Sins of the Fathers Read online

  Historical Fiction by Herbert J. Stern and Alan A. Winter

  Sins of the Fathers Wolf

  Non-fiction by Herbert J. Stern

  Diary of a DA

  Judgment in Berlin

  Trying Cases to Win: 5 Volume Series

  Trying Cases to Win: in One Volume

  Novels by Alan A. Winter

  Island Bluffs

  Savior’s Day

  Snowflakes in the Sahara

  Someone Else’s Son

  Copyright © 2022 by Herbert J. Stern and Alan A. Winter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Kai Texel

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6942-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6943-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire à des absurdités peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités.

  —Voltaire (Questions sur les Miracles, 1765)

  TRANSLATION

  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

  In honor of

  Ludwig Beck

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Hans Dohnanyi

  Wilhelm Canaris

  Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin

  Hans Oster

  Werner Schrader

  Erwin von Witzleben

  and

  Fabian von Schlabrendorff

  Many will recognize the names of these

  German officers and citizens who lost their lives

  participating in the July 1944 assassination

  attempt of Adolf Hitler to end the war Germany

  could not win.

  Few, however, are aware that six years earlier these

  same men risked their lives to prevent Hitler from

  starting that war.

  Fabian von Schlabrendorff survived unimaginable

  cruelty at the hands of the Nazis and was spared

  death at the last minute when Judge Freisler died

  from Allied bombing in February 1945, with

  Schlabrendorff’s file in his hand.

  This book is dedicated to our wives, Marsha Stern and Lori Winter, for their patience, understanding, support, and love.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART II

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART III

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  PART IV

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  PART V

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  PART VI

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Epilogue

  Authors’ Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Munich, 1936

  It was left to me to bring justice to the two black-uniformed Dachau guards who beat Max Klinghofer to a bloody pulp. When I found Max, his face was unrecognizable. He was caked in his own excrement. Max died in my arms, and I am thankful that in those last precious moments he knew I was there. I wept over Max’s body, stroking his hair, wiping the blood away from his cheeks with my tears, promising to avenge his needless death.

  I had already dealt with Felix Querner. Now it was Konrad Jüttner’s turn.

  Drastic measures were required to get Querner to reveal Jüttner’s name. In the end, he told me what I needed to know. Everybody talks in the end. Both guards were members of the Schutzstaffel-Wachverbände—the SS Death’s Head Units—that ruled Dachau with the brutality demanded by their commandant, Theodor Eicke. Eicke graduated from a mental institution the year before he took over Dachau. That was one of two qualifications to run Dachau in the eyes of Reichsführer Himmler, head of the SS. The other? The ability to inflict pain and suffering without remorse . . . and train others to do the same.

  As I waited in the shadows, a thunderclap rumbled to the west. I counted the seconds before a bolt of lightning flashed like a photographer’s bulb. A spark of blue-white flickered, only to be swallowed by the darkness and disappear. Puddles turned into ponds. Branches scattered across the road. Driving on the rutted road would be treacherous.

  I had planned for such a night.

  The din of the driving rain was soon exceeded by the throbbing of a tuned engine. I glanced at my watch. Right on time. As Jüttner’s car rounded the bend, two white headlights bobbed over fallen debris, casting bleached beams helter-skelter. I leaped to the middle of the road and waved my arms. I knew my SS general’s uniform would force the driver to stop. Moreover, he would see my car off kilter in the ditch by the side of the road.

  Jüttner slowed to a halt and cranked down the window of his black Ford Rheinlander sedan.

  “That’s quite a car you have,” I said, marveling at its sleek look despite the rain pounding off it like the rat-a-tat of a Maxim machine gun used in the Great War. “It’s the first one I’ve seen.”

  “Only been made for a couple of years. Got it the other day. But you didn’t stop me to admire my car . . .”—he double-checked my insignias—“. . . Herr Obergruppenführer.” He brushed crumbs off his tunic from the buttered brötchen in his hand, sat taller behind the wheel, and pointed. “I see your car in the gulley. How did that happen?”

  “The more I tried to drive it out, the more the rear tire spun deeper into the mud. I was waiting for someone to come along to help steer if I pushed from behind. Lucky for me it was an SS man.”

  I plumbed his eyes for a flicker of suspicion. There was none. I peered at his uni
form crests. “A Sturmbannführer, I see.”

  I was a general officer, five ranks above him. He had to help.

  Jüttner opened the car door, stepped into the mud, and sized me up. “You look big enough and strong enough. It just might work.”

  I was six-foot-seven and well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Pushing my car while he steered was more than plausible.

  “Aren’t you going to pull your car to the side?”

  He shook his head. “It’s fine right here. I make this trip every night. I’m the last one on this road ’til the morning shift.”

  This confirmed what I knew from previous reconnaissance.

  Jüttner was a beefy man who did not restrain himself at the table. He lumbered around his car, surveyed my back tire buried in mud, sized up the incline of the ditch, and then gave a thumbs-up. “We should be able to do this.”

  He slipped onto my front seat while I sloshed to the rear and leveraged my foot against a small boulder I had strategically planted earlier. I signaled I was ready; he put the car in gear. I gritted my teeth as I drove my leg into the rock. With both hands cupped around the bumper’s rim, I lifted with all my strength. Joints cracked. Muscles quavered. The car budged. I struggled for traction as the car continued to move. Jüttner goosed the gas pedal enough to coax the car over the hump and onto the road.

  Jüttner slid out of the car smiling, proud that he had helped an Obergruppenführer. “That was easier than I thought it would be.”

  When he turned to close the door, I smashed the crook of his left knee with a truncheon. Jüttner screamed. He toppled to the ground, clipping his head on the way down. He grabbed his leg with his left hand.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Blood gushed down his face. As his left hand levered him up, his right hand groped for his pistol. I smacked his arm with the club; it cracked. His half-drawn gun flew into the foliage.

  With both hands, I yanked him by the collar onto his good foot. “You’re not going anywhere, Jüttner.”

  Pain rocketed through his body. Jüttner grimaced. His breathing grew shallow. He struggled to gain control, to make sense of what was happening.

  “Are you crazy!” he shouted. “I don’t care if you are a general. When I tell my commandant, he will go right to the Führer. You’re as good as dead.”

  I snorted. “Your Commandant Eicke will stand idly by and do nothing. Do you know why? Because no one in the Reich is closer to the Führer than me.”

  Hearing this, the whites of his eyes widened. He shot furtive glances this way and that, hoping for someone to come along . . . knowing no one would.

  Desperate, he barked, “What do you want?”

  “Let me refresh your memory. August ’34. A Jew was tortured so badly in Dachau that he was unrecognizable. Remember?”

  “There were so many . . . I . . . can’t recall . . .” He gasped for air. “We had our orders to mete out severe punishment at the slightest infraction.” Gasp. “Prevent the others from stepping out of line.”

  “His name was Max Klinghofer. Do you remember Max?”

  There was a flash of recognition. “The fat little Jew? I remember. He was a wiseass. Spoke back to us.”

  Max had been like a father to me. Without a blink, I punched Jüttner in his gut. He doubled over. I held him until he stopped puking, angled him up, and smashed him again.

  Jüttner clawed for air. I was in no rush. He could take all the time he needed.

  When his chest and shoulders stopped heaving, he raised his good hand. “Enough. No more.”

  I held him up by his jacket collar or he would have collapsed. Our eyes met, fear in his. Without a word, I belted him again. “That was for Max’s friend, Kitty. She loved him very much.” Then I unleashed the hardest blow of all. Bones snapped. A rib. Probably two. “That was for me, you piece of shit.”

  The driving rain slowed to a light drizzle. The wind died down. Jüttner’s sour stench of fear coupled with the stink of shit and piss sliding down his leg made me gag. I swallowed hard.

  “Who gave the order to kill Max?”

  “There was no order. Felix and I did what was expected of us.” Then he turned, wide-eyed. “Felix,” he whispered.

  “What about Querner?” I spit his name out.

  “We never found his body.” Jüttner was barely audible. His eyes flitted everywhere but at mine. Then a look of recognition crossed his face. “It wasn’t a boating accident, was it? You killed Felix.”

  “Good for you. Now someone knows what happened to Querner. For the last time, who gave the order to kill Max?”

  “I told you. There was no kill order. The moment an inmate breaks a rule, any rule, we have the right to punish them as we see fit.”

  The rain stopped. A sliver of moonlight painted a silvery cast on his face. Jüttner knew he was as good as dead. He managed a defiant smile. Blood covered his front teeth, rendering the final ghoulish touch to his façade. “You don’t want to understand, Obergruppenführer . . . if, indeed, that is what you are. Your Jew, Max, was the lucky one. He didn’t last long compared to some of the others. He was weak. The weak go fast. If you ask me, that is a blessing in disguise.”

  Infuriated, I wrapped my left arm around his head, a quick jerk, and he was dead.

  I dragged Jüttner to his car, shoved him behind the wheel, pulled out the choke, and started the engine. Next, I grabbed a thick branch that had fallen in the storm, snapped it over my knee to the size I needed, and wedged it between the seat and the gas pedal. Then I stretched to reach the clutch and shift the car into gear. I stood on the running board and steered through the open window, pointing the car down the middle of the road. The car gathered speed. When I no longer felt safe, I jumped off, catching myself before I tumbled to the ground. Just when I began to wonder how far it could go straight, the car veered into the ditch that paralleled the road, teetered on two wheels, and then flipped into a tree. There was a whoosh as the gas tank exploded. Soon flames engulfed the car. I waited a moment to assess the damage before I turned away.

  Back in my rented Mercedes, I pressed hard on the accelerator, secure that the investigation would conclude that Konrad Jüttner died in a terrible accident on a dark, stormy night.

  *

  Days later, I found the newspaper article that announced Jüttner’s accidental death.

  All seemed in order.

  I no sooner put the paper down than my office phone rang.

  “Hello.” No one answered. I hung up. Not ten seconds later, the phone rang again. “Hello.” No one.

  It was a prearranged signal. I left the Chancellery building and headed for the lobby in the Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelmplatz. I found an empty phone booth.

  When the call went through, the man on the other end said, “What were you thinking?”

  “Hello to you, too, Bernhard. How’s the weather in London?”

  “Not as stormy as it could be for you. I gave you Querner’s name so you could report him to the Ministry of Justice for killing Max. Then I discover he goes missing in a boating mishap. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I didn’t say anything. Now I read about Jüttner. Have you gone mad?”

  “Querner gave up Jüttner.”

  “That’s obvious. Friedrich, you promised not to do anything rash.” Usually calm and in control, Bernhard Weiss spoke faster, his voice pitched higher. “Look at what you did: not one, but two! How long do you think it will take before Heydrich or Himmler link you to these murders?”

  Bernhard Weiss had been the deputy president of the Berlin Police before the Nazis ordered the Jewish policeman’s arrest. That’s when I helped him escape to Prague.

  “No one saw me. Both deaths appear as accidents. That is how the final reports read. It’s over. Justice has been served.”

  “You would be wise to trust my instincts, Friedrich. They have served me well over the years.”

  “And my instincts tell me it’s time to leave Germany, Bernhard. I can’t stay any lon
ger. You have no idea how crazy it is getting. Hitler grows less stable by the day.”

  “It can’t be that bad! Most foreign papers applaud all he is doing for Germany.”

  “At what price? The outside world sees Hitler’s picture the way Goebbels paints it. The real Hitler, the Hitler I see, has all but withdrawn from the Party leadership since becoming chancellor. If you can believe it, he left Hess in charge of the Party . . . and you know how much of a fool that one is. Day-to-day operations are in disarray as Hitler builds a war machine in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Rather than hold cabinet meetings, he consults with a vicious gang of the worst sort that elbows each other for power. Then there is his master plan to restore all of Germany’s lost territory.”

  “In a way, I understand that.”

  “That’s where everyone underestimates him. Hitler intends to expand Germany’s borders well beyond what we lost in the Great War. The man is unstable.”

  “Friedrich, words matter to you. What are you trying to tell me?”

  After all of these years, I was reluctant to unmask myself in order to explain how dangerous Hitler had become.

  “Friedrich . . . Friedrich are you still there?”

  “I am. It is time someone else knew.”

  “What? You’re talking in circles,” Bernhard said.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Bernhard, do you remember that day in the Düppel neighborhood? The park bench. Do you recall what we talked about?”

  “That was before Hitler took power, right? I was investigating you. Your background. When I discovered that Friedrich Richard died in Pasewalk Hospital in 1918 . . . I stopped the investigation because, well, I didn’t know what I would discover. The last thing I wanted was to compromise you. I needed you to remain safe and stay in place.”

  “You might never have trusted me had you continued that investigation.”

  “What would I have learned?”

  “That I am a victim of amnesia. That I was blown up in the Second Battle of the Marne, during the summer of 1918. That I had multiple broken bones and burns on my back and arms. A plastic surgeon at Charité Hospital repaired my face. While my injuries healed, my memory never returned. That is why they sent me to Pasewalk Hospital. For psychiatric treatment.”

  “At least you’re better now.”