Page 101 of Hell to Pay
“Not much, sir,” I say. “Just the basic idea. All the countries of the world get together and decide who’s out of line, how to keep the peace. Decent idea, if it works.”
He nods. “You’ve put your finger on the main point. ‘If it works.’ Think of this as a sort of test case. They’re saying, even if there isn’t international law written now that says you don’t invade your neighbor and slaughter civilians, there ought to be, so they’re going to set the precedent.”
“Will there be trials in Japan, too, sir?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But there are going to be trials here, all right. And they’re going to need evidence for that.”
“That doesn’t seem hard to find, sir,” I say. “It’s not like any of it’s a secret anymore.”
“You’re not thinking, Stark,” he says. “It’s a criminal trial. Your father’s a lawyer, I believe.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, wondering how on earth he knows that.
“Then you should know,” he says, “that the prosecutor can’t just stand there and say, ‘Everybody knows you killed your wife. Your neighbor saw you do it, in fact, so we’re going to lock you up until we get around to giving you the chair.’ No matter how cut and dried it looks, you have to prove it to the judge and jury, right?”
“Right, sir,” I say. “Evidence. Witnesses and documents and so forth,depending on the crime. My dad does corporate law. It’s mostly documents there.”
“And the Nazis kept documents,” he says. “They may not have had much humanity, but they sure had organization. There are going to be a whole lot of Americans descending on Nuremberg soon, looking at all that evidence, interviewing all those witnesses. JAG lawyers. Investigators. The U.S. is leading this charge, and we’ll be supplying most of that. But obviously, those folks don’t all speak fluent German. They won’t know if a list they’re looking at is of Jews executed in a gas chamber, or General Jodl’s wife’s shopping list. That’s where you come in.”
“I do, sir?” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “Your country’s asking you to go to Nuremberg and help out. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and you did excellent work in Dachau. Commended by General Linden. He was the one who recommended you for this duty, in fact. You’re smart, you’re fluent, and you can handle the tough stuff. Even got the Silver Star along with your Purple Heart.”
“Sir,” I say, “I’m no lawyer.”
“And you don’t have to be,” he says.“You just have to interpret for one. Or one of the psychologists, because they’re sending those, too. Understanding the defendants’ motivations and all that, although personally, I don’t much care about their motivations. If they did it, that’s enough for me, and you bet they did it.”
“Which defendants are we talking about, sir?” I ask.
He waves a hand. “Well, Hitler and Goebbels and Himmler killed themselves, unfortunately, and some of the others are missing. Dead,escaped … who knows? But the rest of them that we have in custody, the big boys. The generals, commandants of the concentration camps, territorial governors, the guys in charge of the slave labor program, Goering himself … any number of them.”
“Sir,” I say, “you do realize I’m a Jew.”
“Yes,” he says. “Which presumably means you’re sound. Not going to have your head turned by Nazi ideology and try to join the Master Race. As this would be a transfer into Military Intelligence, that would probably be frowned upon.”
“What makes you think that I’ll be able to keep from killing them myself?” I ask. “Sir,” I remember to add.
“What makesyouthink that you will?” he asks. Sneaky guy.
“Discipline, I suppose, sir,” I say. “Duty. Also, I’m not that good a shot.”
He smiles, but says, “And yet you took out a grenade launcher and a machine-gun nest in Fürth. Just west of Nuremberg, in fact.” He looks at another paper. “Where you met a German girl who saved your life.”
“Uh …” I say, losing all my cool. “Yes, sir.”
He looks up from the pile. “So presumably you don’t believe every German is evil.”
“No, sir,” I say. “Seems to me that good and evil are distributed around pretty evenly. The problem seems to be when an evil man gets the opportunity to spread his poison without enough people to stop him. Like if Roosevelt had been a Hitler, I suppose. But arethere good people in Germany?” I’m nervous, standing here talking to the Colonel, but take some time to think about it. “Of course there are. There have to be, though I wish I could just hate them all and be done with it. Because they—well, they bought into the whole thing, sir, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” the Colonel says. “They did. And there have to be consequences for that.”
“How long is this tour, sir?” I ask.
“A year,” he says. “The trial might take longer than that, but after a year, you’ll be rotated out and discharged. Unless you want to stay, of course.” Likethat’sgoing to happen. You know what the number one rule in the Army is? “Never volunteer.”
The good news? I won’t be getting shot at, and I confess there’s a part of me that wants to knowwhy.These are smart guys. They have to be—this thing took a lot of organizing. Why did they jump into bed with somebody as crazy and plain evil as Hitler? This is as much of a front-row seat as anybody could get to watch that question be answered.
Oh, and I have two weeks’ leave starting September 15th, as they won’t need me in Nuremberg yet andwillneed me just about every day of that year, apparently. The Colonel suggested I grab a seat on a plane and spend some time in England. England in September doesn’t sound too bad, does it? They’re short on food there, too, but not as bad as Germany, and I’ve barely spent a dime of my Army pay. Nothing to spend it on, and I’m not a good enough poker player to gamble with it.
