“Bit longer, actually,” he said. “Anything left in that flask?”
Like every other member of the British embassy, Macrae had walked to work on the morning of 10 November. Most of the pavements were covered in broken glass from smashed shop-fronts and apartment windows. The streets were littered with broken furniture and household goods. There were no taxis, buses or cars moving in the city. Only the fire service seemed willing to risk their heavy engines on the rubble of glass in order to hose down smouldering houses close to the scores of synagogues throughout the city.
When dawn broke, there was little left of such places of Jewish worship. As elsewhere in Germany, the larger synagogues had been burnt down completely in the night and left in smoking ruins. Hundreds of smaller synagogues had been torched but not wholly destroyed. Houses and apartments belonging to Jews had been broken into and their contents vandalised or tipped into the street. Crowds had gathered to stare at the piles of broken mirrors, paintings, ornaments and furniture that lay heaped up on pavements. No one dared touch such goods and no one asked what had happened to their owners.
The staff meeting at the embassy had been put back that morning owing to late arrivals and also the need to get as much information as possible about the violent events of the night before. It was noon when Sir Nevile Henderson took his seat in the conference room. He noted that his colleagues looked visibly shocked. That was understandable. He himself felt pained and aggrieved at the reported events of the night. It was a diplomat’s job to accept that in certain postings there would be dangers. But this was Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, a proud and powerful nation that lay at the heart of Europe. Mob rule here was unthinkable.
He had been woken at midnight by a call from David Buckland with the news that organised Nazi paramilitaries in all major cities had begun attacking Jewish properties. He had dismissed the reports as exaggerated and reminded himself that Buckland was young and inexperienced. He had gone back to sleep. There had been no news on the German radio that morning, but when he found the locally employed cook crying in the kitchen, he realised something had gone badly wrong. She was a good German girl, since the embassy did not employ Jewish staff if it could help it. The woman said she feared for her Jewish neighbours, who had simply vanished in the night.
That was when Sir Nevile had gone out and walked the streets of the city centre. What he saw disturbed him deeply. The National Socialist Party had evidently lost control of the thuggish elements of its own organisation. On his return, he placed a call to the office of Field Marshal Göring. A message was taken by his secretary, who declined to give any information about the field marshal’s whereabouts.
The meeting began with a report by the political attaché, David Buckland. He had been up most of the night and looked ashen-faced. He took a deep breath and read from a typewritten document. Reports of destruction of Jewish property and violence towards Jews all over the country were pouring in all the time, he said. So far, one hundred major synagogues had been destroyed, eight thousand Jewish homes burnt out and Jewish businesses attacked throughout the country, especially those in the centre of cities. More sinister were the beatings and the bestial treatment of elderly Jewish women and children. They had been driven into the streets and attacked by organised gangs. Many had been murdered in their homes.
“Did the police not do anything?” snapped the ambassador.
“No. The mob was made up of Nazi Party members and many were part-time police. They all wore their swastika armbands quite openly. They used official vehicles and carried military weaponry.”
“What was the cause of this – who ordered it?”
Sir Nevile looked around the room. Heads were bowed towards their coffee or their notebooks. One or two people sat back and stared at the ceiling. No one seemed to want to answer the question. Halliday at the back was preoccupied with extracting congealed mucus from his left nostril.
“I can hardly believe this was sanctioned at any senior level,” said the ambassador. “I have placed a call to Field Marshal Göring and I hope to speak to him very soon. I am sure he will enlighten us.”
Halliday drew an old handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose loudly and raised his hand. The ambassador nodded. At least the man had stopped picking his nose.
“A word of caution, Ambassador. I think you will find that Göring and all those gangsters at the top of the party were well aware of what was to happen to the Jews and their property.”
The reference to the government of a major European country with whom the United Kingdom had diplomatic relations as “all those gangsters” was typically provocative. Sir Nevile Henderson had put up with Halliday dressing like a tramp, reeking of alcohol and picking his nose in his meetings. He was not going to accept such a casual insult to a host government to which he was the accredited diplomatic representative.
“I would ask you to justify such a remark,” he said. “And I would like to see you afterwards to discuss your use of language in these meetings.”
“They were aware of it because they ordered it – all of them. And the Führer himself was made fully aware. I think the excuse was the shooting of a junior German attaché in Paris a couple of days ago, but I am not fully informed on that. The point is that this pogrom has long been planned. With Hitler, timing is everything. We gave him Czechoslovakia at Munich, which saved him going to war for it. Now he can turn on the Jews, because he knows we will do nothing.”
“That is the kind of malevolent analysis I would expect to find in the Manchester Guardian,” said the ambassador. He looked around the room, seeking eye contact with his staff as he spoke. “I understand all of you are deeply shocked by what we have heard of the events last night. But I must ask you to remember that our mission in the Foreign Service is to act dispassionately and to provide London with an analysis of events without exaggeration or emotion. It is particularly important not to place weight on rumour and gossip. It is on those principles that our diplomacy has always been based.”
The ambassador sat down. Halliday tilted back on his chair, placing his arms behind his head in a gesture that pulled a length of crumpled shirt from his waistband, revealing an expanse of hairy stomach.
“My source is Goebbels himself. He made a speech on Munich radio immediately after meeting with Hitler, saying that retaliatory action against the Jews had been agreed by the highest authority. That was the signal for the pogrom.”
Halliday tipped his chair forward with a thump, rose and moved towards the door, the flapping of his unlaced shoes the only sound to break the silence of the room. He turned at the door, as Macrae knew he would, and faced the table.
“We should remember that we are not dealing with a head of state, nor indeed with the supreme commander of the German army, nor the leader of the National Socialist Party. We are dealing with the author of Mein Kampf, and if any of you are surprised by what happened last night, and what will continue to happen to Jews in this country, I suggest you reread that very enlightening book.”
He closed the door behind him. The meeting had effectively ended.
They called it Kristallnacht, and even in the Salon the next night Sara caught whispered conversations expressing shock at the savagery and degradation inflicted on the Jewish community. She heard the word again and again – Kristallnacht, the night of crystal – as if the orgy of violence could be covered up with a pretty name. It wasn’t just the foreigners who appeared troubled by the violence.
Military officers, mostly army but some from the Luftwaffe, were in there that night, along with plump party members wearing swastika armbands over their expensive French suits. They all seemed worried. The conversational hum in the room was muted. The girls too were having trouble finding business. The Pink Room was almost empty. People seemed to want to drink and talk, and then drink some more.
It was Kitty Schmidt who told Sara the full extent of the atrocities. As befitted a woman who was running a brothel for the Gestapo, and who made
sure that its senior officers were well entertained, Kitty was very well informed.
She took Sara aside and whispered terrible news: over the next week twenty thousand Jews would be arrested on charges of economic sabotage and sent to one of three camps – Dachau, Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald. The aim was to so traumatise the Jewish community that the remainder would abandon their homes and possessions and flee the country.
“You have family?” said Kitty.
She had never asked Sara about her family, her friends or her life outside the Salon. Kitty Schmidt was a professional madam just trying to survive, like everyone else caught in the Nazi net. She accepted a Jewish woman at the Salon because that is what Heydrich and Bonner wanted. She did not question their orders. She knew the reason and accepted it. A Jewish whore was the ultimate carnal pleasure for a drunken Nazi.
“My mother died last year, thank God. I have a brother in one of the camps.”
“I am sorry.”
Kitty laid a hand on her cheek and smoothed it.
“This will end one day,” she said. “Be patient.”
Sara nodded but thought, be patient for what? For a Jew in Germany, there was no future worth waiting for. The future had been cancelled.
That night, Sara entertained a client described as a special guest of Reinhard Heydrich. He was a well-dressed Russian in his middle fifties and told Sara he was a businessman, although Sara knew that was a lie. Businessmen had great folds of fat hanging over their waistline, the result of too much eating and drinking at other people’s expense. This man’s body was lean, toned and muscular. He was military or intelligence, maybe both. It would not normally have bothered Sara, but she was curious that the Gestapo should send a Russian to the Salon at a time when Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry were vilifying Moscow as the capital of a Bolshevik-Jewish global conspiracy.
The man was polite and said very little after she had taken him to the best room in the house. They walked down the corridor, past the numbered doors with their spyholes and up a short flight of stairs, to what Kitty laughingly called the honeymoon suite.
The room had mirrors on three of its four walls and a large mirror on the ceiling over the double bed. On the far side of the room, there was a bathroom behind a mirrored door. The colour scheme was crimson. A small fountain was playing in a corner and a cluster of flowering orchid plants had been placed on a table by the door. There was a bar, behind which two glass shelves were lined with bottles of vodka, whisky, rum and gin. Bottles of German champagne had been placed in ice buckets on the counter. A tray of plated cold meats, pâté, soused herrings and sliced fruit sat alongside dark rye bread and a slab of butter on a small candlelit table laid for two.
Sara had been told to stay with the Russian until the next morning, her first overnight booking at the Salon. She had protested, but Kitty Schmidt had insisted. The order came from the top, she said. The Russian was to be given the finest hospitality the Salon could provide. That was why the best room had been reserved for the night. A sign had been placed on the door saying “Do Not Disturb.”
The Russian had spoken not a word but had thrown his jacket on the bed and sat down to eat. Sara, who was feeling hungry herself, watched him devour every morsel of food on the table.
Then he had begun to drink – vodka, one shot glass after another. He spoke once, in good German, to ask her to take her clothes off, and continued drinking, looking at her reflected image in the mirrors while she sat on the bed. He drank an entire bottle, then stood up, stretched, belched and walked over to the bathroom.
When he returned, he began to undress but tripped while taking his trousers off, collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. The cameras and microphones recorded no more than the sight and sound of a snoring guest of the Third Reich and his very bored courtesan companion. Around midnight, Sara heard the faint click that told her the equipment had been turned off.
When she awoke the next morning, she thought at first that the Russian had died in the night. He was lying on his back, not making a sound. His face was grey and his limbs felt cold. She tried to shake him awake but there was no response.
She was suddenly frightened. Bonner was bound to blame her. After a few minutes of vigorous shaking, the man had coughed and opened his eyes. He sat up and began talking a language she assumed was Russian. She made him some coffee, kissed him sweetly on the cheek, whispered “Heil Hitler” in his ear and left.
When she walked out that autumn morning to return to her room, she knew she had found her future. The certainty of what she had to do almost made her skip with joy. It was as if she had been walking blindly through a thick fog, which had suddenly lifted to reveal the path ahead.
20
In Berlin that Christmas, the weather was colder and the festivities more extravagant than anyone could remember. The mercury at Tempelhof airport dipped to minus twenty in mid-December. Record-breaking snowfall swept in from the north and blanketed the city for days.
This did nothing to deter the citizens of Berlin from enjoying what many believed would be their last Christmas at peace for a long time. They whispered this thought among themselves at home, but never in bars or restaurants. They were going to enjoy the winter carnival of 1938, because it might be their last.
Military conscription had already taken most young men for a compulsory eighteen months’ service, unless they could show they were employed in a reserved occupation. Throughout Germany, families desperately sought jobs for their sons in armaments factories or in the power and telephone companies. The number of young men applying to become medical students in major universities or hospitals rose dramatically.
All military conscripts and many regular soldiers and airmen were given ten days’ leave to join their families for the holiday. Those returning to Berlin from their units were amazed at the extravagance of the seasonal decorations and the lights on Christmas trees on all main streets and in the big department stores. The newspapers remarked that Berlin looked more than ever like a winter wonderland as the festive lights assumed strange shapes and colours in the swirling snow showers. On the streets, carol singers competed with the collectors for the Nazi Party winter-relief programme, an unsubtle method of extorting money in the name of the poor but actually for party funds. Everyone gave something, to avoid being reported for antisocial behaviour.
As he walked down Wilhelmstrasse on his way back to his office, Bonner counted fourteen Christmas trees in the windows of the British embassy, the Propaganda Ministry and the Reich Chancellery. Except for those at the embassy, all had swastikas instead of stars at the top. Bonner considered himself a good Nazi, but the party’s attempt to take religion out of Christmas and turn the whole celebration into a pagan feast to mark the winter solstice was ridiculous. Germans had always loved their Weihnachten and, back in the Middle Ages, had been the first in Europe to invent Santa Claus, the Christmas tree and all that went with it.
Goebbels had been given the task of reinventing Christmas when the Nazis came to power back in 1933. A Christian celebration to mark the birth of a Jewish messiah was hardly going to chime with the ideology of the National Socialist Party. The mental gymnastics that followed had been the subject of much bar-room humour throughout the country, until it had become dangerous to make such jokes.
Saint Nicholas, better known to German children as Father Christmas, became the Norse God Odin, carols and hymns like “Silent Night” were rewritten to remove all reference to Christ the Saviour, and so it went on.
Most people simply ignored the ideological interference with their midwinter festival and carried on with their celebrations as usual. The Gestapo were well aware of popular feeling and chose to do nothing. Bonner despised Heydrich as an unbalanced fanatic, but in this case he was right. Tradition trumped ideology at Christmastime. The churches, on the other hand, were very much the business of the secret police, which is why no senior religious figure had spoken out against the Nazification of Christmas. Nor, indeed, had a single s
enior churchman condemned the atrocities of Kristallnacht. They were all frightened, which is just as it should be, thought Bonner.
As he trudged through the frozen slush on the steps of the Gestapo headquarters, Bonner noted that the festive season had left no mark on the building. The blinds were drawn tightly on all windows as usual, and hardly a glimmer of light escaped from the building.
Heydrich had permitted one tree in each of the two canteens, with the swastika at the top and black Iron Crosses hanging from the branches – nothing else. He had said that any office decorations would be inappropriate at a time when the country was facing enemies on all sides.
Bonner placed his shopping on the floor of his office and congratulated himself. It was 17 December and he had bought presents for all the family, including his elderly father and mother in Heidelberg. He had even bought something for Hilde. He was particularly proud of the gift. It showed real imagination. Even that ox of a Bavarian girl might just appreciate the thought that had gone into it.
He unwrapped the present and looked at it. An hourglass filled with coloured layers of sand that filtered through from top to bottom with such precision that in exactly sixty minutes the top layers lay in their separate colours in the lower chamber.
It was a fragile ornament made of fine blown glass that stood on its own base. Bonner had been fascinated while watching it in the shop, where an assistant had turned it upside down for him. Here was a metaphor for the ultimate absurdity of life, the shifting sands of time trickling to eternity before one’s very eyes.
He wrapped the hourglass carefully and put it in his desk drawer. It was far too good for Hilde. She would just break it. He would give her a decent bottle of schnapps instead. She could swill that with the new boyfriend she had met in one of the interrogation teams. He got the bottle out of one of the shopping bags, placed it in its wrapping paper on his desk and pressed the buzzer. He heard her clumping across the floor in the office next door.
Midnight in Berlin Page 29