The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

  After dinner I played chess with Hettlage, Speer’s associate. Heide came over and watched us play, in silence; Hettlage won easily. I had one last Cognac and chatted a little with Heide. The guests went up to bed. Finally she got up and, as directly as her colleagues, said: “I have to go help Dr. Mandelbrod now. If you don’t want to be alone, my room is two doors down from yours, on the left. You can come have a drink, a little later on.”—“Thank you,” I replied. “I’ll see.” I went up to my room, pensive, got undressed, and lay down. The remnants of the fire were glowing in the hearth. Lying there in the dark, I said to myself: After all, why not? She was a beautiful woman, she had a superb body, what was preventing me from taking advantage of it? There was no question of an ongoing relationship, it was a simple, clear-cut proposition. And even if my experience of them was limited, women’s bodies didn’t repel me, they must be pleasant too, soft and pliable, you must be able to forget yourself in them as in a pillow. But there was that promise, and if I was nothing else, I was a man who kept his promises. Things weren’t settled yet.

  Sunday was a quiet day. I slept late, until about nine o’clock—usually I got up at 5:30—and went down to breakfast. I sat down in front of one of the big casement windows and leafed through an old edition of Pascal, in French, which I had found in the library. At the end of the morning, I accompanied Frau Speer and Frau von Wrede on a walk in the park; the latter’s husband was playing cards with an industrialist known for having built his empire through clever Aryanizations, the hunter general, and Hettlage. The grass, still wet, glistened, and puddles punctuated the gravel and dirt paths; the humid air was cool, invigorating, and our breaths formed little clouds in front of our faces. The sky remained uniformly gray. At noon I had coffee with Speer, who had just made his appearance. He spoke to me in detail about the question of foreign workers and his problems with Gauleiter Sauckel; then the conversation turned to the case of Ohlendorf, whom Speer seemed to regard as a romantic. My notions of economics were too rudimentary for me to be able to support Ohlendorf’s theories; Speer vigorously defended his principle of industrial self-responsibility. “In the end, there’s only one argument: it works. After the war, Dr. Ohlendorf can reform as he likes, if anyone wants to listen to him; but in the meantime, as I said to you yesterday, let’s win the war.”

  Leland or Mandelbrod, whenever I found myself near them, chatted to me about various things, but neither one seemed to have anything special to say to me. I began to wonder why they had invited me: certainly not so I could enjoy Fräulein Heide’s charms. But when I thought about the question again, at the end of the afternoon, in the von Wredes’ car, which was taking me back to Berlin, the answer seemed obvious: it was to put me in contact with Speer, so I could get closer to him. And that seemed to have had its effect; when it was time to go, Speer had taken leave of me very cordially, and had promised me that we would see each other again. But one question troubled me: What was the point? In whose interest were Herr Leland and Dr. Mandelbrod bringing me up in this way? For there was no doubt it was a question of planned ascent: ministers, usually, don’t spend their time chatting thus with simple majors. That worried me, for I didn’t have the means to gauge the exact relations between Speer, the Reichsführer, and my two protectors; they were obviously maneuvering, but in what direction, and for whose benefit? I was willing to play the game, but which one? If it wasn’t that of the SS, it could be very dangerous. I had to remain discreet and be very careful; I was no doubt part of a plan; if it failed, there would have to be a scapegoat.

  I knew Thomas well enough to know without asking him what he would have advised: cover yourself. On the Monday morning, I requested a meeting with Brandt, which he granted me that afternoon. I described to him my weekend and told him about my conversations with Speer, the main points of which I had already jotted down in an aide-mémoire that I gave him. Brandt didn’t seem to disapprove. “So he asked you to bring him to visit Dora?” That was the code name for the installation Speer had mentioned to me, officially called Mittelbau, “Central Construction.”—“His ministry has filed a request. We haven’t replied yet.”—“And what do you think of it, Standartenführer?”—“I don’t know. It’s up to the Reichsführer to decide. That said, you did well to report to me.” He briefly discussed my work too, and I told him about the initial impressions that emerged from the documents I had studied. When I got up to go, he said: “I think the Reichsführer is satisfied with the course things are taking. Continue on as you are.”

  After this meeting I went back to my offices to work. It was pouring outside, I could barely see the trees of the Tiergarten through the downpour whipping the leaf-stripped branches. Around five o’clock, I let Fräulein Praxa go; Walser and Obersturmführer Elias, another specialist sent by Brandt, left at around six o’clock, with Isenbeck. An hour later I went to find Asbach, who was still working. “Are you coming, Untersturmführer? I’ll buy you a drink.” He looked at his watch: “Don’t you think they’re coming back? It’s almost their time.” I looked out the window: it was dark out and still raining a little. “You think—with this weather?” But in the lobby the porter stopped us: “Luftgefahr Fifteen, meine Herren,” a serious raid on its way. They must have detected the planes ahead of time. I turned to Asbach and said cheerfully: “You were right, after all. What should we do? Take our chances outside or wait in here?” Asbach looked a little worried: “It’s just that I have my wife…”—“In my opinion, you don’t have time to go home. I would have given you Piontek, but he left already.” I thought. “We’d do better to wait here till it passes, you can go home afterward. Your wife will go to a shelter, she’ll be fine.” He hesitated: “Listen, Sturmbannführer, I’ll go call her. She’s pregnant, I don’t want her to worry.”—“Right. I’ll wait for you.” I went out onto the steps and lit a cigarette. The sirens began to wail, and the passersbys on the Königsplatz hurried along, anxious to find a shelter. I wasn’t worried: this annex of the ministry had an excellent bunker. I finished my cigarette as the flak opened up and returned to the lobby. Asbach was running down the stairs: “It’s fine, she’s going to her mother’s. It’s just next door.”—“Did you open the windows?” I asked him. We went down into the shelter, a block of solid concrete, well lit, with chairs, folding cots, and large casksful of water. Not many people were there: most of the civil servants went home early, because of the lines for shopping and the air raids. In the distance, it was beginning to thunder. Then I heard well-spaced, massive explosions: one by one they came closer, like the mammoth footsteps of a giant. At each impact the pressure of the air increased, pressing painfully on our ears. There was an immense roar, very close, I could feel the bunker’s walls tremble. The lights flickered and then went out all at once, plunging the shelter into darkness. A girl yelped in terror. Someone turned on a flashlight; others scraped matches. “Isn’t there an emergency generator?” another voice began, but was interrupted by a deafening explosion; rubble rained down from the ceiling, people cried out. I smelled smoke, the smell of explosives bit into my nose: the building must have been hit. The explosions drew off; through the ringing in my ears, I could dimly hear the throbbing of the squadrons. A woman was crying; a man’s voice grunted out curses; I lit my lighter and headed for the armored door. With the porter, I tried to open it: it was blocked, the stairway must have been obstructed by debris. Three of us rammed it with our shoulders and managed to open it enough to slip outside. Bricks were piled on the stairs; I climbed up to the ground floor, followed by a civil servant: the main entrance door had been blown off its hinges and hurled into the lobby; flames were licking the paneling and the porter’s lodge. I ran up the staircase, down a hallway cluttered with window frames and ripped-off doors, then up another floor, to my offices: I wanted to try to save the most important files. The iron balustrade on the staircase was bent: the pocket of my tunic caught on a piece of twisted metal and ripped open. Upstairs, the offices were burning and I had to turn back. In the hall
way, an employee was carrying a pile of files; another joined us, his face pale beneath the black traces of smoke and dust: “Leave that! The west wing is burning. A bomb came through the roof.” I had thought the attack was over, but again squadrons were rumbling in the sky; a series of explosions approached at a frightening speed, we ran for the basement, a massive explosion lifted me up and threw me into the stairway. I must have stayed there for a bit, stunned; I came to, blinded by a glaring white light that turned out to be a little flashlight; I heard Asbach shouting, “Sturmbannführer! Sturmbannführer!”—“I’m all right,” I muttered, getting up. In the glow from the fire in the entryway, I examined my tunic: the metal point had cut through the cloth, it was ruined. “The ministry is burning,” another voice said. “We have to get out.” With some other men we cleared the entrance to the bunker as well as we could, so everyone could climb out. The sirens were still wailing but the flak had fallen silent, the last planes were flying away. It was 8:30, the raid had lasted an hour. Someone pointed to some buckets and we formed a chain to fight the fire: it was laughable, in twenty minutes we had used up the water stored in the basement. The faucets didn’t work, the bombs must have burst the pipes; the porter tried to call the firemen, but the telephone was cut off. I recovered my overcoat from the shelter and went out into the square to examine the damage. The east wing looked intact, aside from the gaping windows, but part of the west wing had collapsed, and the neighboring windows vomited thick black smoke. Our offices must have been burning too. Asbach joined me, his face covered in blood. “Are you hurt?” I asked.—“It’s nothing. A brick.” I was still deafened, my ears were ringing painfully. I looked at the Tiergarten: the trees, lit up by several fires, had been smashed, broken, toppled—it looked like a wood in Flanders after an attack, in the books I read as a child. “I’m going home,” Asbach said. Anguish twisted his bloodstained face. “I want to find my wife.”—“Go on. Be careful of falling walls.” Two fire trucks arrived and maneuvered into position, but there seemed to be a problem with the water. The ministry employees were leaving, many carrying files that they put down a little farther away, on the sidewalks: for half an hour I helped them carry binders and papers; my own offices were unreachable in any case. A strong wind had arisen, and to the north, the east, and farther to the south, beyond the Tiergarten, the nighttime sky glowed red. An officer came over to tell us that the fires were spreading, but the ministry and the neighboring buildings seemed to me to be protected by the bend in the Spree on one side and the Tiergarten and Königsplatz on the other. The Reichstag, dark and closed, didn’t seem damaged.

  I hesitated. I was hungry, but I couldn’t count on finding anything to eat. At home I had some food, but I didn’t know if my apartment still existed. I finally decided to go to the SS-Haus and report for duty. I set off down the Freidensallee at a run: in front of me, the Brandenburg Gate stood under its camouflage nets, intact. But behind it, almost all of Unter den Linden seemed to be in flames. The air was dense with smoke and dust, thick and hot, I was beginning to have trouble breathing. Clouds of sparks burst forth, crackling, from the buildings on fire. The wind was blowing ever more strongly. On the other side of the Pariser Platz, the Armaments Ministry was burning, partially crushed under the impacts. Secretaries wearing civil defense metal helmets were bustling about in the rubble, recovering files there too. A Mercedes with a fanion stood parked to the side; among the crowd of employees, I recognized Speer, bare-headed, his face black with soot. I went over to greet him and offered him my help; when he saw me, he shouted something to me that I didn’t understand. “You’re burning!” he repeated.—“What?” He came toward me, took me by the arm, turned me around, and beat my back with his open hand. Sparks must have set fire to my overcoat, but I hadn’t felt anything. Confused, I thanked him and asked him what I could do. “Nothing, really. I think we’ve gotten out what we could. My own office took a direct hit. There’s nothing left.” I looked around: the French embassy, the former British embassy, the Bristol Hotel, the offices of IG Farben—everything was heavily damaged or burning. The elegant façades of the Schinkel town houses, next to the Gate, stood out against a background of fire. “How awful,” I muttered.—“It’s terrible to say,” Speer said pensively, “but it’s better that they’re concentrating on the cities.”—“What do you mean, Herr Reichsminister?”—“During the summer, when they attacked the Ruhr, I was terrified. In August, they attacked Schweinfurt, where our entire production of ball bearings is concentrated. Then again in October. Our production fell by sixty-seven percent. You may not realize it, Sturmbannführer, but no ball bearings, no war. If they concentrate on Schweinfurt, we capitulate in two months, three at the most. Here”—he waved his hand at the fires—“they’re killing people, wasting all their resources on our cultural monuments.” He gave a dry, harsh laugh: “We were going to rebuild everything anyway. Ha!” I saluted him: “If you don’t need me, Herr Reichsminister, I’ll keep going. But I wanted to tell you that your request is being considered. I’ll contact you soon to tell you where things stand.” He shook my hand: “Fine, fine. Good night, Sturmbannführer.”

  I had soaked my handkerchief in a bucket and was holding it over my mouth to go forward; I had also soaked my shoulders and cap. In the Wilhelmstrasse, the wind roared between the ministries and whipped the flames licking the empty windows. Soldiers and firemen were running everywhere, with little result. The Auswärtiges Amt looked severely hit, but the chancellery, a little farther on, had fared better. I was walking on a carpet of broken glass: in the entire street there wasn’t one window left unbroken. On the Wilhelmplatz some bodies had been stretched out near an overturned Luftwaffe truck; frightened civilians were still coming out of the U-Bahn station and looking around, horrified and lost; from time to time a blast could be heard, a delayed-action bomb, or else the muffled roar of a building collapsing. I looked at the bodies: a man without pants, his bloody buttocks grotesquely exposed; a woman with her stockings intact, but without a head. I thought it especially obscene that they were left there like that, but no one seemed to care. A little farther on, guards had been posted in front of the Aviation Ministry: passersbys shouted insults at them or sarcastic remarks about Göring, but didn’t linger, no crowd was forming; I showed my SD card and went through the cordon. I finally arrived at the corner of Prinz-Albrechtstrasse: the SS-Haus had no windows left, but otherwise didn’t seem damaged. In the lobby, troops were sweeping away the debris; officers were hoisting boards or mattresses to cover the gaping windows. In a hallway, I found Brandt giving instructions in a calm, flat voice: he was especially concerned with getting the telephone restored. I saluted him and informed him of the destruction of my offices. He nodded: “Well, we’ll take care of that tomorrow.” Since there didn’t seem to be much to do, I went next door, to the Staatspolizei; they were busy nailing up the doors that had been torn off, as well as they could; some bombs had struck nearby, an enormous crater disfigured the street a little farther on, and water was escaping from a burst pipe. I found Thomas in his office drinking schnapps with three other officers, unbuttoned, black with filth, laughing. “Look at you!” he exclaimed. “You’re a sorry sight. Have a drink. Where were you?” I briefly told him about my experiences at the ministry. “Ha! I was home already, I went down to the basement with the neighbors. A bomb came through the roof and the building caught fire. We had to break down the walls of the neighboring basements, several in a row, to come out at the end of the street. The whole street burned down and half of my building, including my apartment, collapsed. To top it all off, I found my poor convertible under a bus. In short, I’m ruined.” He poured me another glass. “Since misfortune is upon us, let us drink, as my grandmother Ivona used to say.”