“The what?” Cronley asked.
“It translates to Special Commission Linz, and what it was was the people who were accumulating artworks—sometimes by buying them, but most often by theft—for the planned Führermuseum in Linz. In February 1944, as I was saying before being interrupted, they began to store these artworks in the salt mines. By the end of the war—by the time Dr. Kaltenbrunner moved to Altaussee—there were about six thousand five hundred paintings, as well as many statues, furniture, weapons, coins, and libraries, including most of the Führerbibliothek—Führer’s library—in the mines.
“And about this time, a number of high-ranking SS officers—Franz Stangl, commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps; Anton Burger, commandant of Theresienstadt concentration camp; Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the Final Solution—people like that—went to Altaussee and placed themselves under the protection of the local Gauleiter, August Eigruber, who was a dedicated Nazi.
“When Hitler ordered the scorched-earth-destroy-everything policy, Eigruber somehow got his hands on eight one-thousand-pound bombs and put them in the salt mines. If he had succeeded in setting them off, all the art—Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges, Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, Vermeer’s The Astronomer and The Art of Painting, all six thousand five hundred works of art—would have been destroyed.”
“But they weren’t. Our experts—what did they call them, ‘the Monuments Men’?—got there in time to save them. Or didn’t they?” Cronley asked.
“When the Monuments Men got there, they discovered that the bombs had been disarmed. At the orders of Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner.”
“Kaltenbrunner?” Cronley asked, visibly surprised.
“There are two common theories about that,” Cohen replied. “One is that he isn’t as bad a human being as most believe him to be. That, in other words, he couldn’t stand idly by and watch Gauleiter Eigruber destroy works of art at the orders of a madman. The second theory is that he didn’t give much of a damn about the artwork, but saved it thinking it might do him some good when he was put on trial.”
“And which makes most sense to you, Colonel?” Ziegler asked.
“Neither. I have my own theory, to which I will get in due time. In early May 1945, if I have this right, on May eighth, Kaltenbrunner heard that we were getting close to Altaussee, and left Villa Kerry, leaving behind about a hundred and twenty pounds of gold, and headed south. I think—don’t know—that he wanted to make his way to Italy, where—I think, don’t know—he wanted to make contact with Wilhelm Waneck, whom we know Skorzeny had ordered to establish escape routes.
“He didn’t make it. On May twelfth, he and his mistress were arrested by an American patrol. He was turned over to the OSS, who held him until the cells were habitable here. Then he was brought here.”
“Two more questions, if it’s okay, Colonel,” Cronley asked.
Cohen gestured for him to continue.
“The OSS had him, held on to him? When I was in the CIC, the CIC was responsible for big-shot Nazis like Kaltenbrunner.”
“I formed the opinion at the time that Colonel Wallace had little faith in the CIC,” Cohen said. “An opinion I’m afraid he still holds. Next question?”
“You said you had your own opinions as to why Kaltenbrunner stopped the destruction of all the art.”
Cohen paused before answering.
“Answering that will cause you to ask other questions, which will take much longer to answer than either of us has time for right now. I will give you a simple answer now, with the understanding that you won’t ask questions until there is time to answer them fully. Agreed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t think Kaltenbrunner cared for the art as art, but rather as artifacts necessary to the new religion he and Heinrich Himmler were setting up. I think he’s a latter-day apostle gathered around the holy grail.”
“‘New religion’?” Cronley parroted. “You can’t stop there!”
“Give my best regards to Justice Jackson,” Cohen said, and stood up. “And I accept your kind invitation to have a drink with you in the bar of the press billet at 1730.”
He then marched out of the room.
“What the hell was he saying?” Ziegler said. “Kaltenbrunner is a new apostle? What the hell does that mean?”
“If we’re lucky we might find out in the bar of the press billet at 1730.” He paused and then added, “What worries me, Augie, is that I don’t think he’s pulling our leg.”
[FOUR]
The Office of the Chief U.S. Prosecutor
The Palace of Justice Compound
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1035 21 February 1946