ABSTRACT
The PICKAXE mission file maintained at the US National Archives documents the extraordinary success of this mission as it was carried out by these men. On April 4, 1945, William Casey, chief of the London office of Special Intelligence, delivered the order to dispatch the PICKAXE mission into Landshut to Army Lt. Joseph Gould. Emil Konhauser was placed in a prisoner-of-war camp outside London in March 1945. All of the German officers Konhauser encountered said that they preferred the "Negro" camp guards because they allegedly spoke disparagingly of their senior officers. On May 5, 1945, Walter Struwe and Emil Konhauser were recovered by the American military and flown to Paris for mission debriefings. The report was at once transcribed and the summary sent to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Both Struwe and Konhauser remained in England until 1947 when their application for repatriation into Germany was finally granted by the Soviet Union.
