1938 (3 page)

A widower with five children, the noble Blomberg was marrying a much younger woman. Some months before, he had divested himself of his uniform, put on civilian dress, and gone to Oberhof in the Thuringian Forest for the sake of his health. Seeing him eating his dinner all by himself, the manager of his hotel had asked him if he would like company. That was when the twenty-five-year-old Eva Gruhn sat at his table. Later she informed Blomberg she was pregnant with his child; he liked Eva so much that he asked for her hand in marriage.

He even went so far as to confess his love to Goebbels, who promised to help him square matters with any of the Nazi leaders who might have objected to his marrying a woman from the
bas fonds.
Eva came from the unglamorous district of Neukölln in Berlin, where her mother had run a massage parlor. Mother Gruhn had twice been convicted of prostitution, and her daughter had followed in her footsteps. Eva had a police record that documented participation in nude orgies, prostitution, and selling pornographic pictures—of herself. She had only just been granted parole when she met Blomberg.

As early as October, Blomberg had cried on Göring’s shoulder and told him of his intended’s humble origins. He had spared Göring the criminal record, which he probably did not know himself. His own officers disapproved of the match. Blomberg had been a stickler for their marrying within their social milieu and was now breaking his own code. Nevertheless, Göring found the story “very moving” and assured him that Hitler’s consent would be forthcoming, as the marriage would strike a blow against the old monarchist order. He took great pains to be helpful, going so far as to dispose of a younger rival for Eva’s affections by packing him off to South America with a well-paid job. Blomberg finally told Hitler on December 22, the marriage went ahead with the Führer’s blessing, and the happy couple departed for their honeymoon on the island of Capri.

There was a slight glitch a few days later, when the Blombergs were obliged to cut short their honeymoon and return to Berlin, on account of the unexpected death of Blomberg’s mother. After her funeral, the honeymoon couple prepared to set off for Italy once again. Goebbels saw Blomberg in Berlin on January 17 and still thought him a “fine fellow.” The storm broke, however, on January 21, when an anonymous caller, claiming to be a general, telephoned Army High Command demanding to speak to Colonel-General Fritsch. When he was refused, the caller shouted, “Tell the general that Field Marshal von Blomberg has married a whore!”

The chief of police, Graf Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, knew the story already: A member of his vice squad had been with a prostitute in the course of his duties, and she had seen the new Frau von Blomberg together with Hitler and Göring in the newspapers, instantly recognizing her as an old friend. The policeman had looked up Eva Gruhn’s record and brought the file to Helldorf. At the Gestapa—Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz Albrecht Palace in Berlin—someone showed Franz Josef Huber, later Gestapo chief in Vienna, a picture of a naked woman, telling him the woman was now Freifrau von Blomberg.

Helldorf went to see General Wilhelm Keitel—whose son Karl-Heinz was engaged to be married to Blomberg’s daughter Dorle—and asked him to identify the new baroness from a police photograph. Keitel had little to tell the police chief. He had not been invited to the wedding and said that the only time he had set eyes on her was at the funeral of Blomberg’s mother. Keitel had not been able to make out her features through her heavy veil.

In a style to which Germany was to become accustomed, Keitel passed the buck. He told Helldorf to approach Göring, for the cogent reason that Göring had been at the wedding and would have had a good look at her. Helldorf drove out to Göring’s mansion at Karinhall near Berlin. Göring, a long-time rival of Blomberg’s, could indeed identify the woman in the picture. He admitted having known of Blomberg’s intention to marry her for a long time: Blomberg had in all appearances walked into a honey trap—possibly set up by his rival.

WHILE DOUBT may still hang over Göring’s role in Blomberg’s fate, there is no question that he was behind the removal of the monarchist, anti-Nazi Colonel-General von Fritsch. He was to be pushed out by trumped-up charges of infringing Article 175 of the Prussian Criminal Code dealing with illegal homosexual activity: He was reported to have frequented a Bavarian rent-boy called Sepp Weingärtner (“der Bayernseppl,” or Bavarian Joe) in November 1933. A blackmailer called Otto Schmidt had allegedly spotted Fritsch having sex with Bayernseppl in a dark place near Wannsee Station. Posing as a policeman, Schmidt had followed him back to town and confronted him on the Potsdamer Platz. According to Schmidt, Fritsch had taken fright, produced his military pass, and asked Schmidt to be discreet. Over the next few weeks Schmidt had been able to pump over 2,000 Reichs marks (RM) out of the unfortunate officer.

Taking full advantage of the Nazi desire to adhere as strictly as possible to the draconian Article 175, Schmidt earned a living by spying on and blackmailing homosexuals. Arrested in 1936, he had saved his hide by giving the police the details of his business. Among his “clients” he had named Walter Funk, later the minister of economics; the tennis ace and Wimbledon finalist Gottfried von Cramm; and a Graf von Wedel, who was police president in Potsdam. He had also named Colonel-General von Fritsch. Schmidt’s interrogator was Josef Meisinger, the chief of a Gestapo unit called the Reichszentrale für die Bekämpfung der Homosexualität (the Reich’s Central Office for the Repression of Homosexuality). Schmidt told Meisinger that he had met the general in Lichterfelde Station—home to the cadet school—whenever he wanted more money. Meisinger had showed Schmidt a picture of Fritsch: “
Det is’ er
,” Schmidt said in his Prussian idiom—“That’s the man.”

Meisinger had taken the story to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichs Main Security office and Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who had drawn up a report, but Hitler had called it
Mist
(dung), refused to look at it, and ordered it to be destroyed. He was still keen to retain Fritsch; only his entourage wanted to eliminate him.

It is not clear who—Göring or Himmler—had been the prime mover in smearing Fritsch back in 1936. It was Heydrich who relocated the incriminating dossier—his involvement would point to Himmler. Göring, on the other hand, had been meditating his coup since the end of the previous year, before Eva von Blomberg’s shady past had come to light. Himmler wanted Fritsch out because he opposed the integration of the SS into the army. Göring objected to him because he assumed that Fritsch would be given Blomberg’s job—which Göring coveted. With Himmler’s permission, Göring had Schmidt brought to his home from Papenburg internment camp at the end of 1937. Schmidt was shown a picture of Fritsch, whom he once again identified as the man he had seen with Bayernseppl.

After Blomberg’s wedding, Hitler had returned to the Berghof and was absent from Berlin until January 24. The next day Göring represented the Fritsch dossier along with the one Helldorf had penned on Blomberg’s new baroness. When the Blomberg file was produced, the petit bourgeois Hitler was irate: He had been tricked into witnessing the ceremony—nay, even kissed the hand of a woman of the streets. He was particularly appalled that the pornographic pictures in the police file had been taken by Eva’s onetime lover, a Czech Jew.

Blomberg was summoned. Hitler wanted the marriage annulled, but the general immediately refused. As it was, Hitler would not allow him to continue as minister of war. He seems to have made little attempt to save himself, going happily into retirement. He even recommended Fritsch as his successor. Hitler was relieved when Blomberg accepted a generous golden handshake, leaving soon after for Italy, but he continued to seethe. There is a suggestion in some circles that his shattered look was a pose, that he was acting, but Goebbels called it “the worst crisis for the regime since the Röhm Affair. . . . The Führer looks like a corpse.” It is unlikely that Goebbels would be misled by Hitler’s performance.

Hitler summoned Keitel and asked him who should succeed Blomberg. Keitel said all the right things: Göring was the man for the job. Hitler, on the other hand, refused to consider Göring, who he thought had enough on his plate already; he believed Göring to be “too idle” to take on the extra work. Keitel then advanced the name of Fritsch. Hitler went to his desk and returned with the Fritsch file. Keitel claims that he responded by saying it could only be “a case of mistaken identity or slander.” Hitler asked Keitel who should have Fritsch’s job. Keitel replied, Gerd von Rundstedt. Hitler thought him too old. Keitel’s next idea was Walther von Brauchitsch; Hitler parried him with Walter von Reichenau. This must have seemed like a means of resolving the problem, given the fact that Reichenau was a keen Nazi, but Keitel said he was “
Hans Dampf in allen Gassen
”—a busybody too interested in politics and too little applied to the business of the army. He was unpopular with the other generals. Brauchitsch would have to do.

THE BACHELOR Fritsch had already aroused suspicions among some members of Hitler’s elite. He had just been on a long holiday in Egypt, where he hoped to cure his bronchitis; he had left soon after the meeting in the Chancellery, together with his second adjutant, a former champion point-to-pointer called Jochen von Both. Göring had Fritsch tailed, but no proof was forthcoming. Fritsch knew a defamatory report about him was making the rounds, but he mistakenly believed the contents of the dossier to be based on malicious rumors about some lunches he had offered an impecunious member of the Hitler Youth a few years before. Other sources mention
two
Youths, and Fritsch’s teaching them history and rapping them with a ruler on their bare calves when they got their facts wrong. The running joke among the SS was that Fritsch was a calf fetishist.

To find out if there were any truth in it, Hitler gave the file to Hossbach, who instantly smelled a rat. Against Hitler’s orders, he confronted Fritsch, who denied everything. Fritsch seemed aware that the scandal had been brewed by Göring and Himmler, who sought to rid Germany of a reactionary general like himself. Hossbach told Hitler that Fritsch denied the charge, painting him in such a sympathetic light that Hitler was still keen to make him war minister. Hitler had not yet abandoned Fritsch on January 26, when the general was asked to come in and see Hitler, Göring, and his accuser in the Chancellery library. Fritsch entered shouting, “I really want to look at this pig!” He was not supposed to know that Schmidt would be present, but Hossbach had told him, thereby incurring the eternal enmity of Göring, who was looking forward to his coup de théâtre.

Hitler told Fritsch that he had been accused of infringing Article 175. Schmidt promptly identified Fritsch, who vigorously denied the charges. He swore on his word of honor he had never set eyes on Schmidt before and that there was no truth in the allegations. He made the mistake, however, of mentioning the Hitler Youth. Hitler was instantly suspicious; he may have felt there was no smoke without fire. Hitler wrote off Fritsch and Hossbach with him, telling Keitel he never wanted to see the colonel again. The firing of Hossbach compounded Hitler’s depression, and Goebbels reported that he was quite tearful the next day. Hitler was not the only lachrymose person around; Keitel’s deputy, Alfred Jodl, reported that his boss was tearful as well: “You get the impression of being caught up in one of the German nation’s fateful moments.”

Positive identification by Otto Schmidt had naturally been sufficient for Göring to declare Fritsch a guilty man, but on further inspection, the Gestapo man Huber alighted on a discrepancy: Deductions from the bank account of one Captain von
Frisch
amounted exactly to the sum paid to the blackmailer Schmidt. He went straight to see his superior, Werner Best, who sent him to Heydrich. Heydrich went pale and took him to Himmler. Himmler thanked him, saying, “You did well.” Only when Meisinger informed Huber that the file had been around for a couple of years and had been put away for later use did he realize he had stumbled across a conspiracy. The missing
t
and lesser rank of Captain von Frisch would not stand in the way of the plotters’ desire to block Fritsch’s progress.

The apparent strike against the officer corps was causing concern. At midday on Wednesday, January 26, Helldorf called a meeting to discuss the Fritsch-Blomberg crisis at the headquarters of the Abwehr, or military intelligence service, on the Tirpitzufer. It was attended by, among others, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, and his two deputies—Colonel Hans Oster and Hans Pieckenbrock. Helldorf defended Fritsch, but in his opinion Blomberg was too compromised, and he was shocked that Blomberg could have stooped so low. The meeting marked the parting of the ways between the nationalist fellow travelers and the Nazis. The suspicion that the whole affair was no more than an attempt to weaken the Wehrmacht’s esprit de corps provoked the burgeoning cell of grumblers to consider launching a putsch.

Yet the scandal would not go away. On the 27th Fritsch endured a four-hour interrogation by Best, again in the presence of Schmidt. Both Fritsch and Schmidt clung to their stories. Since Schmidt’s appearance at the Chancellery, the Gestapo interviewed a number of young men who had served under Fritsch’s command, including Gottfried von Cramm, who had just returned from America and was later imprisoned for another offense under Article 175. The Gestapo ignored Schmidt’s various claims that were clearly factually incorrect, and Franz Gürtner, the minister of justice, who was equally biased against the general, said Fritsch had not proved his innocence and regarded the story of the Hitler Youth as incriminating. Blomberg had thrown fat on the fire before his departure by saying that Fritsch was “not a woman’s man.” Gürtner recommended the case go before a military court. The four-hour interview coincided with the ex-kaiser’s birthday, and the discontent within the officer corps was clear from the number of pro-monarchist celebrations that took place in their messes.