He remembered as well what he had told Begović at the safe house in Sarajevo – that the track of his life was a scar that hid what was and what might have been. Scars healed well if they healed quickly, he thought. Was this such a chance? To change the track of that scar, alter it, make it something different? Heal it? Cauterise it? What image was he looking for? The past was what it was, and what might have been, could have been – should have been – lay hidden, lost, obscured by its weight. The past could not be changed, but the future was different, and it was here, now. It always had been.
He thought of the people in his life whose opinion he might have sought. Meissner, Brauer, maybe even Freilinger, certainly Claussen. Dr Begović. His son, if he was alive. And Carolin, most especially. He unfolded her picture and held it in his hand, his thumb stroking that fall of her hair. Then he thought that all his life, he had waited on the good opinions of others and nearly always done what was expected of him, hoping it was the right thing. Often it was. Sometimes, it had not been. This time… this time, it felt right that there was no one to ask.
He shifted the tunic on his lap, his eyes switching back and forth between the eagle and swastika stitched onto the right breast, the Iron Cross on the left. Almost unconsciously, his fingers began to pick at the loose stitching along the eagle’s wing again, working and worrying it. Something had happened to him these past few days. He had found himself again, and found a new side to men he thought he had known well. He had found respect in the ranks of his enemy, and danger from his own side. He had become aware of another way of fighting this war, the presence of a fork in the track of his life, and in that hut in the forest he had taken the first steps down that different path.
He knew now he had never lacked for choices; it was decisions that were missing. So often, he had been passive in the face of what needed to be done. Running that confrontation in the forest over and over in his mind, pinned to the certainty in Goran’s eyes, he was afraid he still was. That he had only really decided when faced with the inevitable. It felt right, what he had decided, what he felt, but he could not help but ask himself – his old self-doubt surfacing – how genuine a feeling, a decision, was it?
He tried to imagine Alexandria, a place away from this war, of safety, and could not. All he could think about was Meissner, and Freilinger, and the others like them who fought a war of shadows. He thought of his functions in Sarajevo, the war of cogs and wheels and information and what a man might do within that system that could not be done from outside it.
His watch had stopped, and he wound it up slowly, thinking. It had come to him on his last day as a fighting man in the first war. Was it just chance, then, fortuitous circumstance, that it should come to him again on the last day of this war that he would choose not to keep on the way he had been going? The second hand slid into motion as he wound it, flicking around its little dial as if it, like him, sought a new north. One day, this war would be over, and there would be a reckoning. Every man would have to stand face to face with judgment of some kind, and often the hardest judgment came from the face you saw reflected back at you every day. A face you saw reflected everywhere, in mirrors and windows, in metal and water, sharp-edged or sunken, chopped or blurred. The splintered facets of yourself that stared back at you from a thousand pairs of eyes. A face you saw reflected within you.
The light slid from the sky, stars scattering themselves in its wake. There were no mirrors here, only the weight of mountain and sky and the image one held of oneself within. Somewhere behind him in the trees, a man began to sing. Others joined him in a refrain, soft clapping keeping time. The air smelled of wood smoke, and he breathed it in without flinching, without the image of those two boys grating at him. He paused, reflected on that, and then, face to face with the mountains, he made his decision. He smoothed down the stitching, stood and shrugged back into his jacket, medals and metal clinking dully, and limped back up into the trees.
Historical Note
Following the German conquest of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Bosnia was ceded to their allies in the Independent State of Croatia (the NDH), ruled by Ante Pavelić’s fascist Ustaše. Croatian rule in Bosnia was incompetent in the extreme but made infinitely worse by the Ustaše’s widespread persecution and mass killings, often of astonishing savagery, of Serbs and Jews.
Such was the Ustaše’s brutality that many Serbs took up arms with the Četniks, a Serbian nationalist and royalist resistance movement that conducted guerrilla warfare against the Axis occupying forces in those parts of Bosnia it regarded as Serb, but which itself committed numerous atrocities, mostly against Bosnian Muslim civilians. Muslims tried to navigate their own path, which, depending on context, involved a mixture of collaboration, resistance, or passive acceptance of their situation. Bosnia’s Jews and Gypsies were all but exterminated.
Then, starting in 1941, Yugoslav Communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito organised their own multiethnic resistance, the Partisans, which fought with increasing effectiveness against both Axis and Četnik forces. So effective, in fact, that the Germans and Četniks began to make common cause against them. The result was a kaleidoscope of shifting front lines as Germans, Italians, Croatians, Ustaše, and Četniks fought the Partisans, often with almost medieval barbarity.
Unlike the exclusive and ultranationalist positions offered by the Ustaše and the Četniks, the Partisans offered one of a multiethnic postwar Yugoslavia united under Communism. By 1943, it was clear to the Allies that the Četniks were a lost cause, virtual German auxiliaries, and their support swung fully behind the Partisans with the dispatch of liaison officers and advisors and increasing supplies of munitions.
The very real rivalries that bedevilled interwar Yugoslavia only erupted into open conflict following the Axis invasion. Axis forces were not passive observers to the playing out of ‘ancient Balkan hatreds’ but were instead active participants. Bosnia was divided into German and Italian zones of influence, and the NDH’s authority was severely limited where their interests were concerned. These interests were primarily economic, and their occupation policy was basically one of maximising the economic contribution of Yugoslavia to the Axis war effort at the least cost and by whatever means necessary. Its corollary was a total disregard for the needs and rights of the local population.
The Germans aided the Ustaše and, to a lesser extent, the Četniks, turning a blind eye to the extremes of their allies, or else were actively complicit. Rare were the voices raised in protest, and when they were it was invariably to protest the damage Ustaše extremes caused to German operations or the occupation policy, rather than any appeal to humanity. In addition to the support it gave its allies, the German Army itself committed widespread and numerous atrocities. These included mass shootings of civilians as reprisals and the summary execution of Partisan prisoners of war including, most notoriously, the execution of some two thousand wounded Partisans and medical personnel at the end of Operation Schwarz.
The German Army in World War II was, in many ways, a heterogeneous and polyglot formation. The soldiers of many nations fought for it, with it, and under it, and it was itself divided between regular army units and those belonging to the SS. In Bosnia, the Croatian Army was a virtual auxiliary formation, almost devoid of independence, although the Ustaše militias maintained a degree of operational autonomy.
There never was a 121st Jäger Division, nor did General Paul Verhein exist, although there were many men like him – half Jewish, referred to by the Nazis as mischling – who fought for the Germans and who only can really know the reasons why they did what they did. Operation Schwarz – what the Partisans called the Fifth Enemy Offensive or the Battle of Mount Sutješka – failed in its objective of destroying the Partisans, although it inflicted grievous casualties on them. After almost a month of fighting, the Partisans managed to break the German encirclement of their position, although they had to leave behind nearly all
their wounded, who were all executed. The Partisans’ breakout is commemorated by a massive sculpture and reliefs at the memorial complex in Tjentište, in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, an area of spectacular natural beauty, but now sadly abandoned and run-down since the war in the 1990s.
This book is a work of fiction, albeit one set in a world which once existed. I have tried to be as accurate as I can to the places and events of those times. Any mistakes are just those, and the sole fault of the author, or have been made deliberately for the needs of the story.
In writing this, I am indebted to four works in particular:
Sarajevo: A Biography, by Robert Donia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
Sarajevo, 1941–1945, Muslims, Christians and Jews in Hitler’s Europe, by Emily Greble (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).
Svjetlost Europe u Bosni I Herzegovini, by Ismet Huseinović and Dzemaludin Babić (Sarajevo: Buybook, 2004).
War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration, by Jozo Tomasević (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
Reinhardt has come to the end of one part of his journey, but his journey is not yet done. Actions have consequences, and consequences must be endured. Reinhardt will march again.
Cast of Characters
In the German Army in Sarajevo
In Military Intelligence, the Abwehr
Captain Gregor Sebastian Reinhardt: counterintelligence officer, a former detective in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei (Kripo)
Major Ulrich Freilinger: chief of the Abwehr in Sarajevo
Lieutenant Stefan Hendel: internal army security
Sergeant Martin Claussen: a former policeman in Dusseldorf
Kruger, Maier, Vogts, Weninger: Abwehr officers
In the Military Police, the Feldgendarmerie
Major Becker: second in command of the garrison’s Feldgendarmerie detachment, and a former Kripo detective
Captain Kessler: in charge of Feldgendarmerie traffic control
In the Sarajevo Garrison
Standartenführer Mladen Stolić: 7th SS Prinz Eugen
Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Lehmann: 1st Panzer divisional intelligence
Eichel, Faber, Kappel, Forster: colonels in the army
Captain Hans Thallberg: 118th Jäger Division, and officer in the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei)
Captain Paul Oster: army medical corps
Lieutenant Peter Krause: movement supply officer, a friend of Hendel’s
Tomas and Pieter: panzer officers
Corporal Jürgen Beike: assistant to Captain Thallberg
Corporal Gerd Hueber: transportation corps, a Serbo-Croat translator
On the Frontlines
General Paul Verhein: commanding 121st Jäger, on Mount Sutjeska
Colonel Clemens Ascher: his chief of staff
Gärtner, Jahn, Nadolski, and Oelker: Verhein’s senior officers
Tiel, Demmler, and Ubben: captains in the 121st
Mamagedov: Verhein’s driver, a Kalmyk, from the Caucasus
Generals Eglseer, Grabenhofen, Kübler, Le Suire, Neidholt, Phleps, von Grabenhofen, and von Oberkamp: officers commanding divisions in Bosnia.
In the City: Its Citizenry and Police Force
Marija Vukić: a journalist and filmmaker, an Ustaša
Vjeko Vukić: her father, a senior Ustaša, killed in the war
Suzana Vukić: her mother
Chief Inspector Putković: of the Sarajevo police, an Ustaša
Inspector Andro Padelin: of the Sarajevo police, an Ustaša, ordered to partner with Reinhardt
Dr Muamer Begović: a medical doctor, a consultant with the police
Bunda: of the Sarajevo police, an officer of imposing size
Goran, Karlo, Simo: men of the city
Colonel Tihomir Grbić: of the Domobranstvo, a decorated veteran soldier
Niko Ljubčić: an Ustaša officer in the Black Legion
Frau Hofler: an elderly Austrian, Marija’s neighbour
Duško Jelić: Marija’s sound engineer
Branko Tomić: Marija’s cameraman, her oldest collaborator and friend of her father
Archbishop Šarić: a committed Ustaša
Father Petar: a priest at the church of St Joseph’s
Alfred Ewald: receptionist at the Austria Hotel
At the Ragusa Club
Robert Mavrić: the manager
Dietmar Stern: maître d’
Dragan: the barman
Anna and Florica: singers
Zoran Zigić: a waiter
Milan Topalović: Zoran’s uncle, a Communist and suspected Partisan
Elsewhere and Elsewhen…
Friedrich: Reinhardt’s son, lost with the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad
Rudolf Brauer: Reinhardt’s former partner in the Kripo and his oldest and closest friend
Colonel Tomas Meissner: Reinhardt’s mentor, and regimental commander during WWI
Major Brian Sanburne: Rifle Brigade, a British liaison officer
Carolin: Reinhardt’s wife, died of illness in 1938
Copyright
This ebook edition first published
in the UK in 2014 by
No Exit Press, an imprint of
Oldcastle Books,
PO Box 394, Harpenden,
Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK
noexit.co.uk
@NoExitPress
All rights reserved
© Luke McCallin 2014
The right of Luke McCallin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN
978-1-84344-547-0 (Print)
978-1-84344-548-7 (Epub)
978-1-84344-549-4 (Kindle)
978-1-84344-550-0 (Pdf)
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The Man from Berlin Page 43