Reading this news, Fritz Kolbe was not the only one who thought that Himmler was probably the brains behind the Munich assassination attempt. He thought of a setup. The Nazis, he said to himself, know that this war is unpopular and want to distract the Germans by making them think that the English want war and that the führer is a demigod protected by supernatural powers. On the other hand, if the SS was really behind this faked assassination attempt, how could Hitler have taken the risk of placing himself next to a ticking bomb that might have gone off a few minutes too soon? Suppose Georg Elser had acted alone, as he claimed. Fritz Kolbe would have liked to talk about the event with some of his friends in the ministry. But he was soon made to understand that it was better not to speak openly on the subject, especially if you called into question the analysis authorized by Goebbels.
The Ministry of Propaganda in fact had taken advantage of the event to put on a grandiose spectacle. November 11 had been declared a “day of national mourning.” In Munich, ten thousand people had marched in silence past the Nazi-flag-draped coffins of the seven people killed in the attempt. The ceremony had been broadcast live on the radio. The event served more than one purpose, because the party had taken advantage of it to settle some internal scores. Fritz thought of Georg Elser, the young Swabian carpenter who looked like a bum. He then remembered what Toni Singer had said to him in South Africa in the course of his brief Masonic initiation. Toni Singer had spoken to him of the symbolism of the tarot and had told him that the only card without a number, hence excluded from the game, was the Fool. This card was the symbol of the authentic initiate, able to see a world inaccessible to ordinary mortals. It pictured a vagabond, holding a staff in his right hand, his pack over his left shoulder, pursued by a dog trying to bite him, with his eyes turned toward the sky.
3
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Berlin, May 10, 1940
The offensive in the West had begun. The Wehrmacht was in Holland and was heading for Belgium. Walking toward the Kottler, a restaurant and café on Motzstrasse in the Schöneberg neighborhood, Fritz Kolbe could not help showing his agitated state: He kicked every pebble he saw and muttered incomprehensible words under his breath. Passersby turned their heads to look at this lunatic walking at full speed, but he kept going, paying no attention to his surroundings. With his black leather coat and his eyes glowing beneath the brim of his hat, he might almost have been taken for an agent of the Gestapo.
The Café Kottler was a place of relative freedom. It was possible to have quiet discussions there because the tables were set in alcoves and discreetly lit with candles. The privacy of discussions was ensured by the music of the zither player who livened up the atmosphere every evening. In short, it was a safe place. The owner was a trustworthy man, a Swabian who pretended to admire the regime but had his own opinions. Above the bar he had hung a sign intended to lull the Gestapo’s curiosity: Der Deutsche grüsst mit ‘Heil Hitler!’, next to an ad for Dörnberg liqueurs.
When he reached the café, Fritz went directly to the table in back, in a little quiet corner where he usually sat. The table had been reserved, as always, in the name of a more or less fictitious “sports association” created by Fritz Kolbe—a method enabling him to avoid awakening the suspicion of the authorities, particularly because Fritz truly was an exercise enthusiast and he trained several times a week in various individual and team sports. The “association” assembled old childhood friends, most of whom he had met on Wandervogel hikes, with whom Fritz now played chess at the Kottler when they were not running in the Grunewald or Wannsee woods. Among them was Walter Girgner, his closest friend, a bon vivant with a talent for business (he had founded a clothing company that was now obliged to work for the Wehrmacht), Kurt Arndt, a police captain, and Kurt Weinhold (nicknamed Leuko), an engineer at Siemens. Even though he had set up house with a certain Lieschen Walter (about whom nothing is known), Fritz was leading the life of a confirmed bachelor.
“What’s gotten into you, Fritz?” said Walter Girgner, seeing his friend’s distressed look. “This time, the war has entered an irreversible phase,” said Fritz. “We are in Holland and Belgium. And then what? France? England? Where is all this going to end? What revolts me is the knowledge that my own ministry has put the cream of its intelligence at the service of this new offensive. For months, the jurists of the Foreign Ministry have been assembling so-called evidence to demonstrate that Holland and Belgium are not maintaining their neutrality. Did you hear Ribbentrop’s press conference this morning? To make sure that our neighbors do remain neutral, we invade them! What cynicism! They call it a ‘protective measure’! If I had been consul at Stavanger, God knows what role that would have had me play in this history of madmen.”
Fritz and his friends agreed that enough was enough and that something had to be done, but what? Since they had renewed their acquaintance in November 1939, they had asked themselves this question every week, and they always ended up feeling as though they were going around in circles and about to go mad (“Sometimes I was doubting who was mad, whether all the others or myself,” Fritz explained after the war).
“Speaking for myself, I can no longer tolerate these lies,” said Fritz. “We have to do everything to prevent this band of assassins from continuing to act. Have you read the latest news? A couple has just been taken away by the Gestapo after being denounced by their own daughter! A chicken thief has been sentenced to death by a special court, in the name of the new provisions of war legislation and the fight against ‘parasites of the people.’ But it’s the Nazis who are a band of vermin and crooks. Everyone agrees, speaking like me and saying that this war is insane, so why doesn’t anyone do anything, why?”
There was an awkward silence. Fritz had an idea. The group ought to distribute anonymous leaflets, write counter-propaganda to denounce the official lies. Tomorrow, he would set to work at home. Writing with his left hand and wearing gloves, in capital letters, he would set down expressions like the ones that circulated in the Café Kottler at night: “What is pessimism? Not winning the war and maintaining Nazi power. What is optimism? Losing the war and seeing the Nazis go.” Or else, inspired by a popular song: “Everything flees and everything leaves / Soon the end of Hitler and the party.” These little squibs would be sent to big companies, big stores, and other places likely to ensure that their content was widely disseminated. They would be accompanied by a little note along these lines: “If you don’t agree with this message, please bring it to the nearest police station.” The idea was to stir up trouble in people’s minds. Above all, they could not get caught. They would have to multiply precautions when carrying the leaflets, never send them more than once from the same place, learn to hug the walls at certain late hours.
Pleased with his resolution, Fritz did not talk about it immediately to his friends. He preferred to wait until there were fewer customers in the room and he had only familiar faces around him. While waiting, he began to recite aloud a few words by Friedrich Schiller: the knights’ song from Wallenstein’s Camp, which he knew by heart because he had sung it often when he was a Wandervogeclass="underline" “Till life has been staked for the rise or the fall / Your life will never be won at all.” Fritz noted with satisfaction that these words had a certain effect around him. He knew that Schiller was looked on favorably by the Nazis (unlike Goethe, whose Masonic inclinations made him suspect), and he was taking no risks by quoting some lines aloud. He called to the zither player to ask if he could play the melody of the knights’ song. The musician agreed for a small tip. The little group, followed by the whole café (including policemen in uniform who were among the customers that evening) intoned the martial air, too well known to be suspected of the slightest subversiveness: “Freedom has vanished out of the land, / Only masters and slaves will you find; / Deceit and treachery now command / Among craven humankind.”