Gill told Blome that in a series of interrogations with sixteen Reich doctors also involved in bioweapons-related research, Alsos officers had learned about many horrific medical crimes. Gill explained that Alsos had documents that tied Blome to the crimes. For example, Alsos had found letters inside the apartment of Dr. Eugen Haagen that linked Dr. Blome to Dr. Haagen and also to an SS colleague named Dr. August Hirt. These letters made clear that someone was providing Reich doctors with human guinea pigs. Who exactly was in charge of this program, Gill asked Blome? Gill needed a name.
Blome denied having any idea what Gill was referring to. Major Gill told Blome he had a letter that implicated Blome. In another letter, Gill said, Dr. Blome had instructed Dr. Hirt to conduct research on “the effect of mustard gas on living organisms.” The phrase “living organisms” was a code name for people, wasn’t it? Gill asked Blome. Dr. Blome kept stonewalling. “On the whole subject of SS research, his attitude was always that it was so secret that not even [the] Reich chief medical advisor knew anything about it,” Major Gill wrote in his report.
Gill was convinced that Dr. Kurt Blome was lying. He felt certain that Doctors Haagen, Hirt, Blome, and the SS were connected to medical research on prisoners at concentration camps.
“This interrogation was extremely unproductive,” a frustrated Major Gill summarized in his report. “Although I do not wish to be definitive my first impression is that Blome is a liar and a medical charlatan.”
Down south in the Bavarian Alps, while the V-2 rocket scientists angled for a deal with the U.S. Army, Georg Rickhey, former general manager of the Mittelwerk, tried to blend in. Rickhey had taken a job ninety miles from Nordhausen, running operations in a salt mine. For several weeks, no one was looking for him. Then Colonel Peter Beasley, of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), arrived in the area on a mission from the War Department. Beasley’s job was to locate the engineers who had built the fortified underground weapons facilities in the Harz. These bombproof bunkers were extraordinary engineering feats, and the USSBS was impressed with how so many of them had withstood relentless Allied air bombing campaigns. The rocket facility at Nordhausen was of particular importance to USSBS officers, and Colonel Beasley set up shop in an abandoned barracks just north of the former Mittelwerk factory, in a town called Ilfeld, to investigate. As circumstance would have it, the barracks he chose to occupy was the building in which the former office of Georg Rickhey was located. From documents and equipment left behind, Colonel Beasley learned that Rickhey possessed extremely valuable information about how the tunnel factory had been built. Beasley asked around, but none of the locals claimed to know where Rickhey had gone.
“I made daily visits to the jails in the small towns to see if I could locate anyone who might interest me,” Beasley wrote in a report. Eventually he found a man who gave him a tip. Georg Rickhey was running operations at a salt mine in the Black Forest, the man said. Colonel Beasley sent two officers into the field to track Rickhey down.
Meanwhile, Beasley and his team followed another lead. “In Blankenburg,” Beasley wrote, “we found a school building with some miscellaneous papers bearing the Speer Ministry insignia.” From these documents Beasley learned that Georg Rickhey was the liaison between the Mittelwerk and the Ministry of Armaments. When Beasley’s two officers returned with Georg Rickhey in custody, Beasley placed Rickhey under arrest and began to interrogate him. He was “a nervous little man who smoked incessantly and always brought the conversation back to scientific or technical matters,” Beasley recalled after the war, but in the end he “was a most profitable catch.”
“I’ve got a job for you,” Beasley told Rickhey. “I want you to begin right now writing out a full description of yourself and all the activities of the V-2 factory, and what your people were working on.” Rickhey complied. When the task was complete, Beasley told the former general manager of the Mittelwerk, “[W]e accept you as an official of the German Government; we have patience and time and lots of people—you have lost the war and so as far as I am concerned you are a man who knows a lot about rockets. As an American officer, I want my country to have full possession of all your knowledge. To my superiors, I shall recommend that you be taken to the United States.”
Rickhey embraced this news with open arms. He told Beasley that he was a scientist and only wanted to work in pleasant surroundings, like the United States. He agreed to tell Beasley where some important records had been hidden. Rickhey took Colonel Beasley to a cave several miles away. There, forty-two boxes of worksheets, engineering tables, and blueprints relating to Nordhausen and the V-2 had been stashed. This was certainly not Wernher von Braun’s documents stash, but for the USSBS, it was more than they possessed up to this point. Now that he was in possession of a huge trove of documents, Colonel Beasley realized that he needed to have them translated by someone with technical expertise. He had promised Rickhey a recommendation for a job in the United States, but first he needed Rickhey to come with him to London to translate and analyze these documents for him.