INTRODUCING THE MAN FROM ITT

The big American combine, International Telephone and Telegraph, has made quite a name for itself in recent months.

Firstly there was the revelation of ITT involvement in American under-cover intrigues aimed against the Allende government in Chile. Then there were the exposures of the company's activities in US presidential elections.

ITT appears to employ some highly-suitable managerial staff to match the reputation it is acquiring. At least, if Herr Kruger, of the company's West German subsidiary, Standard Electric A.G., is anything to ro by.

Back in | 1945, a Scotland that the British Government was confronted with the problems of a truly superb issue of five-pound notes • Einsatz 'In April 1945, Bernhard" was transferred to an underground factory. in Austria... Kruger escaped to Switzerland with a large accumulated private fortune. He has not been found.' A Major McNally of the US Army headed American investigations into the case of 'Operation Bernhard'. He takes up the story in 'Readers Digest' in July 1952:

'It was April 1945 before Operation Bernhard was ready to set up its presses in Gallery 16 behind Redl Zipf in Austria. By that time American troops were already closing in on the redoubt.

'Late one day Major Kruger—in a fast Alfa Romeo convertible and accompanied by a striking blonde-roared into the concentration camp at the mouth of the Redl Zipf cave. Every trace of Operation Bernhard was to be obliterated. All records were to be destroyed, fake currency and unprinted banknote paper burned, plates and dies sunk in the deepest part of Lake Toplitz. All 140 members of Operation Bernhard were to be taken to Ebensee Concentration Camp and killed.

The major, composed and polite as always, apologized for not being able to supervise the details himself. He had, he said, urgent business elsewhere... The car streaked away in the direction of Switzerland. Kruger has never been heard of since, despite the concentrated efforts of half a dozen police forces to find him.' In fact the Nazis never had time to execute the 140 prisoners, as ordered by Kruger. Nevertheless, SS Major Kruger, apart from his forging activities, is known to have been responsible for the murder of at least four prisoners assigned to work on his project.

For a few years after the war, Kruger apparently could not be found. But in 1961 he was unearthed-not by one of the 'half a dozen police forces' that were supposed to have been searching for him, but by a journalist, Julius Mader, who specializes in this sort of case. He found former SS Major Bernhard Kruger, not hiding in the South American interior or anywhere uncomfortable like that, but living peacefully under his own name in Stuttgart, West Germany.

Mader urged the West German authorities to look into the case, and they undertook to do so. But the investigations dragged on, without making much progress, as such cases tend to do when entrusted to the hands of the West German police; and after a while, were dropped altogether