‘“And how do I do this?” you might ask. Here our Führer is instructive; learn from the Führer. Fear. Fear is your most useful tool.’ When Reinhard said this, he usually got a nervous laugh from his audience. At that moment they recognized the part fear played in their own lives, and how the solution, the means to ending that fear, came about when they began inflicting fear in others. ‘Fear is one lever by which you can make someone doubt his own perceptions and beliefs, deny and turn against what he has taken to be true up until now.
‘As human beings, we are all driven by self-interest. I learned in the course of my theological studies – yes, I was once a theologian – that even Jesus was driven by self-interest. He had a compelling need to appear virtuous. Not to be virtuous, but to exhibit virtue, to appear virtuous to others. His grandiosity – proclaiming himself the son of God – sprang from his own weakness, his need to feel superior, and that need is nothing more than a need to gain power. Humanity, charity, generosity, these are various forms of the same weakness, and they run contrary to who we actually are.
‘We men are power-seeking creatures. Rob a man of his power, make what was once his power yours, and he will tell you whatever you want to know, and do whatever you want him to do.’
Reinhard Pabst believed that the Gestapo and the SS had finally given him his manhood, after humanism and Christianity had sought to emasculate him, to turn him into a eunuch, or worse yet, a woman. Humanism and Christianity were feminine ways of being: insidious, seductive, devious. And if they were not vanquished, they were then mortally dangerous.
The Gestapo gave him the power to invoke fear in others and thus gave him absolute power over them and the liberty to do with them whatever he pleased. He believed that, thanks to the Führer, he had freed himself from all the destructive – that is, feminine – strictures society and religion had imposed upon him.
Reinhard could tell as soon as he saw Willi that this former police detective was resolute, despite his weakened physical state. He meant to find out just how resolute he was, and, by means of his own superior interrogatory skills, to dismember the prisoner’s last remaining resolution, expose his hope as illusory, and then exterminate him. First though, he needed to find out how much the prisoner actually knew about Friedrich Grosz.
Reinhard saw that Willi was alert and watchful. In fact, he seemed almost relaxed, seemingly indifferent to his own fate. We shall see about that, thought Reinhard. He knew that every man nursed hope somewhere inside himself, and Willi would be no different in that regard. And every man also had fear as a constant companion.
Reinhard was right about that. Willi had hope. And he had plenty of fear too. He had faced his own fear again and again over the many months he had been in Dachau. He was fearful even now as Reinhard Pabst sized him up, afraid of the pain that might come, afraid he might be killed. But Willi had also learned that fear was about the future, about what lay ahead. And the here and now demanded his full attention. So he had learned over these months to lay his fear aside, as one might take off a hat and lay it aside.
Willi reminded himself that he had actually wanted this meeting to come about. This was where Willi’s personal madness – his obsession with seeing justice done – had come into play. Here he was, a prisoner in Dachau, and yet he had imagined that he could somehow manipulate circumstances and make a serial murderer come to him. And now he had actually done it. After naming Friedrich Grosz as the murderer of many women during his earlier interrogation, he had guessed that word would get back to Grosz himself, and that Grosz might be strongly tempted to show himself.
Why not? The Gestapo was a relatively small and tight-knit organization. Willi’s accusation would make Grosz nervous and fearful. After all, this prisoner Geismeier’s allegation was a serious threat to his existence. Reinhard had to confront and deal with this threat once and for all. And now, if Willi’s hunch was right, Reinhard was here to kill him.
Reinhard sensed something dangerous about this man Geismeier despite his ragged and emaciated being. He looked Willi up and down, walked around him, keeping his distance, as though Willi were a wild animal. Once he was satisfied that he had taken Willi’s measure, he stopped in front of him and smiled. It was not a smile so much as an imitation of a smile, a facial grimace meant to convey confidence but conveying instead uncertainty.
When Reinhard anticipated a formidable foe – and he believed from what he knew about Willi that he would be formidable – he chose to interrogate them alone, one on one, with no one else present. He liked to imagine the two men would engage in a contest of wills. He wore his pistol, knowing it would be a distraction, that his opponent would focus on it, both as a threat and a temptation. And he was right – Willi was thinking about the pistol.
‘Geismeier,’ said Reinhard. It was more a statement of fact than a greeting.
Willi did not reply.
‘You were once a student of Shakespeare, I understand,’ said Reinhard.
Willi did not answer, but raised his eyebrows slightly.
Reinhard was pleased. ‘Don’t be surprised,’ he said. ‘I probably know as much about you as you know about yourself.’ He offered Willi some
