“DR. FLÄCHSNER: From each of two documents which I shall produce in another context the fact emerges that, in the munitions industries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, workers from concentration camps worked an average of 60 hours a week.
“In that case, Mr. Speer, why were special concentration-camp quarters established at the plants and known as work camps?
“SPEER: Those work camps were established in order to avoid long distances for the inmates and thus ensure that the worker was fresh and eager to work when at the plant (italics are the Au.’s).
“Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of National Socialist Germany.… Consequently the Bolshevik soldier has forfeited all claim to treatment as an honorable soldier and according to the Geneva Conventions.… The sense of pride and superiority of the German soldier who is ordered to guard Soviet prisoners of war must at all times be apparent to the public.… Hence orders are for ruthless and forceful action at the slightest sign of resistance, particularly toward Bolshevik agitators.… In dealing with Soviet prisoners of war, disciplinary reasons alone require that weapons be used at the slightest provocation.
“The German Army must forthwith eliminate all those elements among prisoners of war that may be considered Bolshevik agitators. Hence the special position of the Eastern campaign demands special measures which are to be carried out unhampered by bureaucratic or administrative influences and with a keen sense of responsibility.”
“Shooting of Soviet Russian prisoners of war. (POW Ord.)
“The shooting of and fatal accidents to Soviet Russian POW’s are henceforth no longer to be reported by telephone to the commandant in charge of prisoners of war as being exceptional occurrences.”
“Prisoners of war who meet their quota in a full day’s work are to receive a basic daily remuneration of
Reichsmark 0.70 non-Soviet prisoners of war
Reichsmark 0.35 Soviet prisoners of war.
The lowest daily remuneration, however, is to be:
Reichsmark 0.20 for non-Soviet prisoners of war
Reichsmark 0.10 for Soviet prisoners of war.”
While we are about it, let us offer a further document, this one turned up by that tireless and agreeably corruptible (by Camel nonfilter cigarettes!) Marja van Doorn. Miss van Doorn came across this document among the jumble of objects in Leni’s chest during further investigations occasioned by Leni’s finally having consented to move to the country—a hitherto undiscovered letter written by the deceased Heinrich Gruyten which the Au. has no hesitation in describing as a “posthumous example of concrete poetry.”
“Space-allocation is to be on a purely mathematical basis. Its purpose is to establish the minimum number of rooms, and specifically which of any existing living quarters, are required for the accommodation of the garrison strength while adhering strictly to the most economical use of space. (Column ‘Regulation Occupancy-Capacity’ in the Accommodation Plan.) The actual use of the living quarters made by the troop unit within the limits set by the Accommodation Plan may be disregarded. Apart from the single rooms provided for by the Plan, the remaining rooms are to be included in the calculations in order of size until the garrison strength has been reached. Rooms not required to be occupied within the terms of regulation room-use, viz., pursuant to the Accommodation Plan, are to be disregarded in space-allocation. Rooms for orderlies in officers’ quarters and accommodation for the quartering of noncommissioned officers and men in officers’ living quarters are to be debited to the annual budget of the troop unit and hence listed as permanently occupied.
“In the event that due space cannot be provided, viz., that the barracks are overoccupied, all available accommodation must be taken into consideration in calculating the annual budget for materials consumed and the annual budget for wear-and-tear of utensils. Hence in such cases space-allocation for the garrison strength is to be calculated not according to regulation occupancy-capacity pursuant to the Accommodation Plan but in terms of actual occupancy.
“Space-allocation is subject to readjustment when the garrison strength is recalculated.
“The allocation, maintenance, and financing of government-owned buildings and rooms for the holding of church services in garrison parishes (garrison churches and churches at Army Bases) and of garrison cemeteries are functions of the Garris. Admin. In large military hospitals a room for prayer is to be provided.
“Approval of the ASC or NSC is required for the construction of new garrison churches and for the establishment of new garrison cemeteries with ancillary structures, and for the equipping of individual rooms for the holding of church services, and for any alterations to existing structures of this nature. Bishops attached to the Armed Forces are to be consulted. In garrisons where government-owned rooms suitable for the holding of church services are not available, the right to use or share in the use of civilian churches is to be secured. Efforts are to be made during negotiations to obtain a share in the use of ceremonial utensils in civilian churches. Where this cannot be achieved, these utensils are to be provided by the Administration pursuant to II 113 (a). The contract to be entered into by the Garris. Admin. requires the participation of the Army (Navy) garrison chaplain and of the Army Corps District (Nav. Station) chaplain, together with the approval of the Army or Nav. Admin. Cf. A. Dv. 370 (A.B.) No. 29.
“For confirmation (First Communicants) classes, suitable accommodation in churches or other buildings is to be provided. If necessary it may be rented by the Garris. Admin. with the approval of the Army or Nav. Admin. In certain cases it may be left to the religious instructor to supply such accommodation himself. In such cases an appropriate reimbursement is to be established by the Army or Nav. Admin.
“The cost of maintaining garrison churches, special accommodation pursuant to Para. 150, and garrison cemeteries with ancillary structures, as well as of maintenance and replacement of the regulation accommodation utensils (incl. those for religious services—viz., II 113(a)—), together with the costs of heating, lighting, and janitorial services for churches and cemetery chapels and for the maintenance and laundering of church linen, are to be defrayed out of the appropriate budgets classified under ‘Accommodation.’
“In cases where the disposal of stable manure is handled by the troop unit concerned, one half of all net yield (i.e., gross revenue less turnover tax, cf. Para. 69 (2) R.A.O.) from the disposal of manure is to be posted by the accounting departments of the troop unit concerned to the item ‘Miscellaneous Income,’ whereas the remaining half is to be retained by the troop unit concerned and pursuant to Para. 244 is to be posted in the ‘S’ ledger under the special heading: ‘Manure Revenue.’
“In return the troop units concerned must undertake:
“(a) the cleaning of manure locations—II 408 (d);
“(b) the maintenance and replacement of their own fodder vehicles;
“(c) improvements to the equipment of stables, indoor riding rings (e.g., by the installation of riding mirrors), outdoor rings, and jumping courses over and above regulation furnishing and equipment (179 [3] and 246);
“(d) the providing of supplemental fodder and other expenditures for the benefit of the horses.
“Other expenditures may not be defrayed from the ‘S’ account ‘Manure Revenue.’ It is incumbent upon the troop unit concerned to dispose of the accruing stable manure to the best possible advantage and with the approval of the Garris. Admin. The latter is required to ascertain the most advantageous sales opportunities. When stable manure is exchanged for fodder, this barter transaction is to be broken down into purchase and sale but without the necessity of notifying the other party to the transaction of this procedure. The monetary value is to be shown in the ledgers as income and expenditure, and one half of the monetary value of the stable manure is to be posted as Manure Revenue to ‘Miscellaneous Income’; the troop unit is to be reimbursed for the value of manure used by the unit itself, e.g., for fertilizing grassland. Half of the monetary value is to be posted t
o ‘Miscellaneous Income.’
“The management of stable manure is the function of the administrative unit (cavalry regiment, battalion, etc.). It can also be left to individual squadrons, batteries, and companies for independent handling. To be entered in ‘S’ ledger pursuant to Paras. 244 and 261.
“Any balance under ‘Manure Revenue’ in the ‘S’ ledger is to remain to the credit of the troop unit concerned even when the latter is transferred to another barracks or another garrison. In the event of transfer of individual sections of a troop unit, an appropriate amount may be transferred to the new troop unit. In the event of the dissolution of a troop unit, etc., the balance of Manure Revenue is to be posted to ‘Miscellaneous Income’ after defrayment of all outstanding costs. In such cases any equipment purchased from the proceeds of Manure Revenue is to be surrendered to the Administration without compensation and against a receipt and is to be posted by the Administration in its equipment inventory.”
For the sake of certain information and amplification, and in order to verify a few items, it was impossible to avoid imposing once again on the exalted personage. When requested by telephone for an interview, as soon as he learned of the Au.’s request he instructed the call to be switched through and agreed without hesitation to a further interview “and if necessary still further ones.” This time his voice sounded friendly, almost jovial, and this time the Au. embarked on the train journey of some thirty-six minutes without trepidation. He decided to indulge in a taxi, thereby missing the Bentley of the exalted personage which the latter had of his own accord sent to the station with his chauffeur for the express purpose of meeting the Au. Since the Au. had not only not expected such attention but had received no advance notice of it, this lack of communication cost him some DM.17.80, including tip DM.19.50, since the exalted personage lives at a considerable distance from town. The Au. greatly deplores having thereby deprived the income-tax department of approximately DM.1.75 to 2.20. Once again the occasion seemed opportune to invest in further gifts. He decided on a view of the Rhine, similar to those whose jewellike clarity had struck him so agreeably at Mrs. Hölthohne’s. Cost: DM.42.00, or 51.80 with frame; the personage’s wife, to be referred to henceforward tout court as Mimi, was—and not only verbally—“delighted at his thoughtfulness.” For the personage himself the Au. had managed to pick up a first edition of the Communist Manifesto, although only in facsimile (in actual fact it was merely a photocopy with a few added graphic touches, but this also drew a gratified smile from the personage).
This time the atmosphere was more relaxed. Mimi, no longer suspicious, served tea approximately of the quality described by Mrs. Hölthohne in the café as not especially good; there were cookies, dry, sherry, dry, and cigarettes, and on the faces of those two sensitive people there prevailed a delicate melancholy that precluded tears but not moist eyes. It turned out to be a pleasant afternoon, without covert aggression, not quite without overt aggression. The parklike grounds have already been described, as has the room, the terrace not yet: it was curved in the baroque style, ornamented at either end with pergolas, its central portion extending well out into the grounds; on the lawn, croquet paraphernalia. First blossoms (forsythia) on the shrubs.
Mimi: brunette and, although fifty-six, genuinely looking like forty-six, long legs, narrow mouth, normal bosom, in a rust-red knit dress, her complexion given an artificial pallor that went well with her type.
“That’s a lovely story of yours, about the girl riding her bicycle from camp to camp, looking for her lover and finally finding him in the cemetery; when I say lovely, I don’t mean the cemetery of course, and her finding him there, all I mean is: a young woman bicycling across the Eifel, across the Ardennes all the way to Namur, managing to get as far as Reims, back to Metz, and home, again right through the Eifel and across zone boundaries and national frontiers.
“Well, I know this young woman, and if I’d known it was she you were talking about I’d have—well, I’d have, I don’t quite know what I’d have done—well, I’d have tried to do something nice for her, although she’s quite a reserved kind of person. We went to see her, you know, in 1952, right after my husband was finally released, after we’d tracked down the gardener and got her address from him. A person of remarkable beauty, whose appeal for men even I as a woman can appreciate” (?? Au.). “And that boy of hers, just as beautiful, with his long fair straight hair. My husband was quite moved—the child reminded him so of young Boris, though Boris had been extremely thin and had worn glasses, but the child did look like him, didn’t he?” (A nod from the personage. Au.).
“She brought him up all wrong, of course. She shouldn’t have refused to send the boy to school. After all, the boy was seven and a half then, and the way she carried on with him was completely unrealistic. Singing songs and telling fairy tales and that incongruous mixture of Hölderlin, Trakl, and Brecht—and I don’t really know whether Kafka’s Penal Colony is the right reading for a boy of barely eight, and I don’t know either whether the naturalistic depictions of all, and I do mean all, the human organs doesn’t lead to, well let’s say, to a somewhat too materialistic outlook on life. And yet: there was something quite wonderful about her, in spite of the pure anarchy that prevailed. I must say, those pictures of human sexual organs, and enlarged at that: I don’t really know whether that wasn’t a bit premature—today, of course, it would already be almost too late” (laughter from both. Au.). “But he was adorable, that child, adorable and quite natural—and what that young woman had gone through, she must have been just thirty at the time, and she’d lost you might say three husbands, and the brother, the father, the mother, and proud! No, I didn’t have the courage to go and see her again, she was that proud.
“We did correspond with her later, when my husband went to Moscow with Adenauer in ’55 and actually managed to find one—repeat one—person at the Foreign Ministry whom he’d known during his Berlin days, and he barely had time on his way out to ask him about Koltovsky. Result: negative, grandmother and grandfather of that adorable child—dead; and his aunt Lydia—no trace.”
The personage: “I am not exaggerating when I say that it is the fault of the Western allies that Boris is no longer alive. By that I don’t mean that unfortunate and foolish subterfuge with the identification papers, and the fact that he was killed in a mining accident. No, that’s not what I mean. The fault of the Western allies lay in the fact that they arrested me and interned me for seven years, that’s to say, put me under lock and key, even if the locks didn’t lock that well and the keys weren’t always turned. You see, I had arranged with Erich von Kahm that he was to warn me as soon as the situation became acute for Boris, but when his entire guard personnel deserted he lost his nerve, and he did the best thing he could under the circumstances: sent him to the Erft front where he would have had no difficulty going over to the Americans at the first opportunity. Our plan had been a different one: Kahm was to get him a British or American uniform and put him into a POW camp for British or Americans—by the time the mistake was cleared up the war would have been over. It was madness, of course, to stick him with German papers, a German uniform, even a faked wound-tag. Madness. Naturally neither Kahm nor I could have had any idea that there was a woman behind it! And a child on the way, and the air raids! Lunacy! At the time I didn’t get much response out of the girl, she thanked me when she found out it had been I who had wangled Boris a job at the nursery, but thanked—well, you might say the way a reasonably well-brought-up girl would thank you for a bar of chocolate. That girl had no idea what I had risked, and how an affidavit by Boris would have helped me at Nuremberg and so on. I made an utter fool of myself in court and before my fellow defendants by stating that I had saved the life of one Boris Lvovich Koltovsky, aged so and so much. The Soviet prosecutor said: ‘Well, we’ll try and locate this Boris since you even know his POW-camp number.’ But a year later he still hadn’t been found! At the time I thought it was all just a pretense. Boris could certain
ly have helped me if he had lived and if he had been allowed to.
“They accused me of making the most horrible statements, and while it is true that they were made at conferences I took part in, they were not made by me. Would you credit me with the following?” (Pulling out his notebook he read aloud): “ ‘Leniency is not called for even toward the Soviet prisoner of war who shows willingness to work and docility. He will interpret it as weakness and draw his own conclusions.’ I am also supposed to have suggested, during a meeting that took place in September ’41 with the head of the army munitions industry, that some RLS” (Reich Labor Service. Au.) “barracks which had housed a hundred and fifty prisoners be adjusted to house eight hundred and forty prisoners by installing tiered bunks. In one of my plants Russians are said to have come to work in the morning without bread or work clothes and to have begged German workers for bread—there are also supposed to have been punishment cells. Yet I was the one who in March ’42 complained that the Russians being sent to us had been so weakened by the atrocious camp diet that they were no longer able to operate a lathe properly, for instance. During a discussion with General Reinecke, the man responsible for all prisoners of war, I protested personally against the regulation mixture for what was known as Russian POW bread, this had to consist of 50 percent rye husks, 20 percent chopped sugar beets, 20 percent ground cellulose, and 10 percent ground straw or leaves. I managed to get the percentage of rye husks raised to 55 percent and that of chopped sugar beets to 25 percent, which meant that the horrible ingredients of ground cellulose, ground straw or leaves, dropped correspondingly, at least in our plants—and at the expense of our plants.
“It is all too easily forgotten that the problems were not of the simplest. I pointed out to Backe, the Secretary of State in the Reich Ministry for Food, and to Moritz, the ministerial director, that work in the munitions industry must not be tantamount to a death sentence, and that such work required strong men. Finally it was I who pushed through what later became the famous ‘thick soup days.’ I had a row with Sauckel, who threatened me with jail and literally waved under my nose all the ordinances of the AHC and AFHC and CORSD” (Army High Command, Armed Forces High Command, Central Office of the Reich Security Department. Au.). “And because that utterly inhuman feeding system had to be kept from the German public, I made use of deliberate indiscretions to smuggle news of it out to Sweden and exposed myself to considerable danger in my efforts to alert world public opinion, and what thanks did I get? Two years’ internment, five years’ imprisonment, on account of our subsidiary plants in Königsberg, for which I really was not responsible.
Group Portrait With Lady Page 34
