His Enemy, His Friend

by John R. Tunis

  Now the general was taken aback. “Who on earth is José Marti?”

  “He was a Cuban.”

  “A Cuban!” A lesser breed, the scorn in the tone of the general plainly indicated.

  “Yes, a Cuban revolutionary, a great patriot. He is a hero even today throughout South America. I believe he was killed by the Spaniards, I am not sure. Anyhow, he was telling us a truth, Uncle Klaus. By the way, have you ever read Rilke?”

  “No.” The general felt slightly uncomfortable. He suddenly realized that his godson was in some ways older than himself. Truly this boy had matured. There was a new firmness about the mouth. It was not unimpressive. Here was a twenty-year-old standing up against the authority of the Wehrmacht. For a few seconds the general was caught up in admiration of his godson. Why, I was like him as a young man, he thought. I had faith. Whatever happened to me? Why did I never take a stand against Adolf Hitler? Or at least have the guts to resign my commission. Why did I sit back and accept it all as my friends and colleagues did, until we discovered he owned us entirely, and it was too late? Why?

  Reluctantly he returned to the somber situation at hand. He pulled a paper from his pocket and took out glasses.

  “Hans, my boy, this is a brutal thing we are doing. I agree. But war is brutal. Only by being brutal can we save the lives of the good German soldiers under your command. Sometimes, like yourself, I have doubts. Then I always come back to this, an activity report which I cut out and kept. It is Herr Himmler, then Gauleiter of Poland, speaking: ‘If the local population from the Nazi point of view is hostile, racially inferior, or composed of criminal elements who attack German troops in the act of carrying out their duties, all those suspected of supporting these terrorists are to be shot and the women and children deported.’ Now we did this in the First World War to protect our troops; we did it here in France at Oradour, we did it at Lidice in Czechoslovakia, and we did it many times in Poland. In Nogent-Plage I consider we have really been most lenient.”

  “But Uncle Klaus....”

  “Wait! Listen to me. It is past midafternoon. We may well have the invasion any minute, at any place along the coast. I speak to you, Hans, in the name of your father whom I so deeply loved. Think! Reflect! Obey your superiors.”

  “But don’t you see, I cannot excuse myself by depositing my conscience with my superiors. Sometimes disobedience is not wrong. Believe me, Uncle Klaus, there are times when it is not wrong. To disobey when your whole being tells you to is obeying your conscience.”

  “Nonsense, my boy, nonsense! Suppose everyone did that? What kind of an Army would we have? Would we be here? Would we be on the Vistula? Would we hold everything from Narvik to Rome? What would happen to us if everyone acted as you are doing?”

  “What everyone does is their concern. What I do is mine.”

  “Hans! For the last time, I beg you, no matter what you feel, no matter the rights and wrongs and your inner struggle which I respect, obey the orders of your superior officer. Were you not a von und zu Kleinschrodt, do you know what would happen to you?

  “We would tie you to the rear of an army truck and invite you to run until you were so badly cut up you would collapse and give in. That is what we would do. You are betraying your family and your class.”

  The young man sat motionless behind the desk in misery. Although he loved his godfather and trusted him, although he was so close to him that he felt his presence deeply, he was still terribly alone. But he gave no sign of yielding. A tiny spiral of smoke rose from the ashtray as the cigarette burned out. There was a sad, heavy silence. Neither man spoke.

  Then the general rose, his chair scraping the floor. He pressed the buzzer on the desk. The orderly entered immediately, standing at attention before the general.

  “Where are the six prisoners?”

  “Downstairs, sir. In the cellar.”

  “Bring them up.”

  Chapter 15

  “ARE YOU CERTAIN that your watch is at the hour?”

  “No. But if it is wrong, the church clock is wrong also.”

  The only remaining watch belonged to the padre. There were twelve minutes left, then ten minutes, then five. At last the hour was up. The cellar door did not slam open with a crash. No helmeted soldiers came for them. What did it mean? The six looked at each other more easily.

  “I feel sure the Herr Oberst has persuaded them to do nothing. He knows none of us played any part in the killing. I felt certain, I said so, remember? I said he would get us out....”

  Only the teacher was less sure. True, it was not like the Germans to be late, especially where death was concerned. Perhaps they had caught the murderer. If so, nobody would bother to tell them.

  Half an hour passed. An hour. A little more than an hour. Above, telephones rang. Long discussions followed in German. After a while a car screamed to a stop on the Grande Rue outside. How strange, thought Monsieur Varin, that one’s hearing becomes so acute at moments like this. He could hear men walking on the hard floor above and distinguish footsteps, the slow pacing of the Feldwebel, the quick, brisk steps of the orderlies. Clack-clack, clack-clack, clack - clack... clack - clack - clack - clack.... Then silence.

  They waited, tired now, weary from fatigue and anxiety and tension, drooping a little, all of them. They sat on the hard dirt floor, back against the stone wall, heads nodding.

  At last the key turned in the lock and the cellar door flew open. At the top of the stairs stood a soldier with the usual submachine gun in his hands.

  “Hinaus!” He beckoned them up. Horrible sound, thought the teacher. A horrible sound and a horrible language. I always disliked it and I always will.

  The hostages rose clumsily to their feet. They’ll probably release us now. They have no evidence against us. The Herr Oberst knows we had nothing to do with the killing of the Hauptmann Seeler. Silently, meekly, they went up the stairs one by one. Just outside the cellar door stood the Feldwebel with a tall German officer, elegant in shiny boots, his chest covered with campaign ribbons and combat decorations. The hostages stared at them dully, drained now of all emotion.

  The Feldwebel signaled a squad of soldiers and turned quickly away, unable to stand the look on those French faces, feeling their faith vanish as he gave the silent orders. The troops formed about them, half leading, half pushing the five men and the boy into the Grande Rue.

  When the farmer Marquet, the first in line, was thrust outside, a wild shrieking arose. The prisoners stood for a few seconds blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight. All the women of Nogent-Plage, old and young, surrounded the steps of the Bloch villa in a semicircle. They were being held off by helmeted soldiers with bayonets attached to their rifles.

  The women also were armed. They had brought brooms, shovels, pitchforks, and rakes. They brandished them before the soldiers, screaming as the hostages stepped hesitantly into the street.

  “Marcel! Marcel! Mon bien-aimé....”

  “Georges! Georges! Suis ici... ici....”

  The wife of the fisherman tried to break through to her husband. A German soldier seized her and tossed her roughly to the pavement.

  At this, like a kind of signal, the women attacked en masse. With their shovels and pitchforks, their rakes and brooms, they tried to break through the soldiers and reach the men and the boy. It was impossible for the Feldwebel standing on the steps of the Bloch villa to give the order to fire into the melee. To have done so would have meant the massacre of both townspeople and troops. For long seconds the street was in utter confusion.

  Run! Run! Run! Run, you idiots, thought the Feldwebel, half hoping that the six would burst away in all directions. Surely a few would escape. But they were dazed so they did nothing. The Feldwebel blew a short blast on the whistle he had removed from his upper breast pocket, shouted crisp commands, and slowly the women were overpowered and forced back. Pitchforks were seized and tossed aside. The troops formed quickly about the prisoners and the column moved down the street. Only two, the
Catholic and the Communist went with heads erect.

  My God, thought the Feldwebel, I’m marching them to death. Just what I said I’d never do. How did I get here?

  From the pleading women who stumbled along beside the column came sobs and screams. Impossible to think coherently, to act intelligently in that emotion. He glanced around.

  The General Froelicher was bringing up the rear, there to see the sentence was carried out. He gave no orders, although the soldiers needed no orders. They had done it many times in other, distant lands.

  “Charles! Charles!” shrieked the wife of the café owner. “Charles! Regard-moi.”

  “Ah, mon fils,” cried the teacher, seeing his wife with the boy at her side. Jean-Paul had the white football under his arm. He was sobbing bitterly, tears on his face. “Adieu, Jean-Paul. Adieu. Et toi, chérie....”

  No man, no woman was shouting to the farmer Marquet. Nor, indeed, did he expect anyone to. But the moment he had come out on the steps of the Bloch villa, his eyes searched the Grande Rue anxiously. What had become of Sebastian? Only a mangy dog trotting along beside the weeping women was now visible. The farmer knew what had happened. The villagers had led Sebastian away. No meat had been available in Nogent-Plage for a long time. They would shoot Sebastian at once.

  The soldiers marched in cadence, their boots striking the concrete with that harsh sound. Suddenly Jean-Paul Varin burst away from his mother’s arm and rushed up to the Feldwebel at the head of the column.

  “Jean-Paul!” cried Madame Varin. “Jean-Paul.”

  Now he was attacking the big German, hitting him with clenched fists, kicking at his legs, weeping and shouting.

  Instantly his mother was beside him, dragging him back to the sidewalk. Kneeling down, she held him tightly to her. He buried his head in her shoulder.

  Quickly the column reached the end of the Grande Rue—and the low wall with its machine guns. A raging tide of women surrounded the troops, held back only by their bayonets.

  Each hostage was blindfolded. They knew no hope at last. All illusions were gone. A quiet descended so deep you could hear the half slap, half crunch of the waves on the pebbly beach below. And the sobs of Jean-Paul tearing his body as he clung to the arms of his mother.

  René Le Gallec next to the teacher reached out, groping for the hand of the older man. His anguished voice was plainly audible. “Will it hurt, Monsieur the Professor, will it hurt?”

  And the reply of the man, distinct above the weeping that now swept the circle of waiting women. “Non, mon petit, it won’t hurt. You won’t feel it.” Then the teacher threw back his head and shouted with all his strength.

  “Vive La France.”

  The Feldwebel could stand it no longer. Then from behind came the voice of his godfather, composed, clear, crisp. “Schiessen!”

  “Vive La....”

  The rifles sounded in unison. They made a queer echo in the fog now approaching from the sea. Startled, the thin dog raced down the road, past the six crumpled figures on the sea wall, toward St.-Valéry in the distance.

  PART II

  Judgment at Rouen

  1948

  FOR MOST AMERICANS, World War II did not begin until December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. For the French it really began in early May, 1940, with the invasion of France, and the fighting was over in six weeks—almost as soon as it started. Then followed more than four years of occupation by a foreign army, of living under enemy rule.

  After the end of the war came trials of various war criminals. Especially remembered are those at Nuremberg, which sentenced to death the most notorious of the Nazi leaders who had not emulated Hitler by taking their own lives: Frank, Frick, Streicher, von Ribbentrop, and others. Here for the first time was established the principle that made not states but individuals answerable to law for acts committed in war.

  Less celebrated than the trials at Nuremberg were smaller trials in various lands where the people had suffered at the hands of Gestapo men, Storm Troopers, and even some German army officers. One of them, perhaps the most discussed all over France, was the trial of the Baron Hans Joachim Wolfgang von und zu Kleinschrodt.

  It was held in Rouen, the city where Joan of Arc was burned to death by English troops in 1431. In 1499 a building was begun to house the Parliament of Normandy. Later it was turned over to the Law Courts and became the Palais de Justice. Here, several years after the war, the baron was brought to justice for the shooting of six innocent French civilians on the afternoon of June 5, 1944, only hours before Nogent-Plage was stormed under cover of the guns of the British fleet and the Feldwebel with almost a hundred of his soldiers was taken prisoner by Canadian troops.

  When his case was called he was offered either French or German counsel or, if he so desired, both. He asked for neither. His defense was that he had not shot the hostages or given the order to do so. The order was given by a superior officer, the General Klaus Froelicher, who had been in Nogent-Plage at the time.

  Obviously the court found this hard to accept. The General Froelicher had later been killed leading an encircled division at the Battle of St.-Lô. Germans, everyone knew, were not in the habit of disobeying commands, and it was established that Headquarters had commanded the Feldwebel von Kleinschrodt to have the six hostages shot. Moreover, his signature was at the bottom of the proclamation issued to the townspeople after the execution.

  The trial attracted attention in all of Europe because the defendant was a prominent athlete, celebrated for his football exploits. The proceedings were short and passionate. Witnesses, mostly inhabitants of Nogent-Plage, including several widows of the men who had been killed, testified against him. Their quiet bitterness was impressive. It was shown that a Hauptmann Seeler commanding the garrison at Nogent-Plage had been shot to death in the street on June 5, 1944, the day before the invasion of Normandy. The baron, then an ordinary Feldwebel, or noncommissioned officer, assumed command and was ordered to seize six hostages and confine them. This he did. Unless the murderer was discovered, he was to shoot the six within the hour.

  Was there a superior officer present at the execution? One had come to town, yes. Madame Dupont and others had seen him arrive at the Bloch villa in a big Mercedes. But was he actually present when the six hostages were shot? Nobody was sure. After all, there had been all that swirling, screaming confusion when the women had attacked the German troops with pitchforks and rakes. And later, during the execution itself, all eyes had been on the condemned six. So if he was there, nobody could recall seeing him. And anyway it was the Feldwebel, at the head of the column, who had marched the men down with the firing squad, and presumably he had given the order for their death.

  Because of the fame of the accused, public interest in the trial was great. Foreign as well as French journalists were present. One American correspondent, perhaps more imaginative than his colleagues, sent on to New York a vivid description of the baron as the Butcher of Nogent-Plage. The title stuck. So that was how all the witnesses and spectators in the high-vaulted fifteenth-century courtroom of the Palais de Justice at Rouen came to think of him.

  A hussier, or bailiff, in knee breeches, stood up with a document in his hands. He read rapidly.

  “WhereasontheafternoonofJunefifthnineteenhundredandfortyfourthe

  aforesaiddefendantcausedtodieatthehandsofafiringsquadthefollowing

  innocentFrenchciviliansRenéLeGallecGeorgesVarinCharlesLavigne

  LouisMarquetMarcelDeschampsandthePèreClementthereforeyou

  HansJoachimWolfgangvonundzuKleinschrodthavebeenconvictedof

  themurderoftheabovenamedsixFrenchmen.Thedefendantwillcome

  forwardtobesentenced.”

  The spectators half rose to watch the black-haired man stand and, with shoulders squared, step into the box. He was in civilian clothes, wearing a sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows that told of happier times. It fitted his muscular frame tightly because of its age, but still it became him. The witnesses, especially
those women in black wearing black veils, watched with icy anger. Nothing could bring back their men.

  The bearded judge with the little red-and-white cap upon his brow leaned forward.

  “Has the defendant anything to say?”

  The courtroom was quiet. Since the baron had hardly spoken in his defense except to deny his guilt, it hardly seemed likely that he would talk now. But after a moment he nodded.

  Arms folded, he said, “Hauptrichter, I have only this to say. I am not guilty of the charges. I did not pronounce the order to have the six hostages shot. In fact, I disobeyed that order. Had Germany won the war, I should have been court-martialed by my own countrymen and faced a firing squad myself.”

  A murmur ran through the courtroom. The bearded judge gavelled sharply for silence. The defendant resumed.

  “No, I did not kill the hostages. I did not kill them because the order to do so offended my conscience. And when conscience and the state conflict, the conscience of a man must take precedence.

  “But if I did not obey this order, I perhaps obeyed others I should not have obeyed. As my chiefs were wrong to obey the orders of a madman. We were all guilty, nous étions tous des assassins. Hence we must pay the price. I am ready. But first, I wish to say this. Someday you French and”—here he looked at the row of correspondents—“you Americans, even you Americans who were victorious and therefore think such a thing is impossible, someday you may also murder, torture, drop bombs, and kill innocent people in the name of some cause or in the belief that you are somehow defending your country while fighting in a foreign land, as we did.”

  Once again the gavel sounded. The judge said, “The defendant will now be sentenced. Hans Joachim Wolfgang von und zu Kleinschrodt, acting for the Court of Cassation, I sentence you to ten years at hard labor. Sentence to begin immediately.

  “The case is now ended. The court is dismissed.”