The Excalibur Codex

In the spring of nineteen-forty one I was summoned to the office of my superior, SS Obergruppenführer Josef Dietrich. I was to accompany him on a secret mission of the utmost importance to the future of the Reich. Poland no longer existed, mighty France had been neutered, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Denmark were ours by right of conquest. England was an irrelevance. Now the Führer’s thoughts turned East to the destruction of the ungodly horde that was the only threat to our domination of Europe, and the annihilation of Stalin and the Jews who kept him in power. My task was to command a security detachment of the Liebstandarte, which would provide a guard for the consignment carried by my general, and, once we reached our destination, to provide security for the meeting that would be held there. Only the general knew our route and we followed his staff car in eight lorries, each carrying fifteen men, with the unmarked armoured truck containing the consignment in the centre of the column. Three men in SS uniform, but without identifying patches, shared the armoured truck driving duties and we had been warned that any man, including officers, attempting to communicate with them would be transferred to a punishment battalion. We drove for five days, often stuck in long jams of troops and supplies even though we had priority over other traffic. The further east we travelled the more crowded the roads became with troops and armour, as we passed through elements of the Second, Third and Ninth armies, past vast camouflaged tank and artillery parks. On the evening of the fifth day we reached a small town and turned onto a newly built road that ran alongside a railway line, and as night fell we were halted by military police opposite a construction site. Thirty minutes after they allowed us to proceed we reached our destination, a village beside a lake dominated by an ancient walled castle. The residents of the village had been temporarily evacuated and replaced by three companies of SS who surrounded the approaches to the castle with barbed wire and machine-gun nests.

We drove past the sentry posts and through the gate into the cobbled courtyard. While my men were allocated their billets in the village I supervised the unloading of the consignment and accompanied my general into the castle. We were welcomed by an over-excited officer with narrow features and restless shifting eyes who introduced himself as Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers. He wore the black uniform of the Allgemeine SS, but with an odd badge that consisted of a sword entwined by a ribbon and surrounded by runes. I didn’t recognize the name, but I saw my general’s face twitch with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

‘You are the first and the most welcome,’ Sievers said. ‘You have them with you? Excellent. They will be safe in the treasury until the others arrive.’

‘I want two men in there with them at all times,’ my general said. ‘See to it, Lauterbacher.’

‘Sir.’

He lowered his voice so the other man couldn’t hear. ‘Once Heydrich arrives they become his responsibility, thank Christ, and we can get this farce over with and back to the real war, eh?’

The interior of the castle was a shrine to the Schutzstaffel, and the order that had preceded them and whose power base it had once been. Banners with the symbols of the Totenkopf and the swastika hung everywhere, interspersed with the holy Knight’s Cross and paintings of Germanic heroes of old. I escorted the consignment, which was enclosed in a coffin-shaped casket nearly two metres long, to an oak-lined cellar in the centre of the castle and relayed the orders for a permanent guard to my Scharführer. Then we waited.

Over the next twenty-four hours the High Priests of the SS arrived one by one, each with his own entourage. Some, like Dietrich and Daluege, were hard men who had broken heads in Munich beer halls and pulled triggers during the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler had taken revenge on Ernst Rohm and his Brownshirts. By contrast, Darré and Hildebrandt were intellectuals, men who advised the Reichsführer on racial policy. Von Woyrsch was a personal friend of Himmler’s from the old days. Darré’s views had shaped the Reichsführer’s eastern policy; von Eberstein had introduced Heydrich and Himmler in the thirties. Bach-Zelewski, of Prussian aristocratic stock, had empty pockets but the bloodline Himmler craved. Berger, Jeckeln, Wolff and Pohl had all been with the Reichsführer from the start. Sievers directed them to their rooms in the castle, but sooner or later they all drifted back to the main hall in anticipation of the arrival of the man responsible for bringing them here. At precisely eight p.m. Reinhard Heydrich swept into the hall like a Crown Prince entering his own palace.

‘Heil Hitler.’ He raised a languid arm in salute before throwing his greatcoat to his aide, a shrewd-looking young Sturmbannführer named Schellenberg, with the black diamond of the SD, the SS intelligence section, on his tunic. In theory, Heydrich was outranked by every man in the room, in practice the power of Hitler’s Hangman, as these tribunes of the Nazi Party called him — but only behind his back — eclipsed them all and they knew it. The General accepted a glass of wine and stood by the great open fire. ‘Gentlemen, success and victory.’ A dozen voices echoed the toast before the cold, executioner’s eyes surveyed the room. ‘You all know why we are here?’

‘I understand and fully agree with the purpose of this meeting,’ the speaker was Daluege, the Ordnungspolizei commander, ‘but surely it would have been more appropriate, not to say secure, to hold it at Wewelsburg. I do not think I’m alone in resenting being dragged halfway across Europe through a country filled with bandits.’

‘I will pass on your complaint to the Reichsführer.’ Heydrich’s voice was like silk being drawn over a razor blade and Daluege’s lips twitched. ‘It was his express wish, for reasons practical, historical, ideological and geographical, that the ceremony should be held here on the very doorstep of our enemies, less than twenty kilometres from where the Führer will direct the coming attack.’

‘I have made my reservations known to both the Führer and Reichsführer,’ Dietrich growled, glaring from beneath beetle brows.

Heydrich nodded gravely. ‘And yet you are here, General Dietrich? You are here because you took an oath to the Führer and a blood oath to the Order. Will you fulfil that oath?’

‘I have never broken an oath in my life, I—’

Heydrich raised a cultured hand. ‘Very soon our Führer will be sending millions of men to carry out a task of titanic proportions that will require a hardness and a merciless resolve that is unprecedented in history. Can our resolve be any less? Nostradamus spoke of the threat from the East that would descend like fire from the sky. That threat is the unthinking scourge of Bolshevism driven by the unbridled greed of Soviet Jewry. It is our Führer’s destiny to eliminate these twin evils and the Reichsführer is prepared to explore any avenue that will aid him in his goal.’ Once more he met each eye in turn. ‘His wishes will be fulfilled. Each of us must put aside his doubts, forget his old beliefs and embrace the new. We have gathered here a weapon of enormous potential and it is time to release that power. The individual elements have been consecrated at Wewelsburg, now we will bring them together. Hildebrandt? You have been able to fulfil our requirements?’

A tall, balding figure clicked his heels. ‘Of course. You could have had a hundred had you wished it. They were being held under Aktion T4.’

‘Five will be sufficient,’ Heydrich assured him. ‘Just make sure they are ready.’ He pulled back the sleeve of his uniform and glanced at his wristwatch. ‘The time is now 8.25 p.m. We will gather in the Great Hall at midnight for the ceremony.’

Three and a half hours later I waited in the shadows beneath the enormous vaulted ceiling of the castle hall. Directly opposite me, perhaps ten metres away, Schellenberg stood equally motionless, his intense dark eyes just visible beneath the gleaming peak of his uniform cap. Between us lay an enormous round table covered with white cloth and circled at precise intervals by twelve throne-like chairs. A candle burned in front of each chair, providing the room’s only light, and each was draped with a cloth embossed with a distinctive coat of arms. These were replicated by twelve banners suspended from the ceiling. In the centre hung the symbol of the Knight’s Cross. Why did I have to be present, along with Schellenberg and the other SS aides? Sievers had explained it earlier.

‘For the ceremony to be successful, there must be a circle within a circle. You, the Black Guard, will form the outer circle. You will not speak, you will not move, no matter what you see or hear. What occurs here will change all our lives,’ His eyes had shone with an almost demonic excitement. ‘None of us will ever be the same again.’

Did we breathe? Does a statue breathe? The silence was so dense and filled with anticipation that at times it made me want to scream. I thought of the millions of men in their great encampments throughout East Prussia and Poland, the millions more who waited unknowing on the far side of the border. My Führer lying in his lonely bed, his mind bent on the destruction of the barbarians. The candle in front of me flickered and I was back in France. A kneeling figure in a khaki uniform pleading for his life until the moment the rifle bullet pierced his raised hands and entered his skull. Hardness and resolve. Hardness and resolve. The end of my nose itched infuriatingly, but there was no question of scratching it. I felt Schellenberg’s eyes on me and I knew that he knew; was mocking my weakness. I fixed my eyes on a point on the wall beyond his left shoulder. Hardness and resolve. Like the long wait before an attack, where a single movement will bring the enemy guns down on you.

At last, the sound of approaching footsteps and the low murmur of chanting voices. The urge to look round was almost irresistible, but not a man even twitched. Closer, until we could hear a soft, swishing sound. I saw Schellenberg’s eyes widen and a dark figure passed to my right, cloaked in black from head to foot and with a cowl covering his features. To my astonishment he held a long sword raised in front of him. He took his place in front of me and I knew from his position and his bulk that it was Dietrich. More cloaked figures appeared at the periphery of my vision. Of these, seven took their seats and placed their hands face down on the table in front of them, but Dietrich and four others, all sword-bearers, remained standing. Behind me a voice chanted an eerie incantation in a harsh alien language and when it ended the man at the eastern end of the circle announced in powerful tones: ‘I lay before you Joyeuse, mighty sword of Charlemagne, defender of the faith.’ Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski placed the blade diagonally across the white linen coverlet, with the point towards one of the four other sword bearers. It was a beautiful weapon, the sword of kings, with a golden hilt and a cross guard formed in the shape of two winged dragons, and a long, slim blade that shone like fire in the candlelight.

‘Zerstorer, sword of Frederick Barbarossa, defier of the Eastern hordes,’ the second man said. I shuddered at the mention of Barbarossa — Red Beard — who legend said slept beneath his mountain at Kyffhäuser awaiting the call to rise again and save his nation from peril. The words belonged to Walter Darré, chief of the Race and Resettlement Office of the SS, and he in turn laid his sword diagonally across the table, creating a sharp angle with the first, where point and the lion’s head pommel of the sword lay together. Zerstorer’s point was aimed directly at the midriff of a third sword bearer.

‘Durendal, imperious blade of Roland, hero of old.’ The weapon placed by SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt across the centre of the table was of similar pedigree to the first, but with a less elaborate hilt. This time the point was directed at the man in front of me and I heard Josef Dietrich, commander of the Liebstandarte, proclaim: ‘Gotteswerkzeug, the sword of Werner von Orseln, greatest of all the Teutonic Knights.’

This was a much more functional blade, the blade of a soldier, with a round pommel embossed with a Maltese cross. A new acute angle was formed, with the point of the sword aimed at the final bearer. As each sword had been placed, the tension in the room grew and the electricity in the air reminded me of the moments before a terrible thunderstorm. The castle was a gloomy, chill place, but sweat ran in rivulets down my back. I studied the blades for some clue to the ceremony’s purpose, but they created an odd symmetrical pattern that didn’t seem to have any form. Now the incantations began again — the voice, I realized, belonged to Sievers — and the men at the table joined in the harsh, grating chant. All but one.

The last man had stood ready while the other swords were placed, his heavy blade held unwavering in front of his face. His was a sword of the most ancient lineage, a broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer. Without a tremor, Reinhard Heydrich allowed the blade to slowly fall, until its tip touched the hilt of the first sword and made the final connection. ‘I lay before you Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, may his strength and the strength of all these great champions aid our cause and use their power to smite our enemies and the enemies of our beloved Führer.’ At the word Excalibur I heard someone gasp. Who had not heard the story of King Arthur and his knights? The others were kings and heroes; Arthur was a legend whose fame had spread beyond his native land and beyond the boundaries of his time. If Arthur was with us we could not fail.

I was so mesmerized by this revelation that I hadn’t recognized the symbol created by the final sword. At first I struggled to hide my astonishment: a Star of David?

‘The five-pointed star of the pentagram is the most potent of all occult symbols,’ Sievers answered my unspoken question as he took his place beside von dem Bach-Zelewski at the eastern point of the star. He wore a black robe with a silver pentagram embroidered on the chest. In the centre of the pentagram was a swastika. ‘The connection of the five blades will channel the power of the men who wielded them, all that is required now is to propitiate the old Gods to ensure that power is ours to wield.’ He paused, allowing the significance of the statement to carry to each of the men at the table. ‘Bring forward the gifts.’

I heard the cry of a child and my blood turned to ice.

I dared not turn my head, but I witnessed them walk into the circle one by one. I have seen the face of war in all its terrible guises, but of them all, this was the most cold-blooded and the most ruthless. Small and naked, the babe was carried almost reverently in the arms of one of the men who had driven the truck and handed gently to Wolfram Sievers. He took the squirming bundle in one arm and withdrew something I could not see from the folds of his robe. The twelve men around the table began to sing in a low monotone. Moving to the north side of the table, Sievers manoeuvred the child so that the head was above the blade of the first sword. It was crying loudly and I could see its angry, wrinkled pink face. In an instant, the cries were cut off as Sievers drew his right hand sharply across the exposed throat and a cascade of dark liquid spurted across the gleaming steel and the virgin white of the table’s cloth. Without a change of expression, he placed the still-twitching body in the centre of the star. ‘May the spirit of Charlemagne accept this gift.’ A second child was brought forward. I turned my eyes away and found myself staring into those of Walter Schellenberg. I have never seen such hatred before or since. It took a second before I realized his loathing wasn’t directed at me. He was looking at Reinhard Heydrich.

At the completion of the ceremony, with the five tiny bodies piled in the centre of the table, Sievers invited the sword bearers to pick up their bloodstained weapons. I saw Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski’s hand shake as he reached for the hilt of Joyeuse and heard his cry of astonishment as he discovered Charlemagne’s sword was as fixed to the table as if it were welded there. Dietrich, Daluege and Hildebrandt followed suit, and found the same. Heydrich reached towards Excalibur, hesitated, then withdrew his hand.

‘The future of the Third Reich lies in your hands.’ Sievers’ voice held a promise and a threat. ‘As long as you, the paramount knights of the Schutzstaffel keep your honour and your faith, the spell will remain in place and the power of the swords and the men who wielded them will carry the armies of Adolf Hitler to victory. Draw strength from what you have seen and done here. Use that strength to advance the cause of National Socialism and in the execution of the difficult and glorious task that lies ahead. Weaken, and that power will turn against you.’

In the morning I wondered if I had dreamed it all, but as we were leaving the castle Dietrich turned to me. His tone was almost kindly. ‘I am sorry you had to see what you did, Lauterbacher. You must forget everything and get on with your life.’ My eyes were drawn to a column of smoke in the woods behind the castle. He shrugged. ‘They were idiot mischlings who did not exist in the eyes of the law. You could say that at least they died for a purpose.’

His eyes told me he didn’t believe that, and he knew I didn’t either.

Two days later I was transferred to an assault group of the 1st SS infantry battalion and within a week I was fighting in the front line of the invasion of Greece.