“How is our defeat at Stalingrad being taken in Berlin? Graciously, I hope.”
Funk dropped the hairbrush and spun around angrily, then contained himself. “We will break through at Stalingrad.”
“That is what I was afraid of. You spoilsports will be too bullheaded to see the handwriting on the wall. And the crushing of our Afrika Korps in Tunis?”
Funk quickly spouted the line of Nazi logistics. The Russians would collapse soon. America was too weak-spined to fight a sustained war, give up her sons and her luxuries and make the sacrifices necessary for victory. England? Washed up.
“Oh, for Christ sake, Alfred,” Horst said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I wrote most of that nonsense after Dunkirk. Know what I’ve been doing lately? Soul-searching. Do you ever soul-search?”
“That is a dangerous avocation reserved exclusively for those whose advanced age makes them otherwise useless. I gave it up twelve years ago when I joined the party.”
Funk pulled up his suspender straps and assured his servant he was capable of buttoning his own tunic. Horst followed Funk back to the living room, where they settled down to await the arrival of the sisters from Prague.
“Why is Hitler suddenly concerned over a few Jewish writings? Is it guilt? Is there a realization that Germany will lose the war unless they break through to Stalingrad? Does Hitler liken these writings to the other book the Jews wrote which has tormented the conscience of man for two thousand years? Does he fear two millennia of a Jewish curse gnawing at the souls of unborn German generations, thwarting their growth? Is it a fear of divine retribution?”
“Nonsense,” Funk snapped. He was about to recite the Nazi line about the war’s being fought because of international Jewry but decided to spare Horst, or rather spare himself from Horst’s retorts.
“Would you say this strange desire to find a few books when you own half the world points out that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword?”
“Nothing of the sort. Every conqueror has justified his actions. In our case the obliteration of the Jews is our holy mission, just as the obliteration of other peoples has been a holy mission for other empires.”
“Would you say that this desire to find the archives is more like a dog scratching frantically to cover up his dung pile?”
“Put it away, Horst. You talk as though the German people have committed some sort of crime.”
“Haven’t they?”
“Of course not. Precedent is all around us. Even the ancient Hebrews destroyed their enemies ... attributed to the commands of their God. Mongols made pyramids of skulls. The Chinese used human bodies as mortar to build the Great Wall. Napoleon had his Gestapo and the Russians have theirs. We are merely making variations on an ancient theme. Every man wants to be the best. The drive to rule is a completely natural expression of human behavior. In an individual the drive finds its expression by pushing the writer’s pen to create a book, by driving the athlete to strain his heart and his muscle. When the drive becomes a national expression it takes the form of conquest. Every people in every age have taken their turn. The world has only one standard for proof that one is better than the other, and that is conquest.”
Horst grunted at Funk’s cruel but accurate logic. “Granted,” he said, “that the desire to dominate is an unalterable trait in the human being. Let us take it a step farther. A woman wants to commit adultery. She has a family, children, position in the community. Does she walk naked in the streets to her lover and perform sex acts in a store window? No. Why? Adultery is a sin we all indulge in, but the woman finds a secluded place, deceives her husband, and avoids scandal. She plays by the rules. You see, Alfred, even the game of sin must be played by the rules. So must war be fought by the rules.”
Funk set his glass down. “What you are saying is that when the sloppy aim of the Luftwaffe kills women and children in London it is permissible. When it is deliberate we break the rules. Isn’t that a hypocritical double standard? Is it a greater sin for a submarine to kill a man on a ship without warning or to blast him, gentlemen’s style, off a battlefield? Your rule says ‘Kill soldiers.’ Is the killing of an armed man really less a murder than the killing of a child? We have learned that other conquests have failed because one cannot go to war with compassion. Total war means total death. If victory means reducing Poland to a pool of cultureless serfs, then that is what must be done.”
“Then why not use poison gas on their armies?”
“This is not a decision of compassion but of expediency. We would certainly not hesitate if we knew they would not do the same to us. You cannot measure brutality by degrees. All conquerors justify their aims on a political theory. In our case the Nazis provide our various frills. No country goes to war without the belief in its own justice—we take it a step farther. We act out what others only theorize. In the concentration camps we reduce our political enemy until he takes the physical appearance of a subhuman. This makes us supermen by comparison.”
“Alfred, does any of this ever annoy you as an individual?”
“No. I decided by 1930 that you either become a Nazi or drown. My personal views on this Jewish business fail to be important. Horst, have you witnessed a gassing?”
“No.”
“I’ll arrange one for you.”
“Thanks, anyhow.”
“The first time I witnessed one it was with a sense of complete fascination. I slept very well that night. The only thing that annoyed me a little was some of the Jewesses carrying their children into the chambers who looked at me with a mocking Mona Lisa smile.”
Horst was sorry he had brought the whole subject up.
“I shall tell you why the German people will be able to achieve what others have failed. It is because we are capable of the perfect state of mind necessary. We can give absolute obedience, respond to total authority, like no others.”
Horst spun the ice cubes with his forefinger. He glanced up into Funk’s face. The Oberführer was in a state of detachment, the cruel and impersonal monster qualities dominating his appearance.
“Others talk of love of country. We act it out through absolute obedience. Four years ago I was commandant of the Waffen SS youth training school at Dachau. We got boys at the age of sixteen for a year’s indoctrination, complete with live prisoners to experiment with. The entire course was geared to teach absolute unquestioned obedience to the Fatherland. Each boy was given an Alsatian puppy of six to eight weeks of age when he entered training. During the year part of their study was to train the animal, live with it, compete it against the other dogs. We encouraged them to develop the natural affection a boy does for a dog.”
Funk clasped his hands behind him.
“The last graduation test to see if the boy was worthy to become an SS officer was by calling him into a private room with his dog. As he stood before me at attention with his dog at his side I would say, ‘Hans, I order you to strangle your dog this instant.’ ”
Horst thought he was going to vomit.
“Oh, a few were unable to do it. Some even broke and cried. But! Almost all of them, without a trace of remorse, without a second of hesitation, said, ‘Jawohl, Herr Kommandant,’ and proceeded to snap their dog’s neck without a trace of emotion. And this, Horst, is the supreme state of absolute obedience which we Germans have attained.”
Horst poured himself a triple drink. “Heil Hitler,” he said.
Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze paced his room in the barracks wildly. Gestapo Chief Sauer had just left him with orders to set up a massive pot around Mila 19 and not to leave until the underground bunker was located and Alexander Brandel found.