I hesitated. I was hungry, but I couldn’t count on finding anything to eat. At home I had some food, but I didn’t know if my apartment still existed. I finally decided to go to the SS-Haus and report for duty. I set off down the Freidensallee at a run: in front of me, the Brandenburg Gate stood under its camouflage nets, intact. But behind it, almost all of Unter den Linden seemed to be in flames. The air was dense with smoke and dust, thick and hot, I was beginning to have trouble breathing. Clouds of sparks burst forth, crackling, from the buildings on fire. The wind was blowing ever more strongly. On the other side of the Pariser Platz, the Armaments Ministry was burning, partially crushed under the impacts. Secretaries wearing civil defense metal helmets were bustling about in the rubble, recovering files there too. A Mercedes with a fanion stood parked to the side; among the crowd of employees, I recognized Speer, bare-headed, his face black with soot. I went over to greet him and offered him my help; when he saw me, he shouted something to me that I didn’t understand. “You’re burning!” he repeated.—“What?” He came toward me, took me by the arm, turned me around, and beat my back with his open hand. Sparks must have set fire to my overcoat, but I hadn’t felt anything. Confused, I thanked him and asked him what I could do. “Nothing, really. I think we’ve gotten out what we could. My own office took a direct hit. There’s nothing left.” I looked around: the French embassy, the former British embassy, the Bristol Hotel, the offices of IG Farben—everything was heavily damaged or burning. The elegant façades of the Schinkel town houses, next to the Gate, stood out against a background of fire. “How awful,” I muttered.—“It’s terrible to say,” Speer said pensively, “but it’s better that they’re concentrating on the cities.”—“What do you mean, Herr Reichsminister?”—“During the summer, when they attacked the Ruhr, I was terrified. In August, they attacked Schweinfurt, where our entire production of ball bearings is concentrated. Then again in October. Our production fell by sixty-seven percent. You may not realize it, Sturmbannführer, but no ball bearings, no war. If they concentrate on Schweinfurt, we capitulate in two months, three at the most. Here”—he waved his hand at the fires—“they’re killing people, wasting all their resources on our cultural monuments.” He gave a dry, harsh laugh: “We were going to rebuild everything anyway. Ha!” I saluted him: “If you don’t need me, Herr Reichsminister, I’ll keep going. But I wanted to tell you that your request is being considered. I’ll contact you soon to tell you where things stand.” He shook my hand: “Fine, fine. Good night, Sturmbannführer.”

I had soaked my handkerchief in a bucket and was holding it over my mouth to go forward; I had also soaked my shoulders and cap. In the Wilhelmstrasse, the wind roared between the ministries and whipped the flames licking the empty windows. Soldiers and firemen were running everywhere, with little result. The Auswärtiges Amt looked severely hit, but the chancellery, a little farther on, had fared better. I was walking on a carpet of broken glass: in the entire street there wasn’t one window left unbroken. On the Wilhelmplatz some bodies had been stretched out near an overturned Luftwaffe truck; frightened civilians were still coming out of the U-Bahn station and looking around, horrified and lost; from time to time a blast could be heard, a delayed-action bomb, or else the muffled roar of a building collapsing. I looked at the bodies: a man without pants, his bloody buttocks grotesquely exposed; a woman with her stockings intact, but without a head. I thought it especially obscene that they were left there like that, but no one seemed to care. A little farther on, guards had been posted in front of the Aviation Ministry: passersbys shouted insults at them or sarcastic remarks about Göring, but didn’t linger, no crowd was forming; I showed my SD card and went through the cordon. I finally arrived at the corner of Prinz-Albrechtstrasse: the SS-Haus had no windows left, but otherwise didn’t seem damaged. In the lobby, troops were sweeping away the debris; officers were hoisting boards or mattresses to cover the gaping windows. In a hallway, I found Brandt giving instructions in a calm, flat voice: he was especially concerned with getting the telephone restored. I saluted him and informed him of the destruction of my offices. He nodded: “Well, we’ll take care of that tomorrow.” Since there didn’t seem to be much to do, I went next door, to the Staatspolizei; they were busy nailing up the doors that had been torn off, as well as they could; some bombs had struck nearby, an enormous crater disfigured the street a little farther on, and water was escaping from a burst pipe. I found Thomas in his office drinking schnapps with three other officers, unbuttoned, black with filth, laughing. “Look at you!” he exclaimed. “You’re a sorry sight. Have a drink. Where were you?” I briefly told him about my experiences at the ministry. “Ha! I was home already, I went down to the basement with the neighbors. A bomb came through the roof and the building caught fire. We had to break down the walls of the neighboring basements, several in a row, to come out at the end of the street. The whole street burned down and half of my building, including my apartment, collapsed. To top it all off, I found my poor convertible under a bus. In short, I’m ruined.” He poured me another glass. “Since misfortune is upon us, let us drink, as my grandmother Ivona used to say.”

In the end I spent the night at the Staatspolizei. Thomas had sandwiches, tea, and soup delivered. He lent me one of his spare uniforms, a little too big for me, but more presentable than my rags; a smiling typist took charge of switching the stripes and insignia. They had set up folding cots in the gymnasium for about fifteen homeless officers; I ran into Eduard Holste there, whom I had briefly known as Leiter IV/V of Group D, at the end of 1942; he had lost everything and was almost crying with bitterness. Unfortunately the showers still didn’t work, and I could wash only my hands and face. My throat hurt, I coughed, but Thomas’s schnapps had cut the taste of ash a little. Outside, we still heard explosions. The wind roared, raging and relentless.

Very early in the morning, without waiting for Piontek, I took the car from the garage and went home. The streets, obstructed by burned or overturned trolleys, fallen trees, rubble, were hard to navigate. A cloud of black, acrid smoke veiled the sky and many passersby were holding wet towels or handkerchiefs over their mouths. It was still drizzling. I passed lines of people pushing strollers or little wagonsful of belongings, or else lugging or dragging suitcases. Everywhere water was escaping from pipes, I had to drive through pools hiding debris that could shred my tires at any moment. Still, many cars were still circulating, most of them without windows and some even missing doors, but full of people: those who had space picked up bombing victims, and I did the same for an exhausted mother with two young children who wanted to go see her parents. I cut through the devastated Tiergarten; the Victory Column, still standing as if out of defiance, rose in the midst of a large lake formed by the water from shattered mains, and I had to make a big detour to skirt round it. I dropped the woman off in the rubble of the Händelallee and went on to my apartment. Everywhere, teams were at work repairing the damage; in front of destroyed buildings, sappers were pumping air into collapsed basements and digging to free survivors, assisted by Italian prisoners—everyone nowadays just called them the Badoglios—with the letters KGF painted in red on their backs. The S-Bahn station in the Brückenallee lay in ruins; I lived a little farther, on Flensburgerstrasse; my building looked miraculously intact: a hundred and fifty meters farther, there was nothing but rubble and gaping façades. The elevator, of course, didn’t work, so I climbed the eight flights, passing my neighbors sweeping the stairway or nailing up their doors as best they could. I found mine torn from its hinges and lying sideways; inside, a thick layer of broken glass and plaster covered everything; there were traces of footsteps and my gramophone had disappeared, but nothing else seemed to have been taken. A cold, biting wind blew through the windows. I quickly filled a suitcase, then went downstairs to arrange with my neighbor, who came from time to time to do housework for me, to come and clean up; I gave her money to have the door repaired that day, and the windows as soon as possible; she promised to contact me at the SS-Haus when the apartment was more or less livable. I went out in search of a hotel: above all, I dreamed of a bath. The closest was the Eden Hotel, where I had already stayed for a time. I had luck, the entire Budapesterstrasse seemed razed, but the Eden was still open. The front desk was being taken by storm, rich people who had been left homeless, officers arguing over rooms. When I had mentioned my rank, my medals, my disability, and lied by exaggerating the state of my apartment, the manager, who had recognized me, agreed to give me a bed, provided I share the room. I held out a banknote to the floor waiter so he would bring hot water to my room: finally, around ten o’clock, I was able to run a bath, lukewarm but delectable. The water immediately turned black, but I didn’t care. I was still soaking when they let my roommate in. He excused himself politely through the closed bathroom door and told me he’d wait below until I was ready. As soon as I was dressed I went down to look for him: he was a Georgian aristocrat, very elegant, who had fled his burning hotel with his things and had ended up here.