Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Part 11

39 "his eyes glittering" and "It was the dream of my life": Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970).

40 "Jewish-owned works of degenerate art": Nicholas, Rape of Europa.

40 Jeu du Paume: Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The n.a.z.i Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

41 Aktion-M: Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves.

41 "Soviet Union lost 1.148 million artworks": See footnotes of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/n.a.z.i_plunder.

41 "cultural center of the Thousand-Year Reich": Mazower, Hitler's Empire.

42 "Bormann knew the location": Whetton, Hitler's Fortune.

42 "bogus art dealers.h.i.+ps in Latin American locations": Stanley G. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

42 "flow of confiscated art": Nicholas, Rape of Europa.

43 "involving 137 freight cars": Shoah Resource Center, www.yadvashem.org, "Einsatzstab Rosenberg."

Chapter 5: n.a.z.i GOLD.

44 German gold reserves: John Weitz, Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greely Schacht (London: Little, Brown, 1999).

45 "abundance of gold": Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves.

45 plunder of European gold reserves: Arthur L. Smith, Hitler's Gold: The Story of the n.a.z.i War Loot (Dulles, VA: Berg, 1996).

46 "Eventually the French agreed to hand over the Belgian gold": Ibid.

46 "saga of the Belgian gold": Ibid.

47 "gold items taken from the victims": Yeadon and Hawkins, n.a.z.i Hydra in America. The scale of Aktion Reinhardt-the theft of prisoners' possessions prior to their extermination in the death camps-was staggering, involving the expropriation of 53,013,133 reichsmarks in cash; foreign currency in bank notes to a value of 1,452,904 reichsmarks; foreign currency in gold coins to a value of 843,802 reichsmarks; precious metals to a value of 5,353,943 reichsmarks; other valuables, such as jewelry, watches, and spectacles, to a value of 26,089,800 reichsmarks; and clothing and textiles to a value of 13,294,400 reichsmarks, to give a grand total of 100,047,983 reichsmarks. The obscene exact.i.tude of the n.a.z.i accounting of the Holocaust utterly beggars belief.

48 "favored the Bank for International Settlements": von Ha.s.sell et al., Alliance of Enemies.

50 "In 1939 the Banco Nacional de Portugal held 63 tons of gold": Antonio Louca and Ansgar Schafer, "Portugal and the n.a.z.i Gold: The 'Lisbon Connection' in the Sales of Looted Gold by the Third Reich"; see online PDF at www.yadvashem.org.

52 "$890 million in gold": John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). It was not until May 1997 that the BIS admitted to accepting s.h.i.+pments of n.a.z.i gold that had been melted down and stamped with prewar German markings to disguise the fact that it was looted from other countries.

52 Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand: von Ha.s.sell et al., Alliance of Enemies.

Chapter 6: EAGLE FLIGHT AND LAND OF FIRE.

53 Operation Citadel: Davies, Europe at War 193945.

54 "sales of 'degenerate art'": Nicholas, Rape of Europa.

55 "290,000 carats of diamonds": Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves.

55 "high-value minerals": Ladislas Farago, Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich (New York: Avon Books, 1974).

56 Operation Andreas/Bernhard: Yeadon and Hawkins, n.a.z.i Hydra in America. The forgeries were so good that the Bank of England could do little to call them in after the war without destroying faith in British paper money; as a result, nothing was said or done and they remained in circulation until 1954, when a new design of the five-pound note replaced the old white "bedsheet." The scale of the operation was considerable: 3,945,867 five-pound notes, 2,398,981 ten-pound notes, and 1,337,325 twenty-pound notes were produced, in addition to a quant.i.ty of fifty-pound notes. Work on counterfeit U.S. dollar notes began in the spring of 1944, and the first examples together with real bills were presented to Heinrich Himmler in January 1945. He was unable to tell the difference between the true and fake notes, but serious production of counterfeit dollars was never undertaken in quant.i.ty. For a fuller account of Operation Andreas/Bernhard, see "Report on Forgery in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp," dated December 15, 1945, compiled by the Central Criminal Office of the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior.

56 Project Eagle Flight: Manning, Martin Bormann.

57 "heavy water": Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves.

57 "create some 980 front companies": Yeadon and Hawkins, n.a.z.i Hydra in America.

58 "every known device": Manning, Martin Bormann.

58 "Bury your treasure deep": Ibid.

59 "self-contained refuge for Hitler": Jim Marrs, The Rise of the Fourth Reich (New York: William Morrow, 2008).

Chapter 7: RED INDIANS AND PRIVATE ARMIES.

63 "Naval Intelligence Commando Unit": The National Archives, Kew, London; Enclosure 1 to File ADM 223/500.

63 "Abwehrkommando": Steven Kippax, "Hitler's Special Forces," Military Ill.u.s.trated 155 (2001).

64 "Fleming's 'Red Indians'": This section is drawn from The History of 30 a.s.sault Unit 19421946 (London: King's College Library Military Archives, Ref GB99). Lt. Cdr. Fleming's room number was 39; Admiral G.o.dfrey, in Room 38, was the role model for "M" in the James Bond novels. See also http://www.30AU.co.uk.

65 "Maj. Wurmann": Richard Breitman, U.S. Intelligence and the n.a.z.is (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

66 30 CU's jeeps: David Nutting and Jim Glanville, eds., Attain by Surprise: The Story of 30 a.s.sault Unit Royal Navy/ Royal Marine Commando and of Intelligence by Capture (London: David Glover, 1997).

66 Tiger tank: David Fletcher, historian, Royal Armoured Corps Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset, UK, in interview with Simon Dunstan, August 2010. This Tiger tank-turret number 131 of Panzer Abteilung 504-now resides at Bovington. It is the only remaining Tiger I in the world that can still motor on its own tracks. Very heavily armored and mounting an 88mm main gun, the Tiger was twice the weight and possessed twice the firepower of the M4 Sherman medium tank that was the mainstay of both the American and British armored forces in 194345.

67 30 a.s.sault Unit: Nutting and Glanville, Attain by Surprise.

67 "Monuments Men": Robert M. Edsel, Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, n.a.z.i Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (London: Arrow Books, 2009).

68 "Prior to this war": Nicola Lambourne, War Damage in Western Europe: The Destruction of Historic Monuments during the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).

68 "Second Punic War": National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland; RG 239/ 47.

69 "Benedictine abbey of Monte Ca.s.sino": Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (Was.h.i.+ngton, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946). Arguably, the destruction by Allied bombing of the Mantegna frescoes in the Ovetari chapel, Church of the Eremitani, Padua, on March 11, 1944, was a comparable artistic tragedy.

69 "Tutti questi vaffunculi quadri!": David Tutaev, The Consul of Florence (London: Secker & Warburg, 1966).

69 "immense h.o.a.rd of artistic plunder": Edsel, Monuments Men.

70 Uranium Committee and Manhattan Project: Jim Baggott, Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret War of the Atom Bomb 19391949 (London: Icon Books, 2009).

71 "Jewish physics": Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Penguin Books, 1986).

72 "Unless and until we had positive knowledge": Cynthia C. Kelly, ed, The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (New York: Atomic Heritage Foundation, 2007).

72 Alsos Mission: Baggott, Atomic.

73 "bearer of this card": Patrick Dalzel-Job, Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy: The Extraordinary Wartime Exploits of a Naval Special Agent (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2005).

73 "targets of military or scientific importance": Sean Longden, T-Force: The Race for n.a.z.i War Secrets 1945 (London: Constable, 2009).

73 "Gold Rush" teams: See Bernard Bernstein Papers at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/bernstein/htm.

Chapter 8: THE HUNTING TRAIL TO PARIS.

74 "peculiar fluttering noise in the air": Dalzel-Job, Arctic Snow.

75 "V-1 Vengeance Weapon": Steven J. Zaloga, V-1 Flying Bomb 194252: Hitler's Infamous "Doodlebug" (Oxford: Osprey, 2005).

75 "Operation Crossbow": George S. Patton, War, As I Knew It (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1947). Between August 1943 and March 1945, Allied air forces flew 68,913 sorties and dropped 122,133 tons of bombs on V-1 and V-2 installations; this represented some 14 percent of all heavy bomber missions during that period.

76 "fifteen miles beyond the American beachhead': The National Archives, Kew, London; File ADM 223/214, History of 30 Commando Unit (later 30 a.s.sault Unit and 30 Advance Unit).

76 "high-speed fighters": Zaloga, V-1 Flying Bomb.

76 "greatest single technical capture of the war": The National Archives, Kew, London; File ADM 223/214.

77 V-1s: Zaloga, V-1 Flying Bomb. A total of 8,617 V-1s were fired, of which 1,052 crashed on takeoff. Of the 5,913 that reached Britain, 3,852 were destroyed by the air defenses, including 1,651 by antiaircraft guns; only 2,515 hit their target areas. The others missed their targets and landed in the countryside. The very last (air-launched) V-1 struck the village of Datchworth, Hertfords.h.i.+re, on March 29, 1945.

77 "20,000 tons of bombs": Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the n.a.z.i Economy (London: Allen Lane, 2006).

77 "pulverized from the air": Mazower, Hitler's Empire.

78 "hanged like cattle": Toby Thacker, The End of the Third Reich (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2008).

79 maskirovka: The Red Army were past masters in their ability to hide whole military formations from enemy observation by a host of means that collectively was known as maskirovka. For Operation Bagration the deception was so effective that the Germans believed the main Soviet summer offensive in 1944 would be in the Ukraine when in fact it was in a completely different country, Byelorussia. Similarly, the Western Allies created false armies prior to D-Day to deceive the Germans as to where the actual amphibious landings would happen through Operation Fort.i.tude. The phantom "First U.S. Army Group" commanded by Gen. George S. Patton was "formed" in southeast England-in much the same manner as maskirovka-with such success that the Germans believed the main Allied offensive was to be in the Pas de Calais region of France even after the D-Day landings in Normandy. It is interesting to note that the German army military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front (Fremde Heere Ost or FHO), which was comprehensively deceived by maskirovka prior to Operation Bagration, was commanded by one Col. Reinhard Gehlen. After the war he sold his "expertise" on the Red Army to the CIA, which funded the creation of the "Gehlen Organization" that was staffed by many former SS personnel. Riddled with Soviet agents throughout its existence, the Gehlen Organization was just as ineffective in its provision of military intelligence to the Western Allies as the FHO had been to the German army in 1944.

79 "Operation Bagration": Jonathan W. Jordan, "Operation Bagration: Soviet Offensive of 1944," World War II magazine (JulyAugust 2006).

79 "most calamitous defeat": Steven J. Zaloga, Bagration 1944: The Destruction of Army Group Center (Oxford: Osprey, 1996).

80 "Team 4 from 30 AU": Dalzel-Job, Arctic Snow.

80 S.Sgt. Bramah: For an account of S.Sgt. Bramah's extraordinary exploits in Normandy, see http://www.nasenoviny.com/GPREN.html.

80 "Woolforce": The National Archives, Kew, London; File ADM 1/15798, Operation Woolforce: activities of No.30 a.s.sault Unit in Paris 1944.

80 "I had blown over 80 safes": Nutting and Glanville, Attain by Surprise.

81 30 AU: The National Archives, Kew, London; File ADM 223/214.

81 "first American vehicle": Steven J. Zaloga, The Liberation of Paris 1944 (Oxford: Osprey, 2008).

81 "celebratory bottle of champagne": Baggott, Atomic.

81 "T-Force activities": Longden, T-Force.

82 "long, empty galleries": Edsel, Monuments Men.

82 "148 crates of looted paintings": Ibid.

83 "art train was trapped": Ibid. These exploits were dramatized in the 1964 movie The Train, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, and Suzanne Flon as "Mlle. Villard"-Rose Valland.

Chapter 9: CASH, ROCKETS, AND URANIUM.

84 "steps to be taken": Manning, Martin Bormann.

85 Fritz Thyssen and his wife detained: Yeadon and Hawkins, n.a.z.i Hydra.

85 "Thyssen family's private bank": Office of the Director of Intelligence, Field Information Agency/Technical, Report No. EF/ME/ 1, September 4, 1945; Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen, U.S. Group Control Council Germany.

85 "industrial and commercial patents": Yeadon and Hawkins, n.a.z.i Hydra.

86 "after the defeat of Germany": Manning, Martin Bormann.