by Herman Wouk
But SS plant or not, the man isn’t shamming agony. Not much later he plops down with a groan on his knees and tumbles over on his side, eyes rolling and glassy. Well fed, new to the camp, he should have done better than that. Camp weakens or toughens you. If the Resistance doesn’t murder that one, he’ll end as a Musselman.
Colonel Blobel is well into his cups now: slumped in the armchair, slurring his words, drooping his glass at an angle that slops brandy. His assertions and boasts are getting wild. The Commandant suspects that, drunk as he is, Blobel is cutely playing cat-and-mouse with him. He still has not mentioned the problem that has brought him to Auschwitz. The escape will give him some nasty leverage, if it isn’t foiled — and soon.
Blobel is now claiming that the whole Jewish program is his idea. In the Ukraine, where he headed an Einsatzgruppe in 1941, he grasped how shoddy the original SS plan was. Back in Berlin on sick leave, he presented a top-secret memorandum to Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann, three copies only — so hot that he didn’t dare keep a copy himself. Therefore he can’t prove that he conceived the present system. But Himmler knows. That’s why Blobel now heads Kommando 1005, the hardest of all SS tasks. Yes, the honor of Germany rests in Paul Blobel’s hands. He realizes his responsibility. He wishes more people would.
What Blobel saw in the Ukraine, so he says, was terrible. He was then an underling following orders. They assigned him to Kiev. Just ordered him to go in there and do a job. His part went off smoothly. He found a ravine outside the town, collected the Jews in batches and got them out to the ravine, called Babi Yar or something, a few thousand at a time. It took days to get it done. There were more than sixty thousand Kiev Jews, the biggest job anybody had yet tried. But everything he didn’t organize himself was bungled. Not only did the army fail to keep Ukrainian civilians away from Babi Yar; half of the crowds of onlookers were German soldiers. Disgraceful! People watching the executions as though they were at a soccer game! Laughing, eating ice cream, even taking pictures! Pictures of women and children kneeling to be shot in the back, tumbling into the ravine! This was damn hard on the morale of the rifle squads; they didn’t appreciate getting into such snapshots. He had to call a halt, raise hell with the army, and get the place cordoned off.
Moreover, the Jews were shot with their clothes on, and with God knows what money and jewelry concealed on them, and sand was bulldozed over them. Idiotic! As to their empty homes in Kiev, why, the Ukrainians just walked in and helped themselves. The Reich got nothing of their property. Everybody knew what was happening to the Jews.
Blobel perceived then and there that Germany was going to lose billions in Jewish property, if the whole thing wasn’t done with more system. His memorandum laid the plan out properly, and Himmler jumped at it. Auschwitz and the whole revised Jewish solution resulted.
The Commandant isn’t about to argue with Blobel, but all this is eyewash. Maybe not about the Ukraine; but long before the Wehrmacht ever got near Kiev, he met with Himmler about the Jewish question, and afterward with Eichmann. It was Eichmann’s setup in the Vienna Jewish Emigration Office, way back in 1938, that was the economic model for Auschwitz. The Commandant has heard all about that Vienna setup. The Jews went in one door of the building rich proud bourgeois, passed down a row of offices signing papers, and came out the other end with bare asses and passports. As for the Aktion Reinhardt, the official general collection of the property of the Jews after special treatment, Globocnik has always handled that. So when Blobel tries to claim —
R-R-R-RING!
The sweetest sound the Commandant has heard in his life! He jumps to his feet. The telephone doesn’t ring in the villa at midnight to report failure.
The sound of the drum is muffled by the snow, so Berel doesn’t hear it until it starts up in the next camp. So they’ve nabbed him, and are marching him through Birkenau already! Well, if he had to be caught — God pity him — better now than later. For the first time in months, Berel has been fearing his knees would give way. Hearing the drum gives him strength. Two SS men are carrying the flogging frame out on the parade ground now. It will soon be over.
And here the guy comes. Three officers lead him, three follow him, leaving him plenty of room for his solo performance. One prods him with a sharp stick, to keep him dancing as he beats the drum. The poor devil can scarcely stay on his feet, but on he comes, jigging and drumming.
The clown suit is getting bedraggled with use. The bright yellow cloth is stained in the seat and the legs with blood. Still, it is a terribly ludicrous sight. Around his neck the usual sign dangles — HURRAH, I’M BACK —in big black German lettering. Who is he? Hard to tell, through the crude paint on his face, the red mouth, the exaggerated eyebrows. As he dances by, feebly whacking the drum, Berel hears Mutterperl hiss.
The flogging is short. The fellow’s behind, when they bare it, is raw bleeding meat. He gets only ten more blows. They don’t want to weaken him too much. The Gestapo interrogation comes first. They want him to stay lively enough so that the torture will make him talk. They may even feed him for a while to build him up. In the end, of course, he’ll be hanged at a roll call, but there won’t be much of him left to hang. Ticklish business, escaping. But if the alternative is going up the chimney, a man has little to lose, seeking another way to leave Auschwitz.
The chilled ranks break. The SS men and the trusties curse, club, and whip the slow-moving inmates back to the barracks. Some stumble and fall. Their rigid legs held them up while they didn’t move. Bend those frozen joints, and down you can go! Berel knows about this. He found it out on the march from Lamsdorf. He walks on his own numb ice-cold legs as though they are iron braces, swinging them clumsily along with his hip muscles.
The block, where the temperature must be about zero, but at least the snow isn’t falling, seems a warm refuge: in fact, home. When the light is turned off, Mutterperl pokes Berel, who rolls close and puts his ear to the foreman’s mouth.
Warm breath; faint words. “It’s off.”
Berel changes position, his mouth to Mutterperl’s ear. “Who was the guy?”
“Never mind. All off.”
The Commandant laughs uproariously with relief and with genuine amusement, as he hangs up. The dogs tracked the fellow down, he tells Blobel. The poor bugger tried to escape in one of the big cistern carts that carry off the crap from the mass latrines. He didn’t get far, and he’s so covered with shit that it’s taken three men to hose him off. Well, that’s that!
Blobel slaps his shoulder. An escape that fails, he says wisely, is not a bad thing for discipline. Make an example of the bastard. This is the psychological moment, the Commandant thinks, and he invites Blobel upstairs to his private office. He locks the door, unlocks the closet, and brings out the treasure. Lovingly he spreads it out on the desk. Colonel Blobel’s bleary eyes widen in an envious admiring gleam.
The stuff is women’s underwear: exquisite fairylike things, soft works of art, lacy pretty nothings that give a man a hard-on just to look at them. Panties, brassieres, shifts, slips, garters, in filmy pastel silks, perfectly laundered, ready for movie stars to put on! The best in the world! The Commandant explains that in the undressing room he has a man just to collect the sweetest stuff he sees. Some of these Jewesses are ravishing. And oh, Christ, what lovely stuff comes off their asses. Just look.
Colonel Paul Blobel scoops up a double handful of panties and girdles, crushing them against his crotch like a woman’s rump, with a wide grin at the Commandant and a masculine growl — RRRRRR! The Commandant says that the stuff is a present for Colonel Blobel. There’s plenty more, tons of it. But this is the best of the best. The SS will deliver a package to the colonel’s airplane with a good selection, also some decent Scotch and brandy, a few boxes of cigars, and so forth.
Blobel shakes his hand, gives him a little hug, becomes a different man. They sit down and talk turkey.
First he lectures the Commandant on the merits of crematorium versus burning pit. He ha
s definite and informed ideas. He gives some technical tips on how to improve the pit performance. Damn useful! Then he comes to the point. Auschwitz has been sending him garbage, not workers. Kommando 1005 duty is very hard work. These fellows he’s been getting don’t last three weeks, whereas it takes three weeks just to show them the techniques. He is tired of complaining to Berlin. He knows that the way to get things done right — as the Commandant has been saying — is to do them himself. So he has come to Auschwitz to settle this thing. It has to be straightened out.
The tone is friendly. The Commandant responds that he will do what he can. He is caught in a bind himself. Himmler can’t make up his mind what the function of Auschwitz is. Is he trying to eliminate Jews? Or put them to work? One week the Commandant gets a bawling out from Eichmann for sending too many Jewish arrivals to the work camp, instead of to special treatment. The next week, or the next day, for that matter, Pohl from the Economic Section will be down on him for not putting enough Jews into the factories. A directive has just come in, four pages long, with orders to nurse sick Jews back to health on arrival, and put them to work, if there’s six months of potential labor in them. To a person who knows Auschwitz, it’s utter nonsense. Just bureaucratic bumpf! But there you are. He has a dozen factories to man, and a perpetual labor shortage.
Blobel waves all this aside. Kommando 1005 has the highest priority. Does the Commandant want to ask Himmler? Blobel is not leaving Auschwitz — and now the tone is not so friendly — without an assurance that he will get four or five hundred ablebodied Jews in the next shipment. Ablebodied! Fellows who can deliver three or four months of hard labor before you have to get rid of them.
The Commandant is resourceful under pressure. In this business he has to be. He has a brainstorm. Colonel Blobel has seen the kommando at work in Crematorium II, he says. There’s a fine working gang, well-fed fellows with strong backs, no better stuff in the camp. They are due to be liquidated when their work is done. The crematorium fires off next week. How about it? Kommando 1005 can have the Crematorium II kommando. Will that do?
This is highly satisfactory to Blobel. The two officers shake hands on it, and open another bottle of brandy.
Before they stagger off to bed, at three o’clock in the morning, they have agreed at length that their work is dirty but honorable, that the SS is the soul of the nation, that front-line soldiers don’t have it as tough, that obedience to the Fiihrer is the only salvation for Germany, that the Jews are the Fatherland’s eternal enemy, that this war is the historic chance of a thousand years to root them out for good; that it only seems cruel to kill women and children, that it’s one hell of a rotten job, but the future of European civilization and culture is at stake. They are seldom this frank about the things that trouble them, but to a surprising extent they find themselves kindred spirits. Arms around each other’s shoulders, they lurch to the bedrooms with almost loving good-nights.
A week later, trucks take the crematorium construction kommando to Cracow. Before the work gang leaves Auschwitz, word comes down from the Labor Section about Kommando 1005. It is just a postponed sentence of death. Still, escapes from 1005 are reputedly easier. In Cracow they board trains for the north. Mutterperl and Jastrow carry identical rolls of undeveloped film, slipped to them after they were searched, stripped, and issued different clothes for departure. Both men have memorized Resistance names and addresses in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and a destination for the films in Prague.
* * *
Global Waterloo 3: Rommel
(from World Holocaust by Armin von Roon)
The Hinge of Fate
In his history, Winston Churchill calls the Battle of El Alamein “The Hinge of Fate.” Actually, it was an interesting textbook encounter, a revival of World War I tactics in a desert setting. The double political impact of El Alamein and Torch was certainly serious. Just as America was dipping a gingerly toe into the European war at one end of North Africa, the legendary Desert Fox was driven from Egypt at the other end. The world was amazed. Spirits rose among the Allies and fell in Germany; Italian morale collapsed.
Nevertheless, despite the great distances and colorful battles, North Africa was a secondary theatre. Once Hitler backed off from the Mediterranean strategy, his last chance to win the war, the front dwindled to a costly and tragic sideshow; and when he too late plunged into Tunis in force, it became a military hemorrhage. Typically, Churchill devotes some twenty pages to El Alamein, and about seven pages to Stalingrad and Guadalcanal combined. Historical myopia can go little further.
Churchill’s Greatest Blunder
What Churchill fails to mention at all, of course, is that his own stupid interference with his army commanders created the North African situation in the first place.
Mussolini took Italy into the war in 1940 as France was falling, after the British had left their ally in the lurch at Dunkirk. The Italian dictator thought he could snatch spoils on the cheap from two defunct empires, so from his huge arid territory in Libya he launched an invasion of Egypt. It was a case of the hyena mistaking an ailing lion for a dead one, and biting prematurely. The British air force and navy were still almost intact. So was their Middle Eastern army. They not only counterattacked by land and air and sent the Italians fleeing westward; they also marched light forces south and took Somaliland and Abyssinia. This cleared the Red Sea and the whole East African coastline for British shipping.
Meantime, along the Mediterranean coast the Italians were routed. Wherever the British armored columns appeared the Italians gave up in droves, though greatly outnumbering the enemy. It appeared that England had North Africa won, to the very border of neutral French Tunisia. This meant sea and air control of the Mediterranean, with the gravest consequences for us.
Absorbed though Hitler was at that time with his plan to invade Russia, these events roused him to dispatch an air wing to Sicily, and a small armored force to Tripoli to stiffen the collapsing Italians. And so it was that there came on the scene the immortal ROMMEL. In February 1941, when the then little-known junior panzer general landed in Tripoli, the Italians were on their last legs. His Afrika Korps of ten thousand men was quite inadequate to hold off the fast-approaching British forces. But Churchill, with his worst blunder of the entire war, gave Rommel his historic chance.
At that time, the feckless Mussolini was in trouble in,Greece, and Hitler wanted to pacify the Balkans before our assault on Russia. That we might invade Greece to clean things up was apparent. Anticipating this, Winston Churchill halted the march of his victorióus African forces, yanked out four of their strongest divisions, and shipped them to Greece! His old Balkan mania, which had led to his Gallipoli disgrace in World War I, was cropping out again.
In both wars Churchill was haunted by the absurd fantasy that the polyglot squabblers of the Balkan peninsula, that patchwork of small countries formed of the debris of the Ottoman Empire, could be induced to unite and “rise up against Germany.” This time his folly cost England a disastrous defeat in Greece and Crete, the “little Dunkirk,” and her chance to secure North Africa as well. By the time the defeated divisions returned to Libya, their equipment battered, their élan gone, Rommel was entrenched, and the Desert War was on. It would take two years of hard fighting and the whole gigantic Anglo-American invasion to retrieve Churchill’s idiocy, and win for England what she had in hand before he threw it away.
TRANSLATORS NOTE:No great man fails to make mistakes. Churchill’s shift of forces from Africa to Greece was mistimed. Churchill doesn’t admit this, in his unabashedly self-serving though fine six-volume history called The Second World War. One has to read a few other books, including works like Roon’s, to get a clearer idea of what really went on. — V.H.
Desert Warfare
The North African desert war oscillated for a year and a half between two port bases fourteen hundred miles apart: Tripoli in Libya, Alexandria in Egypt. A game of hare and hounds went on turn and turn about. First the Afrika Korps, the
n the British, stretched their supply lines to attack, ran low, and withdrew to base. Supply so far governed this war that Rommel wrote, “Any desert campaign was won or lost by the Quartermaster Corps before a shot was fired.”
In Erwin Rommel’s masterly desert tactics, the ruling concept was the open southern flank. On the north lay the Mediterranean. To the south lay the sandy void. Conventional rules of land war melted before the oceanlike open flank. It was Rommel’s flank moves that won victory after victory, as he kept varying his tricks to bedazzle his stolid foe.
But a desert army’s range, like a fleet’s, is dictated by the amount of fuel, food, and water it can carry along, with the reserve needed to double back to base. The dashing Rommel was somewhat neglectful of this limitation; fortunately his good staff kept it in mind. It was something Adolf Hitler could never understand. His mentality was that of a World War I foot soldier. In Europe adequate supply lines were taken for granted, and our troops could live off fruitful invaded lands like France and the Ukraine. The picture of armored columns proceeding through vast sterile flat voids was beyond Hitler. He saw the newsreels regularly at Headquarters, but they made no dent in his obtuseness.
I was present on two occasions when Rommel flew to the Führer’s HQ in East Prussia to plead for more supplies. Goring was there once. The bored uncomprehending glaze in the eyes of the two politicians must have sickened Rommel. Hitler’s response each time was the same: airy-fairy chaffing of this great field general as a “pessimist,” voluble promises to improve supplies, warm assurances that Rommel would “pull it off no matter what,” and a new medal.