Himmler was congratulating himself, not just at having pulled off these secret talks but also at the way his Fuhrer was handling things. Hitler actually seemed to be enjoying the conference. His grasp of affairs had suddenly improved and he had even stopped indulging in his two common mannerisms: the compulsive picking at the skin on the back of his neck and the biting of the cuticles around his thumbs and forefingers. Himmler wasn’t sure, but he thought it was even possible that Hitler had dispensed with his usual morning injection of cocaine. This was like seeing the old Hitler, the Hitler who had made the French and the British dance to his tune in 1938. What would have been hard to believe but was now quite obvious was just how divided the Allies were: Churchill’s refusal to negotiate, or even meet, with Hitler was understandable, but it seemed extraordinary to Himmler that Roosevelt and Stalin should not have agreed on a common position before sitting down with the Fuhrer. This was more than he could reasonably have expected when, secretly, they had left Prussia and traveled to Teheran, leaving a stenographer named Heinrich Berger to impersonate Hitler at the Wolfschanze and Martin Bormann in effective control of the Greater German Reich.
The Russians had, he admitted, behaved with great hospitality. Von Ribbentrop said that Molotov and Stalin seemed no less friendly than when he had visited Russia in August 1939, in pursuit of the nonaggression pact. And their control of security and secrecy had been predictably excellent. No one was better at keeping secrets and manipulating public perceptions than the Russians. Secrecy was, of course, the reason that Stalin had insisted on having the Big Three in Teheran. The peace talks could not have been arranged anywhere else, except perhaps in Russia itself. Just look what had happened to the secrecy of the Allied talks in Cairo, Himmler reflected. Even so, it had been Himmler’s idea to use General Schellenberg’s Operation Long Jump as a way of demonstrating German good faith to the Russians. Giving up those men to the NKVD had been regrettable, but it was made easier by the late discovery that most of Schellenberg’s team were not German at all but Ukrainian volunteers. Himmler cared nothing for these men, and as a result he had been able to denounce them to the NKVD without scruple. As for the handful of renegade German officers and NCOs, they would be on Schellenberg’s conscience, not his.
Of course, the warmth of the Russian reception had a lot to do with the secret payment of ten million dollars in gold from Swiss bank accounts held by Germany into those of the Soviet Union. How right the Fuhrer had been about Russia: it was the very acme of the capitalist state headed by a man who would do anything, make any sacrifice, and take any bribe to pay for the realization of his idee fixe. And, despite what Hitler had said in front of Roosevelt, he was already reconciled to paying Stalin a fifty-million-dollar “bonus” if a peace could be negotiated at Teheran, for this was a drop in the ocean compared to the gold Germany had on reserve in its secret Swiss bank accounts.
“In the final analysis,” Hitler had told Himmler in their preparatory talks at the Wolfschanze, “Stalin is nothing more than some plutocratic tycoon looking for his next payday. For that reason alone, you know where you are with the Russians. They’re realistic.”
Realistic? Yes, thought Himmler, you knew where you were with the Popovs. They would do anything for money. Even so, there was no way he was going to let Goring take over the country, as Stalin had suggested as the best alternative to the Fuhrer remaining as head of state. Himmler hated Goring almost as much as he hated Bormann, and he hadn’t put his neck on the line persuading Hitler to come to the Big Three in person just to see the country handed over to that fat bastard.
In some respects, the British were just like the Popovs, he reflected. Quite predictable. Churchill most of all. Very likely the British prime minister was worried that once a peace with Germany was signed, the generous terms offered to Great Britain by Hess in 1940-a peace without any conditions whatsoever-would be made public and there would be an uproar in the British newspapers. Could the Fuhrer have been more generous? No wonder Churchill refused to come to the negotiating table. Surely, as soon as the war was over, Churchill would be kicked out of office.
No one could accuse the Americans of not being realistic, but, unlike the Russians, they could not be influenced by money. Still, as the Fuhrer had always argued, they could be influenced by their own paranoia. “They fear Bolshevism more than they fear us,” he had told Himmler back at the Wolfschanze. “And the greatest success of the Red Army has not been defeating the German army, but in the way it has intimidated the Americans. We must take advantage of that fact. If they cannot be bribed in these negotiations, then they must be blackmailed. They are, of course, aware of the secret weapons we have been developing at Peenemunde, or why else would they have used the whole of Bomber Command to target the area back in August? It will require great subtlety, Himmler, for without telling the Americans exactly what we have, we must imply that if Germany were forced to negotiate a separate peace with the Russians, we would feel obliged to share our new weapons with them, in lieu of war reparations. Naturally, the Americans will fear this because even now it is clear that they are more concerned about the shape of postwar Europe than they are about defeating Germany.
“The vengeance-weapon film that the people at Fieseler made in May-the Americans should see a copy. And just in case they still don’t believe it, let’s plan to fire one such weapon at England on November twenty-eighth, the day of the conference. Not from the new site, of course, but from Peenemunde. That should help them to decide if we’re serious or not. But don’t fire it at London. No, choose an American air base. The one at Shipham, near Norwich, perhaps. That’s a large one. A V1 rocket might have quite a chastening effect there, Himmler.”
Although a V1 had been placed on a launching ramp at Peenemunde earlier that same day, it had not, in fact, been fired. In the final analysis, it had not been seen as necessary. Now, possessed of film footage of a successful V1 test flight and a list of German scientists, American military intelligence had persuaded Roosevelt that it was imperative for the German rocket secrets to be in American, not in Russian, hands after the war. Consequently, the president had already been persuaded in secret not to insist on large German war reparations, and also to abandon his demand for free and fair elections.
Since the Americans and the Russians both thought they had already made a secret deal to their own advantage, Himmler did not see how, short of a disaster-one of the rages that were inbuilt features of Hitler’s character, perhaps, or Churchill prevailing on Roosevelt at last to break off the talks with Hitler-these negotiations could fail. If a peace was agreed at Teheran, Himmler felt his own achievements in this diplomatic triumph would make his name more illustrious in German history than Bismarck’s.