PART 4:SECRET AGENDA:OPERATION PAPERCLIP; A HELL CALLED DORA

Secret Agenda The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and 

Project Paperclip 1945 to 1990 

By Linda Hunt 

4 

A Hell Called Dora

IN the fall of 1946 Air Material Command headquarters at Wright Field was bustling with activity. Dozens of reporters mingled with the large crowd that had gathered at the air base. The War Department's news blackout had been lifted. Wright Field and other bases were having an open house to introduce some of Nazi Germany's finest scientists. AAF officers put on frozen smiles as twenty Germans, in their best suits, went out to meet the press. The group was carefully selected from among eighty-six German jet engine, helicopter, and other aircraft specialists employed by the AAF at Wright Field or in cities where they worked under Army Air Forces contracts at aircraft factories or universities. 

Alexander Lippisch showed the visitors a model of his new delta-wing supersonic jet. Lippisch was the inventor of the famous Messerschmitt ME-163 jet fighter plane, which set speed records. Theodor Knack, formerly of the Graf Zeppelin Institute, held up his ribbon-type parachute and told reporters it permitted safe jumps at high speeds. Eighty-year-old Hugo Eckener, former chairman of the Zeppelin Company, smiled brightly as AAF public relations officers said Goodyear was thrilled to have the dirigible designer working for them as a consultant under AAF contract. No one asked the former commander of the ill-fated Hindenberg blimp about the thirteen passengers and thirty-six crewmen who were killed when the infamous dirigible caught fire and burned in 1937. 

The open house resulted in a flood of favorable newspaper and magazine stories which highly pleased the War Department. The Germans' Nazi past was forgotten. After all, reporters had been told that the Germans had been "exhaustively screened." Life, Newsweek, and other magazines gave prominent display to photographs of the Germans alongside their inventions. The local Dayton Daily News was less formal, showing a picture of six Germans sunning themselves after lunch. All of the news stories created the impression of a congenial, friendly relationship between the Germans and AAF officers at the base. Jet fuel expert Ernst Eckert, for example, was even photographed having a friendly talk with an American engineer about high-speed gas turbines. And American officers said they were thrilled to have the Germans working at the air base. "I wish we had more of them," one officer said, "they are wonderful workers."1 

The problem was, the stories were beautifully orchestrated War Department propaganda. The congeniality between the Germans and AAF officers was staged. The press was required to clear their copy with military censors prior to publication. Most photographs had been provided by the U.S. military. Few stories deviated from a lengthy five-page War Department press release-a document full of half-truths and baldfaced lies. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of one of the most successful military intelligence disinformation campaigns ever foisted on the American public. The Paperclip myth had just been hatched and was ready to fly.2 

On the issue of the Germans' nazism, for example, Under Secretary of War Patterson claimed that "no scientists who are alleged war criminals are brought to the United States." Additionally, military press officers were intent on creating an image of Germans working in a state of euphoric harmony with American officers. The War Department press release emphasized how closely the Germans worked with American personnel to impart their knowledge: "To date there has been no evidence of friction between these groups."3 

Contrary to this propaganda, the Nazi past of the Paperclip group caused such violent disputes among officers at Wright Field that the air inspector once told Colonel Putt, "The mere mention of the German Scientist situation is enough to precipitate emotions in Air Corps personnel ranging from vehemence to frustration. "4 

Air Corps officers stationed in Germany began to arrive in Dayton and were outraged to find Germans working there whom they regarded as Nazi war criminals. Arguments and fights short of blows ensued. Two Germans and a U.S. Army officer filed reports on Theodor Zobel charging that he had "performed experiments on human beings while in charge of wind tunnels at Chalais Meudon, France." But before the allegations were even investigated, Putt sent AAF headquarters a recommendation that Zobel be approved for legal immigration.5 

Other questions were raised about jet fuel expert Ernst Eckert's Nazi past, while working for the German Institute of Technology in Nazi-occupied Prague, Czechoslovakia. Berlin Document Center reports reveal that Eckert had been a member of the SA and had joined the Nazi party in 1938 and the SS a year later. Yet during an interview Eckert denied he had ever been a member of the SS-until confronted with his SS records. Then he talked about participating in SS meetings. "We did some sports, some exercises, talked about the state of the war, things like that," Eckert said. All of this information had been available to Putt and other AAF officers at Wright Field. "The Air Force knew," said Eckert, "they helped us fill out our forms. "6 

The controversies that arose over Zobel, Eckert, and others were only the beginning. In October 1946 a letter written by a Paperclip scientist to his part-time employer set off a chain of events that instigated Georg Rickhey's trial for Nazi war crimes and a military cover up to assure that the Nazi past of the rocket group at Fort Bliss remained secret.7 

Rickhey was an aggressive, cool, and calculating man, one who didn't mind attracting attention to himself or his highranking position during the war. He bragged on papers filed with both Wright Field and the JIOA that he was the wartime general manager of the Mittelwerk underground V-2 rocket factory. During the entire time Rickhey worked at Wright Field, from July 21, 1946, until his arrest nearly a year later, his name was prominently displayed on U.S. Army war crimes lists as being wanted for murder.8 

His Paperclip job at the air base was analagous to putting a fox in a chicken coop. Rickhey was paid to translate forty two boxes of Mittelwerk documents shipped from Nordhausen-the very same records a U.S. Army war crimes unit sought to use as evidence of his crimes. Rickhey had turned these records over to a Colonel Peter Beasley soon after the U.S. Army liberated Dora concentration camp. They were shipped first to London and then to Wright Field. Rickhey once described them as including Mittelwerk management papers, lists of managers, contracts, letters, and policy as well as information about V-2 rockets and underground tunnel construction.9 

Judging from his description and the available documents, the boxes contained very important war crimes evidence. For example, management papers might have included sabotage reports signed by Rickhey, Rudolph, or other civilians that were filed with the SS. Sabotage reports resulted in hundreds of prisoners being hanged. 10 

Except for a meager handful, these Mittelwerk documents disappeared from view once they arrived at Wright Field. This is not surprising, since Putt had put Rickhey in charge of them at the air base. He certainly was given more than ample opportunity to destroy anything that could be used as evidence against him or other Germans at Fort Bliss whose names appeared in those files. Equally disturbing, however, is that Putt and other Wright Field officers allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, this is only one example of how Paperclip officials' callous attitude toward Nazi war crimes obstructed any possible justice. 

Rickhey lived with 140 other Germans in a cluster of one story barracks located on an isolated hilltop at Wright Field. Not satisfied with the money he earned under Paperclip, he used liquor and other goods given to him by relatives to set up a black market in his room, selling beer, candy, and cigarettes to other Germans at a profit. His room was frequently the site of noisy card games and drinking parties that extended long into the night.11 

His card-playing partner, fifty-nine-year-old Albert Patin, had been a big-time industrialist who owned factories that manufactured automatic pilot devices for fighter planes. Patin had been a colonel in the SA storm troopers, a position he claimed was "honorary," and a director in the German Air Ministry. In a long, rambling affidavit turned over to Putt, Patin described how he had hobnobbed during the war with those in Hitler's inner circle. There were Mediterranean cruises with the nephew of Hermann Goring, the proclaimed successor to Hitler, and winter trips with Dieter Stahl, head of munitions production in Albert Speer's Armaments Ministry.12 

Even more damaging, Patin brazenly admitted using Russian, French, and Dutch P.O.W's, along with "500 pitifully dressed Jewish women with shorn hair," as slave laborers in his factory. "One of the first things I ordered was the issuance of scarves for the women to cover their heads as they suffered most because of their shorn hair," he said. Patin claimed he ignored "one of the basic rules when employing slave labor" by not putting electric fences around the "encampment" where his slaves were imprisoned.13 

Patin's admission was totally ignored, even though both Putt and J.I.O.A officers had to know that using slave labor was a crime warranting full investigation. The International Military Tribunal was front page news and had just sentenced Albert Speer to twenty years in prison for his involvement with slave labor. Yet Patin was the first German whom Putt recommended for legal immigration. And like Hamill's questionable use of Axster as a trusted informant, Putt used Patin to spy on the other Germans at Wright Field. 14 

One cold October night Rickhey, Patin, and another man were drinking booze, playing cards, and having a noisy good time. This was the second time in a month that Rickhey's loud parties had kept his neighbor, sixty-three-year-old Hermann Nehlson, awake past midnight. Rickhey soon would discover that Nehlson was the wrong man to cross. Unlike Rickhey's crowd, Nehlson had avoided even joining the Nazi party. During the war, Nehlson had been a consulting engineer for an aircraft company in Austria. He told friends that he had wanted to make a better life for his daughter in America, but was now surrounded by the same Nazis and anti-Semitic views that he had encountered in the Third Reich. In addition, Putt had promised Nehlson that he could work full time for Erwin Loewy, a close friend whose engineering company in New York City had contracts with the AAF. Instead he was allowed only short visits to New York and was otherwise confined to the air base.15 

Angry that he couldn't sleep, Nehlson went to Rickhey's room and turned out the lights to stop the noise. The men around the card table lit a candle and continued with their game, as Rickhey yelled, "one could still play cards with a good `kosher' candle." Nehlson attributed the anti-Semitic remark to the fact that Rickhey was drunk. 16 

When he returned to his room, Nehlson wrote a two-page letter to Loewy and told him of the unpleasant incident. He put more-damaging information about Rickhey on the second page of his letter, hoping it would slip by military censors. Nehlson accused Rickhey of being the "chief culprit" when twelve Dora prisoners were hanged in the V-2 factory. He thought Rickhey was guilty of the crime. But when he asked Wright Field officers to do something about it, he was told that they would go to any extreme to protect the scientists at the air base. Nehlson guessed that included Rickhey as well as Patin, who had just been named camp spokesman. "That is how things are here," Nehlson sadly told his friend. Then he put the letter in the slot to be mailed.17 

A few weeks later Nehlson left the air base without permission and spent four days with his brother-in-law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a result Putt accused him of security violations and transferred him to Mitchell Field, New York.18 

However, Nehlson's letter eventually caught the attention of censors who screened the Paperclip group's mail. Colonel Millard Lewis, an officer in A.A.F Headquarters, asked Cone, G-2's Exploitation Branch chief, to investigate Nehlson's charges against Rickhey. Lewis also strongly suggested that "a more comprehensive investigation" of German scientists be made, "to avoid the possibility of undesirables being admitted to the U.S." Clearly, insufficient background investigations were not the problem. Nearly everyone at Wright Field, from the Germans to A.A.F officers in charge, openly discussed Rickhey's involvement in the hangings. As one employee put it, the whole story was "common knowledge."19 

Seven months passed before A.A.F headquarters even assigned an investigator to the case. Meanwhile, Putt continued to consider Rickhey eligible for immigration. On May 2, the same day that Air Corps Major Eugene Smith was ordered to investigate Rickhey's case, A.A.F Headquarters signed Rickhey to a new five-year contract .20 

Once Smith was on the case he quickly traveled to Wright Field. Little is known about Smith except his rank and serial number. He did note his personal opinions of Germans he interrogated in reports he filed with the air provost marshal. And his reports clearly show his frustration that headquarters had given him minimal information about Mittelwerk and Dora to begin his investigation. 

Smith first discussed Rickhey's case with Captain Albert Abels, one of the officers in charge of Paperclip personnel at Wright Field. Abels said he'd heard rumors about Rickhey but discounted them as "petty jealousy" among the Germans. Several other Americans at the air base also knew about the hangings but did nothing to investigate the stories. Smith wasn't so cavalier-at his insistence, Rickhey was arrested, searched, and given a physical exam. On May 19, 1947, he was returned to Germany under guard to face war crimes charges.21 

Smith went to Mitchell Field to meet Nehlson and three other German scientists who also had heard about Rickhey's activities. All had met Rickhey for the first time in Germany when he boarded the ship for America with a trunk that had "Mittelwerk General Manager" boldly painted on its side. Once on board, a former Mittelwerk engineer, Werner Voss, openly discussed Rickhey's involvement with the hangings. Voss told the Germans that Rickhey had instigated several hangings of Dora prisoners in the factory. In one case, prisoners were hanged when some of them tried to revolt after British planes dropped leaflets on the area urging them to do so.22 

The hangings were so gruesome that even today Dora survivors, such as Yves Beon, remember them vividly. In one case, twelve prisoners were simultaneously hanged on an overhead crane near Arthur Rudolph's office. With their hands tied behind their backs and wooden sticks in their mouths to stifle screams, the electric crane slowly lifted them above a crowd of engineers and prisoners gathered in the tunnel. "Instead of letting them drop and killing them on the spot immediately, they let them hang very slowly with pain that's absolutely horrible," said Beon. Their bodies were left hanging in the tunnel for hours as a warning to the other prisoners.23 

Nehlson confided to Smith how odd it was that Rickhey was deliberately separated from Rudolph and other Mittelwerk engineers at Fort Bliss. "I think he is protected," Nehlson said in a guarded voice. "All those who had been at Nordhausen were already in this country. They were brought to this country to work."24 

Two days later, when Smith arrived at Fort Bliss, he began to see that the Germans were protected there, too. Wernher von Braun and his brother Magnus, who had worked at Mittelwerk, were conveniently out of town on business when Smith arrived. Hans Lindenberg, whom the Canadians wanted to interrogate during Backfire, had died a few months earlier. And even though Major Hamill had visited Mittelwerk in 1945, he told Smith he knew nothing about the place.25 

Information that surfaced years later certainly explains why Wernher von Braun would have wanted to avoid talking to Smith. A transcript of a meeting held in Rickhey's office in 1944 to discuss slave labor lists von Braun as one of those attending the meeting, along with high-ranking SS officers as well as Arthur Rudolph, General Dornberger, Ernst Steinhoff, Hans Lindenberg, and Hans Friedrich. The group discussed bringing more French civilians to work as slaves in the underground factory and the requirement that they wear striped concentration camp inmate uniforms. There was no indication that von Braun or anyone else at the meeting objected to this proposal.26 

Of the Germans Smith did interrogate, three men gave him so little information that he did not bother to conduct formal interrogations under oath. That is unfortunate, since one of the men, Guenther Haukohl, is currently under active investigation by the justice Department. Haukohl was assigned to Mittelwerk in 1943, helped design the assembly line, and supervised V-2 production. Yet he told Smith he had only heard rumors of hangings. Both Hans Palaoro and Rudolph Schlidt were tight-lipped about their activities. Palaoro said he never saw Rickhey at Mittelwerk and had no information other than what Smith already knew, which was very little. Schlidt said he had seen Rickhey only a couple of times and never witnessed any instances of prisoners being shot, hanged, or stabbed in the tunnels.27 

Werner Voss, the source of the rumors about Rickhey, told Smith another story when he was interrogated. He said that twice he had seen up to twenty men at a time hanged in the  tunnels, but he did not see Rickhey at the hangings. Voss denied telling Nehlson that Rickhey had instigated the hangings and said he had talked about the hangings with the men on board ship only because he had a personal grudge against Rickhey. Smith did not ask him what that was about.28 

Eric Ball, an engineer on the Mittelwerk assembly line, told Smith that he had seen two hangings but that Rickhey was not present at either of them. He admitted seeing German engineers beating prisoners in his section. "These 8 or 10 times the beatings were done by Germans who were in charge of the section and it was very light," Ball said. He told Smith that while civilian engineers were not supposed to strike prisoners, if the beatings had been carried out by the SS instead, they would have been much worse.29 

Smith did not know the extent to which the civilian engineers had physically abused prisoners or he might have questioned Ball more closely. According to Mittelwerk records, the beatings became so widespread that Dora's camp doctor complained that prisoners were hospitalized for being "beaten or even stabbed with sharp instruments by civilian employees for any petty offense." On June 22, 1944, Rickhey and the SS even warned the engineers in writing that punishing prisoners was the SS's exclusive domain.30 

Smith also did not know about Mittelwerk's notorious Prisoner Labor Supply office or that it was directly subordinate to Rudolph. The office, run by a civilian named Brozsat, was responsible for the quantity of food the prisoners received, which was minimal. The office also was responsible for obtaining prisoners from Dora to work in the factory. This was done in coordination with an SS officer who ran a corresponding prisoner allocation office at Camp Dora. Decades later Rudolph would admit to Justice Department attorneys that it was he who requested prisoners from SS Sergeant Wilhelm Simon, who headed the camp's office. Civilian employees under Rudolph in Mittelwerk's supply office also were known to have beaten the prisoners frequently.31 

What Smith did know was that he became suspicious of Rudolph the minute he started interrogating him. Despite having little information, Smith was not stupid, and when Rudolph told him a conflicting story, Smith became suspicious. Rudolph admitted that he had visited the SS commandant at Camp Dora twice. But when Smith began to ask about prisoners who were hurt or killed, Rudolph first denied seeing prisoners abused, then later described incidents of abuse. In one breath, Rudolph first told Smith, "I did not see them punished, beaten, hung, or shot." Yet a few minutes later, when asked to describe the time twelve prisoners were hanged from the crossbeam of a crane, Rudolph said he did not know if they were dead when he arrived, but "I do know that one lifted his knees, after I got there."32 

Smith was skeptical. From information he had obtained, a sketch had been made of Mittelwerk's tunnels showing that Rudolph's office had been located near the crane from which the prisoners were hanged. He figured that Rudolph must have seen the hangings and he repeatedly asked Rudolph about them, but was given even more conflicting answers. One exchange went like this: 

"Did you ever see anybody die in the tunnel?" Smith asked Rudolph. 

"No." 

"Tell me about the day Rickhey ordered 12 men hung by a crane." 

"The SS had control of things like that. There were 6 maybe 12."33 

Rudolph's answers on the amount of food given to prisoners were equally evasive, since the food supply department was subordinate to him. At first Rudolph said German civilians either brought food from home or ate in a cafeteria, while prisoners only ate soup sent from Camp Dora. But later Rudolph claimed that the slave laborers' meals were "about the same" as his own meals. Smith did not believe him, but he did not have enough information to piece the real story together. He decided to talk with Rudolph again after he had met with everyone else.34 

Hans Friedrich had been in charge of a consulting committee for V-2 electrical devices at Mittelwerk. But some of his activities may have resulted in prisoners being hanged. According to Dora records, German engineers turned prisoners over to the SS for minor offenses, such as leaning over to tie a shoelace, and the prisoners were hanged as a result. Friedrich admitted that he had once reported a prisoner to the Prisoner Labor Supply office for offering him a cigarette, and he believed the complaint was given to the SS. Unfortunately, Smith did not pursue this point with Friedrich.35 

Friedrich said that once, while prisoners were hanging on a crane, he telephoned Rudolph to ask how long the crane would be out of operation. "He told me that the men would be hanging there the last 6 hours of one work shift and the first 6 hours of the next work shift, so that all Germans and Haeftlinge [prisoners] could see," Friedrich said. But when Smith questioned Rudolph a second time and asked about that incident, Rudolph said he did not remember the telephone conversation.36 

Smith thought it was unusual that the men he interrogated knew so little about Mittelwerk's tunneling operations. Many of their answers were so alike that it was almost as though they had agreed on them beforehand. They claimed that the slave laborers' living, sanitary, and working conditions were the same as theirs, even though twenty thousand prisoners had died. All of them said they had seen only two hangings. And if prisoners were hurt, beaten for instance, the SS or prisoner capos were at fault. According to them, German engineers had nothing to do with punishing prisoners.37 

Smith also was suspicious about Rudolph and he noted those suspicions in his final report: Mr. Rudolph impressed the undersigned as a very clever, shrewd individual. He did not wish to become involved in any investigations that might involve him in any way with illegal actions in the underground factory and as a result, was cautious of his answers.38 

On June 10, 1947, Smith sent the air provost marshal a detailed sixteen-page report and the sworn interrogations he had conducted at Fort Bliss and Mitchell Field. Smith included the sketch showing the location of Rudolph's office adjacent to the crane used to hang prisoners. All of this information was sent to Germany and introduced as evidence during Rickhey's trial.39 

Rickhey was confined in an old barracks at the former Dachau concentration camp, awaiting trial as a Nazi war criminal. Armed American soldiers stood guard in watch towers from which the SS had once looked down on their victims. A large part of the Dachau complex had been turned into a prison for SS officers and other hardened criminals awaiting war crimes trials. One barracks was used as a courtroom for 489 war crimes cases conducted by U.S. Army military courts between 1945 and 1949. The Nordhausen cases were among those trials. They consisted of the main case, U.S. v. Andrae et al., and the cases of five other individuals tried separately. 

Rickhey posed a serious problem for the Army. On one hand, he was a sacrificial lamb. He was not a brilliant visionary like von Braun or a highly experienced engineer, but only a bureaucrat whose skills were expendable. On the other hand, the Army could not afford to make him too angry, since he knew too much. 

Imprisonment did not dampen Rickhey's arrogant spirit. He thought he was still employed under the Paperclip contract he had signed at Wright Field shortly before his arrest. He sent reports of his exploits in Germany to Paperclip officers at Wright Field, reminding them of his valuable work. One report, directed to Putt, was pompously entitled "Report From Germany." In it Rickhey reminded Putt that he had generously turned over his Mittelwerk management records to the AAF. In a brazen lie, he told Putt he had been cleared of war crimes charges. "The suspicion manifested about me . . . was in error and was rectified by Col. Berman chief of the Nordhausen prosecution," he lied. His confinement at Dachau was a mere inconvenience, since he had to give "authentical information" in the war crimes case. But he soon would be free to visit Paperclip offices at Landshut to discuss technical information about underground tunnels with Germans he recommended be hired under Paperclip.40 

Lieutenant Colonel William Berman was outraged when he heard about Rickhey's letter. He immediately contacted the commanding officer of the Army's war crimes unit, Lieutenant Colonel Clio Straight, and told him that no error had been committed. Rickhey was still imprisoned as a war crimes suspect and would be a defendant in the main Nordhausen case.41 

Rickhey's chief defense attorney, Major Leon Poullada, demanded that von Braun and his group testify at Rickhey's trial. Poullada told War Department officials he wanted von Braun "as well as some engineers who worked in the different departments of the so-called Mittelwerk" as witnesses. Lieutenant Colonel Straight supported the request, emphasizing that Rickhey faced a death sentence and that the personal attendance of von Braun and other witnesses was essential: "Sworn statements would be inadequate due to necessity for detailed explanation of complicated managerial structure of Mittelwerk Company and overlapping chains of command in Nordhausen."42 

Rickhey's trial posed a serious threat to the Germans working for the Army under Paperclip. Detailed explanations of Mittelwerk's management structure would expose Rudolph's authority over the Prisoner Labor Supply office and his connection to SS officer Simon, who was a defendant in the trial. Von Braun would be forced to explain his own dubious activities at Mittelwerk. Both might have to explain their attendance at the meeting in Rickhey's office in which the idea of sending more French civilians to Dora was discussed. And then there was the ultimate threat-Dora survivors, who were witnesses at the trial, might recognize them if they were present in the courtroom. 

Army Ordnance officers solved the problem by flatly refusing to comply with Straight's request, saying that von Braun should not leave the United States for "security reasons." If this refusal stemmed from ostensible concern that von Braun might be kidnapped by Russians, it was a hollow excuse. Ordnance had allowed von Braun to travel to Europe exactly five months prior to Straight's request, on February 11, 1947. The sole purpose of his trip was to meet his girlfriend and bring her back to America. Ordnance officers first claimed that von Braun had made the trip to take care of his "personal affairs." But to get their superiors to approve of von Braun's trip, the officers quickly changed the story and claimed that the trip had been an "emergency." They pointed out that von Braun's Paperclip contract allowed his return to Germany when "a state of emergency exists."43 

Ordnance officers won the battle: the group never appeared at the trial. The best Poullada got were sworn statements from von Braun, Rudolph, and others in which no questions were asked about their own involvement in Mittelwerk's sordid affairs. 

Poullada's efforts to get Mittelwerk records from Wright Field also failed, even though General Clarence Huebner, commander in chief of the U.S. Army in Europe, told the War Department to turn over the documents as expeditiously as possible. Four months later Rickhey's family hired a lawyer in the United States and began to campaign for his release. They sent numerous irate letters to congressmen, including a gross accusation that the War Department had used "Gestapo" methods against Rickhey. Congressman John Anderson from California tried to get the Mittelwerk documents after Poullada's efforts failed. Anderson finally obtained a mere handful of records and sent them to Dachau with a request that Rickhey's cooperation under Paperclip be brought to the judges' attention at the trial.44 

The Andrae trial began August 7, 1947. Except for Rickhey, the defendants were either SS officers or prisoner capos. The defendants were charged with the murders of at least twenty thousand prisoners who were starved, beaten, tortured, or hanged. Rickhey was specifically accused of instituting a system to increase V-2 rocket production that forced the slave laborers to work at such a fast pace that hundreds of them died from exhaustion. He also was charged with instigating hundreds of hangings in Mittelwerk's tunnels or at Camp Dora.45 

SS officer Simon, Dora's labor allocation leader, also was sitting in the dock, charged with murder. This man was so brutal that Dora prisoners had nicknamed him "Simon Legree." An example of his brutality occurred one summer day in 1944, when a trainload of Hungarian Jews, including children, arrived from Auschwitz so weak from hunger they had to be carried into the camp. Simon immediately assigned the adults to a grueling work detail, forcing them to carry heavy wood planks to construct their own prison barracks. Soon many of them dropped dead from exhaustion. Then Simon went after the children, whom he considered useless because they were too young-no more than ten or twelve years old -to work in the tunnels. He ordered the SS to round them up in the camp yard and beat them to death with clubs.46 

In his opening statement, Lieutenant Colonel Berman, the chief prosecutor, described Dora as unique among concentration camps in that it was created to serve the German war machine. The entire complex consisted of the main camp, Dora, and thirty-one sub camps clustered around the town of Nordhausen, Germany, in the Harz mountains. The camps existed solely to provide forced labor in the top-secret V-weaponry factory. "Dora was a concentration camp with the avowed purpose of exterminating those who were sent to it," Berman said. "The method of extermination was not the gas chamber, but the method of working them to death, and this they proceeded to do."47 

Of the 60,000 prisoners who had passed through the camp in less than two years, one-third died as a result of organized murder. Dora's hospital records graphically list the cause of death: 9,000 died from exhaustion and collapse, at least 350 were hanged, and the remainder were shot or died from disease or starvation. The bodies of those who died were shipped to Buchenwald until Dora's own crematory, designed to burn up to seventy-five bodies a day, was complete.48 

During the trial Rickhey was described as a cold-blooded Nazi who ordered the SS to hang prisoners. Four months before American soldiers arrived, as Hitler was demanding that more rockets be produced, Rickhey took one of his daily walks through the tunnels dressed in full Nazi uniform and surrounded by heavily armed SS guards. He called the prisoners together in the tunnels and threatened to cut off their food entirely if they did not work faster. Witnesses said that was exactly what happened. Soup kettles dried up, potatoes rotted, and the death toll mounted. Both Rickhey and Rudolph knew the prisoners were dying. Simon's office sent them daily reports on the number of prisoners either working, sick, or dead.49 

Rickhey's defense centered on his claim that he was an administrator in charge only of budgets, not of rocket production. He had had nothing to do with the prisoners' deaths and conveniently blamed everything on the technical director, Albin Sawatzki, who had never been located. Reports of his whereabouts were mixed. Dora survivors have claimed that American soldiers killed him at Nordhausen in 1945. One Army C.I.C agent reported that Sawatzki was buried in a hospital cemetery near Nordhausen. Two other reports, including an Army war crimes arrest warrant, noted that he might be in England. Another Army officer told his superior that Sawatzki was living in a large apartment near Mittelwerk, in what was by then Soviet-controlled East Germany.50 

Rickhey begged the court to consider his work under Paperclip and his inability to obtain Mittelwerk documents or witnesses in his defense. "I have tried to get these records very hard and if I had gotten them I wouldn't be sitting here now," he said. Poullada submitted the affidavits filed by von Braun, Rudolph, and others at Fort Bliss who were not allowed to attend the trial. When von Braun's statement was introduced, noting that he had visited Mittelwerk fifteen to twenty times to discuss technical matters, the military judges asked Rickhey who he was. "Dr. von Braun was head of the development of the V-2 and always had close contact with all the data of Dr. Sawatzki constantly," said Rickhey.51 

Chief Prosecutor Berman read portions of Smith's interrogation of Rudolph regarding Rickhey's position at Mittelwerk. Rudolph described the defendant as his chief and said that as Mittelwerk's general manager, Rickhey was responsible for everything that occurred in the factory. Rickhey had bragged about his powerful position when he was at Wright Field. During the trial, however, he tried to downplay his role. Berman and Rickhey argued a minute over Rudolph's description of his authority, and then this ironic exchange took place: 

"Mr. Rudolf [sic] is not only a scientist of repute, but personally a man of reputation as distinct, is he not?" the prosecutor asked Rickhey. 

"As far as I know, Mr. Rudolf's reputation is okay," Rickhey replied halfheartedly. The report that Major Smith filed with the court, noting his own skepticism about Rudolph, was ignored.52 

Dora survivors told the court horrifying stories about how brutally they had been treated by vicious SS guards. There was also testimony about civilian engineers-such as Rudolph's subordinates in the Prisoner Labor Supply office who ordered SS officers to hang prisoners or who beat prisoners on their own. At least 350 Dora prisoners were hanged, including 200 for sabotage. Prisoners who worked on assembly lines continually risked their lives by deliberately pulling out wires, urinating on wiring, and using other methods to assure that the rockets would not operate properly. They felt that their sabotage efforts helped save Allied soldiers' lives. In addition to those hanged for sabotage, others were hanged for such trivial offenses as leaning over to pick up a piece of wire from the ground or making a spoon during work.53 

When civilian engineers saw a prisoner doing something suspicious they filed a sabotage report. These reports were turned over to the SS and then usually the prisoners were hanged. Rickhey was accused of having sent these reports to the SS, which had carried out the hangings. But Sawatzki's former secretary at Mittelwerk testified that it was Rudolph who had turned over the reports. Hannelore Bannasch said she saw the sabotage reports that crossed her desk at work. According to Bannasch the reports were handled by "the factory management," and Sawatzki heard of them only as "they were passed on by the factory management." 

"Whom do you mean by that-what individual?" the prosecutor asked Bannasch. 

"Director Rudolf," she replied.54 

He then asked her who had signed the sabotage reports. Previous witnesses had testified to having seen a sabotage report signed by both Rickhey and a prisoner capo. 

"That is impossible," said Bannasch, "a prisoner couldn't possibly sign a sabotage report and if anybody had signed it at the Werke, it would have been Mr. Rudolf, and never Rickhey, because he never had anything to do with that factory, itself."55 

Civilian engineers even had taken more direct action by personally ordering the SS to hang prisoners. One Dora survivor named Josef Ackermann recalled that a group of Russian P.O.W's were hanged because they were caught making a metal spoon. "The capo told a civilian engineer about it and the civilian engineer called the SS who was near him," said Ackermann. "The SS brought a piece of wire and hanged them over their machine." Another witness, Cecil Jay, was a British citizen living in Germany who had been arrested by the Gestapo for anti-Nazi activities and sent to Dora. Jay testified that he saw civilian personnel order SS guards to hang four prisoners in the tunnel. "The order was given from the civilians to the SS that the prisoners be punished for sabotage and it was carried out," Jay said.56 

Rudolph's subordinates in the Prisoner Labor Supply office were notorious for beating prisoners. George Finkenzeller, a capo in Paperclip engineer Guenther Haukohl's detail from November 1943 until the summer of 1944, when he went to another area of the plant, was convicted in a separate Nordhausen trial. In his testimony Finkenzeller identified civilians by name from the Prisoner Labor Supply office and Rudolph's deputy, Karl Seidenstuecker, and said they ordered the SS to punish prisoners or beat prisoners themselves. "Practically all civilians who were working in the prisoner labor allocation and partly some of the civilians, especially during the first year, carried out beatings on their own," said Finkenzeller.57 

Prisoners were brutally beaten by almost anyone in authority for any minor offense. "I was beaten by the SS, I was beaten by the civilian engineers, and I was even beaten by the capos," said former Dora prisoner Georges Kassimatis. He was beaten once with a large rubber hose because he was cold and had wrapped himself in a cement bag to keep warm. Another time he was beaten while carrying torpedo parts because he was not walking fast enough to suit his guards. He lagged behind the others in line because he was so weak from hunger his feet had gone numb.58 

Toward the end of the trial Jean Michel was called to the witness stand. Michel had been a leader of the French Resistance in Paris when he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dora. In late 1944 he organized a French underground movement in the camp to try to save prisoners' lives. "Everybody knew that the SS had decided to kill everybody at, the end of the war," Michel said in an interview. "So, I decided to try to do something about it." He told the court that the Gestapo had caught him and thirty-seven other Frenchmen and threw them all in jail. Two men were beaten to death when they tried to escape. Then Michel and the others were taken one by one into another cell, where the SS beat them. "I would have been hanged if the end of the war didn't arrive as it happened," Michel said. After the war he was awarded the French Legion of Honor and the American Medal of Freedom.59 

The trial lasted four months. When the verdicts were announced, fifteen defendants were found guilty and four were acquitted. Rickhey was found not guilty, and he immediately complained in a letter to Beasley that the trial had been a Communist plot. Rudolph had sent Simon's attorney a letter in Simon's defense claiming that the SS officer had tried to help the prisoners. The court, however, thought the evidence against Simon showed entirely the opposite and sentenced him to life imprisonment.60 

In Washington, G-2 Exploitation Branch chief Montie Cone was busy in his office in the Intelligence Division when the telephone rang. State Department representative Henry Cox wanted to know if there had ever been a Paperclip specialist returned to Germany for a war crimes trial. "I thought a moment," said Cone, "and realizing that the Rickhey case was in the public domain . . . I did not dare deny the story." He told Cox that one Air Force case had been returned to Europe under suspicion and that he recollected that the man was cleared. In any event, Cone said, "we did not desire to take further chances on the case. "61 

Then, in an unprecedented move, the Army classified the entire trial record. The American public would not know that Rudolph, Magnus von Braun, and others at Fort Bliss had worked at Mittelwerk, not Peenemunde. The press would not be able to obtain Smith's report that noted his suspicions about Rudolph, or see trial testimony of witnesses who said it was Rudolph who had signed sabotage reports that were turned over to the SS. Wernher von Braun would be saved from having to answer awkward questions about his frequent visits to that underground hell. No one would know about twenty thousand men who died while working as slaves on Hitler's V-2. No one would even know that Camp Dora existed. 

All of that evidence was now safely hidden from public scrutiny. And it stayed that way for decades. 

NEXT

Experiments in Death(S55)

CHAPTER 4: A HELL CALLED DORA 

1. "Nazi Brains Help Us," Life, 9 December 1946, pp. 49-52; Herbert Shaw, "Wright Field Reveals `Operation Paperclip,' " Dayton Daily News, 4 December 1946, p. 5; and Newsweek, 9 December 1946, pp. 68-69. 

2. War Department, Public Relations Division, "Release," 27 November 1946, for release to the press on 4 December 1946, G-2 Paperclip files, RG 319, WNRC. 

3. Ibid. 

4. AAF Participation in Project Paperclip. 

5. Accusations against Zobel are in OMGUS Security Report, 25 October 1946, in the Theodor Zobel INSCOM dossier B8003094 and Zobel's JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 282 

6. SS membership is in Meldebogen and sworn statement, 2 July 1947, in the Ernst Eckert JIOA dossier. The Berlin Document Center card showing Eckert's SS membership number, 6432691, is in Ernst Eckert INSCOM dossier D024720. Quotes are from Eckert interview. 

7. Hermann Nehlson to Lcewy, 17 October 1946, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

8. Personal data sheets are in the Georg Rickhey JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

9. Rickhey testimony, Andrae, transcript pp. 7524-59. 

10. For example, the document Nehlson turned over to Smith was a management chart containing the names of Mittelwerk managers. See Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Patin Nazi party and SA membership: in OMGUS Security Report, 29 September 1948, in the Patin IRR dossier XE008256, RG 319, NARS. Relationship with Goring's nephew and others: in Statements Made by Pa perclip Specialist Albert Patin, forwarded to the JIOA on 18 October 1948 by the Department of the Air Force, in the Albert Patin JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

13. Paperclip Specialist Albert Patin. 

14. See especially Security Report of Sponsoring Agency, 25 October 1946, stating that Patin "advises this command of attitude of other scientists," in the Albert Patin JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

15. See Basic Personnel Record, in the Hermann Nehlson JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. See also Smith interrogation of Nehlson, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

16. Hermann Nehlson to Loewy, 17 October 1946, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

17. Ibid. 

18. OMGUS Security Report, 19 June 1947, in the Hermann Nehlson JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

19. Colonel Millard Lewis to Director of Intelligence, Exploitation Branch, 19 December 1946, in the Georg Rickhey IRR dossier, RG 319, NARS. 

20. Major Eugene Smith to Air Provost Marshal, "Preliminary Investigation Regarding the Activities of Dr. Georg Rickhey," 23 May 1947, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

21. Ibid. 

22. Ibid. 

23. Ibid.; Beon interview. 

24. Smith interrogation of Hermann Nehlson. 

25. Major Eugene Smith to Air Provost Marshal, "Investigation Re Notes Notes 283 garding Activities of Dr. Georg Rickhey, Former Director-General of the Underground Mittelwerk Factory Near Nordhausen, Germany," 10 June 1947, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1 (hereafter cited as Smith, "Activities of Dr. Georg Rickhey"). 

26. "Transcript of Conference of May 6, 1944 in the office of Director General Rickhey," 6 May 1944, OSI. 

27. Smith, "Activities of Dr. Georg Rickhey." 

28. Smith interrogation of Werner Voss, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

29. Smith interrogation of Eric Ball, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

30. "Special Order of Mittelwerk Factory Management," 22 August 1944, OSI. 

31. Prisoner Labor Supply office is discussed in People vs. Erwin,~ulius Busta and Ernst Sander, Provincial Court of Essen, West Germany, 1971. 

32. Smith interrogation of Arthur Rudolph, in Andrae, prosecution exhibit P-126. 

33. Ibid. 

34. Ibid. 

35. Smith interrogation of Hans Friedrich, in Andrae, prosecution exhibit P-127. 

36. Ibid. 

37. Smith, "Acdvities of Dr. Georg Rickhey." 

38. Ibid. 

39. Ibid. 

40. Georg Rickhey, "Report From Germany," n.d., in Georg Rickhey IRR dossier X8737323, RG 319, NARS. 

41. Lieutenant Colonel William Berman to Chief, 7708 War Crimes Group, 17 June 1947, in Rickhey's IRR dossier, RG 319, NARS. 

42. Lieutenant Colonel Clio Straight to War Department, 31 July 1947, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. 

43. Cable, War Department to 7708 War Crimes Group, 7 August 1947, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. On von Braun's trip to Germany: Colonel R. F. Ennis to Executive, Intelligence Division, 11 February 1947, G-2 Paperclip files, 400.112, RG 319, WNRC. 

44. Requests for documents: in cable S-1804, EUCOM Headquarters to WDGID, 4 August 1947, in Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1. Congressman John Anderson and Rickhey family correspondence, in cluding the "Gestapo" accusation: from Andrae, Preliminary Investigation file, roll 1, the Georg Rickhey IRR dossier, RG 319, NARS; the Rickhey JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS; and the Rickhey G-2 dossier, RG 319, WNRC. 284 Notes 

45. Charges are in Andrae, roll 5. 

46. Wilhelm Simon testimony, Andrae. 

47. Prosecution's opening statement, Andrae, transcript p. 35. 

48. William Aalmann, Dora booklet, in Andrae. 

49. Testimony of Georges Kassamatis and Rickhey are in Andrae. For testimony that Rickhey and Rudolph were on the distribution list to receive daily reports, see Leinweber testimony, Andrae, transcript pp. 4029-44. 

50. Author interviews with Jean Michel and Beon; Sawatzki arrest reports, Army CIC reports on whereabouts, and memos from the War Crimes Group are in Albin Sawatzki INSCOM dossier XE185239. 

51. Rickhey testimony, Andrae; and Wernher von Braun statement, defense exhibit D-38, also in Andrae. 

52. Smith interrogation of Arthur Rudolph; and Rickhey testimony, transcript pp. 7560-82, both in Andrae. 

53. Testimony about civilian engineers: in Kassamatis testimony, Andrae. Information on prisoner sabotage of rockets is from the Beon interview. 

54. Testimony of Hannelore Bannasch, Andrae, transcript p. 7237. 

55. Ibid. 

56. Josef Ackerman and Cecil Jay testimony, Andrae, esp. transcript PP~ 75-76. 

57. George Finkenzeller testimony, in main trial, Andrae, transcript p. 6476. Finkenzeller's trial records are located on roll 16. For background on Guenther Haukohl see his IRR dossier, RG 319, NARS; Haukohl's JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS; OSI interrogation of Arthur Rudolph, 13 October 1982 and 4 February 1983; and Hunt, "Nazi Coverup." 

58. Kassimatis testimony, in Andrae, transcript pp. 1283-97. 

59. Jean Michel testimony, in Andrae, transcript pp. 4153-213; Michel interview; and Hunt, "Arthur Rudolph, NASA and Dora." 

60. Letter, Georg Rickhey to Colonel Peter Beasley, in the Rickhey JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. Information about Rudolph letter in Simon's defense: in OSI interrogation of Rudolph. 

61. Colonel Montie Cone, "Office Memorandum," 5 March 1948, in the Georg Rickhey G-2 dossier, RG 319, WNRC