In the end, it was Heinrich Himmler and the U.S. Air Force who saved the necks of Ruff, Romberg, and Weltz. Only three people could have definitely implicated them in medical crimes at Dachau: Himmler, who committed suicide before he could be questioned; Rausch, whom Himmler executed; and Strughold, whom the air force was shielding. As a result, the Nuremberg panel acquitted all three doctors, on the grounds of reasonable doubt. It was, the panel said, a close call. In the end, sixteen of the twenty-three doctors/administrators were found guilty. Seven of those were sentenced to death.
The air force immediately put Ruff, Romberg, and Weltz back on the U.S. payroll. It had special plans for its war treasure, Dr. Strughold. Worried that the Soviets might kidnap him, the air force forged Strughold’s way into the United States in 1947 on the first wave of Paperclip scientists to hit the shores of America.
The air force sent Dr. Strughold to Randolph Field, Texas, where he created the first ever American department of space medicine, earning him the title “Father of Space Medicine.” Strugi, as his friends called him, went on to pioneer the next generation of low-pressure chambers, space simulators, and pressure suits, all of which helped put Neil Armstrong on the moon.
As a result of his groundbreaking research, Dr. Strughold was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame. The Daughters of the American Revolution awarded him the Americanism Medal. The Aerospace Medical Association created the “Hubertus Strughold Award.” The Texas State Senate declared a “Dr. Hubertus Strughold Day.” And Ohio State University included his portrait in a mural of medical heroes alongside Hippocrates and Marie Curie. The university removed Strughold’s portrait from the group after he died.
In 1958, eleven years after Strughold entered the United States, the INS received a complaint about him and checked his background. It began by asking the air force if it had any “derogatory information” on its famous employee. The air force said no, Dr. Strughold had been “appropriately investigated.” Case closed.
When Strughold’s name appeared on the published Karbach list in 1974, Texas congressman Henry Gonzalez was upset. Anxious not to see a famous son of Texas smeared by reckless war crimes innuendo, Gonzalez complained to the INS. The congressman said his constituent had told him he first heard about Nazi medical experiments on humans after the war. So what was the flap all about?
INS commissioner General Chapman reassured Gonzalez: “Our inquiries [about Dr. Strughold] were terminated…. We consider the matter closed.” For its part, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Strughold’s wartime activity, but it didn’t find enough clear and convincing evidence to charge him. Dr. Hubertus Strughold died a free man in San Antonio in 1978 under a cloud of suspicion and with a slightly tarnished name.
Dr. Strughold’s alleged complicity in the medical experiments on Dachau prisoners, as terrible as they were, was a “minor” war crime compared to the role other Paperclip scientists played in a secret SS camp hidden in a remote mountain valley and code-named Dora.
Greek for “gift.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bivouacked just inside the western border of Germany, U.S. Army Private John Galione smelled death. The stench came from somewhere up ahead, from the east. It was an odor the 104th Infantry Timberwolf—a veteran of the battle for Remagen Bridge—had smelled many times before. Galione had heard rumors about Soviet soldiers finding concentration camps filled with corpses and the walking dead as they pushed across Poland toward Berlin. He had a hunch that if he followed the stench, it would lead him to such a camp. The problem was—the smell was coming from territory still held by the German army.
Galione told his platoon leader about his suspicion and asked if he could have a couple of guys for reconnaissance. There may be some American prisoners there, he argued. Maybe pilots shot down and captured.
Although the platoon sergeant didn’t disagree, he said no. A reconnaissance mission would be too risky. If there is a concentration camp up ahead, he said, it’ll have to wait another week.
Galione couldn’t sleep that night. A week was a long time; men would die. The more he thought about the camp—now a reality in his mind—a plan began to take shape. If there was a Nazi camp farther east, it would have to be next to a railroad. How else could they move thousands of prisoners in and out? All he had to do was follow the train tracks east, deeper into Germany, and they would lead him to the camp.
Galione woke up a buddy and told him he was going to have a look up ahead and why. He expected to be back by morning, he said, but if he wasn’t, would his buddy tell the sarge that he hadn’t deserted? Galione didn’t want to be branded a coward if he got captured or killed.
At nine thirty on the night of April 5, 1945, Private Galione began to follow the rail tracks southeast. He felt at home traveling under the stars. For a Timberwolf, specially trained in nighttime fighting in America’s rugged Northwest, darkness was a friend.
Galione never made it back by morning. When the sun rose, he continued following the tracks and the smell. For five days, over one hundred miles, along the tracks at night and in the woods during the day, no sleep, just a few hours of rest against a tree. He was surrounded by German soldiers and retreating convoys of trucks and jeeps. To sleep was dangerous.
Exhausted and weak from hunger, Galione was also in pain. Walking had chaffed raw the unhealed leg wound he suffered at Remagen. But he kept on going, pushed by an invisible hand (was it God?) and pulled by the fear that there might be Americans in the camp. God or no God, he was worried. Would he face court-martial when he got back to camp? If he got back?
With each step, it seemed, the smell of death got stronger. On the fifth day of trekking, he spotted another Timberwolf camp a mile or so from the tracks with a road leading to it. He thought about going for help, then dismissed the idea. Lives were at stake; every minute was a life.
A few hours after he passed the Timberwolf bivouac, he found a spur trailing off north from the main tracks. The stench was now overpowering. He followed the spur and soon found an abandoned boxcar. It was empty, the straw-strewn floor fetid from blood, urine, and feces.
The spur curved and the tracks stretched toward the mouths of two openings in the mountainside, camouflaged with netting. In the valley, on a flat plain, stood a huge, silent camp with empty guard towers and a gate with a large lock. A lone soldier was loading a truck. Galione knew he had stumbled onto something big.
On the tracks near the first opening sat another boxcar. The smell coming from it was even riper. He didn’t have to guess what he would find inside—dead bodies dressed in prison rags. He began poking around the five- day-old corpses with his rifle, hoping to find out who the dead men were, how they died, and whether any were Americans. The only identifications he found were colored armbands sewn onto the prison pajamas—red, green, yellow, blue. He knew that “yellow” meant Jew. What did the others signify? While turning corpses, his gun made a steel-on-steel clang. He silently cursed. If he weren’t so tired, he would never had made such a rookie mistake.
The first shot pinged off the boxcar. Galione ducked. The soldier he had seen earlier was running toward him with a rifle. Galione jumped from the boxcar and scampered up the mountainside as fast as loose rocks would allow. Bullets whizzed by his ear and ricocheted off the granite rocks as he dove into the camouflage above the first opening.
Unable to see the American with the green and silver Timberwolf patch on his shoulder, the soldier lost interest, jumped in his truck, and drove off. As soon as he disappeared around the curve, Galione relaxed and scanned the camp below. The barbed-wired prison was as quiet as a ghost town.
Attracted by the gunfire, curious prisoners began to gather at the gate. They knew the Allies were advancing. For days they had heard the sounds of battle, closer every daybreak. Was this liberation day? There was no cheering. Just an eerie silence.
The openings in the mountain were calling to Galione like sirens. What were the Nazis hiding inside? Fuel? Bombs? Tanks? How deep into the mountain did the openings go? As curious as he was, he was too smart to explore. There might be Germans hiding inside or the place might be booby-trapped. One step into the darkness and the mountain could explode into piles of rock. Instead Galione picked his way down to the prison gate. The least he
