In Berlin, we had some trouble justifying ourselves, but less than I expected; not like ordinary soldiers, who were unceremoniously hanged or shot on suspicion alone. Even before shaving or washing, Thomas went to present himself to Kaltenbrunner, whose headquarters were now in the Kurfürstenstrasse, in Eichmann’s old premises, one of the last RSHA buildings still pretty much standing. Since I didn’t know where to report to—even Grothmann had left Berlin—I accompanied him. We had agreed on a story that was for the most part plausible: I was taking advantage of my leave to try to evacuate my sister and her husband, and the Russian offensive had caught me short with Thomas, who had come to help me; Thomas had had the foresight to provide himself with a mission order from Huppenkothen before leaving. Kaltenbrunner listened to us in silence and then dismissed us without any comment, informing me that the Reichsführer, who had resigned the day before from his command of Army Group Vistula, was in Hohenlychen. The report on Piontek’s death took me no time at all, but I had to fill out a number of forms to justify the loss of the vehicle. In the evening, we went to Thomas’s place, in Wannsee: the house was intact, but there was neither electricity nor running water, and we could only have a quick wash with cold water, and shave with difficulty before going to bed. The next morning, wearing a clean uniform, I went to Hohenlychen to present myself to Brandt. As soon as he saw me, he ordered me to shower, have my hair cut, and come back when I looked presentable. The hospital had hot showers, I spent almost an hour under the stream of water, voluptuously; then I went to the barber and, while I was at it, had myself shaved with hot water and sprinkled with eau de Cologne. Almost cheerful, I went back to see Brandt. He listened to my story severely, berated me curtly for having cost the Reich, through my imprudence, several weeks of my work, then informed me that in the meantime I had been reported missing; my office was dissolved, my colleagues reassigned, and my files archived. For now, the Reichsführer had no more need of my services; and Brandt ordered me to return to Berlin to put myself at Kaltenbrunner’s disposal. After the interview, his secretary led me into his office and handed me my personal mail, transmitted by Asbach when the Oranienburg office was closed: mostly bills, a note from Ohlendorf about my wound in February, and a letter from Helene, which I pocketed without opening. Then I went back to Berlin. A chaotic atmosphere reigned at the Kurfürstenstrasse: the building now housed the headquarters of the RSHA and of the Staatspolizei, as well as numerous representatives of the SD; everyone needed more room, hardly anyone knew what he was supposed to be doing, all wandered aimlessly through the hallways, trying to look busy. Since Kaltenbrunner couldn’t receive me before nightfall, I settled into a chair in a corner and resumed my reading of
L’Éducation sentimentale, which had suffered again from the crossing of the Oder, but which I was determined to finish. Kaltenbrunner had me summoned just as Frédéric meets Madame Arnoux for the last time; it was frustrating. He could have waited a little, especially since he had no idea what to do with me. He ended up, almost at random, appointing me liaison officer with the OKW. My work consisted of this: three times a day, I had to go to the Bendlerstrasse and bring back dispatches about the situation on the front; the rest of the time, I could calmly daydream. The Flaubert was soon finished, but I found other books. I could also have gone out walking, but that wasn’t recommended. The city was in a bad state. Everywhere, windows were gaping; one regularly heard part of some building collapse with a huge roar. In the streets, teams of people tirelessly cleared away the rubble and piled it up in neatly spaced heaps so that the rare cars could pass, slaloming their way through, but often these piles too toppled over, and they had to start again. The spring air was acrid, full of black smoke and brick dust gritty in the teeth. The last major raid had occurred three days before our return: on that occasion, the Luftwaffe had introduced its new weapon, surprisingly rapid jet aircraft, which had inflicted some losses on the enemy; since then, there had been only harassing Mosquito raids. The Sunday after our arrival was the first fine spring day of 1945: in the Tiergarten, the trees were budding, grass was appearing on the heaps of debris and turning the gardens green. But we had few occasions to take advantage of the nice weather. Food rations, ever since the loss of the eastern territories, were reduced to a strict minimum; even the best restaurants didn’t have much. The ministries were being emptied of their personnel to fill out the Wehrmacht, but with the destruction of most of the index files and the general disorganization, most of the men thus freed waited for weeks to be called up. At the Kurfürstenstrasse, they had set up an office that delivered false papers from the Wehrmacht or from other organizations to senior RSHA officials who were regarded as compromised. Thomas had several cards made up for himself, all different, and showed them to me, laughing: engineer at Krupp’s, Hauptmann of the Wehrmacht, civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture. He wanted me to do the same, but I kept putting it off; instead I had another pay book and SD card made up, to replace the ones I had destroyed in Pomerania. From time to time, I saw Eichmann, who was still hanging around there, completely dejected. He was very nervous, he knew that if our enemies got their hands on him, he was finished, he wondered what was going to happen to him. He had sent his family away and wanted to join them; I saw him one day in a hallway arguing bitterly, probably about this, with Blobel, who was also wandering about without knowing what to do, almost constantly drunk, hateful, enraged. A few days before, Eichmann had met the Reichsführer in Hohenlychen, and had returned from this interview extremely depressed; he invited me to his office to drink some schnapps and to listen to him talk, he seemed to have a certain regard for me and treated me almost as his confidant, though I had no idea why. I drank in silence and let him vent. “I don’t understand,” he said plaintively, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. “The Reichsführer said to me: ‘Eichmann, if I had to start over again, I’d organize the concentration camps as the British do.’ That’s what he said to me. He added: ‘I made a mistake there.’ What could he have meant? I don’t understand. Do you understand? Maybe he meant the camps should have been, I don’t know, more elegant, more artful, more polite.” I didn’t understand what the Reichsführer had meant, either, but it was all the same to me, really. I knew from Thomas, who had immediately plunged back into his intrigues, that Himmler, prompted by his Finnish masseur, Kersten, and by Schellenberg, kept making gestures—mostly incoherent ones, to tell the truth—toward the Anglo-Americans: “Schellenberg managed to get him to say: ‘I protect the throne. That doesn’t necessarily mean the one who is sitting on it.’ That’s real progress,” Thomas explained to me.—“Truly. Tell me, Thomas, why are you still in Berlin?” The Russians had stopped on the Oder, but everyone knew it was just a question of time. Thomas smiled: “Schellenberg asked me to stay. To keep an eye on Kaltenbrunner and especially Müller. They’re running a bit wild.” Everyone, in fact, was running a bit wild, Himmler first and foremost, Schellenberg, Kammler who now had his own direct access to the Führer and no longer listened to the Reichsführer; Speer, it was said, was racing around the Ruhr trying, in the face of the American advance, to countermand the Führer’s destruction orders. The population was losing all hope, and Goebbels’s propaganda wasn’t helping things: by way of consolation, he promised that in case of defeat the Führer,