The Axmann Conspiracy: The Nazi Plan for a Fourth Reich and How the U.S. Army Defeated it

Now that Axmann had been captured along with some of his top men, the CIC worked in overdrive to bring down the conspiracy of former HJ leaders still dedicated to the Nazi cause.

Axmann, Memminger, and Overbeck were all intensively interrogated. They tried to give as little information as they could, sticking to what they thought their interrogators already knew and trying to spin those facts that they couldn’t deny in such a way that their activities would seem innocuous.

After being captured, Axmann was asked repeatedly about the deaths of Hitler and Bormann.² At one point Axmann even helped make a diagram showing the locations of Hitler and Eva Braun’s bodies as he found them. He also assisted with a diagram of where he came upon Bormann’s body.

Axmann and Memminger were transferred to Oberursel, while Overbeck was held in Heidelberg.3 The message from the USFET HQ to the Third Army troops holding Axmann and Memminger that requested the prisoners be moved to Oberursel included the following: “Since subjects are desperate men, request they be held incommunicado and placed under heavy guard during transfer.”⁴

The town of Oberursel is northwest of Frankfurt, in the German state of Hesse. Here the U.S. Military Intelligence Service Center was located. It was informally known as Camp Sibert after General Edwin Sibert (the G-2 for USFET).⁵ During World War II, this facility had been used by the Germans to interrogate prisoners of war, primarily captured Allied pilots and flight crews. This is where Axmann and Memminger were held.

While he was being admitted to Camp Sibert, Axmann’s prosthetic arm was taken away from him, never to be returned. He later speculated that “it landed on either the garbage heap or as a souvenir in America.”⁶ This prosthetic had helped him during his breakout from the bunker, when the Russian soldiers he ran into were fascinated by it. But now, it was gone, and he was without his Dr. Strangelove–like appendage.

Axmann was held in solitary confinement. Christmas was the same as all his other days in Camp Sibert with one exception—he heard singing from outside that faintly made its way into his cell.⁷

The documents found on these prisoners were carefully analyzed. Especially helpful was the diagram Axmann had drawn, of Heidemann’s various business enterprises, during their one-on-one meeting in the cabin outside of Oberstaufen.

Meanwhile, the CIC did what it could to keep the arrests secret. They didn’t want to spook their remaining targets or expose their informants.

By January 9, U.S. forces had arrested twenty Nazi operatives as part of this operation.⁹

Among the documents confiscated from Simon Winter was an interesting letter from a Hilde Merklein. It had been sent using a courier, which was illegal during the occupation as it allowed Nazis to send messages without going through the post. Merklein had been Winter’s secretary and later became an officer under his command in the national leadership office for the HJ in Berlin.

As this letter revealed, since the war ended she had obtained employment as the secretary to an up-and-comer in German politics. She worked for Professor Carlo Schmid, then the minister of education for the area of Württemberg, appointed by the French. The letter from Merklein to Winter “disclosed some inside information concerning the formation of the new Landesregierung [state government] which then was a topic of discussion…especially the new choice for Minister of Education and his assistant for political questions.”10

While other BDM plants in secretarial positions were often in Military Government offices, this was an amazing position from which Merklein could spy. Although education at first might sound like a relatively unimportant ministry, the education of young people was something that those who had run the HJ and BDM understood to be of the utmost importance in influencing the country’s future.

Moreover, they had placed a BDM officer with someone who was a rising star in German politics. Professor Schmid went on to great prominence in the shaping of the modern West German state. In his 1979 obituary, the Los Angeles Times referred to him as “one of the founding fathers of the West German state and a man described as Germany’s most articulate spokesman for progressive socialism.”¹¹

As it was, the CIC now knew about this spy Professor Schmid had unwittingly hired, so they resolved to have her fired (if she was still working for him).

Despite the disappearances of key figures such as Axmann, Memminger, Winter, Heidemann, and Bergemann, the rest of the group did not go to ground, but continued about their business.

The first New Year’s celebration in occupied Germany came and went. On January 8, 1946, the prosecution at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg started its case against the individual defendants. Until then, the trial had focused on six organizations—the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Security Service (SD), the secret police (Gestapo), the Stormtroopers (SA), and the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces.

Surprisingly, Axmann was never called to testify at Nuremberg. He had firsthand knowledge of the death of Martin Bormann, and Bormann’s lawyer’s main defense was that his client was dead. Also, he knew Baldur von Schirach well and could have testified on his behalf.

The interrogation of suspects picked up during Operation Nursery continued. A report on January 2, 1946, stated that “none of the prisoners has been broken so far, and the information obtained is far from a complete picture. OVERBECK has categorically refused to furnish any names and addresses.”¹⁵ This report goes on to explain that Axmann and Memminger pretended to cooperate a bit while only giving old, out-of-date contact information for their Nazi colleagues.

For the things that the prisoners couldn’t deny (because the CIC had documented them well), like the meeting in Lübeck between Axmann and Memminger, they tried to spin the facts as best they could. Instead of this having been a trip to meet with others who wanted to bring back National Socialism to Germany, it was simply a series of social visits. As the interrogation document notes, “MEMMINGER claims that the trip was not undertaken, in order to organise groups, but only in order to find out what had become of old friends during the past few months. The conversation with AXMANN in LUEBECK for instance concerned only a general exchange of experiences according to him.”¹⁶

The CIC had an informant (Günter Ebeling) present in Lübeck when Axmann and Memminger met up. So they knew that Memminger was not telling the truth about what happened there.

Far from giving up while in captivity, Axmann tried to bargain in exchange for answering questions. He wanted to send a message out before he would cooperate fully. Military Intelligence interpreted this request as having a threefold purpose. First, it was an attempt to stall the interrogations and slow down this process. This would be the case even if this condition were never met; as long as it was considered, it would cause delay.

Second, Axmann was trying to warn the others that the CIC was after them. Third, Axmann wanted to try to gain the assistance of people with some kind of influence, who might be able to help him out.¹⁹ The interrogators at Camp Sibert did not fall for this and promptly refused his request.

An example of how the prisoners tended to react to evidence against them is Gustav Memminger’s take on the “list of traitors” found among his personal papers. The title of this paper seemed straightforward, and the meaning of it difficult to deny, but Memminger still tried to spin it. According to notes on his interrogation, “he was afraid that this entry might be ‘misinterpreted’ and gives the following ‘explanation’: It had come to the attention of their group that some of the HJ people had turned informer and were working for the CIC.…It was considered advisable to compile a list of all such cases. Again MEMMINGER asserts this should only warn their friends not to trust the ‘traitors,’ but was not meant as a basis for repressive and retaliatory action.”²⁰

Axmann confirmed that his intended destination was Lübeck, where he was heading when he was arrested en route. He then admitted to having had plans to use members of their group who “had served as officers at the front in order to maintain liaison with former army officers. The purpose of this liaison is twofold: a. positive liaison with Army and Air force units and their staffs in the British Zone…b. negative work in the Russian Zone, i.e. to discourage former officers from working for the Russians directly or from joining German units under Russian supervision.”²²

A rare moment of candor happened as a result of an interrogator surprising one of the prisoners with unexpected evidence: “When OVERBECK was shown the sheet, on which AXMANN had jotted down the structure of HEIDEMANN’s various firms and enterprises, he forgot himself for a moment and lost his usual composure exclaiming ‘For Heavens sake, you’ve got that one too. At least, I had hoped that these notes would have been destroyed.’”²³ As First Lieutenant Leo Barton, the writer of these interrogation notes, pointed out about Ernst Overbeck’s outburst: this was “a reaction which would not have taken place, if HEIDEMANN had really ‘just been running a business.’”²⁴

Memminger had extensive papers that military intelligence viewed as “a good example of the camouflage under which Nazi propaganda is being continued.”²⁶ One of the ideas the group was trying to spread was that “the past 12 years were not in vain, since so many principles and achievements of the National Socialists were incorporated into the programs of the parties now in existence.”²⁷ They wanted to bring back National Socialism, but were smart enough to understand that given the circumstances, they would need to be careful about how they presented their platform.

It was not enough merely to inspire others to nostalgia for the fallen regime; they wanted to be in control of whatever new Nazi party emerged. The method (“Utiser Weg”) to achieve their goals emphasized that “in order to count on the strength of the National Socialists for the future, their cohesion and solidarity must be maintained. This requires the organisation of all good German elements in solidarity which will receive their directives from one headquarters”²⁸ that would have to be “camouflage[d]…in order to exist in illegality.”²⁹

Conveniently, the high-ranking Nazis already captured “cannot be counted upon for this reconstruction work.”³⁰ This meant that Axmann and his men would comprise the new, secret leadership of a covert Nazi Party. Axmann would not have to hand over power to men who had held more power than him during the Third Reich (like the last president of Germany, Karl Dönitz). When Memminger’s documents were drawn up, the Allies already held prisoner Dönitz and other key Nazi figures.

It was an absurd story—a plane flying low to the ground shooting bullet after bullet in automatic firing at people below somehow managed to punch a hole in just the spot in his identity document where it would obliterate his job information, all without injuring Heidemann. He would have had to have been running from fire with his ID card out in his hand, away from his body, when a bullet happened to hit it.

Rosenheim CIC Agents Kaufman and Lewis continued to run their informant Günter Ebeling. They met with him in Bad Oeynhausen, a spa town in northwest Germany, in early January 1946, as part of their investigation into Tessmann operations in the British Zone.³³ Meanwhile Agents Reis and Hochschild continued handling Kulas along with their other, lesser informants.

Plans were being put in motion for a roundup of all the remaining members of this conspiracy. As Agent Reis later recalled, “All the names, addresses and detailed instructions for the picking up and placing these individuals under arrest in a proper sequence in both the U.S. and British Zones took some doing. We picked up or caused to be picked up HJ officials who were not a part of a given group or wouldn’t be missed immediately, from time to time, to whittle down piece by piece the ‘big pie.’…There were approximately 2000 HJ leaders and forty were equal in rank to Memminger and Winter and Overbeck.”³⁴

A major raid would take place simultaneously in the British and American Zones, during the early hours of Sunday, March 31, 1946. In order to prepare for this raid, debriefings were held at local counterintelligence offices in mid-March.

The briefing officer did not know the inner details of Operation Nursery, or if he did, he didn’t share them with the personnel gathered together on the second floor of this former police station.³⁶ Instead, he just gave them the broad overview that some kind of Nazi conspiracy centered on former HJ and BDM was afoot. And he explained what this meant to the local agents—a list had been drawn up of names and addresses of suspects for them to pick up in this subregion.

Haywood was a British warrant officer in the 92 Intelligence Team but was working with the CIC. There was an usually high level of cooperation between the British and American occupying forces in Bremerhaven, owing to it being part of an American enclave located within the British Zone.

At this meeting, Haywood was told that “on a certain night two weeks hence, between midnight and five in the morning, every person named in the lists would be arrested. We were to take in those in our territory and deliver them promptly to Bremen for interrogation. We were not to question them. It was crucial that not one of them have warning of what was to happen, so only one person of those present at our meeting would be entrusted with the names of the suspects in our territory.”³⁷

Captain James Draycott (British but like Haywood assigned to work with the American CIC)³⁸ announced to the room that “I am now turning over to Mr. Haywood a sheet of paper with six names and addresses on it. Between now and the time for the arrests he will have to ascertain whether the people are in fact at those addresses. He will not reveal those names to anybody else.”39 Afterward, he gave Haywood “a sealed envelope and, smiling, said ‘Don’t let this out of your sight.’”⁴⁰

His list had an even 3-3 split between men and women. A more crucial distinction to Haywood was between those living in Bremerhaven and those on the outskirts. Five of the names would be easy, as they lived in the city, but the sixth would be trickier.

For those in the city, as Haywood recalled, “the German police had accurate, up-to-date housing lists. But I wouldn’t dare to consult those in the file room with Germans about. Playing safe, I had the police deliver to my office the files for all the streets in the town, not just the five streets where my targets were thought to be. I gave no explanation for why I wanted the files.”⁴¹ All five names checked out, and Haywood was hopeful that the targets would be home during the raid as a curfew was then in effect.

Along with a partner, he did a drive-by of the addresses in town to get a sense of where they were, and of all the ways they could go in and a suspect could flee out. As for the BDM suspect in the countryside, he needed a different approach. He later wrote, “I couldn’t possibly go to the policeman in her community and ask him to tell me where she lived. Nor could I ask to see files at the mayor’s office, lest someone gossip about my interest.”⁴²

He even worried about using his own car to drive around, as someone might recognize it. So he borrowed a car and drove around the village, looking for the target address. He decided that rather than risk tipping off his suspect, he would not investigate whether she actually lived there, and instead he would hope for the best. So far, the five names and addresses he had looked into had checked out.

Such matters as how to check up on the accuracy of the list they were given and how to conduct the actual raid were up to the local agents. Haywood’s plan “would have two teams of four men, each team to use two jeeps. Another agent would stay by the phone, just in case a call from Bremen came in. We would begin immediately after midnight.”43

Just after midnight, now the early morning of Sunday, March 31, 1946, the raid began. In Bremerhaven, they divvied up the suspects in town into two groups and picked them up first. Four of the suspects were at home. The fifth, a woman, was not; she was at her boyfriend’s place. The team that went to pick her up threatened the mother with arrest unless she coughed up his name and location.

The arresting agent told Haywood what happened next. It turned out that the mother had sent them to the housing for single officers. They found their suspect with her boyfriend, an American officer who worked in the same building as the arresting agents.

They still had one left to pick up though—the woman in the country. Once there, they were able to make an arrest at the address on their list, of a girl named Inge.

The arrestees were taken to the local jail, to be held in isolation.⁴⁴ Later, the Americans drove them to a detention center in Bremen for interrogation.⁴⁵

The large-scale raid of March 31, 1946, was primarily to pick up the rank and file of the HJ underground movement. The leaders had already been arrested—Axmann and his top men in December. During the time between the two raids, the British and the Americans had captured about two hundred of the Nazi underground’s leadership.

As the head of intelligence in the American Zone said in a press release, “In today’s round-up of suspects, [General] Sibert pointed out that many, if not all personalities may be unaware of the real intentions of the ringleaders and as such would later be released, provided they do not fall into existing automatic arrest categories.”⁴⁶

The Associated Press reported that “gun battles between Nazi fanatics and American and British troops broke out at scattered points in Western Germany early today as an estimated 7000 Allied soldiers cracked down on a Nazi attempt to regain power and re-establish Nazism in Germany. Early reports of a vast dragnet thrown over Germany and Austria said that firing occurred at a number of points as combat troops, counterespionage agents and constabulary forces swooped down on almost 1000 suspects.”⁴⁸

This figure included the two hundred or so suspects that had already been arrested. Brigadier General Edwin Sibert, who had been in charge of intelligence for the American Zone since its establishment, told the press that “the movement’s long-range plan, designed to revive the Nazi ideology in Germany, was the most dangerous threat to our security encountered since the war.”⁴⁹

While this raid took place in the British and American Zones, the CIC did have information about some activities by these personalities in the Soviet Zone, which they shared with the Soviet authorities.⁵⁰

When the official press release went out from the USFET, Hunter’s name was omitted. He was originally credited in the press release at the very end as follows: “1st Lt. Jack D. Hunter, Claymont, Del., of the Counter Intelligence Branch as the officer in charge of the case.”⁵¹

Hunter believed that this omission was the result of political infighting at the CIC headquarters in Frankfurt, where another, high-ranking officer had earlier wanted to take over the Nursery case from him.

In April 1946, the following commendation came from General Joseph McNarney himself, then the military governor for the American Zone and head of all American forces in Europe (USFET):

HEADQUARTERS
U.S. FORCES, EUROPEAN THEATER
Office of the Commanding General

12 April 1946

SUBJECT: Commendation
TO: Chief, Counter Intelligence Corps, European Theater
(THRU: Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, United States
Forces, European Theater.)

The successful completion of Operation NURSERY climaxes a long record of splendid performance on the part of the Counter Intelligence Corps in this Theater. In that operation, by good judgment and efficient functioning, the Regional and Sub-Regional offices have eliminated a dangerous element from German life.

The achievements of the Counter Intelligence Corps in this connection gain all the greater significance when the nature of the organization just smashed is taken into account. Here was no fly-by-night scheme of harassment, concerned with chalking swastikas on buildings or with cutting wires. It was an organization planned in terms of years, not of months, whose ultimate aim was subversion designed to upset the aims of the occupation, to keep alive the spirit of National Socialist ideals and to undermine subtly whatever new German leadership may emerge from the country’s downfall.

With patience and resourcefulness, the Counter Intelligence Corps agents under the case direction of Lt. J.D. HUNTER developed the slimmest of leads and by close and careful surveillance of the key personalities recorded the growth of an underground organization since its inception in June 1945. Since the scope of this operation transcended the borders of the occupational zones, these agents had to secure the cooperation of other occupying powers. Such a task called for tact, detailed knowledge of the situation, and sure judgment. That the development of this operation in all its ramifications proceeded without compromise is a tribute to the security-mindedness of the agents; a single leak of important information would have alerted the subversive organization and driven it out of reach, even further underground, with its potential danger to the occupation greatly increased. The agents were opposed by men with demonstrated records of ruthlessness. These men had money, arms, organization. The agents not only risked their own lives on numerous occasions; they had to persuade indispensable German informants to take innumerable risks, for which they could not even expect recognition.

The success of the operation in the face of such formidable handicaps reflects the greatest possible credit on the Counter Intelligence Corps. The vigilance and resourcefulness shown and the experienced gained augur well for the success of such future operations as will unquestionably arise.

It is desired that you express to the members of the Counter Intelligence Corps who participated in Operation NURSERY, no matter in how humble a capacity, the contents of this message and my personal appreciation of their accomplishment.

/S/ JOSEPH T. McNARNEY
/T/ JOSEPH T. McNARNEY

General, U.S. Army, Commanding

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