Lucas Delattre - A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich

After the little town of Angerburg, they plunged again into the forest. There was no way of telling where they were, no indication of the “Führerhauptquartier.” If the road signs were to be believed, the car was headed toward an enigmatic factory supposedly belonging to a celebrated precision instrument maker (Askania Werke). “Askania? That’s all nonsense. That lets them conceal the real nature of the place,” the driver told Fritz in answer to his question about the meaning of these strange signs.

After half an hour had passed, and they had gone through several guard posts at the entry of various “forbidden zones” protected by high fences, barbed wire, and patrols, they could see the first wooden huts and half-buried bunkers. They finally arrived at a clearing where three trains were standing. They could not be seen from a distance because they were thoroughly camouflaged, like the railroad track, with nets covered in fake foliage. And yet they occupied a space as large as a marshaling yard. One of the three trains held the “field offices” of the foreign minister. Next to Ribbentrop’s was Göring’s—the most beautiful of all, a veritable palace on wheels—and finally Heinrich Himmler’s. This had been the first “railroad headquarters” to see the light, and since then all the high officials of the regime had wanted to have, like the Reichsführer SS, their private train ( Sonderzug ) close to the front. The three trains were equipped with everything necessary: private salons, radio room, dining car, toilets, and showers (and even a screening room in Himmler’s train). At the ends of the cars were antiaircraft batteries in case of enemy attack.

It was after ten in the morning and the heat was stifling, even in the shade. A smell of tar drifted through the air. Fritz was brought to one of the cars of Ribbentrop’s train, where he was asked to wait for a few minutes. Karl Ritter was not yet there. While waiting for his boss in a little compartment that resembled an antechamber, Fritz glanced outside. There were patrols with dogs. Fritz also noticed a small group of officers having a conversation, each with mosquito netting around his head. Fritz held back his laughter.

Soon, an armored car arrived, stirring up the dust. This was Karl Ritter’s car. At Ritter’s right, Fritz thought he recognized Walther Hewel, a close confidant of the führer. Hewel, a Nazi stalwart from the early days, ensured constant contact between Ribbentrop and Hitler. There were also a stenographer and a few officers of the high command of the Wehrmacht whom Fritz did not know. Everyone was in uniform. Karl Ritter looked even smaller than usual when he was seen next to Walther Hewel, a strong man with a powerful presence. Hewel did not at all correspond to the clichéd image of the Aryan man (he was dark-haired), which had not prevented him from becoming an SS-Brigadeführer, the equivalent of a brigadier general in the elite order of the Nazi regime.

Karl Ritter looked irritated when he came into the train car, soon followed by his colleagues, and sat at a table covered with campaign maps. He had not seen Fritz, who was hidden by a door ajar at the other end of the compartment and who was waiting to be called before showing himself. “Where can the minister be?” Ritter asked in an exasperated tone. “We had an appointment for ten o’clock!” “Mister Ambassador,” said Walter Hewel, “the minister usually gets up late, you know that very well. Right now, he is probably being taken care of by his personal barber in his private apartment,” he added, with a little ironic smile. Like many others, Walther Hewel detested Ribbentrop. He made no attempt to disguise his disregard for him, since Hewel was one of the few historic companions in arms of Adolf Hitler, and had personally participated at his side in the failed 1923 Munich putsch.

While waiting for Ribbentrop’s arrival, Karl Ritter questioned Walther Hewel about the evenings with Hitler in “forbidden zone number one,” a few kilometers from there. “It’s cold,” replied Hewel, “the führer never heats the rooms where he is. No one dares to speak for fear of being ridiculous. When he invites us into his ‘tea house’ after dinner, he spends the entire evening carrying on long monologues while drinking a brew made of fennel. He is attentive only to his dog Blondi. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to realize that there are ten people around him thinking only of going to bed. Last night he spoke for more than an hour about vegetarian cooking and the nausea meat makes him feel. He detests the idea that animals are killed so they can be eaten!” Karl Ritter displayed a sneering attitude and asked if it was allowed “at least to play bridge” (one of his favorite pastimes) at the führer’s evenings.

In Adolf Hitler’s circle, neither bridge nor any other game was played. The führer preferred long discussions in front of a skimpy fire. Walther Hewel described how, the night before, the führer had spoken at length of his plans for Russia, and that he had seemed very optimistic about the conquest of Moscow, “which shouldn’t take long to fall after Kiev.” He explained to his audience that once Moscow and Leningrad had been captured they should simply be wiped off the map. Russia would be a vast agricultural province and a source of raw materials from which Germany would take everything it needed. “When we have conquered the territory,” Hewel went on, “the führer thinks that it will not take much effort to control it. A bit like the British in India: an administration of 250,000 men should suffice, and a few divisions to put down possible rebellions.” The Russian, Hewel asserted, had a slave mentality: “The Russian, at bottom, is a kind of rabbit,” he said. “He doesn’t have the ability to transform himself into a ‘bee’ or an ‘ant,’ as we Germans can. There is no point in trying to make the Russian more intelligent than he is.” The Russia of tomorrow, Hewel continued, would look like something new: “German towns, and all around them countryside where Russian peasants will work. A little further on, there will be large territories for our army training.” There was a proposal to settle on the borders of this “oriental empire” peoples close to the Germans by blood, such as the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes, who would protect Germany from the “Asiatic hordes.” The führer thought that in the future Europe would be entirely united against America. “Even the English will be with us once we have conquered the Russian landmass and all its natural resources!”

“You really believe all this talk? You think that Moscow is easy to capture? Believe me, I know Russia, and everything you tell me is very pretty but not very realistic!” remarked Karl Ritter, who trusted Walther Hewel enough to tell him frankly what he thought. Hewel, who respected Ritter, and retained some degree of independent thinking, had a contemplative air. “But after all, what does it matter?” Ritter continued. “Right now, let’s talk about urgent matters. I would like to have details about what is to be done with prisoners of war. We’ve settled the question of political prisoners, who have to be liquidated. Do you have figures on the number of political commissars in the Red Army already killed? And where are we in reference to ordinary prisoners?”

Walther Hewel turned to an OKW officer to ask for more information. The officer took from his briefcase a recent circular and read a few passages: “Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of Germany. For the first time German soldiers are facing an enemy trained not only as a soldier but as a political agent in the service of Bolshevism. He has learned to fight against National Socialism with all available means: sabotage, demoralizing propaganda, assassination… The Bolshevik soldier has thereby lost the right to be treated as an ordinary combatant according to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.”