Stumpfegger was a more recent acquisition. He was a giant of a man with very little brain but an unlimited capacity for hero-worship, and Hitler was his idol. Always prone to adulation, the Führer had taken to him at once and now often chose him for his companion on the walks he took every afternoon round the Chancellery garden.
Others who had frequent access to Hitler were Heinz Lorenz, who brought the news bulletins from Goebbels’ Ministry, Artur Axmann the Nazi Youth Leader, the secretaries Frau Jung and Frau Christian and his vegetarian cook Fräulein Manzialy, with whom he often took his meals. In addition to these, there were a score or so of junior staff officers, guard commanders, detectives and servants, all with long service and of undoubted loyalty, who had their quarters in the basement of the Chancellery.
As well as files on all these people, the contents of which Gregory was striving to memorise, there was one that he studied with special interest. Hitler had always presented himself to the German people as so entirely devoted to their welfare that his every thought was given to it, to the exclusion of all private pleasures, including sex. That this was not the fact Gregory was aware, as he had seen British Foreign Office Intelligence reports recording occasions in pre-war days when Hitler had been known to retire from very private parties with young women—generally blonde acrobats, for whom he apparently had a particular penchant. There was also the unedifying case of Frau Goebbels whom, it was reported, he had forced to perform certain services for him that had so disgusted her that she had fled to Switzerland, and had been induced to return by Gestapo agents only when threatened with the death of her children.
But what Gregory had not known was that Hitler had had a regular mistress for twelve years. This woman had first come to his notice as the assistant of his photographer, Hoffmann. Her name was Eva Braun, but it was forbidden to refer to her except by her initials, and mentions of her as E.B. were made by members of Hitler’s entourage only in whispers. That the secret of their intimacy should have been kept for so long, Gregory decided, must have been mainly due to her personality and Hitler’s.
Other dictators, with such an inexhaustible choice of female companions to amuse them in their leisure hours and with whom to disport themselves in bed, had always taken for their mistresses women who were universally acclaimed either for their beauty, intelligence, wit, charm, breeding or chic; but Eva Braun did not possess a single one of these qualities. Had she done so she would, no doubt, like the great courtesans, have insisted on recognition and demanded houses, a retinue of servants, splendid jewels and to be the best-dressed woman in her country. As it was, she was no more than a moderately good-looking blonde with a passable figure, lacking both intelligence and wit, and completely unambitious. Hitler had made her independent by making over to her one half of the royalties on his photographs but, although she had been for many years, in all but name, the dictator’s wife, she still lived like an ordinary German Hausfrau, content to preside over the teacups, to make small talk with his men friends and to sleep with him when required. But that had suited Hitler, for he had never succeeded in sloughing off the mind and habits of a common man, and Eva was a common woman.
These, then, made up the devil-inspired maniac’s court of which Gregory was shortly to become a member. Apart from a harem and eunuchs it had, he realised, all the elements of that of an Eastern potentate of the eighteenth century: the unpredictable, tyrannical, sadistic Sultan who handed out rewards, or orders to have people executed, entirely according to his mood of the moment; the grovelling flatterers who throve upon his vanity; the high priests of the Nazi religion, ever urging him to greater blood sacrifices by the murder of countless Jews; boastful paladins who at heart were men of straw; petty thieves who had swollen in that hothouse of opportunity into crooks defrauding the Government of millions; medicinemen who kept their Lord alive on drugs only for their own profit, and even soothsayers by whom he allowed himself to be guided. The more Gregory read the more he marvelled that such a cesspool of hatred, intrigue and corruption could have continued for so long as the fountain-head of power in Germany.
During those February days, while Malacou worked tirelessly on horoscopes, Gregory got to know the members of Goering’s entourage. General Koller he found to be a pleasant, elderly man but one whose nerves had been frayed almost to breaking point since, as the Reichsmarschall’s chief liaison officer with Hitler, he had daily to listen to furious diatribes by the Führer about the failures of the Luftwaffe. Koller’s deputy, General Christian, Gregory liked less, and he seemed stupid enough to believe that in spite of everything Germany might yet emerge victorious. But with Nicolaus von Below Gregory got on extremely well, although he met the Colonel only twice at the dinner parties Goering continued to give, dressed in ever more fantastic costumes, as an Indian Rajah, Inca Emperor or in some other array of silks and satins that enabled him to display his fabulous jewels.
At length the period of preparation on which Gregory had insisted ended, and on the morning of Thursday, March 1st, General Koller took him and Malacou into Berlin. The Air Ministry had been partially wrecked but the damage from bombs had not harmed its basement and, down there, an Administration Officer showed them to cheerless quarters that had been prepared for them. Kaindl had seen to it that they were equipped with everything that an officer and his servant would normally require and, leaving Malacou to unpack their things, Gregory accompanied Koller up the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reich Chancellery.
The vast building was one of Speer’s major achievements and in former days its huge Egyptian-style hall, staircases and galleries must have been most impressive. But in the past year bombs had destroyed its upper storeys and brought masses of plaster down from the ceiling of the lofty hall. No serious attempt had been made to clear up the mess and, instead of the seething mass of busy people whose clamour used to fill it, it was now a mausoleum of shadows, the silence of which was broken only by the crunching of the rubble under the feet of a few men in uniform hurrying to and fro from the staircase that led to the several underground bunkers.
At the head of the stairs there was a cloakroom, not for garments but for weapons. Since the bomb plot positively no-one had been allowed to enter Führer H.Q. while armed. Even Goebbels and the other Ministers had to submit to being searched before they were allowed into the quarters of their master and, as Gregory found, the search was a really thorough one.
On going down into the depths he expected to find some similarity to the fortress basement In Whitehall, in which Churchill’s staff officers planned the High Direction of the war. But it was totally different. The underground accommodation of the British War Cabinet and Joint Planning Staff consisted of the best part of a hundred rooms with every facility which would have enabled its inmates to withstand in reasonable comfort a siege of several weeks; whereas the bunker from which Hitler now directed his war had fewer than thirty rooms, many of which were no more than cubby holes, and the only spaces large enough to hold conferences, or in which a number of people could feed, were the passages. There were other bunkers in which junior staff and servants had their quarters, but these were some way off, and the whole system presented a picture of muddle, acute discomfort and inefficiency.
The difference, as Gregory was quick to realise, lay in the fact that the British had foreseen that their war leaders would have to go to earth and had planned accordingly; whereas the German High Command had never visualised the possibility that the bombs of the Allies would force them to seek shelter underground.
Gregory was already fully informed about Hitler’s routine. The Führer rose at midday, held a conference with his principal executives, which sometimes lasted several hours, went up to walk for a while with one of his cronies round the Chancellery garden, returned to the bunker for a meal of vegetables or tea and cream buns over which he treated those present to endless monologues about the war situation, then he gave interviews to Generals from the front and others, ate again, and went back to bed at between four-thi
rty and five o’clock in the morning.
In order never to be absent when his master uttered, Bormann kept the same hours. Thus, by keeping himself informed of every last detail of what was going on, he was able either to prevent visitors from having access to Hitler, or criticise what they had said after they had gone; and he had become the channel through which the majority of Hitler’s orders were issued.
Having arrived down in the bunker shortly before noon, Koller was able almost at once to present Gregory to Bormann. Hitler’s ‘Grey Eminence’ regarded him with a cold, unsmiling stare then shot at him a few questions about himself. Gregory replied that until recently he had been employed by the Reichsmarschall in buying antiques in the Balkans. Bormann’s lips curled in a sneer and he muttered, ‘What a way to spend the war! Your fat slob of a master should be choked with the loot such people as you have stolen for him.’
For a moment, Gregory felt that he ought to show resentment at the insult to his Chief, but Koller gave him a quick nudge; so he remained silent. And he was soon to learn that in the bunker such abuse of Goering was quite usual.
With a wave of his hand Bormann dismissed him. Koller then went in to the midday conference while Gregory found von Below, who gave him a friendly welcome and showed him round the headquarters, although not, of course, the rooms occupied by the Führer.
For a time they discussed the war. In the bunker there was no spacious map room, such as that in the War Cabinet basement where Gregory had worked in comfort with half a dozen colleagues—only a small chamber adjacent to the Führer’s apartments, barely large enough for three people to move round in. But von Below produced a map of the Western Front on which were marked roughly the positions of the opposing Armies.
On February 8th General Eisenhower had launched his great spring offensive, its main weight being directed towards the lower Rhine. In the extreme north the British and Canadians had succeeded in clearing the Reichwald Forest, but further south the American thrust towards Düsseldorf had been checked by the fanatical bravery of General Schlemm’s First Parachute Army. Moreover conditions could not have been more unfavourable to the Allies, as it had rained incessantly; tanks and carriers had become hopelessly bogged down, slowing up the general advance along the whole front. But now the ground was drying out and, placing his finger on a spot west of the Rhine in the Wesel-Homburg sector, von Below said:
‘The enemy are massing here for another major assault. Air reconnaissance is almost entirely denied to us these days, but hundreds of officers and men who were overrun by the Allies’ advance, then succeeded in hiding and straggling back by night, all report enormous concentrations of guns and armour in that area. I fear there is little doubt that the British will be over the Rhine before the end of the month.’
‘They may,’ Gregory replied, ‘but the Americans will be across before the British. The first crossing won’t be made up there either, but further down, south of Cologne.’
That was the conclusion that Malacou had come to as the result of his astrological calculations and mystical communings with occult powers while at Karinhall. The opportunity to use it had arisen sooner than Gregory had expected, but he felt it too good to miss.
Von Below looked at him in astonishment. ‘But, my dear fellow, you are talking nonsense. Just look at the map. General Patton’s army, in the centre there, is still many miles from the Rhine, and unlike the Allied dispositions further north his troops are widely dispersed. What you suggest is wildly improbable.’
‘It is not,’ Gregory insisted. ‘The Americans will be over the Rhine south of Cologne within a week. If it were not unsporting to bet on certainties, I’d bet you a hundred marks that will be so.’
‘Gott im Himmel! To talk of it as a certainty you must be crazy. I’ll willingly take you for a thousand. On what do you base this extraordinary assertion?’
‘On the foreknowledge of my servant. He is a Turk, whom I acquired while travelling for the Reichsmarschall in the Balkans, and he is a genuine mystic. He predicted correctly the defeat of the British airborne landings at Arnhem, the Ardennes offensive and its failure, and many other things. So I have complete confidence in him.’
‘How very extraordinary. That is better than any of the Führer’s magicians can do. Sometimes they pull a rabbit out of the hat. When the Führer decided to rescue Mussolini our Intelligence people hadn’t an idea where he was imprisoned. But an occultist who calls himself the Master of the Sidereal Pendulum located him for us. On checking up we found that he was right, then Otto Skorzeny flew in and got the Duce out. Most of the time, though, I think they are just guessing, and only last week the Führer sent his two latest wizards packing because they had misled him with false predictions.’
Gregory smiled. ‘Most of these fellows are charlatans; but Malacou is not. Perhaps he is granted these powers because he refuses to make money out of them. Anyway, if you would like your fortune told you have only to let me know.’
At that moment von Below was called away; so Gregory continued to familiarise himself with his new surroundings, then returned to the Air Ministry for a late lunch.
During the next few days he made the acquaintance of all his new colleagues in the bunker and settled down to his duties there. They were by no means onerous and consisted mainly in making précis of staff papers for Generals Koller and Christian, relaying orders by telephone and, at times, going in a car to the Tempelhof or Gatow airports to meet senior officers who had been summoned to Berlin by the Führer.
On March 6th he met and brought to the bunker General Siegfried Westphal. This comparatively young and exceptionally brilliant officer had, in turn, been Chief of Staff to Rommel in North Africa and to Kesselring in Italy and was now Chief of Staff to von Rundstedt. He had been sent by his chief to endeavour to persuade Hitler to permit a withdrawal which would considerably shorten the front in the West and so enable it to be held more strongly. After his departure Gregory learned from Koller, von Below and others the course the interview had taken. With great courage Westphal had spoken his mind frankly to Hitler and for five hours stood up to endless tirades of abuse. When he at last emerged from the interview he was sweating profusely but he had managed to wring a partial agreement from Hitler.
He had asked that parts of the West Wall should be given up, on the grounds that it had been so shoddily built that many of the emplacements were death-traps rather than strong points, and that, fearing to be buried in them, the troops preferred to risk their lives in the open. As the West Wall was Hitler’s own creation this had sent him into a furious rage; but he had been forced to admit that his own estimate, that a division averaging five thousand men could hold a front of fifteen kilometres, was no longer practical in view of the Allies’ great numerical superiority; and had consented to withdrawals in certain places. But General Jodl expressed the opinion that Westphal’s success was only temporary, and that the Führer would soon revert to his demand that every foot of ground should be held.
The following afternoon Gregory was sent by Koller out to Karinhall with a confidential document for Goering, which gave him an opportunity to report that he had established himself satisfactorily at Führer H.Q. and had made his first move, although he was now far from happy about its probable outcome. But on his return, when he entered the outer bunker he noticed that its inmates were looking very glum. Suddenly, von Below caught sight of him and cried:
‘Teufel nochmal, Protze! You were right!’
To Gregory the exclamation could mean only one thing: the Americans were across the Rhine. For the past two days he had been becoming more and more anxious, as Malacou had been unable to give a more exact prediction than that the crossing would take place in the first week in March. Had he for once proved wrong, Gregory would not only have been made to look a credulous fool but also have lost the sort of brilliant opening to his campaign that might not again arise. But this was the 7th; so, much relieved, he was able to smile and ask:
‘When did it happ
en, and where?’
‘This afternoon,’ replied the Colonel. ‘One of General Patton’s flying columns reached the Rhine at Remagen. God alone knows why, but our Sappers there failed to blow the bridge in time. Still, the Americans can’t possibly have crossed in any strength. They couldn’t have had more than a reconnaissance force so far in advance of their main body; so all the odds are that the few who have got across will be driven back into the river.’
But hour after hour next day, as the reports came in, the atmosphere in the bunker grew more tense. ‘Two-gun’ Patton was proving himself another Murat by his dash and determination. Not only had the Germans failed to retake or destroy the bridge; the Americans were pouring across it and, supported by a thousand aircraft, establishing themselves on its far side.
On the 9th a German counter-attack in force was launched but by evening it was known that it had failed. At eleven o’clock that night Gregory was in his cubicle in the Air Ministry basement and just about to turn in. An orderly from the telephone exchange came to his room and told him that General Koller required his presence at once over in the Chancellery bunker. Hastily he put on his tunic again and hurried off up the street. He found Koller in the main passage that was used as a general sitting room. The General said only ‘Come with me,’ and led the way through the partition door into the end of the passage that was used for conferences.
There, alone at the long narrow table, Bormann was sitting. Fixing his cold steely eyes on Gregory, he asked, ‘Herr Major, is it true that you predicted the crossing of the Rhine at Remagen by the Americans a week before it occurred?’
‘Jawohl, Herr Parteiführer,’ Gregory replied promptly.
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