Klaus Barbie Read online

  I was sitting in my office when Jim Ratcliffe, my deputy, came in holding some paper. It was the Region IV informants list we’d received from Garvey. I read down it and saw the name Klaus Barbie. I couldn’t believe it. I remembered very clearly that was the same German whom Garvey had said we should arrest when I was in Bremen, and here he was using him. Ratcliffe began running around the walls in excitement shouting that Garvey was double-crossing us. I immediately sent Garvey an order to arrest Barbie.

  It was the beginning of a bitter feud between Browning and Region IV, who were determined to protect the former Gestapo chief. He had become, they insisted, one of their best agents. Browning was told that Barbie had ‘disappeared’.

  Garvey is quite insistent today that he cannot remember Barbie or anything about the case, but he too accepts the documentary evidence. He says that he had spent his time struggling with ‘organisational problems’ and that, although his name appears on the messages, he was just ‘signing off’ what others had written. Indeed no-one who worked at headquarters in Munich can, or wants to, remember Barbie. That is not the case of those who worked in the Augsburg detachment itself. For them, Barbie became a very special source of whom they were increasingly proud.

  Taylor’s memory after seeing his old files is, however, quite clear about who brought Barbie to his Memmingen office in April 1947. It was Joseph ‘Kurt’ Merk, a former Abwehr officer from Dijon. Merk and Barbie had together been running one of the most successful penetration operations in occupied France, code-named ‘Operationa Technica’. Over a long period Merk had used his French girlfriend, Andrée Rives, to uncover the plans of Charles Merlen, a Dijon Resistance chief. As Merlen’s niece, Rives had infiltrated his and many other networks with ease. Merk and Barbie divided the information between them.

  Taylor had recruited Merk in April 1946. Although Abwehr officers were still on the automatic-arrest list, there was little stigma attached to employing them. There had been mutual war-time respect between the Allied and German intelligence services. Very soon after the German surrender, Reinhard Gehlen, the head of Fremde Heere Ost (the section of the German General Staff which, through the Abwehr, specialised in eastern Europe), had made a deal with an American intelligence officer, General Edwin Sibert, to hand over all his invaluable records to the Americans. Microfilmed and photostatted precisely in preparation for that sort of deal, Gehlen had hidden them in drums underground on a remote Bavarian farm. Sibert’s distrust of the Russians was still a minority view among Americans in summer 1945. As late as 10 December 1945, when Gehlen had been in Washington for four months being debriefed on his archives, the War Department sent Sibert a telex refusing him permission to use Germans to gather intelligence about the Russians. Sibert ignored that directive. It was the US Army’s view in Europe that they needed intelligence and that only experienced Germans could provide it. Merk was one of those.

  Taylor remembers Merk as an ambitious, totally committed intelligence officer who was frustrated by the very limited role that he could perform in Augsburg. His speciality was intelligence, not counter-intelligence which he felt was too passive. But that did not prevent Taylor enthusiastically describing Merk to CIC headquarters in Frankfurt as ‘one of the best counter-intelligence men in France during the German occupation’, to justify the German’s employment. For the moment Merk had to be satisfied. Diligently he had found informers in refugee camps, among demobilised soldiers and former SS officers, and in the bars and shops of nearby villages. These people kept him supplied with news tit-bits and comment about their feelings towards the Allies and their own politicians, the state of the rampant black market and whatever they had heard from friends, relatives and recent arrivals from the Russian zone. All of this was included in Merk’s weekly report for Taylor who paid him with cigarettes, chocolate and other food – the currency of the period. It made life comfortable for him and Andrée Rives who, fearing execution as a collaborator, had left France with her mother and lived with Merk under the name Annamarie Richter.

  Merk met Barbie by complete chance in February 1947. Travelling by train on a procurement mission, he saw Barbie standing forlornly on a station platform. After the mutual congratulations on surviving the war, Merk revealed the identity of his new employers and suggested that Barbie should also join. Barbie was reluctant. Unlike Merk, he knew that he faced a certain death penalty if he was ever handed over to the French. Merk persuaded him that times had changed and that the Americans were by then quite uninterested in war crimes. This was not quite accurate; a minority had objected when Gehlen, on his triumphant return from America, began recruiting some of the most notorious SS officers for his new agency. Those objections had come from CIC officers who were looking for the very same SS men as internationally-wanted war criminals. But they were a fast-dwindling minority. The American war-crimes trial programme had become completely discredited. Their investigation of the Malmédy massacre had itself become the subject of an intense investigation, and the victim of an extraordinary and vicious political campaign to deny that the Nazis were in fact guilty of any crimes. Many American officers, especially those who had not fought in the war, were opposed to any further American involvement in prosecuting Germans for crimes against non-Americans: with Europe edging towards a new confrontation, it no longer made political sense. Straight and the JAG office had been ordered to wind up the war-crimes trials immediately and release as many suspects as possible without trial, even where the evidence was convincing. Knowing that, Barbie hesitantly agreed to meet Taylor.

  Merk had already discovered that his American masters were not very demanding. Taylor’s commanding officer, Captain George Spiller, had won two silver stars for outstanding bravery during the campaign in Italy; but he had also lost a lung and suffered another severe wound, so was unfit for active service. His wartime record guaranteed him continued but unstrenuous employment in the military. Heading a small CIC detachment in a Bavarian backwater seemed an ideal posting and Spiller did not complain. Intelligence work did not interest him, so he left those chores to his staff. His routine rarely changed. On Thursday afternoons he would leave his office, collect his German girlfriend and enjoy four days of hunting, love-making and good food. It was all paid for by profits he earned selling American PX stores on the black market. On Tuesday morning he would return, crack the whip and submit the accumulated reports to headquarters without comment. For the time being no one at headquarters queried his output, which was just as well because Merk consistently exaggerated the value of his information.

  Barbie’s description of his introduction to Taylor suggests a rather pleasant encounter. Taylor assured him that ‘he had nothing to fear’ and that he would not be arrested. All the American wanted, he said, was to have a few words with him about his past. Taylor did not query any part of Barbie’s concoction of lies, or refer to the SHAEF description of Barbie as the Gestapo chief of Lyons or the CROWCASS listing of Barbie as wanted for murder. He automatically accepted that Barbie was a straight, clean intelligence agent and immediately offered him a job and a room at the local station hotel pending his superior’s approval. Eight days later Taylor was given the go-ahead. The only condition on Barbie’s employment was that he agree to break off all contact ‘with other SS or German intelligence personnel’ except on the direct orders of the CIC. Without any reflection Barbie agreed to the conditions, and then immediately broke his undertaking.

  Merk and Barbie convinced Taylor on three counts that, together, they could provide him with vital intelligence.

  Firstly, their wartime experience fighting the French communist Resistance would aid the Americans in their own penetration of the German Communist Party and in the detection of Soviet agents. This should not have been very convincing since the French Communist Party was very weak in Lyons and the German communists were not fighting an underground war, nor did they have much in common with the French party. But for the two Germans and the Americans it was the same enemy.


  Secondly, they claimed that they could satisfy the American need for information about trends and events in the neighbouring French zone. It is most unlikely that they actually dared cross into the zone to collect their information, and questionable whether they had reliable sources supplying them; but they definitely gave their American handlers the impression that they had penetrated the French command in Baden-Baden and were drawing on prime sources in French intelligence. Surprisingly, no one in Region IV seems to have been aware that spying on an Ally was strictly forbidden.

  Thirdly, Merk persuaded Taylor that they had access to an enormous network of agents stretching from Lisbon to the Soviet border. This last claim, although exaggerated, was partly true in 1946/7. Using his own wartime contacts with Abwehr agents and those he inherited from other Abwehr officers whose speciality had been eastern Europe and the Balkans, Merk began to supply intelligence about the persecution of German minorities, about the Resistance movements still working against the Russians, and about general political trends in those countries and the other zones in Germany. Frustrated by their own ignorance and pleased to be receiving any information, the Americans were undaunted by their inability to verify the accuracy of Merk’s information.

  Barbie’s contribution was his privileged entrée to the Kamaradenschaft. At the beginning he looked for those former SS officers who had served in eastern Europe. Their archives and memory, combined with the information brought by the floods of refugees, could, with careful analysis, provide important pieces of the jigsaw. To the CIC in Munich it seemed as if they had finally produced an important team. It was what both Spiller and Garvey wanted to believe; under Spiller’s indulgent regime, Taylor accepted with gratitude anything the Merk network delivered. Yet they were involved in operations that were completely contrary to the CIC’s official mission, namely counter-intelligence – checking any threat to American occupation within Region IV.

  From his office at 36 Kaiser Promenade in Memmingen, Barbie handled his agents with commitment and serenity; an unspoken understanding about his loyal services to the Third Reich was automatically assumed by both his agents and his paymaster. Both became deferential. His agents, according to Barbie, submitted both oral and written reports which were rewritten before being passed on to Taylor. Merk was given between 10,000 and 15,000 Reichmarks per month to run the network, plus food and cigarettes. Most of his agents, including Barbie himself, were paid 500 Reichmarks per month (about 50 dollars) plus supplies of coffee, cigarettes and other scarce but very valuable commodities. Taylor never queried but only praised Merk’s work. Regularly, Taylor and Merk spent their weekend recreation together in the picturesque Bavarian village of Marktoberdorf. The American’s relationship with Merk had become, according to a later CIC report, ‘a firm friendship … between two equals, rather than … between the American CIC agent and his informant’.

  Barbie’s use, like that of many former SS officers, might have passed unnoticed at CIC headquarters in Frankfurt had Captain Robert Frazier, reading through a routine Region IV report, not requested on 22 May some more information about a German named Emil Hoffmann. Hoffmann had been an ‘Operation Selection Board’ target but, according to Barbie, was in fact a British informer who had in January 1947 approached him with an offer to work for British Intelligence – an advance rejected by Barbie because he feared a trap. Frazier’s inquiry placed Taylor in an embarrassing predicament. Until then, all Barbie’s information was passed on by Taylor, giving Merk as the source. Now feeling somewhat vulnerable, Taylor felt the need to explain Barbie’s existence formally and also persuade headquarters of his value to Allied Intelligence. With apparent sincerity, Taylor wrote:

  Barbie impressed this agent as an honest man, both intellectually and personally, absolutely without nerves or fear. He is strongly anti-communist and a Nazi idealist who believes that he and his beliefs were betrayed by the Nazis in power. Since Barbie started to work for this agent he has provided extensive connections to French Intelligence agencies working in the US Zone, to German circles, to high-ranking Rumanian circles and to high Russian circles in the US Zone.

  Having established Barbie’s importance, Taylor pleaded for Barbie to remain free: ‘It is felt that his value as an informant infinitely outweighs any use he may have in prison. Control over Barbie’s activities is obvious … This opinion is based on this Agent’s personal contact with Barbie and the trust which Barbie has placed in this Agent.’ Endorsing Taylor’s argument, Region IV headquarters in Munich commented, ‘It is emphasised that Subject’s value as an informant cannot be overlooked.’ Their arguments were answered from Frankfurt by an inexplicable silence. Without further instructions, Taylor allowed the network, code-named ‘Buro Petersen’, to grow from fifteen to at least sixty-five informants on the payroll. By the time Taylor returned to America in August 1947, his successor, Special Agent Camille Hajdu, immediately diagnosed that his predecessor had lost control over the two Germans. He resented what he later described as the ‘bosom-pal’ relationship between Taylor and Merk which was beginning to cause a ‘great deal of embarrassment to Region IV’, not least because Merk and his girlfriend had been the witnesses at Taylor’s wedding. Yet Hajdu admitted that ninety per cent of the information his office received came from Merk’s network and at the beginning, like his predecessor, he too was grateful.

  When Browning finally heard about Hajdu’s special informant, he was neither grateful nor prepared to tolerate Barbie’s continued use. He asked for an explanation. Garvey formally admitted on 17 October that Region IV was employing Barbie and asked ‘what disposition should be made’ of him. Browning replied twelve days later that he should be arrested immediately. Browning insists that the only reason for that order was that Barbie had been a member of the Gestapo. He admits that even he had used ‘Gestapo types’ in Bremen, but insists (although he knew nothing about Barbie’s wartime service) that they had first-hand experience of the German Communist Party because they had actually worked during the war inside Germany itself, which Barbie had not. Browning wanted Barbie’s continued use independently assessed. Garvey was ordered to send Barbie for ‘detailed interrogation’ to the US European Command Interrogation Center at Oberursel. ECIC was staffed by G2, Army Intelligence, which was not connected with the CIC. Browning hoped that its unbiased, trained interrogators could produce honest replies to a detailed list of questions which he had drawn up, to ‘complete his [Barbie’s] history’ and establish Barbie’s post-war contacts with Nazi groups. Garvey and Barbie’s handler, Hajdu, resented that order and prevaricated.

  Through October and November, Browning sent increasingly acrimonious messages to Garvey saying that Barbie should be arrested, only to be rebuffed by claims that Barbie’s skills were invaluable and that there was no one to replace him. According to Hajdu, Barbie was producing ‘extremely good material’ and was ‘exceedingly successful’; his arrest ‘would damage considerably the trust and faith which informants place in this organisation’. Instead of arresting Barbie, Hajdu wanted any questioning done informally by local CIC agents. Naively, Hajdu added that Barbie would volunteer to co-operate with that sort of interrogation. In November, Garvey was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Ellington Golden who argued even more strongly than his predecessor that, if Barbie’s arrest was unavoidable, he should at least be given ‘some type of preferential treatment’ during his interrogation. Hajdu was concerned that if Barbie was mistreated he would defect to British Intelligence; Golden was equally concerned that the CIC would lose its most valuable source of information about activities in the French Zone.

  After reading Region IV’s pleas, both Browning and Vidal were more than irritated. Vidal especially queried Barbie’s activities in the French zone. These were maverick and unauthorised and suggested that the two Germans were continuing the war under different auspices. On 1 December Browning rejected Golden’s suggestion of preferential treatment and ordered Barbie’s immediate arrest; but his position was suddenly un
dermined.

  Irked by Browning’s attitude, Golden had appealed to the CIC commander, Colonel David Erskine, and found a sympathetic ear. Erskine agreed that Region IV’s task was hard enough without losing key informers. Humiliated, Browning was compelled to include in his final order for Barbie’s arrest an assurance that, ‘Upon completion of his interrogation, providing the interrogation provides no information which would demand Subject’s imprisonment, he will be returned to your custody with instructions for future disposition.’ Browning claims that he was performing a near-impossible balancing act. He had both to comply with Erskine’s orders and simultaneously not annoy Golden. Browning promised Munich that Barbie would be kept in prison not because of his own ‘subversive activities’ before his recruitment, but just to discover what other information on the SS groups he possessed. As a guarantee, Vidal instructed the ECIC interrogators not to question Barbie about his work for the CIC.

  Today, Browning insists that his only motive was simply to remove a Gestapo officer from the CIC. ‘Everyone knew he was ex-Gestapo,’ claims Browning. ‘It’s just that Region IV wanted to ignore it.’ If Browning is correct, then he must have been sorely disappointed with Barbie’s interrogation at Oberursel which started in mid-December.

  Barbie claims that on arrival he was given rough prison clothes and locked in a solitary cell to await interrogation. Within hours of his arrival, his interrogator appeared, only to be ignored. He left, but returned the next day with a typewriter. Barbie was ordered to write an account of his war record. Left alone for weeks in his cell, Barbie admits that he became desperate and depressed. With nothing to do except throw a coin he had found at the wall, he says that he twice tried to commit suicide. Finally, fearing that he would otherwise be handed over to either the French or the British, he began to write. In 1979 he claimed, ‘I didn’t tell them any more than I could write on one-and-a-half sides of paper.’ In fact it was more, but it was certainly not the complete truth. Later he admitted that it had been a catharsis (‘I finally got it off my chest’) and that he enjoyed it.