Hitler's peace

“Your report was very thorough,” I told him. “For what it’s worth, I agreed with your conclusion. That, on this particular occasion at least, the German army was not responsible for mass murder.”

“Your German is very good,” said the major.

“It should be. My mother always read fairy tales to me in German.”

“Is she German?”

“Kind of. You know, the American kind.” I threaded my cigarette between my lips and sat back in my chair, my hands in the pockets of my trousers. “You were telling me a story yourself, weren’t you?”

“The suitcase you found when I was picked up,” Reichleitner said to Deakin. “Where is it, please?”

Deakin stood up and shouted through the judas hole. Reichleitner said nothing until the case was open on the table in front of him. It was empty.

“The clothes that were in here are at the laundry,” explained Deakin.

“Yes, I know. The lance corporal explained. Have you a pen-knife, please?”

This time Deakin hesitated.

Reichleitner shook his head and smiled. “It’s all right, Major. I give you my word as a German officer, I will not attack you with it.”

“We’ve already cut the lining,” said Deakin, handing over the knife he used on his pipe.

“It has a double lining,” said Reichleitner. He unfolded the blade of Deakin’s knife and levered it inside the leather lid. “Also, you have to know where to make the cut. This has been stitched in with very fine wire. With one cut you might remove the first lining, but not the leather underneath.”

It took Reichleitner several minutes to remove the leather lid of his suitcase. He laid it flat upon the desk and then opened it like a large portfolio to reveal a waterproof package containing several neat piles of paper and a small roll of photographs.

“Very clever,” said Deakin.

“No,” said Reichleitner. “You were careless, that’s all.” He made one pile of pages out of the several smaller ones and then pushed the documents toward me.

“After Katyn Forest,” he said, “this was the next investigation. Hardly as thorough, but just as shocking. It relates to a place in Russia called Beketovka. The largest POW camp for German soldiers captured at Stalingrad. The conditions described here apply in all Soviet POW camps for German soldiers. Except those for the SS. For the SS things are much worse. Please, read this file. Several men died to bring the information and these pictures out of Russia. I shan’t detain you with the precise figures now, gentlemen. Instead I shall merely give you one statistic. Of the two hundred fifty thousand Germans captured after the surrender at Stalingrad, about ninety percent are now dead from cold, starvation, neglect, or just plain murder. My mission here is simple. To deliver this file to your president with a question. If the deaths of twenty-seven thousand Poles are not enough for you to break off your alliance with the Soviet Union, then what about the deaths of two hundred and twenty-five thousand German prisoners?”

“Only four thousand Poles have been found. So far.”

“There were other graves,” said Reichleitner. “In truth we had no time to examine all of them. However, our intelligence sources in Russia have indicated that this may be only the tip of the iceberg. Of the million or more Poles deported in 1941, perhaps as many as a third of them are now dead, with many more unaccounted for in Soviet labor camps.”

“Bloody hell,” breathed Deakin. “You can’t be serious.”

“Had I not seen what I have seen, then I might have agreed with you, Major Deakin,” said Reichleitner. “Look, this is what I know. But what I suspect is much, much worse. There are terrible things that Germany has done, too. Dreadful things to the Jews in Eastern Europe. But we are your enemy. The Russians are your friends. Your allies. And if you do and say nothing of these things, you will be as bad as them, for you will be condoning what they have done.”

Deakin looked at me. “These figures he mentions, they’re impossible, surely.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But three hundred thousand Poles?”

“Men, women, and children,” said Reichleitner.

“It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

Reichleitner threw himself down on his bed. “Well, I have done my duty. Everything is explained in the file. I can tell you no more than you may read for yourselves.”

Deakin tapped the bowl of his pipe against the heel of his hand and, catching my eye, nodded.

“Actually there’s quite a lot you haven’t told us, Major,” he said. “Such as who sent you on this mission. And who you were to make contact with when you arrived in Cairo. You don’t expect us to believe that you were going to make your way to the American legation and hand this dossier over to the president in person. To whom were you intending to entrust this?”

“Good point,” I said.

“You might not be a spy yourself, but the person with whom you were supposed to make contact in Cairo almost certainly is.”