To distract me, Hagen took me to the Bayreuth Festival to see “Götterdämmerung.” In the final act, when Gunther sings: Complain not to me, but to Hagen; he’s the cursed boar who slew this hero! Hagen laughed aloud, then wept again. Because he was in uniform, they didn’t dare tell him to be quiet. I glanced up at the sleepwalker’s private box, but the curtain was drawn. Sometimes it’s better not to know.
Here comes Hagen through the Brandenburg Gate, at the head of a long file of anxious women and children. The battle of Berlin has just ended. They say that a hundred thousand civilians died. The survivors are coming back. A woman strides quickly into West Berlin, clutching her buttonless coat. Another woman, a darkhaired beauty, holds her child’s hand, her face blank and shocked. Hagen leaps up on a mound of rubble and shouts down at them: I did it! I lost Berlin!
They throw stones at him. But Hagen’s invulnerable, like Judas. He’s armored with steel-plated guilt.
I see Hagen at Nuremberg—naturally. How could he not be there? He’s a principal defendant! They might have let him off, since he was only a colonel, but he insists that he was really a general.
I’ll never forget the look on Justice Jackson’s face when Hagen rose, stared straight forward, and coolly explained: The function of Germans in Europe, and our duty itself, is to take the blame for everything. We commit crimes so that the rest of you can feel pure.
On 1.10.46 he was found guilty on all counts. General Nikitchenko added: The record is filled with his own admissions of complicity. There is nothing to be said in mitigation.
There he sat, in the very front row, with the worst of those war criminals, some of whom were in uniforms and others in suits; their heads slumped forward, as if the headphones weighed them down, and they closed their eyes, waiting for sentence to be passed upon them. It happened in alphabetical order. As each one’s turn neared, he opened his eyes, sat up straight, and braced himself, staring up at the judges. But when the court called upon Hagen to rise, his face became as bright as the lights of the Metropole on that night I’ll never forget when the artistes Margot and Heidi Hoffner danced nude together, and all of us who saw them felt that we’d been given a secret deep within the embrace of the wartime blackout.
Defendant Hagen, said the President, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.
I knew that, said Hagen.
The prison psychiatrist came on the last afternoon, to record his feelings. Hagen told him: My emotions can be summed up in two words: Déjà vu.
Dr. Gilbert wrote down this reply. He seemed irritated.
Everything’s my fault, yawned Hagen, blowing a smoke-ring. I killed all those Jews. I saw today coming, too. I foresaw all this back in 1929.
Do you remember the tests I gave you? said the doctor in an angry voice. I learned quite a lot about you. Among other flaws, you’re diseased by infantilism. That’s why you can’t stop playing with people. You’ve never taken responsibility for anything.
What on earth are you talking about? You can punish me for anything you like! I’m ready. When you have marital problems, feel free to tell your wife it was all my doing. I know how that will turn out.
Dr. Gilbert slammed the notebook shut. He rose and banged on the cell door so that the guard would let him out. He refused to look at the condemned man, but when the key began to turn, he hissed over his shoulder: You don’t know who you are. Tonight you’re going to die without even knowing that much.
Of course I would prefer to be myself, said Hagen. But something always brings me back to take the blame for what God has done. And what if this something is also myself? ‣
INTO THE MOUNTAIN
We have diagrammed the troop groupings as though they were the receding wings of a theater set—1, 2, 3, 4—inwards.
Before the sleepwalker slammed the door behind him he needed there to be nothing left, not even the door itself; in the old Norse legends great men go into the mountain when they die, and their voices may sometimes be heard where there are hollows in the earth; but the sleepwalker’s intention was that there would be no mountain after him, no voices in the ground, no ground, and certainly nobody above ground to listen.
He said: Trudl, bring me the folder for Operation Spiral, would you, please? That’s a good child.
(Do you want to know why it was called Operation Spiral? The Midgaard Serpent swallows his own tail, and then what? Where does he go?)
The telephone rang. Four officers had waited too long to blow up the Remagen bridge; the enemy was across the Rhine!
Have them shot, he said.
The telephone rang. The Ruhr basin would soon pass out of our hands.
Flood the coal mines, he said. It will take the Jews twenty years to get them working again!
The telephone rang. The enemy was approaching Düsseldorf.
Then burn Düsseldorf, he said. Do I have to tell you everything?
The telephone rang. Gauleiter Wagner wished to confirm that the water-works of Baden should be destroyed.
Confirmed, he said. Trudl, child, could you kindly put the tea on?
The telephone rang. Speer had committed treason.
Send him down to me this evening, he said.
When Speer came, the sleepwalker glared at him and said: Bormann has given me a report on your conference with the Reich Gauleiters. You pressed them not to carry out my orders, and even declared that the war is lost. Are you aware of what must follow from that?
Speer, peering up at the concrete ceiling as though he’d spied a crack, insisted that the war was lost.
If you could at least hope! the sleepwalker pleaded, for Speer was his architect. That would be enough to satisfy me…
Speer remained silent.
You have twenty-hour hours to think it over! the sleepwalker shouted. Get out now; you’re ill; you’re dismissed from my office!
The telephone rang. Some officer or other wanted to know what to do with the women and children in his sector once their houses had been demolished.
Tell him that the nature of this struggle permits no consideration for the populace to be taken.
The telephone rang. His National Redoubt in the Alps was almost ready. Saying nothing, he hung up.
The telephone rang. Göring wanted to assure him that the Philharmonic would go under with everything else. Meanwhile he heard an explosion far away and aboveground.
He snatched up the telephone at once, demanding to know how the Russians were able to shell Berlin. The telephone explained that they had laid down a heavy and precise curtain of fire on the airfield in Prague, so that our Luftwaffe was helpless.
Then the Luftwaffe is superfluous, said the sleepwalker. The entire Luftwaffe command should be hanged at once!
He slammed down the telephone in a rage.
The telephone rang.—Mein Führer, we’ve lost communication with Wenk. The Russians are—
Oh, I have no doubt that I’m their target, he said.
The telephone rang. Although Wenk still could not be reached, Ninth Army had been encircled, and Heinrici’s troops had also fallen out of touch, General Koller was ready nonetheless to start the counteroffensive which would save Berlin. The sleepwalker threatened him: Any commander who holds back his troops will forfeit his life in five hours!