foreign minister said. “I was thinking that we might attempt to seek further clarification of exactly what Roosevelt meant when he told reporters at Casablanca of his demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender.”
Himmler nodded thoughtfully and puffed at his cigar. The president’s remark had caused as much disquiet in Britain and Russia as it had in Germany, and, according to intelligence reports from the Abwehr, it had generated the fear among certain American generals that unconditional surrender would make the Germans fight all the harder, thereby prolonging the war.
“We might use Teheran,” continued Ribbentrop, “to discover if Roosevelt’s remark was a rhetorical flourish, a negotiating ploy intended to force us to talk, or if he meant us to take it literally.”
“Exactly how might we obtain such a clarification?”
“I was thinking that the Fuhrer might be persuaded to write three letters. Addressed to Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. Stalin is a great admirer of the Fuhrer. A letter from him might prompt Stalin to question why Roosevelt and Churchill don’t want a negotiated peace. Could it be that they would like to see the Red Army annihilated in Europe before committing themselves to an invasion next year? The Russians have never trusted the British. Not since the Hess mission.
“Equally, letters to Roosevelt and Churchill might make something of the brutal treatment of German POWs by the Russians, not to mention those Polish officers murdered at Katyn. The Fuhrer could also mention a number of pragmatic considerations which Roosevelt and Churchill might think could weigh against a European landing.”
“Such as?” asked Himmler.
Von Ribbentrop shook his head, unwilling to show the Reichsfuhrer all his best cards and telling himself that Himmler wasn’t the only one who could withhold information. “I wouldn’t want to go into the details right now,” he said smoothly, now quite convinced that Cicero’s discovery of the Big Three at Teheran might be the beginning of a very real diplomatic initiative, perhaps the most important since he had negotiated the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. Von Ribbentrop smiled to himself at the idea of pulling off another diplomatic coup like that one. These letters to the Big Three from the Fuhrer would be written by himself, of course. He would show those bastards Goring and Goebbels that he was still a force to be reckoned with.
“Yes,” said Himmler, “I might mention the idea to Hitler when I go to the Wolfschanze on Wednesday.”
Von Ribbentrop’s face fell. “I was thinking that I might mention the idea to Hitler myself,” he said. “After all, this is a diplomatic initiative rather than a matter for the Ministry of the Interior.”
The Reichsfuhrer-SS thought for a moment, considered the possibility that Hitler might not like the idea. There was a strong chance that any negotiated peace might require Germany to have a new leader, and while Himmler believed there was no one better than himself to replace the Fuhrer, he did not want Hitler to think that he was planning some sort of coup d’etat.
“Yes,” he said, “I think perhaps you’re right. It should be you who mentions this to the Fuhrer, Joachim. A diplomatic initiative like this one should originate in the Foreign Ministry.”
“Thank you, Heinrich.”
“Don’t mention it, my dear fellow. We will have your diplomatic effort and my Beketovka File. Either way, we must not fail. Unless we can make some sort of a peace, or successfully detach the Soviet Union from her Western allies, I fear Germany is finished.”
Since the purpose of the speech Himmler was to make at Posen the next day was the subject of defeatism, Ribbentrop proceeded cautiously.
“You are being frank,” he said carefully. “So let me also be frank with you, Heinrich.”
“Of course.”
Von Ribbentrop could hardly forget he was speaking to the most powerful man in Germany. Himmler could easily order the train stopped and Ribbentrop shot summarily by the side of the railway track. The foreign minister had no doubt that the Reichsfuhrer could justify such an action to the Fuhrer at a later date, and, aware of the secrecy of the subject he was about to broach, Ribbentrop found himself struggling for the words that might still leave him at arm’s length from being complicit in Germany’s crusade against the Jews.
In late 1941, he had become aware of mass executions of Jews by Einsatzgruppen-SS special action groups in Eastern Europe-and since then had tried his best to avoid reading all SS and SD reports that were filed, as a matter of routine, with Department III of the Foreign Ministry. These Special Action Groups were no longer shooting thousands of Jews but organizing their deportation to special camps in Poland and the Ukraine. Von Ribbentrop knew the purpose of these camps-he could hardly fail to know it, having visited Belzec in secret-but it bothered him a great deal that the Allies might also know their purpose.
“Is it possible,” he asked Himmler, “that the Allies are aware of the purpose behind the evacuation of Jews to Eastern Europe? That this is the true reason they have ignored evidence of Russian atrocities?”
“We agreed that we are speaking frankly, Joachim,” said Himmler, “so let us do just that. You are referring to the systematic extirpation of the Jews, are you not?”
Von Ribbentrop nodded uncomfortably.
“Look,” continued Himmler. “We have the moral right to protect ourselves. A duty to our own people to destroy all saboteurs, agitators, and slander-mongers who want to destroy us. But to answer your question specifically, I will say this. I think it’s possible that they do know of the existence of our grand solution to the Jewish problem, yes. But I would suggest that currently they imagine that accounts of what goes on in Eastern Europe have been dramatically exaggerated.
“If I might be allowed to pat myself on the back, it is incredible just what has been achieved. You have no idea. Nevertheless, none of us forgets that this is a chapter in German history that can never be written. But rest assured, Joachim, as soon as a peace has been negotiated, all the camps will be destroyed and all evidence that they ever existed erased. People will say Jews were murdered. Thousands of Jews, hundreds of thousands of Jews-yes, they will say that, too. But this is war. ‘Total war,’ Goebbels calls it, and for once I agree with him. People get killed in wartime. That is an unfortunate fact of life. Who knows how many the RAF will kill tonight in Munich? Old men, women and children?” Himmler shook his head. “So, Joachim, I give you my word that people will not believe it was possible so many Jews died. Faced with the menace of European Bolshevism, they will not want to believe it. No, they could never believe it. No one could.”
III
Named after the leading poet of Polish romanticism, the Adam Mickiewicz Square in Posen was one of the old city’s most attractive sights. On the eastern side of the square was a castle built for Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1910, when Posen had been part of the Prussian empire. In truth, it hardly looked like a castle, more like a town hall or a city museum, with a facade that was fronted not by a moat but by a large wrought-iron railing protecting a neatly kept lawn and an open graveled area that resembled a parade ground. On this particular day, that spot had been given up to at least a dozen SS staff cars. Parked in front of the railing were several Hannomag troop carriers, each containing fifteen Waffen-SS Panzergrenadiers, and there were almost as many patrolling the castle’s perimeter. The Polish passengers riding on a tram along the eastern side of Adam Mickiewicz Square glanced in at the castle and shuddered, for this was the headquarters of the SS in Poland, and even as they looked, still more SS staff cars could be seen going through the heavily guarded gates and dropping SS officers at the tree-lined entrance.
The inhabitants of Posen, formerly known as Poznan, had endured the SS in their city since September 1939, but no one on the tram could remember ever seeing so many SS at the Konigliches Residenzschloss; it was almost as if the SS were holding some sort of rally at the castle. If the people on the tram had dared to look more closely, they would have noticed that every one of the SS officers arriving at the castle that morning was a general.
One such general was a handsome, dapper-looking man of medium height in his early thirties. Unlike most of his brother senior officers, this particular SS general stopped for a moment to smoke a cigarette and look with a critical eye at the exterior of the castle, with its ignoble, suburban clock tower and high mansard roof from which were hung a number of long swastika banners. Then, looking one last time across Adam Mickiewicz Square, he
