First SEALs (33 page)

In a bizarre twist of fate, some inmates of the camp had the opportunity to become part of the most diabolical part of the Third Reich that had enslaved them—the SS. “About the middle of April, a request was made to the prisoners for volunteers for the Waffen SS (Infantry). It was limited to Germans (Austrians included) and about 1000 volunteered, as they understood that the other alternative was execution (this was later disproved). Some also sought a chance to escape in this way. About 300 were selected from those volunteers, given regular SS rations, including cigarettes, outfitted in old
Afrika Korps
light khaki, drilled and trained for combat and assigned to minor policing tasks inside the camp. It was a very clear demonstration of the inherent German love for authority and the ruthlessness with which they automatically operate. From fellow prisoners, they overnight became our masters and did not spare the rod.”

The desperation inside Mauthausen represented a microcosm of the entire Third Reich that was crumbling before the Allied offensives.

27

LAST ACTS

I
N
A
PRIL 1945, THE
A
LLIES UNLEASHED
their last great offensive in northern Italy. The Eighth Army attacked in the east on April 9, and General Mark Clark's Fifth Army assaulted the center.
To lay the foundation for this effort, seventy-five different OSS teams had been working behind the German lines on missions to sabotage German operations and support the partisan resistance. Many of the most successful operations came from the Eighth Army Detachment and the Maritime Unit of Company D.

The OSS played a key role in the final Allied offensive, supplying weapons, food, and equipment to tens of thousands of Italian partisans; helping tie up countless German troops; and even clearing the Axis forces out of entire regions throughout northern Italy. Agents also continued to provide the Allies with a consistent stream of actionable intelligence, particularly bombing targets. They also conducted hit-and-run raids and ambushed German convoys. As a result, movement of Axis troops became nearly “
impossible.” Partisans accomplished “not only the immobilization of enemy columns, but the cutting of potential enemy escape routes to the north and the prevention of demolitions particularly of the municipal, industrial, and transport organizations.”

German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of all Axis forces in Italy, took note of the damage the OSS-supported Italian resistance caused and saw the need for a strong response. “
Activity
of partisan bands . . . has spread like lighting in the last ten days . . . and is beginning to show clear results,” he wrote. “Speedy and radical counter measures must anticipate this development.”

Throughout the waning months of the war, the MU and the Eighth Army Detachment units continued operating in the Adriatic. One of the more successful MU/Eighth Army efforts to enter northern Italy around this time was the PIA mission. Known as the Fabulous Five, the PIA operatives' code names were Rolando, Buffalo Bill, Red, Stalin, and Potato. In addition to gathering key intelligence and locating bombing targets, in one of the Five's great coups involved the capture of a Fascist police department “right under the eyes of the Gestapo.”

Despite the intensity and successes of the operations, OSS headquarters was in the midst of deactivating MU. Lieutenant Kelly and Captain Thiele had to make do with fewer Americans, as several men were already being called home. A month earlier the wounded, badly burned Ward Ellen had returned to the United States for treatment. The OSS was considering plans for the use of MU personnel in the Pacific. However, the war in that theater ended before many of the MU men from the Mediterranean could redeploy.

D
URING THE CLOSING WEEKS
of the war, the OSS coordinated a general uprising to liberate a heavily defended stretch of fifty miles of Italian coast. Operating with a team of San Marco commandos in a mission near the Po Delta region of the Adriatic Coast, Marine Lieutenant George Hearn, assigned to the MU, led a band of partisans in heavy fighting. It “
resulted in the killing of twenty-three enemy and the capturing of 436 prisoners, with a loss of one man killed and twenty-two wounded.” He also forced the surrender of Germans controlling the city of Chiogga, near Venice. “The German city garrison of thirty, though heavily fortified and
reinforced by more than one thousand men in the surrounding area, surrendered without firing a shot.”

In yet another operation, the MU planned a special project to capture valuable German technology. “
[MU will] move as quickly as possible into enemy-occupied Italy to seize the newest German maritime sabotage equipment for use in some other theater [PTO]. Plans are being drawn up with special teams to rush to the German operational bases, training and experimental areas, to seize this material,” noted one OSS planning document. James Angleton, from X-2 in Rome, the OSS resident expert on Italian underwater operations who had vetted the San Marco men, would assist in capturing high-value targets from
Decima MAS
.

T
HE
OSS
PLAYED THE CRUCIAL
role in the surrender of all German forces in Italy. During the final months of the war in Europe, the American intelligence agency engaged in intense negotiations with the SS. In the stunningly successful Operation Sunrise, SS
Obergruppenführer und General
Karl Wolff der Waffen, commander of the SS troops in Italy, covertly sent word to the Allies in early 1945 that he desired to facilitate a German surrender in the country. In Zurich, he secretly met with Allen W. Dulles, head of the OSS station in Switzerland (and a future director of the Central Intelligence Agency), and offered the surrender of all German and Italian troops in Italy.
*
As a result of these clandestine discussions, the Germans fighting on the Italian front surrendered on May 2. World War II in Italy ended six days before the capitulation of the remainder of the German armed forces in Europe.

*
Shortly thereafter U.S. troops arrested General Wolff at his private villa in Bolzano, Italy, and took him into captivity.

28

GOD BLESS AMERICA

L
IEUTENANT
J
ACK
T
AYLOR WAS SO SICK
with dysentery that he could hardly walk. From his normal weight of 165 pounds he was down to about 114. He recalled, “
I was so weak that I could not stand at attention . . . for roll call for any length of time without fainting.” Even in his weakened condition Taylor grabbed on to the hope drifting throughout Mauthausen:

Terribly optimistic rumors had been circulated regarding the position of the Russians and we had expected to be over-run by 20 April but, either the Russians turned north from Vienna to Czechoslovakia or they were stopped by superior German forces at the mouth of the Danube valley at St. Polten about 60 km away. About this time the first contact with the International Red Cross was made and all women from the western nations including the American Miss Dien were evacuated to Switzerland. These times became very dangerous as certain streets were walled off with barbed wire and we feared a mass execution. At certain unpredictable times, all prisoners were isolated in their blocks and a general tenseness gripped the whole camp, SS included. We heard rumors that the Commandant and other high ranking officers were discussing our futures as a mass wherein we would all be executed or transported to another area, or left in the lager which would be defended using us for hostages.

Food became impossible to obtain. Our daily ‘bread' was cut to practically nothing and [inmates] in prominent positions who had not eaten ‘prisoner food' for two years were at this time forced to. In the
Sanitatteslager
(hospital) the starving were cannibalizing their own dead comrades, cutting out the heart, liver and muscles. Jews in the tent camp (
Zelt lager
) were paying a $20 gold piece for two loaves of bread and half kilo of margarine, and two wagonloads of dead were hauled away each day to the mass grave on the hill. Gold, diamonds and jewelry were being accumulated by the SS from the Jews, and our bread was being used for this purpose. One night a lone plane came over and dropped one bomb (some said up to three bombs) in the adjacent Jew tent camp. We all then expected a mass bombing of the whole lager, but it never materialized. In the morning, I saw the upper half of a body, which had been blown from the Jew camp 200 yards and landed on the eaves of one of the bar barracks. About fifteen were killed and forty-seven injured most of whom probably eventually died.

The Red Cross arrived at Mauthausen on April 25 and “
started the evacuation of Frenchmen, Dutch, and Belgians.” At least one British officer spoke French well enough that he was able to get in on the evacuation efforts. “The Frenchmen departed singing the Marseillaise, and many were overcome with tears,” recalled Taylor. “Despite their successful efforts to remove some of the prisoners from the prison, the Red Cross workers weren't allowed within the camp itself, and thus didn't witness the true atrocities occurring there.” Later Taylor and the others saw evidence that the Red Cross had also delivered packages that the prisoners had never received. “SS troops were noticed eating bars of chocolate and smoking American cigarettes,” wrote Taylor. “Several empty cartons were picked up by prisoners and brought to me.” The SS had stolen all the American goods, and they also pilfered most of the things sent to the Frenchmen, giving each of them only one
bar of chocolate. Eventually Taylor received a package meant for Hungarian prisoners that contained Ovaltine, cheese, and sugar. He recalled, “My system was so deteriorated that I could not ‘keep down' this real food. My Czech and Pole friends did everything they could to help me and with the aid of some opium, I was able to get started again on the cheese and later the Ovaltine and sugar.”

But just as the Red Cross was bringing hope to some of the Mauthausen inmates, the Germans were cruelly ending the dreams of those who were left behind. On April 26, 1945, the day after Red Cross evacuations began, the Germans killed more than a thousand prisoners at the camp. With the Allies marching ever closer, the Reich increased executions and cremations, essentially covering up the evidence of the atrocities they had committed.

Unbeknownst to Taylor until much later, he narrowly escaped execution at that time. Taylor knew that he toiled under a death sentence—he had been in line, a dead man walking, three times before. But Russian soldiers who pushed him out of the way, taking his place, ultimately saved him from death on each of the previous occasions. The Russians sacrificed their lives for Taylor because they wanted the lone American officer to survive. They needed his position and his voice to bear witness to the horrors and atrocities the Nazis committed in the camps. However, Taylor was unaware that camp officials had once again drafted orders for his termination. A fellow inmate and friend of Taylor's named Dr. Stransky Milos worked in the political department. Seeing Taylor's name on the list of people to be executed, Milos erased his name as well as that of another friend on April 26.
The rest of the people on the list, many of them prisoners transported from Vienna along with Taylor, were executed on April 28.