Alone, I read, took walks. In the sanatorium garden, the apple trees were in flower, the bougainvilleas, wisteria, lilacs, laburnum, were all in bloom and assailed the air with a riot of violent, heavy, contrasting odors. I also went every day to stroll about in the botanical gardens, east of Yalta. The different sections rose in tiers above the sea, with grand views over the blue and then the gray of the horizon, and always to the back the omnipresent snow-covered range of the Yaila Mountains. In the arboretum, signs guided the visitor to a pistachio tree over a thousand years old and a yew tree that might have been five hundred; higher up, in the Verkhniy Park, the rose garden displayed two thousand species that were just opening up but were already humming with bees, like the lavender of my childhood; in Primorsky Park there were subtropical plants in glass houses, hardly damaged at all, and I would sit facing the sea to read, at rest. One day, returning through town, I visited Chekhov’s house, a comfortable little white dacha turned into a museum by the Soviets; the staff, judging from the signs on the walls, seemed especially proud of the living room piano, on which Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin had played; but for my part, I was stunned by the caretaker of the place, Masha, the actual sister, now an octogenarian, of Chekhov, who stayed seated on a simple wooden chair in the entryway, motionless, silent, her hands flat on her thighs. Her life, I knew, had been broken by the impossible, just like mine. Was she still dreaming, there in front of me, of the one who should have been standing at her side, Pharaoh, her dead brother and husband?

One evening near the end of my leave, I went to the Kasino in Yalta, set up in a sort of slightly outmoded, rather pleasant rococo palace. In the large stairway leading to the main hall, I ran into an SS-Oberführer whom I knew well. I stepped aside and stood at attention to salute him, and he returned my salute absentmindedly; but two steps farther down he stopped, turned around suddenly, and his face lit up: “Dr. Aue! I didn’t recognize you.” It was Otto Ohlendorf, my Amtschef in Berlin, who now commanded Einsatzgruppe D. He nimbly climbed back up the steps and shook my hand, congratulating me on my promotion. “What a surprise! What are you doing here?” I briefly explained my story. “Oh, you were with Blobel! I pity you. I don’t understand how they can keep mentally ill men like that in the SS, even less entrust them with a command.”—“Whatever the case,” I replied, “Standartenführer Weinmann seemed like a serious man.”—“I don’t know him much. He’s an employee of the Staatspolizei, isn’t he?” He contemplated me for an instant and then abruptly suggested: “Why don’t you stay with me? I need an adjunct for my Leiter III, in the Gruppenstab. My old one got typhus and was sent home. I know Dr. Thomas well, he won’t refuse your transfer.” The offer caught me by surprise: “Do I have to give you an answer right away?”—“No. Actually, yes!”—“All right, then, if Brigadeführer Thomas gives his consent, I accept.” He smiled and shook my hand again. “Excellent, excellent. Now I have to run. Come see me tomorrow in Simferopol, we’ll arrange everything and I’ll explain the details to you. You won’t have any trouble finding us, we’re next to the AOK, just ask. Good night!” He ran down the steps, waving, and disappeared. I headed for the bar and ordered a Cognac. I liked Ohlendorf enormously, and always took keen pleasure in our conversations; a chance to work with him again was more than I could have hoped for. He was a remarkably intelligent, penetrating man, definitely one of the best minds of National Socialism, and one of the most uncompromising; his attitude made him a lot of enemies, but for me he was an inspiration. The lecture he had given in Kiel, the first time I met him, had dazzled me. Speaking eloquently from a few scattered notes, in a clear, well-modulated voice, which marked each point forcefully and precisely, he had begun with a vigorous criticism of Italian fascism, which, according to him, was guilty of deifying the State without recognizing human communities, whereas National Socialism was based on community, the Volksgemeinschaft. Worse, Mussolini had systematically suppressed all institutional constraints on the men in power. That led directly to a totalitarian version of State control, where neither power nor its abuses knew the slightest limit. In principle, National Socialism was based on the reality of the value of the life of the human individual and of the Volk as a whole; thus, the State was subordinate to the requirements of the Volk. Under fascism, people had no value in themselves, they were objects of the State, and the only dominant reality was the State itself. Nevertheless, certain elements within the Party wanted to introduce fascism into National Socialism. Since the Seizure of Power, National Socialism, in certain sectors, had deviated, and was falling back on old methods to overcome temporary problems. These foreign tendencies were especially strong in the agricultural economy, and also in heavy industry, which was National Socialist in name only and which was profiting from the uncontrolled overspending of the State to expand beyond all measure. The arrogance and megalomania that reigned in certain sectors of the Party only aggravated the situation. The other mortal danger for National Socialism was what Ohlendorf called its Bolshevist deviation, mainly the collectivist tendencies of the DAF, the Labor Front. Ley was constantly denigrating the middle classes; he wanted to destroy small-and medium-size businesses, which formed the real social basis of the German economy. The fundamental and decisive measure of political economy should be Man; economics—and in this, one could follow Marx’s analyses completely—was the most important factor in the fate of mankind. It was true that a National Socialist economic order did not yet exist. But National Socialist policies in all sectors—economic, social, or constitutional—should always keep in mind that their object was man and the Volk. The collectivist tendencies in economic and social policies, like the absolutist tendencies in constitutional policies, deviated from this line. As the wellspring of National Socialism, we students, the future elite of the Party, should always remain faithful to its essential spirit, and let this spirit guide each of our actions and decisions.

It was the most incisive critique of the state of things in modern Germany that I had ever heard. Ohlendorf, a man scarcely older than I, had obviously meditated for a long time on these questions and had based his conclusions on profound and rigorous analyses. What’s more, I later learned, when he was a student in Kiel, in 1934, he had been arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for his virulent denunciations of the prostitution of National Socialism; this experience had no doubt contributed to inclining him toward the security services. He had a high opinion of his work; he saw it as an essential part of the implementation of National Socialism. After the lecture, when he had suggested that I collaborate with him as a V-mann, I had the misfortune, when he described the tasks, of blurting out stupidly: “But that’s a snitch’s job!” Ohlendorf had reacted dryly: “No, Herr Aue, it’s not the job of an informer. We’re not asking you to squeal, we couldn’t care less if your cleaning lady tells an anti-Party joke. But the joke interests us, since it reveals the mood of the Volk. The Gestapo has perfectly competent services to take care of the enemies of the State, but that’s not the jurisdiction of the Sicherheitsdienst, which is essentially an organ of information.” In Berlin, after I arrived, I had little by little attached myself to him, thanks especially to the intervention of my professor, Höhn, with whom he had stayed in touch after Höhn had left the SD. We saw each other from time to time over coffee; he invited me to his house to explain the Party’s latest unhealthy tendencies, and his ideas for correcting and fighting them. At that time he wasn’t working in the SD full time, he was also conducting research at the University of Kiel and later on became an important figure in the Reichsgruppe Handel, the Organization of German Commerce. When I finally entered the SD, he acted, as did Dr. Best, a little like my protector. But his ever-worsening conflict with Heydrich, and his difficult relations with the Reichsführer, had weakened his position, which didn’t prevent him from being appointed Amtschef III—head of the Sicherheitsdienst—during the formation of the RSHA. In Pretzsch, there were a lot of rumors about the reasons for his departure for Russia; they said he had refused the position several times, until Heydrich, supported by the Reichsführer, forced him to accept it in order to shove his nose in the mud.