HHhH: A Novel

by Laurent Binet

95

  It is in Poland that Heydrich unveils his most devilish creation. The Einsatzgruppen are special SS troops, made up of SD and Gestapo members, whose job is to clean up the zones occupied by the Wehrmacht. Each unit is given a little booklet containing the necessary information: in tiny characters, on extrathin paper, is a list of all those who must be liquidated as the country is occupied. Not only Communists but also teachers, writers, journalists, priests, industrialists, bankers, civil servants, merchants, wealthy farmers … everyone of any note. Thousands of names are listed, with their addresses and telephone numbers, plus a list of known acquaintances—in case these subversive elements attempt to take refuge with parents or friends. Each name is accompanied by a physical description and sometimes even a photo. Heydrich’s information services have already achieved an impressive level of efficiency.

  However, this meticulousness is probably a bit superfluous considering the behavior of the troops, who shoot first and ask questions later. Among the first victims of the Polish campaign are a group of Scouts, aged twelve to sixteen. They are lined up against a wall in the market square and shot. The priest who sacrifices himself to perform their last rites is also executed. Only afterward do the Einsatzgruppen take care of their real objectives: the merchants and local notables, who are, in their turn, lined up and shot. Essentially, the work of the Einsatzgruppen—a detailed written account of which would take up thousands of pages—can be summed up in three terrible letters: etc. Until they reach the USSR, at least: at that point, even et cetera’s suggestion of infinity will not be enough.

  96

  It’s incredible. Almost anywhere you look in the politics of the Third Reich, and particularly among its most terrifying aspects, Heydrich is there—at the center of everything.

  On September 21, 1939, he sends a personally signed letter to all the relevant services about the “Jewish problem in the occupied territories.” This letter concerns the roundup of Jews into ghettos, and orders the creation of Jewish councils—the infamous Judenräte—under the direct authority of the RSHA. The Judenrat is undoubtedly inspired by Eichmann’s ideas as Heydrich saw them applied in Austria: the key is to make the victims collaborate in their own murder. Despoiled yesterday, destroyed tomorrow.

  97

  On September 22, 1939, Himmler’s creation of the RSHA becomes official.

  The RSHA—the central office of Reich security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt)—brings together the SD, the Gestapo, and the Kripo in one monstrous organization whose powers are beyond imagining. The head of this organization, nominated by Himmler, is Heydrich. Espionage, political police, and criminal police, all placed in the hands of one man. They may as well just have named him officially “the most dangerous man in the Third Reich.” In any case, this quickly became his nickname. Only one police force is not controlled by him: the Ordnungpolizei, the uniformed police whose task is to maintain order, is given to a nobody called Dalüge, directly answerable to Himmler. It is a trifle compared with the rest, but Heydrich, in his thirst for power, is not the type of man to ignore it. All the same, it is a trifle, in my opinion—although it’s true that I don’t have Heydrich’s aptitudes or experience in these matters. Anyway, the RSHA hydra has enough heads to keep him busy. So now he has to delegate. He gives each of the RSHA’s seven divisions to a colleague who is selected first and foremost for his abilities rather than his politics—and this is rare enough to be worth mentioning in the lunatic asylum that is the Nazi regime. Heinrich Müller, for example, who is put in charge of the Gestapo—and who identifies so completely with his job that hereafter he is known simply as “Gestapo” Müller—is a former Christian Democrat: an affiliation that does not prevent him from becoming one of the Nazis’ most devastating weapons. The other RSHA offices are given to brilliant intellectuals: youngsters such as Ohlendorf (Inland-SD) and Schellenberg (Ausland-SD), or experienced academics like Six (Written Records). Such men contrast strongly with the cohort of cranks, illiterates, and mental degenerates who populate the Party’s higher echelons.

  One minor branch of the Gestapo—a status that does not reflect its true importance, but it’s always better to remain discreet with such sensitive subjects—is devoted to Jewish affairs. Heydrich already knows who he wants to run it: that little Austrian Hauptsturmführer who did such good work before, Adolf Eichmann. At the moment he’s working on a particularly original dossier: the Madagascar Plan. The idea is to deport all the Jews there. An idea worth pursuing. First, it is necessary to defeat Britain, because sending the Jews by sea will otherwise be impossible. Afterward … we’ll see.

  98

  Hitler has decided to invade Britain. For a landing on the English coastline to succeed, Germany must first control the skies. Yet, in spite of Göring’s promises, the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes are still flying over the Channel. Day after day, night after night, the heroic British pilots repulse the attacks of the German bombers and fighters. Operation Sea Lion, planned for September 11, 1940, is postponed first until the fourteenth, and then until the seventeenth. But on September 17, a Kriegsmarine report states: “The enemy air force is still not beaten, in any way. In fact, it is increasingly active. On the whole, atmospheric conditions do not allow us to hope for a period of calm.” So the Führer decides to delay Sea Lion indefinitely.

  That same day, however, Heydrich—told by Göring to organize repression and purification in the immediate aftermath of the invasion—gives orders to one of his colleagues, Standartenführer Franck Six, former head of economics at the University of Berlin, now redeployed in the SD. This is the man Heydrich has chosen to settle in London and to command the specially formed Einsatzgruppen: six small units to be based in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh—or Glasgow, if the Forth Bridge is destroyed before then. “Your task,” Heydrich tells him, “is to fight, by any means necessary, all opposition groups, organizations, and institutions.” In concrete terms, the work of these Einsatzgruppen will be as it was in Poland, and as it will later be in Russia: they are death squads, ordered to exterminate everything in their path.

  But at this point the mission is complicated by the Sonderfahndungliste GB, the special search list for Great Britain better known as the Black Book. It is a list of some 2,300 people to be found, arrested, and delivered to the Gestapo as quickly as possible. At the head of the list, unsurprisingly, is Churchill. Among the other politicians, British and foreign, are Beneš and Masaryk, representatives of the Czech government-in-exile. So far, so logical. But the list also contains the names of writers such as H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and Rebecca West. Freud is there, despite having died in 1939. And Baden-Powell, too, the founder of the Scout movement. In retrospect, the execution of the young Scouts in Poland is more than an excess of zeal: it’s a mistake because the Scouts are considered by the German secret services to be among the best potential sources of information. This is, altogether, a fairly weird collection of names. Apparently it was drawn up not by Heydrich but by Schellenberg. If the work seems rather botched, that might be due to the fact that Schellenberg was very busy preparing the attempted kidnapping of the Duke of Windsor in Lisbon.

  So the list is rather comical, the duke’s kidnapping will fail, the Luftwaffe will lose the Battle of Britain, and Operation Sea Lion will never be launched. A few stray stones in the garden of German efficiency.

  99

  I’m still not sure about the veracity of all the Heydrich anecdotes I’m collecting, but this one is particularly unreliable: the witness and protagonist of the scene I’m about to describe isn’t even certain himself about what happened to him. Schellenberg is Heydrich’s right-hand man in the SD. He is a fierce, unscrupulous bureaucrat, but also a brilliant, cultivated, elegant young man whom Heydrich sometimes invites not only on regular trips to brothels but to spend evenings with himself and Lina, at the theater or the opera. So he counts almost as a close friend of the couple. One day when Heydrich has a meeting out of
town, Lina calls Schellenberg to suggest they take a stroll around a lake. They drink coffee, talk of literature and music. That’s as much as I know. Four days later, after work, Heydrich takes Schellenberg and “Gestapo” Müller for a night on the town. The evening begins in a chic restaurant on Alexanderplatz. Müller pours the drinks. The atmosphere is relaxed, everything seems normal. Then Müller says to Schellenberg: “So, did you have a good time the other day?” Schellenberg understands immediately. Heydrich, white-faced, says nothing. “Do you wish to be informed of what happened on the outing?” Schellenberg asks him, speaking like a bureaucrat almost in spite of himself. And suddenly the evening plunges into strangeness. Heydrich hisses: “You have just drunk poison. It will kill you within six hours. If you tell me the whole, absolute truth, I will give you the antidote. But I want the truth.” Schellenberg’s heartbeat races. He starts to describe the afternoon while trying to keep his voice from trembling. Müller interrupts him: “After the coffee, you went for a walk with the boss’s wife. Why are you hiding this? You do understand that you were being watched, don’t you?” But if Heydrich already knew everything, what would be the point of this drama? Schellenberg confesses to a fifteen-minute walk and gives an account of the subjects touched upon during their conversation. Heydrich remains pensive for a long time. Then he delivers his verdict: “All right, I suppose I must believe you. But give me your word of honor that you will never do anything like this again.” Schellenberg, sensing that the greatest danger is over, manages to conquer his fear and to reply in an aggressive voice that he will give his word after drinking the antidote because an oath extorted in such circumstances would be worthless. He even dares to ask: “As a former naval officer, would you consider it honorable to proceed in any other way?” Bearing in mind how Heydrich’s naval career ended, you have to admit that Schellenberg has balls. Heydrich stares at Schellenberg. Then he pours him a dry martini. “Perhaps I was imagining it,” Schellenberg writes in his memoirs, “but it seemed to taste more bitter than normal.” He drinks, apologizes, gives his word of honor, and the evening begins again.

  100

  During one of his many brothel visits, Heydrich has an inspired idea: open his own.

  His closest collaborators—Schellenberg, Nebe, and Naujocks—are given the task of carrying out this venture. Schellenberg finds a house in a chic district of suburban Berlin. Nebe, who has worked for years in fashionable society, recruits the girls. And Naujocks takes care of fitting out the premises: each room bristles with microphones and cameras. They’re behind paintings, inside lamps, under armchairs, on top of wardrobes. A listening post is installed in the cellar.

  The idea is brilliant in its simplicity: instead of going out to spy on people in their homes, get them to come to you. So it has to be a high-class brothel to attract a prestigious clientele.

  When all is ready, Kitty’s Salon opens its doors and, thanks to word of mouth, is soon famous in diplomatic circles. The bugs work twenty-four hours a day. The cameras are useful for blackmailing clients.

  Kitty, the boss, is an ambitious madam from Vienna: distinguished, competent, and devoted to her work. She loves being able to boast about her famous clients. The visit of Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister and Mussolini’s son-in-law, drives her mad with happiness. I suppose there is also a fascinating book to be written about her.

  Quite quickly, Heydrich starts giving visits of inspection. He turns up late, usually drunk, and goes upstairs with one of the girls.

  One morning, Naujocks happens upon a recording of his boss. Out of curiosity he listens—I don’t know if there was a film—and, having had a good chuckle, prudently decides to erase the recording. I don’t have the details, but evidently Heydrich’s performance is laughable.

  101

  Naujocks stands in Heydrich’s office—he has not been invited to sit down—beneath an enormous chandelier whose point hangs ominously over his head like the sword of Damocles. His fate, he knows, hangs by a thread this morning. Heydrich sits before the vast wall tapestry embroidered with a gigantic eagle clasping a swastika. He bangs his fist on the solid wood table and the impact makes the photo of his wife and children jump.

  “How the devil could you decide to record my visit to Kitty’s Salon last night?”

  Even if he’d already guessed the reason for this morning’s summons, Naujocks turns pale.

  “Record?”

  “Yes. Don’t deny it!”

  Naujocks makes a quick calculation: Heydrich has no material proof, because he took care to erase the tape. So he adopts what seems to him the most profitable strategy. Knowing his boss as he does, however, he is aware that he’s risking his life.

  “But I do deny it! I don’t even know which room you were in! Nobody told me!”

  There follows a long, unnerving silence.

  “You’re lying! Either that or you’re getting careless.”

  Naujocks wonders which of these hypotheses is, in his boss’s eyes, the most unforgivable. In a calmer and thus more disturbing voice, Heydrich begins to speak again:

  “You should have known where I was. It’s part of your job. It is also your duty to switch off the microphones and tape recorders when I’m there. You didn’t do that last night. If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again. Leave.”

  Naujocks—the jack of all trades who, at Gleiwitz, started the war—is sidelined. It is thanks only to his remarkable survival instinct that he is not simply liquidated. After this regrettable incident, he will spend most of his time trying to keep his head down. In the end, this is not a very high price to pay for fucking with Heydrich: his boss, Himmler’s right-hand man, the SS number two, supreme leader of the RSHA, master of the SD and the Gestapo. Heydrich, the Blond Beast, who, through his ferocity but also through his sexual performances, is doubly deserving of his nickname. Or not, as Naujocks must snigger to himself in those moments of calm between the surges of fear.

  102

  The dialogue in the preceding chapter is the perfect example of the difficulties I’m facing. Certainly Flaubert didn’t have the same problems with Salammbô, because nobody recorded the conversations of Hamilcar, father of Hannibal. But when I make Heydrich say: “If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again,” all I am doing is repeating the words as reported by Naujocks himself. You could hardly hope for a better witness, for reporting a phrase, than the only other person in the room, who heard it and to whom it was addressed. That said, I doubt whether Heydrich really formulated his threat in that way. It’s not his style. What we have here is Naujocks recalling a phrase years after the event, which is rewritten by whoever’s taking down his dictation, and then again by the translator. But Heydrich, the most dangerous man in the Reich, saying, “If you think you can make a fool of me, Naujocks, you’d better think again” … well, it’s a bit lame. It is surely much more likely that Heydrich—a coarse man on a power trip, and angry too—said something along the lines of: “You want to fuck with me? Watch it, I’ll rip your balls off!” But what is my opinion worth compared with an eyewitness account?

  If it were up to me, I’d write:

  “Tell me, Naujocks, where did I spend the night?”

  “I beg your pardon, General?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Well … I don’t know, General.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, General.”

  “You don’t know that I was at Kitty’s?”

  “…”

  “What have you done with the recording?”

  “I don’t understand, General.”

  “Stop fucking with me! I want to know if you kept the recording!”

  “General … I didn’t know that you were there!… Nobody warned me! Of course, I destroyed the recording as soon as I recognized you … I mean, as soon as I recognized your voice!…”

  “Stop bullshitting, Naujocks! You’re paid to know everything, and especially w
here I am, because I’m the one who pays you! The instant I take a room at Kitty’s, you switch off the microphones! The next time you try to fuck with me, I’ll send you to Dachau, where they’ll hang you up by the balls! Am I making myself clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, General.”

  “Now fuck off!”

  That would, I think, be a bit livelier and more realistic, and probably closer to the truth. But it’s impossible to know for sure. Heydrich could be foulmouthed, but he also knew how to play the icy bureaucrat when the need arose. So, all in all, between Naujocks’s version, however corrupted, and mine, it is undoubtedly better to choose that of Naujocks. But I still think Heydrich would have wanted to rip his balls off.

  103

  From one of the high windows in the north tower of Wewelsburg Castle, Heydrich contemplates the plain of Westphalia. In the middle of the forest, he can just make out the huts and the barbed-wire fences of Germany’s smallest concentration camp. But his gaze is probably focused on the parade ground, where the troops of his Einsatzgruppen are being drilled. Operation Barbarossa will be launched within a week. Within two, these men will be in Byelorussia, in Ukraine, in Lithuania, and will be seeing action. They’ve been promised that they’ll be home again by Christmas, once their job is done. In reality, Heydrich has no idea how long this war will last. Within the Party and the army, everyone who knows about the operation is highly optimistic. The Red Army’s performances on the battlefield—mediocre in Poland, frankly rubbish in Finland—lead the Nazis to believe that the still-invincible Wehrmacht can achieve a rapid victory. Based on what he’s seen in the SD reports, however, Heydrich is more circumspect. The enemy’s forces—the number of their tanks, for example, or of their reserve divisions—seem to him to have been dangerously underestimated. But the high command of the armed forces has its own information service, the Abwehr, and it has chosen to ignore Heydrich’s warnings and to put its faith instead in the more encouraging conclusions of Admiral Canaris, Heydrich’s former boss. Heydrich, whose expulsion from the navy remains an unhealed wound, must be choking with rage. Hitler has declared: “The beginning of a war is always like opening a door onto a darkened room. You never know what’s hiding in there.” Implicitly, it is admitted that the SD’s warnings might not be baseless. But the decision to attack the Soviet Union has been taken, all the same. Heydrich watches with concern as the clouds gather over the plain below.