“Make it snappy! We’d better not keep Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach waiting!”
“I’m ready, Voegler. I’m on my way.”
Somehow, his words had the ring of a condemned man’s last ones.
II
THEY FLEW in one of the Wehrmacht’s converted Heinkels to Augsberg, forty miles northwest of Munich, where an SS staff car and driver were put at their disposal so that Voegler could indulge a fancy to retrace part of the route he and his Leibstandarte detachment had taken the night of the Roehm purge and his promotion to Hauptsturmfuehrer.
Kurt had already telephoned home from Essen to announce their return, and as Voegler put it, “We’ve masses of time. The driver can drop me off at my apartment in Briennerstrasse and take you on from there. I can’t tell you, Armbrecht, how much I’m looking forward to a decent home-cooked meal at your place.”
Kurt had deliberately not mentioned his mother’s invitation to dinner, first extended at the Munich railway station and repeated during his telephone call. The fact that Voegler was taking it for granted both depressed and alarmed him. It had now become a routine with him to look for the ulterior motive behind every suggestion, every glancing comment made by the SS officer, and he was pretty certain that it wasn’t the meal that was uppermost in Voegler’s mind, nor was it solely the prospect of spending a domestic evening in Sophie’s company. Clearly, his obsession with Sophie had not ended with their tour of Essen’s factories. Even now, on the last lap of the journey, there was to be a turn of the screw.
“Why is he turning off here, Voegler?” They had reached Maisach, only a dozen miles short of Munich, and had swung off the main road into a secondary road forking northeast.
“Didn’t I mention it? Helmut Brunner, second in command of the Totenkopfverbaende at Dachau, is an old comrade of mine. He’ll give us lunch and show you around the place afterward.”
Under cover of his army greatcoat, Kurt’s hand tightened into a hard fist. Dachau—the first of Himmler’s concentration camps, set up in 1933 for the “protective custody” of anti-Nazi Germans and reputedly the mildest and best-run corrective institution of them all—unless you believed the hair-raising stories and macabre jokes that had been circulating around the Munich beer halls for years.
They were stopped by the SS guards at the great arched gateway to the camp.
“Obersturmbannfuehrer Voegler and Captain Armbrecht,” Voegler snapped. “Inform Sturmbannfuehrer Brunner of our arrival.”
“Jawohl, Herr Obersturmbannfuehrer! At once!”
A brief telephone call and they were directed around the barbed wire perimeter of the huge camp toward a tree-lined avenue of attractive villas interspaced with well-kept lawns and flower beds. “Still the best married quarters and barracks of any of our camps,” Voegler said, stubbing out his cigarette and straightening his belt. “You’ll like Brunner’s wife. Very warm and feminine.”
She was waiting for them at the open front door, a plump smiling young woman wearing a Bavarian blouse and dirndl skirt, with a chubby blond child in her arms. A few yards away on the front lawn a middle-aged man with the red triangle of a political offender sewn on his pajama-striped prison garb let fall his shears and sprang to attention, sweeping off his cap. His head was shaved close, revealing an old scar across his scalp, but otherwise he looked in fairly good shape.
Frau Brunner offered a cheek for Voegler to kiss. “Werner, what a lovely surprise! Helmut will be right down. Just, you know, cleaning up.” The last was said with a comical little grimace and a jerk of the woman’s chin toward the distant complex of low barracks and tall watchtowers.
Voegler introduced Kurt and they followed Frau Brunner into a sunlit sitting room with matching chintz curtains and chair covers and smelling sweetly of polish and cut flowers.
“We’re not staying for lunch, Kitty,” Voegler kidded, keeping his lipless mouth straight. “That is, not unless you’ve improved your cooking since I was last here.”
“Brute!” She made a face at him, hugging the child closer. “Just for that—”
“—let the miserable so-and-so go without!” It was a harsh voice, even in banter, and perfectly suited to the big rawboned man who followed it into the room, buttoning a cardigan over his tieless service shirt. He was about Voegler’s age and spoke with the same North-German accent. When the shoulder slapping was finished and Kurt had been introduced, their host produced a bottle of Schnapps and kept their glasses primed while his wife went to see “how that new cook is getting along in the kitchen.” The two SS men exchanged news of mutual friends, embroidering their gossip with allusive SS jargon, most of which went right over Kurt’s head. But later, over the meal served by a crisply uniformed Ukrainian housemaid, Sturmbannfuehrer
Brunner gave way to Voegler’s request to feed Kurt some facts about the camp.
There were about 40,000 “detainees” at the present time, of whom maybe a third were women and children. Most of the Jews had been deported east, but they had hung onto a few whose special skills were of value in the SS workshops. The prisoners were adequately fed, “without being spoiled, of course.” Coffee in the morning before going to work—4 a.m. to sunset in the winter; 3 a.m. to sunset in the summer. A bowl of soup at midday. At night, 300 grams of bread with 15 grams of margarine or jam. Frau Brunner, however, didn’t think it was enough. “We lost so many good workers during the winter,” she said, helping Voegler to another thick wedge of apfel strudel. “Quite apart from the waste of manpower, the stench from those four furnaces installed last year was quite ghastly whenever the wind blew this way.” Abruptly, Kurt asked for the lavatory and stayed there for some minutes, face buried in trembling hands. When he returned to the table, Voegler gave him a friendly smile over the rim of his coffee cup. “I was just telling Helmut about the medical experiments we saw at Ravensbrueck. He doesn’t seem very impressed.”
“A bunch of cranks, that lot,” Brunner grunted. “The best medical research work is still being done here, under Doctor Sigmund Rascher and his team. Incredible fellow. Only last week he actually reversed the classical operation for Siamese twins by—” Brunner broke off, rolling his eyes, as his wife pushed back her chair and left the room, wailing, “I don’t want to hear about it!”
“Soft as butter, that one,” he grinned. “Anyway, as I was saying, Rascher actually succeeded in grafting two completely unrelated twelve-year-old kids together, using only one blood system. Claims to have kept them alive, what’s more, for all of twenty-three minutes.”
Over Voegler’s long low whistle, Kurt said, “Did he explain the value of the experiment, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?”
“I believe there’s a report and photographs gone to Reichsfuehrer Himmler’s headquarters. Our chief takes a great personal interest in this work, as you probably know.” He drained his coffee cup. “Well, gentlemen, a quick look around the camp and then I must get back to work.”
The workshops were nowhere on the scale of the big factories at Auschwitz, and the Kapos patrolling the benches seemed far less addicted to their whips and truncheons. Outwardly, the blocks of prisoners’ huts presented a neater, almost habitable aspect, but a quick look by Kurt inside of one of them was enough to explode the illusion. The wooden bunks rose three tiers high from the cement floors, accommodating five persons in each separated niche, a little over two yards wide and two feet high. The bedding was a thin straw paillasse and a single threadbare blanket.
As they turned the corner of Block 9, a huge sign, attached to the wall of the end hut, greeted them. In German Gothic characters it proclaimed:
“There is a road to freedom, its milestones are: Obedience, Industry, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Sincerity, and a Spirit of Sacrifice and Patriotism.”
Facing the sign, at a distance of about ten yards, an elderly man, stark naked, was hanging from the crossbar of a wooden gibbet by his thumbs, his feet inches off the ground. His eyes were closed and his toothless mouth hung open. The only
sign of life in him was an occasional weak flutter of his fingers. As Kurt, ashen-faced, turned quietly away he heard Voegler’s calm matter-of-fact question to Brunner:
“What’s this one been up to, then?”
“Recent arrival. Principal of a village primary school. Gestapo got a recent tip and found a copy of Bertrand Russell’s dangerous drivel, Education and the Social Order, large as life on his bookshelves. Since he obviously liked shit so much I ordered him a week of latrine fatigue. Old fool decided to go on strike this morning.”
After dropping Voegler and his orderly off on Briennerstrasse, Kurt directed the driver to enter Nikolaistrasse from the west, to avoid alerting the odious Herr Krenkler just around the corner on Werneckstrasse. As he dismissed the SS man, Sophie came running down the short forecourt and out onto the pavement.
“Kurt, darling! We’ve been worried stiff. We expected you two hours ago!”
“Slight detour en route, Maedel.” He held her back at arm’s length. “You look great! Another kiss!”
It was Saturday, and his father was waiting with his mother to greet him at the side door to the old house. If Walter Armbrecht was surprised by the silent warmth of his son’s embrace, he didn’t show it. “Let the lad go up and take a quick bath, or whatever he has to do!” he expostulated, cutting through the two women’s volley of questions. “Our guest will be here in an hour or so.” And, sheperding Kurt toward the staircase, “Hurry on down, Son. The champagne’s on ice, waiting.”
Kurt’s first action upon reappearing downstairs in one of his old civilian suits was to head for the sideboard in the living room, lift the ice bucket up by its handle and hold it out to his wide-eyed sister.
“Hide this bottle away somewhere, Maedel. And tell Mother on no account to serve up anything even remotely black market.” Turning to his father, whose eyebrows were also up high, “This fellow Voegler’s a Party fanatic, Father. I’ve got to talk to you now, before he gets here.”
He hadn’t written once to his family during the month’s tour of the Greater Reich. Now, as all three of them sat in silence, he started to tell them why.
He paused at the end of his story, lowering his eyes for a long moment before raising them to meet Walter Armbrecht’s calm gaze. “I’m not going to ask your forgiveness for being such a blind and dogmatic idiot. I can’t even tell you I’ve completely renounced National Socialism. What I do have to say is that I’m sickened and ashamed by the means this country is using to establish its New Order in Europe and the East. I’ve looked at it, and it’s obscene. And I cannot believe that we, as a race, will ever be forgiven for what we are doing.”
It was his mother who broke the silence. She said, her voice shaking, “Please be careful, Kurt. You mustn’t do anything that might—” She broke off, staring helplessly from her husband to Sophie, then back to Kurt.
“It’s all right, Mother, this is between us and these four walls. I’ve not had much time to think straight. I had to tell you this now because I couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer, the way I’ve had to these past weeks. We’ll talk more about it later, after Voegler has gone. But please, Father—not a word of anti-Nazi criticism while he’s here, no matter what he comes out with. Don’t let him goad you. The man’s dangerous.”
“I realize that,” his father said. “It’s you I’m worried about, Son. You’re going back, right among the savages who have dragged us into this. How are you going to cope?”
He let out a short, joyless laugh. “I’ll manage. I’ll probably just keep telling myself the whole thing was a nightmare. It’s not really happening.”
Margit Armbrecht started to say, shaking her head, “It’s terrible what they’re doing to the Church. No Easter processions allowed anywhere this year. And that poor Archbishop Galen, forbidden to—” when the doorbell rang, freezing them all in their seats.
“That’ll be Voegler.” Kurt stood up, walked over to his father and reached down to put a swift grip on his shoulder. “I’ll take over from here, Father. Just keep a tight rein on that tongue of yours.”
Voegler had shed his SS uniform for a well-cut prewar suit of Cheviot tweed. In the hallway he presented a bouquet of flowers to Margit Armbrecht and a box of chocolates to Sophie. “You don’t have to feel badly about the chocolates,” he smiled, perhaps misinterpreting her embarrassment. “They didn’t come off anyone’s sugar ration.”
When Kurt led him into the sitting room to meet his father, Voegler greeted the professor with the Nazi salute and a respectfully modulated “Heil Hitler!” and Walter Armbrecht replied in kind but with what seemed to his tight-strung son a somewhat limp salute. The two younger men remained standing while the professor handed out the aperitifs.
“Herr Professor,” Voegler said, raising his glass, “you will understand how much Kurt and I have been looking forward to this evening. A pleasant ending to a pretty arduous trip.”
“It’s an honor to welcome you here, Herr Obersturmbannfuehrer. Kurt has been telling us how much he’s indebted to you for your help and guidance.”
“Oh, that!” Voegler shrugged off the compliment. “We are all of us in the service of the Fuehrer. And he can be a hard taskmaster. Right, Kurt?”
It was the first time Voegler had addressed him directly by his Christian name. A month ago, he might have been flattered. Now, the familiarity was as suspect as the comradely smile that went with it. Kurt said, “I can’t really complain so far as my work’s concerned. The Fuehrer hasn’t even asked to see my first draft yet.”
“Wise man,” Walter Armbrecht grunted. “Wish I could practice the same discipline so far as one or two of my students’ handiwork is concerned.”
Voegler said, “I gather your subject is history, Herr Professor. Doesn’t it make you giddy, the speed at which the Fuehrer is writing it?”
To Kurt’s relief, Walter Armbrecht was taking his time answering. He gave Voegler an amused smile, sipped at his drink and sat down, gesturing to the other two to do likewise. “History is the tale of what has already happened,” he said. “My period ends with Bismarck and the birth of the Prussian empire.”
He gave a stunted little laugh. “I certainly don’t envy those whose job it’ll be to condense these years into a chapter or two.”
“You’ll forgive my naïveté, Herr Professor, but unfortunately I never attended university. A ‘chapter or two’? Is that really how you academics evaluate it?” The smile was still there, and he was leaning forward in his chair, all attention.
“In relative terms, yes. The Fuehrer has been making history for only about ten years. Alexander the Great came to the throne of Macedonia in 336 B.c.”
“But what history! The face of Europe, completely changed!”
“I think,” Kurt intervened gently, “my father’s ‘chapter or two’ was put in the context of a single volume, if one can imagine it, of world history. In such a volume Napoleon, for example, might rate one chapter—if that.”
“I see your point,” Voegler leaned back in his armchair, nodding his head. “But Kurt, what is it going to feel like, having your mighty theme cut down by some future historian to a chapter or two?”
“I shan’t be around to complain.” He gave a wry chuckle. “Sometimes I even wonder if I’ll be around to put ‘Finis’ to the story.” He had all of Voegler’s attention now. If only he could hold it till the women took over, and the small talk. . . . “I was thinking about what you said that night we were driving back to Warsaw—about our children campaigning across Russia and Canada and down into the United States. It’s perfectly feasible, I suppose. But where is Mein Sieg going to end—on the Volga, the Bering Sea, the Forty-ninth Parallel, the Gulf of Mexico?”
“There’s a possibility the Americans might save us the journey,” Walter Armbrecht put in. “I don’t know if either of you read the text of Roosevelt’s last broadcast—” He broke off, catching the flare in Kurt’s eyes. But Voegler moved smoothly in.
“Go on, Herr Professor. Tel
l us how you interpret it.”
“Frankly, I think there was more to it than his usual saber-rattling. It struck me as the language of someone who now knows he has the resources to wage war on a global scale and is not going to wait much longer to get in.”
“Against the will of the Congress and the majority of the American people?”
“No. But these are delicate balances that can change overnight. Happily for us the Japanese are acutely aware of this and are still showing remarkable restraint. But all it needs is for one trigger-happy Japanese pilot to be intercepted over Philippine air space. We can easily anticipate how Roosevelt and his generals would whip that up into an act of unprovoked aggression. Roosevelt would get his vote in the Congress and America would be at war.”
Voegler remained silent for a while, revolving his empty glass slowly around by the stem. Kurt sprang up to take it from him. Through the heavy silence they could hear Frau Armbrecht calling out to Sophie, and a few seconds later the girl stood framed in the doorway, her worried expression giving way to a swift smile as Voegler eased around in his chair to look at her.
“We’re ready to eat, gentlemen. I’m to get you seated, while Mother puts her finishing touches to the soup.”
Placing Voegler at the head of the table in the small dining room next to the Professor’s study, she sat down on his left. Her mother was to sit on Voegler’s right and the other two men would face each other across the bottom end of the table. As Margit Armbrecht started to serve the soup Kurt was struck by a fearful thought and, muttering an excuse, he left the room and let himself quietly into his father’s study. The big mahogany desk was as littered as ever with papers and books, and after a quick glance through the titles Kurt turned to the bookshelves lining the wall behind the desk. He had to move fast but he knew more or less where to look. Within a minute he had located five works sternly proscribed by the regime, slipped them from the shelves and locked them away in a cupboard. Pocketing the key, he returned to the dining room in time to hear his mother’s response to a question from Voegler.
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