Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb by Thomas Powers

Author:Thomas Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306810114
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2000-08-10T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Six months of broken OSS promises to pull off Operation Shark drove Boris Pash half crazy with frustration, but he did not realize the full scope of the disaster until May 30, 1944. At 12:30 that day Pash and a new Alsos aide, Major Richard C. Ham, met Howard Dix of the OSS for lunch in Washington to discuss plans for the second Alsos mission gearing up to follow the Allied armies into Europe after the invasion known to be imminent. Dix wanted to ask what sort of assistance Alsos would require in Europe. Pash was evasive. Shark was still very much on the active list— the OSS insisted an agent had been in touch with Edoardo Amaldi in Rome, and the physicist was ready to leave as soon as a submarine could be dispatched to a new pickup zone on the Adriatic Coast.[1] Dix asked what Alsos would do with Amaldi once he had been brought out. Pash was evasive again; no one had told him how fully Dix and his OSS office were involved in collecting intelligence for Groves and Furman.[2]

But a few hours later that afternoon Shark unraveled before Pash’s eyes. Two Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents Pash had recruited for Alsos in Naples, Carl Fiebig and Gerry Beatson, cabled Washington with bad news: they had only just discovered that the Italian agent “Morris”—the man who the OSS said had been sent into Rome after Amaldi in February—had been arrested in North Africa by the CIC as a spy for the Germans. A search of his apartment in Naples had uncovered many documents referring to Alsos and Shark, including a slip of paper bearing the names of Gian Carlo Wick and Edoardo Amaldi. Another paper provided a chronology of Shark, and letters “Morris” had written to friends in German-occupied Italy betrayed the fact that he was working as an agent for OSS.

Within the week Pash was back in Italy for the capture of Rome on June 5, and two days later he interrogated “Morris” in Naples’ St. Angelo prison. Pash was furious to learn how many secret documents had simply been handed over to “Morris” by the OSS, but he cautiously concluded that “Morris” did not know, and the Germans had probably not learned, either the name or the true purpose of the Alsos mission. But just to be on the safe side, Pash recommended that the CIC keep “Morris” in prison until his information was obsolete or the war ended.[3]

But in a few days the collapse of Shark was academic. After months of battle the Germans in central Italy were finally pulling back, leaving Rome exposed. The commander in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, asked Hitler for permission to withdraw from Rome on June 2, and the following day Hitler agreed—Rome must be spared as a “place of culture.“[4] By the night of the 4th, American forces were probing the southern edge of the city, and at 8 a.m. on the morning of June 5, General Mark Clark made his way by Jeep through the city to the Vatican.

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