All through March the Russian guns had been audible in Berlin.
Across the city, dark grey, windowless, ravaged by four years of
bombing, glistening wet in the rain and melting snow showers that
masked the ebbing winter, sirens wailed day and night. Order
remained, but law had ceased to function and the "flying
courts-martial" of the SS were both the source and the
embodiment of authority. Eastward toward the "front"
streamed a continuous procession of reinforcements,
Hitlerjugend
,
apprentices, foreign "brigades," the sweepings of prisons
and hospitals, to take their place in the flimsy patchwork that still
offered a screen against the gathering armies of Zhukov and Koniev.
In the West, both Patton and Montgomery had crossed the Rhine during
the last week in March, and it was plain that the Wehrmacht no longer
had the capacity to defend a true north-south line from the North Sea
and that in military terms the war was lost.
But to the people of Berlin this meant little—except to
those, and they were not few, who had come to look on the
Anglo-Americans almost as a relieving army. They knew that one battle
remained to be fought, and with their beloved Führer in their
midst (and there is no doubt that even at this late stage of the war
nine out of every ten Germans
did
still love and venerate
Hitler), they were preparing for the final ordeal.
During March the Russians had confined their activities to
enlarging and reinforcing their bridgeheads across the Oder, and to
clearing their right flank and the Baltic coast between Stettin and
Danzig. The three "fronts" of Rokossovski, Zhukov, and
Koniev together disposed of more than seventy armoured brigades, but
of this strength only some twenty-five were in action. The remainder
were being massed in two battering-rams which were to strike—one
above, one below the Berlin latitude—and meet west of the city.
This, the
Stavka
was determined, was to be the last battle.
Like the Western Allies on the Rhine, it seems to have overestimated
German strength and the degree of force which it would need to break
it. The stop lines and the zones of occupation had been agreed upon
in principle at Yalta, so the "race to Berlin" no longer
had any reality. But once the Allies were across the Rhine in
strength the start of the Russian offensive could be delayed for only
a few days.
If the Russians overestimated the difficulty of their task and the
Germans themselves still hoped for a miracle, the neutrals had no
illusions, and viewed the prospect of Communist irruption into
Western Europe with barely concealed alarm. In February 1945,
Ribbentrop, as a preliminary to his "diplomatic coup," had
prepared a memorandum which had been submitted to both the Vatican
and the Swiss Government. This document seems to have been rather
muddled, simultaneously "threatening" to "hand
Germany over" to the Russians and offering to surrender to the
West and switch the whole weight of the Wehrmacht to "stemming
the Bolshevist flood." Anxious though they must have been for
some arrangement of this kind to be successful, the neutral embassies
harboured few illusions concerning its acceptability in the West, and
Ribbentrop found himself compelled to attach a series of codicils
promising (although on what authority is not clear) that ". .
. the National Socialist Government would resign" and that ".
. . the persecution of Jews and political opponents would cease."
This last did arouse a flicker of interest from the Swiss, who
asked for "stronger assurances on the matter of Jews and
concentration camps." As the Swiss had particularly asked that
these assurances come from the SS, Ribbentrop had been compelled, to
his chagrin, to approach the Reichsführer, and had taken the
path, trodden by so many other senior Nazis that March, to Dr.
Gebhardt's nursing home at Hohenlychen.
Himmler's reaction to the Foreign Minister's approach is not
recorded, but it seems safe to assume that it amounted to nothing
more than the usual placatory and evasive pattern which the
Diadochi adopted to one another (and with which both Ribbentrop and
Himmler had themselves replied to Guderian when he approached them
that winter) 3 when the subject of "independent" peace
negotiations was raised. For the last thing Himmler wanted was
Ribbentrop interfering in negotiations which he, the Reichsführer,
had already well under way. All that Himmler would consent to was
that a certain Fritz Hesse (styled as "Referent on British
Affairs" at the Wilhelmstrasse) should proceed to Stockholm and
maintain contact.
Whether or not Himmler had, as he asserted to Schellenberg,
become convinced of the existence of God, it is plain that he had not
yet absorbed the Christian ethic to the full, for throughout the
winter months of 1944-45 he had been bargaining with the Swiss and
Swedish Red Cross concerning the lives of the million-odd Jews who
were incarcerated in concentration camps, midway between the ghettos
and final "resettlement." The first approaches had been
made in the summer of 1944, when the mass deportation of Hungarian
Jewry had taxed the capacity of the Auschwitz crematoria to such an
extent that the idea of selling their lives for cash and goods, took
hold as an acceptable proposition in the higher echelons of the SS.
The negotiations were handled by Eichmann through a colonel in the SS
named Becher, who had earlier proved his competence in acquiring the
Baron Oppenheim racing stud for the SS Cavalry School. A price of
about seven hundred Swiss francs per head was demanded. (Curious how
down the ages the price of a human being as merchandise remains
constant.
This figure is almost exactly the same as two hundred Con-federate dollars, the price of a slave before the Civil War in the
United States—or the forty talents used to buy one in the Roman
Empire.) The first deal was for thirty thousand Hungarians against a
payment of twenty million Swiss francs, to go into the SS numbered
accounts in Zurich. However, things moved very slowly because,
although international Jewry had been quick enough about collecting
the ransom, they were reluctant to pay it over without proof that the
Germans would keep their promise. Only two trains of Jews were
"delivered" to Switzerland, one in August and one in
December 1944. The deliveries then stopped altogether, as the SS
bankers reported that none of the ransom had yet been received.
Nonetheless, Himmler's main purpose, that of direct contact with
foreign heads of state, was achieved, as in February 1945 the first
five million francs was paid over by the President of the Swiss Republic, "on the understanding that it would be used to finance
further emigration through the Red Cross."
The concept of the Red Cross taking a hand in affairs was one
about which Himmler could not but have held mixed feelings. As early
as January, Professor Karl Burck-hardt, head of the Swiss Red Cross,
had suggested that the concentration camps be opened to Red Cross
inspection. This, clearly, was a very delicate matter indeed, as the
death rate in the camps was running at about four thousand a day. But
Himmler had partly brought it upon himself by his practice of putting
individual Jews who had had ransom promised, or deposits paid, "on
ice" at camps at Strasshof, in Austria, and the notorious
"Belsen" (Bergen-Belsen), soon to be ravaged by an outbreak
of typhus. Eichmann's bureaucratic machine, functioning with its
habitual
punctilio
, had recorded all this on punch cards, and
the names of Jews in this category had in some cases been acquired by
the Red Cross, which had entered
in loco custodis
to them and
could therefore claim the rights of contact and, in due course,
inspection. Very reluctantly a few Swiss officials had been admitted
to the inspectorate at Oranienburg—itself more of a "labour"
camp, though perilously close to the gas ovens and torture chambers
of Sachsenhausen-—and as further evidence of "good faith"
a third train of immigrants was despatched to Switzerland.
By now, though, rumours of the whole deplorable affair were
starting to get back to Hitler, and matters came to a head when
someone gave him a report from the Swiss. newspapers of the train's
arrival.
[Colonel Becher maintained in an affidavit after the war (Nuremberg Case XI NG 2675) that this "someone" was Schellenberg.
A contention not without relevance to the enigma of Schellenberg's
"loyalty" to Himmler and his part in the earlier Langbehn
affair (see p. 385 and fn. 4)]
How Himmler survived this confrontation, after being once again
caught in an act of flagrant and heretical disobedience, will forever
remain a mystery. Yet he seems to have done so, just as he had survivied the stormy interview after the Langbehn affair, with no more
serious a setback than an order—which he plainly had no
intention of keeping—that "no concentration camp inmate
must be allowed to fall into Allied hands alive."
In the meantime Ribbentrop, who had been distinctly put out to
find that the Reichsführer was conducting parallel negotiations,
had broadened the base of his own standpoint by authorising Hesse
to make an offer to the representative of the World Jewish Congress
in Stockholm, to hand over "all Jews in German-held territory or
to put them under neutral protection." This put the Reichsführer
in an exceptionally difficult position. For Himmler's purpose, of
course, had nothing to do with the welfare of the Jews— any
more than Ribbentrop's had—but was to establish "diplomatic" contact at a high and fruitful level. Ribbentrop's
offer had been "most irresponsible." The Foreign Minister's
intention had been, by the extravagance of his promises, to return
the focus of attention to himself; it was to be
his
coup—whatever the price. But this made things very awkward
for Himmler, who had now met Bernadotte (the head of the Swedish Red
Cross) at the instigation of Schellenberg, and had indulged with
him in a certain amount of cautious shadowboxing on "real"
diplomatic issues.
The danger now loomed that the "subtlety" (i.e.,
unreality) of these approaches would be jeopardised (i.e.,
demonstrated) by the highly embarrassing revelations of the German
"resettlement policy" which now appeared to be imminent.
Frenzied activity began, to put a gloss over the horrors of the camp
system. Himmler circularised Kaltenbrunner, Pohl, [SS General Oswald
Pohl, head of Wirtschafts und Verwaltung-shauptamt, the economic
administration of the SS.] and Gluecks, [Gruppenführer Richard
Gluecks, head of the concentration camp inspectorate.] and sent a
memorandum to Grawitz (who combined the outwardly incompatible
offices of head of the SS Medical Service and Chief of the German Red
Cross), insisting on measures against the typhus epidemic at
Belsen—measures which, it seems safe to assume, differed from
the usual treatment by
Flammenwerfer
and "isolation."
Still more macabre, there remained many in the SS who either from
conviction or personal jealousy of Himmler were set on disrupting
this plan. Between them, Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann (the latter, as
always, obedient to every order which emanated from above, even when
one contradicted another) began to turn Belsen into a Dantesque
clearinghouse for the whole camp system. Across the tortured railway
system of the Reich train after train of battened-down Jewish
families were shunted from one siding to another, clogging the
through traffic, drawing the fire of marauding Allied aircraft, using
valuable fuel and rolling stock before discharging their
three-quarters-dead cargo at Belsen, the "transit camp,"
where, as Hoess the commandant stolidly recounted to the Nuremberg
tribunal, ". . . tens of thousands of corpses lay about
everywhere."
From the time of the first payment of five million Swiss francs in
February nearly fifty thousand inmates and "arrivals"
died in Belsen alone. Yet the National Leader felt no compunction
about writing to Hillel Storch that his release of the three Swiss
trains was "but a continuation of his work to assist Jewish
emigration which he had begun in 1936."
In fact, all this energy of Himmler's was misplaced. The real
concern of the neutrals was to achieve contact and, preferably, a
settlement between the West and some form of German "presence."
And the only person who really had the authority to negotiate such a
settlement was the Reichsführer. Yet try as Schellenberg
might, and discreetly encouraging as Bernadotte was, Himmler would
not commit himself. He and Bernadotte met four times, and on each
occasion Himmler ducked the issue at the last moment. His indecision
was partly an endemic fault; partly, too, it had a rational base. He
was the natural heir; why do anything which by anticipating events
might go awry and spoil his chances? Like every one of the Diadochi
(except Speer), Himmler could not perceive just how close the final
collapse was.
Yet even he had his moments of apprehension. After one of their
many agonising and circumlocutory "walks" Himmler turned to
his aide and said:
"Schellenberg, I dread the future."
The vernal equinox came and passed. The days lengthened, and the
last hours of the German Army began to slip away as the Russians
perfected their plan of attack. Fresh material and drafts of
infantry continued to flow up to the front, embracing the whole
spectrum of military quality, from the brand-new
Jagdtiger
with 122-mm. guns and infrared sights (a tank markedly superior to
anything which NATO disposed of for the first eighteen years of its
existence) to stocks of French Army rifles of World War I vintage,
captured and stored in 1940. The replacements included
Volkssturm,
Volksgrenadier
, the remains of Luftwaffe field forces, special
police companies, out-of-work camp guards, foreign "legions"
of every kind, Hitler Youth, Gauleiters and their staffs. At night
the Russian patrols gave the Oder position no rest. Periodically
during the day a hurricane of fire would sweep across the front as
newly arrived Russian batteries registered and then fell silent.