Death and Honor

[FIVE]

Office of the Military Attaché Embassy of the German Reich Avenida Córdoba Buenos Aires, Argentina 1405 13 July 1943

Sturmbannführer Erich Raschner, a thoughtful look on his face, handed Himmler’s handwritten order, the directive from the foreign ministry, and von Deitzberg’s personal orders from the reichssicherheitshauptamt, back to von Deitzberg but said nothing.

“And your opinion of all this, Erich?” von Deitzberg asked.

“There’s no telling—there’s not much to go on.”

“Off the top of your head? I won’t hold you responsible.”

“It’s odd that I’m not being ordered back to Berlin with you.”

Von Deitzberg nodded his agreement. “And what would be your guess about that?”

“The reichsprotektor wants me here,” Raschner said, matter-of-factly, with no suggestion that he was being flip.

“And why would he want you here?”

“To keep an eye on things,” Raschner replied. “We still haven’t found the traitor, and . . .” He let his voice trail off.

“And?” von Deitzberg said.

“Have you shown me everything?”

Von Deitzberg nodded.

“Have you learned anything more about the reichsprotektor in that connection? ”

“As far as I know, he knows nothing about it,” von Deitzberg said.

“You don’t think maybe the reason you’re being recalled so suddenly is because he’s found out?”

Von Deitzberg stared at him coldly.

“I thought of that,” he said, finally. “But if that were the case, don’t you think he’d have recalled both of us and not sent Cranz here?”

In August 1941, in the Reich Chancellery, Hitler had personally promoted Brigadeführer Reinhardt Heydrich, Himmler’s adjutant, to gruppenführer. And Hitler made von Deitzberg—newly appointed as first deputy adjutant—an obersturmbannführer.

After a good deal of champagne at the promotion party at the Hotel Adlon, von Deitzberg confided to Heydrich that, although the promotion was satisfying for a number of reasons, it was most satisfying because he needed the money.

Two days later, Heydrich handed him an envelope containing a great deal of cash.

“Consider this a confidential allowance,” Heydrich said. “Spend it as you need to. It doesn’t have to be accounted for. It comes from a confidential special fund.”

With his new position as first deputy adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Himmler came other perquisites, including that of a deputy. Heydrich sent him—“for your approval; if you don’t get along, I’ll send you somebody else”— Obersturmführer Erich Raschner, whom Heydrich identified as intelligent and trustworthy. And who “having never served in either the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht,” Heydrich went on, “had been taught to respect those of his superiors who had.”

Raschner turned out to be a short, squat, phlegmatic Hessian, three years older than von Deitzberg. He had come into the SS as a policeman, but a policeman with an unusual background. He had originally been commissioned into the Allgemeine-SS, which dealt mainly with internal security and racial matters, rather than the Waffen-SS. Later, he had been transferred to the Sicherheitspolizei.

Von Deitzburg had sensed that, for some reason, it was important to Heydrich that he and Raschner get along.

When, several weeks later, Heydrich asked von Deitzberg for his opinion of Raschner, von Deitzberg gave him the answer he thought he wanted: They got along personally, and Raschner would bring to the job knowledge of police and internal security matters that von Deitzberg admitted he did not have.

“Good,” Heydrich said with a smile. “He likes you, too. We’ll make it permanent. And tonight we’ll celebrate. Come by the house at, say, half past seven.”

At a little after half past seven, they opened a very nice bottle of Courvoisier cognac, toasted the new relationship, and then Heydrich matter-of-factly explained its nature.

“One of the things I admire in you, Manfred,” Heydrich said, “is that you can get things done administratively.”

“Thank you.”

“And Erich, on the other hand, can get done whatever needs to be done without any record being kept. Do you follow me?”

“I’m not sure.”

“The confidential special fund is what I’m leading up to,” Heydrich said. “I’m sure that aroused your curiosity, Manfred?”

“Yes, it did.”

“What no longer appears on Erich’s service record is that he served with the Totenkopfverbände,” Heydrich said.

The Death’s-Head Skull Battalions were charged with the administration of concentration camps.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You told me a while ago you were having a little trouble keeping your financial head above water. A lot of us have that problem. We work hard, right? We should play hard, right? And to do that, you need the wherewithal, right?”

“Yes, sir,” von Deitzberg said smiling.

“Has the real purpose of the concentration camps ever occurred to you, Manfred?”

“You’re talking about the Final Solution?”

“In a sense. The Führer correctly believes that the Jews are a cancer on Germany, and that we have to remove that cancer. You understand that, of course?”

“Of course.”

“The important thing is to take them out of the German society. In some instances, we can make them contribute to Germany with their labor. You remember what it says over the gate at Dachau?”

" ’Arbeit macht frei’ ?”

“Yes. But if the parasites can’t work, and can’t be forced to make some repayment for all they have stolen from Germany over the years, then something else has to be done with them. Right?”

“I understand.”

“Elimination is one option,” Heydrich said. “But if you think about it, realize that the basic objective is to get these parasites out of Germany. Elimination is not the only option.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” von Deitzberg confessed.

“Put very simply, there are Jews outside of Germany who are willing to pay generously to have their relatives and friends removed from the concentration camps,” Heydrich said.

“Really?”

“When it first came to my attention, I was tempted to dismiss this possibility out of hand,” Heydrich said. “But then I gave it some thought. For one thing, it accomplishes the Führer’s primary purpose—removing these parasitic vermin from the Fatherland. It does National Socialism no harm if vermin that cost us good money to feed and house leave Germany and never return and then cost others money to feed.”

“I can see your point.”

“And if, at the same time, it takes money from Jews outside Germany and transfers it to Germany, there is also an element of justice. They are not getting away free after sucking our blood all these years.”

“I understand.”

“In other words, if we can further the Führer’s intention to get Jews out of Germany, and at the same time bring Jewish money into Germany, and at the same time make a little money for ourselves, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing that I can see.”

“This has to be done in absolute secrecy, of course. A number of people would not understand; and an even larger number would feel they have a right to share in the confidential special fund. You can understand that.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Raschner will get into the details with you,” Heydrich went on. “But essentially, you will do what I’ve been doing myself. Inmates are routinely transferred from one concentration camp to another. And, routinely, while the inmates are en route, members of the Totenkopfverbände remove two, three, or four of them from the transport. For purposes of further interrogation and the like. Having been told the inmates have been removed by the Totenkopfverbände, the receiving camp has no further interest in them. The inmates who have been removed from the transport are then provided with Spanish passports and taken by Gestapo escorts to the Spanish border. Once in Spain, they make their way to Cádiz or some other port and board neutral ships. A month later, they’re in Uruguay.”

“Uruguay?” von Deitzberg blurted in surprise. It had taken him a moment to place Uruguay; and even then, all he could come up with was that it was close to Argentina, somewhere in the south of the South American continent.

“Some stay there,” Heydrich said matter-of-factly, “but many go on to Argentina. ”

“I see,” von Deitzberg said.

“Documents issued by my office are of course never questioned,” Heydrich went on, “and Raschner will tell you what documents are necessary. You will also administer dispersals from the confidential special fund. Raschner will tell you how much, to whom, and when.”

“I understand.”

“We have one immediate problem,” Heydrich said. “And then we’ll have another little sip of this splendid brandy and go see what we can find for dinner.”

“An immediate problem?”

“We need one more man here in Berlin,” Heydrich said. “Someone who will understand the situation and who can be trusted. I want you to recruit him yourself. Can you think of anyone?”

That had posed no problem for von Deitzberg.

“Josef Goltz,” he said immediately. “Obersturmbannführer Goltz.”

Heydrich made a Give me more sign with his hands.

“He’s the SS-SD liaison officer to the Office of the Party Chancellery.”

Heydrich laughed. “Great minds run in similar channels. That’s the answer I got when I asked Raschner for ideas. Why don’t the two of you talk to him together?”

In addition to his other duties, Gruppenführer Heydrich had been named Protector of Czechoslovakia. On 31 May 1942, he was fatally wounded when Czech agents of the British threw a bomb into his car in Prague.

Before leaving Berlin to personally supervise the retribution to be visited upon the Czechs for Heydrich’s murder, Himmler called von Deitzberg into his office to tell him how much he would have to rely on him until a suitable replacement for the martyred Heydrich could be found.

Meanwhile, von Deitzberg was faced with a serious problem. With Heydrich’s death, he had become the senior officer involved with the confidential fund and the source of its money. But von Deitzberg had never learned from Heydrich how much Himmler knew about it.

He quickly and carefully checked the records of dispersal of money; he found no record that Himmler had ever received money from it.

It was of course possible that the enormous disbursements to Heydrich had included money that Heydrich had quietly slipped to Himmler; that way there would be no record of Himmler’s involvement.

Three months later, however, after Himmler had asked neither for money nor about the status of the confidential fund, von Deitzberg was forced to conclude that Himmler not only knew nothing about it but that Heydrich had gone to great lengths to conceal it from the reichsprotektor.

It was entirely possible, therefore, that Himmler would be furious if he learned now about the confidential fund.

The reichsprotektor had a puritanical streak, and he might consider that Heydrich had actually been stealing from the Reich, and that von Deitzberg had been involved in the theft up to his neck.

When von Deitzberg brought up the subject to Raschner, Raschner advised that as far as he himself knew, Himmler either didn’t know about the fund—or didn’t want to know about it. Thus, an approach to him now might see everyone connected with it stood before a wall and shot.

They had no choice, Raschner concluded, except to go on as they had— but of course taking even greater care to make sure the ransoming operation remained secret.

Obersturmbannführer Josef Goltz had died at Samborombón Bay with Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner. That meant only four people, all SS officers, were left who knew the details of the confidential special fund: Von Deitzberg, Raschner, Cranz, and their man in Uruguay, Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck.

And von Tresmarck wasn’t really in the same league as von Deitzberg, Raschner, and Cranz. He wasn’t really a senior SS officer, for one thing. And for another: his sexual orientation.

Von Tresmarck had come to von Deitzberg’s attention when a Sicherheitspolizei report of his relationship with a young SS officer had come to his desk for action.

At the time, von Deitzberg had needed someone reliable in Uruguay. Reasoning that someone whose choices were doing precisely what he was told to do—and keeping his mouth shut about it—or swapping his SS uniform and the privileges that went with it for the gray striped uniform of a Sachsenhausen concentration camp inmate—with a pink triangle on the breast—would be just the man he needed.

And von Dattenberg had spelled it out to von Tresmarck in just about those terms.

If von Tresmarck would marry someone suitable immediately, his Sicherheitspolizei dossier would remain in von Deitzberg’s safe while he went to Uruguay and did what he was told to do.

He even defined someone suitable for him.

“One of the ladies who spends a good deal of time around the bar in the Adlon Hotel is a Frau Kolbermann. Inge Kolbermann. She is the widow of the late Obersturmbannführer Kolbermann, who fell for the Fatherland in Russia and left her in pretty dire straits financially. And there are other reasons she will probably accept a proposal of marriage. You had better hope she accepts yours.”

She indeed had accepted von Tresmarck’s proposal, as von Deitzberg thought she would. He knew a good deal about Frau Kolbermann, both professionally and personally. She was no stranger to his bed. If she was in Uruguay, she posed far less of a threat to embarrass him.

And so far, both of them had performed adequately.

Almost visibly thinking, Raschner hadn’t replied for a long moment.

“I don’t believe in good luck,” he said finally. “But sometimes things happen randomly that others might consider good luck.”

“Meaning?”

“The pie, with Goltz gone, can now be sliced into three parts, not four.”

“Yes, that’s true. I hadn’t thought about that.”

“The weak links in the chain are von Tresmarck in Uruguay and those I think of as the worker bees in Germany, those who—”

“I take your point.”

“You will be there. You can arrange things so the worker bees about whom you have any suspicions, or who know too much, can be sent to work in other hives or otherwise disposed of. And von Tresmarck can continue accepting contributions to the confidential fund as he has been doing, with Cranz keeping a close eye on him. And me keeping a close eye on both of them.”

“And Cranz,” von Deitzberg said, “as commercial attaché, will be able to make the right kind of investments.”

“With me watching him,” Raschner said.

“And me watching you,” von Deitzberg said smiling. “Keep in mind always, Erich, that you work for me, not Cranz.”

“Of course,” Raschner said. “Are you going to tell him that?”

“Of course. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell him right now. Go get him, would you, please? He’s with Frogger.”