA&A, a renowned sculptor in civilian life, was now attached to the U.S. First Army. On December 15, 1944, he arrived at the quiet farming village of La Gleize in eastern Belgium, close to the border with Luxembourg. It had escaped damage during the Allied advance and now lay peacefully under a weak winter sun, with the forbidding forests of the Ardennes dark in the distance. Walker was anxious to see a famous and revered fourteenth-century wooden statue, the Madonna of La Gleize, which stood in the nave of the village church. To Hanc.o.c.k, it was a sublime work of art that seemed to dominate its surroundings, and he was relieved to find it untouched by the war. After a pleasant meal in the local inn, he continued his tour of the area.

At 5:30 a.m. in the pre-dawn darkness of the following day, an artillery bombardment by 1,600 guns saturated the area with sh.e.l.ls. Behind this curtain of fire came seven armored and nine infantry divisions of the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies, while further south formations from the Seventh Army also plunged westward. Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein-Operation Watch on the Rhine-was. .h.i.tler's last gamble for victory in the West. The strategy was to hurl his remaining armor through the Ardennes, across the Meuse River, and on to Antwerp, whose strategic port had finally become operational for the Allies on November 28. If he achieved this, he could drive a wedge between the American and the British-Canadian army groups; less realistically, he hoped that this attack would buy time for his new "wonder weapons"-jet aircraft and Type XXI "electro-drive" U-boats-to enter service in significant numbers. On December 11, the Fuhrer had traveled from Berlin in his private train to the Adlerhorst (Eagle's Nest) field headquarters near Bad Nauheim in south-central Germany, to exercise personal command over the offensive.

The story of the Battle of the Bulge has been told at length elsewhere. In fog and snow that initially grounded the Allied tactical air forces, the Germans achieved complete surprise. The American divisions that they first encountered either were being rested in this quiet sector after the bitter fighting for the Hurtgen Forest or were fresh from the United States. But the difficult terrain and bad weather were also an obstacle for the panzers. In June 1940, when a dash along a similar axis of advance had successfully divided the bulk of the French armies from the British Expeditionary Force, it had been difficult enough to negotiate the narrow forest roads of the Ardennes in high summer with tanks weighing no more than twenty tons. Now the roads were coated with snow and ice and progress was immeasurably more difficult for tanks weighing twice as much or more.

Despite the shock of the a.s.sault and the collapse of many units, pockets of determined American resistance formed and combat engineers made heroic efforts to destroy bridges that lay in the line of the German advance-the availability of fuel and bridges would determine the very success or failure of the German offensive. With the destruction of the bridges, the leading German battle group was forced northward off its intended line of march toward the village of La Gleize. However, the skies were clearing and the long column of armor and trucks was strafed by U.S. fighter bombers, causing the advance to falter. As American reinforcements poured into the area, the German battle group was virtually surrounded by December 20. After a fierce two-day battle, the group's remnants broke out on foot, leaving their wounded and a small band of Waffen-SS troops to cover the withdrawal. They made their last stand in the church of La Gleize under constant American bombardment until the building was pounded to destruction and finally overrun on the twenty-fourth. On the same day, Chief of the General Staff (Army) Gen. Heinz Guderian advised the Fuhrer to halt the offensive since progress on the other routes was now minimal and to little avail.

The shock of the unexpected offensive had caused near panic in some Allied quarters. On January 4, even General Patton confided in his diary, "We can still lose this war." Despondency grew with distance from the battlefield, and in Washington, the U.S. Army chief of staff, Gen. Marshall, mused, "If Germany beats us, we will have to recast our view of the whole war. We will have to take a defensive position along the German frontier. The people of the United States would have to decide whether they wanted to continue the war enough to raise large new armies." By now a bitter joke circulated among the troops: "The war might still be over by Christmas ... Christmas 1950." An aftershock struck at dawn on New Year's Day 1945, when the Luftwaffe launched its Operation Baseplate against numerous Allied airfields in Belgium, France, and Holland, destroying some 439 aircraft, mostly on the ground. While such material losses could quickly be made up and the many German fighter pilots shot down and killed were effectively irreplaceable, the Allied commanders took this attack as further evidence of the Wehrmacht's ability to prolong the war.

In total, beating off the Ardennes offensive cost the Americans 89,000 casualties, including 14,872 killed, making it the U.S. Army's bloodiest battle of the war. However, German casualties were 130,000 with 19,000 killed, as well as almost 400 irreplaceable tanks lost. Within weeks, nine fresh American divisions arrived in the European theater. Hitler's last gamble in the West had failed and the frontiers of Germany now lay open to invasion.

THE MONUMENTS MAN Capt. Walker Hanc.o.c.k returned to La Gleize on February 1, 1945. From a distance, the village appeared to be completely obliterated. The church where the Waffen-SS had made its stand was reduced to a sh.e.l.l; the roof had collapsed, broken beams lay all around, the nave was knee-deep in frozen snow, and an icy wind blew through gaping holes in the walls. The church pews were piled up to form bullet-riddled barricades, and b.l.o.o.d.y bandages, ammunition boxes, and ration cans littered the ground. But in the center of this desolation Walker found the Madonna of La Gleize totally undamaged: She stood just as he had seen her two months ago, in the middle of the nave, one hand on her heart, the other raised in benediction. She seemed hardly to notice her surroundings, focused as she was on the distant divine. But against that backdrop, she looked more miraculous and hopeful than ever, her beauty triumphant even in the midst of devastation and despair.

Chapter 11.

RAIDERS OF THE REICH.

THE ARDENNES OFFENSIVE CAME as a particularly rude shock to the Allied high command because it had relied for years upon Ultra intelligence for warnings of German capabilities and intentions. There were officers on the ground who had feared a major German a.s.sault against the U.S. VIII Corps' line in the Ardennes, such as Col. Oscar Koch, the Third Army G-2 intelligence chief, but his premonitions had been ignored. There was too much reliance on Ultra among the Allied commanders, and too little on human intelligence or battlefield reconnaissance.

The masterly German deception plan for Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein had been based on strict radio silence, so there had been no opportunity for intercepts by Bletchley Park. Other security measures had included forbidding any officers privy to the plan to fly in an aircraft west of the Rhine in case they were shot down or crash-landed, and all troop movements had been made at night. By day, Allied photoreconnaissance had been compromised by the awful weather, and as they closed up to the borders of Germany the Allied troops no longer received useful information from local Resistance fighters, as they had when further west.

The great majority of German communications were now made by the latest model teleprinter cipher machines, such as the Siemens & Halske T52d Geheimfernschreiber (secret teleprinter) and the Lorenz SZ42. The T52 series of machines and their traffic were code-named "Sturgeon" by Bletchley Park while the Lorenz was "Tunny." By the winter of 1944, the specialists at Bletchley Park were physically and intellectually exhausted after years of painstaking decryption work, and unraveling the secrets of the new Sturgeon and Tunny machines required yet another concerted effort. The situation was exacerbated when it was discovered that Enigma machines were now fitted with a more sophisticated version of the return cylinder that made decryption much more difficult, requiring further modifications to the room-sized protocomputer Colossus and the electromechanical decryption devices known as "bombes." Similarly, the Luftwaffe later employed a cipher system known as Enigma Hour that automatically generated a ma.s.sive number of extra permutations on encryption. Fortunately, the repeated indiscipline of some German Enigma operators-particularly in the Luftwaffe-made the task easier for Bletchley Park to decipher messages, and a shortage of Sturgeon machines at this stage of the war meant that they never posed a dangerous problem for the Allies. Nevertheless, the latter quickly realized that such technology in the wrong hands would create a serious threat in the postwar era. It was essential to capture examples of these encryption devices intact and to deny them to potential adversaries.

In February 1945, an Anglo-American organization known as the Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM) was set up to hunt for German cryptographic equipment and its operators as the Allies advanced into Germany. The TICOM teams of British and American personnel divided up any spoils of war on a "one-for-me-and-one-for-you" basis. There was by now a tacit agreement that the United States and Britain must continue to cooperate in the field of signals intelligence that had served both countries so well during the war. Together, they had broken virtually every military and diplomatic code used by the Axis powers, giving the Allies an extraordinary advantage on the battlefield. Curiously, the one state that proved to be invulnerable to penetration of its codes or ciphers was the Vatican, but then the papacy was not supposed to be in league with the Fascists or the n.a.z.is.

After a stupendous effort, Colossus was able to break the Tunny cipher and read significant amounts of Sturgeon traffic, but now there was a new sound coming over the radio speakers of the Hut 6 intercept room at Bletchley Park. It was the characteristic noise of yet another new German encryption device, code-named "Thrasher," and this one seemed to be impervious to penetration by Colossus. The Germans had devised an unbreakable code for their latest machine-the Siemens & Halske T43 Schlusselfernschreibmaschine. It was all the more vital to capture such equipment in order to maintain the Allies' superiority in signals intelligence in the years to come.

A WHOLE RANGE OF SPECIALIST UNITS were by now poised on the borders of Germany, eager to advance and uncover the secrets of the Third Reich. In addition to the nuclear research hunters of the Alsos Mission; the MFA&A heritage protectors and art detectives; the heavily armed "Red Indians" of Ian Fleming's 30 a.s.sault Unit, which was now named 30 Advance Unit; the scientists and technologists of the T-Forces; the gold-seekers of the Klondike teams; and the TICOM teams hunting for encryption technology, several other organizations had also been activated, each with its own tight focus. To reduce the risk of mutual confusion, the G-2 intelligence division at SHAEF created a Special Sections Subdivision in February 1945 to coordinate the activities of all these specialized teams with the fighting troops as they advanced into Germany.

With her cities and factories devastated by air attack and still being bombarded by V-2 missiles, Britain was anxious to acquire Germany's industrial machinery and manufacturing processes to rebuild an economy that was on the brink of bankruptcy. In booming America such considerations were not a factor; instead, the United States wanted German intellectual property and the personnel who had devised the weapons systems that were still impeding an early Allied victory. The role of the new Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section (EPES) was to prioritize the desirable fields of German technology and identify the scientists, engineers, and technicians involved in such projects. The first task was relatively simple. Thanks to Ultra, the Allies knew many details of the technical and operational capabilities of the latest weapons and even their secret German designations. For instance, the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was code-named "Silver" and the Arado Ar 234-the world's first dedicated jet bomber-was "Tin." EPES's second task was more difficult, since intelligence was lacking as to the specific locations of research laboratories and their staff. All such facilities were now widely dispersed across the Reich to reduce the effects of Allied bombing; many were in Bavaria, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, so as to be at the extreme range of bombers flying from Britain or Italy.

The advanced German capabilities that justified the creation of EPES were brought into sharp focus after the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen was captured intact by elements of the U.S. 9th Armored Division on March 7, 1945. After a doomed attack by three lumbering Stuka dive-bombers, all of which were shot down by the American antiaircraft defenses, the Germans committed some of Hitler's Wunderwaffen. On the following day the bridge was attacked by fighter-bomber Me 262s and then by Arado Ar 234s. Thereafter, the German's sophisticated rocket unit SS Werfer Abteilung 500 launched eleven V-2 ballistic missiles from the Eifel Forest area. The closest struck 300 yards from the target, killing three American soldiers; no damage was done to the bridge, but it was yet another demonstration of Germany's considerable lead in weapons technology. Subsequently, Gen. Hugh J. Knerr, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces in Europe, observed: Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we been alarmingly backward in many fields of research. If we do not take the opportunity to seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it and put the combination back to work promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt to cover a field already exploited.

This incident led directly to Operation l.u.s.ty, which was set up by the U.S. Army Air Forces to capture German aeronautical secrets and equipment, and personnel involved in the design and development of jet- and rocket-powered aircraft. Significantly, in July 1945, two months after the German surrender, the British initiated Operation Surgeon specifically to deny such prizes to the Soviet Union, which many in the West now believed was fast becoming a serious threat to European unity. These schemes came under the overall supervision of Operation Overcast, an initiative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose object was to recruit or persuade German scientists and technicians in selected fields that it was in their best interests and those of their families to seek protection and possible employment by the Western Allied powers. In particular, the Americans were anxious to exploit the expertise of German scientists involved in the development of ballistic missiles and atomic weapons. Some a.n.a.lysts had drawn the sensible conclusion that the future lay in a combination of the two weapons systems so it was all the more important to deny such technology to the Soviets.

In March 1945, the exploitation of German technology had a.s.sumed such importance at SHAEF that the Special Sections Subdivision and the EPES were now reporting directly to Gen. Eisenhower's chief of staff, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith. Similarly, at 21st Army Group, all exploitation teams, such as 30 Advance Unit and Target Force, were now responsible to SHAEF through Field Marshal Montgomery's chief of staff, Gen. Freddie de Guingand. The chain of command was specific, detailed, and coordinated. There was, however, a serious obstacle to the success of Operation Overcast. By special decree, President Roosevelt expressly forbade the employment in America of any German who had been a n.a.z.i Party member or who was a.s.sociated with any war crimes. Since advancement or even employment in any important field in n.a.z.i Germany was often dependent on party membership, this ruling presented a major stumbling block. Similarly, since slave labor, which was used in the production of virtually all German weapons, const.i.tuted a war crime under international law, every weapons project was tainted.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE between "The Big Three"-Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin-was held in the Crimean city of Yalta between February 4 and 11, 1945. Code-named Operation Argonaut, its purpose was to discuss the structure of Europe once hostilities with Germany ceased. By now, President Roosevelt was gravely ill, but his policy of conciliation toward Stalin continued unabated. Poland-the original casus belli of World War II-was abandoned to its fate; the Balkans also became a Soviet sphere of influence and final boundaries were drawn up for the imminent linkup of Western Allied and Soviet armies in Germany. The country was to be divided into four zones of occupation administered by the Americans, British, French, and Soviets. Stalin demanded the reiteration of the insistence on unconditional German surrender; he still feared a separate peace between the Western Allies and Germany, whereby they would join forces and mount a grand capitalist crusade against the Soviet Union-a policy recommended by some Allied commanders, such as Gen. George S. Patton.

President Roosevelt was quick to concur and made yet more concessions to ensure that the Soviet Union would join in the war against j.a.pan. He still did not know whether the atomic bomb would actually work, but he did know that any amphibious invasion of the j.a.panese home islands would be unspeakably costly in casualties, with estimates running as high as 1 million Allied troops. Stalin promised to attack j.a.pan ninety days after the defeat of Germany. Publicly, the Grand Alliance stood firm in its resolve: "It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and n.a.z.ism and to ensure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world." In private, Churchill's suspicion of Stalin's intentions was as sharp as ever: "The only bond of the victors is their common hate."

ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE YALTA CONFERENCE, the first enriched uranium U-235 arrived at Los Alamos from Oak Ridge-a vital step in the construction of the first atomic bomb. The emphasis of the Alsos Mission was now on preventing the Soviets from acquiring German research material and the scientists involved in the Uranverein or Uranium Club. From papers captured at the University of Strasbourg, Alsos discovered that there was an industrial facility producing high-purity uranium metal at the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg. This was deep inside the proposed Soviet occupation zone of Germany and well beyond the reach of the Alsos Mission. Gen. Groves advised Gen. Marshall that the plant be attacked to prevent its falling into the hands of the Red Army intact. On March 15, 612 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers dropped 1,506 tons of high explosives and 178 tons of incendiary bombs on Oranienburg; the plant was devastated.

Following the successful crossing of the Rhine by the Allied armies in March 1945, the Alsos Mission could begin its task of finding the Uranverein scientists and any uranium in Germany. Based on intelligence provided by the Special Sections Subdivision, the Alsos Task Force A was directed to undertake Operation Big. This required them to reach Haigerloch in southwest Germany without delay. Haigerloch was designated to be part of the French zone of occupation-and the Yalta Conference had determined that nothing could be removed from each nation's areas of responsibility-but SHAEF gave unequivocal orders that Col. Pash's men were to get there before Gen. Jean de Lattre de Ta.s.signy's French First Army. Mounted in trucks and armored cars, Task Force A barreled into Haigerloch and found the B-VIII nuclear reactor in a cave. It was simply too small to ever go critical. The Germans were indeed years behind the Allies, since Fermi had achieved the first ever nuclear reaction in America as far back as December 1942. Close by, in Hechingen, the team found all the German scientists they sought except for Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, and these two were apprehended within days. Everything and everybody a.s.sociated with atomic research was safely spirited out of the future French zone.

In the closing months of the war, the leading Soviet atomic research facility designated Laboratory No. 2 possessed only seven tons of uranium oxide. The F-1 uranium reactor required forty-six tons to continue operation, whereas the plutonium-production Reactor A needed 150 tons. The Soviets were in desperate need of large quant.i.ties of uranium ore, and Gen. Groves was determined that they should not find it in Germany.

On April 12, 1945, Team 5 of 30 Advance Unit, commanded by Lt. James Lambie Jr., U.S. Navy Reserve, was deep inside Germany, investigating a factory at Sta.s.sfurt some eighty miles west of Berlin. Among other things, they found multiple barrels-several of them broken-containing an unidentified black substance. This news was immediately pa.s.sed up the line to SHAEF, and the barrels' contents were subsequently identified as the missing Belgian uranium ore. But Sta.s.sfurt was in the designated Soviet zone of occupation. The second in command of the Alsos Mission, Lt. Col. John Lansdale Jr. (the former head of security for the Manhattan Project), consulted SHAEF with a proposal for organizing a strike force to remove the material. Landsdale noted in his report that the Twelfth Army's G-2, when shown the plan, "was very perturbed at our proposal and foresaw all kinds of difficulties with the Russians and political repercussions at home." Realizing the urgency of the situation, Lansdale approached Gen. Omar Bradley, commander of 12th Army Group, for permission to raid the facility against the rules laid down at Yalta. Bradley reportedly responded: "To h.e.l.l with the Russians." On April 17, Lansdale and his team headed for Sta.s.sfurt and located the plant where the uranium ore was stored-a total of some 1,100 tons. When most of the barrels were found to be too unstable for transport, Lansdale's men purloined 10,000 heavy-duty bags from a nearby paper mill to use as containers. Within forty-eight hours, the vast bulk of Germany's h.o.a.rd of uranium ore was safely in the American zone of occupation and beyond the reach of the Soviets. The Western Allies now controlled most of Germany's atomic scientists, its only functioning reactor, and virtually all its supplies of heavy water and uranium ore. The Uranium Club had been closed down. Although the Alsos Mission was highly successful in thwarting Soviet nuclear ambitions, Martin Bormann was still one step ahead in his plans to utilize n.a.z.i high technology. Once he was safely ensconced in Argentina during the summer of 1948, his final down payment for continued safe haven under the Peron regime was the highly attractive inducement of the fruits of n.a.z.i nuclear researches and advanced aviation designs that made Argentina the sixth country in the world to produce its own jet aircraft, after Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States and France.

ON THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1945, the day that Lt. Lambie's team discovered the uranium at Sta.s.sfurt, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suffered a ma.s.sive cerebral hemorrhage and died some hours later. His successor was Vice President Harry S. Truman. For the past few months Truman had chaired the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, which had been probing ma.s.sive discrepancies in military funds allocated to the War Department. Within days of becoming the thirty-third president of the United States, Truman was informed about the Manhattan Project; now he knew where the missing funds had gone. In August, President Truman made the painful decision to drop an atomic bomb on the j.a.panese city of Hiroshima and then a second bomb on Nagasaki. Within days the j.a.panese empire surrendered and the military invasion of j.a.pan was no longer necessary. Thanks to the Alsos Mission, America for the time being had a monopoly of atomic weapons and was now capable of producing three bombs every month.

Chapter 12.

BORMANN, DULLES, AND OPERATION CROSSWORD.

ADOLF HITLER LEFT HIS WOLF'S LAIR in East Prussia for the last time on November 20, 1944. During the war he had spent more time in this mosquito-infested pine forest than anywhere else. After a brief stay in Berlin, on December 10, he took up residence at his Eagle's Nest headquarters in south-central Germany to oversee the Ardennes offensive in person. As ever, Martin Bormann was with him, but the Reichsleiter was extremely unhappy with the accommodations a.s.signed to him and his staff at Bad Nauheim. Above all, there were insufficient secure teleprinters to allow him safe and instant communication with his network of gauleiters, many of whom were now being tested as never before as the fighting fronts approached their regions.

Despite the worsening war situation, the German telephone system generally remained highly efficient. In January 1945, Gen. Alfred Jodl noted that the Armed Forces Supreme Command generated some 120,000 telephone calls and 33,000 telex messages to German military units every day. Day in and day out, the Fuhrer stood hunched over the situation maps with his magnifying gla.s.s, spewing out an avalanche of orders for formations whose present equipment and capabilities he often wildly overestimated. As Albert Speer observed, "The more difficult the situation, all the more did modern technology widen the gap between reality and the fantasy being operated from that table."

Martin Bormann was not privy to the endless military conferences at the Adlerhorst, so he had plenty of time to further his schemes. For months past, he had been reducing the access of other n.a.z.i leaders to the Fuhrer, thereby increasing his own influence as the inner circle's numbers dwindled. By Christmas 1944, only a small remaining group had undeniable access to Hitler. Among these was Hermann Goring, but his star was waning fast; his Luftwaffe remained incapable of stemming the Allied bombing offensive against Germany and now proved unable to support the ground forces in the faltering Ardennes offensive. On December 26, Goring's stock plummeted further when he suggested that it was time to negotiate an armistice with the Allies, only to receive the full force of one of Hitler's raging tirades: "I forbid you to take any step in that direction! If, in spite of what I say, you do anything to defy my order, then I will have you shot." Bormann duly noted Goring's defeatism.

On New Year's Day 1945, Hitler made a radio broadcast to the nation, proclaiming that "Germany will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and rubble of her cities and ... despite all setbacks, will go on to win final victory." On January 4, 1945, virtually the whole senior n.a.z.i hierarchy was present at the Eagle's Nest, including Goring, Goebbels, von Ribbentrop, and Bormann. Also attending as a guest was Col. Hans-Ulrich Rudel of the Luftwaffe, a favorite of Hitler's and the most decorated man in the Wehrmacht. Only Heinrich Himmler was absent, due to his newfound role as a military commander, directing Operation North Wind in the Rhineland. Bormann had plans for all of them.

On January 12, some 3 million troops of the Red Army began their long-antic.i.p.ated offensive along the Vistula riverfront in Poland, behind the largest artillery bombardment of the war thus far. Within twenty-four hours, the German defenses were broken and the Soviets had advanced ten miles. Gen. Guderian telephoned the Fuhrer headquarters pleading for reinforcements. Hitler was only willing to release the Sixth Panzer Army for the Eastern Front. Although this formation had, on paper, an elite corps of SS armor, it had been worn down in the Ardennes. Despite the unfolding defeat on the Vistula, Hitler was disturbed by the discovery that there was no emergency exit from his command bunker at the Eagle's Nest. And when the Fuhrer was unhappy, Bormann was invariably at hand to rectify the situation. On January 14, the bunker's architect, Franz Werr, was summoned to Hitler's presence; he was warned in advance that he could not hoodwink the Fuhrer, since the latter's interest in architecture made him "the greatest master mason of all time." Werr explained that there was no need for an emergency exit from the bunker, because in the unlikely event of the main exits being blocked after an air raid, then hundreds of laborers were on hand to clear the rubble. Hitler insisted that another exit be installed immediately, but when Werr returned with a work party two days later, Hitler had left for Berlin.

BORMANN'S SCHEME TO MARGINALIZE Himmler was bearing fruit. His authority as overlord of the entire SS apparatus was still unchallengeable but, like most men, he had an exploitable weakness. In addition to his other t.i.tles, Himmler nursed a fervent wish to hold a high military appointment. Accordingly, in the aftermath of the July 1944 bomb attempt, when Hitler was seething with suspicion of the Wehrmacht officer cla.s.s, Bormann had suggested to the Fuhrer that Himmler should be made commander of the Ersatzheer or Replacement Army. Thereafter Himmler became, successively, the commander in chief of Army Group Upper Rhine, attempting to stem the advance of the U.S. Seventh and French First armies in Alsace, and then head of Army Group Vistula, which stood in the path of a Soviet advance on Berlin.

Needless to say, these command appointments were nominal rather than executive: Himmler was devoid of military insight or talent so actual day-to-day command was exercised by professional soldiers. However, since "Himmler's" army groups were doomed to failure by the strength of the opponents they faced, the Fuhrer's faith in his "treue Heinrich" was shaken-just as Bormann had intended. Others in the n.a.z.i hierarchy saw which way the wind was blowing, concluding that any hope of surviving the maelstrom of defeat was more likely to lie with Bormann rather than with the waning, faltering Himmler or the drug-addled Goring. Bormann now had a strong coterie of allies in his bid for power and exclusive access to the Fuhrer. These included SS and Police Gen. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Himmler's deputy as head of the RSHA; the enigmatic SS and Police Gen. Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo; and SS Gen. Hermann Fegelein, the brother-in-law of Eva Braun, who was Himmler's adjutant and representative of the SS at Hitler's headquarters. Fegelein's defection to Bormann's camp was crucial; like Bormann, he was a sensualist and the two became close drinking companions.

By the end of January 1945, the Red Army had created a vast westward salient reaching to the Oder River, only sixty miles from Berlin. A counterattack on the salient's northern flank from Pomerania failed, and on February 20, Bormann wrote to his wife, Gerda, in triumph: "Uncle Heinrich's offensive did not work out. He did not properly organize it and now his reserve divisions must be a.s.signed somewhere else." Himmler retired to the military hospital at Hohenlychen and asked the Fuhrer to be relieved of his command on "medical grounds," so as to be able to concentrate on all his other responsibilities. Meanwhile, Goring had retreated to Carinhall, his country residence, to try to save his vast art collection from the advancing Red Army.

Bormann now sought to eject from Hitler's inner circle even minor figures who were beyond his easy control. One of these was Heinrich Hoffmann, the Fuhrer's personal photographer, art adviser, and long-time confidant, who had introduced Hitler to Eva Braun. Out of apparent concern for Hoffmann's health, Bormann suggested that Hoffmann needed a medical examination by Hitler's physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. After various tests, Hoffmann was informed that he was a carrier of the dangerous Type B paratyphoid bacterium; accordingly, he represented a threat to the health of the Fuhrer and must be banished from his presence and from headquarters. Mystified, Hoffmann sought a second opinion. The tests proved negative but the medical report crossed Bormann's desk and Hoffmann remained in exile. Next Bormann turned on Hitler's personal surgeon, Dr. Karl Brandt, the originator of the n.a.z.i Project T4 euthanasia program. Bormann's purge continued with ruthless efficiency. Any Germans, from ordinary citizens to top party officials, were expendable if their removal would benefit Bormann and his plan for saving the lives and fortunes of a handful of the n.a.z.i leadership.

With his grip on the n.a.z.i court now increasingly a.s.sured, Bormann turned his attention to a.s.serting his absolute authority over the gauleiters-the party chiefs who governed the forty-two regions of the Greater German Reich. In "Gestapo" Muller, Bormann had a powerful ally to enforce his will. As always, Bormann's technique was the carrot and the stick. Total loyalty to the Fuhrer remained paramount, and the faithful execution of all orders emanating from the Fuhrer's headquarters was vital for the well-being of the party. In the office of every gauleiter a torrent of instructions poured out of the teleprinters from the "Telex General." Invariably, these began: "National Socialists! Party comrades! By the Fuhrer's command, I hereby direct ..." Thanks to Muller's Gestapo spiderweb, Bormann's intelligence on activities across the shrin