Victory and Honor

“In one sense, rather well,” Dulles began, then paused as he saw the waiter suddenly approaching with his drink.

When the waiter had left again, Dulles raised his glass in salute and solemnly said, “To victory in Europe.”

He took a sip and then went on in explanation: “Just before I left Bern to come here, I learned that German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark, and northwestern Germany will surrender tomorrow to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath, just southeast of Hamburg.

“Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, now head of the German state, has sent Admiral von Friedeburg, his successor as commander in chief of the German navy, to General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims to set up things. And Colonel-Generaloberst Alfred Jodl—the chief of staff of OKW, who will actually sign the surrender documents—is on his way to Reims as we speak.”

“And the other sense? What’s that? The reason you’re not in Reims?”

“I thought it more important—and so did Graham—that we had a talk before you went back to Argentina. The other sense, Clete, is that our war—Graham’s, mine, and yours—is just about to begin.”

Frade’s eyebrows went up when he heard his name rolled in with those of Dulles and Colonel Alejandro F. Graham, USMCR, the deputy director for the Western Hemisphere of the Office of Strategic Services. Both men were equals in the OSS, reporting directly to—and on occasion directly defying—OSS Director William “Wild Bill” Donovan.

“That sounds ominous,” Frade said. “Who are we going to fight?”

“It’s a long list of belligerents, I’m afraid, starting with those Germans you know are already in South America under the Nazis’ Operation Phoenix and planning, at some point, to resurrect the Thousand-Year Reich. And the Soviet Union, of course. Josef Stalin really is not Friendly Uncle Joe, as Roosevelt and Eleanor have tried so hard to make us believe. But our immediate enemies are Admiral Leahy and General Marshall and others of their ilk. And possibly Harry Truman, although he may surprise us. And, of course, not to forget Henry Morgenthau.”

“The secretary of the Treasury?”

“The secretary of the Treasury,” Dulles confirmed.

“You don’t really think anybody’s going to go along with that nutty idea of his . . . what’s it being called? ‘The Pastoralization of Germany’?”

“Yes, Cletus, I’m afraid that I do. They want Germany powerless, and believe completely demolishing its industry will accomplish that. But what I actually was thinking about is Morgenthau finding out about the deal we quietly struck with Colonel Gehlen. Morgenthau’s Jewish. He has every right in the world to loathe and detest the Germans for what they did to the Jews—and see that they’re punished for it. He quite seriously proposed summarily executing the top one hundred Nazis as soon as they came into our hands. I shudder to think what Morgenthau would do if he knew we had arranged the movement of several hundred Nazis to sanctuary in Argentina.”

“That’s been a constant question in my mind from the beginning,” Frade said, and his memory flashed with his initial oh shit! reaction to being told of the operation some sixteen months earlier in this same hotel.

Frade clearly recalled Dulles and Graham announcing that the plan was not only for American spies to smuggle German spies to South America—but for Frade’s OSS spooks and SAA Lockheed Constellation aircraft to carry out the operation. They explained that they had made the secret agreement with Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Gehlen, who was head of Germany’s Abwehr Ost—Russian—intelligence. Gehlen believed (a) that Germany was losing the war—they said he in fact was involved with Count von Stauffenberg in Operation Valkyrie, the plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler—and (b) that after the war, Gehlen’s agents faced firing squads or worse, particularly if Stalin had a say.

So Gehlen offered to the OSS all his assets, data, and agents-inplace in exchange for Gehlen and his officers and their families not falling into ruthless Russian hands.

Perhaps even more staggering—if protecting enemy agents at war’s end wasn’t outrageous enough—was the fact that Dulles and Graham were doing this specifically without anyone’s knowledge or authority—including Wild Bill Donovan’s. They explained that if they didn’t tell the OSS chief, then he could honestly say he never knew. But more important, if they did tell Donovan, he’d likely feel duty bound to share it with his boss, FDR. And then—if against incredible odds they actually got approval—the secret soon would find its way to others—Morgenthau and Vice President Henry Wallace leapt to mind—who would act on their moral outrage over aid and comfort to the Nazis.

And the OSS—and America—would lose Gehlen’s great wealth of intelligence on Communist spies, especially those who had infiltrated America’s all-important atomic bomb program, the Manhattan Project.

Dulles and Graham further explained to Clete that sharing this devout distrust of Communists were certain elements within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, influential ones who offered to readily supply Vatican-issued passports and other papers identifying Gehlen’s men and their wives and children as, respectively, priests and nuns and orphans seeking safe passage to South America to perform God’s work.

Having taken an oath to defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, Cletus Frade came to agree with the position that Morgenthau and all others who simply sought retribution against the Germans would cause the United States even greater harm if they failed to secure Gehlen’s intel.

And shortly thereafter Frade’s SAA Connie left Lisbon for Buenos Aires with the first load of Vatican- sponsored priests, nuns, and orphans among its passengers.

Now, sixteen months later, Frade asked, “Are we going to do any more of that, now that the war’s over?”

Dulles nodded.

He sipped his scotch and then said, “There’s another thirty-five or so of Gehlen’s men still in Germany that we promised to get out. Which we are going to have to be even more careful about now with Germany’s surrender; word is that Morgenthau has ordered the Secret Service—it being, of course, under the Treasury Department—to assign agents to track what happens with senior Nazis, particularly those top one hundred he’d like seen stood before a firing squad and mowed down with machine guns.”

“Tracking every senior Nazi won’t be easy for them to do.”

“Agreed. But there are two things in play. One, Morgenthau is on a mission he devoutly believes in, and will not be deterred.”

Frade nodded. “And the second?”

“That some Secret Service agent need only stumble across one of Gehlen’s men we’re smuggling for our whole operation to be blown.”

Frade made a face, then said, “Well, if you and Graham are right about the Russians—and I think you are— then making the deal was the right thing to do. Why the hell wouldn’t Morgenthau also see that?”

“If I were Jewish,” Dulles said, “I don’t think I’d be able to see it. Particularly after seeing the movies of the concentration camp ovens. And the bodies. And insofar as destroying German industry is concerned, I’ve always thought it had more to do with punishing the Germans than anything else.”

“Colonel Graham told me he thought it had more to do with giving the Russians a license to steal what’s left of German industry and move it to Russia. He said that the plan had been written by Morgenthau’s deputy, a guy named Harry Dexter White, who he and J. Edgar Hoover were agreed was a Communist.”

“I submit the possibility that we’re both right,” Dulles said.

“You said Admiral Leahy and General Marshall are our enemies, too,” Frade said. “What did we do, change sides?”

“Clete, you know that the OSS has always been a thorn in the side of the Army and the Navy. I don’t think it’s too far off to say they’ve always hated us—them and especially Hoover’s FBI—for any number of reasons, some of them valid but most simply visceral. We’re not like they are. From the beginning, we had Wild Bill Donovan’s friendship with Roosevelt to protect us.

“Roosevelt is gone. The military establishment is already telling Truman it’s time to shut down the OSS. The war in Europe is over, and General MacArthur refuses to permit us to operate in the Pacific. What worries me is that Harry Truman won’t—doesn’t know how to—say no to the generals.”

“I always thought generals and admirals were afraid of presidents, not the other way around.”

“Harry Truman was a captain in the First World War. After it, he joined the reserves and stayed in. He’s currently a reserve colonel. Colonels—with certain exceptions, such as Graham and you—don’t argue with generals.