In February 1944, Swiss intelligence received one 106-page report by a defector (agent code D 143) from Nazi Germany’s Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS’s intelligence branch. Dated 9 February 1944, this report offers an insider’s view of the internal disintegration, moral collapse, and infighting that plagued the Nazi foreign intelligence service, known as Amt VI. The SD defector described various Nazis’ extermination methods, experiments, and plans. He reveals that the commandos in the East adopted “the GPU method of a shot to the back of the neck” which was “widely used” with “in total, up to 100,000” victims. He also described the use of homicidal gas vans, known as “Nebe gas vans” after Arthur Nebe, the former head of Einsatzgruppe B and chief of the Criminal Technical Institute. According to the report: “rear compartment was sealed; 20 cm thick oak walls lined with sheet metal. Engine in front, from where exhaust gases are directed into the interior of the truck through a pipe.” The SD man noted that within Einsatzkommandos, most personnel were “completely drunk,” with as many as 40% suffering nervous breakdowns. He recalled that in in Summer 1943, Einsatzgruppe C chief Max Thomas informed him that “that approximately 6,000,000 people (Russians and Jews) had been disposed of”.
