The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (36 page)

As Dr Frundsberg spoke, there were constant interruptions as deferential messengers came and went with urgent communiques. A field telephone rang frequently and he cut himself off in mid-sentence to answer. It was clear the doctor was a man who continued to exercise great authority, and the SS officers were made brutally aware of their own marginal importance. Visibly shaken, the SS men’s leader tried to justify himself. He explained that he had been a major in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) - the security service of the SS - with the cover name Lurnmel, and was now commander of Group 9-11-23 Résistance Group West. Its charter was sabotage, espionage, Résistance, and the eventual overthrow of the Allied military government. The group comprised former members of the SS and SD and carried out their activities using fake ID cards, forged residence and work permits, and phoney army discharge papers.

The leader’s adjutant had been an SS
Unterscharführer
and had escaped from a French prisoner-of-war camp. The other two men present at the lodge, who happened to be twin brothers, had escaped from an Allied camp for SS prisoners. One served as head of intelligence, while the other was the head of the organisation for Rheinland-Westfalen, and the centre of operations was in Fulda.

Dr Frundsberg nodded without comment and made notes on a pad before him. Encouraged, the leader boasted of close connections to the group that had undertaken the bombing of the De-Nazification Court in Stuttgart. This had the opposite effect to the one desired, and Frundsberg rose to his feet, infuriated. He raged that such acts were rank stupidity that achieved nothing except to attract attention to the underground. The result was to put American intelligence on full alert. It was precisely because of such foolish and irresponsible freelance operations that it was vital to incorporate all groups opposed to the occupation under the Grossorganisation. Amateur and uncoordinated assaults put the entire mission at risk, and only the Grossorganisation was authorised to launch such attacks.

Dr Frundsberg then challenged the men to provide proof and details of their recruitment. They described a travelling variety show that went by the name of Black Panther and moved from town to town making contact with SS men through word of mouth. Heralded in advance by posters proclaiming THE BLACK PANTHER IS COMING, potential recruits were signed up backstage under the noses of the Allied occupation forces.

The men explained that they had been unaware of the existence of the Grossorganisation but declared they were loyal to the Nazi cause to the point of death. Dr Frundsberg seemed unimpressed and demanded more information on their organisation and its activities. Visibly intimidated, the leader of the SS men gave a full account and expressed willingness to turn over control of the group under certain conditions. Listing his qualifications as an intelligence officer, which were impressive, he laid out the intricate system he had devised for his own organisation. He asked for logistical and intelligence support, and requested that he be made head of intelligence of the Grossorganisation.

Dr Frundsberg hesitated, and seemed to give the proposal serious thought. In his reply he pointed out weaknesses in the group’s intelligence apparatus, while outlining the workings of the highly developed intelligence structure of the Grossorganisation. He intimated that the leader had much to learn. The circumstances of defeat and occupation required different techniques and expertise to those used in time of open war.

After listening closely to Dr Frundsberg, the leader pulled himself up in his chair and said he had made an important decision. He agreed to place the group under the new command, and to co-operate with the commander to the utmost of his ability. He asked in a crisp, military tone:
‘Und was befehlen Sie uns jetzt zu tun?’
- What do you order us to do now?

Dr Frundsberg hesitated once again, and his concentration seemed to wander momentarily. But his bullying, autocratic manner returned almost immediately as he rattled off a list of clipped commands. First of all, he demanded that all activities of the SS underground cease instantly. Secondly, only orders issued directly from him were to be carried out. Thirdly, the leader was to instruct all the groups under him to prepare for an inspection. As the orders were given the SS man wrote them down, adding his own rider: failure to obey this order is punishable by death.

Dr Frundsberg rose abruptly and marched from the room without another word. His departure announced the end of the meeting. Once again the men allowed themselves to be blindfolded and led back to the cars that had brought them. The return journey repeated the rituals enacted on the trip out, with the same random stops and exchange of passwords.

The curtness of the commands, the peremptory treatment and the severity of Dr Frundsberg at the lodge did not disturb the SS men. Indeed, the opposite was true. The harsh encounter had bolstered their confidence. To men who had spent their adult lives in an authoritarian hierarchy that demanded blind obedience, the experience had been almost religious in nature. It was a taste of old times. Somewhere, at least, the Nazi flame continued to burn bright. The men had been given a focus for their uncoordinated activities and the motivation necessary to refresh their floundering morale. And, most important of all, they had discovered an impressive leader of the old school whose confidence and authority remained unshaken. They had found a strong man to take them forward, the head of an organisation with the will and means to continue the fight.

When they were arrested months later, the SS officers refused at first to believe the outrageous prosecution claims that Dr Frundsberg was neither a Nazi nor even a German, but a United States Counter Intelligence officer named Michel Thomas.
[154]

Immediately after the war Germany and Austria were split into four zones to be militarily occupied and administered by each of the Allies: America, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. As the armies of the various countries moved into position in their allotted territories, and the zones became reality rather than lines on a map, there was an enormous migration of people from one zone to another. Seven million ethnic Germans fled Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Russian zone to escape the Soviets. The intelligence fall-out was overwhelming. The post-war mission of US Counter Intelligence was to protect the American zone - which included southern and eastern Germany to the Czech and Austrian borders -against espionage, sabotage and subversion. This embraced the automatic arrest policy of the Nazis, the capture and interrogation of war criminals, and the apprehension and debriefing of important German scientists and intelligence agents. It was a tall order to fulfil in the ruins of post-war Germany, and the matter was complicated by competing US government agencies that pursued contradictory policies. In addition, intrigue and deceit among supposed Allies capped the universal administrative chaos.

The Allies could not even agree on the form the new Germany should take. The Americans wanted to reduce Germany to a broken agricultural state without a real economy, while the Europeans foresaw the disastrous financial burden this would impose on the entire continent. The British, virtually bankrupted by the war, found it difficult from the outset to find the money to subsidise their zone - eighty million pounds in the first year. In order to be able to divert wheat to Germany, the new Labour government introduced bread rationing, something that had not even been in force in the war. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was working to turn the zone it controlled - East Germany - into a totalitarian prison state.

The occupation authorities were theoretically committed to eradicating Nazism root and branch from the country, which meant cleansing schools, universities, city halls and newspapers of party members. In reality the policy was a recipe for chaos. It condemned tens of thousands of people to internment without hearings and at first denied party members any employment except manual labour. The de-Nazification policy created an unworkable world with rules described by the officials involved as ‘systematic and meticulous imbecility’ enacted by officers who were ‘politically ignorant and morally indifferent’.
[155]

The American Department of War estimated that it needed a minimum of ten thousand permanent American personnel to have any hope of success with de-Nazification. By the end of 1945 there was a staff of only two hundred designated to the task, and a third of those were German nationals. The policy to root out Nazis failed utterly, and by the autumn of 1946, out of a total of almost forty-two thousand cases compiled by de-Nazification tribunals, only one hundred and sixteen Germans were considered major offenders.
[156]

In many towns the records had been destroyed, and ardent Nazis simply moved back into power. The Allies themselves knowingly appointed Nazi Party members, or sympathisers, as the mayors of Hamburg, Wuppertal, Bremen, Hanover, Kiel and many other smaller towns. Agencies of the US government, including the army, State Department, and later the newly formed CIA and air force, all created clandestine programmes to allow known Nazis who were deemed useful into the United States. Hard-headed realists, who were able to accept that a country that had been Nazi since 1933 could scarcely be expected to operate without employing numerous party members, still drew a line when it came to war criminals. But it was crossed repeatedly, and a form of
Realpolitik
was adopted by the Allies that was nakedly amoral.

Surrounded by chaos and unaware of the dark political forces playing themselves out elsewhere, Michel plunged into post-war intelligence work in Munich, eager to hunt down Nazis. ‘I was in a sea full of fish to be caught.’

The CIC Munich office was established in a German government building on Ludwigstrasse, and one of the larger rooms on the ground floor was used as a reception area for arrested suspects. As the men were interrogated and processed, they were predictably vociferous in their denials of any involvement with either the Gestapo in particular or the Nazi Party in general. Michel employed a Gestapo officer with long service as his right-hand man to help discover the truth. ‘He had originally been an official with the Kriminalpolizei and was then transferred to the Gestapo. He was not a bad guy and insisted that he had always worked inside the office and never gone out on raids or been involved in torture. I believed him. I thought he would be more useful to me than inside an internment camp, so instead of processing him, which was my official duty, I offered him a job.’

The man was given an office next to Michel’s and put to work typing profiles on Gestapo officials to be arrested, and provided lists of likely aliases and possible addresses. He was allowed to go home to his wife and family at night. ‘I felt he earned his freedom.’ And every morning he would be placed in the reception area posing as another prisoner, where he would mingle and chat to fellow suspects until it was his time to be interrogated. ‘And then he would come in to me and tell me who was there. It worked very well. It gave me a weapon which was taken as uncanny insight and prescience by the men who sat before me lying for their lives.’
[157]

Counter Intelligence at this time was receiving a welter of reports on post-war undercover organisations dedicated to preserving Nazi ideals. One, the Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehorigen - known by its initials, ODESSA - was created with the mission of re-establishing conditions favourable for the rebirth of Nazi power. In reality it was little more than a well-funded bureau that helped party members and war criminals obtain false identities and escape the country. However, in this it was highly successful. ODESSA smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars out of Germany, via Switzerland, primarily to Argentina. It arranged for the escape of thousands of wanted Nazis out of Germany to the Middle East and South America, especially Argentina. A CIC team, led by Michel, raided the organisation’s HQ in Munich only weeks after the end of the war. The office yielded five members, who were arrested, and all the paraphernalia for forging documents. Michel kept a printer’s counterfeit die-stamp of the papal seal as a souvenir.
[158]

Another well-publicised group was the Werewolves, which supposedly had access to stockpiled weapons hidden in the Tyrol enabling Nazi guerrilla fighters to wage war against the occupation armies. ‘The Werewolves were the brainchildren of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Maybe that’s why in practice the outfit proved to be a lot of media bark with no bite.’
[159]
There was also a group that attracted considerable CIC interest at the time called Red Lilac, but eventually proved to be little more than a band of freebooters set on personal enrichment. ‘Although these cabals never managed to mount a serious threat on their own, they numbered thousands of men with access to weapons and funds, trained in sabotage, espionage and assassination. These men were drifting back into society taking innocuous jobs as car mechanics and cooks. If they could have been welded into a cohesive, well-directed force they could have frustrated attempts to reconstitute the liberated countries as democracies.’

The more experience Michel accumulated with captured German officers, and later with high-ranking Nazi officials, the more contempt he developed for them. ‘Most exhibited in their attitude something subservient and despicable. They revealed a leadership made up of low people and rejects. Practically all of them were easily cowed during interrogation, ready and willing to give away their friends. Most volunteered to betray colleagues. There were few who showed any rectitude. What was lacking completely was any sense of dignity. This was hardly surprising. If they didn’t recognise human dignity in others, why should they have it themselves? There wasn’t a trace of it.’