important Communist functionary whom we captured, but frankly speaking we never really bothered with sending anyone to Hanoi or elsewhere. As long as our General Staff refused to study the basic literature on Communism or guerrilla warfare, interrogation of the Viet Minh prisoners would do little good for the troops in the jungle. I had sent back scores of reports and documents throughout the years, some of them related to vital and often immediate enemy threats which could and should have been averted by a simple countermeasure. Nothing had been done; my reports had been swallowed up by the insatiable desk drawers of the General Staff. The Legion fought and died as usual and, as though nothing had happened, the Viet Minh could even carry on with an attack our HQ had known about a week in advance. So whenever we captured a terrorist leader we interrogated the man, gave him the third degree if necessary to obtain all the information that was important for our own campaign and security, then dispatched him to the only perfect Communist paradise, as Karl had put it—hell! On that particular occasion, however, Schulze had a different idea and, just for the fun of it, I allowed him to have his way. Erich suggested that instead of executing the party cadres, we should hold a “panel discussion” with them in front of the whole village. We would discuss both ideology and politics. “The Communists have been talking to these people for years,” Schulze explained. “Everyone was obliged to listen but no one was ever permitted to ask impolite questions, or to oppose the agitators; the people could only bow to whatever they were told, accepting the party dogmas— criticizing nothing. Now they will have to listen to me too. Let the two tovariches partake in a truly democratic dialogue. We will permit them to say whatever they feel like saying, then we shall tell the people what we think of it.”
Eisner chuckled. “Are you planning to shoot it out with a provincial agitator? He will crack your arguments in no time, making you the laughingstock of the whole village.”
“Nonsense! All they can do is to parrot some hackneyed slogans.”
Eisner laughed. “That’s what you think, my friend, but they are professionals and whatever they parrot they will parrot it well. String them up and be done with it.”
“Nonsense!” Erich waved, dismissing Bernard’s suggestion. “Up ’til now we were killing them all. Now let us talk a bit—it might work.”
Riedl agreed. “They aren’t going to run away, Bernard, you can hang them later.”
He turned toward Pfirstenhammer. “What do you think of Schulze’s idea, Karl?”
“I am fascinated! Especially about finding out how much Erich knows about Communist ideology.”
Schulze ordered the troopers to untie the prisoners and the two were seated on an improvised bench made of empty crates and planks. We seated ourselves in a similar fashion. Erich’s “dialogue” was to be a welcome diversion from our dreary routine. The villagers, about one hundred men and women, had been requested to bring mats and sit down. Xuey explained to them briefly what we were up to, an explanation our prisoners acknowledged with a wry smile of contempt. Xuey and Suoi stood by to interpret for us.
I was a bit skeptical about Schulze’s ability to argue with a seasoned Communist agitator and doubted if he could present our side of the picture without talking sheer nonsense and receive sneers instead of cheers. But he seemed confident enough, and I thought, why shouldn’t he have his fun. Besides, as Karl remarked, should Erich go wrong, we could always deliver the final argument, and he tapped the stock of his submachine gun with a significant grin.
Schulze protested. “Nothing of the sort, men, I want to play it absolutely fair.”
Karl chuckled. “How can you possibly play it fair when, at the end of your conference, they are going to be shot anyway? The people will think that we killed the prisoners because they won the argument.”
“Well, we can spare them for once, can’t we?” Karl glanced at me. “What do you think, Hans?”
“Personally I think the whole business is nothing but a shot in the dark, but since I did not intend to leave here before sundown anyway, we have time. We can also decide about the prisoners later.”
Schulze advised Commissar Kwang, “You may say whatever you want, tovarich Commissar—nobody is going to hurt you for it, but you will also have to listen to our arguments.”
“As you wish,” the agitator bowed in mocking compliance, “We are your prisoners and consequently we have no choice.”
“Commissar Kwang,” Erich shook his head slowly, “I am telling you that you may speak as freely as if you were in Peking, yet you begin with unfair remarks. Speak to the people. You should not feel embarrassed Say whatever you feel like saying. Quote Lenin, Stalin, or Mao Tse-tung, condemn the French colonialists, curse us. The people here know you. You have been talking to them before, haven’t you?”
“A most extraordinary favor from an imperialist puppet who calls himself an officer,” the commissar replied, and as Xuey interpreted his words, Schulze broke into a jovial grin.
“That’s much better, Commissar Kwang. Now you are hitting familiar chords.”
Kwang smiled and turned toward the villagers, whose faces revealed eager interest. They understood that we were permitting the important Viet Minh leader to speak with impunity granted to him in advance, something the Viet Minh would never do.
“The colonialist officer wants me to speak to you,” Kwang began slowly, his voice picking up momentum as he went on. “You all know that only an hour ago they murdered sixteen brave patriots, devoted men who have been fighting the white oppressors for many years, so that you may gain your freedom one day. They were killed while they slept, for these brave men here were afraid to face them with a weapon in hand. With blood still dripping from their hands, these aliens are making a mockery of freedom by offering me immunity for whatever I might say against them. They permit me to quote Comrade Mao, they permit us to condemn the colonialist criminals, so that you may see what a great freedom they represent. We don’t need the freedom which the white killers permit us to have. We shall have our freedom without their consent. The colonialist officers are still walking and talking, they can still murder your brothers and sisters—but they are dead men already. Now they are posing as great heroes but they are nothing but frightened rats who sneak in the night to raid your homes, to murder the brave fighters of the people. They know they are losing, therefore they try to make our victory as bitter as possible. The people laugh at them everywhere. The people know who are their true friends, and millions in every part of the country follow Father Ho and Comrade Mao. I have already told you how the brotherly Chinese people defeated colonialists who were a thousand times stronger than the French puppets in your country. We don’t have to condemn them. They have condemned themselves a thousand times. When this mockery is over, they will kill me and Comrade Kly, and afterwards they will speak to you again. You should never believe them, for no oppressor is ever telling the truth to the oppressed.”
He stopped, bowed slightly, and without looking at Schulze he returned to his place. “We are ready to face our executioners now,” he said aloud instead of sitting down, “for we are going to die for the people and when our bodies return to mother earth, for every drop of our blood a hundred avenging fighters will rise.”
Schulze stepped forward.
“Commissar Kwang seems to have told you what he wanted to say,” he began slowly, ignoring Kwang’s dramatic “farewell.”
“You have heard what he thinks of us colonialist officers. He called us rats, oppressors, dead men. I am addressing him as Commissar Kwang, and not a Communist murderer, which is what his kind really are. He may speak to you freely but I am sure that you have never seen a captured French officer speaking to you with the permission of a Viet Minh commissar. And you will never see one, for the Communists will never permit anyone to speak the truth, or to oppose them in any way. What Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung have written down fills enough books to build a dam across the Mekong River. But once their ideology is put into practice, it does not work. It may hypnotize the people but it can never convince them of anything because Communism is the biggest fraud ever conceived by a few wicked men who wanted to get rich through robbery and murder.”
“Say, Erich!” Eisner cut in. “Speak in simple terms or you won’t have a chance of getting through. If you are going to use words like “ideology,”
“fraud,”
“hypnotize,* then you might as well speak German for all the good it will do.”
He paused for a moment, then added: “Just tell them Communism is a big lie and they will get you.”
He sat down. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what Communism means,” he said to me. “Ho Chi Minh isn’t using the term either.”
“I can tel! you in front of the agitators—” Erich went on.
“Merde!” Bernard interposed again. “They don’t know an agitator from Adam.”
“Shut up, will you?” Schulze snapped. “Or stand up and speak yourself.”
