31: Corruption

The man who did most to hinder the atrocities in the East was a thirty-four-year-old German lawyer who worked for Himmler. Georg Konrad Morgen, son of a railroad conductor, had become imbued with the ethics of law from his student days and even as an assistant SS judge was outspoken in his disapproval of illegality whoever committed it. His judgement, based strictly on the evidence, so exasperated his superiors that Morgen was posted to a front-line SS division as punishment. Because of his outstanding reputation he was transferred in 1943 to the SD's Financial Crimes Office with the understanding that he was not to deal with political cases.

Early that summer Morgen was given a routine investigative mission to clear up a long-standing corruption case at Buchenwald concentration camp. The commandant, Karl Koch, had been suspected of hiring out camp laborers to civilian employers, racketeering in food supplies and, in general, running the camp for his own personal profit. The initial investigation had failed to bring a conviction when a parade of witnesses categorically supported Koch's pleas of innocence.

Morgen journeyed to Weimar where he installed himself in a local hotel, and quietly began his research. To his surprise he found the concentration camp, located on a hill above Weimar, a prospect pleasing to the eye. The installations were clean and freshly painted; the grounds covered with grass and flowers. The prisoners appeared to be healthy, sun-tanned, normally fed.

But as Morgen began to dig deeper he learned that the corruption at Buchenwald had started with the influx of Jews after Kristallnact. Unfortunately, the closer he got to the truth about Koch, the further he was from proof. Too often for coincidence he found that prisoners said to have information of corruption were now dead. From their files he discovered that the dates of death were years apart and in each case a different cause was given. Suspecting murder, he ordered an investigation but his own special agent could not find a single clue and refused to continue his search.

An ordinary man would have abandoned the investigation, but Morgen was so convinced that crime had been committed that he turned detective himself. He went to local banks where he briefly displayed official-looking papers and pretended that he had been authorized by Himmler to examine Koch's accounts. His persistence was rewarded. At one bank he found undeniable evidence that Koch had embezzled 100,000 marks. Finally, proof of murder came when Morgen burrowed deep into the prison records to discover that witnesses were taken to a secret cell and eliminated.

Armed with a bulging briefcase of records and affidavits, Morgen set out for Berlin. His superior, the chief of criminal police, blanched at the evidence. He had not expected Morgen to take his assignment so seriously and hurriedly passed him on to SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Reinhard Heydrich's successor was equally aghast -- or pretended to be -- and said, "That's not my business. Take it to your own boss in Munich." Morgen dutifully took the evidence to the head of the SS Legal Department, who was just as unwilling to take any responsibility. "You'll have to tell all that to Himmler," he said.

Morgen proceeded to the Reichsfuehrer's field headquarters where he was refused an interview. With the help of a sympathetic member of Himmler's personal staff, Morgen proceeded to draft a cautiously worded telegram outlining the case. The problem was to get it delivered personally. Somehow it was slipped through the bureaucratic barrier and came to Himmler's attention.

To the amazement of almost everyone, he gave Morgen complete authority to proceed against Koch, his wife and anyone else connected with the sordid case. Some thought it was because of Himmler's mistrust of Oswald Pohl, the administrator of all concentration camps; others believed that he did not realize the case was a potential Pandora's box; but those who knew Himmler most intimately felt it was another instance of his peculiar sense of honor.

In any case, it looked like Morgen had managed a coup when an accomplice of Koch's named Koehler, lost his nerve and agreed to testify. He was jailed as a material witness, but within days was found dead in his cell. In the light of such damning evidence, Koch wilted under Morgen's relentless interrogation. He confessed that, besides enriching himself at the expense of the inmates, he had executed a number of them to cover up his secret.

The successful prosecution of Koch by no means satisfied Morgen's sense of justice. He pursued the trail of corruption to Poland. In Lublin, Morgen was warmly greeted by the camp's commandant, Christian Wirth, who had acted as Gerstein's guide

in Belzec. He revealed with pride that it was he who had not only built the four extermination camps in the Lublin area but organized the system of extermination. Each establishment, he said, had been built up like a Potemkin village. As trains pulled into a dummy railroad station, the occupants imagined they were entering a city or town. With relish, Wirth described how he or one of his representative would greet the newcomers with a set speech:

"Jews, you were brought her to be resettled, but before we organize the future Jewish state, you must of course learn how to work. You must learn a new trade."

After these calming words, the victims would innocently start off on their march to death.

Wirth's description of the entire process seemed "completely fantastic" to Morgen until he toured the buildings which housed the loot. From the massive piles -- including one incredible heap of watches -- he realized that "something frightful was going on here." Never had he seen so much money at one time, particularly in foreign currency. There were coins from all over the world. He gaped in wonder at the gold-smelting furnace and its prodigious stack of gold bars.

Morgen inspected all four camps built by Wirth. In each one he saw evidence of execution -- the gas chambers, the ovens, the mass graves. Here was a crime on a ghastly scale, yet he was helpless to act since the order had come directly from the Fuehrer's chancellery. Morgen's only recourse was to prosecute the "arbitrary killings" of prisoners; these could be brought before the SS judicial system. He set out to get evidence and persevered, despite continued hindrances, until he found sufficient proof to bring charges of murder against two top officials at Majdanek.

The guiding spirit of all four camps, the helpful Christian Wirth, continued to talk freely to Morgen. One day he remarked casually that a man named Hoess ran another large extermination complex near Auschwitz. This sounded like fertile ground for Morgen, but his authority was limited and he had to find some good reason to go so far afield. He soon found his excuse: an unsolved case of gold smuggling involving several men on Hoess's staff. And so, by early 1944, the doughty Morgen was investigating the death camps near Auschwitz. He had no trouble locating numerous sheds loaded with loot, gas chambers and crematories. But investigations of "illegal" killings and corruption were blocked every time one of his men got too close to the truth and Morgen decided to return to Germany so he could attend a more important matter -- the mass official killings themselves.

Morgen decided to approach Himmler personally and make it clear that the extermination system was leading Germany "straight into the abyss." To reach the Reichsfuehrer he again had to go through channels. First on the list was his immediate superior, the chief of the criminal police. Arthur Nebe listened in shocked silence ("I could see his hair stand on end when I made my report"), when he could finally speak he told Morgen to report the matter immediately to Kaltenbrunner. He, too, was appalled and promised to take his protest to both Himmler and Hitler. Next came Chief Justice of the SS Court Breithaupt. He was so incensed that he promised to arrange a meeting between Himmler and Morgen. But this time the machinery of bureaucracy prevented Morgen from getting beyond the Reichsfuehrer's anteroom.

This convinced Morgen that he would have to take a more practical route to justice: "that is, by removing from this system of destruction the leaders and important elements through the means offered by the system itself. I could not do this with regard to the killings ordered by the head of the state, but I could do it for the killings outside of this order, or against this order, or for other serious charges."

He returned to his task with spirit, determined to institute proceedings against as many leaders as possible in hopes of undermining the entire system of mass murder. He expanded the scope of investigation to concentration camps despite threats and attempted reprisals. At Oranienburg one of his informers -- a prisoner named Rothe -- was saved at the last moment from a public execution designed to warn other inmates not to collaborate with Morgen. Even so, he won the nickname, "The Bloodhound Judge," bringing some 800 cases of corruption and murder to trial, 200 of which resulted in sentences.

Karl Koch of Buchenwald was shot (the charges against Ilse Koch could not by proven). The commandant of Majdanek was also executed, his chief assistant condemned to death. The commandant of Hertogenbosch was posted to a penal unit for maltreatment of prisoners and the head of Flossenburg was fired for drunkenness and debauchery.

These trials caused such reverberations in the hierarchy by the early spring of 1944 that Himmler, undoubtedly at Hitler's order, instructed Morgen to cease further investigations. The Bloodhound Judge was going too far, too successfully and was about to launch a full-scale inquiry into Rudolf Hoess and the Auschwitz constellation of camps.

The shock wave of Morgen's one-man cleaning had already compromised the Lublin killing complex. Christian Wirth was instructed to destroy three of the four camps he had built -- Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec -- without leaving a trace. After that, Wirth was sent to Italy to defend roads against partisans. There he was killed by a partisan bullet in the back.

In the meantime, despite the Himmler-Hitler order, Konrad Morgen was surreptitiously continuing his lonesome attempt to end the Final Solution. Morgen survived the war and went on to practice law in western Germany.