Gestapo by Edward Crankshaw Page B

carry out in the German manner the most atrocious orders without any sense of personal responsibility, or even involvement. There were also volunteers, of course, men like Heinrich Baab of Frankfurt, whom we meet later, who drifted into the regular Gestapo because the work suited them. Baab himself had been a Block supervisor in the S.A. He had volunteered as a Gestapo informer for fifty marks a month, proved his worth, and was then taken into the Frankfurt police for duties first with the Gestapo, then with the S.D. He was a loutish brute with a good working-class background, a man with a chip on his shoulder who found fulfilment in the uninhibited exercise of subordinate authority. There were many like him.
    But not all members of the Gestapo were trained Gestapo agents. There was a large corps of administrative officials who had no police training at all, but were simply civil servants: in 1944 there were some three thousand of these, or less than ten per cent of the regular force. There were a host of junior clerks and typists, many of them, and particularly in war-time, women, often the wives and relatives of regular officials. The so-called Executive Officials, the true Gestapo agents, formed just under half of the total force of forty thousand in 1944, and they were divided into various grades. First the Senior Grade civil servants, the
Regierungsrat
and the
Kriminairat
, who were highly educated men. Then the slightly lower grade, beginning with the
Kriminal Inspektor;
then the medium grade, beginning with the
Kriminal Assistant
. All these, most of them civil servants by nature with an ingrained police outlook, were sent to special training courses at the Fuehrer School, where they were inculcated with the outlook and techniques of Gestapo Mueller. They were German officials called upon to carry out specialized work in accordance with the orders of Hitler, and most of them were convinced that all they were doing was their duty, which frequently called for harshness and an iron will.
    Mueller, who came to control and who built up this apparatus for Heydrich, will repeatedly appear by name inthese pages. But we shall never meet him. He was the archetype of non-political functionary, in love with personal power and dedicated to the service of authority, the State. Although he was a high-ranking officer of the S.S. and had worked under Himmler from the moment he took office as Bavarian Chief of Police, it was not until 1939 that he joined the Party, and even then he took no stock in it. He worked anonymously, and he has left hardly a trace behind. We find his signature on orders authorizing the most atrocious deeds. We glimpse him once or twice in action, and are surprised to discover that this man without a shadow, this office bureaucrat, could walk about and use a gun. But we know nothing about him, neither where he came from nor where he went. Even his subordinate, Eichmann, the murderer of the Jews, who never on any account put his signature to a document, left behind friends and acquaintances who have given us vivid glimpses of the man. Mueller left nobody. We see him lunching at the Adlon Hotel with Heydrich, Nebe, Schellenberg, later with Kaltenbrunner. They are all dead. Even Willy Hoettl, who has things to say about most people, can tell us nothing about Mueller.
    One of the few recorded interviews with him is given us by General Walter Dornberger, the chief of rocket research at Peenemuende. In his memoirs Dornberger shows a marked talent for describing the most varied personalities and making them live. But Mueller defeats him.
    â€œHe was the unobtrusive type of police official who leaves no personal impression on the memory. Later, all I could remember was a pair of piercing gray-blue eyes, fixed on me with an unwavering scrutiny. My first impression was one of cold curiosity and extreme reserve.”
    And yet it was a critical meeting. Himmler had been interfering with the management of the Peenemuende