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To my wife, Peg, and to our four sons, Peter, Paul, Gerald and John, whose collective encouragement and belief in this book as a work of historic importance gave me the necessary persistence and determination to keep going.
To Robert W. Wolfe, director of the Modern Military Branch of the National Archives in Washington, his associate John E. Taylor, and George Chalou, supervisor of archivists in the Suitland, Maryland, branch of the National Archives, whose collective assistance in my search for telling documents from both sides of World War II contributed substantially to the historical merits of this book. To those retired agents of the U.S. Treasury Department whose reports and files brought into focus the magnitude of Martin Bormann's campaign to shift the liquid assets of Germany to neutral nations during the last months of the war. To those German nationals who, for the sake of history and to set the record straight about the leader they believe was the mainspring of West Germany's postwar recovery, contributed to my knowledge and insights into the remarkable Bormann organization. |
