Gestapo (6 page)

Nebe was an altogether more colorful character; but he was able to change his colors and sink into the background of the moment like a chameleon. He was one of the most able members of the regular Prussian Police, and functioned as head of the
Kriminal Polizei
, or Kripo, in effect the Prussian C.I.D. He was also in secret a member of the Nazi Party and of the S.S., which he had joined in 1929 in defiance of a law forbidding membership of political parties to members of the Civil Service. He was, however, a man so accustomed to playing his own hand, and that so close to his chest, that his real affiliations will probably never be known. He led a lonely life, achieving and maintaining a high position in the police hierarchy, but never exceeding his own powers, a secret member of the S.S. when it looked as though the S.S. was going to sweep the board, a secret member of the Opposition when it looked as though Germany was going to lose the war. He is supposed to have been overtaken and hanged by the avenging host of his police colleagues after the failure of the Stauffenberg plot; but we have no proof of this: he ran away, was chased—and never heard of again. For all we know, like Mueller, Chief of the Gestapo; Eichmann, exterminator of the Jews, and a host of other conscientious murderers, he may be alive to this day.

Gisevius, who, for reasons best known to himself, professes a reverence for Nebe little short of idolatry, and as fanatical as his hatred of Diels, presents his idol as an
idealist—who joined the Party in secret for reasons of idealism, went on being a policeman under Goering and Himmler for reasons of idealism, turned against the Party again for reasons of idealism, continued to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, still for reasons of idealism, and finally ended as a martyr. He does not, however, refer at all to the period when Nebe commanded one of the notorious Action Groups in Russia and gave a personal demonstration to Himmler of how Jews were executed. So we shall probably never know whether this adventure was also undertaken in a spirit of idealism—or in a fit of absent-mindedness.

These were the chief figures among the bunch of officials who were intriguing against each other with murderous intent in and around the headquarters of the Prussian Police, under Goering. Everybody feared everybody else. There are occasions when it is permissible to believe both Diels and Gisevius: for example, when each confirms the other in describing the mood of those days:

“… We were living in a den of murderers,” writes Gisevius (who, it should be remembered, was doing his level best to make good in that den). “We did not even dare step ten or twenty feet across the hall to wash our hands without telephoning a colleague beforehand and informing him of our intention to embark on so perilous an expedition. Not for a moment was anybody's life secure. Nebe, of all persons, Nebe the Nazi, the old fighter who had the best of connections, used to impress this on me forcibly, morning, noon, and night. His own opinion of his illustrious department was quite clear. As a matter of principle he entered and left by the rear staircase, with his hand always resting on the cocked automatic in his pocket. And again and again he angrily reprimanded me for coming incautiously upstairs near the banister—which could be seen more easily from above—instead of stealing up against the wall, where a shot from above could not easily reach me.

“It was so usual for members of the Gestapo to arrest one another that we scarcely took notice of such incidents, unless we happened to come across a more detailed
example of such an arrest—by way of the hospital or the morgue.”

That is a leaf from the album of an aspiring member of the early Gestapo, describing life in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse—Nebe had been seconded to the Gestapo from the Kripo. But life also had its color in the old Prussian Police headquarters in the Ministry of the Interior across the road. And Gisevius gives a vivid account of the excitement when Diels was brought back to the Prinz Albrecht Strasse to resume his old functions after Heydrich's first major assault had all but succeeded:

“At the end of September, Diels was removed from office with the lightning swiftness common to all Nazi actions. The Gestapo chief was assigned to the post of assistant police commissioner of Berlin; but he sensed that his career was in a bad way and thought it better to fly to Czechoslovakia on a false passport. Nebe and I, who had persistently intrigued for his removal, breathed more freely.”

But not for long. Diels has himself described at length and with some pathos his feelings in exile and the highly patriotic motives which induced him to return. We have no reason to doubt that he felt homesick in Prague. He also wanted to get on in the world, and Berlin was the place for that. And so, says Gisevius, “From his retreat in Bohemia he threatened embarrassing revelations, and asked a high price for keeping his mouth shut. By the end of October he had moved in again.” This rings true, and it is also the only reasonable explanation of Diels' power over Goering. Diels himself describes how after Goering had “pleaded” with him to return he, Diels, demanded extensive guarantees and a free hand. For the time being he had both. And it was at this moment that Goering, who had now succeeded von Papen as Prime Minister of Prussia, quite unconstitutionally removed the Gestapo from the Ministry of the Interior and continued to run it, through Diels, as his private police force.

“I can still see Nebe collapsing into his chair when he returned from the Ministry with the bad news,” writes Gisevius, who, however, was made of sterner stuff. “My immediate reaction was to decide that I
must not sleep at home that night. So I hid in a hotel; and that was fortunate for me, for the hangmen were already out looking for me.”

Next day he decided to throw himself on the protection of Kurt Daluege. Instead of going to his own office in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, he went off to the Ministry of the Interior and slunk in through a back entrance. Nebe, who knew Daluege very well, joined him there, and together they went up to Daluege to decide what to do. They could not think of anything. One of Daluege's subordinates, who had gone with them, also in fear of his life from Diels, had the bright idea that Diels should be called over to the Ministry for a conference and then, when he appeared, Nebe and Gisevius should “grab him and throw him out of Daluege's third-floor window.” But even as they discussed the pros and cons of this expedient the door opened, and Daluege's secretary came in to tell them that a Gestapo agent was waiting outside and wished to arrest Gisevius—“in the office of the Chief of Police, of all places!”

But the Chief of Police, Daluege, did not seem to share the indignation of Gisevius at this sacrilege. “In fact, the spark of courage that remained in him seemed to go out.” He was finding it difficult to make up his mind whether Diels or Heydrich was going to win the next round—and in any case neither Heydrich nor Diels had any use for Gisevius. “Nevertheless, he was generous enough to show me how to escape through an emergency exit.”

What to do next? With presence of mind Gisevius remembered his original protector, Grauert, who had been put into an under-secretaryship at the Ministry of the Interior by Goering in the flush of his first purge. “Grauert was not a man to get excited easily,” reports Gisevius. “Yet even he was somewhat put out.” He told the egregious young man that everything would be all right, he would see to that; and meanwhile he had better go home and wait for things to blow over. But this Gisevius flatly refused to do. He would not budge from the sanctuary of Grauert's office—until, at last, Grauert agreed to ring up Goering, who “pretended to be outraged by what had happened and ordered a strict investigation.”

Three days later Gisevius was back again in his own
office, still a member of the Gestapo. And there was Diels to welcome him:

“My dear fellow, what a shocking misunderstanding! I knew nothing about it at all. It was all a piece of insolence on the part of the S.A. You're my very best adviser!”

Diels' own account of the events that led up to his precipitate flight from Germany, referred to by Gisevius, is part and parcel of the same mood. One night round about midnight he was rung up by his wife, who was in a highly agitated condition. Their apartment had been broken into by a gang of roughs who had locked her up in her bedroom while they went methodically through their belongings and carried off what they wanted. Diels hurried home and was able to establish that the gang of roughs must have been a well-known S.S. Group under a certain S.S. Captain Packebusch which had recently been active in various parts of Berlin as a self-appointed anti-Communist mobile squad. Packebusch was used by Daluege to do his dirty work.

Not only was this aggravating to Diels in principle, since he himself was the great expert on Communism, but also, worse than this, Nebe had been telling the S.S. that he, Diels, of all people, was a Communist in disguise. Gisevius insists that his beloved Nebe, a simple soul, really believed this. But while there is every excuse for believing almost anything of Diels, there are certain things that those who knew him really could not have believed: and one of these was that Diels would ever associate himself with a losing cause. He certainly had a curious relationship with the German Communist leaders, Thaelmann and Torgler. This was probably in essence no more than the sort of attraction which so often binds together deadly adversaries in a private duelist's universe. But there may have been more behind it than that.

In the interests of his career, Diels had deserted his chief among the Social Democrats, Sievering, for von Schleicher. He had deserted von Schleicher for Goering. There had been a time when nobody could tell whether the Nazis or the Communists would win; and it is conceivable that during this period of uncertainty Diels, with
his deep knowledge of the Communist Party in Germany and his personal acquaintance with its leaders, may have deliberately left himself several lines open. We do not know. All we know is that a man with Diels' established record cannot justly complain if, when in doubt, we believe the worst of him. Certainly on that winter's night Captain Packebusch of the S.S. had broken into the flat of the Chief of the Gestapo in the hope of discovering incriminating documents linking him with Communist leaders. He failed, and Diels acted with resolution.

As soon as he had decided whom he was dealing with he telephoned an old friend, Commandant of the Tier-garten Police Station, a man “who had often helped me in the past, and was not afraid of his chief, Daluege.” The old friend responded, and, within an hour, the house in the Potsdamer Strasse, where Packebusch “carried on his unholy activities at Daluege's behest,” was surrounded by members of the uniformed police, armed with hand grenades and automatics. Diels, according to his own account, himself stepped forward to knock on the door. An S.S. sentry opened, and, taking Diels and the little group at his heels for friends, showed them the way to Packebusch's rooms, Diels still leading.

“I chose to expose myself in this affair,” he writes, “because, in the last resort, it was my own personal interest that was at stake. The most dangerous part of the enterprise now lay before me: the arrest by my own hand of the worst of the gangsters.”

It was a dramatic moment. There, in the small hours, sat the S.S. Captain—

“the very prototype and image of the later concentration camp commandants, harshness and callousness written deep into his face. He sat there, brooding over the papers on his desk like a scholar working into the night.… They were my papers he was working on, and defacing, as I soon discovered, with inept annotations.…

“Packebusch had no time to recover from his shock. He stared at me as though I were a ghost. As I said, ‘I've come to take you away,' the uniformed police who had entered with me seized him without particular gentleness. They removed the pistol from the belt he had hung up on the wall with his black uniform jacket. His
accomplices, in turn, were seized in their own rooms.”

But by the time Diels had got Packebusch to his own office on the Prinz Albrecht Strasse it was a different story. They started roaring and shouting defiance at each other. Diels threatened Packebusch with prison, and Packebusch threatened Diels with arrest for treason.

“As I jumped up to refute this insolence he pulled an automatic from his trousers' pocket and pointed it at me, yelling unprintable obscenities. But before he could steady his aim and press the trigger the great Alsatian dog which had been observing the progress of the scene from his corner of the big room threw himself at the jackbooted thug.” [Diels, as usual, was in civilian clothes.] “Two policemen wrenched the weapon from his hands.”

The upshot of that evening's entertainment was that with Himmler protesting to Goering and calling for the blood of the Chief of the Gestapo, it looked as though the S.S. had won. But there were obscurities in the case, almost certainly involving scandals among the high and mighty of the Nazi Party. Diels was demoted, fled to Czechoslovakia, returned in triumph to a stronger position, himself accepted rank in the S. S., and managed to hold out against Heydrich for several months to come.

While the police leaders fought each other for power, the work of the police went on. And always the Gestapo was being strengthened. These incidents in the lives of Gisevius and Diels are recorded here not for their own sakes but to illustrate the atmosphere inside Gestapo headquarters in its early days. To the outsider the building in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse was the headquarters of a smoothly functioning terror machine. To the victims it was a pit of organized torture and injustice in which their bodies, and sometimes their spirits, were broken by remote inquisitors who knew how to be affable and bland when occasion called for it and how to beat and kick a man until he whimpered for mercy when occasion called for that. But the remote inquisitors, as we have seen, had problems of their own.

The sorting out of these problems reflected the development of the Gestapo from a small private instrument in
Goering's own war against all comers, from Communists to the S.A., into the dread and comparatively streamlined apparatus, which, partnered by the S.S.
Sicherheitsdienst
, was ready to apply its deep experience to the subjugation of occupied Europe.