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Page 5
That same evening, I watch a TV documentary on an old Hollywood film about General Patton. The film is soberly entitled Patton. The documentary consists essentially of showing extracts from the film, then interviewing witnesses who explain, “In fact, it wasn’t really like that…” He didn’t take on two Messerschmitts that were machine-gunning the base, armed only with his Colt (but no doubt he would have done, according to the witness, if the Messerschmitts had given him time). He didn’t make such-and-such a speech before the whole army but in private, and besides, he didn’t actually say that. He didn’t learn at the last moment that he was going to be sent to France, but had in fact been informed several weeks in advance. He didn’t disobey orders in taking Palermo, but did so with the backing of the Allied High Command and his own direct superior. He certainly didn’t tell a Russian general to go fuck himself, even if he didn’t much like the Russians. And so on. So, basically, the film is about a fictional character whose life is strongly inspired by Patton’s, but who clearly isn’t him. And yet the film is called Patton. And that doesn’t shock anybody. Everyone finds it normal, fudging reality to make a screenplay more dramatic, or adding coherence to the narrative of a character whose real path probably included too many random ups and downs, insufficiently loaded with significance. It’s because of people like that, forever messing with historical truth just to sell their stories, that an old friend, familiar with all these fictional genres and therefore fatally accustomed to these processes of glib falsification, can say to me in innocent surprise: “Oh, really, it’s not invented?”
No, it’s not invented! What would be the point of “inventing” Nazism?
41
You’ll have gathered by now that I am fascinated by this story. But at the same time I think it’s getting to me.
One night, I had a dream. I was a German soldier, dressed in the gray-green uniform of the Wehrmacht, and I was on guard duty in an unidentified landscape, covered with snow and bordered by barbed wire. This background was clearly inspired by the numerous Second World War video games to which I’ve occasionally been weak enough to become addicted: Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Red Orchestra…
Suddenly, during my patrol, Heydrich himself arrived to perform an inspection. I stood to attention and held my breath while he circled me with an inquisitorial air. I was terrorized by the idea that he might find fault with me. But I woke up before anything else happened.
To tease me, Natacha often pretends to worry about the impressive number of books on Nazism that line the shelves of my apartment, and the risk of ideological conversion she thinks I’m running. To join in the joke, I never fail to mention the innumerable tendentious—if not openly neo-Nazi—websites that I come across while researching on the Internet. It is obviously impossible that I—son of a Jewish mother and a Communist father, brought up on the republican values of the most progressive French petite bourgeoisie and immersed through my literary studies in the humanism of Montaigne and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the Surrealist revolution and the Existentialist worldview—could ever be tempted to “sympathize” with anything to do with Nazism, in any shape or form.
But I must, once more, bow down before the limitless and nefarious power of literature. Because this dream proves beyond doubt that, with his larger-than-life, storybook aura, Heydrich impresses me.
42
Anthony Eden, the British foreign minister, listens in stunned silence. The new Czech president, Edvard Beneš, is displaying a staggering confidence in his ability to resolve the question of the Sudeten Germans. Not only does he claim to be able to contain Germany’s expansionist desires, but, what’s more, to do so alone—in other words, without the help of France and Great Britain. Eden doesn’t know what to make of this speech. “I suppose that to be Czech in days like these, one must be an optimist,” he says to himself. It is still only 1935.
43
In 1936, Major Moravec, head of the Czechoslovak secret services, takes his colonel’s exam. One of the hypothetical questions reads: “Czechoslovakia is attacked by Germany. Hungary and Austria are also hostile. France has not mobilized her army and the Petite Entente is probably unworkable. What are the military solutions for Czechoslovakia?”
Analysis of the subject: with the Austro-Hungarian Empire having been carved up in 1918, Vienna and Budapest are now naturally eyeing up their former provinces—that is, Bohemia-Moravia, which had been an Austrian dependancy, and Slovakia, which had been under Hungarian control. Moreover, Hungary is led by a fascist ally of Germany, Admiral Horthy. A badly weakened Austria, meanwhile, is having trouble resisting the calls from both sides of the German border for the country to be united with its Germanic big brother. The agreement signed by Hitler, which promises that he won’t intervene in Austrian affairs, is not worth the paper it’s written on. If there was ever a conflict with Germany, therefore, Czechoslovakia would also find itself pitted against the two heads of the fallen empire. The Petite Entente, agreed to in 1922 by Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia to protect one another from their old Austro-Hungarian masters, is not the most convincing of strategic alliances. And France’s reluctance to keep its commitments to its Czech ally if a conflict arises has already been made clear. So the hypothetical situation proposed in the exam is completely realistic. Moravec’s response is only five words long: “Problem unsolvable by military means.” He passes with flying colors and becomes a colonel.
44
If I were to mention all the plots in which Heydrich had a hand, this book would never be finished. Sometimes in the course of my research I come upon a story that I decide not to relate, whether because it seems too anecdotal, or because there are details missing and I’m unable to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, or because I find the story questionable. Sometimes, too, there are several contradictory versions of the same story. In certain cases, I allow myself to decide which version is true. If not, I drop the story.
I had decided not to mention Heydrich’s role in the fall of Tukhachevsky. First of all, because his role struck me as secondary, even illusory. Next, because Soviet politics in the 1930s doesn’t really have much to do with the main flow of my story. Finally, I suppose, because I was afraid of getting involved on another historical front: the Stalinist purges, Marshal Tukhachevsky’s career, the origins of his dispute with Stalin… all of this called for both learning and meticulousness. The danger was that it would drag me too far from my subject.
All the same, I have imagined a scene, just for the pleasure of it: we see the young General Tukhachevsky contemplating the rout of the Bolshevik army at the gates of Warsaw. It’s 1920. Poland and the USSR are at war. “The Revolution will step over the corpse of Poland!” declared Trotsky. It has to be said that in allying itself with Ukraine, in dreaming of a confederation that would also include Lithuania and Byelorussia, Poland was threatening the fragile unity of the nascent Soviet Russian state. On the other hand, if the Bolsheviks wanted to take the revolution to Germany, they were bound to go through the region.
In August 1920, the Soviet counterattack led the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw, and Poland’s fate looked sealed. But the young nation’s independence would last another nineteen years. What Poland was unable to do in 1939 against the Germans, it did that day against the Russians: it pushed them back. This is the “miracle at the Vistula.” Tukhachevsky is defeated by an unparalleled strategist—Józef Piłsudski, the hero of Polish independence, and nearly thirty years Tukhachevsky’s senior.
The two armies are more or less equal in numbers: 113,000 Poles against 114,000 Russians. Tukhachevsky, however, is certain of victory. He sends the main body of his forces north, where Piłsudski has fooled him into believing that there is a concentration of troops. In fact, Piłsudski attacks in the south, from behind. It is here that this tributary episode joins the main flow of my story. Tukhachevsky calls for reinforcements from the 1st Cavalry—led by the no-less-legendary General Budyonny—who are fighting on the southwest fr
ont to take L’viv. Budyonny’s cavalry is formidable, and Piłsudski knows that this intervention might turn the battle against him. But then something unbelievable happens: General Budyonny refuses to obey orders, and his army remains at L’viv. For the Poles, this is without doubt the real miracle at the Vistula. For Tukhachevsky, however, defeat is bitter, and he wants to understand why it happened. He doesn’t have to search far: the political commissar of the southwestern front, under whose authority Budyonny is operating, has decided that the capture of L’viv is a matter of prestige. There is no question of him sending away his best troops, even if it is necessary to avoid a military disaster, because he knows that the disaster is not his responsibility. Never mind that the fate of the war depends upon it. The personal ambitions of this commissar have often taken precedence over all other considerations. His name is Joseph Dzhugashvili, though he is better known by his nom de guerre: Stalin.
Fifteen years later, Tukhachevsky succeeds Trotsky as head of the Red Army, while Stalin succeeds Lenin as head of state. The two men hate each other, they are at the pinnacle of their power, and they disagree over political strategy: Stalin seeks to delay a conflict with Nazi Germany, while Tukhachevsky advocates going to war now.
I wasn’t aware of all this when I saw the Eric Rohmer film Triple Agent. But I decided to study the question seriously when I heard the main character, General Skoblin, an eminent White Russian exiled in Paris, say to his wife: “Do you remember? I told you that in Berlin I went to see the head of German intelligence, a certain Heydrich. And you know what I didn’t want to tell him? Things about Comrade Tukhachevsky, whom I met secretly in Paris during his trip to the West for the funeral of the king of England. Oh, of course, he didn’t open his heart to me, but from what he said I was able to make certain deductions. The Gestapo must have got wind of this meeting; Heydrich questioned me, I answered evasively, he gave me an icy look, and that’s how we left it.”
Heydrich in a Rohmer film! I still can’t get over it.
After this bit of dialogue, Skoblin’s wife asks:
“And this Mr. Heydrich, why does he want this information?”
“Well, it’s in the Germans’ interests to compromise the head of the Red Army, especially as they already know he’s out of favor with Stalin… at least, that’s what I assume.”
Skoblin goes on to deny any links with the Nazis, and this, too, seems to be Rohmer’s view, even if the director takes great care to stress the ambiguity of his character and politics. But I struggle to believe that Skoblin went to the trouble of meeting Heydrich in Berlin just to tell him nothing.
It seems to me more likely that Skoblin went to see Heydrich to inform him that a plot against Stalin had been hatched by Tukhachevsky, but that in doing so, Skoblin was acting on behalf of the NKVD—in other words, for Stalin himself. Why? To spread the rumor of the plot in order to make people believe an (apparently unfounded) accusation of high treason.
Did Heydrich believe Skoblin? I don’t know, but either way he saw the opportunity of eliminating a dangerous enemy of the Reich: to remove Tukhachevsky in 1937 is to decapitate the Red Army. He decides to feed the rumor. He knows that such an affair is a matter for Canaris’s Abwehr, as it’s a military question. But, intoxicated by the sheer scale of his project, he manages to convince Himmler and Hitler to give him control of the operation. To carry it out, he calls on his best hired man, Alfred Naujocks, who specializes in dirty work. For three months, Naujocks will create a whole series of forgeries aimed at compromising the Russian marshal. He has no difficulty finding his signature: all he has to do is look through the archives of the Weimar Republic. Back then, when diplomatic relations between the two countries were more friendly, many official documents had been signed by Tukhachevsky.
When the dossier is ready, Heydrich assigns one of his men to sell it to the NKVD. This meeting gives rise to a wonderful spying double cross: the Russian buys the fake dossier from the German, whom he pays with fake rubles. Each thinks he’s fooling the other, each is fooled in turn.
Eventually, Stalin gets what he wants: evidence that his most serious rival is planning a coup d’état. Historians disagree over how much importance should be given to Heydrich in this affair, but it should be noted that the dossier was sent in May 1937, and that Tukhachevsky was executed in June. For me, the closeness of the dates strongly suggests a link between cause and effect.
So, in the end, who fooled whom? I think Heydrich served Stalin’s interests, in allowing him to get rid of the only man capable of eclipsing him. But this man was also the most able to lead a war against Germany. The total disorganization of the Red Army, caught off guard by the German invasion of June ’41, would be the final aftermath of this murky story. But you can’t really say it was Heydrich’s masterstroke. Rather, Stalin shot himself in the foot. All the same, when Stalin begins a series of unprecedented purges, Heydrich is exultant. He is perfectly happy to take all the credit for this state of affairs.
45
I am thirty-three, considerably older than Tukhachevsky was in 1920. Today is the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Heydrich—May 27, 2006. Natacha’s sister is getting married, but I’m not invited to the wedding. Natacha called me a “little shit.” I don’t think she can bear me anymore. My life is in ruins. I wonder if Tukhachevsky felt this bad when he realized that he’d lost the battle, when he saw his army routed and understood that he had failed miserably. Did he believe he was finished, done for, washed up? Did he curse fortune, or adversity, or those who’d betrayed him? Or did he curse himself? Anyway, I know he bounced back. That’s encouraging, even if it was only to be crushed fifteen years later by his worst enemy. The wheel turns: that’s what I tell myself. Natacha doesn’t return my calls. I am in 1920, standing before the trembling walls of Warsaw, and at my feet, indifferent, flows the Vistula.
46
That night, I dreamed that I wrote the chapter about the assassination, and it began: “A black Mercedes slid along the road like a snake.” That’s when I understood that I had to start writing the rest of the story, because the rest of the story had to converge at this crucial episode. By pursuing the chain of causality back into infinity, I allowed myself to keep delaying the moment when I must face the novel’s bravura moment, its scene of scenes.
47
Imagine a map of the world, with concentric circles closing in around Germany. This afternoon, November 5, 1937, Hitler reveals his plans to the army high command—Blomberg, Fritsch, Raeder, Göring—and to his foreign minister, Neurath. The objective of German politics, he reminds them (although I think everyone’s understood by now), is to ensure the safety of Germany’s racial identity, to guarantee its existence, and to aid its development. It is therefore a question of living space (the famous Lebensraum) and it is here that we can begin to trace the circles of the map. Not from the narrowest to the widest, to take in at a single glance the Reich’s expansionist aims, but from the widest to the narrowest, focusing ruthlessly on the ogre’s first targets. For reasons he never bothers to explain, Hitler decrees that the Germans have the right to a bigger living space than other races. Germany’s future depends entirely on the solution to this problem. Where can this space be found? Not in some distant colony in Africa or Asia, but in the heart of Europe (he traces a circle around the Old Continent), in the immediate neighborhood of the Reich. So the circle encompasses only France, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland—plus Lithuania, if we remember that the top of Germany at the time extended from Danzig to Memel and bordered the Baltic countries. So Hitler’s question was this: Where can Germany obtain the greatest profit for the lowest price? France was ruled out because of its presumed military power and its links to Great Britain—and Holland and Belgium, too, due to their strategic importance for the French. Mussolini’s Italy was naturally excluded straightaway. An eastward expansion toward Poland and the Baltic countries would create a premature conflict with the Soviet Union. Swit
zerland was saved as usual, less by its neutrality than by its role as the world’s piggy bank. The circle is therefore retraced and moved above a zone reduced to two countries: “Our first objective must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously in order to remove the threat to our flank in any possible operation against the West.” As we see, no sooner has he targeted his “first objective” than Hitler is thinking of widening the circle.
Apart from Göring and Raeder, both of whom were genuine Nazis, Hitler’s audience is shocked by his plans—literally so in the case of Neurath, who suffers several heart attacks in the days that follow the unveiling of this brilliant scheme. Blomberg and Fritsch—respectively, the war minister and commander in chief of the armed services, and commander in chief of the army—protested with a vehemence wholly inappropriate in the Third Reich. In 1937, the old army still believed that it could sway the opinions of the dictator it had, imprudently, helped to seize power.