To become, after his death, the most unlikely hero of a controversial play and to owe his official rehabilitation in his own country mostly to a passionate debate over the memory of Pius XII: such has been the posthumous fate of Kurt Gerstein, the “Spy of God”—a fate as outrageously improbable as his life, as Rolf Hochhuth's play, and indeed as the whole madhouse that was Hitler's Germany.

Kurt Gerstein, born in 1905 in Westphalia, belonged to an old Prussian family famous for its piety and sense of duty—or, more accurately, its Pflichtgefühl, that untranslatable virtue of a vanished Germany. The son of a high magistrate, young Gerstein chose to be a mining engineer. While still a student he ran the local branch of the YMCA, and by 1932 he was an official of the national organization, in charge of its advanced program of Biblical studies. Pictures of him during this period reveal a slender, blond young man with a long face and chiseled features. In the Third Reich such an appearance was the equivalent of a pedigree, and it no doubt eased his entry into, and subsequent career in, the SS.

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In 1933 Gerstein was a staunch supporter of the Nazi party and was swept along for a time in the euphoria that took hold of Germans of all classes, ages, and beliefs. Unlike most of his fellow citizens, however, Gerstein, a Lutheran, grew disillusioned once he became fully aware of the implacable struggle that the Nazis were waging against the Christian churches. With his typical initiative and energy, he took to distributing anti-Nazi leaflets and made speeches against the Godless propaganda of the party. In 1935 he was the victim of a public beating; a year later, and again in 1938, he was interned in a concentration camp. Meanwhile he had lost his government job as a mining engineer, and was studying medicine. This change was also to influence the course of his later career.

On the first of September 1939, the same day that war was declared, Hitler decided to put to death the mentally defective and deranged as a useless burden to the Staat and its Volk. The Führer's “euthanasia program”—perhaps an even more fundamental expression of Nazi ideology than the subsequent murder of the Jews and gypsies—was shrouded in secrecy, but it inevitably became common knowledge once sufficient progress had been made in emptying the asylums. One of the first victims happened to be Gerstein's sister-in-law. It was at this point that he decided to join the SS, in order, as he put it, “to see, to see clearly into its workings and then to proclaim them to the world!” No one sent him on this spying mission; in fact, officials and members of his church disapproved of it.

Gerstein explains himself as follows in his autobiography, written in May 1945:

Even if my life were in danger I had no scruples about it: I had been caught out twice myself by Gestapo agents who had infiltrated into the church's most exclusive circles and who had prayed at my very side. I thought to myself: “Anything you can do I can do better,” so I volunteered for the SS. The fact that my sister-in-law, Berthe Eberling, had been put to death at Hadamar was an added incentive. I was introduced by the two Gestapo agents who had dealt with my case and I was accepted without any difficulty. One SS man said to me: “An idealist like you should make a fanatical party member. . . .”

By now a doctor as well as an engineer, Gerstein was attached to the hygiene service of the SS. He soon made a name for himself as “something of a technical genius,” he tells us, by perfecting a system for disinfecting and delousing troops in the field and prisoners of war. In the German army, fumigation was carried out with the help of a gas called “Zyklon B.” One day, in the summer of 1942, Gerstein received top-secret orders to deliver a cargo of this gas to a “prisoner-of-war camp” in Poland. Having joined the SS to learn the truth about euthanasia of deranged Germans, Gerstein arrived at the camp at Belzec to witness a mass annihilation of Polish Jews.

Immediately upon his return to Germany, Gerstein began to search for a way to let the world know the atrocious truth. The scene described in The Deputy is not quite exact; in Berlin he was not received by the nuncio Orsenigo; he visited the legation in civilian dress, rather than in uniform, and once he presented his credentials he was asked to leave. Hochhuth's scene is accurate, however, in a deeper sense, since Gerstein's rebuff as he describes it in his confession (this part was first made public in 1964) anticipates the main theme of the play:

My attempt to report all this to the Holy Father's chief delegate was without success. They asked me if I were a soldier. Then they refused me audience and asked me to leave the legation of his Holiness right away. I tell this to show how extremely difficult it was even for a German who was desperately hostile to the Nazis to expose the criminality of their leaders. What could be expected of an ordinary citizen if Christ's deputy on earth himself refused to hear me, even though tens of thousands of people were being slaughtered each day and a delay of mere hours seemed to me criminal? Even the nuncio in Germany refused to be informed of this monstrous violation of Jesus's commandment: “Love thy brother as thyself. . . .”

We know about this episode only from Gerstein's own account, but his further efforts to alert the world are confirmed by various witnesses. The most impressive testimony is that of Baron Gorran von Otter, presently Swedish ambassador in London, who was then with the Swedish embassy in Berlin. Gerstein met von Otter on the train from Warsaw to Berlin when he was returning from his macabre mission. They talked all through the night, Gerstein relating what he had seen at Belzec as well as his secret reasons for being in the SS. As von Otter puts it: “From the very beginning, as Gerstein described these atrocities, weeping and broken-voiced, I had no doubts as to the sincerity of his humanitarian intentions. . . . He was firmly convinced that as soon as they learned the facts about these exterminations and the facts were confirmed by unbiased outsiders, the German people would not tolerate Nazi rule a day longer.” Von Otter conscientiously communicated Gerstein's information to Stockholm but the matter seems to have ended there, and it was not until Germany's surrender in August 1945 that the Swedish government passed on these details to the Allies. By 1942-1943, as we know, the chancelleries of Europe were not lacking in information about events at Auschwitz and elsewhere. As long as the war continued, however, no neutral government and no “unbiased” authority dared announce the horrible truth to the world because of fear of Nazi Germany. The sheer incredibility of the facts also contributed to the silence. The resistance movement in the Netherlands, for example, refused to transmit Gerstein's message to London because “they should not tell things to the world that nobody could believe.”

Gerstein's efforts remained fruitless until the end. At one point he attempted to sabotage extermination operations by pretending that certain deliveries of the Zyklon B entrusted to him had been lost or spoiled. To carry out this deception, he had the contractors make out the invoices to him so that when he destroyed the shipments he could also destroy any incriminating evidence. From his point of view, and ours, this sabotage prevented him from becoming an accomplice to murder, but it is impossible to say whether it enabled him to save any lives. The production of Zyklon B gas is not very complicated and it is unlikely that the chief supplier—the firm of Degesch in Frankfurt—ever suffered any shortage of the basic materials. What we do know is that once Gerstein was placed in charge of production of the gas, he did have the formula modified to eliminate a special ingredient that made the victims' death particularly painful.

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It is not difficult to find witnesses—particularly among Lutheran pastors—to whom Gerstein confided his activities and expectations while he continued to serve in the SS. Yet the character of his life during his final three years as a “spy of God” is by no means clear. Every confidence he made, even to his wife or his father, constituted a mortal danger and so none of these confidences was ever complete. Moreover, the testimony we have about him is sharply contradictory. Some observers describe him as a broken man, apparently horrified by his inescapable complicity in a situation which he had freely chosen; to others he was simply an SS hack; and to still others, a man who trusted in the future, who was confident of the downfall of the Third Reich and hoped to serve as a star witness in the trials that would inevitably follow.

Here is an extract from a letter written in March 1944 to his father, the old Prussian magistrate, which provides us with some indication of Gerstein's state of mind.

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Dear Father,

I'm taking the opportunity of a Sunday evening alone to write you a long-owed letter. In principle, unlike previously, I don't write letters any more.

I often think of the mill on your desk with our name inscribed on it; Gerechtigkeit [Justice], Ehrenhaftigkeit [Honorableness], Ruhe [Equanimity], Sicherheit [Trustworthiness], Treue [Loyalty], Ehrlichkeit [Honesty], Innigkeit [Sincerity].¹ Are all these only valid for an individual? Are there other values and ends to which they become subordinate and inferior? Do we have the right to abandon justice, this ancient pledge handed down to us? Can we ever depart from love which is said to be the only thing distinguishing us from all other living creatures? Is there some future ahead where these supreme virtues will be systematically crushed underfoot? I don't know what is going on inside you and I'm far from demanding the right to know, but when a man has served the cause of justice during his entire professional life, he must have had some reactions these last few years. I'm still horrified at the words you shouted or rather wrote to me at a very desperate moment in my life when I was struggling with all the vital issues: “hard times require hard methods!”—No. Phrases like that don't make what is happening acceptable to me. I can't believe, confronted with all the indescribable things I have to see, that this is my father's final comment. You should not depart for another world with these words and these thoughts. It seems to me that all of us who still have some time to live, still have the chance to reflect upon the practical possibilities and limits as well as the consequences of this total absence of moral restraint. There are certain self-evident truths. . . . Pride goes before a fall. Der Krug geht so lange zum Wasser, bis er bricht.² I could go on quoting proverbs endlessly, but let us leave it here. I don't want to make you any more wretched than necessary. You have lived through a lot and sacrificed a great deal. But, dear father, if we really want to maintain some communication, other than at a most superficial level, we must have a basis of mutual honesty. Otherwise everything gets reduced to small talk. I'm a long way now from my old narrow opinions. I'm aware of ideas and values we can't transgress against, except with the most drastic results. However powerless the isolated individual, and however much he honors prudence as the crowning virtue, he should never give up those ideas and values he cherishes. He can never make excuses to his conscience by saying: that doesn't concern me, I can't do anything about it. Sileat, sed cogitet mea res agitur [let him be silent but recognize that something of mine is at stake].

Dear father, there are times when every son has to speak out, even to his father to whom he is indebted for every moral concept and basic notion he has. A day will come when you, too, will be called to account for these times and for what they have produced. We wouldn't understand each other at all or have anything meaningful to say to one another if it were impossible or forbidden for me to say this. Don't underestimate your responsibility and obligation to give account. The day might come sooner than you think. For myself, I have a sense of this obligation and feel consumed by it (consumor in ea). But I'll stop there.

With most cordial greetings from your son,

Kurt

We do not have his father's reply, but six months later, after the Allied landings in Normandy, the son wrote as follows:

. . . Our views are so different that we shall never agree about the reasons for what is now happening. Contrary to what you write, I think any discussion at all is out of the question. What's more, you are wrong on one point. I never lent a hand in any of this. Whenever I received orders I not only didn't carry them out but saw to it that they were disobeyed. For my part I come out of it all with clean hands and a clear conscience. It's very comforting to me. And I didn't act in this way out of cleverness. What does death matter, after all? I did it from principle and a sense of decency. . . .

After the final German defeat, Gerstein returned to Tübingen where his wife and two children were living. He turned himself over to the French occupation authorities and also gave them his autobiography, which has come to be known as the “Gerstein document.” He was then transferred to Cherche-Midi, the military prison in Paris. On July 25, 1945, according to the official report, he was found hanged in his cell and the inquest concluded that he had committed suicide.

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A number of strange facts surround the circumstances of his death. First, the file of the prosecution against him by the military court disappeared. The official report states that it was sent to London in November 1945 and from there transferred to the Polish office of the United Nations Commission on War Crimes, but it has never come to light. There also exists a letter from Gerstein to a Dr. Ubbink, one of his confidants and a member of the Dutch resistance, written from prison during the month that he died. The letter is so full of optimism that one begins to question—as, indeed, does his wife—whether he in fact committed suicide. There is also the possibility that he was killed by his fellow SS prisoners, not an uncommon way of settling accounts in the prisons and camps after the war.

Further, in January of the following year, the international military tribunal in Nuremberg at first rejected the document which contained Ger-stein's autobiography, apparently because it had no identification number. The same afternoon, the error was rectified and the document was accepted, but since there was much heated subsequent debate about Gerstein in Germany, the story that “even the Nuremberg tribunal refused to consider his fantastical lies” received plenty of attention. Gerstein's description of the camp at Belzec, however, remains one of the most harrowing accounts found in the vast literature on genocide, and in 1956, the West German Information Service distributed tens of thousands of copies throughout the country. Since then the name of Gerstein has become synonymous with false witness and betrayal to all the unrepentant SS members who are still to be found throughout Europe.

Finally, in 1949, there was a hearing for Gerstein before the de-Nazification Council (“Spruchkammer”) of Tübingen. The council refused to rehabilitate him posthumously and instead classified him as a “petty Nazi.” Why this verdict? There was no question of Gerstein's sincerity. Dozens of witnesses, among them such well-known figures as the Protestant Bishop Dibelius and Pastor Niemöller, came forward to testify to his anti-Nazi convictions and to his fearless behavior. Their statements, however, were often not without a certain amount of ambiguity. Could this be because these witnesses, unlike von Otter and Dr. Ubbink, were neither outsiders nor unbiased? For example, Pastor Niemöller described Gerstein as “a rather special kind of saint.” Going even further, Pastor Mochalski said “that he underestimated the SS system and fell prey to it. In this way he became an instrument of the SS plan for extermination when it was precisely this he wished to resist. . . .” In addition, the complete success of Gerstein's dissimulation in 1941 led the tribunal to suspect that his reconversion to Nazism might very well have been genuine and that it was only after his experience of the horrors of Belzec that his eyes were opened again. And most important of all, the tribunal found that once Gerstein had learned of these matters it was his duty to quit the SS, whatever the cost. Their argument on this point is worth quoting at length:

. . . The fact that he informed prominent members of the Evangelical Church and of the Dutch resistance of the extermination measures being taken and that he begged them to let the world know what he knew, as well as the fact that he rendered two deliveries of prussic acid unusable, can all be said to constitute acts of resistance, for if discovered they would have greatly endangered Gerstein's life. However, this attitude, as well as the fact that he did not act of his own free will but rather under the stress of a situation and of orders whose consequences seemed inevitable in any case, is not sufficient, in the light of the enormity of the crime, to completely absolve him from any responsibility. It can only contribute to the leniency of our decision. One could have expected of Gerstein that after what he went through at the camp in Belzec he would resist, with all his might and main, becoming an instrument of these exterminations. The tribunal is of the opinion that Gerstein did not exhaust every possibility and that he could have found still other ways and means to stand apart from such action. It is neither understandable nor excusable that, as a convinced and devout Christian who had for years adopted a correct and courageous attitude toward the National Socialists, he should consent, a year later, to pass on orders issued to the Degesch company.

He should have understood clearly, especially after what he had gone through, that by himself he was powerless to stop the exterminations or to save even a few lives, simply by spoiling several deliveries of prussic acid.

Therefore this tribunal has dealt lightly with Gerstein in view of certain extenuating circumstances. . . .

The last lines of this decision lead one to wonder whether Gerstein was found guilty for his failure or for his initiative. “It is not necessary to hope in order to begin, or to succeed in order to persevere” (William of Orange). The tribunal seems to condemn Gerstein for what, to our way of thinking, was the real value of his actions. Throughout the entire duration of the war none of the judges or honored witnesses had shown any opposition to the mass exterminations. Gerstein, who at the very least had dared to do so, becomes a prodigious nuisance to them. Thus, post-Hitlerian followed the course of Hitlerian Germany, both being guided by the dictates of a secular German culture in which an order was an order and a sense of duty the foremost of virtues. One of these duties was not to meddle in what did not concern you, even when, as Gerstein's distinguished father put it, “hard times require hard methods.”

Can the recent decision by the Württemberg Land to rehabilitate Gerstein's reputation be viewed as an indication of the influence of a new generation? It is evident that the scandal revived by Hochhuth's play formed the basis of this reversal, but other “angry young men”—a group of young churchmen and friends of Gerstein—have recently created a memorial in his honor in Westphalia: “Kurt Gerstein House.” The repercussions in Germany of this further initiative will perhaps provide a test case of “the new Germany.”

¹ The “N” is missing from the anagram in the original.

² Literally, “the pitcher goes to the water until it breaks.”