Over the next few days, more soldiers arrived in Gendorf. These filthy, grime-covered American GIs were delighted when the so-called plain chemist offered them free bars of soap. Some of the soldiers hadn’t washed in more than a month. The chemist’s generosity did not stop there. Otto Ambros gave the soldiers powerful cleaning solvents so that they could wash their mud-covered armored tanks.
Soldiers interviewed Otto Ambros a second time. This time, Ambros voluntarily offered up character witnesses. Working at the Farben factory in Gendorf were skinny men with shaved heads. Ambros said they were war refugees and that they could vouch for his kindness as a boss. They were from Poland, just across the border to the east. Ambros told the soldiers that he had personally brought these poor workers here to Gendorf. He’d handpicked the men and trained them how to work hard. This way, when the refugees went home, they would have skills that could help them earn a living, Ambros explained. The skinny refugees were quiet and said nothing to dispute the plain chemist’s claims. Some of them even helped the American soldiers wash their tanks.
Otto Ambros was a talkative man. He regaled the Americans with stories about the joys of chemistry. For example, did the soldiers realize what a miracle it was that man could make one hundred wonders from a single chemical compound like ethylene oxide? Or how amazing rubber was? Ambros told the soldiers that he had been to Ceylon, where the rubber plant grows. Rubber had so much in common with man, Ambros said. He was a rubber expert, so he knew this to be fact. Rubber was civilized. Neat and perfect if kept clean. Ambros told the soldiers that a rubber factory and a man must always be very clean. A single flake of dust or dirt in a vat of liquid rubber could mean a blowout on the autobahn one day. IG Farben had synthetic rubber factories and, like natural rubber, the laboratories and factories must always be kept perfectly clean. Ambros talked a lot, but he did not mention anything about the rubber factory he had built and managed at Auschwitz. The soldiers thanked him for his generosity with the soap and the cleaning agents. Before they left, they reminded Ambros again that it was important he not leave town. He was technically under house arrest.
When American officials of higher rank finally arrived in Gendorf a few days later, they had more specific questions for Ambros. Why was part of the Farben detergent factory built underground? It would take months for CIOS investigators to learn that the factory here in Gendorf produced chemical weapons during the war—and that, after Ambros had fled Auschwitz in late January 1945, he and his deputy, Jürgen von Klenck, had come to Gendorf to destroy evidence, hide documents, and disguise the factory so that it appeared to produce only detergents and soap.
In Munich, on May 17, 1945, U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint were conducting a routine identification request when a well-dressed man—134 pounds, five foot nine, with dark black hair, hazel eyes, and a pronounced dueling scar on the left side of his face between his nose and his upper lip—presented a German passport bearing the name Professor Doctor Friedrich Ludwig Kurt Blome.
Dr. Blome’s name triggered an alert: “Immediate arrest. 1st Priority.” Samuel Goudsmit and the entire team of biological warfare experts with Operation Alsos had been on the hunt for Dr. Blome. Agent Arnold Vyth, with the army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, made the arrest. Agent Vyth completed the necessary paperwork while the prisoner was processed. Dr. Blome was sent to the Twelfth Army Group Interrogation Center for questioning. Several days later, a document arrived via teletype from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America’s wartime espionage agency and the precursor to the CIA. They, too, had been searching for Dr. Blome.