Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb Read Free Book Online

arrival, Matteson and his team rounded up at least twenty Nazis and seized the villa that Kaltenbrunner had just left—as well as the wireless station through which he kept in contact with Berlin. A few days later, another tip came from a local Austrian resistance fighter that Kaltenbrunner, his adjunct, and two SS guards were hiding in a hunting cabin high in the Totengebirge.
    Guided by four former Wehrmacht soldiers who knew the territory and backed by an American infantry squad, Matteson climbed into the mountains, disguised in lederhosen, an Alpine jacket, and spiked shoes. The party hiked through the deep snow during the night to avoid detection. Five hours later, at first light, they sighted the cabin. Matteson walked the last five hundred yards to the door alone. In his pocket, Matteson had a note from Kaltenbrunner's mistress that he had made her write, pleading for her lover to surrender peacefully to the Americans. Matteson knocked.
    An unshaven man in civilian clothes opened the door a crack. "What do you want?"
    "I want to come in. I'm cold," Matteson responded, his gun hidden.
    The German shook his head no. The CIC agent passed the mistress's note, and the moment the man read its contents, he slammed the door shut. Through the window, Matteson saw the man run across the room and grab a revolver. Another man on the bed reached for a gun as well. Matteson darted toward a wall of the cabin without windows and whistled for his squad. They surrounded the house and called for Kaltenbrunner and his men to surrender. The door opened, and out they came, arms high in the air. At first Kaltenbrunner pretended to be a Wehrmacht doctor, but he was given away by his height, the scar across his cheek, and his Gestapo identification badge, engraved "#2." Kaltenbrunner had ranked behind only Himmler in the SS.
     
     
    Himmler himself did not go so easily. At the war's end, he brought his staff together, saying, "Well, gentlemen, you know what you have to do now? You must hide yourselves in the ranks of the Wehrmacht." Himmler followed his own advice. Shorn of his mustache and dressed as a sergeant with a black patch over his eye, he tried to pass through British lines with six of his men, but they were caught by a random patrol. During a routine medical examination before his interrogation, Himmler bit into a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth and died fifteen minutes later.
    Other top Nazi leaders soon found themselves incarcerated at the Allied prison in Mondorf-les-Bains, in southeastern Luxembourg. Hermann Göring surrendered in the Alps, insisting that he would speak only to General Eisenhower. Two soldiers unceremoniously hauled the 264-pound Göring, who had been Hitler's second in command, out of his car. Grand Admiral Dönitz, General Alfred Jodl, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and Minister of Armaments Albert Speer surrendered without protest. Fritz Sauckel, head of the slave labor program, was trapped while hiding in a cavern. On a routine patrol, an American Jewish major identified a bearded Julius Streicher, the virulently anti-Semitic publisher, who was disguised as an artist, paintbrush in hand. Hans Frank, the governor-general of Poland, attempted to hide among German POWs, but he grew so nervous over the risk of discovery that he slashed his left wrist and neck, barely surviving. Troops from the 101st Airborne uncovered Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, in a mountain hut very much like the one in which Kaltenbrunner was found. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was one of the last to be caught. The son of a wine merchant, who Ribbentrop had hoped would give him sanctuary, informed the police of his whereabouts. British soldiers arrested Ribbentrop while he was still in bed at his Hamburg hideaway. Wearing pink-and-white-striped silk pajamas, he sat up and said in flawless English, "The game is up. I congratulate you."
    The most notorious Nazis fell into Allied hands within the first weeks of the