E xposing thE t hird r Eich AmericAn WArriors Throughout the nation’s history, numerous men and women of all ranks and branches of the U.S. military have served their country with honor and distinction. During times of war and peace, there are individuals whose exemplary achievements embody the highest standards of the U.S. armed forces. The aim of the American War- riors series is to examine the unique historical contributions of these individuals, whose legacies serve as enduring examples for soldiers and citizens alike. The series will promote a deeper and more com- prehensive understanding of the U.S. armed forces. s eries editor : Roger Cirillo An AUsA B ook Exposing thE Third rEich Colonel Truman Smith in Hitler’s Germany H enry G. G ole Copyright © 2013 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1 Maps by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Cartography Lab. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gole, Henry G., 1933- Exposing the Third Reich : Colonel Truman Smith in Hitler’s Germany / Henry G. Gole. p. cm. — (American warriors) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-4176-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-8131-4177-0 (epub) -- ISBN 978-0-8131-4178-7 (pdf) 1. Germany—History—1933-1945. 2. Smith, Truman, 1893-1970. 3. Military attaches—United States—Biography. 4. United States. Army—Officers— Biography. I. Title. DD256.5.G5944 2013 943.086—dc23 2013008901 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses To Irene and Henry Gole, who paid my high school tuition when the cupboard was bare contents Foreword by Edward M. Coffman ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi 1. Patrician Heritage 1 2. Over There 17 3. Deutschland and Yearning 32 4. Civil Affairs and Romance on the Rhine 43 5. Berlin, Munich, and Hitler in Weimar Germany 58 6. Years of Preparation 77 7. Marshall’s Men 87 8. Army War College and Command 103 9. Hitler Takes Power 122 10. Hitler’s Germany 130 11. Kay, Germany, and Ambassador Dodd 143 12. Hitler Arms, Smith Reports 165 13. Smith’s Trojan Horse 182 14. The Lindbergh-Smith Friendship 202 15. Hitler Is Ready 216 16. Welcome Home 231 17. Smith as “Strategicus” 248 18. Wartime Washington 268 19. The Road to German Rearmament 286 20. Politics, Travel, and Writing 302 21. Retrospective and a Graceful Exit 313 Appendixes A. Losses in Smith’s 4th Infantry, October 1918 329 B. Smith to His Sister on the Death of His Daughter, 1923 330 C. Marshall on Smith’s Berlin Reporting and Dignity 331 D. The German-British Bombing Pause, Christmas 1940 332 E. Marshall on Smith’s Assessment of the Balkans, 1943 334 F. Smith on the Situation in Europe, May 1944 337 G. Marshall Saves a German General 339 H. Smith on the German Army, 1963 341 I. Smith’s Letter to Brigitta von Schell, 1967 348 J. Smith to Marshall on Smith’s Retirement 351 K. Obituary, Katharine Alling Hollister Smith 353 A Note on Sources 355 Notes 359 Selected Bibliography 381 Index 395 ix Foreword During World War I, Truman Smith acquired a distinguished re- cord as an infantry officer commanding a company and later a bat- talion in combat. After the war he served in the occupation troops stationed in Coblenz. Then, in the twenty years between the world wars, he spent two four-year tours in Germany as an assistant mili- tary attaché and, then, as the military attaché. During the first tour in the 1920s, he became good friends with several of the German officers and was able to maintain those friendships after Hitler be- came dictator. Between these tours, he attended several of the army schools in the United States, and, at Fort Benning, he became one of the select group known as the Marshall Men. He also spent two years as a battalion commander in Hawaii. Although he developed diabetes, which in the army requires retirement, General George C. Marshall returned him to active duty. The chief of staff knew that he was the best American expert on the German army and, throughout the war, relied on him for his knowledge. After the war, the Smiths traveled extensively and kept up with friends, including Charles Lindbergh and Herbert Hoover. Truman Smith also stayed in touch with his German army friends, including Hans Speidel, a World War II general who became a NATO com- mander. Both of the Smiths wrote memoirs. Kay’s complemented Truman’s, since she offered accounts of several situations in his career that he merely mentioned. She outlived him by twenty-two years and was active until the last days of her life. Henry Gole is well qualified to write a biography of Truman Smith. In addition to the invaluable memoirs of Truman and Kay Smith, he had access to their correspondence and conducted ex- tensive research of relevant books and articles. His experience as a soldier has helped him understand Smith’s military career. He left college to fight in Korea as an infantryman and then finished col- lege, earned two graduate degrees, and taught high school. When he heard President Kennedy’s inaugural speech encouraging Amer- icans to ask what they could do for their country, he volunteered and took a sizable cut in his salary to become a second lieutenant. x Foreword Then he attended the Basic Infantry Officer Course at Fort Benning, Ranger training, and jump school and eventually joined Special Forces. He saw combat in Vietnam with that elite organization. Henry studied at Stanford under the noted historian Gordon Craig and spent a year in Germany. Later, he served there four years as the assistant military attaché. With this background, he was an excellent teacher at West Point and the Army War College. It was my good fortune to meet and become a good friend of Henry’s when we both arrived at West Point in the summer of 1977. Later, in another visiting professor year, we became reacquainted at the Army War College. After he retired, Henry continued to teach at the War College. He earned his doctorate under the distinguished historian Russell Weigley. This is the fourth book he has published since he retired from the army, and it is my hope that he will write more in the future. Edward M. Coffman xi preface and Acknowledgments This book began with several straws blowing in the wind that land- ed on my desk. One was awareness of rich sources conveniently located. Another was readiness for a new project. Yet another was appreciation of the personal story of Truman Smith’s dedicated ser- vice to this country, which parallels the general decline of the pa- trician class, sometimes called “the northeastern establishment,” in American political leadership. Friends at the U.S. Army Military History Institute (MHI) in Car- lisle, Pennsylvania, who had supported me in earlier work, among them Marty Andreson, David Keogh, Louise Arnold-Friend, Rich Baker, and Rick Eiserman, had years ago made me aware that Tru- man Smith’s memoir, “Facts of Life,” and his wife Katharine’s mem- oir, “My Life,” were in the MHI archives, crying for attention. After my biography of General William E. DuPuy was published in 2008, I was considering a novel as my next project. Richard Sommers en- couraged me instead to tell the Truman Smith story. I thank him for that and the entire MHI staff for support and professionalism. I knew that Rick Eiserman had planned to write his dissertation on Smith and had done extensive research. However, he had put his project aside for personal and professional reasons. When he be- came aware of my interest in Smith, he sent me five banker’s boxes of research materials he had gathered from several archives and in- terviews he had conducted. That generosity was crowned with his best wishes for my success in telling this story. Roger Cirillo, editor of American Warriors, a series sponsored by the Association of the United States Army, encouraged me to write this book as an entry in the series. Roger had been enormous- ly supportive in placing my three earlier books with their eventual publishers. At that point Steve Wrinn, Director of the University Press of Kentucky, entered the picture. Having recently published my Du- xii preface and Acknowledgments Puy biography, he joined Roger in encouraging me to write this book. Scanning the MHI holdings and the materials Rick had sent me, I became increasingly enthusiastic as I learned more about Smith from those sources and from reading letters and diaries I had un- covered. Truman Smith was born at West Point in 1893. His father, a U.S. Army captain, one of the last of the Indian fighters and an instruc- tor at the United States Military Academy, was killed in action in 1900 in the Philippines. An old Yankee family, the Smiths had been in New England since the seventeenth century. Smith’s grandfather and namesake (Yale, 1815) had been a U.S. senator from Connecti- cut. Like his grandfather, Smith too was a Yale graduate (1915). He did graduate work in history at Columbia University, vol- unteered for the New York National Guard, served on the Mexican border, and became an officer of the Regular Army. He distinguished himself as a commander in intense close combat in France in 1918, for which he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross and awarded the Silver Star for heroism. He served in the occupation of Germany from 1918 to 1920 in Coblenz where, among other accomplishments, he was editor and principal author of the “Report on Civil Government of the Army,” commonly known as the Hunt Report, later used as a reference for the occupation of Germany in the waning years of World War II. He served in Berlin from 1920 to 1924 during the early period of the Weimar Republic, first as “observer,” then as Assistant Military Attaché. In 1922 he interviewed Hitler in Munich and reported his impressions of Hitler and the “Fascisti” in Germany and Italy. He attended professional courses at the Infantry School and at Fort Leavenworth before becoming one of “Marshall’s men” at Fort Benning from 1928 to 1932. He and George Marshall maintained direct contact and correspondence until Marshall’s death in 1959. Upon completing the Army War College course, Smith com- manded a battalion of the 27th Infantry in Hawaii from 1933 to 1935. I served in the same Wolfhound Regiment during the Korean War as well as in the 4th Infantry Regiment in Germany, Smith’s outfit in France in 1918. Also like Smith, I was assistant army attaché from 1973 to 1977, but in Bonn, Germany, not Berlin. Smith was military attaché in Hitler’s Germany from 1935 to preface and Acknowledgments xiii 1939. His close friendship with Charles A. Lindbergh allowed him to penetrate the Luftwaffe and provide valuable insights into the bare-knuckle fight of the interventionists and isolationists in the pe- riod just before American entry into World War II. Smith’s published and unpublished “Strategicus” articles of the early 1940s were masterful analyses of the geopolitical situa- tion, American national interests, and possible American military courses of action in World War II. Marshall held Smith in very high regard as a strategist and German specialist and retained him on active duty despite Army regulations that would have required him to be medically retired when Smith was diagnosed with diabetes in 1939. During World War II, Smith, then a colonel, served in G-2, General Staff, in Washington. He enjoyed considerable freedom of action as he tracked current events, briefed Marshall and other se- nior officials, and wrote estimates and manuals. Upon retirement from the army, Smith ran for Congress in 1946, but was defeated in the Republican primary election. Due to his personal and professional contacts with influential Germans and Americans, he played a major part in German rearmament and se- lection of Bundeswehr leaders in the 1950s. During my preliminary research, I came upon Truman Smith holdings in several archives and discovered that Smith’s daughter, Katchen (b. 1924), was alive and willing to talk to me. She and her two daughters, Lissy and Kitty, exchanged emails with me and also provided photos for the book. Lieutenant General A. C. Wedemeyer said of Smith, “Had this illness [diabetes] not intervened, I have little doubt that Smith would have risen to high rank and might have played a role equal in influ- ence to Eisenhower’s during World War II.” He reminds us that the study of less well-known figures—compared to Omar N. Bradley, George S. Patton, and Henry H. Arnold, for example—contributes to the historiography of the U.S. Army in World War II, twentieth- century Germany, and aspects of the Cold War. Smith was a close observer of the kaiser’s army in World War I, von Seekt’s Reich- swehr of the Weimer Republic, and Hitler’s Wehrmacht—and he was with his friend Hans Speidel at the creation of the Bundeswehr. Truman Smith was both a friend of Germany and an American patriot. His lucid writing sheds light on the world he observed until his death in 1970. For the reasons summarized here—and others— xiv preface and Acknowledgments Truman Smith should be more than a footnote to history. That’s why I wrote this book. I thank Gary Johnson and Jim McNally for their generous assistance with photography. Donna Bouvier, expert copyeditor, has once again saved me from myself in grilling me; then she hid my sins. She forced me to answer questions as she represented the general reader. I also appreciate David Cobb’s patience and thoroughness in producing the book in your hands. Finally, brother Bill Gole and longtime colleague Dave Keough read early drafts and provided sage advice and encouragement. These good people deserve credit for their support; shortcomings and errors are mine alone. 1 1 patrician heritage I come from old New England stock, the ninth Smith since old John and his thirteen-year-old son Richard left Sudbury in Suffolk to try to better their lot in the New World. —Truman Smith, “The Facts of Life” Truman Smith, born to a prominent family at West Point in 1893, was well educated, confident, and responsible, and, while he never used these words to describe himself or his class, he was an Ameri- can aristocrat. Like European gentry, his Yankee patrician class knew without saying that the price of economic well-being and high social status is responsibility to society at large, a sense of noblesse oblige. The Smith family history exemplifies the evolution of the Amer- ican patrician class and illustrates how attaining that status and its attendant sense of responsibility shaped its members’ worldview and personal behavior. Smith’s family knew good times and bad, but Richard Smith (1621–1680) enjoyed what a modern person would call a meteoric career. He arrived in Massachusetts as an ap- prenticed servant to a rich Puritan. He rose to prosperity and social prominence, played a part in the founding of Lancaster and Gro- ton in Massachusetts and Lyme in Connecticut, and represented his hometown in the colonial legislature in Hartford. His landholdings included a pasture on Smith’s Neck near the mouth of the Connecti- cut River that was still in Smith family hands in 1964, when Truman wrote his memoir, “The Facts of Life,” at the urging of his wife and William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. 1 After three generations in New England, during which the Smiths grew poorer, Richard’s great-great-grandson Phineas Smith (1759–1839) restored the family’s wealth, served in the 8th Connecti- cut Regiment of the Continental Army, and achieved local promi- nence by representing Roxbury in the Hartford legislature. His two brothers rose to national eminence. Nathaniel, the second brother, 2 E xposing thE t hird r Eich became a leader of the Connecticut Federalist party, a Washing- ton congressman, and an associate justice in Connecticut, and he played a leading role in the Hartford Convention of 1814. Nathan, the youngest brother, helped found Trinity College at Hartford, was prominent in the Episcopal Church, and died a U.S. senator. Truman Smith’s grandfather, also named Truman Smith (1792– 1884), graduated from Yale in 1815, exactly one century before his grandson. He studied law and entered politics, serving three years in the Hartford legislature and nine years in the House of Represen- tatives in Washington. He became one of the leaders of the Whig party and, according to his grandson, directed Zachary Taylor’s successful nomination and election to the presidency. He declined the president’s offer to become the first secretary of the interior and was elected a U.S. senator by the Hartford legislature. When the senator’s grandson and namesake had retired from the army in 1946 and was living in Fairfield, Connecticut, he gath- ered documents pertaining to his father, Edmund Dickenson Smith (1858–1900) and wrote a narrative of his life and military career. Tru- man’s training as a historian is evident in this unpublished docu- ment and enclosures. 2 Senator Truman Smith, 1792–1884 (Yale, 1815), father of Captain Edmund Dickinson Smith (USMA, 1879), who was killed in combat in the Philippines in 1900, and grandfather of Colonel Truman Smith, 1893–1970 (Yale, 1915). (Box 4, Photo albums, Truman Smith Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.) patrician heritage 3 Edmund, the second son of the elder Truman, was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1858 and graduated from the U.S. Mili- tary Academy at West Point in 1879, thirteenth in a class of forty- nine, whereupon he was commissioned into the infantry. Except for two tours teaching mathematics at West Point (1884–1888 and 1891–1895), the 19th Infantry was his home until he was killed while leading his troops in action in the Philippines in 1900. His son ob- serves that “the regiments of the ‘Old Army’ were clubs in a very real sense, as the British regiments are to this day.” (Truman is re- ferring here to the British Army he knew. Later reductions in force and “amalgamation” changed the character of the British regimen- tal system, to the chagrin of British soldiers. Prior to that amalga- mation, the permanence of officers and enlisted personnel brought about powerful regimental pride.) Edmund’s sentiments regarding the infantry and his regiment were clear. Truman recalls his father uttering these words to a family member. “The Army is composed of three sorts of people: Asses, those tooting their own horns, and the 19th Infantry.” In the army of this era, promotions were slow. Edmund was a second lieutenant from 13 June 1879 until his promotion to first lieutenant on 3 December 1889. He would remain in that grade for another six years before promotion to captain on 3 January 1895. During these years his duties took him to Kansas, Indian Territory, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, and the United States Military Acad- emy at West Point. Immediately following graduation, he served in the Ute War, entitling him to wear the Indian Wars Medal. For a while he commanded the Seminole Scouts at Neville Springs, Texas, regarded as a good assignment for a promising young infantry of- ficer. During his second tour of duty at the Military Academy, Ed- mund courted and married Truman’s mother, Mary Dewing Smith (1862–1929), on 29 June 1892 in Stamford. She was the daughter of another prosperous Connecticut family whose wealth derived from her father’s success as a merchant in South Carolina and then as a New York stockbroker residing in Stamford. Her father, Hiram Dewing, was in business in Charleston, South Carolina, when the Civil War broke out. Being Connecticut Yankees, Hiram and his wife were interned in Somerville, South Carolina, where Truman’s mother was born on 15 October 1862. After the war, the family was repatriated. Truman writes that his mother received “an excellent education 4 E xposing thE t hird r Eich for the age” at the Katherine Aiken School in Stamford. She also studied for about a year in Berlin, Germany, and, he reports, “She was the last person to shake hands with Bismarck after the Kaiser Wilhelm II cashiered him.” American ladies of a certain class did the Mary Dewing Smith, Smith’s mother. She and Edmund were married on 29 June 1892 in Stamford, Connecticut, during Edmund’s second teaching tour at West Point. Her parents were in Charleston, South Carolina, when the Civ- il War broke out. The Connecticut Yankees were interned in Somerville, South Carolina, where Mary was born in 1862. (Box 4, Photo albums, Truman Smith Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.) Annie Corliss, Truman’s nurse, with two-year-old Truman. Little boys were dressed in this manner, indistinguishable from little girls, into the twentieth century. (Box 4, Photo albums, Truman Smith Papers, U.S. Army Military His- tory Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.) Sister Charlotte and Truman with their parents before the family was separat- ed. The 19th Infantry was in Puerto Rico in August 1898 with Edmund com- manding Company G. The regiment returned, reorganized, and recruited in Middletown, Pennsylvania, from May to July 1899 before deploying to the Phil- ippines. Mother and children went to Stamford. (Box 4, Photo albums, Truman Smith Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)