Going back to the 1930s in Berlin, at Giesebrechtstrasse 11, a fabled (and swanky) brothel run by Madame Kitty Schmidt, known as Salon Kitty, is working flat out. Foreign diplomats and the cream of German public, quasi-social life stop in at Salon Kitty: bankers, industrialists and politicians. Discretion is guaranteed, the services are first class, and the prices are out of this world. But Hitler grows ever more powerful and Kitty Schmidt gets nervous. By 1939 Salon Kitty is no longer frequented by refined Jewish businessmen, because the Brownshirts are beating up the refined Jewish businessmen, shutting down their companies, destroying their property, and then, rough and ready, sweaty and drunk, they come barging into Kitty’s to “get relief”. The police are running raids more often. Kitty is no fool. Kitty is, in fact, alarmed, and her business losses mount. Through Jews who are leaving Germany, and whom Kitty Schmidt is secretly helping to escape, she transfers her considerable takings to British banks and on 28 June, 1939, she leaves Berlin, meaning to join the riches that await her in London. But the Gestapo functions without a hitch. Kitty Schmidt arrives at the German-Dutch border, where she is immediately arrested by members of the secret police and taken straight to Walther Schellenberg, cunning and powerful head of the Sicherheitsdienst, the State counterespionage service, later a major general of the Waffen-S.S. and one of the organizers of the hunt for the Red Orchestra Soviet spy group. They introduce the 57-year-old madam Kitty Schmidt to the darkness of the infamous Prinz Albrechtstrasse, where Walther Schellenberg shoves a fat file under her nose that bulges with her subversive and illegal activities. Now take a look, dear Kitty, Walther says. These accusations guarantee you an unlimited amount of time at some cosy concentration camp. But, Walther Schellenberg continues, if you do something for us, perhaps there is something we can do for you.
Come on, forget those dolls, forget the Borghilds, chuckles S.S.-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, organizer of the “Night of the Long Knives” and the brain behind the Einsatzgruppen, chairman of the conference at Wannsee, later known as the Butcher of Prague, who at this juncture is head of the S.S. Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (R.u.S.H.A.), the race and settlement office, transformed as it was from an unprepossessing institution into a powerful organization wielding authority over a broad network of informants with thousands of dossiers on Communists, unionists, social democrats, on rich industrialists, Jews, even members of their own Nazi Party and S.A. (Sturmabteilung) henchmen. Reinhard Heydrich, the reclusive sadist, accomplished gymnast, skilled fencer, fearless pilot, is raised in high society in a family of musicians and artists. Forget the dolls! exclaims Heydrich. We have genuine, first-class ladies ready to give their all for their homeland! After the war, while in prison, Walther Schellenberg pens his memoirs, which he calls Labyrinth, and in which he asserts that “their” women, who worked at Kitty’s, were qualified and cultivated ladies from the Berlin demi-monde, but that there were others, too, from the cream of German society, women prepared to serve their homeland without reservation. On account of his liver cancer, Schellenberg is released from prison after serving two years of a six-year sentence, and in 1952 he dies in Turin, convinced that he has been one of the most successful spies of all time.
The war is fast approaching. Information leaks now and then, with wine and beautiful women, in the throes of coital passion, all sorts of things slip out. So Reinhard orders Walther: Put pressure on Kitty Schmidt. Kitty Schmidt hands over her famous house of ill repute to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and signs a secret statement, according to which she will ask no questions and do whatever she is told. She also signs that she understands, should she fail to obey, that they will execute her immediately. And so, although prostitution is expressly banned, or rather strictly forbidden, workmen move into the house at Giesebrechtstrasse 11, following Walther Schellenberg’s orders. A complete refurbishment ensues; a new, more beautiful, luxurious, perfect brothel is built; a high-class whorehouse for V.I.P.s and spies. All the rooms, from the corridors to the boudoirs on the third floor of the building at Giesebrechtstrasse 11 have double walls into which surveillance equipment is installed, and from it hidden cables run down to a bricked-off portion of the cellar where there are five monitoring desks, each with two record turntables and wax discs spinning on them, which means that conversations from ten rooms can be recorded on those wax discs simultaneously.
Then S.D.-Untersturmführer Karl Schwartz sets out to snare personnel. These unprecedented raids on whorehouses, nightclubs and streets corners multiply. Young women are pulled aside and grilled in a rigorous selection process. Doctors, psychiatrists, linguists and university professors all help Schwartz whittle his shortlist of ninety breathtakingly beautiful potential “activists” down to twenty first-class women. Under lock and key for seven weeks in a sealed-off wing of the Sonthofen Officers’ Academy, amid thick forests, small lakes and natural wonders, which they have no chance to appreciate because of the snow, surrounded by fresh air they have no time to enjoy, the beauties spend their nights engaged in a fundamental re-education. After gruelling training in foreign languages, marksmanship and unarmed combat; after instruction in politics and ideology, and courses in international and domestic economics; after the study of secret codes and cyphers, and memorizing countless charts of military insignia, uniforms and decorations, twenty peerless Nikitas of Nazism and counterintelligence are born, o temporal o mores! R.u.S.H.A. finally inserts them into the redecorated Salon Kitty in March 1940, and they write reports after every instance of sexual intercourse, unaware that they, too, are being recorded.
Madame Schmidt receives her final instructions. Carry on as before, Schwartz tells her, or was it Schellenberg, either way. Welcome all your old customers. Keep on your existing girls. But every so often we will send along special guests, might this be Schwartz speaking? On no account are you to introduce them to one of your regular girls. Show them this album of twenty girls, Schwartz, apparently, says. When they choose their lady friend, phone for her. She will arrive in ten minutes. You will not discuss their clients with these girls, and they will leave immediately after the special guest of yours, of ours, has left the building.
How will I know this is a special guest? asks Madame Kitty, because she can barely wait for work to begin again.
Our guests will use the codeword “I come from Rothenburg”, Schwartz says, or was it Schellenberg?