Nevertheless I felt rather unsure of myself. Was that because of recent events, or simply my innate lack of bureaucratic instinct? Whatever the case, after I had managed to gather an overall idea of the problem from the documents, I decided, before going up to Oranienburg where the IKL people had their headquarters, to consult Thomas. I liked Thomas, but I would never have spoken to him about my personal problems; for my professional doubts, though, he was the best confidant I knew. He had once demonstrated to me in luminous terms the principle of how the system functioned (this must have been in 1939, or maybe even the end of 1938, during the internal conflicts that had shaken the movement after the Kristallnacht): “It’s normal that orders are always vague; it’s even deliberate, and it stems from the very logic of the Führerprinzip. It’s up to the recipient to recognize the intentions of the one who gives the command, and to act accordingly. The ones who insist on having clear orders or who want legislative measures haven’t understood that it’s the will of the leader, and not his orders, that counts, and that it’s up to the receiver of the orders to know how to decipher and even anticipate that will. Whoever knows how to act this way is an excellent National Socialist, and he’ll never be reproached for his excess of zeal, even if he makes mistakes; the others are the ones who, as the Führer says, are afraid of jumping over their own shadows.” I had understood that; but I also understood that I lacked the skill to go beyond the surfaces of things, to guess at the hidden stakes; and Thomas had precisely this talent to the highest degree, and that’s why he was driving in a sports convertible while I was going home on the U-Bahn. I found him at the Neva Grill, one of the good restaurants he liked to frequent. He talked to me with cynical amusement about the population’s morale, as it was revealed in Ohlendorf’s confidential reports, copies of which he received: “It’s remarkable how well informed people are of the so-called secrets—the euthanasia program, the destruction of the Jews, the camps in Poland, the gas, everything. You, in Russia, had never heard of the KLs in Lublin or Silesia, but the lowliest tramcar driver in Berlin or Düsseldorf knows they’re burning prisoners there. And despite Goebbels’s propaganda, people are still capable of forming opinions for themselves. The foreign radio broadcasts aren’t the only explanation, since a lot of people are still afraid of listening to them. No, all of Germany today is a vast tissue of rumors, a spider’s web that extends to all the territories under our control—the Russian front, the Balkans, France. Information circulates at an incredible speed. And the cleverest are able to match up these pieces of information so as sometimes to arrive at surprisingly precise conclusions. You know what we did, recently? We deliberately started a rumor in Berlin, a real false rumor, based on authentic but distorted information, to study how quickly and by what means it was transmitted. We picked it up in Munich, Vienna, Königsberg, and Hamburg in twenty-four hours, and in Linz, Breslau, Lübeck, and Jena in forty-eight. I’m tempted to try the same thing starting in the Ukraine, just to see. But the encouraging thing is that despite everything, people continue to support the Party and the authorities; they still have faith in our Führer and believe in the
Endsieg. Which demonstrates what? That barely ten years after the Seizure of Power, the National Socialist spirit has become the truth of the daily life of the Volk. It has penetrated into the most obscure recesses. And so even if we lose the war, it will survive.”—“Let’s talk instead about how the war can be won, all right?” While eating, I told him about the instructions I had received and the general state of the situation as I understood it. He listened to me while drinking wine and cutting his steak, perfectly grilled, pink and juicy inside. He finished his meal and poured some more wine before he replied. “You’ve landed yourself a very interesting job, but I don’t envy you. I have the impression they’re sending you into a lion’s den, and even if you don’t make any blunders you’re going to be eaten alive. What do you know about the political situation? The internal one, I mean.” I too finished eating: “I don’t know much about the internal political situation.”—“Well you should. It has radically changed since the beginning of the war. Firstly, the Reichsmarschall is out, for good, in my opinion. What with the failure of the Luftwaffe against the bombings, his Homeric corruption, and his immoderate use of drugs, no one pays any attention to him anymore: he serves as an extra, they take him out of the closet when they need someone to talk in the Führer’s place. Our dear Dr. Goebbels, despite his valiant efforts after Stalingrad, is on the sidelines. The rising star today is Speer. When the Führer appointed him, no one gave him more than six months; since then, he’s tripled our weapons production, and the Führer grants him anything he asks for. What’s more, this little architect whom everyone used to make fun of has turned out a remarkable politician, and he’s now got several heavyweights on his side: Milch, who oversees the Aviation Ministry for Göring, and Fromm, the head of the Ersatzheer. What is Fromm’s interest? Fromm has to provide men for the Wehrmacht; so every German worker replaced by a foreign worker or an inmate is one more soldier for Fromm. Speer thinks only about how to increase production, and Milch does the same for the Luftwaffe. They all demand just one thing: men, men, men. And that’s where the Reichsführer has a problem. Of course, no one can criticize the Endlösung program in itself: it’s a direct order from the Führer, so the ministries can just quibble at the margins, playing on the diversion of some of the Jews for work. But after Thierack agreed to empty his prisons into the KLs, they have come to represent a considerable pool of manual labor. It’s nothing, of course, next to the foreign workers, but it’s still something. Now the Reichsführer is very jealous about his SS’s autonomy, and Speer is encroaching on it. When the Reichsführer demanded that the factories be built inside his camps, Speer went to see the Führer and, presto! The inmates left for the factories. You see the problem: the Reichsführer feels he’s in a weak position and has to give guarantees to Speer, to demonstrate that he’s showing goodwill. Of course, if he actually manages to inject more labor into industry, everyone’s happy. But that, in my opinion, is where the internal problem comes in: the SS, you see, is like the Reich in miniature, people tug it every which way. Take the example of the RSHA: Heydrich was a genius, a force of nature and an admirable National Socialist; but I’m convinced that the Reichsführer was secretly relieved by his death. Sending him to Prague was a brilliant move: Heydrich took it as a promotion, but he also saw that he was forced to let go a little of the RSHA, simply because he was no longer in Berlin. His tendancy toward autonomy was very strong, that’s why the Reichsführer didn’t want to replace him. And then each of the Amtschefs began to go his own way. So the Reichsführer appointed Kaltenbrunner to control them, hoping that Kaltenbrunner, who is a complete idiot, would himself remain controllable. But you’ll see, it’ll start all over again: the job requires it, more than the man. And it’s the same thing for all the other departments and divisions. The IKL is particularly rich in alte Kämpfer: there, even the Reichsführer has to tread softly.”—“If I understand correctly, the Reichsführer wants to promote reforms without upsetting the IKL too much?”—“Or else he doesn’t care about reforms, but wants to use them as an instrument to tighten the screws on the stubborn ones. And at the same time, he has to demonstrate to Speer that he’s cooperating with him, but without giving him the possibility of interfering with the SS or cutting back its privileges.”—“It certainly is delicate.”—“Ah! Brandt said it welclass="underline" analysis and diplomacy.”—“He also said ‘initiative.’”—“Of course! If you find answers, even to problems that weren’t directly submitted to you but that play to the vital interests of the Reichsführer, your career is made. But if you start indulging in bureaucratic romanticism and try to change everything all at once, you’ll very quickly end up as a deputy Leiter in some shabby SD-Stelle in the hinterlands of Galicia. So beware: if you pull off the same kind of trick you did in France, I’ll regret having gotten you out of Stalingrad. Staying alive has to be earned.”