A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  Clutching the pistol, I crept back to the staff car and followed the convoy toward the prison, perhaps also to my death, an irony not lost on me. Hitler’s web had snared me as surely as it had those young men.

  5

  In the two-hour drive to the prison, I had plenty of time to formulate a plan, but I came up with nothing. I had to see Röhm or find Mouse, assuming that either was still alive. If not, well, I did not let myself think about that. There would be plenty of time to fall into despair later.

  I pulled off the road and rolled to a stop far from the convoy and safely behind a stand of trees. A strip of parched grass separated me from the prison. The cars in the Nazi convoy had halted at the gate. I climbed out to see better, then took out the field glasses. Black-uniformed SS men unloaded the SA brownshirts. Slouched down so that only the field glasses stuck above the doorframe, I recognized Röhm marching, strong and fast, leading his boys to their fate. SS jeers drifted toward me, but the SA paid them no mind.

  It would take hours to process them. I only hoped that the Nazis would be thorough enough to give Röhm a few more hours to live, assuming they did not inconvenience themselves with the details of a trial. That could drag out for weeks. Remembering the men on the tables in the breakfast room, I suspected that they would not bother with a trial.

  I slipped behind a tree when Hitler’s staff car roared past and away from the prison. He had not gone inside. Röhm had probably seen his old friend for the last time.

  I shook my head. The politics, however fascinating, did not concern me. I had not come to save or bury Röhm, only to get Anton back. And for that I needed to know what tools I had.

  When I opened Röhm’s portfolio, the rich smell of expensive leather wafted out. On top lay paperwork for a marriage license for Ernst Röhm and Hannah Vogel filled out and ready to sign. Underneath that was the paperwork to change my name to Hannah Röhm after the wedding. I put those papers on the seat and looked in the portfolio again. It also contained three passports, all newly issued. One for Hannah Vogel, one for Anton Röhm, one for Ernst Röhm. Thorough. Maybe if he had spent more time placating Hitler and less time making my life difficult, he would not be in prison.

  I kept out the Hannah Vogel passport for access to the prison. I did not want my Swiss identity to be linked to Röhm’s. I locked the paperwork and other passports in the glove box with the Luger. It would not do to be found with Röhm’s passport or a gun if I was searched in prison. They would have to stay here while I went inside, hopefully to see Röhm.

  I checked every centimeter of the automobile, from the trunk to the front seat, finding only a bundle of tools, the wedding dress, and a packet of hard candies embossed with swastikas. I pictured Anton popping them into his mouth, sucking on the Nazi symbol encased in sugar. Repulsed, I dropped the candies onto the floor.

  Before moving my suitcase to the trunk, I removed my satchel from it, then applied lipstick and combed my hair. From my days as a crime reporter in Berlin, I knew that it always helped to look attractive when visiting prison. I locked the doors and tucked the keys into my satchel with my Hannah Vogel passport.

  Now that I had a real identity, all that remained was concocting a good story. Before his death, my brother and I had loved spinning wild tales to embarrass our sister, but back then only he had the nerve to put our stories into action. I had been forced to acquire a great deal more nerve since his death. I hoped it would be enough to bluff my way into prison. And back out.

  My shoes wobbled on the gravel. The sun was high in the sky, and heat shimmered off the pavement near the prison. Another scalding day.

  I followed the SS men’s route to the guardroom. Gulping a deep breath of outside air, in spite of the twinge from my rib, I opened the wooden door.

  “Papers,” a prison guard said gruffly. His gray uniform marked him as a longtime guard, instead of an SS man.

  I handed him my Hannah Vogel passport. “Hannah Vogel.” It was the first time I had used my real name in three years, and it felt as false as my other identities. “Here to see Ernst Röhm.”

  The guard blinked, looking surprised. Röhm had been delivered only minutes before. The guard must wonder how I knew he was at Stadelheim.

  “I heard that he is here, along with a number of his men.” I gave up no details, but made it harder for him to deny it. It would be easier for him to confirm something he thought I already knew than make up a lie. I hoped.

  “He’s not allowed visitors. None of them are.” I put his age at sixty, old enough to be the father, or the grandfather, of many of those arrested. How did he feel about this?

  A quick volley of shots cut through the air. We both jumped. They had already reached the firing squad stage. My mouth went dry. “How often?”

  “Executions are staged every twenty minutes,” he said slowly, as if uncertain whether he was allowed to tell me, but used to answering direct questions. “You should leave.”

  “I am here on behalf of his mother, Em-Emilie Röhm,” I stuttered, glad that I had researched Röhm enough to know. “She wishes me to pass on her love before it is too late.”

  Emotions ran across his face. He probably had children of his own, and he must have once had a mother.

  “No visitors. Not yet.”

  “Will he be alive later?” I twisted my hands, desperate to question Röhm before he was executed. “Or should I tell his mother that she will never have a chance to say good-bye? Wouldn’t your own mother want to tell you that she loved you one last time?”

  Who could deny a mother her last wishes?

  Not the guard. His face sagged, and I could tell he was thinking of his own mother, or his own children.

  “I’ll call someone.” He leaned his head through the inner door and yelled. Minutes later a younger guard appeared. “Take over for a few,” my guard said. “Visitor.”

  The young guard raised his eyebrows. I had to be the first visitor here for these prisoners.

  “Follow me,” the old guard said. “I can give you fifteen minutes.”

  “Frau Röhm will thank you.”

  He grunted. He knew as well as I that no mother would thank a man implicated in the death of her son.

  We shuffled down the long corridor, walls painted gunmetal gray for a little more than a meter and a half, about as high as the top of my head. Beyond that they were a lighter gray. Humid air pressed in, rank with the smell of unwashed bodies and fear. I breathed through my mouth.

  We passed a courtyard in the middle. The view through the barred window showed beaten earth. A line of eight bloody streaks against one wall showed where the last round of men had been executed. My guard strode by without looking. Nauseated, I hurried along on his heels.

  When we reached a room near the courtyard, he said, “You have five minutes.”

  “You said fifteen.”

  “It took us over five minutes to walk here.” He held up five fingers swollen with arthritis. “Plus five to walk back. I must be back at my post on time.”

  I read the number painted over Röhm’s door. Cell 474.

  “Do you need an escort?” he asked, worried for my safety or perhaps about his rules, here in the prison where they had just illegally executed eight men. I shook my head.

  The giant metal key screeched in the lock as he opened the door. I stepped into a wall of oven-hot air. The door clanged shut behind me.

  Röhm stopped pacing midstep. Even in this heat, every button on his tunic remained closed. He would not shed his uniform for reasons of personal comfort.

  “Ready for me?” he snarled, turning toward me, face pink from the heat.

  I held up my hands. “It is I. Hannah.”

  He nodded and stepped back, shoulders relaxing. “How many of my men have they executed?”

  I did not lie to spare him. “I heard one set of shots. Eight men per round, I think.”

  He winced. “It’s over then.”

  “Tell me where Anton is. Or do you think they won’
t kill your son?”

  “What could you do?”

  “Get him to safety.”

  “And then? Raise him as an enemy of the Fatherland?”

  “Are you less of an enemy?”

  He hung his head over his barrel chest. When he raised it again, his eyes shone with unfamiliar tears.

  “They are loyal to Hitler, you know,” he said in a quiet voice. “As am I.”

  “I believe you. But we have little time.”

  “How did you get in here?” Sweat dribbled down his face.

  “I said I represented your mother.” I saw no reason to lie.

  “You will tell her that I love her. That my last thoughts were for her. And return the dress.”

  “Is Anton with her?”

  The door swung open, and in walked Hans Frank, Minister of Justice for Bavaria and Hitler’s personal lawyer. I recognized him from newspaper photographs. He was the oily man who helped to finance the Nazi party in the early days through lawsuits against their opponents. Dark hair was slicked back from his receding hairline, and his soft chin quivered in surprise at seeing me. I was no more happy to see him.

  Röhm stepped forward and shook his hand. Military manners ever present, he introduced me to Frank. “This is Fräulein Vogel, my fiancée. Fräulein Vogel, Minister Frank.”

  Hans Frank captured my hand in his own clammy one. “Delighted to meet you,” he mumbled, without meeting my eyes. “It is late for that kind of charade, Captain Röhm.”

  He used Röhm’s military rank from the army, not the one assigned by the Nazis.

  My guard peeked in behind Frank’s shoulder and beckoned. I ignored him.

  “Ernst.” I used his first name for the first time ever. It was my brother’s name, and it bothered me to use it for this ruthless Nazi. “Tell me what I need, and I will go. You will rest easier.”

  Röhm laughed. “Should I tell you then that I love you? Isn’t that what women wish to hear on their last visit?”

  What a lovely game he played, still hoping to cast doubt on his homosexuality, something Hitler was certain to use as a justification for killing him. But a dangerous game for me. “I—”

  My guard stormed into the room and grabbed my arm tightly enough to leave bruises. “Please.” I was on the verge of tears and did not care who knew.

  “Give my love to my mother,” Röhm said. “She will be grateful, and perhaps you will be as well.”

  “But—” I glanced at Minister Frank. I could not finish my sentence in front of him. My eyes went back to Röhm.

  He held my gaze for a second and gave a small nod. It was all the confirmation I would receive. The guard yanked me out of the cell.

  I stumbled down the corridor. We stopped next to a group of eight brown-shirted young men looking into the courtyard where the firing squads had shot the last group. My guard said something in a low voice to one of the two men guarding them.

  “Take off your shirts!” the first guard bellowed.

  The eight young men unbuttoned their shirts and removed them. Most folded them and hung them over their forearms, as if at a tailor’s fitting. The first guard gathered them up. The boys would not be wearing them again.

  The second guard leaned across and used a charcoal pencil to sketch a black circle around the left nipple of the first young man. He proceeded down the line, circling each one’s left breast to mark the heart. Unable to stop myself, I put my palms to my cheeks. Targets. He was drawing targets on them for the firing squad.

  One boy sobbed off to the side, praying. The others stared straight ahead—terrified, but trying to be brave. They looked about the same age my brother Ernst had been when he died by violence at the hands of a Nazi. Twenty.

  I stared at their pale young bodies. Most were too young to have chest hair. A few did not need to shave. They folded their arms across their chests self-consciously. For some I might have been the first woman to see them half-naked since they were children.

  My guard remembered me and dragged me away.

  We reached the guardroom door when another volley of shots sounded. I dropped to my knees and vomited.

  They were only boys.

  Still on my knees, I rested my head against the cold stone wall. My empty stomach heaved. Pain from my rib was so excruciating, I thought I would lose consciousness and collapse on the floor in my own mess.

  The guard hauled me up with one hand.

  “I’ll clean it up,” he said. “Get the hell out of here.”

  He thrust me through the door and into the hot sun. I sat on the front steps and sobbed. It did no good to remind myself that these boys had helped bring Hitler to power. That they were part of a group that savagely beat Communists and Jews in the street. Eight boys, gone. Eight mothers to weep.

  I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief and took a shuddering breath.

  Hans Frank appeared behind me. He stopped on the first step and put on his hat.

  I jumped to my feet and tripped, barely catching myself with a hand against the wall.

  “Be more careful, Fräulein Vogel,” Hans Frank said. Lovely. He remembered my name. I wondered what else Röhm had said about me after I left the cell.

  “Good advice in these times, Minister.” I studied his face, but he gave nothing away.

  “Good advice in any times.”

  “Did he have other messages for me?”

  He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his brow. “He said that all revolutions devour their own children.”

  6

  I needed to find Röhm’s mother. Besides Mouse, she was my only link to Anton. And who knew where Mouse was, if he even lived.

  Afternoon sun beat down as I hurried across the parking lot and behind the trees to Röhm’s Mercedes. He would not ride in it again. One never knows what will outlast one in life.

  I glanced around the empty parking lot before opening the door. No one seemed to be watching as I slid onto the hot leather seat. When I started the engine, I winced at the noise. Like everything about Röhm, it would not be quiet and demure, no matter the consequences. Driving as slowly and quietly as I could manage, I pulled onto the street.

  The steering wheel burned my palm so I drove with the tips of my fingers, wishing that the chauffeur had left a pair of driving gloves. Had he been killed? Likely. The SS were killing everyone close to Röhm. Was his mother safe? Was I? Was Anton? I stepped on the accelerator.

  If my brother had managed to avoid being sent to a camp, his relationship with Röhm would probably have put him in front of a firing squad with those other young men. There were many reasons to be murdered in the Third Reich.

  Near the prison I had to stop at a fuel depot. When I pulled to the pump, a young man ran out.

  “Petrol?” He almost fell in his haste. About twenty, the same age as the boys executed. “Fräulein?”

  “I am sorry. My mind was elsewhere.” At Stadelheim Prison.

  “Do you need petrol?” he asked again, looking worried.

  “Petrol and a map of Munich.”

  “Of course.” He pumped the petrol, running his fingers along the fender as if it belonged to a beautiful girl he could only dream of touching. “You have a swell car. It’s a government car, isn’t it? I’ve never seen one here without a chauffeur. You are lucky to get to drive it. Those cars cost more than I make in five years. How does it accelerate?”

  I hesitated. It was difficult to talk about something as trivial as an automobile. “The handling is impeccable.”

  “I bet you must be married to a famous party leader.”

  I jerked my head to indicate the wedding dress on the backseat. “Almost married.”

  His eyes widened, and his freckled face broke into a gap-toothed grin. “Are you going to your wedding in this car? I could wash it for you. It’s a little dusty. Party leaders take great care of their cars. They are always so clean, and you don’t want to be in a dirty car on your wedding day.”

  “Just petrol and the map
. The wedding has been postponed.” Indefinitely.

  He filled my tank and brought out a map. “This one comes from the petrol company. It has most streets, but I can help you too if you give me a street name. I’m pretty familiar with Munich. My father drives a taxi. Where are you going?”

  “I can sort it out.” I had no intention of telling anyone my destination.

  “Whatever you say, Fräulein.” He turned away so quickly that I almost missed the hurt in his eyes. No one could help me without putting us both into danger, even someone as innocent-seeming as a fuel depot attendant who loved cars. If the Nazis were feeling thorough, they would wipe out everyone linked to Röhm, most especially his purported fiancée. I had to be careful about whom I trusted. Bad enough that I drove his Mercedes. I did not need to tell my destination.

  While the attendant washed my windows and checked the oil and fluids, I studied my new map. I knew someone who might help me find Röhm’s mother’s address, if he still lived.

  “You’re all full up on everything. Usually something is low, but your chauffeur must be the careful type.”

  “He was.” I regretted the use of past tense. Perhaps he was still alive. If he had aligned himself with the forces who killed Röhm, he could be driving this automobile as soon as someone recaptured it from me. Who knew where anyone’s loyalty lay?

  “Drive safe.” The attendant waved.

  I waved back, checked the map one more time, and pulled into the street, repeating the directions in my head, anxious not to become lost in Munich, the cradle of National Socialism, in the staff car of one of the most prominent and, by now, newly murdered National Socialists.

  As I cruised through the broad streets, I rolled down the windows so that the breeze cooled my face. Heads turned to follow my progress, eyes full of fear. Even though I had removed the swastika banner, everyone recognized it as a Nazi staff car. Mercedes made only a handful of this model. I must get rid of it soon, but for now I needed to move around as quickly as possible.

  Tall white university buildings with red-tiled roofs came into view. Archways invited me to slip into its cool halls and mingle with the students. Girls with hair shorter than what was fashionable in South America hugged books to their chests. Their skirts fluttered innocently in the breeze. But many boys walking next to them wore the brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth. I drove on.