In the Garden of Beasts

contact with any Storm Troopers seeking to effect rescue. Hitler and his ever-larger raiding party climbed back into their cars, now numbering about twenty, and raced off on a more direct route toward Munich, stopping any cars bearing SA leaders who, unaware of all that had just occurred, were still expecting to attend Hitler’s meeting set for later that morning.
    In Munich, Hitler read through a list of the prisoners and marked an “X” next to six names. He ordered all six shot immediately. An SS squad did so, telling the men just before firing, “You have been condemned to death by the
Führer
!
Heil Hitler.
”
    The ever-obliging Rudolf Hess offered to shoot Röhm himself, but Hitler did not yet order his death. For the moment, even he found the idea of killing a longtime friend to be abhorrent.
    SOON AFTER ARRIVING at his Berlin office that morning, Hans Gisevius, the Gestapo memoirist, tuned his radio to police frequencies and heard reports that sketched an action of vast scope. Senior SA men were being arrested, as were men who had no connection with the Storm Troopers. Gisevius and his boss, Kurt Daluege, set off in search of more detailed information and went directly to Göring’s palace on Leipziger Platz, from which Göring was issuing commands. Gisevius stuck close to Daluege in the belief that he was safer in his company than alone. He also figured no one would think to look for him at Göring’s residence.
    Although the palace was an easy walk away, they drove. They were struck by the aura of utter calm on the streets, as though nothingunusual were taking place. They did note, however, the complete absence of Storm Troopers.
    The sense of normalcy disappeared immediately when they turned a corner and arrived at Göring’s palace. Machine guns jutted from every promontory. The courtyard was filled with police.
    Gisevius wrote: “As I followed Daluege through the succession of guards and climbed the few steps to the huge lobby, I felt as if I could scarcely breathe. An evil atmosphere of haste, nervousness, tension, and above all of bloodshed, seemed to strike me in the face.”
    Gisevius made his way to a room next to Göring’s study. Adjutants and messengers hurried past. An SA man sat quaking with fear, having been told by Göring that he was to be shot. Servants brought sandwiches. Although crowded, the room was quiet. “Everyone whispered as if he were in a morgue,” Gisevius recalled.
    Through an open doorway, he saw Göring conferring with Himmler and Himmler’s new Gestapo chief, Reinhard Heydrich. Gestapo couriers arrived and left carrying white slips of paper on which, Gisevius presumed, were the names of the dead or soon-to-be dead. Despite the serious nature of the endeavor at hand, the atmosphere in Göring’s office was closer to what could be expected at a racetrack. Gisevius heard crude and raucous laughter and periodic shouts of “Away!”
    “Aha!”
    “Shoot him.”
    “The whole crew of them seemed to be in the best humor,” Gisevius recalled.
    Now and then he caught a glimpse of Göring striding around the room dressed in a billowy white shirt and blue-gray trousers tucked into black jackboots that rose above his knees. “Puss-in-Boots,” Gisevius thought suddenly.
    At one point a red-faced police major burst from the study, followed by an equally enflamed Göring. Apparently a prominent target had escaped.
    Göring shouted instructions.
    “Shoot them! … Take a whole company.… Shoot them.… Shoot them at once!”
    Gisevius found it appalling beyond description. “The written wordcannot reproduce the undisguised blood lust, fury, vicious vengefulness, and, at the same time, the fear, the pure funk, that the scene revealed.”
    DODD HEARD NOTHING about the cataclysm unfolding elsewhere in the city until that Saturday afternoon when he and his wife sat down for lunch in their garden. At almost the same moment, their son, Bill, appeared, having just returned from his drive.He looked troubled. He reported that a number of streets had been closed, including Unter den Linden at the heart of the government district, and these were being patrolled by heavily armed squads of SS. He had heard as well that arrests had been made at the headquarters of the SA, located just blocks from the house.
    Immediately Dodd and his wife experienced a spike of anxiety for Martha, out for the day with Boris Winogradov. Despite his diplomatic status, Boris was a man whom the Nazis