“We are aware of that Reich Minister, but If we don’t find a resolution to the case then the police will be discredited.”
“No,” said Goebbels. “It would be disappointing perhaps. A number of prominent people would probably lose interest in you; however, since their interests are in conflict, that could even be to your advantage in the end.”
“Thank you, Herr Reich Minister.” Nebe would have clicked his heels, but he had kicked off his shoes. He squatted fast and grabbed them from under the desk and, holding them under his chin, he clapped the heels together in front of the phone. Goebbels chuckled and hung up. Nebe put down his shoes and then the phone. He rested his fingertips on the desk and stared in front of him.
“What did he say?” asked Nolte.
Nebe let out a long breath and smiled. “He said to relax because we’re fucked no matter what we do.” He slipped into his shoes. “So, let’s go home.”
DECEMBER 24TH, 1939
IN THE DAYS THAT HAD followed Nebe’s conversation with Goebbels Georg was placed under strict solitary confinement. None of them cared for waiting but that was all there was to do until the Reich Minister meticulously orchestrated the diffusion of the situation. Solitary could be justified as interrogation technique, some of Nebe’s colleagues even considered it “ingenious cruelly,” the calm before the storm of family confrontation and torture. Nebe was really only interested in buying time to review every aspect of the confession thus far and to insulate he and his immediate colleagues from Elser, a respite to gain perspective. He knew Georg would hate it, he even felt bad about it, although of course he mentioned that to no one. His particular variety of sadism was more of a niche fetishism that a general aberration of character, as such that type of torment offered him no pleasure.
After Hitler and Stalin had summarily divided up Poland, giving the French and English a pretext to declare war on Germany without actually having to do anything at the time, there was intense debate among Hitler’s advisors as to what the next step should be. That internal uncertainty defused to some extent the immediate pressure of what to do about Georg. Goebbels’s propaganda machine through calculated manipulation of the press had successfully diminished the attempt to the status of an unfortunate accident. That meant for all intents and purposes that ground for Elser’s disappearance had already been laid. The interrogation had officially been relegated to going through the motions: because there was a book they were obliged to go by it.
The mere thought of the process of bringing in the family and then pointlessly torturing the man had set Nebe’s teeth on edge. Certainly any skills he actually possessed would have been better applied anywhere else but the situation had passed into the realm of absurdity, beyond hope of return. Nebe was standing outside his office with Nolte waiting for the situation to unfold. It was almost noon and they were both clanking with tension. Then Brandt went by with Elser’s mother, the wreck of a once pretty woman. The frown lines were cut so deep at the corners of her mouth it resembled the hinged jaw of a marionette. Georg’s sister followed with a dizzy dignity, looking off in odd directions and smiling inappropriately. Brandt opened the door to where Georg waited between a brace of Wachtmeisters. Georg and his mother fell toward each other, throwing their arms about each other, holding each other up.
Georg was saying, “Mama, I’m sorry,” over and over and his mother was saying, “It’s alright, baby, my sweet baby …” over and over. It was a two-part fugue.
Nebe lurched away and nearly ran for the toilet. Nolte turned back from the door and started to follow him, but Nebe made an about-face and put a hand against his chest. “No, you stay here in case he cracks.”
By the time he threw open the door, he was running with his mouth full of bile. He made it to a stall and threw up with a great green gush into the toilet. He leaned over it, inspecting the spiderweb cracks in the porcelain bowl then looked around for toilet paper. There wasn’t any and he used his handkerchief to wipe up the flecks of vomit that had splashed out to speckle the walls and floor. He looked at it and threw it away, cursing. He walked to the sink and splashed cold water on his face and neck, letting it trickle down his back. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a criminal. The man he had been interrogating for nearly seven weeks still didn’t look like a criminal but he, the officer in charge of the investigation, could easily be mistaken for a vagrant or a gambler down on his luck. He leaned against the wall and held out his hand to see if it were trembling. It wasn’t and he abruptly felt better. He lit a cigarette. It tasted harsh, but somehow that was reassuring. He thought about it. It was a question of motive. The guy hadn’t done it for fame or love or money and that’s all there is. There was satisfaction in his craftsmanship, but couldn’t he have gotten that by building another cuckoo clock? He apparently took no pleasure in killing and was genuinely shocked to discover that people had been killed by what he’d done. He had known it on some level, of course, but he hadn’t thought about it.
So, what was his motive? He claimed that he was trying to stop the war, but what was in it for him? The problem was that the attempt appeared to be an altruistic act and that was intolerable.
Since antiquity philosophers had been able to detect only one altruistic act in all of nature: dolphins pushing exhausted swimmers back to shore. Even that had come under question because many maintained that dolphins simply enjoy pushing things, so the only swimmers heard from were those pushed back toward shore. Even dolphins were easy to frame on circumstantial evidence.
Gibbon had written The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire covering 1,500 years of history without once finding it necessary to suspect anyone of a decent motive. But, in the case of Elser, a bad motive didn’t fit the facts; there was simply nowhere to put it. It was intolerable and, worse, it would never be believed. The Gestapo would say that they were trying to turn the man into a hero, a plaster saint, and Nebe himself would inevitably be killed. He had to find a lie that would be believed and that was possible only by a selective suppression of the facts that would not look like a cover-up. He leaned his forehead against the cool tile and was comforted by it.
He thought wistfully of Maurice Bauvard, that Swiss theology student on vacation from a seminary in Alsace Lorraine. He had also come to Munich to kill the Führer. He’d bought a 7.65 automatic in Basel, a typical amateur with a little shit pistol who had stalked the Führer around until his money ran out. He was caught on a train without a ticket and the police found the gun on him. He immediately confessed that he intended to kill the Führer. Like a typical amateur, he didn’t really want to hurt anyone, he just wanted to attract attention. The Gestapo would have never known about the intended assassination if he hadn’t thrust his confession upon them. Nonetheless the Gestapo obligingly took him off the train, executed a perfunctory “investigation,” then cut his head off, another success story. No one ever asked about his motives, no one was even vaguely interested. Even so, it would have been easy to spin that it into a Catholic conspiracy, masterminded by the Pope, and that would have been fun and useful too. Why did they have to build a conspiracy on such poor material as Georg Elser? Nebe thought, and then he knew the answer: Elser had almost succeeded. That demanded an explanation, a theory at least if not a full-blown conspiracy.
Nebe ground out his third cigarette and walked back to his office. He could see through the glass that Elser was alone with Brandt. The women were gone. Nolte was outside the door, arms crossed and leaning against the wall.
“Well?” said Nebe, but Nolte simply shook his head and opened the door. Nebe walked in with Nolte behind him. Elser and Brandt were both smiling at him. They seemed glad to see him. Brandt had just finished typing Georg’s confession. He rolled it out of the typewriter and walked it over, oaring it with the gesture of a head waiter offering a menu. Georg automatically reached for a pen.
“No,” said Nebe, “read it first.” It was a one-page summary and Georg took a few minutes, read it then re-read it,
his lips moving in time with his eyes. Nebe thought longingly about the bottle of schnapps in the bottom drawer of his desk. Finally, Georg stood up and turned his face questioningly from one detective to another. He’s trying to act stupid, thought Nebe. Did that prove conspiracy? No, either he is stupid or it proves that he thinks we’re stupid.
“Something wrong?” asked Nebe.
Georg looked up at him in astonishment. “It says at the bottom that I set the clocks for 3:00 p.m.”
Nebe was nonchalant. “So? Change it and put your initials next to it. To prove the change was made with your approval of course.”
Georg suddenly had an idea. You could almost hear the wheels go round. He smiled. “You put in that mistake deliberately,” said Georg, “so I’d catch it. So you could prove I had read it.”
Nebe smiled at him. “You have put in a few deliberate mistakes yourself, Georg. We know you’re a British agent. We just need to hear you say it. Then it would be over. It’s purely a formality.”
“I’m a British agent!”
“That’s not quite enough. It was a one-man job so there was no reason to involve anyone else once it started. But you didn’t start alone. How did the British contact you?”
Georg jiggled his head and shrugged and flapped his hands, all in different directions. He was sure Nebe had gone insane, though he hadn’t seemed that crazy to start with. That’s the way it happens sometimes, one moment they were here and suddenly they were gone and unreachable. He couldn’t follow Nebe up and down the winding staircases of his delusions. It was obvious there was no way to satisfy him. “No one! There was no one!”
“You would never make a decision like that by yourself,” said Nolte, leaning into it. “You’re sane enough not to trust your own judgment. You’d have to talk it over with someone else, a close friend maybe? It’s only natural.”
Nebe was waving his hands back and forth like the signal at a railway crossing, flagging Nolte to stop. Nolte looked puzzled, or at least tried to.
“No,” said Georg and Nebe let out a wheezy sigh.
“Georg,” said Nebe, “I dislike torture, for a lot of reasons. It works perfectly if you know exactly what it is you want a man to say. But as a means of extracting information, well, it’s unreliable at best. If there’s no way to double check a man’s story, it’s completely pointless.”
“Yes,” said Georg but Nebe kept talking, patiently explaining.
“It is standard European police procedure for extracting the names of accomplices after confession. Did you know that?”
“Actually, no,” said Georg.
“No, of course you wouldn’t,” said Nebe. “Do you want to change your story in any way? You can’t undo the harm you’ve done, but you can stop your friends from doing any more. That would be a service to the Reich. It would be …,” he paused visibly trying to think of a believable promise, “taken into consideration.” He offered, “You want to tell us their names.”
Georg thought he sounded more troubled than concern for his career would explain, almost afraid. He looked at Nolte, who seemed afraid too, he was making faces of approval.
“You know I did it alone,” said Georg. “Why do you keep asking the same stupid questions?”
“Because it’s my job,” said Nebe, “and if we don’t uncover a conspiracy,” he paused again, “we might be seriously inconvenienced.” Georg shook his head, baffled, or trying to act like it. Brandt and Nolte stood up. Georg looked from one to the other then Nebe pressed a buzzer underneath his desk.
They took Georg downstairs for a very long time to a subbasement and into a windowless, soundproofed room. They strapped him into a heavy wooden chair with an elaborate leather harness that left only his mouth free to move.
Two uniformed Wachtmeisters entered and with utmost efficiency methodically beat on his shins with night sticks. The beating was supposed to alternate with questions, with promises and fake arguments about whether the beating had gone too far or not far enough, anything to keep him uncertain what was going to happen next. That was the only effective use of fear. Predictability led to stupor and indifference or, worst of all, to courage.
But the Wachtmeisters beat on and on with a slow steady rhythm. They took no pleasure in the work, which was one of the qualifications for the job. It kept things from getting out of hand. Occasionally, they looked to Nebe, but he kept gesturing for them to continue, as though he were waiting for Georg to scream ‘Stop, I’ll tell you everything.’ But Georg just screamed.
As interrogation, it made as little sense as trying to seduce a girl by throwing snowballs at her. But Nebe didn’t expect it to work; he simply did it so he couldn’t be accused of having left anything undone. Stupor and indifference were overcoming the interrogators. Nebe was startled to find himself wondering if von Eberstein might not have been right after all. Could Georg actually have been completely innocent? Yet another confession made by an innocent man desperate to save his family.
No, he knew too much; in essence no one else could have done what he had done. Had they told him? Fed him his confession and had him repeat it back. Nebe couldn’t remember. He began to wonder how crazy he really was, because this whole situation was certainly not sanity. Then one of the Unterwachtmeisters swung high and caught the inside of the knee cap and consciousness went out like a blown candle. Georg slumped in his straps. The inquisitors dumped a bucket of water on him, just like in the movies, thought Nebe, and held ice to the back of his neck, but Georg stayed out. Nebe wondered why he had to be here and then he remembered. He had to be present or it wasn’t an interrogation, it was just frustration, and that was contrary to regulations.
One of the Wachtmeisters dug his wristwatch out of his pocket. You do not beat a man while wearing a wristwatch; he took Georg’s pulse. “One hundred and forty-eight,” he said. “His heart’s burning out. You want to call the doctor and give him a shot?”
“Let him sleep it off,” said Nebe, “or pretend to, or whatever it is he’s doing. Maybe he’ll go comatose or die of an aneurism. …”
“And if he dies under interrogation …” Nolte was mortified; they’d all be out directing traffic in Warsaw in the rain.
“Call the doctor.”
The Wachtmeisters tilted the chair on its back to prevent shock, then Nolte and Nebe went out into the corridor. Nebe stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit a match, holding it two handed as though there was a wind.
“Why can’t we smoke in there?” asked Nolte.
Nebe took a deep drag and blew the smoke at Nolte. “That’d be ‘Undermining the Majesty of the Law.’”
Nolte pulled out a cigarette as well but paused. Nebe thought he was waiting to have it lit; outrageous impertinence to a superior officer, but Nolte was staring at Nebe’s hands.
“You’re trembling,” observed Nolte. There was amazement in his voice and a touch of delight.
“Shut up,” said Nebe and with difficulty steered a lit match to the end of Nolte’s cigarette.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Nolte, but that wasn’t really a change of subject.
“Of course he is. To get through a beating like that …” he shook the memory off. “If he’d known what was coming he’d have been scared.”
“Maybe he was,” said Nolte, almost supportively.
“No,” said Nebe. He was staring at the floor and getting smoke in his eyes. He rubbed them. “They sweat, their eyes get flat and shiny like they had tinfoil behind them; you can’t control that. He was trusting as a dog.” And Nebe managed to stop talking. If his voice had cracked, Nolte pretended not to notice.
“What now?” Nolte asked in a dead voice.
“We could take him to the Dornier works at Friedrichshafen, sew him in a sack and leave him in the wind tunnel. Or hang him on the Bolger swing. They’re doing marvelous things with electric shock these days.”
“A man can’t even remember his own name after that,” said Nolte.
“I know that,” sai
d Nebe, “but it’s new, untested technology. We wouldn’t be entirely responsible.” Strangely, anger helped him to stop shaking. He held out his hand and it was satisfactorily steady, but Nolte had carefully averted his eyes. They walked down the hall. It was as humiliating as Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.
“None of this makes sense,” said Nolte.
Nebe sighed yet again. “Why should it? It doesn’t have to because it has already happened.”
Nolte was agitated. “You going to say that in the report?”
Nebe paused and drew himself up into a stance suitable for reviewing troops or waiting in front of a firing squad. “I’m going to say that he appears to have acted alone and that there is no evidence of contact with any foreign government or underground group.”
Nolte was looking at him as though he had never seen him before. “We were told to find a conspiracy,” said Nolte. “Specific orders.”
Nebe smiled. “Exactly, so let’s call Berlin and get it over with.” They went back to Nebe’s office. Nebe looked a little happier as soon as he was back sitting behind his desk.
“Who are you going to call?” asked Nolte.
“Does it really matter?” said Nebe. “They’re all on the line.” He called SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. He talked for a long time with no apparent reply. Then Nolte heard the Reichsführer say something loud enough for the noise to be heard across the room. It ended on a high note. It was a question. “Yes, he acted alone,” Nolte heard Nebe say into the phone. The voice at the other end was screaming unintelligibly a man who had never before needed to raise his voice. “I understand all that,” Nebe said into the phone, “but it seems to be the truth.”
“What do you mean ‘seems’ to be?” Even Nolte heard the Reichsführer’s shrill voice clearly, all the way from Berlin.
The Führer Must Die Page 17