MONDAY 25 OCTOBER 1971

Three people are together in a room in Frankfurt, West Germany. John Toland, an American historian, is working on a biography of Adolf Hitler and has come to Frankfurt to meet Konrad Morgen, currently a lawyer. Also in the room is Inge Gehrich, an interpreter.

Toland isn’t interested in Morgen because he’s a successful Frankfurt lawyer. He has come here today because of the surprising and little-known fact that Konrad Morgen, a former SS investigating judge and Reich police official, carried out the very first successful criminal investigation of a concentration camp commandant and he did it not after, but during, the Second World War.

The tape recording of the conversation is not a good-quality one and it’s difficult at times to hear what Konrad Morgen is saying.1 Sometimes I have to rely on Inge Gehrich’s English translation and even then, I am often rewinding the tape and turning the volume up to the maximum in order to make out what is being said. Sometimes a car or truck roars past, and at one stage the telephone rings and a dog barks.

Although the quality of the recording is poor, I pay particular attention because it is the only occasion on tape when Konrad Morgen is being conversational. The recordings of his witness testimony at Nuremberg after the war and then again in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in 1964 are very formal. Even his interview for the TV series The World at War is much more structured than the conversation I am listening to right now.

It is immediately clear that Morgen has a very good understanding of English; several times he is so keen to get his point across that he speaks directly to Toland in English. Although his English is very good, I think I know why he prefers to speak in German and that’s because he’s a lawyer who has been in a lot of courtrooms and he wishes to express himself exactly as he wants to on tape, with no possibility of misunderstanding.

Toland asks Morgen about being an SS judge and police investigator. Is it true that SS courts sentenced concentration camp commandants to death for atrocities against inmates? Yes, replies Morgen, who goes on to say that he personally arrested Karl-Otto Koch, the commandant of Buchenwald, and his wife and then went on to investigate Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz. Toland says he plans to write a chapter about this and that most people in the West wouldn’t believe it.

Morgen tells Toland that the higher-up SS leaders didn’t like him and he was dismissed from his job in Kraków. Toland tells Morgen that he’s surprised that the Allies didn’t honour him for the things he did – after all, he risked his life. Morgen sounds embarrassed and simply mutters Ja. Toland adds that it says something about German law that people like Konrad Morgen were able to carry on a legal process. And why not, says Morgen animatedly. After all, the government may have changed but the judges didn’t turn into criminals!

Toland wants to know how many other judges were like Morgen? He tells Morgen, ‘You sound like an original to me.’ Ninety-nine per cent of judges were like him, says Morgen. Yes, but how many were acting like Morgen, Toland wants to know. Were these other judges also bringing up embarrassing cases? They wanted to, yes, says Morgen. But he had a special investigative talent, he had the right nose to be a detective. Plus, says Morgen, he was interested in international law. You were a bloodhound, says Toland. Morgen is delighted and says yes, yes! He was called a Blutrichter, literally a ‘blood judge’.

Morgen tells Toland that when he investigated the crimes in Buchenwald, he had been instructed not to investigate political cases. But here he was with a political case. So he investigated on his own initiative, what he calls auf eigener Faust – literally with his own fists. And when he told the senior SS officers about what was going on at Buchenwald, they wouldn’t take action and kept passing him on to the next person. He went to Arthur Nebe (head of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt or Reich Central Police Detective Office) first, but Nebe said go to Ernst Kaltenbrunner (head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or the Reich Security Main Office).* Kaltenbrunner said take it straight to Himmler.

At this point in the conversation, Morgen switches to English as Gehrich, the interpreter, hasn’t heard of Nebe and he is impatient to carry on with his story. Morgen wrote to Himmler, who didn’t cover it up and, he says, he raised hell. Himmler told Morgen to arrest Koch and told him he would also get the authority to clean up the whole place. Koch was indicted, sentenced to death and executed. But Morgen couldn’t obtain enough proof to get his wife sentenced and she was still under arrest at the end of the war.

Toland asks Morgen, is it true that lampshades were being made of human skin or is that baloney? Morgen says it was other people who found this out. The Americans threatened to kill him if he didn’t testify that Frau Koch had done it but he wouldn’t as he had found no evidence. Toland asks if he was treated well by the Americans. Morgen tells him that they threatened to hand him over to the Czechs, Poles or French if he refused to testify. Toland expresses his dismay at this.

Morgen says that after the war lots of people asked him why didn’t he go after Hitler? In the same way that a US Army judge couldn’t go after President Nixon, or after Kennedy for Vietnam, he couldn’t prosecute Hitler. A judge in the army always reports to the army chief of staff.

The conversation turns to concentration camps and Toland asks Morgen what he thinks of the figure of 6 million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. Morgen answers simply ‘yes, it’s correct’ in a tone which conveys the meaning ‘yes, of course it’s correct’. Later on, the discussion moves through various senior Nazis to Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary. Earlier in the interview, Morgen had mentioned that he had been imprisoned in Oberursel and Nuremberg by the Americans after the war and had talked to many fellow prisoners about Hitler.

Morgen tells Toland that Bormann never left Hitler’s side. He always carried a notebook and whatever Hitler said, he wrote down and turned into an order. Toland is interested in this and asks Morgen if he thinks that this was how the order for the extermination of the Jews came about? Was Hitler thinking aloud and then Bormann wrote it down and turned it into an order? Morgen says the extermination of the Jews was always Hitler’s intention; it was premeditated and carefully managed. Bormann’s role was to facilitate this and make sure that it happened.

Toland asks Morgen where he thinks the order to exterminate the Jews came from. Was it from Hitler? Toland says that many people have told him that Hitler knew nothing about it. Morgen doesn’t agree. He says yes, it came from Hitler. What about Himmler’s role? Morgen says that Himmler was central to the extermination of the Jews.

Toland tells Morgen how grateful he is that he confirmed the killing of 6 million Jews, as he was on the verge of doubting it but now he’s met Morgen and Morgen is the best witness he has come across. It’s clear from this that other interviewees from inside the SS and Nazi Party whom Toland has talked to for his book have rejected this figure.

At the end of the interview, Morgen says he would be glad to read Toland’s book and Toland promises to send Morgen a copy before it’s published in appreciation. When the book is published in 1976, Toland describes Konrad Morgen as ‘the man who did the most to hinder the atrocities in the East’ and describes his work as ‘one man house-cleaning’ as well as a ‘lonesome attempt to end the Final Solution’.2

The more I read about and listen to Konrad Morgen, the more I am reminded of Bernie Gunther, Philip Kerr’s fictional Second World War Berlin detective. Like Gunther, Morgen worked for Nebe in the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, the Central Police Detective Office of the Reich. Like Gunther, Morgen had a career investigating crime during the war and uncovering terrible truths in Nazi Germany, where darkness touched everyone and everything. But while Bernie Gunther was investigating general crimes, Morgen’s particular beat was rooting out criminals in the ranks of the SS, including the Gestapo and the police.

Both Gunther and Morgen faced the same problem: how do you stay alive in the Third Reich and perhaps even prosper without selling your soul to the devil? It was a difficult dilemma for any German and a very acute one for Bernie Gunther and Konrad Morgen. But while Kerr could ensure that the fictional Bernie Gunther always lived to return another day, for Konrad Morgen there were no such guarantees. He was on his own. The title of this book, Hitler’s Crime Fighter, captures the contradiction of an SS investigating judge and police official investigating and prosecuting murder and crime in the...