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Kappler continued: “—and, in view of my present problems, I could not be more grateful for your counsel in seeing that my South America incorporation was—is—completely independent of its German counterpart . . .”
Is he reading my mind? Dulles thought.
And he should mean: What’s left of its German counterpart. Because Royal Air Force and Army Air Force bombers have been wiping out German refineries.
“. . . especially,” Kappler finished, “with the Allied bombing missions indiscriminately taking out Farben’s manufacturing plants.”
There he goes reading my mind again!
And if he’s bothered by those bombings, he won’t be thrilled with these photographs.
“Not at all indiscriminately, Wolffy. Their targets are ‘POL’ plants—for Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants. Other facilities may be targets of opportunity or, perhaps, as happens in the fog of war, mistakes. And you are indeed fortunate that your companies in South America have no link—direct or indirect—to their German counterparts. Because if there was any indication that they in any manner aided the Axis, they would be taken out. Not necessarily by U.S. bombers out of Brazil, of course, but by other quiet and equally effective means.”
At Canoas Air Force Base near the southern tip of Brazil—some two hundred miles north of its border with Uruguay—the U.S. Army Air Forces had a detachment of its 26th Antisubmarine Wing, based out of Miami, Florida. The U-boat hunters patrolled the Atlantic Ocean with a mix of light, medium, and heavy bombers—Lockheed A-29 Hudsons, North American B-25 Mitchells, and Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses—any of which could easily reach a target in Argentina.
While it would be an act of war for the 26th’s aircraft to attack a facility in a neutral country, Kappler knew that the OSS had sabotage teams. And he had an image flash in his mind of Augustus Compania Industrial y Mercentil Limitada and Augustus Carbonera Argentina S.A.—his steel and coal manufacturing plants just up the River Plate from Buenos Aires—going up in flames.
He met Dulles’s eyes for a long moment.
Dulles, puffing on his pipe, did not blink.
Kappler nodded, then looked away in thought.
After another long moment he said: “There are of course those who are betting the Germans will win the war, and so have no reservations doing business with them. Particularly when it is quite profitable to do so with the cheap laborers supplied by the SS. And there are those who refuse to do so. . . .”
His voice trailed off as he looked at Dulles.
When Dulles was working in Berlin for Sullivan and Cromwell, he had become disgusted with the viciousness of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and Hitler’s goal for a judenrein—a Jew-clean—Germany. He had lobbied to have the law firm close its Berlin office and cease doing business with any company conducting any kind of trade with the Nazis. That had represented a remarkable amount of income for the firm, but Dulles declared it to be “blood money,” among other just descriptions that would reflect poorly on the firm, particularly its partners.
He ultimately won on both counts. The law office in Berlin was quietly closed. Sullivan and Cromwell then sent letters explaining why the firm was taking such measures to those clients with any connection to the Third Reich. Among them were Thyssen, Kappler, and Gust
av Krupp, head of the four-hundred-year-old Friedrich Krupp A.G., the largest corporation not only in Germany but in all of Europe.
“Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach is an über-Nazi,” Kappler said bitterly. “Hitler is his hero—he practically drools in his presence—and so Hitler has no worries about his loyalty. Krupp, after Thyssen fled here to Switzerland, is the main reason that the industry in the Ruhr Valley continues producing at near capacity—he has his plants as well as Thyssen’s entire Vereinigte Stahlwerke that Hitler seized. It would not surprise me that it was Gustav who pressured Bormann to seize Chemische Fabrik.”
Dulles puffed on his pipe as he listened.
“And,” Kappler finished, “he probably wants all of mine nationalized, too—which would explain Marty Bormann’s threat.”
“What precisely,” Dulles then asked, “got Fritz Thyssen in hot water with Hitler? Was it that letter he wrote?”
“Yes,” Kappler said, “mostly it was his denouncing of Nazism, particularly after being a high-profile early supporter, which was the same as denouncing Hitler himself. So, after Thyssen left the country with his family, an angry Hitler declared him a traitor, stripped him of his citizenship, and—”
A knock at the door interrupted his thought.
As Kappler and Dulles looked toward it, the door swung open and the OSS agent reappeared.
“Mr. Dulles, Herr Doktor Bernhard?”
Dulles felt Kappler’s eyes on him, and when he looked he could see Kappler’s expression was that of questioning.
He’s wondering who the hell is interrupting what he thought was supposed to be our secret meeting.
Well, this should be as interesting as I thought it would be. . . .
[FIVE]
OSS Dellys Station
