The Theory and Practice of Hell (68 page)

That same fall the Thuringian tax authorities suddenly manifested an interest in the financial affairs of the Buchen wald canteen, alleging that no taxes had been paid on trans actions running into the millions—which was quite true, of course. An investigation was imminent, and it would cer tainly, at least in part, have uncovered the SS graft system headed by the Commandant. All records in camp were therefore burned and there ensued a tenacious jurisdictional dispute as to whether outside agencies had any right to in tervene in the concentration camps.

As a high SS and police official, and the supreme legal

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authority in the district, Prince Waldeck, who was probably behind the sudden interest of the tax office, had the right to intervene. He carried the matter further, but soon en countered resistance on the part of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the SS Operational Main Office in Berlin, until Himmler himself advised him that no further ac tion was desired, since the charges against Koch were un justified.

In February 1942, nevertheless, Koch was transferred away from Buchenwald, becoming Commandant at Lublin. His ad jutant, Hackmann, accompanied him. When these two mass murderers embarked on their journey, they had rapid-firing automatic weapons mounted on either side of their cars, since they feared partisan ambushes in the east. During the depar ture, the camp band had to strike up marches, while the prisoners were drawn up in a double line.

Prince Waldeck felt that this settlement of the Koch case constituted a disavowal of himself. He sought to prove to Himmler that his attitude toward the Buchenwald Com mandant had been founded on fact. He therefore proceeded to examine various Buchenwald records. Among other things he scanned the death rolls in camp. There he came upon the names of Walter Kramer and Karl Peix—“ shot while at tempting to escape.” Kramer, at the time Capo in the Hospital, had once treated the Prince for a case of boils, to his entire satisfaction. It did not take the Prince long to discover the true reason for Kramer’s death, and that of his deputy. Like many SS officers, Koch preferred to be treated by prisoners rather than by SS Medical Officers. Kramer had treated him for syphilis. Kramer also knew of the “ con tributions” from wealthy Jews who had passed through Buchenwald in 1938 during the Vom Rath program—monies that Koch had embezzled. Naturally the Commandant did not wish these two damaging incidents to come to light in the course of the investigations which the SS courts were con ducting of him. In November 1941, he had therefore ordered SS Master Sergeant Planck to take the two inmates—who had been suddenly arrested and thrown into the camp prison—to the outside labor detail at Goslar and there to shoot them “ while attempting to escape.” This was promptly done.

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Prince Waldeck took up this matter in vain, for the threatened men proceeded with the systematic liquidation of every possible witness, not only from among the prisoners, but also in the ranks of the SS. There was much wire-pulling throughout the concentration-camp system between Buchen wald and Lublin. The purpose was to destroy all witnesses and records that might have documented the numerous murders, larcenies, embezzlements, orgies, and adulteries that had taken place.

Not until 1943 did the situation reach the point where Himmler permitted an official investigation. Evidently

Koch’s misdeeds at Lublin and Belgrade had meanwhile made him a public liability to the SS. Envious SS informers, moreover, had meanwhile accumulated a mass of material on SS corruption. On the occasion of a mass escape of Russian prisoners from the Lublin concentration camp, it was shown that Koch had completely neglected his assigned duties in order to indulge his private vices and personal avarice without let or hindrance. Whenever prisoners showed up missing on his rolls, he simply had civilians arrested in the vicinity who were kept as a “ black reserve” for contingencies. (A similar procedure was followed in other eastern concentration camps as well.)

Koch himself was now arrested, together with his wife, Ilse Koch, and his adjutant, Hackmann, and soon afterward Planck, Sommer and Dr. Hoven. The Buchenwald Camp Medical Officer and Prison Warden were accused of having put out of the way a certain SS Master Sergeant Kohler in the camp prison, when he threatened to make damaging statements.

The two insisted that Kohler had committed suicide, but an autopsy showed the cause of death to have been an alkaloid poison. The specific compound used was not established, and the members of the investigating commission, SS Major Morgen and SS Captain Wehner, in the presence of the Officers-in-Charge, conducted a “ little experiment” in Ward 46. They had four unsuspecting Russian prisoners of war fed various alkaloids in noodle soup. When the men failed to die of the consequences, they were subsequently strangled in the crematory. I know of no other incident that serves so well to

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characterize the special nature of this SS trial.

The investigation and the trial dragged out for nearly two years, with the threads running all the way up to Himmler. The record grew to some ten thousand pages.
The
results were as follows: Planck committed suicide by hanging. Sommer, it is stated, did likewise. Koch and Hackmann were each sen tenced to death on two counts, with the chance of probation by front-line service. But Prince Waldeck, as the supreme legal authority in the district, swiftly forestalled this possibility, by having Koch shot at Buchenwald a few days before the camp’s liberation. Frau Koch was acquitted. Dr. Hoven was suddenly released on April 2,1945, to play the role of a stool pigeon among the prisoners at Buchenwald during the dramatic final week. This role, however, did not reach full fruition because events went out of control and because Hoven was a shrewd man who took no unnecessary risks. He had been in custody for twenty months, a fact of which he thought he might well take advantage with the victors.

There has been much argument as to the motives that could have led the top leadership of the SS to institute the Koch trial in the first place. In my opinion it was not at all a deliberate action for the purpose of realizing certain political purposes, nor did it spring from a genuine feeling that a purge was needed. The tortuous maze of conflicting personal interests among the SS officers simply erupted at a given point—an ab scess on the rotten body burst open.

Dr. Morgen, the ambitious head of the investigating com mission, was a figure of considerable psychological interest. On the basis of the experiments he made at Buchenwald, Lubin, Auschwitz and other camps, he reached a devastating judgment of the concentration camp system and its practices. But nothing changed in the over-all situation. If any measure of relief was obtained here and there during the last years of the system, it was not as a result of the conditions revealed in the Koch trial, but for other general reasons that have already been discussed. In its origins, its course and its significance, the Koch affair was no more than a reflection of the all-pervading parasitism of the SS, which brooked neither retreat nor remedy.

That such figures as Koch and Fassbender and Hoven

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found preordained careers in the ranks of the SS—especially in the concentration camp SS—becomes understandable when the standards in terms of the character and mind demanded of Hitler’s black-uniformed Elite Guards are taken into account.

The intellectual development of SS members all the way up to their highest leaders was far below the average. Their fac tual knowledge rarely exceeded that of an eighth-grader—and not a very bright one at that. If they had any shreds of am bition left to expand their knowledge, it was in the field of military affairs, especially as it might help advance their careers. In examinations for promotion to SS sergeant, “ general intelligence questions” included the following: What is the difference between a child and a dwarf? Between a ladder and stairway? How many members of the
Waffen SS
wear the Knight’s Cross?

And what did the SS officers read? Rarely a book—at best detective stories—though they were in the habit of exchanging gifts of luxuriously bound volumes. Their SS training manuals? Certainly not—most of them never even read the magazine of the SS, the
Black Corps
. They would skim the headlines in the newspapers, occasionally read part of an editorial—as long as matters were going well.

Knowledge was not essential to the realization of SS aims. v What was needed was conscious awareness of being the master class, of being an elite even within the Nazi party, of being the Praetorian Guard—of who was a friend and who an enemy. All this involved prestige, which could be readily in creased by a harsh, ruthless, arrogant bearing, by acquiring a reputation for relentlessness, by spreading fear wherever one went. Critical thought would have required the power to discriminate and make comparisons, which in turn meant an expanding mental horizon. This might have impaired striking power. It would have appeared to them as demoralizing, dangerous, disloyal, “ Jewish.” It was not necessary to self-awareness—that was satisfied by articles of political faith.

They never doubted what their leaders told them—it was pleasant and often even convenient to believe. Doubt would have been treason, whereas their slogan said that their “ honor was loyalty.” They remained true to themselves.

It is apparent that the motives of the SS were never