Hitler's Peace

by Philip Kerr

  Von Ribbentrop sipped some of Himmler’s wine, although he much preferred the champagne he had been drinking in his own carriage, and shook his head. “I don’t believe that Roosevelt knows the nature of the beast to which he has chained himself,” he said. “Churchill is much better informed about the Bolshevik and, as he has said, he would make an ally of the devil in order to defeat Germany. But I really don’t think Roosevelt can have any real conception of the gross brutality of his ally.”

  “And yet we know for a fact he was informed of the Katyn Forest massacre’s true authors,” said Himmler.

  “Yes, but did he believe it?”

  “How could he not believe it? The evidence was incontrovertible. The dossier that was compiled by the German War Crimes Bureau would have established Russian guilt in the eyes of even the most impartial observer.”

  “But surely that’s the point,” said von Ribbentrop. “Roosevelt is hardly impartial. With the Russians continuing to deny their culpability, Roosevelt can choose not to believe the authority of his own eyes. If he had believed it, we would have heard something. It’s the only possible explanation.”

  “I fear you may be right. They prefer to believe the Russians to us. And there’s little chance of proving otherwise. Not now that Smolensk is back under Russian control. So we must find another way to enlighten the Americans.” Himmler collected a thick file off his desk and handed it to von Ribbentrop, who, noticing that Himmler was wearing not one but two gold rings, wondered for a moment if they were both wedding bands from each of his two wives. “Yes, I think that I might send him that,” said Himmler.

  Von Ribbentrop put on reading glasses and moved to open the file. “What is it?” he asked, suspiciously.

  “I call it the Beketovka File. Beketovka is a Soviet labor camp near Stalingrad, run by the NKVD. After the defeat of the Sixth Army in February, some quarter of a million German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Russians and held in camps like Beketovka, which was the largest.”

  “Was?”

  “The file was put together by one of Colonel Gehlen’s agents in the NKVD and has only just come into my hands. It’s a remarkable piece of work. Very thorough. Gehlen does recruit some very capable people. There are photographs, statistics, eyewitness accounts. According to the camp register, approximately fifty thousand German soldiers arrived at Beketovka last February. Today less than five thousand of them are still alive.”

  Von Ribbentrop heard himself gasp. “You’re joking.”

  “About such a thing as this? I think not. Go ahead, Joachim. Open it. You’ll find it quite edifying.”

  As a rule, the minister tried to avoid the reports arriving at the Foreign Ministry’s Department Deutschland. These were filed by the SS and the SD and detailed the deaths of countless Jews in the extermination camps in the East. But he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of German soldiers, especially when his own son was a soldier, a lieutenant with the Leibstandarte-SS and, mercifully, still alive. What if it had been his son who had been taken prisoner at Stalingrad? He opened the file.

  Von Ribbentrop found himself looking at a photograph of what at first glance resembled an illustration he had once seen by Gustave Doré, in Milton’s Paradise Lost. It was a second or two before he realized that these were the naked bodies not of angels, or even devils, but human beings, apparently frozen hard and stacked six or seven deep, one on top of the other, like beef carcasses in some hellish deep freeze. “My God,” he said, realizing that the line of carcasses was eighty or ninety meters long. “My God. These are German soldiers?”

  Himmler nodded.

  “How did they die? Were they shot?”

  “Perhaps a lucky few were shot,” said Himmler. “Mostly they died of starvation, cold, sickness, exhaustion, and neglect. You really should read the account of one of the prisoners, a young lieutenant from the Seventy-sixth Infantry Division. It was smuggled out of the camp in the vain hope that the Luftwaffe might be able to mount some sort of bombing raid and put them out of their misery. It gives a pretty good picture of life at Beketovka. Yes, it’s a quite remarkable piece of reportage.”

  Von Ribbentrop’s weak blue eyes passed quickly over the next photograph, a close-up shot of a pile of frozen corpses. “Perhaps later,” he said, removing his glasses.

  “No, von Ribbentrop, read it now,” insisted Himmler. “Please. The man who wrote this account is, or was, just twenty-two, the same age as your own son. We owe it to all those who won’t ever come back to the Fatherland to understand their suffering and their sacrifice. To read such things, that is what will make us hard enough to do what must be done. There’s no room here for human weakness. Don’t you agree?”

  Von Ribbentrop’s face stiffened as he replaced his reading glasses. He disliked being cornered, but could see no alternative to reading the document, as Himmler had bidden.

  “Better still,” the Reichsführer said, “read aloud to me what young Zahler has written.”

  “Aloud?”

  “Yes, aloud. The truth is, I have only read it once myself, as I could not bear to read it again. Read it to me now, Joachim, and then we will talk about what we must do.”

  The foreign minister cleared his throat nervously, recalling the last occasion on which he had read a document aloud. He remembered the day exactly: June 22, 1941—the day when he had announced to the press that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union; and as von Ribbentrop proceeded to read, the sense of irony was not lost on him.

  When he had finished reading, he removed his glasses, swallowing uncomfortably. Heinrich Zahler’s account of life and death at Beketovka seemed to have conspired with the motion of the train and the smell of Himmler’s cigar to leave him feeling a little off-color. He stood up unsteadily and, excusing himself for a moment, walked into the concertina gangway between the coaches to draw a breath of fresh air into his lungs.

  When the minister returned to the Reichsführer’s private car, Himmler seemed to read his thoughts.

  “You were thinking of your own son, perhaps. A very brave young man. How many times has he been wounded?”

  “Three times.”

  “He does you great credit, Joachim. Let us pray that Rudolf is never captured by the Russians. Particularly as he is SS. Elsewhere the Beketovka File makes reference to the especially murderous treatment that the Russians have inflicted on SS POWs. They are taken to Wrangel Island. Shall I show you where that is?”

  Himmler picked up his Brockhaus atlas and found the relevant map. “Look there,” he said, pointing with a well-manicured fingernail at a speck in a patch of pale-looking blue. “In the East Siberian Sea. There. Do you see? Three and a half thousand kilometers east of Moscow.” Himmler shook his head. “It’s the size of Russia that overwhelms, is it not?” He snapped the atlas shut. “No, I’m afraid we will not see those comrades again.”

  “Has the Führer seen this file?” asked von Ribbentrop.

  “Good God, no,” said Himmler. “And he never will. If he knew about this file and the conditions in which German soldiers are kept in Russian POW camps, do you think he would ever contemplate making a peace with the Soviets?”

  Von Ribbentrop shook his head. “No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

  “But I was thinking that if the Americans saw it,” said Himmler. “Then . . .”

  “Then it might help to drive a wedge between them and the Russians.”

  “Precisely. Perhaps it might also help to authenticate evidence we have already provided of the Russians being to blame for the Katyn Forest massacre.”

  “I assume,” said von Ribbentrop, “that Kaltenbrunner has already informed you of this man Cicero’s intelligence coup?”

  “About the Big Three and their forthcoming conference in Teheran? Yes.”

  “I’m thinking, Heinrich—before Churchill and Roosevelt see Stalin, they’re going to Cairo, to meet Chiang Kai-shek. That would be a good place for this Beketovka File to fall into their hands.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, possibly.”

  “It would give them something to think about. Perhaps it might even affect their subsequent relations with Stalin. Frankly, I don’t expect any of this material would surprise Churchill very much. He’s always hated the Bolsheviks. But Roosevelt is a very different saucer of milk. If the American newspapers are to be believed, he seems intent on charming Marshal Stalin.”

  “Is such a thing possible?” grinned Himmler. “You’ve met the man. Could he ever be charmed?”

  “Charmed? I sincerely doubt that Jesus Christ himself could charm Stalin. But that’s not to say Roosevelt doesn’t think he can succeed where Christ might fail. But then again, he might lose his will to charm if he were made aware of just what sort of monster he’s dealing with.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “But the file would have to come into their hands from the right quarter. And I fear that neither the SS nor the Reich Foreign Ministry could bring the appropriate degree of impartiality to such a sensitive matter.”

  “I think I have just the man,” said Himmler. “There’s a Major Max Reichleitner. Of the Abwehr. He was part of the war crimes team that investigated the Katyn massacre. Of late he’s been doing some useful work for me in Turkey.”

  “In Turkey?” Von Ribbentrop was tempted to ask what kind of work Major Reichleitner was doing for Himmler and the Abwehr in Turkey. He hadn’t forgotten that Ankara was where the SD’s agent Cicero was also operating. Was this just a coincidence, or was there perhaps something he wasn’t being told?

  “Yes. In Turkey.”

  Himmler did not elaborate. Major Reichleitner had been carrying the diplomatic correspondence on another secret peace initiative, this one conducted with the Americans by Franz von Papen, the former German chancellor, on behalf of a group of senior officers in the Wehrmacht. Von Papen was the German ambassador in Turkey and, as such, von Ribbentrop’s subordinate. Himmler considered von Ribbentrop useful in a number of ways; but the Reichsminister was acutely sensitive about his position and, as such, was sometimes something of a nuisance. The plain fact of the matter was that Himmler enjoyed reminding the foreign minister of how little he really knew and how much he now relied on the Reichsführer, rather than Hitler, to remain close to the center of power.

  “I believe there may be something else we might do to take advantage of this forthcoming conference,” the foreign minister said. “I was thinking that we might attempt to seek further clarification of exactly what Roosevelt meant when he told reporters at Casablanca of his demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender.”

  Himmler nodded thoughtfully and puffed at his cigar. The president’s remark had caused as much disquiet in Britain and Russia as it had in Germany, and, according to intelligence reports from the Abwehr, it had generated the fear among certain American generals that unconditional surrender would make the Germans fight all the harder, thereby prolonging the war.

  “We might use Teheran,” continued Ribbentrop, “to discover if Roosevelt’s remark was a rhetorical flourish, a negotiating ploy intended to force us to talk, or if he meant us to take it literally.”

  “Exactly how might we obtain such a clarification?”

  “I was thinking that the Führer might be persuaded to write three letters. Addressed to Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. Stalin is a great admirer of the Führer. A letter from him might prompt Stalin to question why Roosevelt and Churchill don’t want a negotiated peace. Could it be that they would like to see the Red Army annihilated in Europe before committing themselves to an invasion next year? The Russians have never trusted the British. Not since the Hess mission.

  “Equally, letters to Roosevelt and Churchill might make something of the brutal treatment of German POWs by the Russians, not to mention those Polish officers murdered at Katyn. The Führer could also mention a number of pragmatic considerations which Roosevelt and Churchill might think could weigh against a European landing.”

  “Such as?” asked Himmler.

  Von Ribbentrop shook his head, unwilling to show the Reichsführer all his best cards and telling himself that Himmler wasn’t the only one who could withhold information. “I wouldn’t want to go into the details right now,” he said smoothly, now quite convinced that Cicero’s discovery of the Big Three at Teheran might be the beginning of a very real diplomatic initiative, perhaps the most important since he had negotiated the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. Von Ribbentrop smiled to himself at the idea of pulling off another diplomatic coup like that one. These letters to the Big Three from the Führer would be written by himself, of course. He would show those bastards Göring and Goebbels that he was still a force to be reckoned with.

  “Yes,” said Himmler, “I might mention the idea to Hitler when I go to the Wolfschanze on Wednesday.”

  Von Ribbentrop’s face fell. “I was thinking that I might mention the idea to Hitler myself,” he said. “After all, this is a diplomatic initiative rather than a matter for the Ministry of the Interior.”

  The Reichsführer-SS thought for a moment, considered the possibility that Hitler might not like the idea. There was a strong chance that any negotiated peace might require Germany to have a new leader, and while Himmler believed there was no one better than himself to replace the Führer, he did not want Hitler to think that he was planning some sort of coup d’état.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think perhaps you’re right. It should be you who mentions this to the Führer, Joachim. A diplomatic initiative like this one should originate in the Foreign Ministry.”

  “Thank you, Heinrich.”

  “Don’t mention it, my dear fellow. We will have your diplomatic effort and my Beketovka File. Either way, we must not fail. Unless we can make some sort of a peace, or successfully detach the Soviet Union from her Western allies, I fear Germany is finished.”

  Since the purpose of the speech Himmler was to make at Posen the next day was the subject of defeatism, Ribbentrop proceeded cautiously.

  “You are being frank,” he said carefully. “So let me also be frank with you, Heinrich.”

  “Of course.”

  Von Ribbentrop could hardly forget he was speaking to the most powerful man in Germany. Himmler could easily order the train stopped and Ribbentrop shot summarily by the side of the railway track. The foreign minister had no doubt that the Reichsführer could justify such an action to the Führer at a later date, and, aware of the secrecy of the subject he was about to broach, Ribbentrop found himself struggling for the words that might still leave him at arm’s length from being complicit in Germany’s crusade against the Jews.

  In late 1941, he had become aware of mass executions of Jews by Einsatzgruppen—SS special action groups in Eastern Europe—and since then had tried his best to avoid reading all SS and SD reports that were filed, as a matter of routine, with Department III of the Foreign Ministry. These Special Action Groups were no longer shooting thousands of Jews but organizing their deportation to special camps in Poland and the Ukraine. Von Ribbentrop knew the purpose of these camps—he could hardly fail to know it, having visited Belzec in secret—but it bothered him a great deal that the Allies might also know their purpose.

  “Is it possible,” he asked Himmler, “that the Allies are aware of the purpose behind the evacuation of Jews to Eastern Europe? That this is the true reason they have ignored evidence of Russian atrocities?”

  “We agreed that we are speaking frankly, Joachim,” said Himmler, “so let us do just that. You are referring to the systematic extirpation of the Jews, are you not?”

  Von Ribbentrop nodded uncomfortably.

  “Look,” continued Himmler. “We have the moral right to protect ourselves. A duty to our own people to destroy all saboteurs, agitators, and slander-mongers who want to destroy us. But to answer your question specifically, I will say this. I think it’s possible that they do know of the existence of our grand solution to the Jewish problem, yes. But I would suggest that currently they imagine that accounts o
f what goes on in Eastern Europe have been dramatically exaggerated.

  “If I might be allowed to pat myself on the back, it is incredible just what has been achieved. You have no idea. Nevertheless, none of us forgets that this is a chapter in German history that can never be written. But rest assured, Joachim, as soon as a peace has been negotiated, all the camps will be destroyed and all evidence that they ever existed erased. People will say Jews were murdered. Thousands of Jews, hundreds of thousands of Jews—yes, they will say that, too. But this is war. ‘Total war,’ Goebbels calls it, and for once I agree with him. People get killed in wartime. That is an unfortunate fact of life. Who knows how many the RAF will kill tonight in Munich? Old men, women and children?” Himmler shook his head. “So, Joachim, I give you my word that people will not believe it was possible so many Jews died. Faced with the menace of European Bolshevism, they will not want to believe it. No, they could never believe it. No one could.”

  III

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1943,

  POSEN, POLAND

  NAMED AFTER THE LEADING POET of Polish romanticism, the Adam Mickiewicz Square in Posen was one of the old city’s most attractive sights. On the eastern side of the square was a castle built for Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1910, when Posen had been part of the Prussian empire. In truth, it hardly looked like a castle, more like a town hall or a city museum, with a facade that was fronted not by a moat but by a large wrought-iron railing protecting a neatly kept lawn and an open graveled area that resembled a parade ground. On this particular day, that spot had been given up to at least a dozen SS staff cars. Parked in front of the railing were several Hannomag troop carriers, each containing fifteen Waffen-SS Panzergrenadiers, and there were almost as many patrolling the castle’s perimeter. The Polish passengers riding on a tram along the eastern side of Adam Mickiewicz Square glanced in at the castle and shuddered, for this was the headquarters of the SS in Poland, and even as they looked, still more SS staff cars could be seen going through the heavily guarded gates and dropping SS officers at the tree-lined entrance.