by Philip Kerr
'You can keep telling yourself that, if you like. But we both know it's not true. Or is it that occupying the moral high ground is more than an aspiration for you Amis? Perhaps it's also a constitutional necessity. Only I suspect that underneath all that sanctimony you're just like us Germans. You really do believe that might is right.'
'At this moment,' said Silverman, 'all that really matters is what we believe about you.'
'He tells a good story.' Earl was speaking to Silverman. 'A regular Jakob Grimm, this guy. All it lacked was the "once upon a time" and the "happily ever after". We should get him some heated iron shoes and make him dance around the room in them like Snow White's stepmother until he's straight with us.'
'You're quite correct,' said Silverman. 'And you know, only a German could have thought of a punishment like that.'
'Didn't you say you had German parents?' I said. 'Just a mother you're sure about, I presume.'
'Neither of us feels very proud of our German background,' said Earp. 'Thanks to people like you.'
For a while the three of us were silent. Then Silverman said:
'There was a Gunther we heard about in that town you mentioned. Baranowicze. He was an SS Sturmbannführer with one of the small killing units belonging to Arthur Nebe's Task Force B. A Sonderkommando. He organised one of the early gassings. Everyone in a mental hospital at Mogilev was killed. That wouldn't be you, would it?'
'No,' I said. But seeing that they were hardly likely to be satisfied with a straight denial I lifted my finger to indicate that I was trying to remember something. And then I did. 'I think there was an SS Sturmbannführer called Gunther Rausch. Attached to Task Force B in the summer of 1941. It must be him you're thinking of. I never gassed anyone. Not even the fleas in my bed.'
'But it was you who suggested to Arthur Nebe the idea of mass killings using explosives, wasn't it? You admitted as much yourself.'
'That was a joke.'
'Not a very funny joke.'
'When it comes to blowing people up I don't think anyone has ever managed that more efficiently than America,' I said. 'How many did you blow up in Hiroshima? And Nagasaki? A couple of hundred thousand and still counting. That's what I've read. Germany may have started the process of mechanised mass killing but you Americans certainly perfected it.'
'Did you ever visit the Criminal Technology Institute in Berlin?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I often went there in the course of my duty as a detective. For forensic tests and results.'
'Did you ever meet a chemist called Albert Wildmann?'
'Yes. I met him. Many times.'
'And Hans Schmidt? Also from the same institute?'
'I think so. What are you driving at?'
'Isn't it the case that you returned from Minsk to Berlin at the behest of Arthur Nebe, not to join the German War Crimes Bureau as you told us, but to meet with Wildmann and Schmidt in pursuit of your explosives idea?'
I was shaking my head, but Silverman wasn't paying attention and I was gaining a new respect for him as an interrogator.
'And that having discussed the idea in detail, you yourself returned to Smolensk with Wildmann and Schmidt, in September 1941.'
'No. That's not true. Like I said, I think you must be confusing me with Gunther Rausch.'
'Isn't it the case that you brought with you a large quantity of dynamite? And that you used it to rig a Russian pillbox with explosives? And that you then herded into it almost a hundred people from a mental asylum in Minsk? And that you then detonated the explosives? Isn't that what happened?'
'No. That's not true. I had nothing to do with that.'
'According to the reports we've read, the heads and limbs of the dead were strewn across a quarter-mile radius. SS men were collecting body parts from the trees for days afterwards.'
I shook my head. 'When I made that remark to Nebe, about blowing up Jews in a field, I had no idea he would actually try something like that. It was sarcasm. Hardly a genuine suggestion.' I shrugged. 'Then again I don't know why I'm surprised, given everything else that happened.'
'We've always thought it was Arthur Nebe himself who came up with the idea of the gas vans,' said Silverman. 'So maybe that was another of your jokes, too. Tell me, did you ever visit an address in Berlin - number four, Tiergartenstrasse?'
'I was a cop. I visited a lot of addresses I don't remember.'
'This one was special.'
'The Berlin Gas Works was somewhere else, if that's what you're implying.'
'Tiergartenstrasse number four was a confiscated Jewish villa,' said Silverman. 'An office from where Germany's euthanasia programme for the handicapped was planned and administered.'
'Then I'm sure I was never there.'
'Maybe you heard about what was happening there and mentioned it in passing to Nebe. As a little thank you for getting you out of Minsk.'
'In case you've forgotten,' I said, 'Nebe was head of Kripo, and before that, a general in the Gestapo. It's quite likely he knew Wildmann and Schmidt for the same reason I did. And I dare say he would have known all about this place in Tiergartenstrasse as well. But I never did.'
'Your relationship with Waldemar Klingelhofer,' said Silverman. 'You were quite helpful to him. With advice.'
'Yes. I tried to be.'
'Were you helpful in any other ways?'
I shook my head.
'Did you accompany him to Moscow, for example?'
'No, I've never been in Moscow.'
'And yet you speak Russian almost as well as he does.'
'That was later, when I learned. In the labour camp, mostly.'
'So between September 28th and October 26th 1941 you say you were not with Klingelhöfer's Vorkommando Moscow, but in Berlin?'
'Yes.'
'And that you had nothing to do with the murders of five hundred and seventy-two Jews during that time?'
'Nothing to do with it, no.'
'Several of them were Jewish mink ranchers who failed to provide the prescribed quota of furs for Klingelhofer.'
'Never shot a Jewish mink rancher, Gunther?'
'Or blown one up, in a pillbox?'
'No.'
The two lawyers were quiet for a moment, as if they'd run out of questions. The silence didn't last long.
'So,' said Silverman, 'you're not in Moscow, you're back on the plane to Berlin. A Junkers 52, you said. Any witnesses?'
I thought for a moment. 'Fellow named Schulz. Erwin Schulz.'
'Go on.'
'He was SS, too. A Sturmbannführer, I think. But before, he'd been a cop in Berlin. And then an instructor at the Police Academy in Bremen. After that, something in the Gestapo. Maybe in Bremen, too. I don't remember. But we hadn't seen each other in more than ten years when we both got on that plane out of Baranowicze.
'He was a few years younger than me, I think. Not much. I think he'd been in the Army during the last months of the Great War. And then the Freikorps while he was at university, in Berlin. Law, I think. Tallish, fair-haired with a moustache a bit like Hitler's, and quite tanned. Not that he looked well when he was on that plane. There were huge bags under his eyes that were more like bruises, almost as if someone had punched him.
'Well, we recognised each other, and after a few moments we started talking. I offered him a cigarette and I noticed the hand that took it was shaking like a leaf. His leg wouldn't stay still either. Like it had St Vitus's dance. He was a nervous wreck. Gradually it became clear that he was returning to Berlin for much the same reason I was. Because he'd put in for a transfer.
'Schulz said that his unit had been operating in a place called Zhitomir. That's just a shithole between Kiev and Brest. No one in his right mind would want to go to Zhitomir. Which is probably why the SS brass in the person of General Jeckeln had established its Ukrainian HQ. there. Jeckeln was never in his right mind as far as I could see. Anyway, Schulz said that Jeckeln had told him that all of the Jews in Zhitomir were to be shot immediately. Schulz wasn't bothered about the m
en, but he had more than a few qualms about the women and the children. Fuck that, he said. But no one was listening. Orders were orders and he should just shut up and get on with it. Well, it seemed that there were a lot of Jews in Zhitomir. Christ only knows why that should be the case. After all, it's not like the Popovs ever made them feel welcome there. The Tsar hated them, too, and they had pogroms in Zhitomir in 1905 and in 1919.1 mean, you would think they'd have got the message and cleared off somewhere else. But no. Not a bit of it. There are three synagogues in Zhitomir, and when the SS showed up there were thirty thousand of them just waiting around for something to happen. Which it did.
'According to Schulz the first day the SS got there they hanged the mayor, or perhaps it was the local judge, who was a Jew, and several others. Then they shot four hundred right away for one reason or another. Marched them out of town to a pit, had them lie down like sardines, one on top of the other and shot them in layers. Well, Schulz thought that would be it. He'd done his bit and that was enough. I mean, four hundred, he thought. But no, he said, they kept on coming. Day after day. And four hundred Jews soon became fourteen thousand.
'Then Schulz was told that they would have to do the women and children as well, and for him that was the last straw. Fuck this, he thought, I don't care if Almighty God has ordered this, I'm not killing women and kids. So he wrote to the Personnel Officer at RSHA HQ. To a General Bruno Streckenbach. And put in for a transfer. Which was why he was on that plane with me.
'They were pretty pissed off with him apparently. Especially his CO, Otto Rasch. He accused Schulz of being weak and letting the side down. He asked Schulz where was his sense of duty, and all that crap. Not that Schulz said he was surprised about this. He said that Rasch was one of those bastards who liked to make sure that everyone, officers included, had to pull the trigger on at least one Jew. So that we were all equally guilty, I suppose. Only he had another word for it: one of those compound words that Himmler used at Pretzsch. Blood part, I think it was.
'Anyway, Schulz didn't know what fate awaited him back in Berlin. He was nervous and apprehensive, to say the least. I suppose he was hoping his behaviour would be overlooked and he'd get the okay to resume his police work in Hamburg, or Bremen. I'm not cut out for this kind of thing, he said. Don't get me wrong, he said, I care nothing for the Jews, but no one should be asked to do this kind of work. No one. They should find some other means of doing it, he said. That's what he told me, anyway.'
'So,' said Earp. 'Are you telling us your alibi is another convicted war criminal?'
'Schutz was convicted? I didn't know that.'
'Gave himself up in 1945,' said Earp. 'He was convicted in
October 1947 of crimes against humanity and sentenced to twenty years. That was commuted to fifteen years in 1951.'
'You mean he's here, in Landsberg? Well then he can confirm our conversation on the flight back to Berlin. That I told him what I already told you. How I was sent back for refusing to kill Jews.'
'He was paroled last January,' said Earp. 'Too bad, Gunther.'
'I don't think he'd have made such a great character witness for you, anyway,' said Silverman. 'He was a Brigadier-General in the SS when he gave himself up.'
'The reason Bruno Streckenbach went easy on Schulz is obvious,' said Earp. 'Because he participated in the murders of fifteen thousand Jews before he sickened of the work. Probably Streckenbach figured Schulz had done more than his fair share of killing.'
'And I guess that must be why you let him go, too,' I said.
'I told you,' said Silverman, 'that was down to the High Commissioner. And the recommendations of the Parole and Clemency Board for War Criminals.'
I shook my head. I was tired. They'd been nipping at my heels the whole day like a pair of nine-to-five bloodhounds. I felt like I was trapped up a tree with nowhere left to run.
'Have you considered the possibility that I could be telling the truth? But even if I wasn't I might be tempted to put my hands up just to get you two off my back. The way you hand out paroles around here I'd have to be Hideki Tojo to get more than six months.'
'We like things to be neat,' said Silverman.
'And you have got more loose ends than an old maid's sewing basket,' added Earp.
'So that when we leave this job we can be sure that we gave it our best shot.'
'Pride in the job, huh? I can understand that.' 'So,' said Silverman. 'We're going to look into your story. Comb it through for nits.'
'That still won't make me a louse.'
'You were SS,' said Silverman. 'I'm a Jew. And you'll always be a louse in my book, Gunther.'
* * *
CHAPTER NINE: GERMANY, 1954
It was easy to forget that we were in Germany. There was a US flag in the main hall, and the kitchens - which were seemingly always in action - served plain home cooking on the understanding that home was six thousand kilometres to the west. Most of the voices we heard were American, too: loud, manly voices that told you to do something, or not to do something - in English. And we did it quickly too, or we received a prod from a night stick or a kick up the backside. Nobody complained. Nobody would have listened, except perhaps Father Morgenweiss. The guards were MPs, deliberately selected for their enormous size. It was hard to see how Germany could ever have expected to win a war against this more obvious- looking master race. They walked the landings and corridors of Landsberg Prison like gunfighters from the OK Corral, or maybe boxers entering the ring. With each other they had an easy way about them: they were all big, well-brushed smiles and booming laughs, shouting jokes and baseball scores. For us, the inmates, however, there were only stone faces and belligerent attitudes. Fuck you, they seemed to say; you may have your own federal government but we're the real masters in this pariah country.
I had a cell for two to myself. It wasn't because I was special or because I hadn't yet been charged with anything but because WCPN1 was half empty. Every week, it seemed, someone else was released. But immediately after the war Landsberg had been full of prisoners. The Amis had even incarcerated Jewish displaced persons there, from the concentration camps of nearby Kaufering, alongside prominent Nazis and war criminals; but forcing those same ragged, threadbare Jews to wear SS uniforms had, perhaps, demonstrated a want of sensitivity on the part of the Americans that almost bordered on the comic. Not that the Amis were capable of seeing the funny side of anything very much.
The Jewish DPs were long gone from Landsberg now, to Israel, Great Britain and America, but the gallows were still there, and from time to time the guards tested it just to make sure everything was working smoothly. They were thoughtful like that. No one really believed the German Federal Government was planning to bring back the death penalty; then again, no one really believed the Amis gave a damn what the Federal Government thought about anything. They certainly didn't give a damn about scaring the prisoners, because at the same time that they tested the gallows they rehearsed the whole ghastly procedure of an execution with a volunteer prisoner taking the place of a condemned man. These monthly rehearsals took place on a Friday, because it was an old Landsberg tradition that Friday was a hanging day. A team of eight MPs solemnly marched the condemned man into the central courtyard and up the steps to the roof where the gallows was, and there they slipped a hood over the man's head and a noose around his neck; the prison director even read out a death sentence while the rest of them stood at attention and pretended - probably wished - it was the real thing. Or so I was told. It might reasonably be asked why anyone, least of all a German officer, would volunteer for such a duty; but as with everything else in Germany, the Amis got exactly what they wanted by offering the volunteer extra cigarettes, chocolate, and a glass of schnapps. And it was always the same prisoner who volunteered to step onto the gallows: Waldemar Klingelhofer. Perhaps the Amis were unwise to do this, given that he'd already tried to open a vein in his wrist with a large safety pin; then again it's no good looking for a whole flock when you've only got
one sheep.
It wasn't guilt about killing Jews that made Klingelhofer try to kill himself and volunteer for a practice execution; it was his guilt over the betrayal of another SS officer, Erich Naumann. Naumann had written a letter to Klingelhofer instructing him what to tell his interrogators and reminding him that there were no reports for the activities of Task Force B, which he himself had commanded after Nebe; but this advice also revealed the true depth of Naumann's own criminality in Minsk and Smolensk. Klingelhofer, who was deeply conflicted about the collapse of the German Reich, handed Naumann's letter to the Amis, who produced it at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1948 and used it as prima facie evidence against him. The letter helped convict Naumann and send him to the gallows in June 1951.
The consequence of all this was that none of the other prisoners spoke to Klingelhofer. No one except me. And probably no one would have spoken to me either but for the fact that I was the only one currently being interrogated by the Americans. This made some of my former comrades very nervous indeed, and one day two of them followed me out of the common room where we ate, played cards and listened to the radio, and into the courtyard.
'Captain Gunther. We would like a word with you, please.'
Ernst Biberstein and Walter Haensch were both senior SS officers and, regarding themselves not as criminals but as POWs, persisted in the use of military ranks. Biberstein, a Standartenführer, equivalent to a full colonel, did most of the talking while the younger Haensch - only a lieutenant-colonel - did most of the agreeing.
'It's several years since I myself was interrogated by the Amis,' said Biberstein. 'I think it must be almost seven years ago, now. No doubt these things are different from the way they used to be. We live in rather more hopeful, even enlightened circumstances than we did back then.'
'The Americans no longer seem to be driven by the same sense of moral superiority and desire for retribution,' added Haensch, redundantly.
'Nevertheless,' continued Biberstein, 'it's important to be careful what one tells them. During an interrogation they sometimes have an easy-going way about them and can appear to be one's friends when in fact they're anything but that. I'm not sure if you ever met our late lamented comrade Otto Ohlendorf, but for a long time he made himself very useful to the Amis, volunteering information without restraint in the misguided expectation that he might curry favour with them and, as a result, secure his freedom. Too late, however, he realised his mistake and, having given evidence against General Kaltenbrunner at Nuremberg and effectively sent him to his death, he discovered that he had managed to talk his way onto the gallows.'