“Shall I make a dinner reservation for the two of you for tonight?” She arched an eyebrow, trying to suppress a grin.
“Why? I’m not going anywhere,” I mumbled and shrugged.
“No? I’m astonished actually.” My sarcastic secretary continued her mocking, strolling towards my desk. “She made it more than clear that she is more than happy to do anything for Herr Gruppenführer.”
“It’s not my fault that women can’t control themselves around me, Frau Friedmann.” I grinned at her. “I’m the victim here.”
“Oh, you most certainly are.” She stood right next to me, and then leaned on the desk seductively, mimicking Himmler’s secretary manner and voice. “Herr Gruppenführer, this is Reichsführer’s order that I brought you personally even though usually his adjutant does it. And now, I will explain to you what Amt IV on the top stands for. That’s all I can do since I have no idea what the rest of it means, but I’m still going to press my chest to your shoulder because maybe after that you will fall in love with me, and we’ll run away to Switzerland and have twenty-eight children.”
I burst out laughing, caught her by the waist and pulled her onto my lap. “Frau Friedmann, you talked me into it. Book the tickets!”
“Oh, stop it with your jokes!” She pushed me off with mock reproach, worming herself out of my embrace.
It was the first time that she had started joking with me and coming this close to me again after our fight not so long ago; the fight, after which I almost stopped drinking altogether, cursing the alcohol and how it made me almost lose the woman who I now couldn’t imagine my life without.
It was all my fault of course, even though I had blamed Himmler for my bitter mood and what he was making me into. I got deadly drunk after the very first day in the office, after I came home to my new villa in Berlin. I looked in the mirror at my new uniform with SD branded on my left sleeve, picked up the bottle of whiskey from the bar and started gulping from it until the reflection got blurry. I have no idea how long I stood like that and how much I really drank, because I had to be intoxicated to the highest point to start seeing things.
I had lifted my eyes to the mirror once again, and to my utmost terror I saw Heydrich’s face instead of my own. He slowly lifted his hand to smooth his hair, gave me a devilish grin that sent chills down my spine and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and laughed in my face.
“You really thought you could kill me, Ernst?” He smiled almost kindly at me. “But I live. I live in you. You’re me now. And I am you. We’re one – forever, till the very end. You’ll look in this mirror and see my face. Murderer. You used to call me a murderer, but you’re a murderer now! Isn’t it hilarious?”
He started laughing, laughing inside my head with his high-pitched voice, and to make him shut up once and for all, I took my gun out and put all eight bullets into my own reflection, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces. He disappeared after that, but his words were imprinted forever in my mind, and I began to drink even more to erase them.
The day of the fight between Annalise and I, I heard the voice again, after I had signed the order for taking the ghetto under control, which meant the deaths of thousands of rebels. I wasn’t sorry for the ones who had attacked our troops who guarded them, however no one could sort them out and make any investigations concerning who was a part of the uprising, and who wasn’t. Waffen SS and one of the Einsatzgruppen sent there with the flamethrowers might torch the whole ghetto to get rid of anyone, who might have been hiding in the buildings or even in the sewers. The ones who gave themselves up would be sent to the closest camps; that’s how the Führer wanted it, and that’s what I, as the Chief of the RSHA, had to do. How could I not get drunk after dealing with that all day?
Annalise walked in at the wrong time that evening. I don’t know why she even stayed late and didn’t go home at five, like she was supposed to. I was staring blankly out of the window when she touched my shoulder and said something to me. I think she asked me to go home and get some rest, but, frankly speaking, I don’t remember. I only remember her soft voice, and that I mistook her concern for me for something different. I followed her to the bathroom, where she was washing something in the sink and hugged her, hugged the only person who cared about me, or so I thought, and stayed with me, and who I just needed to be near for five minutes because she always made those voices in my head go quiet.
I came to her looking for sympathy, but she pushed my hands away angrily and started accusing me of ‘dirty intentions’ with indignation in her voice. I didn’t have any dirty intention on my mind at all, but just the thought of how she presumed such baseness from me infuriated me to my ugliest point. So, she wanted to think of me as a monster like Heydrich?! Fine, she would most certainly get what she asked for! And I did the most terrible thing I could: I squeezed her next to the sink and tore her shirt open, and the more she was screaming at me, the stronger I was holding her in place, with both hands inside her bra and with my teeth in her neck. She resorted to her last argument and threatened to tell Reichsführer on me, and I only laughed drunkenly in response and said that I couldn’t care less about Reichsführer because it was he who had made me into this. I would have definitely done something irreparable if she didn’t manage to twist her body and hit me across the face with such force that it immediately cleared my head from all the alcohol. The despising look full of hatred that she gave me, before pushing me out of her way and storming out of the bathroom, erased the last faint traces of intoxication, and I covered my mouth in horror at what I’d just done.
“Annalise,” I barely called after her, but she had already slammed the door of the anteroom on her way out. I covered my face with my hands, leaned on the wall and slid down the floor, thinking that I’d lost her forever.
That’s why I couldn’t be happier that now she was finally back to her teasing and playful self, and I even decided to send Rosamunde, or whatever her name was, flowers, as gratitude for restoring mine and Frau Friedmann’s friendship.
“I’m not promising you twenty-eight children, but four is a reasonable number, what do you think?” I let go of her, and she stood up, straightening invisible lines on her uniform. “I was thinking two boys and two girls, for equality.”
Annalise gave me a dirty glance together with a sly smile, but instead of answering took the order in her hands to read it.
“Do we have to go to Poland again?” she asked, sighing heavily, as she always did after reading Reichsführer’s orders. She didn’t fancy the man, and never hid her resentment, not in front of me at least. Somehow, without ever speaking of it, the two of us silently agreed that we hated Himmler together with his orders.
“No. I have to go to Poland. You’re staying here and minding the office.”
“Georg can mind the office just fine.”
“I’m taking Georg with me. I still need my adjutant, if you don’t mind.”
“I went with you last time,” Annalise argued, making me smile unwillingly. She always argued with me, when even my own subordinates didn’t have enough courage to say something against my orders.
“And you almost got yourself shot.” I reminded her of the bold stunt she pulled during one of the operations. “What got into you, dressing up like a Jew just to make a point to me?”
She carelessly shrugged with one shoulder. “Just wanted to help those Polish women.”
“Jewish women.”
“Jewish Polish women.”
I caught myself chuckling. The cheeky girl definitely wasn’t raised in a traditional household, where a man’s word was taught to be respected without ever challenging it. Frau Friedmann on the contrary challenged her own boss at every opportunity; a boss who was normally feared by everyone because of his, let’s admit it, quite volatile temper.
“It’s all the same in the eyes of the government, Frau Friedmann. Polish, German, Austrian – they’re Jewish, and Reichsführer wants them… away from the gentiles.” I fi
nished carefully.
“What a nice euphemism for ‘wants them dead,’ Herr Gruppenführer.” She caught onto that, of course.
“Well, they’re very much alive now, thanks to you and your reckless actions, Frau Friedmann.”
She beamed at me. “Thanks to you, actually, Herr Gruppenführer. You gave that order for their transfer.”
She paused for a moment, while I was hiding my eyes in the papers and trying my best not to blush at the compliment, which was far from becoming for the Chief of the RSHA and the Führer’s ardent servant, which I was supposed to be. No matter how dishonorable it was for me as an officer, I strived for her praises much more than I was striving for the Führer’s.
All of a sudden she leaned into me and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Thank you, Herr Gruppenführer.”
I looked up at her, quite astonished, but she just presented me with another radiant smile and walked back to the anteroom, not forgetting to throw her last – and as I suspected needing no discussion – statement, “I’m still going with you to Warsaw!”
I was still sitting at my desk with a dreamy smile stuck to my face when Georg let Obersturmführer Höttl in. As soon as I took up the position of Chief of the RSHA one of the first things I did was to restore my compatriot, who I had saved from Heydrich’s claws when he was still alive, to his title and I even appointed him as a chief of the department, responsible for Vatican matters. I figured that being the devout Catholic that he was, he could manage the matter much better than his predecessor did, who completely severed all ties with the Catholic Church following Reichsführer SS’s orders.
One time I heard firsthand of Himmler’s quite strange explanation as to why he resented the Christian religion so much and preferred the German pagan one to it. He had summoned me to his office to report on the matter of infiltrating the Russian prisoners of war back into their country, far behind the front lines, from where they could start leading the guerrilla war against their own former comrades.
When I first questioned him as to why he wasn’t afraid that they would just go ahead and join their army again, he only smiled enigmatically and said, “You still have so many things to learn, Ernst. The Russians have a certain law in the army, it’s a special Stalin’s directive called ‘Not a Single Step Back.’ It means that the frontline is followed by a certain ‘protection’ battalion, which has its machine guns directed not at the enemy troops, but at their own soldiers, and if the ones in the front suddenly decide to retreat, they get shot on the spot for desertion, as enemies of the state. This way they can only attack, and never retreat. Quite an effective tactic, if you ask me. If I didn’t care so much for my own German soldiers, I would have advised the Führer to adopt such an initiative. However, I’m distracting myself. Imagine the rage of their commanders when their troops are captured and obtain the status as prisoners of war. They are automatically declared as deserters and traitors of the State, and therefore their return home is something not to be discussed. The answer to your question is quite simple: they won’t want to return back to their commanders simply because those very commanders will execute them right that instant. That’s why we’re quite certain, and this has been proven to be true, that they will make a perfect partisan force against their own partisans and the army. Besides, we promise them naturalization after the war is over. They are not as disagreeable as you think they are. You should talk to Müller about the Russians. He’s quite interested in them, and can give you a few curious insights on the subject.”
I nodded, and said carefully, “But Reichsführer, they will never have faith in National Socialism, no matter how much you try to indoctrinate them. Like in that saying: ‘No matter how much you feed the wolf, he still looks back at his forest.’ Don’t you think that one day it will backfire on you?”
“Faith is an interesting thing, Ernst,” Himmler pronounced slowly, twisting his ring with a snake on it around his finger, and turning his head to one side slightly so that the sun reflected from his glasses, making it impossible to see his eyes. “Take Christianity as an example. Do you know how many good German lives were lost to the inquisition in the Middle Ages? Do you know how barbaric it was, burning the poor souls alive only for being different from them? And to think of it: we’re now using those seers and the witches’ inventions and we call it ‘alternative medicine.’ Christianity is a narrow-minded and dogmatic utopia, which needs to be gotten rid of. It only poisons people’s minds and distracts them from what is truly important: Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.”
I chuckled slightly with my eyes downcast, but Himmler still noticed it. “You disagree with me?”
“No, not at all, Reichsführer. I was only wondering if those very inquisitors that you just mentioned were led by the same ideas that you just outlined.”
“I don’t think I understand what you are implying, Gruppenführer.” Himmler frowned and leaned forward.
I cleared my throat and went on to explain. “The inquisitors were probably under the same impression that they were cleansing their parish from the unwanted elements, Reichsführer. Those alien elements, as you correctly pointed out, were different and therefore needed to be exterminated, mercilessly and without any doubt to save the majority of individuals who willingly submitted to their leaders. And I wonder, if those inquisitors also exclaimed in indignation, about how barbaric it was to kill Christians during the pagan rule, and questioned how they finally restored the order for their people. Ein Volk.”
“Where are you going with this, Ernst?” Himmler said in a menacingly quiet voice.
“Only thinking out loud. The history always repeats itself. The pagans were replaced by the Christians, and the Christians are being shunned now so as to be replaced by the pagans. We are the inquisition, Reichsführer. I only wonder how long it will take for the cycle to complete itself, when we will be cursed as barbarians and narrow-minded bigots.”
The pause lasted for more than a minute, until he finally uttered, “Have you been drinking again?”
“No, Reichsführer. I’m afraid I’m absolutely sober.”
“I’m starting to doubt your loyalty to the regime.”
“I swore my loyalty to the regime, Herr Reichsführer, and I will die protecting it,” I answered completely unemotionally, just to pacify Himmler. Even if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life, I almost added and bit my lip to keep the dangerous words inside.
That conversation and the look which Himmler gave me before I left flashed before my eyes as Höttl made his way to my desk after saluting me. After Annalise brought coffee for us – Höttl attacked the plate of cookies as soon as she left – we spoke about the progress he was making with the Vatican and the general situation in his department. I listened carefully to his reports, pointed out a few things that he should concentrate his attention on and gave him an approving nod in the end.
“I’m so glad you’re the Chief of the RSHA now,” he blurted out all of a sudden, reddening to the roots of his hair, like he always did when emotions got a hold of him. “Obergruppenführer Heydrich resented me to the last minute and would only mock my words and order me to do the opposite of what I proposed, just out of spite.”
“And yet I would much prefer to see him here instead of myself.” I sighed sadly, toying with my coffee cup.
“But why, Herr Gruppenführer?” Höttl was visibly surprised by my words. “It is such a grand position, and there’s so much you can do to fix everything after Obergruppenführer Heydrich…”
“I wish it were true, my friend. There’s very little that I can fix. I am blocked on every way by Reichsführer; Müller and his Gestapo – I don’t even know what’s going on there and neither do I care. My immediate subordinate Schellenberg, the Chief of the SD-Ausland, is hiding reports from me and goes to his protector Himmler each time I say something that is not to his liking. Admiral Canaris, the Chief of the Military Intelligence, makes a scene each time I ask for certain information from his department… Thi
s whole office is a bureaucratic mess. No wonder the Russian counterintelligence is beating ours down in so many aspects. At least they don’t have ten department chiefs ready to tear into each other’s throat over the power. And I’m an Austrian on top of it; as if being their new boss didn’t give them enough reason to openly hate me.”
“There must still be people who you trust, Herr Gruppenführer.”
“Yes, there are four. You, Sturmbannführer Skorzeny, my adjutant and my secretary. Quite a sad picture, isn’t it?” I sneered ironically.
“Sometimes four loyal ones are more important than four thousand who you can’t trust, sir.”
“I hope you’re right, my friend. I hope you’re right.”
_______________
Nuremberg, September 1946
“Is that right, Henry? We’re actually allowed to see each other?” I stared in disbelief at my guard, who had just broken the news to me.
It seemed that the prison administration felt sorry for us in view of our nearing verdict announcement, and had decided to allow us one social hour every day.
“Yes.” Henry smiled, leaning on the opened window in my door after handing me my lunch. “Each one of you can invite three other people to join you in a game of cards, or chess, or just to talk to each other if you like. Every day, till October first, when the verdicts will be given. They’re setting up two tables in a separate cell, where you’ll be meeting, starting today.”
“That’s great news, Henry.” I smiled back at him from behind my table.
“Yes, I think it’s very nice. You must be going mad from boredom all alone here, especially now that the hearings are over and you don’t have to go to the courtroom anymore. At least this is something to look forward to.”
I only nodded in reply, silent terror engulfing me again with its merciless grip. I suddenly wished that we had to go back to the courtroom, that the proceedings would still go on, because the time that I so naively considered to be dragging purposelessly, had slipped right through my fingers without me realizing it. The verdicts would be given out in a month only. Thirty days, before they would sentence us to death. But I am only forty-two, I don’t want to die yet! I have so much to live for, to actually live and not serve my masters like a dog, whose chain was too short and too thick to make an escape possible.
The Austrian: Book Two Page 18
