Wernher von Braun, General Dornberger, and their group had been here since being transferred from CIC headquarters in Reutte. Isolated in the Alps, the two scientists had been frustrating their interrogators, stonewalling and withholding information. Dr. Robertson came to see if he could get any better information out of the scientists. Most of the rocket team was here, including the two men who had stashed the V-2 documents that Staver was now searching for, Dieter Huzel and Bernhard Tessmann. Neither Huzel nor Tessmann had shared with von Braun or Dornberger the fact that they’d told Karl Otto Fleischer the location of the stash in the D?rnten mine. Dornberger and von Braun were under the assumption that they held all the bargaining chips.
The intelligence officer Walter Jessel had sensed something was amiss with Dornberger and von Braun—that the two rocket scientists were playing games. “Control was exercised by Dornberger in the course of the CIOS investigations,” Jessel noted in one report. Dornberger’s “first instructions [to other scientists], probably under the impression of immediate transfer of the whole group to the United States, were to cooperate fully with the investigators,” Jessel explained. But as the days wore on and no deal was offered by the Allies, Jessel watched Dornberger become intractable. “Sometime later, he [Dornberger] gave the word [to the others] to hold back on information and say as little as possible.” The scientists were walking on the razor’s edge. If they said too much, many of them could be implicated in the slave labor war crimes, as was the case with Arthur Rudolph, Mittelwerk operations director.
For Rudolph, it was best to say as little as possible. He described his time at Garmisch-Partenkirchen as enjoyable because it meant that “the horrible days of fleeing were over.” Years later, he described his weeks of internment in the Alps as ones where he could finally “enjoy a few days of relief,” but this relief was short-lived owing to his “restless intellect.” Rudolph demanded more of himself than a suntan, he later said. “There were already rumors that the Americans would take us to the U.S.A. So, I decided I needed to learn English.”
Arthur Rudolph’s interrogator saw Rudolph differently than he saw himself. In military intelligence documents, Rudolph was described as “100% Nazi,” a “dangerous type.” There was a decision to be made: whether to use Rudolph as an intelligence source or to intern him for denazification and investigation into possible war crimes. Denazification was an Allied strategy to democratize and demilitarize postwar Germany and Austria through tribunals in local civilian courts (Spruchkammern) that were set up to determine individual defendants’ standings. Each German who was tried was judged to belong in one of five categories, or classes: (1) major offenders; (2) party activists, militarists, and profiteers; (3) individuals who were less incriminated; (4) Nazi Party followers; (5) those who were exonerated. Rudolph’s interrogator did not believe a committed Nazi like Arthur Rudolph would make a viable intelligence source, and he wrote, “suggest internment.”
Rudolph hoped he would be hired by the Americans. He located a murder mystery in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen library, The Green Archer, and attempted to learn English for what he believed, correctly, would be a new job.
Back in Nordhausen, Major Staver was making headway. Working on the new tip from Dr. Robertson, Staver drove to meet with his new source, Karl Otto Fleischer, in a parking lot. This time, Staver had Walther Riedel with him. In the parking lot, Staver demonstratively pulled a notebook from his breast pocket, just as Dr. Robertson had done with him. Staver read aloud a narrative he’d composed, part truth and part fiction. “Von Braun, [Ernst] Steinhoff, and all the others who fled to the south have been interned at Garmisch,” Major Staver told his two prisoners. “Our intelligence officers have talked to von Ploetz, General Dornberger, General Rossman, and General Kammler,” Staver said—also partially true. “They told us that many of your drawings and important documents were buried underground in a mine somewhere around here and that Riedel, or you[,] Fleischer, could help us find them,” Staver said, which was made up.
Staver told the men that it was in their best interest to think over their next move very carefully. They could cooperate, he said, and give up the location of the V-2 documents. Or they could stonewall and risk being put in prison for withholding information. They had one night to consider the offer. Staver would meet the two men the following morning, in the same parking lot, at exactly 11:00.