“These are names that will forever hang around the neck of our nation like rotting corpses.” The bishop was trying to keep his composure. On the wall film images of the camp, of the guards on the towers at Chelm and the mass graves created by the Einsatzkommandos chased each other. The audience stared in numb fascination.
“The names I want you to remember are Chelm, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. These were killing factories. When Aktion Reinhard ended in late 1943 about 2 250 000 human beings had been processed - gassed - in these three camps. And in contrast to the labour camps where they kept rosters of the units they processed – yes units are what Hitler reduced human beings to – no records were kept. By early this year it seems the SS was busy demolishing Treblinka and Sobibor, ploughing over the field and planting lupin and pine trees to hide the fact that anything had ever been there. Take Treblinka as an example; a million human beings were gassed there, their corpses burnt on iron racks and the bones crushed so that their ashes could be ploughed under without a trace. What we have been able to piece together speaks about processing by weight and numbers; never in terms of human beings. Almost everything we know about this camp comes from the camp guards and a few survivors who apparently staged a revolt in August 1943 that led a few souls to freedom.
These were places where trains brought thousands of people by cattle car. On the rail siding they would be deprived of any belongings and led to the gas chambers. There they would be stripped down naked, not registered, and gassed by the thousands. Usually within a few hours of their arrival there would be no trace except the smouldering ashes of their bones on the racks designed to reduce them to part of the soil. Hundreds of thousands possible two million went that way.
As an interesting aside from one of our legal people you may wish to know that German law stipulates that an individual act of violence or murder must have taken place. When you cannot establish this on an individual basis our legal system cannot convict.”
There was no response in the room just stunned, numb silence. Many of them had seen the inside of Gestapo jails, many had faced torture. But nothing could have prepared them for the reality of the nightmare they saw on the screen. And to hear that their legal system technically did not call this a crime.
“The numbers defy belief and they create a multi-faceted heritage of guilt for us. About four-and-a-half to five million Jewish people were murdered in these camps and by the Einsatzkommandos. But in addition to that about 4 million Russians, half a million people from western and southern Europe and two million Poles have also died; worked to death as Untermenschen – subhumans – in the factories of our war industries plants in eastern Europe. All in all we think that about 13 million were killed by various means but that about a third of them were murdered in the Vernichtungslager.
There was one camp where slave labour and Vernichtung went hand in hand - Auschwitz Birkenau Camp 2. This is where the IG Farben built the Bunawerke in 1942 and used slave labour to operate it. Under the cover of that construction effort, the SS who rented out the bodies to Bunawerke, built their gas chambers at Camp 2. Thousands of Jews mainly from Poland but also from anywhere else in the Balkans were brought here as were thousands of Russians. Anyone who fell sick in the slave labour camp – Camp 1 also went here. When we put an end to it about 450 000 Jews had been gassed, together with possibly another 400 000 mostly Russians and Jews who were worked to death. The industrialists of IG Farben, Herr Chancellor, knew about their labour source.”[75] Goerdeler said nothing. The business community were his constituency. The bishop had just sent a signal that this issue would have to be dealt with, eventually openly.
The Protestant Bishop picked the story in halting heavy words: “Finally, let me stress one point. The insistence on secrecy was absolute. Despite the large numbers involved Himmler and his killers managed to keep this completely under wraps. Those camp guards who talked were shot or went to a camp themselves. That is why so many of us guessed something of what was happening, wondered at disappearances, but very few really knew. The camps we knew about and dreaded were those in Germany where the politicos, and undesirables went and died. The pictures of corpses we have shown you, the images of the skeletons covered in skin with the deep-sunk eyes, the piles of naked bodies piled high in rough heaps ready for burning or lying on their bunks in stupor; these are the images from the camps where killing was not the primary objective. These were not the Vernichtungslager, still people from all over Europe, including Germany, died in their thousands in the Konzentrationslager.
It was only on October 4 and 6 last year in Posen that Himmler gathered all the SS leaders and the Gauleiter and explained in detail the reasons and the methods behind the extermination of the Jews. One of the arguments the Reichsführer used to justify the murder of the women and children was that he was not willing to let potential avengers grow up and live. He concluded with these words: ‘This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written. … we must take this secret with us to the grave.’
The bishop, looked up. No-one had noticed that he and the protestant had taken alternate turns in talking. ‘We must take this secret to the grave was Himmler’s wish. That makes it our duty as members of a civilized, Christian nation to publicize this and bring the perpetrators to justice. As a man of God I am overwhelmed, the barbarity, the complete failure of humanity; I admit and may God forgive for this, I admit as having doubted his will and existence when I saw what the Vernichtungslager were like. For me and here I can speak for all of Germany’s churches, a nod to his protestant counterpart, this can only be dealt with in one way – we as Germans must accept that the actions of this regime as what they are – crimes of individual men against individual human beings. Any other approach leads to a punishment that robs the victims of their humanity even in memory. The recognition of any man’s responsibility for himself and his own actions must be at the heart of our way that we deal with this challenge as Germans and as Christians.”
When the lights came on, Beck, ashen, was the first to respond, “Trials, do we really need to go down that route now? This is deadly stuff, it will weaken us, possibly prevent us from defending ourselves.‘
The Bishop agreed, “it certainly robs us of as a nation of moral standing.”
“Even worse” Leuschner threw in “the trials will result in further morale decay as there will be thousands who weren’t there or didn’t know. Also you said yourself that thousands of the victims were Germans, not Jewish Germans but just .. just Germans.”
‘We all had some sense about what was happening in the camps, some of us even had first-hand experience of the Konzentrationslager.’
‘We still know right from wrong. We know that in some way, if only passively we were party to the monstrous wrong. As long as Hitler was creating jobs and later, conquering countries, we put aside our nagging doubts, any moral misgivings.” Goerdeler’s eyes went round the table. “Not all of us who opposed the regime did so when the going was good. The war ultimately allowed us to justify not looking deeper into ourselves and standing up to those who needed standing up to. Nevertheless this crime was committed by members of a nation not by the nation. That is an important fact, bishop, and it is one that we must never forget if there is to be justice in this world.‘ Goerdeler sounded very tired, but he had just reasserted some authority. No-one doubted that he had opposed Hitler from the start and resigned and gone into opposition long before the war..
Beck had another point. “We were Hitler’s victims almost as much as the poor souls whose bodies and ashes you have just shown. When this story is told to the world, it must not be forgotten that no matter how unbelievable the crime, those around this table and indeed large segments of this nation had nothing to do with it. These were crimes of the regime we risked our lives to end.”
Albert Speer suddenly had deep urge to be elsewhere.
“Nevertheless,” the Protestant cut in ”a regime that this nation vo
ted in. A regime that no matter who knew what, could point to only a very limited, disorganised and until Colonel von Stauffenberg’s deed, an ineffectual opposition.” Around the table there was some indignant bristling.
Most eyes turned to Claus, who waived off “I cannot speak today, what I have seen is the reality of the evil I sensed in the Hitler state for whom I went abroad as a soldier. I do not know how to respond to this.”
There was silence. The ultimate question of resistance or active revolt had not occurred to most Germans, even those around the table; it had been Stauffenberg who had acted; he and a few other colonels had taken the active steps over the years. Then there were the few not-to-be-forgotten Christian martyrs who had committed symbolic, usually non-violent acts of opposition. None of them had amounted to a credible challenge to the Third Reich. The Generals and Field Marshalls had certainly failed.
Von Witzleben who had himself felt the wrath of Hitler’s system first-hand inside a prison cell, sought the last word: ‘On one issue we must be very clear – we cannot muddle the concept of war crimes with Nazi crimes. These are two completely separate categories of crime: a war crime is a deed committed exclusively in connection with the war and should be handled by military courts or a court martial. But these, … these,‘ He waved towards the image on the wall,’ the crimes of the Nazis are civil crimes. They were committed by perpetrators who had nor have any military status against civilian populations not involved in the conflict. To confuse these two would be our end, the one is political and need to be dealt with that way. If we muddle the two, we will not only inextricably connect the Wehrmacht to the camps but later also allow anyone who so chooses the option to argue that the Nazi crimes were a necessity, a by-product of the conflict. No we must separate the Nazi crimes completely.’
The one among them who had not participated in the debate was Speer. His ministry now as under Hitler, directly ran the lives of over 22 million people, until a few weeks ago that had also included another six million foreign forced labourers. A further 100 000 concentration camp prisoners had also fallen within his jurisdiction. Even if Speer had never ordered the construction of any camp or issued directives for the deportation of Jews or others marked for extermination, as the beneficiary of substantial weapons production from the SS camp factories, could he really claim to be unaware? In early 1943, he had visited one of the Konzentrationslager – Mauthausen. He had known at least the key aspects of how these camps treated people. Aktion Reinhard was something Himmler had tried to involve him in but he had managed to avoid. But in the end would that count, after all, his ministry had overseen the slave labour system in which literally millions had perished working for the German war machine. The captive working to death approach of the SS had only been ended days after Stauffenberg’s coup.
No-one met his eye but no-one forced him to answer that question on that day. For that he was grateful. But in his heart Albert Speer knew that he and those who worked for him would one day have to answer for this. He doubted whether the concept of just following orders would be a good excuse, they would after all have been the Fuehrer’s orders.[76]
September 8th
London
The British press had finally turned on the Lublin Committee after carefully holding off for a few days while they sought clarification of the political aspects with their Whitehall contacts. But now there was a torrent of anti-Home Army and anti-British propaganda pouring from Lublin that even the most hard-bitten reader of Soviet propaganda found difficult to stomach. The Economist and the Spectator both carried pieces recounting the conciliatory steps the London exile Government had made towards the Soviets and their puppets. For their troubles the had received, what the Spectator called ‘unworthy and obstructive replies.’ Even allowing for the difficulties created by the ceasefire between the Home Army in Warsaw and the Wehrmacht this was not something the wartime censors or pro-Soviet decision-makers like Guy Burgess at the BBC Newsdesk could contain.
For once Churchill had set aside the various staff and cabinet reports which he normally used to pass the time on airplanes, but now he needed some better reading something that would give him a sense of what the press was feeding the people. People whose wishes in theory he was bound to turn into policy. In Moscow he would most likely have to follow his gut instincts and it was critical that this was in tune with what the nation would support. If only there were not the complications of the Americans and the Russians.
He looked out the window below him Europe’s Mediterranean coastline slipped by as the Sutherland flying boat headed eastwards. Much of it looked more peaceful than it had in years. In France allied troops were approaching Belgium’s borders and the Rhine. There they would most likely stop to wait out the worst of the winter. On the eastern front things appeared to have stabilized temporarily as Stalin’s troops had kicked the Germans out of Byelorussia and much of the southern Balkans.
Apart from a few small shrinking pockets of retreating German troops in Croatia and Serbia guarding the rail lines for the troops retreating from Greece, the Balkans were now liberated. Hungary was still on Germany’s side, petrified of the Soviet threat.
In the Pacific, the Americans were readying themselves for a landing on Okinawa which promised to be bloody. Okinawa would give American bombers a launching pad for land-based bombing raids on the Japanese mainland. The end was in sight and the victors needed to reach agreement on the shape of the post-war world. China continued to hold down the bulk of Japan’s land forces and she would claim her place soon.
This was what driving Churchill to Moscow. After the grief over the Warsaw Uprising and the surprise deal cut by the Home Army he needed to clear the air permanently with Stalin, or formalize the rift. Much as he had wanted the American President or at least a senior American administration official to join him in Moscow, no American was on the flight with him. Instead the US Ambassador would be there as an observer. The Americans had no intention of being formally present at a meeting whose issues they, with their naïve view of global politics and lack of historical perspective - considered resolved. Instead, Churchill had taken the Polish Premier and two of his ministers along. Poland was after all the key issue that needed to be discussed; discussed and resolved Churchill reminded himself. It, the first country attacked by Hitler; the first ally as they often called themselves, would set the precedent. The problem was that contrary to America, England had some contractual obligations which -no matter how Eden would seek to interpret them – created at least in the mind of the Prime Minister a very real obligation towards the Poles and the preservation of their sovereignty.
In 1939 Britain had bound herself to Poland by guaranteeing her ‘independence’. The Anglo-Polish Treaty of Mutual Assistance in August 1939 had been bolted on as an afterthought as war clouds had gathered. In fact the afterthought had come about as a means of preventing Stalin from joining Hitler in an alliance. At the time everyone in the British establishment had accepted that this was a hasty arrangement and not surprisingly it had not worked. Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler and between them they had divided Poland by force the next month. In response Britain had gone to war. Thus from the collapse of appeasement Churchill had been landed with Warsaw as an ally.
By the same token it had taken Hitler’s betrayal of his pact with Stalin to rehabilitate the Soviet dictator for the West. Indicative of its desperation at the time, Britain had rushed into an alliance with Soviet Russia within days of the German invasion. More significantly it had dragooned its Poles into a Polish-Soviet treaty a few weeks later. Although Stalin, feeling rather beleaguered in late 1941 had formally renounced his claims of Polish territory in terms of this treaty, he had not offered a guarantee for its August 1939 borders. Neither for that matter, Churchill’s ministers assured the House of Commons that day did this constitute a guarantee on the part of the British Government of any kind. That ambiguity of 1941 was at the heart of the current problems.
Churchill signalle
d the steward for another drink and smiled over at Premier Mick who had respectfully been keeping his distance, but now seized his chance. The British leader smiled again but regretted the encouragement. Premier Mick was a purely civilian politician. His predecessor Sikorski had built a rapport with Churchill both men having experienced similar military events. Except when lecturing, Mick was a cold fish as far as Churchill was concerned, there was no personal angle.
For a few minutes the Pole sought to make stilted but reasonable small talk. Then he came to the point. “Prime Minister I remain concerned about the purpose of this trip. I have, as I mentioned before accompanied you primarily as a gesture of good faith and in the hope that an agreement can be reached with Stalin that involves a formal guarantee of our August 1939 borders as well as our sovereignty.” And with that Churchill received another history lesson of Poland’s struggle. It was a long flight during which Churchill would frequently call on the steward to replenish his glass.
The first sign of trouble came the next day when after a brief stop in Cairo and refuelling stop on a Crimean airfield, the aircraft landed and the Soviet welcoming delegation refused to recognize the Polish Premier as a head of state. Eventually the situation was temporarily contained by Churchill’s insistence that Premier Mick formed part of his delegation. It was not a good start to what should have been a fence-mending exercise. Neither Premier spoke much on the drive to their guest house.
Public order is a matter of life and death. If we do not re-establish
it ourselves, foreigners will impose it upon us!
Charles De Gaulle last week of August 1944[77]
September 9th
Paris
The end came faster than Charles de Gaulle would have thought possible even in his worst nightmares. A week ago there had been a confrontation between Free French airmen and the American units at the Paris airfields, when the former tried to deliver military supplies and especially fuel to his stranded units from depots in francophone Africa. It had taken nearly 50 American military police to contain the situation but word had gotten out that America was now not only refusing to supply Free French units with fuel and ammunition; now they were actively blocking attempts by French troops to bring in French fuel and ammunition from French territories onto French soil. What was lost on most readers of French newspapers was that this approach was consistent with Washington’s line regarding France as territory subject to military rule until then end of hostilities. American commanders wanted no more guns and fuel in the hands of the recalcitrant French units than they already had. With the continued withdrawal of German units to the border, there was no value in having an additional two or three French divisions in the ranks. Most American commanders on the spot worried that the most likely use of such supplies would be a French civil war. To Frenchmen the issue was one of sovereignty, and America had violated it. Although his aides had rushed out stories that this was all an attempt by America to determine the political future of France, the expected groundswell did not materialize. Parisians were a fickle lot and after four years of occupation had enjoyed a few days of plenty and euphoria when well stocked French and American troops had roamed the liberated city. Now rationing was back in place, and the tanks and men of 2e DB who were in Paris seemed only to have enough food for themselves. Although both French and Americans both wore virtually identical uniforms and carried the same weaponry, Parisians soon learnt to tell the difference, French patrols walked, Americans drove. The point was not lost on the populace.
The Valkyrie Option Page 40