When he had finished and was hoping to rest on top of her, she slid out from under him.
‘I’ll get breakfast,’ she said.
‘Please, Ingrid, stay in bed a little longer.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ll be late.’
Reminded by that remark of what the day might yet bring, Ernst felt the chill of dread slipping through him. He had forgotten that he’d been ordered to report back to barracks unusually early, in preparation for possible action against the SA, or Brownshirts, who were reported to be planning an armed rebellion under the leadership of Captain Ernst Roehm.
Another police duty, Ernst thought bitterly as Ingrid, in a dressing gown, padded from the room and he slid his legs out of the bed and went into the bathroom.
As he attended to his ablutions, he pondered the fact that even he was becoming confused by the sheer number of conflicting groups within the Third Reich’s increasingly nightmarish police structure. Top of the list were the Gestapo, or Secret State Police. Originally under the command of the debauched Hermann Goring, recently it had been taken under the wing of Heinrich Himmler, who was also head of the SS. The SS had been formed as Hitler’s personal Guard Detachment but was fast becoming the most feared police force of all. Next came the SD, which acted as the long-range Intelligence and Security Service of the SS, under the control of the dreaded Reinhard Heydrich. Last of the major groups was the SA, originally formed as part of the SD and consisting of Ernst Roehm’s brown-shirted Storm Troops, who represented the military arm of the Nazi Party and were used mainly to intimidate, beat up, or murder those openly opposed to it. Now that degenerate madman, Roehm, was rumoured to be planning a putsch, or armed revolt, against the Reichswehr... And today’s police duty, Ernst suspected, had something to do with that situation.
He resented being involved with such duties – more so because Ingrid had frequently expressed her contempt for the SS, which she viewed as fascistic and brutal. He also resented them because what he had been promised, eighteen months ago, would be aeronautical intelligence gathering for the SS technical branch had in fact turned out to be secret service intelligence gathering against, and the arresting of, all those who opposed Hitler’s National Socialist Party.
Ernst had escorted more unfortunate souls into Stadelheim Prison and Gestapo headquarters than he cared to remember – and there were stories about both of those places that he preferred to forget.
Suddenly filled with the nervousness that always assailed him when he thought of his SS duties, he had a quick bath, dressed even more urgently in his gleaming black SS uniform, looked fondly in on his nine-month-old daughter, Ula, where she was sleeping in her cot in her own brightly painted room, then went into the kitchen to have coffee with Ingrid. She was sitting at the table, a steaming mug in her hands, her short-cropped blonde hair attractively dishevelled around her delicate features. Having Ula had not made her lose her figure, which remained slim and sensual; and Ernst, as he took the chair facing her, was grateful for that.
‘I’d forgotten I had to be there so early,’ he said, sipping his coffee. ‘I also forgot to tell you that I may not be coming home tonight. It could be a long duty.’
‘What is it this time?’ Ingrid asked him, her green gaze steady over her steaming mug.
‘I don't know,’ he lied, because he had been ordered to do so and did not dare do otherwise. ‘They only said that it was some kind of police action that could take a long time.’
In fact, he had been told in confidence the previous day by Gruppenführer Josef Dietrich, commander of Hitler’s élite SS bodyguard, the Leibstandarte, that for months the SA, under the command of the notorious homosexual, Captain Roehm, had been in growing, increasingly open revolt against Hitler in particular and Himmler's SS in general, and now that conflict was coming to a head. According to Dietrich, Goring, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and the dreaded SD chief Reinhard Heydrich had formed a secret alliance to get rid of Roehm and were going to act soon.
Ernst dreaded the form such an action might take, but tried to look unconcerned.
‘Another police action,’ Ingrid said, putting his previous thoughts into words and imbuing them with soft sarcasm. ‘Before we married I said you’d end up as a policeman — and that's what you are.’
‘I’m not a policeman,’ Ernst insisted too loudly, aware that he had to do this too often. ‘I’m not a member of the Gestapo, so stop suggesting I am.’
‘You do the Gestapo’s work,’ Ingrid replied, not perturbed by his outrage, ‘and that’s just as bad.’
‘I obey orders,’ he said, ‘and that’s all I do. It’s not the kind of work I wanted, it’s certainly not what I expected, and although I don’t always like what I’m told to do, I must obey orders.’
‘You could try refusing.’
‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. I’m an SS officer, a German officer, and you know what that means.’
‘It means you work as a policeman.’
‘It means that if I don’t do what I’m told, I’ll be imprisoned myself
– or possibly shot. Is that what you want?’
Ingrid placed her cup back on the table and gazed down at her coffee, perhaps trying to hide the blush he could see on her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you’re not really a policeman. I also know you don’t like what you’re doing and my attacks make it worse. I hate saying these things, but I can’t help myself. I hate the SS – and I can’t bear the thought that you, who should have been an engineer, are doing their dirty work. It makes me feel sick.’
‘It sometimes makes me feel sick as well,’ Ernst said, ‘but what else can I do? I’m an officer in Heinrich Himmler's SS – and it’s too late to get out.’
Ingrid raised her head again. ‘Are you sorry you joined?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes I feel betrayed – they said I’d be in technical intelligence – but at other times, and I certainly can’t deny it, I want to surrender my own feelings to the general good.’
‘And you think that what’s happening at present is for the general good?’
Ernst heard his own sigh like a soft wail of defeat. ‘We can only hope,’ he said. ‘At the moment, things certainly look ugly, even shameful, but one hopes that the end will justify the means – and that’s all one can hope for.’
Ingrid had just been about to take his hand, but she froze, glanced at him, then sat back and stared distractedly around her, as if looking for exits.
‘Everything’s changed so quickly,’ she said, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘Nothing’s been the same since that night outside the Chancellery. It’s only been fifteen months, yet now we live in a city ruled by brown-shirted brutes, secret police, intimidation and fear. It’s been like a bad dream.’
Ernst knew what she meant and rarely stopped thinking about. it. He, too, remembered that wonderful moment in Wilhelmstrasse, when Hitler had appeared at the window of the Chancellery to salute his cheering men. It had been a great moment, a transcendental experience, one that had seemed to offer the promise of a magical future. A mere fifteen months ago...
And since then?
Ernst could not forget that he had been one of the truckloads of SS men, hastily sworn in as auxiliaries to the SA, who had, in March 1933, just a few days before he’d married Ingrid, swarmed through the city to round up known Reds and Social Democrats and take them into ‘protective custody’ – a term that, even then, was rumoured to mean imprisonment, torture, or execution. Nor could he forget that he had been one of the many proud SS guards who sang the ‘Horst Wessel’ song in the Kroll Opera House, temporary site of the new Reichstag, the tumultuous night that Hitler, wearing his brown SA uniform and standing on a stage decorated with a huge swastika flag, made the speech that expunged democracy from the German parliament. Nor could he forget that while the midnight calls and arrests increased, along with the whispers about torture and murder in SA and SS prison cells, he had been
one of the many loyal ‘policemen’ who had seized union offices throughout the nation, arrested labour leaders, confiscated union files and bank accounts, shut down their newspapers, and in one awful day obliterated organized labour in the whole country.
Now the Führer, Adolf Hitler, was ruling a totalitarian state known as the Third Reich – and he, Ernst Stoll, once a mere technical student, had aided his ruthless climb to power. Naturally, Ingrid was right: he had a lot to be ashamed of. But though he sometimes acknowledged this to himself, the shame and despair in which he writhed secretly made him loathe her for saying it.
‘I have to go now,’ he said.
Feeling like someone being sucked into quicksand, and filled with the feeling that today would be a nightmare, he walked around the table, kissed Ingrid’s cheek, and started out of the house.
‘Don’t do anything you’ ll be ashamed of,’ Ingrid joked, trying to lighten the depression he was clearly showing.
‘I’ll try not to,’ he replied with a smile and a wave, before stepping outside and closing the door behind him.
Waiting on the pavement in the morning's brightening light for the jeep that would transport him to Stadelheim Prison, he could not shake off his recollections of the past fifteen months and realized why he was losing Ingrid’s love, even as his pride was being destroyed. He had become a policeman, the emissary of butchers, and as his resistance was eroded and his pride subtly destroyed, Ingrid’s respect for him, the basis of her love, was also being eroded.
The Third Reich was driving a wedge between them, just as Ingrid had said it would.
The jeep that Ernst had been waiting for turned the corner at the bottom of the street, came toward him and pulled in to the curb. As his fellow officers, Willi Brandt and Franck Ritter, both lieutenants, were taking up the rear seats, Ernst sat up front with the driver – not without noticing that the normally ebullient Brandt was looking gloomy, while Franck was clearly excited.
‘So,’ Ernst said, as the jeep moved out into the almost deserted road and headed for the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, ‘another early-morning call for the élite. It’s so nice to be wanted.’
‘It depends what they want us for,’ the gloomy Brandt said, ‘since that may not be nice.’
‘I always enjoy the early-morning calls,’ Franck said, sounding as excited as he looked. ‘It usually means some kind of action.’
‘I like action in the cinema,’ Brandt replied. ‘I don’t like to be part of it. Not when it involves arresting people and throwing them into that prison.’
‘They deserve what they get,’ Franck said. ‘If they didn’t, we wouldn’t arrest them. They’re the dregs of society – drunkards, gypsies, communist traitors and Jews – and what we do is for the good of the country, which is why I enjoy it.’
‘You’d enjoy torturing or shooting them even more,’ Brandt said in a remarkably careless outburst, ‘but that doesn’t make it right.’
‘Those are the words of a traitor!’ Franck snapped. ‘I could report you for that!’
‘If it gets me off this duty,’ Brandt responded, ‘please be my guest.’
Unnerved by the conversation, Ernst told them both to shut up, then he glanced at the awakening city through which they were moving. It was a warm Saturday morning and already the news vendors were out, selling the propaganda to be found in the Illustrierte Beobachter and Frankfurter Zeitung while the Brownshirts took up their positions on the pavements, preparing for another day of insults, beard-tugging, and other carefully planned humiliations.
An average weekend in Berlin, 1934.
Ernst felt even worse when the jeep pulled up at the main entrance to the grim Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. He was startled by the number of SS jeeps and troop trucks lined up along the pavement, and even more startled when, inside the gloomy building, he found that it was packed with heavily armed SS troops.
‘This is no ordinary working day,’ Brandt whispered, looking even more upset. ‘What the hell’s going on, Ernst?’
‘Something big,’ Ritter exclaimed, his eyes gleaming with excitement. ‘I knew it! I knew it!’
Even as he spoke, the door behind them opened again and more SS troops hurried in.
‘They’ve arrested Roehm!’ someone whispered.
‘Hitler himself did it!’ someone else added.
‘It’s us or the SA,’ another voice said. ‘And today will decide it.’
Hardly able to believe what he was hearing, Ernst led his two comrades up the stairs and along some packed corridors, until he came to the office of his superior, Gruppenführer Josef Dietrich. As Ernst stopped in the doorway, Dietrich barked orders to a group of SS officers. When the officers left, all looking anxious, Dietrich waved Ernst inside.
‘Heil Hitler!’ he snapped automatically, then added more reasonably: ‘Prepare yourselves, gentlemen. Operation Calibra has begun. You are in for a busy day.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Ernst said, ‘but I’m not familiar with that code name.’
‘No, Lieutenant, of course not. Only the most senior officers were informed. It came to our attention that Roehm was planning a putsch and the ultimate destruction of the authority of the army and SS. However, early this morning, our courageous Führer, in the company of Goebbels, flew to Bad Wiessee and personally arrested that disgusting pervert and the nest of homosexual traitors he calls his stormtroopers, at the Pension Hanselbauer, near the Tegernsee. According to my reports, most of the pig’s men were still in bed when the raid took place – many of them caught in flagrante delicto with fellow SA troops or local youths. One’s stomach churns just to think of it.’ Here the Gruppenführer shook his head in disgust. ‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘they were all rounded up and are at this very moment being transported back to Berlin to be incarcerated, with Roehm himself, in the Brown House, prior to being quickly tried and judged. Today, gentlemen, we will wield our long knives – so prepare to shed blood.’
Ernst’s soul plunged into despair – but he found no escape.
At ten hundred hours that warm Saturday morning, he was informed that the cells of Stadelheim Prison were already packed with SA leaders. Those still in the Brown House, including Roehm, had demanded to see the Führer, but were refused and, instead, transported to Stadelheim in an armoured car. There, Roehm was put in a solitary cell, not far from the one he had occupied after the Beer Hall putsch.
Shortly after learning of Roehm's incarceration, Ernst was called to the office of Gruppenführer Dietrich, who told him that the purge was beginning.
‘I personally,’ Dietrich proudly informed him, ‘have been put in charge of the executions of the SA men being held in Stadelheim Prison. Meanwhile, you’re to go with Lieutenant Ritter to the home of General von Schleicher and once there put him to death. You understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ernst replied, burning up with shock and disbelief. He was being ordered to kill the former chancellor of Germany. ‘I just think – ’
‘Don’t think, Lieutenant, just obey. And when you’ve completed your task, drive straight to Stadelheim Prison to receive further orders. Now good luck and – Heil Hitler!’
Unable to believe what he was hearing, but forced to accept that this was real, Ernst soon found himself seated beside the hated Franck Ritter in one of the many police cars that were careening and screeching through the streets of Berlin in the great roundup of enemies of the Reich. As if caught in a dream that was turning into a nightmare, he saw one unit, the troops wearing steel helmets, armed with rifles and submachine guns, surrounding von Papen's office. Hearing the sound of gunfire, savage and frightening, Ernst felt sick to his stomach, too hot, unreal. He briefly closed his eyes but opened them again to see a similar unit closing in on Roehm's opulent residence on the Tiergartenstrasse.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Too soon for Ernst’s liking, he and Lieutenant Ritter were being ushered by an unsuspecting cook into the study of a comfortable house in a s
uburb of Berlin. While Ernst licked his dry lips and fought to stop himself from shaking, Ritter asked the distinguished-looking gentleman sitting at the desk if he was indeed General von Schleicher.
‘Yes, of course,’ the former chancellor replied, looking up in surprise, even as Ritter pulled his pistol from its holster, cocked the safety catch, and opened fire.
The noise was appalling in that confined space.
Fumbling in a state of nerves, not having killed before, Ernst fired in a daze even as Schleicher was falling – and, worse, just as Frau von Schleicher appeared out of nowhere, rushed toward her stricken husband, and was cut down by the bullets that Ernst and Ritter were still firing.
Now two bodies lay on the floor in dark pools of spreading blood.
While Ernst stood there, too shocked to move, Ritter hurried over to the bloody bodies on the floor, examined them dispassionately, then looked up and said, ‘This bastard’s dead, but his wife’s still alive. An ambulance is coming for them, dead or alive, so let’s get out of here. There’s more work to be done.'
Which was certainly true.
In the courtyard of Stadelheim Prison the slaughter was well under way, but Ernst, when he reported to Gruppenführer Dietrich, was told to make his way back to Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse where there was plenty of worthwhile work still to do. After driving there in traffic jammed up by the police roadblocks and SS trucks being used to raid other SA groups, he was ordered down to the cells. It was a hell of smoke and ricocheting gunfire, of aggressive bawling and piteous pleas for mercy, and Ernst didn't know what to do, didn't want to do anything, turned away to rush out again, but was pushed back by an officer.
‘That bastard in there!’ the officer bawled. ‘That rat in his hole!’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 7
