Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler (24 page)

ON THURSDAY, APRIL 12
,
1945
, the day that Lt. Lambie’s team discovered the uranium at Stassfurt, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suffered a massive 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
massive 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 Japanese city of Hiroshima and then a second bomb on Nagasaki. Within days the Japanese empire surrendered and the military invasion of Japan 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

B
ORMANN,
D
ULLES, AND
O
PERATION
C
ROSSWORD

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 assigned 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 Führer stood hunched over the situation maps with his magnifying glass, 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 Nazi leaders to the Führer, 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 Göring, 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, Göring’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 Göring’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 Nazi hierarchy was present
at the Eagle’s Nest, including Göring, 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-anticipated 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 Führer 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 Führer 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 Führer, 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 titles, 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 class, Bormann had suggested to the Führer 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 Führer’s faith in his “
treue Heinrich
” was shaken—just as Bormann had intended. Others in the Nazi 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 Göring. Bormann now had a strong coterie of allies in his bid for power and exclusive access to the Führer. These included SS and Police Gen.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
, Himmler’s deputy as head of the RSHA; the enigmatic SS and Police Gen. Heinrich Müller, 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 assigned somewhere else.” Himmler retired to the military hospital at Hohenlychen and asked the Führer to be relieved of his command on “medical grounds,” so as to be able to concentrate on all his other responsibilities. Meanwhile, Göring 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 Führer’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 Führer 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 Nazi 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 Nazi leadership.

With his grip on the Nazi court now increasingly assured, Bormann turned his attention to asserting his absolute authority over the gauleiters—the party chiefs who governed the forty-two regions of the Greater German Reich. In “Gestapo” Müller, Bormann had a powerful ally to enforce his will. As always, Bormann’s technique was the carrot and the stick. Total loyalty to the Führer remained paramount, and the faithful execution of all orders emanating from the Führer’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 Führer’s command, I hereby direct …” Thanks to Müller’s Gestapo spiderweb, Bormann’s intelligence on activities across the shrinking Reich remained extensive. The Gestapo was a vast organization, embracing many sections and subsections responsible for a wide range of surveillance and executive functions in the Reich and beyond. When the gauleiter of Bayreuth had the temerity to consign Bormann’s telexes to the trash bin, he was shot as a defeatist by Müller’s men on Bormann’s orders. That was the stick: the carrot was a new identity at the end of the war for those who toed the party line. The new identity papers were produced by the Jewish forgers at Sachsenhausen concentration camp through Operation Bernhard.

Following the failure of the Ardennes offensive, Hitler returned to Berlin and took up residence in the Old Reich Chancellery until repeated air raids forced him to seek permanent shelter in the Führerbunker, situated beneath the chancellery gardens, in mid-February. Thursday, April 12, 1945, was a day of rejoicing in the underground bunker. In the midnight hours, when Hitler was at his most energetic, the news arrived of President Roosevelt’s death. To Hitler, this seemed like a salvation reminiscent of the death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in 1762, which had saved Hitler’s hero Frederick the Great of Prussia during the Seven Years’ War. In his order of the day to the Wehrmacht on April 13, Hitler predicted that the fortunes of war had changed “now that destiny has removed the greatest war criminal in the world from the Earth.” Bormann was equally exultant; immediately contacting all his gauleiters by telex, he prophesied “a total reversal in the attitude of the Western powers toward the Soviet offensive in Europe.” Stalin’s ultimate fear of a separate peace between the Western Allies and Germany, and Hitler’s ultimate hope of an accommodation with the Allies, now appeared feasible, since the champion of unconditional surrender was dead and Nazi Germany was still not defeated. Bormann concluded his telex message with the claim that this was “the
best news we have had in years
.… Tell all the men, the most dangerous man of this war is dead.” To Bormann, Roosevelt’s death provided a golden opportunity to make the ultimate deal to secure the success of his Project Land of Fire.

IN BERN, THE OSS STATION CHIEF
Allen Dulles had continued to cultivate his own web of contacts, despite the frustration of his hopes to support the German resistance movement prior to the July bomb plot. Both Britain and America still discouraged contact with any envoys extending peace feelers from the Nazi hierarchy, for fear of offending Joseph Stalin and compromising the agreement to demand unconditional surrender. However, with the death of Roosevelt and the very heavy casualties suffered by the Western Allies during the winter of 1944–45, opinion was beginning to soften slightly in some quarters. Similarly, perceptions of “Uncle Joe’s” Russia as simply a stalwart ally against Nazi Germany were changing rapidly. To Dulles, the advance westward of the Red Army presented a
clear and present danger
to Europe and to American interests in the future.