Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler (62 page)

184    
“massive intelligence-gathering advantage”:
F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp,
Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); see also
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk
.

184    
Berchtesgaden:
Arthur H. Mitchell,
Hitler’s Mountain: The Führer, Obersalzberg, and the American Occupation of Berchtesgaden
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007).

184    
Oscar Oeser:
Arthur G. Bedeia, ed., “Guilty of Enthusiasm,” in
Management Laureates
, vol. 3 (London: JAI Press, 1993); also see online history of St. Andrews University School of Psychology.

184    
Colossus:
Peter Thorne and John McCutchan,
The Path to Colossus … an historical look at the development of the electronic computer.
A presentation to Engineering Heritage Victoria, June 19, 2008,
www.consuleng.com.au/The%20Path%20to%20Colossus%20080827%20revcomp.pdf
.

185    
“Prof. Oeser was amazed at what he found”:
http://www.ellsbury.com/enigmabombe.htm
; see also Lewin,
Ultra Goes to War
. There are references to this machine being introduced for Abwehr signal traffic in December 1944 that refer to it by the designation Schlüsselgerät 41—SG41. (By that date Adm. Canaris was in Gestapo custody, and the Abwehr had passed under the control of the SS Reich Main Security Office.) The Abwehr’s original Enigma system had been broken at Bletchley Park in December 1941 by Alfred Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox, and that used by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in August 1942 by Keith Batey, but Batey’s obituary (London
Times
, September 10, 2010) confirms that neither he nor anyone else was able to reconstruct the working system of this new Siemens & Haske machine.

186    
“Bormann’s reply”:
Bar-Zohar,
Avengers.

186    
“fishing expedition”:
Whealey,
Hitler and Spain
.

186    
Gustav Winter:
Juan Luis Calbarro, “Vida y leyenda de Gustav Winter,”
Historia
magazine, 16, April–May 2005.

187    
“peninsula of Jandía”:
“Fuerteventura: geología, naturaleza y actividad humana.” A presentation to Canaries Association for Scientific Education, Fuerteventura, December 5–9, 2007; PDF available online,
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:pjgK76W-XcUJ:www.vierayclavijo.org/html/pdf/cuadernillos/07/0712_fuerteventura.pdf+%22Fuerteventura:+geolog%C3%ADa,+naturaleza+y+actividad+humana%22&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiaB_KX2fCx0XOM4pKP-cXpXS96Uc-62bJnkDFsj58b06zmhrQdQ264BUDbJ0x2w3LW14C69671ZXNYdyiOL_Q2Nhoq9rPQ9fckQyYWQCH1HCIh5aMlXPD3VhZpNrfOqybAii_9&sig=AHIEtbRrbZszO9TEPoIlRji_uOMXYk-aZA
. Quotations from interview with Isabel Winter, Gustav Winter’s wife, are taken from this presentation. In 1984, an extremely colorful tale about the accidental discovery of a “U-boat pen” tunneled into the island was published by a German magazine. This fiction has been exploded by the U-boat historian Jak P. Mallmann Showell in his book
U-Boats At War: Landings on Hostile Shores
(Hersham, UK: Ian Allan, 2000), for which he carried out field research and a comprehensive analysis of U-boat orders, logs, and mission reports relevant to the Canary Islands. There are detailed records of the U-boat supply base run from an “interned” German freighter in Las Palmas harbor on Gran Canaria, but no suggestion that U-boats visited Fuerteventura. This is hardly surprising: Villa Winter was designed for a single purpose, and anything that might draw attention to it before 1945 was deliberately avoided.

187    
“dark tales”:
Elizabeth Nash, “Germans Helped Franco Run Civil War Death Camps,” London Independent, February 22, 2002,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germans-helped-franco-run-civil-war-death-camps-661623.html
.

187    
“near Bordeaux”:
Interview with Isabel Winter.

187    
“built a runway”:
Enrique Nácher, Gran Canaria. “La Leyenda de Gustav Winter: ¿Espía nazi en Fuerteventura?” Historia 16, April–May 2005, republished at
http://hispanismo.org/reino-de-las-canarias/5643-la-leyenda-de-gustav-winter-espia-nazi-en-fuerteventura.html
.

188    
“relocations to the Canaries”:
The Associated Press, Moscow, February 1, 1944.

188    
Walter Winchell:
“A Reporter’s Report to the Nation,” syndicated, October 26, 1944. Winchell was scathing about Carlton Hayes, who was appointed U.S. ambassador to Spain in 1942. In spring 1944, Hayes was reportedly obstructive to Operation Safehaven, the U.S. operation designed to find and eliminate German industrial and commercial assets throughout the world. According to Donald P. Steury—a CIA officer in residence at the University of Southern California, writing on the agency’s website—Samuel Klaus, the Federal Economic Administration team leader in Spain, indicated that Hayes was unwilling to cooperate and that for several months the embassy would not allow OSS Madrid to pass Safehaven material or even background economic reporting to Washington.

188    
“Hitler’s change of aircraft”:
“Is Hitler in Spain?”
Daily Express
, London, June 19, 1945.

189    
experience of the crews:
Jak P. Mallmann Showell,
U-Boat Commanders and Crews 1935–45
(Ramsbury, UK: Crowood Press, 1998).

190    
“augmented by nonregulation items”:
http://www.uboataces.com/articles-life-uboat.shtml
.

190    
“The usually relaxed atmosphere”
to the end of Chapter 16:
This section of chapter 16 constitutes one of the very few sections in this book that cannot be documented but is based on our own extensive researches and those of our U-boat expert, Innes McCartney, and in consultation with our Luftwaffe expert, Tony Holmes. The types of aircraft employed by the Spanish air force and the military air routes to Fuerteventura and the Jandía Peninsula are based on rigorous knowledge down to which Ju 52s were passed to the Spanish air force by the Condor Legion, and their respective bases. We have established that the Jandía Peninsula was a secret Abwehr facility that had been planned well before the war and built under severe duress by Franco’s Republican political prisoners at great human cost. Such a massive investment in an area of barren, hostile terrain begs the question: what other purpose did it have but as a staging post for an elaborate escape plan? The airstrip at the southern tip of the peninsula was capable of taking the Luftwaffe’s largest aircraft, such as the Fw-200 Condor or a Ju-290. It is still visible on Google Earth. The whole Jandía Peninsula was a forbidden military zone throughout the war and for years thereafter.

The Allies were seriously concerned that the Canary Islands were being used by the Germans to support U-boat operations. This suspicion was based on the interception of a secret Kriegsmarine document titled
U-Plätze
, or “U-Places,” which became interpreted as “U-Bases” with the presumption that they were U-boat bases. The “U” in fact related to
Unterkunft
, or “refuge,” and there were scores of them dotted around the world, intended to shelter all types of Kriegsmarine vessels—places to undertake repairs or find fresh water. Similarly there were consistent rumors among the Allies that there were U-boat bases along the South American coastline, even as far south as Tierra del Fuego. There is no evidence to support such a proposition, but the list of locations in the
U-Plätze
does mention a tiny island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, the Canary Islands were used by the Nazis to support U-boats; a German tanker was permanently moored at Las Palmas on Gran Canaria to allow U-boats to sneak in at night and refuel clandestinely. Accordingly, Fuerteventura and Jandía in particular were not designed and never acted as a support facility for U-boats or any other activity until April 1945, yet the Villa Winter complex and airstrip had been constructed at vast expense.

As to the actual circumstances of Hitler’s journey by U-boat, they have perforce to be a matter of conjecture and informed speculation based on solid research as to the realities of living over long periods of time in the claustrophobic world of the submariner. In particular, we have drawn on the experiences of the Yanagi, the secret underwater trade between Germany and Japan conducted by German and Japanese submarines for the transfer of vital strategic resources, such as tungsten, tin, quinine, coffee, opium, high technology, and VIPs, between 1942 and 1945. These voyages between Europe and Japan were immensely long and, with much time spent underwater, tedious in the extreme. They did, however, show us how U-boats and Japanese submarines were modified for the passage of VIPs.

191    
toilets:
U.S. Navy report, “Sanitation aboard Former German Type IXC,” March 1946,
www.uboatarchive.net/DesignStudiesTypeIXC.htm
.

191    
food:
http://www.uboataces.com/articles-life-uboat.shtml
.

191    
“arrived off the Argentine coast aboard U-880”:
Stanley Ross, Overseas News Agency, “U-Boats Base Spy Surge in Latin America,”
Christian Science Monitor
, January 24, 1945.

192    
“Koehn was back”:
The Associated Press, Montevideo, Uruguay, August 18, 1945.

192    
Curtiss Condor II:
Peter M. Bowers,
Curtiss Aircraft 1907–1947
(London: Putnam, 1987).

Chapter 17: A
RGENTINA
—L
AND OF
S
ILVER

194    
“when war broke out in 1939”:
http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civilian/rg-84-argentina.html
.

195    
Hasse quote:
Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn,
The Plot Against the Peace: A Warning to the Nation
(New York: Dial Press, 1944).

195    
Wilhelm Canaris:
Richard Bassett,
Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery
(London: Cassell, 2005).

195    
Estancia San Ramón:
Patrick Burnside,
El Escape de Hitler
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta, 2000).

196    
“standing joke”:
Jorge Camasara,
Puerto Seguro: Desembarcos clandestinos en la Patagonia [Safe Haven: Clandestine Landings in Patagonia]
(Buenos Aires: Norma Editorial, 2006).