I was still waiting for my summons from the Reichsführer when the English resumed their massive strikes on Berlin, with considerable vigor. It was August 23, a Monday, I remember, late at night: I was at home, in bed, but I probably wasn’t asleep yet, when the sirens went off. I was tempted to remain lying, but already Frau Gutknecht was banging my door. She was bellowing so loudly you could scarcely hear the sirens: “Herr Offizier! Herr Offizier!…Doktor Aue! Get up! The Luftmörder! Help!” I pulled on a pair of trousers and unlocked the door: “Well, yes, Frau Gutknecht. It’s the RAF. What do you want me to do?” Her jowls were trembling, her cheeks were pale, and she was crossing herself convulsively, muttering: “Jesus-Mary-Joseph, Jesus-Mary-Joseph, what are we going to do?”—“We are going to go down into the shelter, like everyone else.” I shut the door and got dressed, then calmly went downstairs, locking my door against looters. We could hear the flak thundering, especially to the south and near the Tiergarten. The building’s basement had been turned into an air-raid shelter: it would never have survived a direct hit, but it was better than nothing. I threaded my way through the suitcases and legs and settled into a corner, as far as possible from Frau Gutknecht, who was sharing her terrors with some neighbors. Children were crying anxiously, others were running between the adults, some wearing suits, others still in their bathrobes. Just two candles lit the basement, little quivering, trembling flames that registered the nearby explosions like seismographs. The alert lasted for several hours; unfortunately, it was forbidden to smoke in these shelters. I must have dozed, I think no bombs hit our neighborhood. When it was over I went upstairs to go back to bed, without even going to look in the street. The next day, instead of taking the U-Bahn, I called the SS-Haus and sent for Piontek. He reported that the bombers had come from the south, from Sicily, probably, and that it was mostly Steglitz, Lichterfelde, and Marienfelde that had been hit, although some buildings had been destroyed at Tempelhof and all the way to the zoo. “Our boys used a new tactic,
Wilde Sau, they called it on the radio, but they didn’t really explain what it was, Sturmbannführer. Heard it works, and we shot down more than sixty of their planes, the bastards. Poor Herr Jeschonnek, he should have waited a little.” General Jeschonnek, the Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, had just committed suicide, because of his service’s repeated failures to prevent the Anglo-American raids. Even before crossing the Spree, Piontek had to make a detour to avoid a street blocked by rubble, the ruins of a building rammed by a bomber, a Lancaster, I think: its tail was sticking out of the ruins, desolate, like a ship’s stern after a shipwreck. Thick black smoke hid the sun. I ordered Piontek to drive me to the southern part of the city: the farther we got, the more buildings were still burning, and the streets were full of debris. People were trying to pull their furniture out of gutted homes to pile it in the middle of streets flooded by fire hoses; mobile field kitchens were serving soup to lines of shocked, exhausted, soot-covered survivors; near the fire trucks, shapes were lined up on the sidewalks, sometimes with a foot, bare or still wearing a pathetic shoe, sticking out from under a dirty sheet. Some streets were barred by streetcars toppled onto to their sides by the force of the explosions or blackened by fire; power lines trailed on the pavement, trees lay crushed or remained standing but bare, stripped of all their leaves. The neighborhoods most affected were impassable; I had Piontek turn around and return to the SS-Haus. The building itself hadn’t been hit, but nearby impacts had blown out the windows, and broken glass on the steps crunched beneath my feet. Inside, I met Brandt in the lobby, looking terribly excited, animated by a glee that was rather surprising in the circumstances. “What is happening?” He paused for an instant: “Ah, Sturmbannführer, you don’t know the news yet. Great news! The Reichsführer was appointed Minister of the Interior.” So that was it, the changes Thomas was talking about, I thought while Brandt rushed into the elevator. I walked up the stairs: Fräulein Praxa was at her place, made up, fresh as a rose. “Sleep well?”—“Oh, you know, Sturmbannführer, I live in Weissensee, I didn’t hear anything.”—“All the better for you.” The window in my office was intact: I had gotten into the habit of leaving it open at night. I thought about the repercussions of the news announced by Brandt, but I lacked information to analyze it in detail. A priori, it seemed to me, it wouldn’t change much for us: although Himmler, as chief of the German police, was technically subordinate to the Minister of the Interior, he was actually completely autonomous, and had been since 1936 at least; neither Frick, the outgoing minister, nor his Staatsekretär Stuckart had ever had the slightest influence over the RSHA or even the Hauptamt Orpo. The only thing over which they had kept control was the civilian administration, the civil servants; now that would also revert to the Reichsführer; but I couldn’t believe it was a major issue. Obviously, to have the rank of minister could only reinforce the Reichsführer’s hand against his rivals: but I didn’t know enough about the struggles at the top to gauge this fact to its full extent.