(intense music)
Downloaded from YTS.MX
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- [Narrator] The door slams shut behind me.
The light goes out.
I hear other cell doors open and slam shut.
I hear the shooting of bolts and the heavy clanking of keys.
I am in total darkness.
- [Man] I believe that this nation should commit itself
to achieving the goal before this decade is out
of landing a man on the moon
and returning him safely to the Earth.
(crowd chattering)
- [Announcer] Passengers arriving at West Air
from the United States.
- [Announcer] Your attention ladies and gentlemen,
good afternoon, this will now serve as this is
the final boarding call, final boarding call.
- Mr. Arthur Rudolf, just arrived from Hamburg?
- Yes, is there a problem?
I'm only here to visit my daughter,
she's driving up from California.
- Sir, you need to come with me.
This way.
(intense music)
Can you confirm you are Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph,
born November 9th, 1906?
- Yes.
- And you were expelled from the United States in 1984?
- I made a voluntary agreement
- And you are on an immigration watch list,
preventing you entering the U.S?
- I'm not going to.
- The office of special investigations
in DC says that you plan to.
That your planning a publicity stunt,
crossing on July 4th at Niagara.
- I deny that the OSI has been persecuting me since 1983.
- Be that as it may, according to this 1993 agreement,
you have admitted to war crimes
and therefore you cannot enter Canada,
not until a formal inquiry as to the facts has been held.
- [Man] What do you think about what Canada's tryna do here sir?
- No comment.
- [Man] The hearing was adjourn because Rudolph's lawyer
wants more time to prepare his case.
- [Man] Say goodbye to him,
say (speaking in foreign language)
(sad music)
- Neil Armstrong has just reported back it feels good.
Nine ignition sequence starts,
six, five, four,
three, two, one, zero.
All engine running.
Lift off, we have a lift off.
32 minutes past the hour.
Lift off on Apollo 11.
- We actually had an informant
who was at a meeting where Rudolf's return
to North America was plotted.
- And then we have that testimony
from the American intelligence officer
at the end of the war, who said, quote,
"100% Nazi, dangerous type, suggest internment."
A lot of things went into this rocket enthusiasm.
Number one was that theorist showed in the 1920s
that space flight was not crazy,
that it might actually be possible.
And particular Hammond Oberg was very important.
His book, "The Rocket into Interplanetary Space"
in 1923 opened up a whole movement in Germany.
Of course Fritz Lang made a famous movie called,
"Frau im Mond, The Woman in the Moon" that opened in 1929.
Hermann Oberth listed as the scientific advisor
on the movie, and so one of
the most famous Weimar film director
had made a major movie about going into space.
This is Germany after the loss of the war,
the humiliating defeat, the Versailles treaty,
and they were very enthusiastic,
bought any new technology which might show German greatness.
So there were a lot of reasons to be interested
in space travel and interested in developing the rocket
as a weapon and as a way to go into space.
And so there were several people were saying,
space flight is real, it can happen, it might happen soon,
they were all very optimistic,
it could happen within a decade or two.
So there was a lot of rocket enthusiasm.
I mean, Rudolph had been involved
with Max Valier back in 1930, who was a great figure
in the early rocket enthusiast community,
was killed in 1930 at the Heylandt factory
when Rudolph was present.
- [Rudolph] Valier was increasing the trust
of his rocket prototype.
We were taking turns using kindling to ignite the rocket.
There were red spots, a dangerous signal.
I recommended we stop, but Valier increased the trust.
There was an explosion and I was thrown in the air
against a wall.
When I stood up, I realized the rocket had gone.
When I turned him around, I saw that he had been hit
by a piece of shrapnel.
By the time the ambulance came, he was dead.
In the summer of 1932,
I was taking part in the rocker demonstration
for the German army.
I saw a very smart young fellow and I asked him,
how do you measure trust?
This was the first time I met Wernher von Braun.
In those days he already had the dreams of going to Mars,
going to the moon.
We've worked together from that day on.
- Von Braun was well-known as the manager
of the V2 rocket project.
So that was not news to anybody.
Rudolph was certainly a little more obscure
in the V2 program than he was in the United States.
The bond between Von Braun and Rudolph
was the early rocket experience they had
at Kummersdorf and Rudolf tested an engine
and I think Von Braun's conclusion was that,
well the rocket engine wasn't that great
but Rudolph was somebody who knew what he was doing
and he was an engineer we could recruit.
They had bonded over space ideas
in the officer club at Kummersdorf.
And so they stayed up late at night, over beers
and talked about expeditions to the moon
and expeditions to Mars.
- [Man] The chief of the chairmen ordinance department
came to see us at Kummersdorf.
And during that visit of General Baker
he questioned us about our progress.
Von Braun did not talk about the weapons we were supposed
to build but about space flight.
General Baker was very nice about it.
But he he argued with Von Braun and told him,
"Von Braun, you will never make it.
"You will not be able to harness the energies necessary
"to get you into space."
- [Man] Houston, slightly less than one minute to ignition
and everything is go.
- [Houston] Roger.
Ignition.
- [Man] We confirm ignition and the thrusters go.
- [Narrator] I know I am free, I will be free again soon.
The confidence I have always had comes back to me.
I know that those who give up, never return.
It is in adversity that hope sharpens it's edge.
The fortunate have no need of it.
- [Man] Network, you get it.
Everything up?
- [Man] That's affirmative.
- [Man] Loud and clear.
- [Man] Apollo 11, this is launch operations manager,
the launch team wishes you good luck and god speed.
- [Man] Thank you very much, I know it will be a good one.
- [Man] How do read me?
- [Man] CC loud and clear.
- [Man] Okay Neil, have a good one.
All right, the CMT on verified program two.
(indistinct radio chatter)
All right, CMT on panel.
(indistinct radio chatter)
(rocket rumbles)
(eerie music)
- [Man] In three short years, we brought the A4
from a project on paper to a flight system,
which for the first time brought a projectile into space,
and in doing so, every step we took
was a step into the unknown.
- [Von Braun] I was watching through a pair of binoculars
and I just kept my fingers crossed
that I would know that all of a sudden see a fireball
in the sky and finally made it.
This day would be remembered as
the day UN space flight was born.
- And this is the site of a V2 attack in Lamberth
on the 4th of January, 1945.
The rockets left Holland at 22 past eight.
So it took very little time, no warning, nothing.
So many people died in the dwellings
because it was in the evening.
Around 39 were killed and 70 injured.
Now this is not the biggest attack,
the most serious V2 attacks
was on New Cross Road in Deptford where 169 people died.
- [Man] Down two and a half.
Forward, forward.
40 feet down, two and a half, picking up some dust.
30 feet, two and a half down.
Four forward, four forward, drift into the right a little.
- [Man] 30 seconds.
(eerie music)
Contact light.
- [Man] We've had shutdown.
- [Man] We copy you down eagle.
(indistinct radio chatter)
- [Man] The eagle has landed.
- [Man] Roger Tranquility, we copy you on the ground,
you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue,
we're breathing again, thanks a lot.
(eerie music)
- [Neil] That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
- [Man] Neil and Buzz, I'm talking to you by telephone
from the oval room at the white house,
and this certainly has to be
the most historic telephone call ever made
from the white house.
I just can't tell you how proud we all are
of what you have done.
For every American, this has to be the proudest day
of our lives and for people all over the world,
I am sure that they too join with Americans
in recognizing what an immense feat this is.
- [Interviewer] Did you all look at each other
at that moment feel it was a German victory?
- Yes we thought so.
- [Interviewer] Do you think the Americans
could have got to the moon had it not been for your help?
- In time, yes, but not that early.
(indistinct radio chatter)
- [Man] 6915.
- [Man] 11 horrace copy, 13301675, over.
- [Man] Every precaution was taken to protect
the outside world from any possibility
of contamination by moon germs.
Here are the three astronauts walking from the helicopter
to the mobile quarantine facility.
- I found this newspaper
when I cleared up my parents' home last year,
and this obviously was an important one to keep
as I obviously thought of about my uncle
when the event was happening in 1969, how they felt
about this development of the V2
into this wonderful rocket that helped men
to go on the moon.
There was a real sense of terrible anger,
especially when Von Braun became this hero of America.
And it was in the French magazines like PARIS-MATCH,
this was about modernity, this was about a space age,
it was interviewed, it was received in great honor
by the French scientist, in of all places, the
(speaking in foreign language)
and this made the survivors of Dora absolutely furious,
and they kept writing to PARIS-MATCH and the radios,
and of course, silence
- In August, 1943, the Nazi leadership responded
to the attack on Peenemunde by the British RAF
and also to bombing in other centers where V2s
was supposed to be produced by deciding to go underground.
So, after a short consultation
they decided to use these tunnels in North Central Germany,
near Nordhausen, to build an underground plant.
- My uncle in his note make reference
to a hall where he worked.
So these would be the smaller halls
that links the tunnels, number 15.
So this is at the beginning and many of his notes include,
"I was in hall 15."
- When we think and talk about German society in general,
thinking about up to 20 million people
that were forced to labor with
the (speaking in foreign language)
in the occupied territories, this was a phenomenon
that of course everybody was aware of.
And they became part of this society
and German society didn't look at it as something unusual
or even a crime, and even those people who were not members
of the Nazi party or the SS,
many of them still believed that this is correct,
that racism is correct, and, that there is a hierarchy
between (speaking in foreign language) people.
And of course, seeing all these forced labors,
seeing the concentration camp prisoners,
there was something they thought that this is correct.
- In his notes he talks about straight away
boing moved into the tunnel.
The first big jobs are basically to clear the tunnels,
to clear them up, to widen them.
It's awful job, very dusty, they worked 24 hours,
they sleep on the floor on straw
and he won't see the lights, he won't be moved out
of the tunnel until March, 1943.
So this is the period of Dora
that gives it its name, it's hell.
- The first day is terrifying.
The capos and the SS drive us on at an infernal speed.
Shouting and raining blows down on us,
threatening us with execution.
The noise boars into the brain and sheers the nerves.
Arriving at the dormitories,
we don't even try and reach the bunks.
Drunk with exhaustion, we collapse onto the rocks.
Behind the capos press us on.
Those behind trample over the comrades.
Soon, over 1,000 despairing men at the brink
of their existence, racked with thirst,
lie there hoping the sleep which never comes.
The shouting of the guards, the noise of the machines,
the explosions and the ringing
of the locomotives bell, never end.
(eerie music)
- [Announcer] 83 year old Arthur Rudolph with his lawyer
and supporters today.
His story began in 1945 when he entered the United States,
part of operation paperclip,
in which dozens of German scientists were brought
into the U.S, Britain and Canada
to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets.
- [Man] Good luck Rudolph.
(eerie music)
- Okay Ms. Kulaszka, your first witness is to character?
- Yes, sir, retired General John Medaris.
I've arranged for him
to give his evidence via satellite video link.
Mr. Clerk, are we ready?
- Yes, we're ready to go.
- [Judge] Welcome general.
I just need to swear you in, do you have a Bible at hand?
- Sir, the Bible has been my custom companion
these last 30 years, go right ahead.
- Having served in the ordinance Corps
in army intelligence during the war,
in 1950 general John Medaris
was the first commanding officer
of the ballistic missile agency in Alabama.
He oversaw the involvement of German scientists,
including Arthur Rudolph in American missile development.
He led the Jupiter rocket project,
the West first satellite less than 90 days
after the Soviet launched Sputnik.
After retirement in 1964,
the general was ordained an Anglican priest.
General, why don't you tell us
how you first met Dr. Rudolph
and what you make of his service
in the time that you knew him during his 38 years
in the United States.
- I first met Arthur, Dr. Rudolph, in 1947
when he was with ordinance research at Fort Bliss, Texas.
He was working on the V2s the army had shipped over.
There were about 40 Germans there who had been brought over
at the end of the war.
All of them had been cleared by army intelligence
and OMGUS, that is the Office
of Military Government United States,
which was running the American zone of Germany
at that time.
I was impressed with Arthur.
He wasn't an A kid, he was a real engineer
and he was great at taking the ideas
of these blue sky scientists
and turning them into stuff that works.
Then Von Braun always said
"Arthur could take dreams and turn them into machines."
I've recruited him and he became manager
of the whole Pershing missile program.
We worked together for 11 years
before he went to join Von Braun at NASA.
I guess it can be summed up in the fact that in 1960
he was awarded the decoration
for exceptional civilian service,
the highest military award available to civilians.
- Thank you, sir.
And what did you think when you heard in 1984
that Dr. Rudolph had been deported?
- Well, I didn't hear about it straight away,
as it was kept secret by the government
for over nine months.
When I did learn of it, I was horrified.
- Do you know anything about Dr. Rudolph's records
that shows he committed war crimes
of enslavement or persecution?
- No, I did not.
He was interrogated by army intelligence
when he was first captured,
and three further times after that, they found nothing.
- Did Dr. Rudolph ever display any antisemitism
or talk about the idea of a master race
or an inferior race and intervention?
(speaking in foreign language)
- No, he did not, we built missiles
to keep up in the arms race with the Soviets.
I do know he was a true believer that communism was a real
and present danger to the world,
and that only a well-armed United States of America
could stand in its way.
The Berlin wall came down last year
and I am real glad I've lived to see it.
I believe it was because we won the cold war,
and it only remained the cold war
because we were always ready to fight a hot one.
America provided the nuclear umbrella
under which the free world, including Canada,
sheltered for 40 years.
The work that Arthur did,
work that is now seeing his own Homeland of Germany reunited
was vital to that effort,
and we should all be grateful to him.
- General, I want to thank you for taking the time
to come and talk to us today.
- [Judge] Mr. Mackintosh, your witness.
- During your war service
did you ever visit the underground rocket factory
in the Haas mountains?
- No, I did not.
- Did you visit the slave labor camp, Mittelbau-Dora?
- [John] No I did not.
- Did Dr. Rudolph ever talk about his war service?
- No, not in any detail.
- Did you ever talk about his membership of the Nazi party?
- My understanding was that he joined
because there was a real fear in Germany in the 1930s
that the communists would take over.
- Do you know he joined the S.A,
a kind of paramilitary wing of the party
and the forerunner of the SS in 1933?
- No, I did not know that.
- Have you ever read the classified transcripts
of Dr. Rudolph's interrogations in 1945 or 1947?
- No. - Okay.
Thank you general, that's all my questions.
- Operation Overcast was a program
to round up German technical personnel,
send them to the United States for six months
and use them to help the U.S grab German technology,
understand German technology.
Then it evolved into Operation Paperclip,
which was more ambitious,
keeping them for longer periods of time
and eventually immigrating them legally
into the United States
- [Man] (indistinct radio announcement)
To the rear coach car, cafe lounge car,
and forward all sleeping cars and business class.
Last call for a full service breakfast.
- And so when they arrived
they were taken straight to Fort Bliss to work
in White Sands and at Fort Bliss.
So essentially what happens is the army decides
that they want to consolidate
the rocket development program.
Huntsville arsenal and Redstone arsenal,
which were right next to each other,
happened to be vacant at the time
and seemed to be a really good place,
and if you think about it,
you've got the TVA right there supplying power,
you have the waterway that could take you on a barge,
could take any rocket all the way over to Cape Canaveral.
And then there's some lobbying as well,
of course from Alabama Senators.
So that's why they're moved to Huntsville.
They were just a couple of hundred families coming
in with thousands of others, right, at the same time,
yet it seems when you talk to people about it,
they had a huge impact.
So what kind of impact they had depends a little bit
on who you talk to.
I think the impression among many Huntsvillians
was that they had a very large impact,
culturally in particular.
- When we came in 1950 to Huntsville
from Fort Bliss in Texas,
we got immediately the assignment to develop
to design the Redstone vehicle.
And in my book, the Redstone engine,
the Redstone propeller system,
is a grown up version of the V2.
- The Marshall center was organized very similarly
to the organization
of Von Braun's big rocket development team at Peenemunde.
- He was definitely one of the people who thought
it was wrong and thought that Rudolph was falsely accused
and what was done to him was wrong.
And so there was pretty immediate response.
One person would try to explain why he might've
been investigated in the first place,
others they don't understand how could he possibly
have been found to have done anything wrong
because the army had already investigated everything, right?
They knew everything, so what had changed?
(upbeat music)
- This is a resolution of the city council of Huntsville,
Alabama, signed by the city Council president
and the mayor in September of 1985,
defending Rudolph against the allegations against him.
Yeah, I don't go to Huntsville,
I'm not welcome there apparently.
In the Nazi cases, only in the mid to late 70s
was there serious reporting on them
and primarily in the New York Times,
but also other major American newspapers.
And that came to the attention of members of Congress,
particularly Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn.
Liz Holtzman pushed for legislation to be enacted,
and it was in 1978.
It is now known as the Holtzman amendment in her honor
and it rendered participants in Nazi sponsored acts
of persecution deportable from the United States
and it also barred them from entering this country.
She also pushed with some other members of Congress
for the justice department to take the responsibility
for these cases away from the immigration service
which had failed and create a unit
in the justice department, criminal division
to investigate and prosecute, hence the birth of OSI in 1979
with strong support from the Congress
and we began investigating and prosecuting these cases.
Well, he appeared to be a grandfatherly looking figure,
he was hoping to talk about the space program
rather than the war, and actually brought a model
of the Saturn five rocket to show us.
- So the U.S law for the OSI and the Holtzman amend
was essentially to force people to leave the country
and have the countries where they were involved
in crimes deal with them
and not charge them in the United States with war crimes.
And so Rudolph was investigated in the early 80s
for his involvement in the Mittelwerk.
- We questioned him twice over those two days,
once I think in 82 and once in 1983.
He made very, very damning admissions.
- And it just turned out that he was the only person
that OSI could really pin something on.
- Here's Rudolph, not the hero on the front page
of the New York Times on October 18, 1984,
after the justice department announced his departure
and surrender of citizenship.
And I really can't begin to adequately explain
or convey what a sea change this was
in the perception of history.
So for most of the world, this was the revelation
that slave labor was used,
concentration camp inmates were used
under grotesquely inhumane conditions
to build the the V2 missile.
- [Woman] The city of Niagara Falls straddles
the Canadian American border.
For Arthur Rudolph it's an ideal location
to hold a news conference.
- We actually had an informant who was at a meeting
where Rudolph's return to North America was plotted
and we were told that the plan was
that although he can't fly into the United States
because we had placed his name on the immigration watch list
the border control watch list,
he would fly into Pearson international airport
in Toronto, Canada, and there he would meet his supporters,
including an American Congressman, the late Jim Traficant.
They would travel to Niagara Falls, Canada
and then they would march over the peace bridge
into Niagara Falls, New York
- [Woman] Now James Traficant is campaigning
to exonerate Rudolph.
He believes Rudolph is innocent.
- [Judge] Your witness Mr. McIntosh.
- Dr. Rudolph.
Do you deny ever harming a prisoner?
- [Rudolph] Yes.
- Did you ever see anyone who reported
to you harm a prison?
- No only Capos, that's the prisoners made foreman
by the SS, or the SS themselves harmed prisoners.
- Did you witness this?
- A few times?
- Did you intervene?
- Perhaps a couple of times, but you see,
I would have become a prisoner myself.
- Come on Dr. Rudolph, you were a highly qualified engineer,
a very effective production manager,
as your whole career testifies.
You were vital to the making of a weapon
that Hitler himself believed would turn the war around,
and yet you say you could not affect conditions
at Mittelwerk because the SS would incarcerate you or worse?
- Well that is the way it was.
I tried to Institute a three shift system,
instead of the two 12 hour shifts, but we were refused.
- You tried to change the shift system
because it was better for the prisoners
or better for production?
- Both, it would be better for both!
- Let's look at production.
The whole point of slave labor was
that it was the cheapest form of manpower
to produce the weapons.
You blamed your superior, Albin Sawatzky,
for the ruthless exploitation of slave labor.
And yet, according to your testimony
to the office of special investigations in 1982,
when Sawatzky went on sick leave in the fall of 1944,
you achieved a new record for rocket production,
up from 700 a month to 900 a month.
- Yes, yes, it was easier without all the form filling.
- Put it this way.
Are you claiming you knew nothing
about the conditions at camp Dora, conditions in which
no one disputes thousands of people died?
- I am claiming that.
- So, for 22 months, you ran the V2 production line
at Mittelwerk and you never saw an execution,
you never saw a punishment beating,
you never saw a prisoner drop down dead
from exhaustion or hunger?
And all of this in an environment
where the U.S army conservatively estimated
that 20,000 workers died,
the equivalent to one entire workforce during
the period coinciding with your time there.
What did you think was happening
to the workers who one day never again showed up on shift?
Did you think they'd gone on vacation
or didn't you notice?
And perhaps Dr. Rudolph, you didn't notice
because you simply didn't care.
- We were not allowed to talk to the prisons
or interact with them in any way.
That was the entire responsibility of the SS.
I've told you already.
I saw a few things, but there was nothing that we could do.
- Dr. Rudolph, we have a description
of a mass hanging from the prisoners on the shell.
He says six to 12 will be hanged together
from a plank suspended on the cranes hooks.
They had their hands tied behind their backs
and wooden gags fastened with wire in their mouths.
Now you say you never saw a hanging
but you did witness the aftermath of an execution,
tell us what happened.
- The men had been hanged.
They were suspended from a crossbar that had been lifted
by a static crane in the assembly hall.
- You mean nooses were placed around their necks
while they stood on the floor,
and the plank was raised until they were suspended,
dying slowly of strangulation?
- [Dr. Rudolph] I did not see that.
- You're an engineer Dr. Rudolph,
I'm sure you could work it out from what you saw.
- I guess, I suppose you would say that's right.
- Where the victim's dead?
- Yes.
I saw one poor fellow raise his legs once.
- His final death throes?
- I suppose.
- Most of the bodies have lost their trousers and shoes.
Puddles of urine cover the floor.
Since the ropes are long the body swayed gently
about five feet above the ground
and you have to push them aside as you advance.
You receive bumps from knees and tibia soaked in urine
and the corpses pushed against each other begin
to spin round.
Here and there, truncheons in hand,
the SS watch the changing of the shifts.
They're laughing.
- [Mr. McIntosh] Dr. Rudolph, do you know
if the victims were executed after they
had been reported for attempted sabotage?
- I don't know the SSO responsible for all discipline.
I heard that the men had been executed
because they had planned an insurrection.
They were Russians I think.
- [Mr. McIntosh] Were people executed
for attempted sabotage?
- I don't know.
- [Mr. McIntosh] You never saw it, you never heard it?
- Correct.
- SS records show that conditions got much worse
in early 1945 with rations reduced
as the allies cut supply lines.
They also show that executions were stepped up.
Presumably the fear of revolt grew as the allies got nearer.
In March, 1945 alone, 163 prisoners were executed
in the tunnels or at Camp Dora, but you saw nothing.
- All I know is that two executions took place
in the tunnel, and I've told you what I saw.
In late March, 1945 we would evacuated from Mittelwerk.
- And that is when the journey away from your past
and to a new life in America began.
No further questions.
- We will now adjourn and resume tomorrow morning.
(eerie music)
- Have I said enough about the nature of the tunnels?
Have I adequately described the evolution
of that circle of hell beyond even Dante's imagination?
The cold, the sweat, the putrefaction,
the noise of the machines that crushed men
and matter the dust which clung to their skin,
in the lungs, the explosions,
and the feverish changing of the shifts.
Have I made you feel the uneasy companionship
of death and fear?
Others replaced the dead.
Other martyrs from Russia, Belgium, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and France,
who were all assumed to know the vermin of the tunnels.
The hunger, the torture, the blows of forced labor.
It was at dawn I realized how the pyramids were built.
(gentle music)
- I began to read Jean Michel's book.
It was to save at least an eye-opener.
He spoke of how prisoners were worked
under horribly inhumane conditions
in an underground V2 missile factory.
that was part of the Dora Nordhausen concentration camp
in central Germany, I had never heard of that.
Michel said that there were members
of the Von Braun engineering team who were in this factory
and who were helping to supervise the prisoners.
And as I recall, the explanation he gave was
that the SS guards weren't capable of doing that,
they didn't know the fine points
of what bolt got turned here
and what wire was connected to what,
whereas the engineers did, and if a prisoner for instance,
sabotaged a rocket as some prisoners very courageously did,
it was the engineers who would detect that
and inform the guards.
- The only piece of testimony
you told Dr. Rudolph's American lawyer about in 1983
was the testimony of Miss Hannelore Bannasch,
a management secretary in Mittelwerk,
even though you didn't name her at the time, true?
- Yes.
- Had the OSI actually spoken to her in 1983
or at any other time?
- [Mr. Sher] No, we had not.
- So her testimony also came from the records
of the 1947 trial?
- Yes, she identified Rudolph as the manager responsible
for passing reports of suspected sabotage to the SS
and that these often led to beatings and executions.
- Okay, now, let's all turn to the translation
of Ms. Bannasch's sworn statement in 1985.
Have you seen this document before Mr. Sher?
- No, I don't believe so.
- Really?
Dr. Rudolph's lawyer in Hamburg, couriered it
to your office in 1985.
- [Mr. Sher] I haven't seen it,
that doesn't mean my office hasn't received it.
- Oh, okay, I see.
Well, now you see that this statement
is made on February 25th, 1985
and is sworn before a public notary.
Ms. Bannasch says that when she eventually obtained
the English translation of her 1947 statement,
she realized it.
I quote, "Does not correspond to my German formulations,
"but can be interpreted with a different meaning
"in the translation and has been interpreted differently."
Mr. Sher, your star witness says she never incriminated
my client in 1947.
- It seems to me she has simply changed her evidence.
- Well, maybe.
And I'd say that is the very essence
of an unreliable witness.
Now, let's go back to 1982.
What made you write that first time
to Dr. Rudolph requesting the first interview in California?
- We had got together enough evidence
to make a case for deportation, that is our job.
The next step is to interview someone.
- You didn't include any specific allegations
in your initial letter of September 14th, 1982,
it merely states your activities between 1939
and 1945 in Germany will be the subject of some questions.
Why so unspecific, why so banal?
- Well, we didn't wanna alert suspects the specific crimes
as that what allow them to potentially prepare
a more elaborate evasion.
- Oh come on!
Isn't it because you had barely anything to go on?
Isn't it because this was just one big fishing expedition?
You do after all ask the subject
to bring along his own evidence.
I quote, "Bring to the interview all documents,
"correspondence, and photographs
"which were prepared during or which relate
"to your activities in Europe from 1939 to 1945."
That's a pretty big net if you ask me
- Rudolph was the only one we could make a case against
and we didn't threaten him,
he made that agreement of his own free will.
- Well why didn't you announce it?
Your first big fish,
your first so-called paperclip immigrant to be deported.
Why wait until nine months after the agreement was made,
and four months after my client was back in Germany?
- The state department didn't want us to announce.
They were having trouble with the Germans
who didn't want this, where happy to have
this individual returning to 'em.
- They must have been even less happy
when they wasted three years trying to prove you were right
to expel 'em in the first place.
Isn't the truth, Mr. Sher, that you
and your zealous colleagues have built
a nice career chasing down vulnerable old men?
- That is not true, that is a vial distortion.
And I know that as your stock in trade, Madam,
you are a Holocaust denier, plain and simple.
We know your purpose here today,
and Rudolph's, is to embarrass the U.S government.
- A denier!
I suppose you refer to my defense
of an individual's constitutional right to free speech,
but it is not my record as a defender that's at issue here.
It is at your record as a prosecutor.
Who could blame my client for wanting his one day in court?
God knows you wouldn't give it to him.
- Believe me Madam, nothing would have made us happier
than to put Rudolph on the stand
and expose him and the militaries,
the U.S militaries complicity in bringing him to the U.S.
Do you think I really believe deportation
is sufficient punishment?
- We all know perfectly well you'd be happy
to intern anyone you say was anywhere near
the German regime during the war.
Guilt by association is good enough for you.
- How can you of all people
make accusations about interment?
You're making a career out of defending death camp guards
and now mass murderers.
- Okay, now that's enough, that's more than enough.
Ms. Kulaszka, do you have any more questions,
and I mean questions, for this witness?
- No sir, I am through with this witness.
- And it just turned out that he was the only person
that OSI could really pin something on.
And even there, I think it was a little marginal.
They used the only thing they had to try to get him to sign
a voluntary agreement to leave, because if it had gone
to a hearing, a denaturalization hearing
to lose his citizenship, he might have successfully pleaded
to a judge that he really wasn't guilty
and he really wanted to help the prisoners,
and it really wasn't fair.
- You're witness, Mr. McIntosh.
- We've heard about why these Nazis weren't investigated
for many years, but how did they remain hidden
in plain sight for so long?
Why wasn't the evidence against them obvious?
- Because it had been hidden by the U.S military
and intelligence community.
It took many applications under the 1976 Sunshine Act
to secure the relevant war's end records.
There was a highly organized plot to bring Nazi engineers
to the U.S and then cover it up.
This is what we now know was called Project Paperclip.
It was against a direct presidential order
to allow any active Nazi party member into the U.S.
Military intelligence believed their needs overrode the law,
but many of these immigrants still had damning information
in the files from their first interrogations in 1945.
The name paperclip came from the fact
that the spooks would simply place a paperclip on a file
to tell OMGUS it needed cleaning before it was submitted
to the state department.
- So what have you discovered that was not
in the OMGUS file?
- We found the original records of Rudolph's interrogation
in June, 1945.
It contained Rudolph's Nazi party membership card,
dated 1931, something that never made it to the later file.
It also contained a handwritten note
from that interrogation, which said, quote,
"100% Nazi, dangerous type,
"security threat, suggest internment."
- What was your evidence that Dr. Rudolph was complicit
in the use of slave labor?
- You mean beyond his own testimony and confession?
- Well, he has made it clear that his plea bargain
in 1983 was made under duress and he now withdraws it.
- Is that right?
Okay.
We have gathered a number of files.
The first is an order from the 1947 DAC,
our war crimes trial, is a note from V2 program COSS,
general Kamala to all managers.
Now, almost incredibly, it is complaining
that civilian managers at Mittelwerk
are to stop beating and even stabbing prisoner workers
for quote, "Any petty offense."
Basically Kamala was annoyed that civilian managers
were doing the job of the SS.
The order said.
"If a prisoner is guilty of a violation
"and a written statement of the incident,
"together with a name and number of the prisoners
"should be brought to the attention of the SS."
Now all managers were required to sign a distribution list
to acknowledge receipt.
The capital letters, AR are clearly visible
on that list and it is established no one else
had those initials
- [Announcer] At a lunch recess, a fighting match broke out
between a member of the Jewish defense league and one of
Rudolph's American supporters. - I heard about this trial
in Toronto, and I said, there are documents here
that implicate Rudolf in the decision
to use concentration camp labor.
And he said, "If I get the documents directly from you,
"I will have to name you in court as a witness
"and your identity as doing this will be revealed."
So I said, okay, then in that case I'll just tell you
where the documents are and you go
and you send somebody to Fribourg and get copies of it.
- Mike Neufeld found a reference to it in a book,
in a footnote, a book that from our perspective
was very obscure, a German book, and we then pursued it
with the German federal archive in Freiburg,
but we are absolutely indebted to Mike Neufeld for that.
- Now even more damning is a signed memo dated April 16th,
1943, from Rudolph to the V2 special committee.
It was found in the minutes of a meeting
at the Berlin locomotive works on June 3rd, 1943.
It contains the report of a visit
to the HINDCO aircraft factory in Iranian Burg,
North of Berlin.
Now the works have recently ramped up
to 4,000 prisoner workers, and this system has worked well
and the employment of detainees has considerable advantages.
It concludes, production of V2's
can be carried out by detainees.
Now this clearly shows that Dr. Rudolph was an advocate
of slave labor, even before he arrived at Mittelwerk.
- That is a fake, fake.
(speaking in foreign language)
That is a lie.
- Mr. Adjudicator, this evidence was not disclosed
to me until this morning.
Mr. Sher, did you have the alleged evidence
in your possession in 1983?
- No. - Well where did it come from?
- If I may, Mr. Adjudicator.
The Providence of evidence is a sensitive issue.
The source may be under confidentiality
or employment agreements,
but it doesn't dilute its credibility.
- Mr. Macintosh, I don't have to know the source
of every piece of evidence, but if I do not know the source,
that will very much affect my judgment
as to the weight I should give it.
- Thank you.
Mr. Sher.
- It's a remarkable document.
Rudolph reports on his trip and explains that the aircraft
are being assembled by a concentration camp inmates,
that discipline is enforced by the SS
and that it works very, very well there,
and we should do the same thing.
I was astonished when I saw that document
because when we questioned Rudolph,
one of the things he emphasized was the idea that,
well, I certainly would've preferred to have
had civilian labor, Germans, not concentration camp inmates,
that was not my decision.
Well, in fact, it was a decision made
on his own recommendation.
From the Nazi perspective, it had value so to speak,
first of all, the prisoners didn't get paid
or hardly got paid, and they never were free.
They could never talk to anyone about the secrets of the V2
and the factory, because they were never going home.
It really is a smoking gun.
- Mary Duncan, you have been an expert witness since 1971.
You are a member of the advisory board
of the World Association of Document Examiners.
- Yes.
- Can you determine whether a signature
on a document is authentic?
- Yes, I can.
- And is it always possible
to be 100% definitive about that?
- Not always
No one writes their names the same way all the time.
In fact, no one writes their name the same way twice.
And over the years, there's a natural variation.
So looking at the signatures from the 1940s and 80s,
one can see that the formation of the R has changed.
To a more printed version.
However, there are still strong similarities.
I have taken the signature in question,
put it under transparency.
(eerie music)
As you can see it matches extremely well.
- So what is your conclusion?
- My conclusion is that the HINDCO memo
was signed by the same individual who signed
all the samples I was given.
- Thank you.
No further questions.
- So what happened with the Mittelwerk at the very end
was that around the 1st of April, 1945, they got the news
that the allies were breaking across the Rhine
and were rushing rapidly in their direction.
And so SS general Kammler, who was now the chief man
in charge sent about 500 key engineers to Bavaria.
And so Von Braun and Rudolph were among this group
that were sent off to what was supposed to be
the Alpine redoubt.
So they left hurriedly right near the beginning of April.
I mean, certainly at this point
the technical intelligence in the U.S army,
the British army, certainly also the Soviets
and the French were very interested in interviewing
the V2 leadership.
Just after that time,
the U.S army rolled over Nordhausen and Buchenwald.
- In early April the U.S army is advancing on April 11th,
the Dora camp, the many sub camps of the Mittelbau complex
was liberated, but only about 800 prisoners were here.
about 40,000 were on deportation and death marches
and thousands were still dying.
And this is similar to the whole break down
and of course the SS was also on the move
and pretty much escaping
and trying to get to the Western zone
to be arrested by the British or US army,
not of course less by the Soviets
- I was a private first class in company L, 414th regiment,
104th infantry division.
- For me that was very interesting to see
how someone grapples with this past in Huntsville
who had direct experience with what had happened in Germany.
- So on the morning of April 11th
we were totally unprepared for the events of that
and the following days.
Reports from civilians and prisoners indicated
that the very disorganized enemy had withdrawn
to positions in the mountains
and so we advanced on Nordhausen where the full horror
of man's ultimate inhumanity was revealed
as the city fell before a heavy artillery attack
on the 11th.
Here we discovered a camp of slave laborers who worked
at the Mittelwerk, some two miles Northwest of Nordhausen.
A huge underground V bomb facility
where some 25,000 slave laborers produced
the V1 and V2 bombs.
Nearby on the edge of the city was a concentration camp
where we found some 5,000 corpses
and some 6,000 others in various stages of decay.
Corpses were scattered throughout buildings and the grounds,
some had obviously been killed as a result of our attack,
fresh blood mixed with stale blood
and the stench of rotting flesh.
That stench was overbearing and some of the prisoners
had been badly burned as well.
We did not know that a crematorium was to be found
at the camp itself where more than 100 individuals
were burned daily.
The camp then exceeded the worst possible nightmare,
men and a few women lay as they had died,
starved, discolored, and all, both the living and the dead,
where in the most incredible, indescribable human filth.
Their striped coats and prison numbers hung
on their frames as a last token of those who enslaved them.
It was like stepping back into the dark ages
to walk into dark cellar rooms, to seek out the living.
It was like walking into a world apart
and returning to bring
those wretched shadow men into daylight.
Today I see a crime so heinous that I'm ashamed to think
that I'm a member of the human race.
I know that we haven't reached a civilized stage
in any sense.
Certainly we cannot speak of the middle ages
or the dark ages of civilization.
It affected me to such an extent that I wonder
how there can be a God, a just Supreme being
that would tolerate such mass suffering by innocent people.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Thank you, Mr. McIntosh.
I'd like you and Ms. Kulaszka to take a few moments each
to sum up before I reach my verdict.
You first, Ms Kulaszka.
- Dr. Rudolph wants to enter Canada
to visit with his daughter and some friends
who have come here to meet him.
He is an old, sick man.
And if he is denied this opportunity,
he will not get another one.
Canada argues that he should not be allowed in
because he committed crimes in the war,
and that meant he should have been on the banned list
of 1945, but that he falsified his way into America
with the help of the government.
And no one denies the Nazi regime were responsible
for war crimes, but to be at the scene of the crime
does not make you guilty of that crime,
especially when you had no choice about your presence.
The OSI acted like a predator,
bringing down an old and wounded member of the herd
when he was isolated and vulnerable.
They threw around unsubstantiated accusations,
made threats they had no jurisdiction to make,
and made a vague trail of evidence sound
like an open and shut case, that's why they cut a deal.
An agreement that was made under extreme duress
and for that reason would not survive the scrutiny
of any court in America and it must not be validated here.
For justice to mean anything,
it must be administered in the open
and not subject to threats and deals offered
by a bunch of zealots who have somehow acquire
the status of law enforcement.
The hounding of this man who has spent 38 years
in the service of the United States in the cold war
with a central contribution to the moonshot
and was rightly honored for it, must stop.
And you sir should bring it to an end here and now.
Thank you
- Mr. McIntosh.
- There is no statute of limitation on war crimes.
Age or health are not relevant when we are holding people
to account for what are some
of the worst crimes ever committed.
My learned friend says that being at the scene
of the crime is not automatically a sign of guilt,
but when it comes to crimes against humanity,
we are testing whether they were committed by act
or by omission.
In a sense it is a legal enshrinement
of Edmund Burkes admonishment that for evil to triumph
all that is required is for good men to do nothing.
Not sir, that I believe we should dwell
on the nuance of act or omission,
or I submit whether or not we are dealing
with a good man here.
My learned friend would have us believe
this is a wronged man,
bullied by authorities who had called his bluff
because they had nothing substantial to go on.
Well, we may all have opinions on how
the U.S agencies involved here conducted themselves.
Clearly those complicit in bringing Dr. Rudolph
and his colleagues to the States in 1945
have a case to answer, but doubtless never will.
I do agree with my learned friend,
justice should be blind but it should never be conducted
in the dark.
Now, let us leave aside what might've happened
and focus on what indisputably did.
Forcible confinement or enslavement
as the Canadian criminal code has it.
In this case, it was used for the purpose
of building deadly weapons to be fired against
the prisoner's own home countries.
Right there are two counts under the code in the category
of crimes against humanity.
Now, while committing the crime by omission
will do for the law, I say there is no doubt
that through his advocacy of slave labor,
that Dr. Rudolph was guilty of conspiracy to enslave.
There is no other explanation
for the HINDCO works memo of April, 1943.
I also submit that at the very least by omission,
Dr. Rudolph is guilty of persecution.
His assertion of a lack of awareness
of the appalling conditions and the very frequent deaths
of prisoners throughout his time at Mittelwerk,
beggars belief and brings willful blindness
to a whole new level.
This is a highly intelligent, highly organized individual,
perhaps the most proficient production engineer
of his generation.
When he took charge, he broke new records for V2 production.
Are we to believe he didn't notice,
he took no interest in the conditions of his workers?
He says he couldn't resist the regime of the SS.
This was a man whom the Nazis knew was central
to their wonder weapon,
their last chance of turning the war around.
He was vital, second only to his mentor, Wernher von Braun.
Are we to believe that these people could not
have made a stand for better conditions
if they had really cared?
The prisoners were a means to an end,
and that end was 800 rockets a month.
If it were more efficient to work a series
of shifts to death than to keep one shift fit and healthy,
then so be it.
The vengeance two missile really was an exceptional weapon.
I'm sure it must be the only weapon in history
to have killed far more people in the making of it
than were ever killed when it were used.
Sir, I submit that Dr. Rudolf is guilty of war crimes
and must be deported.
(sad music)
- [Narrator] If in the end, the V2 was to permit man
to go to the moon, this futuristic program
did not grant Nazi Germany the possibility
of winning the war.
On the contrary, the obsession with rockets
and the diversion of resources at caused,
probably contributed decisively in the precipitation
of the irreversible fall of the third Reich.
While the bodies of Dora's martyrs were still warm,
the allies impassively organized the recovery
of the V2s and Nazi scientists.
The curtain lowered on the tragedy of Dora is so opaque,
that I have come to believe that in the icy domain
of state reasoning, anything,
absolutely anything can happen.
(sad music)