The Führer Must Die

by Victoria Andre King

  Georg had been crying, not sobbing; just water running down his face. “I didn’t want this,” Georg said.

  “You care about the people you killed?” asked Nebe.

  Georg looked up at him, his sincerity was infuriating. “I care very much.”

  “Of course he does!” the first guard yelled fondling his new pistol grip.

  “Yeah!” the second guard shouted from the door.

  “You hear that? He cares, very much. So what would you do if, right at this moment, you were set free?” Nebe scrutinized his face, Georg was unflinching.

  “I’d find a job. I’d help support the families of those …”

  Nebe leaned in for emphasis. “Innocent people you killed?”

  Georg took a deep breath then swallowed hard. “Yes. I’d like to help them. I’d like to be part of my country again.”

  Nebe raised an eyebrow. “Would you be able to do that?”

  Georg continued eagerly, “Yes. I know now that it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Nebe shook his head slowly. “You say that because you have been arrested?”

  Georg grew insistent. “No. If my plan had been correct, it would have succeeded. Since it did not succeed, I am convinced that my understanding was wrong.”

  “Very Hegelian!” said Nebe.

  “What did you say?” the typist at the end of the aisle asked.

  Nebe chuckled. “I said, ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’”

  Georg’s cell was a remodeled office like every other room in the building. It had a steel door and bars on the windows but the walls looked like plaster board. The two guards were supposed to be watching him but they were playing chess at the end of the corridor and making the ceremonial noises chess players make to cheer themselves up. Georg let his mind wander. Shiny pictures of shiny women hung in his imagination like Christmas tree ornaments. He had been enlightened by Vogue as a young man in 1920. He was in a news agent’s and was looking at the magazine rack. He saw the cover of one of the first issues of French Vogue and thought: Wait a minute! So that’s what they’re supposed to look like, not the shapeless baggy creatures with faces like shelled walnuts that had surrounded him since he was born. It had explained everything and substantially raised his expectations.

  He thought of one of his women, that blonde milliner’s assistant, Ingrid. A milliner’s assistant wasn’t quite fashion so it wasn’t quite glamour, but it had been as close to it as he was ever going to get. It may have had something to do with his taste for oral sex and that certainly had something to do with a lack of confidence. But he liked the feeling of power: they screamed, they passed out, or suddenly they didn’t know where they were or what was happening. One girl had told him it had felt like she was being kissed by God. Hannah had told him that she had finally found something she didn’t want to live without.

  He thought of Hannah. He thought of Ingrid. He had a quick impossible daydream: Hannah running a dental clinic in Geneva with Ingrid as the receptionist and then suddenly, he knew that he was going to escape. These people were impossible. They couldn’t accept a simple explanation. It had to be complicated or they couldn’t be detectives. You don’t get promoted for solving a simple problem so it had to be excruciatingly complicated. There was a story everyone knew about the German revolution of 1848. The revolutionaries had studied the French version and knew that they were supposed to heave up the paving stones to form barricades. But Germany was very advanced and many of the streets were already paved with concrete. There were big holes in the barricades so the revolutionaries put up signs saying EINTRITT VERBOTEN—ENTRY PROHIBITED. The troops marched up, saw EINTRITT VERBOTEN, turned around, and marched away. It was a kind of blindness and that was a reason for hope.

  Out of simple boredom he cut a panel out of the plaster board with the clasp knife he had stolen. There was another wall a few inches behind the first. This one was ragged plaster and soiled, peeling paint. It had been simpler to build a plasterboard room inside the office than to repair the walls. He reached through the opening and the plaster crumbled at his touch. He clawed at it and the plaster came away in clumps. The outer wall was brick and concrete with a plaster face. He thought about that. He had several inches of masking tape secured to the raised arches on the undersides of his shoes. He peeled it off lovingly and used it to make a hinged door out of the plasterboard panel. He tested the door several times. He had worked fast. When the panel was closed the seams were clearly visible. He opened the door and scratched out a hand full of crumbled plaster from the outer wall then closed the panel and used the grayish caked dust to wad up the cracks which outlined the door stand. They had given him a chair and it wasn’t bolted down. He placed the chair in front of the escape hatch and then sat down on the bed to think it over. He could leave the debris in the space between the two walls. It was that easy.

  He was startled out of his calculations by one of the guards. “You want coffee, Georg?” asked the guard with the new pistol grip.

  Georg smiled at the thoughtfulness of the gesture. “No, thank you.”

  His smile was contagious, the guard was practically beaming. “Alright, see you in a couple of hours.”

  Georg heard the outer door close and dove for the wall. The work was easier this time. It took an hour to remove the first brick. Watery-gray daylight showed through. He was outside. There was another wall in front of him. No one would see the hole. The next wall looked about three feet away. He could rappel his way to the ground. Painfully, but it could be done. It came into consciousness that he was actually going to escape. He thought madly that it might get him into trouble and then, when he realized that it didn’t matter, he felt shame. Then he felt guilty that he would be leaving without saying goodbye but decided, sensibly, that that didn’t matter either.

  After all he doubted they would blame him.

  JANUARY 15TH, 1940

  HE HEARD THE CLICK OF the hall door. He closed the panel, moved the chair in front of it and skipped across the room to the wash basin. The guard opened the cell door. He smiled at Georg. It was time for more charades.

  Nebe and company were waiting for him and as he was led into the room and Nebe immediately picked up on something. Georg had changed, tangibly changed, but he couldn’t put his finger on how yet. He eyed Georg curiously, “So you know why we’re all here, get on with it. You were saying.”

  “I’ve said everything there possibly is to say. I’ve told you my reasons plenty of times.”

  “Oh, go on Georg.” Nolte and Brandt looked from Georg to Nebe then at each other. They too sensed that something had changed but weren’t about to bring attention to themselves by asking what it was. Nebe was obviously enjoying Georg’s exasperation and the job offered so few pleasures anymore.

  Georg regarded his captive audience with a sigh of resignation before pressing on. “Well, there’s the Hitler youth. I don’t like what they’ve done to the children, making them spy on their parents. He has no right to do that it’s unnatural.”

  “The young understand quicker,” said Nebe. “At least that is the rationale behind it. What else?”

  Georg thought a moment. “And I don’t like the way Jews are being treated.”

  “The Arabs have a saying: When you see a blind man, kick him. Why should you be kinder than God?” Nolte was showing off again so Nebe indulged in a display of anger.

  “Do you have doubts or something? Why are you being so defensive? Go on, Georg.”

  *Later, much later.*

  Georg now had a light of determination in his eye. “And the workers are furious at the Party.”

  Nebe was the only other person in the room that wasn’t on the verge of coma. “I didn’t know that.”

  Georg was almost passionate. “This was supposed to be a workers’ revolution. I made less money at the munitions plant than I did ten years before and taxes tripled.”

  Nebe raised his eyebrows again. “Workers complaining? Can you remember a
specific instance?”

  Georg scoffed. “They’re too frightened to complain openly.”

  Brandt had woken up a little. “Then how do you know they’re dissatisfied?”

  Georg repeated for emphasis, “Because they’re making less than they did ten years ago and taxes …”

  Nebe cut in, staring at Brandt, “You keep talking about money, but you pay child support for your son, anything over twenty-four marks, it even says so in your file. What’s his name?”

  Georg sighed, “Manfred.”

  Nebe thought about that. “Like von Richtoffen?”

  Georg shook his head. “Like the opera by Beethoven.”

  Nebe considered that then returned to his original tack. “A fine name; but still everything you make over twenty-four marks a week goes to him the ruling of the court. You’ll never make more than twenty-four marks no matter who’s in power Georg; you are full of shit!”

  Georg turned his palms upward and gazed at the ceiling like a Renaissance Jesus. “I wasn’t thinking of myself.”

  It was Nebe’s turn to sigh. “Of course you weren’t.”

  Nolte groaned.

  *Later, much, much later.*

  Georg seemed possessed of an almost-superhuman ability to endure insanity. “And it is unethical to bring the churches into your politics.”

  Brandt was nodding. “It’s true, it’s very true.”

  Nebe was dying for a drink. “Georg, can’t you just say: I. Am. Angry.”

  Nolte interjected, “That’s descriptive not expressive. He would have to put himself at a distance from it to describe it. You’re asking him to talk like a bystander.”

  Nebe feigned patience. “He is a bystander. It’s an English plot, remember?”

  Nolte never knew when to shut up. “Then he doesn’t need to be angry.”

  Georg was becoming confused again. “Angry about what?”

  Nebe rolled his eyes. “The workers are angry at the Party.”

  Georg was trying to follow. “Yes, I said that.”

  “And you are a worker.”

  “Yes.”

  “Therefore, you are angry at the Party.”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it. Say: I am angry at the Party.”

  “I am angry at the Party.”

  Nolte couldn’t take any more. “For Christ’s sake! The man blew up a building and killed people; we already know he’s angry.”

  Nebe resigned himself to the fact that if the situation continued, his men would snap. “Let’s get out of here,” said Nebe. “Let’s go out for a drink. Would you like that, Georg?”

  Georg didn’t understand.

  “He can’t go out like that,” complained Brandt, “he’s been sleeping in his clothes for ten weeks.”

  “Then get him some clothes,” Nebe said patiently.

  Nolte took out a flip notebook and his fountain pen. “Georg, tell me your suit and collar size,” he said.

  Later that evening, the three inspectors were sitting at a table against a wall with Georg wedged in among them. The restaurant was old, cold glitz with waiters that looked like retired college deans, creamy-white walls and chandeliers like upside-down glass Christmas trees. The table cloths were so fiercely white that Georg kept his hands in his lap.

  “This isn’t my kind of place,” he said.

  “Mine either,” agreed Nebe. “You have to be tremendously cold to feel at ease in a place like this.”

  “If none of us like it, why are we here?” Georg asked.

  “Oh, there’s no back door,” said Nebe. “Security is easy. We always use it.” He looked Georg up and down. “Suit fit alright?”

  “Lovely,” said Georg, “Thank you. But how will you justify the expense?”

  “You can wear it at the trial too. It’s no problem,” said Nebe. The waiter arrived and looked them over contemptuously.

  “Beer?” he inquired with infinite sarcasm.

  “No,” said Nebe. “Schnapps. The best you have Swiss!” The waiter jerked back as if slapped and went to get it from the bar.

  “Those two thousand people that disappeared in 1936,” said Georg. “What happened to them?”

  Nebe shrugged. It was in the worst possible taste to even bring that up. “I imagine that you mean to ask: ‘How were they killed?’ Well it is said that they had used a meat packing plant. An assembly line hanging. On meat hooks sliding down a rail past the execution team. They could hang 400 an hour but it took another hour to get their clients to calm down. There wasn’t time for niceties like tying their hands with the result that they were all trying to climb on top of each other to take the weight off their necks. It took an hour before the hanged could begin to relax and be sensible about it.”

  Nebe looked longingly at the bar.

  Georg found it impossible to grasp. “Were they guilty?”

  Nebe was matter-of-fact. “Of what?”

  Georg’s eyes grew wide. “How can you justify that?”

  Nebe was stoic. “It was fantastic theater.” Everyone jumped as though the table had just ridden over a bump so he clarified. “I don’t justify it. I could if I had to though. I could justify it morally, aesthetically, legally, politically, practically. I could justify it anyway you liked, as long as you were to tell me what the rules were. It’s a ceremonial game, it won’t change anything. My father wanted me to be a lawyer. I studied mathematics instead, which turned out to be criminal law with an imaginary client. So, I ended up here.” … A peculiar hell where the only reality was the meat hooks.

  The waiter arrived with the schnapps and four glasses. Nebe poured a round. “You do drink, don’t you, Georg?”

  In reply, Georg gulped the schnapps and widened his eyes as the oily, fiery liquid exploded in his stomach and spider-webbed numbingly through his veins. He went white, then red.

  “You want some water or something with that?”

  Georg shook his head and held up his empty glass. Nebe refilled it. Georg spoke as soon as his breath returned. “Why do I have to be a British conspiracy?”

  Nebe sighed again, it was almost becoming a reflex. “The party line is that the Führer has the support of every German worker, therefore, a German worker could not have possibly wanted to kill the Führer on his own.”

  Georg was incredulous. “But I’m the only one.”

  Nebe donned his school master’s hat yet again. “You’re missing the point, Georg. We find ourselves in the position of the virgin who said, yes, she did have a baby but it was only a small one. You wanted to stop the war. That’s a purely altruistic act. That’s unbelievable and it makes us look evil and we’re not going to put up with it. But let’s not talk business.”

  Nebe’d only had one drink and the Christ symbolism was creeping in already. That was bad. It was very bad indeed. Georg’s glass was empty again. Georg held it out to remind him.

  Nebe shook a finger. “Three’s enough for now. Let’s have some fun before the nerves go dead. There’s a sporting house we maintain. I’d like to show it to you.” Georg looked depressed. “I don’t like paying for anything either,” Nebe consoled him, “but this is departmental business. Heydrich had it built for his personal use but then he decided that it might be useful in interrogation, so he got the department to pay for it. The man is a genius.” Nebe shuddered. “Look, Georg, this is all part of the interrogation.” Georg was fidgeting, opening and closing his mouth. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll prove it to you later. Trust me a little.”

  The government-issued Mercedes pulled up in front of a very nondescript building and the motley crew emerged, careful to keep Georg in the middle. Nebe was playing the gracious host. “This is Obergruppenführer Heydrich’s headquarters in Berlin.” He said it by way of orientation.

  Once inside, the waiting room didn’t look like the Obergruppenführer’s taste, but that man was full of surprises. The walls were covered with black velvet curtains that sported an abstract pattern of photographs demonstrating oriental positio
ns. Instead of couches there were black and gold recamiers that looked like they were out of an ad for an overpriced perfume. The girls didn’t swarm out and grab at you; they swaggered out one at a time like runway models. It didn’t feel like a whorehouse, more like a fashion show where you got to sleep with the models. That’s the way Heydrich liked it. As Nebe had mentioned, the man was a genius.

  Nebe watched Georg out of the corner of his eye. He was crouched forward in his chair, rigid as a kitten that’d just seen its first mouse. Nebe smiled.

  The first girl was a German expressionist hooker who looked like Jean Harlow with green hair, black lipstick, and a red satin dress glued to her skin. As she was about to exit, she bent her knees, stuck out her derrière and waggled it, sucking her thumb and looking over her shoulder at them in shy speculation.

  “This is sociologically interesting,” said Nolte.

  “Isn’t that a rather desperate attempt at detachment?” asked Nebe.

  “Just trying to take an interest,” said Nolte, spitting the words.

  The next girl was, perhaps, eighteen and dressed in a long fluted dress and an expression of open innocence: impersonating a student about to set out on her Wandervogel year. Maybe she actually was, but that was of little interest to her audience.

  The next girl was a tall red-headed woman in black leather fetish gear with a four-inch clitoris and a knowing smile. She noticed Nolte’s expression and gave him a slow-motion grind of her hips that was, somehow, in the most scrupulous good taste.

  “Oh my God,” said Nolte. “This is it. I’m going to rush home to murder my wife.”

  “You’re on duty,” cautioned Nebe. The girl pirouetted and struck a few poses. Then half-squatted, hands on her knees, and opened her mouth to a soft wet O. Her tongue was in three separate positions at the same time.

  “Fuck theory,” said Nolte, “this is reality.” The girl had turned around and was giving them a sample of what she could do with her derriere.