The consequence of all this was that none of the other prisoners spoke to Klingelhöfer. No one except me. And probably no one would have spoken to me either but for the fact that I was the only one currently being interrogated by the Americans. This made some of my former comrades very nervous indeed, and one day two of them followed me out of the common room where we ate, played cards, and listened to the radio, and into the courtyard.

“Hauptmann Gunther. We would like a word with you, please.”

Ernst Biberstein and Walter Haensch were both senior SS officers and, regarding themselves not as criminals but as POWs, persisted in the use of military ranks. Biberstein, a Standartenführer, equivalent to a full colonel, did most of the talking, while the younger Haensch—only a lieutenant colonel—did most of the agreeing.

“It’s several years since I myself was interrogated by the Amis,” said Biberstein. “I think it must be almost seven years ago now. No doubt these things are different from the way they used to be. We live in rather more hopeful, even enlightened circumstances than we did back then.”

“The Americans no longer seem to be driven by the same sense of moral superiority and desire for retribution,” added Haensch redundantly.

“Nevertheless,” continued Biberstein, “it’s important to be careful what one tells them. During an interrogation they sometimes have an easygoing way about them and can appear to be one’s friends when in fact they’re anything but that. I’m not sure if you ever met our late lamented comrade Otto Ohlendorf, but for a long time he made himself very useful to the Amis, volunteering information without restraint in the misguided expectation that he might curry favor with them and, as a result, secure his freedom. Too late, however, he realized his mistake and, having given evidence against General Kaltenbrunner at Nuremberg and effectively sent him to his death, he discovered that he had managed to talk his way onto the gallows.”

Biberstein had a thoughtful-looking face, with a broad forehead and a skeptical cast to his mouth. There was something of the serious clown about him—an authority figure and white-faced straight man whose sour, rising diphthongs and way of speaking at someone instead of to them reminded me that before joining the SS and the SD, Biberstein had been a Lutheran minister in some northern peasant town where they didn’t seem to mind that their pastor was a long-standing Nazi Party member. Probably they hadn’t minded, either, that he led a murder commando in Russia before being promoted and asked to take charge of the Gestapo in southern Poland. A lot of Lutherans had seen Hitler as Luther’s true heir. Maybe he was. I didn’t think I’d have liked Luther any more than I ever liked Hitler. Or Biberstein.