A Kiss for the Enemy (38 page)

‘You manage damned well with that wooden foot of yours, Arzfeld! I can hardly keep up with you.' They were walking together on a Sunday afternoon in July, both freed for a few hours from duty.

Frido walked surprisingly fast. He was silent that afternoon. The heart had been pounded out of Berlin by Allied bombers and there were few people minded to stroll light-heartedly in the summer sunshine. When Frido at last started to speak he talked in a low voice and Becker had simultaneously to gallop to keep up and to bend his head, for he was particularly tall.

Frido said, ‘I wanted to have this talk here, outside. Outside one can speak freely if one's careful. Indoors one never knows.

‘I've been told to make certain things clear to you. General von Tresckow vouched for you. We know you're reliable.' Von Tresckow had once been Chief of Staff to ‘Army Group Centre' on the Eastern Front. Klaus Becker had been a promising adjutant at that Headquarters before returning to his regiment, a tall young man who radiated calm, principle and purpose. He had attracted confidence. Now he looked at Frido, listening, expressionless. He knew that von Arzfeld was, as he put it to himself, ‘All right': but a man could not stop his heart beginning to race when conversation took this turn. What was coming? What would be required?

Frido was continuing in the same low voice –

‘You've heard about yesterday?'

‘You mean the false alarm? Orders sent out from your people, troops started to move and then everything cancelled? Yes, of course – and there were all sorts of rumours, I can tell you! But then we heard it was an exercise, a sudden unannounced alert to test the readiness of the troops for Operation “Valkyrie”, isn't that so?'

‘Valkyrie' was the codename for mobilizing home forces in case of emergency – an emergency which, during Frido's time in Berlin, had been imagined as possibly being caused by a revolt of the huge numbers of wretched, conscripted foreign workers within the Reich: by some other internal disturbance: or even by an Allied landing on the north German coast, though few people had ever thought that likely. ‘Valkyrie' involved in the first instance the Berlin Guard battalion and all troops who could be raised from the staffs of training schools and depots near the capital. It was decreed by ‘Home Army' that every installation must find men for operations in such an emergency, and guards were to be rushed into Berlin to secure Government offices, telephone and radio centres and other key points. While the emergency lasted, ‘Valkyrie' placed legitimate authority firmly in military hands.

‘Valkyrie' had been ordered, suddenly, the previous day, a Saturday, 15th July. Then, a few hours later, it had been cancelled and the troops ordered back to barracks.

‘It wasn't an exercise,' said Frido.

‘An alarm? I don't believe it! Even at my humble level we in OKH would have – besides nobody could imagine England and America starting another invasion here, when they're doing pretty well in France.'

For there were no illusions within the Army High Command. Field Marshal von Kluge's front in Normandy might crack at any time. His signals grew more desperate daily. The Allies had landed on 6th June, 1944. The long anticipated Anglo-American invasion of the Continent had been under way for nearly six weeks. German attempts to push the invaders into the sea had utterly failed. Every soldier knew that when the British and Americans finally broke out from the expanding beachhead in which they were precariously hemmed, there would be little organized defence feasible between the Channel and the Rhine.

Frido began talking, quietly, flatly. He had been ordered to brief Becker. Becker listened with a heart half-troubled, half-exalted.

On the previous day, Frido said, the Commander-in-Chief of Home Army, General Fromm, and his Chief of Staff, Colonel von Stauffenberg, had flown to Hitler's Supreme Headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. They had been ordered to attend a conference with the Führer himself, to describe the progress made with weeding out men within the home and training establishments in order to man new divisions. This operation had been largely entrusted to Fromm.

‘We don't think it's going to work miracles,' interrupted Becker conversationally. ‘They're pretty sceptical in OKH. The barrel's been well scraped.'

Frido ignored him, and went on in his matter-of-fact voice. Becker listened with a curious feeling in his stomach.

In Colonel von Stauffenberg's briefcase had been a bomb. The bomb was to be set off by a time fuse. The fuse depended on the breaking of a capsule which would spill acid on, and snap, a tiny wire. This, in turn, would release a striker on to a detonator cap and the fuse would be ignited. A ten minute fuse.

‘It's an English fuse. The
Abzvehr
have plenty of them and it was easy to get them until Canaris went.' Admiral Canaris, head of the German counter-espionage service,
Abwehr
, had
been dismissed five months earlier. He was, Frido said, ‘reliable'. The function of the bomb was to kill Hitler.

Thereafter ‘Valkyrie' was immediately to be ordered. But instead of securing Government offices and communications against some internal threat or some revolution, the purpose of ‘Valkyrie', Frido explained, was to get control of the machinery of government for a new, anti-Nazi administration, dedicated to making peace.

‘All of which is organized. General Beck will be Head of State. Dr Goerdeler, Lord Mayor of Leipzig, is to be Chancellor. Field Marshal von Witzleben, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. And so on.'

‘What happened?'

‘We heard Stauffenberg had landed at Rastenburg, with Fromm. We ordered “Valkyrie” straight away. We knew he'd not fail – he's been the life and soul of the whole business and it all turns on him. The General – Fromm – sits on the fence. He'll emerge as his Chief of Staffs benevolent patron if all goes right – assuming he survives. If it doesn't –'

‘But it didn't!'

‘No, it didn't. At the last moment Hitler left the conference room. So, of course, no bomb.'

‘And meanwhile “Valkyrie” had been ordered!”

‘Yes. Fromm, of course, was with Stauffenberg in East Prussia. When they got back and we learned what had happened – or not happened – at Rastenburg we had to cook up a story about a practice alert, an exercise. I don't think Fromm believed a word of it but it suits him to pretend. He's been trying to have it both ways for over a year.'

They walked on, more slowly now. Becker said,

‘One heard rumours – earlier attempts –'

‘There were indeed earlier attempts. Something always went wrong. It never came to the point – although, to be accurate, a bomb was actually put on
his
aircraft once, flying back from Russia. It didn't go off. But now everybody's absolutely determined – it's
got
to happen. There can be no more waiting. It's got to happen – by one means or another.'

Becker was silent. Frido was not sure whether his companion's lack of response implied dissent.

‘You agree, I hope?'

‘Yes – but the urgency –'

‘My God,' said Frido, his voice for the first time a little louder, ‘we can't go on like this! It's obvious the war is lost. Within months the Red Army will be in East Prussia. We're certainly not going to push the English and Americans into the sea. We're just about holding on in Italy. Germany is being systematically destroyed by these air raids. Of course we can't wait.' He stopped, wheeled and stared at Becker.

‘And it's far worse than that – far, far worse. There are worse things even than defeat if it's defeat in a decent cause. But look at the things that have been done by these swine – in our name! That are being done all the time! One can't breathe until –'

He stumped on.

‘Until the principal swine is dead?' said Becker, near inaudibly.

‘Of course. That's the key to everything. Without that nobody will be moved. They'll be stifled, hesitant, mutter about the oath –'

‘I think many soldiers feel strongly about the oath. Germans are serious about such things.'

‘Then they had better,' said Frido, ‘enquire in their hearts whether they can reconcile it with the creed many of them recite conscientiously on Sundays. Germans have the name of being serious about such things too.'

The moral issue was not new to Klaus Becker, and the strength of feeling he shared. His temperament was to provoke antithesis in an argument. There was one practical point he had secretly felt for a long time from his own observation, that these people (and he felt both proud and nervous to be of their number) disregarded. He put it to Frido.

‘Whatever orders are given by generals, I don't believe the ordinary German soldier is ready to go against – him. That's the problem, in my view.'

‘When he's disappeared they'll change, start opening their minds to the truth. They're fine fellows, after all, they've simply been mesmerized.'

‘I'm not so sure,' said Becker. ‘The ordinary soldiers, the young ones anyway,
believe
in Hitler. They think he rescued Germany from the old gang with their disaster-laden policies –
that's how they see it. We must face the fact that to most young Germans, not all, this – Goerdeler, Beck, von Witzleben – will simply look like a step into a gloomy conservative past from which Hitler rescued them.'

‘There are also young idealists in Germany, young people who have discovered enough of what National Socialism is doing and are revolted by it.'

‘Some, perhaps. But the young people I'm chiefly concerned with are in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. And I think most of them are – loyal to the Führer.' Becker said the last words with an ironic inflexion, wryly. He shrugged his shoulders. What of it, he seemed to say. If we have consciences we must obey them, however lonely the road.

‘We can't think too much of that,' said Frido abruptly, who shared the same anxiety, ‘we mustn't worry about that. We've got to have faith. We've got to light a torch. Then men will rub their eyes and feel they've emerged from darkness, as Stauffenberg says.'

‘And your part in all this?'

‘A humble transmitter of commands and information, knowing nothing and obeying orders. A captain at a desk in an office in the Bendlerstrasse. But placed where another might question certain orders, be dismayed at certain information. And in the light of yesterday's events, it's been decided an extra link is desirable between the Bendlerstrasse and OKH. We knew your name, of course, and I was able to speak about you personally. Now here's what you've got to do …'

‘Becker? Arzfeld here. Supper this evening? Seven o'clock?'

‘Thank you.'

It was three days later. 19th July. That evening they sat in a cellar-restaurant that had survived air raids, not far from the Tiergartenstrasse. They sipped wine and Frido said quietly, conversationally,

‘Thursday. Tomorrow.'

‘Same plan?'

‘Precisely. Same conference, reconvened. Same object, same method. He'll send word when it's done. We won't act till then.'

‘You mean he'll wait to telephone –?'

‘No. The Chief Wehrmacht communications man is a friend. He'll do it while – my master – is on his way back to Berlin.' Frido lifted his glass. His smile was exultant.

‘To Thursday!'

They walked away from the restaurant an hour later. It was a warm night. There was no air raid. Their footsteps echoed. They had the narrow, moonlit side street to themselves.

‘I shall speak to you, tell you what's happening all the time. You're my only authorized link with OKH. And you know whom to tell what in OKH.'

‘I do.'

‘We shall send signals to the Military Districts direct from Home Army. You've heard Rommel's been wounded?' It was a statement. All Germany knew that the wiry, tough Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been hit by an enemy air attack in France two days before.

‘Was he –?'

‘Ready to serve, yes. A late sympathizer, but helpful. He doesn't know our plans, but he would have reacted after the event as we wish. It's a pity he was hit. And we know that they've moved to arrest Goerdeler, but he's gone into hiding. Of course others – Leber and others – were arrested earlier this month.'

They were only names to Becker. Whether names like this would command the confidence of the hard-bitten, suffering
landser
at the fronts he was unsure. Frido took his arm, eyes shining in the moonlight.

‘Until tomorrow!'

They parted with a handshake, Becker extending his left, his only arm and holding the other tightly. Frido sat all night by the window of the room he had rented in the southern suburbs of Berlin. No Allied bombers disturbed the German capital that night. It was hot and sultry. At five o'clock he washed, shaved, put on a clean uniform and set out on a bicycle towards the Government quarter. His artificial limb impeded his bicycling now as little as it slowed his walking, and he covered the distance in excellent time.

The Headquarters of Home Army was in the Armed Forces
Building in the Bendlerstrasse. Frido shared his office with two colleagues on the Staff, a captain and a lieutenant. Neither had become intimate friends of his, with neither had he ever discussed anything more serious than their shared professional concerns, and neither was privy to the great enterprise which had kept him sitting awake and restless all night. But neither, he was sure, was a zealous National Socialist. They were intelligent, painstaking officers with good records at the Front in both cases. One, Koller, had been wounded in the Caucasus and the other, Hoffmann, was suffering still from stomach disorders acquired in North Africa. He did not think, when the moment came, they would be particularly inquisitive or obstructive. But he could not trust them.