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III.25 Field Intelligence Reports: Theater Officer Correspondence,Draft Histories
(Entry 110)
These records include a report by Lt. Jack H. Taylor, USNR, on the OSS
Dupont Mission, the first American mission to Vienna, Austria, in October
1944 (Box 4, location: 190/07/08/04). Lt. Taylor’s sworn deposition, May 14,
1945, is included in Exhibit 4 of the Cohen Report; see RG 238, III.32, below. On
March 29, 1946, Taylor provided the opening testimony at the war crimes trial,
The United States v. Hans Altfuldisch et al. See III.78, ETO Case 000­50­5.
Taylor and two other members of the four­man team were arrested in
November, interrogated by the Gestapo, and imprisoned in Vienna. With
the approach of the Russian front, Taylor was transferred to Mauthausen on
April 1. After the camp’s liberation, Taylor stayed on for three weeks, work­
ing as a liaison to Lt. Col. R. R. Seibel of the 11th Armored Division, collect­
ing documentation and survivors’ testimony and tracking down SS person­
nel hiding in the area. Parts I and II of the report describe the Dupont
Mission and capture of its team members. Part III is a detailed firsthand
account of the final month preceding Mauthausen’s liberation. It includes
descriptions of the camp layout, living conditions, and forced labor; exam­
ples of mistreatment, torture, and executions; and identifies significant
inmates and camp personnel. Taylor lists Mauthausen’s 26 “subsidiary work
camps.” He records the existence of “secret tiny hyroglyphics” used by prison
secretaries Ernst Martin and Josef Ulbrecht to encode the true (as opposed
to official) causes of death recorded in the Mauthausen death registers. The
report is illustrated by 11 photographs taken after Mauthausen’s liberation
showing the camp entry, hospital, Russian lager, the “Death House,” shower
nozzles and canisters of Cyclone B cyanide used in the gas chambers, the cre­
matorium, electric fence, and a group shot of three prominent inmates
(George Haveka, an electrical engineer from Prague; Ernst Martin, a gas
works director from Innsbruck; and Josef Ulbrecht, a bank director from
Prague) instrumental in preserving valuable camp documents.
Taylor concludes his report by describing deteriorating conditions; bombing
raids; rampant rumors immediately preceding the arrival of the 11th Armored
Division; the early evacuations of some French,Dutch,and Belgian inmates under
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