'I've seen him, of course. Since I've been in here. But we haven't spoken. Nor are we likely to.'
'And why's that?'
'I thought it was free association. Do I have to explain who I choose to speak to and who I don't?'
'There's nothing free in here,' said Earp. 'Come on, Gunther. Do you think you're better than Blume? Is that it?'
'You seem to know a lot of the answers already,' I said. 'Why don't you tell me?'
'I don't understand,' said Earp. 'Why would you speak to a man like Waldemar Klingelhofer in here and not Blume? Klingelhofer was also in Task Force B. One's just as bad as the other, surely.'
'All in all,' said Silverman, 'it must seem like old times for you, Gunther. Meeting all your old pals. Adolf Ott, Eugen Steimle, Blume, Klingelhofer.'
'Come on,' insisted Earp. 'Why speak to him and none of the others?'
'Is it because none of the other prisoners will speak to him because he betrayed a fellow SS officer?' asked Silverman. 'Or because he appears to regret what he did as head of the Moscow killing commando?'
'Before taking charge of that commando,' said Earp. 'Your friend Klingelhofer did what you claim to have done. He headed up an anti-partisan hunt. In Minsk, wasn't it? Where you were?'
'Was that just shooting Jews, the same as Klingelhofer?'
'Maybe you'll let me answer one of your questions at a time,' I said.
'There's no rush,' said Silverman. 'We've got plenty of time. Take it from the beginning, why don't you? You say you were ordered to join a Reserve Police Battalion, number three one six, in the summer of 1941, as part of Operation Barbarossa.'
'That's correct.'
'So how come you didn't go to Pretzsch in the spring?' asked Earp. 'To the police academy there for training and assignment. By all accounts, nearly everyone who was going to Russia was at Pretzsch. Gestapo, Kripo, Waffen-SS, SD, the whole RSHA.'
'Heydrich, Himmler and several thousand officers,' said Silverman. 'According to previous accounts we've heard, it was common knowledge after that, what was going to happen when you all got to Russia. But you say you weren't at Pretzsch, which is why the whole business of killing Jews was such an unpleasant surprise for you. So why weren't you at Pretzsch?'
'What did you get? A sick note?'
'I was still in France,' I said. 'On a special mission from Heydrich.'
'That was convenient, wasn't it? So, let me get this straight: when you join Battalion three one six, on the Polish-Russian border in June 1941, it's really your impression that your job will involve nothing more than hunting down partisans and NKVD, right?'
'Yes. But even before I got to Vilnius I'd begun to hear stories of local pogroms against the Jews because the Jews in the NKVD were busy murdering all of their prisoners instead of releasing them. It was all very confused. You've no idea how confused. Frankly, I didn't believe these stories, at first. There were plenty of stories like that in the Great War and most of them turned out to be false.' I shrugged. 'In this particular case, however, even the worst, most far-fetched stories were nearly all true.'
'Exactly what were your orders?'
'That our job was a security one. To keep order behind the lines of our advancing Army.'
'And you did that how?' asked Silverman. 'By murdering people?'
'You know, being a detective in the police battalion, I paid a lot of attention to my so-called comrades. And it turned out that a lot of these murdering bastards in the task forces were lawyers, too. Just like you guys. Blume, Sandberger, Ohlendorf, Schulz, I expect there were others, but I can't remember their names. I used to wonder why it was that so many lawyers took part in these killings. What do you think?'
'We ask the questions, Gunther.'
'Spoken like a true lawyer, Mister Earp. By the way, how come I don't have one here? With all due respect, gentlemen, this interrogation is hardly consistent with the rules of German justice; or, I imagine, the rules of American justice, either. Doesn't every American have a fifth-amendment right not to be a witness against himself?'
'This interrogation is a necessary step in determining if you should be tried or released,' said Silverman.
'This is what we German cops used to call an Eskimo's fishing trip,' I said. 'You just drop a line through a hole in the ice and hope that you catch something.'
'In the absence of any clear evidence and documentation, sometimes,' continued Silverman, 'the only way to gain knowledge of a crime is by questioning a suspect such as yourself. That's usually been our experience with war crimes cases.'
'Bullshit. We both know you're sitting on a ton of documentation. What about all those papers you recovered from Gestapo headquarters that are now in the Berlin Document Centre?'
'Actually, it's two tons of documentation,' said Silverman. 'Between eight and nine million documents to be precise. And eight or nine represents our total staff at the OCC. With the Einsatzgruppen trial we got lucky: we found the actual reports that were written by the task group leaders. Twelve binders containing a gold mine of information. As a result we didn't even need a prosecution witness against them. Even so, it took us four months to put the case together. Four months. With you it might take longer. Do you really want to wait here for another four months while we work out if you have a case to answer?'
'So go and check those task group leader reports,' I said. 'They'll clear me for sure. Because I wasn't one of them, I've told you. I got an exeat back to Berlin, courtesy of Arthur Nebe. Out of the task area. He's bound to have mentioned it in his report.'
'That's where your problem lies, Gunther,' explained Silverman. 'With your old friend Arthur Nebe. You see the reports for Task Force A, C and D were very detailed.'
'Otto Ohlendorf s were a model of accuracy,' said Earp. 'You might say he was a typical fucking lawyer in that respect.'
Silverman was shaking his head. 'But there are no original reports written by Arthur Nebe from Task Force B. In fact there are no reports from Task Force B until a new commander is appointed, in November 1941. We think that's why Walter Blume took over from Nebe. Because Nebe was falling down on the job. For whatever reason he wasn't killing nearly as many Jews as the other three groups. Why was that, do you think?'
Arthur Nebe. It had been a while since I'd really thought about the man who'd saved my life, and perhaps my soul, and whom I'd repaid so unkindly: effectively I'd murdered Nebe in Vienna during the winter of1947/48 when he'd been working for General Gehlen's organisation of old comrades, but I hardly wanted to tell the two Amis anything about that. Gehlen's organisation had been sponsored by the CIA, or whatever they called it back then, and possibly still was.
'Nebe was two different men,' I said. 'Perhaps several more than just two. In 1933 Nebe believed that the Nazis were the only alternative to the communists and that they would bring order to Germany. By 1938, probably earlier, he'd realised his mistake and was plotting with others in the Wehrmacht and the police to overthrow Hitler. There's a propaganda ministry photograph of Nebe with Himmler, Heydrich and Muller that shows the four of them planning the investigation of a bomb attempt on Hitler's life. That was November 1939. And Nebe was part of that very same conspiracy. I know that because I was part of it, too. However, Nebe quickly changed his mind after the defeat of France and Britain in 1940. Lots of people changed their minds about Hitler after the miracle of France. Even I did, for a few months, anyway. We both changed our minds again when Hitler attacked Russia. Nobody thought that was a good idea. And yet Arthur did what he was told. He'd plot away and do what he was told even if that meant murdering Jews in Minsk and Smolensk. Doing what you were told was always the best kind of cover if you were simultaneously planning a coup d'etat against the Nazis. I think that's why he seems like such an ambiguous figure. I think that's why, as you said, he was falling down on the job as commander of Task
Force B. Because his heart was never in it. Above all, Nebe was a survivor.'
'Like you.'
'To some extent, yes, that's true. Thanks to him.'
'Tell us about that.'
'I already did.'
'Not in any great detail.'
