HHhH

by Laurent Binet

  98

  Hitler has decided to invade Britain. For a landing on the English coastline to succeed, Germany must first control the skies. Yet, in spite of Göring’s promises, the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes are still flying over the Channel. Day after day, night after night, the heroic British pilots repulse the attacks of the German bombers and fighters. Operation Sea Lion, planned for September 11, 1940, is postponed first until the fourteenth, and then until the seventeenth. But on September 17, a Kriegsmarine report states: “The enemy air force is still not beaten, in any way. In fact, it is increasingly active. On the whole, atmospheric conditions do not allow us to hope for a period of calm.” So the Führer decides to delay Sea Lion indefinitely.

  That same day, however, Heydrich—told by Göring to organize repression and purification in the immediate aftermath of the invasion—gives orders to one of his colleagues, Standartenführer Franck Six, former head of economics at the University of Berlin, now redeployed in the SD. This is the man Heydrich has chosen to settle in London and to command the specially formed Einsatzgruppen: six small units to be based in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh—or Glasgow, if the Forth Bridge is destroyed before then. “Your task,” Heydrich tells him, “is to fight, by any means necessary, all opposition groups, organizations, and institutions.” In concrete terms, the work of these Einsatzgruppen will be as it was in Poland, and as it will later be in Russia: they are death squads, ordered to exterminate everything in their path.

  But at this point the mission is complicated by the Sonderfahndungliste GB, the special search list for Great Britain better known as the Black Book. It is a list of some 2,300 people to be found, arrested, and delivered to the Gestapo as quickly as possible. At the head of the list, unsurprisingly, is Churchill. Among the other politicians, British and foreign, are Beneš and Masaryk, representatives of the Czech government-in-exile. So far, so logical. But the list also contains the names of writers such as H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and Rebecca West. Freud is there, despite having died in 1939. And Baden-Powell, too, the founder of the Scout movement. In retrospect, the execution of the young Scouts in Poland is more than an excess of zeal: it’s a mistake because the Scouts are considered by the German secret services to be among the best potential sources of information. This is, altogether, a fairly weird collection of names. Apparently it was drawn up not by Heydrich but by Schellenberg. If the work seems rather botched, that might be due to the fact that Schellenberg was very busy preparing the attempted kidnapping of the Duke of Windsor in Lisbon.

  So the list is rather comical, the duke’s kidnapping will fail, the Luftwaffe will lose the Battle of Britain, and Operation Sea Lion will never be launched. A few stray stones in the garden of German efficiency.

  99

  I’m still not sure about the veracity of all the Heydrich anecdotes I’m collecting, but this one is particularly unreliable: the witness and protagonist of the scene I’m about to describe isn’t even certain himself about what happened to him. Schellenberg is Heydrich’s right-hand man in the SD. He is a fierce, unscrupulous bureaucrat, but also a brilliant, cultivated, elegant young man whom Heydrich sometimes invites not only on regular trips to brothels but to spend evenings with himself and Lina, at the theater or the opera. So he counts almost as a close friend of the couple. One day when Heydrich has a meeting out of town, Lina calls Schellenberg to suggest they take a stroll around a lake. They drink coffee, talk of literature and music. That’s as much as I know. Four days later, after work, Heydrich takes Schellenberg and “Gestapo” Müller for a night on the town. The evening begins in a chic restaurant on Alexanderplatz. Müller pours the drinks. The atmosphere is relaxed, everything seems normal. Then Müller says to Schellenberg: “So, did you have a good time the other day?” Schellenberg understands immediately. Heydrich, white-faced, says nothing. “Do you wish to be informed of what happened on the outing?” Schellenberg asks him, speaking like a bureaucrat almost in spite of himself. And suddenly the evening plunges into strangeness. Heydrich hisses: “You have just drunk poison. It will kill you within six hours. If you tell me the whole, absolute truth, I will give you the antidote. But I want the truth.” Schellenberg’s heartbeat races. He starts to describe the afternoon while trying to keep his voice from trembling. Müller interrupts him: “After the coffee, you went for a walk with the boss’s wife. Why are you hiding this? You do understand that you were being watched, don’t you?” But if Heydrich already knew everything, what would be the point of this drama? Schellenberg confesses to a fifteen-minute walk and gives an account of the subjects touched upon during their conversation. Heydrich remains pensive for a long time. Then he delivers his verdict: “All right, I suppose I must believe you. But give me your word of honor that you will never do anything like this again.” Schellenberg, sensing that the greatest danger is over, manages to conquer his fear and to reply in an aggressive voice that he will give his word after drinking the antidote because an oath extorted in such circumstances would be worthless. He even dares to ask: “As a former naval officer, would you consider it honorable to proceed in any other way?” Bearing in mind how Heydrich’s naval career ended, you have to admit that Schellenberg has balls. Heydrich stares at Schellenberg. Then he pours him a dry martini. “Perhaps I was imagining it,” Schellenberg writes in his memoirs, “but it seemed to taste more bitter than normal.” He drinks, apologizes, gives his word of honor, and the evening begins again.

  100

  During one of his many brothel visits, Heydrich has an inspired idea: open his own.

  His closest collaborators—Schellenberg, Nebe, and Naujocks—are given the task of carrying out this venture. Schellenberg finds a house in a chic district of suburban Berlin. Nebe, who has worked for years in fashionable society, recruits the girls. And Naujocks takes care of fitting out the premises: each room bristles with microphones and cameras. They’re behind paintings, inside lamps, under armchairs, on top of wardrobes. A listening post is installed in the cellar.

  The idea is brilliant in its simplicity: instead of going out to spy on people in their homes, get them to come to you. So it has to be a high-class brothel to attract a prestigious clientele.

  When all is ready, Kitty’s Salon opens its doors and, thanks to word of mouth, is soon famous in diplomatic circles. The bugs work twenty-four hours a day. The cameras are useful for blackmailing clients.

  Kitty, the boss, is an ambitious madam from Vienna: distinguished, competent, and devoted to her work. She loves being able to boast about her famous clients. The visit of Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister and Mussolini’s son-in-law, drives her mad with happiness. I suppose there is also a fascinating book to be written about her.

  Quite quickly, Heydrich starts giving visits of inspection. He turns up late, usually drunk, and goes upstairs with one of the girls.

  One morning, Naujocks happens upon a recording of his boss. Out of curiosity he listens—I don’t know if there was a film—and, having had a good chuckle, prudently decides to erase the recording. I don’t have the details, but evidently Heydrich’s performance is laughable.

  101

  Naujocks stands in Heydrich’s office—he has not been invited to sit down—beneath an enormous chandelier whose point hangs ominously over his head like the sword of Damocles. His fate, he knows, hangs by a thread this morning. Heydrich sits before the vast wall tapestry embroidered with a gigantic eagle clasping a swastika. He bangs his fist on the solid wood table and the impact makes the photo of his wife and children jump.

  “How the devil could you decide to record my visit to Kitty’s Salon last night?”

  Even if he’d already guessed the reason for this morning’s summons, Naujocks turns pale.

  “Record?”

  “Yes. Don’t deny it!”

  Naujocks makes a quick calculation: Heydrich has no material proof, because he took care to erase the tape. So he adopts what seems to him the most
profitable strategy. Knowing his boss as he does, however, he is aware that he’s risking his life.

  “But I do deny it! I don’t even know which room you were in! Nobody told me!”

  There follows a long, unnerving silence.

  “You’re lying! Either that or you’re getting careless.”

  Naujocks wonders which of these hypotheses is, in his boss’s eyes, the most unforgivable. In a calmer and thus more disturbing voice, Heydrich begins to speak again:

  “You should have known where I was. It’s part of your job. It is also your duty to switch off the microphones and tape recorders when I’m there. You didn’t do that last night. If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again. Leave.”

  Naujocks—the jack of all trades who, at Gleiwitz, started the war—is sidelined. It is thanks only to his remarkable survival instinct that he is not simply liquidated. After this regrettable incident, he will spend most of his time trying to keep his head down. In the end, this is not a very high price to pay for fucking with Heydrich: his boss, Himmler’s right-hand man, the SS number two, supreme leader of the RSHA, master of the SD and the Gestapo. Heydrich, the Blond Beast, who, through his ferocity but also through his sexual performances, is doubly deserving of his nickname. Or not, as Naujocks must snigger to himself in those moments of calm between the surges of fear.

  102

  The dialogue in the preceding chapter is the perfect example of the difficulties I’m facing. Certainly Flaubert didn’t have the same problems with Salammbô, because nobody recorded the conversations of Hamilcar, father of Hannibal. But when I make Heydrich say: “If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again,” all I am doing is repeating the words as reported by Naujocks himself. You could hardly hope for a better witness, for reporting a phrase, than the only other person in the room, who heard it and to whom it was addressed. That said, I doubt whether Heydrich really formulated his threat in that way. It’s not his style. What we have here is Naujocks recalling a phrase years after the event, which is rewritten by whoever’s taking down his dictation, and then again by the translator. But Heydrich, the most dangerous man in the Reich, saying, “If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again”… well, it’s a bit lame. It is surely much more likely that Heydrich—a coarse man on a power trip, and angry too—said something along the lines of: “You want to fuck with me? Watch it, I’ll rip your balls off!” But what is my opinion worth compared with an eyewitness account?

  If it were up to me, I’d write:

  “Tell me, Naujocks, where did I spend the night?”

  “I beg your pardon, General?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Well… I don’t know, General.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, General.”

  “You don’t know that I was at Kitty’s?”

  “…”

  “What have you done with the recording?”

  “I don’t understand, General.”

  “Stop fucking with me! I want to know if you kept the recording!”

  “General… I didn’t know that you were there!… Nobody warned me! Of course, I destroyed the recording as soon as I recognized you… I mean, as soon as I recognized your voice!…”

  “Stop bullshitting, Naujocks! You’re paid to know everything, and especially where I am, because I’m the one who pays you! The instant I take a room at Kitty’s, you switch off the microphones! The next time you try to fuck with me, I’ll send you to Dachau, where they’ll hang you up by the balls! Am I making myself clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, General.”

  “Now fuck off!”

  That would, I think, be a bit livelier and more realistic, and probably closer to the truth. But it’s impossible to know for sure. Heydrich could be foulmouthed, but he also knew how to play the icy bureaucrat when the need arose. So, all in all, between Naujocks’s version, however corrupted, and mine, it is undoubtedly better to choose that of Naujocks. But I still think Heydrich would have wanted to rip his balls off.

  103

  From one of the high windows in the north tower of Wewelsburg Castle, Heydrich contemplates the plain of Westphalia. In the middle of the forest, he can just make out the huts and the barbed-wire fences of Germany’s smallest concentration camp. But his gaze is probably focused on the parade ground, where the troops of his Einsatzgruppen are being drilled. Operation Barbarossa will be launched within a week. Within two, these men will be in Byelorussia, in Ukraine, in Lithuania, and will be seeing action. They’ve been promised that they’ll be home again by Christmas, once their job is done. In reality, Heydrich has no idea how long this war will last. Within the Party and the army, everyone who knows about the operation is highly optimistic. The Red Army’s performances on the battlefield—mediocre in Poland, frankly rubbish in Finland—lead the Nazis to believe that the still-invincible Wehrmacht can achieve a rapid victory. Based on what he’s seen in the SD reports, however, Heydrich is more circumspect. The enemy’s forces—the number of their tanks, for example, or of their reserve divisions—seem to him to have been dangerously underestimated. But the high command of the armed forces has its own information service, the Abwehr, and it has chosen to ignore Heydrich’s warnings and to put its faith instead in the more encouraging conclusions of Admiral Canaris, Heydrich’s former boss. Heydrich, whose expulsion from the navy remains an unhealed wound, must be choking with rage. Hitler has declared: “The beginning of a war is always like opening a door onto a darkened room. You never know what’s hiding in there.” Implicitly, it is admitted that the SD’s warnings might not be baseless. But the decision to attack the Soviet Union has been taken, all the same. Heydrich watches with concern as the clouds gather over the plain below.

  Behind him, he hears the voice of Himmler talking to his generals.

  For Himmler, the SS is an order of knights. He considers himself a descendant of Henry the Fowler, the Saxon king who, by repelling the Magyars in the tenth century, laid the foundations of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, and who then spent most of his reign exterminating Slavs. With his claims to such a lineage, the Reichsführer needed a castle. When he found this one, it was a ruin. He had to bring four thousand prisoners from Sachsenhausen, nearly a third of whom died during the renovations. Now, however, it towers imperiously over the Alme, which flows through the valley. Its two towers and its dungeon, connected by battlements, form a triangle whose point, turned toward the mythical land of Thule, birthplace of the Aryans, represents the axis mundi, the symbolic center of the world.

  Here in the heart of the dungeon, in a former chapel renamed Obergruppenführersaal, Himmler is holding a meeting that Heydrich has been unable to get out of. In the middle of this great circular room, the highest SS dignitaries are gathered around an enormous oak table. It is round and seats twelve, of course, because Himmler wanted to reproduce the symbolism of the Arthurian legend. But the Reich’s quest for the Grail in 1941 is a little different from Perceval’s. “The final confrontation between two ideologies… the need to seize new Lebensraum…” Heydrich knows this mantra by heart, as do all Germans at the time. “A question of survival… pitiless racial struggle… twenty to thirty million Slavs and Jews…” At this point Heydrich, who is fond of numbers, pricks up his ears: “Twenty to thirty million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and the problems of food supply.”

  Heydrich does not let his irritation show. He stares at the magnificent black sun inlaid with runes on the marble floor. Military actions… problems of supply… could they be any more evasive? Heydrich is well aware that with certain sensitive subjects one must not be too explicit, but a moment always comes when you have to call a spade a spade—and it seems reasonable to think that this moment has now arrived. Otherwise, through a lack of clarity in their orders, there is a risk that the men will mess things up. And he is the one who’s responsible for this mission.

&nbs
p; When Himmler ends the meeting, Heydrich hurries through corridors cluttered with suits of armor, coats of arms, and paintings. He knows that there are alchemists, occultists, and magi here working full-time on esoteric problems, but he pays no mind to any of this. Two days he’s been stuck in this lunatic asylum! He wants to get back to Berlin as soon as possible.

  But outside the clouds are massing in the valley, and if he waits too long his airplane won’t be able to take off. They escort him to the parade ground, where he has the honor of reviewing the troops. He dispenses with the long speech and dashes past the assembled ranks, hardly even glancing at the gang of assassins chosen to go and exterminate subhumans in the East. There are nearly three thousand of them and they are turned out impeccably. Heydrich dives into the plane that idles at the end of the runway. It takes off just before the storm breaks. In the sudden downpour, the troops of the four Einsatzgruppen start to march.

  104

  In Berlin, there is no round table and no black magic. The atmosphere is bureaucratic, and Heydrich studiously writes his directives. Göring has asked him to keep them short and simple. On July 2, 1941, two weeks after the launch of Barbarossa, the following note is sent to SS commanders behind the front line:

  “To be executed: all Komintern functionaries, Party functionaries, people’s commissars, Jews occupying positions in the Party or the State, other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, irregular soldiers, murderers, agitators).”