Having nothing else to do, Fritz plunged into reading the newspapers. The press was entirely subject to party propaganda, but the most important facts could be found in it: “The wearing of a yellow star is obligatory for Jews beginning this month of September 1941.” News from the front was more difficult to decipher. The triumphant communiqués of the army high command (the OKW, or Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) hardly made it possible to get a precise idea of the real situation. “Siege of Leningrad, imminent fall of Kiev”: that was about all that could be learned from the day’s papers. There was no need to try to find out more, the rest was merely a long lyrical and indigestible outpouring on the theme of the “heroic action of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht” or on the battle of Kiev, “the greatest of all time.”
Everyone knew in the fall of 1941 that there could no longer be any question of a quick end to the war. Fritz recalled the rumors heard in Berlin: there were more and more frequent whispers that Hitler had had terrible outbursts of fury. The führer was said to have an increasingly pronounced tendency to lose his composure in the face of the enemy. He had been heard to howl with anger when Rudolf Hess went to England in May 1941, and when Churchill and Roosevelt offered assistance to Stalin in mid-August 1941, making possible for the first time a coordinated war on two fronts. According to an unverifiable rumor, sometimes Hitler would bite anything at hand: his handkerchief, a cushion, and even the curtains!
In the train taking Fritz to the “wolf’s lair,” the night was very dark: it was traveling through what used to be the Danzig corridor with all lights out, for fear of bombardment or sabotage by the Polish resistance. At break of day, following the instructions he had received, he put on the uniform that he would have to wear at the führer’s headquarters, a feldgrau-colored uniform provided by the ministry. He had difficulty recognizing himself in the mirror. He hesitated particularly before putting on the headgear: a peaked cap with a double strand of aluminum above the visor and a badge representing an eagle holding a swastika in its claws.
Fritz arrived in the early morning at Gerdauen, a little town that looked like a border post, sixty kilometers southeast of Königsberg. A Foreign Ministry car was waiting to take him directly to Karl Ritter. They went through the countryside of Masuria and the forest of Rastenburg (still more birch woods), with silvered lakes and magnificent glades, but also marshes and peat bogs. “The region is infested with mosquitoes,” warned the driver, advising Fritz to cover his hands and neck with Dr. Zinsser’s lotion, made in Leipzig, “excellent as a preventive measure.”
After the little town of Angerburg, they plunged again into the forest. There was no way of telling where they were, no indication of the “Führerhauptquartier.” If the road signs were to be believed, the car was headed toward an enigmatic factory supposedly belonging to a celebrated precision instrument maker (Askania Werke). “Askania? That’s all nonsense. That lets them conceal the real nature of the place,” the driver told Fritz in answer to his question about the meaning of these strange signs.
After half an hour had passed, and they had gone through several guard posts at the entry of various “forbidden zones” protected by high fences, barbed wire, and patrols, they could see the first wooden huts and half-buried bunkers. They finally arrived at a clearing where three trains were standing. They could not be seen from a distance because they were thoroughly camouflaged, like the railroad track, with nets covered in fake foliage. And yet they occupied a space as large as a marshaling yard. One of the three trains held the “field offices” of the foreign minister. Next to Ribbentrop’s was Göring’s—the most beautiful of all, a veritable palace on wheels—and finally Heinrich Himmler’s. This had been the first “railroad headquarters” to see the light, and since then all the high officials of the regime had wanted to have, like the Reichsführer SS, their private train (Sonderzug) close to the front. The three trains were equipped with everything necessary: private salons, radio room, dining car, toilets, and showers (and even a screening room in Himmler’s train). At the ends of the cars were antiaircraft batteries in case of enemy attack.
It was after ten in the morning and the heat was stifling, even in the shade. A smell of tar drifted through the air. Fritz was brought to one of the cars of Ribbentrop’s train, where he was asked to wait for a few minutes. Karl Ritter was not yet there. While waiting for his boss in a little compartment that resembled an antechamber, Fritz glanced outside. There were patrols with dogs. Fritz also noticed a small group of officers having a conversation, each with mosquito netting around his head. Fritz held back his laughter.
Soon, an armored car arrived, stirring up the dust. This was Karl Ritter’s car. At Ritter’s right, Fritz thought he recognized Walther Hewel, a close confidant of the führer. Hewel, a Nazi stalwart from the early days, ensured constant contact between Ribbentrop and Hitler. There were also a stenographer and a few officers of the high command of the Wehrmacht whom Fritz did not know. Everyone was in uniform. Karl Ritter looked even smaller than usual when he was seen next to Walther Hewel, a strong man with a powerful presence. Hewel did not at all correspond to the clichéd image of the Aryan man (he was dark-haired), which had not prevented him from becoming an SS-Brigadeführer, the equivalent of a brigadier general in the elite order of the Nazi regime.
Karl Ritter looked irritated when he came into the train car, soon followed by his colleagues, and sat at a table covered with campaign maps. He had not seen Fritz, who was hidden by a door ajar at the other end of the compartment and who was waiting to be called before showing himself. “Where can the minister be?” Ritter asked in an exasperated tone. “We had an appointment for ten o’clock!” “Mister Ambassador,” said Walter Hewel, “the minister usually gets up late, you know that very well. Right now, he is probably being taken care of by his personal barber in his private apartment,” he added, with a little ironic smile. Like many others, Walther Hewel detested Ribbentrop. He made no attempt to disguise his disregard for him, since Hewel was one of the few historic companions in arms of Adolf Hitler, and had personally participated at his side in the failed 1923 Munich putsch.
While waiting for Ribbentrop’s arrival, Karl Ritter questioned Walther Hewel about the evenings with Hitler in “forbidden zone number one,” a few kilometers from there. “It’s cold,” replied Hewel, “the führer never heats the rooms where he is. No one dares to speak for fear of being ridiculous. When he invites us into his ‘tea house’ after dinner, he spends the entire evening carrying on long monologues while drinking a brew made of fennel. He is attentive only to his dog Blondi. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to realize that there are ten people around him thinking only of going to bed. Last night he spoke for more than an hour about vegetarian cooking and the nausea meat makes him feel. He detests the idea that animals are killed so they can be eaten!” Karl Ritter displayed a sneering attitude and asked if it was allowed “at least to play bridge” (one of his favorite pastimes) at the führer’s evenings.
In Adolf Hitler’s circle, neither bridge nor any other game was played. The führer preferred long discussions in front of a skimpy fire. Walther Hewel described how, the night before, the führer had spoken at length of his plans for Russia, and that he had seemed very optimistic about the conquest of Moscow, “which shouldn’t take long to fall after Kiev.” He explained to his audience that once Moscow and Leningrad had been captured they should simply be wiped off the map. Russia would be a vast agricultural province and a source of raw materials from which Germany would take everything it needed. “When we have conquered the territory,” Hewel went on, “the führer thinks that it will not take much effort to control it. A bit like the British in India: an administration of 250,000 men should suffice, and a few divisions to put down possible rebellions.” The Russian, Hewel asserted, had a slave mentality: “The Russian, at bottom, is a kind of rabbit,” he said. “He doesn’t have the ability to transform himself into a ‘bee’ or an ‘ant,’ as we Germans can. There is no point in trying to make the Russian more intelligent than he is.” The Russia of tomorrow, Hewel continued, would look like something new: “German towns, and all around them countryside where Russian peasants will work. A little further on, there will be large territories for our army training.” There was a proposal to settle on the borders of this “oriental empire” peoples close to the Germans by blood, such as the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes, who would protect Germany from the “Asiatic hordes.” The führer thought that in the future Europe would be entirely united against America. “Even the English will be with us once we have conquered the Russian landmass and all its natural resources!”