A young man stared up at them, cold, clear-eyed, and fair, wearing a military tunic undone at the collar. It was a charcoal line drawing, made with some care, with the details shaded and filled and the rest a loose impression. He looked about twenty, with unkempt hair, a wispy moustache, and an impudent smile at the edges of his lips. Freckles dotted the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. In the eyes, the artist had captured sadness and vulnerability.
When Eleanor turned it over to reveal the next picture beneath, Denham gasped. The drawing was made on the back of some official headed letter paper, yellowed and spotted with age. Along the top, in a heavy Gothic font, were the words List Regiment Hauptquartier.
Eleanor turned the sheets of paper, the same headed letter paper. All were drawings of young men, German soldiers of the Great War from the look of their tunics and caps, perhaps sketched in barracks or the wooden billets behind the line, or in the trenches themselves.
In some drawings the lads looked at the artist with a guileless expression, young faces worn down by premature wisdom, ravaged by the horrors they’d witnessed; others looked away and into the light, smiling with a slight frown, suggesting mild embarrassment. There must have been more than a hundred drawings in all, some made on small scraps of notepaper, but most on the letter paper of the List Regiment. Towards the end of the collection the tone of the pictures changed, becoming more naturalistic in style. In one, a lad lay convalescing from an injury; bandaged heavily around his upper chest and shoulder, he looked impassively at the viewer, a cigarette held in the tips of his fingers. The drawing dwelt on the smooth torso, the heavy arms, and the large, powerful hands. There were several more in this vein. None, as far as Denham could tell, were of officers. In one startling drawing, a crop-haired young man with a smooth face stared fiercely at the viewer, holding wide open the left side of his tunic to reveal a shrapnel wound healed above his nipple; on the right side his iron cross was pinned below the breast pocket. Like a Teutonic Saint Sebastian, Denham thought. Heroic, but also something else, somehow
… A small white terrier dog featured in some drawings, sitting at the subject’s feet or being held by him.
Only the final drawing confirmed what the others seemed to be hinting at. It was another young soldier, but this one had on his army boots and felt cap, with a full cartridge belt slung over his shoulder, and nothing else, save for a bottle of beer swinging in his right hand.
‘My God, he’s-’ Eleanor said.
The descending seismographic scribble in the bottom left-hand corner of each sheet would have been indecipherable to a police graphologist, but Denham recognised it. He’d seen it before. On the watercolour hanging in Herr Liebermann’s parlour.
‘These drawings,’ he said, ‘are the work of Adolf Hitler.’
Eleanor dropped the final, nude drawing from her hand.
‘They must have been made during the war.’
She looked up, not focusing on anything, before turning to him. ‘You’re kidding me.’
The ventilation machine thrumming through the floor sent a shudder up Denham’s spine. He remained silent.
‘Hitler drew naked men?’ Eleanor said in an astonished whisper. There was the tremor of a laugh in her voice.
‘He does brawn better than buildings.’
‘What are they doing in Jakob’s safe?’
The final, nude drawing was the most skilled in terms of its draughtsmanship. Denham picked it up and underneath found some large, sealed buff envelopes, cleaner than the shabby letter paper. There were four of them. He opened the first while Eleanor leafed back through the drawings.
It contained the two-page sworn affidavit of one Fritz Engelhardt, a former colonel of the List Regiment of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Army, notarised in Geneva and dated January 1930. The central passage read:
Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler served under my command as a dispatch rider stationed in the List Regimental Headquarters at Fromelles and Fournes from 1914 to 1918. The artistic drawings hereto attached were confiscated by Lieutenant Karl Lippert from Lance Corporal Hitler upon the latter’s return from furlough in January 1918. Subsequently, the drawings were submitted to me privately by Lt. Lippert pursuant to an application for promotion from Lance Corporal Hitler. I was unable to ignore the evidence of the drawings and as a result promotion was refused, despite Lance Corporal Hitler holding the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
Denham read it again. It took several seconds to sink in.
The next envelope contained a dense, typewritten statement, five pages long, titled Mend Protocol. As far as he could tell, it was a transcription of the evidence of one Hans Mend, also known as ‘Ghost Rider,’ a dispatch runner serving on the staff of the List Regiment, who had known Hitler between 1914 and 1920. On the third page someone had circled one paragraph with blue ink:
We noticed that he never looked at a woman. In 1915 we were billeted in the Le Febre brewery near Fournes. We slept on hay bales. At night Hitler lay down with Schmidl, his male whore. We heard a rustling in the hay. Someone flicked on his electric torch and muttered, ‘Look at those two fairy brothers.’ I myself took no further interest in the matter.
He was aware of Eleanor talking about the drawings, but he wasn’t hearing her. He opened the third envelope.
Inside it were around fifteen pages of yellowed notes, written on paper headed Pasewalk Military Hospital. Some sort of case notes by the look of them, but the crabbed, obsolete style of handwriting was almost illegible. This one would take some time to decipher. One thing stood out, however. Across the top of the first page another hand had written in ink: Dr Edmund Forster dismissed University of Greifswald Feb ’33. Arrested September ’33. Died police custody. Denham returned it to the envelope.
And then the final, fourth envelope.
It seemed to contain a series of arrest sheets, dating from 1920 and 1921. Mug shots. And pages and pages of witness depositions.
On 17 November, I, Jochen, nineteen years old, unemployed, met a gentleman of average height near the kiosk on the Marienplatz. He remarked that I was looking hungry and asked if I wanted a hot meal. As I had not eaten that day I accepted. He also paid for beer but he himself did not drink. Afterwards he asked me to accompany him to his home, and in return for five marks, to spend the night with him. I had been without employment for two months and there was no heating or food at home so I agreed to accompany the gentleman to his home. Signed: Jochen Krubel.
At the Alte Pinakothek museum in the Kunstareal district I, Heinz Peter, twenty-one years old, a bailiff’s clerk, was approached by a man wearing an old army greatcoat who spoke an Austrian dialect. I agreed to go to a cafe with him where he talked a great deal about a new order of German art that would represent the true virtues of the people. When he saw that I was interested in his remarks he wanted to show me paintings made by himself and books with plate photographs of the German masters which is why we went to his lodgings. Because it was late and the district trains had stopped running the man invited me to spend the night and I accepted. Signed: Heinz Peter Frank.
On a street near the university in the Schwabing district I, Michael, twenty-three years old, an apprentice sheet metal worker, met a man with whom I went for a walk in the English Garden and then for a meal in a small tavern. When I told him I had served as a private in the war and had hoped to become a sergeant he spoke for a long time about the need for Austria and Germany to unify. He urged me to join a new military-political force of ex-servicemen led by himself and asked if I was willing to agitate on its behalf, because Germany belonged to men such as myself and my comrades. After giving me cigarettes he invited me to his room but did not wish me to smoke there. The man wore a wide-brimmed felt hat and carried a short leather crop. One of his distinguishing features is a forelock falling over his forehead. Signed: Michael Schneider.
The mug shots, both face-on and profile, were glued to each charge sheet. A younger face, only thirty-one, but hard to mistake. The forelock and luminous stare. Arrested for soliciting, conveyed to the cells of the Munich vice squad on Ettstrasse, and charged under Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code.
‘What is all that?’ Eleanor said.
‘You won’t believe me if I tell you… I can’t believe it myself.’