At Fort Bliss, in the evenings, the German rocket specialists gathered in a clubhouse built in a grove of cottonwood trees. There, they played cards while drinking American cocktails and beer. They strung hammocks between the trees and enjoyed balmy desert nights. Once a month, most of the Germans went into El Paso as a group to shop and have a restaurant meal. The nightmarish environment at Nordhausen, which the majority of the rocket engineers had participated in, must have seemed like another world—until Major Smith arrived to take official depositions for the U.S. Army and ask the men to recollect what those days had been like.
Major Smith’s first interviews would be with Wernher von Braun and his brother Magnus von Braun. But after Major Smith arrived at Fort Bliss, he was told that both von Braun brothers were out of town. Smith interviewed Günther Haukohl instead. Haukohl had been the original designer of the Nordhausen rocket assembly line and, like Wernher von Braun, was an officer with the SS. Günther Haukohl told Major Smith that he had no clear memories about what happened in the tunnels in the last months of the war, but, yes, prisoners were abused. Rickhey’s involvement is “probably a rumor,” Haukohl said. V-2 engineers Hans Palaoro and Rudolph Schlidt seconded Haukohl’s position, repeating the idea that the end of the war was nothing but a blur. Engineer Erich Ball, who also worked on the rocket assembly lines at Nordhausen, told Major Smith that he had witnessed two sets of prisoner hangings in the tunnels but that Georg Rickhey had not been involved in either of them. Major Smith accepted that the men might not be able to remember details about what had gone on, but surely as engineers they could remember the layout of the facility. Smith asked Haukohl, Schlidt, Palaoro, and Ball to use their engineers’ precision and help him create an accurate illustration of the work spaces inside the Nordhausen tunnels, including where the rockets were assembled and where the hangings occurred. This was an important artifact for the investigation.
Next, Major Smith interviewed the former Mittelwerk operations director Arthur Rudolph. Like Georg Rickhey, Arthur Rudolph had authority over the Mittelwerk’s Prison Labor Supply office, which was the unit responsible for getting food rations to the slave laborers. In his interview, Arthur Rudolph first denied ever seeing prisoners abused. Major Smith showed Arthur Rudolph the illustration that had been drawn by Rudolph’s Nordhausen colleagues Haukohl, Schlidt, Palaoro, and Ball. Major Smith pointed out to Arthur Rudolph that Rudolph’s office was directly adjacent to where the twelve so-called political prisoners had been hanged from the crane. As Arthur Rudolph continued to deny ever seeing prisoners abused, Smith found his testimony increasingly suspicious. Everyone else interviewed admitted to having seen some prisoner abuse. Rudolph was adamant: “I did not see them punished, beaten, hung or shot,” he told Major Smith.
Smith approached the question in a different manner. He asked Rudolph if he could recall anything about the twelve men who had been hanged from the crane. This public execution, Smith said, had been confirmed by many of Rudolph’s colleagues, and Smith was trying to put together an accurate portrait of what had happened, and when. Rudolph replied, “[O]ne [dying prisoner] lifted his knees, after I got there.” In other words, Rudolph had witnessed the executions. Major Smith was now convinced that the truth about what happened at Nordhausen was being covered up, collectively, by the group, and that Arthur Rudolph knew a lot more than he let on. But as Smith noted in his report, the subject of the investigation was Georg Rickhey, not Arthur Rudolph. “Mr. Rudolph impressed the undersigned as a very clever, shrewd individual,” Smith wrote. “He did not wish to become involved in any investigations that might involve him in any way with illegal actions in the underground factory and as a result, was cautious of his answers.”