A bomb that was planted by Colonel Graf Von Stauffenberg exploded two meters from my right side. It very seriously wounded a number of my faithful staff members. One of them has died. I myself am absolutely unhurt, except for very light scratches, bruises, and burns. I interpret this as confirmation of the order of providence that I continue to pursue the goal of my life, as I have done up to now. For I may solemnly state before the whole nation that since the day I moved into Wilhelmstrasse I have had only one thought; to do my duty according to my best understanding and my conscience. Since it became clear to me that war was inevitable and could no longer be put off, I have known nothing but worry and work. I have lived through countless days and sleepless nights, only for my people.
At an hour in which the German armies are committed to the hardest fighting, a small group existed in Germany – as one did in Italy – that believed it could deliver a stab in the back, as in the year 1918. But this time the conspirators have very much deceived themselves. The allegation by these usurpers that I am no longer alive is contradicted by this very moment as I speak to you, my dear comrades. The circle of these conspirators is a very small one. It has nothing to do with the German armed forces, and particularly not with the German army. It is a very small gang of criminal elements who will now be ruthlessly exterminated.
Therefore, I order at this moment:
One: That no civilian authority has to take any order from any office that these usurpers seek to control.
Two: That no military authority, no troop leader, no soldier, has to obey any order of these usurpers; that, on the contrary, everybody is obliged to either arrest the transmitter or giver of such an order at once, or, in case of resistance, to do away with him immediately.
So as to create order, I have appointed Reichsminister Himmler as commander of the Army of the Interior. I have called General Guderian into the general staff in order to take the place of the chief of the general staff who has recently retired because of illness. I have assigned a second proven leader of the Eastern Front as his assistant.
Nothing is changed in any other office of the Reich. I am convinced that with the disappearance of this very small clique of traitors and conspirators we are finally creating an atmosphere at the rear, in the homeland, that the fighters at the front need. For it is unthinkable that at the front hundreds of thousands and millions of good men should give their all while a small gang of ambitious and miserable creatures here at home tries to permanently circumvent this attitude. This time we are going to settle accounts as we National Socialists are used to doing it.
I am convinced that every decent officer, every brave soldier, will understand that, in this hour.
Probably only a few today can imagine what fate would have befallen Germany if the plot had succeeded. I thank providence and my creator, and not because he has preserved me. My life is only worry, only work for my people. Rather, I thank him because he has made it possible to for me to go on carrying these worries, and to pursue my work as well as I can, before my conscience.
Every German, regardless of who he is, has the duty of countering these elements at all costs. Either arrest them right away or, if they offer resistance in any form, do away with them without more delay. Orders have been issued to all troops. They will be carried out blindly, with the obedience that the German army knows.
I may joyfully greet you in particular once more, my old battle comrades, in that it was granted to me again to escape a destiny that had nothing terrible in it for me, but that would have brought terror for the German people.
I also see in this an omen from providence that I must carry on my work, and therefore I shall carry it on.”
Kamille wiped her tears in silence. Marthe stared at the opposite wall without blinking until she said, with a devastating sense of finality in her voice, “that’s it then. We have failed.”
Sorrow laying heavily around her, Kamille started sobbing, her trembling hand pressed to her mouth as though she wished to stifle the desperation clutching at her wildly-beating heart.
“Be brave, my dear,” Marthe spoke to her calmly, taking her by the shoulders. “We tried at least. Our deaths won’t be in vain.”
“My daughter!” Kamille cried out, for the first time painfully aware of her own mortality. “What will happen to my Violette now?”
“Nothing will happen to her.” Marthe’s smile came out pained as she looked at her son longingly as if already saying her goodbyes. “She’s in Paris. Your friend will take care of her.”
The commotion at the door sent them springing to their feet, yet it was only their husbands, pale and distraught.
“He’s alive,” Erwin spoke first, a slight tremor in his voice betraying his state. “The SS is already rounding up our forces. They will take over our headquarters in no time. Our names are everywhere, in the lists of the new Ersatzheer orders…”
Kamille walked over to her husband and pressed her head to his shoulder. He kissed her hair and asked for her forgiveness, for everything. He had caused her only misery, only misfortune, as soon as he stepped through the doors of her house. No, she assured him with a mild smile, not misfortune. He loved her dearly, and that’s all she ever asked of him.
“Let’s sit in the living room,” Marthe suggested in a quiet voice. “Right by the window. Let’s move the table there; this way we’ll see them when they come. We have a few minutes for a cup of coffee, don’t we?”
She brought the cups, but no one could drink. They all sat unnaturally straight, their eyes trained on the street outside. Soon enough, a black car appeared near the gates.
“It’s time.” Erwin rose to his feet a little unsteadily and solemnly shook Jochen’s hand.
The women kissed each other and exchanged quick but heartfelt embraces. Kamille’s hand trembled so much that she almost dropped the small glass vial that Jochen gave her a few months ago. Potassium cyanide. For your protection.
“Don’t be afraid, my love,” he whispered to her, planting a soft kiss on her lips. “I’ll follow right after.”
The SS were already banging on the door outside. Tears streaming down her face, Kamille took a deep breath, placed the vial in her mouth and bit on the glass.
By the time the SS kicked in the door, she was already dead. The SS commander stood above the five bodies – a child, two women and their husbands. The husbands chose the gun to the poison, it seemed. He heaved a disappointed sigh – another group suicide; Himmler would let him have it this time for sure! He picked up a whimpering dog from the floor.
“Talk about coincidences!” He chuckled with his aide as the squad exited the Holstoff’s house. “My sons were just pestering me about getting a dog!”
“At least something good came from those criminals.”
“Ja, at least something.”
22
Lyon, July 1944
Klaus observed the damage to one of his favorite restaurants, on the Place Bellecour, Moulin à Vent, which he and many of his men frequented, with a pensive expression and his hands folded behind his back. It was a hot night, and he was wearing short sleeves. The owner reassured him that no one was seriously injured; still, Klaus returned the following morning with five prisoners from Montluc, including one of the maquis leaders who the Wehrmacht had handed him after one of the latest operations. He shot them all and left their bodies lying in front of the entrance as a grim warning for anyone who might consider threatening the Gestapo in such a malevolent manner again.
Lyon had been quiet up until now. The city was his, and his alone. This incident, despite it inflicting no damage to his staff, rubbed him the wrong way. He always prided himself in strutting around the city without any escort; presumptuous, arrogantly mocking the Resistance just with his overpowering presence. No one dared attack him. People started shaking with fear as soon as he entered the room, and that’s how it was supposed to be. A bomb? Thrown into his Moulin, where he loved taking Mimiche every Thursday? That would not do.
But how many people would he have to personally execute to finally put them to order? The maquis had proved that, after the allied landing in Normandy in June, they were a force to be reckoned with. Klaus never expected that they would organize a well-planned sabotage of key railroads, radio stations, telephone lines, and generally stall the German advance toward the north, where the reinforcements were so needed. He could swear that he had wiped them out, in his area at least; but, just like cockroaches, they kept crawling out of every crack, emboldened by the Allied support. One idiot maquisard even flew a tricolor flag from the height of his command post in his camp, proclaiming it a liberated zone and the Fourth Republic, no less. Klaus smirked, recalling the pleasure with which he had hit the man in the face after the Wehrmacht troops brought him to his headquarters in Lyon. The maquisard didn’t last even one day of beatings and died a shameful death, in a puddle of his own urine. Pathetic.
Yet, despite the calm, Klaus sensed a metaphorical storm coming. He might have been arrogant, but he was not a stupid man. The odds were simply not in his favor, nor Germany’s for that matter. And now, after those mutineers nearly succeeded in assassinating the Führer, the Wehrmacht here in France started grumbling their discontent with the SS louder and louder. Two squadrons nearly refused to carry out his, Klaus’s, orders, arrogantly proclaiming that they were not going to take part in any more atrocities.
“So, let me get this straight,” Klaus had asked their commander, standing nose to nose with him until the commander was forced to step away. “When things were going well for us all, I didn’t hear a peep from you. Now, when the tide has shifted, you all of a sudden don’t want anything to do with us. Now, tell me, was it not your general who demanded that my SS find and execute the terrorists who killed two of his soldiers? And now, when I task you with finding and eliminating those terrorists, you suddenly don’t want to know me or my orders? A convenient position; nothing to say?!”
“It’s not that,” the Wehrmacht officer said in a faltering tone. “It’s just, your people ransack villages, set whole towns ablaze and kill innocent civilians. Your men slaughtered over six hundred peaceful inhabitants at Oradour-sur-Glane, among them two hundred children, and only because you had ‘reliable information’ that a maquis group was holding a German officer hostage there. Meanwhile, there was no officer and no maquis group! You just like to slaughter everyone you see, on the slightest provocation!”
Klaus did not argue with that last statement but reassured the officer calmly that those were not his men. “That was the Das Reich division. They aren’t subordinate to me.”
“They might as well have been,” the Wehrmacht officer grumbled before walking away.
In less than three weeks, the Americans landed on the southern coast of France, and Klaus, after getting the news from his aide, sat alone for a very long time in his office, contemplating his position. Reluctantly, he picked up the phone, marveled that it was still working, and requested the operator to connect him with Paris SD. According to Sievers’ adjutant, his commanding officer was just finishing talking to Berlin, and if he, Barbie, was not too pressed for time, he could talk to him within five minutes. This surprised Klaus; the resentment between the two was mutual and the only time Sievers deigned to speak to him in person was when he had come down to Lyon to collect Sophie, whoever she was to him.
“Further orders?” The familiar mocking tone was in place when Sievers took the phone from his adjutant. “Clean everything up and start an organized and fighting retreat. The Wehrmacht will cover you up.”
“The Wehrmacht and I aren’t on the best of terms as of late,” Klaus admitted into the black speaker.
“Is there anyone at all in this sad world who you get along with?” Sievers sarcastically snarled.
Klaus considered for a moment. Odette loved him very much, but that was about it.
“Not really,” he confessed at last, with a crooked grin, twisting his mouth into a sneer. “But I’m quite surprised that you’re lecturing me on the matter that no one wants to deal with me. Aren’t you my commanding officer? If I’m such a monster, what does that say about you? We’re in the same boat, Herr Standartenführer. If they want me, they will want you even more.”
“Let me worry about myself,” Sievers replied with strange confidence in his voice. “Is that all or do you have any more questions with which to waste my time?”
Klaus only shook his head from side to side pensively, before realizing that his SD chief couldn’t hear him and cleared his throat. “No. That will be all. Thank you for your time, Herr Standartenführer.”
After placing the receiver down, he sat, rubbing his chin for a few very long moments, mulling over Sievers’ last comment. He sounded far too sure of himself for a man who should be busy preparing his will for the time when the Allies came. He was up to something.
But figuring Sievers out could wait. More than anything Klaus wanted to get out of Lyon, but before that, he needed to get rid of all the witnesses who might inconveniently start opening their mouths when asked about him. No people, no problem, was Klaus’s motto – it hadn’t failed him so far.
The following day he ordered his men to collect and destroy all documentation from the Gestapo headquarters. While they were busy burning all documents in the backyard, he and the rest of his team started bringing up prisoners from the cellars.
“One hundred and nine, mostly Jews,” Klaus wrote in his notebook for a future report after the prisoners were taken to Bron airport in the outskirts of Lyon, before being shot and buried in craters from the allied bombing. He smirked then, tore the page off and burned it with the help of his lighter.
“No more reports. No more Jews. Nothing ever happened here. Try and prove it, if you like,” he mumbled under his nose, speaking to no one in particular.
Three days later, another hundred or so, men and women, were taken from Montluc to the disused fort of St Genis-Laval. Klaus personally supervised how their bodies, riddled with bullets, were doused with petrol and set alight. He was driving away in his Citroën when the fort was dynamited – he watched the spectacle from the rearview mirror.
The last thing he had to do.
Odette climbed into his car, dressed for a picnic in her bright yellow sundress and a straw hat with a wide brim. He had been promising to spend the whole day with her for quite a long time now but with all that mayhem going on… Ach, to hell with it! What good would it do, worrying about it now? The game was up, in Lyon at least.
“You look very pretty today, Mimiche,” he remarked with a strange note to his voice.
“Really?” she beamed in response, revealing two rows of beautiful pearly teeth. “I’m so glad you like the dress. I bought it especially for this occasion.”
“I’m glad you did. This is how I want to remember you, my little Mimiche,” he replied, stopping the car on the road, overlooking a beautiful, picturesque valley.
“Remember me?” A scowl replaced her usual sweet expression. “But you told me that we would run away together…”
“Of course, we will, Mimiche. But I can’t take you with me now; the war is still going on, and I still have a lot of work to do.” He spoke to her as if to a child and brushed her cheek with his fingers, imprinting her features in his memory. “I’ll come and get you later after everything is over. I always keep my promises, don’t I? I promised you a picnic, and even the Allied invasion didn’t stop me.”
“No, it didn’t.” Odette was beaming again, stepping out of the car, reassured and happy beyond measure.
Klaus exited the car as well and watched her collect the picnic basket and a blanket from the back seat.
“Kiss me, Mimiche,” he said suddenly as she circled the car to proceed down the valley. She complied only too happily and kissed him with all the love she felt for him at that moment. Klaus savored every second of that kiss and didn’t want to open his eyes at first when she stepped away and, giggling, started running through the soft grass.
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br /> She never saw him pull the gun out behind her back, only heard the gunshot, and then – nothing at all.
Paris, August 1944
Etienne sat across the table from Sievers, waiting for his response. Sievers didn’t have much time to think; outside, the capital was barricaded and fortified, with résistants fighting their oppressors on every corner.
As soon as Etienne was parachuted into the area together with a few résistants from the Free French and two SOE agents, he jumped at the chance of negotiating with Sievers as soon as the head of the local SOE network mentioned it.
“London is none too happy about letting him walk free, but he’s holding over a hundred of our agents hostage in some remote location. In case something happens to him, his men are ordered to execute them all. Tread carefully.”
That was the entirety of the uncomplicated instructions they gave him.
When he arrived at the SD Chief’s headquarters, he couldn’t contain his emotion when he saw Giselle standing by the window in the room where Sievers received him. A brilliant smile appeared on her face at once. He dropped his serious mask as well, rushing to enclose her into his embrace, to hold her tight against his chest.
“Well? There you have your Monsieur Delattre, my dear Laure.” Sievers smiled softly, and stood aside, giving them their privacy.
“Marcel?” He saw her hold her breath.
“Fighting along with the maquis from what I heard.” Etienne gave her hand a reassuring press.
“And Philippe? He was with him; was he not?”
This time Etienne lowered his eyes.
She understood everything. “Was it Barbie?”
“Yes. I was there when he...” Etienne pinched his lips together and offered her a pained smile. Words failed him.
“How did it happen?” she demanded with an icy rage in her voice.
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