The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story Read online

  I was looking out of the window with my thumb squeezed between my teeth. I had nothing to answer him. Not a word.

  “Don’t you dare go and ask her for money, do you hear me? You got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out. You’re a grown man now. Time to pay for your own mistakes.”

  Chapter 14

  Nuremberg prison, March 1946

  “Another one who paid for his mistakes.”

  Dr. Gilbert held the newspaper to my face with yet another SS man on its pages, executed somewhere in Poland. I glanced at the name, but didn’t recognize it. The hanged man’s face looked surprisingly peaceful, and I hoped deep inside that he died instantly, without suffering.

  “Will it make you feel better,” I lifted my eyes at the psychiatrist, who was standing over me as I was sitting on my cot, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight with him today, and finished my question in the same calm voice, “when you hang me? Will it make you personally feel better?”

  “Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “When all of you hang nicely, it will make me feel much better. Excellent, even. As a matter of fact, I already have a bottle of champagne prepared for the occasion.”

  I chuckled softly, lowering my eyes again. “Do you know who you remind me of? Reinhard Heydrich. He would say something like that. He always celebrated death.”

  “Don’t you dare compare me with that ruthless murderer!”

  “And what’s the difference between the two of you? The color of your uniform only.”

  I looked up at him again, still smiling. It was obvious that he was fighting a desire to hit me on the face.

  “We’re executing justice,” he said at last through gritted teeth.

  “So he was saying.”

  “It was you who became his successor! Did it make you feel good to hang people?”

  “No. Of course not. I got drunk constantly because I couldn’t take it, not because I celebrated it,” I said calmly. “Don’t put us all together in the same box, saying that we were all the same, thinking the same and feeling the same. We were all different people, Dr. Gilbert. Just like you are. You, for one, enjoy shoving these pictures into my face, something that our Gestapo used to do; and yet the boy, who is standing guard by my door, shares his food with me whenever his family sends him something from home. It’s only a question of human decency.”

  He eyed me for a while then turned around to leave, but at the door he stopped and looked at me and said, “You have no right to teach me about human decency.”

  _______________

  Linz, May 1934

  “I don’t think they have a right to do it, Ernst.”

  I gave Lisl a long skeptical look, making her lower her eyes.

  “Dollfuss has the right to do whatever he wants. He imagines himself the second Mussolini, that piece of… work.” I quickly corrected myself, trying to mind my language in front of my wife.

  Elisabeth didn’t seem to be bothered with the news that I was out of a job; she was too excited to just have me back and couldn’t care less that we had only a few days left to vacate the apartment. I was actually very happy myself to see her face light up with the brightest smile when she saw me at the door as she threw herself into my embrace. She proved to be a perfect wife, Lisl – loving, devoted and supportive, when I most needed it.

  Maybe Himmler did me a favor after all, pushing me to marry, I was thinking while studying the ceiling at night, with Lisl peacefully sleeping on my arm. And maybe he did have a point, making all of the SS staff marry Party supporters or preferably the ones from the League of the German Girls. She didn’t start screaming and accusing the Party for all our misfortunes, unlike my father, but on the contrary she declared in a proud tone that I had suffered for a noble cause and that she was positive that it was a temporary situation and I would find a way out of it. Until then we could live in her parents’ house, who would support us both.

  I scrunched my nose instinctively again at the idea of moving in with my in-laws. Not that they were bad people; I was actually grateful that they had agreed to provide us with a roof above our heads, but still… I, with my love of freedom to come and go as I please and where and with whom I please, would have to start living under the all-seeing eye and control of my in-laws. I would have to start asking them for money and report how exactly I was spending it.

  Great. Just fucking great. Fucking Dollfuss, I thought with all the hatred I had for the dictator, who was responsible for my new humiliating state, and then grinned, remembering that next week I was meeting with several of my fellow SS men, including Bruno, in Vienna. Oh no, Dollfuss won’t get out of it so easily. I’m not the one to forget and forgive so easily. Me, paying for my mistake? How about him paying for his instead?

  That last sinister thought was like a soothing balm to my soul, and I finally closed my eyes and started falling asleep, my dark hungry demons curling by my bedside, their leathery wings folded, talons hidden for the night, waiting to be released.

  _______________

  Nuremberg prison, March 1946

  At the exit of the courtroom, the guard waited for me to release the knot on my tie and hand it to him. Before I entered my cell they also took my shoes off to make sure I didn’t strangle myself with the shoe laces, and handed me white slippers instead, ones that we were all prescribed to wear in our cells. Only Göring and the former army generals, Jodl and Keitel, were allowed to wear knee-high military boots and their old uniforms, though they were stripped of all the regalia.

  I lay on my cot after changing from my suit into my regular, ‘cell’ clothes, and envied Speer, who had something to busy himself with, unlike the rest of us. My friendly guard was right: Albert Speer did cover the walls of his cell in exquisite drawings of portraits, cities and architectural complexes, creating his own black and white universe that even the prison administration admired, and, therefore, allowed him to keep it.

  “I wish I could draw like you,” I admitted to him one day during the court recess. “Oh, the things I would decorate my walls with!”

  “Like what?” He smiled.

  “Austria. My native town. Mountains. Cows, farms, little mountain huts, I don’t know.” I paused for a moment. “The woman I love.”

  “You can always draw it all in your mind. Your imagination is the most powerful thing. Just close your eyes and you’ll see it all.”

  The next day he slipped a sheet of paper folded in two into my hand during the hearings.

  “Don’t open it before you get back to your cell.” The architect winked at me.

  I thought it was a note of some sorts that he wanted to keep secret from everyone, but when I finally unfolded the sheet when alone in my cell a smile from ear to ear immediately played on my face. Speer had drawn a typical, rural Austrian village, with mountains, cows and little huts; with everything that I would put on paper. He probably drew everything from memory, from having stayed at one of the Austrian mountain ski resorts. Under the painting he wrote a small note:

  P.S. Sorry, I don’t know the woman you were talking about, but here are your cows.

  P.P.S. We put ourselves in our own jails. No one can lock you away from what you love. Just close your eyes when you decide to free yourself.

  _______________

  Vienna, July 1934

  “So it’s all decided then?” Bruno looked each of the SS men, sitting in a tight circle on the floor, square in the eye, making sure that everyone understood the audacity of our plan and its consequences. “While the rest wait outside, ten of us go in and deal with him. Ernst and I are in charge, we’ll do all the talking, and you in the meantime will have to mind all the exits and detain anybody who tries to interfere. As soon as he signs our demands, we all make a quick escape to the border, and from there straight to Munich to hand the papers to Reichsführer Himmler.”

  “Why are you so sure he’ll sign it?” one of our fellow conspirators asked with a shade of doubt in his voice.

  “Oh, he will,�
�� I reassured him with a grin, inspecting a gun in my hands. “I’ll be very persuasive.”

  “I don’t know about that, he’s one arrogant tiny man.”

  All of us chuckled, recalling the sight of Dollfuss’s miniature height, all 4 feet 11 inches of it.

  “All of them are. Just think how arrogant Napoleon was, and I bet he was taller than Dollfuss!”

  “Maybe in his hat he was!”

  “And while sitting on a horse!”

  All of us burst out laughing, but Bruno decided to push the matter like he always did.

  “Just like the Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels. Oh, my bad actually, he wouldn’t get on a horse with that wooden leg of his!”

  Some of our comrades couldn’t stop their laughing fit, while I said, wiping my tearing eyes, “Bruno, you’re so getting shot for that one if someone hears you!”

  “Scratch that, scratch that!” He quickly waved both hands at me, widening his eyes theatrically and still laughing. “Scratch that from the transcription, Your Honor! I did not say that! Nobody heard it, right?”

  After the tension in the room was gone thanks to our jesting mood, all of us got serious again.

  “Is the cover-up team ready?” Bruno asked.

  “Ready and waiting,” the reply followed.

  “They do realize that in case if we fail, they will almost certainly die, don’t they?” I inquired to the man responsible for the selection of the people for our cover-up team.

  “They’re ready to give their lives for the future of Austria and the Reich.”

  I nodded.

  “So, we’re decided on the date, place and time. This was our last meeting. God help us. Sieg Heil!”

  “Sieg Heil!”

  “Sieg Heil!”

  We shook hands, saluted each other, and made our exit one by one, going in different directions from the conspiracy apartment provided by our comrades in Vienna. Only Bruno and I went together to the small hotel, where we had rented a room a day earlier.

  For a couple of minutes we just sat on our beds, separated only by a small nightstand with a cheap lampshade on it, and taking swigs from a flask I wisely brought from Linz.

  “Are you nervous?” Bruno broke the silence first, squinting from the whiskey burning his throat.

  I took the flask from his outstretched hand and took a sip.

  “Not nervous. Excited,” I answered with a grin.

  “There’s no turning back now.”

  “I know.”

  “Himmler won’t back us up in case if we fail, will he?”

  “He won’t back us up in any case.” I confessed to what I was supposed to keep a secret from everybody, even him. Reichsführer was clear on the matter: he gave me initiative with the coup-d’état, but shifted all the responsibility on my shoulders, saying that I could do whatever I wanted, but the Nazi Party ‘wouldn’t know anything about it.’ It was a convenient position. “Even if Dollfuss agrees to sign the resignation, Himmler will say that it was the Austrian initiative, to which he and the Reich’s government were absolutely oblivious.”

  “So technically we’re on our own.”

  “Yes.”

  Bruno nodded several times and looked at me inquisitively.

  “Aren’t you afraid, Ernst?”

  “No. He’s taken everything from me already. My life isn’t worth anything at this point. I have nothing to lose.”

  “You have a pregnant wife at home,” Bruno reminded.

  Lisl had announced the big news only a week ago, but truly speaking, even though I managed to fake excitement over the event, it only added to my headache. We lived with her parents for Christ’s sake, and I had no job, no money and no future. A kid wasn’t such a great idea at this point. With some detached curiosity I noted the fact that I haven’t thought of it a single time while I was in Vienna. It surprised me even more that it didn’t bother me now, either.

  “Well, good. Then, if I die, someone will keep my bloodline going,” I answered carelessly, as I kicked my shoes off, threw my jacket on the side of the bed and fell right on top of the covers. I didn’t care about wrinkling my clothes: we were going to attack in full black SS uniform tomorrow, which was neatly packed and hidden in a small suitcase under the bed. “Let’s sleep, Bruno. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  The next evening we met with our team near the chancellery. We left the cars, provided by the Viennese SS comrades, lit our cigarettes, synchronized our watches and checked our guns.

  “Ready?” I addressed the men who were supposed to take care of the guards.

  “Ready.”

  “Let’s get moving then,” I commanded.

  Everybody got back into their cars, and we drove up right to the entrance. The whole idea of the coup-d’état was so audacious that the guards at the entrance didn’t even have time to react to the armed, uniformed SS men, suddenly shoving machine guns into their faces and ordering them inside. We swiftly followed the head group, and I motioned the tail group to barricade the doors. At the end of the working day, with half of the chancellery staff already gone home to their families, herding the remaining people into one big conference room and putting two men to watch them was a piece of cake. I pushed Bruno with my elbow almost laughing, noting that we had got the whole chancellery under our control without a single shot fired in less than five minutes. But that was the easy part; our head team was already motioning to us from upstairs that they had Dollfuss cornered in his office.

  Drunken on the easy victory and adrenaline, I almost flew up the stairs jumping two steps at a time, my new polished black boots hugging my feet nicely. I stopped at the doors for a second, smoothed an invisible wrinkle on my black military jacket and smiled viciously, nodding to my comrades to open it.

  The Chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, was sitting on a small sofa under the gunpoint of three of my SS men, with a sour expression on his face. He locked his eyes with mine and frowned.

  “You’re in charge here, I assume?” He addressed me, looking me up and down.

  “You assume correctly.” I motioned to my escort to step aside, and stood in front of the sitting man, who had to lift his head to a very uncomfortable position to keep eye contact with me.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I am the leader of the Austrian SS, Sturmhauptführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner. I would add ‘at your service,’ but I’m afraid that would sound a little hypocritical.”

  Bruno hardly suppressed a chuckle behind my back.

  “There’s no such thing as the Austrian SS, young man,” Dollfuss replied, trying to keep an air of a rightful country leader. “I made it illegal.”

  “You, making it illegal doesn’t make it nonexistent, judging by the fact that I’m standing right here, in front of you, in full uniform, and having your whole government under my control.”

  Dollfuss looked at me a little longer and finally said, squinting his eyes slightly, “Wasn’t it you, who made all that fuss with the hunger strike over the ungrounded arrest and sentencing a couple of months ago?”

  “That would be me,” I admitted, not without pleasure.

  “I should’ve hanged you then,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve, Herr Dollfuss.” I laughed together with my comrades, enjoying every minute of finally having my revenge.

  Oh, I was savoring every moment of his humiliation, even though it still didn’t come close to the humiliation he had caused me in KZ Kaisersteinbruch, with its flea-infested straw mattresses for beds, for scratching myself until I bled, not able to get rid of the lice since we were only allowed to shower once a week, for all that back-breaking work, for never-healing blisters, for having to eat ‘soup’ made of potato skin, and for the final spit in the face – banning me from the bar for the rest of my life.

  “What do you want?” the Austrian chancellor asked once again, folding his arms.

  “I want you to sign this.” I put my hand in
side my jacket and produced a paper, which I handed to him.

  Dollfuss read it carefully, smirked and tried to give it back to me. This time I crossed my arms over my chest, refusing to take it.

  “I’m not signing this,” Dollfuss said haughtily and put the paper on a small coffee table next to the sofa. “A resignation? Are you out of your mind? I wouldn’t hand you and your Party power over my country even if my life depended on it.”

  “Oh, but I’m afraid it does depend on it,” I replied in a menacingly quiet voice, as I unhurriedly opened my holster, took my gun out and pointed it to his chest. Even though I had proved to be a sharp shooter at the shooting range during training, I had never had to use it on a live target, but he didn’t have to know about that.

  The chancellor looked at the gun, back at me and smirked again.

  “Are you threatening me? How original. However, I admit, I wouldn’t expect anything different from a representative of the Party, consisting of the biggest thugs the world has ever spit out from its bowels.”

  “Oh, look who’s talking from the height of his horse! Would you mind enlightening me on the matter of how the Nazi Party is different from how you do things together with your friend, Duce?” I arched my eyebrow in mock surprise. “Didn’t you proclaim yourself as a king and a god for the people of Austria just a year ago, banning all opposition as soon as you had power in your hands?”

  Dollfuss remained silent, either because he had nothing to say against my words, or because he had decided not to condescend to arguing with some ‘Nazi thug.’ Whatever it was, his arrogance and refusal to cooperate started getting on my nerves. Without lowering my gun I took the document from the table, put it on his lap and forced a pen into his hand.