The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story

by Ellie Midwood

  “Reichsführer doesn’t have any secrets from me!” His infamous insecurity, so masterfully covered by layers of coldness, arrogance and self-assurance, showed itself once again, much to my pleasure.

  “You can have this report only if your pull it from my cold, lifeless hands, Gruppenführer.”

  He eyed me for a moment, deciding if he should resort to his usual screaming, which normally sent even the most leveled SS men into uncontrollable terror, but calculating that it most likely wouldn’t produce such an effect on me, decided against it.

  “We can certainly make that happen one day, Standartenführer Kaltenbrunner,” he finally pronounced in a deadly cold voice.

  “I would love to see you try, Gruppenführer Heydrich. Shalom.” I saluted him with two fingers at my forehead, and grinned at the priceless expression on his face, colored with red patches of boiling anger at the allusion to his allegedly concealed heritage. I quickly turned around and left the outraged, but still speechless, head of the Security Service alone, before he would remember that he had a gun on him and decided to use my back as target practice.

  I was relieved not to run into him again on the way out of Himmler’s Berlin headquarters, but still looked around warily prior to getting back to my rented car. After the purge he organized at the Night of the Long Knives together with Himmler, which resulted in beheading (sometimes literally) of the SA – the rival organization to Reichsführer’s SS – Reinhard Heydrich proved that anything could be expected from him. I wasn’t afraid to meet him face-to-face, however, getting shot in the back by one of his agents wasn’t in my immediate plans.

  I cursed under my breath after recalling Heydrich’s words about the train luggage compartment in my memory. The son of a bitch was right, it was damn cold there unlike in the heated – at least at night – passenger compartments. But I wasn’t a regular passenger, I was a criminal and a smuggler, at least in my government’s eyes, and therefore I had to hide both the small suitcase with money and my six foot seven frame in the furthest corner of the train luggage car.

  However, this time, to my big surprise, the spot that I chose as my hiding place was occupied by some stranger, who stuck his foot in front of him, stopping me from getting any closer.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” The young man, of my age and with a long ugly scar crossing the whole left side of his face from his chin almost to his left ear, whisper-yelled at me. “Get the hell out of here! You’re not supposed to ride a train in a luggage compartment!”

  “What are you doing here then, smartass?!” I whisper-yelled back at the insolent stranger, Austrian as well, judging by the same accent I got so often picked on for in Berlin.

  “None of your business! Get the fuck out or I will make you get the fuck out!”

  “Oh yeah?!”

  It never took much to cause me an anger fit, and the big mouthed guy clearly had no idea what had he gotten himself into, even though he wasn’t small or weak looking either. I grabbed his foot and yanked it toward myself, making him fall on his back, and jumped on top of the intruder, grabbing him by the lapels and throwing a punch. It turned out that he knew how to fight, judging by how easily he blocked my hand and tried to grab my throat instead. If before I wanted just to scare the guy away, now he left me no other choice but show him what I was indeed capable of.

  For over a minute the two of us were rolling on the floor, kicking and hitting each other ferociously, and the longer we fought, the more I started wondering if the guy belonged to the SS as well, because the fighting style was much too familiar, and he knew just how to counter the moves I was pulling that no outsider would. Finally, our deadly wrestle came to a halt as soon as we hit a massive pile of suitcases and they crashed on top of us with a noise that immediately alerted conductors, who were still standing on the platform, that something fishy was going on inside.

  “Freeze! Don’t you dare move!” I whispered inaudibly into the stranger’s ear, still pressing his neck with my arm as we lay buried under a pile of luggage after the door opened and someone walked inside the compartment.

  The two men moved the luggage around, kicked a couple of suitcases, as I concluded from the sounds coming from the outskirts of the pile that was luckily sheltering us from the train conductors. It was hardly a pleasurable experience, lying on top of some idiot, who was still grabbing my lapels and throwing silent withering glances at me, but the experience of being arrested for smuggling money out of the Reich, even though Reichsführer would have most likely gotten me out, would be even a less pleasurable one, so I kept as still and quiet as a mouse, while they produced a thankfully short and very superficial search.

  In a couple of minutes they concluded that the suitcases probably fell by themselves, and left the compartment, locking it from the outside. The stranger decided to enact revenge on me for the several humiliating minutes and kicked me quite painfully in the shin. I kicked him back and pressed my hand harder into his throat.

  “Stop wriggling, you fucking moron!” I was still whispering, not knowing how far from the entrance the conductors were. “It’s all because of you! What the fuck are you doing here anyway?!”

  “I’m executing orders from some high ranking people in Berlin, asshole!” He growled back, confirming my suspicion that he belonged to the SS. “And if I got caught, you would have been over with in a day!”

  “I highly doubt that, because I execute the orders of Reichsführer himself!” I raised my voice a little, putting special stress on my commander’s title to impress the stranger. “Now tell me your name and rank, and I’ll have you executed before the tribunal for assaulting a commanding officer and endangering a special mission carried out in the Führer’s name!!!”

  The young man squinted his grey eyes at me slightly, clearly asserting the situation, and demanded, without releasing my lapels, “You tell me your name and your rank first.”

  “You’re one insolent bastard, aren’t you?” I chuckled out of astonishment at the guy’s audacity. He was tough enough to not only fight, but to continue arguing with me, and I started respecting him for that. “I’m SS Standartenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the leader of the Austrian SS. Satisfied?”

  The stranger’s lips slowly moved in a wary smile, and he slowly released my lapels and smoothed out my shirt and jacket apologetically.

  “Herr Standartenführer,” he said in a most respectful tone, trying to wriggle his way in between the suitcases to put his hand to his forehead to salute me. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Right,” I grumbled, finally pushing the rest of the luggage off my back and sitting on the floor next to him. The train had started moving at last. We were safe. “So who would you be?”

  “My name is Otto Skorzeny, Untersturmführer SS, at your service, Herr Standartenführer!”

  He saluted me again, sat up, and, after straightening his clothes, smiled the most genuine smile at me as if we weren’t tearing into each other’s throats just minutes ago. I started to find the guy more and more fascinating. We both studied each other for a little while. He obviously wanted to speak, but didn’t want to break military etiquette by initiating the conversation. So prim and proper, right after he cursed me out in a way that would put any sailor to shame. I chuckled again, raking my fingers through my hair, trying to put it back in order after the fight. Untersturmführer Skorzeny mirrored the gesture, also raking his hands through his dark unruly mane. It was like looking in some deranged mirror, I thought, and nodded at his scar.

  “Schmiss?”

  He replied to my grin with his even wider one.

  “Jawohl, Standartenführer.” He nodded at my left cheek. “Yourself?”

  “Got drunk and went face first through the car window.”

  “Right. I never heard of anyone going face first through the window and cutting only one side of the face.”

  “You’re a smart guy,” I smirked again.

  “I’m
a fencer myself, sir. I’d recognize a mensur scar out of a million.” He smiled again. “Which fraternity did you belong to, if I may ask?”

  “Armenia, in Graz. You?”

  “Vienna. Born and raised, and went to the university there, too.”

  “Beautiful city. I practically live there now.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes. Well, actually, my home is in Linz, but with Reichsführer’s orders it’s getting harder and harder to travel between the three cities. Besides, I have a seven months pregnant wife at home, a toddler, and my in-laws, in whose house I live.”

  Otto whistled, and clicked his tongue sympathetically.

  “Now I understand why you charged at me like that. I would be mad all the time too, if I were you.” He chuckled, but quickly remembered his position and my rank again. “I apologize, sir. It wasn’t my place to say it.”

  His transition from using a newly found best friend attitude to the submissive subordinate was getting more and more amusing, and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

  “That’s fine, Otto. You don’t mind me calling you Otto, do you?”

  “No, sir. It’s a big honor.”

  “Call me Ernst. We’re both Austrians after all, so I suggest we drop the whole subordination thing and be friends.”

  Otto reverently looked at my outstretched palm, took it in his hand, as big as mine, and squeezed it firmly.

  “Ernst.”

  “Otto.”

  We both laughed looking each other in the eye, like two suddenly reunited twin brothers. Why I felt this way about this fellow, I had no idea. Maybe because we indeed looked like brothers, two huge, menacingly looking Austrians with scarred faces, who could fight equally and then laugh at each other only minutes later. For some reason I knew that he felt the same way.

  “So whose orders are you carrying out that I don’t know about?” I finally remembered what the fight was initially about.

  Otto hesitated, but just for a moment. “Gruppenführer Heydrich. But I never told you anything.”

  “How did I not see that coming? That scheming bastard!” I cursed out and hit the closest suitcase with my fist. “Is he plotting something behind my back? About the Anschluss?”

  This time Otto didn’t hesitate and nodded enthusiastically several times. He obviously knew where his new allegiance was, and I liked my fellow Austrian more for that.

  “I have documents with special directives to deliver to the head of the Viennese SS. I don’t think they would contradict those of Reichsführer, but… but my thinking is that Heydrich doesn’t want you to be aware of them. You know, so when the Anschluss finally does happen, you won’t be in control of anything. I’m suggesting it solely on my own conclusions, of course. I asked him a couple of times about you, since you’re the head of the Austrian SS, but he prohibited me to even utter your name in his presence. I don’t think that he’s too fond of you, to be honest.”

  “And it’s a very mutual feeling, trust me,” I replied sulkily. Having Heydrich as a personal enemy was amusing at times; having him as a political enemy was a highly dangerous affair.

  “Here they are.”

  I looked at the neatly folded papers that Otto held out to me after extracting them from under his shirt.

  “The Reich orders. From Heydrich. Top secret,” he clarified, misinterpreting my confusion.

  “Otto, he’ll execute you for treason for showing them to me,” I said, warning him of the possible consequences.

  He shrugged and put the papers on my lap.

  “He won’t, if doesn’t find out.”

  I picked up the papers and looked at my newly found best friend with a smile. He was smiling too.

  Chapter 16

  Nuremberg, April 1946

  I was smiling as my guard repeated the message that Otto had given him in response to mine. I’d been asking Henry – my guard asked me to call him by his first name – to greet Otto for me if he had a chance to meet him. Henry had finally succeeded in not only speaking to my best friend away from the other guards’ eyes while Otto was waiting to get his meal, but even in persuading him that he hadn’t been sent by the prison administration, OSS or SOE.

  “I told him the code word you told me, and he shook my hand right away.” Henry chuckled. “Before that point he looked like he was going to break my teeth just for telling that I supposedly came from you. You were right when you told me that he wouldn’t believe me without the word.”

  “Don’t blame him, he was the best counterintelligence agent and the best diversionist in the former Reich,” I explained with a grin, looking over my shoulder. My guard stood behind my back according to protocol and was supervising me shaving. They wouldn’t give us regular razors naturally, only the safety ones, but even those we were only allowed to use with the guard standing right over our shoulder, in case we decided to slice our necks with it. “So what did he say? How did he get caught?”

  “He said that he couldn’t stay away from you, that’s why he gave himself up.” Henry laughed. “I think it was intended to be a joke.”

  “Yes, it most certainly was.” I laughed together with him. “Did he say anything else?”

  “We didn’t have a chance to speak for too long. He asked me about you, how you were doing and about your routine.”

  “My routine?”

  “Well, yes. About when you go to court and what time you come back… when you take your walks… things like that.”

  I went quiet for a moment. “He did?”

  “Yes. I think he was hoping that maybe it would coincide with his routine and he would see you.”

  I highly doubted that Otto would risk his life and freedom for a chance to say hello to me, but decided to play along with my unsuspicious guard. “We used to be best friends. Yes, he probably wants to shake my hand for the last time maybe.”

  “That’s very nice of him. Oh, he told me to give another code word back, so you’d know that it’s from him. He said ‘Mussolini.’ I don’t know why ‘Mussolini,’ but he said that it was his code word for you. He said you’d understand.”

  Otto didn’t have a code word for me, but I did understand why he gave this particular word to my guard. It was one of his most successful operations, when he rescued the Italian dictator from captivity, right from under the noses of the allies. Oh God, has this idiot returned to try and rescue me?

  I put the razor away and sighed heavily, covering my eyes with one hand. What did he do? Why? He’ll never succeed - we’re guarded twenty-four hours a day, what is he hoping for? Idiot, such a daring idiot, and for what? To put his life in danger for nothing.

  “Something wrong?” I saw Henry’s concerned look through the small mirror.

  “No. Nothing. Could you just… if you meet him next time, tell him another code phrase please? Tell him that I order him to cancel operation Mussolini and go home. Will you?”

  “What is it with Mussolini?” Henry laughed with childish naivety. He had only turned eighteen in 1945 and had fought for a few months only. Thankfully, the war didn’t touch him like the others, didn’t mare his kind heart with anger and bitterness. I told myself every day how lucky it was that he was appointed my guard, and not someone else’s. “The man’s been long dead.”

  “Of course he is dead.” I smiled. “That’s why the code phrase. To put people off track.”

  “The intelligence thing. I got it.” He nodded, smiling at me.

  _______________

  Vienna, March 1938

  She was smiling at me, my on and off mistress of almost twenty years. Maybe I had no right to even call her my mistress though. The title mistress implies certain regularity to the relationship; my relationship with Melita was the most irregular one there is. And yet here she was, in my rented apartment and occasional headquarters in Vienna, smiling at me from under the sheets she’d pulled over herself not out of modesty but because of the chilly March night.

  Just ten minutes ago I had h
ad her legs wrapped around my waist and her nails deep into my skin as she was whispering something meaningless until I covered her mouth with mine and moved her legs on top of my shoulders. She started screaming soon after; she liked it hard and rough, most of the women did, as I had concluded from my very rich experience throughout the years. And then that goddamn phone rang.

  In any other circumstance I would yank the plug out of it and get back to whoever currently occupied my bed. This time, though, I quickly climbed off protesting Melita because I knew that only one man would call in the middle of the night, and only for one reason. Otto confirmed my guess in three clipped sentences and cut the line after saying his last Jawohl to my orders. The Anschluss had started.

  We had been gathering intelligence from all possible sources, and, still, without Otto and his undivided devotion to me personally, I would have never been so quickly alerted to the first signs of the Germans making their first move. Heydrich did everything in his powers to keep me in the dark about the upcoming operation to discredit me in the eyes of his superiors. He didn’t like my authority over the Austrian SS, and made it his personal mission to install his own loyal man instead of me in the future office.

  “Not going to happen, Gruppenführer Heydrich,” I kept muttering under my breath quickly pulling on my boots under Melita’s amused stare. “I’ll be there before your people, I’ll be commanding your people and they won’t dare to disobey me. Then what will you have to say, you worthless sleazebag?”

  “Where are you going?” she asked me, handing me my belt that she had found near the bed.

  “Chancellery. With five hundred of my men under Otto’s command.”

  “Again?” I didn’t see her, but I could swear she arched her brow sarcastically. “Who are you going to shoot this time?”

  Melita was one of the very few people, including my wife Lisl and Otto, who knew the story about Dollfuss. I’d told her when it was safe to tell her, and Bruno was finally off my back after I kept recommending his services to Himmler personally and he at last gave him a position somewhere in the Gestapo. Melita was a doctor after all, a psychiatrist and a highly qualified one, and had recently been transferred to Berlin to work on some secret program for the government. And, besides, she was one of the very few people who I trusted and could actually talk to.