They Used Dark Forces (56 page)

Heinrich Himmler, who was the same age as Bormann, forty-five, still held a very high place in the Nazi hierarchy and appeared to be the most likely bet as Hitler's successor should he ever be persuaded to rescind his decree of 29th July, 1941, by which Goering had been appointed as Heir Apparent. Yet Himmler's potentialities seemed more apparent than real; for he now rarely saw Hitler and there was good reason to believe that Bormann had deliberately flattered him into asking for the command of an Army Group in order to get him out of the way.

Why Himmler was allowed to continue as the Supreme Head of scores of divisions of fighting troops, large bodies of pro-Nazi partisans all over Europe and countless thousands of civil and secret police, Gregory could not imagine; for he was clearly as mad as his master, hopelessly incompetent and suffering from a series of nervous breakdowns to boot.
Although theoretically commanding an Army Group against the Russians on the most vital sector, he was now spending most of his time in a clinic at Hohenlychen, where he was completely dominated by three people—his doctor, Karl Gebhardt, his masseur Kersten and his astrologer Wulf, whom, from time to time, he lent to Hitler. But he remained Reichsführer and Hitler still often referred to him affectionately as ‘
Reichheine
'.

It was evident that Himmler's empire was being run for him by his principal lieutenants: Kaltenbrunner who, after the assassination of Heydrich, had become the head of the R.S.H.A.; Ohlendorf, the head of the S.D.; Grauber, Eichmann, Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Political Police; von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Partisan Warfare Chief, and others less senior of their kind; all depraved blood-lusting sadists who for years past had been torturing and murdering people by the tens of thousands and continued to do so as the only means of postponing defeat and being called to account for their appalling crimes.

Himmler's liaison officer at Führer Headquarters was Obergruppenführer Hermann Fegelein. He was a detestable little man who had started life as a horse coper and jockey, then been an early member of the Waffen S.S. In spite of being almost illiterate he had risen to command an S.S. cavalry division. With it he had achieved a spectacular success on the Russian front and it was this, coupled with his abilities as an unscrupulous intriguer, that had led to his further promotion.

Joachim Ribbentrop, vain, pompous and self-opinionated, now aged fifty-two, was both hated and despised by the other members of Hitler's court. They blamed him equally with Goering for the disasters that had befallen Germany, but with more justification. Goering's aircraft replacement programme had, as Gregory knew, been hopelessly sabotaged during the past two years, whereas Ribbentrop had suffered no such handicap at the Foreign Office. From the beginning Hitler had given him a free hand, and by his puffed-up insolence he had made innumerable enemies for Germany among the statesmen of both her allies and the neutrals. Yet nothing could persuade Hitler to change his belief in Ribbentrop, who was a very
frequent visitor at Führer H.Q. and was always warmly welcomed by him.

Albert Speer, aged forty, was a satrap of a very different kind. In his early thirties he had become Hitler's favourite architect. With unlimited millions to spend and the backing of such an enthusiastic builder as his master a brilliant career had opened for him. His outstanding ability and genius for organisation had led, in 1942, to Hitler making him Minister of Armaments and War Production. Delighting in his work and totally immersed in it, he played no part in politics and was the one member of the court who, apparently, had no enemies.

After these Princes of the Nazi State there came the less prominent courtiers, although some of them were said to possess more influence over the Führer than his Ministers. For instance his physician, Professor Theodore Morell and his surgeon, Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger.

Morell was probably the worst criminal ever to have held a medical degree. Having begun his career as a specialist in venereal disease among the demi-monde of Berlin, he was sent for to treat the court photographer, Hoffmann, but soon acquired Hitler as his patient and for the past nine years had been in constant attendance on him. He was a repulsive servile old man who knew little and cared less about the practice of medicine, but had sufficient brains to use it with complete unscrupulousness as a means of gratifying his insatiable avarice. Within a few years he had a number of big laboratories going in which were manufactured vast quantities of quack remedies, some of which were actually condemned as harmful by the medical profession. But that did not deter him, and Hitler, whose faith in him knew no bounds, both granted him monopolies for certain of his products and made the use of his ‘Russia' lice-powder compulsory throughout the armed forces.

Stumpfegger was a more recent acquisition. He was a giant of a man with very little brain but an unlimited capacity for hero-worship, and Hitler was his idol. Always prone to adulation, the Führer had taken to him at once and now often chose him for his companion on the walks he took every afternoon round the Chancellery garden.

Others who had frequent access to Hitler were Heinz Lorenz, who brought the news bulletins from Goebbels' Ministry, Artur Axmann the Nazi Youth Leader, the secretaries Frau Jung and Frau Christian and his vegetarian cook Fräulein Manzialy, with whom he often took his meals. In addition to these, there were a score or so of junior staff officers, guard commanders, detectives and servants, all with long service and of undoubted loyalty, who had their quarters in the basement of the Chancellery.

As well as files on all these people, the contents of which Gregory was striving to memorise, there was one that he studied with special interest. Hitler had always presented himself to the German people as so entirely devoted to their welfare that his every thought was given to it, to the exclusion of all private pleasures, including sex. That this was not the fact Gregory was aware, as he had seen British Foreign Office Intelligence reports recording occasions in pre-war days when Hitler had been known to retire from very private parties with young women—generally blonde acrobats, for whom he apparently had a particular penchant. There was also the unedifying case of Frau Goebbels whom, it was reported, he had forced to perform certain services for him that had so disgusted her that she had fled to Switzerland, and had been induced to return by Gestapo agents only when threatened with the death of her children.

But what Gregory had not known was that Hitler had had a regular mistress for twelve years. This woman had first come to his notice as the assistant of his photographer, Hoffmann. Her name was Eva Braun, but it was forbidden to refer to her except by her initials, and mentions of her as E.B. were made by members of Hitler's entourage only in whispers. That the secret of their intimacy should have been kept for so long, Gregory decided, must have been mainly due to her personality and Hitler's.

Other dictators, with such an inexhaustible choice of female companions to amuse them in their leisure hours and with whom to disport themselves in bed, had always taken for their mistresses women who were universally acclaimed either for their beauty, intelligence, wit, charm, breeding or chic; but Eva
Braun did not possess a single one of these qualities. Had she done so she would, no doubt, like the great courtesans, have insisted on recognition and demanded houses, a retinue of servants, splendid jewels and to be the best-dressed woman in her country. As it was, she was no more than a moderately good-looking blonde with a passable figure, lacking both intelligence and wit, and completely unambitious. Hitler had made her independent by making over to her one half of the royalties on his photographs but, although she had been for many years, in all but name, the dictator's wife, she still lived like an ordinary German
Hausfrau
, content to preside over the teacups, to make small talk with his men friends and to sleep with him when required. But that had suited Hitler, for he had never succeeded in sloughing off the mind and habits of a common man, and Eva was a common woman.

These, then, made up the devil-inspired maniac's court of which Gregory was shortly to become a member. Apart from a harem and eunuchs it had, he realised, all the elements of that of an Eastern potentate of the eighteenth century: the unpredictable, tyrannical, sadistic Sultan who handed out rewards, or orders to have people executed, entirely according to his mood of the moment; the grovelling flatterers who throve upon his vanity; the high priests of the Nazi religion, ever urging him to greater blood sacrifices by the murder of countless Jews; boastful paladins who at heart were men of straw; petty thieves who had swollen in that hothouse of opportunity into crooks defrauding the Government of millions; medicinemen who kept their Lord alive on drugs only for their own profit, and even soothsayers by whom he allowed himself to be guided. The more Gregory read the more he marvelled that such a cesspool of hatred, intrigue and corruption could have continued for so long as the fountain-head of power in Germany.

During those February days, while Malacou worked tirelessly on horoscopes, Gregory got to know the members of Goering's entourage. General Koller he found to be a pleasant, elderly man but one whose nerves had been frayed almost to breaking point since, as the Reichsmarschall's chief liaison officer with Hitler, he had daily to listen to furious diatribes
by the Führer about the failures of the Luftwaffe. Koller's deputy, General Christian, Gregory liked less, and he seemed stupid enough to believe that in spite of everything Germany might yet emerge victorious. But with Nicolaus von Below Gregory got on extremely well, although he met the Colonel only twice at the dinner parties Goering continued to give, dressed in ever more fantastic costumes, as an Indian Rajah, Inca Emperor or in some other array of silks and satins that enabled him to display his fabulous jewels.

At length the period of preparation on which Gregory had insisted ended, and on the morning of Thursday, March 1st, General Koller took him and Malacou into Berlin. The Air Ministry had been partially wrecked but the damage from bombs had not harmed its basement and, down there, an Administration Officer showed them to cheerless quarters that had been prepared for them. Kaindl had seen to it that they were equipped with everything that an officer and his servant would normally require and, leaving Malacou to unpack their things, Gregory accompanied Koller up the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reich Chancellery.

The vast building was one of Speer's major achievements and in former days its huge Egyptian-style hall, staircases and galleries must have been most impressive. But in the past year bombs had destroyed its upper storeys and brought masses of plaster down from the ceiling of the lofty hall. No serious attempt had been made to clear up the mess and, instead of the seething mass of busy people whose clamour used to fill it, it was now a mausoleum of shadows, the silence of which was broken only by the crunching of the rubble under the feet of a few men in uniform hurrying to and fro from the staircase that led to the several underground bunkers.

At the head of the stairs there was a cloakroom, not for garments but for weapons. Since the bomb plot positively no-one had been allowed to enter Führer H.Q. while armed. Even Goebbels and the other Ministers had to submit to being searched before they were allowed into the quarters of their master and, as Gregory found, the search was a really thorough one.

On going down into the depths he expected to find some
similarity to the fortress basement In Whitehall, in which Churchill's staff officers planned the High Direction of the war. But it was totally different. The underground accommodation of the British War Cabinet and Joint Planning Staff consisted of the best part of a hundred rooms with every facility which would have enabled its inmates to withstand in reasonable comfort a siege of several weeks; whereas the bunker from which Hitler now directed his war had fewer than thirty rooms, many of which were no more than cubby holes, and the only spaces large enough to hold conferences, or in which a number of people could feed, were the passages. There were other bunkers in which junior staff and servants had their quarters, but these were some way off, and the whole system presented a picture of muddle, acute discomfort and inefficiency.

The difference, as Gregory was quick to realise, lay in the fact that the British had foreseen that their war leaders would have to go to earth and had planned accordingly; whereas the German High Command had never visualised the possibility that the bombs of the Allies would force them to seek shelter underground.

Gregory was already fully informed about Hitler's routine. The Führer rose at midday, held a conference with his principal executives, which sometimes lasted several hours, went up to walk for a while with one of his cronies round the Chancellery garden, returned to the bunker for a meal of vegetables or tea and cream buns over which he treated those present to endless monologues about the war situation, then he gave interviews to Generals from the front and others, ate again, and went back to bed at between four-thirty and five o'clock in the morning.

In order never to be absent when his master uttered, Bormann kept the same hours. Thus, by keeping himself informed of every last detail of what was going on, he was able either to prevent visitors from having access to Hitler, or criticise what they had said after they had gone; and he had become the channel through which the majority of Hitler's orders were issued.

Having arrived down in the bunker shortly before noon, Koller was able almost at once to present Gregory to Bormann.
Hitler's ‘Grey Eminence' regarded him with a cold, unsmiling stare then shot at him a few questions about himself. Gregory replied that until recently he had been employed by the Reichsmarschall in buying antiques in the Balkans. Bormann's lips curled in a sneer and he muttered, ‘What a way to spend the war! Your fat slob of a master should be choked with the loot such people as you have stolen for him.'