by Philip Kerr
“In the final analysis,” Hitler had told Himmler in their preparatory talks at the Wolfschanze, “Stalin is nothing more than some plutocratic tycoon looking for his next payday. For that reason alone, you know where you are with the Russians. They’re realistic.”
Realistic? Yes, thought Himmler, you knew where you were with the Popovs. They would do anything for money. Even so, there was no way he was going to let Göring take over the country, as Stalin had suggested as the best alternative to the Führer remaining as head of state. Himmler hated Göring almost as much as he hated Bormann, and he hadn’t put his neck on the line persuading Hitler to come to the Big Three in person just to see the country handed over to that fat bastard.
In some respects, the British were just like the Popovs, he reflected. Quite predictable. Churchill most of all. Very likely the British prime minister was worried that once a peace with Germany was signed, the generous terms offered to Great Britain by Hess in 1940—a peace without any conditions whatsoever—would be made public and there would be an uproar in the British newspapers. Could the Führer have been more generous? No wonder Churchill refused to come to the negotiating table. Surely, as soon as the war was over, Churchill would be kicked out of office.
No one could accuse the Americans of not being realistic, but, unlike the Russians, they could not be influenced by money. Still, as the Führer had always argued, they could be influenced by their own paranoia. “They fear Bolshevism more than they fear us,” he had told Himmler back at the Wolfschanze. “And the greatest success of the Red Army has not been defeating the German army, but in the way it has intimidated the Americans. We must take advantage of that fact. If they cannot be bribed in these negotiations, then they must be blackmailed. They are, of course, aware of the secret weapons we have been developing at Peenemünde, or why else would they have used the whole of Bomber Command to target the area back in August? It will require great subtlety, Himmler, for without telling the Americans exactly what we have, we must imply that if Germany were forced to negotiate a separate peace with the Russians, we would feel obliged to share our new weapons with them, in lieu of war reparations. Naturally, the Americans will fear this because even now it is clear that they are more concerned about the shape of postwar Europe than they are about defeating Germany.
“The vengeance-weapon film that the people at Fieseler made in May—the Americans should see a copy. And just in case they still don’t believe it, let’s plan to fire one such weapon at England on November twenty-eighth, the day of the conference. Not from the new site, of course, but from Peenemünde. That should help them to decide if we’re serious or not. But don’t fire it at London. No, choose an American air base. The one at Shipham, near Norwich, perhaps. That’s a large one. A V1 rocket might have quite a chastening effect there, Himmler.”
Although a V1 had been placed on a launching ramp at Peenemünde earlier that same day, it had not, in fact, been fired. In the final analysis, it had not been seen as necessary. Now, possessed of film footage of a successful V1 test flight and a list of German scientists, American military intelligence had persuaded Roosevelt that it was imperative for the German rocket secrets to be in American, not in Russian, hands after the war. Consequently, the president had already been persuaded in secret not to insist on large German war reparations, and also to abandon his demand for free and fair elections.
Since the Americans and the Russians both thought they had already made a secret deal to their own advantage, Himmler did not see how, short of a disaster—one of the rages that were inbuilt features of Hitler’s character, perhaps, or Churchill prevailing on Roosevelt at last to break off the talks with Hitler—these negotiations could fail. If a peace was agreed at Teheran, Himmler felt his own achievements in this diplomatic triumph would make his name more illustrious in German history than Bismarck’s.
1100 HOURS
I SIPPED the last of my water and tried to ignore a need to visit the lavatory.
The arguments had turned to France, a topic Hitler refused to consider with any seriousness. At the very least the French had no right to the return of their empire, he argued. And why should Roosevelt and Stalin be disposed to treat France as anything other than their enemy, since the current government was Nazi in all but name and actively helping Germany?
“France is hardly an occupied country,” said Hitler. “There are less than fifty thousand German soldiers in the whole country. That’s not an occupying army so much as an auxiliary police force helping to carry out the will of the Vichy French government. The thing that strikes me above all about the French is that because they have been so anxious to sit on every chair at the same time, they have not succeeded in sitting firmly on any one of them. They pretend to be your ally and yet they conspire with us. They fight for free speech and yet France is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. She refuses to renounce her colonies and expects Russia and America, two countries that have thrown off the yoke of imperialism, to restore them to her. And in exchange for what? A few bottles of good wine, some cheese, and perhaps a smile from a pretty girl?”
Stalin grinned. “I tend to agree with Herr Hitler,” he said. “I can see no good reason why France should be allowed to play any role in formal peace negotiations with Germany. I was very much in agreement with what the Führer said earlier. To my mind, there wouldn’t have been another war at all if France hadn’t insisted on trying to punish Germany for the last one. Besides, the entire French ruling class is rotten to the core.”
I wished that Stalin would say more, for it was my opportunity to rest for a moment. Roosevelt was easy to work for, breaking up his statements into short lengths, which demonstrated some concern for his two translators. But Hitler was always much too carried away by his own eloquence to pay much attention to von Ribbentrop, who had struggled to find the words to convey Hitler’s thoughts into English, so much so that I had felt obliged to step in and help; and, after a while, the exhausted-looking von Ribbentrop had given up altogether, leaving me to translate all of the conversation between Hitler and Roosevelt.
Roosevelt had smoked steadily throughout the negotiations and, suddenly afflicted with a fit of coughing, now reached for the carafe of water that stood on the table in front of him. But he succeeded only in knocking it over. Both Bohlen and I had now run out of water, and seeing the president’s predicament, Hitler poured a glass from his own untouched carafe. Standing up quickly, he brought it around the table to the still-coughing Roosevelt. Stalin, slower on his feet than Hitler, started to do the same.
The president took the glass of water from Hitler, but as he put it to his lips, Agent Pawlikowski sprang forward and knocked it from his hand. Some of the water spilled over me, but most ended up on the president’s shirtfront.
For a moment, everyone thought that the Secret Service agent had gone mad. Then von Ribbentrop expressed the thought that was now in the minds of every man in the room. Picking up Hitler’s water carafe, he sniffed it suspiciously and then said, in his Canadian-accented English, “Is there something wrong with this water?” He looked around the room, first at Stalin, then at Molotov, and then at Stalin’s two bodyguards, Vlasik and Poskrebyshev, who both grinned nervously. One of them said something in Russian that was immediately translated by Pavlov, the Soviet interpreter, and Bohlen.
“The water is good. It comes fresh from the British embassy. First thing this morning.”
Meanwhile Roosevelt had turned in his wheelchair and was regarding Pawlikowski with something like horror. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, John?”
“John,” Reilly said calmly. “I think you should leave the room immediately.”
Pawlikowski was trembling like a leaf, and, seated immediately in front of him, I could see that his shirt, soaked in sweat, was almost as wet as the president’s. The Secret Service man sighed and smiled almost apologetically at Roosevelt. The very next second he drew his weapon and aimed it at Hitler.
“No,” I
yelled and, jumping to my feet, I forced Pawlikowski’s arm and gun up in the air so that the shot, when it came, hit only the ceiling.
Wrestling Pawlikowski onto the table, I caught sight of Stalin’s bodyguard pulling the Russian leader onto the floor, and then others diving for cover as Pawlikowski fired again. A third shot followed close on the second, and then Pawlikowski’s body went limp and slid onto the floor. I pushed myself up off the table and saw Mike Reilly standing over the agent’s body, a smoking revolver extended in front of him. And seeing that his colleague was not dead, Reilly kicked the automatic from the wounded agent’s hand.
“Get an ambulance, someone,” he yelled. The next second, seeing that both Hitler’s and Stalin’s bodyguards had their own weapons drawn and were now covering him in case he, too, felt impelled to take a shot at one of the two dictators, Reilly holstered his gun carefully. “Take it easy,” he told them. “It’s all over.” Coolly, Reilly picked up Pawlikowski’s automatic, made it safe, ejected the magazine, and then laid these items on the conference table.
Gradually, the room came to order. Högl, the detective superintendent guarding Hitler, was the first bodyguard to put away his gun. Then Vlasik, Stalin’s bodyguard, did the same. Pawlikowski, bleeding heavily from a wound in his back, was swiftly carried out of the room by Agents Qualter and Rauff.
I sat down on my chair and stared at the blood on my shirt sleeve. It was another few seconds before I realized that someone was standing immediately in front of me. I lifted my gaze, up from the polished black shoes and over the dark trousers, the plain brown military tunic and the white shirt and tie, to meet Hitler’s watery blue eyes. Instinctively, I stood up.
“Young man,” said Hitler, “I owe you my life.” And before I could say anything, he was shaking my hand and smiling broadly. “But for your prompt action, that man would surely have shot me.” As he spoke, the Führer rose slightly on his toes, like a man for whom life suddenly had a new zest. “Yes, indeed. You saved my life. And judging from his behavior with the water glass, I think he had already failed to poison me, eh, Mr. President?”
Roosevelt nodded. “My deepest apologies to you, Herr Hitler,” he said, speaking German again. “It would appear you are right. That man meant to kill you, all right. For which I am deeply ashamed.”
Stalin was already adding his own apologies as host.
“Don’t mention it, gentlemen,” Hitler said, still holding me by the hand. “What is your name?” he asked me.
“Mayer, sir. Willard Mayer.”
Even as Hitler held my hand, I felt an understanding of what the Führer and I were: two men for whom the entire spectrum of moral values had no real meaning, who had no real need of the humanities and the immaterial world. Here was the obvious extension of everything that I, as a logical positivist, believed in. Here was a man without values. And I suddenly perceived the bankruptcy of all my own intellectual endeavors. The meaninglessness of all the meanings I had striven to find. This was the truth of Hitler and all rigid materialism: it had absolutely nothing to do with being human.
“Thank you,” said Hitler, squeezing my hand in his own. “Thank you.”
“That’s all right, sir,” I said, smiling thinly.
At last the Führer let go. It was Hopkins’s cue to suggest that this might be an appropriate opportunity to call a temporary halt to the proceedings. “I suggest that during our recess,” he said, “we examine those documents we have prepared supporting our respective negotiating positions. Willard?” He nodded at a file that lay on the table. “Would you hand that to the Führer, please?”
I nodded numbly, and handed the file over to Hitler.
The three delegations now moved toward three of the room’s four doors. It was only now that I saw how the room had been constructed so that four delegations might enter the room from four separate entrances and, presumably, four separate dachas inside the Russian embassy compound.
“Wait a minute,” said Hopkins, as the American delegation neared the door that led back the same way they had come. “I’ve still got the American position papers. What was it that you gave the Führer, Willard?”
“I don’t know. I think it must have been that Beketovka File,” I said.
“Then no harm done,” said Hopkins. “I expect Hitler’s seen it before. Still, it’s a lucky thing you didn’t give it to the Russians. Now that would have been embarrassing.”
1215 HOURS
HIMMLER WAS AMAZED that the peace talks still appeared to be on track. After the attempt on the Führer’s life, he had assumed Hitler would insist on returning to Germany immediately. And indeed, he could hardly have blamed him. But you never could tell how the Führer would react to an attempt on his life. In a way, of course, he had lived with the idea of assassination all his political life. As early as 1921, someone—Himmler had never found out who it was—had fired shots at Hitler in Munich during a rally at the Hofbräuhaus. Since then, there had been at least thirty other attempts, not including the trumped-up plots that the Gestapo dealt in. During a twelve-month period in 1933 and 1934 alone, there had been ten attempts on Hitler’s life. By any standard, the Führer was a man possessed of the most astonishing luck. Usually, once the shock and anger had disappeared, Hitler managed to see an escape from death as nothing short of miraculous. It was a sign of divine intervention, and after thirty or more attempts, Himmler was half-inclined to agree.
Surviving an attempt on his life was the only time Hitler ever talked about God with any real conviction or enthusiasm, and it always affected both his oratory and his self-belief. It was a vicious circle, too: the more attempts to assassinate him Hitler survived, the stronger became his certainty that God had marked him out to make Germany great. And having convinced himself that this was the case, he more easily persuaded others to think the same way.
In the middle of a difficult war, there was, understandably, less hysterical adoration of the Führer than once there had been. Himmler still remembered the feeling of shock and awe he had experienced at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, when Hitler had driven through the town in an open-top Mercedes. The faces of those thousands of women who had screamed Hitler’s name and reached out to try and touch him, as if he were the risen Christ incarnate—no other comparison served as well. Himmler had seen houses with shrines to the Führer. He had met schoolgirls who painted swastikas on their fingernails. There were even small towns and villages in Germany where the sick were encouraged to touch Hitler’s portrait in search of a cure. All of which only served to bolster Hitler’s sense that he was God’s elect. Still, it took an assassination attempt to give Hitler a lift—but usually only after a couple of days had elapsed and the guilty caught and punished, with maximum cruelty. On this particular occasion, however, Hitler returned to the villa on the grounds of the Russian embassy with his face shining and his eyes flashing, reassuring Himmler and the others in the German delegation that there was no need to be concerned about the future of the talks.
“God and Providence have made it impossible for anything to happen to me,” he told Himmler and von Ribbentrop, “until my historic mission is completed.”
The Führer retired to his bedroom “to rest and read these Allied position papers.” Himmler felt sufficiently reassured by Hitler’s show of optimism to order a bottle of champagne for himself and von Ribbentrop.
“Remarkable, is it not?” said Himmler, toasting the German foreign minister. “Who but the Führer could come through such an ordeal? To sit there for two hours and not drink any of that water. And then, having survived an attempt to poison him, to be saved from shooting by a Jew, of all people.” Himmler laughed out loud.
“Are you sure?” asked von Ribbentrop. “The translator is Jewish?”
“You may take it from me, Joachim. There’s not much I don’t know about Jews, and I can tell you that Mayer is an undeniably Jewish name. Besides, there is his rather obvious physiognomy. The dark hair and high cheekbones. The man is Jewish, all right. I ha
ven’t dared to tell the Führer.”
“Perhaps he already knows.”
“I rather think the actual assassin is a Pole, however. Or at least of Polish descent.”
Von Ribbentrop shrugged. “Perhaps he’s a Jew, too.”
“Yes, perhaps. John Pawlikowksi.” Himmler thought for a moment. “Is Molotov a Jew?”
“No,” said von Ribbentrop. “Merely married to one.”
Himmler laughed. “I bet that’s awkward for him. Stalin is openly anti-Semitic. I had no idea. Do you know, I heard him tell the Führer that the Jews were ‘middlemen, profiteers, and parasites.’”
“Yes, he and the Führer got on rather well, I thought. They see eye-to-eye on a great many things. For example, like the Führer, Stalin hates people with mixed loyalties. It’s why he thinks that Roosevelt is weak. Because of the powerful Jewish lobby in America.” Von Ribbentrop sipped some of his champagne with satisfaction. “And something else. He has the same low opinion of his generals that Hitler has.”
“That’s hardly surprising when you see the general he brought with him. Did you smell that man Vorishilov’s breath? My God, he must have had beer for breakfast. How did he ever come to be a field marshal?”
“I think he was the only one who wasn’t executed during Stalin’s last purge. He was much too mediocre to shoot. Thus his current elevated position in the Red Army. Incidentally, on the subject of shooting, I don’t know whether you noticed, but last night at the dinner with Stalin, every one of those Russian waiters was carrying a gun.”
“NKVD probably. Beria told me there are a few thousand of them in and around the embassy. Schellenberg’s team never stood a chance. It just makes me all the more glad I told Beria about them.”
“Have they all been captured?”
