The Sunday Gentleman (61 page)

But although everyone got together amicably on Allied personnel problems, sparks flew in the Kommandatura headquarters when Hess and his playmates were mentioned. The Russians were particularly bitter about Hess, probably because they still remembered that, in 1937, he had worked with Trotsky to overthrow Stalin. “From the start, the Soviets disagreed with us on almost every point,” one American member of the Kommandatura revealed to me. “The trouble was that our mentalities were so different. The Russians went at every point with a kind of Slav logic, literal, unimaginative. I don’t say their logic was worse or better than ours. I only say it was different. In Directive 35, there was a clause reading that the prison would be under ‘full quadripartite administration.’ Let me invent an example to show how this clause was interpreted. Say Admiral Raeder was to be shaved. To the Americans ‘full’ administration of the shaving meant the four powers would agree on one man to do the job. But to the Russians, the word ‘full’ meant an American slapped the lather on Raeder’s chin, an Englishman wielded the razor, a Frenchman sprinkled the talcum, and a Russian applied the wet towel. To them that was full administration of Spandau!”

The greatest four-power arguments raged over the style of confinement, communal work, religion, freedom of speech, and exercise. The British, leaning over backward to be fair, wanted Hess and company treated as ordinary German criminals, which meant that they would be permitted to dwell behind barred cells, yet be free to go into the prison yard and work together, exercise together, worship together, and talk together. The Russians strongly opposed this leniency, insisting that the seven were not ordinary but extraordinary criminals and that they should be kept separate, silent, and in permanent solitary confinement.

When the question of outdoor exercise was being debated, the Soviet representative argued that all seven could get sufficient exercise inside their cells. The British doubted this. The Russian leaped to his feet, paced forward three steps, pivoted, paced back three steps. “That is exercise if you do it long enough!” he bellowed. As to religion, the Americans pointed out that German lifers in all German prisons are permitted to go to services on Saturday or Sunday. Replying to this, a Russian general rose and said, “So you want to give them religion on Sunday, do you? Very well. What religion? Tell me, who was their god? The only god they know is the god of war. Where will you find a clergyman who will represent the god of war?”

On the issue of free speech within Spandau, the British argued that if Funk wanted to stand up in the garden and lecture to the other six Nazis, he should be permitted this privilege. The Russians said if he so much as opened his mouth, he deserved punishment. At last, on this issue, as on most of the others, the French and Americans effected a compromise. There would be neither full silence nor full freedom of speech. Funk could talk to Hess about duties at hand, but not about outside matters. Funk could say to Hess, “Help me lift this wheelbarrow,” but he could not say, “Tell me, Rudolf, what did you and the Fuehrer really discuss before you flew to Scotland?”

After six months, the rules were agreed upon, and on July 18, 1947, the RAF flew the seven Nazis from Nuremberg to Gatow Airport outside Berlin, and then, behind lorried infantry, they were driven the three miles to Spandau Prison.

Since that day, the four directors of Spandau have continued to meet weekly around a single table. While interpreters translate their conversation, and secretaries take down every spoken word for superiors in Moscow, London, Paris, and Washington, the four men continue to rehash and arbitrate all aspects of Spandau life. “Of course, they still disagree,” one witness to their meetings told me. “They are four different personalities. Major Roger Smith, who used to be General Frank Lee Howley’s adjutant in Berlin, is an outspoken earthy American from Maryland with nineteen years in the army behind him. The British director comes from the Isle of Guernsey. The Frenchman is from Metz. The Russian director comes from an unpronounceable place in the U.S.S.R. Haggling is inevitable. Their backgrounds and educations are different. The American argues with the Frenchman as often as with the Russian. Put it this way. Find yourself any four grown men. One wants to go to a cricket match and insists the other three must come along. Well, two of the others want to see naked women, and the fourth wants to get drunk. How can they get together and choose one amusement for all four? It’s not easy. But the four directors are managing to do just this. In fact, relations with the Russian director were never better than at recent weekly meetings. Right now, they’re having a great argument about memoirs. Two of the seven Nazis want to spend their spare time writing memoirs. The Russian director says the result would be a couple of
Mein Kampf
‘s. Two of the three Western directors think the Nazis should have such freedom to write, since the four powers can censor every word anyway. The disagreement has been passed up as high as the Berlin Kommandatura, which now contains only three powers, and to the Russian military in the East Berlin zone.”

However, there are no disagreements whatsoever among the four-power employees who guard the interior of Spandau. The American and Russian guards, when they bull-session in German, the official prison language, never argue the merits of capitalism versus Communism or of their respective atom bombs. “We get along swell with the Reds,” an American guard recently told a friend. “On the other hand, if they get along too good with us, they’re yanked out fast and replaced by new boys.”

There are supposed to be thirty-two guards, including four wardens, inside Spandau. Actually, there are twenty-eight. Only the United States has not filled its quota. Russia, Great Britain, and France have each supplied eight men, but the United States has supplied only four. “It’s because too few want the job,” said an American official. “The guards get sick of being enclosed. They become bored, ambitionless, introspective, morbid, until they’re feeling like Rudolf Hess himself.”

The four American guards, paid $3,619 a year each, fill the minimum qualification of having been army noncoms for two years, or members of the Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, or a civilian police force for three years. Like their fellow guards, they all speak and understand German fairly well—even though they are not permitted to talk to the seven Nazi prisoners, except when giving orders.

All of the guards—warders, the Prison Governorate prefers to call them—are supposed to be civilians. But, according to an inside source, the eight Soviet Russian guards and the Russian warden are not really civilians, but Red Army soldiers pretending to be civilians. Of all the guards, the British are the most experienced in prison work, and the Americans the least. Seven of the British guards worked together before the war, in a Hong Kong colonial prison. After being interned by the Japanese, and eventually released, they accepted the same kind of employment again in Berlin.

These four-nation interior guards, wearing loaded .45’s or their equivalent, attired in specially designed blue uniforms (with outer flap pockets, resembling the British flight officer’s uniform), which were made by the German government, work a constant and rugged schedule. Two guards, always representing different nations, slowly patrol the first-floor cell-block that holds the seven Nazis. Every three minutes, one of these guards is supposed to peer into each cell to see what the occupant is doing. While there have been no suicide attempts yet (because the seven have even less opportunity to obtain and hide potassium cyanide vials than did Goering), the guards are still not supposed to take any chances. The fact is, the guards, by unspoken consent, have agreed that the peek-once-every-three-minutes routine is too tiring, and they now take a look about every fifteen minutes.

The guards work in shifts of four, employing a pattern that is complex but effective. While two of them are patrolling the cellblock, a third guard naps in the warden’s austere office nearby, and a fourth toils at the entrance reception office checking various other prison personnel in and out. In a two-week period, each guard works three separate sets of hours—from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon for three days, from four in the afternoon until midnight for two days, from midnight to eight in the morning for three days, with two to three days off between each change of hours.

The guards who are bachelors are billeted in the brick buildings in front of the prison; the married guards have apartments requisitioned for them closer to the center of Berlin. The food inside the prison changes every month. For with the start of each new month, as the exterior platoon of guards changes, the new director in charge brings in his own mess. The permanent personnel in the kitchens, which includes several Dutchmen, a Czech, a Hungarian, a Finn, and a Pole, but no Germans, is prepared to cope with anything. During the Russian month, most of the guards drink vodka, during the English month they drink ale or gin, during the French month they have wine or cognac, and during the American month. Cokes or Scotch. The Russian food, which leans heavily on borscht and pork, is the most unpopular. The English mess, roast beef, kidneys, mutton chops, is considered the skimpiest, the French mess the tastiest, and the American mess the healthiest.

The seven prisoners rarely share their captors’ food. The prisoners’ meals are prepared in a special kitchen adjacent to their cellblock. Each receives 1,680 calories a day, precisely the same ration that two out of every three Berliners receive. The Berlin government reluctantly pays the prisoners’ food bill. Most of the food comes from American army stores—for such security purposes as preventing poisoning. Sometimes the meals are supplemented by leftovers from the guards’ mess. The prisoners’ main dish is usually prepared in a large stewpot, which the cook leaves inside the door of the cellblock. Each week, one of the prisoners takes a turn at KP duty. As the warden watches (sometimes glancing between the three slices of bread on each plate for messages or poison), the prisoners are released from their cells, one at a time. The first prisoner marches to the end of the cell-block, accepts his food on a tin plate, accepts a spoon (no forks or knives permitted), and returns to eat alone and in silence behind his closed door. The others follow in turn.

“The portions of food are usually equal,” one gastronomic observer remarked to me. “They had better be. Hess knows that even if he is sore at Raeder, he cannot cheat him out of his full share of food, because if he does, Raeder will remember and get even when it is his turn at KP.” The only one of the seven with a special food allotment is Doenitz. Because a French army doctor noted that he was severely underweight, he now receives 510 grams of extra butter every two weeks. When gossip of this leaked out, the Berlin
Neue Zeitung
commented bitterly, “Many Germans on the outside wish they could be as well off with their meals as Doenitz.” The slow method of serving the food usually means that the last two prisoners will find their helpings cold when they return to their cells. To overcome this, the Americans once tried to introduce a speedier method of feeding—but the Russians vetoed it.

There are thirty cells in the main block. The cells across from, and on either side of, each prisoner are kept empty. Walther Funk’s cell, six feet by nine, is typical of the rest. The door is made of solid steel, but has a small slit at eye level. Inside, the cell is furnished with an army cot, wooden stool, small table, and toilet. There are four plaster walls, no windows. Having received permission. Funk, like most of the others, has pasted up several photographs of his family, as well as sacred pictures of Jesus and of Mary.

Funk and his six companions wear round gray hats that match their light gray jackets and trousers. Their shoes, designed years before by Albert Speer for the Reich’s slave laborers, are wooden. Once, while trying to do double time in the shoes, Speer ruefully remarked to a guard, “If I had known I would ever have to wear them, I’d have put a little leather in them.” Doenitz alone has been granted the luxury of silk underwear because of a skin allergy. None wears a belt, for the obvious reason. Instead, they use ordinary elastic suspenders, which—for the same obvious reason—have been cut in half and then sewed together again with just enough thread to hold up their trousers.

The prisoners rise at six every morning, dress, soap and scrub their cells, then remove their shirts and wash. Once a week, they are led to hot showers, two at a time, while an armed guard watches. Von Neurath is the only one not well enough to take his weekly shower. There is a daily shave given by the prison barber, a Dutchman, and a daily medical inspection by the prison doctor. Once a week, two of the prisoners spend four hours doing the laundry for all seven.

After breakfast, a nine-hour work period begins. Activity is divided among the potato garden outdoors, and indoors the pasting together of paper envelopes, and the making of straw shoes for the German economy. Speer seems to enjoy the garden most. On warm days, he strips to the waist before he digs and plants, and he is the only one with a generous suntan. It was in the garden that a classic incident occurred, one which the German press picked up and spread throughout the Reich. Rudolf Hess, who along with Doenitz still has moments of humor, was laboring in the garden one morning when an American guard walked over with a hose. “Here,” said the guard, “water the plants.” Hess looked up, then suddenly grinned. “Give it to Admiral Doenitz,” he said in pointed English. “He knows all about water.”

While all of the seven have been docile since their imprisonment, there remain stringent penalties for any one of the group who gets out of line. According to the official four-power agreement on Spandau, “Punishment for offenses committed in jail may consist of cancellation of privileges, and may include the cutting off of light in the cell for a period of up to four weeks, reduction of food which will be replaced by bread and water, deprivation of furniture and clothing, and, in special cases, fettering.”

The privileges the seven possess consist primarily of smoking, letter writing, and reading, during the two-hour evening rest period between dinner and lights-out at ten o’clock. Each receives a package of tobacco a week, but may smoke only after meals or during the evening rest period. Hess occupies much time just pacing, and on several occasions has broken into a crazy goose step. Sometimes he will sit for an hour and stare at the wall. Several times, he has been caught talking earnestly to himself. Hess is the only one of the seven who speaks of Hitler, referring to him still as the Fuehrer. The bald Funk, too, utilizes the privacy of his cell, alternately weeping out of self-pity and whistling jazz tunes as he beats time on the wooden stool.