‘First time. But I know what you mean about Bavarians. All that quaint conservatism. It’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it?’ He looked out of the window for a minute at the moving picture that was the German countryside. Facing me again he said:
‘Do you really think Streicher could have something to do with these killings, sir?’
‘We’re not exactly tripping over the leads in this case, are we? Nor would it appear that the Gauleiter of Franconia is what you would call popular. Arthur Nebe even went so far as to tell me that Julius Streicher is one of the Reich’s greatest criminals, and that there are already several investigations pending against him. He was keen that we should speak to the Nuremberg Police President personally. Apparently there’s no love lost between him and Streicher. But at the same time we have to be extremely careful. Streicher runs his district like a Chinese warlord. Not to mention the fact that he’s on first-name terms with the Fuhrer.’
When the train reached Leipzig a young S A naval company leader joined our compartment, and Korsch and I went in search of the dining car. By the time we had finished eating the train was in Gera, close to the Czech border, but despite the fact that our S A travelling companion got off at that stop, there was no sign of the troop concentrations we had heard about. Korsch suggested that the naval S A man’s presence there meant that there was going to be an amphibious attack, and this, we both agreed, would be the best thing for everyone, given that the border was largely mountainous.
It was early evening by the time that the train got into the Haupt Station in central Nuremberg. Outside, by the equestrian statue of some unknown aristocrat, we caught a taxi which drove us eastwards along Frauentorgraben and parallel to the walls of the old city. These are as high as seven or eight metres, and dominated at intervals by big square towers. This huge medieval wall, and a great, dry, grassy moat that is as wide as thirty metres, help to distinguish the old Nuremberg from the new, which, with a singular lack of obtrusion, surrounds it.
Our hotel was the Deutscher Hof, one of the city’s oldest and best, and our rooms commanded excellent views across the wall to the steep, pitched rooftops and regiments of chimney-pots which lay beyond.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Nuremberg was the largest city in the ancient kingdom of Franconia, as well as one of the principal marts of trade between Germany, Venice and the East. It was still the chief commercial and manufacturing city of southern Germany, but now it had a new importance, as the capital of National Socialism. Every year, Nuremberg played host to the great Party rallies which were the brainchild of Hitler’s architect, Speer.
As thoughtful as the Nazis were, naturally you didn’t have to go to Nuremberg to see one of these over- orchestrated events, and in September people stayed away from cinemas in droves for fear of having to sit through the newsreels which would be made up of virtually nothing else.
By all accounts, sometimes there were as many as a hundred thousand people at the Zeppelin Field to wave their flags. Nuremberg, like any city in Bavaria as I recall, never did offer much in the way of real amusement.
Since we weren’t appointed to meet Martin, the Nuremberg Chief of Police, until ten o’clock the following morning, Korsch and I felt obliged to spend the evening in search of whatever entertainment there was. Especially because Kripo Executive was footing the bill. It was a thought that had particular appeal for Korch.
‘This isn’t bad at all,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Not only is the Alex paying for me to stay in a cock-smart hotel, but I’m also getting the overtime.’
‘Make the most of it,’ I said. ‘It’s not often that fellows like you and me get to play the Party bigshot. And if Hitler gets his war, we may have to live on this little memory for quite a while.’
A lot of bars in Nuremberg had the look of places which might have been the headquarters of smaller trade guilds. These were filled with militaria and other relics of the past, and the walls were often adorned with old pictures and curious souvenirs collected by generations of proprietors, which were of no more interest to us than a set of logarithm tables. But at least the beer was good, you could always say that about Bavaria, and at the Blaue Flasche on Hall Platz, where we ended up for dinner, the food was even better.
Back at the Deutscher Hof we called in at the hotel’s cafe restaurant for a brandy and were met by an astonishing sight. Sitting at a corner table, loudly drunk, was a party of three that included a couple of brainless- looking blondes and, wearing the single-breasted light-brown tunic of an NSDAP political leader, the Gauleiter of Franconia, Julius Streicher himself.
The waiter returning with our drinks smiled nervously when we asked him to confirm that it was indeed Julius Streicher sitting in the corner of the cafe. He said that it was, and quickly left as Streicher started to shout for another bottle of champagne.
It wasn’t difficult to see why Streicher was feared. Apart from his rank, which was powerful enough, the man was built like a bare-fist fighter. With hardly any neck at all, his bald head, small ears, solid-looking chin and almost invisible eyebrows, Streicher was a paler version of Benito Mussolini. His apparent belligerence was given greater force by an enormous rhino-whip which lay on the table before him like some long black snake.
He thumped the table with his fist so that all the glasses and cutlery rattled loudly.
‘What the fuck does a man have to do to get some fucking service around here?’ he yelled at the waiter. ‘We’re dying of thirst.’ He pointed at another waiter. ‘You, I told you to keep a fucking eye on us, you little cunt, and the minute you saw an empty bottle to bring us another. What, are you stupid or something?’ Once again he banged the table with his fist, much to the amusement of his two companions, who squealed with delight, and persuaded Streicher to laugh at his own ill-temper.
‘Who does he remind you of?’ said Korsch.
‘Al Capone,’ I said without thinking, and then added: ‘Actually, they all remind me of Al Capone.’ Korsch laughed.
We sipped our brandies and watched the show, which was more than we could have hoped for so early in our visit, and by midnight Streicher’s and our own were the only parties left in the cafe, the others having been driven away by the Gauleiter’s incessant cursing. Another waiter came to wipe our table and empty our ashtray.
‘Is he always this bad?’ I asked him.
The waiter laughed bitterly. ‘This? This is nothing,’ he said. ‘You should have seen him ten days ago after the Party rallies were finally over. He tore hell out of this place.’
‘Why do you let him come in here, then?’ said Korsch.
The waiter looked at him pityingly. ‘Are you kidding? You just try stopping him. The Deutscher is his favourite watering-hole. He’d soon find some pretext on which to close us down if we ever kicked him out. Maybe worse than that, who knows? They say he often goes up to the Palace of Justice on Furtherstrasse and whips young boys in the cells there.’
‘Well, I’d hate to be a Jew in this town,’ said Korsch.
‘Too right,’ said the waiter. ‘Last month he persuaded a crowd of people to burn down the synagogue.’
Streicher now began to sing, and accompanied himself with a percussion that was provided with his knife and fork and the table-top, from which he had thoughtfully removed the tablecloth. The combination of his drumming, accent, drunkenness and complete inability to hold a tune, not to mention the screeches and giggles of his two guests, made it impossible for either Korsch or myself to recognize the song. But you could bet that it wasn’t by Kurt Weill, and it did have the effect of driving the two of us off to bed.
The next morning we walked a short way north to Jakob’s Platz, where opposite a fine church stands a fortress built by the old order of Teutonic knights. At its south-eastern point, it includes a domed edifice that is the Elisabeth-Kirche, while at the south-western point, on the corner of Schlotfegergasse, is the old barracks, now police headquarters. As far as I was aware, there wasn’t another police HQ in the whole of Germany which had the facility of its own Catholic church.
‘That way they’re sure to wring a confession out of you one way or the other,’ Korsch joked.
S S-ObergruppenFuhrer Dr Benno Martin, whose predecessors as police president of Nuremberg included Heinrich Himmler, greeted us in his baronial top-storey office. The look of the place was such that I half expected him to have a sabre in his hand; and indeed, when he turned to one side I noticed that he had a duelling scar on his cheek.
‘And how is Berlin?’ he asked quietly, offering us a cigarette from his box. His own smoke he fitted into a rosewood holder that was more like a pipe and which held the cigarette vertically, at a right-angle to his face.
‘Things are quiet,’ I said. ‘But that’s because everyone is holding their breath.’
‘Quite so,’ he said, and waved at the newspaper on his desk. ‘Chamberlain has flown to Bad Godesberg for
