Here was Streicher with Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had the face and bearing of a mousy accountant or professor, she thought, the kind of weakling who had been bullied by larger, fitter men his entire life and now reveled in his circumstances: black-clad, medals on his chest, a swastika armband, flunkies tailing behind him to accommodate his every wish.
Himmler, she knew, in addition to overseeing the Gestapo and Waffen-SS, was considered to be the chief architect of the Holocaust. His Einsatzgruppen shock troops had built the extermination camps that killed six million Jews and a half million others. He’d been a believer in occultism and had inserted pagan symbols and rituals into the structure of the secret police. He’d died by suicide in 1945.
And there he was, right in front of her. Standing next to a glowing Julius Streicher.
As she paged through the album with a growing sense of dread, she alternated between the photos and her computer to try to fill in the unknowns and translate the meager captions. One in particular stopped her in her tracks.
It was of six men standing outside in a knot at what looked to be a street parade or march. They seemed to be sharing a hilarious joke.
All six, she confirmed from her research, had been there from the beginning of the Nazi Party. They’d fought in World War I, later participated with Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, and were the first on the scene after the Reichstag fire in Berlin that launched the party into power.
In the photo, from left to right, were Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Hermann G?ring, Streicher, Joseph Goebbels, and Himmler.
Hess was dark and almost handsome, but something looked off about him, she thought. He’d been the Deputy Führer as well as a close friend and confidant of Hitler, and while in prison with Hitler had served as an assistant in the writing of Mein Kampf. Hess had served as a kind of vice president with a twist—he’d attended ceremonies and funerals on behalf of Hitler, but also signed most of the regime’s legislation and edicts, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped Jews of their rights.
In 1941, unbeknownst to Hitler or the party, Hess made a secret flight to Scotland to try to end the war, and was promptly arrested. Hitler wanted nothing more to do with him. Later, he was returned to Germany for the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life in Berlin’s Spandau Prison. He hanged himself in 1987 at the age of ninety-three.
Hermann G?ring, obese, with fat gargoyle features, looked jolly and mischievous in the photo, as if he were about to tell another joke. She recognized him, but still looked him up to fill the gaps of her knowledge.
G?ring had been wounded in the Beer Hall Putsch, and in the hospital developed a morphine addiction that he maintained for the rest of his life. He’d created the Gestapo and been named commander in chief of the Luftwaffe. He was fond of elaborate uniforms he designed for himself and considered himself Hitler’s successor, even though he was the least anti-Semitic in the Nazi government. That hadn’t stopped him from acquiring a massive collection of stolen art primarily from Jewish families. He’d died by suicide in 1946 just prior to his sentencing at the Nuremberg trials.
Joseph Goebbels stood next to G?ring like a hatchet-faced ferret.
She sat back and shook her head. All of the men in the photograph looked remarkably like weak men playacting. Like members of a third-tier men’s club devoted to dressing up in silly uniforms and singing drinking songs. But the more she read about them, the more it was clear they were evil, depraved, mentally ill monsters.
Goebbels had been Reich Minister of Propaganda, and had molded and shaped Hitler’s message for the masses through brilliant public relations efforts that legitimized the outlaw regime. He once wrote, “Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time. What one calls a genius.”
Goebbels had actually been named in Hitler’s will as the man to succeed him, and after Hitler had committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, he’d held the job of chancellor for exactly one day. Then he and his wife poisoned all six of their children before killing themselves.
How, she wondered, had this photo album found its way halfway around the world to Saddlestring, Wyoming?
And who was Julius Streicher? That was the one she’d never heard of.
* * *
—
Marybeth had been so consumed by her research that she hadn’t heard Evelyn Hughes, the front desk librarian, come in, until she asked, “What is that?”
Marybeth looked up, alarmed. It felt like she’d been caught doing something improper, probably because the things she’d learned made her feel dirty.