Chapter 5

Major Steiner had cautioned all of his sub-units to stick together and be certain to turn themselves into the American units and not the British or French units which had far better interrogators and intelligence services. The Americans were not overly anti-German like the European Allies and tended to see most German soldiers as fighters for their country and not Nazi war planners to be liquidated for their evil intent. He sensed the main problem area would be how they treated the civilian populace and the elements of humanity that the political wing of the government went to extremes to dispose of. He instructed them all to claim membership of armored units or bodyguard units for the upper echelons and not actual members of the Nazi party. That would account for their tattoos and their already destroyed war records. He also advised them to appear as cooperative as possible even to the point of being disloyal to the Fatherland in order to dispel any suspicion about the gaps in their stories.

He moved his unit down to the slow moving Allied lines and scouted the movements of the forces to find a suitable area to surrender. It was well after the "Battle of the Bulge" that he struck upon an armored reconnaissance unit wearing the unmistakable yellow scarves and told his men and the four females to approach the Americans with their hands on their heads and hide all the weapons in a buried cache for later use if necessary.

The Americans were surprised to find four females in the group that surrendered on the other side of the narrow river. They were not as haggard as the other defectors and they were unusually cooperative in answering questions even down to giving locations of German units to their immediate front. The SS insignia was dismissed as the normal thing for armored troops and the women were sent to a Red Cross evacuation center to be sent to the safety of the rear area. Eventually, all the females were called upon to act as interpreters for the fast-advancing American forces under the famed General George Patton who was more than upset over the drag of the slow-moving Allied forces. They all used their feminine wiles to trade female companionship for food supplies and special treatment. They proved invaluable to the advance elements in pacifying the civilian populace with exaggerated stories of the American power and plentiful supplies to keep them from hunger and danger in the immediate future. Most of the German civilians sensed they were infinitely better off with the Americans as captors rather than the much feared hordes of revenge-driven animals from the East.

The American detention center was more like a sorting factory for intelligence collection than a prison for the captured prisoners of war. Karl had already instructed his men to avoid being seen together to allay any suspicions of collusion. He had given his rank as a sergeant and it made him infinitely less interesting to the American interrogators. Every now and then, he gave up a little tidbit of interest to the less than effective questioners and pretended that he really didn't know what it actually meant. He was amused at their excitement when he pointed them in the right direction several times like a fool who didn't know the value of his knowledge. All in all, he found them to be mostly straight forward fellows with little skill in devious behavior. Fortunately, the Commanding Office forbade any physical abuse of the detainees and that actually made most of them a lot more cooperative.

He was astonished one morning to being taken into an interrogation room and meeting a female interrogator with the rank of a Colonel. He was most impressed because it was the first time he had actually been outranked by one of the captors even though he was still passing as a mere sergeant. She started out the "debriefing" by repeating to him a good portion of what he had already told other interrogators. Most of it was a web of fabricated lies but he had good control of what he said and the reason why he said it.

The female was all in khaki and he found it strangely seductive because it combined the scent of femininity with the authority of superior rank. It was the first time in his life that he found himself eager to please a woman and follow a female lead. The Colonel must have sensed his inner conflict and pressed him for information without giving him a chance to resolve the competing urges. She began to question the truthfulness of his response in giving his rank because in her words,

"We have two separate detainees who swear they have seen you on the Russian front wearing a Major's uniform and with the insignia of the dreaded "Death's-head".

Karl knew this was not good news and tried to reconcile the facts in his mind. His two primary options were to either deny everything or swear that the two men were lying through their teeth or to admit to the truth and explain it away by claiming he was merely delivering messages for his commanding officer back in Berlin. He had a "fallback" option of claiming membership in the elite bodyguard section that guarded the Supreme leader's hideout. He decided to admit to his actual rank and gave exact directions to the rumored "Wolf's Lair" lodge in the Bavarian mountains. He knew the great leader would never return to the location after the ill-timed assassination attempt on his life that also cost the life of the "Desert Fox" because of some peripheral connection. The interrogator seemed excited with his information and he realized that a lot of the information that seemed old business to him was news to the Americans.

Apparently, she also had information from other sources that had reinforced the fact he was not involved in the "Jewish Business" at all. Some of the escaped concentration camp inmates had recognized his photo and described him as totally opposed to anti-Semitism when other SS personnel were rounding up families for deportation to the work-camps. He was described as sympathetic to their plight but not in a position to do more than protest.