Adolph
The Spy Who Saved New York
by
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PREFACE
"ADOLPH" is fiction. So far as the author knows, there was never an American spy named Kurt Wolff, nor was there any American spy who penetrated the German atomic weapon project. The story, however, is built on a number of real events that did take place at the times and places described. How the story came to be, and some facts about those real events may be of interest to the reader.
The idea for the story got its start when Al Bowen, who shared both an interest in World War II history and an office with me at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I were discussing the advent of nuclear weapons. One of us referenced a part in Herman Wouk’s great novel, WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, where an army colonel, assigned to the Manhattan Project, asked a navy captain to speak on their behalf with Admiral King, the Chief of Naval Operations. They wanted to obtain permission for the army to have a copy of the navy’s plans for a thermal diffusion plant that the navy had in its small laboratory doing research on possible use of nuclear fuels for ships. The army’s problem was that their large production size gaseous and electromagnetic diffusion plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee had failed to achieve sufficient enrichment to produce weapons grade uranium. This was in the spring of 1944, and the army faced having to explain how they spent so many millions of dollars without developing a usable uranium weapon before the end of the war. The fact that this country’s most brilliant nuclear physicists were facing failure would find a solution in what Admiral King, in Wouk’s novel, called a "tin pot lab" struck both Al and myself as highly improbable. But, the army did drop a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, so where else could the uranium have come from?
This book, then, is my fantasy of how we came to have the bomb named "Little Boy." The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. It was in the late fall of 1945, months after the war had ended, before Oak Ridge produced enough weapon grade uranium for a first or second bomb, depending on whether you share my fantasy or the reported history.
It is a fact that the German’s had started work on a nuclear device before the Americans. They had a setback when British Commandos destroyed their heavy water facility in Norway, but history records that their work continued in the Black Forest. Their scientists were taken to England after capture, but little that I know of has ever been published on how far they had advanced. One more fact-at that time, the largest known resource of uranium was in Germany.
I include in this book a number of American Army general officers, a senior government official, and one of America’s brilliant scientists, all of whom held important leadership roles in our war against Germany. The words I put in their mouth are mine and created to support the story. I have tried, as best I could, to portray these men in each incidence with the respect and high regard I have for each and every one of them. Some of the instances are historical and some occurred, as far as I know, only in this fiction. An example of the latter is the meeting in the Pentagon when General Marshal was informed of the German nuclear project. On the other hand, the meeting of Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton, at which Patton boasted about how fast he could get a counterattack launched to relieve Bastogne, did occur.
My treatment of General Patton warrants a detailed discussion. "Georgie," as his troops called him behind his back, was and continues to be a hero to most officers of the Armor Branch of the US Army. As an armor officer in the fifties and sixties, I read everything I could find on him and his accomplishments. I formed the opinion that he had two driving characteristics, two guiding philosophies from which he never deviated. First, he sought greatness on the battlefield. The second, and more important in my view, he did not want his soldiers to die for our country; he wanted his soldiers to make the enemy die for their country. To this end, while his tactics were bold to the point of being daring, he was quick to relieve a commander whose troops, in his opinion, suffered an excessive number of casualties. Yet on two notable occasions during his command of Third Army in the last months of the war, he violated both of them.
The raid to free the P.O.W.s in Hammelburg is well documented. Patton, shortly after crossing the Rhine River, sent one of his best mechanized infantry companies, reinforced with tanks, on a mission that he had to know would have little chance of success. Not only was the raid’s objective too far away from friendly lines to start with, the remainder of his army was attacking to the northeast, while the raiding party went almost due east. He not only sent his most highly regarded company commander to command the mission; he let one of his aides go along as an observer. The unit did reach the POW camp, but was surrounded before they could return. Patton’s son-in-law was a prisoner in the camp and was wounded in the brief fight when the camp was overrun. When the press learned of the raid and its failure, they took Patton to task for what was called a grandstand play, staged to rescue his son-in-law. Patton denied that he knew his son-in-law was a prisoner in that camp. For a man who fired generals who wasted their soldiers needlessly, this action was totally out of character. In my mind, Patton was too brilliant a commander to believe the chance of success was worth the risk. On a side note, his son-in-law, John Knight Waters, went on to distinguish himself in the Korean conflict and later became a four-star general. The author had the privilege of serving under him as a tank company commander in Germany in the late 1950s.
The second incident that was out of character for Patton, was sending the Second Cavalry to rescue the Lippizanner mares. The discussion in this book about why he did not want to send the troops into Czechoslovakia is taken from history. Patton violated a direct order when he did so and knew that Eisenhower had threatened to send him home in disgrace if he sent a single soldier past the Linz-Pilsen line. That he did so was documented in a movie made by Disney.
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About the Book
According to Herman Wouk in his novel "War and Remembrance" the US Army’s project to develop an atomic weapon was in trouble. Although they had succeeded in producing enough weapon grade plutonium for two bombs, there were series doubts that the implosion trigger would work. Worse, the facility built at staggering costs to enrich uranium failed to do so. The solution that the US Navy had in its laboratory which the army could build multiple copies of seemed to this author to be highly improbable. Still, the army did drop a uranium bomb on Hiroshima. If the reported solution was not possible, where did they get the uranium they needed.
It is well known that the Germans had an atomic weapon project before the Americans did. The commando raid on their heavy water plant supposedly ended those efforts, but after the war the allies admitted that the project had continued without success.
Adolph is a fictional story of how America was able to obtain a German atomic weapon through the courage and skill of two American Spies. More important, it tells how the Germans planned to employ the weapon on New York City and how the British and Americans combined to destroy the residential part of Dresden, Germany in order to defeat the German plan. The bombing of Dresden has been declared by historians as the greatest terrorist event of all time because it resulted in the death of over 130,000 civilians in a city that had no valid military target.
Adolph is full of action, danger, and courage that will keep the reader hesitant to put the book down.
About the Author
Lieutenant Colonel David C. Holliday (Retired) is a former Contributing Editor of "National Defense"magazine in which he had his own column on Tank and Automotive developments. He also authored a number of articles to "Armor" magazine, writing on technical and humorous aspects of military life. As a Systems Analyst he wrote descriptions of how new weapons systems would be employed in future battles, doing so in a manner that readers could visualize the action as if they were reading a novel. While assigned as a military instructor at Eastern Kentucky University he developed and taught a course in American Military History. He is a University of Kentucky Fellow, a Kentucky Colonel, and a member of the US Armor Association which has honored him as "Knight of the Order of St. George" with a silver medal.