by Suninfo
‘We can keep this up all night if necessary,’ Wollweber said brightly.
‘Under the Geneva Convention I’m entitled …’
‘You’re not entitled to anything. You were captured in German uniform and we therefore have every right to shoot you out of hand.’
‘And supposing you do,’ said Ashby, ‘where does that get you?
Nowhere.’
‘We might come to some arrangement if you were more cooperative.’
Ashby looked as though he was thinking it over and then he said, ‘Can I have a cigarette?’
‘A cigarette?’
‘Yes, if we’re going to talk, it will help me to concentrate.’
Wollweber snapped his fingers and one of the guards stuck a cigarette between Ashby’s lips and lit it. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Get rid of the guards then.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll talk to you but not with anyone else present.’
‘What is this foolishness?’
‘I’m not being foolish,’ Ashby said obstinately. ‘If you’re really interested in what I have to say, you’ll send the guards out of the room. After all, what have you got to worry about? I’m not likely to run away.’
Wollweber hesitated and then said, ‘All right, but just remember this—they’ll be waiting outside in the corridor and God help you if you try anything.’
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Ashby waited until they were alone. He’d won the first round and it was important that with the opening of the second, he should hit exactly the right note.
‘Do you carry any life insurance, Sturmbannführer? I know Kaltenbrunner does.’
Wollweber stood up and rounding the desk, moved into the light where Ashby could see him. ‘Don’t waste my time,’ he said harshly.
‘Kaltenbrunner knows that Germany has lost the war. He’s known it ever since Stalingrad and that’s why he’s been making overtures to us through people like Baron Pierre Damon.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘You think so? If we didn’t have his tacit support we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’
‘Now I know you’re lying because it was he who warned Oberführer Kastner that an attempt would be made on Bormann’s life today.’
‘So he got cold feet at the last minute.’
‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m going to tell my assistants to beat a little sense into you.’
‘Damon exists and you know it. Hold on to that.’
‘It will give me a great deal of pleasure to have you shot.’
‘And after the war you’d hang for it. You’ll stand there with a black hood over your head, and your arms and legs will be pinioned and then they’ll put a rope around that fat neck of yours. You think about it.’
‘Under the Geneva Convention we have every right to …’
‘You won’t have any rights, the loser never does, and you’re going to lose this war, Sturmbannführer——?’
‘Wollweber.’ He hadn’t meant to give his name but it just slipped out.
Ashby said, ‘Do you know what a war criminal is, Wollweber?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well now, you don’t sound very sure. Tell me, how many Jews have you sent to the concentration camps?’
‘What?’
‘One would be enough to get you hung, unless …’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless you had someone like me to speak up for you.’ It was out in the open now and he allowed time for Wollweber to digest all the implications. ‘Although I can’t give you the information you want,’ Ashby said slyly, ‘it must be quite obvious that Major Ottaway and I can only be of use to you if we’re still alive when it’s all over.’ Ashby spat the cigarette from his mouth. ‘You do see that, don’t you?’ he said.
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Night had fallen on the city and the streets were cloaked in darkness. A policeman strolling through the Gruetgasse shone his masked torch into the side entrance of the Rathaus, satisfied himself that the broken door had been secured and then moved on. He stopped at the top of the Prinzipalmarkt and looked back at the council chambers and wondered at the mentality of those RAF terror fliers who had chosen death in preference to a prisoner of war camp. Somehow that story didn’t ring true in his ears and he thought it would be interesting to know what really had happened inside that old building.
But he never would know. On Saturday, 28th October the Hall of Peace, in common with over eighty per cent of the old city, would be reduced to a pile of rubble.
Somewhere a clock started chiming the hour of midnight. The long day was over.
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GERMANY
April 1945
‘Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears—
The grand Perhaps.’
ROBERT BROWNING— BISHOP BLOUGRAM’S APOLOGY
20
GERHARDT LAY THERE in the dark listening to the distant rumble of artillery fire and although it was a comforting sound, he knew that by the time they arrived it would be too late. Wollweber had sent him to Berlin where he’d been held in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse while awaiting trial before the People’s Court, but on 3rd February, ’45, in the heaviest raid of the war, a bomb had struck the courtroom and Judge Roland Freisler had been killed. On the following day, Gerhardt, Lieutenant-General Graf von Macher and Colonel Vietinghoff had been transferred to the Flossenburg concentration camp.
As each day passed without a date for the trial being set, he had begun to hope that they had forgotten all about him. It was an unrealistic attitude to take but he’d heard of at least one case where this had actually happened and he told himself that as the war slowly drew towards its end, the administrative machine was bound to crack and fall apart. This illusion had lasted until 10th April when, in the camp laundry, he’d been hauled before a summary court martial, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death within the space of one hour.
He thought about Christabel and the children and wondered 193
how they had been faring. Wollweber had told him that his wife had been sent to the Lehrterstrasse Prison in Berlin early in October and he knew that the Party had selected foster parents who could be relied upon to see that his children grew up to be good National Socialists. He’d tried to express his sorrow and regret in a letter which he hoped would reach them some day, but his prose had been stilted and he doubted if they would ever understand his motives.
He heard the bolts drawn back on his cell and throwing the blanket to one side, he stood up. There were two of them, hard-looking men who, having supervised a thousand executions, were used to this kind of thing.
Gerhardt said, ‘Is it time?’
The Unterscharführer, a wall-eyed man of thirty with bad teeth, said, ‘Take your clothes off, you’re going to have a bath.’
Gerhardt obediently removed his dungarees and waited for the next order. After six months in the hands of the Gestapo and the SS, his pride and spirit had been completely broken, and when the wall-eyed man indicated that he should cross his hands behind his back, he did so without comment.
The cord bit into his wrists and then, naked, he was led out of the cell and across the yard towards the execution shed, and the first light of day was just beginning to show in the east, and the birds were beginning to chorus, and then he was inside the shed and his eyes strayed to the hooks set in the beam, and he watched the hangman attach a short noose to each one, and then the door opened again and there were von Macher and Vietinghoff marching stiffly between their escorts. And finally they stood there in line beneath the hooks and waited, knowing that at any moment the guards would lift them up one by one and slip a noose around each neck.
Christabel Gerhardt had lost track of time. She was no longer sure of the days but she thought it might be Sunday, 22nd April, and she knew th
at the end was near. Russian artillery had been systematically pounding the city for the past twenty-four hours and now the screeching banshee howl of the multi-barrelled rocket-firing Katushkas added to the appalling din. The bombardment did, however, have one beneficial effect, for it radically changed the attitude of the guards in the Lehrterstrasse who were now anxious to be on friendly terms with the prisoners with whom they were sheltering in the cellars.
Although she had been held in ‘B’ Wing with the other political prisoners, Christabel Gerhardt had never been subjected to the same rigorous interrogation that she had received from Wollweber 194
and not once during six months had anyone ever intimated that one day she would have to stand trial. It was almost as if they’d forgotten she existed and she was grateful for that small mercy.
And now that it was almost over, it seemed there was every chance that she would be killed by a stray shell.
A man’s voice said, ‘Frau Gerhardt?’
She looked up into the face of an old man. ‘Yes?’ she said dully.
‘You won’t know me but my name is Ernst Osler and I was a friend of your husband’s. I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear of his death.’
‘Thank you.’
‘If there is anything I can do to help?’
‘I don’t think anyone can help us now.’
‘Your husband was a very brave man.’
‘Yes?’
A hand reached out and patted her wrist. ‘You mustn’t despair,’
Osler said gently. ‘One of the guards told me that some of the prisoners were released this morning. Perhaps they will let you go.’
‘I think that’s rather unlikely, don’t you?’
‘We can but hope.’
‘I try not to think about the children.’
‘I know …’
‘You see, the terrible thing is that I don’t know where they are.’
Osler struggled to find some words which would be of comfort but the phrases sounded banal and meaningless in his ears and, embarrassed by his failure, he got up and moved away. He resolved that somehow he would find a way to help her.
For the first time ever Johannes Lehr was glad to be a prisoner.
If he’d been serving with his Teno battalion there was every chance that he’d now be in battle, crouching behind a street barricade armed with a Panzerfaust with which he would be expected to stop a tank at point-blank range. He’d heard that they’d called up the class of ’29 and that even thirteen-year-olds were being pressed into service. Berlin was being defended by old men and children while those heroes in SS uniform were summarily executing anyone who was suspected of being a deserter. It was being said by the guards that if you walked down the Charlottenburger Chausee you’d find a corpse hanging from every other tree. It was probably an exaggeration but he suspected that there was more than a grain of truth in the story.
He nudged Erhard Thierback in the ribs, pointed to Osler and said, ‘What do you think that old fool’s up to now?’
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Thierback said, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I regret the day that old goat walked into my shop. If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
Lehr rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘We had a nice racket going for us while it lasted.’
‘You should have stuck to looting,’ Thierback said bitterly. ‘I said at the time it was a mistake to help someone disappear.’
‘And you’ve been saying it ever since. Sometimes I think you’re a bloody gramophone. Look at him, he’s talking to another woman now.’
‘Who is?’
‘Osler. He’s a bit long in the tooth for it, isn’t he? Must be his second childhood.’
‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ said Thierback. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Osler was back and there was an excited look on his face.
‘I have something for you, Frau Gerhardt,’ he whispered. He took hold of her right hand and pressed a slip of paper into the palm and closed her fingers around it. ‘Don’t look at it now, wait until I’ve gone.’
‘What is it?’
‘A release slip. When there is a lull in the shelling you can just get up and walk out of here a free woman.’
‘Where did you get it?’ she said breathlessly.
‘From the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness. She doesn’t want it, her home is in Düsseldorf and she hasn’t a hope of reaching it.’
‘I must thank her.’
Osler shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that would be unwise.
She knows that you’re grateful.’
‘I don’t know what to say …’ Tears began to well in her eyes and she brushed them away.
Osler squeezed her hand again. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he said simply.
Two hours later, Christabel Gerhardt walked into the guard room on the main floor and took her place in the queue, and the man behind the desk didn’t even look up when he stamped her release chit. She walked out into the street and although the immediate area was still being swept by mortar fire, she was deliriously happy.
As night fell on the doomed city, the sky was tinged with a red glow from the fires which were burning in every district, but in the cellar of the Lehrterstrasse Prison there was a feeling of mounting optimism. During the course of the afternoon at least twenty-one men and women had been released and rumour had 196
it that more were to be freed before morning. And then, as if in answer to a prayer, a guard came into the cellar and began to read aloud from the list of names clipped to his millboard.
‘Johannes Lehr … Erhard Thierback …’
And one by one they got to their feet and stood in line.
‘Ernst Osler … Julius Lammers … Elena Lammers …’
Five names and then five more—a communist, a Frenchman, two Ukrainian Poles and a corporal in the Wehrmacht.
Ten singled out from the rest and counted and led up to the security office to receive their personal belongings which had been taken from them when they were arrested—a cigarette case for one—a gold propelling pencil and fountain pen for Lammers—
a lighter without a flint for Lehr and the Iron Cross Second Class for the soldier.
And then they were told to pack their things, and one of the guards who was quite drunk was laughing and joking with them and slapping them on the back, and they were like excited children at a birthday party but no one could see that it would end in tears.
And then they were taken out from the cellar into a hall which was in total darkness and presently a flashlight played on their faces and a hard voice said, ‘Don’t get any wrong ideas, you people are being transferred and we’ll have to walk to the Anhalter Terminus.’
And then they were lined up in the street and it was raining hard and Lammers took off his jacket and placed it around his wife’s shoulders, and then someone gave an order and the small column flanked by six men of the Waffen SS, set off in the direction of the Invalidenstrasse.
But when they reached the Invalidenstrasse they turned off the road and headed towards the bombed-out Ulap Exhibition Hall because the sergeant in charge said they were taking a short cut, and so they entered the skeleton of this massive building and stumbled over the rubble, and suddenly they were grabbed by the collar and stood apart from each other facing a brick wall, and they heard the bolts rattle and Elena started to cry.
And they died in a crash of gunfire, and then the execution squad marched away into the night and left them lying there in the rain—two Ukrainian Poles, one communist, a Frenchman, a corporal of the Wehrmacht, Ernst Osler, Johannes Lehr, Erhard Thierback, Elena and Julius Lammers.
They were a solid phalanx of between ten and twelve thousand men who, marching on parallel roads, were spread out over eighty square kilometres of the countryside. They were ragged, tired 197
and hungry and they had been on the march for ten days, heading first in one direction and then turning back th
rough almost a hundred and eighty degrees. Each day had brought different and conflicting orders, each day had seen them walking to yet another town as they crisscrossed the map of Germany. They lived off the land because the Wehrmacht was no longer able to feed them and when they passed through a village, it was as if a swarm of locusts had stripped it bare.
Guarded by less than a hundred men under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel who’d lost an arm and the sight of one eye in the First World War, the POWs had achieved such a moral domination over their keepers that at times it was hard to say who were now the captives. With transport reduced to the absolute minimum, it was impossible to do anything for those who were sick or fell out on the line of march and by common consent they had to be left behind.
Five days previously at Grosse, north of the Elbe, they’d received an issue of Red Cross parcels on the basis of one between two men which they’d held in reserve, knowing that as word of their approach travelled ahead, the local inhabitants would endeavour to make sure that there was nothing left for them to steal. Now that this meagre supply had been exhausted, the distant rumble of gunfire in the west was the only thing that kept them going.
Ottaway marched in silence beside Ashby. That they were still alive on this day late in April was evidence of the miracle which, alone and unaided, Ashby had succeeded in working. He had shown a remarkable talent for blackmail, first with Wollweber and subsequently with the commandant of Sachsenhausen concentration camp who finally had been persuaded to arrange their transfer to a POW camp in exchange for a worthless affidavit which absolved him of all responsibility for the conditions which existed at Sachsenhausen. How any man could fondly imagine that this useless scrap of paper would protect him in the days to come was beyond Ottaway’s comprehension, but with the imminent collapse of the Reich staring them in the face, it seemed that there were any number of petty officials only too anxious to obtain some tiny shred of evidence which purported to show that basically they were decent men at heart.
Ottaway said, ‘I don’t know whether my imagination is playing tricks with me or not but we seem to be moving away from the battle area. The artillery sounds fainter than it did an hour ago.’