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).

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.