Klaus Barbie Read online

  His first interrogation, completed on 28 January 1948, was indeed worthless. It was an unsubstantiated account of an invitation in February 1946 from a former SS officer to work for Soviet intelligence, which he had rejected: nothing else, and it was a good ploy to make his interrogators nervous. Browning’s hopes of a definitive report from his professional interrogator were dashed. After stating incorrectly that Barbie had been a captain in the Waffen SS (the SS’s elite army group), the interrogator’s report concluded that ‘Barbie has co-operated willingly. It is not believed that he has wilfully withheld information.’

  In return for his co-operation, Barbie was now allowed access to the prison library. To his surprise, these were the same books as had been provided for the Allied pilots imprisoned in the camp during the war. The Nazi books had not been removed. Suddenly, the line of questioning also changed. ‘I was asked what I knew about communism. Then it all became much clearer.’ To meet Vidal’s increasing dissatisfaction with the Merk–Barbie network, the new Region IV commanding officer, George Eckman (Golden’s successor), had sent a new, detailed list of questions to Oberursel about Barbie’s work for Region IV itself, and also a detailed questionnaire about the offer of employment by Hoffmann on behalf of British Intelligence. Vidal added that headquarters was still expecting Barbie’s ‘complete history’.

  Two of the three interrogation reports dated 15 April 1948 were extensive descriptions of Hoffmann’s recruitment efforts and Barbie’s arrest and escape from the British in Hamburg. They reflected Vidal’s concern that the CIC should have adequate information should their British allies accuse them of duplicity in shielding Barbie from arrest. To the CIC’s satisfaction, Barbie insisted that he would never work for the British: ‘owing to the unjust treatment he received from the British after his arrest in Hamburg … he lost all interest in the British as well as faith in the many promises they made him.’ Without any prompting, he added how happy he was working for the Americans and that he hoped to return to Memmingen. No one disbelieved him since the alternative to his privileged lifestyle was, inevitably, imprisonment.

  The third report contained Barbie’s own account of his career in the Third Reich. It was an unchallenged cover-up. Claiming that throughout the war he had remained a member of SD’s Section VI, he concealed his membership in the Gestapo, made no reference to Lyons and invented a record of service in Italy. Once again the interrogators revealed their inexperience and ignorance, not even mentioning that CROWCASS listed Barbie as wanted for ‘murder’ in Lyons. Concluding their recommendations, they wrote:

  Because of Barbie’s activities with CIC Region IV during 1947, it is not deemed advisable to intern him for his affiliation with the Waffen SS. His knowledge as to the mission of CIC, its agents, sub-agents, funds, etc, is too great. If Barbie were interned, it is the opinion of the interrogator that upon his release or escape … he would contact either the French or the British Intelligence and work for them.

  The Americans had wittingly confessed that their informer possessed the power of blackmail. On 10 May Barbie was deemed to be ‘of no further CI [Counter-intelligence] interest’ and returned to work for Region IV.

  It was a defeat for Browning, which he admits was partly his own fault because he had failed to brief the ECIC interrogators about Barbie’s Gestapo record. More importantly, he was frustrated by Colonel Erskine’s support for Region IV. Says Browning, ‘I just had to obey my orders.’ But he claims that Barbie’s future use by Region IV was subject to ‘strict limitations’; principally, that his employment had to be reviewed every three months and all his activities closely supervised and reported. Even before Barbie returned, Browning had already asked for a ‘plan for approval by this headquarters’ for the future use of the German team.

  By the beginning of 1948 there was nothing unusual about the use of incriminated Germans. The Allies had condoned the wholesale reinstatement of former Nazis to their old jobs. Teachers who had lectured on the glories of Nazi race theories were again teaching in the schools and universities; judges who had passed death sentences for trivial offences in the notorious People’s Courts were once again dispensing justice; doctors who had knowingly condoned and contributed to the euthanasia programmes were practising medicine; government officials who had without compulsion implemented the worst measures during the Third Reich were once again powerful bureaucrats; and the industrialists who had used slave labour and earned enormous profits during the war were on the verge of re-amassing their wealth and power. In that context, the use of one insignificant Gestapo officer who could give some help against the communist threat seemed, to many, utterly acceptable.

  As France reeled from a series of communist-inspired strikes which threatened its fragile return to democracy, American intelligence, in a state of alarm, now added the French Communist Party to its list of urgent targets; and that included its activities in the French zone. It was not particularly difficult to convince Barbie that he was ideal for the task. To Barbie it now seemed that, because the Americans had cleared him, they would also automatically protect him, principally to save themselves embarrassment.

  In his absence, Merk’s star had waned irreversibly. He had been unable to establish with his new CIC handler, Camille Hajdu, the intimacy that he had enjoyed with Taylor. Hajdu resented Merk’s high-handedness, his embarrassing and increasingly unauthorised activities, and he was critical of his deteriorating performance. Hajdu was not alone in strongly suspecting that much of Merk’s information was valueless. But just before Barbie’s return, Hajdu was reassigned. Dick Lavoie, the man who had tried unsuccessfully to arrest Barbie in Marburg in 1946, was promoted to ‘Tech Spec’ for Region IV. Eager to prove his mettle, he wanted to exploit his inheritance and refused to share Hajdu’s scepticism.

  On his return, Barbie’s position was reassessed. Spiller was ordered to find a new handler and new accommodation for his elite team, since their cover as ‘Buro Petersen’ in Memmingen had been exposed. He chose thirty-one-year-old Erhard Dabringhaus who had arrived in March. Theoretically, Dabringhaus was a good choice. Born in Essen, Germany, he had emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1930 and returned to Europe as a major and trained interrogator with the 1st Infantry Division. Leaving the army in 1946, he reapplied at the end of 1947 and was appointed a civilian special agent in the CIC. He reported to Spiller on 1 March 1948. Neither was impressed by the other. Spiller disliked Dabringhaus for having a more senior war-time rank, while Dabringhaus was unimpressed by Spiller’s slipshod, inadequate operation. Spiller gave his new recruit a list of German informers with orders to build up his relationships quickly. It was only four weeks later that he was ordered to Memmingen to help two German agents move their belongings to new quarters in Augsburg.

  Dabringhaus arrived at 7 Schillerstrasse on 15 June in a small US Army truck. Aware that Merk and Barbie were considered important informers, he helped them carry their belongings out of the house. With them were Andrée Rives and her mother, and Dr Emil Augsburg, who had formerly worked for Adolf Eichmann: he had become a key informant for the Merk–Barbie network. Dabringhaus drove them all to 10 Mozartstrasse, a large corner house in the pleasant leafy Stadtbergen suburb of Augsburg. Soon after their arrival, their new German neighbours protested to the local authorities. The house had been requisitioned from an anti-Nazi family who had thought it was going to be used for Americans. It was infuriating that they had been evicted to make way for ex-Nazis. Inevitably the protest was ignored. Merk lived downstairs with Andrée; the Barbie family lived upstairs, but the Barbie children could often be seen playing in the garden.

  Dabringhaus now found himself in a very peculiar position. Two Germans of nearly the same age, both from the Rhineland, who had fought against each other during the war, were now expected to develop a relationship in the service of an occupying power to spy on their fellow countrymen. Barbie clearly had the advantage. He was an experienced, totally ruthless intelligence officer, whereas Dabringhaus
had been no more than a field interrogator. The American was never in a position to do other than serve his informant and their relationship remained brittle.

  Dabringhaus’s initial task was to formalise the Merk network. Their targets were clearly set out by Lavoie. Besides reporting on the activities of the Bavarian Communist Party and Soviet agents, they were to maintain their penetration and surveillance of French Intelligence, both in the American and French zones. Barbie, using the aliases Becker, Behrends, Speer and Mertens, was put in overall command of the network’s anti-French activities. Truly it must have seemed that the war had never ended. A proper office was obtained for the two Germans on the first floor of the US billet next to the town’s swimming pool. They brought their own secretary, the widow of a former SS officer killed in Russia, who was provided with a rare luxury, her own typewriter. At 9.00 a.m. daily, the four would assemble at the office to discuss the day’s operations. Dabringhaus is convinced even today that Barbie had a network of between sixty-five and a hundred informants throughout west and eastern Europe and claims as his own achievement that he cut it down to twenty-five, ‘because the rest were giving us nothing and we were stupid enough to pay for it’. Munich headquarters objected, says Dabringhaus, because they wanted more information not less. Barbie and Merk ‘had gone way beyond their original mission, which was to penetrate the French zone, French intelligence and the French Communist Party. Instead they had sub-agents in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, and were getting information from the SS General Gunther Bernau in Stuttgart, who sold information supplied by 125 former SS officers.’ Among that valuable intelligence, according to Dabringhaus, was the information that the Czechs were mining uranium (which was commonly known before the war) and reports on the condition of the Romanian economy. According to the Danish journalist Christian Zarp, who had specialised in the Romanian economy for the SS, Barbie had obtained that material from himself and Emil Augsburg. Its value was dubious.

  By November 1948, at the end of the first three-month trial period, Captain Max Etkin, Region IV’s Operations Chief, was just the latest American pleading that the two Germans should not be dropped. Headquarters, however, was convinced that the network was too big, too expensive, and definitely compromised, not only in British and French eyes but also amongst the Nazi fraternity. To deflect that criticism, Etkin reported that the team’s contacts with Emil Augsburg, Gunter Bernau and every informant not living within the region’s boundary, had been severed. Informants of ‘dubious character’, involved in black-marketeering, robbery and smuggling, had also been dropped. ‘The net,’ reported Etkin, ‘is no longer being employed merely to keep them from being used by an undesirable foreign power.’ The ‘Merk Empire’ had collapsed. It was now, allegedly, just a small six-man agency, working on local surveillance. Barbie and Merk, wrote Etkin gullibly, would not break the new ground rules because they ‘feared being left out in the cold, and they are firmly convinced that the US authorities are going to help them in the event of trouble, as they have in the past.’ Etkin was reflecting one of his own agent’s memoranda: ‘Barbie is concerned about the French and realises that if the French were ever to get control over him, he would be executed.’ Clearly, there were no doubts about the nature of Barbie’s wartime record.

  Nevertheless, Browning again argued that the team should be dropped, not least because, as he correctly perceived, despite their promises, Barbie and Merk would never sever their contacts with the Kamaradenschaft. But once again he was forced to compromise and agree to another three-month trial period.

  ‘Merk’s biggest coup,’ says Dabringhaus, ‘was to produce two double agents who confided that the French were trying to penetrate US intelligence. That’s why we lost confidence in the French.’ It is a strange assertion, not least because Barbie’s role was exactly the same, only in reverse. It also confirms the extraordinary naivety which prevailed amongst the intelligence community, which Barbie himself soon noticed – especially about communist affairs. On several occasions he took Dabringhaus to local Communist Party meetings, once even at two o’clock in the morning. Dressing in German clothes so that he would not seem out of place, Dabringhaus could thus submit impressive eyewitness reports on communist agitation which even he admits amounted to little more than underpaid workers protesting.

  It was in the very nature of the American operation, and Dabringhaus’s position within it, that both he and headquarters took everything that Barbie told them on trust. Dabringhaus knew the names of ‘no more than a dozen’ of Barbie’s paid agents, and he rarely met any of Barbie’s informants. Instead, he regularly supplied Barbie with up to twelve different forged identity cards at a time and handed over a regular yellow envelope with his wages and expenses. His original claim that the envelopes contained $1,700 per month, has now been revised down to $500 per month. Every other CIC officer has derided this account, insisting that they never used real American dollars, but the military scrip especially issued for the occupation. In fact, Merk and Barbie were already supplying information to other American agencies that were not prevented from using dollars. Nevertheless, Merk consistently complained that he was not paid enough, once telling Dabringhaus that he could not support his network on 8,000 Deutsche Marks ($2000) per month. Dabringhaus, who was nothing more than a cossetter, passed that complaint to Dick Lavoie who in turn passed it on to Browning at the CIC’s new headquarters in Stuttgart. It reinforced his view that the net had outlived its value.

  In 1979, Barbie was surprisingly silent about his work for the Americans. However, he was proud to have been able to use his position to help so many SS men leave Germany with officially prepared ID papers and money. This was just one of Barbie’s many rackets, prompting him to brag to Dabringhaus on repeated occasions about how easy it was to fool the Allies. Dabringhaus could only agree. ‘Barbie always told Merk that I was too weak. “When you’ve got an enemy in your hands,” he would say to Merk, “you’ve got to crush him.”’

  Dabringhaus now says that he was appalled by Barbie’s past, but there is no contemporary record to support that. After five months he was summarily told that he was to be moved away from Augsburg. His successor was twenty-eight-year-old Herbert Bechtold, who had also been born in the Rhineland and had emigrated to America in 1935. Bechtold had spent the war fighting in northern Africa and through Europe from the Normandy landings to the Rhine. When he finally reached Berlin and was eligible for priority demobilisation, he applied to remain in the army because he lacked qualifications for other employment. For a time he was allowed to work in the Army’s CID investigation department, but was then compulsorily demobilised. Re-engaged, he was posted to Munich in 1948 under Colonel Aaron Banks. According to Bechtold, he immediately impressed Banks by uncovering a homosexual ring run by an American soldier whom Bechtold revealed to be a Soviet agent. As a reward, Master Sergeant Bechtold was posted as a CIC agent to Augsburg in September 1948. Bechtold’s briefing left him in no doubt that he was taking charge of the region’s top agents who had become disgruntled. ‘A choice assignment which needed tact, patience, diplomacy and skill,’ remembers Bechtold. ‘My first task was to sort out their problems and get them happier.’

  It was Dabringhaus who introduced Bechtold to the Germans. ‘Barbie was wary like a fox, scenting a new quarry. He had to figure me out, because he was going to live off me and they hadn’t been getting their money.’ Within days the two Rhinelanders had taken to one another. In Bechtold’s view, Barbie realised that he was different from the normal, bossy American. There was a chance of a real friendship. Nostalgically, Bechtold remembers that they broke the ice at an Augsburg nightclub. As they sat listening to the live band, surrounded by girls and dancing, Bechtold ordered a bottle of champagne and they toasted each other and their future work. ‘He opened the window to himself and his personal life. He trusted me and began to reminisce about other champagnes he had drunk.’ Notably Barbie spoke about drinking real champagne in France served by distinguish
ed waiters in what he called ‘the good old days’. They were to speak a great deal about France over the next twenty months. But first Bechtold had to solve Barbie’s problem, which eventually proved to be Spiller himself.

  Investigation of Barbie’s complaints over money had revealed that Spiller had been using his fund in a currency deal with his German girlfriend’s husband. ‘Spiller was only interested in his pleasure and profits. Stuttgart was never satisfied with his briefings and then he’d take it out on his staff. He’d always be screaming that whatever we gave him was not conclusive enough, and then throw it in the basket.’ Stuttgart at that time wanted information about the activities of General Friedrich von Paulus, who collaborated with the Russians after his capture. They were also interested in how the 6th Army was being used by the Russians, and any news brought by the refugees from eastern Europe. ‘Spiller just did not understand the work and irreversibly exposed himself.’ He was removed and returned soon after to the United States.

  His replacement at the beginning of 1949 was Major George Riggins who, soon after his arrival, was joined by an operations officer, Eugene Kolb. It was now that Barbie began what the Americans considered to be his most effective but also most sensitive work – the monitoring of communist activities in Bavaria. Senior officers in Stuttgart realised that he now knew more about American intelligence than most CIC officers. There was no alternative, they felt, but for the Army to protect him from the French. Kolb, who directed the detachment’s work, was initially responsible for that protection.