The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (37 page)

The willing betrayals and automatic denials of party membership became routine. One exception stood out. Michel interrogated an SS officer who not only refused to give information but also proudly stated that he remained an enthusiastic Nazi. Automatically, Michel offered the man his hand. ‘It was a relief after all the evasions and lies to meet a single man who said he was a Nazi. Someone who was prepared to take the consequences for his beliefs. So I reached out and shook that Nazi’s hand.’

In the midst of the war, retribution for Nazi crimes had been declared by Winston Churchill to be among the major purposes of the war, but the complexities of peace introduced a harsh
Realpolitik
. ‘Revenge is, of all satisfaction, the most costly and long drawn out; retributive persecution is of all policies the most pernicious,’ Churchill declared after the war, modifying his earlier position. ‘Our policy... should henceforth be to draw the sponge across the crimes and horrors of the past, hard as that may be, and look for the sake of our salvation towards the future. There can be no revival of Europe without the active and loyal aid of all the German tribes.’
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There was no war crimes policy at first in either Washington or London, and when one finally emerged the necessary machinery was not in place to implement it. In the US, the War Department assumed responsibility for punishing war crimes and pressed the Intelligence Division to carry out the task. This fell to the CIC, the only section empowered to arrest war criminals, and at first the job did not seem too onerous as at the time of the D-Day landing there were only sixty-eight names on the wanted list.
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However, public outrage generated by the murder of unarmed American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge - the Malmédy Massacre - led directly to a commitment to an international war crimes trial. Malmédy was the greatest crime committed against Americans during the entire war.

The list of wanted men mushroomed. The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects - which went by its acronym CROWCASS - became the world’s biggest list of possible war criminals with eight million cross-indexed names. Created by General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, its aim was to foster international co-operation in finding and prosecuting war criminals. The registry was broken down into three lists: (1) wanted men; (2) prisoners already in custody; (3) the names of all internees and the camps they were held in. Scotland Yard and FBI experts joined forces with the French in Paris, on Rue Mathurias, where an army of three hundred clerks was put to work punching information into an IBM card-index machine. Forms had been sent out to all internment camps to be returned with every internee’s photo and fingerprints. The cards flooded back at the rate of forty thousand a day, overwhelming a workforce that was only able to process a fraction of that number.

People on the lists had also changed identities, while fingerprinting proved an exercise in futility as there were no prints on record for the wanted men. On top of this, the Russians were not part of CROWCASS - which excluded thirty-five per cent of all POWs - while camps under British jurisdiction were not even returning their forms. The British officer who headed CROWCASS was eventually forced to admit the list was worthless. In the general chaos, numerous war criminals slipped through the net and were not even questioned, let alone punished.

Before the war had ended a large number of Displaced Persons seeking repatriation who needed CIC approval, particularly French and Polish speakers, were sent to Michel to be processed. It was dull, form-filling work for the most part and something he delegated as much as possible, but a Belgian, who claimed to have been released from a labour camp and wanted to be repatriated, aroused Michel’s curiosity. Everything about him seemed to be in order, except there was something about the accent that seemed off-key to a highly tuned ear. It was nothing obvious or defined, and might even have been a regional variation unknown to Michel, but it made him suspicious. ‘I remembered, for example, that the Belgians say
“septante and octante”
whereas the French say
“soixante-dix and quatre-vingt”
and he seemed unaware of this. It was something that insignificant.

‘The DP supplied me with his basic biography: name, date of birth, home town, trade. All seemed in order except the accent continued to bother me. The man was tall and rail-thin with big ears on a narrow face. He told me he was thirty-eight years old, although he looked much younger, which struck me as odd. Most slave labourers quickly appeared older than their chronological age because of the brutal working conditions in the labour camps. He was ragged and dirty enough, and cursed the guards, camp commander and even Hitler with appropriate vigour, but all that could be a piece of theatre to fool me. I studied his hands - they showed none of the inevitable cuts and bruises and calluses of manual labour.’

Michel chatted casually in French and reminisced about his travels in Belgium before the war. The DP spoke of his brief career as a soldier in 1940 when the German Army swept through the country. ‘The talk meandered for hours - innocuous questions and bland answers.’

Finally, Michel appeared to be satisfied and the DP moved in his seat, preparing to leave.

‘One moment, please,’ Michel said.

He told him that he knew he was not Belgian, because of inconsistencies in his conversation, and that he believed everything the man said to be a lie. He glared at the ‘Belgian’ and began to fire questions in an aggressive, unfriendly tone, picking away at discrepancies in statements the man had made about his career. The DP seemed to have an answer for everything, but Michel continued to chip away at him for the rest of the night. ‘I did not expect him to give himself away easily. He had been too well coached to fall for simple cat-and-mouse games. But marathon question-and-answer sessions were quite effective.’

As the night wore on the man began to make small mistakes. Michel ignored these without comment and let them pile up. Then he painstakingly went back over his line of questioning until the DP grew flustered and confused. He was also exhausted, while Michel displayed the stamina to suggest he could go on for ever. ‘The longer I grilled him the more he realised I was not going to buy the story. He was visibly sagging before my eyes.’

Michel sat at a table and began to write. Dawn broke, and a grey light filtered into the bleak office. The DP sat slumped in his chair, so worn down and tired that he resembled a different being to the tall, confident man who had swapped nostalgic small talk about pre-war Belgium eighteen hours earlier.

Michel looked up from his writing and fixed him with a hard stare. ‘There’s only one way you can save yourself. You must tell me everything and then work with me to save Germany.’

Once again, Michel resorted to the histrionic display of the outraged patriot. ‘Like my piano-playing rocketeer, I knew he burned with nationalist fervour. I counted on that quality as the real hook into him.’ He began to speak in German, which the man affected to have difficulty understanding. Michel trotted out his phoney family antecedents, claiming to be a genuine German patriot who had witnessed the destruction of his beloved country. ‘You are a disgrace to the Fatherland. I am a German to the tips of my toes but you’ve damn near wiped out an entire generation of the finest young blood in Europe, and now to make matters worse you’re engaged in some scheme to make it possible for a few higher-ups to live off the loot they’ve grabbed.’ The harangue continued for an hour until the man was hallucinating from exhaustion. This was exactly the state Michel wanted him in. ‘Look around you,’ he said as he finished his speech, gesturing at the ruined town outside the window. ‘See the glory you’ve brought Germany.’

The man stared at the floor and said nothing. Michel sighed, and returned to his work. The only sound in the room was that of his pen moving across paper.

At last, a low, sombre voice broke the silence: ‘Ich bin Georg Lermer.’

‘Go on,’ Michel said, continuing to write. ‘I’m listening.’

Lermer began a long, rambling story he hoped would save his life. He was diffident at first, but gathered momentum as he was artfully prodded and steered by Michel towards a full confession. ‘He was not the stupid sort who savaged prisoners in concentration camps. Undoubtedly he was responsible for more than his share of misery, but he could still reason. Like so many in the Nazi hierarchy, ideology appealed to him in direct proportion to the power it brought and the amount of personal ambition it fulfilled. I listened with fascination.’

Lermer confessed to being a German officer who had served with the RSHA (Nazi intelligence) in various occupied countries in western Europe. As he spoke, he gave the true reason for trying to get to Belgium and outlined in a flat, exhausted monotone the Regenbogen (Rainbow) plan. The brainchild of the immensely powerful Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary, Rainbow was the secret strategy for post-war Nazis outside Germany. In anticipation of defeat, Bormann had made contingency plans in 1944 to develop an international strategy to wage underground war aimed at undermining democracies with the ultimate objective of bringing the Nazis back to power. He foresaw and encouraged unlikely tactical alliances with anyone opposed to democracy. ‘The plan was to unite Communists, fascists, religious extremists and even common criminals. It may sound far-fetched now, but there was no shortage of volunteers.’
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Lermer, a fluent French speaker, had been given a false identity as a DP from Belgium who had been in a labour camp for years. His top-secret mission was to find his way back to Belgium, create a normal life with a job and family, and dedicate himself to Rainbow, in charge of Belgium, France and Luxembourg.

Michel’s pen flew across the pad of paper on his desk, recording every detail. ‘Once his tongue was loosened he kept adding information. He offered me the names of people we desperately hunted for prosecution. He revealed aliases, new identities, the hideouts of several dozen fugitives.

Rainbow envisioned much more than hit-and-run killings or sabotage. Skilled operators would foment strikes, mastermind hijackings of strategic goods, counterfeit currencies to disrupt economies, start small wars and generally stir the political pot. Significantly, Rainbow operatives were never to associate directly with overt neo-Nazi groups. International agents would incite ethnic religious and racial hatred, pitting Jew against Arab, Moslem against Christian, Protestant against Catholic, white against black.’ And the enterprise was carefully planned, compartmentalised for security, and well funded through Switzerland.

‘Rainbow is just one more ignoble delusion,’ Michel scoffed with a confidence he did not feel. ‘It is not enough to destroy Germany, now you want to export the terror. Once again Germans will pay the price. Look at yourself and think how the rest of the world regards you. If the survivors of slave-labour camps could get their hands on you; if we were to turn you over to the French whose relatives were murdered as hostages; if we were to ship you to Poland or the Soviet Union, you would wish we had simply blown your brains out here.’

He described a bleak fate for members of the RSHA and emphasised Lermer’s personal responsibility not only for his own activities but those of the entire Nazi government. Conscience and personal responsibility might have been suspended as long as the Third Reich existed, Michel said, but thinking Germans should now be looking inward, counting the costs and asking themselves what they had lost. ‘I spoke of the need to become aware of the enormous personal and national guilt and did not allow my prisoner to evade any slivers of conscience he might have left.’

Lermer was offered a deal.

‘If you want to stop it, we can talk about it.’

‘How can I stop it? I am your prisoner.’

‘First, I want a complete breakdown of Operation Rainbow worldwide. I want a list of those who were associated with you in western Europe. I want the names of collaborators and sympathisers. I want their probable whereabouts and their codenames. Instead of trying to make Rainbow succeed, you will help smash it.’

Lermer grabbed at the lifeline thrown to him.

‘I wanted more than a spur-of-the-moment decision made after I had battered his mind with a marathon inquisition. His co-operation was his commitment. And he offered to bring in an associate who was also to be sent to Belgium.’
[163]

Michel took Lermer with him to Munich and worked on a report outlining the nature of Rainbow. He attached a list of Nazis gleaned from his prisoner, and their cover names and possible whereabouts. He suggested using Lermer and his associate as part of a CIC task force to trap and arrest those involved by sending out agents posing as Rainbow couriers.

The report was sent through to the main HQ in Frankfurt and Michel was summoned by the colonel in charge of CIC to discuss putting his plan into action. The colonel was sceptical about various suggestions in the report, and seriously concerned about one in particular. There was a recommendation that both men should be given their freedom and be allowed to create the nucleus of a project designed to unmask their associates.

‘How do we know this whole Rainbow thing isn’t a fantasy of two down-at-heel Nazis trying to get their freedom?’ the colonel wanted to know.

Although the colonel accepted the report’s evaluation of the danger of Rainbow, he balked at the idea of giving the men their freedom and employing them as double agents. Michel was suggesting, in effect, the time-honoured strategy of setting a thief to catch a thief. ‘The rule book called for suspects to be arrested, and then to sweat whatever intelligence you could out of them, and move against others who might be implicated. This was the routine, respectable approach. No one could criticise these tactics even if they brought meagre results. The other route was a risk.’