Hitler's Peace

by Philip Kerr

  To my horror, Stalin ignored the prime minister, neither speaking to him nor shaking his hand and slowly walked past him into the dining room.

  “Well, that’s got him rattled.” And Churchill laughed.

  “Is that why I’m here, sir?”

  “I told you before, young man. You’re here because I asked you to be here.”

  But I was no longer sure that the British prime minister did not have some ulterior motive in asking me to his party. Perhaps rattling Stalin had been a motive in itself.

  At a safe distance I followed Churchill into the dining room. It looked like the interior of a small Cairo nightclub: heavy, red velvet curtains hung off large brass rails, while the walls were covered with a mosaic of small pieces of mirrored glass. The general effect was not one of imperial grandeur so much as a tawdry glamour.

  A waiter dressed in red and blue, with ill-fitting white gloves, approached Stalin, bowed his head curtly, and offered up a tray of drinks that the Soviet leader seemed to regard with suspicion.

  The table was set with crystal and silver and in pride of place stood a large birthday cake with sixty-nine candles. Checking the place cards, I discovered that I had been seated rather closer to Stalin than either one of us might have considered comfortable. After the incident on the terrace I had a bad feeling about Churchill’s birthday party, which was hardly made better by the discovery that only six places would separate me from Stalin. I wondered if it was possible that Stalin had snubbed Churchill because the prime minister had invited me. And had Roosevelt really snubbed me, too? If the president had turned against me, I could see the evening ending only in disaster. I picked up my place card and went out onto the back terrace to smoke a cigarette and contemplate my next move.

  It was quiet in the back garden of the legation with only the sound of water trickling into a large square fish pond, and the hiss of burning storm lanterns—a precaution against a possible power cut. I walked down the steps into the garden and then along the edge of the pond, my eyes fixed on the perfect white moon that lay motionless upon the surface of the water. With only the British speaking to me, there seemed to be little point in going back into the dining room.

  I walked past the kitchens to a quiet domed area covered with wisteria and honeysuckle and sat down to finish my cigarette. Gradually, as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I made out a large water cart and, on the wall, a heavy brass water tap. I closed my eyes wearily, trying to cast my mind back to a happier time—alone in my room at Princeton with just a book, the tolling of the bell in the Nassau Hall tower, and the ticking of an Eardley Norton bracket clock on the antebellum mantelpiece.

  I opened my eyes again, for suddenly it seemed I could indeed hear the ticking of that lovely old Georgian clock, a graduation present from my mother. And, fetching a storm lantern from the terrace, I brought the light back to the little ornamental dome and glanced around in search of the sound’s origin. I discovered the ticking coming from inside the Furphy water cart. My ear pressed against the cart’s cool metal cylinder, the clock sounded quite infernal, as if, like the devil’s clock, it was about to strike and the battlefield where heaven had stood, blown to hell again.

  There was a bomb inside the cart. And from the size of the water cylinder, it was a big one. As much as a ton, perhaps. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was only a few minutes before nine o’clock.

  I picked up the wooden shafts of the water cart and, taking hold of the leather harness, began to pull. At first the cart hardly seemed to shift, but at last, after an effort that left me red in the face and dripping with sweat, it moved and, slowly, began to roll out of the little rond-point dome.

  I told myself that I made an absurd-looking hero, in my tuxedo and evening slippers. But all I had to do was keep the cart moving. Just long enough to get it away from the main building. I reached the gravel driveway, my shoes slipping slightly on the small stones and, stopping for a moment, I threw off my jacket before once again picking up the yoke and dragging the thing down to the main gate.

  Two of the Sikh sentries came toward me, bayonets fixed, but quite relaxed and looking puzzled.

  “What are you doing, Sahib?” asked one of them.

  “Give me a hand,” I said. “There’s a time bomb inside this thing.”

  They stared at me blankly.

  “Don’t you understand? It’s a bomb.”

  And then wisely, one of them ran off toward the main building.

  I reached the gate, having achieved quite a reasonable forward motion, at which point the Sikh who had spoken to me threw down his rifle and began to help me push the cart.

  At last we cleared the gates of the British embassy compound and headed down the wide empty boulevard toward the main part of the city. The Sikh stopped pushing now and ran away. Which suited me fine. I almost preferred that I should do it myself. How much better that I should be remembered not as the man who had saved Hitler’s life, nor even as the man who had scuppered the peace talks, but as the hero of the hour—the man who had saved the Big Three from being blown to pieces.

  There seemed nothing particularly heroic about what I was doing. I was tired and, in a way, I almost looked forward to the end of it all. So, pushing the water cart with its lethal payload, I went to find a kind of peace. The kind of peace that passeth all understanding. Final peace. Hitler’s peace.

  XXVII

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1943,

  BERLIN

  WITH NONE OF THE surviving members of the Operation Long Jump team—supposing that there were any—having yet made it as far as the German embassy in Ankara, there was much that Walter Schellenberg still didn’t know about what had happened in Teheran. But from sources at the Soviet embassy in Iran, and inside the British SIS in London, he had been able to put together a rough picture of the events that followed the hurried departure of the Führer from the Iranian capital. Alone in his office on Berkaerstrasse, Schellenberg reread the top-secret account he had typed himself for Himmler, and then drove to the Ministry of the Interior.

  It was a meeting he was hardly looking forward to since it was now well known to the Reichsführer-SS that the young SD chief had disobeyed a direct order regarding the use of Zeppelin volunteers. Himmler would have been well within his rights to have ordered Schellenberg’s immediate execution. At the same time, however, Schellenberg had already concluded that if Himmler intended to have him arrested he would probably have done it by now. The worst Schellenberg thought he could probably expect was a severe dressing down, and perhaps some sort of demotion.

  Despite the recent bombing, the Ku-damm still managed to look comparatively normal, with people getting ready for Christmas as if they hadn’t a care in the world. To look at them, carrying Christmas trees and gazing in shop windows, a war might be happening somewhere other than in Berlin on a Thursday morning in mid-December. Schellenberg parked his car on Unter den Linden, where a cold wind was worrying the Nazi flag on the facade of the Ministry of the Interior, saluted to the two guards on duty outside the front door, and went inside.

  He found Himmler in a businesslike mood and, to his surprise, the Reichsführer showed no immediate inclination to issue his subordinate with any kind of reprimand. Instead he eyed the report on Schellenberg’s lap and with an uncharacteristic casualness invited the SD general to summarize what it contained.

  “Most of the Friedenthal Section were killed or captured, of course,” said Schellenberg. “Very likely they were betrayed to the Soviets by one of the Kashgai tribesmen, for money.”

  “Very likely,” agreed Himmler, who saw no reason to tell Schellenberg that it was he himself who had betrayed the Operation Long Jump team to the NKVD.

  “It was always the main risk in Operation Long Jump—the reliability of those tribesmen,” Schellenberg continued. “But we think that those who did evade capture, at least in the short term, were probably responsible for some sort of bomb that was placed on the grounds of the British embassy in Teheran.
Our sources indicate that there was a large explosion about a hundred yards away from the embassy at just after twenty-one hundred hours on Tuesday, November thirtieth. Churchill was hosting his birthday party at the time, and it seems that earlier that same day, the bomb, of considerable size, had been concealed in a water cart and positioned close to the banqueting room. But the bomb was discovered, very likely by the same man who was killed moving it to a place of safety. An American, named Willard Mayer.”

  “You don’t say,” said Himmler, who sounded genuinely surprised to hear this.

  “Willard Mayer was a member of the American OSS, and was Roosevelt’s German translator during the conference. He was also a philosopher of some note and before the war had studied in Vienna. And in Berlin, I believe. I looked at one of his books. It’s really quite profound.”

  “Willard Mayer was also the Jew who saved the Führer’s life,” said Himmler.

  “Then he seems to have been quite a hero, doesn’t he?” Schellenberg observed. “Saving the Führer and then the Big Three. A little more than one expects from your average philosopher.”

  “Do you really think that bomb would have killed them?”

  “By all accounts, the explosion was immense. The American’s body was never found.”

  “Of course, with him gone there’s one less witness to what really happened,” said Himmler. “In that respect at least, they’re fortunate. Almost as fortunate as you, Schellenberg.”

  Schellenberg acknowledged the rebuke with a curt nod of the head. He waited a moment.

  “Well, go on,” urged Himmler. “Go on.”

  “Yes, Herr Reichsführer. I was merely going to add that as far as the Americans are concerned, the process of rewriting the record has already begun. To read the British and American newspapers after the conference was over, it’s hard to believe the Führer could ever have been there. Remarkable, really. It’s as if none of this ever happened.”

  “Not quite,” said Himmler.

  Schellenberg braced himself. This was it. Himmler was going to demote him after all.

  “That Jew-lover, Roosevelt, must now take the consequences for his refusal to agree to the Führer’s terms.”

  Schellenberg smiled with a mixture of relief and amusement. It seemed as though he would be remaining in his position. And it looked as if it wasn’t just the Allies who were busy rewriting history. The first time Himmler had told him of the Führer’s secret trip to Teheran he had added that Hitler’s departure had been precipitated by the discovery that he could not deal with an enemy as cruel and perfidious as Stalin after all.

  “What consequences are those, Herr Reichsführer?”

  “The war against the Allies may be impossible to win, Schellenberg,” said Himmler. “I think we both know that’s true. But there is still the war against the Jews. The Führer has ordered that the final solution of the Jewish problem is to be given the utmost priority in the coming year. New deportations have already begun in Hungary and Scandinavia, and special camps have been given instructions to increase their turnover.”

  Himmler stood up and, clasping his hands behind his back, walked to the window and looked out.

  “The work will be difficult, of course. Unpleasant, even. Personally speaking, I myself find this order especially abhorrent. As you know, I have always struggled to find a just peace for Hitler and for Germany.” He glanced back at Schellenberg and shrugged. “But it was not to be. We did our very best. And now . . .” He walked carefully back to his desk and, sitting down, picked up his fountain pen with its infamous green ink. “Now we must do our very worst.”

  Schellenberg breathed a sigh of relief. He was safe after all.

  “Yes, Herr Reichsführer.”

  APPENDIX :

  EXCERPTS FROM THE WORKS

  OF WILLARD MAYER

  “To be content is to have arrived at the furthest limits of human reason and experience; and there is more satisfaction to be had in the acceptance of what cannot logically be said than in all the moral philosophy ever studied by men. Reason is as inert as a noble gas and functions empirically, by its relation to real existence and matters of fact. And what cannot be tested empirically and is incapable of being proved true or false can never be an object of our reason. To be empirical is to be guided by experience, not by sophists, charlatans, priests, and demagogues.” from On Being Empirical

  “All the objects of which we are aware are either impressions we take from the data of sensation, or ideas, which may only be gathered from an impression if that idea is to be logical. In looking to find the meaning of things, we must be empirical concerning matters of fact, or analytical concerning the relation of ideas. But matters of fact are what they are and need reveal no logical relation to each other: that facts are facts is always logically true regardless of rational inspection. Since, however, ideas may also exist as ideas regardless of rational inspection, it will be understood how it is only here, at the level of mere understanding, that there can exist the possibility of philosophy and establishing scientifically what may or may not logically be said. By the same token, since the opposite of any fact can exist as an idea, however illogical, it will be seen as a paradox how any philosophical demonstration of a fact becomes impossible.” from On Being Empirical

  “A man need only be convinced of two principles of philosophy in order to find himself liberated from all vulgar creeds, no matter how charismatic these might seem to be: first, that considered in itself, there is nothing in an object that enables us to say anything beyond that object; and, second, that nothing enables us to say anything about an object beyond those observations of which we have direct experience. I say again, let any man take the time to be persuaded of these two philosophical principles, and live his life accordingly, which we might describe as being empirical, and it will be perceived how all the bonds of common ignorance will be broken. In this way does modern philosophy shine the sublime light of science in even the darkest places in Man’s psyche.” from

  On Being Empirical

  “We read a great deal about organized book burnings by Nazi stormtroopers. But in fact it was the Christians who first organized book burnings as a means of promoting their faith (see Acts of the Apostles 19:19---20). One of my students at the University asked me today if I thought it could ever be right to burn a book, quoting Heine’s ‘Almansor’ in support of his argument that it could not. I told him that any volume of philosophy should be consigned to the flames if it contains any experimental or abstract reasoning regarding matters of fact, human existence, and mathematics, for such a book can contain nothing but lies and specious reasoning. His eyes widened fearfully as he whispered to me he assumed I was referring to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and that I should be careful what I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that actually I had been referring to the Holy Bible.” from

  Vienna Diary: 1936

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION that is based on a real event in history: the Big Three Conference at Teheran of 1943. The photographs of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt—“the Big Three”—at Teheran, and later at the Yalta Conference of February 1945, are near icons of the Second World War. Roosevelt died before the VE Conference at Potsdam in July 1945. But most of the substantive issues had been decided in Teheran.

  Some names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s own imagination, but others are not. Many of the more obscure events described in the book really did take place, and I thought it might amuse the reader if I listed a few here.

  These are, in no particular order:

  • Sumner Welles, the assistant secretary of state, resigned from the administration in September 1943, following the disclosure of “an act of grave moral turpitude with a Negro railway conductor.”

  • A torpedo was fired at the USS Iowa by the USS Willie D. Porter during Roosevelt’s journey to North Africa. He and the Joint Chiefs of Staff narrowly esca
ped death at the hands of their own naval escort destroyer.

  • In 1943, secret peace negotiations between the Germans and the Russians, and the Germans and the Americans, were being actively discussed. The former German chancellor and ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, really did meet with Commander George Earle in Ankara, on October 4, 1943. According to von Papen’s memoirs, Earle claimed “to have been entrusted by President Roosevelt with the task of discussing with me personally the possibility of an early peace” and showed von Papen a document “that might serve as the basis for peace with Germany.” Von Papen says that Earle even encouraged him to come to Cairo, for an interview with the president, but that he could not have gone “until I had written proof from President Roosevelt that he would undertake to negotiate on the basis of the terms we had discussed.” So, the talks between von Papen came to nothing. “I can only assume that the President considered it too risky to be more specific.” Similarly, while Himmler was in Posen, his masseur, Felix Kersten, really was in Stockholm, making contact with President Roosevelt’s special representative, Abram S. Hewitt. Hewitt also met with General Walter Schellenberg in Sweden. Himmler had also, previously, deputed his lawyer, Carl Langbehn, to attempt peace feelers in Switzerland. The Russians were no less willing to negotiate with the Germans, and, after Stalingrad, their ambassador in Stockholm, Madame de Kollontay, met with von Ribbentrop’s representatives on a number of occasions.

  • Operation Long Jump was a real plan. More than one hundred German paratroopers were parachuted into Iran in order to kill the Big Three. All were killed or captured.

  • Camp 108, at Beketovka, was a real camp for German POWs. The figures given in the book for German deaths in Russian POW camps are well documented.