McCoy, Alfred W. “Science in Dachau’s Shadow: HEBB, Beecher, and the Development of CIA Psychological Torture and Modern Medical Ethics.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 43, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 401–17.
Middleton, Drew. “7 Nazis Executed for War Murders.” New York Times, June 7, 1951.
“Nazi Brains Help U.S.” Life, December 9, 1946.
“Nazi Doctors to Be Tried Next.” Stars and Stripes, October 12, 1946.
“Nazi Escape Plan Revealed to Fly Leaders to Greenland.” Scotsman, December 28, 2003.
New York Times. “Cured in U.S. of Her Ills, Left as Nazi Guinea Pig.” March 7, 1952.
O’Donnell, James P. “The Devil’s Architect.” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 1969.
Pearson, Drew. “Air Force Hires Nazi Doctor Linked to Ghastly Experiments.” Associated Press, February 14, 1952.
Ravo, Nick. “Dr. Theodor H. Benzinger, 94, Inventor of the Ear Thermometer,” Obituary, New York Times, October 30, 1999.
Reichhardt, Tony. “First Up? Even Before NASA Was Created, Civilian and Military Labs Were in Search of Spacemen.” Air & Space, September 2000.
Reuters. “Factbox: Five Facts about Russian Military Intelligence.” April 24, 2009.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. My Day. United Feature Syndicate, December 14, 1949.
Rule, Andrew. “Thalidomide, A Wreckage of Innocent Lives.” Daily Telegraph, June 27, 2011.
Ryan, Cornelius. “G-Gas: A New Weapon of Chilling Terror. We Have It—So Does Russia.” Collier’s, November 1953.
Schmidt, Dana Adams. “Germans on Trial in ‘Science Crimes.’ ” New York Times, December 10, 1946.
Shane, Scott. “C.I.A. Knew Where Eichmann Was Hiding, Documents Show,” New York Times, June 7, 2006.
______.“Md. Experts’ Key Lessons on Anthrax Go Untapped.” Baltimore Sun, November 4, 2001.
Shaw, Herbert. “Wright Field Reveals ‘Operation Paperclip.’ ” Dayton Daily News, December 4, 1946.
Shevell, Michael I. “Neurosciences in the Third Reich: From Ivory Tower to Death Camps.” Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 26, no. 2 (May 1999): 75–76.
Siegel, Barry. “Can Evil Beget Good? Nazi Data: A Dilemma for Science.” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1988.
Silver, Arnold M. “Questions, Questions, Questions: Memories of Oberursel.” Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 2 (April 1993): 202–6.
Stoll, Werner A. “Lysergsäure-diethylamid: Ein Phantastikum aus der Mutterkorngruppe.” Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie 60 (1947).
______.“Psychische Wirkung eines Mutterkornstoffes in Ungeewöhnlich Schwacher Dosierung.” Schweizer medizinische Wochenschrift 79, no. 5 (1949).
Tucker, Jonathan B. “Farewell to Germs: The U.S. Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Warfare, 1969, 1970.” International Security 27, no. 1 (Summer 2002): 107–48.
U.S. News & World Report. “What’s Happening in the Race to the Moon?” June 1, 1964.
Walker, Lester C. “Secrets by the Thousands.” Harper’s, October 1946.
Weeks, Maurice, and Paul Yevich. American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal 24, no. 6 (1963): 622–29. Declassified December 27, 2007.
ORAL HISTORIES
Major General Charles E. Loucks, U.S.A., Retired, Oral History Interview by Morris C. Johnson. Senior Office Oral History Program, U.S. Army, 1984.
Major General Harry G. Armstrong, Retired, Oral History Interview by J. Bullard and T. C. Glasgow. U.S. Air Force Oral History Program, 1976.
Hubertus Strughold, Oral History Interview with James C. Hasdorff. Office of the Air Force History. San Antonio, TX. November 25, 1974.
Hubertus Strughold, Oral History Interview by Ingrid Kuehne Kokinda. Institute of Texan Cultures Oral History Collection, University of Texas at San Antonio, 1982.
Paul A. Campbell, Oral History Interview by Frances Kallison. Institute of Texan Cultures Oral History Collection, University of Texas, 1977.
Robert C. Haney, Oral History Interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, September 21, 2001.
Kurt H. Debus, Oral History Interview with Walter D. Sohier and Eugene M. Emme. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. March 31, 1964.
Wernher von Braun, Interview with Robert Sherrod, NASA, August 25, 1970.
Wernher von Braun, Interview from an unnamed film (discusses the Mittelwerk), Linda Hunt donation to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, February 2003.
ONLINE COLLECTIONS
Central Intelligence Agency, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room.
Nuremberg Trials Project, A Digital Document Collection. Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University.
Library of Congress: Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945–October 1, 1946.
The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey.
T-Force and Field Information Agency, Technical Archiv und Bibliothek, Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt am Main.
The Avalon Project, Lillian Golden Law Library, Yale Law School, New Haven, CT. Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 7, 2008.
Time & Life Pictures Collection, Getty Images.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.: Holocaust Encyclopedia; Photo Archives; Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945.
The Wollheim Memorial, Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt, Germany.
Also by Annie Jacobsen
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s
Top Secret Military Base
NOTES
Prologue
“I’m mad on technology”: Hitler, Table Talk, 308.
“These men are enemies”: Maxwell AFB History Office document. Memo, Patterson to Secy, General Staff, May 28, 1945, Subj: “German Scientists.”
the JIC warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff: JIC estimate, JIC 250 (Winter 1945), said that the Soviets would avoid war with the United States until 1952. JIC estimate, JCS 1696 (Summer 1946), said that war with the Soviets would be “total war.”
the surgeon general: RG 319 Walter Schreiber, Schuster File, August 18, 1949; HLSL Item No. 286. The Harvard Law School Library owns approximately one million pages of documents relating to the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and to the subsequent twelve trials of other accused war criminals before the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). As part of Harvard’s Nuremberg Trial Project, many of these documents are now available online. When such a digital document exists, I list it hereafter by its HLSL item number.
sarin gas: Sarin, tabun, soman, and VX are all organophosphorus nerve agents—liquids, not gases (under most combat conditions); some chemical weapons experts use the term “nerve agent,” not “nerve gas.”
Chapter One: The War and the Weapons
difficult time: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 147–51.
Air battles raged overhead: Goudsmit, 68.
soldiers guarded: Ibid., 73.
documents in the cabinets: Pash, The Alsos Mission, 154.
Bill Cromartie and Fred Wardenberg: Ibid., 157.
Reich Research Council: HLSL Item No. 2076; Deichmann, 4, 90–93. Originally established in 1937, the Reich Research Council was designed to focus Germany’s individual science branches on a war economy—to be in sync with Hitler’s Four-Year Plan, of which Hermann Göring was plenipotentiary (minister). The original president of the Reich Research Council was General Karl Becker, an engineer. On June 9, 1942, by Führer decree, Hermann Göring was made chairman of the Reich Research Council, with all research to focus on warfare.
members of the Nazi Party: Goudsmit, 73.
set up camp in Professor Haagen’s apartment: RG 165 “Code Name: Alsos Mission, Scientific Intelligence Mission, M.I.S., G-2, W.D.,” photographic history compiled by Colonel Boris T. Pash, 10.
K-rations on the dining roo
m table: Ibid., 11.
“usual gossip”: Goudsmit, 69.
“Heil Hitler, Prof. Dr. E. Haagen”: Goudsmit, 74–75; Pash, The Alsos Mission, 150.
The document: Goudsmit, 74.
troubling reality: Goudsmit, 79; Pash, The Alsos Mission, 149–52.
The sword and the shield: HLSL Item No. 1614; HLSL Item No. 1615.
readied for a celebration: Neufeld, Von Braun, 187–88. There are conflicting reports about where this ceremony may have taken place (Schlossberg?), as discussed with Michael Neufeld on April 3, 2013.
china place setting: Photographs, Dornberger files, Deutsches Museum, Munich.
Christian Science Monitor reported: April 28, 1945, http://www.nasm.si.edu/events/spaceage/vengeance.htm.
“hitherto unknown, unique weapons”: Evans, 674. The quote is from Adolf Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945 (Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945).
rocket programs: The German army called the V-2 the A-4; Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 1.
“Around the castle in the dark forest”: Neufeld, Von Braun, 188.
wunderkind-physicist: Von Braun was a poor student. His excellence in physics took off after 1929, when he read Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space), by Hermann Oberth.
Knight’s Cross of the War Service Cross: Neufeld, Von Braun, 187. Neufeld explains that this award is “a very high noncombatant decoration equivalent to the Knight’s Crosses awarded for valor” and illustrates von Braun’s high place in the Nazi hierarchy in the final months.
receiving the honor: Photographs, Dornberger files, Deutsches Museum, Munich.
Albert Speer was now responsible: Evans, 324.
“Total productivity in armaments”: Ibid., 327.
science and technology programs: Cornwell, 313.
“sounded thoroughly utopian”: Speer, Reich, 366.
“excitement of the evening”: Dornberger files, Deutsches Museum, Munich; Neufeld, Von Braun, 188.
flutes of champagne: Photographs, Dornberger files, Deutsches Museum, Munich.
highest death toll: See www.V2Rocket.com. This website contains an eyewitness account of the incident by Charles Ostyn under “The Rex Cinema.”
“It seemed likely that”: McGovern, 62.
Trichel was putting together: NASA History Office, 194.
The British had the lead: McGovern, 101.
the Middle Works: It is sometimes also referred to as the Central Works.
move rocket production underground: Himmler wanted to take charge of the entire V-weapons program, displacing Albert Speer, but this proved impossible considering the fact that Hitler saw Speer as the miracle worker of armaments production (Evans, 320–25).
Hans Kammler: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 201.
Jedem das Seine: Derives from the Latin phrase Suum cuique, “to each his own” or “to each what he deserves.” The phrase is also attributed to Cicero, who wrote, “Iustitia suum cuique distribuit.” In Nazi Germany these slogans were transformed into propaganda phrases and were hung over the main entrance gate to many concentration camps. Jedem das Seine was over Buchenwald. Arbeit macht frei, “Work makes you free,” was over Auschwitz.
high school graduate: RG 330 Arthur Rudolph, JIOA Form No. 2., Basic Personnel Record. The extent of Rudolph’s higher education, listed on his personnel record, was “toolmaking and machine construction”—courses he’d taken at vocational school.
Rudolph worked with the SS construction staff: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 206.
The prisoners worked: Aalmans, 10. I use the monograph Aalmans wrote for the U.S. War Crimes commission as my primary source for Dora-Nordhausen facts unless otherwise noted. The statistics vary dramatically in secondary works.
read one report: Aalmans, 10.
workers suffered and died: Ibid., 11.
dead were replaceable: The Mittelbau-Dora Memorial has many details online: http://www.buchenwald.de/en/338/.
approximately half of the sixty thousand: This is Aalmans’s figure. The memorial puts the death rate at two out of three.
innocuous-sounding division: Allen, 2. The German term is Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt.
This office was overseen by Heinrich Himmler: Himmler received his authority directly from Adolf Hitler. The SS functioned as an extrajudicial organization, carrying out the most atrocious aspects of the war, including the concentration camp system, mass exterminations, and the slave labor network.
required partnerships: Allen, 173.
Speer’s buildings: Evans, 327.
“The work must proceed”: Aalmans, title page of the war crimes monograph.
first six months: Evans, 665.
“American standards,” wrote Speer: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 212.
Himmler reminded the Führer: Evans, 663–65.
thirty subcamps: As explained at the memorial site, “Dora and other subcamps originally belonging to the Buchenwald complex were amalgamated to form the independent Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp, in which Dora now served as the main camp. Once Mittelbau had become an independent concentration camp, it gained further subcamps through the relocation of new armament projects to the Southern Harz Mountains.”
“Mittelwerk General Manager”: RG 330 Georg Rickhey, JIOA Form No. 2, Basic Personnel Record. His position as such earned him a salary of 54,000 reichsmarks a year. The average German worker during this period earned 3,100 reichsmarks a year.
Rickhey was in charge: Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Georg Rickhey B-162/964; RG 330 Georg Rickhey “Statement of Work History” and “Condensed statements of my education and my activities” (March 4, 1948).
typical rate of four marks: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 186. Along with slaves, writes Neufeld, the SS Business Administration Main Office supplied security guards, food, and clothing “in a manner that led to a heavy death toll from starvation, disease and overwork.”
two and three reichsmarks per man: Aalmans, 12.
were all present: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 228.
“During my last visit to the Mittelwerk”: Ibid., 229.
“Howling and exploding bombs”: Speer, Reich, 418.
poison gas air locks: Author tour of Schloss Kransberg estate and interview with Jens Hermann, caretaker of the castle, August 1, 2012.
series of small cement bunkers: Photographs, Bavarian State Archive, Munich; interview with Hanns-Claudius Scharff, September 27, 2012.
Hitler had been directing: Photographs of Hitler at Adlerhorst/Eagle’s Nest, Bavarian State Archive, Munich.
Speer later recalled: Speer, Reich, 419–21.
grand Führerbunker in Berlin: RG 330 Georg Rickhey, “Statement of Work History”; Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Georg Rickhey B-162/964.
Hitler moving back: On January 15, Hitler boarded his armored train for the nineteen-hour trip to Berlin.
captured or destroyed: Speer, Reich, 422.
ferocious and fanatical Nazi Party loyalist: Kershaw, The End, 50.
“I am a deserter”: Photographs on display at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site, permanent exhibition.
no one had any idea: Speer, Reich, 422.
an otherwise empty hotel: Ibid., 422.
“In my room hung an etching”: Ibid.
“The war is lost”: Shirer, Rise and Fall, 1097. Shirer also notes that “from the afternoon of January 27, the Russians had crossed the Oder 100 miles from Berlin. Hitler’s HQ had moved to the Chancellery in Berlin where he would remain until the end.”
Chapter Two: Destruction
Levi recalled: Thomson, 184.
Auschwitz III: U.S. Army aerial photograph, “Auschwitz-Birkenau Complex, Oświȩcim, Poland 26 June 1944.” Enlarged from the original negative and captioned by the CIA: “SS War Industries, IG Farben etc. Auschwitz III Buna.” National Archives; Schmaltz, Buna Monowitz monograph.
first corporate concentration camp: Drummer and Zwilling, 80.
had been murdered for minor infractions: Interview with Gerhard Maschkowski, June 2, 2012.
nine thousand emaciated, starving inmates: Ibid.; see also oral history interview with Gerhard Maschkowski, June 29, 2007, Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Norbert Wollheim Memorial, Frankfurt, Germany.
“Dogs on leather leashes”: Interview with Gerhard Maschkowski, June 2, 2012; Primo Levi describes this similarly.
infectious diseases ward: Thomson, 186; the German word is Infektionsabteilung.
“He had a high temperature”: Thomson, 186.
Primo Levi explained: In a letter to his friend Jean Samuel (Thomson, 186–87).
plant manager of Buna-Werk IV: Author visit to Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt, which is located inside the former IG Farben building. For a full listing of the Fritz Bauer collection of documents on Ambros, which include many from the NMT, see the Wollheim Memorial: http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/igwerksleitung.
Ambros had been awarded: RG 319 Otto Ambros, SHAEF file card, WD44714/36, “Microfilm Project MP-B-102.” The card reads: “Name: Ambros, Career: Member of I.G. Board, Chairman of C-Committee (i.e. Committee for Poison Gas) in Speer Ministry, Chief of CW Production, Chief of Buna Production. In June 1944 Hitler [m]ade a donation of one million marks to him. [sic] sotensibly [sic] as a reward to him and his collaborators for an important discovery in Buna making Germany independent of natural rubber.”
Ambros left the concentration camp: Walther Dürrfeld, the engineer in charge of the Buna plant, was the second man. Walther Dürrfeld, affidavit, February 18, 1947, NI-4184. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Case VI, 73–77.
to destroy evidence: RG 330 Jürgen von Klenck, D-64032, July 25, 1952; RG 319 Otto Ambros, September 28, 1944.
evacuate Dyhernfurth: “Elimination of German Resources for War,” 1282; Tucker, 70.
kill an individual in minutes: The figure varies. Many WWII-era documents state that liquid tabun can kill a man in thirty seconds from exposure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts the figure at “within 1 to 10 minutes.”