Introduction
July 7, 1943 began as usual. Speer, Gobbels and Goering were summoned to the Chancellery to communicate information about the war and listen to the Führer's reactions.
I am still not sure what Morell injected him with that day, but it must have been something stronger than usual. He kept fidgeting in his chair, barely listening to reports and reassurances from his staff. At one point, he pounded his fists on his desk, interrupting Speer's analysis of the industries affected by the latest aerial bombings.
As was routine, he stood up and began ranting about whatever was on his mind at the time.
"Who are our enemies? The American mongrels, the Untermenschen of the East, and the decadent British." The Furher continued to walk in circles as he ranted his latest plan. "All of them were created by the Jews to destroy the Aryan race!"
The rest of the circle continued to smile and nod vigorously, but Hitler did not seem to care.
He continued to complain about the Judeo-Bolsheviks, the losses at Stalingrad and in North Africa, and how utterly useless the German generals and Mussolini were. At one point, he even complained that the Allied leaders had faced less adversity despite their racial inferiority.
Then, suddenly, the Fuher stopped and his eyes took on a manic gleam. For the first time since the defeat of Stalingrand, he smiled again.
"Traudl," he seemed to have finally realized that I was in the room with him, "could you phone Canaris and Himmler for me? I need a list of the best agents at our disposal."
Excerpt from "In the devil's den: my life from 1942 to 1945" by Gertraud Junge.
……
The first thing you notice about Otto Skorzeny is the smile. It is small, almost imperceptible, as if he has just heard the funniest joke in the world but is trying to hide it. I know he could give me a friendly hug or slowly slit my throat while maintaining the same damn expression. I suppose that's why he hasn't had a visitor in almost 15 years.
The guards lead him to the other end of the table, ignoring his attempts at conversation. Only after securing him to the chair are his chains removed and he can turn his attention to me.
The smile becomes bigger.
"John," the tone is that of an old friend rather than someone I am meeting for the first time, 'I admit I am a big fan of your writings....'.
His attempts to syncopate me are not worth transcribing. After a couple of minutes, his one-sided conversation finally ends and he expects the usual question.
"Tehran." I finally say. "Why did you do that?"
He looks annoyed. He probably has other stories to tell, but in the end he cannot escape his greatest success.
"Because the Führer told me to. Please tell me you're not going to scream the usual nonsense."
"I just want to know the story behind it."
He shrugs. "There is not much to tell. In early August 1943, Himmler called me back urgently to Berlin. There, I and seven other agents met with the Führer to discuss our new mission."
"None of you had any doubt about the mission?"
"Of course, we had. Still, criticing the Furher's soundity of mind was an unwise decision at the time."
He pauses and tilts his head to the right, waiting for a reason to continue his story. I pull out of my pocket the only thing that can catch his interest. His eyes light up seeing the American cigarettes in my hand.
I hand him one and he finally restarts to talk.
"I won't give you any names." He says, savoring the taste of the smoke. "Not of my colleagues or those who helped us in Turkey and Iran. I'm just telling you how we killed those three assholes."
This time his smile seems a little more sincere. "The Soviets were still killing our soldiers all around Kiev, so reaching Bulgaria and then Turkey was the easy part. We had some trouble finding a good landing spot in Iran, but your and Moscow's invasion pissed off some locals enough that they were willing to cooperate with us."
The smile disappears for a second, replaced by a bored grimace . "One of us even suggested breaking into the conference with guns blazing. The idiot wanted a glorious but useless death to please the party leadership in Berlin. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and we decided that a bomb was a better idea."
He stops briefly and looks around wearily. "Of course, it didn't work out as we had hoped. Still Landsberg is better than some shitty camp in Siberia."
"You practically killed Germany." I say before I can restrain myself.
His smile is back, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Oh, I played almost no part in the subsequent madness. And I'm pretty sure that your beloved Wallace was more guilty than I was for what happened here, in the rest of Europe, or in Japan."
I sit back and let an old, broken man involuntarily vomit up his past sins.
Excerpt from John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Profiles in Cowardice: the men who made World War II possible
......
EXPLOSION AT THE CONFERENCE
TEHERAN- We have just received confirmation of an explosion during the allies' conference in the Iranian capital. We are waiting for more informations, but sources close to the U.S. Embassy in Teheran confirm that the president and his counterparts from England and Russia were near the bomb when it went off.
-Associated Press bulletin, 11/28/1943