“Sign it,” I said sternly this time, almost pressing the gun against his forehead.
“Don’t even think about it.” He dropped the pen, his hands laying limp on top of the paper. “I’m not signing anything.”
“Yes, you are.” I clicked the safety off my gun and lifted his chin with it, making him look into my eyes. “You are signing it this instant, or I’m going to shoot you through your worthless little neck!”
“Killing me won’t change anything.”
“It will, for you. You will be dead.” It was frustrating, how this tiny dictator, blinded by his own self-assurance, refused to believe that I’d actually shoot him. I wasn’t going to, initially, but now I hated to admit that the situation was quickly getting out of my control.
“You won’t shoot me.” Dollfuss sneered with even more contempt. “If you could, you would have done it a long time ago. But all that you, the celebrated SS, are good for is dressing in your pretty little uniforms, marching around, and kissing your superiors’ behinds. You can’t do anything when it comes to serious affairs without your head commanders, and I can see you are a pathetic example, Sturmhauptführer Kaltenbrunner. If you were a real soldier, you would have pulled the trigger already. But you aren’t, no matter how much you want to imagine yourself to be. You’re not a soldier, and you’re not a leader; you’re nothing. See? I’m saying it to your face, in front of your own men, and you can’t do anyth—”
He coughed up on a last word, clasping his throat and looking at me in surprise. I don’t even understand how it happened, how I pulled the trigger and shot him through the neck, just like I said I would.
“Ernst!” Bruno yelped behind my back as I stood there motionless, not able to take my eyes off the bleeding man. “You shot him!”
“I did.”
I swallowed a lump in my suddenly very dry throat, looked at the gun in my hand while my mind was feverishly trying to make the connection of how this weapon fired in the first place, how it was my finger that pulled the trigger, and how I was the reason that the Austrian leader was lying on the sofa, bleeding, but still alive.
“Now what?” Bruno asked gingerly, looking from our wounded victim to me and back.
“Please, call the doctor,” Dollfuss managed to whisper, clasping both hands around his throat to stop the blood.
The fact that he was still alive was a miracle to begin with, I thought with immense relief, but what was I to do now, when my men were standing around me and looking at me expectantly. I pressed my jaws together, shifting from one foot to another. To hell with the coup-d’état, make the order to take him to the hospital and save his life? And then what? He’ll get better and send out the order to hang us all? And what of my comrades now, if I do give this order? It will prove that I am indeed no soldier and no leader? What will Reichsführer Himmler say, when he hears about it? What will Dietrich say? Oh God, what will the Führer say?
Cold sweat started to break on my temples, and I quickly took my military cap off and wiped my forehead with my sleeve.
“I’m begging you…” Dollfuss pleaded again. Several pairs of eyes were piercing me at the same time. They were waiting. I kept looking at Dollfuss because it wasn’t as terrifying as looking into the eyes of the men, who were silently waiting for my decision. I swallowed hard and tried to compose myself. I could still turn the situation to my favor and not to leave this room a murderer, if only this stubborn man would cooperate.
“Sign the resignation, and we’ll get you help,” I promised, putting my gun away and picking up the document from the floor.
Dollfuss looked at it helplessly and only clenched his hands over his wound tighter. “I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.”
Why are you doing this to me?! I almost yelled at him. Don’t you understand that I’m trying to save your life? I don’t want you to die as much as you don’t want it! I don’t want to have your blood on my hands! I’m not a killer, I didn’t want it to turn out this way, I do want to help you but I can’t lose this fight to you, not in front of my subordinates, don’t you get it? My future, the only future in the SS that I have now, since you took my other, normal future from me, depends on the outcome of our fight. It’s not the time to be stubborn. Help me help you, for God’s sake!
“You don’t have much time before you lose too much blood for any doctor to save you.” I made another attempt to explain everything to him rationally. “Sign the resignation, and we’ll get you to the nearest hospital. This is not worth your life. It’s just politics. What are you fighting for? Power? If you die, you won’t have any power anyway. Sign it, we’ll take you to the doctor and you’ll be like new in just a few weeks, sipping red wine together with your Duce someplace warm in Italy. He’ll grant you some position, I’m quite certain of it. Chancellor, sign it. Please!”
I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead, and the color slowly draining from his face. But he still threw a despising glare at me and whispered, “Never.”
Bruno sighed heavily and nudged me slightly with his elbow.
“What’s the plan now?”
I shrugged irritably. “I don’t know. Do you have any suggestions?”
“It looks to me that he won’t sign it,” Bruno concluded.
The idea of getting help for the Austrian Chancellor wasn’t voiced by anyone, and I was too afraid to suggest it myself, even though it would mean his imminent death.
“Let’s get out of here. The cover-up team will stay and look into things,” Bruno said after a pause.
“He’s still alive,” I whispered, desperately trying to find the solution for this helpless situation.
“Well, yes, for now he is. Are you planning to stay to witness his last breath or something?” Bruno, judging by his attitude, wasn’t bothered in the slightest by the fact that we were the reason behind someone nearing death. “Let’s go, before the whole Austrian army marches in here and executes us all for high treason.”
I threw a last begging glance at Dollfuss, but his stern face, with hardly a noticeable wrinkle of suffering over the bridge of his nose spoke for itself. He would die, but he wouldn’t sign our demands.
“If he changes his mind and signs the paper, take him to the hospital immediately,” I ordered the men who were staying behind to cover our retreat.
“Jawohl, Sturmhauptführer!” they replied in unison, saluting us.
“Sturmhauptführer Kaltenbrunner and I were never here. Hudl, Holzweber and Planetta, you are in charge here. Hudl, it was you who shot him,” Bruno added, pointing at the SS man.
“Jawohl.”
I looked over my shoulder one last time, and the two of us made our escape into the night.
The news of Dollfuss’s death and of the arrest of our comrades, who stayed behind and readily admitted their guilt, reached us in Linz. The coup-d’état failed, and there was no point in going to Germany. The Austrian army forced the remainder of the SS, occupying the chancellery, to give themselves up, threatening to blow up the whole building with dynamite if needed. In the wake of the nationalist uprising around the country, all the SS formations, who had been informed beforehand, tried to take power into their own hands, but the Italian dictator, Mussolini, quickly sent reinforcements to support the Austrian army, and without German help the Austrian SS were outnumbered and doomed to failure.
Both the Führer and Reichsführer Himmler washed their hands of course, completely denying any involvement and even denied the idea that they knew anything of the planned uprising. Not that I was surprised, since Himmler made their position clear during our last conversation, but, still, them turning their back on us when we were fighting for their cause, left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. I was more than certain that if we had succeeded, they’d have marched inside the country first thing the following day, and announced themselves the rightful leaders.
“Do you see how they are?” I asked Bruno bitterly, for the first time angered by the actions of my superiors. And not
just superiors, the leaders, who I swore to give my life for. It seemed like they weren’t going to reciprocate though, despite all the Führer’s loud words. “Our men are arrested, and they didn’t move a finger to help the uprising.”
We were sitting in a small pub near the train station, which was nearly empty due to it being early. We stopped to have something to eat and most importantly drink, since I’d downed my remaining whiskey within the first thirty minutes on the train. My hands were still trembling slightly, and I was in an agitated and unsettled mood, which was unusual for me, with a million thoughts flashing through my mind. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how Bruno could be so calm and unfazed, eating his breakfast as if nothing had happened merely hours ago. I for one couldn’t even stuff a single piece of bread in my mouth. I only drank the beer he ordered for the two of us, and, unsatisfied with its effect, ordered a bottle of cognac.
“You shouldn’t be drinking that on an empty stomach,” Bruno remarked nonchalantly, after I had finished my fourth shot and refilled the glass once again. “You’ll get sick.”
“I’m not even getting drunk,” I replied quietly, trying to get control over my hectic breathing. I downed another shot and ran my sweaty palms though my hair once again, trying to understand what the hell was going on with me.
I killed a man, that’s what’s going on. I finally admitted the terrifying truth inside my mind, struggling with the lighter with my shaking fingers. I killed a man. Another human being. I shot him, and now he’s dead. I’m a murderer.
“Can I have your bread roll if you don’t want it?” Bruno nodded at my untouched plate, breaking through the chain of my terrifying thoughts. I pushed it towards him.
“You can have it all,” I mumbled, wondering at his hearty appetite.
“Are you upset with Himmler?” he asked, spreading the butter over the bread roll he’d cut in two, putting three slices of cheese on top of it. I refilled my shot glass with the disgusting amber liquid once again. “I don’t understand why. You knew it already, that they wouldn’t help us no matter the outcome. They couldn’t risk their position. The German army is only forming, they aren’t strong enough to start a war, and that’s where it would go with Duce and his alliance with our government. Why are you getting yourself all worked up for no reason?”
“I’m not. It’s not because of Himmler.”
“Stop biting your nails! Jesus Christ! What is it with you today?”
“I killed a man!” I whisper-yelled at him, pulling forward and almost grabbing his lapels. I wanted to shake the living hell out of him for his calm attitude. I wanted to bang this realization into his head with my fist, I wanted to slap him until he would snap out of his careless mood and understand it at last, the consequences of our actions.
“No, you didn’t,” Bruno answered after a short pause, without even moving a brow, and cut a piece of my sausage with his fork. “Hudl did. You weren’t even in Vienna yesterday. You were here, in Linz, with me.”
“Bruno, listen to me. Hudl and his people were arrested. They will be hanged for high treason, and it’s all my fault as well…” I started with a warning tone in my voice, but he interrupted me right away.
“No, Ernst, you listen to me. Why do you think Hitler and Himmler denied any knowledge of the coup-d’état? Because they’re too important to get involved, too important to risk their status and reputation. They are needed for higher goals, Ernst, just like you are. You are the leader of the Austrian SS. We couldn’t risk your life when someone else, someone minor, could give theirs so you would be able to continue your work. Do you understand? It’s always been like this, since the dawn of ages, the greatest politicians and army commanders sacrificed the ones who could be easily replaced. Not them though, they have a different, greater destiny. And so do you. Be grateful that someone was happy to give his life for you. They did it voluntarily, Ernst, no one forced them. They will give their lives for the greater future. So stop torturing yourself over a waste of life, who deserved to get shot anyway. Pull yourself together.”
I nodded several times, just to make him stop talking.
“I think I’d better go home,” I mumbled, looking for money in my pocket, picking up my cigarette case from the table and getting up from the table. He was one of my closest friends, and yet I couldn’t wait to get away from him. It was all too difficult to comprehend for me at this point. I just wanted to get into my bed, curl under the blanket and have no one touch me or talk to me.
Bruno gave me a strange look before getting up and taking my hand, which he squeezed tighter than he normally did, as if warning me of something.
“Yes, that’s probably a good idea. You’re not yourself today. Go have some rest, and I’ll check on you later.”
“Thank you.”
“Heil Hitler,” Bruno whispered the usual goodbye, even though the other two patrons, having their breakfast by the bar, couldn’t possibly hear him.
“Heil Hitler,” I replied, and almost ran out to the street.
I was almost happy to find the house empty after I opened the front door with my key. I called Lisl from the hallway and, after not getting a reply, thought with immense relief that she was probably helping her parents at their grocery store. I threw my suitcase on the floor, grabbed a bottle of brandy from the bar in the living room, hid in the corner between the bed and the wall in mine and Lisl’s bedroom, and tried to gulp it as fast as I could together with tears, which I had been containing far too long.
“Oh God, what have I done?” I moaned, biting the neck of the bottle with my teeth in a useless attempt to stop myself from falling apart. I was getting terribly lightheaded, all my muscles locking up in the tightest of knots and dry, hardly contained sobbing contracting my throat as if someone had stuck a live butterfly in it which was trying to choke me with its battering wings. I forced more brandy into my mouth, trying to kill both the butterfly and the rest of the demons, who I swear were piercing the back of my head with their tiny claws, laughing at me and whispering into my ear, “You belong to us now… We’ll have your soul… You’re ours…”
“I’m going to hell,” I said out loud, just to confirm to myself that the voices weren’t real, only mine was. I was sure that I was going mad anyway. “I killed a man, I broke the first and most important of God’s law, and now I’m going to hell… I’m a murderer… I’m going to hell…”
I poured more disgusting alcohol into my throat, burning it, and went into a violent coughing fit. After finally catching my breath, I dug inside my pocket for my cigarettes and to my utmost horror took out a gun instead of the cigarette case, the very gun with which I killed Dollfuss, the very weapon which turned me from a human to an animal, something without a soul or honor, only anger and bloodthirstiness. I dropped it from my hand and hardly made it to the bathroom, my stomach emptying itself from all the alcohol I’d put there, in one violent spasm. I fell on the bathroom floor and hoped that I would die there and then. However, nobody seemed to want my torn soul just yet, neither God, nor even the devil himself. I fell into a half-conscious, half-alcohol induced sleep, from which Lisl woke me hours later.
“Ernst!” I opened my eyes and tried to focus my gaze on my wife, still not changed into her domestic clothes. She was shaking my shoulder, making me nauseous again. “Wake up, for goodness sake! You scared me to death, finding you like this on the floor! And after I almost stumbled upon a gun in the bedroom! What have you been up to?!”
I just shook my head, trying to sit up with Lisl’s help and asked her for a glass of water. After she filled one up in the bathroom, I drank it in one shot and looked at her helplessly.
“Lisl, I killed him. Dollfuss. It was me, I did it,” I confessed to my most horrifying sin, hoping that her condemnation would in some twisted way relieve me from my burden. Wasn’t it how our priest taught us, when my mother took me to church every Sunday against my father’s will? Yes, Father Wilhelm. The good, kind Father Wilhelm, that’s how he was teach
ing us: confess to your sins and through darkness and hate you will find forgiveness.
“So?” Instead of the horror and shock that I expected to see on my wife’s face, there was only a slight wrinkle of confusion over her brow. “That’s why you went to Vienna in the first place, wasn’t it? To kill him?”
“No!” I pulled away from her, not believing her calmness. What was with everybody today? Have they all conspired to be so unaffected with the gruesomeness of my deed? “I wanted him to sign the resignation! I never meant to…”
I shook my head vehemently to confirm my words.
“Oh, well… I just always assumed that it was your ultimate goal.” Lisl shrugged, still not showing any emotion, which would be only natural for a woman, and especially for a woman in her state, who had just found out that her husband killed a man. “You were always saying, Dollfuss this, Dollfuss that… I thought you wanted him dead. Anyway, you did a big favor to all the Austrians. They will try to install some kind of temporary government, but with Dollfuss and his hate and intolerance to our Party and our Führer gone, it will only be a matter of time until the two of our great nations reunite under one flag.”
I was staring at her in disbelief, seeing nothing but a passionate light in her eyes, which was there every time she spoke of the Führer or the Party.
“It’s a good thing you did,” she continued with a terrifying smile on her unemotional face, as she tried to take my hand in hers; I quickly pulled it away. “For our Fatherland. I’m very proud of you.”
Lisl got up and held her arms to me, helping me get up.
“Now go change and come downstairs. Mama and Papa will be here soon and I’ll make a nice dinner for all of us to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?” I asked my still smiling wife and followed her out of the bathroom, not sure that I heard her correctly.
“Why, yes,” she replied cheerfully, ascending the stairs. “My husband is a hero. I’m certain that when the Führer hears of this, he will reward you for your loyalty. Can you imagine, maybe he is even speaking of you with someone at this very moment? Ah, how exciting it is!”
The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Page 23