Exorcising Hitler (43 page)

One means of beginning to distinguish between the various graduations of political turpitude was the length of time of membership and the date of joining. After Hitler came to power and then secured his dictatorship in the subsequent March 1933 elections, there had been a wave of applications to join the Party (the so-called
Märzgefallenen
), leading rapidly to orders from the Führer that there be a stop on new members, to maintain the Party’s allegedly elite character and avoid its being swamped with politically promiscuous careerists. This generalised blackballing edict was relaxed only in 1937. Thus, almost all who had joined before 30 January 1933 (around 1.5 million) could be reckoned as hard-core Nazis, most of the
Märzgefallenen
as opportunists, and many, if not most, of the post-1937 members as passive
Muss-Nazis
.

These were of course distinctions that any open-eyed Soviet citizen or observer of Stalin’s Russia would immediately recognise when comparing the composition of the membership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where to belong was also to open up otherwise closed career paths. This may have been why, although the Red Army could come down brutally, even murderously hard on evident war criminals or recognisable ‘class enemies’, there was a certain laxity when, perhaps, they read the familiar signs of passive careerism in this or that Nazi.

Thus Götz Bergander’s father, the distillery chemist and, since the advent of the Soviets, distillery director, had been a member of the Nazi Party, but a wholly passive one. So passive that the son of Dr Bergander’s closest friend, and thereby lifelong friend of Bergander junior, expressed complete disbelief sixty years later that the doctor could have been a Nazi. In his late teens at the time, old enough to understand the essentials of political allegiance, and still remembering downright subversive conversations between their two fathers around the wartime dining table, Steffen Cüppers was staggered by the fact that this serious, independent-minded scientist could have ever joined the NSDAP. But he had.
⁸

The Russians were naturally aware of Dr Bergander’s background, because he had filled in a questionnaire, but several things counted in his favour. First, he had always treated his foreign workers and servants well, and they had informed the Soviet occupiers of this – just as they also picked out those Germans who had not. Second, Dr Bergander had given a job to a local communist activist after he had been released from a concentration camp, an act of generosity that was technically illegal. Once the Russians arrived, this same man became a power not just in the factory but in the politics of the new post-war Dresden. The man vouched for him. Third, the Soviets decided that they needed Dr Bergander, Nazi or not.

Particularly during the early part of the Soviet occupation, when, for all the mayhem, front-line veterans still dictated a more pragmatic tone and local Red Army commanders had considerable independence in decision-making, it seemed to be all about relationships. This seems also to have been true when it came to matters such as the dismantling of factories.

The distillery in Dresden-Friedrichstadt was marked out for dismantling and shipping to Russia. Dr Bergander protested. The staff, many of them loyal old-style trade unionists and communists, also protested. To no avail. Parts of the factory began to be disassembled and stacked (in all weathers) ready for the first shipment. More protests from the German side. And then suddenly, one morning, Dr Bergander was summoned to Soviet HQ. The NKVD seemed to be involved. When, after some hours, he did not reappear, it seemed the doctor and his family’s hitherto considerable store of luck had finally run out.

The rest of the family waited in trepidation in their flat next to the distillery as darkness fell. Still no word. Then, as evening began to turn into ominous night, they heard the sound of vehicles. Doors slamming. Shouting. Boots on the stairs. The door burst open. And in walked – or, rather, lurched – Dr Bergander. The normally taciturn chemist was laughing, talking animatedly to his uniformed Russian companions. They streamed into the room after him, chuckling and back-slapping. They were delighted to be there, delighted that they had been able to decide against the dismantling of the distillery, but right now what they needed was another celebratory drink . . .

The family looked on, open-mouthed. No one had ever seen Dr Bergander the worse for drink before. But quickly young Götz was fetching more schnapps (this was, after all, a distillery) and his mother was raiding their sparsely provisioned post-war larder, seeking snacks for their guests. The distillery was saved. The celebrations went on into the night. The often terrifying but always unpredictable Russians had amazed their new subjects once again.
⁹

Most cases were much more bureaucratically complicated, and neither was the by no means straightforward question of Nazi Party membership so easily adjudicated as in the case of Dr Bergander. All the same, when it suited any of the occupiers, they could waive the rules for any German they decided they wanted. The Americans, for instance, removed a great many former German rocket scientists – and eventually their families, too – from their homes and places of work around Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains, the great underground V2 production complex known as the
Mittelwerke
, which was overrun by the US Army in April. Within hours, American investigation teams were swarming over the place like termites – albeit in many cases, termites with degrees from MIT and the like, systematically recruited by the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS) for just such purposes.

Between April and the beginning of July 1945, when the area had to be handed over to the Russians, these teams and their accompanying T-Force units (whose job was to secure the objectives, clear them of possible booby traps and so on, so that the scientists could move in) worked feverishly to strip it of machines, equipment and what was left of its precious product. Everything – every last nut and plate and bolt and wire – was shipped west into the safety of the US Zone. In one eight-day period, 400 tons of equipment was transported to Antwerp, whence it was shipped to New Orleans.
¹⁰
And under a highly secretive programme codenamed ‘Overcast’ – later changed to ‘Paperclip’ – 765 selected German engineers and scientists who had worked on Hitler’s missile programme were magicked away to America without any denazification process at all, as were the sequestered rockets and their spare parts. Partly this was to complete the debriefing process, partly to keep them from the Russians, but in any case America’s post-war missile programme was given a good head start.

These compulsory but often by no means unwilling emigrants were not all apolitical boffins. Some, such as Arthur Rudolph, were also directly responsible for abuse of the complex’s slave-labour workforce, whose mortality rate was horrendously high. Initially, Rudolph had been designated a ‘100 percent dangerous Nazi type’ and recommended for internment. He was not alone. Conscientious State Department employees – or fanatical ‘Morgenthau boys’, depending on your point of view – refused to issue entry paperwork and fought a stubborn battle of attrition with parts of the military to refuse the men residence until they had been properly processed, which would have involved sending them back to Germany. The tug of war went on for many months. Finally, after former Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall was appointed Secretary of State at the beginning of 1947, he broke the log jam by simply declaring that in these cases, national security took priority over the imperatives of denazification.
¹¹

It was not just in the case of Americans that from a (very) early stage new post-war exigencies undermined noble intentions. The Soviets and the British also scooped up what German rocket and weapons scientists they could find, with scant or no regard to these useful men’s previous political allegiances.
¹²
The Soviet equivalent of ‘Paperclip’ was Operation Osavakim.
¹³
The Russians have since been accused of mass abduction. In fact, it seems that many German scientists went willingly, attracted by ration and accommodation privileges, not to mention excellent research facilities, and they were on the whole decently treated by the Soviets.
¹⁴

Neither did this greed for German know-how apply only to rocket scientists. In June 1945, American investigators, driving through the French Zone with Otto Ambros, a senior IG Farben scientist whom they had arrested on suspicion of leading key wartime chemical weapons projects and of involvement with the Auschwitz factory, found themselves stopped, questioned and their arrestee whisked away. Ambros was promptly debriefed by the French at IG Farben’s Ludwigshafen factory complex, which happened to be situated inside their allotted territory.
¹⁵

The Americans themselves also effectively abducted not just elite German rocket scientists but a great many other technical and scientific experts from the Thuringia/Saxony area during their brief period of occupation between April and July 1945, in order to find out what they knew and to ensure that what valuable knowledge they had did not fall into Soviet hands.

They promised attractive working conditions, scientific books, equipment and instruments, a salary commensurate with my qualifications, and replacement of the personal items I would have to leave behind. I asked for a few days to think it over, but was told by the CIC agent that I would be taken the next day whether I wanted to go or not.
¹⁶

Extravagant promises were made, but by no means all these experts were offered fat contracts and tickets to California; in fact, many were ruthlessly abandoned in the Western zones, far from their former homes and jobs in the East, once the Americans had finished squeezing them for what they knew. Many such ‘rejects’ were nevertheless not permitted to return home. These unfortunates were held within the Western zones, often unemployed or at least with no job appropriate for their talents, often for some years, under a kind of semi-arrest. One such, a professor at the University of Jena, complained of life in this professional limbo:

At 3 p.m. my family, my two assistants, and I left Jena. Only when we were underway did I learn that we were going to Heidenheim, where we were interned. None of the promises made to me . . . have been fulfilled. I lost my position, my income, and about 80 percent of my property. All of my furniture and household utensils and a large portion of my library are gone.
¹⁷

Often the aim of such restrictions was to prevent these men from being recruited by the ‘other side’ – even though the Americans themselves did not want them. And indeed some, once released, drifted back to the East, drawn by the
payoks
(packages of food and goods) offered by the Soviets, which were of a generosity comparable to those of the rocket scientists recruited under Operation Osavakim.

In varying degrees, the attitude of the Allies changed very quickly from one of fairly good mutual cooperation to open competition. This was most clearly, though by no means exclusively, illustrated in the changes in the relations between the Americans and the Russians. Almost from the outset, the denazification process was directly affected. It could only become more so as passions faded and post-war reality impinged on wartime dreams.

The chore of filling out the
Fragebogen
was, for most Germans, just that. Even for those who had been Party members, the worry was not so much that this fact could come to light as whether, when it did, they would be classified as activists. This revelation could bring serious consequences up to and including imprisonment. Then they could be listed as
Mitläufer
(fellow travellers), which would probably mean a fine, and/or temporary restriction of employment prospects or civil rights.

There were, in fact, five possible levels of classification. The levels were usually referred to by their category numbers, descending from completely innocent to absolutely guilty, as follows:

 
  V. Exonerated, or non-incriminated persons (
Entlastete
)

 
IV. Followers, or Fellow Travellers (
Mitläufer
)

 
III. Less incriminated (
Minderbelastete
)

 
 II. Activists, Militants, and Profiteers, or Incriminated Persons (
Belastete
)

   I. Major Offenders (
Hauptschuldige
)

Categories I and II included those to be subjected to automatic arrest by any Allied forces that encountered them, on the grounds of  either criminal involvement or potential danger to the security of the occupation. The Anglo-Americans also had a huge list, put together from various intelligence sources, held at a central point known as CROWCASS (Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects). This was held on a Hollerith IBM card-index machine based in Paris. The idea was that photographs, fingerprints and personal details of suspects could be sent in from internment and POW camps, compared with those on the list and processed, thus ensuring that no guilty men would escape justice. The system was up and running by the end of June 1945. More or less.