‘Gesundheit!’
Pauli had this filthy influenza. Inge said it was his fault for not wrapping up well, but anyway he couldn’t shake it off. He’d been running a temperature for two days and he should have been in bed, and would have been except that Lothar Koch had made such a fuss. In any case, the last place he should have been at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday, June 30, 1934 was standing in front of the passenger buildings on the silent, empty and icy-cold Oberwiesenfeld, the airport for Munich.
The breath of the two men condensed on the night air. ‘He left Bonn at two a.m.,’ said Lothar Koch. Behind the airport buildings a line of big cars were parked. The drivers had been sleeping. But now they’d been wakened and were wiping condensation from the glasswork and running the engines to have them warm and ready.
Pauli wiped his nose and didn’t answer. It was all right for Koch. He was used to outdoor duties, and he had woollen underwear to wrists and ankles and his new heavy black leather overcoat. Leather was the only thing that offered protection against this sort of cold wind, and Pauli decided to buy one from the same shop where Koch had got his. It had a removable woollen lining in a hideously vulgar plaid, not even a genuine tartan. Pauli’s Scots nanny had taught him to despise such fakes, and he had decided against buying the coat. But this morning he wouldn’t have cared what the lining was like. Anything would have been warmer than his thin raincoat.
‘Are you sure the Führer himself is aboard?’ said Pauli. He huddled in the shelter of a mobile generator, but it gave little protection against the piercing wind. ‘Why would he come so early? He’s not due in Bad Wiessee until eleven a.m.’
‘Something very special is happening. The teleprinters have been going all night,’ said Koch. ‘I was in the Brown House last night soon after Sepp Dietrich arrived with two Berlin Criminal Police officers. He’d come directly from a meeting with the Führer. He said that two companies of the Leibstandarte are coming from Berlin-Lichterfelde. Does that bring back some happy memories?’
Pauli nodded and wiped his nose again. Lichterfelde barracks. It was odd to think of the black-uniformed LAH, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler – the Führer’s SS bodyguard – occupying the old Prussian-army cadet school. Nineteen fourteen – that was a long time ago. He’d been just a child, and the world was foolish and innocent. If only he’d known what was waiting for him.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Koch. ‘The Leibstandarte are on their way by train to Kaufering, near Landesberg am Lech. Sepp Dietrich is meeting them there with transport to take them to Bad Wiessee.’
‘I don’t see any special significance in that,’ said Pauli. ‘The Leibstandarte companies have to provide security for the Führer’s meeting with Röhm.’
‘Röhm and all SA Obergruppenführer, and Gruppenführer and inspectors. All the SA top brass will be there,’ said Koch. ‘My pal from the Kripo got a look at the Führer last night. He said he was in a really bad mood.’
Pauli nodded and sneezed into his handkerchief.
Koch added, ‘But the most significant thing of all, my friend, happened last Monday. The German Officers’ Association expelled Captain Ernst Röhm. Expelled him! Why is the army distancing itself from him? I think those bastards know something we don’t know.’
‘But which we soon will know,’ said Pauli, and wiped his nose. In this cold wind his eyes were watering, too. He felt like death. Whatever was going to happen, he fervently hoped it would happen soon, so that he could go home and go to bed.
There was the sound of a door slamming and a flash of yellow light from the building behind them. A man in blue coveralls and a leather jacket came out of a door marked ‘Weather Bureau’ and told them the plane would be landing in ten minutes. Soon afterwards all the runway lights came on, revealing a layer of mist through which the lights shone like dandelion puffballs. Then they switched on the big floodlights that illuminated the apron where the passengers disembarked.
Now a group of people came from the airport buildings and stood looking at the northwestern sky. They didn’t speak to one another. They stood like statues, still and silent. Some of the reception committee were easily recognized. They were mostly men from the Munich offices: personalities who had several closely written index cards devoted to them in Lothar’s constantly updated SD records. There were a couple of army officers, and high-ranking officers of the SA, the SS and the Nazi Party. The only ones not in uniform were two airport officials, who kept looking at their watches.
Pauli was the first person who spotted it in the streaky purple sky. It was the big three-engined Junkers that Lufthansa had refurbished specially for Hitler. It landed smoothly and taxied to where the steps had been wheeled into position. Lothar Koch and Pauli Winter kept well aside from the reception committee. Their orders would come from the office of Reichsführer-SS Himmler: that’s how important it was. Meanwhile, Koch was writing in his tiny black notebook the name of everyone present. Koch kept a note of everything; it had become almost an obsession with him.
The aircraft’s door opened, and as the first passengers emerged the reception committee formed a line, fidgeting about, like recruits on a parade ground, to be sure they were properly in position. The third man – a leather-coated figure – coming down the steep metal steps paused to look round, like an actor making his first appearance on a new stage. It was the Führer – there was no mistaking him – and even from this distance it was clear that he was agitated. After him came Josef Goebbels, lame and cautious on the steps, then Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief, and then – a dispatch case clamped tight under his arm, and keeping apart from the others – came Viktor Lutze, the SA leader in Hanover.
The Junkers cut its engines one by one, and in the silence that followed, Pauli heard Hitler tell the Reichsheer officers, ‘This is the blackest day of my life. But I shall go to Bad Wiessee and pass severe judgement. Tell that to General Adam.’
Koch eyed Pauli and smiled sardonically. Now, slowly, it was becoming clearer to them. They both knew that Lieutenant General Wilhelm Adam, commander of the Reichsheer’s 7th Division in Munich, was one of their regular sources of information about SA activities. If Röhm and his men were to be the target of some punitive action, General Adam would be only too pleased to provide the army’s help. No doubt that was where Dietrich, the LAH commander, would get his trucks.
A tall man in the long black overcoat and peaked cap of the Allgemeine SS detached himself from Hitler’s party and came over to them. ‘Which of you is the lawyer?’ he asked. He wore the headquarters cuffband, a badge that identified him as one of the adjutants that Himmler’s offices teemed with nowadays.
‘I am,’ said Pauli.
‘You’d better start now,’ he said. ‘Röhm’s Headquarters Guard might put up a roadblock. You’d better have your story ready.’
‘I have false papers,’ said Koch. Even Koch was deferential to this august personage from the Reichsführer’s office.
‘Don’t park near the Pension Hanselbauer. We don’t want them alarmed.’
‘It’s all prepared,’ said Koch. ‘I have chosen a place already.’
‘Very efficient,’ said the tall man in a voice that might or might not have been sarcastic. ‘Are you men armed?’
‘Yes,’ said Koch.
‘And you, lawyer?’ As he said it the adjutant looked away to see where Hitler’s entourage were going.
‘I have a pistol,’ said Pauli.
‘And do you know how to use it?’ asked the man. He was too young to have been in the war. It was typical of such upstarts that he wore an army sabre instead of the SS sword that regulations prescribed.
‘Yes,’ said Pauli, ‘I know how.’ Pauli did not share Koch’s awe. He added, ‘Is the Führer going to Bad Wiessee?’
The tall SS adjutant looked at him with contempt. ‘You’d better get started,’ he said and turned away to rejoin Hitler’s party, who were now getting into the cars.
‘Don’t ask questions,’ said Koch after they were on the road south. It was getting lighter every minute, and the cloudy sky changed from red to pink and curdled, like a bowl of soured cream. ‘That’s one of the basic rules.’
‘It’s a damned stupid rule.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ said Koch judiciously, ‘but it’s a rule nevertheless. If you wanted so badly to know where the Führer is going, you should have asked me.’
‘Why? Do you know where they’re all going?’
‘They’re off to the Ministry of the Interior in Munich. The Führer will give Minister Wagner a good talking to. After that they’ll come out to Bad Wiessee.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I asked one of the drivers. That schmuck you asked had no idea where they were going. That’s what made him upset when you asked.’
Pauli laughed despite his misery. He liked Koch. Koch had the right pragmatic approach; that’s why he’d falsified his age to get into the army, and that’s why he’d become a sergeant major at some ridiculously young age.
‘And forget about roadblocks,’ said Koch. ‘Röhm’s Headquarters Guard are in Munich. Does that oaf think we haven’t been watching their movements all the time?’
Bad Wiessee was a small resort near the Austrian border where the elderly came to retire and the infirm to enjoy the iodine baths. When the two men arrived in their car, the streets were empty. In the sanguine light of early morning, the still water of the lake reflected the surrounding mountains and the tall peak of the Wallberg, which was, for the few brief weeks of summer, devoid of snow.
They parked in the back alley of the little Goldenes Kreuz Gasthof. From there they could see the road while remaining virtually out of sight. Bad Wiessee is only fifty-four kilometres from Munich, but it is high in the mountains, and in the unheated car Pauli shivered with the cold.
Inge had provided them with some cold meat, bread rolls, and a small flask of hot soup. The soup would make Pauli feel better: Inge’s home-made soup always did. There was not much of it, and he shared it between the two metal picnic cups.
For a few minutes the two men sat there chewing in silence, but they watched the road constantly.
‘Here they come now,’ said Koch. It was 6.30 a.m. He opened the car door to tip away his untouched cup of hot soup. Pauli could cheerfully have killed him.
Pauli turned his head towards the road but saw nothing. ‘Where?’
‘They won’t have their lights on,’ said Koch. ‘There!’
He could see them now, three vehicles coming slowly down the final stretch of road.
‘Where’s Dietrich and his Leibstandarte?’ said Koch anxiously. ‘Oh my God! Where is he? How the hell can we protect the Führer if he goes in there now?’
The three cars rolled on right to the front door of the Pension Hanslbauer. Someone there must have been expecting the visitors, for the door opened immediately. Men tumbled out of the cars. Besides the Führer and his associates, there were six broad-shouldered, reliable men from the Political Police department in Munich.
‘Come along!’ said Koch. ‘This is us.’
Pauli swigged down the rest of his soup, even though it burned his throat, and clambered out of the car into the colder air that came off the lake. Koch in the lead and Pauli chasing after him, they ran across the yard and entered the hotel building along with Hitler and the rest of them.
The proprietors – a man and wife – were up and dressed. Perhaps they were preparing breakfast for the fully occupied hotel. The woman hurriedly took off her apron and started to welcome the Führer formally. She even held the guest book ready for signing. Someone elbowed her aside roughly, Lutze grabbed the visitors book and they raced up the stairs. By now everyone had pistols drawn, even Hitler.
There was a banging of doors: they were looking for Röhm. There were shouts and screams. ‘No, not there!’ More shouts. ‘He’s not there, either!’ A thump was heard as something or someone was knocked to the floor. Many of the SA leaders were in bed with young men. Lutze shouted the number of Röhm’s bedroom – he’d read it from the visitors’ book he’d snatched from the old woman. Now Lutze’s role was clear: Lutze was Judas.
Someone was knocking at Röhm’s door and shouting that he had something urgent to discuss. There was a delay, and then the door opened very wide. Röhm was dressed in pyjamas. He stood in the doorway, heavy with sleep and blinking in the light. Hitler called him a traitor and Röhm shouted ‘No.’ Hitler said, ‘Get dressed. You’re under arrest.’ His voice cracked with emotion. Röhm was his oldest friend, an associate and a supporter right from the very beginning, and still almost the only man who used the familiar du to the Führer.
Röhm, his scarred face flushed with anger, stared at him until Hitler turned away and banged on the door opposite Röhm’s. SA Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines opened the door; behind him a young nude man was sitting on the bed, wide-eyed, and searching amongst the rumpled sheets for something to wear. Lutze pushed past Heines into the room. He opened the chest of drawers and wardrobe, looking for weapons, but there were none. Whatever the SA leaders had been doing, there was no evidence of armed revolt.
In the absence of Hitler’s comments, Goebbels – the Führer’s mouthpiece – was shouting ‘Nauseating!’ and ‘Revolting!’ from the other end of the corridor. Pauli stood watching. Otto Dietrich, the press secretary, caught his eye and shrugged. The two men had something in common. Pauli Winter was going to be asked to justify this madness in legal terms, and the press secretary would have to make it into something the public might swallow. Hitler croaked, ‘Take him out and shoot him,’ but no one was sure who was meant to be shot.
Heines heard it, however. He turned to Lutze and said, ‘Lutze, I’ve done nothing. Can’t you help me?’ Lutze, still rummaging through the wardrobe, said, ‘I can do nothing. I can do nothing.’
Koch pushed his way along the corridor. ‘Come, Pauli.’ He seemed to know where he was going. He kicked open the unlocked door of a room and went inside. Pauli followed, pistol ready. There was no SA man to be seen in this bedroom, only a boy in bed: skinny, very young, little more than a child. Koch pulled the sheets from his naked body and the boy flinched, shielding his face with his hands, as if expecting a blow. Koch turned away from the bed and pulled open the wardrobe. At first there seemed to be only clothes hanging there. Then Koch shouted, ‘Out! Out, you bastard!’ and a small hunched figure stepped out from the hanging garments.
He was completely naked. A pale, wrinkled body contrasted oddly with hands and head darkened by sunlight. It was Graf. Without his spectacles, he had to screw up his eyes to see Koch and Pauli more clearly. ‘Winter,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘I thought it might be you.’
Pauli said nothing. For a moment the two men looked at each other. There would be no pleas from Graf. Even now, humiliated and vanquished, he wouldn’t ask for help. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ said Pauli. He handed the old man his gold-rimmed spectacles.
Koch watched the exchange with interest. He’d known all along, of course. And Lothar Koch couldn’t resist telling you he knew. In a policeman it was a failing – perhaps Koch’s only failing as a policeman.
From outside in the corridor someone said, ‘Lock them in the cellars. We’ll take them to Stadelheim.’ It wasn’t clear who said it. Hitler was overcome with emotion and seemed almost incapable of speech. Perhaps it was Goebbels.
Pauli Winter and Lothar Koch drove behind the truck that took the arrested men to Stadelheim Prison. They went the long way, right round the southern end of the lake, through Rottach-Egern and Tegernsee, having heard that the men of Röhm’s HQ Guard were waiting on the direct route back, hoping to rescue their charges.
By the time they got to Munich, the city was awake and at work. Armed men were in evidence everywhere. Nazi Party HQ in Briennerstrasse was completely sealed off – not by brownshirts or SS men but by armed soldiers of the Reichsheer. There were soldiers at the railway station, too, and plainclothes policemen were meeting every train and arresting SA leaders as they arrived for the scheduled SA conference with Hitler at 11:00 a.m.
At the prison, Pauli recognized most of the brownshirt leaders detained. Some of the most famous names in Germany were that day written into the prison records, for the SA had found supporters in high places. Ritter von Krausser, Manfred von Killinger, Hans-Peter von Heydebreck, Hans Heyn, Georg von Detten, Hans Joachim von Falkenhausen . . . Rumours abounded throughout the city, everyone was confused, and fear could be seen in almost everyone’s eyes.
At the SD office, Pauli Winter was given a list of names and addresses. He would serve the warrant – no more than a typed note – and Koch would make the arrest. There were no police cars to spare, so they had to take a taxicab. They had found and arrested six wanted men before they stopped for a quick lunch. They went to the big Bierkeller opposite the prison. It was crowded with policemen, most of them on the same task as Pauli and Koch. By this time Stadelheim Prison in central Munich was full. Prisoners were being taken up the road to where the old Royal Bavarian Gunpowder Factory buildings were now being used as a camp for ‘enemies of the state’. Dachau concentration camp, they called it. Koch cursed their luck long and heartily. Dachau was seventeen kilometres away, the extra journeying was going to make much more work.
Pauli sat back, exhausted. His influenza had weakened him so that every exertion was too much. He drank his ‘soup with egg yolk’ in the hope that it would give him more strength. It wasn’t like Inge’s. Inge’s home-made soup – like everything else she did – was perfect. He loved Inge, and needed her, especially when he wasn’t well. He was lucky to have such a wonderful, beautiful wife. She grumbled sometimes, but Inge did everything just the way he liked it.
Koch, who seemed to enjoy the excitement that the day had brought, was at the next table swapping stories with plainclothesmen from the Political Police desk. Someone said that Viktor Lutze had been declared the new Chief of Staff of the SA, so things didn’t look too rosy for Röhm. There was a story going round that the Stadelheim Prison authorities had put Röhm back into the same cell that he’d occupied when arrested for marching alongside Hitler after the attempted putsch in 1923. If true, it was a grim sort of joke, but it was the type of black humour that policemen enjoyed. Koch and his cronies howled with merriment at the idea of it.
An even better story was that the team sent to arrest Dr Ludwig Schmitt, an ally of Hitler’s old enemy Strasser, had come back with Dr Wilhelm Eduard Schmid, the well-known music critic of the Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten. ‘And,’ said the policeman telling the story, ‘once inside Dachau the poor old bastard was executed, so it’s too late to do anything about it now.’ The other men drank their beer and exchanged self-conscious smiles. No one knew if it was true; there were many such stories going the rounds. And it was not only in Munich. Summary executions – officially sanctioned murders – were taking place everywhere. The news just in said that in Berlin Dr Erich Klausener – a director of the Reich Transport Ministry and onetime head of the Police Section of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior – had been shot dead in his office by a uniformed SS man.
Pauli closed his eyes listening to Koch and his pals and tried to clear his blocked sinus. He was suffering. Koch told him to eat up, but Pauli just couldn’t bear to. Once they were in the car again, Koch looked down at the paper and said, ‘The next on the list is SA Obersturmbannführer Heinrich Brand!’
Pauli almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What? Brand?’
‘Just a joke, Pauli, old friend. No, your Brand is far too smart to get caught in the mangle. Brand is to be on Lutze’s new staff, from what I hear.’
Koch looked at his watery-eyed, red-nosed friend and smiled. Koch knew about Pauli’s court-martial, and his time with the Punishment Battalion. Koch had a spy in the army records office who checked up on everyone Koch needed to know about, but he never revealed that knowledge to Pauli, and had arranged the SD personnel files so that Pauli Winter’s army record was unblemished. Koch regarded such little favours as the sort of thing any comrade would expect of another.
They arrested four more SA leaders that afternoon. The elderly brownshirts went meekly and with only mild complaints. It was the journey to Dachau that was so tiring. By 6:00 p.m. the two men reported back to the SD office in Zuccalistrasse 4. Pauli sank down behind his desk while Koch found for him the bottle of schnapps they kept in the filing cabinet. ‘What a day!’ said Pauli, but just as he was signing out, a clerk told him that a lawyer was required at Stadelheim Prison. He was to report to SS-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich.
He found the well-known Leibstandarte commander in the courtyard of the old prison. The cobbled yard was dark, the low evening sun making the rooftops golden and the enclosed yard blue in the summer-evening light. Dietrich, forty-two years old, was a broad-shouldered man who’d been a manual worker for most of his life: farm labourer, petrol-pump attendant, customs officer, factory worker. Hitler had chosen him as a personal bodyguard back in the days when he needed physical protection at his meetings. Now Dietrich was an SS general, but he’d not lost the common touch. When Pauli found him, he was smoking a cigarette and chatting in Bavarian dialect with six of his black-uniformed soldiers and a tall young subaltern with shiny new officer’s badges.
‘Hello, Pauli,’ said Dietrich, still speaking in his strong Bavarian accent. He prided himself on his informality. ‘It looks like we’re ready to go.’ He threw down his cigarette and ground it under the heel of his polished boot. The firing squad picked up their rifles. ‘I want it all neat and tidy,’ said Dietrich. He put an arm round Pauli’s shoulder and walked him away from the soldiers and the young officer.
‘Yes, Gruppenführer,’ said Pauli.
‘You’re the legal expert. I want it all neat and tidy.’ He looked into Pauli’s watery eyes and, to be sure that it was clear, said, ‘We’re executing these SA people. Not Röhm: he stays in custody while the Führer thinks it over. What’s the normal procedure?’
‘A trial and a verdict,’ said Pauli.
Dietrich was a simple man, and now he smiled as if Pauli had made a subtle joke. ‘The Führer has tried them and found them guilty,’ he said.
Pauli wiped his nose and his eyes. Dietrich was staring at him as if he might be crying. He felt a fool. ‘Do you have orders?’
‘I don’t want the Public Prosecutor chasing me,’ said Dietrich, turning his back and lowering his voice. With remarkable bravery, the Munich Public Prosecutor had persuaded the Ministry of Justice to file cases for ‘incitement to murder’ against the Dachau camp commandant and two of his officials.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Pauli. ‘The Minister of the Interior told the Cabinet that any investigation of Dachau must be refused for reasons of state policy. This will come under the same heading.’
‘But the camp commandant was sacked,’ said Dietrich, scowling. He didn’t want to risk the same fate.
‘It will be all right,’ said Pauli, who wanted only to go home and go to bed. ‘But, for legal reasons, your officer had better read the sentence to each man before the execution takes place.’ Pauli felt a sneeze building up and had his handkerchief ready for it. He sneezed.
‘Gesundheit!’ said Dietrich politely, and beckoned the young officer over to them. ‘Tell him what to say,’ he instructed Pauli.
Thinking quickly, Pauli said, ‘Something like “You have been condemned to death by the Führer.”’ He blew his nose.
‘Is that enough?’ said Dietrich doubtfully.
‘They only have to be told the sentence,’ said Pauli. ‘That’s the law.’
‘“Heil Hitler” at the end,’ said Dietrich. ‘“You have been condemned to death by the Führer. Sentence to be carried out herewith. Heil Hitler.” Got it?’
‘Yes, Gruppenführer,’ said the subaltern.
Crack! The sound of the rifles echoed round and round the narrow prison courtyard. The small barred windows were silent and dark, with bright-orange rust marks disfiguring the grey bricks. Yet Pauli could not get over the feeling that he was being watched by many eyes.
Next! Next! Next! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Cold and wet from a quick drenching under a cold shower, the SA leaders arrived one by one in the yard doorway, frightened and bewildered. The young SS officer’s face was impassive, but he gabbled too quickly through the sentences and sometimes stumbled over the words.
More than one of the prisoners stood erect and met the bullets with a Nazi salute and a shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ believing that they – and their Führer, too – were the victims of an SS coup.
Pauli had qualms when Edmund Heines crumpled under the bullets. As well as being SA-Obergruppenführer, Heines was the Police President of Breslau. And even Dietrich’s iron nerve seemed to go as SA-Obergruppenführer Schneidhuber faced the firing squad. Schneidhuber was Police President of Munich.
But the shooting went on. Pauli watched it dispassionately. Better men than this had died alongside him in the war, he reminded himself. If the truth was known, some of the British and Frenchmen he’d killed were more to be pitied. Only when Captain Graf came into the courtyard did Pauli feel like turning his eyes away. But he didn’t. He watched Graf standing erect in front of the wall that was now chipped and broken with rifle fire. The dust of the broken brickwork hung in the air like smoke, and mingled with the cordite to make a unique stink that he never forgot.
Graf refused a blindfold. He looked at Pauli right to the end. And Pauli stared back at him. Graf didn’t shout ‘Heil Hitler’ or give the Nazi salute. He had never been a great admirer of Hitler, or of the men around him. Graf was one hundred per cent soldier; the Freikorps and the SA were just ways of holding on to a soldier’s mode of life. When the volley came Graf was torn in two and the blood spurted like a fountain. His death seemed bloodier than the others. Perhaps because a chance bullet clipped an artery – or perhaps because Pauli felt it more. Graf had been a comrade, a good comrade, and a man does not lightly lose a friend. But Graf was a soldier; it was a good enough way for a soldier to go.
‘Leave the presidency vacant, what a great idea’
It wasn’t turning out to be the successful dinner party that Inge had planned and she was unhappy. It was the first time that they had had guests in this new Berlin apartment that had been redecorated to their own wishes, and she’d had her dress made specially for the occasion. It was a long slinky bias-cut gold satin gown that hugged her figure. Sleeveless, with a plunging neckline, it revealed her wonderful skin. Inge had invited her sister Lisl with her husband, Erich Hennig. The guest of honour was to be Reichsminister Fritz Esser, now one of the party luminaries, a member of the cabinet, and a close associate of the Führer. But Fritz Esser had sent a huge bunch of flowers and a note that said he was delayed in meetings at the Reichskanzlei and wouldn’t arrive until after dinner.
‘It’s because the President is so sick,’ Inge explained to Erich, her brother-in-law, as if she was well informed about the state of President Hindenburg’s health. ‘I feel so concerned about the Führer. He looks tired.’ The two sisters always spoke of Hitler as a couple of starry-eyed schoolgirls might speak of an adorable hockey coach. It was a competition between them, a contest in which a curiously large proportion of Germany’s female population also participated.
‘I know,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘We’re hoping Erich will play before the Führer next year at the Bach Festival in Leipzig.’
Lisl was always saying that her husband would be playing at one of the concerts Hitler attended. It would be impetus enough to put Erich Hennig far ahead of his rivals. But Adolf Hitler did not attend many such musical events, and Erich’s career was at present in the doldrums. Hennig’s piano recitals, and his occasional performances with large orchestras, were to be heard in far-off German provinces, while Berlin’s concert halls were monopolized by more famous performers of a previous generation.
In the hope of pleasing his musical guest, Pauli said, ‘Fritz Esser was with the Führer at Bayreuth last week. They saw Das Rheingold. Fritz said it was the best ever.’
It proved not so pleasing. ‘Fritz Esser!’ said Hennig contemptuously. ‘And how many other productions of Das Rheingold has he seen?’
Pauli smiled and poured more wine. Inge had always said the Hennigs were jealous of Pauli’s longterm friendship with the very influential Fritz Esser. To say nothing of Pauli’s regular meetings with Heydrich, Himmler, and Josef Goebbels. Perhaps it was true.
It was a warm summer evening, uncomfortably warm, and the Winters’ apartment had the windows open to catch the breeze. Their new cook was determined to show her skills for such a celebrated guest and had produced an exquisite meal of fresh tomato soup, trout and then roast beef, with Pauli’s favourite chocolate cake to follow.
The absence of Fritz was a disappointment to all, but it gave the two sisters a chance to talk about family matters. The Hennigs now had a four-year-old son, and their present apartment was not big enough. Also Frau Wisliceny had died the previous month, and now that the initial shock was over they were able to discuss more practical problems.
‘Papa has enough money,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘He has the pension and his investments.’
‘But not enough to keep that big house going,’ added Erich Hennig quickly. Lisl and Erich had discussed it before coming tonight, thought Pauli. Erich was shrewd. Peter had always hated him, of course, and sometimes Pauli could see what his brother disliked. Politics, business, or the custody of his father-in-law’s house, Erich Hennig would always manage it to his own advantage.
‘He told me he wanted to go in one of those new service apartments round the corner, on Prenzlauer Promenade,’ said Pauli in an innocent voice.
It amused him to see that this had exactly the effect he expected. ‘One bedroom, one bathroom, one drawing room and a tiny little kitchen!’ said Erich excitedly. ‘He’d go crazy in a tiny place like that.’
Just to keep Erich agitated, Pauli said, ‘He said he’d eat most of his meals downstairs in the restaurant.’
‘Ridiculous!’ said Erich Hennig. ‘He says that now, but wait until he’s tried it for a few months.’
It was quite amusing to bait Erich, thought Pauli. He decided to memorize every word: it would amuse Peter no end. ‘But he eats in restaurants now,’ said Pauli. ‘He likes restaurants. Even before your poor mama died, they went to restaurants a lot.’
Inge knew what Pauli was doing, of course, and now she indicated that it had gone far enough. ‘Let’s hear what Lisl thinks,’ said Inge.
‘We were thinking of moving in with Papa,’ said Lisl. ‘He needs someone to look after him. He could eat with us, and we could see to his laundry and so on. The maid we have is a wonderful laundress. She even does Erich’s dress shirts for his concert performances.’
‘That would mean a lot of extra work for you,’ said Inge. ‘It’s such a big house.’
Lisl said, ‘It wouldn’t mean any extra work. We’d keep Papa’s two girls, so we’d have three staff.’
‘Couldn’t Papa move to your apartment?’ said Pauli.
‘We’re too cramped already,’ said Erich.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lisl. ‘Papa’s house is partly Inge’s; of course it is.’
‘Professor Wisliceny is getting old,’ said Erich. ‘He can’t last that much longer.’
Lisl said, ‘When Papa dies, Inge, then we wouldn’t expect to keep the house.’
Erich was not prepared to be a party to such rash and selfless promises. He said, ‘On the other hand, looking after your father will be a lot of extra work for Lisl.’
‘She just said it wouldn’t be any extra work,’ said Pauli.
‘Be quiet, Pauli,’ said Inge. She’d already been considering how much to spend, and where to invest the remainder of the proceeds of her share of the big Wisliceny house. Similar houses round the corner from Papa in Kant Strasse, were fetching high prices nowadays. The Ku-damm area had gone up and up. Some speculator would buy it to convert to apartments, or even into a hotel.
‘We need a room for our little one and two rooms for the nanny,’ said Lisl. ‘And it would help Erich to prepare for his concert.’
‘What concert?’ asked Inge.
‘Erich has this wonderful chance to play the Mozart wind quintet in Breslau,’ said Lisl. ‘But the new tenants downstairs from us have been complaining about the piano.’
‘If you are thinking of having wind quintets playing there, you’ll have Professor Wisliceny’s neighbours complaining, too,’ said Pauli.
‘It’s the Köchel 452,’ said Erich Hennig slowly and patiently. ‘Piano with wind instruments. I would only be practising the piano part. We have rehearsal rooms for the ensemble.’ He smiled as a children’s photographer smiles at a particularly difficult sitter.
‘In Papa’s house the walls are so much thicker,’ said Lisl resolutely. ‘Think of the times Mama had musical events there.’
‘If Papa agrees, then of course you must,’ said Inge suddenly. ‘You need the extra rooms.’
Pauli looked at her with some surprise, but Inge always gave in to her younger sister, or so it seemed to him. He wondered if that was the way other people saw the relationship between him and Peter.
‘Thank you, Inge,’ said Lisl.
‘We’ll drink to it,’ said Inge, reaching for the wine. In some ways the decision was a relief to her. It would mean that Papa would be properly looked after. She would have been worried to have her father living alone. ‘When you move out, we’ll sell and share the money.’ The Hennigs drank the wine, but Pauli noticed that they didn’t confirm the idea of eventually sharing the money.
After the Hennigs had gone, Inge seemed to regret her impulsive generosity. She was often like that: she gave away things she treasured and then regretted it, venting her consequent anger not upon herself but upon the person to whom she’d been so generous. Pauli poured a nightcap for her, and they sat together in the study while he glanced through some papers from his office.
‘They’ll never move out,’ said Inge sadly. ‘We’ll never see a pfennig from Papa’s lovely house.’ She was also thinking about the extra space they’d need when she had babies, but she didn’t say that.
‘I doubt if they’ll be able to afford it after your father goes, darling. It must cost a lot of money to keep up. I remember your father complaining about the enormous bill for that new roof a couple of years ago.’
‘Well, at least they won’t have the roof to worry about,’ said Inge.
Pauli laughed. His wife was determined to be downhearted.
‘I’m going to bed, darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t be long.’ She smiled and kissed him. Some husbands might have scolded a wife who’d so foolishly abandoned a large part of her inheritance, but Pauli would never look at it like that. Pauli didn’t care much about possessions, beyond his basic comfort. Sometimes she felt he wouldn’t even care if he lost her.
It was half past midnight when Fritz Esser rang the bell. Inge was in bed and asleep. Pauli was sitting in his tiny study, reading through a sheaf of regulations and amendments; these now appeared on his desk in ever-increasing amounts.
Fritz Esser stood in the hallway with a stupid grin on his face. At first Pauli thought he was drunk, but no one ever came drunk from a meeting with the Führer, except drunk with happiness.
‘I pissed myself laughing,’ shouted Esser as Pauli showed him into the little study and brought out a bottle of fine old French brandy. Fritz was forty last birthday. He laughed. Except for his dark eyes and his amazing collection of crowded, broken and irregular teeth, this man was scarcely recognizable as the lean youth who’d pulled the Winter boys out of the Baltic so long ago. Esser had put on weight to a point where his suits had to be tailored for him. They were all made by one of Berlin’s best tailors. Pauli’s weight went up and down, but Inge nagged him when he had to diet. Esser was unmarried and had no such restrictions. Still, Esser was tall and big-boned: he could put on this much weight without appearing ridiculous.
‘What happened?’ said Pauli.
‘It’s not what’s happened,’ said Esser, ‘it’s what’s going to happen tomorrow. The Chancellery is a madhouse: generals, admirals, Gauleiters and all the press and propaganda bigwigs.’
‘Hindenburg? Has he gone?’ Hindenburg was dying; everyone knew that it was just a matter of time.
‘Those army bastards,’ said Esser. He drank some brandy and laughed again. It was Fritz Esser’s naughty-boy laugh, with something of a snigger in it. ‘Those generals are too stupid to know when it’s raining. Which of those idiots chose tomorrow as the day for their big military celebration? They haven’t won a war for over half a century. They certainly can’t celebrate victory day for the last show – which they lost – so they decide to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the day the Kaiser ordered mobilization.’ He laughed again, a loud, hearty laugh that suited his big frame. He picked up the brandy bottle and poured more for himself. They knew each other well. In Pauli Winter’s house he didn’t have to ask for what he wanted: he helped himself. ‘Remember mobilization day, 1914?’
‘I remember,’ said Pauli. That fateful day in 1914 was etched deeply into his memory. At the Lichterfelde cadet school there had been a special parade. His parents had attended; Mama had cried.
‘So now all the toy generals are taken out of their boxes and wound up, ready to march backwards and forwards to the music of their tin-soldier bands. The generals have put on their nicest uniforms and groomed their pet donkeys. . . . And what’s going to happen? That inconsiderate old bastard Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg is going to snuff it . . . and screw up the whole bloody show. Ha, ha, ha! It’s the best laugh I’ve had since they shot that bastard Röhm last month.’
‘Are you sure about Hindenburg?’
‘I was with the Führer when the latest doctor’s bulletin was delivered. The army will look such fools. Blomberg, that wonderful War Minister of ours, is in the Bendlerblock sending teleprinter messages to every army unit in Germany cancelling the celebration and ordering them to prepare funeral ceremonies instead.’
‘What did the Führer say?’
‘Oh, naturally, the Führer was very upset,’ said Esser, in a voice that indicated that the Führer wasn’t upset at all. ‘The Führer will become president now and probably combine the rank of chancellor with it.’
‘That would be illegal,’ said Pauli.
‘Are you sure?’ He stopped drinking, put the glass down, and wiped his mouth.
‘You should know that, Fritz. You were a deputy in 1932, when the Reichstag passed the amendment. It said that in the event of the President’s death, the duties of president will be performed by the president of the High Court of Justice until a new election is held.’
‘Authority doesn’t automatically pass to the Chancellor?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘President of the High Court of Justice? You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ said Pauli.
‘You’re forgetting “The Enabling Act”,’ said Fritz Esser. ‘That gives him power to do anything he wants.’
‘Except interfere with the authority of the presidency. That was specifically excluded.’
‘Jesus Christ! An election? That could ruin everything. I’d better go back and make sure the Führer knows.’
‘Sit down and relax a moment, Fritz.’ Fritz Esser cautiously sipped at his brandy and sat down to think it over.
‘Better not to become president,’ said Pauli, to make conversation. ‘If Adolf Hitler becomes president, he’ll have to take an oath to uphold the constitution. That will limit his powers.’
‘How could he avoid it?’
‘He could leave the presidency vacant and create a new office.’
‘For instance?’
‘Just call himself Führer, for instance.’
‘Führer, Yes, excellent. Chancellor and Führer – he could combine those roles. He’s sending for the service chiefs. He’s going to make them swear an oath of allegiance.’
‘That would be a way round it,’ said Pauli.
‘A way round what?’ said Esser.
‘Normally the army swears an oath of allegiance to the presidency and, as a safeguard, the President takes an oath to uphold the constitution. That’s how the system works.’
‘You mean, get the army to swear an oath to the Führer, then leave the presidency vacant, so that he doesn’t have to promise to uphold the constitution. That’s damned clever, Pauli. The Führer will like that.’
He picked up his glass, then, remembering his Führer’s abstinence, put it down again. ‘I’d better get going. There’s going to be the devil of a lot to do. It’s a good thing I didn’t let my driver off for an hour; I usually do when I come to see you.’
‘If you must go, Fritz.’
‘You’re too bright for that job you’re doing with the Gestapo, Pauli. I’ll have to find you something better than that.’
‘I’m okay, Fritz. It’s interesting and I’m good at it.’
‘Leave the presidency vacant – what a great idea.’