I ordered another round: I had already had a chance to notice that drinking tended to relax Eichmann, to arouse his sentimental, friendly side. I wasn’t trying to con him, far from it, but I wanted him to trust me and see that my ideas weren’t incompatible with his vision of things. I gave him a rough outline of the project; as I had foreseen, he scarcely listened. One single thing interested him: “How do you reconcile all that with the principle of Vernichtung durch Arbeit?”—“It’s very simple: the improvements relate only to the skilled workers. It will be enough to make sure that the Jews and the asocials are assigned to heavy but unskilled labor.” Eichmann scratched his cheek. Of course I knew that in actual fact the assignments of each individual worker were decided by the Arbeitseinsatz of each camp, but if they wanted to keep skilled Jews, that would be their problem. Eichmann, in any case, seemed to have other concerns. After a minute of thought, he said abruptly: “Fine, that’s okay,” and began talking about the South of France again. I listened to him as I drank and smoked. After a while, at an opportune moment, I asked him politely: “To come back to my project, Obersturmbannführer, it’s almost ready, and I’d like to send it to you so you can study it.” Eichmann waved his hand: “If you like. I already get so much paper.”—“I don’t want to bother you. It’s just to be sure you don’t have any objections.”—“If it’s as you say…”—“Listen, if you have the time, look at it, and then send me a little letter. That way I can show that I took your opinion into account.” Eichmann gave an ironic little smile and waved a finger at me: “Ah, you’re a clever one, Sturmbannführer Aue. You have to cover your tracks too.” I kept my face impassive: “The Reichsführer wants the opinions of all departments involved to be taken into account. Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner told me that for the RSHA, I would have to see you. I find it normal.” Eichmann scowled: “Of course, I’m not the one who decides: I’ll have to submit it to my Amtschef. But if I give a positive recommendation, there’s no reason he’ll refuse to sign it. In principle, of course.” I raised my glass: “To the success of your Danish Einsatz, then?” He smiled; when he smiled that way, his ears seemed to stick out, and he looked more than ever like a bird; at the same time, a nervous tic deformed his smile, making it almost into a grimace. “Yes, thank you, to the Einsatz. To your project too.”

I drafted the text in two days; Isenbeck had meticulously prepared handsome detailed charts for the annexes, and I used Rizzi’s arguments without altering them too much. I hadn’t quite finished when Brandt summoned me. The Reichsführer was going to the Warthegau to deliver important speeches there; on October 6, a conference of the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters was taking place, at which Dr. Mandelbrod would be present; and the latter had asked that I be invited. How far was I with my project? I assured him that I had almost finished. I just had to present it to my colleagues before sending it to the relevant offices for approval. I had already discussed it with Weinrowski, presenting Isenbeck’s scales to him as a simple technical elaboration of his ideas: he seemed to think it was fine. The general meeting went off without any hitches; I let Rizzi do most of the talking, and contented myself with stressing that I had secured the verbal agreement of the RSHA. Gorter seemed satisfied, and just wondered if we had gone far enough; Alicke seemed unable to follow Rizzi’s economic arguments; Jedermann grumbled that it was still going to be expensive, and where would we find the money? But he was reassured when I guaranteed that if the project were approved, it would be financed through additional allocation. I asked each person for a written reply from his Amtschef for the tenth, counting on being back in Berlin by then; I also forwarded a copy to Eichmann. Brandt had let me know that I could probably present the project to the Reichsführer in person, once the departments had given their agreement.

The day of our departure, at the end of the afternoon, I went to the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais. Brandt had invited me to attend a speech of Speer’s before joining Dr. Mandelbrod in the special train for the bigwigs. In the lobby, I was welcomed by Ohlendorf, whom I hadn’t seen since he left the Crimea. “Dr. Aue! How nice to see you again. I hear you’ve been in Berlin for months. Why didn’t you call me? I would have been happy to see you.”—“I’m sorry, Brigadeführer. I was terribly busy. You too, I imagine.” He seemed to be radiating intensity, a dark, concentrated energy. “Brandt sent you for our conference, isn’t that right? As I understood it, you’re looking into questions of productivity.”—“Yes, but only in matters concerning concentration camp inmates.”—“I see. Tonight we’re going to introduce a new cooperation agreement between the SD and the Armaments Ministry. But the subject is much vaster; it will also cover the treatment of foreign workers, among other things.”—“You’re in the Ministry of Economics now, Brigadeführer, isn’t that so?”—“That’s right. I’m wearing several hats these days. It’s too bad you’re not an economist: with these agreements, a whole new field will open up for the SD, I hope. Well then, let’s go up, it’s going to start soon.”

The conference took place in one of the great oak-paneled halls of the palace, where National Socialist decorations clashed somewhat with the eighteenth-century woodwork and gilt candelabra. More than a hundred SD officers were present, among them a number of my former colleagues or superiors: Siebert, with whom I had served in the Crimea, Regierungsrat Neifend, who had worked in Amt II but had since been appointed Gruppenleiter in Amt III, and others. Ohlendorf had his seat near the rostrum, next to a man in an SS-Obergruppenführer’s uniform, with a broad, bare forehead and firm, set features: Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter from Lower Silesia, who was representing the Reichsführer at this ceremony. Reichsminister Speer arrived a little late. He struck me as surprisingly young, even though his hair was starting to recede, slim, vigorous; he wore a simple twill suit, with the Gold Badge of the Party as sole decoration. Some civilians accompanied him, and took their seats on chairs lined up behind Ohlendorf and Hanke, while he stepped up to the podium and began his speech. He spoke, in the beginning, in an almost gentle voice, precise and polished, which emphasized rather than masked an authority that Speer seemed to draw more from himself than from his position. His dark, keen eyes remained fixed on us and left our faces only occasionally, to look at his notes; when they were lowered, they almost disappeared under his thick, bushy eyebrows. The notes were just there to serve as pointers for his speech; he hardly consulted them at all, and seemed to take all the figures he ticked off directly from his head, as he needed them, as if they were constantly stored there, ready for use. His statements were brutally and, to my way of thinking, refreshingly frank: if total military production was not rapidly implemented, the war was lost. These weren’t Cassandra warnings; Speer compared our present production with the estimates we had of Soviet and especially American production; at this pace, he demonstrated, we wouldn’t hold out for a year. But our industrial resources were far from being fully exploited; and one of the major obstacles, aside from the problems of manual labor, was the obstruction, at a regional level, by private interests: it was especially for that reason that he counted on the support of the SD, and that was one of the main subjects of the agreements he was going to conclude with the SS. He had just signed an important agreement with the French Economics Minister, Bichelonne, to transfer the majority of our production of consumer goods to France. That would certainly give a considerable commercial advantage to postwar France, but we didn’t have a choice: if we wanted victory, it was up to us to make sacrifices. This measure would allow us to transfer an additional million and a half workers to armaments. But we could expect a number of Gauleiters to oppose the necessary closures of firms; and this was one particular area where the SD could intervene. After this speech, Ohlendorf got up, thanked Speer, and swiftly presented the terms of the agreement: the SD would be authorized to examine the conditions of recruitment and the treatment of foreign workers; similarly, any refusal by the Gauleiters to follow the minister’s instructions would be subject to an SD investigation. On a table set up for this purpose the agreement was ceremoniously signed, by Hanke, Ohlendorf, and Speer; then everyone exchanged a German salute, Speer shook their hands, and left. I looked at my watch: I had less than forty-five minutes, but I had brought my travel bag. In all the milling around, I slipped next to Ohlendorf, who was talking to Hanke: “Brigadeführer, excuse me. I’m taking the same train as the Reichsminister; I have to go.” Ohlendorf, a little surprised, raised his eyebrows: “Call me when you get back,” he said.