Gestapo (11 page)

And yet it was a critical meeting. Himmler had been interfering with the management of the Peenemuende station (this was in 1944), and Dornberger had gone to Berlin to demand the release of two of his men who had been arrested for no apparent reason at all. Mueller's behavior indicated how deeply he had been impressed by his Soviet model. He heard Dornberger out, and then, without warning, instead of arguing, came back with a counter-attack:

“ ‘You are a very interesting case, General. Do you
know what a fat file of evidence we have against you here?'

“I shook my head in surprise. He raised his hand a few inches above the table. I couldn't help asking him, ‘Why don't you arrest me then?'

“ ‘Because it would be pointless as yet. You are still regarded as our greatest rocket expert, and we can't very well ask you to give expert evidence against yourself.' ”

There was some desultory discussion of General Dornberger's alleged negligence and sabotage, and that was that. The only time Mueller showed emotion at this interview was when Dornberger referred to the arrests as being carried out by the S.D. This upset the Chief of the Gestapo: “As a general on the active list you should surely know the difference between the S.D. and the Gestapo.” Dornberger retorted that nobody knew the difference. Mueller gulped, but said nothing.

He disappeared as silently as he arrived. We hear of him last in Hitler's Bunker two days before the end. Professional as always, he had turned up in that madhouse on Hitler's instructions to interrogate, as head of the Gestapo, the ex-riding-master Fegelein, the cousin of Eva Braun, and one of Himmler's personal links with the Fuehrer's inner circle. Fegelein had to be investigated because the news had just come to Hitler that Himmler had turned against him and was conspiring to usurp the leadership. It is characteristic of all we know of Mueller that he should not have been held compromised by the treason of his master.

Mueller did his job, while Berlin rocked, shuddered, and disintegrated under the Russian artillery and Hitler prepared himself for the end. Then, with Fegelein shot for a conspiracy with which he had nothing to do—Hitler's last execution—the chief of the Gestapo vanishes, whether to die in the streets of Berlin, to escape under an assumed identity to Austria or Spain or the Argentine, or to join the Russians he admired so much, we do not know. Willy Hoettl believes that he did just that. For some time he had been using captured Russian agents to communicate false intelligence to the Soviet armies, using their own codes and their own wireless sets; and it would have been entirely possible for him to enter into detailed communication with the enemy by this means without anyone being the wiser.
Be that as it may, like a perfect civil servant, he went, leaving not a trace, his files totally destroyed.

If every member of the R.S.H.A. had been as efficient and careful as Gestapo Mueller it would have been very hard indeed to piece together the story of that remarkable institution. But many members were not. Documents with the signatures of Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, and even Mueller himself were found by the Allies all over Europe. These should have been destroyed when read by their recipients; but they were not. Further, prisoners from the concentration camps, many of whom had been interrogated by the Gestapo, lived in considerable numbers to tell their tales. These, too, should have been done away with before their release by the Allies; but, although Kalten-brunner and others gave orders for their liquidation, they survived. Finally, on a much smaller, yet decisive, scale, certain colleagues, associates, and subordinates of Mueller fell into Allied hands and satisfied some inner need either by denouncing their superiors and associates or else by confessing to all but unbelievable actions committed by themselves. These, had they been made of the stuff of Mueller, would have destroyed themselves or else gone into hiding; but they did not. So, all in all, the discretion of Gestapo Mueller was practiced in vain.

It should not be thought that all his associates were captured. Some committed suicide, like Himmler himself; many others—a remarkably high proportion, indeed—simply disappeared, like Mueller, and have never been heard of again. Nor did all those who were captured allow themselves the luxury of confession. For example, Kalten-brunner, Heydrich's rather dreary successor, sourly refused to admit his complicity in anything at all, even when confronted with his own signature and his own photograph in what might be called compromising contexts. Others sought to put all the blame onto their colleagues. Some succeeded in this; but some did not—like the gentlemanly and well-dressed Dr. Lindow of sub-section Ia of the Gestapo,
who busied himself with Russian prisoners-of-war, and, two years after his release from formal internment as a second-degree Nazi, was shocked and outraged to find himself suddenly under arrest for mass murder. But there were others who felt the need to confess, and described their activities, and those of their associates, with conscientious care and in clinical detail.

These were various. There was the imposing figure of S.S. Lieutenant General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, Higher S.S. and Police Leader of the Central Russian front, and, as such, immediately responsible to Himmler for everything that happened behind the fighting armies in his immense command. There was one of the star performers among Heydrich's bright young men, an intellectual thug, the brilliant young economist Otto Ohlendorf, who became an S.S. Major General and head of the domestic S.D., the German version of those Oxford dons who did so well in the British Intelligence during the war; unlike his English, or Scottish, or Welsh counterparts, he got out of his depth and found himself commanding one of Heydrich's notorious Action Groups (
Einsatzgruppe
D), and later admitted responsibility for the murder of over ninety thousand Jews in Southern Russia, men, women, and children. There was S.S. Captain Dieter Wisliceny, a trusted aide of S.S. Colonel Eichmann (Chief of the Gestapo's Jewish Office (R.S.H.A. Amt IVA 4b)) in his task of delivering the Jews of Europe to the gas chambers.

It was Wisliceny who related at Nuremberg how Eichmann had told him that he would kill himself if Germany lost the war, and “would leap into his grave laughing, because the feeling that he had five million human beings on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.” (Eichmann could not help boasting, even in terms of horror, as Mr. Reitlinger in his monumental and terrible study of the attempted extermination of European Jewry has shown: he personally did not have a hand in more than three million murders. Most would be well satisfied with this; but Eichmann, like so many of his compatriots, had to exaggerate, even to himself.)

There was S.S. Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Franz Hoess, not a member of the Gestapo or the S.D., and so inferior. As Commandant of Auschwitz, however, he was a particular
crony of Eichmann's and his chief customer; later, he became Deputy Inspector of Concentration Camps under S.S. Lieutenant General Gluecks. Gluecks vanished, but Hoess was caught and hanged. There was Helmut Naujocks of the S.D., a plainclothes expert, who only killed for a useful purpose, but who was able to throw some light on the conspiratorial aspects of the Gestapo: his modest contribution to history was the faking of the frontier incident which started the world war.

There were others: so many, that, in spite of the silences of Gestapo Mueller, the picture builds up; it is time to look at it.

At Nuremberg they did not talk about the activities of the Gestapo: they talked about its crimes. They listed these crimes in a manner which makes for convenient reference, and, at the same time, offers a useful and comprehensive survey of the ground we have to cover. The best list was provided by Colonel Story of the United States Prosecution. When he speaks of “the conspiracy” he means the Nazi conspiracy, first against Germany, then against the world:

“The Gestapo and the S.D. played an important part in almost every criminal act of the conspiracy. The category of these crimes, apart from thousands of specific instances of torture and cruelty in policing Germany for the benefit of the conspirators, reads like a page from the devil's notebook:

“They fabricated the border incidents which Hitler used as an excuse for attacking Poland.

“They murdered hundreds of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children by the infamous Einsatz groups.

“They removed Jews, political leaders, and scientists from prisoner-of-war camps and murdered them.

“They took recaptured prisoners-of-war to concentration camps and murdered them.

“They established and classified the concentration camps and sent thousands of people into them for extermination and slave labor.

“They cleared Europe of the Jews and were responsible
for sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths in annihilation camps.

“They rounded up hundreds of thousands of citizens of occupied countries and shipped them to Germany for forced labor and sent slave laborers to labor reformatory camps.

“They executed captured commandos and paratroopers, and protected civilians who lynched Allied fliers.

“They took civilians of occupied countries to Germany for secret trial and punishment.

“They arrested, tried, and punished citizens of occupied countries under special criminal procedures, which did not accord fair trials, and by summary methods.

“They murdered or sent to concentration camps the realtives of persons who had allegedly committed crimes.

“They ordered the murder of prisoners in Sipo and S.D. prisons to prevent their release by Allied armies.

“They participated in the seizure and spoliation of public and private property.

“They were primary agents for the persecution of the Jews and churches.”

This was the pattern of terror. Himmler used to go about asking visiting foreigners why it was that the Gestapo had got such a bad name for itself. Heydrich, on the other hand, knew why, and gloried in this reputation:

“Secret State Police, Criminal Police, and S.D. are still adorned with the furtive and whispered secrecy of a political detective story. In a mixture of fear and shuddering—and yet, at home, with a certain feeling of security because of this presence—brutality, inhumanity bordering on the sadistic, and ruthlessness, are attributed to the men of this profession.”

Heydrich was speaking to his officers and men on German Police Day in February, 1941. He was happy that things should be so. He could make a joke about it. In the same speech, he said:

“It is natural that people do not want to be involved with us too much. There is no problem down to the
smallest egotistical longing which the Gestapo cannot solve. Regarded in this way we are, if a joke is permitted, looked upon as a cross between a general maid and the dustbin of the Reich.”

The joke was permitted. The problems were solved by killing and torture: the Gestapo knew no other way. There was scarcely an exception to this. Once Himmler was in the saddle there were few major actions undertaken by the Gestapo which did not involve the torturing or killing of somebody. The massacre of June 30th set the tone. When Himmler was allowed by the generals to murder their rivals in cold blood, when during this massacre Himmler saw fit to kill off for good measure some of the Army's closest friends, without producing any reaction from the generals—then the game was up. It was too much to expect that the ordinary citizens of a powerful country should show resistance to an evil condoned by their most venerated caste. If Himmler, under Hitler, showed no scruple in murdering his fellow Germans—Communists, Socialists, Liberals of all kinds—it was a fair deduction that he would show no scruple in murdering his fellow Party members. And if he was prepared to murder his fellow Party members, then plainly he would be even more prepared to murder such foreigners as might come his way. This happened. And the generals who had condoned the murders of Roehm, Strasser, and their old friend von Schleicher, were to find themselves condoning before very long—and, indeed, as we shall see, actively assisting in—the murder of hundreds of thousands of human beings, men, women, and children, under their own noses and within the areas of their commands.

They could not help it, they said. The whole affair was outside their control. It could be so: it is not for us to say. The issue is too large for the outsider. Only the Germans can decide. So far, as a nation, they have evaded decision.

But why should we pick on the generals? Why assume in them a special responsibility towards the German people? The answer is that they claimed such responsibility. The officer caste regarded itself, and was so regarded by large sections of the population, as the repository of German honor. It was also powerful. Hitler could do nothing without its assent and connivance. It tolerated Hitler, whom it
despised, because Hitler promised it a return to its vanished glory. For this it was prepared to put up with Himmler and Heydrich too, and the methods of this precious pair. It was the only organized body which could have stopped Himmler in time. It did not do so because Himmler was helping Hitler to consolidate his power, and the generals needed Hitler to restore their arms. In order that they might once more hold up their heads before the world and recover their lost confidence, the German generals were prepared to condone, and did condone—and later largely assist in—the murder of innumerable innocent civilians, men, women, and children. And in the end, of course, they found they could not hold up their heads after all.

It was not as if these men had no warning. In June, 1934, after the nation as a whole, in the high hysteria of revolutionary violence, or in the defeatism of cynicism, opportunism, or despair, had been gathered into Himmler's net, the generals were still outside. They had the aged President at their head; General von Fritsch, the most able man after von Seekt, was their Chief of Staff. They had their ex-Chief of Staff, General Beck, who had resigned in disgust, as their mentor and Cassandra. They made their deal with Himmler and handed over the S.A. to the S.S. for slaughter almost certainly without knowing what they were doing. But by the first day of July they knew exactly what they had done. And if in that moment they were too dazed and sickened to take resolute action, they still had another chance. Two more chances. Three.