[The original plan had been to smuggle the train through battle lines by taking advantage of the tactical confusion that had existed in late 1943 in several cities in the Ukraine and South Russia, where portions of the cities—Kiev for example—were in the hands of both armies. Under such circumstances it would have been possible for a train to cross from the Russian-held sector into the German, probably without being fired on. But by February 1944 there were no cities still in German hands except Sebastopol (which was inaccessible to Krausser) and those cities to which rail tracks had been destroyed by bombardment—a fact Krausser must have learned in his several unsuccessful forays west into the Ukraine in January and early February.
[Thus for the second time in twenty-five years the gold of the Czars was removed from a train and hidden. No subsequent Soviet records even so much as hint that there has ever been a suspicion in that country that the treasure may be buried near the banks of the Don in South Russia. The annihilation of Jagdsonderkommando Ein guaranteed that no one in Germany could make even a wild stab at the eventual disposition of the gold—not even those like von Geyr who were intimate with the plan to extricate the treasure.]
Erysichthon offended Ceres; in response, Ceres punished him with an insatiable appetite. Finally he ate himself.*
* Both the title and the organization of this section are the editors’.
In Bristow’s manuscript, the foregoing pages contain numerous oblique references to World War II. These would make little sense to any reader who was not acquainted with the history of the war in the USSR. Therefore the editors have deleted nearly all such references from the narrative; we have combined them, together with other material, in a separate section here, in order to put everything before the reader with the minimum confusion and obscurity.
This section, therefore, is compiled mainly from Harris Bristow’s working notes; from passages deleted from the foregoing manuscript pages; from the transcribed interviews with Haim Tippelskirch; and from a summary outline which Bristow prepared in 1971 as a basic framework for his Sebastopol project.
For certain events we have no other guide than the cryptic references in Bristow’s Vienna manuscript, since his Russian notes have been lost. Therefore, in a few cases, we have been forced to draw inferences. They are so labeled.
As in the Kolchak segment, material supplied by the editors appears in brackets, while the Tippelskirch statements appear set off in quotation marks. But it must be understood that this section is a re-creation of Bristow’s notes rather than an edited version of an existing manuscript. The words are mainly Bristow’s but the connectives are the editors’. To mark all of them would be to create pages so cluttered with ellipses and brackets that they would be unreadable. In all cases, any fact or event which is not from Bristow’s material is clearly marked as such, by appearing in brackets or in a footnote. But we repeat that Bristow did not actually “write” this section as it now appears.—Ed.
* Evidently this carefully typed paragraph was to have been the opening passage of Bristow’s history.—Ed.
* This paragraph was written longhand on a sheet of Army & Navy Club (Washington, D.C.) stationery; the evidence suggests it was written by Bristow in 1972 during the period which he characterizes as “argumentative” and “opinionated”—the summer when he became briefly notorious after his appearances on television interviews. Probably he would have toned down, or eliminated, this passage in his full draft of the work. But it serves here to emphasize his state of mind at the time; that is why we have elected to include it.—Ed.
† This information comes from notes Bristow made in London in 1972. The British Official Secrets Act specifies that official records may be made public after thirty years. Bristow was among the first historians to have access to these reports from the British ambassador to Poland, confirming the role of Russian executioners in the Katyn massacre.—Ed.
* The clause is underlined in Bristow’s notes.—Ed.
* In October 1941, for example, Stalin cabled Churchill an urgent request for thirty divisions of combat troops. (From Bristow’s notes.)
† Transcribed from the Haim Tippelskirch tapes.—Ed.
* The great bulk of Bristow’s material is devoted to Sebastopol, but much of it has no bearing on the central thrust of this book. The extremely brief summary here is sufficient to lay the groundwork for the narrative which follows, concerning the German attempt to bring the Czarist bullion out through the Crimea in 1944. In the meantime we shall have to hope that someday Harris Bristow is able to complete his definitive work on the siege of Sebastopol.—Ed.
* By apparently meaningless coincidence, according to Bristow’s notes, von Geyr had married a woman who in turn was related vaguely to Krausser (Frau von Geyr being the aunt of the husband of Krausser’s older sister). “The correspondence” (between Krausser and von Geyr), Bristow observes on a note card, “shows no visible affection between the two men.” Apparently Krausser’s insensate brutality dismayed von Geyr, while Krausser in turn thought of the elder officer as an old-fashioned militarist with outmoded notions of morality and a lack of proper devotion to the Führer. It appears both men were correct in their appraisals.—Ed.
* Krausser never realized this ambition, although in 1944 his name was among those singled out by Hitler for posthumous recognition: into the file stamped “Deceased” was inserted a commendation by the Führer and a citation for the Iron Cross. (From Bristow’s notes.)
* Elsewhere in the interviews Haim Tippelskirch makes it fairly clear that he volunteered for the assignment, but only because he felt that his background made him a good choice for it. Tippelskirch here does not take credit for the initiative, but apparently the idea to attempt these evidence-gathering missions was largely his own.—Ed.
* Tippelskirch and his fellow agents brought stolen documents and photographs out of the Soviet Union on at least five occasions during the war. These were copied en masse and distributed to government officials and organs of the press in many nations, including the important neutrals; the Zionists also tried to persuade the British and Americans to drop leaflets over Germany in order to reveal to the German people the monstrous proportions of the Nazi atrocities. But almost all the governments and newspapers who were approached by the Zionists with these materials paid little heed to it. They “considered the source”; they were not altogether convinced that the photos were not fakes, the documents forgeries. Indeed, the press generally refrained from printing the photos not only because their origin was suspect but also because they were “too gruesome.” This evidence was only exposed to full public view after 1945, during the war-crimes trials.—Ed.
* Haim Tippelskirch’s estimate of probabilities was remarkably accurate. Bristow’s files show that this correspondence began with Krausser’s dispatch to von Geyr, 12 Sept. 42, and that it followed very much the pattern suggested above. According to passages we have deleted from the foregoing portion of Bristow’s manuscript, Bristow found several documents in the USSR which added details—nothing extraordinary—to the manner in which the German High Command slowly became convinced of the possibility that Kolchak’s gold was still buried in the Sayan Mountains and that Krausser’s reports were more valid than had first been assumed. Krausser was commended for his initiative in the Maxim Tippelskirch case.—Ed.
* Nowhere in Bristow’s manuscript or materials does such a letter appear, but apparently Bristow was willing to believe Haim Tippelskirch’s hypothesis. It does fit the facts, whether or not it is accurate in every detail.—Ed.