Himmler was amazed that the peace talks still appeared to be on track. After the attempt on the Fuhrer’s life, he had assumed Hitler would insist on returning to Germany immediately. And indeed, he could hardly have blamed him. But you never could tell how the Fuhrer would react to an attempt on his life. In a way, of course, he had lived with the idea of assassination all his political life. As early as 1921, someone-Himmler had never found out who it was-had fired shots at Hitler in Munich during a rally at the Hofbrauhaus. Since then, there had been at least thirty other attempts, not including the trumped-up plots that the Gestapo dealt in. During a twelve-month period in 1933 and 1934 alone, there had been ten attempts on Hitler’s life. By any standard, the Fuhrer was a man possessed of the most astonishing luck. Usually, once the shock and anger had disappeared, Hitler managed to see an escape from death as nothing short of miraculous. It was a sign of divine intervention, and after thirty or more attempts, Himmler was half-inclined to agree.
Surviving an attempt on his life was the only time Hitler ever talked about God with any real conviction or enthusiasm, and it always affected both his oratory and his self-belief. It was a vicious circle, too: the more attempts to assassinate him Hitler survived, the stronger became his certainty that God had marked him out to make Germany great. And having convinced himself that this was the case, he more easily persuaded others to think the same way.
In the middle of a difficult war, there was, understandably, less hysterical adoration of the Fuhrer than once there had been. Himmler still remembered the feeling of shock and awe he had experienced at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, when Hitler had driven through the town in an open-top Mercedes. The faces of those thousands of women who had screamed Hitler’s name and reached out to try and touch him, as if he were the risen Christ incarnate-no other comparison served as well. Himmler had seen houses with shrines to the Fuhrer. He had met schoolgirls who painted swastikas on their fingernails. There were even small towns and villages in Germany where the sick were encouraged to touch Hitler’s portrait in search of a cure. All of which only served to bolster Hitler’s sense that he was God’s elect. Still, it took an assassination attempt to give Hitler a lift-but usually only after a couple of days had elapsed and the guilty caught and punished, with maximum cruelty. On this particular occasion, however, Hitler returned to the villa on the grounds of the Russian embassy with his face shining and his eyes flashing, reassuring Himmler and the others in the German delegation that there was no need to be concerned about the future of the talks.
“God and Providence have made it impossible for anything to happen to me,” he told Himmler and von Ribbentrop, “until my historic mission is completed.”
The Fuhrer retired to his bedroom “to rest and read these Allied position papers.” Himmler felt sufficiently reassured by Hitler’s show of optimism to order a bottle of champagne for himself and von Ribbentrop.
“Remarkable, is it not?” said Himmler, toasting the German foreign minister. “Who but the Fuhrer could come through such an ordeal? To sit there for two hours and not drink any of that water. And then, having survived an attempt to poison him, to be saved from shooting by a Jew, of all people.” Himmler laughed out loud.
“Are you sure?” asked von Ribbentrop. “The translator is Jewish?”
“You may take it from me, Joachim. There’s not much I don’t know about Jews, and I can tell you that Mayer is an undeniably Jewish name. Besides, there is his rather obvious physiognomy. The dark hair and high cheekbones. The man is Jewish, all right. I haven’t dared to tell the Fuhrer.”
“Perhaps he already knows.”
“I rather think the actual assassin is a Pole, however. Or at least of Polish descent.”
Von Ribbentrop shrugged. “Perhaps he’s a Jew, too.”
“Yes, perhaps. John Pawlikowksi.” Himmler thought for a moment. “Is Molotov a Jew?”
“No,” said von Ribbentrop. “Merely married to one.”
Himmler laughed. “I bet that’s awkward for him. Stalin is openly anti-Semitic. I had no idea. Do you know, I heard him tell the Fuhrer that the Jews were ‘middlemen, profiteers, and parasites.’”
“Yes, he and the Fuhrer got on rather well, I thought. They see eye-to-eye on a great many things. For example, like the Fuhrer, Stalin hates people with mixed loyalties. It’s why he thinks that Roosevelt is weak. Because of the powerful Jewish lobby in America.” Von Ribbentrop sipped some of his champagne with satisfaction. “And something else. He has the same low opinion of his generals that Hitler has.”
“That’s hardly surprising when you see the general he brought with him. Did you smell that man Vorishilov’s breath? My God, he must have had beer for breakfast. How did he ever come to be a field marshal?”
“I think he was the only one who wasn’t executed during Stalin’s last purge. He was much too mediocre to shoot. Thus his current elevated position in the Red Army. Incidentally, on the subject of shooting, I don’t know whether you noticed, but last night at the dinner with Stalin, every one of those Russian waiters was carrying a gun.”
“NKVD probably. Beria told me there are a few thousand of them in and around the embassy. Schellenberg’s team never stood a chance. It just makes me all the more glad I told Beria about them.”
“Have they all been captured?”
“Beria says they have. But I’m not so sure. Still, even if they haven’t all been caught, I don’t give much for their chances. Not in this country. It’s a filthy place. Not at all what I imagined. From what I’ve observed so far, the tap water is hardly less lethal than the stuff that was in the Fuhrer’s carafe.”
“I rather think President Roosevelt sipped some of that water,” said von Ribbentrop. “Before it was knocked from his hand.”
“He seems all right.” Himmler shrugged. “I sent Brandt to enquire after his health-in plain clothes, of course. But it seems that Roosevelt has gone shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“Yes, the Russians have set up a shop on the grounds of the embassy. They say it’s for the convenience of all the delegates, so that we don’t have to leave the estate-but, oh, my, the prices! Brandt says they’re astronomical.”
“But what is there to buy?” laughed von Ribbentrop.
“Oh, it’s well stocked with everything that might appeal to an American tourist. Water pipes, carpets, wooden bowls, Persian daggers, silver. Brandt says there is even a box of silk teddy bears.”
“Perhaps Roosevelt is picking out a teddy bear for Churchill’s birthday.” Von Ribbentrop laughed. “Or, perhaps, some sour grapes. The son is here, too, you know. Randolph. It seems that he’s an even bigger drunk than his father.”
“I hear Roosevelt’s son, Elliott, is just as bad. Apparently he and Randolph stayed up late last night getting drunk. There is no greater curse than the curse of a great man for a father.”
“Can you imagine what Hitler’s son would have been like?” von Ribbentrop asked. “I mean, if he had ever had a son. To live up to such a man as the Fuhrer. Impossible.”
Himmler smiled quietly to himself: there were perhaps only three people in the world who knew that Hitler had indeed fathered a son, by a Jewish woman in Vienna in 1913. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had claimed to have left the old Austro-Hungarian capital for “political reasons”; he had even written a version that had him leaving Vienna to escape conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, preferring to enlist in a German regiment, the Tenth Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, instead. But only Hitler, Himmler, and Julius Streicher knew the truth-that Hitler had an affair with a Jewish prostitute, Hannah Mendel, who had borne him a son. Mendel and her son had disappeared from Vienna sometime in 1928 and not even Hitler knew their final fate. Only Himmler knew that Mendel had abandoned her son in 1915; that she had died of syphilis in 1919; that her son, Wolfgang, had been brought up in the Catholic orphanage in Linz; that Wolfgang Mendel had changed his name to Paul Jetzinger and become a waiter at Sacher’s Hotel in Vienna until the outbreak of war, when he had enlisted in the Third Motorized Infantry Division; and that Corporal Paul Jetzinger had been killed or captured at Stalingrad. Which Himmler had thought was probably for the best. Great men like Hitler shouldn’t have sons, he thought; especially sons who were half-Jewish.
Himmler and von Ribbentrop were in an excellent mood when the drawing room door was suddenly flung open and Hitler stormed in. His face was wreathed in fury as he marched up to Himmler, brandishing a file in front of the Reichsfuhrer’s face.
“Did you know about this?” he yelled.
Himmler stood and clicked his heels together as he came to attention. “Know about what, my Fuhrer?”
“It’s an SD file entitled ‘Beketovka.’”
“Beketovka?” stammered Himmler, and, wondering how on earth Hitler could have come into possession of the file, he colored noticeably.
“I can see you recognize the name,” Hitler barked. “Why was I not shown this before? Why did I have to receive this from the Americans?”
“I don’t understand. The Americans gave you this file?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But that hardly matters beside the fact that I have never been shown the contents of this file.”
Himmler winced, suddenly understanding exactly what must have happened. The Beketovka File. He had forgotten all about it. The file had reached Roosevelt’s hands, as he had ordered it should, and mistakenly, the Americans had simply handed it back to Hitler. As Himmler searched for an explanation, Hitler struck him on the shoulder with the file and then threw it on the floor.
“Do you really think I would have come here, ready to withdraw my forces from Russia, if I had known about this?” he said.
Himmler stayed silent. Knowing Hitler as well as he did, it seemed to him that the question hardly needed to be answered. This was the end of Teheran, he could see that. Plainly, Hitler’s rage, the worst Himmler had witnessed, made it impossible that the Fuhrer could continue to sit at the same negotiating table as the people he would hold responsible for the atrocities detailed in the Beketovka File.
“Thousands and thousands of our brave musketeers and lieutenants have been murdered by these Russian pigs, in circumstances that beggar belief, and yet you would have had me sit down and talk peace with them. How could I look my soldiers in the eye if I made a deal with these animals?”
“My Fuhrer, it was for those soldiers who still remain alive that I thought it best to pursue these talks,” Himmler said. “Those German prisoners still in Russian camps may yet be released.”
“What kind of a man are you, Himmler? Two hundred thousand German prisoners have been systematically starved, frozen, or beaten to death by these subhuman Slavs and you can still contemplate cozying up to them.” Hitler shook his head. “Well, that’s a matter for your own conscience. Assuming you have one. But I for one will not make a peace with the cold-blooded murderers of German soldiers. Do you hear me? I will not shake hands that are dripping with German blood. You’re an unprincipled swine, Himmler. Do you know that? You are a man without values.”
Still beside himself with fury, Hitler marched around the room, biting the cuticle around his thumbnail and calling down vengeance upon the heads of the Russians.
“But what will we tell them?” Himmler asked weakly. He knew that the question hardly needed to be asked since he was quite certain that the room concealed hidden microphones: a large part of his negotiating strategy had been based on the assumption that the Russians would listen to their supposedly private conversations; another sign of good faith, as Himmler had described it to Hitler. But in his anger, the Fuhrer seemed to have forgotten this.
“Tell Stalin that because of the attempt on my life you no longer believe that my safety can be guaranteed and that we are forced, reluctantly, to withdraw from these negotiations. Tell them what you like. But we’re leaving. Now.”