IN THE New Reich Chancellery the working day was beginning. Early though it was, the sun was already warming the building’s grey walls and the stone slabs of the pavement. Afraid of being late, employees were hurrying in: typists, stenographers, clerks, archivists, receptionists, the women who worked in the canteen and the café, and junior officials from the adjutant’s office and the Reich Ministers’ Secretariat. Big-boned Nazi women strode down the corridors, swinging their arms, keeping up with the young men in military uniform; this was a time when the Chancellery’s female employees were the only women in Berlin ever to be seen without a shopping bag for provisions. They had been ordered not to bring any large bags or packages to their workplace, since it was imperative that the staff of so august an institution should maintain their dignity. People said that this order had been issued after a collision between Goebbels and a librarian carrying bags full of cabbage and jars of pickled beans and cucumbers. In her confusion, the librarian had dropped her handbag and a paper bag full of peas, and Goebbels, in spite of the pain in his leg, had squatted down, placed his files of papers on the floor beside him and begun to gather up the scattered peas, saying that this reminded him of his childhood. The librarian had thanked him and promised to preserve the peas as a keepsake, as a reminder of the kindness and straightforwardness of the lame doctor, of the fact that he was truly a man of the people.31
Chancellery employees coming from Charlottenburg or from the direction of Friedrichstrasse understood at once, as soon as they left their tram or U-Bahn station, that Hitler was in Berlin and would be going to the Reich Chancellery. White-haired senior officials walked on with poker faces, as if to show they had no wish to see anything they weren’t meant to see. But the young exchanged winks as they walked past the additional military and police posts and saw the many men in civilian dress, all with oddly similar expressions, each with a gaze that could penetrate the leather of a briefcase as swiftly and easily as an X-ray. For the young, all this was amusing and entertaining—Hitler had seldom visited Berlin during the last few months. He was now spending most of his time either in Berchtesgaden or in his field HQ five hundred kilometres from the combat zone.
At the main entrance to the Chancellery, senior guards were checking passes and documents. Behind them stood members of the Führer’s personal bodyguard, looking slowly and searchingly at everyone who passed through.
The office had tall French windows looking onto the garden. These were now half-open and there was a smell of freshly watered greenery. The office was huge, and it took some time to walk from the fireplace at the far end, beside which stood a writing desk and an armchair upholstered in pink silk, to the anteroom door. In the course of this walk one would pass a terrestrial globe the size of a beer keg, a long marble table covered in maps, and the French windows opening onto the terrace and garden.
Out in the garden, thrushes were calling to one another with quiet restraint, as if afraid of expending too soon the strength they would need for a long summer’s day. Inside the office, now walking past the French windows, was a man in a grey trench coat and breeches. On his chest—over a simple white shirt with a turndown collar and a tightly knotted black tie—were an Iron Cross, a wounded-in-action medal, and a special Party badge with a gold border around the swastika. His rather feeble, drooping shoulders, which seemed all the narrower in comparison with the almost womanly breadth of his hips, had been skilfully padded. There was something discordant about his general appearance—he seemed somehow to be both thin and plump. His bony face, sunken temples and long neck belonged to a thin man, while his bottom and thighs seemed to have been borrowed from someone stout and well nourished.
His suit, his Iron Cross testifying to military courage, his war-wounds medal testifying to the suffering he had undergone, the Nazi badge with a swastika that symbolized the racial and state unity of the New Germany—all this was familiar from dozens of photographs, drawings, newsreels, stamps, badges, posters and leaflets, bas-reliefs in plaster and marble, and cartoons by David Low and the Kukryniksy.32
Yet even someone who had seen hundreds of different images of this man might have been slow to recognize the real Hitler, with his sickly face, his pale, narrow forehead, his inflamed, protruding eyes with swollen lids, and his broad, fleshy nostrils.
That night, the Führer had slept little and woken early. His morning bath had not restored his spirits. It may have been the exhausted look in his eyes that made his face seem so very different now from how it appeared in pictures and photographs.
While he was asleep, lying in his long nightshirt under a blanket, mumbling, snoring, chewing his lips, grinding his large teeth, turning from side to side, drawing his knees up to his chest—while he was asleep, this man in his fifties had much in common with any other middle-aged man with a shattered nervous system, an impaired metabolism and heart palpitations. It was indeed during these hours of ugly, troubled sleep that Hitler was closest to being human. He grew less and less human when he woke, got out of bed with a shiver, bathed, put on his underwear and military breeches—already laid out by his staff—combed his dark hair from right to left and checked in the mirror to make sure that the entire image—hair, face, bags under the eyes and all—was in accord with the sacrosanct model now as obligatory for the Führer himself as for his photographers.
Hitler went out through the French windows and leaned his shoulder against the wall, which was already being warmed by the sun. He seemed to enjoy the feel of the warm stone, and he pressed his cheek and his thigh against the wall too, wanting to absorb from it some of the sun’s warmth.
He stood there for a while, obeying the instinctive desire of any cold-blooded creature to warm itself in the sun. His facial muscles relaxed into a sleepy, contented smile; there was something about this pose, which he thought rather girlish, that he found pleasurable.
His grey trench coat and breeches blended with the pale grey of the Chancellery stone. Now that it was at rest, there was something indescribably horrible about this weak, ugly creature with its thin neck and drooping shoulders.
Hearing quiet steps, Hitler quickly turned round.
But the man approaching was a friend. He was tall, well built, and he had a distinct paunch. He had rosy cheeks, plump, slightly protruding lips and a small chin.
The two men went back into the office. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, walked with his head bowed, as if embarrassed at being visibly taller than the Chancellor.
Articulating each word clearly, and raising his pale, moist hand, Hitler said, “I don’t want any explanations. I want to hear the simple words operation completed.”
He sat down at the table and gestured brusquely to Himmler to sit opposite him. Narrowing his eyes behind the thick lenses of his pince-nez, Himmler began to speak. His voice was calm and gentle.
Himmler was well aware of the bitterness inherent in any friendship between those standing at the summit of a granite state. He knew that it was not any particular knowledge, intelligence or other gift that had elevated him—a poultry-farm manager and employee of a company that produced synthetic nitrogen—to such heights.
His terrible power sprang from only one source—his passion to execute the will of the man whom, as if they were both still students, he had just been addressing as du. The more blind and unquestioning his obedience within this office, the more limitless his power outside it.33 Such a relationship, however, was not easy to maintain. Only by means of constant alertness could Himmler demonstrate the appropriate flexible, emotionally committed obedience. He needed to avoid all suspicion of freedom of thought, but it was equally important to avoid any suspicion of obsequiousness, that sister of hypocrisy and betrayal.
His devotion had to adopt complex, varied forms, not only that of straightforward obedience. At times it was better to be querulous or sullen; at times it was better to argue, to be rude, stubborn, or contrary. Himmler was speaking to a man he had first met long ago, at a dark time of pitiful weakness. It was important that Hitler should constantly, every minute, sense in some part of his soul the longstanding nature of the bond between them, that this bond should matter more to him than anything that belonged merely to the present moment. But it was equally important that Hitler should feel the exact opposite: the absolute insignificance, today, of such a link from the distant past. Really, this link served only to emphasize the depth of the abyss between them; never, under any circumstances, could it suggest that the two men might in any respect be on equal terms. And in every one of his conversations with the Führer, Himmler had to call up both of these opposites. This was a world where reality was without reality, where the only reality was the mood of the Führer, his whim of the moment.
Now Himmler was making out that he was obliged—in the Führer’s own interest—to argue with him. He, Himmler, understood Hitler’s deepest wish. This wish might seem terrible. It was born, however, not only from long-past yet indelible personal suffering but also from a selflessly noble hatred—the impassioned survival instinct of the race whom the Führer now represented. Still, a rage that does not distinguish between an armed enemy and a helpless baby or adolescent girl is indeed dangerous. In all likelihood, he alone among the Führer’s close associates fully understood what strength of will was required to struggle against the seemingly helpless and weak; he alone knew the dangers of such a struggle. It was a rebellion against millennia of human history, a challenge to mankind’s humanistic prejudices. The weaker and more helpless the victim appears, the more difficult and dangerous the struggle. Among those close to the Führer there was no one else who understood the true grandeur of the special operation, now already underway, that in the language of the enfeebled might be called organized mass murder. The Führer should have no doubt that Himmler was proud to share with him the awful weight of this burden. But no one else, even among the Führer’s most devoted friends, need know all the bitterness of this work. Himmler alone should glimpse the depths the Führer had revealed to him, since he alone could discern in them the truth of a new creation.
Himmler was speaking quickly, in an excited, impassioned tone, conscious all the time of the weight of Hitler’s gaze.
Himmler knew only too well Hitler’s way of appearing to be absorbed in his own thoughts and not to be listening at all—and then, bewilderingly, pouncing on some important and subtle point. Hitler’s unexpected smile at such moments was frightening.
Himmler put his hand on the papers lying on the desk.
The Führer had seen the plans, but he himself had just come back from the empty spaces that lay to the east. There, among uninhabited pine forests, he had seen the severe simplicity of the gas chambers, their steps and doorways adorned with flowers . . . The sad music of the last farewell to life and the tall flames in the middle of the night . . . Not to everyone is it given to understand the poetry of the primeval chaos that blends life and death together.
It was a complex and difficult conversation. For Himmler, every such tête-à-tête with Hitler had one and the same hidden purpose. Whether they were talking about the future of the German nation, the decadence of French painting, the excellence of a young sheepdog the Führer had given to him as a present, the extraordinary fruitfulness of a young apple tree in the Führer’s garden, the bulldog face and fat belly of that drunkard Churchill or the unmasking of Roosevelt as a “secret Jew,” Himmler’s hidden agenda was to consolidate his own position, to establish himself as closer to Hitler than the three or four other men who appeared to enjoy his ephemeral trust.
But progress towards this goal was no simple matter. When the Führer was cross with Goebbels or suspicious of Göring, it was best to disagree with him, to argue in his colleagues’ defence. Conversation with Hitler was always complicated and dangerous. There were no limits to his suspiciousness. His moods changed swiftly and his decisions were beyond all ordinary logic.
Now too Hitler interrupted, repeating, “I want to hear that the work has been completed. I want to hear the simple words all completed! I do not want to have to return to this question when the war is over. What do I want with your flower-adorned steps and your clever little plans? There are enough gullies and ravines in Poland, aren’t there? And enough idlers in your SS regiments?”
He leaned forward, gathered up the papers lying on his desk, held them for a while in the air, as if giving his anger time to build up, then threw them back down on the table.
“To hell with your clever plans and your idiot mysticism! I don’t need your flowers and your music. Who told you I was a mystic?34 I’ve had enough of all this. What are you waiting for? Have they got tanks? Machine guns? Air support?” And then, more quietly, he asked, “Do you really not understand? Do you want to torment me when I need to gather all my strength for the war?” He got up from the desk and moved closer to Himmler. “Shall I tell you the source of your slowness and your love of mystery?” He looked down at Himmler, at the pink, translucent skin he could see beneath Himmler’s thinning hair, and went on with a laugh of disgust, “Do you really not understand? You who know the pulse of the nation better than anyone—do you really not understand your own self? I know only too well why you want to hide everything in dark forests and obscure mysticism. It’s because you’re afraid! And that’s because you don’t believe in me, in my power, in my success, in my struggle! You did not believe in me, I remember, in 1925. And it was the same in 1929, in 1933, in 1939, and even after I had conquered France! Feeble souls, when will you believe? And you—will you really be the very last to understand that there is only one real power in the world? Is every blockhead in Europe going to grasp this before you? Even now, when I’ve brought Russia to her knees—when everyone can see she will stay on her knees for the next 500 years—do you still not believe? I don’t need to hide my decisions. Stalingrad will be ours within three days. I hold the key to victory in my hands. I am strong enough. The time for secrets has passed. What I conceived, I shall carry out—and no one in the world will dare hinder me.”
He pressed his hands to his temples, tossed back the hair hanging over his forehead and repeated several times, as he looked around him, “I’ll give you flowers! I’ll give you music!”