Every day, more wounded arrived: they came from Kursk, from Rostov, from Kharkov, recaptured one after the other by the Soviets, from Kasserine too; and a few words with the newcomers said much more about the current situation than the military communiqués. These communiqués, which were delivered to us in the common rooms over little loudspeakers, were introduced by the overture to Bach’s cantata Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott; but the Wehrmacht used the arrangement by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, Johann Sebastian’s dissolute son, who had added three trumpets and a kettledrum to his father’s austere orchestration, an ample enough pretext, by my lights, to flee the room each time, thus avoiding being drugged by the flood of lulling euphemisms, which sometimes lasted a good twenty minutes. I wasn’t the only one to show a certain aversion to these communiqués; a nurse whom I often found at those times ostensibly busy out on a terrace explained to me one day that most Germans had first heard of the encirclement of the Sixth Army at the same time as its destruction, and that this had done little to temper the shock on morale. It had had an effect on the life of the Volksgemeinschaft; people were openly talking and criticizing; a semblance of a student rebellion had even broken out in Munich. That, of course, I had not learned from the radio or from the nurses or from the patients, but from Thomas, who was now well placed to be informed about this sort of event. Subversive pamphlets had been distributed, defeatist slogans painted on the walls; the Gestapo had to intervene vigorously, and they had already condemned and executed the ringleaders, most of them idealistic youth gone astray. Among the minor consequences of this catastrophe would have to be counted, alas, the sensational return to the forefront of the political scene of Dr. Goebbels: his renewed declaration of total war, in the Sportpalast, had been broadcast to us on the radio, no possibility of escaping it; in a rest house belonging to the SS, they unfortunately took this sort of thing very seriously.
The handsome Waffen-SS who filled the rooms were for the most part in a piteous state: often they were missing pieces of arms or legs, or even a jaw; the atmosphere wasn’t always very cheerful. But I noticed with interest that despite what the most casual reflection on the facts or the studying of a map could suggest, their faith in the Endsieg and their veneration of the Führer remained for the most part intact. This wasn’t the case for everyone; some people, in Germany, were clearly beginning to draw objective conclusions from the facts and from the maps; I had discussed this with Thomas, and he had even led me to understand that there were some, like Schellenberg, who thought through the logical consequences of their conclusions, and who were considering acting on that basis. I didn’t discuss any of this, of course, with my comrades in misfortune: to demoralize them even more, thoughtlessly to take away from them the foundation of their wounded lives, would have made no sense to me. I was regaining my strength: I could now get dressed by myself, walk on the beach on my own, in the wind under the harsh calls of the seagulls; my left hand was finally beginning to obey me. Around the end of the month (all this happened in February 1943), the chief doctor of the establishment, after examining me, asked me if I felt able to leave: with everything that was happening, they were short on space, and I could just as easily finish my convalescence with my family. I amiably explained to him that returning to my family wasn’t an option, but that if he liked, I would leave; I’d go to the city, to a hotel. The papers he handed me gave me three months’ leave. So I took the train and went to Berlin. There I rented a room in a good hotel, the Eden, on the Budapesterstrasse: a spacious suite with a sitting room, a bedroom, and a beautiful tiled bathroom; hot water, here, wasn’t rationed, and every day I slipped into the bathtub and emerged an hour later with my skin bright red, and collapsed naked onto my bed, my heart pounding wildly. There were also French windows and a narrow balcony looking out onto the zoo: in the morning, as I got up and drank my tea, I would watch the keepers make their rounds and feed the animals; I took great pleasure in this. Of course, all this was on the expensive side; but I had received all at once my back wages accumulated over twenty-one months; with the bonuses, that made a tidy little sum, I could easily indulge myself and spend a little. I ordered a magnificent black uniform from Thomas’s tailor, onto which I had my new Sturmbannführer stripes sewn and to which I pinned my medals (along with the Iron Cross and my War Service Cross, I had received some minor medals: for my wound, for the ’41–’42 winter campaign, a little late, and a medal from the NSDAP, which they gave out to pretty much anyone); although I don’t like uniforms much, I had to admit that I cut a dashing figure, and it was a joy to stroll about town like this, my cap a little askew, my gloves held negligently in my hand; seeing me, who would have thought that I was actually nothing but a bureaucrat? The city, since I had left, had changed its appearance quite a bit. Everywhere the measures taken against the English air raids had disfigured it: a huge oversize circus tent, made of netting camouflaged with strips of cloth and fir tree tops, covered the Ost-West-Achse from the Brandenburg Gate to the end of the Tiergarten, darkening the avenue even in the middle of the day; the Victory Column, draped in netting, had had its gold leaf replaced by an awful brown paint; on Adolf-Hitler-Platz and elsewhere, they had set up dummy buildings, vast theater sets beneath which the cars and trams circulated; and a fantastic construction overlooked the zoo near my hotel, as if risen out of a nightmare—an immense medieval fort made of concrete, bristling with cannons that were supposed to protect humans and animals from the British
Luftmörder; I was curious to see this monstrosity at work. But it should be said that the attacks, which already at that time were terrifying the population, were still nothing compared with what would come later on. Almost all the good restaurants had been closed in the name of total mobilization; Göring had tried his best to protect Horcher, his favorite place, and had posted a guard in front of it, but Goebbels, acting in his capacity as Gauleiter of Berlin, had organized a spontaneous demonstration of the anger of the people, during which they had broken all its windows; and Göring had had to cave in. Thomas and I weren’t the only ones to laugh at this incident: failing a real “Stalingrad” diet, a little abstinence wouldn’t harm the Reichsmarschall. Thomas, fortunately, knew several private clubs, exempt from the new regulations: there you could stuff yourself on lobster or oysters, which were expensive but not rationed, and drink Champagne, which was strictly limited in France itself but not in Germany; fish, alas, was still nowhere to be found, as well as beer. These places sometimes displayed a curious spirit, given the general mood: at the Golden Horseshoe they had a black hostess, and the female customers could ride horseback on a little circus ring, to show off their legs; at the Jockey Club the orchestra played American music; you couldn’t dance, but the bar was decorated with photographs of Hollywood stars, and even of Leslie Howard.