Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton
a few kilometres down the road. Two hundred prisoners were put into this chamber and each was depressurized until his body exploded. The report on this series of experiments was sent to the Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1942.
The third and final part of the stolen file was a report of Dr Rascher’s ‘warming experiments’. These were even more perverted. Male prisoners were frozen almost to death in ice-water and then placed in a bed between two naked women. (The women were prisoners from Ravensbrück concentration camp.) Dr Rascher noted in great detail the sexual reactions of the half-dead men and to what extent these improved their chance of survival. He reported in a paper dated February 1943 and marked Secret.
It stabbed Löwenherz to the heart of his belief. Of course he had misgivings; few men didn’t. Baron Löwenherz, his father, had not disbelieved the rumours; he called them symptoms of unrest. The Nazi Party was a bridge to sanity, a stage between the 1918 breakdown on the home front and the return to a natural state of things where a strong German officer corps held Germany’s honour in trust. For the time being the nation was in the hands of these Bavarians and among them there were some villainous rascals, but better this sort of revolutionary than the Bolshevik variety, who was prepared to butcher families because their hands were clean or their names patrician. Inventive, creative men are inclined to be ruthless, the baron had told him. We must work with these Nazi condottieri, just as Leonardo had to work with Machiavelli, with Cesare Borgia and with his Count Sforza; just as three centuries later the Industrial Revolution pushed aside philosophers and humanitarians so that single-minded despots ruled Europe. They put children up chimneys and women down mines, they bullied, cheated, bribed and literally worked their employees to death. They caused misery and strife but, as we now know, the Industrial Revolution put Europe a century ahead of the rest of the world.
Now the Nazis are transforming Germany with a similar single-minded ruthlessness. Of course we can’t approve of the sort of things that occur, these camps that people speak of in whispers, the witch-hunts for Jews and Communists, the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ that Hitler used to annex Austria and then Czechoslovakia. These things are bad things, but they are all things that Britain did, or would have done if necessary, to achieve its position as a world power. If Hitler cheats he cheats for Germany, if he steals he steals for Germany, if he kills then this he does for Germany too. If he needs our help then the officer corps must give it, generously and unstintingly.
All these things that his father had told him Löwenherz explained to Christian Himmel, but Christian remained unconvinced.
‘But what would you achieve if you gave these unpleasant documents to the British? Would you like their propaganda people to reveal such things to the world?’
‘I? Give them to the British?’ said Himmel. ‘Is that what they told you?’
‘Then what do you want with the papers?’
‘It’s very simple,’ said Himmel. ‘These things are being done in our name, Herr Oberleutnant. Oh, it sounds very grand when you say it’s for Germany, but these things are being done on behalf of us aviators. The research will be used to help us survive should we force-land in the ocean or the Arctic. But, Herr Oberleutnant, do you know a flyer who wouldn’t sooner die than have these disgusting experiments done to prisoners?’
‘None,’ agreed Löwenherz. ‘But that’s because we should ask them the question while they are warm and dry and on the ground, perhaps sitting back in the Mess with a cognac in their hand. Ask a flyer that question a few moments after he has crashed in the cold sea and perhaps he’ll decide differently.’
‘I won’t.’
‘No. Because you are an idealist, Christian. I remember the time when you spoke of the Nazis as though they were saviours of our land.’ Exactly, in fact, as the old baron had spoken of them. ‘Now you’re disillusioned,’ continued Löwenherz. ‘You’re bitter and resentful of your own ingenuous feelings. You’re angry because the Nazis have never delivered something they didn’t promise.’
‘Of course I am,’ said Himmel, ‘but that doesn’t mean I was right then, nor that I am wrong now.’
‘It means that you should consider matters at greater length and not rush headlong into danger.’
‘No, with respect, Herr Oberleutnant, no. We have all delayed too long. While the victories arrived on schedule we all put our conscience in pawn to success. It’s only now, when the future looks less rosy, that we are beginning to wonder if the “new order” has been built upon sand.’
‘But the documents, Himmel. What do you want with them?’
‘I made twenty-three photographic copies of the documents. Each copy was sent by normal mail to a Luftwaffe officer. I considered the list for a long time, Herr Oberleutnant. You are number twenty-three; that is your copy. The original has been posted to the Medical Inspectorate of the Luftwaffe in Berlin.’
There was silence. A tuft of cloud was decapitated by the black wing. Other larger tufts raced after it. Then Löwenherz said, ‘It doesn’t make it legal because you sent it only to Luftwaffe officers. It was a highly secret document.’
‘It’s hardly less secret now that twenty-three Luftwaffe officers have a copy. But from now on they can’t pretend they don’t know of these things. They must protest. They must raise their voices. From now on they can never say they have not heard of concentration camps …’
‘What do you know of concentration camps, Christian?’
‘I know, sir, that at least three airmen at Kroonsdijk have spent time in such places for small political offences. Even if we have three times the average, that still leaves one man on every Luftwaffe airfield who has been in such a place. How much longer can the whole nation pretend that they don’t know what we are doing in Europe, from Bordeaux to Leningrad: prisoners tortured, civilians killed, hostages executed? Now this is something that puts the honour of the Luftwaffe in jeopardy. Reichsmarschall Göring will have received one of these copies. He will understand what must be done.’ A large cloud-fragment swallowed the aeroplane and disgorged it.
‘They will arrest you, Christian,’ said Löwenherz. ‘Perhaps as soon as tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ said Himmel. ‘Tomorrow I shall be arrested. But tomorrow I shall not be agonizing with my conscience, nor shall I be making excuses for the Nazis, nor shall I be fighting so that even more foreign prisoners can be experimented upon in concentration camps by insane doctors wearing the same uniform that I am wearing.’
‘Stop talking, Himmel. I must have time to think.’ The cloud-top was higher inland and suddenly the Junkers was totally enveloped in it. Now that it was pressing against the window it was no longer soft, dry, white, sun-tipped and inviting. It was grey, wet, cold and threatening. They could see nothing. The cloud gave a curious unnatural constant light to the cabin, and the two men sat very still, brightly lit and shadowless, like specimens on a microscope slide.
When August Bach emerged from the gloomy chill of the air-conditioned Divisional Fighter Control bunker it was 17.15 hrs CET. The day had ripened into one of those mellow summer afternoons when the air is warm and sweet like soft toffee and anyone with an ounce of sense is reclining in the grass smelling the honeysuckle and wild strawberries, half listening to the insects, and watching blues and brimstones fluttering fast enough to avoid the swallows above them that glide and wheel and wait and wait.
Both Max and August dozed contentedly, hypnotized by the sunlit countryside that moved past like a swinging watch. The dark-blue Luftwaffe Citroen made good speed down the main road from Arnhem past Utrecht all the way to the small town of Tempel, where it turned off north through Leiden, heading towards The Hague where General Christiansen, First World War ace fighter pilot, was now Military Governor of the Netherlands.
They were beyond Leiden before Max awoke from his reverie. He stirred