Battleship Bismarck (65 page)

Of course, to keep my mouth closed under any and every circumstance,
uninterruptedly, so to say, was more than I could manage. The most violent agitation gripped me whenever I read a report in the Allied press, often half hidden, by way of suggestion and unconfirmed conjecture, of killings and atrocities behind the German battlefronts. Before the background of the racial madness loose in Germany—with the crackling Kurfürstendamm of 9 November 1938 always in mind—such press notices sprang to horrifying reality

“Who are we, that we set ourselves up as judges over other people, that we feel called upon to decide on the ‘worth and worthlessness’ of foreign life, to legitimatize our elimination of ‘inferior beings’?”—I spit out the words, as it were, on one of my walks with one of the two or three officers in camp to whom I could say such things at all. “The German reputation, our right to self-respect, they will be lost for an eternity, we are pulling ourselves down—for every single day of the Hitler regime, it will take a year to rehabilitate Germany among the community of nations—and even that may not suffice. The outlook is becoming worse and worse.” My uncontradicted monologue had relieved me somewhat; I couldn’t expect that it would do more. Then again, the day came when abruptly and for no apparent reason, the blinders fell. “We are basically still not a nation at all,” I announced to one of my trusted friends. “For what was jammed together and tied up with so much pressure and force from above, can hardly have grown into it organically. After a thousand years of German history, still not grown into it, still no true nation!” At that time, in the tenth year of the Hitler regime, I found this a disturbing realization.

One other time also I was unable to contain myself: on the morning of 21 July 1944, the day after the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler. In the camp street, otherwise empty at that early hour, I met, of us inmates,
the
officer with whom I could talk more openly than with any other. “Damn!” we called to one another, “it didn’t work!” And immediately after, again almost simultaneously, “Have we gone crazy, to shout that out here? Let’s clear out!” The first excitement and the chill despair that fate had again so cruelly decided against Germany had swept over us. Yet out of the initial surge of emotion I could not form a lasting view of the consequences of the failure. In the end, it was necessary to distinguish and inwardly to choose between two evils. Either Hitler lived, as had happened, and only our adversaries’ victory would bring the frightful killing and destruction to an end. Or, to enter into speculation, suppose the attempt had succeeded. Then, in my opinion—with the “stab in the back” legend following the First World War, my own initial gullibility in the face of
it, and the striking susceptibility of my countrymen to political legends always in mind—another consequence would have become inevitable. The new legend would have freed Hitler from responsibility for the defeat and fastened it on the assassins, the “traitors.” The prospect of the devastation of Germany to be expected from the living Hitler had to be weighed against, in the other case, the politically ruinous way of thought to be feared among subsequent generations who believed the legend. Each person may assess these alternatives, now historical, for himself.

The news of Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt reached us through the secret radio station the day that it occurred and shook the camp like an earthquake. Everyone was speedily informed of the events in the Wolf’s Lair.
*
Uneasiness and the paralysis of all emotion were the first reaction; the events in the Reich were spoken of only in whispers and undertones. Soon we also learned of the execution of Stauffenberg and others in the Bendlerstrasse and—to me the most tormenting—the appointment of Himmler as commander in chief of the Home Army. Then the possibility that the conspirators had symphathizers in Bowmanville arose, was dragged forward, and bruited about. Suspicion of certain individuals spread throughout the camp. The waves of excitement grew ever higher; if and the extent to which they would die down appeared increasingly questionable. During those days National Socialist fanatics in another officers’ camp shouted, “String up the Catholics and the nobility!” And some people in Bowmanville may not have viewed matters very differently. The senior officer in camp acted at once. Generalleutnant
†
Arthur Schmitt, a veteran of the
Deutsches Afrika Korps
and above all suspicion as a supporter of Hitler and suitably certified by his annual address on 9 November, the anniversary of Hitler’s unsuccessful Munich Putch in 1923, assembled us at a muster on the evening of 21 July. He damned the conspirators and called on us to close ranks behind Hitler. And in fact camp life returned to normal. At least outwardly; emotional residues and potentially explosive attitudes remained in existence.

It was on 14 August 1944 that one of our officers, a Luftwaffe captain whom we will call X, went over to the Canadians. He had taken advantage of a stay outside the compound not to return and placed himself at the disposition of the custodial power. A wild wave
of excitement gripped the camp; attitudes still heated from the attempt on Hitler reached the boiling point; for days the air seemed to lie on us all heavy as lead, thick enough to cut, unwilling to lift, suffocating. A self-appointed drumhead court-martial condemned X, in absentia, “to death on account of desertion” and declared him an “outlaw.” Any occupant of the camp who encountered him anywhere would be entitled to kill him. “Absolute nonsense,” Seeburg growled to me at a favorable occasion, “no one here has jurisdiction.”

The extreme Nazis in the camp then raised additional questions: “Who will desert next? Who knew of X’s plan? With whom was X most often seen together? And what kind of people are they, inside and out?” They “found” that Schmitt had not conducted the previous investigations aggressively enough and wanted to “investigate” for themselves. Camp discipline fell into the shadows. Advocates of vigilante action were undermining the primacy of the military hierarchy, but before things got dangerously out of hand Schmitt did the only correct thing and undercut the competition by undertaking the interrogations and making the decisions himself.

For my part I now expected to be questioned by Schmitt at any moment, as in the past months I had occasionally talked with X on walks. In the complete rejection of the so-called National Socialism I had found myself at one with him, although our motives were very different. But our exchange of thoughts always remained purely academic; through no syllable, no sign, could I have become aware of his intention to desert. Besides, he must have regarded the creation of initiates as a danger to his secret plan. My fundamental attitude to such changes of sides had long been clear: To have emigrated on political grounds before the war in the conviction that one would be unable to lessen the national catastrophe under Hitler and, to the contrary, would personally have to collaborate with it—that I can understand. But to desert in 1944, during the war—no, never!

“You know the monstrous thing which has taken place, Müllenheim, and I have to get to the bottom of your possible complicity in the desertion of Captain X,” Schmitt told me when he summoned me on 17 August. “As you were repeatedly seen together with X, the possibility cannot be dismissed that you had been initiated into his plans and improperly kept silent.” He continued, “You also know that, in violation of military conventions, I have been attacked by some hyperactive officers as supposedly too indecisive in the investigation of Captain X. I am personally conducting this investigation
and according to the standards that duty dictates. I will announce the results at a camp assembly, at which I will also give my opinion of the gentlemen who have personally pressed me too closely. What do you have to say?”

“It is quite true, Herr General,” I replied, “that I have spoken with Captain X on occasion. But I never heard anything about his intention to desert or even any such ideas. I myself most definitely condemn his step and have absolutely nothing to do with it. Of this I assure you, and there is nothing more that I can say.”

“I will take that under serious consideration,” Schmitt said, “but, Müllenheim, there is something more. Your continually critical remarks about our government are known, and indeed have been for a long time, and, because of the present atmosphere in the camp alone, I do not see how I can avoid publicly naming your name.”

This was a damnably unwelcome revelation and I had to reflect before replying. Certainly, as I’ve said before, over the years I had been reserved in political conversations or avoided them altogether. But one could scarcely conceal his inner self completely for long in such a crowded, communal society. Gestures and the unspoken word counted in it. Hadn’t just recently an officer newly assigned to the camp told me of his first question to a friend he encountered there: “With whom can one speak openly in this Cloud-Cuckoo-Land?” and hadn’t the latter answered, “With Korvettenkapitän von Müllenheim of the
Bismarck.
” And soon thereafter hadn’t we had a conversation that he characterized as “an oasis in the desert”? Hadn’t I long been to many the “objective one,” the “citizen of the world”? To attempt to deny my critical remarks about “our government” to Schmitt would therefore have been more than merely tactically a false move.

“Herr General,” I finally formulated it, “your announcement is not agreeable to me and I would much prefer it if you left me unmentioned. With the case that is the only thing being debated here I have nothing to do, absolutely nothing at all.”

Schmitt seemed to hesitate. “I will see and you will hear further,” he said before the door closed behind me. Then he continued his investigation, sounding out people about me and interrogating others. When he summoned me again on 24 August he had dropped the point of my “complicity in the desertion,” but not my “criticism of our government.” Apparently he was under enormous pressure from the camp extremists. Yet I could only repeat my previous statements. He once again withheld his final decision. More days had to pass in
agonizing suspense before the morning of 28 August, the day of the assembly, when I once more stood before the general.

“No, Müllenheim,” Schmitt told me, “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave you out of my address this evening. I have made inquiries, very many, very precise inquiries, and you appear too heavily compromised by your critical remarks. But at first and for the most part I will settle accounts with those gentlemen who have laid their hands on military discipline and have seriously wronged and insulted me. Your turn will come later.”

“If you believe that you must act in this manner, Herr General, I must understand; besides, I can’t stop you,” I replied, and my last interview was over.

Schmitt acted on his words. After condemning the deserter and justifying the verdict of the drumhead court-martial, he devoted the main portion of his eighty-minute-long address to reprimanding the officers who, although in an ever-so-well-meant excess of zeal, had forgotten military conventions. He did not come to me—politically the other extreme, so to speak—until the very end and then very briefly. He deplored my repeated criticisms and advised me to lay aside my uniform after the war and leave the armed forces. Curiously, the thought that came to mind was, “The outcome of the war, Herr General, will be such that you may have to lay aside the uniform before I do.” But I was in anything other than high spirits. A deep silence lay over the hall and when at the end of the address I returned to my quarters like everyone else, with the usual camp stool tucked under my arm, it was as though I did so inside a glass jar of isolation. A new era of communal life might have begun for me. I would find out; but I certainly would not change my views of Hitler.

“Cheer up, it’s been publicly certified that you’ve thought otherwise”—these surprising words were as welcome as they were unexpected a greeting the next morning. Out on an early walk through the camp, I had encountered Generalleutnant Hans von Ravenstein and it was he who had spoken to me in such a friendly way. I looked at him gratefully but avoided involving him in a longer conversation in public, which in view of the still ticklish mood in camp could have unpleasant consequences for him. He was the last person I would have wished them on. Moreover, although much remained unsaid, to me we appeared to be completely in agreement. After the war—that was how I summed up his message to me—we would have a politically “sanitary” government without a Brown residue. At the time we certainly did not visualize a Globke-
Oberländer state,
*
a state of conservative restoration and lacking political hygiene.

Generalleutnant von Ravenstein, a Silesian from a military family dating from before the wars of Frederick the Great, slender, with the finely chiselled features of an aristocrat, even a little reminiscent of the Hohenzollerns, had come to our camp in 1943 after being captured while commanding the 21st Panzer Division in Libya. Soon after his arrival he had proven himself to be a speaker who could figuratively tear his listeners our of their seats; his fiery words, his repeated
“In Afrika wird ge-Rommelt,
”
†
seemed to have truly transferred the battlefield into the auditorium—if anyone was able to fire up soldiers, he was definitely the man. But to listen to him most carefully was absolutely necessary. For what he left unsaid was as important for an understanding of his evaluations and judgments as were his spoken words. Repeatedly decorated for bravery during the First World War and awarded the Order Pour le Mérite as a captain in May 1918 for an outstanding feat of arms, after the war he was for many years active in a high position in the communal service in the Ruhr. Becoming a soldier again in 1934, during the Second World War he had fought in Poland, France, the Balkans, and Africa, receiving the Knight’s Cross in June 1940. His charming, charismatic personality and his innate diplomacy, refined amid the changing scenes of his life, would later make him in another place a camp leader who was equally well respected by the Germans and the Canadians.