“To the best of our ability,” said Nebe and the voice on the phone screeched a series of remarks about that. “We did,” said Nebe, “of course we did. If we go any further, he’ll die under interrogation. What do you want us to say he said?” The Reichsführer was screaming again. Nolte heard a reference to betrayal and the treaty of Versailles. “Yes,” said Nebe, “we will at once.” He kept holding the phone long after the Reichsführer had hung up.
When Nebe clanged open the door to his cell Georg slowly gave him his full attention then jumped around on the metal shelf of the bunk in a frantic and dissipating search for a position in which he could not be surprised. He gave up, panting.
“I’m sorry, Georg,” said Nebe, “but the Führer doesn’t believe us. You’re going to have to go through all of this again. We’re moving you to Gestapo HQ in Berlin.”
Georg was quite naked. He had been savagely beaten and his legs were purple and black splotched with red. Below the knee, most of the skin had burst and peeled back from the swollen red meat underneath. Nebe couldn’t think of anything except that they’d have to put him under full anesthesia even to get his pants on. He called the doctor to shoot him full of cocaine and Georg got very happy. He began singing something inane from The Student Prince. It was Christmas. Nebe wanted to say Merry Christmas, but was afraid that he’d start crying and kissing Georg all over. Only Reinhard Heydrich could get away with interrogation methods like that.
Cultural Musings
Fascism and art: Anouilh’s version of Antigone was first performed in Paris in 1942 during the Nazi occupation. A plot summary makes it sound like a plea for resistance, but not the way he tells it. In Anouilh’s version, Antigone’s motives don’t make sense even to herself, it’s a blind compulsion, and her real motive is to get herself killed doing something romantic because she can’t face the banality of getting married and raising children. Creon is the hero in this play because he deals with the world as it is and makes the necessary compromises. The Nazis loved it.
To be fair, no nation can be at its cultural best under foreign occupation and all of the French plays of the time are morally subversive in a very sinister way. The most famous example is The Madwoman of Chaillot, which argues that the solution to the world’s problems is the mass extermination of all unpleasant people. It argues further that only a madwoman would be capable of this, but the kind of madness necessary is really a higher form of sanity because there is no other solution. Giradoux had the tact to die in 1944, before the liberation. If he had survived the war, he would have gone to the guillotine for Collaborationist Art. This may seem a little severe but the one nice thing about the French is that they take Art seriously.
This Antigone went further. It had language even in its costumes. In the play police uniforms were represented by having someone wear a dark-blue trench coat over a white dinner jacket. Certainly this play is a sedative, apology for all forms of authority, still it is possible to see in this something of the French attitude of elegance as authority and, perhaps, something of the national character itself.
Hegel said there were three kinds of tragedy:
Tragedy of character is where the hero is laid low by a single flaw of personality. There are many examples, but even Shakespeare couldn’t always make it work. Desdemona didn’t have to drop that handkerchief at precisely the wrong moment. Romeo didn’t have to drink the poison quite so quickly. Edgar could have arrived at the Tower five minutes sooner and saved Cordelia’s life. That was melodrama not really tragedy.
Tragedy of fate, like Oedipus or Macbeth, is where you’re screwed no matter what you do and by trying to escape your fate you run smack into it. That’s called dramatic irony. That works, but those were the only two examples he could proffer. How could he have imagined a situation such as that Nebe and his colleagues were facing?
Then there was perfect tragedy: the conflict between public and private loyalties. Both sides, being perfectly/utterly right are of course incapable of backing down, catastrophe is inevitable. Hegel knew of only one example: Antigone. Elser came later and had the misfortune of having inconvenienced the Third Reich so they would make sure his story faded away.
The German theatricality of the police was embodied by the Gestapo. Its full name was the Geheime Staatspolizei—the Secret State Police. It was, supposedly, a plain clothes organization, but in the absence of uniforms, they took to costumes. Black leather raincoats and chocolate Tyrolean hats with a green feather were especially popular. Even their headquarters had the quality of stage sets. They were all reconverted office buildings and security was impossible. Escapes were common, not that there was anywhere to go. Certainly, there was no real police work, no investigation since they relied entirely on informants rather than the assembling of evidence. Accusation was enough.
As theater, the Gestapo could be compared to the games of the late coliseum where Greek tragedies were re-enacted with real killings: an Antigone who was really hung, an Oedipus who really had his eyes gouged out. Dramatically, it was very effective. The Gestapo, occasionally, did hire an experienced police officer but almost in the same way as a movie director might hire him; as a technical advisor to provide some realistic detail.
Artur Nebe was perfect for that job. He had never taken anything very seriously and had been most successful at it for the entirety of his adult life. He had changed sides many times but always just before his faction began to lose popularity. It had begun to look as though his defection was an omen if not a deciding factor. It created the illusion of almost supernatural power, indistinguishable from the real thing because it was never challenged. He had done the equivalent of tossing a coin and having it come up heads ten times in a row. By that point, if the coin came up tails, there were enough men to stare it down and say: it looks like tails but it must be heads because that man said so.
Most men, knowing that they were standing on thin air, would have given in to panic, or a belief in their own magic, which would have killed them even faster. But Nebe’s cynicism saved him time and again. He believed that he would only be a Nazi for a few months longer. He was confident that the war against France would be a disaster, that is, unless Hitler’s generals managed to kill the Führer first, but Nebe hoped they wouldn’t. He’d had enough and was looking forward to working with the French army occupation. He spoke fluent French and so would be recognised as a civilized man. All he had to do was get Georg’s perfect tragedy off his back and bide his time.
JANUARY 1ST, 1940
NEBE AND NOLTE WERE SMOKING in the men’s toilet. Nolte, always the straight man, asked, “Do we really have to smoke in the toilet? I feel like I’m back in school again.” The decor was actually more like a whorehouse. That particular toilet had been the executive washroom of whatever civilian organization has used the building previously. The faucets were gold plated, the sinks were shaped like seashells and the window and mirrors were framed with thick burgundy velvet.
“Führer’s orders,” said Nebe. “No smoking, even at a book burning.” Nolte believed him. Nebe dropped his cigarette and stamped it out on the carpeted floor as Brandt walked in and quickly picked it up and threw it away.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Brandt, “a German worker trying to kill the Führer.”
But Nebe had come to consider it totally sensible. There were hundreds, probably thousands of German workers who would be delighted to kill the Führer if only they could find someone to order them to do it. There were plenty of foreigners as well such as General Oster who was in the habit of carrying a pistol in his pocket to shoot the Führer just in case he gave the order for the attack on France. There was Colonel MacFarlane, the British military attaché to Berlin. His apartment was less than three hundred yards from the reviewing stand for all major parades. He could have potted Hitler out of the window at any time. For a big game hunter like the colonel, it was an easy shot but he wouldn’t make the decision by himself. He wrote to the foreign office, begging for or
ders, but no one in the foreign office would take the responsibility either, so the Führer lived on.
But Elser hadn’t needed marching orders and there was nothing mystical about that, it was just bad luck. Nebe had once been interested in small-unit tactics and had read the field manuals of all the major armies. They were fascinating, especially those of the Americans. They were extremely well written by the best technical writers but, unfortunately, they were paid by the word so they went on and on about even the simplest points.
Nebe remembered the advice on the selection of platoon sniper: “He must be intelligent; the predator must always be smarter than his prey. He must be a loner, not a sulking adolescent, but the real thing: the one man who doesn’t need or even want the emotional support of the people around him. He must be a man with no pleasures but delight in his own precision. Men like that,” the manual said, “are one or two out of a hundred.” Usually they had cowboy jobs like long-distance trucker, so they slipped through life unnoticed. When you found one, you made him a sniper. It was the only thing he was good for and he was perfect for the job.
Elser had the sniper mentality. Of course, it took more than that. It took a man with nothing better to do and nothing to lose. Men like that were common enough but almost none of them were opposed to the war precisely because they had nothing to lose. The social upheaval that accompanied every war might get them back in the game for one more long-shot last chance. A man like that, opposed to the war and with nothing to lose, they were one in ten at most. And when it came to a man with Elser’s skills, his quirks and opportunities, a born killer who was also a skilled clockmaker with easy access to high explosives, then an easy calculation with very few assumptions showed that men like that would be fewer than one in 200 million. If there were 20 million men in Germany between the ages of 18 and 60, the odds were ten-to-one against there being even one. But there was one. Georg Elser was just an unlucky roll of the dice. Q.E.D.
And yet …
Those were only remote, enabling causes; they made it easy but they did not in themselves prompt him to action. They were perhaps necessary but not sufficient. Something more was required. Well, there was more. He made cuckoo clocks, an embarrassing occupation at the best of times. But now his art was obsolete and unemployable; it could do nothing to affect the forces acting on the people he cared about, which wouldn’t be that serious if the result was simply beautiful but its value was unclear even on its own terms. It was the only thing he was good at; to do anything else at all would be a total sacrifice benefiting no one. He had the craftsman’s itch, that lurking dark desire to create and his art no longer made sense. The prompt to action came built in. He had to save his world but he could only do it with a cuckoo clock. And he had almost succeeded. Q.E.D.
And yet …
The theory of probability could be applied only to repeated events, like rolling dice or tossing a coin. Applied to unique events its terms were undefined and you generated paradoxes very quickly. The textbook example was: what is the probability that Antony and Cleopatra kissed on their first date? If it had already happened then the probability of it happening was one. If it didn’t happen the probability was zero, otherwise “probability” was undefined. John Maynard Keynes had tried to evade the problem by considering unique events representative of some larger sample class. If instead of “Anthony and Cleopatra” you said “a heavy-duty seductress and an over-the-hill general doing the middle-aged crazies,” the probability that they kissed on their first date would be rather high. But you couldn’t assign a number to it. And the purpose of mathematics was to go into a problem and come out with a number that, in some sense, represented the solution. Anyone who told you anything else was full of shit. But you could assign a number to it, any number you wanted, it would be in the way you chose the sample class. So that was out.
And yet …
Being German was not a unique event; there were certainly enough of them for random sampling. But Elser was unique. The argument would hold only if it could be proved that the assemblage of Elser’s qualities were necessary for the assassination, if there were no other way it could have been done. And that was ridiculous, the armored glass on the Führer’s limo was only twenty-five millimeters thick, it might have stopped a small caliber bullet but a soldier’s rifle could have blown him away at any time. So, where were all the others? The English, Jews, and Communists all had clear and acceptable motives for an assassination and the resources of entire nations behind them. Why hadn’t they tried to kill the Führer? Obviously, they were insane; another way of saying that there was no rational explanation, which in itself was not an explanation.
And yet …
He didn’t have to explain the Jews, the English, and the Communists. He only had to explain Georg Elser, and that was an event as random and unpredictable as the decay of the radium atom. Elser was just an unlucky roll of the dice.
But, the Gestapo didn’t believe in the sovereignty of chance and so they felt surrounded by intrigue. They weren’t mathematicians and so, to Nebe, they were lower than beasts. “It’s so stupid, I can’t even get angry,” said the beast next to him, looking at a scar on his knuckle, “it’s just sad and dumb.”
“The slave mentality,” Nebe said dutifully. “We’re finally beginning to win and he can’t handle it. He thinks it must be a mistake.”
The second beast hissed through his teeth, “Wish he were a Jew.”
“Well, he is a Communist.” Brandt had the look of a man having the same practical joke played on him for the third time.
Nebe elaborated, “He voted communist in 1933.”
“Well,” said Brandt, “shouldn’t that wrap it up?”
“How else was a worker supposed to vote?” Nebe gazed at Georg intently, as if waiting for him to finally get it and start to play along. “You do what’s expected of you. That way there’s nothing to think about and it gets to be habit. But the attempt was unexpected because you don’t usually try to solve your problems by killing people. It’s not a habit, so you stopped to think about it. What did you think?”
“The Führer must die,” replied George.
“Why?”
“I’ve told you that.”
“Tell us again.”
Gestapo inspectors and police detectives were as much alike as chess pieces from two different sets. It made sense. If you were the Gruppenführer, you would choose your assistants so that they couldn’t possibly replace you. One would be a little stupid and very physical, preferably handsome since you wanted all forms of authority working for you at once, and the other to do your thinking for you, as smart as possible but with a real dislike for making decisions. Nolte was the smart one without leadership ability. Brandt was the beef.
Georg couldn’t find a reply. Nebe regarded the ceiling. Angels blowing trumpets had been spooned out of the plaster moldings that were layered on like cake frosting. Nebe lurched back and slapped the arms of his chair.
“He might change his story the second time but not the tenth or the fiftieth. Give us all a break,” said Nolte in a disinterested voice.
Nebe drew his automatic. It was an American .45 worn gangster style in a shoulder holster. He didn’t trust the 9 mm. He fired a shot into the ceiling and skinny sharp-faced men, wearing pinched suits and fixed stares, erupted out of the stairwells, guns drawn and looking dedicated.
They took Georg downstairs to an auditorium and sat him between two uniformed guards. It was the gray army uniform with a metal garget hanging by a chain around the neck, signifying: Sicherheitsdienst—the Gestapo’s competition.
When Nebe and Nolte entered an hour later with a girl stenographer, Georg was holding a clasp knife in one hand and a Walther P38 in the other, waving them at one of the guards. “Try this,” Georg said in a triumphant voice.
Nebe and Nolte ponderously drew their guns and dove among the auditorium seats with all the exasperation of cops who had achieved desk jobs and never anticipated that they would ha
ve to move fast again. The guard grabbed his gun from Georg and swiveled it around wildly, not knowing which way to point it. Quite casually, Georg pocketed the clasp knife as though that were completely natural. Nothing happened. Still crouching behind a row of seats, Nebe and Nolte peeped over the top to find the explanation for the silence.
The stenographer was kneeling on a seat in the row in front of them, looking down at them with motherly concern. Both guards had their guns out and were looking to Nebe for instructions.
“What’s wrong?” asked the first guard in a hurt tone.
“He had your gun!” screamed Nebe.
“Oh,” said the guard, “he made me a custom grip for my pistol. Hand carved.” And he held it aloft like a trophy to display a hand-carved custom grip that would flatter an Olympic match pistol.
“I want one too,” said the second guard insistently, like a sibling jealous at another’s being favored.
Nebe stood up very slowly. He stuck his pistol back in his armpit, adjusted his tie, and buttoned his jacket. He and Nolte walked single file out of the row seats, holding themselves rigidly erect and stiffly showing their profiles. They waved off the guards and sat down on either side of Georg.
“Georg,” Nebe said reflectively, “I’m afraid you’re becoming a morale problem.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be.”
“I know. I know you don’t. That’s what makes it a problem.” Nebe sighed with a wheeze. “We want to show you something, a movie. You like movies, don’t you, Georg?”
“Yes, very much.”
Nebe checked that the stenographer was in place in the first seat on the aisle and the guards were standing by the only door. Then he signaled to the projectionist at the rear of the auditorium. The lights went out and the movie began. “It’s the funeral of that sixteen-year-old waitress you killed at the BürgerBräuKeller. Just one of the many people your bomb killed.”
Funerals followed one another in a morbid procession: all with wailing relatives and majestically expressionless ministers and bureaucrats. Bund Deutscher Mädchen were marching beside the coffin in their black uniforms and pilgrim collars, taking little high-kneed steps. They looked awful. Then the movie was over and the lights came on.
The Führer Must Die Page 18