AFTER-ACTION REPORT

"I'll see if breaking his neck has any effect..." -Der Geist

In October of 1942, a group of AsA operatives traveled to the Ukraine on a mission of apparently personal nature- their objective was to retrieve the only son of Konrad Bergen, an old friend of Hauptmann Konrad Steidel. The agent known as "Geist" was put in charge of the mission, and assembled agents Hengen, Danor and the now-infamous Hohenleutner. On the way, they met Charles Westcote-Kern and his entourage, and found themselves at cross-purposes (note: this represents the earliest reports of the schism within the AsA).

On arrival in the area where Janus Bergen's unit was last seen, they found a destroyed village with an eerily silent atmosphere. They investigated a nearby factory, bombed and abandoned, only to discover some kind of occult mechanism, most likely of Kern's making. Trying to remove the box, they found the very building around them coming to life to attack them. They destroyed the factory and, returning to the village, encountered Kern once more. According to the report, the doctor was using occult sorcery of some kind to re-animate the corpses of the fallen German soldiers. An all-out battle erupted as Geist and the others found Kern's actions inhuman. During the battle, they found that the village itself was alive with the spirits of the dead, and it was all they could do to escape.

Janus Bergen was not recovered, and it is believed that this operation was the evidence Kern needed to persuade Hitler to give him control over the AsA. According to the reports of Paperclip agents Steidel and Danor, Hohenleutner was "convinced" of the rightness of Kern's methods soon after this encounter.