“Abram. Is he a Jew?”
“I’m not sure. But, yes, probably.” Himmler shrugged. “But that can’t be allowed to matter.”
“You’ve spoken to Kersten?”
“This evening on the telephone, before I left Berlin. Hewitt told Felix that he thought negotiations could only begin after we have made a move to get rid of Hitler.”
At this mention of the unmentionable, both men grew silent.
Then von Ribbentrop said, “The Russians aren’t nearly so narrow in their thinking. As you know, I’ve met Madame de Kollontay, their ambassador in Sweden, on a number of occasions. She says Marshal Stalin was shocked that Roosevelt made this demand for unconditional surrender without even consulting him. All the Soviet Union really cares about is the restoration of its pre-1940 borders and a proper level of financial compensation for her losses.”
“Money, of course,” snorted Himmler. “It goes without saying that’s the only thing these Communists are interested in. All Stalin really wants is Russia’s factories rebuilt at Germany’s expense. And Eastern Europe handed to him on a plate, of course. Yes, by God, the Allies are going to find out damn soon that we’re all that stands between them and the Popovs.
“You know, I’ve made a special study of the Popovs,” continued Himmler, “and it’s my conservative calculation that so far the war has cost the Red Army more than two million dead, prisoners, and disabled. It’s one of the things I’m going to speak about in Posen. I expect them to sacrifice at least another two million during their winter offensive. Already the SS Division ‘Das Reich’ reports that, in some cases, the divisions opposing us have contained whole companies of fourteen-year-old boys. Mark my words, by next spring they’ll be using twelve-year-old girls to fight us. What happens to Russian youth is a matter of total indifference to me, of course, but it tells me that human life means absolutely nothing to them. And it never ceases to amaze me that the British and the Americans can accept as their allies a people capable of sacrificing ten thousand women and children to build a tank ditch. If that is what the British and the Americans are willing to base their continued existence on, then I don’t see how they’re in any position to lecture us on the proper conduct of the war.”
Von Ribbentrop sipped some of Himmler’s wine, although he much preferred the champagne he had been drinking in his own carriage, and shook his head. “I don’t believe that Roosevelt knows the nature of the beast to which he has chained himself,” he said. “Churchill is much better informed about the Bolshevik and, as he has said, he would make an ally of the devil in order to defeat Germany. But I really don’t think Roosevelt can have any real conception of the gross brutality of his ally.”
“And yet we know for a fact he was informed of the Katyn Forest massacre’s true authors,” said Himmler.
“Yes, but did he believe it?”
“How could he not believe it? The evidence was incontrovertible. The dossier that was compiled by the German War Crimes Bureau would have established Russian guilt in the eyes of even the most impartial observer.”
“But surely that’s the point,” said von Ribbentrop. “Roosevelt is hardly impartial. With the Russians continuing to deny their culpability, Roosevelt can choose not to believe the authority of his own eyes. If he had believed it, we would have heard something. It’s the only possible explanation.”
“I fear you may be right. They prefer to believe the Russians to us. And there’s little chance of proving otherwise. Not now that Smolensk is back under Russian control. So we must find another way to enlighten the Americans.” Himmler collected a thick file off his desk and handed it to von Ribbentrop, who, noticing that Himmler was wearing not one but two gold rings, wondered for a moment if they were both wedding bands from each of his two wives. “Yes, I think that I might send him that,” said Himmler.
Von Ribbentrop put on reading glasses and moved to open the file. “What is it?” he asked, suspiciously.
“I call it the Beketovka File. Beketovka is a Soviet labor camp near Stalingrad, run by the NKVD. After the defeat of the Sixth Army in February, some quarter of a million German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Russians and held in camps like Beketovka, which was the largest.”
“Was?”
“The file was put together by one of Colonel Gehlen’s agents in the NKVD and has only just come into my hands. It’s a remarkable piece of work. Very thorough. Gehlen does recruit some very capable people. There are photographs, statistics, eyewitness accounts. According to the camp register, approximately fifty thousand German soldiers arrived at Beketovka last February. Today less than five thousand of them are still alive.”
Von Ribbentrop heard himself gasp. “You’re joking.”
“About such a thing as this? I think not. Go ahead, Joachim. Open it. You’ll find it quite edifying.”
As a rule, the minister tried to avoid the reports arriving at the Foreign Ministry’s Department Deutschland. These were filed by the SS and the SD and detailed the deaths of countless Jews in the extermination camps in the East. But he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of German soldiers, especially when his own son was a soldier, a lieutenant with the Leibstandarte-SS and, mercifully, still alive. What if it had been his son who had been taken prisoner at Stalingrad? He opened the file.
Von Ribbentrop found himself looking at a photograph of what at first glance resembled an illustration he had once seen by Gustave Dore, in Milton’s Paradise Lost. It was a second or two before he realized that these were the naked bodies not of angels, or even devils, but human beings, apparently frozen hard and stacked six or seven deep, one on top of the other, like beef carcasses in some hellish deep freeze. “My God,” he said, realizing that the line of carcasses was eighty or ninety meters long. “My God. These are German soldiers?”
Himmler nodded.
“How did they die? Were they shot?”
“Perhaps a lucky few were shot,” said Himmler. “Mostly they died of starvation, cold, sickness, exhaustion, and neglect. You really should read the account of one of the prisoners, a young lieutenant from the Seventy-sixth Infantry Division. It was smuggled out of the camp in the vain hope that the Luftwaffe might be able to mount some sort of bombing raid and put them out of their misery. It gives a pretty good picture of life at Beketovka. Yes, it’s a quite remarkable piece of reportage.”
Von Ribbentrop’s weak blue eyes passed quickly over the next photograph, a close-up shot of a pile of frozen corpses. “Perhaps later,” he said, removing his glasses.
“No, von Ribbentrop, read it now,” insisted Himmler. “Please. The man who wrote this account is, or was, just twenty-two, the same age as your own son. We owe it to all those who won’t ever come back to the Fatherland to understand their suffering and their sacrifice. To read such things, that is what will make us hard enough to do what must be done. There’s no room here for human weakness. Don’t you agree?”
Von Ribbentrop’s face stiffened as he replaced his reading glasses. He disliked being cornered, but could see no alternative to reading the document, as Himmler had bidden.
“Better still,” the Reichsfuhrer said, “read aloud to me what young Zahler has written.”
“Aloud?”
“Yes, aloud. The truth is, I have only read it once myself, as I could not bear to read it again. Read it to me now, Joachim, and then we will talk about what we must do.”
The foreign minister cleared his throat nervously, recalling the last occasion on which he had read a document aloud. He remembered the day exactly: June 22, 1941-the day when he had announced to the press that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union; and as von Ribbentrop proceeded to read, the sense of irony was not lost on him.
When he had finished reading, he removed his glasses, swallowing uncomfortably. Heinrich Zahler’s account of life and death at Beketovka seemed to have conspired with the motion of the train and the smell of Himmler’s cigar to leave him feeling a little off-color. He stood up unsteadily and, excusing himself for a moment, walked into the concertina gangway between the coaches to draw a breath of fresh air into his lungs.