“Himmler then presented those members of the Schutzstaffel who had assassinated Röhm with Totenkopfrings, which made them sort of an elite within the elite SS.
“The rings proved so popular that Himmler, expanding this elite corps, awarded them to all three hundred original SS members. The SS by then had grown to about fifty thousand and soon would grow even larger.
“Then Himmler established a new tradition. When Schutzstaffel members who had been given Totenkopfrings died, they would take the rings off the corpses and install them in Himmler-provided frames, which then would be given to the families so they proudly could display them on their walls.
“This didn’t last long. As the SS grew like Topsy, so did the awards of the Totenkopfrings. Himmler was passing them out by the bucketful—about twelve thousand by the end of the war.
“The first thing he did was to order the families who’d received framed rings to send them to Wewelsburg Castle—remember, Himmler leased it for a hundred years in 1933 to serve as an SS educational and ceremonial center—where they would be stored for the ages in a ceremonial chest.”
“Twelve thousand rings? Each weighing what?” Dunwiddie asked.
“Depending on who made them, one and a quarter ounces to one and a half ounces,” Cohen said.
Dunwiddie said, “That’s twelve thousand times one-point-two-five—”
“Just shy of a half ton,” Cohen furnished.
“Good God, a thousand pounds of gold rings!” Dunwiddie exclaimed.
“There are at least three theories about what happened to the rings when they reached the castle,” Cohen went on. “I don’t know which, or any, of them I believe. The one I do tend to believe is that immediately on arrival, General Siegfried Taubert melted them down and sent them with a trusted flunky to Switzerland to quietly sell what were now untraceable bars of gold.”
“That had to have been dangerous,” Dunwiddie said. “What if von Dietelburg had found out? Or Himmler himself? They’re ruthless.”
“An understatement, Tiny. While I don’t know about SS-Reichsführer Himmler, I’m certain that if Taubert was selling melted Totenkopfrings, then von Dietelburg was getting his percentage. And, for that matter, it seems entirely possible that the whole scheme was von Dietelburg’s idea.”
“You said that there were three theories,” Father McGrath said.
Cohen nodded. “Theory two is that the rings are intact, hidden somewhere in the castle. There are a number of secret places they could be hidden, and I’m sure we haven’t found all of them. Theory three is that Taubert, knowing he couldn’t transport that much weight, moved them to a cave near here, then blew up the cave’s entrance.
“Theory three is what Sergeant Strauss said he believes, which is why he stuck around. So when I got things organized, we started looking for the cave.”
“Got things organized?” McGrath said.
“I took over the castle, Father Jack. Before I finished chatting with Johann Strauss that first day, I sent Vito’s driver off to find a telephone. Six members of Vito’s detachment arrived right after dark. The castle has been under my control ever since, and we have been exploring it steadily. Nobody gets in but my people.”
“Sir, I have to ask,” Dunwiddie said, “what does Military Government think about the CIC detachment that’s in charge of protecting the Tribunal taking over a castle two hundred–odd miles away?”
“They are curious,” Cohen replied, a hint of humor in his tone, “and I suspect displeased. But, so far, General Greene has been able to keep the situation under control.”
“And what have you found?” McGrath asked. “Anything?”
“This is where it gets interesting. I found—not immediately, but gradually, as I found it hard to believe myself—that Himmler was turning the castle into a holy place, into a Vatican dedicated to a religion he was starting.”
“A castle as a holy place?” Ginger said, in disbelief. “That medieval place looks like anything but that.”
“A holy place,” Cohen confirmed. “And it’s a Renaissance castle.”
Ginger nodded.
Cohen went on. “This is the point of the lecture, so pay attention. Enter Professor Karl Diebitsch, an artist—and, to be fair, a soldier; he was an Oberführer in the Waffen-SS—who had designed the all-black SS uniform and served as sort of Himmler’s artist-in-residence. Diebitsch also designed the gold Totenkopfrings.
“Starting in 1934, under Diebitsch’s direction, the plaster on the exterior walls of Wewelsburg was removed to make the structure look more castlelike. They opened a blacksmith operation to make wrought-iron interior decorations. The blacksmiths and the plaster removers were concentration camp inmates, mostly Russian POWs. But absolutely no Jews, as Jews would obviously contaminate the place.
“Officially, the castle was supposed to be turned into a meeting place for SS brass. That was bullshit. From the beginning, it was to be the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?” McGrath asked.
“Almost as soon as I got a good look at the castle, I saw that there were major changes to it. At first, I didn’t know what, exactly, had been changed, only that clearly there were changes. I later learned that between 1938 and 1943, the Nazis had built two rooms they called the Obergruppenführersaal—the ‘SS Generals Hall’—and the Gruft.”