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As he lay balled up in the fetal position, absorbing blow after blow, he heard a gunshot, people screaming, a thundering vibration on the floor as over two dozen employees of Der Illustrierte Sonntag raced for the door on the SS’s command.
Then it was quiet. The pressroom had been cleared. The guards stopped kicking him. Gerlich managed to sit upright against the wall, cringing in pain.
“Ah, now we can speak privately.”
Gerlich’s blood went cold. He knew that voice, even before the guards parted to reveal Heinrich Himmler, smiling with one side of his mouth. “Good evening, Fritz. It’s been a long time.”
“Get out… of my office,” Gerlich managed between gasps of air. “Take your jackbooted thugs… with you. I’ll… call the police.”
“Will you, now?” Himmler smirked. Both knew that Gerlich calling the police would yield nothing. “There’s no need for such drama. I just wanted to have a chat.” He sat down in the editor’s chair, making himself comfortable. “I always wondered what it was like wasting away in an office, editing a newspaper that nobody reads.”
“If nobody read it, you wouldn’t be here,” Gerlich managed. Beyond his office, he could hear crashing and scraping and hacking—the sounds of the SS guards looting the pressroom, breaking furniture, destroying file cabinets.
“What do we have here?” Himmler leaned over, taking a look at Gerlich’s desk. “Copy for tomorrow’s edition, Fritz?”
“You can’t… see that!”
“And yet, here I am, seeing it.” Himmler clucked his tongue as he read the article. Then he ripped the copy into pieces. “Herr Gerlich, you have the wrong story. I’ve brought our lawyer, Herr Frank, to explain.”
Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer and counsel to NSDAP, stepped forward. Well dressed, with receding dark hair, Frank handed several documents to Gerlich. “We will sue Der Illustrierte Sonntag and you personally, Herr Gerlich,” he said. “And as always, we will win.”
“Only because the Munich judges are in your pocket.” Gerlich looked over the papers. One contained a draft of a lawsuit against him. The other was a single piece of paper, what looked like a press release. “What is this?”
“That,” said Himmler, “is the true story. Which you will print tomorrow.”
Gerlich looked it over. “‘Unsatisfied artistic achievement’? This is a joke. We will not print such rubbish! If Geli Raubal committed suicide, why has the government whisked away her body so she cannot be examined?”
Himmler sighed. He removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “Yet again, you have incorrect information, Fritz. And you have reached the end of the road on this story. Is that clear?”
“Never,” Gerlich growled. “We will never stop telling the truth.”
Himmler looked Gerlich over, then nodded to the SS troopers. Himmler got to his feet and came around the desk. A moment later, the guards turned over Gerlich’s desk with a furious crash, papers flying everywhere. They lifted his typewriter off the back desk and threw it against the wall.
“You have no right to do this!” Gerlich shouted.
Himmler looked him over again. “Do consider the press release we gave you, yes? I think you’ll find that other newspapers have reconsidered their editorial positions. You wouldn’t want to be left alone, twisting in the wind.”
“I am never alone,” he whispered.
“Ah. Ah, yes. Your religious conversion. I’ve heard.” Eyes narrowed, Himmler bent at the waist, moving closer to Gerlich. “God has given us the Führer, Fritz. You’d do well to fall in line like a humble servant.”
“Never,” Gerlich hissed. “I will not bow to a false prophet like Hitler.”
“What did you call him?” Himmler straightened up, removed his sidearm, and aimed it at Gerlich’s face. “I dare you to say that again.”
Gerlich closed his eyes and silently began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
“Say it again, Gerlich! I dare you!”
Gerlich, chin up, looked Himmler in the eyes. “Hitler is a false prophet. A demigod. A charlatan. I will never bow to such a hateful, bigoted—”
Himmler discharged his firearm, a single shot, before Gerlich could finish the sentence.
13
Autopsy theater
Munich
