Prince of Spies

by Prince of Spies (retail) (epub)

  You may wish to read it, Karl-Heinrich. It has helped seal your fate.

  The Soviet officials have been most helpful, even enthusiastic. The diary will help them identify a number of war criminals, including you. You said in your last letter that you were going to disguise yourself as a junior Wehrmacht officer. They have been able to check with their comrades responsible for the prisoners captured at Gumrak, and they now know that Oberleutnant Karl Naundorf is actually SS Brigadeführer Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf. You really ought to have been more imaginative in adopting another identity, but then I guess your arrogance got the better of you.

  So there we are, Karl-Heinrich. The Soviets assure me that for security reasons they will only show you this letter in the moments before your execution, so that you will not be able to divulge its contents to anyone.

  My new life starts now, as yours comes to an end.

  Sophia

  * * *

  Wednesday 24 January 1940

  Kielce, Radom district, General Government of Poland

  I thought nothing could be more fun than conquering Poland in less than a month last September, but these days life is even more amusing. I’ve not made an entry for a couple of days because we’ve been so busy, though it’s not been exactly hard work! Last night, after our ‘exertions’, Karl, Gerd, Georg and I ‘borrowed’ a crate of excellent vodka from a merchant’s house in one of the better districts of this miserable city. I don’t remember much of what happened, but let’s say that this morning there wasn’t much vodka left. Gerd had also managed to get hold of six girls: four of them Polish and two Jewish, and not one of them over the age of eighteen! I do remember we had an argument about which of us would have two girls, and in the end, it was Gerd and me: Gerd because he’d found them, me because I pulled rank!

  Because I felt so ‘guilty’ this morning, I wrote a long letter to Sophia pledging my undying love as always. She writes such sweet letters to me I feel I must reply in kind.

  So the fun we’re having at the moment is all to do with the Jews. This place is full of the bastards! Fritz Katzmann, who is now looking after the policing of the district, told me the other day that before the war there were only around 15,000 Jews in the city. Now there are over 20,000, because they’re bringing them in from other places. I guess sooner or later they’ll have to put them in one area so they can be controlled while we come up with other plans for what to do with them.

  Yesterday morning I was in Katzmann’s office and he told me about a house on Pocieszka where a bunch of radical Jews were hanging out. Apparently they came from a small town called Chmielnik, which is just south of Kielce. According to Katzmann, these Jews were political radicals; they belonged to a secular socialist party called the Bund. He said he had his eye on them because he was concerned they might cause trouble. I said to him, ‘Katzmann, what the hell’s the point of keeping your eye on them? What are you waiting for – you want them to start taking shots at our boys?’

  He didn’t look too happy at me talking to him like that. He’s the same rank as me – an Oberführer – though I’d be surprised if I’m not ranking him in a matter of months if my promotion to Brigadeführer comes through as I’m sure it will. He said, ‘All right, von Naundorf, you deal with it,’ and I said I happily would. Karl, Gerd and Georg were free, so we took a unit of Stormtroopers with us and went to the house on Pocieszka.

  I decided we should treat the raid as a proper operation; after all, we didn’t know if these people were armed. I commanded a unit going through the front of the house while Georg looked after the rear. Gerd and Karl took their men into the houses either side, because these Jews have been known to use the roof spaces as escape routes.

  But there was no trouble. There were about a dozen of them, all in their late teens or early twenties – split equally between men and women – all sitting in the kitchen having some kind of meeting. There wasn’t a weapon to be seen. They were obviously shocked when we burst in, but one of them, would you believe, had the cheek to ask us if we had permission to enter the house like that! I told him this was all the permission I needed, and pulled out my Luger pistol and hit him across the face with it. I’m sure I must have broken his jaw, but he didn’t make a sound; he just stood there and smiled. I was so angry I shot him there and then, and the others started screaming.

  Once we’d quietened them down, I ordered my men to search the house. One of the women stepped forward and said there was no one else there and they’d happily come to the police station. This seemed odd to me, to say the least. Until we’d shot the young man, they’d had a rather defiant air about them, and now they were volunteering to come along to the station. I reckoned it was because I’d ordered a search of the house. So then I said I wanted an extra-thorough search to be carried out. Sure enough, they discovered a trap door in the cellar, and through this a small underground room – more of a hole really – with half a dozen young children in it. Well, that was a bonus!

  When we brought the children out to the street, where the others were waiting, there was quite a commotion, the gist of which was the adults pleading with us to take them but spare the children. Imagine, the sheer (and I have to say typical) arrogance of the Jews, thinking they could negotiate with us!

  I was about to arrest them all, but Gerd said he had a much better idea. He herded them together and made them all march along. The adults were trying to comfort the children, who were terrified. My guess is they were all aged around five or six. Soon we came to the River Silnica, which isn’t much of a river, to be honest, but it more than served our purpose, especially as the water was so cold. Gerd got his men to line the children up on the bank, and he personally pushed them in, one by one!

  I can tell you, they didn’t last long. I think the cold must have been too much for them. We noticed some of the local Poles watching us from the other bank, and when the kids drowned, they cheered, as if we’d put on a show for them. I sometimes think the Poles in Kielce despise the Jews more than we do.

  After that, we took the adults to the SS headquarters, though to be honest, by then I was quite bored with everything. I’d rather hoped they’d have put up some resistance at the house on Pocieszka. I was all for handing them over to the Gestapo for questioning, but Oberführer Katzmann is more of a bureaucrat than a soldier and he insisted that we needed to process the prisoners and then they’d be sent off to a camp.

  I couldn’t be bothered with all this red-tape nonsense, so I told Georg just to shoot the prisoners there and then. He hesitated, I guess because two Oberführers had given conflicting orders, so I said, ‘You know what? I’ll do it myself!’ I got the Stormtroopers to line the prisoners up against the wall and we machine-gunned them there and then.

  They were remarkably calm, and when they realised their fate, they started singing a song, very quietly, but they sounded like a choir.

  I have no idea what the song was, but I can’t get it out of my head.

  * * *

  NKVD (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)

  Official memorandum: restricted and confidential

  To: Commissar of State Security (First Class) A. I. Stepanov, NKVD Desk, Soviet Embassy, Bern, Switzerland

  From: Commissar of State Security (Third Class) Semyon Mikhailovich Chernyakhovsky, NKVD office, Beketovka prisoner of war camp, Stalingrad Oblast

  Date: 29 March 1943

  Subject: SS Brigadeführer Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf

  Comrade Stepanov,

  Further to your communication dated 23 March. Your report was forwarded to my office.

  The majority of Germans taken prisoner following the glorious victory in the Battle of Stalingrad are being held in either the Dubovka or Beketovka prisoner of war camps. All of the Germans who were found alive at Gumrak Airbase (liberated 21 March) have been brought here to Beketovka.

  Upon receiving your report, we were able to establish that a Wehrmacht Oberleutnant by the name of Karl Naundorf was indeed
captive at this camp.

  He was subjected to intense interrogation by my officers. At first, he rigorously denied he was an SS Brigadeführer by the name of Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf. However, we were soon able to establish that this prisoner was indeed a member of the SS when upon examination we discovered the SS tattoo in his left armpit. Other German prisoners also identified him as an SS officer.

  When confronted with the detail of your report and specifically the allegations of his crimes against the civilian population in Nazi-occupied Poland, he refused to comment.

  The case was passed to me for review: I decided there was clear evidence of SS Brigadeführer Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf having committed war crimes and I ordered his execution.

  The execution took place at 0600 this morning. As per your request, immediately prior to his execution the prisoner was shown the letter from his wife, dated 23 March, along with the section of his diary relating to Kielce. He read some of the letter but refused to read any more, so the remainder of the letter and the diary extract were read to him by a German-speaking comrade.

  I can report that I have never seen a prisoner – either a German soldier or a Soviet citizen – so angry and distressed. Even though he was handcuffed, he nevertheless had to be restrained.

  His fury continued unabated until the moment of his execution, so much so that he had to be strapped to a chair and carried to the gallows like that. As a result, death by hanging was not instantaneous. The added weight of the chair and his struggle meant the rope snapped and the prisoner was writhing on the ground in considerable agony until he expired some ten minutes later.

  Upon my instructions, he was not shown the mercy of a bullet to dispatch him.

  Chapter 20

  Neuengamme; Lübeck, April 1943

  The journey to Neuengamme had taken all day, with a running commentary provided by August, the German communist, who’d somehow been aware of their destination when they’d left Peenemünde. They drove through Mecklenburg and into Saxony, dropping south before Hamburg, driving through the plains north of the mighty Elbe and eventually following the path of a smaller river towards an enormous complex surrounded by barbed wire and searchlights that pierced through the low cloud and mist.

  ‘We’re lucky,’ said August, chewing on the stub of a cigarette he’d found on the floor of the lorry.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like we’re particularly lucky.’ Prince spoke German with August. His companion had been a modern languages teacher in Berlin: English and French. Prince was aware that August knew he wasn’t French and may have even guessed he was British, but he didn’t risk hinting at it.

  ‘Look, Pierre, they suspect all of us in here of being involved in that air raid in some way or other. My psychoanalyst friends – assuming any of them are still alive, which I doubt – would say they’re being paranoid. The air raid threw them into a panic, and they’re being uncharacteristically irrational about it. They’re looking for anyone and everyone to blame for it. But we should take some comfort that they allowed us to leave Peenemünde; if they’d wanted to finish us off, they could have done it there and then. And if they’d wanted to torture us, there’re plenty of other camps they could have sent us to, even those terrible ones in Poland you hear all the dreadful rumours about. Neuengamme is bad enough, but they put the prisoners here to work. There are factories all over the area. If we keep our heads down and are very lucky, we may survive a few months, and who knows what will happen then? The war may well be over!’

  August the Marxist, forever the optimist.

  * * *

  They’d ended up in one of the sub-camps of Neuengamme, this one on the banks of the Dove-Elbe river. It was a collection of badly built huts in a large and exposed field of mud arranged around a parade ground where the prisoners assembled at the beginning and end of each day for a head count. Nearby was a large brickworks to where they were marched at seven o’clock every morning, returning ten hours later if they were lucky. On occasions they were so busy they were kept there all night, allowed a few hours’ sleep on the filthy floor.

  That was a good sign, according to the ever-optimistic August. Prince replied he was struggling to see it.

  ‘The foreman is from Bremen. My grandmother was from Bremen.’

  ‘And that makes it a good sign?’

  ‘No, it means I can speak his dialect and he sometimes tells me things. He told me the authorities are increasingly desperate for bricks the Allied bombing raids are having a devastating impact. Hamburg has been really badly hit, as have all the other ports in this area, plus the Ruhr cities and Berlin, of course. So the more bricks they need, and the harder we’re having to work, the more it’s a sign that the Nazis are being defeated!’

  There were other benefits to having to work through the night at the brickworks. The enormous kilns meant it was warm inside in contrast to the icy conditions in the camp huts. And they received slightly better food. In the camp, their main meal of the day was brought to their hut in a large pot after the evening roll call and heated up on a gas stove. It was a gruel-like concoction made mostly from vegetable peel with the occasional chunk of rotten meat thrown in. It wasn’t unknown for them to find bits of animal carcass floating in it, sometimes with fur still attached to the skin. But if they had their main meal in the factory, the foremen would make sure they each had a piece of bread with it, which was occasionally not stale. Sometimes they’d give them raw potatoes, and when the guards weren’t looking, they’d bake the potatoes on the kilns. Prince couldn’t recall ever eating anything more delicious.

  There were forty men in their hut in the camp, the majority Dutch or Belgian, plus a handful of Germans, a few French and a couple of Norwegians. The Russians, Ukrainians and Poles tended to be grouped together in other huts, often with quite violent consequences.

  The atmosphere in their hut was not as visceral as it could be in others. Some of the nationalities didn’t particularly like each other, but nor was there any deep-seated hatred. The atmosphere was more one of quiet resignation: most of their time there was spent in a state of exhaustion and hunger. Just staying alive and out of trouble kept them occupied.

  At the back of Prince’s mind was a constant anxiety that the Nazis hadn’t forgotten why he’d been sent to the camp in the first place. He was all too aware that he was here because another French prisoner had denounced him at Peenemünde, and he found it hard to believe that that was the end of the matter. He was convinced that sooner or later someone at Peenemünde or even here at Neuengamme would get round to looking at his file and decide to question him again.

  When he’d been at the camp for what must have been a month, this sense that he’d be called in any day now by the SS began to become an obsession. He was convinced that anyone walking behind him was following him on behalf of the SS; he even started to wonder whether August had been planted there to spy on him. He knew that once he was questioned, he’d be finished. He wouldn’t be able to pass himself off as a Frenchman for more than a minute in a serious interrogation. A sense of hopelessness began to envelop him, and he soon lost track of time as he sank into a pit of despair, beyond caring what day of the week it was, or even what month.

  One afternoon, one of the Belgians from his hut, a man in his fifties called Frans, found him slumped in a corridor in the brick factory, doing nothing other than staring at the wall. ‘Are you ill, my friend?’

  Prince shook his head, not taking his eyes off the wall in front of him.

  ‘Then why are you sitting like that? If the guards see you, you’re in big trouble, you know that.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You don’t care about being in trouble?’

  He turned away, hoping the Belgian would get the message that he wanted to be left alone. At that moment, footsteps approached them and he heard Frans talking in Flemish to one of the Dutch prisoners. Together they hauled Prince up and helped him back into the area he was working in.

  Back in the hut t
hat evening, he didn’t eat anything and just lay on his bunk, face down, staring at the ground, watching a mouse scurry beneath him. Something was dripping on his neck from the bunk above, but he lay still, not bothering to move even one inch.

  August came over and sat next to him. ‘Frans told me what happened in the factory. You’ve given up, haven’t you?’

  Prince didn’t reply. He found it hard to disagree with the German. August grabbed him roughly by his shoulder and made him turn to face him.

  ‘I’ve been in these camps since before the bloody war started, over five years now. You have to give me some credit for the fact I’ve got some experience. There are three things I know – are you listening to me?’

  Prince couldn’t ignore the fire in August’s eyes and the passion with which he spoke.

  ‘The first is that Nazism will be defeated and socialism will triumph. The second is this: there’s a moment when some men just give up in the camps. They decide life is so terrible they couldn’t care whether they live or not. I can see you’re like that. The third thing, though, is that there is a way to survive, a way to get through even in the most appalling circumstances.’

  August paused, looking for some kind of response. Prince sat up, his eyes showing the first signs of life for a few days.

  ‘Look at Henk over there,’ August continued. They both looked over at the Dutchman, a mild-mannered man in his late sixties, a university lecturer who’d been suffering from typhus since Prince had arrived at the camp but who stoically carried on, a gentle smile rarely absent from his face. ‘Henk shouldn’t be alive, should he? He’s been a prisoner since the Nazis invaded the Netherlands; he was tortured by the Gestapo and has been here for years. He wasn’t a well man even before the war. How come he’s still alive, while younger, stronger men gave up and died?’