Back in Stalingrad, I used the figures Hohenegg had provided me to draft a report that, according to Thomas, stunned Möritz: he had read it at one go, he told me, then returned it without any comments. Thomas wanted to forward it directly to Berlin. “You can do that without Möritz’s authorization?” I asked him, surprised. Thomas shrugged his shoulders: “I’m an officer of the Staatspolizei, not of the Geheime Feldpolizei. I can do what I like.” In fact, I realized, we were all more or less autonomous. Möritz only rarely gave me precise instructions, and in general I was left to myself. I wondered why he had had me come. Thomas kept direct contacts with Berlin, I didn’t really know through what channels, and he seemed always sure of the next step. In the first months of the occupation of the city, the SP, along with the Feldgendarmerie, had liquidated the Jews and the Communists; then they had evacuated most of the civilians and sent the ones of working age to Germany, almost sixty-five thousand in all, for the
Aktion Sauckel. But they too found little to do now. Thomas, though, seemed busy; day after day, he cultivated his intelligence officers with cigarettes and canned preserves. I decided, for lack of anything better to do, to reorganize the network of civilian informers that I had inherited. I summarily cut off supplies to the ones who seemed useless, and told the others I expected more of them. On a suggestion from Ivan, I went with a