Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Read Free Page A

the democratic powers would join forces with Germany to fight the threat of communism as the Red Army rampaged through Eastern Europe. Most of these peace feeler forays were conducted through neutral countries with agents of the British Secret Service, MI6, or the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The main OSS center in Europe was in Switzerland and run by Allen Dulles, later director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1953 and 1961. From his offices in Bern, Dulles coordinated hundreds of agents, including several Nazi diplomats, across occupied Europe. In early 1945, Dulles was in direct communication with various Nazi factions and Wehrmacht generals to arrange a separate peace in Italy and Austria in order to shorten the war and end the suffering of millions.
    To the end, Bormann was determined to save the looted wealth of Germany for his own nefarious ends and to sustain a select band of Nazis following military defeat and the fall of Berlin. Massive funds were channeled abroad while large stashes of bullion and stolen artworks were hidden underground in deep mines across the Third Reich. These were primed with explosives for demolition, which Bormann considered preferable to allowing them to fall into the hands of the Bolshevik hordes. But to Bormann, the artworks were also a bargaining tool. It seems evident that Bormann offered the OSS a Faustian pact: the fruits of one thousand years of Western art together with the secrets of Nazi Germany’s advanced military technology in exchange for the escape of one man—Adolf Hitler. The alternative was the total destruction of the jewels of Western civilization. This was the key to Aktion Feuerland. The deal was done and on the night of April 28, 1945, the plan was put into place. Grey Wolf was on the run.

A YOUNG ALLEN WELSH DULLES in his office at the State Department, 1924. Allen Dulles joined the OSS in 1942 before moving to Bern in Switzerland in October, where he became one of the most successful spymasters of World War II, with numerous contacts across occupied Europe and with the Nazi high command.

ALLEN WELSH DULLES [left] greets his brother John Foster Dulles after a flight on October 4, 1948. After the war, Allen Dulles became the director of the Central Intelligence Agency while John Foster Dulles became secretary of state during the Eisenhower administration. Together, they were among the most influential American officials of the immediate postwar period and leading figures in the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union.

REICHSLEITER MARTIN BORMANN stood in the shadow of his beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler, and served him faithfully from 1933 for the rest of his life. It was Bormann’s business acumen that made Hitler immensely wealthy and allowed the creation of Aktion Feuerland to effect the escape of the Führer to Argentina.

WILHELM “OLD FOX” CANARIS headed up the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization, from 1935–44. He was a brilliant spymaster but he also ensured that his closest colleagues were not members of the Nazi Party. Since before the outbreak of war, Canaris had been active in the resistance movement of Germans attempting at first to frustrate and then to overthrow Hitler—a group known to the Gestapo as the Schwarze Kappelle (Black Orchestra) and to the OSS as “Breakers.”

HEINRICH HIMMLER AND HERMANN GöRING shake hands at a Nazi Party event, April 1934. By 1943, the two would be embroiled in a plot with Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer to thwart Bormann’s Council of Three plan; at the same time Himmler would take part in a separate plot with Bormann to gain more power at the expense of Göring. Such divisions in the Nazi hierarchy allowed Hitler to rule the Third Reich with undisputed absolute power.

A BERLIN STREET after Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938: One of the many Jewish businesses with shattered storefronts. That night Jewish homes, properties, and synagogues across Germany and