The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Read online

  “Fucking Dollfuss!” I spit on the ground after the first two hours, looking at my hands where watery blisters were already forming under the skin. We had eleven more hours to go. “You won’t live long, son of a bitch. I’ll get to you one day, I swear to God, I’ll get to you, you fucking bastard!”

  “You and me both, my brother, you and me both.” I caught a grin from my fellow SS member from Abschnitt VIII, Bruno Schuster, who was working in the line next to me, a monster of a guy, just like me, over six feet tall and with a grip of a grizzly bear. He had been my sparring partner several times during our training, and we used to beat each other senseless much to our superiors enjoyment and our fellow trainees’ amazement. Even though I was now technically Bruno’s superior, we still shared the closest friendship and had immense respect for each other. I grinned back at him; I had no doubts that he would follow me without any questions asked.

  “What are we doing?” another fellow SS man, overhearing our little conversation, chimed in.

  “Planning that fucker Dollfuss’s assassination for what he’s putting us through,” Bruno replied, savoring every word.

  “I’m in!”

  “In what?” The next SS man in line pricked up his ears, also putting away his mallet.

  “Dollfuss assassination.”

  “I’m in!”

  “If one is in, everybody’s in, you all swore to it,” Bruno grumbled and wiped his glistening with sweat forehead with the back of his hand, even though it was a freezing January day outside. However, after only two hours of working in the quarries we had already shed our coats and were working only in our shirts, steaming with body heat in the frosty air. “I say, after we’re out of here, we catch the first train to Vienna, catch him when he least expects it and fuck him up royally.”

  “I’m not going to fuck him up.” I inspected my hands again and rolled my shoulders up and down, trying to get some feeling back into my numb back. “I’ll kill that bastard.”

  Bruno liked that, judging by his approving chuckle, just like the rest of my comrades.

  “He’ll do it.” Bruno winked at our grinning co-conspirators, jerking his thumb in my direction. “He almost killed me once, and I’m his friend! I wouldn’t want to meet this guy in a dark alley, and especially if he’s pissed, like he is now.”

  More chuckles and encouraging rumble followed, as I, not without satisfaction, watched the chain reaction I had involuntarily created, just with one phrase. The word about my plans concerning Dollfuss was travelling along the line, finding more and more supporters amongst the SS staff, who were as ‘grateful’ to our dearest dictator for making us break our backs for free as I was. However, the guard, supervising our sector, didn’t take too well to our chatter and the break we decided to take without asking for permission, and quickly – and rightfully – assuming me as an instigator, strolled in my direction, his hand resting on his holster.

  “Who allowed you to stop working?” he asked, frowning, but keeping a reasonable distance. Smart decision, taking into consideration that he hardly reached my shoulder even in his uniform cap.

  “We’re on break,” I answered with as much sarcasm and contempt as I could possibly put into my voice.

  “And who sanctioned your break, number 14735?” The guard tried to return my sarcasm, reading the number sewn onto my shirt.

  “First of all, my name is Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Dr. Kaltenbrunner to you.” I gave him my most charming smile, causing a quiet rumble of encouragement from my fellow SS brethren, who stopped working altogether and were anticipating a major showdown. “And second, these are my subordinates, and I sanctioned the break.”

  “I’m the boss here! I say when you work and when you take breaks!”

  I almost applauded the bravery of the guard, who was trying his best to keep the order in his hands, but in the view of no one going back to work, was failing miserably.

  “Are you sure about that?” I stepped towards him, my hands on my hips and my eyes squinted in the most testing manner.

  He unbuttoned his holster, but didn’t step away.

  “Are we going to have a problem, me and you?” he asked me, placing his hand on top of the gun.

  “It depends on your behavior.”

  This time the cheers and laughter were much more audible. The guard quickly scanned the crowd, ascertained the situation and slowly stepped away.

  “Go back to work,” he said, throwing a last glance at me.

  “I didn’t hear the magic word.” I knew that I was pushing my luck, but once I was angry and in the state of mind I was in now, I couldn’t care less about the consequences.

  “What?” The guard scowled, not believing that I actually had the insolence to say it.

  “I said, I didn’t hear the magic word. I don’t know how your mama raised you, but my mama taught me good manners when I was a little boy. She taught me to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ like all well-bred and polite people do. Didn’t they teach you that? How awfully they must have raised you.”

  The guard went pale, either from anger or astonishment under my very amused gaze.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, if you want me and my subordinates to go back to work, you just have to ask politely. ‘Dr. Kaltenbrunner, please, go back to work’ will do just fine.” I gave him another one of my most charming smiles, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he warned me, taking his gun halfway out of the holster.

  “Or what?” I arched my brow. “There are at least fifty of us around you, and you have only eight bullets in your gun. We’ll rip you apart with our bare hands before you take a single shot. I am ready to die today. Are you?”

  Nobody was laughing this time. The silence amongst the SS men around him, watching him without blinking like a pack of wolves watching its prey, was almost eerie. The guard sniffled, shifted uneasily from one foot to another and swallowed hard.

  “Dr. Kaltenbrunner, please, go back to work,” he mumbled at last, clearly hoping to be on any other place on Earth, but not amongst us.

  “Thank you very much.” I bowed mockingly and picked up my mallet, easily flinging the heavy instrument on my shoulder as if it didn’t weigh anything. “It’s nice to do business with polite people.”

  He quickly turned around without responding and started walking away, from time to time throwing glances behind his back. I watched him retreat with his tail between his legs, and then turned back to the SS men behind my back. The silent admiration written all over their faces said it all: I was their undisputable leader, and they were ready to follow and obey me like I once swore to follow and obey my leaders. They were looking up to me like I was once looking up to my leaders. I couldn’t say that recognition didn’t feel good. I winked at the line of the expectant eyes waiting for my command and grinned.

  “Well, guys, you heard the boss. Let’s go back to work!”

  They picked up their instruments with an eagerness that surprised even me.

  Chapter 13

  Nuremberg prison, March 1946

  The eagerness with which former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was protecting us, his former subordinates, surprised even me, and I thought that I had seen everything in this life. He was sitting in the defendant’s booth, having been stripped of all his military regalia, but keeping the grand attire he used to have in the days of his glory. He was the first defendant who the prosecution called, and in his opening statement the first thing he said was that he was willing to take up all the crimes that all of us were charged with, and to be the only one held responsible.

  “These men here,” Göring said in his powerful voice, pointing at the dock where all of us were sitting, “are nothing more than simple soldiers following their superiors’ orders. You’re calling them the main perpetrators, ha! Half of them I only met several times in my life, some of them only here in Nuremberg, so you can make your conclusions about their position. The main conspirators – the Füh
rer, Himmler, Bormann and Goebbels – are absent, and this leaves me as their rightful leader. I have always emphasized while giving my orders that I am the one who will presume responsibility in any outcome to follow, and here I am to stand by my words. These men were following the Führer’s orders, and their only fault lays in the fact that they were too blind in their faith in him. I am willing to take up the guilt and charges brought up against each and every one of them, as any decent leader would do. Prosecute me alone, I will not break my word.”

  “Noble, but already pointless,” I heard Alfred Rosenberg, who was sitting next to me and was usually silent, mutter under his breath.

  I looked at him and he sighed, meeting my gaze, and then shrugged indifferently, as if saying, we all know what the outcome will be. Why all the loud words? They don’t mean anything anymore. I looked back at Göring and envied the fearless façade he was still able to put on in front of his interrogators, to bare his teeth back at them, to laugh in their faces and send them off in hardly contained fury with his sarcasm and contempt. I used to be like that too, back in some other life, which wasn’t mine as it seemed now, but then something snapped in me and there was nothing left to fight for. Rosenberg was right, it was all meaningless and pointless.

  I still walked up to the former Reichsmarschall during our scheduled walk later that day and offered him my hand, not too sure if he was going to take it. For the most part, my fellow co-defendants weren’t too fond of me.

  “Kaltenbrunner.” Göring looked at my hand, squeezed it in his firm grip and continued his stroll, not asking me to join him but not telling me to get lost either. I took it as a favorable sign and leveled my step with his.

  “Reichsmarschall, I won’t take much of your time,” I said quietly. “I just wanted to express to you my gratitude for what you said there, in the courtroom.”

  “I said a lot of things.”

  “About us,” I clarified my thought even though I knew that he was perfectly aware of what I meant. He was that kind of a man, Göring, he liked testing people and never backed down once he found someone’s weakness. He was bold to the point of absurdness, but I was longing for some of that boldness now, because I lost mine a long time ago and frantically needed someone strong to lean on. I wasn’t good on my own these days.

  Göring stopped for a moment, looked at me with the usual scowl forever imprinted on his face, and smirked.

  “About you? What about you? Why are you looking at me with those eyes, like that of a lost puppy? That’s all I could do for your lot. Not that it’s going to help you in any way.”

  “I still wanted to let you know that I highly appreciate your words, Reichsmarschall.”

  “Ah, it’s all a bunch of crap.” He waved his hand dismissively. I couldn’t hide a smile because he reminded me so much of my former self, defying and cursing out everything that wasn’t going his way. “My words mean nothing, because I am nothing now. After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It’s been going on for centuries, and it will still go on. The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused. I said it openly to Dr. Kelley, the Mr. Know-It-All psychiatrist, who together with Gilbert… Uh, what’s the point now? Only that fellow, Goldensohn, him I like. He hardly ever speaks, but he’s a damn good listener. Has he visited you yet?”

  “Yes, yes. He’s very pleasant, you’re right. Not like the other two,” I readily agreed.

  “So anyway, I asked Dr. Kelley, how many Indians did you Americans exterminate when you came to their land? I bet more than six million. Do you know what big eyes he made at me and he almost jumped backwards in indignation and started shouting that the two matters couldn’t possibly be compared. And why not, I asked him. How is it different, what we were doing to our Jews, communists and prisoners of war to what you did to your Indians and black slaves up to very recent times? He went into complete denial and refused to further discuss the subject with me. Just like I told you, Kaltenbrunner, the victor is always right. No one was able to set a trial for them, and therefore they aren’t guilty, while we are going to hang.”

  “Well, maybe it’s for the good,” I said quietly, looking under my feet. “We deserved our punishment. We are all guilty men here.”

  Göring stopped again and looked at me, until I raised my eyes to meet his.

  “Don’t tell me that you’ve turned to religion all of a sudden, with your guilt admission,” he started sternly.

  “No, no, it’s not that.” I interrupted him right away before he assumed I was a born again Christian or something worse, and smiled at him. “I’m just spending too much time alone in my cell, that’s it. Thinking over… everything.”

  “Aha.” He looked me up and down with suspicion and resumed his walk. “Thinking over. It’s exactly because you’re in that cell, that’s why you’re thinking over. If you were in your villa in Berlin, back in the former Reich, if we had won the war, you wouldn’t be thinking over anything. You would be enjoying your life like you used to, and not a single pinch of conscience would bother you then. Tell me now, am I wrong?”

  I shrugged uncomfortably, not so sure what to answer to him.

  “Well?” Göring demanded once again. “Tell me, did you feel guilty about having a nice house with servants? Did you feel guilty about all the champagne you drank and the caviar you ate? Did you feel guilty about your car with a personal driver? Did you feel guilty having several adjutants standing at attention, ready to fulfill your every wish? Did you feel guilty about the power? Did you feel guilty about all the beautiful women you had? Well, answer me!”

  “No, I didn’t,” I finally admitted what I hated to admit to myself. It was even more disgusting to say it out loud.

  “Of course, you didn’t. And now tell me, did you feel sorry for those people, when you were signing protective custody orders? Did you feel sorry when you ordered the execution of the allied parachutists, who were helping the French resistance?”

  “No, I didn’t, but it was different! They were soldiers, and they were leading the guerilla war together with partisans against our soldiers, soldiers who I swore to protect! They were ambushing and executing our own Germans in cold blood! I had all the right to sign that order!”

  “Only they were already in the position of being POWs, as I heard from the prosecution.”

  “They were still guilty in killing soldiers under my command. I punished the guilty, not innocent people. Would you do differently in my position?”

  “Me? Most certainly not. But to the prosecution you are still the guilty party, who ordered the execution of the POWs who had already given themselves up. If I were you, I would blindly deny everything, and hope for a miracle.”

  “I don’t need a miracle. I deserve to die. I don’t feel guilty about many things, but the Jewish question should have never been handled like it was. That is what I feel guilty about.”

  “Oh, please, Kaltenbrunner! For the love of God! You, out of all people, suddenly declaring your eternal love for the Jewish race! In the good old days I would have taken my gun out and executed you right where you stand, like a lame horse, just to put you out of your misery! Say it all you want to Colonel Amen when he starts interrogating you before the judges, but don’t humiliate yourself and me here, when we are alone! I won’t believe a word of what you say! You feel guilty about the Jews!” He sneered. “If you felt guilty or disagreed with the Führer on any of the points of his politics, you would have been executed in 1944 together with your would-be best friend von Stauffenberg for that matter. But what were you doing during that hot July? Oh, that’s right! You were the one in charge of the People’s trials against that very von Stauffenberg, after he tried to blow up the Führer, weren’t you? So I guess you were quite satisfied with our politics, allow me to conclude.”

  I wish I was executed together with von Stauffenberg, I though sulkily. I would have died anyway,
a year earlier, a year later, but at least for the next generation of Germans my name would be associated with something positive, with at least some effort that was made to try to beat the unbeatable. But no, that night when the Wehrmacht resistance approached us, Otto and I exchanged looks and said that we were staying out of this. We knew that the resistance would choke on its own blood and very soon, and we decided to stay out of trouble to only get ourselves into bigger trouble one year later. I had hoped that at least Otto would escape the manhunt, but he was incarcerated here, in Nuremberg as well, and even though I never saw my best friend, I knew of his invisible presence.

  “I’m not declaring my love for the Jewish race, I’m only saying that the Jewish question shouldn’t have been handled with such severity. There was no need for such measures. I thought we would get them out of the country, resettle, but that’s all. Killing them was… a senseless brutality.”

  “And I agree with you. I, for one, established the very first concentration camp for the communists and criminals, if you remember. I never intended putting Jews in there, nor was I planning to exterminate them in masses. Himmler did, with his favorite Heydrich. You know how much I always detested Himmler. I was a military man, Kaltenbrunner, a politician and a diplomat. I honestly couldn’t care less about Jews. I wanted them out of the country only.”

  “By the sound of it we are all as innocent as babies, but those people are all still dead.”

  “I still don’t believe that you feel guilty about it.”

  “That’s quite alright, Reichsmarschall. Sometimes I don’t believe myself either.”

  _______________

  KZ Kaisersteinbruch, April 1934