Chapter 23
Arriving at
precisely 10:25, Frank thought he would be early for the 11 AM meeting. He was
wrong. Colonel Taylor had preceded him, along with the Provost Marshal (Army
head of the MPs), Mayor Schwarz (Mayor of Mannheim), and Colonel Nelson
(Garrison Commander). At 10:50, General Sheldon
(USAREUR Commander) arrived with minimal fanfare, and at 10:55, Ambassador
Cranston walked in with his entourage. At the same time, two German policemen
escorted in an elderly man that Mayor Schwarz introduced as Herr Marius Fuchs.
The Americans were puzzled by his attendance, but in deference to the mayor,
welcomed him to the meeting.
Colonel
Nelson introduced the attendees and their functions and after the formalities
were completed, he asked Frank to explain what they were all doing there. Frank
began:
“Just two
weeks ago, my children discovered a trap door in our quarters that opened into
a vertical shaft with a ladder bolted to the side wall. Without my knowledge, they began to explore
the shaft and came upon a network of tunnels that exists beneath this area. They
were discovered at the outlet of one of the tunnels next to the runway on
Coleman Barracks.”
“After I
found out about their explorations, I had them show me what they had
found. As an engineer, I was impressed
by the scope of the tunnel system. The various tunnels lead to all the US Army
kasernes north of the Rhine River, as well as to the BASF plan and to the
Abandoned Ammunition Arsenal located in the Kafertal Wald to the north which
was destroyed in World War II.”
“The origin
of the tunnels is in question, but it appears that some were in use during
World War I, and were apparently used for underground ammunition storage. The
ammunition was manufactured by BASF during World War I and in the same factory
by IG Farben during World War II. “
“We are
here today because of what remains in the tunnels. Three large storage chambers
were locked. My son, who fancies himself to be a locksmith, was able to open
all three doors. The first contained ammunition from the World War I era. The
second contained hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars’ worth of art
works and gold bullion. Our assumption is that it was looted by the Nazis
during the war and stored there for safekeeping.”
“When the
art and gold were discovered, I forbade my children from returning to the
tunnels until the proper authorities were notified, and I spent all of
yesterday making notification. I realized that there may be some political
implications which is why you are all here.”
“What I
didn’t discover until last evening was the contents of the third chamber. My
headstrong son returned yesterday to the doors without permission and opened
the third door. He entered to find
hundreds of corpses that were apparently murdered in that chamber. While he was
inside, the door was closed and locked on him and he was overcome with cyanide
poisoning.”
“My older
son, John, discovering that his brother, Jarom, had not shown up for school
yesterday. He assumed, correctly as it
turned out, that Jarom had gone back to the unopened door and he followed to
bring his brother back. As it turned
out, John discovered the locked door and communicated with Jarom from the
outside by tapping on the door. As the taps disappeared because Jarom had been
overcome, John knew something was wrong and, using a hand grenade from the
ammunition storage room, he blew the lock off and rescued his brother.”
“By that
time I was home and the boys had been missed so I went down the tunnel to see
if they were there and discovered Jarom unconscious in the tunnel. I carried
him out and he was taken to Heidelberg hospital where he is recovering.”
“The revelation
of the underground chamber where the bodies were found complicates the
discovery, I assume.”
Mayor
Schwarz spoke up, saying, “I believe that Herr Fuchs may be able to answer more
of your questions, if you will allow it.”
Everyone
turned to Marius. Although he had been included during the introductions, no
one knew his connection to their meeting. His English was rudimentary, and the
mayor had provided an interpreter who was brought into the meeting. Through the
interpreter, Marius began to relate the history of the tunnel complex.
“When I was
a young man, maybe 16 or 17, Mannheim was a graveyard. My family had been
killed in the war and I was the only survivor.
The bombers had come for weeks and they had destroyed all the buildings.
Then when they got close enough, the artillery started shelling us. The only hope we had for survival was to
leave or to hide. I grew up right here
and I knew the woods and the streams.
Before the war, I knew of a deep cave system far below the surface. The entrance was in the middle of the fields
over there,” he said pointing to the southeast.
There were rocks and a crack in the earth that my friends and I would
play in, but it was very dark so we could not go very far inside. We made a torch
one time and followed the crack in the earth down 25 or 30 meters and the cave
seemed to level out and go sideways, but the darkness was absolute and one of
my friends got stuck down in the cave.
It was terrifying. We left him
and returned with a shovel and a pick and were able to free him, but it put
such a scare in us that we didn’t go back, and he was never quite the same
after that. Imagine being trapped far
underground in the pitch black, alone.“
“After the Americans had arrived,
times were desperate. Food was scarce as it had been during the end of the war,
and there was lots of rebuilding to do, but no money. I was almost 19 and
strong. I had been too young to fight
during the war, but in the year or so after, I had grown up to be almost a man.
I worked for the Americans on a construction crew. The German Kasernes were
being rebuilt for the use of the American troops, and after a few years, they
began to bring their families. Housing
had to be built for them. The bombs and artillery shells had left craters
everywhere and the trees were all dead, but soon the rocks were gone and the
ground was flat. They built Ben Franklin
Village in the area they had cleared.
“The foreman on my crew was an old
man named Klaus. We had worked together for some time and he trusted me. He
would give me a job and he knew that when he came to check on my progress, that
I would be working hard. I learned to anticipate his instructions and became
better and better at my trade. Klaus had also grown up here and had lived here
even before the first War. When we were working on one particular house, he was
very fussy. He insisted on forming and pouring the concrete walls himself. It
seemed he was working early in the morning and late in the evening to get it
completed. Finally one day, he called for a sledge hammer to break in a
concrete divider we had poured. I brought the hammer and he took it from me and
told me I could leave for the day. I pretended to leave, but I watched as he
made an opening in to a dark space, and then he disappeared into it. I waited a few minutes and then followed him
into the hole he had made. I was surprised to find a vertical passage
descending into the earth from our construction. As I followed him down, I
began to recognize the vertical section of the cave I had explored as a child,
but it had been straightened, the rocks had been removed, and a steel ladder
had been bolted into the side. I could see the light from what I supposed was
his flashlight ahead of me. When he reached the end of the vertical section,
for a moment he could go no further, but he pulled out a rope ladder that I
suppose he had hidden somewhere and, after fastening it to the steel, he
climbed down to the floor of a large room.
It was very dark because I had no light, and I was now committed. If I
didn’t continue to follow him, I would be lost in the dark.”
“I continued to follow him as he
walked down a long tunnel. Eventually he came to another crack in the earth
that rose upward from the tunnel we were following. I followed his light, very scared now that it
would go out and I would be lost forever. We had to climb over boulders and
smaller rocks, and finally came to a door which he passed through and closed
leaving me in the dark. I had little choice. I fumbled my way to the door and
it was locked. I knocked on it softly,
and finally pounded on it and screamed. Suddenly the door opened and Klaus was
standing there, a smile on his creased face.”
“I could tell then that he knew I
had been following him. We were in a garden shed built into the side of a small
hill. He invited me into the house, but did not answer the questions that he
knew I must have. It was a small miracle that his home had been spared in the
bombing, but it was on the edge of the woods and perhaps the area had never
been a target. He introduced me to his wife, Anneliese, and his daughter, Alexandra
and her two children. They shared their meager meal with me, and as humble as
it was, it was delicious. It had been a long time since I had a meal with a family
in a real home. Klaus explained that his daughter was a widow and she and her
two babies lived with him. We talked into the night of Germany and the sorrows
of the past and hopes for the future.”
“Klaus invited me to stay the
night, and the next morning we walked back to the construction site overland,
arriving before anyone else. The opening in the concrete that we had made the
day before was still there, and we set about making a temporary wood cover for
the shaft. It was an unspoken agreement that this opening and the tunnel we had
walked through was a secret, and that I had been trusted with keeping it. Klaus
explained that he had other responsibilities and that he wouldn’t be returning
to the construction project, but asked if I would continue working. He asked me
to return to his home for dinner that night. I was happy to accept his
invitation. He then opened the wooden cover we had made and he disappeared
below. I closed the cover, and when the rest of the work crew arrived and
everyone was waiting for instructions, I began passing out the various jobs
just as Klaus would have done. When the
American boss came around asking about Klaus, I told him that he had not come
back. He could see that the work was
progressing on our building and he asked who was in charge in Klaus’ absence. I
told him that I had been supervising, and he put me in charge on the spot. I
was young, but because I was large and appeared to know what I was doing, the
other men listened to me and I became the foreman that day.”
“Klaus never returned to the
construction site. As we began framing
the doors and windows, I took personal responsibility for that part of the
house. I built the floor of the closet and installed the hinges and locks in
the evenings, working by myself. When the building was finished, no one else
knew about the secret opening.”
“I returned to Klaus’ home that
evening; the day I had become the foreman. The food was excellent and
welcome. After the meal, Klaus and I
walked out into the forest and began to talk, and what follows is what he
explained to me then and what he later shared with me from the book he wrote
about his life.“
“Klaus was born in 1883. Mannheim had been built and burnt twice
before, but the 1800s were a century of relative peace and growth.
Unfortunately, in the early 1900s, the unrest in Europe became extreme and in
1914, war broke out. Mannheim’s industrial plants, where explosives and
gasoline needed for the war were produced, made it an early target and in 1915
BASF was bombed. Klaus had been trained as an engineer and his skills were in
demand, not only on the battlefield but also for production of the critical
armaments and fuel needed to fight the war. The aerial bombing was a surprise
and the high command wanted to be able to protect the ammunition and armaments
produced here. Klaus knew of the natural caves that he had played in as a
child. He was a more determined explorer than I was and had used long-burning
torches to explore them. There were two natural openings that he knew of, the
one in Kafertal on the property he acquired to build his house, and the other
where the house we had built for the American Army would someday be. He had
even been to the underground river beneath the forest.
It was Klaus’ idea that an
underground complex could be built to store the munitions as an extension of
the natural cave system. He presented his idea to his superiors and they
immediately seized on it. They were already building an Ammunition Storage Arsenal
a short distance away from the BASF factory.
Klaus would be in charge of constructing an underground tunnel that
would connect the BASF factory with the Ammunition Storage Arsenal using the
cave system, as well as constructing underground storage chambers for protected
storage of munitions.”
“The tunnel system was a major
project. Building large tunnels on the
battlefield in France near the Siegfried Line was ongoing, so it was reasonable
to do the same here, but an excavation like this was not without its
challenges. Digging and reinforcing tunnels of the size needed 30 meters below
the surface of the earth required earth removal, reinforcement of the tunnels
with steel rebar where necessary, and concrete. At the site of the Ammunition
Storage Arsenal, a large shaft was dug straight down about 30 meters and a
crane was erected over the hole. Mining equipment was lowered to the bottom of
the large shaft and a tunnel was dug back toward the BASF plant. Blasting was
often required to penetrate the rock and miners worked around the clock to
finish the project. The tunnel intersected with the naturally occurring cave
system that had been there, and the water from the underground river became an
unexpected resource for mixing concrete.
Daimler-Benz, on the north side of the Rhine and across the river from
BASF was contracted to build a small motorized tractor that could haul trailer
cars along the tunnel and large storage chambers were cut into the rock to store
the munitions and armaments. In a short time, thousands of tons of munitions were
produced at the factory and carried under the Rhine River to be stockpiled for
use as the war progressed. When the
factory was bombed, the flow of munitions to the battlefield was uninterrupted
because of the stockpile far beneath the ground.”
“When it appeared that the war
would be lost in 1918, the high command ordered us to close down the tunnel
system. The entrance from the arsenal was hidden and the badly damaged building
was abandoned. The entrance at the BASF factory was hidden in the building’s
foundation, and as far any but a few knew, it had never existed. Of course, the
old men who had worked on it knew about it, but war is destructive, not only
for the country and the land, but also the people. The workers went home to
where they had come from and got old and died. There was no evidence of the
tunnel system anywhere. “
“My memory of what he told me is
not as precise as what he had written down himself. Please allow me to read to you from his
book.”
From
the Memoirs of Klaus Baer:
“I had bought the property that
included the cave entrance on the northwest side of the forest, and built my
home there. My wife and I raised our daughter there, and I watched over the
tunnels, occasionally climbing down through my cave and then walking down the
tunnels we had worked so hard to build. The storage bunkers had been built
along the tunnel from BASF to the above ground Ammunition Storage Arsenal. A
series of 16 chambers were located along the tunnel from the factory to within
2 miles of the Arsenal. They had been fitted with huge iron doors and were
closed and locked securely. At the end of the war, only one of them had any ordinance
left, and that is how they remained.”
“Adolf Hitler came to power in 1934
and the military aggression of the 3rd Reich almost guaranteed
another war. We who had already seen our friends and families die and the
cities destroyed were not eager for war, but when your nation goes to war, you
must also. The German Army built a number of Kasernes around north Mannheim.
Perhaps the location of IG Farben (BASF had merged with Bayer, Hoechst and
three other companies in 1925 to form IG Farben) and other industrial companies
as well as proximity to the Rhine River was the reason. It was desirable to protect the factories as
well as the transportation routes to and from them.”
“The tunnel complex was on the
military maps, of course, and while it was building the kasernes, the Wehrmacht
leadership decided to upgrade the tunnels to include their expansion allowing underground
access from the kasernes. Rather than bring in military or civilian
construction units to do the work, the 3rd Reich used the Jews
slated for extermination to accomplish it. Construction began in 1939. Over
2000 Jews were imprisoned in the fenced forest around the Ammunition Storage Arsenal. This became their living quarters during the
construction when they were above ground. They were led underground with armed
guards in almost no light, breaking stone with sledge hammers and carting it
away in hand carts. Explosives were used when the stone was too difficult to
break with a sledge hammer, and many of the Jews perished when poorly timed
explosions occurred. But the supply of
Jews seemed endless. The underground river was successfully used to dispose of
much of the waste as the flow was sufficient to carry the debris away without
clogging the river. The other debris was carried to the Ammunition Storage Arsenal,
loaded on the backs of the slaves where it was carried up the concrete stairs
and dumped into trucks that hauled it off.”
“By 1941, the munitions in all but
one of the bunkers had been used by the Army and had not been replaced. One of
the bunkers became quarters for the Jews who were working underground. They
would spend weeks at a time underground with little food. Hygiene was
non-existent and the waste was carted off daily and dumped in the river. Life
underground was literally hell on earth. Vermin would attempt to infest the
tunnels, but were caught and eaten almost immediately. “
“I was not a Nazi party member, but
had served in the Army. In 1943, I served in the disastrous attack on Russia,
and barely survived as the Army was pushed further and further west by the Soviets.
I had been wounded and become part of the walking dead trying to stay ahead of
the battle, and was finally sent home to recuperate. My wife helped me to
partially recover, but I never again returned to the battle. As my health
improved, I once again attempted to explore the cave. As I climbed down from the surface, I noticed the
terrible odor of death and dying, but I still was not aware of what had gone on
here. I made my way through the tunnels
I had been so familiar with. When I saw the great changes that had occurred in
the tunnel system and I saw the pitiful creatures that had done the work, I was
truly shocked. I became, in effect, a
spy. I had my own entrance to the tunnel
system and I watched silently as the work was completed.”
“By 1943, it was becoming obvious
that the 3rd Reich would fall, and many in the leadership were
beginning to worry about how they would hold on to their stolen fortunes and
how they would hide from the world the terrible things they had done. The
tunnel system proved to be their windfall. Senior officers had plundered the
homes and businesses of the Jews as they had been sent away as slaves or to the
Extermination Camps. They had taken the gold, jewelry and art that they had
found. Even as early as 1938, laws had been passed allowing seizure from German
museums and private collections. Anything considered ‘degenerate’ by the Fuhrer,
which he defined as art depicting prostitutes, pimps, idiots and Jews, and most
abstract art. The Louvre Museum and many others in France, Belgium, Austria and
Italy as well as the other conquered territories were looted and the invaluable
objects of art were secreted away. The storage bunkers in the tunnel system
became an ideal place to hide some of the stolen treasures. The tunnel system
had been completed with its miles of underground connections to allow the
troops in the kasernes to respond to a threat against the stored ammunition or
the production plants themselves. Now they became a last defense of the stolen
gold and artworks of Europe. As their last act, the slaves were required to
clean every inch of every tunnel so that it would be impossible to tell how the
tunnels had been made, and to haul the treasures into the storage bunker where
it would be closed off until better times. IG Farben had been complicit in
using slave labor at its factories. It was a simple matter to use the IG Farben
access to the tunnel system to secretly bring in the treasures. Once the
storage bunker was full, the slaves were herded into their underground prison,
a quantity of Zyklon B was thrown in and the door was shut and sealed. It was
never opened again.”
“The war was lost and the senior
officers that had been responsible for secreting the treasures of Europe in the
tunnel system beneath Mannheim went out of their way to eliminate any who knew
of it. When the War Crimes Commission indicted those senior officers and they
were hanged, the number of those who knew about the hidden treasure was few;
perhaps one.”
“I became the guardian of the tomb
of the Jewish slaves, and the depository of the hidden treasures of Europe. I
have continued my vigil, but I will not be able to do so forever. I would bring
my secret knowledge to the proper authorities, but who are the proper
authorities? Germany has suffered so much for its poisonous leadership that I
cannot bear to cause further shame by unveiling these horrors to the world.
There is a young man, an orphan, who works on the construction project for the
Americans with me. He is kind and
intelligent and hard working. If God wills it, I will invite him to become my
successor.”
“Klaus was like a father to me. It
wasn’t long before he invited me to live in their home, and it wasn’t much
later that beautiful Alexandra and I fell in love and were married. It is true
that she is 5 years older than I, but the war had aged me beyond my years and
my only desire was to give and receive love. We have now been married for 53
years. The children are grown and have families of their own. The years of being the guardian of the
tunnels have given me time to think. Those who had a hand in stealing the
treasures are all gone and won’t be enriched by allowing their release to the
world. Wiser men than I will have to decide who should receive them, but
certainly those that stole them won’t have a share and I believe that the
treasures should belong to all the people of the world. As for the tomb of the
Jews, I think it is time that the crime committed against them should be
acknowledged and their descendants notified of the existence of their remains,
if possible. Germany will suffer with embarrassment, but perhaps in these
turbulent times this is necessary to remind us of the humanity we must seek in
all mankind.”
“I
am embarrassed to admit that when the boy went into the chamber yesterday, I
did not know what to do. I had been charged with protecting the secrets, and
all I could think of at the time was to lock the door. I left for a time and
realized the terrible thing I had done, and I was returning to free him when I discovered
he was already gone. I followed his brother and sister to one of the kasernes
and the military police brought me out. Mayor Schwarz arranged that I should be
here today to tell my story. I beg your forgiveness for what I did to your son,
Major, and I am grateful he is recovering. I hope you will allow me to
apologize to him
