In Field Gray, the colour of WW II German uniforms, Bernie is taking a boat to Haiti to escape Cuban Military Intelligence Lieutenant Quevedo who wanted Bernie to spy on his boss, Meyer Lansky.
A very successful brothel owner, Doña Marina, induces Bernie to take with him a fiery beautiful revolutionary / part-time prostitute for the cause, Melba Marerro, who has killed Police Captain Balart.
On their way they are stopped by the U.S. Navy. Marerro shoots an American officer. During subsequent interrogation in Guatánamo Gunther’s attitude, caustic words and general obstinacy gain him a beating.
After a short stop in New York he is flown to Germany and placed in Landsberg prison. He is to face his past.
Two American Army lawyers question him extensively about his time in the “RSHA - which was the security office created by the mergers of the SD (the security service of the SS), the Gestapo and the Kripo in 1939.”
They have a huge amount of information on his life and the actions of the various German units in Russia in 1941, especially the Sonderkommando who killed and killed and killed. Pacification is a euphemism.
Bernie starts talking about being in a police battalion in Russia in 1941. He was the Captain in charge of a unit that killed 30 captured NKVD who had just killed 2,000 - 3,000 prisoners, including German prisoners of war. The executed NKVD were killed not because of a military directive but because Gunther and his unit decided they deserved to die.
General Nebe, formerly Bernie’s boss in the Berlin police, sees Bernie after Bernie has complained about watching soldiers murder Jews, including old women. It is a chilling conversation as Nebe will kill Jews so he can maintain his current position of authority and be ready to “move against Hitler when the time is right”. It is pointed out to Bernie that the NKVD unit his unit killed were all Jews.
The conversation, it is more a discussion than an interrogation, with the American lawyers is a fascinating exploration on the early days of the Holocaust of the rationalizations,the justifications, the choices, the righteousness, the willing collaborators, the perceived moral superiority of the victors and regrets. It is disturbing and enlightening as it examines the experiences of those directly involved as they stoutly maintain they were following orders.
The Americans avoid Bernie’s question on why he is being pursued when the Americans have been releasing SS who killed thousands after less than 10 years imprisonment.
The CIA steps in and their questions take him back to 1931 when the Communists and the Nazis are killing each other on the streets of Berlin. I have always believed Kerr’s historic summaries were accurate. My belief was confirmed when he discussed Hans Litten cross-examining Hitler in the Eden Dance Palace case over the Nazi fiction that Hitler was “Herr Law and Order”. Having read a biography of Litten and a portion of Litten’s cross-examination Kerr was faithful to the facts.
Bernie is taken forward to 1940 when Reinhard Heydrich, possibly the most ruthless Nazi, calls again on Bernie. When Heydrich actually wants a reliable “honest” policeman he sends for Bernie. For all his stubbornness even Bernie recognizes the danger and futility of even slightly resisting Heydrich. The mission will take Bernie into the recently conquered France. He bears a letter from Heydrich that requires every German officer to transfer any soldier to Bernie’s command.
Heydrich arranges for a custom made field gray SD uniform so that Bernie will look good in France. While it is not black Bernie is uncomfortable wearing it for he felt “as if I’d signed a contract in blood with hitler himself”.
I thought I had gotten used to all the surprising places Bernie stays in his chaotic striking life when I was stunned to read the Americans had put him in cell 7, the cell, more a nice room, that Hitler had occupied after the failed putsch in 1923. I was further amazed when Bernie dreamed of a conversation with Hitler about what Bernie was doing in France.
A third set of Americans question Bernie about the war.
Late in the war he was stationed on the northern frontlines of the Eastern Front. He tells them of the terrible vengeance exacted upon German civilians by the Ivans advancing through East Prussia. He was fighting as a regular soldier. He is captured and sent to Russia as a prisoner of war.
Bernie makes a tour of the prison camps, jails, detention centres and prisons of all the major combatant nations of WW II except for the British and Italans. The worst are the Russian, though not by much.
Multiple intelligence services want Bernie to work for them. His core integrity attracts them. That integrity also compels him to refuse offers despite often brutal consequences for him.
Continuing the dizzingly round of places and countries, Bernie ends up in Germany at Friedland in 1954 when 1,000 prisoners of war return from Russia. Bernie is officially there as a representative of the VdH, an organization who assists returning German soldiers. Kerr describes the terribly thin men as resurrected from their graves. In their “battered field gray” they fill the platform of the train station.
Kerr continues his seeming effortless transitions between the present and multiple different earlier times of Bernie’s life. The twisty end was worthy of a Jeffery Deaver novel.
Bodies are piling up around Bernie. He always has a reason to satisfy his mind if not his conscience. On a cover blurb he is described by Philip Caputo “as the most anti-heroic of anti-heroes”. I like the description but I would still want Bernie at my side if I was facing a bad situation.
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