The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  He walked around the silent hall with Frank on his heels; touched Soviet guns, so utterly unsophisticated in design but so astonishingly deadly. Stood in front of the Soviet Yak plane with a veritable hole in its fuselage; stared at it long and hard. It was a similar Yak that had ended his days in the Luftwaffe. Little Yak that, according to Reichsmarschall Göring, was, by all means, no match to his highly praised Messerschmitts. Reinhard flew a Messerschmitt that day and a lot of good it did. The crudely-made Russian plane turned out to be much lighter and maneuvered with such ease that Reinhard couldn’t even catch him in his crosshairs despite the supposed superiority of the German machine. And then, to add injury to the insult, the degenerate Russian pilot tricked him with such ease into following him towards the Soviet frontline that Reinhard only realized his mistake when a burst of gunfire shoved through the metal of his plane. Having waved his wings in gratitude to the anti-aircraft battery on the ground, the Yak was gone. Reinhard was falling behind the enemy lines, still not believing such a humiliating turn of events.

  “Such simplicity. Primitivism even,” Frank’s voice behind his back distracted Reinhard from his musings.

  Reinhard nodded curtly and turned away from the offending Yak. “Indeed. Primitivism. They will never win a war against us.”

  Reinhard thoroughly ignored the gnawing memory pestering him like a pesky fly. They were a superior species, the Germans. And what happened there, with the Yak, was a stupid mistake, that’s all. Just like the setback with Moscow. They’d take it eventually. Reinhard almost persuaded himself that he believed his own words.

  An exhibition worker appeared from behind the closed doors, leading to the small auditorium. “We’re ready with the film, Herr Obergruppenführer. If you would please follow me.”

  He was already holding the door open for the two men. Reinhard proceeded into the darkened hall made into a temporary movie theater for the duration of the exhibition, welcoming the distraction. He had asked the SS war correspondent in his charge to film specific things and hopefully the fellow, who came highly recommended, didn’t miss out anything.

  It turned out, he didn’t. As a matter of fact, he followed Reinhard’s instructions with envious thoroughness, finding (God only knew where!) such filth and derangement that even Reinhard found himself pursing his lips in disgust on quite a few occasions as the film rolled.

  “How can they live like that?” Frank muttered next to him, making a vague gesture of amazement with his arm.

  “They don’t have to suffer for too long,” Reinhard promised with a confident grin. “As soon as we colonize the lands and give them to our farmers and workers, all this degradation will be wiped completely off the face of the earth. Together with the people, who carry it.”

  No, the voice behind the scenes didn’t say any of that, of course. Instead, it spoke with great compassion of the Russian people’s plight as pictures of burned churches, primitive dwellings, diseased children with flies crawling on their bodies and even faces, and starved peasants, changed one after another.

  Oh, the relief with which they welcomed the German soldiers! – That was filmed in the Western Ukraine, the war correspondent fellow commented quietly. They couldn’t find any relieved-looking people in Russia itself, no matter how hard they tried; only the partisans who shot at them at the slightest of provocations and hanged them in droves regardless of their rank or position. Reinhard waved the comment off; no one would know the difference anyway.

  More destroyed Soviet tanks lined the field as the camera moved further, following the German advance. Reinhard tried not to think that in place of each destroyed one, ten new ones would appear before the German troops the next day. The factories, producing them, had been wisely moved behind the Urals right after the German invasion.

  “The Urals will be our Eastern border.”

  Reinhard only realized that he spoke out loud when Frank addressed him. “Their armament factories—”

  “Their armament factories will be all destroyed by then.”

  “Of course, Herr Obergruppenführer.”

  The propaganda film came out to be an absolute perfection – even Reinhard himself couldn’t have made it better. He thoroughly shook the correspondent’s hand and congratulated him on his success.

  The refreshments and a light lunch were already waiting for them in a separate room. Forgetting his steaming coffee in a delicate china cup, Reinhard occupied himself leafing through the propaganda booklet that would be distributed for all the guests attending the exhibition the following day.

  “I could swear that the last time you submitted it to me for my approval, it was almost fifty pages long.” His sharp gaze met Frank’s as Reinhard turned the booklet towards his deputy, his index finger pointing at the last page’s number – 43.

  “You are correct, as always, Herr Obergruppenführer. It used to be forty-eight pages long,” Frank replied, carefully avoiding his superior’s inquisitive look.

  “What happened to the five missing pages?”

  “Nothing. I took the liberty of removing them out of the booklet. They were irrelevant to its contents.”

  Reinhard regarded Frank with infinite, mocking patience as the latter squirmed in his seat, seemingly in the hope that Herr Protector would just leave the whole matter alone.

  “Is there any chance I can see the booklet that I have approved? Or have you destroyed them all already?” he asked, at length.

  “No, of course not, Herr Obergruppenführer.” Frank rose from his seat somewhat tiredly, as though admitting his defeat. Herr Protector never left matters alone, so the hope was in vain. He should have known better. He also should have known that having a photographic memory, Herr Protector hardly ever forgot things, even such trivial ones as the number of pages in a damned booklet.

  Frank left his superior to enjoy his Czech beer, to which he had acquired quite a taste recently and soon returned with the original booklet. Reinhard even obliged him with a smile. Frank by now knew better than to expect anything less than a reprimand following such cunning, unnatural smiles.

  “And why exactly did you take the GPU part out?” Heydrich finally asked, shuffling through the last five pages.

  Frank looked at him, almost with accusation. Do I really have to spell it out? With your phenomenal memory, you must remember exactly what’s in that section. Too close to home, if you ask me. That’s why I took it out. But I can’t quite tell you that and not anger you; can I?

  Instead of bringing arguments in his defense, Frank simply took the booklet out of Heydrich’s hands and started reading. “The brutal terror Bolshevism exercises through the GPU is perhaps the best answer to the frequent question of why the Bolshevists fight so bitterly at the front. Twenty-five years of terror have produced a gray and broken mass who silently follow orders because that is their only way to remain alive. Resistance means death, often the death of the entire family. The bestial terror regime of the Jewish GPU is best seen in the sadistic methods of torture used against supposed ‘enemies’.”

  He paused, looked at Heydrich again. Blood fault law and the way we wipe out families in our dungeons? Ring any bells yet?

  The Reich Protector remained unmoved, with the same half-a-smile sitting slyly on his face. Why did you stop? By all means, continue.

  Frank did. “According to a captured commissar, nearly 5,000 people were shot by the GPU in five years behind the dungeon’s iron bars. The cell is tiled. The condemned were brought to the cell and shot in the back of the neck. The corpses were moved to the side and sprayed with a hose to wash away the blood. A fan provided fresh air so that the next victim would not faint from the blood, because he was to remain conscious until the last moment. Another narrow cell was used to secure confessions. Prisoners were forced to kneel for hours. If they stood up, they hit the ceiling and set off an alarm, when a spotlight would be then aimed at them. If they sat on the small seat, they got an electric shock that forced them off. A wooden prong on the door pres
sed against their stomachs.”

  Frank shot Heydrich another long look.

  The latter chuckled quietly to some thought of his. “An interesting invention, a room like that, is it not? Do you think we can organize something similar here, in Prague?”

  “I’m sure it’s easily done, Herr Obergruppenführer.”

  “Well, continue. What’s next?”

  “The worst of all terror institutes of the GPU is the forced labor camps in which millions of innocent victims die every year. Only rarely do they know why they were taken from their families and jobs to work in the icy wastes of Vorkuta or any of the numerous other labor camps. Most of them are there only because free labor was needed somewhere in the wilderness. No one cared about them. They were shipped there under the principle; ‘people? We have enough of such trash.’

  “The unhappy victims, condemned with or without cause, follow a miserable path from which death is the only real escape. It begins with a spy, often a member of one’s own family. One night the GPU knocks on the door and takes its victim. Put in narrow cells, worn out by endless interrogations, and finally forced to confess by the usual methods of torture, with or without a verdict, they are transported to forced labor camps with inadequate food, often in the bitter cold. Many die on the way. In the forced labor camps themselves, they are stuffed into small barracks. The pitiful food ration depends on the amount of work done. It is never enough and the hard work soon leads to exhaustion. The smallest offense is punished severely by a spell in an ice cell. Continual overwork, bad food, and the lack of sanitary facilities soon lead to serious illness. The sick, forced laborers, are put on starvation rations to speed their deaths, for the GPU has no interest in weak workers. They must be disposed of as quickly as possible.

  “Very few forced laborers return to freedom. Kajetan Klug was one of them. He was a leader of the Marxist Defense League in Linz. After the unsuccessful insurrection of February 1934, he had to flee the revenge of the Dollfuss regime. His route led him through Czechoslovakia to the land of his dreams, the ‘Paradise of Farmers and Workers.’ In Moscow, he took over the leadership of the Austrian immigrants and became a party member. But he soon learned the misery of the workers and farmers. When he openly criticized these conditions, he was accused of espionage. He was arrested, tortured, acquitted, and finally condemned, with no proof, to five years of forced labor in Central Asia. The wintry wasteland of Vorkuta finally opened his eyes to the real nature of the ‘Paradise of Farmers and Workers.’ A few days before the beginning of the war with the Soviet Union, he succeeded in escaping to the German embassy. Along with the embassy personnel, he was able to reach Germany.”

  Reinhard burst out laughing. “So he did. And we sent him to Dachau on the very same charge that the Russians sent him to Vorkuta for – espionage. I still remember the case quite well. The irony of it, eh? That poor fellow!”

  A sharp look replaced an unexpected laughing fit at once. “You still didn’t tell me why you took the GPU section out of the booklet.”

  Frank took a deep breath, carefully selecting words. “Because unlike everything else listed in this booklet, the GPU section is…”

  His voice trailed off despite his attempt to keep it firm. Heydrich was watching him like a hawk.

  “…the GPU section is?”

  “The GPU section is… It can easily be called ‘the RSHA section,’ Herr Obergruppenführer. Pardon my straightforwardness,” Frank finished, with a bravery that he had never expected of himself.

  “And?”

  Much to his surprise, Heydrich didn’t burst into a rage fit but on the contrary, remained positively calm. Smiling even. For some reason, that smile of his unnerved Frank more than the shouts that he had expected to hear.

  “And… People can draw parallels.”

  “What people? Who knows about what we do behind closed doors? Who knows about our cellars besides us and our deputies who know better than to talk about such things? Who knows about the camps? Who knows about torture?” He shrugged with a dismissive look and sipped some more of his beer. “You’re wrong about one thing, my dear Frank; unlike our Soviet counterparts, we know better than to let our enemies of the state walk free. No one will escape our camps. No one will tell the rest of the world what happens in our cells. And when we’re finished with all this scum, there will be no need for those camps, those cells and dungeons, for there will be no more scum to fill them with. Please, distribute the original booklet, with the GPU section included, Frank. Our people need to see them as monsters and us – as saviors, for we really are their saviors. They just don’t see the whole picture yet. They will never need to learn about it. They will only praise us once we’re done. And those people currently in our custody? As your wonderful booklet wisely noted, ‘we have enough of such trash.’ No one will miss them.”

  Prague. March 20, 1942

  * * *

  Reinhard stood over the corpse of a man, studying the gunshot wound in his temple. A shame.

  “He shot himself before we could… We did our best to capture him alive, Herr Obergruppenführer,” a quiet voice with a barely detectable tremor in it, whispered behind his back.

  “And look at how successful your operation turned out.” Sarcasm dripping out of every word, Reinhard only clasped his hands behind his back, tighter.

  Colonel Morávek. The last of the Three Kings. The last acting head of the Czech Resistance, dead; lying pale and waxy at his feet. Reinhard turned his head with the tip of his boot. Talk about a late birthday present.

  He won. He beheaded the Czech Resistance. He was the ultimate predator in the food chain; yet, all he could taste on the tip of his tongue was a bitter disappointment.

  “The things he could have told us…” Reinhard murmured in spite of himself with a tone of desolate finality in his voice.

  His agent cleared his throat behind his back. “People don’t always talk.”

  Reinhard turned sharply on his heels to face the man. Eastern front! Penal battalion! His eyes perfectly expressed his sentiments before he even opened his mouth.

  The agent quickly produced a stack of notes before his superior, with a reverence of a mere mortal in his effort to appease an angered, ancient God, with a timely sacrifice. “But their pockets do just fine. It appears he carried nearly all of his documentation on his person when heading to the meeting we had set up for him. Through this, we have managed to uncover the identity of an Abwehr agent, alias A54, who has been working in Czechoslovakia this whole time. We’re already raking the city in search of him.”

  Reinhard took the news silently. Stood, staring at the corpse for a few more moments, deep in his brooding, then turned away at last.

  “Try to get at least that one alive, will you?” he threw over his shoulder, heading over to his open car.

  Chapter 6

  Prague. May 1942

  Jan sat on Jozef’s bed, his unseeing gaze fixed on the opposite wall, as his friend was pacing the room in front of him, agitated and flushed. They had just received a coded message from London. According to the latest intelligence, Heydrich was said to be leaving for Berlin soon, and after that – to France, and permanently. It appeared that Hitler, inspired by Heydrich’s exemplary dealing with the Czech Resistance, decided to offer him a new posting, where he would just as effectively deal with the French Resistance.

  “Was that all in vain then?” Jan whispered quietly, searching Jozef’s face.

  Jozef stopped his pacing in an abrupt manner. “Of course, not!”

  “But he’s leaving in a few days…”

  “It only means that we have a few days to carry out the plan.” Jozef shrugged, as though stating the obvious.

  Jan licked his parched lips, a feverish gleam shining in his blue eyes. “But we’re not ready—”

  “Not ready?” Jozef cried and closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down before continuing in a much milder voice. “We’re more than ready, Jan. We’ve been preparing for this for mo
nths. We found the perfect spot. We have been monitoring his movements through his butler this whole time; we know his routine better than ever.”

  “Routine? What routine?” Jan whisper-yelled back in a very, unusually for him, restless excitement. “We only know the timing of his comings and goings, yes. But as for the escort? He mostly travels alone; that’s true. But what about those times when he traveled with an armored car full of the SS on his tail?”

  “What about them?” Jozef’s tone was so decidedly nonchalant that Jan stared at him in disbelief.

  “What about them? They’ll stuff us with lead before we know what hit us!”

  “So, they will.” Another unconcerned shrug followed. “Jan, listen to what I tell you. I know that you don’t want to die. Neither do I, believe me. I want to kill that Hangman, make it back to Britain a hero, maybe go on a few more operations, and then, when the war is over, I want to come back to my native Czechoslovakia, marry Libena and have many beautiful children with her. I do want that, very much. I know that there’s a chance that this will happen. But I also know that there’s a bigger chance that it won’t. Before we set out on this mission, the Colonel told us that we would be on our own after carrying out the mission. If we do make it out of the country – good. If we don’t, we don’t. But we must carry out what was entrusted to us, all of these sentiments and arguments aside. We can’t just dismiss the few months of work by saying, oh well, he’s leaving, what bad luck. Maybe the French will be more successful. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I let him go, Jan.”

  Jan rubbed his forehead with both hands before muttering so quietly that Jozef barely heard him, “I know. Me too.”

  “Are you still up to it then?” Jozef searched Jan’s features, creased with anxious lines. “If you aren’t, tell me now. We know a couple of men from our group that was dropped from the same Halifax as us in December. I can use Karel Čurda instead. He knows about the operation anyway, I’ll just have to fill him in with the details and—”