Men in Black: Fighting the Nazi Secret Police

By Owen Elford

Men in Black, first published in 1942, is a novel of Czech resistance to the occupying Germans in the early days of World War Two, and the struggle against the Gestapo, or Nazi secret police. The culminating act of the resistance is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, which would lead to massive reprisals, including the razing of the village of Lidice and the execution of many of its inhabitants (the original subtitle of the book was “A Novel about Lidice,” but the book does not detail the massacre that occurred there). Men in Black is a moving, albeit fictional, account of the courage and sacrifice made by men and women during the war, and the brutality the Nazis imposed on those who dared to resist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742606

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MEN IN BLACK

Fighting the Nazi Secret Police

A Novel by

Owen Elford

Men in Black was originally published in 1942 as Men in Black: A Novel about Lidice, by Albert Unger Publishing Company, New York. Owen Elford is a pseudonym for Otto Fürth.

Cover photograph: Reinhard Heydrich

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

MEN IN BLACK 6

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 105

DEDICATION

* * *

Dedicated to

the victims of Nazism all over the world.

MEN IN BLACK

For a long time Police Corporal Anton Redtenbacher had directed traffic at a street crossing in the City of Vienna. It was not like those intersections that are to be found by the thousands all over the world, where sidewalks and roadways meet at right angles and where the traffic is regulated impersonally by shifting red and green signal lights. From his post Anton could see just an intersection—the corner where the dark-gray opera house stood. But his wooden platform was placed in the middle of a broad, open plaza whose many limbs and tributaries flowed haphazardly together among high patrician mansions, flat, modern market booths, magnificent public buildings and spacious garden plots. Park paths and the tracks of the gleaming red and yellow tram cars turned suddenly here and there to wind around buildings.

Anton was a well-built man of medium height, about forty years old; his keen, tanned face above the tight-fitting, dark-green uniform made him look much younger. He stood in the center of the square, upon a round wooden platform, in the midst of passing pleasure cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians, his right arm outstretched to halt the stream of traffic, or his white-gloved hands waving in graceful, friendly gestures to set the current in motion once more. Sometimes he contented himself with a slight nod of his head or an encouraging squint of his keen blue eyes.

He knew many people by sight, and he greeted them by holding his upturned fingers on the visor of his cap for as long as seemed justified by the social ranks of each person. Sometimes his greeting was only the briefest contact of his index finger with the rim of his cap.

He stood at his post in the hot August sunlight when gusts of wind blew toward him greasy scraps of paper and green lettuce leaves from the long rows of booths in the nearby retail market; he stood there when the evening breeze wafted sweet and cool from the thick foliage of the Leopoldsberg, whose silvery grey flank he could make out on clear days above the confusion of roofs and spires; he stood there on dark nights in heavy rains that ran down to the gleaming asphalt along the stiff, pointed monk’s-hood of his sleeveless rubber raincoat like the rain that runs down the grey sides of a church. He stood there in wintry snowstorms, when the bronze figures of the statues in the park wore white fur coats and a tall Christmas-tree with electric candles glittered on the corner where the Opera House stood and Vienna’s handsomest limousines vanished under the arch of the ramp. He stood untiringly, with his strong mouth smiling pleasantly, moving his head, arms and hands rhythmically, as though keeping time to an inaudible melody. When he looked down past the Opera House along the broad, elegant, busy Kärntnerstrasse, he saw the delicate ashen spire of the Stephansdom, towering above weather-beaten roofs and chimneys. On his right, almost at the other end of the spacious square and flanked by two high spires, gleamed the wonderful green copper dome of the Karlskirche; behind him the business streets fanned out to the railroads and factories on the periphery of the city.

In the days of the Danube Monarchy, when Vienna was still the capital and imperial residence of a colorful, many-tongued empire, old Kaiser Franz Josef had ridden across this square when he left the ancient grey walls of the Hofburg and rode down the majestic Ringstrasse to his pleasure castle of Laxenburg. He sat in his open coach above the golden wheels in a bright blue military cloak, on his head the tall general’s hat with a plume of dark-green feathers, his chin smooth-shaven between the short sideburns that grew whiter and whiter as the years passed, his watery blue eyes expressing paternal approval as he nodded to the cheering populace. Beside him sat his adjutant, in front of him, on the raised coachman’s seat, a gold-braided servant and the liveried coachman who guided the noble, thoroughbred horses with a sure hand.

Through this square, on one of the highest church holidays, the colorful Corpus Christi procession passed in solemn magnificence over strewn branches that bore the first green leaves of spring. And in the midst of the procession, beneath a brocade canopy, strode the archbishop of Vienna in full ecclesiastical regalia.

Here rifles and machine guns had blazed after the First World War, when a small Republic struggled up out of the grave of the great monarchy—a miniature state, but one that valiantly sent forth fresh shoots, like a flower that has been transplanted from the soil of an ancient garden to a narrow flower-pot.

Silently, heavily, the long rows of the Worker’s Defense League had marched eight abreast before Anton’s eyes; noisily, in double-quick time, the short, brown-shirted columns had later swung by; broad and peaceful, with pheasant feathers in their caps, the Heimwehr battalions had marched.

Days of chaos had come, when Anton’s wooden platform stood deserted and Anton and his comrades, their loaded rifles held at ready, had leaped across street barricades. But always the small, well-trained forces of law and order had won out after a brief struggle — and Police Corporal Redtenbacher would return to his post to regulate the pulsating traffic of a busy city with friendly, gracious gestures of his hands. He returned more than ever convinced that it was the inviolate mission of his profession to maintain order. For he had seen for himself how small was the number of troublemakers and lawbreakers. In the eyes of all the complex and different types of men who dwelt within his beat or passed through it he read the assurance of their essential goodness and their loyalty. For all their feverish partisanship, these people loved their native land above all else, and they were grateful to the guardians in the dark-green uniforms for their tenacious defense of it. Anton’s own roots were sunk deep in this soil, and he knew these people as a sheriff knows his village or a forester his woods.

For some weeks now he had been aware of an unusual disquiet in the faces of the people. It was like the sudden fright of people who in the midst of a family quarrel are attacked by robbers. One of the ne’er-do-well younger sons has often warned them against the robbers, but no one had taken him seriously, now the house is surrounded by them.

More and more often Anton had to blow his whistle after pedestrians and drivers who absentmindedly hurried by him without regarding his signals. People seized the newspapers more eagerly from the hands of the newsboys on the street corners, and daily the headlines became more stirring and more ominous. In the evenings small groups of boys and young men appeared suddenly to demonstrate illegally. In the chanting choruses that the Government had prohibited they called for the dissolution of the State. Move on now, don’t stand still, Anton cried dutifully, and they would vanish like phantoms into the darkness of the sidestreets.

For two days Police Precinct Gumpendorf III had been on an emergency basis. The austere precinct office was located on the ground floor of a rooming house, and always smelled of Russian leather, boot polish and cheap cigarettes. There was a narrow private entrance and three small barred windows, through which the twilight casted deep shadows in the room. Outside a small, almost deserted street sloped upward between the grey walls of buildings.

A few yards down the street, in the main entrance of the six-story building, the rotund, robust figure of the landlady appeared for a moment, haranguing with fluent tongue and expressive gestures one of the tenants of the house. The man, whose leashed dog had infringed upon the sanitary code, listened in shamefaced silence.

Dampened by the row of buildings in between came the regular humming, rattling, and honking of horns from the main artery one block away. From that direction, too, came the heavy tread of the policemen who had just been relieved.

Frau Leopoldine Redtenbacher, the landlady, finished reprimanding the unfortunate tenant and started to retreat from the chill of the early spring evening to the comfortable warmth of her kitchen. She looked up as the tread of the approaching men came nearer, recognized her son, Anton, and waved to him. By expressive gestures she conveyed to him that a cup of hot, strong coffee was waiting for him.

As he came abreast of her, Anton smiled gratefully and replied in the same sign language, that as soon as he could find a free moment he would visit her. Then the men vanished one after the other through the narrow entrance to the precinct office.

On the stairway Frau Redtenbacher encountered the old, invalid university professor, who today looked more wan than usual. He was a frail old man with a high, finely-chiseled scholar’s brow, set in between two tufts of snow-white hair that puffed out from under his hat. He walked heavily, leaning upon a rubber-tipped cane. Evil times, he murmured as he stepped out of the elevator. What does your son have to say, Frau Redtenbacher? Will the police be able to keep the upper hand?

"Has anything special happened, Herr Professor? My son is still on duty...I’ll turn on the radio right away. .

You won’t get anything new on the radio. But take my word for it, Frau Redtenbacher, there’s something in the air, something very bad... He went out on the street and waved for a taxi. The landlady followed and helped him in. She stood staring thoughtfully after him for a moment, arm akimbo. Then she began to shiver with cold and went in again—back to her warm kitchen and the security of commonplace things.

Anton had meanwhile delivered his report and gone into the ready room with his comrades. Here he and his fellows could smoke and rest upon the hard cots whose crude wood was notched and nicked from years of use.

Suddenly the men started. From the street, low at first but quickly mounting in intensity, came strange howls and shouts.

The police captain looked up. His dark-ringed eyes and his grey stubble between the wings of his open silver collar betrayed uninterrupted work. He listened for a moment, briskly put the telephone receiver back on the hook and nervously buttoned his collar. The instructions he had just received from his superiors contradicted strangely the confident declarations of the Austrian Government in the newspapers and over the radio. The captain got up, and opened the middle window. A wave of wild, inarticulate shouts, mingled with an undercurrent of low, rhythmical battle-cries, washed into the room. And the next moment a shimmering white thing flew silently between the black bars and into the room, shattered like a loosely-packed snowball and sank in flakes upon the crude brown tables and chairs in the room. Some of the men picked up the paper flakes. There were a hundred or so small, delicate, carefully cut-out swastikas.

The eyes of the others turned toward the lean police captain who stood motionless, his lips pressed lightly together as though tasting some new food, his thin, hawklike face set. Then his right hand moved up and down several times, as though he were trying to weigh the feathery bits of paper he held in his palm. He had been instructed not to react to provocation under any circumstances, though he was to intervene energetically where the public peace was threatened. Now he opened his hand. His mouth twitched with repressed scorn as he dropped the bits of paper into the wastebasket near his desk. Redtenbacher, he said, turning to Anton, take three men and clear the sidewalk in front of headquarters. But don’t make too much of a fuss.

Anton rose to his feet, buckled his leather straps, and hurried out into the street, followed by three of his comrades. He raised his whistle to his lips and blew a short, shrill warning. As soon as the group of some twenty youthful demonstrators saw the uniforms, they broke into a run and disappeared. The four policemen looked at one another with satisfaction. This game was familiar to them. The paper swastikas alone were new.

But no sooner had the last of the four men returned to the precinct office than across the street a new group appeared out of a side street. This time the demonstrators were thin, fifteen to seventeen-year-old high school boys, hatless, their hair fluttering, their voices high-pitched and clear. They stood somewhat uncertain, ready for flight, opposite the police office and began to speak in chorus. From a low, timid murmur the chorus rose rapidly to a loud cry: One People, one Reich, one Führer! The words sounded clearly through the bars of the open window.

This time Anton did not wait for orders. With a surprisingly swift movement he sprang out on to the street again. A second later he was across, and as the band of boys scattered wildly in all directions his hand fell heavily upon the loudest of them and held him fast.

All of a sudden the quiet street had come alive. People stopped on both sides of the street, stepped out of the doors of houses and put their heads out of windows to watch the brief encounter. Hurrah for the police, an asthmatic voice cried excitedly from somewhere on the second floor. Boo, a shrill woman’s voice replied from the fifth floor on the opposite side of the street.

Anton shoved his prisoner before him into the precinct room. Outside doors and windows closed, and the few bystanders continued on their way.

The captain turned on the light. In the glow of the powerful, unshaded lamps the prisoner blinked. He was of medium height with narrow shoulders and thick, dark, close-cropped hair that stood up like the bristles of a brush above his low forehead. There was an angry gleam in his deep-set eyes. The left side of his mouth was marred by a long, irregular saber scar that reached almost to his ear. He was obviously older than the boys he had lead.

The prisoner drew from his pocket, as identification, an attendance card of the Technical University. The name on the card was Eberhard Woitschek.

I protest against this inhuman treatment, he said, glaring at Anton, who had at last released him.

Shut up, the captain snapped. We know what we’re doing.

The boy trembled with rage, but his small eyes turned mockingly to the office. If you choose to arrest me, captain, I’m at your disposal, he said. You’ll have to let me go tomorrow, anyway.

The captain seemed not to hear him. Put him on the blotter and give him a warning; if it happens again he’ll see the judge; dismissed, he snapped dryly, in a businesslike tone. He turned his back on the young man, fumbled with his collar until he had it open again and went back to his desk to pick up the ringing telephone.

A few minutes later Anton asked for and received an hour’s leave to visit his mother before he went on night duty. The whole police force was still operating on a twenty-four hour basis.

There