The Himmler's SS (58 page)

Otto Ohlendorf pleading ‘not guilty' at Nürnberg, 15 September 1947. Behind him sit his former RSHA colleagues Heinz Jost, Erich Naumann, Werner Braune and Walter Hänsch. As one-time commander of Einsatzgruppe ‘D' in Russia, and chief of the SD in Germany, Ohlendorf was sentenced to death.

However, while the majority of the very highest SS leaders were too well known to avoid detection and arrest by the Allies at the end of the war, there were many more anonymous and rather faceless individuals who quite easily evaded capture. Prominent among such men were Heinrich Müller, Richard Glücks and Dr Josef Mengele, whose associations with the extermination programme earned them death sentences ‘in absentia' from the Nürnberg tribunal. Hundreds of junior SS officers and NCOs from concentration camp guard units, policemen who had served with Einsatzgruppen in the east, and foreign volunteers such as Léon Degrelle who were regarded as arch-traitors in their own countries, managed to flee to the safety of sympathetic nations and set up new and comfortable lives for themselves after 1945. Their ability to do so was due almost entirely to the assistance provided by a vast and typically efficient escape network organised by the SS in its terminal stages.

At the end of 1944, Himmler ordered the RSHA to prepare false identity documents and passports bearing fictitious names which were subsequently distributed to selected leading members of the SS and NSDAP. After the surrender was signed, many top Nazis went into hiding or operated openly under their new pseudonyms. In front of the very eyes of the Allied administration, valuable contacts were established between high-ranking Nazis in prison and new underground groups outside, using secret codes devised by the SD before the collapse of the Third Reich. The initial overall organisation which co-ordinated these activities was called ‘Spinne', or ‘Spider', and was restricted to operating within Germany itself. Most important ex-SS men did not want to hang around the Homeland for too long, however, and by 1946 they decided that the time had come to set up a worldwide escape network. As a result, the ODESSA (Organisation der SS-Angehörigen, or Organisation of SS Members) came into being the following year.

In a surprisingly short time, using the expertise of its RSHA veterans, ODESSA built up an efficient system of couriers who managed to smuggle wanted SS men and other Nazis out of the country. A few enterprising individuals even secured jobs driving US Army trucks on the Munich–Salzburg autobahn, and hid fugitives in the backs of the vehicles, which were seldom searched by the American military police, to get them safely across the Austrian border. Every forty miles or so, an ODESSA Anlaufstelle, or reception centre, was established, run by at least three but not more than five people, who knew only the Anlaufstellen on either side of them along the route. These relay points covered the entire German–Austrian frontier, with the most important ones being situated at Ostermiething in Upper Austria, Zell-am-See in the Salzburg District, and Igls near Innsbruck in the Tyrol. Many SS men on the run ended up at either Bregenz or Lindau, both on Lake Constance, from where they crossed into Switzerland and thereafter boarded civil airline flights to the Middle East or South America. ODESSA also ran a so-called Monastery Route, between Austria and Italy, where sympathetic Roman Catholic clergy, particularly Franciscan friars, passed hunted SS men down a long line of religious ‘safe houses'. Moreover, the organisation had connections with professional smugglers in all frontier areas, and cultivated valuable contacts in the Spanish, Egyptian, Syrian and numerous South American embassies in various European capitals. One of the main organisers was Obersturmbannführer Franz Roestel, formerly of the Waffen-SS division ‘Frundsberg'. Although not on the ‘wanted' list himself, he operated under the assumed name of Haddad Said, and found places for many of his ex-colleagues as military advisers to the governments of developing Arab states.

All this cost money, a resource which ODESSA conveniently had in virtually unlimited supply. The huge profits amassed through the SS economic enterprises, the substantial donations received over many years from members of the Freundeskreis RfSS and the Fördernde Mitglieder, and the cash raised by the sale of confiscated Jewish property and art treasures looted from the occupied territories had filled the wartime coffers of the SS to the point of overflow. Early in 1945, the WVHA and RSHA conspired to liquidate all remaining SS assets and transfer the bulk of its money into bank accounts opened in neutral countries. These were subsequently used to establish and finance over 750 SS-sponsored companies which sprang up all over the world, including 112 in Spain, 58 in Portugal, 35 in Turkey, 98 in Argentina, 214 in Switzerland and 233 in other countries. Trusted former SS officers suddenly and unexpectedly had substantial sums deposited into their personal bank accounts, which explains how so many of them became ‘successful businessmen' in later life. One ex-Obersturmbannführer paid a visit to his bank in 1947 to discover that his account, which had stood at a modest 12,000 Marks the previous week, had risen abruptly to over 2,600,000 Marks! He had no idea where the additional money had come from, until he recalled a mysterious visit he had had in the autumn of 1944 from two senior SS officers, who wanted to know the number of his bank account and asked for a specimen of his signature on two blank sheets of paper. Although no explanation had been given at the time, they had evidently been preparing the groundwork for the distribution of SS funds after the war.

It has been estimated that between 1945 and 1948 the SS managed to hide the present-day equivalent of around £1,000,000,000 in money and assets in various parts of the world. The six lists of the people authorised to dispose of, and benefit from, these funds are probably the most important undiscovered documents of the Third Reich. Two were in the hands of the men who organised ODESSA in 1947, two are said to be in the safe-keeping of banks, and one of the remaining two is believed to be lying at the bottom of Lake Töplitz in Austria, where a large quantity of Nazi loot was hurriedly sunk in 1945. The vast majority of those named on the lists are now dead, but their children live on. There can be little doubt that many respected family businesses currently operating successfully across the globe owe their origins and continued existence to ODESSA and the funds of the SS.

While ODESSA was always a secret network, geared towards securing the escape of SS war criminals and the continuance of Nazi ideology, a second well-publicised organisation for ex-SS men was established at about the same time. It was the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Soldaten der ehemal Waffen-SS, or HIAG, the Welfare Association of Former Soldiers of the Waffen-SS. HIAG consistently denied any connection with ODESSA, but the latter undoubtedly financed it in the early days. Its avowed purpose was to campaign for and achieve the payment of state benefits to exservicemen of the Waffen-SS, particularly the war-wounded, who did not qualify for regular Wehrmacht disability pensions. In that aim, it was moderately successful. Over the years, as its original membership progressively died off, HIAG dwindled in importance to become only a pale shadow of its former self, devoted almost entirely to the running of a small publishing house, Munin-Verlag GmbH of Osnabrück, which produced literature celebrating the combat achievements of SS field troops during the Second World War. The dismemberment of HIAG in the early 1990s saw the end of the last acknowledged active remnant of the SS.

However, while the SS may now be consigned to the history books, interest in the story of the organisation, and its regalia, has never been greater. The Waffen-SS in particular continues to hold a position of unique interest, with recent analyses setting aside the atrocities and reappraising the Waffen-SS as an élite multi-national fighting force, even a forerunner of NATO, whose soldiers earned the respect not only of their Wehrmacht comrades but also of their enemies.

A veritable multi-million pound business has grown up around the buying and selling of SS militaria and other memorabilia. Indeed, the collecting of SS regalia began even before the cessation of hostilities in May 1945. As German towns and cities, and concentration camps, fell to the Allies, SS items rapidly discarded by their owners were just as quickly ‘snapped up' by souvenir-hunting British and American troops. Like their counterparts in armies throughout history, the victors of the Second World War eagerly traded in and bartered with the spoils taken from the vanquished. Large stockpiles of SS uniforms at Dachau were liberated
en masse;
SS stores and military retailers had their premises stripped; prisoners-of-war had their badges confiscated; and so on. Such was the availability of SS effects that no great value was put on any of them. Soldiers might exchange an SS general's peaked cap for an Iron Cross 2nd Class, a death's head ring for a belt buckle or a Reichsführer's sword of honour for a steel helmet. Few knew exactly what was passing through their hands: they merely swapped things according to individual preferences. When the Allied troops returned home with this booty they found a ready market for their acquisitions. With some elementary research into the subject, a more discerning breed of collector soon evolved and the whole business took off.

During the 1950s and 1960s, such was the demand for all manner of National Socialist regalia, both military and civil, that several unscrupulous dealers began to have it reproduced and passed their fakes off as genuine articles. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed an even bigger boom in the trade and a resultant explosion in the creation of improved fakes to meet the ever-increasing demand. While the collecting of SS items will always be distasteful to many, for quite understandable reasons, the fact remains that these are now the most sought after pieces of Nazi regalia. Not an insignificant number of Jewish businessmen have ‘had the last laugh' by dealing in fake SS militaria for which they charge exorbitant prices, making considerable profits as a result. The cash benefit of selling SS items was brought to a head during the late 1980s, when the official in charge of the German archives storing wartime SS personnel records amassed a fortune by removing documents signed by Himmler, Heydrich and the like and selling them on the open market. He subsequently received a lengthy jail sentence for his efforts, and collectors throughout the world were obliged to return to the authorities in Germany items which they had bought in good faith.

Among the SS pieces now in greatest demand are peaked caps, tunics, camouflage clothing and insignia of all types. Originals are hard to find, and to meet the demand the fakers have turned to producing ‘fantasy' items which had no authentic counterparts during the Third Reich! Foremost among these are the following ‘fantasy' cuff titles, none of which existed before the end of the Second World War:

Berlin

Böhmen-Mähren

Britisches Freikorps

Dirlewanger

Galizien

Junkerschule Tölz

Kaminski

Leibstandarte

Lettland

Lützow

Nibelungen

Otto Skorzeny

Schill

Seelager

SS-Polizei

Totenkopf I

Totenkopf II

Totenkopf III

Ungarn

Wallonie

While the fakers have always tended to concentrate on the lucrative areas of collar patches, shoulder straps, arm eagles and so on, every type of SS badge has been copied. Reproductions include sports vest insignia, unit ciphers, the whole range of foreign volunteer arm shields, mountain troop edelweisses, Old Campaigner's chevrons, breast runes and the rank insignia for camouflage clothing. Copy piping and Tresse for collars and shoulder straps are available by the metre, and even RZM labels have been faked for sewing on to bogus uniforms and badges. Moreover, dozens of other SS collectables have been reproduced. Belt buckles, cap cords, tunic buttons, sword knots, identity papers and discs, flags, pennants and rings are just a small selection. Waffen-SS recruiting posters, driving licences and even song books have been reprinted. Convincing new fakes regularly appear with plausible ‘pedigrees' designed to assist their acceptance. In 1992, for example, a ‘batch of SS uniform thread' was allegedly ‘found in the former East Germany' and rolls of it, complete with RZM labels attached, circulated widely on the collectors' market. Suspicions were soon aroused by the sheer quantities of thread available, however, and these suspicions were duly justified when one buyer cut open his newly acquired roll to reveal the words ‘Made in Pakistan' stamped inside. Yet another ‘Eastern bloc find' had been exposed!

The point of all this is that there would be no purpose in producing such fake trash if there were not a vast and lucrative market for it. Most buyers think they are acquiring true relics of the SS, and are still captivated by the death's head and runes, even with the full knowledge of what these came to represent during the Second World War. It therefore becomes all the easier to understand how Himmler's Black Order could hypnotise so many ordinary Germans in the 1930s and set them eagerly along the road to perpetual damnation.