Hitler's peace

“Unquestionably, Herr Reichsminister.”

“Have a safe trip back to Turkey, Herr Moyzisch.” And, turning to Linkus, he said, “Show Herr Moyzisch out and then tell Fritz to bring the car around to the front door. We leave for the railway station in five minutes.”

Von Ribbentrop closed the door and returned to the Biedermeier table, where he gathered up Cicero’s photographs and placed them carefully in his saddle-leather briefcase. He thought Moyzsich was almost certainly right, that the documents were perfectly genuine, but he had no wish to lend any support to them in Schellenberg’s eyes, lest the SD general be prompted to try to take advantage of this new and important information with some stupid, theatrical military stunt. The last thing he wanted was the SD pulling off another “special mission” like the one a month before, when Otto Skorzeny and a team of 108 SS men had parachuted onto a mountaintop in Abruzzi and rescued Mussolini from the traitorous Badoglio faction that had tried to surrender Italy to the Allies. Rescuing Mussolini was one thing; but knowing what to do with him afterward was quite another. It fell to him to deal with the problem. Installing Il Duce in the city-state Republic of Salo, on Lake Garda, had been one of the more pointless diplomatic endeavors of his career. If anyone had bothered to ask him, he would have left Mussolini in Abruzzi to face an Allied court-martial.

These Cicero documents were another thing entirely. They were a real chance to put his career back on track, to prove he was indeed, as Hitler had once called him-after the successful negotiation of the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union-“a second Bismarck.” War was inimical to diplomacy, but now that it was clear the war could not be won, the time for diplomacy-von Ribbentrop’s diplomacy-had returned, and he had no intention of allowing the SD with their stupid heroics to ruin Germany’s chances of a negotiated peace.

He would speak to Himmler. Only Himmler had the foresight and vision to understand the tremendous opportunity that was provided by Cicero’s very timely information. Von Ribbentrop closed his briefcase and headed for the street.

By the tall lamppost that flanked the building’s entrance, von Ribbentrop found the two aides who were to accompany him on his train journey: Rudolf Linkus and Paul Schmidt. Linkus relieved him of his briefcase and placed it in the trunk of the enormous black Mercedes that was waiting to drive him to the Anhalter Bahnhof-the railway station. Sniffing the damp night air charged with the smell of cordite from the antiaircraft batteries on nearby Pariser Platz and Leipziger Platz, he climbed into the backseat.

They drove south down Wilhelmstrasse, past Gestapo headquarters and onto Koniggratzerstrasse, turning right into the station, which was full of aged pensioners and women and children taking advantage of Gauleiter Goebbels’s decree permitting them to escape the Allied bombing campaign. The Mercedes drew up at a platform well away from Berlin’s less distinguished travelers, alongside a streamlined, dark green train that was building up a head of steam. Standing on the platform, at five-meter intervals, a troop of SS men stood guard over its twelve coaches and two flak wagons armed with 200-millimeter quadruple antiaircraft guns. This was the special train Heinrich used by the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, and, after the Fuhrerzug, the most important train in Germany.

Von Ribbentrop climbed aboard one of the two coaches reserved for the use of the Reich Foreign Minister and his staff. Already the noise of clattering typewriters and waiters laying out china and cutlery in the dining car that separated von Ribbentrop’s personal coach from that of the Reichsfuhrer-SS made the train seem as noisy as any government office. At exactly eight o’clock the Heinrich headed east, toward what had once been Poland.