by Philip Kerr
“Yes, sir,” said Moyzisch. “I am sure you’re right to question this, Herr Minister.”
“I think we are finished here.” Von Ribbentrop stood up abruptly.
Moyzisch rose quickly to his feet but, in his anxiety to be out of the Reichsminister’s presence, knocked over his chair. “I’m sorry, Herr Reichsminister,” he said, picking it up again.
“Don’t bother.” Von Ribbentrop waved his hand at the dripping ceiling. “As you can see, we are not yet recovered from the last visit of the RAF. The top floor of the ministry is gone, as are many of the windows on this floor. There is no heat, of course, but we prefer to stay on in Berlin rather than hide ourselves away at Rastenburg or the Berchtesgaden.”
Von Ribbentrop escorted Linkus and Moyzisch to the door of his office. To Moyzisch’s surprise, the Reichsminister seemed quite courteous now, almost as if there might be something he wanted from him. There was even the faintest hint of a smile playing on his face.
“Might I ask what you will be telling General Schellenberg about this meeting?” With one hand tucked into the pocket of his Savile Row suit, he was clinking a bunch of keys nervously.
“I will tell him what the Reichsminister himself has told me,” said Moyzisch. “That this is disinformation. A crude trick perpetrated by British intelligence.”
“Exactly,” von Ribbentrop said, as if agreeing with an opinion Moyzisch had first voiced himself. “Tell Schellenberg he’s wasting his money. To act on this information would be folly. Don’t you agree?”
“Unquestionably, Herr Reichsminister.”
“Have a safe trip back to Turkey, Herr Moyzisch.” And, turning to Linkus, he said, “Show Herr Moyzisch out and then tell Fritz to bring the car around to the front door. We leave for the railway station in five minutes.”
Von Ribbentrop closed the door and returned to the Biedermeier table, where he gathered up Cicero’s photographs and placed them carefully in his saddle-leather briefcase. He thought Moyzsich was almost certainly right, that the documents were perfectly genuine, but he had no wish to lend any support to them in Schellenberg’s eyes, lest the SD general be prompted to try to take advantage of this new and important information with some stupid, theatrical military stunt. The last thing he wanted was the SD pulling off another “special mission” like the one a month before, when Otto Skorzeny and a team of 108 SS men had parachuted onto a mountaintop in Abruzzi and rescued Mussolini from the traitorous Badoglio faction that had tried to surrender Italy to the Allies. Rescuing Mussolini was one thing; but knowing what to do with him afterward was quite another. It fell to him to deal with the problem. Installing Il Duce in the city-state Republic of Salo, on Lake Garda, had been one of the more pointless diplomatic endeavors of his career. If anyone had bothered to ask him, he would have left Mussolini in Abruzzi to face an Allied court-martial.
These Cicero documents were another thing entirely. They were a real chance to put his career back on track, to prove he was indeed, as Hitler had once called him—after the successful negotiation of the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union—“a second Bismarck.” War was inimical to diplomacy, but now that it was clear the war could not be won, the time for diplomacy—von Ribbentrop’s diplomacy—had returned, and he had no intention of allowing the SD with their stupid heroics to ruin Germany’s chances of a negotiated peace.
He would speak to Himmler. Only Himmler had the foresight and vision to understand the tremendous opportunity that was provided by Cicero’s very timely information. Von Ribbentrop closed his briefcase and headed for the street.
By the tall lamppost that flanked the building’s entrance, von Ribbentrop found the two aides who were to accompany him on his train journey: Rudolf Linkus and Paul Schmidt. Linkus relieved him of his briefcase and placed it in the trunk of the enormous black Mercedes that was waiting to drive him to the Anhalter Bahnhof—the railway station. Sniffing the damp night air charged with the smell of cordite from the antiaircraft batteries on nearby Pariser Platz and Leipziger Platz, he climbed into the backseat.
They drove south down Wilhelmstrasse, past Gestapo headquarters and onto Königgratzerstrasse, turning right into the station, which was full of aged pensioners and women and children taking advantage of Gauleiter Goebbels’s decree permitting them to escape the Allied bombing campaign. The Mercedes drew up at a platform well away from Berlin’s less distinguished travelers, alongside a streamlined, dark green train that was building up a head of steam. Standing on the platform, at five-meter intervals, a troop of SS men stood guard over its twelve coaches and two flak wagons armed with 200-millimeter quadruple antiaircraft guns. This was the special train Heinrich used by the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, and, after the Führerzug, the most important train in Germany.
Von Ribbentrop climbed aboard one of the two coaches reserved for the use of the Reich Foreign Minister and his staff. Already the noise of clattering typewriters and waiters laying out china and cutlery in the dining car that separated von Ribbentrop’s personal coach from that of the Reichsführer-SS made the train seem as noisy as any government office. At exactly eight o’clock the Heinrich headed east, toward what had once been Poland.
At eight-thirty, von Ribbentrop went into his sleeping compartment to change for dinner. His SS general’s uniform was already laid out on the bed, complete with black tunic and cap, cross-belts, black riding breeches, and polished black riding boots. Von Ribbentrop, who had held the honorary rank of SS-Gruppenführer since 1936, enjoyed wearing the uniform, and his friend Himmler seemed to appreciate him wearing it. On this particular occasion, however, the SS uniform was mandatory, and when the minister came out of his compartment, the rest of his Foreign Ministry staff aboard the train were also dressed in their coal black uniforms. Von Ribbentrop found himself smiling, for he liked to see his staff looking smart and performing at a level of efficiency that only the proximity of the Reichsführer-SS seemed able to command, and instinctively he saluted them. They saluted back, and Paul Schmidt, who was an SS colonel, presented his master with a sheet of ministry notepaper on which was typed a summary of the points von Ribbentrop had wanted to make to Himmler during their dinner meeting. These included his suggestion that any Allied air crew captured after a bombing raid be handed over to the local population and lynched; and the issue raised by SD agent Cicero’s photographed documents. To the minister’s irritation, the issue of the deportation of Jews from Norway, Italy, and Hungary was also on the agenda. Von Ribbentrop read this last item once more and then tossed the summary onto the table, his face coloring with irritation. “Who typed this?” he asked.
“Fräulein Mundt,” said Schmidt. “Is there a problem, Herr Reichsminister?”
Von Ribbentrop turned on the heel of his boot and walked into the next carriage, where several stenographers, seeing the minister, left off typing and stood up respectfully. He approached Fräulein Mundt, searched her out tray, and silently removed the carbon copy she had made of Schmidt’s summary before returning to his private carriage. There, he placed the carbon copy on the table and, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his SS tunic, he faced Schmidt with sullen displeasure.
“Because you were too damned lazy to do what I asked, you risk all our lives,” he told Schmidt. “By committing the specific details of this Moellhausen matter to paper—to an official document, I might add—you are repeating the very same offense for which he is to be severely reprimanded.”
Eiten Moellhausen was the Foreign Ministry’s consul in Rome, and the previous week he had sent a cable to Berlin alerting the ministry to the SD’s intention to deport 8,000 Italian Jews to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, “for liquidation.” This had caused consternation, for von Ribbentrop had given strict orders that words such as “liquidation” should never appear in Foreign Ministry papers, in case they fell into Allied hands.
“Suppose this train were captured by British commandos,” he shouted. “Your stupid summary would condemn us just as su
rely as Moellhausen’s cable. I’ve said it before, but it seems I have to say it again. ‘Removal.’ ‘Resettlement.’ ‘Displacement.’ Those are the proper words to use in all Foreign Ministry documents relating to the solution of Europe’s Jewish problem. The next man who forgets this will go the same way as Luther.” Von Ribbentrop picked up the offending summary and carbon copy, thrust them at Schmidt. “Destroy these. And have Fräulein Mundt retype this summary immediately.”
“At once, Herr Reichsminister.”
Von Ribbentrop poured himself a glass of Fachinger water and waited, impatiently, for Schmidt to return with the retyped document. While he was waiting, there was a knock at the other door of the carriage and an aide opened it to admit a small, plain-looking SS-Standartenführer, a man not dissimilar in appearance to that of his master, for this was Dr. Rudolf Brandt, Himmler’s personal assistant and the most industrious of the Reichsführer’s entourage. Brandt clicked his heels and bowed stiffly to von Ribbentrop, who smiled back at him ingratiatingly.
“The Reichsführer’s compliments, Herr General,” said Brandt. “He wonders if you are free to join him in his car.”
Schmidt returned with the new summary sheet, and von Ribbentrop received it without a word, then followed Brandt through the concertina gangway that joined the two coaches.
Himmler’s car was paneled with polished wood. A brass lamp stood on a little desk beside the window. The chairs were upholstered in green leather, which matched the color of the car’s thick velour. There was a gramophone and a radio, too, though Himmler had little time for such distractions. Even so, the Reichsführer was hardly the monkish ascetic he projected to the public. To von Ribbentrop, who knew Himmler well, his reputation for ruthlessness seemed ill deserved; he was capable of being very generous to those who served him well. Indeed, Heinrich Himmler was not a man without charm, and his conversation was lively and more often than not laced with humor. It was true that, like the Führer, he disliked people smoking cigarettes around him, but on occasion he himself enjoyed a good cigar; no more was he a teetotaler, and often drank a glass or two of red wine in the evening. Von Ribbentrop found Himmler with a bottle of Herrenberg-Honigsächel already open on the desk, and a large Cuban cigar burning in a crystal ashtray that lay on top of a Brockhaus atlas and a Morocco-bound copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a book that Himmler was seldom, if ever, without.
Seeing von Ribbentrop, Himmler put down his notorious green pencil and jumped to his feet.
“My dear von Ribbentrop,” he said in his quiet voice, with its light Bavarian twang that sometimes reminded von Ribbentrop of Hitler’s Austrian accent. There were even some who said that Himmler’s accent was consciously modeled on Hitler’s own voice in an attempt to ingratiate himself still further with the Führer. “How nice to see you. I was just working on tomorrow’s speech.”
This was the purpose of their rail journey to Poland: the following day in Posen, the old Polish capital that was now the site of an intelligence school run by Colonel Gehlen for German military forces in Russia, Himmler would address all of the generals, or “troop leaders,” in the SS. Forty-eight hours later, he would give the same speech to all of Europe’s Reichsleiters and Gauleiters.
“And how is that coming along?”
Himmler showed the foreign minister the typewritten text on which he had been working all afternoon, covered as it was with his spidery green handwriting.
“A little long, perhaps,” admitted Himmler, “at three and a half hours.”
Von Ribbentrop groaned silently. Given by anyone else, Goebbels or Göring or even Hitler, he would have risked taking a nap, but Himmler was the kind of man who later asked you questions about his speech, and what in particular you thought had been its strongest points.
“That can’t be helped, of course,” Himmler said airily. “There’s a lot of ground to be covered.”
“I can imagine. Of course, I’ve been looking forward to this, since your new appointment.”
It was just two months since Himmler had taken over from Frank as minister of the interior, and the speech at Posen was meant to demonstrate that the change was not merely cosmetic: whereas previously the Führer had counted on the support of the German people, Himmler intended to show that now he relied exclusively on the power of the SS.
“Thank you, my dear fellow. Some wine?”
“Yes, thanks.”
As Himmler poured the wine, he asked, “How is Annelies? And your son?”
“Well, thank you. And Haschen?”
Haschen was what Himmler called his bigamous wife, Hedwig. The Reichsführer was not yet divorced from his wife, Marga. Twelve years younger than the forty-three-year-old Himmler, Haschen was his former secretary and the proud mother of his two-year-old son, Helge—try as he might, von Ribbentrop couldn’t get used to calling children by these new Aryan names.
“She is well, too.”
“Will she be joining us in Posen? It’s your birthday this week, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. But, no, we’re going to meet at Hochwald. The Führer has invited us to the Wolfschanze.”
The Wolfschanze was Hitler’s field headquarters in East Prussia, and Hochwald was the house Himmler had built, twenty-five kilometers to the east of the Führer’s sprawling compound in the forest.
“We don’t see you there very much anymore, von Ribbentrop.”
“There’s very little a diplomat can do at a military headquarters, Heinrich. So I prefer to stay in Berlin, where I can be of more use to the Führer.”
“You’re quite right to avoid it, my dear fellow. It’s a terrible place. Stifling in summer and freezing in winter. Thank God I don’t have to stay there. My own house is in a considerably healthier part of the countryside. Sometimes I think the only reason the Führer endures the place is so he can feel at one with the privations endured by the ordinary German soldier.”
“There’s that. And another reason, of course. So long as he stays there he doesn’t have to see the bomb damage in Berlin.”
“Perhaps. Either way, it’s Munich’s turn tonight.”
“Is it?”
“Some three hundred RAF bombers.”
“Christ!”
“I dread what is to come, Joachim. I don’t mind telling you. That is why we must do all we can to succeed with our diplomatic efforts. It is imperative that we make a peace with the Allies before they open a second front next year.” Himmler relit his cigar and puffed it carefully. “Let us hope that the Americans can yet be persuaded to put aside this insane business of unconditional surrender.”
“I still think you should have allowed the Foreign Ministry to speak to this man Hewitt. After all, I’ve lived in America.”
“Come now, Joachim. It was Canada, was it not?”
“No. New York, too. For a month or two, anyway.”
Himmler remained silent for a moment, studying the end of his cigar with diplomatic interest.
Von Ribbentrop smoothed his graying blond hair and tried to control the muscle twitching in his right cheek that seemed only too obviously a manifestation of his irritation with the Reichsführer-SS. That Himmler should have sent Dr. Felix Kersten to Stockholm to conduct secret negotiations with Roosevelt’s special representative instead of him was a matter of no small exasperation to the foreign minister.
“Surely, you can see how ridiculous it is,” von Ribbentrop persisted, “that I, an experienced diplomat, should have to take a backseat to—to your chiropractor.”
“Not just mine. I seem to remember he treated you, too, Joachim. Successfully, I might add. But there were two reasons why I asked Felix to go to Stockholm. For one thing, he’s Scandinavian himself and able to conduct himself in the open. Unlike you. And, well, you’ve met Felix and you know how gifted he is and how persuasive he can be. I don’t think magnetic is too strong a word for the effect he can have on people. He even managed to persuade this American, Abram Hewitt, to let him treat him for back pain, which provided a very us
eful cover for their talks.” Himmler shook his head. “I confess I did think it was possible that under the circumstances Felix might actually achieve some influence on Hewitt. But so far, this has not proved to be the case.”
“Abram. Is he a Jew?”
“I’m not sure. But, yes, probably.” Himmler shrugged. “But that can’t be allowed to matter.”
“You’ve spoken to Kersten?”
“This evening on the telephone, before I left Berlin. Hewitt told Felix that he thought negotiations could only begin after we have made a move to get rid of Hitler.”
At this mention of the unmentionable, both men grew silent.
Then von Ribbentrop said, “The Russians aren’t nearly so narrow in their thinking. As you know, I’ve met Madame de Kollontay, their ambassador in Sweden, on a number of occasions. She says Marshal Stalin was shocked that Roosevelt made this demand for unconditional surrender without even consulting him. All the Soviet Union really cares about is the restoration of its pre-1940 borders and a proper level of financial compensation for her losses.”
“Money, of course,” snorted Himmler. “It goes without saying that’s the only thing these Communists are interested in. All Stalin really wants is Russia’s factories rebuilt at Germany’s expense. And Eastern Europe handed to him on a plate, of course. Yes, by God, the Allies are going to find out damn soon that we’re all that stands between them and the Popovs.
“You know, I’ve made a special study of the Popovs,” continued Himmler, “and it’s my conservative calculation that so far the war has cost the Red Army more than two million dead, prisoners, and disabled. It’s one of the things I’m going to speak about in Posen. I expect them to sacrifice at least another two million during their winter offensive. Already the SS Division ‘Das Reich’ reports that, in some cases, the divisions opposing us have contained whole companies of fourteen-year-old boys. Mark my words, by next spring they’ll be using twelve-year-old girls to fight us. What happens to Russian youth is a matter of total indifference to me, of course, but it tells me that human life means absolutely nothing to them. And it never ceases to amaze me that the British and the Americans can accept as their allies a people capable of sacrificing ten thousand women and children to build a tank ditch. If that is what the British and the Americans are willing to base their continued existence on, then I don’t see how they’re in any position to lecture us on the proper conduct of the war.”