Gestapo by Edward Crankshaw Page A

Diels, had the bright idea that Diels should be called over to the Ministry for a conference and then, when he appeared, Nebe and Gisevius should “grab him and throw him out of Daluege’s third-floor window.” But even as they discussed the pros and cons of this expedient the door opened, and Daluege’s secretary came in to tell them that a Gestapo agent was waiting outside and wished to arrest Gisevius—“in the office of the Chief of Police, of all places!”
    But the Chief of Police, Daluege, did not seem to share the indignation of Gisevius at this sacrilege. “In fact, the spark of courage that remained in him seemed to go out.” He was finding it difficult to make up his mind whether Diels or Heydrich was going to win the next round—and in any case neither Heydrich nor Diels had any use for Gisevius. “Nevertheless, he was generous enough to show me how to escape through an emergency exit.”
    What to do next? With presence of mind Gisevius remembered his original protector, Grauert, who had been put into an under-secretaryship at the Ministry of the Interior by Goering in the flush of his first purge. “Grauert was not a man to get excited easily,” reports Gisevius. “Yet even he was somewhat put out.” He told the egregious young man that everything would be all right, he would see to that; and meanwhile he had better go home and wait for things to blow over. But this Gisevius flatly refused to do. He would not budge from the sanctuary of Grauert’s office—until, at last, Grauert agreed to ring up Goering, who “pretended to be outraged by what had happened and ordered a strict investigation.”
    Three days later Gisevius was back again in his ownoffice, still a member of the Gestapo. And there was Diels to welcome him:
    â€œMy dear fellow, what a shocking misunderstanding! I knew nothing about it at all. It was all a piece of insolence on the part of the S.A. You’re my very best adviser!”
    Diels’ own account of the events that led up to his precipitate flight from Germany, referred to by Gisevius, is part and parcel of the same mood. One night round about midnight he was rung up by his wife, who was in a highly agitated condition. Their apartment had been broken into by a gang of roughs who had locked her up in her bedroom while they went methodically through their belongings and carried off what they wanted. Diels hurried home and was able to establish that the gang of roughs must have been a well-known S.S. Group under a certain S.S. Captain Packebusch which had recently been active in various parts of Berlin as a self-appointed anti-Communist mobile squad. Packebusch was used by Daluege to do his dirty work.
    Not only was this aggravating to Diels in principle, since he himself was the great expert on Communism, but also, worse than this, Nebe had been telling the S.S. that he, Diels, of all people, was a Communist in disguise. Gisevius insists that his beloved Nebe, a simple soul, really believed this. But while there is every excuse for believing almost anything of Diels, there are certain things that those who knew him really could not have believed: and one of these was that Diels would ever associate himself with a losing cause. He certainly had a curious relationship with the German Communist leaders, Thaelmann and Torgler. This was probably in essence no more than the sort of attraction which so often binds together deadly adversaries in a private duelist’s universe. But there may have been more behind it than that.
    In the interests of his career, Diels had deserted his chief among the Social Democrats, Sievering, for von Schleicher. He had deserted von Schleicher for Goering. There had been a time when nobody could tell whether the Nazis or the Communists would win; and it is conceivable that during this period of uncertainty Diels, withhis deep knowledge of the Communist Party in Germany and his personal