Someone knocked and I opened the door: a bellboy was there to tell me that Obersturmbannführer Hauser had left a message. I had him cart away the leftovers of the meal I had had sent up the day before, and took the time to shower and comb my hair before going down to reception to call Thomas. Werner Best was in Berlin, he told me; he was willing to see me, that very evening, in the bar at the Hotel Adlon. “You’ll be there?” I went back up to run a bath, as hot as possible, and plunged into it until my lungs felt as if they would crush. Then I sent for a barber to come shave me. At the appointed time I was at the Adlon, toying nervously with the stem of a martini glass, gazing at the Gauleiters, diplomats, high-ranking SS officers, wealthy aristocrats who stayed there while they were passing through Berlin, or were just dining there. I thought about Werner Best. How would a man like Best react if I told him I thought I’d seen the Führer draped in a rabbi’s shawl? No doubt he’d give me the address of a good doctor. But maybe he’d also coldly explain to me why it had to be that way. An odd man. I had met him in the summer of 1937, after he had helped me, through Thomas, during my arrest in the Tiergarten; he had never again alluded to it. After my recruitment, although I was at least ten years younger than he, he seemed to take an interest in me and invited me several times to dinner, usually along with Thomas and one or two other officials from the SD, once with Ohlendorf, who drank a lot of coffee and spoke little, and sometimes also one-on-one. He was an extraordinarily precise, cold, and objective man, and at the same time passionately devoted to his ideals. When I still barely knew him, it seemed obvious to me that Thomas Hauser imitated his style, and I saw later on that this was the case for most of the young SD officers, who definitely admired him more than they did Heydrich. Best, at that time, still liked to preach what he called heroic realism: “What counts,” he asserted, quoting Jünger, whom he read avidly, “is not what you fight for, but how you fight for it.” For this man, National Socialism was not a political opinion, but rather a way of life, a hard, radical one that blended a capacity for objective analysis with the ability to act. The highest morality, he explained to us, consists in surmounting traditional inhibitions in the search for the good of the Volk. In that, the Kriegsjugendgeneration, the “war youth generation,” to which he belonged along with Ohlendorf, Six, Knochen, and also Heydrich, was clearly distinct from the previous generation, the junge Frontgeneration, the “youth of the front,” who had been in the war. Most of the Gauleiters and Party leaders, like Himmler and Hans Frank and also Goebbels and Darré, belonged to that generation, but Best thought them too idealistic, too sentimental, naïve, and unrealistic. The Kriegsjungen, too young to have been in the war or even fought with the Freikorps, had grown up during the troubled Weimar years, and against this chaos they had forged a völkisch, radical approach to the problems of the nation. They had joined the NSDAP not because its ideology was different from that of the other völkisch parties of the 1920s, but because instead of getting bogged down in ideas, in leaders’ quarrels, in endless, unproductive debates, it had concentrated on organization, mass propaganda, and activism, and had thus naturally emerged in a guiding position. The SD embodied this hard, objective, realistic approach. As for our generation—by that, Best, in these discussions, meant the generation of Thomas and me—it hadn’t yet fully defined itself: it had reached adulthood under National Socialism, but hadn’t yet been confronted with its real challenges. That was why we had to prepare ourselves, cultivate a severe discipline, learn to fight for our Volk and if necessary destroy our enemies, without hatred and without animosity, not like those Teutonic big shots who behaved as if they were still wearing animal pelts, but in a systematic, efficient, carefully thought-out way. That was the mood of the SD then—and, for example, of Professor Dr. Alfred Six, my first department head, who was also at the same time the head of the foreign economics faculty at the university: a bitter, somewhat disagreeable man who spoke more often of bioracial politics than of economics; but he advocated the same methods that Best did, and the same held true for all the young men recruited through the years by Höhn, the young wolves of the SD, Schellenberg, Knochen, Behrends, d’Alquen, Ohlendorf of course, but also less well known men now, such as Melhorn, Gürke who was killed in combat in 1943, Lemmel, Taubert. It was a race apart, not much appreciated within the Party, but lucid, active, disciplined, and after I entered the SD, I had aspired only to become one of them. Now I wasn’t so sure. I had the impression, after my experiences in the East, that the idealists in the SD had been overwhelmed by the policemen, the bureaucrats of violence. I wondered what Best thought of the Endlösung. But I had no intention of asking him, or even of broaching the subject, not to mention that of my strange vision.

Best arrived half an hour late, wearing an extraordinary black uniform with two rows of gold buttons and immense lapels lined in white velvet. After a formal exchange of salutes, he vigorously shook my hand, apologizing for his lateness: “I was with the Führer. I didn’t even have time to change.” While we congratulated each other on our respective promotions, a maître d’hôtel appeared, greeted Best, and led us to a reserved booth. I ordered another martini and Best a glass of red wine. Then he questioned me about my career in Russia: I replied without going into details; in any case, Best knew better than anyone what an Einsatzgruppe was. “And now?” So I explained my idea to him. He listened to me patiently, nodding his head; his high-domed forehead, gleaming beneath the chandeliers, still bore the red mark of his cap, which he had placed on the banquette. “Yes, I remember,” he said finally. “You were beginning to be interested in international law. Why haven’t you published anything?”—“I’ve never really had a chance. At the RSHA, after you left, they entrusted me only with questions of constitutional and penal law, and afterward, in the field, it was impossible. I have acquired a solid practical experience of our methods of occupation, though.”—“I’m not sure that the Ukraine is the best example.”—“Of course not,” I said. “No one in the RSHA can understand how we let Koch go on like that. It’s a catastrophe.”—“That’s one of the dysfunctions of National Socialism. On this point, Stalin is much more rigorous than we are. But men like Koch, I hope, have no future. You read the Festgabe that we arranged to have published for the Reichsführer’s fortieth birthday?” I shook my head: “Unfortunately not.”—“I’ll have a copy sent to you. My contribution to it developed a theory of the Grossraum founded on a völkisch basis; your old professor Höhn wrote an article on the same subject, as did Stuckart, from the Ministry of the Interior. Lemmel, you remember him, has also published work on these concepts, but elsewhere. It was a question both of completing our critical reading of Carl Schmitt and at the same time of putting forward the SS as the driving force behind the construction of the New European Order. The Reichsführer, surrounded by men like us, could have been its main architect. But he let the chance slip by.”—“What happened, then?”—“It’s hard to say. I don’t know if the Reichsführer was obsessed by his plans for the reconstruction of the German East, or if he was overwhelmed with too many tasks. Certainly the involvement of the SS in the processes of demographic planning in the East played a role. That’s part of the reason I decided to quit the RSHA.” This last assertion, I knew, lacked sincerity. Around the time I was finishing my thesis (it had to do with the reconciliation of positive State law with the notion of Volksgemeinschaft) and was entering the SD full-time, to help write legal opinions, Best was already beginning to have problems, especially with Schellenberg. Schellenberg, in private but also in writing, accused Best of being too bureaucratic, too narrow-minded, an academic lawyer, a hair-splitter. That, according to rumor, was also Heydrich’s opinion; at least Heydrich had given Schellenberg free rein. Best, for his part, criticized the “de-officialization” of the police: concretely, he argued that all employees of the SD assigned to the SP, like Thomas and me, had to be subject to the ordinary rules and procedures of the State administration; department heads should all have legal training. But Heydrich made fun of this kindergarten for ticket punchers, and Schellenberg launched attack after attack. Best, on this subject, had made a striking remark to me one day: “You know, despite all my hatred for 1793, I sometimes feel close to Saint-Just, who said: I fear less the austerity or the delirium of some than the flexibility of others.” All that occurred during the last spring before the war; I have already spoken about what ensued in the fall, Best’s departure, my own troubles; but I understood why Best preferred to see the positive side of these developments. “In France and now in Denmark,” he said, “I tried working on the practical aspects of these theories.”—“And how is that going?”—“In France, the idea of a supervised administration was good. But there was too much interference from the Wehrmacht, which continued its own policy, and from Berlin, which spoiled things a little with that business of hostages. And also, of course, the Eleventh of November put an end to all that. In my opinion it was a gross mistake. But well! I have every hope, on the other hand, of turning Denmark into a model Protektorat.”—“People have only good things to say about your work.”—“Oh, I have my critics too! And also, you know, I’ve only just begun. But beyond these precise issues, what counts is to get down to developing a global postwar vision. For now, all our measures are ad hoc and incoherent. And the Führer is giving contradictory signals about his intentions. So it’s very hard to make concrete promises.”—“I see perfectly what you mean.” I spoke to him briefly about Lippert, about the hopes he had raised during our conversation in Maikop. “Yes, that’s a good example,” said Best. “But you see, other people are promising the same things to the Flemish. And also now the Reichsführer, encouraged by Obergruppenführer Berger, is launching his own policy, with the creation of foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, and this is incompatible with, or in any case not coordinated with, the policies of the Auswärtiges Amt. That’s the whole problem: so long as the Führer doesn’t intervene in person, everyone pursues his own personal policies. There’s no overall vision, and so no truly völkisch policies. The real National Socialists are incapable of doing their work, which is to direct and guide the Volk; instead, it’s the Parteigenossen, the Party men, who carve out fiefs for themselves and then govern them as they please.”—“You don’t think the members of the Party are authentic National Socialists?” Best raised a finger: “Watch out. Don’t confuse a member of the Party with a man of the Party. All members of the Party, like you and me, are not necessarily ‘PGs.’ A National Socialist must believe in his vision. And necessarily, since the vision is unique, all real National Socialists can work only in a single direction, which is that of the Volk. But do you think that all these people”—he made a wide gesture encompassing the room—“are authentic National Socialists? A Party man is someone who owes his career to the Party, who has a position to defend within the Party, and who thus defends the interests of the Party in controversies with other hierarchies, whatever the real interests of the Volk may be. The Party, in the beginning, was conceived as a movement, an agent of mobilization for the Volk; now it has become a bureaucracy like all the others. For a long time, some of us hoped the SS could take up that role. And it’s not too late yet. But the SS is also succumbing to dangerous temptations.” We drank a little; I wanted to return to the subject that concerned me. “What do you think of my idea?” I finally asked. “It seems to me that with my past, my knowledge of the country and of the various trends in French thinking, it’s in France that I could be most useful.”—“You might be right. The problem, as you know, is that aside from strictly police functions, the SS is a little out of the picture in France. And I don’t think my name would be very useful to you with the Militärbefehlshaber. With Abetz I can’t do anything either, he’s very jealous of his shop. But if you’re really interested, contact Knochen. He should remember you.”—“Yes, that’s an idea,” I said halfheartedly. That wasn’t what I wanted. Best went on: “You could tell him that I recommended you. What about Denmark? Wouldn’t that interest you? I could probably find a good job for you there.” I tried not to show my increasing embarrassment too much: “Thank you very much for the suggestion. But I have very concrete ideas about France, and I’d like to follow them up if that’s possible.”—“I understand. But if you change your mind, contact me.”—“Of course.” He looked at his watch. “I’m dining with my minister and I really have to change. If I think of something else, for France, or if I hear of an interesting position opening up, I’ll let you know.”—“I would be very grateful to you. Thank you again for taking the time to see me.” He finished his glass and replied: “It was a pleasure. That’s what I miss the most, since I left the RSHA: the possibility of openly discussing ideas with men of convictions. In Denmark, I have to be on my guard all the time. Good night, then!” I walked him out and left him in the street, in front of the former British embassy. I watched his car head off down Wilhelmstrasse and then I made for the Brandenburg Gate and the Tiergarten, troubled by his last words. A man of convictions? Before, probably, I had been one, but now, where was the clarity of my convictions hidden away? I could glimpse these convictions, they were dancing gently around me: but if I tried to grasp one, it slipped between my fingers, like a nervous, powerful eel.