“Great minds run in similar channels,” he said. “That’s the answer I got when I asked Raschner for his suggestion. Why don’t the two of you talk to him together?”
On their third meeting Raschner had another suggestion to offer. They needed an absolutely trustworthy man—someone with sufficient rank to keep people from asking questions about what he was doing—to handle things in Uruguay. And someone who could be sent there without too many questions being asked.
“Does the Herr Obersturmbannführer know Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck?”
Von Deitzberg did know von Tresmarck, didn’t think highly of him, and told Raschner so.
“He does follow orders, and he would be absolutely trustworthy,” Raschner argued.
“Absolutely trustworthy? What do you know about him that I don’t, Raschner?”
Raschner had laid an envelope filled with photographs on the desk. They showed Werner von Tresmarck in the buff entwined with at least ten similarly unclad young men.
“Because the alternative would be going to Sachsenhausen wearing a pink triangle on his new striped uniform,” Raschner explained unnecessarily.
When von Deitzberg went to Heydrich with the idea, he thought the probable outcome would be von Tresmarck’s immediate arrest and transport to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Homosexuality was one of the worst violations of the SS officer’s code of honor, topped only by treason.
Heydrich surprised him.
“I can see a certain logic to this, Manfred,” Heydrich had said. “Von Tresmarck would certainly be motivated to do what he was told and to keep his mouth shut about it, don’t you think?”
“That’s true, Herr Gruppenführer.”
“Tell you what, Manfred. See if Raschner can come up with a female in similar circumstances we can marry him to. Make the point to her that if she can’t make sure that von Tresmarck keeps his indiscretions in Uruguay behind closed doors, both of them will wind up in Sachsenhausen.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer.”
Raschner was prepared to deal with Heydrich’s order. Von Deitzberg realized Raschner had expected Heydrich’s reaction.
Raschner showed von Deitzberg the Sicherheitsdienst dossier of a woman believed to pose a threat to the sterling reputation of the SS officer corps.
She was the widow of Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer Erich Kolbermann, who had given his life for his Führer and the Fatherland at Stalingrad. Officers’ ladies in these circumstances were expected to devote their lives to volunteer work for the
war effort by working in hospitals, that sort of thing.
If they didn’t do what was expected of them, a friendly word from the local SS commander reminded them that their exemption from labor service had ended with the demise of their husband. In other words, either behave or report to the Labor Office, which will find some factory work for you to do.
When Inge—who had been raising eyebrows in Hamburg with her hospitality to young SS officers on leave, not infrequently with two or more at once—was given the friendly word from the local SS man, she disappeared.
She turned up in Berlin, one of the thirty or more attractive young women who congregated in the bars of the Hotel Am Zoo and the Hotel Adlon, where they struck up conversations with senior officers—or Luftwaffe fighter pilots—who were passing through the capital and were able to deal with the prices of the Am Zoo and the Adlon.
The attractive young women were not prostitutes, but they did take presents and accept loans.
Raschner brought Frau Kolbermann to von Deitzberg’s office for a friendly chat. Von Deitzberg was drawn to her from their first meeting. Not only was she very attractive, but he thought her eyes were fascinating; naughty, even wicked, à la Marlene Dietrich. He restrained himself, knowing that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was not only something of a prude but expected the highest moral standards to be practiced by his officers.
Frau Kolbermann readily accepted the proposition Raschner offered. She said she knew where Uruguay was, had even visited it, and spoke passable Spanish, which confirmed what the dossier suggested: a well-bred woman who’d fallen on hard times.
She was formally introduced to von Tresmarck the next day, became Baroness von Tresmarck two days after that, and was on a Condor flight to Buenos Aires ten days after that.
From then on, things had run smoothly for almost a year. But then they began to fall apart.
On May 31, 1942, Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, “Protector of Bohemia and Moravia,” had been fatally wounded in Prague when Czech agents of the British threw a bomb into his car.
Before leaving Berlin to personally supervise the retribution to be visited upon the Czechs for Heydrich’s murder, Himmler called von Deitzberg into his office to tell him how much he would have to rely on him until a suitable replacement for the martyred Heydrich could be found.
Von Deitzberg was now faced with a serious problem. On Heydrich’s death, he had become the senior officer involved with the confidential special fund and the source of its money—yet never had learned from Heydrich how much Himmler knew about it.
He quickly and carefully checked the fund’s records of the dispersal of its money before he had taken over. He found no record that Himmler had ever received anything.