THE LAST WEISS

by Rolf Richardson

  Felix was his usual bland self, bow tie at a jaunty angle and... was it just my imagination, or was his paunch in unusually good shape? There was little we could do if a few off-cuts of Daisy the cow vanished, but rabbits were a different matter. We had delivered one dozen bundles of fur – we expected one dozen prospective meals in return.

  Felix handed them over without a murmur; he might be annoying and unreliable, but didn’t make waves. For the next few days the Gasthof’s stew pot would be of prima quality.

  In the evenings, Irma and I continued our front-of-house work, while Siggy and Felix – when he felt like it – sweated away in the kitchen.

  During her pre-shift tobacco break, I tried to pump Irma about her latest meeting with Frunze. Had he said anything about Norway? Hadn’t said much at all, she replied. Just submitted to her fevered brow treatment. She seemed concerned for her lover.

  I did my best to avoid the Local Group Leader, which wasn’t difficult. Wallisch flitted, like a grey shadow, amongst his Party flock; always there, but never there. The officers working up at the castle continued to drift down to the gasthof for a drink, then dinner. In the midst of chaos and disaster, people still needed feeding and watering.

  My effective boss was Gregor Weiss, now under-employed as bürgermeister, but still regarded as the town’s senior citizen. Between us we made sure everything was in best possible shape for the coming winter. With his gammy leg, Gregor wasn’t very mobile, but that didn’t matter, he conducted an efficient orchestra from his podium at the gasthof family table. A good man.

  So it was with a slight twinge of surprise that I found myself one early evening excluded from the family table; rather brusquely, I thought, which was not Gregor’s usual style. He had visitors. People I’d not seen before. He seemed tense, worried.

  I was soon caught up in the evening rush and thought no more about it. But as we were clearing up at the end, I asked Irma who the visitors were.

  “One of them,” she replied in a conspiratorial whisper, “was Carl Friedrich Goerdeler.”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” I’d never heard of him.

  “Probably not,” she admitted. “He’s a politico from the past. Quite important once.”

  “And now?”

  “A has-been, like Gregor. Wanders around trying to bring back the good old days.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Nah. Harmless old codger. Bit of a prig, actually. Forget him.”

  Which we did. For once, Irma’s judgement was hopelessly off-key.

  CHAPTER 30

  July 20th started quite normally. As do most disaster days. It wasn’t until the uniforms started gathering for their pre-dinner drinks that I became conscious of an unusual buzz. An elderly colonel was sitting in a corner, ears glued to a wireless tuned to Deutschlandsender, their version of the BBC. Every few minutes someone would come up to see if there was anything to report; the answer remained a shake of the head.

  It was a hot and sultry day, so there was much discarding of jackets and ties. Beer flowed freely, keeping Irma and me more than usually busy.

  At 6.30 the colonel held up his hand. By now he was in shirt sleeves and braces. And by my count on his third stein of beer. At first no one took any notice, so he clapped his hands and yelled “Silence!” Three times. Everyone now at full attention. He turned up the volume. Full blast.

  Deutschlandsender was short and to the point. There had been an attempt on the Führer’s life. It had failed. The Führer was unhurt. More information would follow in due course.

  Pandemonium. I was too busy to gather what everyone was talking about, but I think we all had the same gut feeling: whatever had happened, this was one of those turning points. The sort of event which would forever be prefixed by one of two words: ‘before’ or ‘after’.

  We served more beer. Then dinner. At 9pm, just when the early birds would have been thinking of sloping off, came another announcement: The Führer would speak to the nation later.

  No guidance was given as to what constituted ‘later’. So everyone stayed put. Even the usual early birds. Theories were floated. Opinions aired – carefully, of course. Midnight came and went. A few gave up and went to bed. At last, at 1am, came the voice we all knew: hoarse; unmistakable.

  “My German comrades,” he began, “I speak so that you shall hear my voice... I am unhurt and well... a crime unparalleled in German history...”

  By his normal standards it was a short speech, barely two minutes, but its contents were momentous. He named the chief conspirator, Count Stauffenberg, who, we later learned, had already been shot. But that was just the start. As the Führer made clear with his final words:

  “We shall settle accounts with them (the conspirators) in the manner to which we National Socialists are accustomed.”

  Not a single German was in any doubt as to what this meant: a massive witch hunt.

  We drifted off to bed, stunned. Everyone was used to military defeats; these could be explained away as gallant Germans fighting heroically against evil outsiders. But now the enemy was within. In the bosom of the National Socialist party. People had to face a fact long obvious to anyone not besotted by Nazi propaganda. The Party was rotten, the state was rotten, the whole nation was rotten.

  There were two stark alternatives. Adopt survival mode, save what you could; or go down in a Wagnerian orgy of destruction. The Führer had already set out his stall: bloody götterdämmerung. Not only for himself, but also the German volk. There was little the wretched ‘volk’ could do about it. But there were a few Germans, men in authority, who might still be able to tip the balance in favour of sanity; not for the whole nation perhaps, but here and there, for the lucky few. Whether you survived the dying days of the Third Reich was going to be largely a matter of chance.

  CHAPTER 31

  We spent the next few days walking on eggshells. After the first furious arrests and executions, the vengeance machine took on a more measured tempo. Anyone remotely connected with the conspiracy, or even thought to be, was locked up. Most were not immediately executed, but left to stew in Gestapo cells, while the Party worked out how to obtain maximum effect from the inevitable show trials.

  We were beginning to relax, glad to be beyond the vortex of retribution, when a lorry groaned its way up the hill, through the mediaeval gate, and into the square. With the petrol situation now beyond critical, the sight of any powered vehicle, even a military one, was a rarity. So figures started appearing out of doorways. It was late afternoon; a quiet time. The weather had turned cooler, with a light drizzle.

  The lorry, a standard Mercedes L 3000, drew up outside the Gasthof zum Löwen. Out stepped the slender figure of Junior Assault Leader Bruch, this time without the gauleiter. Bruch was followed by two unknown officers, more senior in rank, wearing standard issue Gestapo raincoats, and caps with death’s heads insignia.

  “We want to speak to Bürgermeister Weiss,” said Bruch to no one in particular. I’d joined Siggy, Irma and a gaggle of curious onlookers. The other officers said nothing.

  None of us wanted to say anything either, to be the first to jerk the secret police into action.

  “Why do you want the bürgermeister?” asked Siggy, at last. It was a daft, even a reckless question, but she obviously felt someone had so break the impasse.

  “No concern of yours,” replied Bruch, glaring down at her from on high. “This is state business. Bürgermeister Weiss, if you please.”

  But words were no longer necessary. The two senior officers, tired of prevarication, were making their way into the gasthof. Bruch, momentarily nonplussed at the termination of his starring role, reasserted his authority with the demand that we stay put. We would have done so without any orders, paralysed by what we knew was about to happen. Like watching an accident in slow motion.

  Progress was indeed painfully slow, because it must have been a good five minutes before the two Gestapo reappeared. Between them, relying heavily on his stick,
came Bürgermeister Gregor Weiss, as upright as his age and condition would allow. A gentleman of the old school.

  “My thanks for all you have done for us, dear Siggy,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “My son would be proud of you.”

  “My son died for the Fatherland,” he said, witheringly to his keepers. They remained stony faced. Joining the Gestapo was widely seen as a means of avoiding conscription: they were not only thugs, but cowards.

  “Come on, haven’t got all day.” One of them tried to hurry him along.

  “I think you may safely let out my room,” he said to Siggy. “Local Group Leader Wallisch may be interested.”

  He was unable to say more, because they were now faced with the technical problem of getting a man with one leg into the back of the lorry. Mission finally accomplished, the driver revved the engine and graunched the wheel round. The death’s head pennant on the bonnet swept past me as they headed down the hill and back in the direction of the city.

  “Why...?” I lamented, looking around wildly for Siggy, but she had already vanished. Back into the gasthof.

  “I was afraid of this.” It was Irma who answered. Tears were streaming down her cheeks; the first time I’d seen her cry.

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “Must’ve been Goerdeler.”

  “That... that politico who visited Gregor?”

  Irma nodded. “I’ve been hearing rumours... didn’t want to believe them. But looks like they’re true, that Goerdeler was involved in the plot and has been arrested. And is now giving the Gestapo all the names he can think of to save his own skin.”

  “But Gregor amongst the plotters? That’s absurd.”

  “Why? He never joined the Party. Even though they wanted him to. And what’s that saying... who’s not for me is against me.”

  “So you think Goerdeler came here to recruit Gregor?”

  Irma sniffed; wiped her nose with a handkerchief. “Does it matter? The Party doesn’t need reasons. Only sacrifices. Examples to the rest of us in blood. Trying to kill the Führer means buckets of blood – believe me.”

  We stood there a few moments longer. Getting soaked, the drizzle now a steady downpour. No one seemed to notice. Eventually, we drifted off, each to our own.

  It was still supposedly summer: August. But the year, like the Reich, was headed inexorably towards winter. Although the seasons would eventually return to spring and warmth, Germany seemed destined for everlasting ice.

  I should have been delighted that the Nazi fat cats were now fighting amongst themselves. A sure sign the end was in sight. All our sacrifices and hardships would soon end in victory. Instead, I felt utterly miserable, for the ordinary little people of our town who now faced catastrophe.

  I was very confused Norwegian airman.

  CHAPTER 32

  SEPTEMBER 1944 , GERMANY

  The weeks after the 20th July plot passed in a daze. There was no news of Gregor Weiss, beyond the fact that he was awaiting trial by the People’s Court. This had been set up under Ronald Freisler to give an appearance of legality to what were, in effect, summary executions. The Gestapo had managed to find many thousands of victims to feed Hitler’s thirst for revenge, so President Freisler had his work cut out. Our bürgermeister had to wait his turn.

  Gregor’s room at the gasthof had been taken over by Local Group Leader Gustav Wallisch, together with his lady wife, known simply as Frau Wallisch, as if she had no other names. Tall, well-built and stately, with a penchant for hats from the 1920s, she was physically an unlikely mate for the Local Group Leader, but temperamentally they were well suited, she being as stiff and unemotional as her husband.

  What Frau Wallisch did with herself was a mystery. Knitting and crochet work were best guesses. She would appear promptly at meal times and take a short stroll if the weather was clement. That was the sum of our knowledge. No gossip, no socialising with the rest of the guests. If there were any Wallisch children she kept them well hidden.

  The Local Group Leader had also taken over Gregor’s jobs. I saw him mainly in connection with the rabbit programme, where new litters were being reported on an almost daily basis. All this fresh produce had to be managed: more hutches constructed by Felix; youngsters sexed and allocated; surplus bucks slaughtered.

  Political views aside, I had to admire Wallisch, who was now doing the work of three men – Willi Weiss, Gregor Weiss and his own. All without apparent effort.

  Wallisch was good at delegating, putting Fräulein Schwarz in charge of the fruit department. No longer hiding behind the curtains of her dolls house, the little fräulein could be seen tripping up and down the valley, knocking on doors, badgering everyone in her best schoolmarm manner to go out and strip the hedgerows of anything edible. Her dolls must have felt abandoned.

  The winter survival programme was doing well. To all outward appearances we had settled back into the old routine. But somehow the town had lost its soul. It wasn’t just the arrest of our respected bürgermeister, although that was bad enough. The 20th July plot had exerted an awful and irreversible change. People no longer cracked jokes. Even Irma had lost her zest for life.

  The one I felt most sorry for was Siggy, and not only because she was the one I was closest to. Husband killed, young son to protect, gasthof to run, now father-in-law arrested. A catalogue of disasters and responsibilities to test the toughest. I was thankful she knew nothing about what could turn out to be the biggest disaster of all: the truth about Willi Weiss.

  Although Willi had been gone three months, I could never dismiss him from my mind. I’d buried the body so far into the forest no one was ever likely to find it. I doubted whether even I could find it. Even so, his ghost continued to give me sleepless nights; worse still, his disappearance was obviously still preying on Wallisch’s mind. The Local Group Leader was now safely installed in the gasthof, so no longer needed Willi’s old room. Nevertheless, he continued to probe. Not every day, to be sure, he had work to do and little time to spare. But unsolved mysteries hurt his professional pride, so whenever the opportunity arose he would be back on the trail; sniffing around, asking questions. Frau Sperrle, Fräulein Schwarz, Irma, Siggy, me – anyone who might let slip a clue. I’d been holding my breath for three months now, a long time without coming up for air.

  CHAPTER 33

  Gauleiter Frunze’s third visit, like his second, was low-key. No personal assistant in the lofty shape of the Junior Assault Leader. That was only to be expected. Bruch was now too busy apprehending enemies of the state. The gauleiter turned up on his own, at the wheel of the Party kübelwagen; in late afternoon, so too late for any jaunt up the valley. This was business.

  Siggy again offered him the use of her room, which he accepted. I was about to carry his small overnight bag up when he stopped me.

  “Irma around?” he asked.

  “Still at the pharmacy,” replied Siggy. “Should be here any minute.”

  “Get her over here; soon as you can.”

  And to me, “When you’ve dumped my stuff, back in the lounge.” Unusually brusque for Frunze.

  I did as he asked, spent a couple of minutes tidying up some female bits and pieces, then back downstairs.

  It was the quiet time of day, so there was only the gauleiter. He had raided the bar again. Four small glasses and a bottle of...? I was about to ask, when the girls appeared. Sat down.

  “Asbach Uralt,” said Frunze, musingly, reading from the bottle label. A famous German brandy. “Nineteen thirty-six. Eight years old. Ripe to drink.”

  “And expensive,” said Siggy. But not accusingly. She was beginning to realise what this was about.

  Frunze carefully poured four large measures. Raised his glass. And said, “To the memory of Bürgermeister Gregor Weiss...”

  Irma let out a sob. Siggy crossed her hands on the table, then buried her head in them.

  “....Who was executed this morning for crimes against the state.”

  Frunze and I managed a s
ip. Just. Although we’d been expecting it, confirmation that the deed was done hit us hard. Only later did an extraordinary fact dawn on me. Here was a gauleiter, a leading Nazi, celebrating the life of someone who had just been topped for treason.

  When the girls had overcome their tears sufficiently to also drink to Gregor’s memory, Frunze said, “Life must go on. Work to do. But when we’re finished tonight I want a chat with Per here. Alone.”

  Surprise all round. So he explained: “I’ve a proposition for him. A difficult decision. Which will probably take time. So when you ladies are finished, off to bed.”

  “Will you let us in on the secret?” asked Irma.

  “Of course. But the details will be depend on our friend here. So don’t wait up. We’ll join you when we’re done.”

  With that, Irma and Siggy had to be satisfied. As we drifted off to prepare for the evening’s rush, I was struck by the unreality of it. Here were two couples: Richard, a top Nazi with a wife and children, sharing a bed with a married but husbandless woman, while up in the attic a young widow was doing the same with a foreigner, who not long before had been trying to bomb her. The domestic convolutions of war.

  CHAPTER 34

  News of the bürgermeister’s fate soon spread through the town, making for a sombre evening, and an early shut-down. The cuckoo clock in the corner had yet to strike midnight when the last guest tramped miserably to bed. The gauleiter fetched two glasses and a bottle of wine from the bar, beckoned me over, and sat down at the family table.

  “Bet you’re wondering what this is all about?” he began.

  “You could say that.”

  He poured us each a glass and continued: “Before I come to the meat of my proposal, you’ll need some background. To understand the current situation and my concerns for the future. This may take a while.”