Hitler's peace

“I won’t be surprised if this conference collapses under the weight of the discord that exists among the Allies. Stalin and Churchill hate each other, that much is certain. The interesting thing will be to see how Roosevelt and Stalin hit it off. I suspect, if only from his speeches, that Roosevelt will behave like a whore for Stalin, trying to seduce the old bastard. Stalin, I’m sure, will just sit there, waiting to see just how far Roosevelt will go to charm him. Meanwhile Churchill’s waiting on the sidelines seething, like some cuckolded husband watching his stupid wife make a spectacle of herself but unable to say anything out of fear she’ll leave him.” Hitler slapped his thigh again. “By God, I’d like to be there to see it.”

His eyes narrowing, Hitler gave Schellenberg a shrewd look. “You’re as clever as Heydrich,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re as ruthless, but you’re certainly as clever.” He smacked Schellenberg’s memo with the back of his hand. “And there is no doubt that this is a clever plan.”

Abruptly, Hitler stood up, prompting everyone else to do the same. “I’ll give you my decision after lunch.”

The meeting adjourned to the dining room, where several members of the General Staff joined them. Throughout the meal they were treated to more of Hitler’s monologues. Hitler ate quickly and with little finesse: a corn on the cob to start, over which he poured almost a cupful of melted butter, no main course, and then a huge plate of hot pancakes with raisins and sweet syrup. Schellenberg felt sick just looking at Hitler’s menu choices and struggled to finish the Wiener schnitzel that he himself had ordered.

After lunch Hitler invited Schellenberg to walk with him, and the two men made a circuit of Restricted 1, Hitler pointing out the swimming pool, the cinema, the barbershop-he was very proud that they had “enticed” Wollenhaupt, the barber from Berlin’s Hotel Kaiserhof, to cut the hair of the General Staff at the Wolfschanze-and the bunkers of Goring, Speer, and Martin Bormann. “There’s even a cemetery,” said Hitler. “Just to the south of here, across the main road. Yes, we’ve got pretty much everything we might need.”

Schellenberg didn’t ask who was buried in the cemetery. Even for an intelligence chief there were some things it was better not to know. Finally Hitler came to the point.

“I admire your plan. It’s like something from a book by Karl May. Have you ever read any books by Karl May?”

“Not since I was a boy.”

“Never be ashamed of that, Schellenberg. When I was a boy, Karl May’s books had a tremendous influence on me. Now, listen. I want you to go ahead with your plan, in the way that you suggested. Yes, send your team into Persia, but do nothing without authorization from me or Himmler. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly, my Fuhrer.”

“Good. They’re to do nothing unless I give you the go-ahead. Meanwhile, I will tell Himmler and Goring that Operation Long Jump gets top priority. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“One more thing, Schellenberg. Be careful of Himmler and Kaltenbrunner. Perhaps a man of your resources needn’t worry too much about Kaltenbrunner. But Himmler-you’ll have to watch out for him, that’s for sure. Watch out that he doesn’t get jealous of you in the same way he got jealous of Heydrich. And you remember what happened to him. It was too bad, really, what happened, but inevitable, I suppose, given all the circumstances. Heydrich was too ambitious, and I’m afraid he paid the price for that.”

Schellenberg listened, trying to contain his astonishment, for the Fuhrer seemed to be suggesting that far from being murdered by Czech partisans, somehow Himmler had had a hand in Heydrich’s assassination.

“So be careful of Himmler, yes. But also be careful of Admiral Canaris. He’s not the old fool the Gestapo make him out to be. All of us can still learn a great deal from that old fox. You mark my words, the Abwehr still has the capacity to surprise us.”

IX

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1943,

ZOSSEN, GERMANY

Admiral Canaris was feeling the cold. It wasn’t that he had just returned from Madrid the previous day and found the Abwehr’s gas-proof gray-green bunker at Army Field Headquarters in Zossen, about thirty kilometers south of Berlin, to be damp and inadequately heated. No, it wasn’t that at all, for unlike most of the senior figures in the Nazi hierarchy, he was something of a Spartan and cared little for his own comfort. At the Abwehr’s offices on Tirpitz Ufer, an elegant four-story building near Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, he had often slept on a camp bed and still thought nothing of doing without a meal so that his two wirehaired dachshunds, Seppel and Kasper, might have fresh meat.

No, the cold Canaris was feeling had more to do with the intelligence failures of his own organization and, as a corollary, the knowledge that he seemed to have lost the ear of the Fuhrer.