Comrades of War

  He was in plainclothes and on his jacket gleamed the Iron Cross, First Class.

  SS Obergruppenführer Berger stepped out of his Horch, wrinkled his forehead and looked disapprovingly at the invalid.

  ‘Get that thing away from here,’ he mumbled to his adjutant.

  The man tried to resist. He screamed loudly as they lifted him up and drove off with him.

  They threw him into an oven together with some Jews and gypsies.

  The frame of the baby carriage rolled slowly across the street, where a boy began playing with it.

  The unpleasant sight no longer annoyed the arriving guests.

  XVII

  An Evening Party at the SS

  One evening Lieutenant Ohlsen drove with his friend Heinrich and an SS Obersturmführer out to a large villa in Wannsee.

  Before the gate, which was ornamented with SS runes and a majestic eagle peculiar to this corps, stood two guards in the full-dress uniform of the SS.

  There was a crush in the large hall, where zealous SS men in white jackets too the guests’ things.

  From the hall one walked into a large room splendidly illuminated by numerous crystal chandeliers, whose lights were reflected by large wall mirrors decorating the room from floor to ceiling.

  In the middle of the room stood a horseshoe table, covered with damask cloths and Sèvres china. Twelve-branched candelabra of beaten gold were placed one after another on the table. Each place setting had several crystal glasses, wreathed with artfully woven flower festoons. The silverware was sterling, heavy and old.

  At the lower end of the room stood half a score of SS officers. They stared hungrily at the entering ladies in their extremely low-necked gowns.

  Heinrich pulled Lieutenant Ohlsen over to this group and introduced him to a tall powerful man wearing the brown uniform of the Party. He had the coldest eyes Lieutenant Ohlsen had ever seen, a human being without a trace of human feelings. A living robot in the Party apparatus.

  He held out his hand to Lieutenant Ohlsen and gave him a handshake reminiscent of old dough. He mumbled something about it being an honor for him to greet a combat officer and advised Lieutenant Ohlsen to do justice to the food. Then he walked up to a lady in a lilac sheath dress. Lieutenant Ohlsen was forgotten.

  The company sat down to dinner.

  A long line of SS men in white jackets marched in with the food. The whole affair went off in parade-ground style. They immediately began serving and filling the glasses.

  It was a menu to which rationing was unknown. Even the most jaded palate could find everything it wished for.

  ‘This is what I call a menu,’ grinned SS Obersturmführer Rudolph Busch sitting across from Lieutenant Ohlsen. He was already a little drunk. ‘That’s something,’ he said, smacking his lips and taking a bite from a pheasant leg which he held with both hands. He had convinced himself he looked like an old Teutonic hero when he ate in that way.

  Heinrich had told Lieutenant Ohlsen that Busch had hanged his own sister in Gross Rosen two years ago. And judging by his looks he seemed very capable of doing a thing like that.

  ‘An internationally composed dinner,’ he growled contentedly, indicating the splendid table with the gnawed pheasant leg. Then he chucked it over his shoulder. It was picked up by one of the SS men in attendance.

  No one took offence at this, because here SS Teutons feasted in the style of old Valhalla.

  ‘Here are artichokes from Yugoslavia,’ he yelled in a rapture of conquest, ‘Belgian truffles, French mushrooms, Russian caviar, Danish butter and ham, Norwegian salmon, Finnish grouse. Dutch shrimps, Bulgarian pheasants, Hungarian mutton, Rumanian fruit, Italian chicken, Austrian saddle of venison, and Polish potatoes – grown in sandy soil! Actually, the only item missing is a delicious English beefsteak.’ Again he flipped a bone over his shoulder. ‘But what isn’t here now may still come—’ he licked his greasy lips – ‘just wait, Lieutenant, till we jump across the creek! I’m looking forward like hell to setting up concentration camps in Scotland and making the English lords vault over the buck.’

  My God, thought Lieutenant Ohlsen, here apparently no one knows that we are losing the war. Here they are still winning victories and storming forward.

  ‘What do you think will become of Germany, Herr Kollege?’ Busch grumbled, tearing into a haunch of venison with his teeth. He resembled a gorgeously uniformed cannibal.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen shrugged his shoulders, saying he was sorry he didn’t know. At any rate he would make sure not to say what he was thinking: pigs, born of pigs, to die like pigs on a military dunghill. He saw the mocking face of the Legionnaire before him and shivered.

  ‘Germany will become the mightiest empire in history,’ maintained the SS officer – he had gradually become quite drunk – ‘and we’ve appetite in plenty,’ he added reflectively. ‘A scorching appetite. Just take a look at our guests here this evening!’ Grinning, he snarled, ‘Today eating is more important for these gentlemen than culture and combat. Look how they jump at the trough. I’m speaking about the men.’

  ‘Certainly,’ nodded Lieutenant Ohlsen. He couldn’t keep himself from asking: ‘And what about the ladies?’

  ‘Just wait, Herr Lieutenant, and you’ll see!’ He laughed omnisciently and slurped from his glass. ‘Here everything goes by SS regulations. Here it’s not as deadly dull as in your club, Lieutenant. When we’ve filled our bellies we proceed to Act Two.’ He took a bite from a peach. The juice flowed over the breast of his light gray uniform jacket. He tried to wipe it off with his hand. ‘Act Two: alcoholic introduction.’ He belched, then nodded apology to his dinner partner. ‘Next follows furioso grandioso.’ He pursed his lips and smacked his tongue like a glutted sow. ‘And finally, Herr Lieutenant, pastorale amoroso. We are always sticklers for etiquette in the SS! The fact is, Herr Lieutenant, that in the SS we are what the English call gentlemen.’

  He stopped speaking and sucked lightly on his finger, on which some horseradish sauce had got stuck. He glanced sideways at Lieutenant Ohlsen and said, while he kept sucking his finger: ‘Horseradish sauce always makes me think of whores, but class-A whores,’ he added, contracting his brows.

  He scrutinized Lieutenant Ohlsen and decided to say something he’d long wanted to say to an army officer. ‘You angel-hair fellows in the Army don’t have the slightest notion of good form. You are common peasants, the whole lot of you.’ He grinned and waited eagerly for Lieutenant Ohlsen to object.

  But the Lieutenant wasn’t listening. He sat there thinking of all he would do to get even with Inge and his father-in-law.

  ‘My father-in-law is a stupid pig,’ he confided to Busch.

  ‘Give me his name and I’ll pass it on to my friend in Prinz Albrecht-Strasse,’ Busch offered. ‘All stupid pigs are to be liquidated. Lebensraum, that’s what matters,’ he imparted confidentially.

  Further down the table an SS Obersturmbannführer shouted: ‘Shut up, Busch, you drunken sot, or you’ll get grilled!’

  ‘Certainly, Obersturm,’ Busch cackled and flushed down his cognac. He glowered about him and muttered, ‘They are to be liquidated. Throw them to the bears.’ He looked across at Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘One should be kind to animals,’ he explained.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen looked at him but didn’t see him. He saw Inge, his wife, before him in a Japanese kimono which brought out her slender legs. He drank and only half heard what Busch was saying.

  ‘The ladies here are eminent ladies, rich ladies. They have an itch in their shafts, the tide is running strong.’ He grinned with delight at his own wit. Suddenly he became philosophical. ‘Herr Kollege, life is strange. You’re an officer of hussars, lieutenant in a combat regiment, and what am I? A lousy prison guard in a camp.’ He wrinkled his forehead in concern and swept a heap of gnawed bones off his plate. Then he glanced briefly at the empty plate and flung that down, too.

  ‘I’m a very unhappy person. A profoundly unhappy person.’ He looked about him frantically as if
he were drowning and was looking for a lifebuoy. He bent across to Lieutenant Ohlsen to entrust him with a great secret: ‘My life has been a disappointment Herr Kollege, would anyone believe my greatest desire was to become a pastor?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ came with conviction from Lieutenant Ohlsen.

  ‘And yet there’s nothing I’d rather do than stand in a pulpit in a black frock and drill with the congregation. Christ, how I’d make them jump, Herr Kollege! And what did the whole thing come to?’ He spat his contempt on the floor, nearly hitting his lady. ‘Ugh, to have become an officer in the Guards. But I have a good idea, Herr Kollege. When the war’s over I’m going to take an accelerated course in theology. In that way I hope to end up as archbishop of Cologne. Then the whole thing will have shape to it.

  ‘When the distinguished ladies present have had a sufficient amount of bubbly,’ he continued, ‘we extend the front to the second floor.’ He grinned omnisciently and winked vehemently at Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘There we stage a French pastoral!’ He stopped talking and thought hard. He passed an exploring glance round the room. Then he pointed at a slender brunette in a low-necked dress of silver lamé. ‘The one over there with the tinsel work, Herr Kollege, is a thigh-swinger stinking with dough.’

  Looking in the direction indicated, Lieutenant Ohlsen noticed a popular movie actress from UFA.

  ‘Will all the ladies be taking part in that pastoral play?’ he inquired dubiously, scrutinizing the well-known movie actress who was flirting quite openly with a general of the police.

  ‘Not all,’ Busch conceded, ‘but the prim ones will be asked to resign, and they are then left out in the cold. The tinsel girl over there—’ he clicked his tongue – ‘is one of the right sort. In her films she lisps like a Gretchen from the YWCA, but here . . . ooh, la, la. Meine Ruh’ ist hin . . . Here she turns into a Clymestra, or what the hell the name of that Greek mare was.’

  ‘Do you mean Clytemnestra?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen smiled, hoping he pronounced the name correctly.

  He was eager to annoy the drunk SS officer.

  ‘Don’t put on airs, you clown from Circus von Kleist!’ Busch flared up.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had accomplished what he wanted.

  Busch sulked and muttered something about liquidating the whole Army, which was comprised of traitors and other outcasts. Suddenly his face lit up.

  ‘Do you know what the letters on the license plates of the Army mean? WH?’

  ‘Wehrmacht Herr,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen answered promptly.

  ‘You missed!’ Busch cried in rapture and pointed accusingly at Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘They mean Weg nach Hinten, the way back.’ He slapped his thighs in rapture and brutally poked his lady dinner companion with his elbow.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Do you know what the Army calls the SS?’

  ‘Nah,’ Busch answered, his curiosity roused.

  ‘Arsch, Arsch,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen said. ‘Ass, ass.’

  The ensuing silence around Lieutenant Ohlsen was oppressive. He laughed, raised his glass and called out: ‘To the Army!’

  But when the glasses were raised somewhat slowly, he added with malicious pleasure: ‘To Adolf Hitler’s Army!’

  However reluctant they were to do so, they now had to drink to the Army and then break the glasses afterward, because Adolf Hitler could be toasted only once from the same glass.

  Looking at the large pile of broken crystal on the floor, Lieutenant Ohlsen vowed to drink to Adolf several more times before he left.

  After dinner the guests scattered about the large villa.

  ‘What’s the mood at the front at the moment?’ a police officer wanted to know.

  ‘I’m on leave and have no knowledge of the momentary situation and mood.’

  ‘Leave?’ cried Busch. ‘What’s that? To us in the SS it is an entirely unknown concept. What it comes to at most is an official trip to pick up traitors and such vermin. Nah, you at the front are well off. Much better than we. Just hearing the name of the Wehrmacht nauseates me.’

  His glassy eyes had started to get watery. ‘Look at those stinking generals strutting about with corset boots on their spindle legs! Lice, I tell you.’ He was getting warmed up. ‘If I was the Führer . . .’ he slit his eyes and knit his brows, ‘I would have them impaled. By God, I would.’ He turned to some SS officers standing by. ‘Isn’t that right, boys? The Army is a flock of cantankerous billy-goats who only know how to bleat.’

  They nodded agreement. One of them muttered something about a ‘cowardly bunch.’

  ‘And those red-braided gentlemen have the guts to show off in front of us, the SS guard of the Führer! They look down on us, think we’re nothing.’ He spat at the Persian carpet. ‘Those squirts completely forget that it is through us they’ve become what they are today. What would they have been without us?’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen indifferently shrugged his shoulders. He glanced at a lady sitting on a sofa with her dress pulled high above her knees. An SS officer was measuring her thighs with a piece of string.

  ‘What were those dogs before?’ Busch asked obstinately, nudging Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘They were shits, small stinking shits without red stripes and they had to appear for inspection to get their stamps just as in the Weimar time.’ He again spat on the carpet, then rubbed it in conscientiously with his foot. ‘You Wehrmacht studs get orders and medallions by the sackful for the bit of fighting you do!’

  Someone tried to quiet down Busch, who by now was extremely stirred up. But he didn’t listen and went on:

  ‘What about us? . . . You don’t answer me. I ask you, Herr Lieutenant Hero-face: What about us?’

  ‘Really, Rudi, cut it out,’ someone said. ‘It isn’t the panzer lieutenant’s fault that you don’t have any combat ribbons.’

  ‘Let me finish what I’ve got to say, you oaf!’ Busch protested, catching Lieutenant Ohlsen by the lapel. ‘Our war is much harder than yours. Just look at my hands, how they tremble!’ He shook his hands violently in front of Lieutenant Ohlsen’s face. ‘Executions by the hundreds, Herr Kollege, mass executions. You should just try commanding firing squads hour after hour, day after day. True, those we plug are just inferiors, but still they scream because they’re afraid to die.’

  He licked his full lips. ‘Sometimes we bury them before they’re really dead. Not because we are inhuman. Remember, I wanted to be a pastor, Herr Kollege.’ He puffed, emptied his glass, had it refilled, emptied it again and had it filled once more. ‘We’re busy, Herr Kollege, busy like hell. All Jews must be liquidated before the war’s over, the Polish and Russian intelligentsia come next – so you can imagine, Herr Lieutenant, what a regular dunghill we have to get through. We gas them, shoot them, hang them and guillotine them. On the whole we do a lot to clear the air.’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen felt nauseated and turned away from Busch.

  The mood became more abandoned. On the stairs they drank champagne out of ladies’ shoes.

  In a little room they were spinning the bottle and stripping off their clothes. In a small niche two high-ranking officers were pulling the panties off a squealing lady. A girl in a blue dress danced on a table. She kicked her shoes to the ceiling. She hit the crystal chandelier, making a bulb blow out with a bang.

  An SS Haupsturmführer pulled his pistol and shot down two more bulbs.

  ‘It was necessary,’ he explained. ‘The bulb struck me. I followed the Führer’s order: two for one.’ He inserted two fresh cartridges in his Mauser and put it back in his pocket. He noted with satisfaction that most of the ladies present had noticed his pistol. There was something very manly about carrying a gun.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen stood looking at one of the costly paintings. An SS Standartenführer placed himself beside him. He pointed at the painting. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen nodded.

  ‘This is an absurd house, don’t you think, Lieutenant?’
Without waiting for an answer, he went on. ‘All of this used to belong to some Jews.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘These Talmud pigs have held their disgusting orgies here.’ His face twisted with nausea at the thought of the immoral goings-on in the house he called ‘absurd.’ ‘It was about time we got this Augean stable cleaned out.’ He laughed and tapped Lieutenant Ohlsen’s shoulder with his white gloves. ‘I took part in it myself.’ He tilted back his head. ‘It was glorious, Herr Kollege.’

  ‘What became of the owner?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked.

  The SS officer almost lost his voice at this naive question. He simply couldn’t understand that a normal person in uniform could ask something so foolish.

  ‘In a camp, naturally. What else? But first we had this Talmud brood thoroughly gestäupt.’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen looked dumbly at him. ‘Gestäupt?’

  ‘Yes, of course, gestäupt,’ nodded the SS officer. ‘Manhandled. From what I hear you do the same thing with the partisans.’ He danced laughing up to a lady and ran his hands up her thighs, tearing her dress in the process. Jubilant at this, he tied the two pieces together in a bow in such a way that the lady’s legs were exposed behind. It looked comic. She was very knock-kneed.

  ‘Aren’t we soon going to bed?’ yelled an SS Sturmbannführer from the Kz-guard of the extermination division.

  ‘That’s the second in command in Oranienburg,’ a police lieutenant explained. He offered Lieutenant Ohlsen a glass of wine. ‘A genuine Veuve Cliquot, can be had only with us in the entire Reich.’ He kept the bottle in his pocket and liberally refilled the glasses. ‘Have you found a heifer for yourself, Herr Lieutenant?’

  ‘A what?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked, surprised.

  The police officer laughed. ‘Well, you see, a heifer is one of the fresh ones. A cow is the run-of-the-mill lady. Mares are acrobats who perform in public.’

  ‘I guess that would make the men bulls and stallions?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen couldn’t help saying.