Himmler in Hiding: Himmler's Astrologer Ponders the Cambridge Spies

“I thought I told you not to go outside,” said Macher. He was furious. He pointed to the house. “Get back inside now.”

Meekly, Franzi Loerber did as he was told and started walking back to the house. “I needed to see the stars,” he mumbled apologetically.

Macher was unimpressed. “You pull something like that again, I swear I’ll blow your brains out. I don’t care how great the Chief thinks you are.”

Franzi had no doubt that Macher would not hesitate to shoot him. Only the day before he’d killed an SS man who’d given him backtalk. Just like that. Bullet in the head, drag the body off, somebody clean the blood off the floor. Now where were we?

The others were standing along the side of the house, keeping back from the open front yard as they watched Macher throttle Franzi. There were three of them, Grothmann, Kiermaier and Gebhardt, who until then had been on lookout duty. Himmler was standing at the threshold, buttoning up his trousers as he stared out at them. “Macher, what is it?” he demanded. “Is everything all right? Tell me what is going on?”

“Zonag the Magnificent here wanted to go look at the stars,” Macher fumed. “Little fairy’s going to get us all caught.”

“He wanted to look at the stars?” Himmler asked. “Well maybe you should let him.” He turned to Franzi. “Did you see something? What was it?” he demanded, his voice squealing with excitement. “You should let him look, Macher. How can you expect him to complete my horoscope? Let him stay outside. I’ll watch him.”

Macher shook his head. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “Everyone back inside.”

From far inside the house, a woman’s voice, high-pitched and fretful, called out, “Heinzi, what is it?”

“It’s nothing, nothing at all,” Himmler called back.

“Then come back to bed,” they heard her purr. “I’m so cold.” Even from outside, it was easy to tell she was pouting. Immediately Himmler turned and made his way back inside, unbuttoning his trousers as he did. Macher shook his head with disgust, then, turning his attention back to Franzi, he grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the ground. “I’ve about had it with you,” he said.

Franzi got back to his feet and stumbled back inside, numbly making his way into the empty parlor. But once there, he found that he could not, for the life of him, remember which chair he’d been sitting in before going out. There were four chairs in the parlor and four of them sitting there in them; Franzi, Macher, Grothmann and Kiermaier. Each with his own place and for Franzi to sit in someone else’s was to invite no small amount of abuse upon himself. By this point, everyone’s nerves were on edge and being at the absolute bottom of the totem pole, Franzi was everybody’s target of choice.

He tried to remember, but couldn’t. The vision he’d just had left him too drained. Even though it had been barely five minutes since he’d been sitting there, the way his head felt it could have been last year. He remained standing, woozily surveying the chairs, hoping to let the others sit down first.

"Sit down!” barked Macher.

Franzi went to an armchair and fell into it. “Get out of my chair!” Kiermaier growled from the doorway. Wearily, Franzi got back up and looked at the other chairs. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Where was I sitting?” Angrily, Kiermaier pointed to the one across from him and Franzi lowered himself again, feeling more dazed than he ever had in his life.

“What’s with you, anyway?” asked Grothmann. “You’re acting strange.”

Franzi put his hand to his brow and said. “I’m sorry, I just...bad headache."

“Oh? So the Swami is having trouble getting out of his trance?” sneered Grothmann.

Franzi gave a week grimace and nodded.

“Hey! The Reichsfuhrer might buy that crap but don’t expect me to,” said Grothmann combatively.

Franzi closed his eyes and let the back of his head rest against the top of the chair. He tried to gather his thoughts, but his head felt like it was full of cold, wet cement. His thoughts moved listlessly through his brain like dying animals.

Then he remembered the vision and what he’d seen, and as dead as he’d been feeling, he suddenly felt a spark of warmth in his heart. Ziggy was near! Manni too, he knew it now with a certainty. They were looking for him, they were looking for him together! Was it even possible? And there was someone else there too, holding Ziggy’s hand and forcing him to look…….It felt like his old friend Nigel Westerby. He couldn’t believe it, but he knew it was true. What were they doing? What did they know? What could be going on that would bring them all together like this? For the first time in weeks he felt hope.

Up till now, he’d been feeling so worn down from fear and futility, he knew he’d soon run out of the strength and will to continue contending with Macher. The only reason Franzi was even alive was that no one else could take away Himmler’s pain. But that didn’t mean they trusted Franzi in the slightest. He was nothing more than a servant, someone they would have gotten rid of long ago if they’d been able to figure out a way to do without his talents. Nothing he could say could ever convince Macher that he wouldn’t try to run away at the first opportunity. As a result, they wouldn’t even let him go out unescorted to the outhouse.

The others got out quite a bit. Every few hours one of them would go sneak around outside to make sure no one had infiltrated in. Franzi had volunteered to go, but Macher wouldn’t let him. “This is man’s work,” he’d say with a superior smirk, as if being homosexual made Franzi an inferior sneaker.

Were they setting up some plan to rescue him? Did they know something about Himmler’s plans that he didn’t know? Franzi knew next to nothing about any of the day-to-day planning that went on. He wasn’t even sure how much Himmler knew. They seemed to be keeping a lot from him, ever since Macher found out he would confide things to Franzi during the course of a massage. They were making very sure that none of that information filtered down to him.

But since the Reichsfuhrer had nothing mundane with which to impress Franzi, he’d resorted to handing him morsels of information on a far grander scale. He never told him very much, by themselves they were all tantalizing, but useless little chunks.

Except what no one understood about Franzi Loerber was his ability to store up all the little chunks and fit them against and alongside each other until he managed to piece large pieces of the puzzle together. And by this point he actually knew quite a lot about the extent of German infiltration into the Soviet intelligence apparatus.

He knew they had two men in the NKVD’s Thirteenth Directorate, which handled foreign counter-intelligence. He didn’t know their names but he did know something about how they operated. He knew that they were among the bargaining chips that Schellenberg hoped to use to get them all in with the British. He also knew that the Soviets had British Intelligence pretty well riddled with their people whom they’d recruited straight from Cambridge. He even knew several of their names, Burgess, Philby, Donald McLean. But there was also another one, one whom Schellenberg had yet to identify.

He knew lots of other things as well. It wasn’t just spies and infiltration and intelligence estimates. He knew about linkages. He knew about the trading houses and holding companies and the foreign subsidiaries and which bankers and industrialists had worked with the Nazis throughout the war. He knew about British lords and American senators. There were plenty of powerful people out there with a vested interest in keeping that information from ever getting out. It was a sure bet that they’d have their people out among the advance parties tidying up and removing certain inconvenient realities before the main force arrived.

Just then a loud creaking of bedsprings erupted from the other side of the parlor wall. Himmler and his mistress were at it again. It had to be the fifth time that day.

Her name was Fraulein Potthast and she was, Franzi had learned, the Reichsfuhrer’s longtime mistress. She had already been living at the farmhouse for two weeks when they had arrived. Apparently Himmler had Kiermaier arrange her accommodation without anyone else knowing about it. She was young, blonde and pretty, though in a horse-faced way. She was also vivacious, flirtatious and loud. She liked wearing shimmery silk robes; lilac and silvery blue and when it was cold she would wrap herself in a heavy, full-length fur which she told them was sable, though Franzi knew it was something else.

It was strange having her brought into their pared-down, die-hard ranks. Franzi could tell Macher didn’t approve of such a reckless change to what had until then been his flawless regime of evasion and escape. But before he could voice his objections, the Reichsfuhrer had already vanished into the bedroom with her.

Her presence was a mixed blessing to say the least. She got on everyone’s nerves and seemed spectacularly unmindful of the perilous situation they were in. It didn’t register with her that they were, at that moment, the focus of possibly the largest manhunt in history. All that mattered was that finally she was the one closest to the Reichsfuhrer! That his mighty empire was now down to a handful of people and that it barely extended beyond the farmhouse was of no consequence. She had him now! She had risen to the very top and no one could take that away from her.

And because of this, she felt entitled to rule the roost, to be treated as the lady of the house, First Lady of the whole SS Empire. She would voice her opinions, she would ask questions, demand answers and accounts. She demanded deference and was quick to inform the four subjects of her dominion which of them were currently on her good list and which were not.

On the other hand, she kept Himmler occupied and out of their hair for hours at a time. Until now, Franzi never had the impression the Reichsfuhrer was much of a swordsman. He seemed more the mousey, schoolmaster type, too prissy and fastidious to ever get really down and nasty. But now he was absolutely unstoppable. Nothing, it seemed, spurred the Reichsfuehrer’s romantic ardor quite like impending doom.

It shouldn’t have affected Franzi’s situation either way except that it did. It made it a lot worse. To his dismay, Franzi discovered that Fraulein Potthast regarded him as her rival. Even though she managed to occupy nearly all of the Reichsfuhrer’s waking attention, there were nevertheless things he needed that she could not provide, physical things, things altogether too similar to her own ministrations for her to be able to brush them aside.

For much as Himmler was now generally calmer and more stable from having her around, his stomach did occasionally erupt into paroxysms of pain, that were worse than ever before. When that happened there was nobody who could take the pain away but Franzi. Each time, she would be dismissed from her privileged place and forced into the common room to sulk while Franzi would come in and go to work on Himmler’s stomach and abdomen, kneading the spasms and squeezing out the knots and replacing them with warmth. He’d listen to Himmler as he’d freshly detail all his fears and he’d calm him and tell him about what the stars were saying about the future. And by the time he’d leave, the Reichsfuhrer would again be glowing in happiness and optimism. Sometimes he would want to have a little party, light the nice candles, break out a bottle or two of the good stuff and even play the gramophone. During which time Fraulein Potthast would feel impelled to act as the charming hostess, addressing everybody with pet names of her own devising; everyone, of course, except Franzi. And they’d all have to treat her with graciousness and deference, which was asking an awful lot of Macher, who had a hard enough time keeping up the pretense that she was anything more than some snatch-on-the-run.

Franzi opened his eyes only to see Kiermaier staring at him. Kiermaier had the unnerving quality of sitting motionless and staring straight at you for an hour, two hours, three, it made no difference to him. He didn’t talk about things, he didn’t give off any indication what he was thinking, if he was thinking anything. And as the groaning bedsprings grew noisier and more imperative, Kiermaier’s stillness only grew disconcerting. Franzi knew better than to start a conversation or, worse, make a comment about what was going on in the next room. Kiermaier was Himmler’s personal bodyguard and while he might have to put up with Macher’s or Grothmann’s little digs, he certainly wasn’t going to take anything from Franzi Loerber.

Franzi drifted back into his thoughts about his brothers and wondered if the view he’d found of the town and that castle was enough landmark that they could find their way. He hoped he was right, he prayed to God they were coming to get him out of this hell. It would be so wonderful to be rescued, to be free. He felt like a Rapunzel locked in a tower, waiting to let down his golden stair, so he and his rescuers could descend it, dismantling it in the process and taking it with them on their escape. Wherever they were going, he knew they’d need it.

The creaking grew louder, but always irregular and arrhythmic and punctuated by the Reichsfuhrer’s sporatic, labored grunting. Does he think himself a great lover? Franzi wondered. Is he relishing his role of public stud? Probably.

“Jesus God, is that all he’s good for?” It was Macher, seething with disgust. He hated weakness in any form and the thought of serving a Reichsfuhrer so enslaved to his own urges ran against his grain.

Kiermaier shot him a poisonous look. “Watch your mouth,” he growled. Macher pursed his lips into a contemptuous sneer, but said nothing. Franzi looked down, not wanting to get drawn into the argument, knowing it would only get him beaten on by both of them.

Macher had only been Himmler’s adjutant for the last two months, but Kiermaier had served as bodyguard for twenty years. It didn’t matter that Macher outranked him and was obviously in charge, Kiermaier’s loyalty was absolute and he wasn’t about to let Macher or anybody even suggest disrespect to his boss. The two butted heads on a regular basis, and, as a result, Franzi sometimes fantasized about Macher and Kiermaier having such an argument that it would get out of hand and they’d end up shooting and killing each other, leaving Franzi free to walk out. But he knew it wasn’t going to happen. They were both pros, and knew better than to tread very hard on the other’s space. Besides, any excess anger they had, they usually took out on Franzi.

He thought about Ziggy and Manni again. How would they escape? Would they steal through the night fields and forests, hiding in the shadows while their pursuers and the victorious armies forged past? And after that, what? Would they find passage across the waters aboard anonymous, nondescript steamships, melding themselves into the mass of humanity in transit?

Where would they go? Anywhere, as long as it was someplace where the dogs couldn’t follow. A sunny land, somewhere lazy and entropic. Someplace where they could go to ground and hide themselves, someplace where even the presence of three identical-looking foreign men would scarce arouse curiosity in the good-natured natives. Spain, Portugal, Chile, the Andes, Uruguay, The Argentine. On second thought, maybe not The Argentine, since it seemed like half the SS was already on their way there. Uruguay, then. Buy a hacienda or a cattle ranch, sink into happy oblivion, keep a low profile, maybe marry, have children. Why not?

Then another thought came into his head. If they were planning to come and rescue him, they had better get a move on it. Even though Macher and the others had gone out of their way to keep Franzi in the dark, he knew beyond a doubt that something was about to happen. There had been several visitors during the last few days, all coming from Flensburg to discuss things with Macher and Grothmann. Every time they did, he’d get sent into the parlor with the girl while Himmler stayed hidden in another room, listening in on the conversation.

That very morning, in fact, a Luftwaffe officer came up in a jeep driven by two British soldiers, both of whom remained in their vehicle while he went inside to talk to Macher and Grothmann. About the only things Franzi actually made out was the Luftwaffe man saying ‘flying boat,’ and Macher telling him, ‘we’ll have it here tomorrow.’

“We’ll have it here tomorrow.” What could Macher have been referring to? What could the Luftwaffe guy care about that much besides payment. He couldn’t want Reichsmarks. No paper money, unless it was Swissfrancs. Couldn’t be British Fivers either, not with the way Schellenberg had been forging them. No, for something like that, it’d have to be Specie; Gold, up front, payment in hand, nothing promissory. Thank you very much, welcome aboard, take any seat you like, we’ll be taking off shortly!

Besides, the Russians were also closing in on them. Only a few days earlier, while they were hiding out in a manor house on the edge of a small village, looking out the window onto the street, Franzi noticed a zigzag mark in yellow chalk on a traffic sign across the street. An inconsequential mark, to be sure, not something anyone would pay any attention to, except that, it hadn’t been there the day before, and it just happened also to be the hailing mark of his old Moscow-Center spy ring. They were looking for him and he didn’t know what to do.

The obvious answer was of course that they were looking for Himmler to bring him to justice. He could find a way to leave them a countermark and lead them to him, which would earn him praise and reward and even a bright, quiet, unproblematic future.

Of course another possibility was that they also wanted the Gold. In which case he could only expect praise and reward if the gold was going to the public good, which was, by the nature of the substance, a bit of a stretch. More likely, they’d want to pocket it for themselves and get rid of him.

Perhaps they wanted him because he’d been their man inside the SS for all these years and it was time to get their spy out and bring him home. Even on an honest, straightforward level, the idea sounded horrendous. He had no desire to go to Russia, even as a hero of the Soviet People. But he knew it was doubtful they would ever do that.

But there was always the possibility they’d figured out he wasn’t a Soviet hero at all, but someone who’d been playing both sides and giving his best work to the British. If that was the case, it wouldn’t be a quick shot in the back of the neck. No, Franzi would have real hell to pay!

Could they have figured that out? Ever since he’d learned from Schellenberg that the Russians had their own people at the top of British Intelligence, he knew it was a very real possibility. All it would take was someone figuring out where Manni had been getting his information from and passing it on to the Russians, who’d promptly connect the dots.

The creaking grew louder and louder, Fraulein Potthast began moaning and making little mewing squeals of joy and then she started screaming full out. She’s faking it, Franzi thought to himself. He’s putting it to her with that pathetic asparagus sprout of his, thinking he’s King Kong reincarnated. Franzi saw Macher and Grothmann exchange a less-than-bemused glance.

Then suddenly it wasn’t the girl who was screaming but Himmler! He shrieked out in excruciating agony, infinitely worse than he had during any of his previous attacks. Kiermaier bolted up from his chair and ran over to the bedroom to investigate. If that bitch has tried something, Franzi could hear him thinking. Had she bitten him someplace? Goddammit, I’ll kill her! 

(A slightly different version of this chapter appears in Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here). 

Schellenberg Picks a New Masseur for Himmler

When the call came, Franzi Loerber had already officially gone off duty and was sitting by himself in the staff and junior officers’ canteen having a cigarette while working out the final calculations on a large batch of horoscopes he’d been assigned to do on senior members of the planning staff. It was crap work, very tiresome. Calculate algorithms based on the variations factored from the shifting positions of fifteen ascendant and twelve descendant groups of stars over twelve nine-day intervals starting a month before conception. It was all complete nonsense, something he’d invented on the spur of the moment a long time ago, but for some reason people swore by it. And far be it from Franzi to tell anybody what they should believe in.

All in all, horoscopes were fairly formulaic stuff. The calculations took forever but the actual writing never took more than five minutes. You always had to make sure it offered so much opportunity, so much warning, and lots and lots of ambiguity. Just write something down, and boom, you’re done and you move on to the next one.

He went on with his number crunching for another hour until the tediousness finally got to him. Putting the horoscopes aside, he took out his hand-written Moscow Center coding chart and began composing a long overdue report.

“47361 73908 66214 38947 03418 87451,” he wrote. It was his way of saying everything was under control and that some promising leads were coming up. “15376 21294 97124 33965,” he added, more as an afterthought. It meant everyone believed the end would come soon.

Franzi looked up to see the cute captain from internal security eyeing him from the next table. Under normal circumstances he might have seen if he could take it somewhere, but since the captain was a spy-hunter and Franzi happened at that moment to be writing a coded letter to Moscow, he instead looked away. He thought about mentioning him in the report. Moscow seemed to like hearing who in SS Headquarters was queer. He tried to remember what the captain’s name was; Hessler, Hindemann?

“96101 49327 85634.” He hated what he was doing. Ziggy was a U-Boat captain, Manni an assassin, Sebastian was an operative for a secret Jewish terror network, all of them living lives of adventure and excitement. And all Franzi had done this entire war was calculate horoscopes and report his fellow SS queers to Moscow and London. “68225 79031 66496.”

Franzi looked at the clock. There was a dead drop hidden in one of the lavatories on the second floor. If he posted the message in the next twenty minutes, he could have Moscow off his back for at least two weeks, maybe longer if things went downhill fast enough. “98343 74588 19632.” He stared at the paper for a long time. Then he looked up. The cute captain was staring at him again. What did he want? Sex? Betrayal? Both? Why not? The captain smiled. Franzi smiled back. He crumpled the paper into a ball, then tossed it into a wastebasket along the wall. Franzi rolled his eyes. The captain gave him a sympathetic smirk like he knew what that was like.

He was done serving Moscow, Franzi decided. The war was all but over and now he had to start taking care of himself. Manni was already gone. He’d left for the Ruhr a month earlier and by this point he was probably safely behind Allied lines. Now Franzi needed to do the same. But how?

It had been a big mistake agreeing to spy for the Russians in the first place, but then at the time he hadn’t felt like he had any right to be picky. If he’d only waited for two more weeks, he could have gone to work for the British. It turned out their friend Nigel Westerby was a British operative and had already signed up Manni. Though Franzi readily agreed to share his information with them, he remembered seeing the disappointment on Westerby’s face.

He remembered how the Russians had first come to him after they’d found out Gustav had just wangled him a cushy research post with the Ahnenerbe, the SS-run racial heritage and occult studies institute. Franzi hadn’t liked the idea of spending the war working with a bunch of charlatans and mystic crackpots, but the Russians insisted it would be an excellent career choice and a great way to fight the Nazis from the inside. It turned out he’d been right on his first guess; it was worse than being a librarian. For someone like him, who’d spent his entire life in the celebrity spotlight, it was a living death. He remembered how, at first, everyone there was excited to have one of the Magical Loerber Brothers on the staff and people would come up to him all the time to ask questions and reminisce, but it wasn’t long before the utter mid-level facelessness of his new job wiped the shine right off him. And once that happened, everyone stopped thinking of him as anyone special.

He noticed two staff majors waving frantically at him from the canteen doorway. “Loerber, come here!” one of them hissed. They waited until Franzi was up close, then whispered. “You’re a masseur, aren’t you?”

Franzi nodded warily. “I’ve done some,” he said. “Not professionally.”

“Get your things,” one of them whispered. “You’re needed immediately at the Reichsfuhrer’s offices.”

Franzi picked up his papers and followed them upstairs to the fifth floor. He was brought past the guards and the identity checkpoint without anyone even taking his name down or checking his papers. Once inside, he was led through a warren of corridors and outer offices where an array of majors, colonels, generals and secretaries all stood attentively, waiting for his arrival. Outside the Reichsfuhrer’s office, a young general stood before the door. Franzi recognized him at once. It was Schellenberg, head of SS intelligence, head of all German intelligence, foreign and domestic, and Franzi’s boyfriend’s boss.

“The Reichsfuhrer needs your help,” Schellenberg said. “Do the best massage you can. And not a word of this to anybody, do you understand?”

Franzi nodded.

But Schellenberg wasn’t satisfied. “I mean nobody. Not your office mates or your fellow astrologers, and certainly not your boyfriend. Clear?”

Franzi nodded.

“Good,” said Schellenberg. “Now go in.”

“But Herr General, isn’t Professor Kersten the only one...?”

“Kersten is gone,” answered Schellenberg, holding open the door and then following him inside.
(Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Blunt and Philby Discuss Schellenberg

For some reason, popular culture likes to portray Nazi Intelligence chief  SS General Walter Schellenberg as a cool-headed, thoroughly competent spymaster.  Others, including myself, take a markedly less generous view (see my earlier blogpost here). According to at least one historical source, Schellenberg had a meeting in Stockholm at the very end of the war with a British intelligence officer who turned out to be Anthony Blunt, a Soviet mole and member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring.  Below is part of a chapter I wrote for GERMANIA, which ended up getting cut, in which Blunt meets with Kim Philby, another member of the Cambridge spy ring. Enjoy!


“Moonpool, you say they call it?” asked Kim Philby a few hours later.

Blunt nodded. He had taken the evening flight back to London and gone straight to Philby’s club. “Some bad news,” he told him.

Listening to Blunt’s description of what Schellenberg had told him a few hours earlier, Philby’s nimble mind was already busy coming up with plans of action. “I’d say this definitely calls for a crash meeting,” he said quietly. Moscow needs to start moving immediately before someone else gets their hands on it.”

“What else do we need to tell them?” asked Blunt.

“They’re going to want to know who else is looking for Himmler right now,” said Philby. “What can you tell them?”

“From what I understand it is a rather biggish manhunt. Though I daresay most of those doing the hunting haven’t a clue. I know the main hunt is being led by some Colonel Herzog. But he’s a tanker, turned cop.”

“Jew?”

“Rather. His father used to be chief rabbi in Belfast.”

“Great,” said Philby, visibly not impressed.

“I’ve heard Westerby’s on it too.”

“Westerby? Jesus!” Philby let out a laugh.

“Yes, last I heard he was sneaking around Monty’s headquarters, being a thorough pain in the neck to everybody. The Americans have their boys out, but at this point it’s unclear how far they’ll get in the northern sector.”

“Aren’t there some American intelligence people attached to British 21 Army Group?”

“Yes, but I gather that at this moment they’re all probably too busy getting drunk and screwing frauleins to be any kind of real threat.”

“So you’re saying Westerby is the only one we have to worry about?”

“Yes, actually. Speaking of Jews, I saw a report the other day about a bunch of rampaging Yids, out to settle scores and kill as many Nazis as they can find. I imagine they’re looking for the gold too. They call themselves the Blood of Israel.”

Philby snorted contemptuously. “That’s pathetic,” he said. “I think this is all going to be a walk in the park. Who besides Schellenberg knows the particulars about Moonpool?”

“It appears the management is being run by one of his adjutants; a Major Steiner. It also appears that Steiner has a boyfriend with whom he’s been engaging in a lot of pillow talk.”

Philby looked impressed. “Name?”

“You’ll love this, Kim. Remember that SS lieutenant they kept asking us to find out about? The fortune teller?”

Philby had to think about it a moment. “You mean Franz Ferdinand Loerber?” Philby was nearly aghast. “Him?”

Blunt smiled.

Philby let out a huge laugh. “Well I reckon that would explain why they were so interested.”

“So I gather.”

“So what kind of a man is this Schellenberg?”

Now it was Blunt’s turn to laugh. “I have a feeling that most of what he thinks he knows about the British Secret Service came from reading a lot of cheap novels. Honestly, I’ve met Americans who had a better sense about it than he did.”
First published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, Germania is now also available on Kindle here.

Walter Schellenberg and the Cambridge Spies: Anthony Blunt

Shortly after Hitler's death, Walter Schellenberg travelled back to Stockholm to meet with Western intelligence, who turned out to be something more than he'd bargained for. Students of Cold War history should know immediately where this is going.

(Following is a deleted scene from Germania.)

“Really quite an interesting idea you’ve got. A mole, you say?” the Englishman said, acting properly impressed by what Schellenberg was propounding. “Quite interesting, yes.”

"Cambridge, you say?” he went on. “Really! How utterly devilish! Well, you must hand it to Ivan for his sheer audacity. Cambridge? I mean that’s something no one ever would have even dared imagine. If this is true, then I’d say we really are in quite a predicament.”

“Oh, I assure you, it’s all true,” chimed in Schellenberg. “Our sources in Moscow are at the very top. And I’m quite sure they’d love working for you.”

“And there are three of them, these Cambridge Spies?”

“Yes,” answered Schellenberg. “Three. Philby, Burgess and McLean.”

“Hmmm,” the Englishman said to himself, his long, elegant fingers stroking his chin as he worked out the different ramifications. He seemed extremely worried. Schellenberg smiled to himself. This meeting was going far better than he could have hoped. Apparently all he’d been hearing about the British giving frosty receptions to Germans only held true when it came to official meetings. When it was unpublicized and without any Americans present, like this one was, they could be quite pragmatic and open about things. This guy was collegial, even friendly. He seemed genuinely interested in what Schellenberg had to say, and once he realized how valuable the stuff was he was being offered, he got downright helpful.

Today’s meeting was one of those professional back-channel things which function best far from the gaze of either the public or government officials. This was the real world, Schellenberg told himself; his proper milieu. That other world, in which those with no imagination preferred to dwell, was really just artifice and delusion. Doenitz, his new Fuhrer, was one such person; a good soldier, but like most military men, too prone to seeing things in black and white, with no understanding at all for gray areas and ambiguities. Well, at least to his credit, he had the sense to send Schellenberg here and let him do his job.

Yes, it was wise to leave some things to the professionals, which is what this Englishman was. His name was Anthony Blunt, a name Schellenberg was already quite familiar with, one of the rising stars of the British Secret Service, and, like himself, a counter-intelligence man. That they’d send Blunt was a good sign that they were taking these overtures seriously and according Schellenberg a requisite level of importance. Not like that poor fool von Friedeburg, forced to surrender to a relative nobody like General Bedell Smith. No, Blunt meant the British were here to deal.

Blunt took his hand away from his chin. He pursed his lips together, then puffing them out the way a bored child might, a bored English child, that is. “Now you know, this is all very nice, General Schellenberg,” he said. “But I really must ask you, what does your Reichsfuhrer hope to get from us in return for this very generous favor?’

Now it was Schellenberg’s turn to appear ruminative. He clasped his hands tightly together, his index fingers pointing upwards like a steeple, touching his lips, fingertips against fingertips. “First of all, he is hoping your organization already recognizes the realities facing Europe at this time. That regardless of all the appearance of good will flowing between Moscow and the West, your alliance with Russia will not last much longer. That for all your best efforts and intentions, conflict will inevitably break out. And when it does, you’re going to need people on your side who have access to information about Soviet intentions and capabilities. ”

“We want you to recognize that, despite all the political propaganda you’ve heard, we are professionals like yourselves. What happened to the Jews was regrettable, certainly, but in all fairness, the responsibility for it should not be laid on our door, but on Hitler’s. I want you to know that Heinrich Himmler never, ever supported the liquidation of the Jews. To the contrary, he opposed it. Many times he confided to me that he regarded any effort to kill off an entire race was sheer folly, if simply for no other reason than the fact that fully two thirds of their population lives abroad. Unfortunately for all, Adolf Hitler proved not to be a reasonable man. Luckily for us all, he is dead.”

Blunt raised his finger. “Really, I do think you’ll find that once everything has blown over…. and yes, yes, the whole thing is regrettable, especially since everyone in the world has by now seen the horrific images. But in the larger view, it is a tragedy that ultimately will be easy to live with. But please, do go on,” he said.

Schellenberg continued. “We also want you and your people to recognize that we can make a unique and decisive contribution to the security of the Western world. He would like to propose a partnership, which for the moment at least, no one else need know about.”

“We would need an enclave of our own, from which we could see to our own internal security requirements. An island or remote estate would be ideal. From there we would be happy to work with your organization and share the intelligence we have on what we are confident shall soon be our common foe.”

Blunt shook his head with a sad smile. “I’m sorry, Herr General, but that would not be an arrangement which my superiors would be able to agree to. The problem is that Mr. Himmler is currently the most wanted man in the world. Everyone in the world is currently hunting for his scalp. What I think would be better is an arrangement that would satisfy all the niceties which the world demands while still allowing your Reichsfuhrer the levels of comfort and privacy which I am sure he would require.”

“Now what I would propose is a sort of custody arrangement whereby the public would be placated by knowing you are in our custody. By doing this we could also ensure that you lads wouldn’t have to worry about being hunted down by some enterprising sorts who, as I understand, expect to find huge caches of gold and other treasures in your Reichsfuhrer’s vicinity. Now if we could report that we had him in our custody, that would force a great many otherwise-motivated parties to call off the dogs. How do you think your boss would feel about that idea?”

Schellenberg frowned as if there was something that troubled him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Custody where?” he asked carefully.

Blunt leaned forward, cupping his fingers around his chin. “Where? Oh…….?” his voice trailed off as if he were exploring that question himself for the first time. Where? Where Where?” He rolled his eyes and arched his eyebrows as he began drumming his fingers upon his chin. “Goodness,” he said sheepishly.

Schellenberg had an idea. “The Swedish government could be convinced to allow us refuge in one of the royal lodges at an undisclosed location. We could be there officially under Swedish custody, but at the same time permitting full British supervision, though I would have to insist on being allowed to run our own on-site security arrangements. But no one would have to know about that. During this time the Reichsfuhrer, myself and others included in this arrangement would submit to full, detailed debriefing.”

“How many people would be included in this scheme?” Blunt asked.

“No more than five,” Schellenberg answered.

Blunt looked surprised. “Is that all?” he asked.

“No, only five,” answered Schellenberg. “There is too much at stake for too many people to know too much about it.”

“I don’t suppose that at this point you’d have any problem telling me who those people would be?” asked Blunt.

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Schellenberg. “There is the Reichsfuhrer, myself, his aides Macher and Grothmann, his medical advisor Gebhardt, my adjutant, Captain Steiner. Oh, and the Reichsfuhrer’s masseur Oberleutnant Loerber.” That makes it seven. Plus of course other support personnel.”

“Support personnel, yes, of course,” agreed Blunt. “No, no, I don’t see any problem with that at all.”

“Kim Philby, a Russian spy.” Blunt shook his head. “Shocking, I must say.”

“Do you know him?”

“Oh, yes, of course. The last man you’d ever think would be red. Same for the others. Shocking.”

Then, suddenly, Blunt was in a big, big hurry to be on his way. There were things that couldn’t wait, a plane to catch. He’d be back in touch, very, very soon. Thank you. Thank you, have a safe trip back to Germany. And he was gone.

Germania was first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, and is now also available on Kindle here.

SS Spy Chief Walter Schellenberg: A Spinmaster in Search of Peace

The Third Reich certainly had its share of whiz kids and SS General Walter Schellenberg was among the brightest. By the time he was thirty, Schellenberg was already head of all foreign intelligence services in the Third Reich. The fact was, though, that aside from his mastery of gamesmanship and political intrigue, he probably wasn't actually that sharp. Where Schellenberg really excelled was as an indefatigable optimist.

Schellenberg knew the war was lost and that Hitler had to be gotten rid of for Germany to survive. He figured that the man for the job had to be his boss, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. It was a logical assumption. After all, only Himmler had the enormous power to take Hitler's place. He had a massive private army, the Waffen SS, whose loyalty, when push came to shove, was more towards him that to Hitler. He also sat on top of a vast financial empire that stretched all over the world. Himmler also controlled the police and the intelligence services. He also was in charge of the vast concentration camp system, but in Schellenberg's mind, it wasn't really that big a deal and from his high-level foreign contacts, he'd come to the conclusion that Eisenhower and the rest of the western leadership felt the same way.

All Schellenberg had to do was get Himmler to move against Hitler; to depose him, make him step down, kill him, hand him over to the West, anything would work. If Himmler could do that, then the path was open for a peace agreement, and ultimately a partnership, with the West.  Schellenberg was convinced that the West needed a post-Hitler Germany as a bulwark against Russia and that they were so eager for it that they would see Himmler more for his good points than his bad ones.  All that had to happen was for Himmler to make his move against The Fuhrer. Himmler had the power, he had all the cards. All he had to do was show some backbone, some initiative.

But Schellenberg didn't quite grasp how profoundly incapable Himmler was of independent action.  He simply could not.  Hitler had made him what he was, and Himmler was too gutless to do more than talk about it.  Schellenberg spent more than two years on one peace initiative after another with the West. And each time they failed, precisely because Himmler could not stand up to Hitler and bring up unpleasant facts.  Himmler had risen to his high postition of unbelievable power, strictly because he was incapable of acting on his own.  Taken on Darwinian terms, this is nothing short of fantastic.

But Schellenberg never quite figured any of this out. The breadth of his optimism is truly an awesome thing. Below is an excerpt from my novel GERMANIA that shows Schellenberg at his finest.

During the flight back from Stockholm, Schellenberg went over and over what he was going to tell Himmler. "The discussions with Count Bernadotte went very satisfactorily, Reichsfuhrer,” he figured he’d start off saying. “He assures me General Eisenhower is receptive to our proposal. The Anglo-Americans are eager to join in an alliance against the Russians.”

Not that Bernadotte had actually said anything of the sort, but Schellenberg, the thirty-year old Head of Foreign Intelligence, needed to get Himmler motivated into moving against Hitler and if fudging a few minor points was what it required, well then so be it.

“The Count said he’d been told by Eisenhower himself that they now consider the Russians a much bigger worry than ourselves. They are absolutely convinced the Russians will turn on them.”

Bernadotte hadn’t said that either. What he’d said was that there was growing nervousness in Allied circles about what would happen with the Russians once Germany was defeated. But Schellenberg was smart enough to know what that meant without having to be told.

“Eisenhower is ready to make a deal, Reichsfuhrer, he merely requires us to make the first move. Until then, his hands are tied.” Of course what Count Bernadotte had actually said was, “This is all very nice, General Schellenberg, but until I get some concrete declaration from the Reichsfuhrer that he is taking over the reins of government from Hitler, nothing I say to Eisenhower will make any difference. There must be immediate action. Force Hitler to step down, arrest him, kill him. How you do it is not his concern. Just get it done.”

That was what Schellenberg really needed to tell Himmler, and perhaps in a perfect world, he would. But he knew from experience how terribly skittish his boss was when it came to things like this. Anything requiring definitive action sent him into one of his massive panic attacks. His stomach would go into spasms and next thing he’d be screaming for Kersten, his Finnish masseur, to come in and take the pain away. Schellenberg didn’t want that to happen this time because Kersten wouldn’t be there. He was supposed to fly back with Schellenberg from Stockholm, but at the last minute he’d made up some excuse and stayed behind. That put Schellenberg in a doubly sensitive situation, since he’d have to force Himmler into making a difficult decision without having Kersten on hand to rescue him.

With a Finnish passport which allowed him to come and go seamlessly, Kersten was the Reichsfuhrer’s secret envoy to Allied intelligence. Schellenberg had flown up with him the day before to see Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross and a member of the Royal Family, who was their intermediary to Eisenhower to explore ways of making a deal to end the war.

Schellenberg and Bernadotte had both agreed that the single best choice for new head of state would have been, hands down, Field Marshall Rommel, the gallant head of the Afrika Korps, who was admired by both the British and Americans and no doubt might have cut a very favorable deal, except of course that Rommel was dead. So Schellenberg proposed his own boss, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Initially Bernadotte had his reservations, worrying that Himmler’s position as head of the SS would put off the Anglo-Americans. Then there was the thing about the Jews and the death camps. But Schellenberg kept pushing the idea until the Count finally relented and said, yes, Eisenhower would probably deal with Himmler as long as he could deliver.

So here they were and all that remained to be done was get Himmler to come across. The problem was, for all his icy efficiency in carrying out Hitler’s orders, when it came to thinking for himself Himmler was a hopeless waffler.

What could he tell him that would make him act? “It is the eleventh hour, Reichsfuhrer. It is late, but not too late. The sooner we move, the more we can bring to the table. But we have to move now. Time will not improve our position. You must move against the Fuhrer immediately!”

The other possibility would be to appeal to the Reichsfuhrer’s obsession with the mystical. "This is our supreme hour of destiny, Reichsfuhrer. We are at the threshold of a moment which might not come again for a thousand years.” And even though Schellenberg himself took a dim view of the Reichsfuhrer’s karma-laden ravings, in this case it wasn’t an exaggeration. If Himmler did move boldly, the rift between Germany and the West could be healed in a matter of days. The fact was, even at this late stage, Germany had an awful lot to bring to the table. There were still more than a hundred army divisions, thousands of aircraft and tanks and a populace dedicated to throwing back the Soviet horde. Eisenhower should be able to see the virtue in that.

And of course there were other things they had to sweeten the deal with, things which being also in charge of counter-intelligence, only Schellenberg knew about. There was, for instance, Source Moonpool, their secret network inside Red Army intelligence. Not only were they learning all there was to the Soviets’ intentions, their plans and capabilities, and more importantly, about their intelligence efforts against not only Germany, but the Western allies as well.

In fact, only the day before, Major Steiner, his man running Moonpool, had come to him with information about something he was calling the “Cambridge Spy Ring;” a group of deep-penetration agents whom the Soviets had recruited from Cambridge University during the thirties and who had since wormed their way to the top tiers of British intelligence. Steiner was confident that by the end of the month they would have their names. When Schellenberg thought about what that information might be worth, he got very excited.

Steiner was perfect, except for one thing. He was a homosexual and had found a boyfriend there at SS Headquarters among the Reichsfuhrer’s staff astrologers, and the transcript from a recent random bugging gave Schellenberg reason to believe their pillow talk might be getting too detailed. Once he had finished reporting to Himmler, his next order of business would be to see that that little issue got taken care of.

They started their descent into Berlin. He could hear the hydraulic whine of the aircraft’s landing gear coming down and locking into place. He looked out the window and recognized Templehof Airport’s long curving terminal buildings. A minute later they had landed and were taxiing down the tarmac.
(Excerpt from "Germania")