Death at Nuremberg (Clandestine Operations 4)

“That would be up, of course, to Super Spook. I was going to suggest that you might wish to sit on your story until we answer some more of the questions that need answers.”

“Morty, what’s your interest in this, pure curiosity?” she asked.

“Nazi evil. My feeling is that this Himmler-inspired Nazi religion made greater inroads into the German people than anyone suspects, and is a greater threat to society than most people recognize.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Cronley said.

“Most Jews want people like Kaltenbrunner, after a fair trial for the murder of the Jews they slaughtered, hung. Simple vengeance.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Ziegler asked. “I wanted to put a bullet . . . more than one . . . into his ear.”

“I think, Mr. Ziegler, that you have a greater understanding of the problem—whether or not you’re aware of it—than most people. You said something to the effect that you shot rabid dogs in the head to make sure they didn’t bite and infect anyone else before they, I quote, ‘got to piss on the pearly gates.’”

“Now I don’t understand,” Ziegler said.

“Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and people like them have already infected the German people with their variation of rabies,” Cohen said.

“Now I really don’t understand,” Ziegler replied.

“The way Himmler and his new religion have influenced the German people is that when we hang Kaltenbrunner, the German people will interpret it as the vengeance of the victors—especially Jewish victors, like me—rather than the punishment of a mass murderer. Instead he will be a martyr to the cause—this foul religion—he helped found.

“Kaltenbrunner and his cult have convinced many Germans—perhaps more than half, maybe sixty, seventy percent of them—that Germans—I should say, Aryan Germans—are a superior race. And that there’s nothing morally wrong in protecting that race by eliminating inferior peoples.”

“You’re saying it was that that sent the Jews to the ovens?” Cronley asked.

“There was a political element in the anti-Semitism. Hitler needed a political enemy to rally the people to his cause. He convinced the people that the Jews were responsible for the unemployment, out-of-control inflation, et cetera, when it was the somewhat justified French vengeance—through the Versailles Treaty—that had caused it.”

“And once the German people were satisfied with that explanation for their plight—there was little public outcry against the Nürnberger Gesetze—Nuremberg Laws—of September 1935. Specifically: ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.’ There were two parts of this law. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or ‘related blood’—whatever the hell that means—could be citizens of the Reich, and classified everybody else in Germany as ‘state subjects,’ without citizenship rights.

“The other part of the law was more specifically anti-Semitic. Marriage between Germans and Jews was forbidden. As was ‘extramarital intercourse.’ So was the employment of females under the age of forty-five in Jewish households.”

“That sounds nutty,” Ziegler said.

“Nutty and evil,” Cohen said. “And since German Jews were without rights as citizens, they could no longer be civil servants, or practice medicine or law, or be schoolteachers, et cetera.

“One would think there would be an enormous public outcry against this, but there was only a negligible protest. I say negligible because the protesters—all bona fide German citizens—were quickly rounded up and placed in ‘detention camps,’ which were quickly renamed ‘concentration camps.’

“Turning to that—immediately after Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the Nazi Party took over all the police in Germany. Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring, who was then Prussian acting interior minister, promptly established the first Konzentrationslager—”

“Using as a model the ‘reconcentration camps’ the Spanish general Valeriano Weyler set up in Cuba in 1897,” Hessinger interrupted.

“No shit?” Ziegler asked.

“Pray continue, Professor Hessinger,” Cohen said.

“For the obvious reason—I almost wound up in one—I’ve always been interested in concentration camps. And I found it very interesting that a year after the first one was opened, Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry—the Rough Riders—shut it down.”

“And I’ll bet you’re also going to tell us Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt went on to become President?” Cohen inquired, more than a little sarcastically.

“Something very much like that happened in Argentina,” Cronley said. “Cletus Frade’s father commanded the Húsares de Pueyrredón, a cavalry regiment. That’s the Argentine version of our ‘Old Guard’ in Washington. Lots of prestige. They got their start when Pueyrredón, who was Clete’s great-great-great—whatever—grandfather, formed gauchos—cowboys—from his estancia into cavalry and chased the English out of Buenos Aires.”

“Fascinating,” Cohen said. “But if you and Friedrich are through with your little lectures, I would like to continue with mine.

“The first Konzentrationslager—Dachau—was set up in 1933 by Himmler to hold Germans—including Aryans—who opposed National Socialism. There was no public outcry against this. At the time it was called the ‘Dachau Protective Custody Camp.’

“Then he started to send what he called ‘racially undesirable elements’ to Dachau. Not only Jews, but Romani—Gypsies—common criminals, and homosexuals. Among the latter were many actors, writers, musicians, and other intellectual types well known, even famous, in Germany. And again there was no outcry.”

“Maybe because everybody was afraid of Himmler and the SS?” Janice asked.