FSF, July 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  He shook his head wearily.

  "A pretty theory! And how long would it take to manufacture the quantities we'd need and load it into bombs?"

  "It's already there. Slave labor from three concentration camps has been at it for years, suffering great losses in the process. Himmler himself gave the green light to make the bombs and stockpile them in underground arsenals, in case Hitler ever gives permission to use them."

  "And you expect some bureaucrat in Munitions to defy Hitler's orders and ship this stuff to us?"

  "Not a bureaucrat. The new Munitions Minister. I met him years ago at the Berlin Institute of Technology. His name's Albert Speer. He's the Führer's fair-haired boy, and because of that he can take risks that nobody else would dare even to think about."

  At first Von Paulus wouldn't hear of my idea—indeed, he ordered me not to bring it up again. But reports of the Russian buildup continued to filter in, and the messages we got from higher headquarters diverged farther and farther from reality. One day in mid-October, he brought up the forbidden subject himself.

  "I think you need to take leave,” he told me abruptly. “Your mother's dying of cancer—didn't know that, did you? She doesn't know it either, the lucky woman. Compassionate leaves are routinely denied, but I'm the commander, and herewith I'm giving you ten days and putting you on the first flight out.

  "See your old school chum in Munitions if you can, and if he agrees to supply us the stuff, head for Luftwaffe HQ. I'll give you a letter to a friend of mine, a general in Transport Command. The weapons will have to be delivered by air, and quickly. I believe the Ivans will attack us at the first snowfall, or shortly after."

  So that was how it all began. Once in 1947, when I was drunk at the Veteran Officer's Club, I called our triumph das Giftsieg. The poison victory. Thank God, everybody else was as drunk as I was and the remark passed unnoticed! There are things that a man who wears two Iron Crosses and the Knight's Cross can say with impunity, and others he cannot.

  Yet I spoke the truth, and though I have no religion I can't help but believe that one day I will be called to account by a higher and juster power than the Gestapo. Mannstein was right, after all—we shouldn't have been allowed to win the war.

  I know that now. But in 1942 I was twenty-nine and wanted to live, no matter what.

  * * * *

  6 September 1949. Another day of splendid weather. Hard work—how beautiful hard work is! The muscles ache, but the spirit knows peace. Then home for a hot bath, a nap, love in the afternoon, and dinner.

  And now, late at night, I get back to my self-appointed task as stenographer to Clio, the Muse of History. Speaking of fate, I now realize that this is mine. Like the tyrant in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the Nazis cut out the goddess's tongue so that the crimes of the past cannot be told. But through me she speaks—even though no one may ever listen!

  I saw Speer. Handsome as ever, superbly intelligent, yet devoted heart and soul to the Austrian necromancer. So devoted that he would even disobey him in order to save him. Who can explain it? With his promise in my pocket, I hastened to Luftwaffe HQ, where the necessary cargo planes were made available to move the weapons to the Stalingrad Front.

  Meantime the Russians too were hard at work. In late October they seized a number of strategic hills inside our lines. As if to aid their attack, winter arrived early with twenty degrees of frost. Intense cold already gripped the northern reaches of the Volga and ice floes drifted past Stalingrad, grinding against each other so loudly that our men in advanced positions could hear them groaning all night, like the souls of the lost.

  By then I'd returned from Germany. With Von Paulus's permission I let Dietrich in on the secret, and it became his task to track the movement of the weapons. The nerve-gas bombs were in crates stamped “oxyacetylene cylinders, extra large size,” so that he could follow them through routine supply messages. On 10 November 1942 an encrypted signal brought word that planes carrying the weapons were even then droning over the snow-powdered fields of western Russia.

  At this supreme moment, I found Von Paulus drawn and white. If he failed to use nerve gas, the Russians would destroy him; if he did use it against Hitler's explicit orders, he might be arrested and shot. And I might be shot too, though I could always plead that I was only following orders, something the commander could not do.

  I don't think either of us slept more than a few hours during the next five days. Nor did Dietrich, who for the first time in our friendship lost his bouncy good spirits. The usual glitches developed in the rear areas. At an airfield near Rostov where the weapons were to be transferred from the transport planes to the bombers, they were almost lost through a paperwork error. After a frantic search of ninety minutes during which we all aged a year or two, they were discovered in a warehouse, stored among ordinary oxygen and acetylene tanks. If welders had actually used them, the results would indeed have been interesting!

  At last came the night of 15 November. I'll never forget it. The weather was still and bitter cold—one of those Russian nights when the Kalmuk steppe seems to hold its breath and even the dead grasses cease to tremble. A thick crust of ice had formed over the autumn snow and lay hard and white as bone under a carborundum sky.

  The bomber pilots knew only that they would be dropping some sort of experimental device, and since Hitler was always ranting about secret weapons, they accepted this story without question. Leaving Dietrich behind, I accompanied the General in his staff car to the Italian sector of the line. We were a few kilometers west of the city, a place of acute danger where the Russians held bridgeheads over both the Volga and the Don, and so could attack at will.

  We stepped out into the terrible cold, and walked slowly toward the north. The car waited with its blue-shielded headlights off, the motor grunting and a plume of white smoke jetting from the tailpipe. And then we heard overhead the Focke-Wulf-190s droning toward the enemy positions!

  White fingers of searchlights began to spring up and the put-put-put of distant antiaircraft guns began. The lights would find a plane and lose it again. Tiny objects tumbled through the beams, but we didn't hear the usual deep grumble of exploding bombs, for the weapons carried only small charges designed to rupture the casings and disperse the gas. I tried to imagine what it must be like for the Ivans, meeting a silent and incomprehensible death. Then I decided not to think about such things, remembering how back in Frankfurt I'd disgraced myself by passing out during a movie that showed the effects of Tabun on a flock of sheep.

  Von Paulus was smoking a cigarette, which of course was strictly against the blackout regulations. He offered one to me, and though I'd never smoked up to that time I felt obliged to take it with a "Danke, Herr Generaloberst." He struck a match, I inhaled and promptly went into a coughing fit.

  He laughed and slapped me on the back. “That's right, mein Junge,” he said. “Stay away from tobacco. It's not healthy."

  Next day brought unmistakable evidence of great disorder in the enemy's buildup areas, plus hysterical accusations from Radio Moscow that we had opened gas warfare. Ignoring all of this, plus a barrage of queries from Army Group South trying to find out what was going on, Von Paulus imposed radio silence and ordered a full-scale assault against the Russian positions in Stalingrad.

  The time was well chosen. Our troops split the center of the enemy's line and began rolling up the pockets that still held out. After three months of desperate fighting in the greatest urban battle known to history, our sorely tried and war-weary soldiers stood at last upon the riverbank, gazing at the famous Volga—a wide, bleak, turbulent stream surging with brown water and dirty white ice. A sight for which their comrades had already paid a hundred thousand lives!

  Now Von Paulus had to face Hitler and tell him what he had done. Cleverly, he sent first a radio message: Mein Führer! I am pleased to lay at your feet the conquered city of Stalingrad. Your genius in directing this assault now stands clear for all the world to see. Heil Hitler!

 
; Then he flew off to the Wolfschanze, the Wolf's Lair as Hitler called his headquarters. Whether he would be shot remained in doubt for at least a week, until it became clear that the Western Allies possessed no nerve gas and could not use conventional poison gas to retaliate without running the risk of seeing London and other English cities submerged in clouds of Tabun, Sarin, and Soman.

  Shortly afterward Von Paulus returned, much older in appearance but with the jeweled baton of a Field Marshal clutched in his hand. As so often happens in war, bold action by a local commander achieved what the bigwigs at higher headquarters had failed to do. Of course it was death for anyone to say so—Hitler as usual claimed all the credit for himself, and a falling blade, a bullet, or a wire noose awaited anybody who told the truth.

  But truth, like the bones of the dead, has a way of reappearing over time.

  * * * *

  7 September 1949. Disturbing news this morning. Müller, the prison commandant, has been found lying in his comfortable country house with his throat cut.

  I heard the news from Marya, who got it from a peasant. She whispered that an order went out from the Ataman last week condemning Müller to death for his many cruelties. Of course everybody on the lower Volga knew about it, except us Germans!

  I asked her if she had any idea who'd done the deed. She said no, gazing at me with the special limpid innocence in her round face that means she's lying.

  "Come now, my girl,” said I, “don't try to deceive your old soldier! It wasn't one of our people, was it?"

  She hesitated, then after a moment said softly, "Vdova Nevskaya was missing from her new home this morning. Her children are crying."

  Good God! Nevsky's widow! If this leads to the discovery that I've been sheltering the family, then it's good-bye to my feudal estate on the Volga! In this world, can one perform any decent act without regretting it?

  Noon. This is turning into a busy day. The radio brings news that Hitler is dead at last. If only some Austrian nursemaid gifted with prophecy had strangled him in his crib, how much the whole world would have been spared!

  He's being embalmed and his funeral is set for a week hence. So I'll have to go to Berlin. Dietrich was right—I can't afford not to, especially with this Müller business hanging over me. On the other hand, that will leave my people here with no defender when the SS descends on them like the Biblical iron besom of destruction.

  One can only hope that the bloodletting in Berlin will begin very soon and distract the butchers from what is, after all, only a local crime.

  Later still. Marya reports that Müller's serfs have been arrested and are undergoing interrogation. Trying to distract their tormentors, they'll begin to accuse anybody and everybody. Those they name will be arrested and tortured, and so on and so on, until the entire district is depopulated. What will happen to the harvest now, God only knows.

  Marya is helping me plan my trip. Lufthansa is putting on extra flights to Berlin, and a single phone call got me a first-class seat. I have four days before my flight takes off. I can only hope the Gestapo mars its hitherto perfect record of incompetence by finding the real murderer quickly—and that the killer's not one of my people!

  With that off my mind, I could almost enjoy seeing Hitler off to Valhalla, or to Hell, whichever it may be.

  * * * *

  8 September 1949. No fresh news about the murder, but arrests have begun in the serf-warrens outside the city. Everywhere the fear is palpable. I feel it too, although the danger's far greater for the Russians.

  I rely on Marya more than ever to keep me informed. She tells me that the Nevsky children have been taken into other houses of the village. The prison at Kalach has been sealed off, and nobody knows what's happening inside, although one can easily guess.

  The harvest is almost done. I was in the west field watching the mechanical reapers at work this morning when I was summoned back to the house to take a long-distance call from Dietrich. A special hundred-man Heroes’ Farewell to our beloved leader is being planned for the small Memorial Chapel on the morning of the funeral. No doubt a Goebbels inspiration—a kind of Viking farewell to the supreme warlord. Through Dietrich's intervention, I'm to be one of the Heroes. The whole Nazi gang will be there to honor us—Bormann, Himmler, the younger generation like Eichmann.

  I know Dietrich set this up because he's trying to save my neck, but sometimes I wish he wouldn't work so hard at it!

  After the service, we'll leave the chapel and march at the head of the funeral cortege down the whole length of Adolf-Hitler-Allee to the Great Hall of the Reich, while the Berlin Philharmonic plays the slow movement from Beethoven's Eroica. Good thing the composer, who hated tyrants, won't be around to hear it!

  * * * *

  9 September 1949. Back in the townhouse. Let me try to be calm.

  Eichmann is here in Führerburg. Local landowners were ordered to assemble today on one hour's warning at the Veteran Officers’ Club.

  There we were harangued by the Reich Protector—tall, sallow, clean-shaven, arrayed in black and silver like a pall draping a coffin. Unless rumor lies (and in these matters it seldom does) he was a key figure in butchering the Jews—nobody even tries to guess how many died in that Aktion—and is now engaged in liquidating some forty percent of the population of White Russia who have been judged to be “racially unworthy of existence."

  His talk was brief and to the point. Himmler has ordered a drastic security clampdown throughout the Eastern Territories. Spots of rebellion are to be stamped out with utter ruthlessness. Obviously he fears that the news of Hitler's death will lead to violent outbreaks, perhaps even a Russian invasion, just at the time when Berlin is in turmoil over the succession.

  "Particularly important [said Eichmann] in the Volga District is the liquidation and annihilation of the band led by the terrorist kingpin who calls himself the Ataman. Müller's murder has been traced to a peasant woman, but of course she did not gain access to this officer's guarded home all by herself! She is now undergoing rigorous interrogation. No doubt the Ataman thought to deceive us into believing the murder was merely a case of private vengeance. We're not as innocent as that!

  "No, this was the opening of a campaign to destabilize German authority throughout the East. We National Socialists know how to deal with such threats! I remind you gentlemen of your duties in this regard. Every whisper of information is to be passed on to Gestapo headquarters at once. No shielding of pet serfs will be tolerated."

  Fixing me with a raptor's eye as he said it. Nazi bluster but, as usual, real ferocity behind it. I was more shaken than I like to admit. The Nevskaya woman may not know that I ordered her and her brats to be hidden, but she certainly knows that Marya arranged it all, and if she talks—

  And of course she'll talk.

  Back in 1944, after the conspiracy against Hitler failed, Mannstein was so unfortunate as to be taken alive. Foolish of him, but I think he had religious qualms about committing suicide.

  At the Club, years after the event, I heard an SS man describe what happened to him. They worked him over for a whole day and in the evening, when he was weak and in great pain, they brought him a bucket with his daughter's head in it. At that he broke down completely and confessed to everything, for he had no more desire to live.

  The creature who told this tale—loudly and drunkenly, while standing at the bar—gave a laugh at the end and said, like some burlesque Nazi in a BBC comedy skit, “We have ways, you see. We have ways."

  Later. I drove to the estate, hoping to calm my spirit by watching the harvesters finish up their work. I was in the fields when a serf ran up and told me that in my absence a Gestapo car arrived in Führerburg and took my Marya away.

  Later still. Drove like a madman to the serf-prison, but could not see her. Eichmann was there, I saw his big black Mercedes with his flag and his motorcycle escort lounging around. He wouldn't meet me, being—as a little Unterstürmführer said with an undisguised sneer—"busy."

  Bus
y! I know how these people keep busy.

  Midnight. Back at the townhouse. No word yet. I have the bottle of Scotch and my Luger lying on the table in front of me. I will not repeat Mannstein's mistake when they come for me. But what is happening to Marya?

  I can only hope that she gave them everything and everyone to save herself pain. Tell them whatever they want to hear, my love, tell them I'm a Russian agent, tell them I'm Khrushchev in disguise, it doesn't matter. They will take nothing but my corpse, and to that they are welcome.

  What is happening to her now?

  * * * *

  10 September 1949. The call came at 0520. The ungodly like ungodly hours.

  A gelid voice announced her death “in process of judicial interrogation.” So that's what they call it now.

  "You will be responsible for funeral arrangements,” the voice continued. “The body must be collected today. Otherwise it will be cremated."

  Somehow I spoke coherently, though without feeling, the way one walks on frostbitten feet. “You're releasing her body, then?"

  "The juridical process failed to reveal that she was involved in illegal activities or had knowledge of such activities."

  His voice betrayed his disappointment. They were gunning for me, but I'm a pal of Dietrich Wallenstein, a big landowner, an official Hero of the Reich with two iron crosses and a knight's cross. To catch me, they needed evidence.

  And Marya didn't talk. In spite of all their little ways, she didn't betray me.

  Later. I have seen her body. That's why they returned it to me. They wanted me to see what they'd done to her.

  Stupid of them. Do they think only they know how to kill?

  Took the Porsche, drove to Gorodok. Typical run-down Russian village. The ruins of the priest's house haven't been cleaned up yet. I called the village elders together. They were out in the fields and took some time to arrive.

  I waited, smoking American cigarettes. Hands quite steady. Now all compromises are over. I know what I'll do, provided I can get help to do it.

  I'm leaving for Berlin tomorrow, so things will have to move fast. That worries me a bit. Things don't usually move fast in Russia.