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By Root 1492 0

in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on April 19, 1919.3 An ophthalmologist by profession, she spoke four languages and, as a recent university graduate, certainly outstripped her new husband in formal education.* At five feet, five inches, with a milky-light complexion and brown hair and eyes, Sylvia was vibrant and attractive. Salinger would later claim that she had “bewitched” him and held powers—dark and sensual—that cast a spell over him.4 It seems that the same aura of mysticism that seeped into Salinger’s writings also entered his first marriage. He claimed that their bond bordered on telepathic.5 Certainly, their relationship was highly charged, both sexually and emotionally. But her nationality was an obstacle. In 1945, American service members were forbidden to marry German nationals. So Salinger presented Sylvia with a counterfeit passport as an engagement gift, granting her bogus French citizenship in the process.†

As if his marriage to the enigmatic Sylvia were not shock enough for his family, when he was discharged from the army in November, he chose to remain in Germany. Once again, the decision ran contrary to what he had long professed. After three and a half years away from home—two of those years overseas—he finally had the opportunity to return to New York. It had been his sustaining dream for years, but when it was finally within reach, he ignored it.

Apparently the desire of Babe Gladwaller to return home to the security and love of his family had been replaced by apprehension. Salinger explained to Elizabeth Murray that his perception of life had changed, that he now saw the world as being divided between those who had shared the anguish of war and those who were “too civilian.” He admitted having been in the army too long, seen too much, become too complete a soldier to return to the comfort of civilian life that he had once craved.6

If Salinger felt unready to return home in 1945, he could console himself with the assurance that there was still work to be done in Germany. The government offered lucrative packages to CIC agents who were prepared to continue their activities. Sylvia too was a compelling incentive for him to remain. It was also possible that he had developed a strong emotional interest in the work he was doing. It was important work that might well have appealed to his sense of duty. After the exposure of the Nazi death camps at the end of April and his distress over the murder of his Austrian family, what Salinger had already acknowledged as his “personal war”7 may have become very personal, indeed. When his official term of service ended, he signed a contract with the Department of Defense and continued serving Detachment 970 as a civilian.

Salinger served with Detachment 970 for almost a year, from its inception in May 1945 until his contract expired in April 1946. During this time he was responsible for locating and arresting war criminals within the American zone of occupation. Agents were guided by “automatic arrest” lists, which included former Nazi leaders, Gestapo troops, military officers, and anyone suspected of war crimes. In the first ten months following the war, Detachment 970 arrested more than 120,000 suspects in Germany alone, 1,700 of them accused of atrocities in connection with the concentration camps, mainly Dachau.8

Salinger was part of Team 63, serving in Sector VI, which included the city of Nuremberg. It was here that the International Military Tribunal was established and where top Nazi officials were put on trial in November 1945. It is unclear whether Salinger was connected with the war crimes tribunal, but his assignment to Nuremberg as an interrogator and translator makes this probable. In any case, Salinger reported to the Joint Allied Control Center, which had been established near his home and where an interrogation center was located that held more than 8,000 high-profile members of the Nazi SS.

In addition to cleansing his sector of war criminals and questioning former Gestapo members, Salinger would have been involved in the repatriation of refugees