Jonathan Littell - The Kindly Ones

The important thing, I saw clearly, was for the RSHA not to have too many objections; if the project was acceptable to them, Department D IV of the WVHA couldn’t oppose it. So I called Eichmann to sound him out: “Ah, my dear Sturmbannführer Aue! Meet with me? It’s just that I’m absolutely snowed under at the moment. Yes, Italy, and something else too. Tonight, then? For a drink. There’s a little café not too far from my office, at the corner of Potsdamerstrasse. Yes, next to the U-Bahn entrance. Till tonight, then.” When he arrived, he flopped onto the banquette with a sigh and threw his cap on the table, massaging the bridge of his nose. I had already ordered two glasses of schnapps and I offered him a cigarette, which he took with pleasure, leaning back in the banquette with his legs crossed, one arm thrown over the back. Between puffs he chewed his lower lip; his broad bare forehead reflected the lights of the café. “So, Italy?” I asked.—“The problem isn’t so much Italy—well, we’ll get eight or ten thousand of them there, of course—it’s mostly the zones that they occupied: with their imbecilic policies they’ve become paradise for Jews. They’re everywhere! In the South of France, the Dalmatian coast, the Italian zone in Greece. I sent teams right away pretty much everywhere, but it’s going to be a big job; with the transport problems on top of that, it won’t get done in a day. In Nice, with the benefit of surprise, we managed to arrest a few thousand; but the French police are becoming less and less cooperative, and that complicates matters. We lack resources terribly. And also Denmark is worrying us a lot.”—“Denmark?”—“Yes. It should have been quite simple, but it’s become a real mess. Günther is furious. Did I tell you I sent him there?”—“Yes. What happened?”—“I don’t know exactly. According to Günther, it’s Dr. Best, the ambassador, who’s playing a weird game. You know him, don’t you?” Eichmann emptied his schnapps in one gulp and ordered another. “He was my superior,” I replied. “Before the war.”—“Yes, well, I don’t know what’s on his mind now. For months and months, he’s been doing everything he can to get in our way, under the pretext that it’s going to…”—he made a repeated gesture from top to bottom—“interfere with his policy of cooperation. And then in August, after the riots, when we imposed a state of emergency, we said, fine, let’s do it. On-site, there’s a new BdS, Dr. Mildner, but he’s already overwhelmed; what’s more the Wehrmacht immediately refused to cooperate, that’s why I sent Günther, to get things going. So we prepared everything, a boat for the four thousand who are in Copenhagen, trains for the others, and then Best keeps creating difficulties. He always has an objection, the Danish, the Wehrmacht, e tutti quanti . What’s more, this was supposed to stay a secret, so we could round them all up at once, without their expecting it, but Günther says they already know everything. It looks like it’s off to a pretty bad start.”—“So where are you at now?”—“It’s planned for a few days from now. We’ll do it all at once, there aren’t all that many of them anyway. I called Günther and said to him, Günther, my friend, if that’s the way it is, tell Mildner to move the date up, but Best refused. Too sensitive, he had to talk some more with the Danes. Günther thinks he’s doing it on purpose so it’ll fail.”—“But I know Dr. Best well: he’s anything but a friend of the Jews. You’d have a hard time finding a better National Socialist than him.” Eichmann made a face: “Mmmh. You know, politics change people. Well, we’ll see. Me, I’m covered, we prepared everything, planned everything, if it goes wrong, it won’t fall on my shoulders, I’m telling you that right now. But how about your project, how’s that going?”

I ordered another round: I had already had a chance to notice that drinking tended to relax Eichmann, to arouse his sentimental, friendly side. I wasn’t trying to con him, far from it, but I wanted him to trust me and see that my ideas weren’t incompatible with his vision of things. I gave him a rough outline of the project; as I had foreseen, he scarcely listened. One single thing interested him: “How do you reconcile all that with the principle of Vernichtung durch Arbeit ?”—“It’s very simple: the improvements relate only to the skilled workers. It will be enough to make sure that the Jews and the asocials are assigned to heavy but unskilled labor.” Eichmann scratched his cheek. Of course I knew that in actual fact the assignments of each individual worker were decided by the Arbeitseinsatz of each camp, but if they wanted to keep skilled Jews, that would be their problem. Eichmann, in any case, seemed to have other concerns. After a minute of thought, he said abruptly: “Fine, that’s okay,” and began talking about the South of France again. I listened to him as I drank and smoked. After a while, at an opportune moment, I asked him politely: “To come back to my project, Obersturmbannführer, it’s almost ready, and I’d like to send it to you so you can study it.” Eichmann waved his hand: “If you like. I already get so much paper.”—“I don’t want to bother you. It’s just to be sure you don’t have any objections.”—“If it’s as you say…”—“Listen, if you have the time, look at it, and then send me a little letter. That way I can show that I took your opinion into account.” Eichmann gave an ironic little smile and waved a finger at me: “Ah, you’re a clever one, Sturmbannführer Aue. You have to cover your tracks too.” I kept my face impassive: “The Reichsführer wants the opinions of all departments involved to be taken into account. Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner told me that for the RSHA, I would have to see you. I find it normal.” Eichmann scowled: “Of course, I’m not the one who decides: I’ll have to submit it to my Amtschef. But if I give a positive recommendation, there’s no reason he’ll refuse to sign it. In principle, of course.” I raised my glass: “To the success of your Danish Einsatz, then?” He smiled; when he smiled that way, his ears seemed to stick out, and he looked more than ever like a bird; at the same time, a nervous tic deformed his smile, making it almost into a grimace. “Yes, thank you, to the Einsatz. To your project too.”

I drafted the text in two days; Isenbeck had meticulously prepared handsome detailed charts for the annexes, and I used Rizzi’s arguments without altering them too much. I hadn’t quite finished when Brandt summoned me. The Reichsführer was going to the Warthegau to deliver important speeches there; on October 6, a conference of the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters was taking place, at which Dr. Mandelbrod would be present; and the latter had asked that I be invited. How far was I with my project? I assured him that I had almost finished. I just had to present it to my colleagues before sending it to the relevant offices for approval. I had already discussed it with Weinrowski, presenting Isenbeck’s scales to him as a simple technical elaboration of his ideas: he seemed to think it was fine. The general meeting went off without any hitches; I let Rizzi do most of the talking, and contented myself with stressing that I had secured the verbal agreement of the RSHA. Gorter seemed satisfied, and just wondered if we had gone far enough; Alicke seemed unable to follow Rizzi’s economic arguments; Jedermann grumbled that it was still going to be expensive, and where would we find the money? But he was reassured when I guaranteed that if the project were approved, it would be financed through additional allocation. I asked each person for a written reply from his Amtschef for the tenth, counting on being back in Berlin by then; I also forwarded a copy to Eichmann. Brandt had let me know that I could probably present the project to the Reichsführer in person, once the departments had given their agreement.