Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  Beck hadn’t eaten or drunk much of the food and wine. An austere, thin figure, he possessed an iron self-discipline, into which he had retreated after the death of his wife from tuberculosis in 1917 when they had been married only one year. Although a highly talented violinist, he hadn’t played a note since that day. Unlike many of the men around the table, Beck was not from a Prussian military family: he was an intellectual from the Rhineland, widely read in philosophy, economics and French literature. He was the brains behind the army, the author of the highly praised German Army Manual of Tactics and the proud successor to von Moltke, who had planned the victory in the Franco-Prussian War, and to von Schlieffen, whose strategy had nearly led to a swift German triumph in 1914. A small man with an intense, intelligent face, his student duelling scar took the form of a swirl on his temple just behind his left eye.

  They had spent the day in the best tradition of the Prussian general staff, playing a war game. This had tested ‘Case Green’, a German invasion of Czechoslovakia, with the French coming to the Czechs’ aid. The results had been even worse than Beck had expected. The Czechs had thirty-four well-trained and well-armed divisions and a string of robust fortifications along their border with Germany. The German army had indeed prevailed against the Czechs, but it had taken them three months, during which time the French army had smashed the six German divisions facing them in the west, and swept across the Rhineland deep into Germany. The Germans lost; the French won. That was the inescapable conclusion.

  Beck wasn’t surprised. As a professional military strategist he was deeply suspicious of Hitler’s plans. The previous November Hitler had called in his service chiefs for a conference at the Reich Chancellery and delivered a five-hour harangue on his scheme to win Lebensraum in Central and Eastern Europe. First Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Danzig and Poland would be attacked to secure ‘living space’ for the German people, and all this would happen between 1938 at the earliest and 1943 at the latest. Beck hadn’t been at that meeting, but General von Fritsch, the then commander-in-chief of the army, had been so incensed that despite being sworn to secrecy he had immediately rushed out to confer with his loyal deputy. Von Fritsch was convinced that the British, French and Russians would not sit idly by and watch Germany swallow up the eastern half of Europe. A world war would be the inevitable result, a war that Germany would lose. Beck agreed, and had spent the last several months firing off furious memoranda about the economic and military weaknesses of the idea: the memorandum was General Beck’s weapon of choice. Since the humiliation of von Fritsch and his replacement by the much more malleable General von Brauchitsch, Beck had kept the memoranda flying.

  As yet he had had no success.

  Beck was still angry at the way von Fritsch had been framed by an unholy alliance of the SS, the Gestapo and Göring, with the tacit encouragement of the Führer himself. He was no admirer of Hitler, but he was a soldier who knew his duty. He saw his role as one of providing counsel, and if that was rejected, obeying orders. When one of his own subordinates had muttered that something must be done to avenge the humiliation of General von Fritsch, Beck had quoted his famous predecessor, Count Schlieffen: ‘Mutiny and revolution are words that have no place in a German officer’s vocabulary.’

  Besides, von Fritsch had made it absolutely clear to Beck that it was of the utmost importance that Beck maintain his position as Chief of the General Staff and not allow himself to be outmanoeuvred into relinquishing it by Göring or Heydrich or any of the other of von Fritsch’s enemies.

  He took out a sheet of paper and glanced at the speech he was about to deliver summing up the lesson to be learned from the day. It was simple: the political leadership, meaning Hitler, must be made to understand the consequences of its policy towards Czechoslovakia. Defeat. Humiliating defeat.

  He surveyed the officers round the table. Most, such as General of Artillery Halder, his deputy, were loyal to the traditions and principles of the German army. There were one or two, some of the younger men, Luftwaffe officers, who had been seduced by Hitler’s overconfidence. But overconfidence didn’t win wars, good planning did. If Beck knew anything about war he knew that.

  He rose to his feet to propose the toast. In his youth, and in the time of his most illustrious predecessors, this would have been to the Kaiser. But not now.

  He swallowed and raised his glass. ‘Gentlemen. The Führer.’

  Conrad saw Anneliese the instant she walked into the café. He watched her as she spoke a few words to the waiter, her eyes flashing as she laughed at his reply. She was lovelier than he remembered.

  It had proved difficult to pin her down; the number she had given him belonged to a communal telephone, and she seemed to work odd hours in the hospital, but eventually he had got through and she had agreed to meet him for lunch at the Café Josty in the Potsdamer Platz. Dinner was out of the question because she was working night shifts.

  She was shown to his table. She was dressed very properly in a dark green suit, white gloves and a small green hat, but there was still something alluring in the way she moved. Despite the Nazi strictures on women wearing make-up, she wore lipstick.

  ‘I love this place,’ she said. ‘It’s the best people-watching café in Berlin.’ And it was true. Large plate-glass windows looked out upon the busy square, alive with people, bicycles, trams, buses and motor cars. Inside the café was crowded too, but it had a cosy feel to it. ‘And they have all the foreign newspapers. Censored, these days, of course. But it’s a good place to catch up on what’s really going on in the world.’

  ‘Have you just come from the hospital?’

  ‘Not quite. I was working the night shift, so I’ve only had time for a couple of hours’ sleep this morning. You must forgive me if I’m a bit dopey.’

  ‘Busy night?’

  ‘Very busy, thanks to Frau Grynszpan.’

  ‘The ward sister?’

  ‘No, a patient. She has had a hernia operation. But I’ve been her captive audience for the past week. She has a grandson she is desperate to introduce me to. I finally saw him last night.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Twenty and very shy, very earnest. And very polite. The poor man – his grandmother was staring at him hard the whole time he was talking to me. And I would swear that she told him what to say. The line that particularly impressed me was, “Do you like gefilte fish? It is my favourite food. I know where you can buy the best gefilte fish in Berlin.”’

  ‘Gefilte fish?’

  ‘Jewish fish balls. They are disgusting. Or at least I think so; the Grynszpan family obviously doesn’t.’

  Conrad laughed. ‘I hope you were kind to the poor boy.’

  ‘Yes, I was. I agreed to go with him to the gefilte fish stand next Sunday, and Frau Grynszpan was so chuffed. Then afterwards, as he was leaving, I told him I had suddenly remembered I had promised a friend I would go to church with her that morning so I couldn’t make it, but not to tell his grandmother as it would only upset her. You should have seen the look of relief on his face! I didn’t realize I was that frightening.’

  ‘Well, it sounds as if you were considerably less frightening than his grandmother.’

  ‘But not the gefilte fish.’ Anneliese shuddered and examined the menu. ‘Fortunately there are none on offer here.’ They ordered sausages. The problem with lunch in Berlin was that when you came down to it, the choice was always some kind of sausage or ham. Fortunately Conrad was growing quite partial to the various Würste.

  ‘I spoke to Captain Foley of the Passport Control Office about your father,’ Conrad said.

  Anneliese’s eyes lit up. ‘And?’

  ‘No luck.’

  ‘Is there nothing you could do to persuade him?’

  Conrad shook his head. ‘I did try quite hard,’ he said. He had decided he had better not describe exactly how hard.

  The light in her eyes disappeared and her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, well. Thanks for the thought.’

/>   ‘When is he due for release?’

  ‘Next Monday.’

  ‘Perhaps they won’t rearrest him.’

  ‘Oh, they will. I’m quite sure they will unless I can get him out of the country somehow.’

  ‘Perhaps these concentration camps are not that bad,’ said Conrad. ‘No one seems to know for sure what goes on in them. An American journalist friend of mine has been to Dachau near Munich. He said it was a bit Spartan, but the inmates were well fed and quite cheerful.’

  ‘Those weren’t the inmates, they were the guards,’ said Anneliese.

  ‘No, Warren said—’

  ‘They were the guards,’ said Anneliese firmly. ‘When they have visitors they lock up the inmates and put the guards in prisoners’ clothes. I’ve seen them do it.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  Anneliese sighed. ‘Yes. You see I know what a concentration camp is like. And I couldn’t bear it if my father ended up in one.’ She bit her lip and a tear ran down her cheek. The change from her previous confidence caught Conrad by surprise. All at once he remembered Theo’s comment about her, his suggestion that it wasn’t just the treatment of her father that would cause her to hate the regime.

  ‘I say, Anneliese. I’m... so sorry. You’ve been in one, haven’t you? You know all about them. And I was sounding off on something I don’t have the faintest clue about.’

  Anneliese wiped her cheeks and smiled at him. ‘Usually I try not to talk about it.’ She sniffed. ‘I think I mentioned I had to interrupt my medical studies—’

  ‘If you don’t want to say anything—’

  ‘No, no, that’s all right. I’d like to talk about it. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And I grilled you about your wife at dinner.’ A smile reappeared for an instant, and then it was gone. ‘When I was at university I became involved in politics, or rather my boyfriend did. His name was Paul and I was devoted to him. Everyone was; he was a natural leader. And he was a communist. This was in 1929 – before the Nazis came to power. He and I used to organize marches at the university. So did the National Socialists. A lot of them ended up as fights. But I thought Nazism was evil and communism was the only way forward for humanity. It seemed the natural extension of all my father had taught me: humanism, a distrust of religion, a desire to do something to help the poor and underprivileged, and also a form of self-discipline. I was eighteen, I was in love and I was an idealist – what is wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Conrad. ‘In fact I rather wish I had known you then.’

  ‘Well, we worked hard, Paul and I. We marched, we organized, we made speeches, we wrote articles, we published pamphlets. But despite all our efforts the National Socialists won the election in January 1933.’

  ‘I remember. I was here in Berlin.’

  ‘Were you here a month later, after the Reichstag fire? Hitler blamed it on the communists and rounded us all up. Paul and I were sent to concentration camps – separately of course. It was horrible, truly horrible. I was only there for six months, but never again.’ She shook her head. ‘Never again.’

  Anneliese glanced at Conrad who was listening attentively. ‘It was the guards that made those places evil. They could have been merely unpleasant, but the guards were the most appalling women: sadists; cruel, evil people. They took pleasure in making their charges’ lives hell – worse than hell – and the camp system encouraged it. That was where I lost my belief in communism, my belief in the nobility of humanity. I realized that there is good and evil in the world, but in that place there seemed to be very little good. I could hardly bear it. Many of the others couldn’t – some committed suicide and some just gave up, wasting away.

  ‘Eventually they let me go, and that was when I tried and failed to return to the university and my medical studies. But they kept Paul in a camp. He had some very powerful enemies in the Nazi Party, especially a man called Baldur von Schirach who was head of the Nazi student movement. They never let me see him. I wrote to him all the time, but I have no idea whether he ever received my letters. Then one year, just before Christmas 1935... ’ She hesitated. ‘... I received a box through the post, with the compliments of von Schirach.’ She paused for breath. Conrad remained silent – he could tell she wanted to go on, even though it was difficult for her. ‘It was a cigar box, with a swastika, Paul’s name and the word “traitor” stencilled on the top. I shouldn’t have opened it... it was stupid, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was just so upset. Inside were... inside were ashes.

  ‘I broke down. I had a complete nervous breakdown. I was studying nursing at that stage. That’s when Sophie and I became friends: she was so good to me. But it took me months to get over it.’ She glanced at Conrad, her eyes moist with tears. ‘What am I saying? I haven’t got over it; I’ll never get over it. And the idea of the same thing happening to my father? I just can’t bear it. I won’t let it happen: I can’t let it happen.’

  ‘It sounds as if Paul was a very brave man,’ said Conrad.

  Anneliese smiled, her wet eyes bright. ‘He was. He was a wonderful man.’

  ‘Sometimes, when you look at the madness of the Nazi regime, and you ask yourself how can the Germans put up with it, you forget that many of them didn’t,’ Conrad said, remembering Theo’s words. ‘Many of the best of them tried to stop it and have died for their efforts. None of us should forget people like Paul.’

  Anneliese looked down at her half-eaten sausage. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure you weren’t expecting a lunch like this, were you?’

  ‘I suppose I wasn’t.’

  ‘Would you like to go for a walk afterwards?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ said Conrad.

  She led him into the Tiergarten, around the maze of lakes and footpaths until they came to a small enclosure full of rose beds, surrounded by a beech hedge, trellises, gazebos and wooden benches.

  ‘Let’s sit here for a bit,’ said Anneliese. ‘This is the Rosengarten, one of my favourite places.’

  It was getting hot, so they found a bench in the shade. The garden was dominated by a thirty-foot marble statue of a woman in a flowing dress with a broad-brimmed hat and a fan. Anneliese explained she was the Empress Auguste Viktoria, whose idea the garden was. The conversation had flowed easily as they had meandered through the park, but now they fell silent. A nursemaid passed them, pushing a pram with one hand, a toddler in a little pre-Nazi sailor’s uniform clasping the other. A breath of air rustled through the garden, the roses nodding a gentle welcome. Outside, beyond the protective cocoon of the trees, they could hear the hum of the vast city, the largest metropolis on the continent of Europe, the Third Reich’s powerfully beating heart. But here, for a few minutes, they felt safe in their own small world of sanity.

  ‘How well do you know Theo?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘Not that well. I see him occasionally with Sophie.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘He seems decent. Honest. He’s charming, of course. Sophie dotes on him.’ Anneliese frowned. ‘He seems very fond of her, but I don’t like the way he treats her sometimes. I think he takes her for granted.’

  ‘Do you know what he does in the War Ministry?’ Conrad asked.

  Anneliese shook her head.

  ‘Does Sophie?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She doesn’t really worry about that kind of thing. What are you getting at?’

  ‘Do you think he might be in the Gestapo?’

  ‘No,’ said Anneliese quickly. She paused, thinking the idea over. ‘No. He’s far too straightforward for that. In fact, I would be surprised if he is a Nazi. He never says anything blatantly anti-Hitler in front of me, but it’s the throwaway remarks he makes. He likes to call Nazi officials “golden pheasants”, for example. But why ask me? He’s your friend. You should know him best.’

  Conrad sighed. ‘Was,’ he said. ‘And now I’m not sure I know him at all.’

  ‘What happened?’ Anneliese asked.

  Conrad hesitated. He realized
his earlier reticence had disappeared; he needed to tell her. ‘I did something very stupid. I asked my friend to spy against his country.’

  ‘You did what?’ Anneliese glanced swiftly around her in the classic manner of a citizen of the Third Reich who knew that there were ears everywhere, even in this obscure corner of the Tiergarten. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’ she asked in an urgent whisper.

  Conrad shrugged. ‘Remember the British Passport Control Officer I told you about? The one who wouldn’t help your father? It turns out that he is some kind of cog in the British secret-service machinery. He was the one who asked me.’

  Anneliese’s lower lip was trembling. ‘Did you do that for me? For my father?’

  ‘Partly,’ said Conrad. ‘Oh, I don’t know why I did it. I really wish I hadn’t now.’

  Anneliese’s face cracked. She seemed on the verge of tears. ‘Thank you, Conrad,’ she said, reaching out her gloved hand towards his. He held it.

  They sat in silence, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

  ‘Conrad?’ Anneliese said at last

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If we gave this Captain Foley a secret, a real secret, do you think he would help my father?’

  12

  It was early morning: the two horses cantered down the broad avenue through crisp dew. Theo loved to ride in the Tiergarten at this time of day, with the rhythm of the hooves beneath him, the cool air rushing past his cheeks, the mare’s breath billowing like steam around his ears, no one else around. A few metres in front of him Colonel Oster pulled up and turned off the avenue into a narrow path through the trees, back towards the stables on the Bendlerstrasse. Theo caught him up, horse and rider panting heavily. Although Oster was at least twenty years older than Theo, he was the better horseman, he was lighter and he was fit. He showed scarcely any sign of physical exertion, although his horse had worked up a good sweat.