The Kindly Ones

The conference took place in one of the great oak-paneled halls of the palace, where National Socialist decorations clashed somewhat with the eighteenth-century woodwork and gilt candelabra. More than a hundred SD officers were present, among them a number of my former colleagues or superiors: Siebert, with whom I had served in the Crimea, Regierungsrat Neifend, who had worked in Amt II but had since been appointed Gruppenleiter in Amt III, and others. Ohlendorf had his seat near the rostrum, next to a man in an SS-Obergruppenführer’s uniform, with a broad, bare forehead and firm, set features: Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter from Lower Silesia, who was representing the Reichsführer at this ceremony. Reichsminister Speer arrived a little late. He struck me as surprisingly young, even though his hair was starting to recede, slim, vigorous; he wore a simple twill suit, with the Gold Badge of the Party as sole decoration. Some civilians accompanied him, and took their seats on chairs lined up behind Ohlendorf and Hanke, while he stepped up to the podium and began his speech. He spoke, in the beginning, in an almost gentle voice, precise and polished, which emphasized rather than masked an authority that Speer seemed to draw more from himself than from his position. His dark, keen eyes remained fixed on us and left our faces only occasionally, to look at his notes; when they were lowered, they almost disappeared under his thick, bushy eyebrows. The notes were just there to serve as pointers for his speech; he hardly consulted them at all, and seemed to take all the figures he ticked off directly from his head, as he needed them, as if they were constantly stored there, ready for use. His statements were brutally and, to my way of thinking, refreshingly frank: if total military production was not rapidly implemented, the war was lost. These weren’t Cassandra warnings; Speer compared our present production with the estimates we had of Soviet and especially American production; at this pace, he demonstrated, we wouldn’t hold out for a year. But our industrial resources were far from being fully exploited; and one of the major obstacles, aside from the problems of manual labor, was the obstruction, at a regional level, by private interests: it was especially for that reason that he counted on the support of the SD, and that was one of the main subjects of the agreements he was going to conclude with the SS. He had just signed an important agreement with the French Economics Minister, Bichelonne, to transfer the majority of our production of consumer goods to France. That would certainly give a considerable commercial advantage to postwar France, but we didn’t have a choice: if we wanted victory, it was up to us to make sacrifices. This measure would allow us to transfer an additional million and a half workers to armaments. But we could expect a number of Gauleiters to oppose the necessary closures of firms; and this was one particular area where the SD could intervene. After this speech, Ohlendorf got up, thanked Speer, and swiftly presented the terms of the agreement: the SD would be authorized to examine the conditions of recruitment and the treatment of foreign workers; similarly, any refusal by the Gauleiters to follow the minister’s instructions would be subject to an SD investigation. On a table set up for this purpose the agreement was ceremoniously signed, by Hanke, Ohlendorf, and Speer; then everyone exchanged a German salute, Speer shook their hands, and left. I looked at my watch: I had less than forty-five minutes, but I had brought my travel bag. In all the milling around, I slipped next to Ohlendorf, who was talking to Hanke: “Brigadeführer, excuse me. I’m taking the same train as the Reichsminister; I have to go.” Ohlendorf, a little surprised, raised his eyebrows: “Call me when you get back,” he said.