In August 1942 a German-born U.S. Army private, Kurt Frank Korf, wrote to his mother in Germany:

Now the arms of madness [of Nazism] are stretching across the Atlantic, and they are gripping us with the fingers of those men and boys who were once close to me. They are the ones who are arming the torpedoes that are blasting the ships that supply our food.… Maybe they have reservations about what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway. I, however, am committed to fighting against them.

I do know one thing: I must be a part of...

In November 1907 a very extravagant wedding took place in Berlin. The bride was Margarete Mossner, daughter of the prestigious publisher Curt Mossner, and the groom was Franz Korf, an inspector with the royal postal service. The reception took place in the posh Savoy Hotel, where guests enjoyed a twelve-course meal and were entertained by an orchestra playing melodies of Strauss, Handel and Mendelssohn. A year later, the couple welcomed a daughter, Hildegarde. Their second child was born on 19 November 1909. He was named Kurt Friedrich Franz Korf.

Korf’s family background was distinguished on both sides. His father’s family...

On 3 February 1937, a cool and sunny day, the SSParisarrived in New York Harbor. Korf nervously waited in line to enter the country. Finally his turn came. When the immigration inspector asked him the purpose of his trip, Korf replied that he was on a business trip and presented his letters of invitation from DuPont and General Motors. This did not impress the inspector, who asked if anyone was meeting Korf. He replied in the negative, and was ordered to stand in a corner. There he waited for about an hour. By that time the crowds had...

On a chilly November morning in 1942 Korf packed a small suitcase and reported to Pennsylvania Station. He soon found himself in a crowd of men as the names of future soldiers were yelled out and tickets distributed to them. Finally, Korf boarded the train and it slowly steamed out into the misty day. The men disembarked at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where there was more yelling and more confusion.

Korf hardly had the chance to put down his suitcase when the command came for all men to fall out. Korf had no idea what the order to “fall out”...

The Battle of the Bulge began on 16 December 1944, when the German army staged a surprise attack against the weakest section of the American front, which stretched for fifty miles between Monschau, Germany, and Echternach, Luxembourg. The focal point of the German offensive was the town of Bastogne, a major road junction. The battle raged for three weeks, and casualties were heavy on both sides, but in the end U.S. forces prevailed.¹ Korf remembered: “Bastogne held, and that was vital. The Germans never crossed the Meuse River; they were stalled there because they literally ran out of gas. I...

Shortly after VE day Korf and his men were ordered to move west. No destination was announced. They stopped at Schloss Seehof, an ornate seventeenth-century castle built on the outskirts of Bamberg, a town about sixty miles north of Nuremberg. The men looked forward to staying in the beautiful castle, but were dismayed when they were ordered to pitch tents outside it. Korf and his men were miffed: “Were we Boy Scouts? The indignation ran high. This was a nice way to start the peace.” But the general was adamant; he wanted the castle unoccupied in order to “respect private...

In late January 1946 Korf was sent to Regensburg by his commandant. Koref drove him. The skies were overcast, and visibility was poor. As they drove into Regensburg the two discovered an overturned jeep. The driver, an American officer, was lying in the snow, bleeding profusely. Korf and Koref resolved to transport him to a nearby hospital in their jeep. But as they tried to lift the victim, Korf’s leg began to slip on the ice. Rather than let go of the injured man, Korf held on to him, but he could not maintain his balance. As Korf fell, his...

Without question, the highlight of Korf’s tenure with the Overseas Mission—if not his entire career with the Justice Department—was his investigation into the diaries of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels. His search for evidence took him through all four zones of occupation, camps for displaced persons, and the prisons for Nuremberg war criminals. He met highly placed members of the Third Reich and members of Goebbels’s family. Korf not only uncovered previously unknown facts about Goebbels’s personal life, but also discovered that the history of the diaries was as fascinating as the career of their author.

Throughout...

The comfort and security that eluded Korf and members of his immediate family during the Nazi era were provided for them in the United States. Korf’s mother, Margarete, came to the United States in 1947 and lived with her son and daughter-in-law. When Frank and Rita Korf went to Germany in 1948, Margarete moved to California to be with her daughter, Hilde. Margarete became a citizen of the United States in the early 1950s. She died during a visit to Germany in 1958 at the age of seventy.

Hilde Korf became a renowned person in her own right. She pursued...