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The next night there was another raid, the fifth and last in that series. The damage was terrible: the center of the city lay in ruins along with a large part of Wedding; they counted more than four thousand dead and four hundred thousand homeless, many factories and several ministries had been destroyed, communications and public transport would take weeks to be restored. People were living in apartments without any windows or heat: a large portion of the coal reserves, stored in gardens for the winter, had burned. Finding bread had become impossible, the stores remained empty, and the NSV had set up field kitchens in the ravaged streets to serve cabbage soup. In the Reichsführung and RSHA complex, we fared a little better: it was possible to eat and sleep, clothes and uniforms were provided to those who had lost everything. When Brandt received me, I suggested I transfer part of my team to Oranienburg, to the IKL premises, and keep a little office in Berlin for liaison purposes. The idea seemed good to him but he wanted to consult the Reichsführer. The latter, Brandt informed me, had agreed to let Speer visit Mittelbau: I was to take charge of organizing everything. “Arrange things so that the Reichsminister is…satisfied,” he said. He had another surprise for me: I was promoted to the rank of Obersturmba
As soon as the Reichsführer had approved of my suggestion, I proceeded to reorganize my office. The entire unit in charge of research, with Asbach as chief, was transferred to Oranienburg. Asbach seemed relieved to be leaving Berlin. With Fräulein Praxa and two other assistants I set myself up again in my old premises at the SS-Haus. Walser had never come back: Piontek, whom I finally sent to find out about him, reported that the shelter in his building had been struck, on the Tuesday night. The number of dead was estimated at twenty-three, the entire population of the building; there were no survivors, but most of the corpses unearthed were unrecognizable. To set my mind at rest, I reported him missing: that way, the police would look for him in the hospitals; but I had little hope of finding him alive. Piontek seemed very upset about it. Thomas, already over his bout of spleen, was overflowing with energy; now that we were office neighbors again, I saw him more often. Instead of telling him about my promotion, I waited, to surprise him, until I had received my official notification and had had my new stripes and collar tabs sewn on. When I presented myself at his office, he burst out laughing, searched through his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, waved it in the air, and cried out: “Ah! You scoundrel. You thought you could catch up with me!” He made the document into a paper plane and launched it at me; its nose hit my Iron Cross and I unfolded it to read that Müller was proposing Thomas as Standartenführer. “And you can be sure it won’t be refused. But,” he added with good grace, “until it’s official, di
My promotion had just as little effect on the imperturbable Fräulein Praxa, but she couldn’t hide her surprise when she received a direct phone call from Speer: “The Reichsminister wants to speak to you,” she informed me in a breathless voice, handing me the receiver. After the last raid, I had sent him a message giving him my new coordinates. “Sturmba
My apartment had been more or less fixed up. I had finally managed to find some glass for two windows; the others remained covered with a waxed canvas tarp. My neighbor had not only had my door repaired but had also unearthed some oil lamps to use until electricity was restored. I had some coal delivered, and once the big ceramic stove was started, it wasn’t cold at all. I told myself that taking an apartment on the top floor hadn’t been very smart: I had had incredible luck escaping the raids of that week, but if they returned, and they certainly would, it wouldn’t last. Yet, I refused to worry: the apartment didn’t belong to me, and I didn’t have many personal possessions; you had to keep Thomas’s serene attitude about these things. I simply bought myself a new gramophone, with records of Bach’s Partitas for piano, as well as some opera arias by Monteverdi. In the evening, in the soft, archaic light of an oil lamp, a glass of Cognac and some cigarettes within arm’s reach, I would lie back on my sofa to listen to them and forget everything else.