We went back into the room and found that Heβ had adopted a crouched position beside his armchair. He was whistling tunelessly between his teeth. When he saw us, he straightened himself up and sat back in his chair, though his eyes continued to roll.
“So, Herr Heβ, what brought you to Britain?”
“Why do people fly to another country?” asked Heβ airily and paused before continuing. “They may have a commission to perform … They may have people they want to see … They may be going on holiday … They may be trying to escape from something.” Heβ stared at us as he stated the different possibilities as though he was trying to gauge our reaction to each.
“And which of these applies to you?”
“I did not come here on holiday. Ever since the British expropriated my family’s business in Egypt after the Great War, I vowed to have as little to do with them as possible. I only came here because I had no choice.”
“And why did you have no choice?”
“Oh, Mr Holmes, you can surely do better than that! Your friend leads us to believe that you are one of the great minds of Europe! Is Mychett Place in Surrey, where I was detained for a while soon after I arrived here, not close to where William of Ockham, the man with the famous razor, was born? Why are you so slow in applying that blade of his?” Heβ drew his hand slowly down his face in the gesture of one using a safety razor, and then suddenly pulled his hand in a slashing motion across his throat. “Has your chronicler here not quoted you as saying that once you exclude the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So exclude, my dear Mr Holmes, exclude.”
Holmes turned to me. “Did you have me say that?”
“On several occasions. And you said it on several occasions.”
“Have you any change in your pocket?” piped up Heβ almost before I could finish my sentence.
“Yes,” said Holmes.
“Any silver?”
“A good deal.”
“How many half-crowns?”
“I have five.”
“Ah, too few! Too few! How very unfortunate, Mr Holmes! However, such as they are, you can put them in your watch pocket. And all the rest of your money in your left trouser pocket. Thank you. It will balance you so much better like that.”
I do not think I have ever seen my friend so nonplussed. I noticed him momentarily consider doing as Heβ had bid, although he quickly thought better of it. Our other code for leaving the room had been to talk about the prolixity of oysters, but as Heβ’s non sequitur about the distribution of small change was itself a direct quote from “The Dying Detective”, I was reluctant to resort to it. I was unsurprised when Holmes rose without saying anything and made for the door again. I followed him.
“The case gathers in interest,” said Holmes calmly, although after he had said this he drew deeply on the cigarette he had lit immediately after we had left the interrogation room, so that its tip burned a fierce red. I was reassured by this response. If Holmes could see our problem as an intellectual challenge, then I was sure that he would bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. If he merely regarded Heβ as a madman, we were unlikely to progress. “Let us play his game. He has given us four reasons why he might have come to this country. One we have eliminated. Perhaps we should talk to Major Foley about what specific peace proposals or insight into German plans Heβ brought when he arrived here four years ago. That would reflect a commission to be performed.”
Foley was called.
“There were no proper peace proposals, Mr Holmes,” he said. “Hitler repeatedly made peace overtures in the early years of the War, but Heβ came with nothing new. And we had already warned Stalin that Hitler was about to attack him. But if he believed us, he took no action. Heβ told us nothing we did not know already even though his landing was only seven weeks before the Germans attacked the Soviets.”
“Very well,” said Holmes. “So he was not performing a commission and he was not here for a holiday.” I saw Foley start at the latter suggestion, but before he could respond, Holmes had spun around and, showing a surprising turn of speed, he went back into the room. I followed at a slightly slower pace.
“So why did you want to see the Duke of Hamilton?” asked Holmes.
“I understood that as a Duke he could tell Churchill to make peace.”
“Had you met the Duke of Hamilton previously?”
“I had seen him at a function in Berlin during the Olympics in 1936, but I had never spoken to him.”
“So why did you think he could tell Churchill to make peace. Neither in Germany nor in Britain can a duke tell a political leader what to do just because he is a duke.”
Heβ was silent.
“What were you afraid of, Herr Heβ?”
There was a long pause. When at last he spoke, Heβ’s voice was hushed to a conspiratorial whisper: “Have you heard,” and his eyes grew wide as he posed the question, “of the Wuwas?”
I could see from Holmes’s face that he had not.
“The Wuwas?”
“Yes, the Wunderwaffen.” Heβ nestled back in his chair and smiled as he saw the look of puzzlement on Holmes’s face. “Miracle weapons. I hear how they rain down on London. When in 1941 the British did not listen to me about Germany’s imminent invasion of the Soviet Union, I assumed that they would make common cause with the Germans against the Soviets and that I would be sent back to Germany. That was why I attempted suicide in June 1941. And my fear of the success of the miracle weapons was the reason why I attempted suicide in February of this year.”
“So you feared a German victory when you came here?”
“Have you heard of Ernst Rӧhm?”
“Head of the Storm-troopers, arrested and murdered in 1934.”
“Actually the chief of staff of the Storm-troopers. Hitler was its supreme leader, or Oberster Führer. Executed in 1934.”
“Are these distinctions important, Herr Heβ?”
“Do you know how Rӧhm was arrested and killed?”
“Herr Heβ, it is normally the interrogator who asks the questions.”
“Did you know that Hitler personally arrested Rӧhm? He arrived at a hotel where Rӧhm was staying and shouted ‘Rӧhm, du bist verhaftet’, or ‘Rӧhm, you are under arrest.’ Note the ‘Du’. Rӧhm was one of the very few people to whom Hitler said Du – the familiar form of your word ‘you’. Rӧhm and Hitler used it to each other because they had known each other right from the very beginning of the National Socialist movement. And Hitler said it while he was arresting Rӧhm and arranging for his death.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Have you not thought how strange it was for the Führer to make the personal arrest of one of the very few people he was on familiar terms with?”
Holmes was silent.
“He must have had a very strong reason for doing this. Would your Mr Churchill personally arrest Mr Atlee, and would he address him as Clem as he did so?”
“So what is your explanation?” asked Holmes, clearly puzzled by the direction of the conversation.
“Have you heard of Eva Braun?”
I could see from Holmes’s face that he had not, just as her name was entirely new to me.
“She is – or was – Hitler’s mistress,” said Heβ.
Holmes looked stunned, a feeling I shared. The name and even the idea that Hitler might have had a mistress were completely unknown to us. Heβ must have been able to see the effect he had had. With a beaming smile, he pressed home his advantage.
“Ah, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he exulted. “She goes everywhere Hitler goes, is well-known in the top circles of the NSDAP, and no one has heard of her. That is what puts German news organisations on a pinnacle for preserving secrecy.”
“You make her sound like my old adversary, Professor Moriarty.”
“Fräulein Braun would never have made it to being a professor. She is or was an intellectual vacuum. Hitler met her when she was a photogr
apher’s assistant. She is attractive to look at, knows something about photography and film-making – and that is the limit of her intellectual prowess. When history comes to examine her, it will find her a vapid disappointment. Rӧhm became her lover as well as Hitler. When Hitler found out about it, he insisted on arresting Rӧhm personally so as to minimise the chances of word about the various relationships coming out.”
“But when Rӧhm was arrested, all the press carried stories of his homosexuality. What makes you say that Rӧhm and this Eva Braun woman were lovers?”
“Don’t you say, Mr Holmes, that the press is a useful tool if you know how to use it? Our RMVP knows how to use the press.”
“RMVP?”
“Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the Imperial Ministry for the Enlightenment of the People and for Propaganda. Led by Dr Josef Gӧbbels. The stories about Rӧhm’s preferences were from the German press agency, which is fully under party control. The Vӧlkischer Beobachter, The People’s Observer, is not quite the same as your Observer, even though Germans edit both. People in Germany do not buy newspapers in order to turn to the back page to find out what is going on in the world of sport, or to the centre pages to read society tittle-tattle. They buy newspapers to find out what the government wants them to think. And then they do so. Our Observer will report as it is instructed by the government. It was not even necessary to have Rӧhm shot, to spread word of his supposed preferences, although doing so made the chances of anyone wanting to investigate it and exposing it as a lie much more remote.”
“So what does the fate of Ernst Rӧhm have to do with you?” “After Rӧhm had died, Eva Braun and I became lovers. When I visited the Führer’s headquarters, I used to eat separately from the rest of Hitler’s inner circle. Eva would make an excuse to join me. Sometimes our meal got extended.” Heβ’s face broke into a lop-sided leer at the memory.
“So you left Germany because you were afraid your relationship with Eva Braun had been discovered?”
“Ah, Herr Holmes, you have eliminated the impossible and arrived at the however-improbable truth! I congratulate you!” Heβ stared out and went through a fit of blinking. “After what happened to Rӧhm, I did not want to take the risk of the relationship between Eva Braun and me being found out.”
“Why did you think your relationship with Eva Braun might have come to the attention of Hitler?”
“Hitler had a new bodyguard called Otto Günsche. He was a tall good-looking man, much closer in age to Braun than I. Eva had switched her affections to him. I had sidelined Rӧhm by tipping off Hitler about the relationship between Rӧhm and Fräulein Braun. Rӧhm died. Günsche had surprised the secret of Eva Braun and me, so I thought the same thing would happen to me. Britain was the only place I could fly to. At the time, Germany had neutralised all its enemies apart from Britain. All the non-belligerent countries would have sent me back. Only Britain would regard me as a trophy worth retaining.”
“Did Hitler not punish Braun for her infidelity?”
“My dear Mr Holmes! We Germans are a civilised race when it comes to how we treat ladies. We do not mobilise them like you do and put them to work in arms factories. We do not halt the production of their cosmetic products for the war effort. We allow those in domestic service to stay in domestic service. And we do not punish them for their side jumps.” And here Heβ stood up, pulled up the bottom of his over-long jacket as though he were a woman raising her skirts, pranced first one way, then the other, and sat down again.
“Side-jumps?” asked Holmes calmly.
“We do not punish them for their …” Heβ paused for a second as he sought the right English word, “… indiscretions. We leave that to the English and their Henry VIII.”
“What can you tell us about Eva Braun and Hitler?”
“They became lovers in the early thirties. Hitler was not a very ardent or attentive lover and so Eva sought solace in the arms of others. After Rӧhm, it was I. It was easy to make the excuse that the Führer wanted me so I could disappear from Ilse, my wife. And with the Führer constantly travelling around, it was easy for me to have time with Eva Braun. She was always whisked out of the room whenever anything of substance was discussed and, since I and the other leading figures in the senior circle of ministers and advisers had overlapping responsibilities, it was easy for me to slip out too. I expect that Günsche shot the Führer when his liaison with Braun was discovered in the last days of the battle for Berlin, as he wanted to protect himself from the same fate that had met Rӧhm, and the fate which would have met me had I stayed in Germany. And Günsche will make sure the body is destroyed. The Germans will want to know that their leader died a hero’s death and will not want any examination of the powder marks on Hitler’s body to show that the fatal shot was fired from a German standard issue at a distance greater than at arm’s length. That would suggest it was the result of some vulgar matter of the heart rather than a hero seeking the free death.”
“The free death?”
“Committing suicide rather than falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks.”
“You make yourself very clear.”
“Now you know the truth, can I have some unpoisoned food? What they give me causes me to become irrational.” He slumped back in his chair, stared up at the ceiling and started whistling.
At a nod from Holmes, we retreated to the corridor.
“Do you believe him?” I asked Holmes.
“I am sure,” said Holmes, “that Heβ can defend himself if he wants to, against any charges. We must remember that as much as establishing guilt, the forthcoming trial will be about finding out what happened and why, and that will be easier to do if Heβ is there. He is intermittently lucid and when he is not lucid, he does not talk about matters of substance. Once the final terms of any surrender are worked out, and the Allies are in full control of Germany, there will be no reason not to send him back. We should find out his reaction to the prospect of that.”
We went back into the room.
“Herr Heβ,” said Holmes. “You do realise that you are almost certainly to be indicted as a war-criminal and tried in Germany? You are likely to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“From 1933 to September 1939,” replied Heβ in a voice of the utmost serenity, “there was no war and I was the legally appointed deputy leader of a sovereign nation at peace. Accordingly, no charges can arise. From May 1941 until now, I have been a prisoner. Between September 1939 and May 1941 I had only a modest role in the workings of my nation’s government. Everything was decided by Hitler, whose company – for reasons you will now perhaps understand – I took pains to avoid. Therefore, I was not there when the major decisions were made. A Deputy Führer is still a deputy and my role, insofar as I had one, was largely confined to agreeing with what the Führer said. As there is apparently now no danger of being shot on sight if I return to Germany, I can face going back with equanimity.”
This was spoken with Heβ looking unwaveringly straight at us. It was as if the outlandish version of Heβ that we had intermittently seen during our prolonged interview was a persona that had never existed.
We went to consult with Foley again.
Holmes spoke first. “Heβ has lurched from implausible raving to calm rationality with every shade in between. Much of what he has said is completely new to me and I am unclear what it tells us about his state of mind or about the state of affairs in Germany.”
Foley said “We have had no way of substantiating the more outrageous things he has said to us. We know so little about what is happening in Germany other than that there is chaos.”
Holmes smiled and said “I have my methods and I propose to apply them to see what I can substantiate. We will report back to you in a week.”
Holmes and I were brought back to Fenny Stratford and I could see that Holmes had a plan for what to do next, but he seemed reluctant to tell me.
After we had been back for a day, he finally s
poke. “It is a very major responsibility I take onto myself, but I suppose I can let you into the secret of my war work as you have been given carte blanche to write a full and honest account of this case. The visitors you have seen come to our cottage – Alan, who wears the gas-mask, and the others, who are colleagues of his – are amongst the greatest minds in the country. They are based at the great house in Bletchley Park and have been engaged in breaking German military codes. Alan has been leading the team that has done this and occasionally has asked me for help on difficult details of the coding structure. My trifling monograph on codes, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers, was apparently a great source of inspiration to them. When they decrypt a German military message, they enter any personal details of anyone they find out about onto a card file, so that files on millions of German personnel are kept. I wonder if we could get Alan to check into the existence of Otto Günsche and Eva Braun for us?”
Alan called the next day, wearing his gas-mask as usual and displaying all the other eccentricities to which I have already alluded. I was asked to join him and Holmes in our tiny sitting room. I noted that Alan used the bicycle chain he brought into the house to secure his tea mug to a radiator. Holmes asked him to see what he could find out about Otto Günsche and Eva Braun, though I noted he gave Alan no indication of why he wanted the information. The voice that assented to Holmes’s request was somewhat muffled behind the mask, but I was not surprised when, a few days later, Alan returned with an envelope in his hand.
For his second visit, Alan retained the gasmask over his eyes, but now he turned it upside down, leaving his mouth and nose clear so that the breathing apparatus stuck into the air like the spout on a teapot. Accordingly, his voice was much easier to understand.
“We know Günsche as a Sturmbannführer or major in the Leibstandarte,” he began. “That is to say, the personal bodyguard of Adolf Hitler. He started in the role in 1940, had prolonged periods at the front in 1941 to 1943, but has been Hitler’s personal adjutant since March 1944. We know nothing about any Eva Braun. We have no record of anyone under that name, but all our focus has been on military personnel and so we have very few records of women in our indexes.”
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