Prussian Blue

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Following Heydrich’s assassination in June 1942, Ernst Kaltenbrunner became the chief of the RSHA, which comprised Kripo, the Gestapo, and the SD, in January 1943; he was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg and hanged in October 1946.

Hans-Hendrik Neumann remained Heydrich’s adjutant until the capitulation of Poland in 1939, when he was sent to Warsaw to set up the SD office there. Subsequently he became police attaché at the German Embassy in Stockholm in 1941, again on Heydrich’s orders; and then served with the SS in Norway. After serving a short prison sentence he joined Philips Electrical GmbH in Hamburg where he worked for the rest of his life. He retired in 1975, and died in June 1994.

Gustav Landauer was a leading anarchist at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was stamped to death by members of the Freikorps in May 1919. His last words were, “To think that people like you are human.”

Colonel Johann Hans Rattenhuber’s RSD units murdered hundreds of Jews at Hitler’s Werewolf HQ in January 1942. He was captured by the Russians in May 1945 and served ten years in prison before being released by the Soviets in October 1955. He died in June 1957.

Major Peter Högl followed Hitler into the Führerbunker in early 1945. It seems probable that he commanded the firing squad that executed Himmler’s liaison man and Eva Braun’s brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, on April 28, 1945. Högl was killed on May 2, 1945, while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin.

The fate of Arthur and Freda Kannenberg, who were the house managers at the Berghof, is unknown.

Martin Bormann became Hitler’s private secretary and the most powerful man in Germany after Hitler himself. He died while making his escape from the Führerbunker on May 2, 1945. His co-conspirator in the murder of Walther Kadow in 1923, one Rudolf Höss, was released from prison in 1928; he joined the SS in 1934, and subsequently became the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. He was hanged as a war criminal in Warsaw in 1947.

Albert Bormann flew out of Berlin in April 1945. He was arrested in 1949 and, having served six months’ hard labor, was released that same year. He refused to write his memoirs and never ever spoke about his elder brother, Martin. He died in April 1989.

Wilhelm Zander accompanied Hitler to the Führerbunker in early 1945. Zander was one of three men Hitler entrusted to take his political testament and effective command of German forces to Admiral Doenitz in April 1945. He survived the war and died in Munich in 1974.

Wilhelm Brückner was sacked by Hitler in October 1940 and replaced as chief adjutant by Julius Schaub. He joined the German army and by the end of the war held the rank of colonel. He died in Chiemgau in August 1954.

Dr. Karl Brandt took charge of the Aktion T4 Euthanasia Program in 1939, which gassed some seventy thousand victims. He was one of the defendants in the so-called Doctors’ Trial, which began in 1946. Charged with carrying out medical experiments on prisoners of war, he was found guilty and hanged in June 1948.

The Krauss brothers were Berlin’s most famous burglars. They really did burgle the police museum. Their fate is unknown to the author.

Gerdy Troost resumed her design work in Haiming, Upper Bavaria, in 1960. She died in Bad Reichenhall in 2003 at the age of ninety-eight.

Polensky & Zöllner continued in business long after the war. In 1987, the German arm of the construction company went bankrupt. But an arm of the company continues to exist today under the old name, in Abu Dhabi.

Erich Mielke served as the head of the Stasi from 1957 until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Prior to this, in October 1989, Mielke had ordered the Stasi to arrest and indefinitely detain eighty-six thousand East Germans in what he considered was a state of emergency. But local Stasi men refused to carry out his orders for fear of being lynched. Mielke resigned on November 7, 1989. He was arrested in December 1989 and went to trial in February 1992. Suffering from the effects of old age, he was released in 1995 on compassionate grounds and died in May 2000.

The tea house at the Kehlstein exists to this day and is a popular visitor attraction, as is the excellent Hotel Kempinski in Obersalzberg, which is built on the site of Herman Göring’s house. The ruins of both the Berghof and Bormann’s house are still visible. The Türken Inn continues in business as a hotel and may be visited throughout the year. The Villa Bechstein no longer exists, but Albert Speer’s house is still there and was sold recently to a private buyer for several million euros.

Albert Speer was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He died in London in 1981.

I am grateful for the help of Marie-Caroline Aubert, Michael Barson, Ann Binney, Robert Birnbaum, Robert Bookman, Paul Borchers, Lynn Cannici, J. B. Dickey, Martin Diesbach, Gail DiRe, Abby Fenneweld, Karen Fink, Jeremy Garber, Ed Goldberg, Margaret Halton, Tom Hanks, David Harper, Ivan Held, Sabina Held, Kristen Holland, Millie Hoskins, Elizabeth Jordan, Ian Kern, Caradoc King, John Kwiatkowski, Vick Mickunas, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Christine Pepe, Barbara Peters, Mark Pryor, Jon Rinquist, Christoph Rüter, Anne Saller, Alexis Sattler, Stephen Simou, Matthew Snyder, Becky Stewart, Bruce Vinokaur, Thomas Wickersham, Chandra Wohleber, Jane Wood, and, above all, Marian Wood, as always.