Killing the SS Read online

  In the interim, the Mossad’s covert attacks produce another victim. Isser Harel is asked to step down as Mossad director, charged with inept handling of the situation with Egypt. His replacement, Meir Amit, will then send out an order prohibiting Mossad agents from hunting Nazis, demanding that the spy agency totally “stop chasing ghosts from our past.”

  Thus, when Otto Skorzeny dies of cancer in July 1975, Joe Raanan is the lone Jew among dozens of former Nazis who travel to Madrid to pay their respects.

  The word atonement is not on Joe Raanan’s mind as he watches the funeral, for Otto Skorzeny never mentioned such a thing. But it is remarkable that the Führer’s favorite SS commando would one day play a key role in defending the Jewish homeland.

  * * *

  Back in New York City, the chroniclers of the Skorzeny-Mossad story, Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, are besieged with reactions to their article in the Forward. “Newspapers and websites all over the world were quoting our article—and that was a surprise,” Raviv will write. “The sensational interest in how the Israelis recruited Skorzeny—and how he was so cold-blooded that he volunteered to commit a murder to impress them—shows that there’s an undying fascination with Nazis. They are mankind at its worst; and the facts we revealed—that one evil man could be manipulated to act against other evil Nazis in Egypt—show yet again how astounding Israel’s spy agency can be.”

  Dan Raviv is correct. It was indeed “tiny Israel” and its supporters who finally brought down the heinous SS executioners.

  With Nazi money and ruthless power available even after World War II, killing the SS was no easy task. But it had to be done.

  And it was.

  Notes

  Prologue

    1.  The Allies applied the term displaced person to any civilian who remained outside the boundary of their home nation at the end of the war. A refugee was a separate distinction, reserved for individuals who remained homeless within their own nation.

    2.  This estimate is based on a 1946 U.S. Treasury Department report.

    3.  There are some who believe that the escape of Nazis was assisted by a group known as ODESSA—Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen—comprised of former SS officers. The alleged organization is thought to be so secretive that there is still debate about the date of the group’s founding and whether or not Himmler knew of its existence. Many even insist it did not exist at all, despite significant evidence to the contrary.

  Chapter 1

    1.  Throughout his career, Dulles was notoriously lenient toward individuals whose views and expertise assisted his agenda. General Wolff was one such individual. Though he was arrested after the war and served prison time for his role in the SS, Wolff allegedly went on to work for the CIA. He died in 1984 at the age of eighty-four.

  Chapter 2

    1.  The Flying Circus was previously commanded by Manfred von Richthofen, Germany’s top fighter pilot in World War I. Richthofen, who was widely known as the Red Baron, was credited with eighty aerial victories before being killed in action on April 21, 1918.

    2.  Radio personality Hans Fritzche, industrialist Gustav Krupp, and banker Hjalmar Schacht were all acquitted. Fritzche was found not guilty, Krupp was excused for medical reasons, and Schacht had actually been held in a German concentration camp for a period of time. This was seen as proof of his innocence.

    3.  Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner was Austrian by birth and rose to become one of the most feared men in the SS. He was distinguished by his towering six-foot-four-inch height, dueling scar, and ferocious temper. Kaltenbrunner was among those most instrumental in implementing Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” on the Jewish population.

  Chapter 3

    1.  First used in Lemkin’s 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, the term comprises the Greek word genos (race) plus the word form -cide (killer). The literal term refers to the killing of a tribe. The German term for such murders is Völkermord.

    2.  He didn’t. The “biggest murder trial of the century,” as it was known in the Associated Press, would be Ferencz’s one and only trial.

    3.  Those who weren’t executed were spared for lack of evidence, demonstration of remorse, or having openly opposed the crimes for which they were charged.

    4.  Some postwar Catholic leaders in Germany believed Ohlendorf was not guilty because he was following orders. In addition, a West German law (Grundgesetz) passed in 1949 forbade capital punishment. The Nuremberg death sentences were not originally open to appeal, but this was reversed by General Clay’s replacement, American high commissioner John McCloy. On January 30, 1951, bowing to pressure from the Church, media, and German politicians, McCloy reduced the sentences of twenty-one men convicted to die in the Einsatzgruppen and the Dachau war crimes trials. They were instead sentenced to lifetime prison terms. However, by the mid-1950s, the West German government no longer viewed these men as war criminals but as political prisoners. All were subsequently released.

    5.  There were originally twenty-four defendants in the Einsatzgruppen trial. However, only twenty-two were tried. Defendant Otto Rasch was removed from the trial for medical reasons and died soon after. Defendant Emil Haussmann committed suicide in his cell before the initial arraignment.

  Chapter 4

    1.  The inn is still operating in the town of Sterzing.

    2.  In 2011, researchers will discover that more than 120,000 of these papers were handed out by the Red Cross. Overwhelmed by the millions of applicants, the Red Cross often had no way to discern the difference between genuine refugees and former SS men.

    3.  This figure was unearthed by researchers in 2011. It is based upon the International Committee of the Red Cross’s own internal archives.

    4.  One American dollar was equal to 625 Italian lira in 1949, making the bribe equivalent to $32. Adjusted for inflation, this would be $320 in modern currency.

    5.  Italian contacts working with the Nazi underground routinely paid lucrative bribes to the local authorities.

  Chapter 5

    1.  In 1947, Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco invited Juan Perón to visit Spain. Franco was one of the few remaining Fascist leaders in Europe. Thinking the move to be politically dangerous, particularly with the United States, Perón instead sent Evita. To make it seem as if the visit wasn’t focused solely on Spain, Evita Perón branded the journey a “goodwill” tour, also paying her respects to other European leaders, including Pope Pius XII and Charles de Gaulle. King George VI of Great Britain refused to meet with Evita because of Argentina’s association with Hitler.

    2.  Juan Perón spent the first two years of World War II in Italy as a military observer, where he gained great respect for Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. In 1941, Perón returned to Argentina, which remained neutral throughout most of the war, despite Allied pressure to declare war on Germany. Argentina’s reluctance to do so was based on a large German immigrant population and an admiration of Germany’s military history, which predated the First World War. It wasn’t until March 27, 1945, that Argentina gave in to these demands, mostly out of fear of postwar economic isolation. At the time, Juan Perón was serving as Argentina’s minister of war. He was first elected president by a popular vote in 1946.

    3.  A lobotomy is a procedure that severs the neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is a powerful organizational center, responsible for planning, personality, and creativity. It is located just behind the forehead. The procedure is performed by inserting a slender probe into the eye socket, breaking through the thin bone behind the eye, and twirling the probe to slice through the prefrontal cortex. The procedure is then repeated on the other eye socket. In all, a lobotomy takes less than ten minutes.

    4.  Many American POW camps became porous a
fter the end of the war, and many of those being held simply walked out the front gate.

    5.  The term ghetto is Italian, given to the Jewish quarter of Venice in the sixteenth century. City officials compelled the Venetian Jews to reside solely within that confined area.

    6.  Diamant pretended to be a former Dutch SS official in order to win the trust of forty-year-old Maria Mösenbacher and eventually secure the photograph. During the war, Diamant lived for a time in the Warsaw ghetto before being sent to Auschwitz.

    7.  The press got onto the story of the Nazi fugitive when American authorities announced he had escaped from the POW camp. Myths about him getting killed by partisans in Austria and escaping to the Middle East became widespread.

    8.  Die Spinne (The Spider) was allegedly founded by Otto Skorzeny, a German commando during World War II. There is conjecture whether it was a branch of ODESSA or its own entity. Another founding member was Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi intelligence officer who later worked for the CIA and West Germany. Evidence suggests Die Spinne operated out of Fascist Spain in the decade after the war, then relocated to South America in the 1980s.

    9.  The ABC Restaurant and Bar, as it is formally known, first opened in 1929. Its specialty is German food and beer. Located at the corner of San Martin and Lavalle Streets in downtown Buenos Aires, the ABC is still open for business.

  10.  The Torah is the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), part of the Tanach (comprised of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings). It mentions the “eye for an eye” punishment in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. These were likely authored by Moses between 1446 and 1406 BC. However, the “eye for an eye” punishment was used three hundred years earlier by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who codified a series of laws and punishments. In legal terms, this law of retaliation is known as lex talionis and today refers more often to settling financial disputes rather than physical issues.

  Chapter 6

    1.  Mossad, which means “institute” in Hebrew, is shorthand for the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.

    2.  Bauer was a leading member of the Social Democratic Party and was working to organize a strike against the Nazis when he was taken prisoner and sent to the Heuberg concentration camp.

    3.  Great Britain did not know they were funding the Avengers. In 1944, the British controlled Palestine, the land that would become Israel. Many Jewish residents of this region joined the British army and fought as a unit known as the Jewish Brigade. They were not disbanded until long after the war, allowing some of these soldiers to conduct anti-Nazi exercises in Europe under the guise of carrying out normal operations.

    4.  Israel declared itself an independent nation on May 14, 1948. The Mossad was formed on December 13, 1949.

    5.  The race laws were enacted in 1935, forbidding marriage, sex, and a number of other relationships between Germans and Jews. Penalties included fines and prison with hard labor. Globke personally helped write the Enabling Act of 1933, which helped Adolf Hitler rise to power, and the Reich Citizenship Law, revoking the right of Jews to be German citizens. After the war, the forty-seven-year-old Globke testified for both the prosecution and defense at the Nuremberg Trials. Due to the fact that he had been denied membership in the Nazi Party because of his Catholic faith, he was not charged with any crimes. Globke quietly became a powerful figure in postwar Germany, using personal relationships formed during his many years in the Nazi regime to become a behind-the-scenes force in the German chancellery. In 1951, Globke pushed through legislation that provided benefits, pensions, and even back pay to civil servants who served in the Nazi regime. Noted author John le Carré wrote of the law’s passage: “civil servants of the Hitler regime … would henceforth receive full restitution of such pay, back-pay, and pension rights as they would have enjoyed if the Second World War hadn’t taken place, or if Germany had won it.” As Globke gained power and became familiar with secrets about German intelligence operations, the CIA and German government actively sought to suppress public knowledge of his past.

    6.  The “Kastner train” is one of World War II’s most bizarre happenings. The thirty-five cattle cars loaded with more than a thousand of Budapest’s wealthiest Jews (and 388 people from Rudolf Kastner’s hometown of Kolozsvár) rolled out of the city on June 30, 1944. Rather than heading straight to Switzerland, the train was routed hundreds of miles north to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp because Adolf Eichmann wanted to review passengers’ statuses. There, in an example of the privileged treatment that would see Kastner placed on trial, the passengers were held in a special section of the facility, where they enjoyed poetry readings and intellectual discussion. By mid-August, the first of the group were loaded onto trains and taken into Switzerland. The final passengers would not leave the camp until December 1944. A total of 1,670 individuals made it safely into Switzerland, where they occupied luxury hotels until the end of the war.

  Chapter 7

    1.  The French Foreign Legion is comprised of individuals from other nations who willingly take up arms in defense of France and its territories. Germans have long outnumbered other nationalities as members. This was particularly true between 1945 and 1950, when it is said that the Legion recruited ex-SS soldiers straight out of POW camps and into their ranks. The focus of French fighting in the 1950s was in their colony of Indochina—later to be known as Vietnam. The French lost this war, with the Battle of Diem Bien Phu, now seen as one of history’s most stunning examples of a smaller nation defeating their colonial master. The French ranks were filled with German noncommissioned officers at that time.

    2.  The color of Bormann’s Nazi Party uniform was brown. The term Brown Eminence is a derivation of the French term éminence grise (“gray eminence”), which referred to the seventeenth-century French cardinal Richelieu’s power-wielding assistant, François Leclerc du Tremblay, a friar fond of dressing in an unbleached woolen tunic.

    3.  Rommel was given a choice between the disgrace of a public hanging or privately committing suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule. He chose suicide and was rewarded with a lavish state funeral.

    4.  Hitler’s last will and testament is now held in a secure vault at the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

    5.  Despite the fact that his son died twelve years after the publication of his Bormann book, Paul Manning thoroughly believed that the murder was revenge. He subsequently stopped researching a follow-up book titled “The Search for Martin Bormann,” which was never published. Paul Manning died of natural causes in 1995.

  Chapter 8

    1.  The name comes from the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in central Munich from which Hitler tried to stage his revolution.

    2.  Opinion is divided over whether Josef Mengele attended his father’s burial. Many say there is no photographic evidence to support this claim. However, Petra Kelly, a German politician who attended the Catholic girls’ school in Günzburg at the time of the funeral, claimed in 1985 that several of the nuns in residence told her that Mengele spent four to five days hiding in the local convent. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has made a similar claim.

  Chapter 9

    1.  The document that allowed Bauer to be released from the Heuberg concentration camp read, “We unconditionally support the Fatherland in the German fight for honor and peace.” One of Bauer’s fellow inmates and a good friend, Kurt Schumacher, refused to sign. He would not be released from German custody until the end of the war in 1945, making him one of the longest-serving prisoners of the Third Reich. Fritz Bauer openly marveled at this display of “incredible belief and courage.”

    2.  Paragraph 175, the article of German law prohibiting intimate relations between men, was first passed in 1871. Homosexual acts were subject to criminal prosecution. It was not un
til 1994 that this law was repealed.

    3.  Years before resorting to mass murder during World War II, the Nazis first tried to rid the nation of Jews by “the Zionist emigration of the Jews from Germany by any means.” Of the estimated 550,000 Jews living in Germany in 1933, 130,000 emigrated by 1938.

    4.  On April 4, 1945, shortly after Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army crossed the Rhine River and advanced toward the German heartland, displaced persons told American intelligence officers about gold and other precious treasures being hidden in the nearby Kaiseroda potassium mine. The main shaft was twenty-one hundred feet below the surface. Upon entering the mine, American soldiers found long rooms filled with currency, gold, silver, platinum, and precious works of art. The Germans had been attempting to smuggle this wealth out of Berlin, to be hidden and later used to fund a resurgent Fourth Reich.

  Chapter 10

    1.  The singular form is sayan (“helper”).

    2.  About $650 American dollars at the time. This is an estimated $5,500 in modern money.

    3.  Roughly $65 dollars, or $550 in today’s currency. This was actually slightly higher than the average Argentine wage earner, leading some historians to believe Eichmann was given a preferential salary due to his SS connections in Argentina.