The Man from Berlin (43 page)

He tried to imagine Alexandria, a place away from this war, of safety, and could not. All he could think about was Meissner, and Freilinger, and the others like them who fought a war of shadows. He thought of his functions in Sarajevo, the war of cogs and wheels and information and what a man might do within that system that could not be done from outside
it.

His watch had stopped, and he wound it up slowly, thinking. It had come to him on his last day as a fighting man in the first war. Was it just chance, then, fortuitous circumstance, that it should come to him again on the last day of this war that he would choose not to keep on the way he had been going? The second hand slid into motion as he wound it, flicking around its little dial as if it, like him, sought a new north. One day, this war would be over, and there would be a reckoning. Every man would have to stand face to face with judgment of some kind, and often the hardest judgment came from the face you saw reflected back at you every day. A face you saw reflected everywhere, in mirrors and windows, in metal and water, sharp-edged or sunken, chopped or blurred. The splintered facets of yourself that stared back at you from a thousand pairs of eyes. A face you saw reflected within
you.

The light slid from the sky, stars scattering themselves in its wake. There were no mirrors here, only the weight of mountain and sky and the image one held of oneself within. Somewhere behind him in the trees, a man began to sing. Others joined him in a refrain, soft clapping keeping time. The air smelled of wood smoke, and he breathed it in without flinching, without the image of those two boys grating at him. He paused, reflected on that, and then, face to face with the mountains, he made his decision. He smoothed down the stitching, stood and shrugged back into his jacket, medals and metal clinking dully, and limped back up into the trees.

Historical Note

Following the German conquest of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Bosnia
was ceded to their allies in the Independent State of Croatia (the NDH), ruled by Ante Pavelić's fascist Ustaše. Croatian rule in Bosnia was incompetent in the extreme but made infinitely worse by the Ustaše's widespread persecution and mass killings, often of astonishing savagery, of Serbs and Jews.

Such was the Ustaše's brutality that many Serbs took up arms with the Četniks, a Serbian nationalist and royalist resistance movement that conducted guerrilla warfare against the Axis occupying forces in those parts of Bosnia it regarded as Serb, but which itself committed numerous atrocities, mostly against Bosnian Muslim civilians. Muslims tried to navigate their own path, which, depending on context, involved a mixture of collaboration, resistance, or passive acceptance of their situation. Bosnia's Jews and Gypsies were all but exterminated.

Then, starting in 1941, Yugoslav Communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito organised their own multiethnic resistance, the Partisans, which fought with increasing effectiveness against both Axis and Četnik forces. So effective, in fact, that the Germans and Četniks began to make common cause against them. The result was a kaleidoscope of shifting front lines as Germans, Italians, Croatians, Ustaše, and Četniks fought the Partisans, often with almost medieval barbarity.

Unlike the exclusive and ultranationalist positions offered by the Ustaše and the Četniks, the Partisans offered one of a multiethnic postwar Yugoslavia united under Communism. By 1943, it was clear to the Allies that the Četniks were a lost cause, virtual German auxiliaries, and their support swung fully behind the Partisans with the dispatch of liaison officers and advisors and increasing supplies of munitions.

The very real rivalries that bedevilled interwar Yugoslavia only erupted into open conflict following the Axis invasion. Axis forces were not passive observers to the playing out of ‘ancient Balkan hatreds' but were instead active participants. Bosnia was divided into German and Italian zones of influence, and the NDH's authority was severely limited where their interests were concerned. These interests were primarily economic, and their occupation policy was basically one of maximising the economic contribution of Yugoslavia to the Axis war effort at the least cost and by whatever means necessary. Its corollary was a total disregard for the needs and rights of the local population.

The Germans aided the Ustaše and, to a lesser extent, the Četniks, turning a blind eye to the extremes of their allies, or else were actively complicit. Rare were the voices raised in protest, and when they were it was invariably to protest the damage Ustaše extremes caused to German operations or the occupation policy, rather than any appeal to humanity. In addition to the support it gave its allies, the German Army itself committed widespread and numerous atrocities. These included mass shootings of civilians as reprisals and the summary execution of Partisan prisoners of war including, most notoriously, the execution of some two thousand wounded Partisans and medical personnel at the end of Operation Schwarz.

The German Army in World War II was, in many ways, a heterogeneous and polyglot formation. The soldiers of many nations fought for it, with it, and under it, and it was itself divided between regular army units and those belonging to the SS. In Bosnia, the Croatian Army was a virtual auxiliary formation, almost devoid of independence, although the Ustaše militias maintained a degree of operational autonomy.

There never was a 121st Jäger Division, nor did General Paul Verhein exist, although there were many men like him – half Jewish, referred to by the Nazis as
mischling
– who fought for the Germans and who only can really know the reasons why they did what they did. Operation Schwarz – what the Partisans called the Fifth Enemy Offensive or the Battle of Mount Sutješka – failed in its objective of destroying the Partisans, although it inflicted grievous casualties on them. After almost a month of fighting, the Partisans managed to break the German encirclement of their position, although they had to leave behind nearly all their wounded, who were all executed. The Partisans' breakout is commemorated by a massive sculpture and reliefs at the memorial complex in Tjentište, in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, an area of spectacular natural beauty, but now sadly abandoned and run-down since the war in the 1990s.

This book is a work of fiction, albeit one set in a world which once existed. I have tried to be as accurate as I can to the places and events of those times. Any mistakes are just those, and the sole fault of the author, or have been made deliberately for the needs of the story.

In writing this, I am indebted to four works in particular:

Sarajevo: A Biography,
by Robert Donia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

Sarajevo, 1941–1945, Muslims, Christians and Jews in Hitler's ­Europe
, by Emily Greble (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Svjetlost Europe u Bosni I Herzegovini
, by Ismet Huseinovi
ć
and Dzemaludin Babi
ć
(Sarajevo: Buybook, 2004).

War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration
, by Jozo Tomasević (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Reinhardt has come to the end of one part of his journey, but his journey is not yet done. Actions have consequences, and consequences must be endured. Reinhardt will march again.

Cast of Characters

In the German Army in Sarajevo

In Military Intelligence, the Abwehr

Captain Gregor Sebastian Reinhardt
: c
ounterintelligence officer, a former detective in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei (Kripo)

Major Ulrich Freilinger
: chief of the Abwehr in Sarajevo

Lieutenant Stefan Hendel
: internal army security

Sergeant Martin Claussen
: a former policeman in Dusseldorf

Kruger, Maier, Vogts, Weninger
: Abwehr officers

In the Military Police, the Feldgendarmerie

Major Becker
: second in command of the garrison's Feldgendarmerie detachment, and a former Kripo detective

Captain Kessler
: in charge of Feldgendarmerie traffic control

In the Sarajevo Garrison

Standartenführer Mladen Stolić
: 7th SS Prinz Eugen

Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Lehmann
: 1st Panzer divisional intelligence

Eichel, Faber, Kappel, Forster
: colonels in the army

Captain Hans Thallberg
: 118th Jäger Division, and officer in the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei)

Captain Paul Oster
: army medical corps

Lieutenant Peter Krause
: movement supply officer, a friend of Hendel's

Tomas and Pieter
: panzer officers

Corporal Jürgen Beike
: assistant to Captain Thallberg

Corporal Gerd Hueber
: transportation corps, a Serbo-Croat translator

On the Frontlines

General Paul Verhein
: commanding 121
st
Jäger, on Mount Sutjeska

Colonel Clemens Ascher
: his chief of staff

Gärtner, Jahn, Nadolski, and Oelker
: Verhein's senior officers

Tiel, Demmler, and Ubben
: captains in the 121st

Mamagedov
: Verhein's driver, a Kalmyk, from the Caucasus

Generals Eglseer, Grabenhofen, Kübler, Le Suire, Neidholt, Phleps, von Grabenhofen, and von Oberkamp
: officers commanding divisions in Bosnia.

In the City: Its Citizenry and Police Force

Marija Vukić
: a journalist and filmmaker, an Ustaša

Vjeko Vukić
: her father, a senior Ustaša, killed in the war

Suzana Vukić
: her mother

Chief Inspector Putković
: of the Sarajevo police, an Ustaša

Inspector Andro Padelin
: of the Sarajevo police, an Ustaša, ordered to partner with Reinhardt

Dr Muamer Begović
: a medical doctor, a consultant with the police

Bunda
: of the Sarajevo police, an officer of imposing size

Goran, Karlo, Simo
: men of the city

Colonel Tihomir Grbić
: of the Domobranstvo, a decorated veteran soldier

Niko Ljubčić
: an Ustaša officer in the Black Legion

Frau Hofler
: an elderly Austrian, Marija's neighbour

Duško Jelić
: Marija's sound engineer

Branko Tomić
: Marija's cameraman, her oldest collaborator and friend of her father

Archbishop Šarić
: a committed Ustaša

Father Petar
: a priest at the church of St Joseph's

Alfred Ewald
: receptionist at the Austria Hotel

At the Ragusa Club

Robert Mavrić
: the manager

Dietmar
Stern
: maître
d'

Dragan
: the barman

Anna and Florica
: singers

Zoran Zigić
: a waiter

Milan Topalović
: Zoran's uncle, a Communist and suspected Partisan

Elsewhere and Elsewhen…

Friedrich
: Reinhardt's son, lost with the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad

Rudolf Brauer
: Reinhardt's former partner in the Kripo and his oldest and closest friend

Colonel Tomas Meissner
: Reinhardt's mentor, and regimental commander during WWI

Major Brian Sanburne
: Rifle Brigade, a British liaison officer

Carolin
: Reinhardt's wife, died of illness in 1938

Copyright

This ebook edition first published

in the UK in 2014 by

No Exit Press, an imprint of

Oldcastle Books,

PO Box 394, Harpenden,

Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK

noexit.co.uk

@NoExitPress

All rights reserved

© Luke McCallin 2014

The right of Luke McCallin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN

978-1-84344-547-0 (Print)

978-1-84344-548-7 (Epub)

978-1-84344-549-4 (Kindle)

978-1-84344-550-0 (Pdf)

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/
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