In July 1947, Field Marshal Paulus became sick and the group was “taken to a summer resort, Livadia, on the Crimea.” There was no shortage of irony here. This was the same palatial resort at which the Yalta Conference took place, in February 1945. The dangerous Lieutenant General Vincenz Müller was with Paulus and Schreiber at the resort. The group stayed through the summer and returned to Moscow, by private jet, when the summer weather passed. For the next year, the former Nazi generals resided again at the country house in Tomilino, Schreiber said. Only now they were heavily engaged in antifascist courses that the Soviets required them to take. Studying kept the generals occupied until September 7, 1948. That’s when Schreiber said he learned that he and twenty-five other former Nazi generals would be leaving for East Germany at once. After Schreiber said no to the police job, he was brought to Dresden and put up in the Hotel Weisser Hirsch, at Bergbahnstrasse 12. His handler, the man called Fisher, agreed to release him from police work, Schreiber said. Fisher stepped away to work on arrangements regarding Schreiber’s teaching position. According to Schreiber, that was when he got away.
Special Agent Wallach summarized the details. “Subject remained alone without anybody looking after him… Subject simply took a train in Dresden on the 17th and arrived in Berlin on the same day. After contacting his family in Berlin… subject established contact with this agent… and was since then under the protection of U.S. authorities in Berlin. At the end of October subject was evacuated with his family to the U.S. Zone for detailed exploitation by ECIC [European Command Intelligence Center],” Camp King.
Was Schreiber a double agent? Was he a true-to-life James Bond? How was he able to resist the Soviets’ notoriously brutal interrogation techniques when so many others—from hardened generals to civilians to spies—were beaten into human ruin? Was he a charlatan? Or a weasel of a man, uniquely skilled at saving his own hide? What was he really doing in Soviet Russia for three and a half years? Special Agent Wallach drew his own conclusion. “Subject made an excellent impression on the undersigned agent. It is not believed that subject is a Soviet plant,” wrote Wallach. He signed his name in black ink.
Wallach’s interrogation report was sent to the director of the Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army, EUCOM, with a memo written by Wallach’s CIC superior marked “Secret-Confidential.” It read: “Subject [Schreiber] claims to know everybody in his transport, their background, political attitude and new job assignments… Will be ready for transfer to your headquarters for detailed interrogation in about six days.” Schreiber had told Wallach he had information on all the high-ranking Nazis now working for the East German police.
On November 3, 1948, the director of the Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army sent a telegram marked “Secret” to JIOA headquarters at the Pentagon, with a copy also sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “If the Surgeon General replies that Schreiber is of importance to national security, his case should be processed under JCS procedure for immigration to the U.S.” Major General Dr. Prof. Walter Schreiber, the former surgeon general of the Third Reich, was about to become part of Operation Paperclip. In the meantime, he and his family were taken to Camp King and put up in a safe house there. When General Charles E. Loucks learned that Schreiber was in U.S. custody, he traveled to Camp King to interview him. Loucks was the man who had welcomed Hitler’s chemists into his home in Heidelberg to work on the secret formula for sarin production. He was particularly interested in learning from Dr. Schreiber about vaccines or serums produced by the Reich to defend against nerve agents.