Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler (64 page)

209    
“weapons to Spanish Republicans”:
Antony Beevor,
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
(London: Phoenix, 2006).

209    
$10 million of Göring’s loot:
Declassified MI5 (Security Service) document, 2007; interrogation of Ernesto Hoppe, KV 2/ 2636, The National Archives, Kew, London. Following a tip from an MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) agent in Argentina, Hoppe, a naturalized Argentinean of German birth, was arrested in Gibraltar aboard a ship sailing from Bilbao to Buenos Aires and interrogated at length. Hoppe, code-named “Herold,” eventually told his interrogators that his mission was to receive about forty boxes of Nazi contraband that were to be delivered at a coastal landing point by the crew of a U-boat and then loaded into a truck for transport to Buenos Aires. There, depending on the markings on the boxes, they were to be delivered to a bank, to a house in the suburb of Villa Ballester in Buenos Aires—owned by two Nazi brothers—and to another address. While conceding Hoppe’s courage and resourcefulness, MI5 concluded that he was an unprincipled rogue equally willing to take pay from Argentina, Germany, or Britain. Hoppe was repatriated to Argentina in October 1945. See also
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/german-intelligence-agents-and-suspected-agents-5.html
and Michael Evans, “‘Unprincipled Ruffian’ Told MI5 of Nazi Plot to Get Gold to Argentina,”
Sunday Times
, September 4, 2007,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2381177.ece
.

209    
Joachim von Ribbentrop:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.
See also interrogation of Otto Reinebeck, February 4, 1946, NARA, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, File 862.20235/4-2646.

210    
“The gold alone came to $1.12 billion”:
Estimates of value come from multiple sources; see notes passim.

210    
“deposits of gold and various currencies”:
“German Disembarkation at San Clemente del Tuyu”; for facsimile copy, see Farago,
Aftermath.

210    
“more than two hundred German companies”:
U.S. Government
Blue Book on Argentina
.

211    
“Nazi considered dangerous”:
The Associated Press, Washington, DC, April 27, 1946.

211    
“Gerda von Arenstorff”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

211    
Ludwig Freude memo:
Ibid.

211    
transfers of assets to Argentina:
Ibid.

212    
“state of siege … retained … and improved on”:
Time
magazine, “Argentina: End of a Siege,” August 20, 1945,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,797675,00.html
.

212    
“Argentina was back to normal”:
Time
magazine, “Argentina: Back to Normalcy,” October 8, 1945,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,776258,00.html
.

212    
“revelations”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición
; “Vier Prinzen zu Schaumburg-Lippe.”

Chapter 18: T
HE
U-B
OAT
L
ANDINGS

217    
San Carlos de Bariloche:
Authors’ multiple visits, 2007–8.

217    
“place of exile”:
Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Bell Syndicate, December 15, 1943. Until July 1942, Pearson’s syndicated column had been cowritten with Robert S. Allen, who at that time obtained a major’s commission in the U.S. Army.

218    
Estancia Moromar near Necochea:
Declassified FBI document, August 1, 1945; see page 222. Declassified FBI documents here supplied via
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/hitler.html
.

218    
“Kay normally ran his operation”:
Authors’ multiple visits to Buenos Aires, 2007–8. See also Juan Salinas and Carlos De Napoli,
Ultramar Sur: La Ultima Operación secreta del Tercer Reich
(Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002), and Jorge Camarasa,
Puerto Seguro (Safe Haven)
(Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2006).

218    
Schultz, Dettelmann, Brennecke:
Depositions to Commission of Enquiry into Nazi Activities in Argentina (CEANA). This was set up by President Carlos Menem in May 1997, with both Argentine and international membership and a broad remit to investigate all aspects mentioned in Parts III and IV of the present book. Schultz, Dettelmann, and Brennecke were engineering and radio ratings, all of whose grades came under the category of
Unteroffiziere ohne Portepee
—roughly, “junior petty officers.” From documents contained in Camarasa,
Puerto Seguro
. Original Argentine documents available at
http://admiral-graf-spee.blogspot.com
.

218    
“eight trucks”:
Depositions to CEANA; from documents contained in Camarasa,
Puerto Seguro
.

221    
“Interrogated though the night”:
Salinas and De Napoli,
Ultramar Sur
.

222    
“Commissioner Mariotti telephoned the chief of police”:
Depositions to CEANA; from documents contained in Camarasa,
Puerto Seguro
.

222    
“FBI message”:
Declassified FBI documents, Buenos Aires, August 1945.

223    
Petty Officer Heinrich Bethe and Capt. Manuel Monasterio:
Jeff Kristenssen,
Hitler murió en la Argentina [Hitler Died in Argentina]: Operacion Patagonia (El Dios Abandonado)
(Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lumiere, 1987). “Jeff Kristenssen” is the pen name of an Argentine former merchant navy officer, congressman, and successful businessman, Capt. Manuel Monasterio. We interviewed Monasterio several times in 2007 and 2008. The retired merchant skipper was then an imposing figure in his mid-eighties, lucid, with a sharp wit, fluent in English, and still involved in the welfare of the elderly in Buenos Aires. Monasterio was convinced by Bethe’s story and promised he would wait ten years until after Bethe’s death before publishing the account. His
Hitler murió en la Argentina
is a strange book, as it appears almost to have been written by three separate authors. He insists, however, that the main characters, a “Pablo Glocknik” and Dr. Otto Lehmann, were real.

Jorge Camasara, in his book
Puerto Seguro
, identifies “Glocknik” as Heinrich Bethe. On the
Admiral Graf Spee
crew list there is a Heinrich Bethe, born October 26, 1912, working as a mechanic’s mate in the 6th Division. Capt. Monasterio says that he met “Glocknik” in 1967 at Caleta Olivia on the Patagonian coast; he was looking for someone to fix his car when a local suggested he try the
“gringo loco”
(mad European), a German mechanic who lived up the road. Possibly because of their shared maritime background, the two men soon hit it off. The captain admits that he made up the name “Pablo Glocknik” to protect his German acquaintance. Patrick Burnside, in his book
El Escape de Hitler
, gives the false name that Bethe actually used as “Juan Paulovsky,” who is confirmed as having lived and died at Caleta Olivia.

Monasterio and
Hitler murió en la Argentina
are discussed at greater length in the first note for Chapter 23, page 324.

223    
“Bethe’s recollections of the U-boat landings”:
Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio),
Hitler murió en la Argentina.

223    
“Ingeborg Schaeffer replied”:
Television interview, Eyeworks Quatre Cabezas, Berlin, 2007.

224    
Wermuth’s interrogation report:
Interrogation of Otto Wermuth by Argentine authorities. Full reports on U-530, including Wermuth’s interrogation, are available at
http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-530NAReport.htm
. There is a “Miramar” on the coast of Argentina, some thirty miles from Mar del Plata, but there would be no reason to surrender at this tiny coastal village. It is most likely that this was a typing error for “Moromar,” the estancia near Necochea that housed Hitler on his first night in Argentina. Official translations and documents, such as the interrogation reports from the Nuremberg investigations, are littered with typos far more obvious than this.

224    
“within a week of his own arrival”:
Ibid.

226    
Television interviews with Wilfred von Oven:
Unused interview for Channel 4 UK documentary,
Secret History: Hitler of the Andes
, Barking Mad Productions; also Argentine documentary
Oro Nazi en Argentina
(Nazi Gold in Argentina), Rodolfo Pereyra (see
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nazi-gold-shipped-by-uboat-to-argentina-532304.html
); and Patrick S. Burnside,
El Escape de Hitler: Su vida invisible en la Argentina—Las conexiones con Evita y Perón
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta, 2000).

226    
Argentine government memorandum:
Dirección de Coordinación Federal, Estrictamente Secreto y Confidential, document DAE 568, October 14, 1952.

227    
“described as the commander of U-235”:
William Stevenson,
The Bormann Brotherhood
(London: Corgi, 1975).

226    
“lost with all hands”:
Contemporaneous German signals decoded from Enigma traffic at Bletchley Park prove beyond doubt that this was a Kriegsmarine action that destroyed its own submarine by accident. It is also significant that even the British Admiralty muddled the number when releasing data into the public domain—see HW18/421 (U2325 [sic]) at The National Archives, Kew, London. Five U-boats have been raised from the Kattegat, though U-235 is not among them—see
http://www.uboat.net/boats/u235.htm
.

227    
Lt. Cdr. Franz Barsch:
Stevenson,
Bormann Brotherhood
.

228    
“in a letter dated as early as August 7, 1939”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición
. Material on Niebuhr’s activities up until his expulsion in 1942 is to be found in KV 2/3301 in the British National Archives at Kew. This deals substantially with Nazi operations in Brazil, but leaves many questions unanswered about activities in Argentina.