Speer hadn’t gotten back in touch with me since the visit to Mittelbau; in the beginning of January, he called to wish me a happy New Year and to ask me a favor. His ministry had submitted a request to the RSHA to forego deportation of a few Jews from Amsterdam, specialists in metals purchasing with precious contacts in neutral countries; the RSHA had refused the request, pleading the deterioration of the situation in Holland and the need to appear especially severe there. “It’s ridiculous,” Speer said to me in a voice heavy with fatigue. “What risk can three Jews dealing in metals pose to Germany? Their services are precious to us right now.” I asked him to send me a copy of the correspondence, promising to do my best. The refusal letter from the RSHA was signed by Müller but bore the dictation mark IV B 4a. I telephoned Eichmann and began by wishing him a happy New Year. “Thank you, Obersturmbannführer,” he said with his curious blend of Austrian and Berlin accents. “Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.” Then I explained Speer’s problem to him. “I didn’t have anything to do with it myself,” said Eichmann. “It must have been Hauptsturmführer Moes, he’s in charge of individual cases. But of course he’s right. Do you know how many requests we receive like that? If we said yes every time, we might as well just close up shop, we couldn’t touch a single Jew.”—“I understand, Obersturmbannführer. But this is a request from the Minister of Armaments and War Production in person.”—“Yeah. It must be their guy in Holland who’s a little overeager, and then little by little it reached the Minister. But it’s all just about interdepartmental rivalry. No, you know, we can’t agree. What’s more, the situation in Holland is rotten. There are all sorts of groups wandering around free, it just won’t do.” I insisted some more, but Eichmann was obstinate. “No. If we agree, you know, people will just say again that besides the Führer there isn’t a single anti-Semite of conviction left among the Germans. It’s impossible.”
What could he have meant by that? In any case, Eichmann couldn’t decide on his own, and he knew it. “Listen, send it to us in writing,” he ended up saying grudgingly. I decided to write directly to Müller, but Müller told me the same thing: they couldn’t make any exceptions. I was hesitant to ask the Reichsführer; I decided to contact Speer again, to see how much he really needed these Jews. But at the ministry they told me he was on sick leave. I made inquiries: he had been hospitalized in Hohenlychen, the SS hospital where I had been treated after Stalingrad. I found a bouquet of flowers and went to see him. He had requisitioned an entire suite in the private wing and had installed his personal secretary and some assistants there. The secretary told me that an old inflammation of the knee had flared up after a Christmas trip to Lapland; his condition was worsening, Dr. Gebhardt, the famous knee specialist, thought it was a rheumatoid inflammation. I found Speer in a wretched mood: “Obersturmbannführer, it’s you. Happy New Year. So?” I explained to him that the RSHA was maintaining its position; possibly, I suggested, if he saw the Reichsführer, he could have a word with him about it. “I think the Reichsführer has other fish to fry,” he replied abruptly. “So do I. I have to run my ministry from here, as you can see. If you can’t resolve the matter yourself, drop it.” I stayed a few more minutes, then withdrew: I could feel I was in the way.
His condition did in fact deteriorate rapidly; when I called back a few days later to ask after him, his secretary informed me that he wasn’t taking any phone calls. I made a few calls: apparently he was in a coma, close to death. I found it strange that an inflammation of the knee, even a rheumatoid one, could reach that point. Hohenegg, to whom I talked about it, had no opinion. “But if he passes away,” he added, “and if they let me do an autopsy, I’ll tell you what he had.” I too had other fish to fry. The night of January 30, the English inflicted on us their worst air raid since November; I lost my windows again, and part of my balcony collapsed. The next day, Brandt summoned me and informed me, amiably, that the SS-Gericht had asked the Reichsführer for permission to investigate me in connection with my mother’s murder. I reddened and leaped out of my seat: “Standartenführer! That business is a disgrace born from the sick minds of careerist policemen. I’m willing to accept an investigation to clear my name of all suspicion. But in that case, I ask to be put on leave until I’m found innocent. It would be inappropriate for the Reichsführer to keep a man suspected of such a horror in his personal staff.”—“Calm down, Obersturmbannführer. No decision has been made yet. Tell me what happened instead.” I sat down and recounted the events, sticking to the version I had given the policemen. “It’s my visit to Antibes that’s made them crazy. It’s true that my mother and I had been on bad terms for a long time. But you know what kind of wound I received in Stalingrad. Being so close to death makes you think: I said to myself that we had to settle things between us once and for all. Unfortunately she’s the one who died, in a horrible, unexpected way.”—“And how do you think it happened?”—“I have no idea, Standartenführer. I began working for the Reichsführer soon afterward, and I haven’t returned there. My sister, who went to the funeral, mentioned terrorists, a settling of accounts; my stepfather supplied a number of items to the Wehrmacht.”—“That’s unfortunately entirely possible. This sort of thing is happening more and more often, in France.” He pinched his lips and tilted his head, making the light play on his glasses. “Listen, I think the Reichsführer will want to talk with you before he makes a decision. In the meantime, allow me to suggest that you visit the judge who wrote the request. It’s Judge Baumann, of the Berlin SS and Police Court. He’s a perfectly honorable man: if you really are the victim of special malice, maybe you can convince him of that yourself.”
I immediately made an appointment with Judge Baumann. He received me in his office at court: a jurist in a Standartenführer’s uniform, getting on in years, with a square face and a crooked nose, and a fighter’s look. I had put on my best uniform and all my medals. After I had saluted him, he asked me to sit down. “Thank you for receiving me, Herr Richter,” I said, using the customary address instead of his SS rank. “Not at all, Obersturmbannführer. It’s the least I could do.” He opened a folder on his desk. “I asked for your personal file. I hope you don’t mind.”—“Not at all, Herr Richter. Allow me to tell you what I plan on telling the Reichsführer: I regard these accusations, which touch me in such a personal question, hateful. I am ready to cooperate with you in every way possible so they can be completely refuted.” Baumann gave a discreet cough: “You understand that I haven’t yet ordered an investigation. I can’t do so without the Reichsführer’s agreement. The case file I have is very meager. I made the request based on an appeal from the Kripo, which states they have convincing information that their investigators would like to look into.”—“Herr Richter, I spoke twice with those investigators. All they gave me by way of information was groundless insinuations without proof, some—excuse me—delirious fabrication of their own fantasy.”—“That is possible,” he said pleasantly. “I see here that you attended the best universities. If you had gone on with law, we might have ended up colleagues. I know Dr. Jessen very well, your old professor. A very good jurist.” He went on leafing through the file. “Excuse me, but did your father fight with the Freikorps Rossbach, in Courland? I remember an officer named Aue.” He said the Christian name. My heart began beating violently. “That is my father’s name, Herr Richter. But I don’t know anything about what you ask. My father disappeared in 1921, and I haven’t heard anything about him since. It’s possible it’s the same man. Do you know what became of him?”—“Unfortunately not. I lost sight of him during the retreat, in December of ’nineteen. He was still alive, at the time. I also heard that he had taken part in the Kapp putsch. Many Baltikumer were there.” He thought. “You could do some research. There are still Freikorps veterans’ associations.”—“Yes, Herr Richter. That’s an excellent idea.” He coughed again and settled into his armchair. “Good. Let’s return, if you don’t mind, to your affair. What can you tell me about it?” I gav
e him the same narrative I had given Brandt. “It’s a horrible business,” he said at the end. “You must have been extremely upset.”—“Of course, Herr Richter. And I was even more so by the accusations of those two defenders of the public order who have never, I am sure, spent a day at the front and who allow themselves to slander the name of an SS officer.” Baumann scratched his chin: “I can understand how wounding that is for you, Obersturmbannführer. But perhaps the best solution would be to shed the full light of day on the affair.”—“I have nothing to fear, Herr Richter. I will accept the decision of the Reichsführer.”—“You are right.” He got up and accompanied me to the door. “I still have some old photographs from Courland. If you like, I can take a look and see if there’s one of that Aue.”—“Herr Richter, I’d be delighted.” In the hallway he shook my hand. “Don’t worry about all this, Obersturmbannführer. Heil Hitler!” My interview with the Reichsführer took place the next day and was brief and conclusive. “What is this ridiculous story, Obersturmbannführer?”—“They’re accusing me of being a murderer, my Reichsführer. It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.” I briefly explained the circumstances to him. Himmler quickly made up his mind: “Obersturmbannführer, I’m beginning to know you. You have your faults: you are, excuse me for saying so, stubborn and sometimes pedantic. But I don’t see the slightest trace of a moral defect in you. Racially, you are a perfect Nordic specimen, with perhaps just a touch of alpine blood. Only the racially degenerate nations, Poles, Gypsies, can commit matricide. Or else a hot-blooded Italian, during a quarrel, not in cold blood. No, it’s ridiculous. The Kripo is completely lacking in discernment. I’ll have to give instructions to Gruppenführer Nebe to have his men trained in racial analysis, they’ll waste much less time that way. Of course I won’t authorize the investigation. That’s all we need.”
Baumann called me a few days later. It must have been around mid-February, since I remember it was right after the massive bombing in which the Bristol Hotel was hit during an official banquet: some sixty people died, crushed under the rubble, including a number of well-known generals. Baumann seemed in a good mood and congratulated me warmly. “Personally,” his voice said at the other end of the line, “I thought the whole business was ridiculous. I’m happy for you that the Reichsführer settled it. It will avoid problems.” As for the photographs, he had found one showing Aue, but blurred and barely visible; he wasn’t even sure it was he, but he promised to have a copy of it made and to send it to me.
The only people who were unhappy with the Reichsführer’s decision were Clemens and Weser. I found them one night in the street in front of the SS-Haus, hands in the pockets of their long coats, their shoulders and hats covered with fine snow. “Well,” I said mockingly, “Laurel and Hardy. What brings you here?” This time, they didn’t salute me. Weser replied: “We wanted to say hello to you, Obersturmbannführer. But your secretary didn’t want to give us an appointment.” I didn’t react to the omission of the Herr. “She was entirely right,” I said haughtily. “I think we have nothing more to say to each other.”—“Well, see, Obersturmbannführer,” Clemens grumbled, “we think we do, actually.”—“In that case, meine Herren, I suggest you go ask for an authorization from Judge Baumann.” Weser shook his head: “We realize, Obersturmbannführer, that Judge Baumann will say no. We realize that you are, so to speak, an untouchable.”—“But still,” Clemens went on, the steam from his breath masking his fat pug-nosed face, “it’s not normal, Obersturmbannführer, you can see that. There should be some justice, all the same.”—“I agree with you completely. But still, your insane calumnies have nothing to do with justice.”—“Calumnies, Obersturmbannführer?” Weser rapped out, raising his eyebrows. “Calumnies? Are you so sure? In my opinion, if Judge Baumann had really read the file, he’d be less certain than you.”—“Yeah,” said Clemens. “For instance, he could have wondered about the clothes.”—“The clothes? What clothes are you talking about?” Weser replied in his place: “Clothes the French police found in the bathtub, on the second floor. Civilian clothes…” He turned to Clemens: “Notebook.” Clemens pulled the notebook out of an inner pocket and handed it to him. Weser leafed through it: “Oh yes, here it is: clothing splattered with blood. Splattered. That’s the word I was looking for.”—“It means ‘soaked,’” Clemens explained.—“The Obersturmbannführer knows what it means, Clemens,” Weser grunted. “The Obersturmbannführer is an educated man. He has a good vocabulary.” He dove back into the notebook. “Civilian clothing, then, splattered, thrown into the bathtub. There was also blood on the tile floor, on the walls, in the sink, on the towels. And downstairs, in the living room and the entrance, there were traces of footsteps pretty much everywhere, because of the blood. There were prints of shoes, we found the shoes with the clothes, but there were also prints of boots. Heavy boots.”—“Well,” I said, shrugging, “the murderer changed before he left, to avoid attracting attention.”—“You see, Clemens, when I tell you that the Obersturmbannführer is an intelligent man. You should listen to me.” He turned to me and looked at me under his hat. “Those clothes were all of German make, Obersturmbannführer.” He leafed again through the notebook: “A brown two-piece suit, wool, good quality, label of a German tailor. A white shirt, German make. A silk tie, German make, a pair of cotton socks, German make, a pair of underwear, German make. A pair of brown leather town shoes, size forty-two, German make.” He raised his eyes to me: “What’s your shoe size, Obersturmbannführer? If you allow me the question. What’s your suit size?” I smiled; “Gentlemen, I don’t know what godforsaken hole you crawled out of, but I advise you to go back to it on the double. Vermin aren’t allowed to remain in Germany anymore.” Clemens frowned: “Say, Weser, he’s insulting us, isn’t he?”—“Yes. He’s insulting us. He’s threatening us too. Actually, you might be right. He might be less intelligent than he seems, this Obersturmbannführer.” Weser put a finger on his hat: “Good night, Obersturmbannführer. See you soon, maybe.”
I watched them walk away under the snow toward the Zimmerstrasse. Thomas, whom I had come to meet, had joined me. “Who’s that?” he said, motioning with his head at the two silhouettes.—“Pains in the ass. Lunatics. Couldn’t you have them put into a concentration camp, to calm them down?” He shrugged: “If you have a valid reason, it’s possible. Shall we go eat?” Thomas, in fact, took hardly any interest in my problems; but he was very interested in Speer’s. “Things are hopping over there,” he said to me at the restaurant. “At the OT too. It’s very hard to follow. But obviously some people see his hospitalization as an opportunity.”—“An opportunity?”—“To replace him. Speer has made himself a lot of enemies. Bormann is against him, Sauckel too, all the Gauleiters, except Kaufmann and maybe Hanke.”—“And the Reichsführer?”—“The Reichsführer more or less supported him up to now. But that could change.”—“I have to confess that I don’t really understand the sense of all these intrigues,” I said slowly. “You just have to look at the numbers: without Speer, we’d probably already have lost the war. Now the situation is clearly critical. All of Germany should be united to confront this peril.” Thomas smiled: “You really still are an idealist. That’s fine! But most of the Gauleiters don’t see further than their own personal interests, or those of their Gau.”—“Well, instead of opposing Speer’s efforts to increase production, they’d do better to remember that if we lose, they too will all end up at the end of a rope. I’d call that their personal interest, wouldn’t you?”—“Certainly. But you must see that there’s something else in all that. There’s also a question of political vision. Schellenberg’s diagnosis isn’t accepted by everyone, nor are the solutions he recommends.” Now we’ve reached the crucial point, I said to myself. I lit a cigarette. “And what is your friend Schellenberg’s diagnosis? And the solutions?” Thomas looked around him. For the first time I could remember, he looked vaguely worried. “Schellenberg thinks that if we continue on like this, the war is lost, whatever Speer’s indu
strial prowess may be. He thinks the only viable solution is a separate peace with the West.”—“And you? What do you think?” He thought: “He isn’t wrong. I’m beginning to get into trouble at the Staatspolizei, among certain circles, because of this business. Schellenberg has the Reichsführer’s ear, but he hasn’t convinced him yet. And a lot of other people don’t agree, such as Müller and Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner is trying to move closer to Bormann. If he succeeds, he could pose problems for the Reichsführer. At that level, Speer is a secondary problem.”—“I’m not saying Schellenberg is right. But what sort of solution do the others envisage? Given the industrial potential of the Americans, no matter what Speer does, time is against us.”—“I don’t know,” Thomas said dreamily. “I imagine they believe in the miracle weapons. You saw them. What do you think of them?” I shrugged: “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re worth.” The food arrived and conversation turned to other things. During dessert, though, Thomas reverted to Bormann, with a mischievous smile. “You know, Kaltenbrunner is putting together a file on Bormann. I’m handling part of it for him.”—“On Bormann? You just told me he wanted to move closer to him.”—“That’s not a reason. Bormann has files on everyone, on the Reichsführer, on Speer, on Kaltenbrunner, even on you possibly.” He had put a toothpick in his mouth and was rolling it around on his tongue. “So, what I wanted to tell you…It’s between us, all right? Seriously…so Kaltenbrunner, then, has intercepted quite a few letters between Bormann and his wife. And we found some real gems there. Worthy of an anthology.” He leaned forward, looking cheeky. “Bormann was after some little actress. You know how hot-blooded he is, the top secretary-stud of the Reich. Schellenberg calls him The Typist Fucker. Well, he got her. But the great thing is that he wrote about it to his wife, who is Buch’s daughter, you know, the head of the Party Court? She’s already given him nine or ten kids, I’ve lost count. And she answers, basically: That’s fine, I’m not angry, I’m not jealous. And she suggests he bring the girl home. And then she writes: Given the terrible decline in child production caused by this war, we will work out a system of motherhood by shifts, so that you will always have a wife who is usable.” Thomas paused, smiling, while I burst out laughing: “No kidding! She really wrote that?”—“I swear it. A wife who is usable. Can you believe it?” He was laughing too. “And Bormann, do you know what he answered?” I asked.—“Oh, he congratulated her, of course. Then he fed her some ideological platitudes. I think he called her a pure child of National Socialism. But it’s obvious that he was saying that to make her happy. Bormann doesn’t believe in anything. Aside from the absolute elimination of anything that could come between him and the Führer.” I looked at him, mocking: “And you, what do you believe in?” I wasn’t disappointed by his answer. Straightening up on his banquette, he declared: “To quote a passage written by our illustrious Minister of Propaganda in his youth: The important thing is not so much what one believes; the important thing is to believe.” I smiled; Thomas sometimes impressed me. I said so to him: “Thomas, you impress me.”—“What do you expect? I’m not satisfied with stagnating in back offices. I’m a real National Socialist, I am. And Bormann too, in his own way. Your Speer, I’m not so sure. He has talent, but I don’t think he’s very devoted to the regime he’s serving.” I smiled again, thinking about Schellenberg. Thomas went on: “The more difficult things become, the more we’ll be able to count only on the real National Socialists. The rats are all going to start to jump ship. You’ll see.”
The Kindly Ones Page 89
