by James Thayer
"Call me Colonel, Lange, not Herr Oberst. We're about twenty miles west of Cleveland. We'll get to Chicago in a day and a half, assuming we keep getting these milk runs."
"A boring, drab country, Colonel." Hans Graf blew through his hands. "No Black Forest, no Bavarian Alps, no history. Just cornfields."
Drab, perhaps, thought von Stihl, but also terrifying. For hundreds of miles the train had passed cities overflowing with foundries, mills, refineries, and manufacturing plants. None of the vast countryside lay untended. Wheat-and cornfields, orchards, vast cattle herds, coal mines, and logging camps crowded the land. And the country was geared for war production. Germany was a midget by comparison. General Rommel was right about a war with the U.S. A deep sense of foreboding had settled over von Stihl.
"Hey, Schwachheit, how come you're not cleaning your beloved Schmeisser? The cold getting to you?" Graf challenged. Crisp wind rushing through the boxcar had turned Graf's scar under his ear into a crimson sun. The ever-present malicious sneer was exacerbated by the cold.
Willi Lange sat opposite the open door with his knees tucked under his chin. His oilcloth roll lay carefully at his feet. It was impossible to ignore Graf in those close quarters.
"It's clean," Lange said, wishing the blond giant would look for something else to divert himself with.
"How do you know? You haven't put it together for at least an hour."
"It's clean, Graf. Why don't you play with your SS dick and get off my back?"
Graf's smirk lowered dangerously. "Those are big words for a little Wehrmacht corporal, Schwachheit. If it wasn't for your protector here"—nodding to von Stihl—"you'd eat them."
"Graf," said von Stihl in a tired voice barely audible over the clacking of the train, "I'm telling you again, take it easy. You'll have enough to get worked up about when we get to Chicago."
"As for you, von Stihl, I'm SS. I don't take orders from a Wehrmacht colonel."
"Graf, you received your instructions directly from SS Obergruppenführer Eicke. Those were to follow my orders. Do you understand this, or do I report to the lieutenant general you breached your loyalty oath?"
Graf was silent. He stared at von Stihl and then at Lange, conveying a threat von Stihl was sure the SS stormtrooper would someday try to execute.
Goddamn SS fanatics. Von Stihl had strenuously objected to the Generaloberst when Graf was added to the team. The general said he understood, but because of certain unmentioned pressures, the standard euphemism for SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler's meddling, an SS soldier had to be a member of the group.
The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was a separate entity from the Wehrmacht, the German Army. The SS was Nazi Germany's black-uniformed, sinister watchdog. It was Hitler's merciless, conscienceless strong arm that beat the German citizenry and peoples of conquered lands into compliance. German laymen and military personnel were rarely granted glimpses of the SS, which considered itself a new sect with its own rituals and customs. Their high-front black dress caps and jackboots put them above the German police and army troops. SS troops were accountable only to their superiors.
The SS was the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, the retiring, pince-nez-wearing schoolteacher from Munich whose hobby was growing herb gardens. Himmler was a peasant mystic whose devotion to National Socialism stemmed from his fear of the corrupt web of international Jewry. He feared only one man, Adolf Hitler. So immersed in satanic evil was Himmler that few high-ranking Nazis could stand his presence. Hermann Göring once complained that when Himmler entered the room, Göring was seized with the urge to vomit.
The Schutzstaffel, or Guard Echelon, was the crystallization of Himmler's anagogic interpretation of German history and his call for a new order of German knighthood. The SS had several branches, each with a specialty. The Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police, or Gestapo) ferreted out, interrogated, and disposed of enemies of the Reich in Germany and occupied countries. The Totenkopfverbände (Death's-Head battalion) guarded the concentration camps and later provided fighting units. The Waffen SS were elite combat troops that rivaled the Wehrmacht.
Hans Graf, the purple-scarred, overbearing commando leaning against the boxcar door frame, was a product of Himmler's vision. He had reported to the SS Junkerschule at Bad Tölz in the Bavarian Alps on November 9, 1937, the anniversary of the Munich Beer Cellar Putsch. The school at Bad Tölz accepted 400 officer candidates a year. Each applicant was required to show genealogical records dating back to 1750 proving he was of pure Germanic stock. Wives' records were searched back to 1800. The entrance requirements were so strict as to physical condition that up until 1936 an applicant was not accepted if he had one filled tooth. Those whose trunks were too long, noses too big, or knees too knobby were not admitted. Phrenologists searched each candidate's head for non-Aryan protuberances. Education, however, was not a prerequisite for admission. Grade-school dropouts and college graduates were admitted without distinction.
After passing the exhausting physical, Graf was issued the twenty-seven pieces of the SS uniform, which included the black trousers and tunic and black helmet. On the right lapel of the tunic were the two lightning flashes that formed the menacing double S.
Graf's transformation began at 6:00 A.M. the second day, when his blood type was tattooed under his left armpit. Then for months Graf and his classmates ran right, ran left, lay down, stood up, crawled, and jumped as they learned to follow orders. Each day had two hours of saluting practice. The right hand was in position six steps before reaching a superior and stayed rigid until three steps after passing the officer. Each day had three hours of the goose-step march. Should any of the candidates' legs not be rigid at the end of the third hour, an extra hour was added. Meals were eaten in stiff-back, chin-out position, and the silverware was moved only horizontally and vertically. These were called square meals. At any time day or night when an officer yelled "Motto," all candidates yelled back in one voice "Meine Ehre heisst Treue." "My honor is loyalty." A late or quavering voice meant another hour goose-stepping.
Bad Tölz also stressed practical information. Graf learned six ways to break a man's neck. He spent hours on the firing range, mastering the intricacies of the Luger pistol, Schmeisser submachine gun, mortars, and bazookas. His class studied the effect of automobile exhaust on a dog that has been locked into a glass box. They saw how various barbiturates and paralyzants affected dogs. The instructor carefully noted how each ingredient would affect a human. The class learned how injections of phenol, petrol, and turpentine will rapidly kill a man. They practiced giving intravenous injections on cadavers brought from the local mortuary. A cadet who fainted was given an extra hour of solitary goose-stepping.
Evenings were occupied with political and racial education. The histories of the Nazi party and the SS were studied. The differences in the European races were explained. The marching song of the SS and the "Horst Wessel Song" were sung. Biographies of SS leaders were committed to memory: Himmler, Heydrich, Dietrich, Hausser, Steiner. Histories of the distinguished SS divisions were reviewed: Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Division Das Reich, Division Totenkopf, and many others. Each division had battalions whose histories were learned.
Grueling months passed. The candidates' minds and bodies were torn down and poured into the SS mold. Nazi doctrine was pounded into them. They became lean and hard. Above all, they were taught to follow orders without question.
On April 20, 1938, Hans Graf received his permanent SS pass and swore allegiance to the Führer:
I swear to thee, Adolf Hitler,
As Führer and chancellor of the German Reich,
Loyalty and bravery.
I vow to thee and to the superiors whom thou shall appoint
Obedience unto death, so help me God.
Graf's training was not as yet completed, however, for he had to earn the Reich's sport badge and learn the SS catechism, an imitation of the Catholic ritual:
Question: Why do we believe in Germany and the Füh
rer?
Answer: Because we believe in God, we believe in Germany, which He created in His world, and in the Führer, Adolf Hitler, whom He has sent us.
Question: Why do we obey?
Answer: From inner conviction; from belief in Germany, in the Führer, and in the movement and in the SS; and from loyalty.
As did all SS candidates, Graf then spent several months in the Labor Service and several more months in the Wehrmacht. His Wehrmacht report was excellent, and on November 9, 1938, one full year after his admission to the officers' school, Graf received his dagger and was commissioned into the SS at the moving ceremony at the National Socialist shrine in Munich.
SS Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) Graf was assigned to the Totenkopf Battalion, Oberbayern Regiment, at the Dachau concentration camp. Here he excelled. As a youth the handsome blond had been expelled from several schools because of his remarkable talent for destruction and disorganization. His SS training captured and channeled this skill, and it manifested itself in the professional subjugation of the prisoners in his eight Dachau barracks. Graf mastered the two fundamentals of effective enslavement: change the prisoners' routine frequently, without apparent reason, to deprive them of the comfort of a set pattern; and savagely punish infractions of even the smallest rule.
Efficiency was Graf's hallmark. Punishment, whether whipping or hanging, took time and interrupted the day's busy schedule. Graf invented the lumberman's slash. Prisoners who merited whipping had the right side of their faces slashed with the SS dagger or bruised by a kapo's club, like trees being marked to be felled. Those deserving death were cut or clubbed on the left side of their faces. During lineup at the end of the day, Graf yanked those with bloody faces from the line, and they were dealt with as indicated. Graf's innovation was duly recorded in his SS file.
Guarding the camp was monotonous, and the Untersturmführer soon longed for a break from the routine. He was also acutely aware that the SS Totenkopfverbände was looked down upon by other branches of the SS. So Graf was delighted when, in October 1939, 6,500 members of the Totenkopfverbände were organized into the SS Totenkopf-division, which along with several other divisions became the Waffen SS, the elite fighting unit. Graf applied and was transferred to the new Death's-Head division.
During the winter of 1939–1940, the Death's-Head division prepared for Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the offensive in the West. The division's commanding officer, SS Gruppenführer (Major General) Theodor Eicke, wanted to be at the spearhead of the offensive to demonstrate the battlefield capabilities of his much-maligned concentration-camp guards. But when Belgium was invaded, the Death's-Head division was in the second wave and saw very little fighting. In May, Eicke's luck changed. The division was pulled out of reserve and joined the Fifth and Seventh panzer divisions sweeping north across Belgium. General Rommel's Seventh Panzer Division captured Le Cateau and Cambrai on May 17 and 18. The Death's-Head division was ordered to clean up and consolidate the captured territory. Fighting small, fierce Belgian units, the division suffered sixty-nine casualties. One of them, Hans Graf, was injured when a red-hot piece of shrapnel struck him under his right ear. During the firefight, the medic applied a butterfly bandage, which pulled back the corner of Graf's mouth. The wound healed slowly, permanently distorting Graf's mouth.
The Death's-Head division raced toward Dunkirk, where they hoped to capture the British Army. The SS was again immersed in battle along the La Bassée Canal at Bethune, where the British fought fanatically to allow more time for the Dunkirk evacuation. The British Fourth Brigade was responsible for holding the canal between Robecq and Bethune but was slowly overwhelmed by the 21,000 men of the Death's-Head division. British soldiers made a heroic final stand at Le Paradis and Locon. Fighting raged, but the British could not halt the Death's-Head onslaught.
The Fourth Company of the First Battalion, Second SS Totenkopf Infantry Regiment, Hans Graf's unit, under the command of SS Obersturmführer Fritz Knochlein, surrounded the 100 men of the Second Royal Norfolk at Le Paradis. After suffering many casualties, the British surrendered. Those captured were marched single file past a barn wall, where they were massacred by the fire of two SS machine guns. Hans Graf was the triggerman on one of the guns. He later bayoneted any Britisher who still showed signs of life. This was the infamous Massacre of Le Paradis.
After conquering Belgium, the Death's-Head division turned south to pursue the hastily retreating French. Engagements with French units were brief but sharp. Hans Graf's superiors noted his exceeding zeal and ruthlessness combined with his technical ability with small arms. Graf was awarded the Iron Cross First Class after the capture of Clamecy, and was promoted to Obersturmführer (first lieutenant).
Graf's proficiency was noticed by increasingly higher levels of the SS, until Himmler, on the recommendation of Obergruppenführer Eicke, personally transferred Graf to the Berlin unit of the Leibstandart SS Adolf Hitler, which guarded the Führer. Wanting a stake in the venture in the United States, Himmler assigned Graf to the mission. Anything was better than standing at attention at the Reich's chancellery day after day, so Graf was grateful for the change. He joined Erich von Stihl in August and began the arduous two months of training.
For the hundredth time, von Stihl shifted his pack behind him, trying to discover a bearable position. The boxcar adamantly refused to yield the slightest modicum of comfort. He stood and rubbed his buttocks, forcing blood back into the aching tissue. He raised his right knee to his chest and pulled it close to lossen the joints. Then came the left knee. Von Stihl walked around Graf and peered out the boxcar. Winter air coursing past the car pricked his face and rushed under his clothes, chasing away pockets of warmth and shocking his skin.
"To hell with riding in this freezing boxcar like cattle," Graf complained. "I say we purchase passenger tickets at the next station."
"I'll tell you again, Graf," replied von Stihl, "we stay in boxcars until Chicago. I'm not going to have any trace of us showing up on bus or train tickets. I don't want our signatures on car receipts. We can't be anywhere where we might be asked to identify ourselves. That happens at public-transportation terminals."
"What's the worry? Each of us has identification that an American cop would swear was genuine. 'Cop,' by the way, Schwachheit, is slang for 'policeman,' " Graf said as he turned to Lange.
"That's the point," von Stihl explained as he returned to his spot at the front end of the boxcar. "Our identification, as foolproof as it might be, is our last resort. There's no sense putting ourselves into a position where we have reached the last resort. So we'll stay in boxcars. If no one sees us, then no one asks questions."
"We're being too careful," Graf persisted.
"Wrong. There's no such thing as too careful on this mission. SS Major General Hausser wouldn't have issued your orders personally, had it not been important, and you wouldn't have undergone that miserable two months of training, either."
"Who needed that shit? I didn't learn anything."
True, thought von Stihl. Graf, like all Waffen SS troops, possessed an amazing arsenal of knowledge. Von Stihl could teach him nothing about wiring explosives or walking silently through underbrush. The Obersturmführer's handling of a Schmeisser submachine gun was impressive. Graf was excellent in hand-to-hand combat, although, like many Waffen SS, he preferred boxing methods to swifter, surer killing techniques. Students at Bad Tölz boxed an hour a day during their training. In addition, Graf was in incredible physical shape. He could run two kilometers in an impressive five minutes and forty seconds and could scale fifty feet of rope in under twenty seconds without using his feet. Graf never perspired, just smiled malignantly. The training was vital, though, because it taught the three commandos to anticipate each other's moves. They gained a coordination and a timing which made them a team. Their competence would lessen luck's role.
The sound of crunching couplers rolled from the front of the train, through their car, and to the rear, like falling dominoes, and me
ant the train was slowing. Graf leaned out the door, saw the switchyard sign pass, and said, "Dammit, here we go with another stop."
Willi Lange concealed the oilskin roll behind him and slumped forward. Von Stihl took his Luger from his waistband and held it under his paper sack, pointed at the door.
Because their door was open, they had been checked only twice during the past three days, and it was unlikely the railroad police would search the boxcars in this tiny switchyard. But they were prepared.
For ten minutes their car was pushed back and forth as cars were added to the train. The roar of the locomotive's big diesel engine reverberated in their car. From the smell, von Stihl guessed a car of pigs was being shuttled into place upwind from their car.
Graf wrinkled his nose and said, "Christ. We'll smell them all the way to Chicago."
Without warning, a railroad policeman stuck his head into the car. "I thought I smelled some assholes on my train. Get out," he ordered.
"Officer," Graf said, "we've got to get to—"
"Hold your bullshit and get off my train," yelled the cop as he beat his billy club against the car floor. He had an immense double chin, and von Stihl guessed the man weighed 350 pounds. "Or I'll come aboard and throw you off, and believe me, you don't want that."
Lange erupted with a phlegmatic, tortured cough. He breathed erratically and whooped sickly again, as if a hand was twisting his throat. A thin strand of spittle dropped from his lips. His eyes were open but were sightless and were raised to his eyebrows. The cough went on and on and racked Lange's entire frame. He grimaced and sank lower to the floor.
"Our friend's got tuberculosis, officer. He's gonna die in a couple of weeks," Graf said in his lunch-bucket accent. "He wants to be taken to Chicago to see his brother."
The policeman cocked an eye at Lange. The little hobo was wearing two weeks of stubble on his cadaverous face, and three days' grime on his hands. His jacket was stained and ragged, and the undershirt hanging out was filthy. One of his bootlaces was untied, as if he lacked the energy to reach his foot. Lange emitted another wrenching cough and slumped sideways, almost to the boxcar floor. He gasped for breath between coughing fits. Mucus dribbled from his nose and caught in his wispy mustache. He wheezed and coughed again, and the cough rattled to a low, exhausted moan.