by Heinz Rein
‘Be reasonable,’ says the older policeman, and puts his hand on his shoulder. ‘Go!’
Eckert, who has already turned his back on the policemen and begun to walk away from them, jerks round. It’s as if something inside him has torn open, as if the crust that has hitherto covered his soul is breaking open and everything that has been repressed for years and repeatedly held down is spilling to the surface through the crack. The images run rapidly through his brain: the loss of his two sons, the fate of his wife’s sister, who married a Jew and was beaten to death in Sachsenhausen, the arrest and cold-blooded destruction of Dean Lichtenberg (because Eckert is a devout Catholic), the total conversion of the people to materialism, the appeals to God from the mouths of rapacious murderers, the insane prolongation of a war lost long ago.
‘Heil Hitler, you say, here, in the ruins of Berlin?’ Eckert roars, and lowers his head like a bull waiting to attack. It may be, it’s even likely, that the young policeman only gave the Hitler salute out of habit and without giving the matter any particular attention, but Eckert can no longer consider that possibility, his brain has been deluged by a red wave, all reflections are extinguished, hate, rage, fury, contempt, despair fill every cell and every pore. This man with the green uniform and the cap, right now he is the system itself, from beneath the peak of the cap pulled low over his eyes there grins the repellent grimace of the hated devil of Braunau, the Antichrist.
With one leap Eckert is on him, both hands grip the man’s throat, they press tightly, almost compressing the throat, the young policeman has almost lost his balance under the attack, he totters and falls to the ground, but Eckert doesn’t let go. He is in an intoxicated state, his surroundings have vanished into the ground, all that remains is him and beneath him the other man, that devilish grimace with the little black moustache on the upper lip.
The other policeman was so surprised by Eckert’s sudden outburst that he missed the moment to intervene. He draws his gun from his side pocket. ‘Let go!’ he roars. ‘Let go this minute!’
The voice reaches Eckert as if from a long way off, the blood rushes in his ears, wild and unruly, his hands tighten their grip on the throat, the young policeman is dazed, his face has gone crimson and is already turning blue.
The other policeman tries to pull Eckert away, but he can’t, Eckert’s hands are like iron fetters around the young policeman’s neck.
‘Let go!’ the older policeman roars again. ‘Or I’ll fire!’ He lashes out at Eckert, but Eckert doesn’t release his grip, he presses his adversary’s head deeper and deeper into the gravel, his breathing is coming in pants. His lips start foaming. Then the older policeman kneels down next to Eckert, puts the pistol to his temple and pulls the trigger.
A short, sharp bang and a dull crackle and it’s over. Eckert’s head falls sideways, his body arches, then slides down and rolls a few metres down the steep scree.
Not everyone who has devoted his life to Führer, nation and fatherland has been given an official obituary. What follows is a report from Police Commissioner Wilhelm Schikorra from the 13th Police District:
On 6 February 1945 local patrolman Günther Dietzer and I were patrolling the incident site in the 13th Police District. At around 16.15 hours we noticed a very unkempt man was rummaging around the ruin of the building 12 Annenstrasse. He was later identified as the tram conductor Max Josef Anton Eckert, born in Bielefeld on 18 November 1894 and living in Berlin-Reinickendorf, 144/II Residenzstrasse. When first instructed to leave the ruin, Mr Eckert violently resisted. At last we managed to persuade him to leave the ruin without applying force. The local patrol man Officer Dietzler gave the Nazi salute as he did so. Hereupon Mr Eckert turned round and shouted: ‘Heil Hitler, you say, here, in the ruins of Berlin?’ At the same moment he jumped at Officer Dietzler’s throat, threw him to the ground and choked him very violently. Dietzler was completely dazed from the fall and the choking and hence not in a position to defend himself. I therefore ordered Mr Eckert twice and loudly to let go of Dietzler. Since he did not comply, and other attempts to release Dietzler from the immediate threat to his life were unsuccessful, I resorted to the use of my firearm. Mr Eckert died on the spot.
This is case III Ic of the Police Administration Law of 1 August 1931. Paragraph 53 of the Criminal Code is also invoked.
Berlin, 7 February 1945
Signed: Wilhelm Schikorra
Police Commissioner
That is the story of the tram conductor Max Eckert, which may seem like the trivial fate of an unknown little man. It took place amidst the mayhem of an event that shook the continents, it was only a drop in a sea of blood and tears, but even the greatest events are composed of small and very small incidents, and only together do they constitute the large whole. The death of the tram conductor Max Eckert is only one small piece in the terrible mosaic of this vast war. Many died more pointlessly, most of them without the triumph of going for the throat of the hated adversary. Eckert died because his tormented and trampled soul discharged itself with the violence of a volcanic eruption. Neither did he die in vain or pointlessly, because every death in the struggle against tyranny goes on working, even if it does so invisibly. It is not the end and the conclusion, it is a new seed and a new beginning.
XX
30 April
It is five minutes past twelve. The city’s breath is suffocated beneath the vapour of smoke and haze rolling through the streets, its veins are opened, the tortured body bleeding its last. A pestilential miasma cloaks the jungle of ruins, mountains of human bodies and animal corpses, the wrecks of burnt-out, blasted tanks and vehicles, heaps of debris, bottomless craters, leaning house walls, exploded bridges, blazes block the streets. The battle still rages in the city centre, on the Kaiserdamm and around the high-rise bunkers in Friedrichshain, by the Zooloigical Garden, and in Humboldthain by Gesundbrunnen Station, aerial battles are being fought between Russian fighters and German supply planes, while new companies have been assembled of the wounded and the scattered, old Volkssturm men and fifteen-year-old members of the Hitler Youth, thrown into battle inadequately armed or with instructions to grab the weapons of the fallen.
Wilhelmplatz lies empty and dead beneath the furious fire of the Russian artillery, only the breadth of the square recalls its former purpose, the parade ground of enthusiasm, the hysterical enthusiasm of a people seduced, and the compulsory enthusiasm of the helots, nothing recalls the torchlight procession of the SA on 30 January 1933, the marches of the Luftwaffe regiments to musical accompaniment, the compulsory presence of school classes at the visits of illustrious guests, the choral calls of ‘We want to see the Führer!’ and the slavish cries of ‘Führer command us, we will follow you!’ nothing more is there, banners, insignias and standards, torches and Turkish crescents have vanished from the granite slabs of the square. Only ruins line it now, the Hotel Kaiserhof, the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, the Finance Ministry, the Reich Transport Office, the Reich Chancellery, the Propaganda Ministry.
The Reich Chancellery is under constant fire, piece by piece the shells eat away at the masonry and unmask the fraudulent display of fake marble, thin sandstone slabs and cheap pink bricks. As on a target, the bullets of the low-flying planes drill into the plaster, walls and ceilings begin to tear apart, mirrors shatter, crystal chandeliers crash and splinter to the parquet floors.
In the underground bunker beneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery, the Führer Adolf Hitler sits on a wooden box. His face is twisted and distorted, his features slack and feeble, his skin pale and covered with bright-red patches, a spasmodic twitch tugs at the corners of his mouth every few seconds, his eyes are bulging far from their sockets and red-rimmed, his gaze is blank, his hands are trembling, his hair is damp and clammy, and the sweat stands out in fat droplets on his brow.
The leader of the Great German Reich, sitting there, ugly and crumpled with anxiety, does not look like a happy bridegroom, who married his long-term lover the previous evening and entertained his guests with spa
rkling wine. The wedding ceremony was only the prelude to the gruesome, trashy operetta staged according to the orders given by the deranged petty-bourgeois from Braunau, just as he ordered millions of people to be hunted into misery, poverty, death, despair, hunger, fire, gas chambers, mass graves, gallows, prisons, concentration camps, military hospitals and the Labour Front. This Führer, who exerted his tyrannical power over the continent of Europe, who had all the means of power and all the sources of information at his disposal, who played with generals as children play with pebbles, who had a whole people lying at his feet in hysterical ecstasy, a people who had taken all gifts from his hands as if they were gifts from God and who listened to his words as if they were the word of God, this great Führer is now sitting in the underground bunker on a plain wooden box and asking his chauffeur, ‘Any news?’
But his chauffeur is not in a position to tell him the news he wishes to hear, that the reserve armies are close by, or that Field Marshal Ritter von Greim has effectively struck in the battle for Berlin with the remains of his Luftwaffe. It can no longer be kept secret that Russian tanks coming from the Brandenburg Gate have reached Potsdamer Platz, the Tiergarten and Weidendammer Bridge, that on the Reichstag, whose blaze twelve years ago went on to rage across the whole world, the red flag of the Soviets now flutters, that Russian tanks are also moving from the south along Wilhelmstrasse northward towards the Reich Chancellery, that Russian infantry are advancing along the underground tunnels at Friedrichstrasse. Neither can it be kept secret any longer that all around the entrance to the bunker a devastating artillery fire is coming down, that the earth is being stirred up, and black fountains of soil are spraying into the air, that the trees are ragged and the walls around the garden of the Reich Chancellery have been laid low. Two days previously he had fetched SS Group Leader Fegelein, Eva Braun’s brother-in-law, from his flat and had him shot because he had attempted to withdraw back into civilian life, in a nocturnal address he had made all the inmates of the bunker take an oath of loyalty to commit mutual suicide, was still preoccupied with defence and relief, intoxicated with the final victory, and had said to Field Marshal Greim: ‘Do not despair, it will all be fine.’ But then the mood had changed again, and he had raged once more like a lunatic through the corridors and rooms of his bunker, when he received the news that his most reliable supporter, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, had made contact with the Western Allies via the Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, and offered the unconditional capitulation of Germany to Great Britain and the United States, the will to total destruction blazed up in him once more. He immediately stamped out the tiny spark of reason, forbidding any radio communication with the special train ‘Steiermark’, Himmler’s headquarters, had, through his Party clerk Bormann, the words ‘Foreign press reports new betrayal, Führer expects unshakeable loyalty from everyone’ broadcast to the four winds, and ordered Schörner from the south of the eastern front, Dönitz from Holstein, Vietinghoff from Italy, Wenck from the Elbe front and Stumpf with the air fleet to relieve the Reich capital, but since then two long, fearful days have passed, and he has had only refusals or no answer at all, which has led Bormann to say ‘betrayal everywhere’. There is no longer any way out, the Führer Adolf Hitler realizes he is surrounded and besieged from the air, he is caught in his own trap. He has not left his bunker for days, and he is not leaving it now, he crouches cravenly deep in the earth below concrete metres thick, he knows that his end has come, that the thousand-year Third Reich that he proclaimed is over, that it is already five minutes past twelve, that the solders whose young gullibility he duped and enslaved with vain gestures and boastful words, whom he despatched six years ago to conquer a world, who toppled cities on his orders and made whole landscapes go up in flames, have now returned from the icy nights of Norway and the roasting desert of Egypt, from the wide steppes of Russia and the unconquerable wall on the coast of France home to the capital of the Reich, but still he does not fall to the scythe-wielding skeleton, he wants the last stalks to be mown down, he wants everything to be harvested this time. He dictates his political and private testament and sends three men with copies to Dönitz, Schörner and to the Party archive in Munich, he appoints Dönitz his successor, draws up a new list of ministers and makes Bormann his executor. And since he lived as a fraud, so he behaves in his final hour, when he orders an announcement to be made that he fell in battle at the head of his soldiers, but he seeks death not in the bullets of the enemy, he creeps cravenly from his accursed life, he orders his chauffeur to get hold of 200 litres of petrol, he bids farewell to his henchmen and withdraws to his room, and while the guards dance with the secretaries to gramophone music, he turns his pistol upon himself and fires into his blasphemous mouth, his wife poisons herself, their corpses are laid by Dr Goebbels and Bormann in the garden of the Reich Chancellery by the emergency exit to the bunker and have petrol poured over them. Under the thunder of the Russian guns and the raised, bloodstained hands of his accomplices, the bodies of Hitler and his lover blaze in bright flames. The stench that has spread across the whole of Europe under his tyranny also accompanies him on his journey to hell.
Towards morning the artillery fire swells again to a monstrous volume, the big house rocks and trembles under the massive explosions, the foundations seem to shake, the air is run through with an incessant rage and roar, a flaming sky arches above the city, and still dust, lead and fire rain down upon it, columns of fire burst up amidst showers of sparks when the shells from the rocket launchers explode. Blood-red and overcast with grey, the sun rises over the horizon in the east, and casts its rays over the mown-down city that smokes, smoulders and burns from a thousand wounds, which from all sides is ceaselessly hammered by all calibres, by rocket launchers, field howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, tank guns and anti-tank guns, on-board weapons, heavy machine guns, mine throwers and bomb shafts.
When the dull light of day pierces the clouds of smoke, the air-raid warden comes to the boiler room. He greets them abruptly and turns to Dr Böttcher. ‘I would like to warn you, gentlemen!’
‘Warn us?’ Dr Böttcher asks, and gets slowly to his feet. ‘What about?’
‘The SS are close by, they are sitting in the Europahaus and the Excelsior,’ the air-raid warden replies, ‘the battle is now concentrated on Saarlandstrasse.’
Dr Böttcher listens to the noise, but the thunder of artillery fire is too great for him to make out fire from handguns.
‘You can believe me,’ the air-raid warden says, ‘I’m telling you the truth.’
‘You just want to get rid of us,’ says Wiegand, joining them, ‘isn’t that right?’
The air-raid warden gives Wiegand an angry look. ‘That too, of course. You’re digging a revolting hole for us with your people. If the SS come they’ll say I’ve helped you, then they’ll wring my neck, and when the Russians come, there will be a battle.’
‘Where is Dr Wiedemann?’ asks Dr Böttcher.
‘Over in the public air-raid cellar,’ the air-raid warden replies, ‘look over there to the right. That seems to be him now.’ Dr Wiedemann comes through the door.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says excitedly, ‘the situation is becoming critical, the SS are crammed together into the tightest space, they are defending every house, every hallway, every courtyard, every cellar …’
‘I told them,’ the air-raid warden interjects, ‘but they wouldn’t believe me!’
Dr Wiedemann explains the situation in short and hasty words. ‘The Russians are on the western side of Saarlandstrasse, the eastern side is still occupied by the SS, but the Russians are also behind them on Wilhelmstrasse. The front line, as it is still called, even though it is also the rear line, runs right through the block. The walls to the courtyard that abut the courtyards on Saarlandstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse, and the firewalls that divide the houses on Saarlandstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse, that is today’s front line. They are fighting bitterly over the walls that connect the co
urtyards, over the cracks in the cellar walls, with unparalleled ferocity, the SS are ignoring the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of women and children in the cellars.’
‘So we need to act quickly,’ Wiegand says firmly. ‘If I have understood you correctly, Dr Wiedemann, we only need to get over the walls of the courtyard to the back and we will be with the Russians.’
‘Just clear off,’ the air-raid warden says angrily. ‘You can join the Russians or the SS or the Zulus as far as I’m concerned, just get out of my cellar.’
‘We can get through a hole in the wall,’ Lassehn says.
‘Quite right,’ Dr Wiedemann replies, and shrugs slightly, ‘but of course I can’t guarantee it …’
‘Of course not,’ says Wiegand, ‘but your information is very valuable to us.’
‘We could be unlucky and end up in a courtyard that is still occupied by the SS,’ says Private Poppe.
‘You could slip on a pile of sand too,’ Schröter says dismissively. ‘I say we should try to get across to Wilhelmstrasse.’
‘That raises an important question,’ Gregor says. ‘Are we going with or without weapons?’
‘Without, of course,’ Lassehn says quickly.
‘No of course about it,’ Gregor says. ‘If we bump into the SS on the way, I’m not going to be dragged off as I was at Silesian Station and later on Stralauer Strasse.’
‘Quite right,’ says Wiegand, ‘My thoughts exactly. This time we’ll fight on, I say we bring our weapons with us. The important thing will be either to make use of the weapons at the right moment or to get rid of them at the right moment.’
‘So with weapons,’ says Dr Böttcher.
‘And what about you lot?’ Schröter says, turning to the soldiers.
‘I don’t really know,’ replies Private Kebschull.
‘You have a good old think,’ says Schröter, ‘take your time.’