The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

  Trevor-Roper, I know, never breathed a word about this episode, nor has Bullock, nor any of the historians who have studied the Führer’s last days. Yet it did take place, I assure you. This silence of the chroniclers is understandable: Müller disappeared, killed or gone over to the Russians a few days later; Bormann certainly died trying to flee Berlin; the two generals must have been Krebs and Burgdorf, who committed suicide; the adjutant must be dead too. As for the RSHA officers who witnessed the incident, I don’t know what became of them, but one can easily imagine, given their service record, that the ones who survived the war must not have bragged about being decorated by the Führer in person three days before his death. So it’s entirely possible that this minor incident indeed escaped the attention of researchers (but perhaps some trace of it remains in the Soviet archives?). I was dragged to the surface up a long stairway that opened onto the chancellery gardens. The magnificent building lay in ruins, gutted by bombs and shells, but a fragrant smell of jasmine and hyacinth filled the cool air. I was brutally pushed into a car and driven to the nearby church; there, they led me down into the bunker and threw me unceremoniously into a concrete room, bare and wet. Puddles dotted the ground; the walls were sweating; and the lock on the heavy metal door plunged me into absolute, uterine darkness: even with my eyes open wide, not the slightest ray of light filtered through. I remained like this for several hours, wet and cold. Then they came to get me. They tied me to a chair, I blinked, the light hurt me; Müller in person interrogated me; they beat me with truncheons, on my ribs, shoulders, and arms, Müller too came over and boxed me with his big peasant’s fists. I tried to explain that my thoughtless gesture meant nothing, that I hadn’t premeditated it, that I had just gone blank, but Müller wouldn’t believe me, he saw a carefully prepared conspiracy, he wanted me to name my accomplices. No matter how much I protested, he wouldn’t give up: when Müller set his mind on something, he knew how to stick to it. Finally they threw me back into my cell, where I remained lying in the puddles, waiting for the pain to subside. I must have fallen asleep like this, my head half in the water. I woke up chilled to the bone and twisted with cramps; the door was opening, another man was being shoved in. I just had time to glimpse an SS officer’s uniform, without medals or insignia. In the darkness, I heard him swearing in a Bavarian dialect: “Isn’t there a dry place in here?”—“Try near the walls,” I murmured politely.—“Who’re you?” His voice barked vulgarly, though in a cultivated tone. “Me? I’m Obersturmbannführer Dr. Aue, from the SD. And you?” His voice became calmer: “My apologies, Obersturmbannführer. I’m Gruppenführer Fegelein. Ex-Gruppenführer Fegelein,” he added with a rather pointed irony. I knew him by name: he had replaced Wolff as the Reichsführer’s liaison officer to the Führer; before, he had commanded an SS cavalry division in Russia, chasing partisans and Jews in the Pripet marshes. At the Reichsführung, he was said to be ambitious, a gambler, a good-looking braggart. I leaned up on my elbows: “And what brings you here, ex-Gruppenführer?”—“Oh, it’s a misunderstanding. I’d had a little to drink and I was at home, with a girl; those lunatics in the bunker thought I wanted to desert. Another one of Bormann’s tricks, I’ll bet. They’ve all gone mad over there; their Walhalla business is not for me, thanks. But it should get sorted out, my sister-in-law will take care of it.” I didn’t know who he was talking about, but I didn’t say anything. It was only when I read Trevor-Roper, years later, that I understood: Fegelein had married the sister of Eva Braun, whose existence I was unaware of at the time, like pretty much everyone else. This highly diplomatic marriage, unfortunately, proved of little help to him: despite his connections, his charm, and his easy tongue, Fegelein was shot the following night in the chancellery gardens (this too, I only learned much later). “And you, Obersturmbannführer?” Fegelein asked. Then I told him my misadventure. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “That was smart. So that’s why they’re all in such a bad mood. I thought that Müller was going to tear my head off, the brute.”—“Oh, he hit you too?”—“Yes. He got it into his head that the girl I was with is a British spy. I don’t know what’s gotten into him all of a sudden.”—“It’s true,” I said, remembering Thomas’s words: “Gruppenführer Müller is looking for a spy, a mole.”—“That’s possible,” he muttered. “But it has nothing to do with me.”—“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “do you know what time it is?”—“Not exactly. It must be around midnight, one o’clock?”—“Then we should get some sleep,” I suggested pleasantly.—“I’d have preferred my bed,” Fegelein grumbled.—“I can only agree.” I dragged myself on the ground against the wall and dozed off; my hips were still in the water, but it was better than my head. I slept well and had pleasant dreams; I emerged from them regretfully, but I was being kicked in the ribs. “Get up!” a voice shouted. I stood up with difficulty. Fegelein was sitting by the door, his arms around his knees; when I went out, he smiled at me timidly and made a little sign with his hand. They took me up to the church: two men in civilian clothes were waiting, policemen, one of them with a revolver in his hand; there were also SS men in uniform with them. The policeman with the revolver took me by the arm, pulled me into the street, and shoved me into an Opel; the others got in too. “Where are we going?” I asked the policeman who was driving the barrel of the revolver into my ribs. “Shut your face!” he barked. The car started off, turned onto Mauerstrasse, went about a hundred meters; I heard a high-pitched whistle; an enormous explosion lifted the car and threw it onto its side. The policeman, beneath me, pulled the trigger, I think: I remember having the impression that his shot killed one of the men in front. The other policeman, covered in blood, had fallen inert on top of me. I kicked and elbowed my way out of the overturned car through the rear window, cutting myself a little on the way. Other shells were falling nearby, projecting huge showers of bricks and earth. I was deafened, my ears were ringing. I collapsed onto the sidewalk and lay there for a minute, stunned. The policeman tumbled out behind me and rolled heavily onto my legs. With one hand I found a brick and struck his head with it. We rolled together in the rubble, coated with red brick dust and mud; I hit him with all my strength, but it’s not easy to knock out a man with a brick, especially if this brick has already burned. At the third or fourth blow, it crumbled in my hand. I cast around for another one, or for a stone, but the man knocked me over and began strangling me. The blood running down his face traced furrows in the red dust covering it, his eyes were mad, rolling wildly. My hand finally found a cobblestone and I slammed it up and sideways into him. He collapsed on top of me. I freed myself and pounded at his head till his skull burst, leaking brains mixed with dust and hair. Then I stood up, still deafened. I looked for his revolver, but he must have left it in the car, one wheel of which was still spinning in the air. The three other men inside looked dead. For now the shells had stopped falling. I began to run limping down Mauerstrasse.

  I had to find somewhere to hide. Around me there were only ministries or government buildings, almost all of them in ruins. I turned down Leipzigstrasse and went into the lobby of an apartment house. Bare or stockinged feet floated in front of me, turning slowly. I raised my head: several people, including children and women, were hanging from the stairway railing, their arms dangling. I found the entrance to the basement and opened it: a gust of putre-faction, shit, and vomit assailed me, the basement was full of water and swollen corpses. I closed the door and tried to go upstairs: after the first landing, the staircase opened onto the void. I headed back down, around the hanged people, and went out. It had begun to rain lightly, I heard explosions everywhere around me. In front of me was the entrance to a U-Bahn station, Stadtmitte on the C line. I ran down the steps, went through the gates, and kept going down into the darkness, guiding myself with one hand on the wall. The tiles were wet, water was welling out of the ceiling and streaming down the vault. Sounds of muffled voices rose from the platform. It was littered with bodies, I couldn’t see if they were dead, sleeping or just lying there, I stum
bled over them, people were shouting, children crying or moaning. A train with broken windows, lit by wavering candles, was standing at the platform: inside, some Waffen-SS with French insignia were standing at attention, and a tall Brigadeführer in a black leather coat, with his back turned to me, was solemnly handing out decorations to them. I didn’t want to disturb them, I went quietly by and jumped down onto the tracks, landing in cold water that came up to my calves. I wanted to head north, but I was disoriented; I tried to remember the direction of the trains when I used to take this line, but I didn’t even know what platform I had stumbled upon, everything was confused. To one side, in the tunnel, there was a little light: I went that way, wading in the water that hid the tracks, stumbling over invisible obstacles. At the end of the platform several trains were lined up, also lit by candlelight, a makeshift hospital, crowded with wounded, shouting, swearing, groaning. I walked alongside these cars without anyone noticing me, and groped my way forward, using the wall to guide me. The water rose, reached midcalf. I stopped and plunged my hand into it: it seemed to be flowing slowly toward me. I continued. A floating body bumped against my legs. I could scarcely feel my feet, numb from the cold. In front, I thought I saw a gleam of light, and I seemed to hear other noises besides the lapping of the water. Finally I reached a station lit by a single candle. The water came up to my knees now. Here too there were a lot of people. I called out: “Please, what station is this?”—“Kochstrasse,” someone replied amiably. I had gone in the wrong direction, I was heading toward the Russian lines. I turned around and headed back down the tunnel toward Stadtmitte. In front of me I could make out the lights of the U-Bahn hospital. On the tracks, next to the last car, stood two human figures, one quite tall, the other shorter. A flashlight switched on and blinded me; as I was hiding my eyes, a familiar voice grunted: “Hello, Aue. How’s it going?”—“You’ve come at the right time,” a second, reedier voice said. “We were just looking for you.” It was Clemens and Weser. Another flashlight turned on and they came toward me; I waded backward. “We wanted to talk with you,” said Clemens. “About your mother.”—“Ah, meine Herren!” I exclaimed. “Do you really think now is a good time?”—“It’s always a good time to talk about important things,” said the slightly rougher, higher-pitched voice of Weser. I retreated some more but found myself backed against the wall; cold water seeped through the cement and froze my shoulders. “What else do you want with me?” I squealed. “My case has been closed for a long time now!”—“By corrupt, dishonest judges,” Clemens said.—“You wriggled your way out with your intrigues,” said Weser. “Now all that’s over.”—“Don’t you think it’s up to the Reichsführer or to Obergruppenführer Breithaupt to decide that?” The latter was the head of the SS-Gericht.—“Breithaupt was killed a few days ago in a car accident,” Clemens said phlegmatically. “As for the Reichsführer, he’s far away.”—“No,” Weser added, “now, it’s really just you and us.”—“But what do you want?”—“We want justice,” Clemens said coldly. They had walked up to me and were surrounding me, aiming their flashlights at my face; I had already noticed that they were holding automatics.

  “Listen,” I stammered, “all this is a huge misunderstanding. I am innocent.”—“Innocent?” Weser curtly interrupted. “We’ll see about that.”—“We’re going to tell you how it happened,” Clemens began. The powerful light from the flashlights dazed me, his big voice seemed to emanate from this harsh light. “You took the night train from Paris to Marseille. In Marseille, on April twenty-sixth, you had someone issue you a pass for the Italian zone. The next day, you went to Antibes. There, you presented yourself at the house and they welcomed you as a son, as the genuine son that you are. That night, you dined with the family and afterward you slept in one of the upstairs bedrooms, next to the twins’ room, opposite the bedroom of your mother and Herr Moreau. Then it was the twenty-eighth.”—“Hey,” Weser interrupted. “It’s the twenty-eighth of April, today. What a coincidence.”—“Meine Herren,” I said, trying to sound confident, “you’re raving.”—“Shut your face,” Clemens roared. “I’ll go on. During the day, we don’t really know what you did. We know you cut some wood, and that you left the axe in the kitchen instead of putting it back in the storeroom. Then you walked into town and bought your return ticket. You were wearing civilian clothes, no one noticed you. Then you came back.” Weser went on: “Afterward, there are some things we’re not sure about. Maybe you talked with Herr Moreau, with your mother. Maybe you had words. We’re not sure. We’re not sure about the time, either. But we do know that you found yourself alone with Herr Moreau. Then you took the axe in the kitchen, where you’d left it, you returned to the living room, and you killed him.”—“We’re even willing to believe that you weren’t thinking of it when you left the axe,” Clemens went on, “that you left the axe there by chance, that you didn’t premeditate anything, that it just happened like that. But once you began, you certainly went all the way.” Weser continued: “That’s for sure. He must have been quite surprised when you laid into his chest with the axe. It went in with the sound of crushed wood and he fell gurgling, his mouth full of blood, taking the axe down with him. You put your foot on his shoulder for leverage and you pulled out the axe and swung again, but you got the angle wrong and the axe bounced back, just breaking a few ribs. Then you stepped back, aimed more carefully, and brought the axe down on his throat. It went through the Adam’s apple and you clearly heard the cracking when it crushed his spinal column. He vomited dark flows of blood in one last great heave all over you, it was gushing from his neck too and you were covered with it, and then in front of you his eyes went dull and his blood emptied out through his half-severed neck, you watched his eyes go out like those of a sheep whose throat’s just been cut on the grass.”—“Meine Herren,” I said forcefully, “you are completely insane.” Clemens took up: “We don’t know if the twins saw that. In any case, they saw you go upstairs. You left the body and the axe there and you went upstairs, covered in blood.”—“We don’t know why you didn’t kill them,” said Weser. “You could have, easily. But you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t want to, maybe you wanted to, but too late, and they’d run away. Maybe you wanted to and then changed your mind. Maybe you already knew they were your sister’s children.”—“We went by her place, in Pomerania,” Clemens grunted. “We found some letters, some documents. There were some very interesting things, among others the children’s documents. But we already knew who they were.” I let out a hysterical little laugh: “I was there, you know. I was in the woods, I saw you.”—“Actually,” Weser went on imperturbably, “we thought so. But we didn’t want to insist. We said to ourselves that we’d find you sooner or later. And you see, we did find you, in fact.”—“Let’s go on with our story,” said Clemens. “You went upstairs, covered in blood. Your mother was standing there waiting for you, either at the top of the staircase, or in front of the door to her room. She was wearing a nightgown, your old mother. She spoke to you, looking into your eyes. What she said, we don’t know. The twins listened to everything, but they didn’t tell anyone. She must have reminded you how she had carried you in her womb, then fed you at her breast, how she had wiped your ass and washed you while your father was chasing whores God knows where. Maybe she showed you her breast.”—“Not very likely,” I spat out with a bitter laugh. “I was allergic to her milk, I never breastfed.”—“Too bad for you,” Clemens continued without batting an eye. “Maybe then she stroked your chin, your cheek, she called you her child. But you weren’t moved: you owed her your love, but you thought only about your hatred. You closed your eyes so you’d stop seeing hers and you took her neck in your hands and you squeezed.”—“You’re mad!” I shouted. “You’re making all this up!”—“Not at all,” Weser said sardonically. “Of course, it’s a reconstruction. But it agrees with the facts.”—“Afterward,” Clemens continued in his calm bass voice, “you went into the bathroom and got undressed. You threw your clothes into the bathtub, wash
ed yourself, cleaned off all the blood, and returned to your bedroom, naked.”—“There, we can’t say,” Weser commented. “Maybe you engaged in perverted acts, maybe you just slept. At dawn, you got up, put on your uniform, and left. You took the bus, then the train, you returned to Paris and then to Berlin. On April thirtieth, you sent a telegram to your sister. She went to Antibes, buried your mother and her husband, then she left again as soon as possible, with the boys. Maybe she had already guessed.”—“Listen,” I babbled, “you’ve lost your minds. The judges said you had no evidence. Why would I have done that? What would be the motive? You always have to have a motive.”—“We don’t know,” Weser said calmly. “But actually it’s all the same to us. Maybe you wanted Moreau’s money. Maybe you’re a sex fiend. Maybe your wound messed up your head. Maybe it was just an old family hatred, that’s pretty common, and you wanted to take advantage of the war to settle your accounts on the sly, thinking it would hardly be noticed among so many other deaths. Maybe you simply went mad.”—“But what are you after, damn it!” I shouted again.—“We told you,” Clemens murmured: “we want justice.”—“The city is burning!” I shouted. “There aren’t any more courthouses! All the judges are dead or gone. How do you plan on judging me?”—“We’ve already judged you,” Weser said in a voice that was so quiet that I could hear the water streaming by. “We found you guilty.”—“You?” I sniggered. “You’re cops. You don’t have the right to judge.”—“Given the circumstances,” Clemens’s big voice rumbled, “we’ll take that right.”—“Then,” I said sadly, “even if you are right, you’re no better than I.”