CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Bundesland State of Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, August 22, 1962

Prior to World War I, Ludwigshafen was a thriving industrial city in southwestern Germany located in a picturesque pastoral setting along the Rhine River across from Mannheim. Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, and Heidelberg made up the Rhine Neckar Region. The area was prosperous owing to the efficient and industrious German people, the homogeneity of the population, and—more importantly—to the presence of chemical and oil plants in Ludwigshafen and Oppau owned by IG Farben [German full name: Interssengemeinschaft Farben. English: Association of Common Interests]. The large complex of companies and plants was the property of a consortium known by the cumbersome title of Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik or BASF, a powerful union of German companies Bayer, Hoechst, and others. BASF produced pharmaceuticals, fuels, fertilizers, potash and salt, inks, cosmetics, and textile dyes among many other products, and provided a stable prosperous economy which encouraged education, innovation, and cooperation.

The adventurism of Kaiser Wilhelm I and the very conservative and jingoistic Junkers produced World War I and the nearly catastrophic destruction of the cities of the region and of the plants and the economy. During the war, the industrial plants played a key role in Germany’s war machine producing munitions, poison gas, Zeppelin factories, and expertise for the military. The area became a prime target of Allied attacks, including the first aerial bombardments. Following the war, Germany was hamstrung with reparations assessments, and the return of the economy to its prewar status was slow. The economic recovery encountered a major setback in the form of a huge industrial explosion that killed five hundred citizens and injured another couple of thousand. A great many of the newly rebuilt buildings were destroyed, and the area had to begin again. Foreign workers began moving in by necessity to provide the labor for reconstruction and to man the plants, adding an entering wedge of diversity and confusion.

Fortunately for Ludwigshafen and Oppau, BASF produced such robust profits that reconstruction of a much changed group of cities proceeded fairly rapidly. The result was a greatly changed city, now built on the efficient and unattractive styles of postwar European housing developed for efficiency and not for attractiveness. Unfortunately for Lugwigshafen and its sister cities, another dictator brought in another round of adventurism and disaster.

In what was dubbed the Oil Campaign of World War II, Allied B-17 and B-24 bombers wreaked havoc on the IG Farben plants so that output dropped to zero, and the economy dropped to a subsistence level. Allied historical records indicated that the area was inundated with explosives for two years with an incredible 13,000 bombers engaging more than 120 separate raids, dropping over 50,000 bombs—including high explosives and nearly two and a half million magnesium incendiary bombs—which wrecked the cities and the plants and brought production to a permanent halt. In a single raid in 1945, Allied bombers laid down 1,000 high explosives and almost 10,000 incendiary bombs that killed scores, started hundreds of fires, destroyed over 350 homes, and put 1,800 people out on the streets with no means of support or protection. The cities were ruined, and the economy appeared to be destroyed beyond recovery.

In the aftermath of World War II, foreign workers began to stream in along with displaced Germans, including not a few war criminals with new identities provided for them by the ODESSA. Old generational associations were disrupted, friends went permanently missing, and the newcomers assimilated easily during the chaos. When BASF rebuilt its factories, the newcomers became an integral part of the community and the economy with hardly any questioning of the past histories of the new generation of citizens.

During the 1960s, Ludwigshafen was part of the French occupation zone, a prominent city of the newly founded Bundesland (state) of Rheinland-Pfalz and the Federal Republic of Germany. Reconstruction of the devastated city and revival of the economy was supported by the Allies, predominantly by American financial aid. By 1948, American citizens pitched in. The “Pasadena Shares Committee” sent packages of blankets, clothing, food, and medicines to help the residents; serious friendships formed. In 1956, Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Pasadena, California, became sister cities.

Much of the city was completely ruined; but because BASF soon made enormous profits again, the city administration became wealthy enough to rebuild Ludwigshafen according to the architectural taste of the current era—the 1950s and 1960s. Projects included the Hochstraßen [highways on stilts], the new main station—which was the most modern station in all of Europe—several tower blocks, and a complete new suburb—the satellite quarter Pfingstweide north of Edigheim.

Largely forgotten was that the partner company of the American Rockefeller industries, Interessengemeinschaft [Association of Common Interests] Farben—IG Farben, for short—participated in the destruction, plunder, and murder of countless thousands of cities and millions of people throughout Europe. The company formed by the association was a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. It was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. The year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler’s seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, and one of the most criminal organizations fostering the Second World War.

One hundred percent of all explosives and synthetic gasoline used in the war came from the IG Farben conglomerate factories. As the German Wehrmacht moved from country to country conquering and subjugating the population, IG Farben followed close on its heels, systematically taking over the industries of those countries. IG Farben participated in the plunder of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, and all other countries conquered by the Nazis. Following the war with all of its chaos and the massive incentives to facilitate the rebuilding of Germany as a bastion against the growth of Stalin’s Soviet Union, IG Farben prospered; and there was hardly a ripple on the surface of the company’s profit history.

One of the newcomers to the reawakening city complex of Lugwigshafen was a relatively young man by the name of Heinrich Rudolf Gajewski, a German IG Farben war criminal who had helped in the manufacture of sarin and tabun gas used in the execution chambers. His principal occupation during the war was the procurement of slave labor, which proved to be a full-time effort because of the unconscionably high mortality rates among the workers due to starvation, overwork, and neglected disease. His talents were also utilized in the postwar triage of returning German POWs, and he gained enormous power of life and death over the returnees. If they could not pay, they languished in the camps and often starved before final repatriation. He returned to Ludwigshafen with the help of ODESSA and assumed a new life under the innocuous name of Gunther Emil Sondregger. Because of his expertise, he was assigned to the human resources division of the BASF system. Because of his being included on the Allies’ most wanted war criminal list, his position in the company was a relatively minor one and one unlikely to attract attention to himself or to the company for harboring him.

Gajewski/Sondregger settled down in the obscure Ludwigshafen suburb of Hemshof in the older original North district of Nördliche Innenstadt located between the main station and main cemetery. Hemshof and the North District were known for their high proportion of foreign inhabitants, making them culturally diverse. He never married, never had children, joined no church or political organization, or even the union at his work. He had a few acquaintances, but no friends or confidants—especially no confidants. He avoided veterans’ groups and did not attend memorial services. He was approached by the Deutsche Reichspartei—the postwar far-right political party—but politely rebuffed them saying he wanted to be left alone. So far as he knew, he was not on any foreign or domestic war criminal list such as Operation Paperclip, nor had he come to the attention of the Verfassungsschutz [Federal German Intelligence Organization]. He considered himself lucky not to have fallen into the hands of the occupiers in the French zone because he was well aware of the many thousands of Germans who were beaten, robbed, raped, and murdered. It would be a mastery of understatement to say that Gunther Emil Sondregger kept to himself. In fact, if one were to make an effort, Sondregger would be found not to have existed prior to 1952 when he joined the influx of workers and foreigners who poured into the city.

Sondregger situated himself in a corner of the large business office and avoided communicating with his fellow workers unless it became absolutely necessary. His manner was stiff and correct, polite, but neither cordial nor forthcoming. From his SS days he had adopted the habit of sitting squarely upright in a sturdy right angle high back chair. This was in part habit, and in part the uncomfortable chair assisted him to maintain his attention on his mind-numbing work and on any other workers or visitors who might pay attention to him. He was assiduously careful about that. Even with the end of military occupation in 1955, Sondregger did not let down his guard. He even dressed to be so ordinary and innocuous as to approach invisibility. He wore a gray suit—he had five of them—a white shirt, and one of three quietly patterned gray and black neckties. His shoes were post-occupation production black lace-ups, and he kept them neat and clean and occasionally polished, but nothing extravagant. He combed his hair straight back; it was neither very short nor very long. He carefully avoided having any facial hair. His eyeglasses were cheap; there were tens of thousands of those discount frames throughout Germany. He made sure he did not call attention to himself by gaining or losing weight. He had weighed 182 pounds since he turned thirty.

On August 16, 1962, Sondregger was seated at his desk checking the accounting sheets of hours worked against pay received during the past month by two thousand workers. The work was deadly dull; but he never forgot the importance of maintaining a low profile; and he was glad to have a job in a difficult economy. The truth was he was very happy to be alive and not rotting in a postwar prison or worse. He was unaware of a person behind him dressed in ordinary factory workers’ garb. He was unaware that the individual was wearing a cummerbund with two heavy 100 Franc coins sewn into folds in the center of the cloth. Before he could react, the assassin behind his chair back-whipped the cummerbund over Sondregger’s head and expertly situated the lump of coins in the exact center of his neck. Powerful hands and arms applied killing pressure for five minutes, fracturing Sondregger’s hyoid bone and cutting off all blood and oxygen supply to his brain. His death was swift, silent, and unseen.

Owing to his reclusive nature, no one paid attention to the accountant slumped over his small desk until quitting time, and only then because he appeared to refuse to leave the building in response to repeated demands. One of the human resources division secretaries happened to say good evening to the obscure accountant; and when he failed to respond in any manner, she looked more closely. She suspected something was very wrong; so, following protocol, she informed the workroom foreman before he could exit the building for the night.

The workroom foreman called security, who recognized that the accountant was dead, and in fact that his neck was encircled by a heavy strangulating cloth. The security officer rushed to close off all exits; but it was an act of futility because most of the workers had already left the building; and no one who worked anywhere near Gunther Sondregger remained in the room.

“Call the Landespolizei [Bundeslandt State Police],” the senior security officer ordered. “Call the Kripo office directly.”

“Kriminalpolitzei, Detective Branch,” the dispatcher answered crisply. “How may I direct your call?”

“Get me Kriminalkommissar [Detective Lieutenant] Horst Schäfer, please. This is an emergency.”

“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”

“Joachim Becker at Farben Administration. I am the security officer.”

“I will ring his office. Hold the line for a moment, please, sir.”

After a two-minute pause, Schäfer responded, “What can I do for you, Joachim?”

“Solve a murder, catch a murderer—your specialty, Cousin.”

“At Farbens?”

“Yes—a garroting in the administration building. The body has not been disturbed.”

“I’ll get Eberhard and the crime scene team and be right there. I presume you have collected everyone in the building for me?”

“Too late. Most of them have already gone. It’s ten minutes after the whistle.”

“Too bad. That’s just more work, but that’s why I get the huge salary.”

It was a standing joke between the two first cousins, because the plant security position paid far better than the police position.

Fifteen minutes later with lights and sirens on, the police contingent pulled up to the main headquarters building of the BASF complex.

Schäfer ordered an officer to take each of the three doors to the building, and he and Senior Constable Zimmermann led the forensics team into the office building through the main entrance where they met Joachim.

“Tell me what you know, Joachim.”

“There’s not much to know. One of our accountants and minor administrators by the name of Gunther Emil Sondregger was strangled to death … garroted by an unknown assailant earlier in the day.”

Schäfer raised a questioning eyebrow.

Joachim was a small wiry man who had been in awe of his much larger cousin during their youths; and even now at thirty-one, he was still a bit intimidated. He shook his dark curly hair—a lifelong habit which came out when he was nervous.

“Nobody’s fault, Horst. The man was a recluse—never talked to anybody, never made a suggestion, or reported an error. He sat in his ridiculous stiff old chair and worked leaning over his desk. It wasn’t until quitting time that anyone noticed that he was not moving. The supervisor determined that he was dead and called me.”

“So, Joachim, how long do you think he has been dead?”

“I can only make an educated guess. He is stiff as a new broom; so, he has been dead no less than three hours and no more than twelve hours.”

“This is not too helpful, Cousin. When did he come in to work?”

“He was like a machine. He clocked in every day at exactly eight in the morning, and he clocked out at exactly five o’clock in the evening, having spent nine hours in his chair.”

“So, he was killed between eleven and five.”

“Approximately.”

Det. Schäfer raised his questioning eyebrow again.

“There’s more to it than just the passage of time; but I’m just a humble security officer, not a medical examiner or a lofty detective. We probably should ask Herr Arzt [Doctor] Miller.”

“Where is the lazy old Nazi anyway?”

“Traffic. Police band said that there was a communist bombing on Universität Strasse. He probably got caught in the police blockade.”

Schäfer gave a small shrug, indicating he was mollified for the present.

“Tell me about the witnesses, please.”

“Sorry, Horst. We don’t have a single person who indicates that he or she saw or heard anything. Not a one.”

Horst sighed and did a little stretch exercise. He was an impressive man—well over six feet tall and weighed more than 220 pounds. He was lean and had sharply defined muscles and large powerful hands. He was an old-school German right down to a dueling scar on his left cheek like so many former officers of the Wehrmacht and the SS. Unlike his wiry, dark, curly-haired, olive-skinned cousin, Horst was an Aryan through and through. He could easily have been taken for a Norwegian with his blond, almost white, short-cropped hair, narrow and lined face, and piercing blue eyes. He wore a gray business suit, fashionable dark gray shirt, deep purple tie, and black penny loafers—an affectation he had picked up from the Americans. He wore the academy ring on his left hand, and his broad band gold wedding ring on the right like most German men. His nails were manicured.

After relieving his tension and frustration with his minor exercise routine, he turned back to Joachim and to Eberhard—his partner—who had been standing quietly listening to the other two men talk.

“Joachim, please get your men out and bring every worker who was on the victim’s work floor back in for questioning. Eberhard, dig into the company records and then in the police and military records to see if you can get a handle on who our victim is and then we three can begin to figure out who had a reason to kill the man.”

“We do have the instrument of death. I thought you would like to examine it.”

“Good, I’ll do that first. After that I am going to follow up on a line of inquiry I have been thinking about as you have told us what you know, Joachim. Let’s take a look at that garrote.”

The heavy cloth cummerbund was thick and sturdy, well worn and rather nondescript gray in color.

“Looks something like a Turk or Arab might wear. We’ll have to do a little looking into the foreign labor pool,” Horst told Joachim.

Joachim nodded. “Let’s open it and see what the lump is.”

Horst opened his pocket knife and sliced the tough cloth open to reveal two worn 100 franc coins.

“Cousin, while you’re at it, check and see if there are any Indians on the payroll. This looks something like an old Thuggee assassin’s weapon.”

“I’ll get on it.”

“Call Eberhard about what you learn. I need to see some people about this. I was going to work with you to question the employees, but I am feeling pushed to follow up my idea. I will be surprised if anything comes from the interrogations, but we need to make sure that we follow every reasonable avenue. Thanks for the help. See you at the family reunion next Friday night.”