Notes

Chapter 2

1 Operation Panzerfaust, a.k.a. Operation Mickey Mouse, was launched on October 15, 1944, in response to Miklós Horthy’s public declaration of alliance with the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler’s security forces had advanced knowledge of Horthy’s plans, and Skorzeny was already in place in Budapest to remove Horthy from power. The name “Mickey Mouse” was based on the nickname of Horthy’s son, Miki. In addition to capturing the younger Horthy, the Germans also took the regent prisoner. Miklós Horthy was taken to Bavaria by Skorzeny, where he lived out the war under round-the-clock SS guard.

2 “Greif” refers to the griffin, a mythological beast with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. In Greek antiquity, it was considered the most powerful of all creatures.

Chapter 3

1 The first meeting of the Big Three (Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill) in which it was agreed that the Americans and British would open a second front in Europe. This strategy was designed to take the pressure off the Russians, who had been battling the Nazis on Soviet soil for more than two years, at the cost of more than twenty million dead, wounded, or missing Soviet soldiers and citizens. The meeting was held at the Soviet embassy in Tehran, Iran. Eisenhower and other top military commanders were also in attendance, along with their personal staff.

2 Montgomery was not promoted to field marshal until September 1, 1944.

Chapter 4

1 His left arm was seriously mangled when he was twelve, in an accident involving a horse-drawn carriage.

Chapter 5

1 Alice Roosevelt was extremely loyal, and her flair for the cutting remark was later put to good use in defense of her cousin Franklin. When it was said that Wendell Willkie, FDR’s opponent in the 1940 presidential election, was a grassroots candidate, she agreed, noting that it was “the grass of 10,000 country clubs.” And of FDR’s 1944 opponent, the nattily attired and immaculately coiffed Thomas Dewey, she remarked, “He looks just like the little man on the wedding cake.” Dewey, a man so sensitive about his height that he sometimes sat on a phone book to look taller in his office chair, would be haunted by that remark the rest of his career.

2 Donovan won his Medal of Honor during World War I, as leader of a mostly Irish American regiment from New York known as the Fighting Sixty-Ninth. He was shot and wounded while battling German positions in France on October 14 and 15, 1918. Donovan refused to be evacuated, so that he might continue to lead the charge. In addition to the Medal of Honor, in his lifetime he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal. No other individual has won all four of America’s top decorations. Also of note is that upon his return from World War I, Donovan worked with Teddy Roosevelt to form a new institution for veterans known to this day as the American Legion. The Fighting 69th, a film about the exploits of the regiment, starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, was released in early 1940. The actor George Brent played Donovan.

Chapter 6

1 Patton served as G-2 in charge of Hawaiian Islands security from 1935 to 1937. During that time he wrote a paper entitled “Surprise” in which he predicted the growing power of the Japanese military and its potential to attack the Hawaiian Islands through the use of aircraft carriers, submarines, and fighter-bombers. This made Patton the first American officer to accurately predict the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor four years later.

Chapter 7

1 Many refer to the West Point class of 1915 as “the class the stars fell on.” Fifty-nine of its graduates achieved the rank of general. Among them were Eisenhower and Bradley, who both attained five-star rank, the highest rank in the U.S. Army. At this point in history, only nine men had been selected for this honor, which also carries the title of general of the army. Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan all held this title, but in the Civil War era, when there was no rank higher than four stars. General John Pershing held the same title just after World War I. Those who wore five stars are army generals Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Henry “Hap” Arnold, Douglas MacArthur, and George Marshall. The navy equivalent of five stars has been awarded to admirals Chester Nimitz, William Leahy, Ernest King, and William F. Halsey.

2 There is still a great deal of conjecture about who leaked the story, but due to the severe restrictions on what the press could and could not publish, the story would never have made it into print without the blessing of British and American authorities at the highest level. Churchill’s ongoing efforts to insert Britain in the postwar argument at the expense of the Soviet Union would have allowed him to seize Patton’s comments as an opportunity to heighten U.S.-Soviet tensions.

3 The group consisted of right fielder and player-manager Mel Ott of the New York Giants; pitcher Bucky Walters of the Cincinnati Reds; Dutch Leonard, a retired former pitcher who’d once played for the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox; and Frankie Frisch, the retired second baseman who enjoyed an eighteen-year career as a player with the New York Giants and then St. Louis Cardinals, and later managed the Cardinals. The greatest of these was Ott. Just five foot nine, he hit 511 career home runs, was the first player in history to have eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, had a lifetime batting average of .304, and retired only 124 hits shy of 3,000. The lifetime Giant would tragically die in a car crash at the age of forty-nine.

4 Top-level members of the SS had to prove their racial purity by providing records of their family lineage dating back to 1750. This practice of achieving racial superiority was based on something known as “scientific racism,” which stated that some races were more advanced than others. Beginning on April 7, 1933, German law required that obtaining a certificate known as the Ariernachweis was mandatory for any individual wishing to hold public office in Germany or to gain membership in the Nazi Party. This “Aryan Certificate” was attained by showing a complete record of family lineage (through birth and marriage certificates) that proved racial purity. It was believed that the Caucasian race was divided into three sectors: Semitic (descendants of Noah’s son Shem, most often associated with Jewish ethnicity); Hamitic (descendants of Noah’s son Ham, often associated with North African and Middle Eastern ethnicity); and Aryan, construed by the Nazis to be of Nordic and Germanic ethnicity. The defining characteristics were blue eyes, blond hair, a statuesque physique, and Caucasian skin pigment. The Aryan bloodline was thought to be purer because it had not intermingled with that of other ethnicities. The extermination of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and mentally and physically handicapped individuals was a way of cleansing Europe of people with non-German impurities. Scientific racism was discredited after World War II. It’s worth noting that members of the SS were all German at the beginning of the war. By its end, combat deaths had seen its ranks so depleted that soldiers of foreign birth, such as Czechs, Poles, and Norwegians, were conscripted into the Aryan brigades.

5 Commander, gunner, loader, driver, machine gunner/radio operator.

6 The differences between the Wehrmacht and the SS can be summed up in the translations of their names. Wehrmacht means “defense force” in German, while SS roughly translates as “protection squadron”—as in the protection of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party ideology. The Wehrmacht comprised all the German armed forces, including the SS (army, navy, air force, and SS; or, in the original German, Heer, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, and Schutzstaffel). The two groups wore separate uniforms, with the Wehrmacht clad in gray wool, while the SS wore camouflage or earth-gray uniforms. In addition to being a branch of the military, SS troopers swore to be loyal to Adolf Hitler unto death, and could be ordered to do anything in the name of the Führer. This led them to commit scores of unconscionable acts of terror and brutality, acts that included murdering prisoners of war, Jews, and other innocent civilians. The totenkopf (“skull”) emblem worn on the SS uniform signified that “you shall always be willing to put yourself at stake for the life of the whole community,” in the words of SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Beginning in 1934, the SS was put in charge of the concentration camps that would systematically murder millions of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, handicapped individuals, and political prisoners. The barbaric behavior of the SS stands in sharp contrast to that of Wehrmacht soldiers such as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whose troops were forbidden from mistreating civilians. Rommel and other German commanders ignored SS admonitions to murder Jews and enemy prisoners. Nevertheless, many German fighting men participated in civilian atrocities, especially against the people of Poland, France, and the U.S.S.R. “I have come to know there is a real difference between the regular soldier and officer, and Hitler and his criminal group,” Dwight Eisenhower said. “The German soldier as such has not lost his honor. The fact that certain individuals committed in war dishonorable and despicable acts reflects on the individuals concerned, and not on the great majority of German soldiers and officers.” Ironically, Eisenhower would later censure George S. Patton for publicly making very similar remarks.

Chapter 8

1 Mims served as Patton’s driver from September 1940 until May 1945.

2 Though several British officers were in attendance—and laughed out loud at Patton’s plan—Montgomery chose to skip the meeting. This act of grandstanding at such a crucial moment did not get him punished for insubordination. Quite the opposite. The next day, Eisenhower reassigned large chunks of Bradley’s forces to Montgomery’s command. This led many in the British press to claim that the U.S. forces were helpless without the field marshal’s tactical expertise. Understandably, this infuriated many American soldiers.

3 The German air force once dominated the skies over Europe. But the Battle of Britain cost the Luftwaffe almost 1,900 fighters and bombers, as well as 3,500 air crew killed and another 967 captured. The Luftwaffe never recovered. The buildup of Allied forces in Europe before and after D-day was complemented by an increasing reliance on airpower to assist ground forces in close combat support and to pummel enemy installations and cities. Though the Luftwaffe was still mounting coordinated strikes in late 1944, the Allies had almost complete air superiority.

4 The Mark IV Panzer formed the backbone of the German army’s tank corps, with more than seventeen thousand seeing service during the war. But when the invasion of Russia revealed that the Soviet T-34 had thicker armor and more powerful armament, the Panther tank was designed and built. Its 75 mm gun and sloped armor (to deflect shells) proved highly effective on the Russian front and was considered the best German tank of the war. The Tiger, designed in 1942, was originally supposed to be named the Panzer VI, but Adolf Hitler ordered that a new name be used. Both the Tiger I and the Tiger II were formidable heavy tanks, easily the equal of any other armored weapon on the battlefield. But the Panzer II, in particular, was rushed into service, and suffered from mechanical issues that limited its effectiveness.

5 Precise German casualties are not known. All told, the Americans lost five thousand, either dead or missing, and the incidence of death was disproportionately high among the fifty-six thousand attacking Germans, who also lost more than one hundred tanks and armored vehicles.

6 A slit latrine was a long, narrow trench just wide enough for a man to straddle while relieving himself. Dirt was thrown over the hole afterward to eliminate odor.

7 A desperate Hitler had ordered the Germans to fly in all circumstances, while the Americans would not take that risk, which infuriated Patton.

8 An archaic French term meaning a diplomatic go-between who is free from punishment or persecution while performing his duties.

9 Shit.

Chapter 10

1 Hitler is fifty-five years old. There is speculation that his shaking left hand and wobbly walk are caused by Parkinson’s disease. There is also a theory that he suffered from an advanced stage of syphilis. He referred to it as “the Jewish disease” in his treatise Mein Kampf. He reportedly had sex with a Jewish prostitute in Vienna in 1908, and perhaps contracted the disease at that time. What is known for certain is that Hitler’s fondness for sugar causes him myriad dental problems, and may explain why he never smiles in public. He is also addicted to cocaine and methamphetamines, suffers from irritable bowel syndrome, has an irregular heartbeat, and has long had a problem with skin lesions on his legs, believed to have been caused by what is known as “neurosyphilis,” a late-phase version of the disease that brings on madness. Early in the war, Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS published a report stating that Hitler enjoyed having women urinate and defecate on him, though this appears to be disinformation intended to malign the Führer. However, what is most surely a fact is that by Christmas 1944 Hitler had become impotent.

2 A baked treat much like a gingerbread cookie.

3 Among the many Allied fighter-bombers patrolling the skies over Europe, the single-engine P-47 stood out for its size (ten tons fully loaded, with two one-thousand-pound bombs) and ability to provide close support for ground troops, thanks to the four .50-caliber machine guns in each wing. Patton considered coordinated attacks by the P-47, Sherman tanks, and infantry a vital part of his tactics.

4 Peiper is multilingual, so no translator is needed. After the war, he was captured by the Americans and served almost twelve years in prison for war crimes. He moved his family to France, where he made his living as a writer. In 1976, French Communists assaulted Peiper’s home, setting it on fire. As Peiper tried to flee the house, he was shot to death.

5 A rank available only to members of the SS. The name translates to “senior storm leader,” and the rank is equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht.

6 Hitler was raised Catholic. His parents, Alois and Klara, were devout. The Führer’s father died in 1903, at the age of sixty-five, and his mother from breast cancer four years later, at forty-seven. Of Hitler’s five siblings, only his youngest sister, Paula, lived to adulthood. She was taken into U.S. custody at the end of the war, but was released when it became clear that she had not been a party to her brother’s actions. She relocated from Austria to Germany after the war, where she lived in seclusion. Paula Hitler died in 1960 at the age of sixty-four. Like her brother, she had no children. Her death ended the Hitler bloodline.

7 Maj. Hal McCown was not among them. He managed to run off and escape during a brief skirmish with forces of the American Eighty-Second Airborne Division. It is worth noting that the Eighty-Second was originally supposed to be the force defending Bastogne, but they were routed to other positions at the last minute, leaving it to the 101st to defend the town.

Chapter 11

1 Stalin had a roving eye, and was especially fond of ballet dancers, opera singers, and actresses. He had many trysts, including a dalliance with a female Georgian test pilot and a thirteen-year-old Siberian girl that produced a child out of wedlock. His relationship with Valentina Istomina began when she came to work for him in 1934, when she was nineteen. Their relationship continued until his death in 1953.

2 Stalin spoke Georgian as a child. This language of the Black Sea region also has its own alphabet.

3 The celebration featured scores of British officers, and the whisky and champagne flowed freely.

4 There is evidence that she may have been murdered. Natasha Alliluyeva was right-handed. The bullet wound appeared in her left temple, which would imply that she used her left hand. In addition, the doctor who did the autopsy reported that there were no powder marks on her skin and that the gunshot took place from at least three feet away. That doctor was later executed.

5 The Christmas story is perhaps apocryphal, an invention of Soviet propaganda.

6 Long after Stalin’s death and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the Christmastime celebration in Russia is still commemorated on January 1 with the ceremonial New Year’s tree.

Chapter 12

1 So named because this is when British nobility presented their servants with a present known as the “Christmas box.” It was understood that they would not receive this present on Christmas Day because they were busy at work, helping their employers with their Yuletide celebration.

2 Hendrix seemed to have been born under a lucky star. A few years later, in September 1949, during parachute maneuvers at Fort Benning, Georgia, he survived a thousand-foot free fall when his primary and reserve parachutes failed to open. He landed on his back, in the soft earth of a freshly plowed field. He suffered minor bruises but no broken bones.

3 Another stumbling block was the American Ninety-Ninth Division. They held the northern shoulder of the Bulge assault, inflicting tremendous casualties on the Germans in the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge. Despite the fact that the Wehrmacht offensive had sputtered, the Germans did not give much ground until Patton was able to relieve Bastogne. In fact, on January 1, the Germans launched Operation Baseplate (Unternehmen Bodenplatte), a last-gasp aerial bombardment on Allied airfields by the Luftwaffe. It was a success, resulting in the destruction of 465 American and British aircraft. However, the sorely depleted Luftwaffe also lost nearly 300 planes, which pretty much finished it as a fighting force.

4 The citation for Abrams’s Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster (awarded in lieu of a second Distinguished Service Cross) concludes by describing the final moments of the Bastogne breakthrough: “Heedless of approaching darkness and strong enemy defenses, he brilliantly led his battalion on to a further objective. Lieutenant Colonel Abrams’ intrepid actions, personal bravery and zealous devotion to duty exemplify the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, the 4th Armored Division and the United States Army.”

Chapter 13

1 The Twentieth Amendment officially moved the inaugural date from March 4 to January 20. The reason for this change was that the pace of modern communications meant that news of a president’s election no longer took several months to travel around the country; nor did it take months for the president to travel to Washington, DC, to take office. The new amendment was ratified in 1933, and took effect for FDR’s second inaugural in 1937. The Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1947, makes it unlawful for a president to be elected to more than two terms.

2 Gen. George C. Marshall, Adm. Ernest King, Secretary of War Harold Stimson.

3 The practice of a presidential invocation did not begin until 1937. Chaplain of the Senate ZeBarney Thorne Phillips delivered the prayer then, and again in 1941. He died in 1942, whereupon FDR selected Dun to replace him. With the exception of Billy Graham in 1989, 1993, and 1997, Phillips is the only cleric to perform the invocation more than once. A minor footnote is that Angus Dun’s father was cofounder of the credit rating firm Dun and Bradstreet.

4 Andrew Johnson was the senator and military governor of Tennessee chosen by Lincoln to serve as vice president during his second term. Johnson showed up severely hungover for his inaugural on March 4, 1865—and then proceeded to take two stiff shots of whisky before delivering a rambling address to the Senate. On the day that Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson was also targeted for murder but was spared when his killer lost his nerve. Upon his ascension to the presidency, Johnson was divisive and inept. Many of the so-called red states and blue states that exist in American politics today can trace their roots back to Johnson’s lack of leadership at a time in the country’s history when healing instead of settling scores should have been foremost. He was impeached by the House of Representatives but avoided conviction by the Senate by just one vote. He was charged with violating the now-repealed Tenure of Office Act, which was passed the previous year specifically to restrict the powers of his presidency. Johnson managed to fight the charges over the course of the ensuing three-month trial and served out the rest of his term. He actually tried to run for the presidency once again that summer, but his lack of popularity made that impossible. Johnson was so bitter about not getting the chance to serve four more years that he refused to attend the inaugural of his successor, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

5 The fifty-one-year-old Mao Tse-tung led China’s revolutionary Communist regime. After the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the Chinese Communists overthrew the ruling Nationalist Party government led by Chiang Kai-shek. From 1949 onward, Mao Tse-tung ruled China with a despotic grasp that rivaled that of Hitler and Stalin. Mao died in 1976 at age eighty-two.

6 The Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s official secret police. Under the supervision of Heinrich Himmler, this branch of the SS terrorized and murdered anyone who might represent a threat to the Nazi Party. Even law-abiding Germans lived in fear of a visit from the Gestapo, who were often clad in civilian clothing. The Gestapo headquarters, on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin, featured underground cells where prisoners were held and tortured. The remains of those cells can be seen today at the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin, which is built upon the large city block that was once home to the Gestapo. The buildings comprising Himmler’s headquarters have all been demolished. All traces of that awful legacy have been replaced by a stark landscape of gray stones, and no vegetation. The entire city block will never again be developed.

7 There is some evidence that Donovan, a well-known Anglophile, was a double agent working for the British. But that has never been proven.

Chapter 14

1 While the term concentration camp is widely used to describe the many places where the Nazis tortured and killed their enemies, real and imagined, six facilities (Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau) also carried the term extermination camp, because most prisoners were murdered immediately upon their arrival. Auschwitz-Birkenau served the dual purpose of forced labor/extermination camp.

2 Each of the five crematoria at Auschwitz featured a room for gassing victims and ovens for burning the bodies. When the number of bodies became too much for the ovens to handle—as with the deportation of Hungarian Jews from March to November of 1944 following the success of Otto Skorzeny’s Operation Mickey Mouse—the bodies were burned outdoors. A large pit behind Krema V served this purpose.

3 Auschwitz was divided into three sections: the main camp, the extermination camp (Birkenau), and a labor camp four miles away that serviced the IG Farben chemical factory. There were also a number of subcamps in the region.

4 Among the experiments were injecting dye into a child’s eyes to see if the iris’s color could be changed, injecting the bodies with germs and diseases to study the physical reaction, and performing operations without anesthetic. On one occasion, Mengele attempted to create a Siamese twin by sewing the bodies of identical Gypsy children to one another, back to back, and connecting their veins and internal organs. The two girls died a few days later when gangrene set in.

5 Each concentration camp was administered by an SS-Totenkopfverband, or “Death’s Head Unit.” These units, usually clad in black from head to toe, were divided into two groups, one overseeing daily life in the camps and the other responsible for perimeter security. A commandant oversaw the unit and the camps. Guards had complete discretion regarding punishment and brutality, and many of them had come to their new callings after a prewar life of crime. Wounded SS soldiers on the front were often transferred to concentration camp duty to recover from their injuries. Also, the inverse was often true, with SS guards ordered to leave the camp and serve on the front lines if they showed themselves to be soft or unwilling to commit atrocities. Life as an Auschwitz guard was relatively easy, with steady supplies of liquor, illicit sexual relationships with prisoners, and a social life of which soldiers on the front lines could only dream. For this reason, SS guards were more than willing to follow orders, no matter how brutal or morally questionable they might have been. In the chilling words of SS guard Oskar Gröning, “The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town, with its gossiping and chatting. There was a grocery, a canteen, a cinema. There was a theatre with regular performances. And there was a sports club of which I was a member. It was all fun and entertainment, just like a small town.”

6 There were 144 successful escapes from Auschwitz, including that of four prisoners who dressed in SS uniforms and drove out through the main gate in Commandant Rudolf Höss’s personal automobile. The four were never caught. Höss, on the other hand, was hanged in 1947 for war crimes. A special gallows was constructed in the heart of Auschwitz for the occasion. It stands there to this day.

7 Josef Mengele went on to be captured by the Americans soon after the war ended, but was released because he’d faked his identity. Mengele then successfully fled Germany to begin a new life in South America, where he was protected by corrupt local authorities in Argentina and Brazil. Ongoing efforts by Israel and West Germany to have him repatriated for trial failed. In 1979, Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming off the coast of Brazil and drowned. He was buried under a false name, but his body’s location was discovered six years later. To this day, the body is stored in the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine. His story was the basis for the novel The Boys from Brazil.

8 On a normal morning in Auschwitz, a prison orchestra played music near the sign as prisoners marched to work. The rhythm made it easier for them to march in time, which also made it easier for the guards to perform the daily head count.

9 Of those sixty thousand, fifteen thousand died in the death marches just before the arrival of the Soviet army. Some froze due to lack of clothing and shoes, but most were shot when they became unable to continue walking. Their bodies lined the roads leading to the railheads of Loslau and Gleiwitz, where unheated cattle cars awaited them. The trains took them to infamous concentration camps such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald. Many who made the march called it the worst period they spent in Nazi captivity.

10 Roosevelt’s radio address was very specific in informing Americans about the reality of the Holocaust: “In one of the blackest crimes of all history—begun by the Nazis in the day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war—the wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour. As a result of the events of the last few days hundreds of thousands of Jews who, while living under persecution, have at least found a haven from death in Hungary and the Balkans, are now threatened with annihilation as Hitler’s forces descend more heavily upon these lands. That these innocent people, who have already survived a decade of Hitler’s fury, should perish on the very eve of triumph over the barbarism which their persecution symbolizes, would be a major tragedy. It is therefore fitting that we should again proclaim our determination that none who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished. The United Nations have made it clear that they will pursue the guilty and deliver them up in order that justice be done. That warning applies not only to the leaders but also to their functionaries and subordinates in Germany and in the satellite countries. All who knowingly take part in the deportation of Jews to their death in Poland or Norwegians and French to their death in Germany are equally guilty with the executioner. All who share the guilt shall share the punishment.”

11 In one of the most famous stories to come out of the Holocaust, Anne Frank was given a blank diary for her thirteenth birthday, which fell just weeks before her family went into hiding in 1942. She went on to chronicle, in great detail, what it was like to mature from childhood into adolescence in such claustrophobic circumstances. The last entry is August 1, 1944, three days before her arrest. Upon his return to Amsterdam after the war, Otto Frank was amazed to discover that the journal had survived. Anne’s insightful comments on the war and her personal relationships were so profound that he sought to have the diary made public. This came to pass in 1950, when it was published in German and French, and then in English in 1952. Though marginally successful at first, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl has since become a classic work on life in Nazi-occupied Germany and the Netherlands, and has spawned a film and stage play. In 1999, Time magazine included Anne Frank in its TIME 100: The Most Important People of the Century list.

12 The Nazi plan to develop an atomic bomb began in January 1939, when German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann found a way to split a uranium atom, thus releasing vast amounts of energy. This was based on the theoretical work already done by the legendary Albert Einstein, who had immigrated to America. After the successful invasion of Poland in September 1939, the German Army Ordnance Office began work on a method of harnessing fission to form a nuclear explosive. There is evidence that the Germans built and tested a nuclear weapon in underground tunnels near the central German town of Ohrdruf. It was on a much smaller scale than the ones detonated by the Americans at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the end, even though Hitler waited in vain for the nuclear bomb that he hoped would win the war—or at least allow him to sue for peace on his terms—it did not come to pass. The majority of the scientists who worked on Hitler’s nuclear effort were taken into custody by either the Americans or the Soviets. Rather than being transported to New Mexico to aid the American Manhattan Project, they were transported to a safe house in England. This is where they received news about the use of America’s atomic weapons against Japan. They were allowed to return to postwar Germany in 1946.

13 Hitler’s bunker complex was much more than a simple air-raid shelter. It consisted of two levels: the upper Vorbunker containing a conference room, dining facility, kitchen, water storage room, and bedrooms for support staff, which numbered more than two dozen; and the Führerbunker, located some thirty feet below ground, with lavishly decorated rooms for Hitler and Eva Braun. A large oil painting of his personal hero Frederick the Great covered one wall. The entire complex was beneath a lavish garden, where Hitler emerged most days to walk Blondi.

Chapter 15

1 Joseph Stalin specifically condoned rape as a reward for his soldiers. “People should understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers of blood and death has fun with a woman.” The brutality will become systematic in the final days of the war. In the German city of Dresden, the Russians will gang-rape women in the streets, forcing husbands and fathers to watch. Afterward, the men will be shot. The Russians will claim that the rapes were retribution for atrocities committed during the German invasion of Russia, which does not explain the estimated one hundred thousand rapes in Austria, two hundred thousand in Hungary, and tens of thousands of others in Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. To this day, the Putin government in Russia denies that the Russian army committed mass rape, but the evidence contained in various eyewitness accounts is overwhelming.

Chapter 16

1 So much so that Winston Churchill was forced to give a pro-American speech in the British House of Commons to heal the wounds.

2 The Siegfried Line was a four-hundred-mile-long defensive array of eighteen thousand bunkers and interlocking rows of pyramid-shaped concrete antitank obstacles nicknamed “dragon’s teeth.” The Germans referred to it as the Westwall, while the Americans continued to use “Siegfried,” after a similar system of forts dating back to the First World War. Hitler built the Westwall between 1936 and 1938, anticipating by almost a decade the day when some great army—in this case, that of George S. Patton—would attempt to invade the Fatherland.

3 Adolf Hitler also fired the German army’s commander in chief, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, because of the incident. His replacement, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, immediately ordered a series of artillery and rocket strikes on the Remagen Bridge. It was eventually destroyed, on March 17, although not before the Allies had crossed ample men and supplies to the other side to secure the bridgehead. By the time the bridge collapsed into the Rhine, several pontoon bridges had been built across the river near its location, making the loss immaterial to the Allied advance. The bridge has never been rebuilt.

4 Modern-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, northern Italy, and regions of Germany west of the Rhine River.

5 The placing of logs over a muddy road to improve traction.

6 He served two terms in office. His successor was a former U.S. Navy junior officer named John F. Kennedy, who served in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War at the same time as Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon. Beginning with Eisenhower, every president for the next forty-two years served in World War II.

7 The U.S. Army had several types of temporary bridges that could be constructed quickly to cross a river. A pontoon bridge consisted of several floating barrels upon which steel tread was laid as a decking material. Such bridges could be built within hours. They were highly effective at moving men and matériel across a river, but also highly unstable due to the fact that they rested directly atop the river.

8 The desire to urinate on enemy soil was shared with British prime minister Winston Churchill, who visited Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s lines in early March and made a point of relieving himself on the German homeland. Even as Patton was polluting the Rhine, Churchill was crossing the same river two hundred miles upstream, in Wesel, alongside Montgomery.

Chapter 17

1 Not everyone lived full-time in the bunker. People came and went as if going to work at a regular job. Even Hitler left the bunker to travel through his private tunnel to the Reich Chancellery. The usual contingent comprised soldiers; female secretaries Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge; personal secretary Martin Bormann; SS adjutant Maj. Otto Günsche; maintenance man Johannes Hentschel; veterinarian Fritz Tornow; nurse Erna Flegel; chief steward Arthur Kannenberg; Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell; Hitler’s personal cook, Constanze Manziarly; and chief valet Heinz Linge. Of these, only Morell, Linge, and Manziarly lived in the bunker full-time, because Hitler depended upon them for immediate personal needs. Eva Braun did not move in until mid-April.

2 Frederick’s fortunes took a turn for the better when Britain stepped in as an ally, while Sweden and Russia withdrew their attacks, thus marking the end of the Seven Years’ War. Prussia and Frederick the Great emerged from the conflict as a world power. It was his greatest triumph.

Chapter 18

1 This is not unusual. Truman was in the habit of taking a long daily walk. Very often, he slipped out of the White House unnoticed and walked the five miles to the Marine Corps barracks and back. He believed that it was useless to worry about assassination, because if someone wanted to shoot him, they would find a way, regardless of Secret Service protection. This proved inaccurate on November 1, 1950, when two Puerto Rican nationals tried to sneak into a house where Truman was taking a nap. They were shot and killed by bodyguards. Truman was unharmed.

2 Anna Roosevelt Boettiger was thirty-nine years old, and had recently moved back into the White House while her husband served in the military. The president put her to work, appointing Anna special assistant to the president. In this capacity, she soon learned many of the most well-kept secrets in the White House. It was Anna who had the unfortunate task of informing Eleanor Roosevelt about FDR’s ongoing affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd after the president’s death. It was a number of years before Eleanor forgave Anna for her role in the deception.

3 America would be without a president for two hours and twenty-four minutes. Truman was not sworn in by Chief Justice Harlan Stone until 7:09 that evening. Part of the delay was waiting for Truman’s wife, Bess, and daughter Margaret to travel to the White House. Another was the search for a Bible for the ceremony. Eventually, a cheap Gideon Bible was located in the office of chief usher Howell Crim, who made a point of dusting it before the ceremony.

4 In a ritual that began in 1924 and still continues almost a century later, the BBC emits a series of “pips” at the top of each hour to denote the exact time. This is accomplished through the use of an atomic clock in the basement of the broadcast center. On the surface, this practice might seem to be an inordinate preoccupation with being punctual, but it actually saves lives. The “pips” are important for those sailors at sea who listen in to the BBC to set their watches, because exact time is vital to proper navigation, preventing them from sailing hundreds of miles off course.

5 The majority of the gold had been looted from the various nations conquered by Nazi Germany. Much of this was returned immediately after the war. The remainder was channeled into what was known as the Nazi Persecutee Relief Fund, which aided survivors of the Holocaust. This fund was exhausted in 1998.

6 Eisenhower and Bradley were also deeply disturbed by what they saw. “The smell of death overwhelmed us,” Bradley wrote in his memoirs. “More than 3,200 naked, emaciated bodies had been thrown into shallow graves. Others lay in the street where they had fallen. Lice crawled over the yellowed skin of their sharp, bony frames. A guard showed us how the blood had congealed in coarse black scabs where the prisoners had torn out the entrails of the dead for food.” Ike’s face “whitened into a mask,” at the sight, in Bradley’s description. Bradley then added, “I was too revolted to speak.”

Chapter 19

1 Joseph Stalin was informed by U.S. ambassador W. Averell Harriman, who made a 4:00 a.m. visit to the Kremlin to deliver the news. A visibly shaken Stalin took Harriman’s hand and held it for nearly a minute as he composed himself. The eternally suspicious Stalin then suggested that FDR’s body be autopsied for signs of food poisoning.

2 The seating capacity was 802, which allowed more than enough room for the entire membership. At Churchill’s insistence, the House of Commons was rebuilt in accordance with its original design between 1948 and 1950.

3 Churchill was a close friend of the distiller Sir Alexander Walker. The prime minister favored hard alcohol, with beer being his least favorite beverage. However, he abhorred drunkenness, and was rarely known to drink to excess. Churchill’s most famous drinking incident occurred just after the war, when the British Labour politician Bessie Braddock accosted him late one night as he left the House of Commons. “Winston, you are drunk. What’s more, you are disgustingly drunk,” she told him. To which Churchill replied, “Bessie, my dear, you are ugly. What’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober, and you shall still be disgustingly ugly.” Churchill borrowed the quote from the 1934 W. C. Fields movie It’s a Gift. It’s worth noting that despite exercising very little, if at all, and drinking so copiously, Churchill inherited a sturdy constitution. Well past his eightieth birthday, he could still boast of a very healthy blood pressure of 140 over 80.

Chapter 20

1 Quoted in statements to Third Army correspondents on May 8, 1945, at his headquarters in Regensburg, Germany.

2 There was great confusion about what was to be done with so many refugees. They had left their homes and farms. It was thought that they should be turned back, sent where they came from, and left to fend for themselves against the Russians, many of whom had been resettled in these very farms and homes. The refugees had no place to go and were unwelcome everywhere.

3 Quoted by Martin Blumenson, Patton’s staff historian for the Third Army.

4 The K-ration was a boxed meal containing breakfast, lunch, or dinner. A full box typically consisted of tinned food, crackers, cigarettes, matches, and dessert.

5 Later in life, Baum will devote himself to the creation of the Israeli state. The Jewish tank commander will also exchange holiday cards with camp commandant von Goeckel. He will become good friends with John Waters, who went on to become a four-star general. However, at the time, he was furious that Patton had risked so much for just one man.

6 The name of the attacker has never been verified, nor has the nationality of the pilot. Although the plane had Polish markings, there were no Polish Spitfires in that part of Germany on April 20.

Chapter 21

1 An estimated eighty thousand Russians died in the Battle of Berlin. Civilian casualties are difficult to place, but it is estimated that between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand citizens of Berlin were killed.

2 Walther Wenck was arrested as a prisoner of war and held by the Americans until 1947. He died in 1982, following an automobile crash. He was eighty-one years old.

3 The liquid form of cyanide. Also known as hydrocyanic acid.

4 A special medallion given to the first one hundred thousand people who joined the Nazi Party. Each was numbered in the order in which the individual became a member. Hitler’s bore the number 1, making his gift to Magda Goebbels a most treasured memento.

5 The Soviets confirmed the identity of the bodies within two weeks but, for years, pretended to know nothing about Hitler’s fate. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Joseph Stalin made a point of pretending that Hitler was alive and on the run. Stalin, a master at creating uncertainty, believed that the ghosts of Nazism would enhance his power.

Chapter 22

1 Priority for going home was based on a system of points accrued by months in service, time in combat, number of children under the age of eighteen, and whether the individual had been awarded a medal such as the Bronze Star or Purple Heart. As for the Third’s job in Germany after the war, days were spent making sure that displaced people did not travel into the American occupation zone, patrolling a “frontier” between the American and Russian lines by erecting signs and barricades to prevent the flow of individuals traveling from east to west, and sealing off Germany to prevent intelligence officials and other high-ranking members of the Nazi Party from escaping the country.

2 The fifty-four-year-old Patterson was a native of Glens Falls, New York, who had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery during World War I. He later practiced law and served as a U.S. District Court judge before accepting the position of undersecretary of war when FDR offered it to him in 1940. Patterson became a favorite of Harry Truman, who elevated him to secretary of war on September 27, 1945. Patterson served two years before returning to the law. His firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler still exists in New York City. Patterson died on January 22, 1952, when the plane he was flying in from Buffalo to Newark crashed into a house while trying to land. He was rushing to get home and at the last minute had traded in his rail ticket for the plane ticket.

3 Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, translated as the “People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.”

Chapter 23

1 At the heart of the dispute was the Morgenthau Plan, a strategy to decimate postwar Germany by destroying its industrial strength and forcing the nation to return to its agrarian roots, soon to produce only beer, grain, and textiles. This would unknowingly have played into Russian hands, because by reducing Germany’s industrial output the nation would not be able to attack Russia again.

2 Oppenheimer is quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture.

3 There are some who believe that Robert Oppenheimer, who had known Communist leanings and whose wife was once a member of the Communist Party, was among those providing nuclear secrets to the Russians. In fact, the Soviet spy’s name was Klaus Fuchs.

4 Patton admired the discipline of the German military and the German work ethic.

5 Although Patton was received as a hero when he returned to the United States in the summer of 1945, his affair with Jean Gordon caused considerable animosity between him and his wife. “Beatrice gave me hell,” Patton told his friend Gen. Everett Hughes upon his return to Bavaria. “I’m glad to be in Europe.”

6 Bandera will himself be assassinated by the Russians in 1959, as noted in the Central Intelligence Agency journal Studies in Intelligence 19, no. 3.

7 On May 4, Patton received approval from Dwight Eisenhower to invade Czechoslovakia. At this point in the war, the Third Army comprised eighteen divisions and more than half a million men, making it the largest U.S. force in history. The Third Army swept into western Czechoslovakia, quickly capturing vast regions of the nation and accepting the surrender of thousands of German prisoners who did not want to fall into Russian hands. On May 6, Eisenhower ordered Patton to halt—which he did, albeit very reluctantly. However, elements of the Third Army did not receive the order. In the ancient city of Rokycany, just east of Plze, there was conflict when the American and Russian armies linked up, very nearly starting the new war for which Patton had long argued.

8 The Russians denied the Americans and British access to many of the POW camps they had liberated, and also denied that they held any Allied POWs. Truman, and Roosevelt before him, allegedly knew otherwise, but did not want to create strife with Stalin. Thus it is believed that many American and British soldiers died in Russian captivity because their release was not demanded.

Chapter 24

1 This is a reference to the smooth-talking religious officials whom Jesus of Nazareth condemned for their lies and air of self-importance, noting that their acts and their beliefs differed greatly.

2 The source of this innuendo is Harry Truman, speaking to a biographer in 1974. Marshall’s reasons were as much personal as political. It was widely held that Eisenhower had a great political future after the war, but Americans did not look kindly on candidates who were divorced—particularly one who left his wife for a foreigner several years younger. Marshall, in effect, believed he was saving Eisenhower from making a great mistake.

3 Raymond Daniell of the Chicago Daily News would later attempt to apologize to Beatrice Patton for his part in this scheme, and for his anti-Patton bias. She refused to accept his apology.

4 Named for Joseph Stalin. In the Cyrillic alphabet, IS is the close equivalent to his initials.

Chapter 25

1 In addition to camouflaging the villa’s exterior, Stalin added several curious security details to it. He ordered that the drapes be short, so that he could see the feet of anyone trying to hide behind them. There were no rugs, so that Stalin could hear any approaching footsteps. Also, the backs of the sofas were bulletproof, and designed to be high enough so that Stalin’s head was not visible when he was seated.

2 At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Stalin’s dacha served as a hotel. Rooms rented for seven thousand rubles—approximately two hundred dollars—per night.

3 In 1964, CIA analysis cast suspicion on Sedov’s death. It pointed out that the autopsies did not probe for evidence of poisoning, such as traces of microbes that might have been injected, nor did they include a thorough search of the nervous system and the skin, to make sure that the location of all injection marks was consistent with medical procedures. Sedov’s successor in Trotsky’s Communist movement, a German named Rudolf Klement, was murdered by NKVD agent Alexander Korotkov on June 13, 1938. His headless body was found floating in Paris’s Seine River.

4 Known as the Bloody Dwarf, Yezhov rose to power by arranging the arrest and execution of Yagoda. He then went on an unparalleled terror spree, killing an estimated six hundred thousand men and women in just two years. The killing was systematic, with security officials given murder quotas that, if not met, resulted in their own executions. Beria, Yezhov’s successor, almost became one of Yezhov’s victims. However, he cleverly aligned himself with Stalin, and Yezhov’s influence soon waned. The Bloody Dwarf was arrested on April 10, 1939, and soon confessed to anti-Soviet activities and homosexual behavior. He was executed on February 4, 1940. His nickname then changed to the Vanishing Commissar, because his image was soon removed from all official photographs until it was as if he had never existed at all.

5 Testimony of Semyon Zhukovsky, head of the Twelfth Department of the NKVD. File number 975026 in the archives of the Soviet Senior Military Prosecutor’s Office.

Chapter 26

1 In all, twenty-four political and military leaders of the Third Reich were tried at Nuremberg. Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. Twelve will be sentenced to death by hanging, seven will be given time in prison, three will be acquitted, one will commit suicide four days after the trial begins, and one will be declared medically unfit for trial.

2 The rumor was untrue, and some believe it was generated by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

3 The forty-eight-year-old head of British intelligence is widely considered to be the model for Ian Fleming’s fictitious spy, James Bond. It was Stephenson who convinced FDR that Donovan should head the OSS.

4 Bazata was held in high esteem by members of the OSS. No less than William Colby, a former OSS agent who went on to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, made a point of depicting Bazata’s heroism in the 1978 book Honorable Men. Bazata’s obituary in the New York Times on August 22, 1999, was specific in recounting his work behind enemy lines in France. However, for three decades after the general died, Bazata remained silent about his alleged role in Patton’s death. These quotes come from a letter he wrote to a friend on August 2, 1975. He later confirmed these claims in a 1979 article in Spotlight magazine.

Chapter 27

1 In addition to being the location of Patton’s headquarters, Bad Nauheim was also the site of Hitler’s Adlerhorst command post. Also, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s father used to travel there to take the waters for his heart condition. Finally, Bad Nauheim was host to Elvis Presley during his short stint in the army between 1958 and 1960. The gate to the city’s castle is depicted on the cover of Presley’s 1959 No.1 hit record, “A Big Hunk o’ Love.”

2 Thompson will try to cover his tracks regarding the “borrowed” truck by telling investigators that at the time of the accident he was turning into a quartermaster depot to return the vehicle, but in fact the depot was much farther down the road. There was a redbrick building to Patton’s right, with a broad driveway that might have been Thompson’s intended path. He will later change his story to say that he was turning onto a side street. But that is suspicious. The closest street to Thompson’s vehicle was fifteen feet north of the accident. In effect, Thompson did not know where he was going.

Afterword

1 This was reported in the Washington Star.

2 This is the citation for Bazata’s Distinguished Cross: “The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Captain (Infantry) Douglas D. Bazata, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy as an organizer and Director of Resistance forces serving with the Office of Strategic Services, in action against enemy forces from 27 August 1944 to 6 October 1944. Captain Bazata, after having been parachuted into the Haute Saone Department of France, organized and armed Resistance Forces, numbering 7,000; planned and executed acts of sabotage against rail and highway markers in order to divert German convoys onto secondary routes, leading them into well prepared ambushes and causing them to lose many men and motor vehicles. All of these tasks were performed in civilian clothing. Captain Bazata’s services reflect great credit upon him and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the armed forces of the United States.”