I had this vision of Himmler red-faced and with a blocked nose (perhaps because I’ve had a nasty cold myself for the past four days) and my tyrannic imagination wouldn’t budge from this idea: I wanted a detail of this kind for the Reichsführer’s face. But clearly I wasn’t happy with the result: I got rid of it once again. I contemplated this nothingness between the first and third sentence for a long time. And, slowly, I began to type: “The blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull.”
As usual, I think of Oscar Wilde. It’s the same old story: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
108
Heydrich, who I imagine settled comfortably in the back of his black Mercedes, presses his briefcase tightly to his knees. It contains probably the most important document of his career, and of the Third Reich’s history.
The car zooms through the suburbs of Berlin. Outside, it’s a pleasant summer evening, and it’s difficult to imagine that the sky will soon be filled with black shapes dropping bombs. But a few damaged buildings, a few destroyed houses, a few hurrying passersby, is all it takes to bring to mind the extraordinary relentlessness of the Royal Air Force.
It’s already more than four months since Heydrich asked Eichmann to write the first draft of this document in order to get Göring’s approval. But they also needed the agreement of Rosenberg, the minister in charge of the eastern territories. And this nonentity is the one who made things difficult! Since then, Eichmann has worked hard on revising the text and all the problems seem to have been ironed out.
We are in the heart of the forest, north of Berlin. The Mercedes stops at the gates of a villa guarded by heavily armed SS men. This is Karinhall, the little baroque palace that Göring had built to console himself after the death of his first wife. The guards salute, the gates open, and the car sweeps up the driveway. Göring stands waiting on the steps, his expression jolly, his body squeezed into one of those eccentric uniforms that have earned him the nickname “Perfumed Nero.” He greets Heydrich effusively, happy to meet the fearsome head of the SD in person. Heydrich is well aware that everyone considers him the most dangerous man in the Reich, and it’s a source of vanity for him, but he also knows that if all the Nazi dignitaries court him so insistently, it is above all to try to weaken Himmler, his boss. Heydrich is an instrument for these men, not yet a rival. It’s true that in the devilish duo he forms with Himmler, he is thought to be the brains (“HHhH,” they say in the SS: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich—Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich), but he is still only the right-hand man, the subordinate, the number two. Heydrich is so ambitious that he will not be satisfied with this situation forever. But when he studies how the balance of power within the Party has evolved, he congratulates himself for having stayed faithful to Himmler, whose power continues to grow while Göring mopes in his mansion, half in disgrace since the Luftwaffe’s failure in England.
Yet Göring is still officially in charge of the Jewish question, and that’s why Heydrich is here tonight.
Before they get to the matter in hand, Heydrich must first suffer his host’s childish enthusiasms. Fat Hermann wants to show him his electric train set, a gift from the Prussian National Theater. He is very proud of it and plays with it every evening. Heydrich bears this patiently. After going into raptures over the private cinema, the Turkish baths, a room with a pharaonic ceiling, and even a lion called Caesar, he finally manages to sit down with Göring in a wood-paneled office. Now he can take out his precious paper, which he gives to the Reichsmarschall to read:
The Marshal of the Reich of Greater Germany
Delegate of the four-year plan
President of the council of ministers for the defense of the Reich
For the attention of:
Head of the Gestapo and the SD
SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich
Berlin
Supplementary to the task that has been entrusted to you by the edict of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of migration or evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby assign you the task of making all the necessary organizational, practical, and financial preparations in order to facilitate a total solution of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.
As far as these matters fall within the domain of other central organizations, those organizations should be involved.
Göring stops and smiles. Eichmann added this paragraph to satisfy Rosenberg. Heydrich smiles, too, though unable to hide his contempt for these bureaucratic ministers. Göring begins to read again:
Furthermore, I charge you to submit to me as soon as possible an overall plan of the preliminary organizational, practical, and financial measures necessary for the execution of the final solution of the Jewish question such as it is envisaged.
In silence, Göring dates and signs what will become for history the Ermächtigung: the authorization. Heydrich can’t suppress a contented grin. He tidies away the precious paper in his briefcase. It’s July 31, 1941, and we are present at the birth of the Final Solution. Heydrich will be its principal architect.
109
In the first draft, I’d written: “squeezed into a blue uniform.” I don’t know why, I just imagined it being blue. It’s true that in photos Göring often sports a pale blue uniform, but I don’t know what he was wearing on that particular day. He might just as easily have been in white, for example.
I’m not sure if this kind of scruple still makes much sense at this stage.
110
Bad Kreuznach, August ’41. The second German fencing championships have just taken place. The twelve best fencers of the Reichsonderklasse [literally “elite class of the Reich”] have been chosen and will receive a gold or silver medal from the NSRL (National Socialist Society for Gymnastics). In fifth place comes an Obergruppenführer [did the magazine editors make a mistake, or are they toadying up to Heydrich by giving him an anticipated promotion?] of the SS and general of police: it’s Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Gestapo and the SD. He joyfully received the congratulations of the public, but his whole attitude breathed the modesty of a true victor. Those who know him know that rest is, for him, an alien concept. No rest and no relaxation: that is his first principle, whether with regard to sport or to service.
(ARTICLE APPEARING IN THE SPECIALIST MAGAZINE
GYMNASTICS AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION
)
Those who know him know that, above all, it’s better not to skimp on praise for this tremendous thirty-six-year-old athlete, nor to dwell on how stressed the judges might have been feeling when they had to decide whether to validate a strike against the head of the Gestapo. Nor is it a good idea to mention Commodus or Caligula, both of whom fought in the arena against gladiators who knew perfectly well that it was not in their interests to win against the emperor.