The Kindly Ones

I followed the Reichsführer’s instructions to the letter. I don’t know what Pohl did with our project, so lovingly conceived: a few days later, around the end of the month, he sent another order to all the KLs, instructing them to diminish the mortality and morbidity rate by ten percent, but without giving the slightest concrete suggestion; to my knowledge, Isenbeck’s rations were never applied. Nevertheless I received a very flattering letter from Speer, who was pleased with the project’s adoption, concrete proof of our new, recently inaugurated cooperation. He ended:

I hope to have the opportunity to see you again soon to discuss these problems. Yours, Speer. I forwarded this letter to Brandt. In the beginning of November, I received a second letter: the Gauleiter of the Westmark had written to Speer to demand that the five hundred Jewish workers delivered by the SS to a weapons factory in Lorraine be withdrawn immediately: Thanks to my care, Lorraine is Judenfrei and will remain so

, wrote the Gauleiter. Speer asked me to forward this letter to the relevant authority to settle the problem. I consulted Brandt; a few days later, he sent me an internal memo, asking me to answer the Gauleiter myself in the Reichsführer’s name, negatively. Tone: abrupt, wrote Brandt. I pulled out all the stops:

Dear Party Comrade Bürckel!

Your request is inopportune and cannot be accepted. In this difficult hour for Germany, the Reichsführer is aware of the need to use the labor of the enemies of our Nation to the utmost. Decisions about assignment of workers are made in consultation with the RMfRuK, the only authority competent today to deal with this question. Since the prohibition presently in force not to employ Jewish inmate workers concerns only the Altreich and Austria, I cannot avoid the impression that your request stems chiefly from your desire to avoid being ignored in the overall handling of the Jewish question.

Heil Hitler! Yours, etc.

I sent a copy to Speer, who thanked me. Little by little, this began to be repeated: Speer had irritating demands and requests sent to me, and I replied to them in the Reichsführer’s name; for more complicated cases, I referred to the SD, going through acquaintances rather than the official route, to speed things up. In this way I again saw Ohlendorf, who invited me to dinner, and inflicted on me a long tirade against the industry self-management system set in place by Speer, which he regarded as a simple usurpation of the powers of the State by capitalists without the slightest responsibility toward the community. If the Reichsführer approved of it, according to him, that was because he didn’t understand anything about economics, and moreover he was under the influence of Pohl, himself a pure capitalist obsessed with the expansion of his industrial SS empire. To tell the truth, I didn’t understand much about economics, either, or about Ohlendorf’s violent arguments on the subject, for that matter. But it was always a pleasure just to listen to him: his frankness and intellectual honesty were as refreshing as a glass of cold water, and he was right to stress that the war had caused or accentuated a number of abuses; afterward, we would have to reform the structures of the State in depth.