In Plainest Sight

1 September 1939

The attempt on my life in the alley last night, so instinctive and surreal at the time, played out again in a fitful dream-sleep, but this time, it was no longer fantastical. Again, I saw myself turn and witness the dagger in the assassin Schlegl’s hand swing upward, just in time for me to sidestep and pivot so the blade slid past me. I spun back as he charged like the mindless bear he was, but slipping to the side, I pushed Schlegl’s elbow down and away. Grabbing his head, I threw him onto the sodden ground, causing the dagger to fly out of his reach. Before I could seize the advantage, he was on his feet, head hunched into his massive shoulders, throwing his bulk into my chest, ramming me against a wall, then moving back slightly and pulling out his pistol.

Even in my dream, I could feel the adrenaline replacing breath as I grabbed his wrist, drove his arm over his shoulder, and pulled him backwards and down. I had the gun even before he landed, and bending over, I smashed him on the forehead with it. Still on the ground, the now-bloody Schlegl gripped my ankle with his feet, twisted it, and sent me reeling back to the wall, giving him time to pull himself up, rush towards me, and throw out a stiff right. I shoved myself to the left to avoid it then reached out, pulled his head forward, and smashed his nose with my knee. Thrusting my other hand into his crotch, I put my shoulder into him, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him onto the cement. With one last grunt, he went limp, his mouth and eyes gaping. Finally, I saw myself lift my booted leg and bring it down like a piston, crushing his head as if it were a ripe melon.

The deed completed, I watched myself—clearly oblivious to my sodden, bloody, and bruised appearance—make it to the street, hail a taxi, and command the alarmed driver to take me to the Adlon. There, I booked a room, had my uniform sponged and pressed, performed some emergency cosmetic repair on my face and hands, raced back to my quarters, and hoped that my position and rank would stifle, in the womb, the inevitable alarm over my ravaged appearance.

I even felt what I’d felt then, that once I’d been delivered to the Chancellery, it would take no prodigious feat of imagination to grasp the perils of using the main entrance, with its myriad checkpoints, stunned stares, robotic demands for my “papers,” and all-too-human appeals for an explanation of my ragged state. So, with a shudder I still experienced, and so violent that it drove all my wounds to erupt in agony, I moved stealthily to the relatively little-known, eremitic side entrance to the main garage. There, I expected far fewer gapes and only one interrogation.

Finally, my brain took pity on me, and a void replaced the savage images.

* * *

Out of the deathlike nothingness, I felt a hand rocking my shoulder with great tenderness and heard a voice no less tender.

Hate to do this, my lad, but it’s time to face the new world, even with your face.”

I must have dozed off without realising it. I shook my head to clear it, but the act only caused an eruption of pain and dizziness.

Hey, are you sure you’re okay to go up?” Kempka asked tentatively as he held me steady. “The Führer can live without you for one day.”

I’m sure he can,” I admitted with a painful grin, “but I’ll be fine so long as I don’t have to carry him anywhere.”

Kempka chuckled. “Like that Jew-lover cripple, Roosevelt? I wouldn’t worry about it. Also, after seeing you, I told anybody who matters that you were in a car accident and—you know—how sensitive you are, so’s not to shove it up your ass.”

I eased my way out of my cot to something resembling a standing position. “My ass thanks you,” I said, truly grateful.

* * *

At 0440, while I was still in my quarters readying myself as best I could, I listened as the radio announcer, in typical stentorian fashion, declared that the Luftwaffe had descended upon the Polish town of Wieluń, destroying seventy-five percent of the city and killing close to twelve hundred people, most of them civilians. Five minutes later came the news that the old dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein had opened fire on the Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig. At 0800, our troops—still without a formal declaration of war—attacked near the Polish village of Mokra.

Kempka was right; the second shoe had dropped.

The Führer didn’t buzz for me any earlier than usual. On my way, despite Kempka’s errand of mercy, I chose to circulate around strategic areas of the Chancellery to minimize the coarse comments about my battered appearance. Mouth still aching, I merely shrugged at the jeers (ranging from the martial: “I sure hope you gave better than you got,” to the erotic: “That slut must be some wildcat; you got her number?”), allowing their narrow, vulgar imaginations to roam free and unfettered. I hated to think how I would have fared with such a surfeit of schadenfreude had Kempka not smoothed the way.

When I finally arrived at the Führer’s quarters, Herr Chinless (after delivering an expression that seemed to say, “Welcome, my brother”) nodded me to the adjoining conference room. Brückner was already there, as were Goebbels, Göring, Himmler, von Ribbentrop, Bormann, and top military commanders. In subdued tones, they all chatted among themselves in clusters while, at his desk, the Führer, in bathrobe and backless leather flappers, scribbled some last-minute notes for his “War Message” to the Reichstag later in the day. I glanced at Brückner, but he was—or seemed to be—concentrating on what the Führer was writing. Considering the circumstances, and since no one seemed to notice me, I laid aside my personal anxieties about my appearance for the moment.

Those stupid Polacks still decline to light the fuse,” von Ribbentrop complained a bit louder than the rest, causing all but the Führer to turn their heads, but only Göring replied.

This is a surprise to you, Ribbentrop?” he said with no small amount of sarcasm. “You somehow feel that Poles should be rendered so despondent by the Führer’s public pronouncements that they would gladly commit suicide?”

Göring was being generous. No offence to von Ribbentrop, but the sheer absurdity of his statement shocked even me, who knew—and cared for—virtually nothing of world affairs or political tactics. A moron’s analysis of the relative strengths of both armies would make such a statement by the “diplomat” comically ludicrous. I could certainly see why the Führer hadn’t glanced up at the fool.

Herr von Ribbentrop,” Himmler said, blank of face but caustic in tone, “I will smooth out your furrowed brow. The… fuse you mentioned has, in fact, been lit. As we speak, the Reich is under a most vicious attack by those suicidal Poles the Reichsmarschall just spoke of.”

Göring’s medals clanged an accompaniment to his chortling, and the rest merely smiled.

Yes,” Himmler continued, glancing at his watch and drawing it out, “Just… about… now—”

Just then, Dara entered to nobody’s notice save for me and the Führer, who glanced up from his desk, motioned me over, winced when I came close, then told me to lay out his field grey jacket in preference to his usual brown Party tunic. He then nodded her into his bedroom, followed her in, and shut the door behind them.

Goebbels turned to von Ribbentrop. “If you wish, you can come back with me to the ministry and I’ll provide further details.”

There was a slight flicker of von Ribbentrop’s eyelids, but Goebbels, ever the narcissistic mediator, beat him to the punch. “Joachim, the Führer, and I felt that your ignorance—as well as his own—was essential to Himmler’s plan.”

B-but this is…” he sputtered.

Yes, highly irregular,” Goebbels agreed. “But regularity is for bowels, not for affairs of state. The Führer feels that it’s far easier to deny something you never knew than something about which you were sworn to secrecy.”

Message delivered, we all left to go our separate ways.

* * *

I was desperate to push Schlegl and the eventual discovery of his body to the furthest recesses of my brain, but still, I could not help likening myself to Poland—even more pathetic since the attack on that hapless nation at least had a discernible cause and a known foe.

So, Göring’s ‘logic’ aside,” I ventured to Brückner as we drove to the Reichstag to hear the Führer’s nationally broadcast oration, “the Führer actually did get his way with the Poles.” I’d already decided to broach the Christiane matter at a less distracting time.

Brückner turned slightly to glance at the damage to my face and hands. “This is Himmler’s show.” He tilted his head towards his raised shoulder. “Personally produced and directed. And it’ll be a rousing success, I can assure you.”

Since the Führer owns the studio?” I said, in keeping with the analogy.

Brückner laughed as he slid shut the partition between the passenger compartment and the chauffeur’s. “Just so. An absentee owner, I must admit, but the benefits will accrue just the same. Who was the sage who proclaimed that ignorance renders the protagonist innocent?”

I’d never heard that one, but I had my suspicions. “Could it be a biblical passage from the Book of Brückner?”

You guessed it. I slipped it between Exodus and Leviticus while nobody was looking.”

* * *

I wouldn’t recount verbatim what the Führer said, for the German as well as all the major world newspapers would carry it. Far more noteworthy was the fact that, even while the Führer was dictating his speech to Dara, declaring war, German troops had already crossed the border into Poland. Göring opened the session and introduced the Führer to the deliriously adoring crowds, a leader who spoke of himself as a man of peace, blamed Poland for attacking the Fatherland, and declared—with theatrical reluctance—that he was being forced to fight a war for the survival of the German people. The rapturous response was not unexpected.

As always, after an important speech, the Führer returned to the Chancellery elated, exhausted, and bathed in sweat. I drew him a hot bath, drizzled in the dessert-scented bubble bath oil, and gave him an Ultraseptyl sedative that had been prescribed by Morell. Before I left the bathroom, what he said to me amply supported the Book of Brückner: “Himmler has provided me with a propagandistic casus belli; its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”

Did the Führer really expect me to have understood casus belli? And what was the “truth” that didn’t really matter? I had no idea and had no intention of asking.

As I stood outside the bathroom door, waiting for the inevitable observation, within minutes I was summoned to the tub.

I see you wear the decorations of battle.” He shook his head from side to side in fatherly commiseration. “Kempka informed me of your romantic mishap. Women have that power, you know. The men of the Nordic countries have been softened to this point, that their most beautiful women buckle their baggage when they have an opportunity to get their hooks into a man in our part of the world. That’s what happened to Göring with his Karin. There’s no rebelling against this. It’s a fact that women love real men. Their instinct tells them. All well and good, I say, but difficulties invariably arise when more than one man is involved. In prehistoric times, women looked for the protection of heroes. When two men fight for the possession of a woman, she waits to let her heart speak until she knows which of the two will be victorious. Tarts adore poachers. So, wear your scars proudly, but in the future, leave the poaching to those not pledged to serve me.”

I thanked him profusely through swollen lips and began to turn round when he said, “Quite a day, Linge, eh? Did you see Ribbentrop’s face after Himmler broke the news to him? He looked worse than you. In any event, our Uncle Heinrich provided me with a superb-if-dubious casus belli. And there, my son, lies a lesson in statecraft.”

* * *

After the Führer’s triumphant war speech, all in the Chancellery, high and low, engaged in a hysterical revelry of anti-Polish sentiment. As for me, what did I personally know or care about Poland and the Poles? Absolutely nothing, save for the few I’d worked beside in the brickyard. To me, they were no more or less than ignorant, drunken louts, infinitely more anti-Semitic than their German counterparts, and prodigious carousers. Even sober, they spoke of their homeland as if it were a cesspool, and Jews, its vermin.

Oddly, my best recollection of Poles came from the jokes they told about themselves with self-deprecating impunity, and that told me as much about them as I ever wished to know. But now, everywhere I turned, the atmosphere was rife with vile ethnic wisecracks and innumerable toasts to an inevitably swift crushing of those “imbecile Polacks”:

We could solve the Polack problem easily: just declare them all wanted criminals, and they’ll turn themselves in for the reward.”

Q: Why did the Polack cross the road? A: He couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken.”

Q: How do you sink a Polack battleship? A: Put it in water.”

Q: Why wasn’t Christ born in Poland? A: Because they couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.”

Q: Why does the new Polish navy have glass-bottom boats? A: To see the old Polish navy.”

Q: What do you do if a Polack throws a hand grenade at you? A: Take out the pin and throw it back.”

And on and on, the crude mockery slithered and splattered throughout the Chancellery, rendering an entire people ridiculous, harmful, and subhuman. Like the Jews. A nation that nobody cared about, for it had no political, economic, or strategic meaning, was suddenly, in declamatory front-page news throughout the world.

And to my shame, the jokes were clever.

* * *

That evening, while the Führer spoke with Goebbels and Göring, the only thing that registered in my consciousness was him saying, “We will now wait to see whether Britain and France will come to Poland’s aid. But you can trust your Führer: they’ll chicken out again, mark my words.”

Only the tiniest portion of my brain took in this business because the rest was preoccupied. Goethe wrote, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” For me, what mattered most was Christiane: Why had she stood me up? Why had she lied about her job? And where was she now? That should have been enough, but I needed to know more: Was there any possible connexion between her and my being followed by the leather greatcoats and fedoras—and how did the would-be assassin, Schlegl, know exactly where I’d be? But I dared not give expression or action to my own temperature until the fever of war had subsided. To have even broached the subject then would most certainly have cast irreparable doubt on my zeal—and me.