The Reluctant Nazi

By Pablo Zaragoza

In Adolf Hitler's early rise to power, he stirred the souls of impressionable youth in alehouses of Munich and beyond. One such young man, Hans Reinhard Richter, ignored is brother's warnings about the madman and immersed himself in Hitler's promise for a greater Germany. "I put on my black shirt and marched." He joined the Nazi Party and quickly rose in ranks to answer to the likes of Himmler and Göring. As an SS officer himself, Hans was charged with overseeing coal mines, reconfiguring them as gold depositories. He fulfilled his superiors' orders to steal from banks, museums, and even concentration camp victims to build vast wealth for the party.

 

After his first wife, an SS spy, died during childbirth, Hans married Irma. By that time, both had become increasingly disillusioned with empty promises of Hitler and his henchmen. They embarked on a dangerous mission to siphon off a portion of the gold, gems, and valuable art they had stolen for the Nazis. Hans and Irma opened accounts under fictitious names and hid their stashes in banks across Europe. Once Hitler initiated the Final Solution, Hans broke with Nazi Germany and courageously joined, first, the OSS and then the CIA to investigate reported sightings of Hitler in South America.

 

Did he find the Führer, or did he reach a dead end?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pablo Zaragoza
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223079699

Book preview

THE RELUCTANT NAZI

Pablo Zaragoza

To my late parents, Elio and Francisca, who persevered under adverse circumstances to keep our family going with love and without complaint.

To my brother Carlos and sister-in-law, Dunia, whose loyalty during challenging times uplifts my spirit.

To my children Elio, Ricardo, and Lourdes, whom I love more each and every day.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Books By Pablo Zaragoza

Copyright

PROLOGUE

My name is Hans Heinrich Richter. I was born on June 20, 1910, and had a regular Bavarian upbringing. We lived on the outskirts of Wein; a small city. Yes, I know it is part of Austria now, but we considered ourselves German. I learned to speak Mist Boarisch Dialekte, but I was instructed to speak as they did in Berlin. We joined in the games of those people who lived in Munich; like asper schnalzen (whip cracking). We would gather in January, in groups of nine with our whips, and scrape the snow away as our ancestors had done.

When I was four years old, my father went to the western front to fight against those that wanted to destroy our way of life. The Schlieffen Plan rushed him into Belgium and then Luxembourg. We received his cold corpse on August 20, 1914. He was lucky that he was identified because most of the men rotted on the ground and were unrecognizable. Mother and my older brother cried; but I was too young to understand the meaning of all these things.

My mother had family in Munich, and so we left Wein and traveled there. It was not easy for Mama. She was a widow of a war veteran who had died doing his duty for Tsar Wilhelm, but as the war dragged on and the bodies of the dead piled higher and higher, our people lost hope until they could not sustain the effort any longer.

With the signing of the armistice, my people were humiliated, our dignity trashed, our fortunes ruined, and we were made to suffer. We borrowed money from greedy American-Jewish bankers, and then we paid it to France and England who, in turn, paid it back to the Americans. The alliance had relied heavily on American banks during the war, and their notes came due. When the stock market collapsed and hyperinflation started, it marked the end of the dream of democracy for Germany, and the Pied Piper of Hitler gave us all hope and restored our dignity. I was twenty-six years old when I heard him speak in the bar halls of Munich. He told us that our leaders had sold us out; that the Jewish bankers had bled the Fatherland dry. We were a great people, he said, and we would be great again. We would renew the Holy Roman Empire under his leadership, and the Reich would be restored.

My brother caught me reading Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, Hans, don’t read that trash. That is the blithering of a deranged mind. A psychiatrist needs to examine him and have him committed.

I paid no attention and swore my allegiance to the National Socialist Party. I put on my black shirt and marched. I listened to Hitler and raised my hand and saluted him with devotion. He was my God. His voice, like Thor’s, was filled with thunder; his speech, like Odin, was filled with wisdom. I was one of hundreds who would have died and did die for him and his vision.

When he became Führer, he opened the doors to our greatness. He annexed Austria. After all, the Austrians were German people whom the decaying Hapsburgs had corrupted with their imperial court of decadence, decay, and corruption. These people joined us with open arms, and when we crossed the border, they threw flowers at our feet and called us saviors.

Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, the Klaipeda Region of Lithuania, and more. The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, a spineless man, told his people that we would have peace in our time, but he was far from the mark. By that time, I had moved from the Sturmabteilung to the Schutzstaffel (SS) with Reichsführer Himmler. Our mission was to defend the blood, the Reich, and Hitler, who was the embodiment of the Fatherland.

I was ready to do as my führer demanded of me, but my mission was not to advance with the troops into Poland. Prior to the invasion, as the ink was drying on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, I was summoned to Himmler’s office. As I entered, I wondered if his family tree were done, would we find him ethnically pure? That round face, those mongoloid eyes were certainly not of Aryan origin. Yet, if the Führer had overlooked this, then we should as well.

The slanted, beady eyes read my file and pointed to the chair in front of him. I stared at a poster-sized photograph of Hitler, as I waited for Himmler to finish reading.

"SS-Hauptsturmführer Richter, you have shown exemplary service to the Party and to the Führer."

Thank you, Reichsführer.

"As of today, I am elevating you in rank, despite the fact that your brother has been a critic of the Führer, even though the Führer has worked tirelessly to increase our territory. You will now have the rank of Sturmbannführer and be working in the East."

The East, sir? I asked with trepidation.

Poland, boy. Haven’t you seen the troops moving toward the border? We will crush those Slovak pig farmers and peasants, and when we do, we will extract everything from them.

What do you mean?

I want every scrap of gold those ignorant animals have. Their teeth, their crosses, their stars of David. I want what’s in their banks and in their jewelry stores, and I want a careful accounting of it all. When you’ve finished accounting for it in Poland, I want you to do the same in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and every other territory we overtake.

Yes, Reichsführer.

You have a degree in accounting from the university and one in economics, is that correct? he asked.

Yes.

You will select a team to help you, and you will begin operations as soon as we cross the border.

I had met him on August 20, 1939, and on August 23, they signed away the fate of Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. By September 1, I was in my staff car following the troops into Poland. As they marched, my brother was at home, packing. He knew what was to come. He was a Social Democrat, and that was as dangerous as being a Jew in those times. He and Mother left without saying a word; but it wouldn’t have mattered to me then where they went or what they were doing. All that mattered to me was that I was part of the aspirations of my führer to set the world right for my people who had been humiliated at Versailles, beaten by the Depression, and now, like Lazarus, resurrected, vigorous and determined to take what was ours by right.

I remember the wind in my face as we crossed the border into Poland, the smell of cordite, ash, and burning flesh in the air. One day, Germans would colonize this land and make it productive and pure. My people, my land, our time had come, and we would not be denied.

CHAPTER ONE

Prior to our troops crossing into Poland, we were instructed to perform one operation before Fall Weiss would take effect. Along with Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks, we received orders from the highest levels: Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller. I was elated to be called into the office of the SS’s second in command, and there with him, the head of the Gestapo, Müller, was waiting for me.

They looked at me, and since I too was SS, it was Heydrich who addressed me, I know that you’ve been assigned to be the Reich’s accountant in Poland once the bullets fly, but I need you to take part in something beforehand, Müller said. You see, Richter, it is important that the world see our invasion not as outright aggression but as response to a provocation. Do you understand?

Yes, sir. I believe I do. What do you want me to do? I was so eager to fulfill my role in the Führer’s grand plan that I would have done anything.

Good, Müller continued. He was a tall Aryan with deep, blue eyes and graying hair. There is a man in prison who will be executed for crimes against his race. He is a Polish sympathizer, a Catholic farmer. The Gestapo captured him as he was distributing anti-German propaganda. By the time you get to Gleitwitz, the subject will be wearing a Polish Army uniform, and you will receive instructions about what to do next. You and your team will also be in Polish uniforms. Is that clear?

Yes, sir.

Sturmbannführer Naujocks will take the radio station there at Gleitwitz. He will broadcast anti-German propaganda, and you will leave the body of the traitor, Franciszek Honiok, in his Polish uniform to show the world that our response to this provocation was just.

At that point, I should have taken off my black uniform and run away from them, like my brother and mother had done, but I was still a believer.

Sir, but this one incident will not stir the country up sufficiently to make them want to go to war, will it? I asked.

I told you, Müller, our accountant was a smart boy. I’ll tell you this. We are dressing many others, like our friend Honiok, in Polish uniforms as part of, what we lovingly call, Operation Himmler in honor of its brilliant creator. We are salting the fields with them, making sure that they are found, showing the people that the Poles are the aggressors and not us.

No one knew that on August 29, Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop were on the verge of dividing Poland in half and that the troops were biting at the bit to cross the border.

I saluted the two men in the room, walked out of the office, and gathered my team. I proceeded to get our prisoner. Naujocks had been tasked to go to the Dachau concentration camp to get the Konserve (Operation Canned Goods) corpses; to be scattered around the border with Poland to show Polish aggression.

I met Naujocks at the cemetery at Dachau. This was before they made it into a forced labor camp and prison for Jews, German and Austrian criminals, and others. Naujocks was a man of average build with black hair, and a thick, five o’clock shadow. He had been working with his men; getting the freshest- looking bastards out of the ground.

As I approached him, his face smudged by the dark soil, he stopped his work and looked at me. You must be the accountant. No names here, please.

Yes, and I should call you?

Nothing, it is best you don’t know who I am, nor that I know who you are. Is that clear? he said.

Yes.

Good. Your man is in Building 8, and you will administer this… he pulled from his coat a slender black box. Have you ever given anyone an injection?

No.

"You will take your belt and place it around his arm as if it were your waist. You will pull on it tight. If you do not see his veins, then you will slap his forearm. Do you understand?

You place the needle in his vein and draw up a little blood to make sure you are in the sweet spot and then press down on the plunger. He will be dead in a few minutes. Once he is dead, you will shoot him several times with your Luger. You do know how to use it, don’t you?

Yes, I know. I had gone through the training and was competent with firearms.

After you have done this, you will transport the traitor to the radio station at Gleitwitz, where I will be with my men. You will drop the corpse at the entrance to the radio station and leave with your people, having the satisfaction of your role in this great endeavor for the Fatherland.

I should have taken my men and headed west all the way to the other end of the world because this was a deceitful way to start a war; a war that would consume the world, orchestrated by a mad man that we had elected as our savior, our Messiah. He had me and the rest of Germany in his hands. He told us that others were responsible for our defeat in the first war and that greedy Jewish bankers had caused the misery of the Depression; the hyperinflation where a loaf of bread cost a man a week’s wages. He promised us a Germany where every Aryan would walk tall and proud of who he was. Germany would no longer beg for crumbs off the table of England and France but would dictate terms to them. He had done it in the Sudetenland, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia. They always bowed down to the strength of his person, and they would do so now. The Allies would fight over Poland, but we wouldn’t.

Naujocks had sent his men with trucks filled with dead men dressed in Polish uniforms to create the illusion of a Polish attack on Germany. He had proceeded in a staff car, complete with Polish plates, ahead of us to the radio station. The few people who were there were lambs to the slaughter in this plan.

The ink was drying on the German-Soviet agreement, with both Hitler and Stalin salivating over the divided carcass of Poland; as Naujocks and a few men walked into the radio station, eliminating the crew that was working there. He went to the station booth and began broadcasting that the Polish people didn’t want to smell German shit any longer. Naujocks was quick. He used more expletives as he continued speaking. He spewed enough vitriol to make any man’s blood boil. My people and I took the outside perimeter to ensure no one would walk in on this hoax.

My lieutenant took the corpse of Franciszek Honiok out of the truck and laid it on the doorsteps of the radio station. We said our goodbyes and headed for our rendezvous. I never saw him again. At Nuremberg, he never mentioned me, and for that I am grateful.

CHAPTER TWO

My group became part of, but separate from, the 4th Army under Rundstedt. I presented my credentials to the commander on August 30 at his headquarters. His steel-blue eyes looked at me with that cold Prussian intellect working on what my purpose was in all of this.

"Herr Richter, his disdain for the SS was evident in his voice. What is your purpose here? I have no use for an accountant and his group of scavengers."

"It is my duty to collect, catalogue, and deliver to the chancellery, the spoils of this campaign. The Führer has demanded that these people who have insulted the German people repay us; by expropriating their gold, silver, and anything of value that we come across."

"You know very well that these people had nothing to do with this war. They are victims of propaganda purposed by Herr Himmler to dupe the citizens of the Reich. They will be told that the Poles tried to invade us, and we are responding in kind. We are not fools in the Wehrmacht, Herr Richter. There is no declaration of war. The bodies of those men you seeded at the radio station and elsewhere are just being discovered; yet here we are, twenty divisions in the center with plans to push our way into Poland and Rundstedt’s thirty-five divisions poised to attack from the South. Why is this, except that it was planned this way?"

Sir, I’m here under orders. I do not question why they are the way they are, sir, I said.

I guess it is better that way. You aren’t Prussian, are you? We follow orders blindly, but at times I have to think and do not understand why we are sacrificing the lives of so many for a piece of dirt.

It is for the greater good of Germany.

Is it? he asked.

He looked at me and dismissed me. His second in command told me to follow closely behind the armored division and do my job. The commander didn’t want to know about them. They were independent. We were not to engage in military operations. He considered us political.

So, my men and I waited for the push that occurred on September 1, 1939. Little did we know the nightmare we were going to experience. The only thing we felt was the adrenaline of battle surge through us. We followed the armored division toward the town of Wielun. I watched the Luftwaffe drop bomb after bomb on it; Rundstedt would not risk men there. So, we stood there 20 kilometers from the city and watched as the town changed into piles of rubble. We advanced after the city center had been pulverized. I could hear the screams of children and their mothers trying to protect them. My task in the operation was simply to go to the three banks in town, acquire the assets there, and then proceed house by house, family by family, and confiscate every scrap of gold, silver, and jewelry. This is how they would pay reparations for startingthe war.

I knew about the disposition, the size of the bank because we had sent men in disguise to determine where these banks were and how well-guarded they were. They had gathered intelligence on other aspects of life: How many churches, synagogues, and the offices of local government. The Junkers had done their job against those that would defy my führer.

I rode in my staff car. There was no resistance to us; we were like gods. The roads were a wasteland of broken bricks, burning remnants of buildings, and bomb fragments. I remember seeing a brown and black dog limping along the road. It had been injured during the bombing. I asked my driver to stop. My intention was to help the poor animal. My steps were firm and purposeful until I got to it. I tried to help it, but the animal bared its teeth. It rushed me; so, I pulled out my Lugar and shot it. I walked back to the car, resolved that the dog, like the Polish people, deserved no mercy.

What does Shakespeare say:

The quality of mercy is not strained.

It dropped as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest…

Mercy is above this sceptered sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show like God’s

When mercy seasons justice.

Only the English—the stupid, arrogant, self-aggrandizing English—would think this way. Mercy is for cowards, for the faint of heart, for those who have no resolve, no purpose to achieve. These people could afford mercy, and I hope it falls on them. However, at my young age, I believed that the embodiment of Thor on Earth, Adolf Hitler, would dispense mercy when he saw fit to do so. I would only carry out his orders.

The driver took me to the first bank. The façade of the building was badly damaged. I strode in, followed by my driver and the men I had brought with me in two trucks. The place was deserted except for a small, bald man inside the vault. I entered the vault. The man was busy making sure the bank’s assets were secure. As I cleared my throat, he turned around quickly. I could see by his facial characteristics that he was a Jew. His eyes widened, perspiration formed on his forehead, and he took a handkerchief from his coat pocket that was gray with dust.

I am Sturmbannführer Richter, and you are?

Bank Manager Morgenthau.

As of this moment, all physical assets of this bank and the contents of its safety deposit boxes are the property of the Third Reich, I said.

Sir, I am not authorized to do that. I would have to get authorization from Warsaw to let you have unfettered access to the bank’s assets, and quite possibly, I couldn’t open the clients’ boxes.

At that point, I pulled out my Lugar and shot Mr. Morgenthau in the stomach. I saw the crimson starting to color his white shirt. He looked at me in amazement.

I was not asking for permission to take them, I said. I was saying that I would.

His eyes opened wide, as I took the keys dangling from his belt and stepped over him. My men followed, some of them stepping on the bleeding Jew, others avoiding him. Bank clients started to come into the bank, but as soon as they saw us, they ran back to their hovels. The former bank manager, still on the ground, held his stomach and moaned in agony.

I used his master key to open safety deposit boxes. Many of these boxes contained birth certificates, old photographs, and certificates of ownership of real estate; but others had jewels, gold and silver coins, and American dollars. The bank had eight bags of gold coins but no gold bars. As we loaded the last of the bank’s material goods, I thanked the cold corpse of Mr. Morgenthau for his cooperation. I went to my ledger and wrote what we had taken, and proceeded to the next bank.

By day’s end, I had fired my gun only three times. The third time was at the synagogue where the rabbi was unwilling to cooperate. The man wanted to protect the Torah, his precious scroll, from us. I could have cared less about his veiled Jewish shit. I was interested in the gold and silver that adorned the place. He threw himself at me, and I shot him. He hadn’t listened when I told him to stop coming at me. He was a funny-looking man with a long, gray beard, and curls where his sideburns should be. He yelled that we had violated the sanctity of the place by not wearing yarmulkes. This was a holy place, he said. I shot him in the forehead, and his brains and blood splattered on his precious piece of paper.

I walked out and filled my lungs with clean air. I took gasoline from the truck and went inside. I drenched the floor and draperies with it. There was a lit lamp in front of their altar. I took the lamp and carried it to the front of the synagogue. I threw it at the gas-soaked floor. I stood there in front of the mixture of yellow, orange, and blue flames and felt their heat. I knew that I was justified in eliminating the rabbi who had tried to impede my duty. I would allow no one to do that, and I do not apologize for that act. It was war, and I was carrying out my orders. These places had to be wiped off the face of the earth; like dog shit from the sole of one’s shoe.

I did the same in the other synagogue; but there, the rabbi didn’t show his face. He was a coward, most likely not like the first who was a brave man defending his faith. At the Catholic Church run by Franciscans, the priest helped us load the trucks and saluted us in the typical Nazi fashion.

By the end of the day, we needed to secure our load. I found one of the few standing warehouses in the area and reported to my superior, Reinhard Heydrich, about our first day in the field.

I expected no other result than success, he said. I did have to eliminate two Jewish people.

By the end of all this, we will have eradicated them all from the face of the earth. You should feel nothing for these vermin. They have chewed away at the fabric of humanity long enough.

I thought to myself that Christ, who was born a Jew, could not be the son of God. How could God deposit the soul, the divinity of Himself into vermin? Yet, this is what my masters said. I was in conflict with this idea, but it was only starting to emerge that these men, this philosophy was corrupt, and it was tearing me apart slowly. I told my superior that we could not safeguard this bounty here forever and that we needed to find a secure repository for it.

I believe you are right, Richter. Give it some thought and come back to me in a day or two with your best proposal. In the meantime, each household must be searched for gold and silver, either in coin or in their teeth, gathered and added to what you have already collected.

I said my Heil Hitler over the phone and hung up. I posted men to guard our treasure and went to sleep in one of the trucks that night. I tried to sleep; but the rabbi’s bumpy, bearded face cried from his burning synagogue, Murderer, murderer, killer of old Jewish men protecting the holy of holies! Murderer! The banker cried out from the floor of his vault, I have a wife, a son, and you have murdered me for what? Shiny yellow rocks polished for coin. He joined the rabbi in a prayer I didn’t recognize in their forbidden language:

El Maley rakhamim, shokhen bamromim,

ha’m’tzey menukha n’khonah takhat kanfey hashkhinah b’ma’alot k’doshim u’t’horim k’zohar harakia mazhirim,

et nishmot kol akheynu b’ney artzeynu, anashim nashim b’taf, she’ney’heyrgu, shenis’rfu, shenitlu v’nekh’n’ku mipney gizanut v’sinat khinam, b’gan eden t’hi m’nukhatam. Ana b’al harakhamim, hastireym b’seter k’nafeykha l’olamim u’tzror bitzror ha’khaim et nimoteyhem. Adonay hu nakhalatam, v’uanukhu v’shalom al mishk’voteyeyhem. V’nomar: Amen

(God full of compassion, dwelling on High,

find perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of Your Presence,

among the holy and the pure who shine with the light of the heavens,

for the souls of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors,

men, women, and children, who have been killed, burned,

and lynched because of racism and baseless hate.)

I woke in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, climbed out of the truck, and stuck a cigarette in my mouth. I could not light the match; my hands were shaking so violently. My second came over and helped me.

Is this your first operation, sir? he asked.

I looked at him with curiosity. Was it that obvious that I had not been battle tested?

Yes.

This was nothing, sir. You’ll see worse as this thing heats up. We are in a fine position ourselves not to feel the worst of it. It’s those men near the front who will have their mettle tested.

I thought about what my second had said, that we were in the best position of all, counting money, making sure that those that had taken so much from the Fatherland paid it back.

CHAPTER THREE

On the second day in Wielun, I divided up my men into groups of three to cover more ground. We went out into the city. Fires were still burning. The gas lines to the bakery close to us had sent a plume of flame into the air, and its embers rained on the homes nearby. The local fire department was exhausted from trying to stop the spread of flames, and they were losing the battle. The destruction caused by the bombing made the streets almost impassable. Stones, bricks, and mortar strewn across our route made it difficult to go from one place to the next.

The jewelry store/pawn shop was on my list of places to visit. We finally arrived, and I saw a group of townspeople going into the shop through the broken window. I told my men to fire on those who were coming out. The shots sounded like thunderclaps, and three of the looters fell on the sidewalk. My men rushed forward and dragged out several others from inside the shop. They placed their hands up in the air. I took those that were cowering inside the shop and dragged them out, too.

I shouted, Empty your pockets!

Two men and a woman lined up in front of the pawn shop. They whimpered as they took rings, chains, and gems out of their pockets. The woman’s cheeks were puffed out as though she had something in her mouth. I walked up to her, and terror filled her eyes.

Why don’t you sing for us, little girl? My men want to hear a song.

She wouldn’t open her mouth. I clenched my fist, drew back my arm, and hit her in the stomach. She cried out, and jewelry exploded from her mouth.

My men laughed. We put the men up against the wall in front of the shop and executed them. I handed the woman over to my men. They tore at her clothes hungrily. I walked inside the shop, as I heard her cry and plead for them to stop. How do you stop