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Eva Heidenreich Blog Entry |
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July 8, 2022, 5:28:19 AM 7/8/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Bad Haircut/Free Draw Friday." (I did Free Draw Friday.) This week's character from my anthro WWII series is Eva Heidenreich. She's not even a week old!--but has already started developing quite a complicated history/personality. She's the wife of Standartenführer (Colonel) Rupprecht Heidenreich, another newish character. The two have a very complicated marriage which alternates between grudging admiration and downright hatred. She might look sweet and kind, and she often presents herself that way, but she's shaping up to be one of the story's more evil characters. Regarding her design, she's supposed to be a blond Hovawart, a kind of German dog breed that strongly resembles a golden retriever. Initially she had twin braids but I changed it to one as another character has that hairstyle already and this looks a bit more mature. I imagine she can wear it in other fashions but I had some difficulty finding photos of the sort of braided hairstyles I was imagining, just think of traditional German women and you probably get the picture. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. TUMBLR EDIT: Whoo boy! Not even a week old and already she's raring to go! I admit, most of Eva's history is unknown so far and what I've got is mostly regarding how she relates to her husband Rupprecht Heidenreich, himself a pretty new character, but WOW did it just start gushing out once she was created. So let's get started, it's not a pretty picture. I last mentioned Col. Heidenreich in the Hedy Rader entry, somewhat in passing. He's very VERY loosely modeled after Reinhard Heydrich, who was just a piece of garbage, let's get that out of the way. You know that an important part of the Holocaust was referred to as Operation Reinhard? He's the reason why. So yeah, garbage. My very loose version of him (hence the vaguely similar name) (just ignore my camp commandant, Hasso Reinhardt) isn't meant to be a stand-in the way my version of Dr. Mengele is. This means there could very well be an actual Reinhard Heydrich somewhere in this fictional universe, he just never appears or is referred to by name. (Notice most of the heavy hitters are never referred to anywhere?--no Himmler, no Goebbels, no Göring, no Eichmann, not even Hitler? I think later in the story a fictionalized but nameless version of Himmler briefly appears out of necessity, and the characters do refer to the Führer, but no names are dropped. These people MIGHT exist here but they're never going to enter the story in any more meaningful fashion because this is an alternate reality and I don't want it to be exactly the same. (Mengele had to appear, as the Angel of Death appeared, and that's him. I mean that couldn't be anyone else but him. *shrugs*) So here we have a weird conundrum where there might be a Heydrich but there's also Heidenreich who's sorta based on Heydrich. Confused yet? You can just forget all that and we can move on, I'm not sure why I brought it up. Along with the alternate reality comes a more simplified version of things, such as the SS. Mainly because I'm too dumb to understand all the fine details of this sort of stuff. I'm reading a book about it right now but cripes it's complicated. Heydrich, the real guy, seemed heavily involved in intelligence and security, so that's what Heidenreich, the fictional guy, is into. Now that I've discovered Lt. Gunter Hesse's exact role in the Allgemeine-SS is that of, well, basically a rat who, alongside investigations of regular German citizens, also investigates other SS members themselves, that means he must be involved in intelligence gathering somehow, and the basic security of the organization, meaning his boss would be in charge of that. The new nameless character of his boss began to appear in my head. I'd recently read a fun fact about Heydrich, the real guy, in that he had a weird goatlike voice that people made fun of. That was just such a strange random detail I had to use it; Heidenreich's first outstanding trait when he enters the story is this ridiculous staccato "AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA" laugh he lets out. I mean, just picture this intimidating SS guy letting out this stupid laugh. Go take a look for photos of Reinhard Heydrich, this very Nazi-looking Nazi guy, and imagine him laughing like a freaking goat. Go on, I'll wait. Okay, back to the entry. Heidenreich's initial appearances in the story are pretty trivial and goofy, I already went over the incident with him gifting Hesse an electric typewriter and a new secretary. He doesn't come across as particularly ominous. That stuff comes later in the story. I intend to try to draw his portrait soon so I should really wait till then to pour this out but he and his wife are inextricably linked, so I may just go over it here instead, sorry. Hesse's introduction to the Allgemeine-SS is pretty awkward. Initially he serves in the Waffen-SS, until an injury forces him out. Prior to that, however, his commanding officer, Vincenz Immerwahr, made a move on him; Hesse refused, Immerwahr backed off, that was it. Hesse is kind of a bigoted, homophobic a-hole, though, so he reports Immerwahr to the Allgemeine-SS, the branch that investigates breaches of conduct like this. Except the Allgemeine-SS replies that, sorry, they won't be charging Immerwahr with anything, because he's Somebody Important. Hesse is basically told to shut up. This not only humiliates Hesse, since he still has to serve with Immerwahr, but disillusions him as well, since he'd had such high hopes for the Schutzstaffel and its concept of "honor." He starts learning really fast that honor only goes so far and the SS is just as corrupt as anything else around him. Well, he gets injured, ends up in the hospital. Another rather new character, Capt. Erich Arzt, a Waffen-SS physician (fun fact, "Arzt" is German for "doctor," so yep, this guy is really named Doctor Doctor), tends to him and suggests he transfer to the Allgemeine-SS if he wishes to stay with them, since he's no longer fit to serve in the (para)military. This would be a great idea, if Hesse hadn't just had his humiliating experience with the Allgemeine-SS, plus, if he didn't require a recommendation from his commanding officer. ;_; He requests one anyway. And wonder of wonders, Immerwahr provides one. Turns out the general doesn't hold grudges, he knows his job was never in any real danger, and he finds Hesse's audacity amusing. Seriously, the guy just tried reporting HIM to the Allgemeine-SS, wouldn't he be the perfect candidate? Hesse gets in, and gets a new office and a new boss, Col. Heidenreich. Heidenreich pays him a visit and after a while belatedly realizes who he is, getting excited: "You're the one! The one who reported Kamerad Immerwahr! Oh my, the B*LLS on you!" Hesse, perplexed, replies that Heidenreich refused to follow through with the investigation. "So?" Heidenreich exclaims. "The fact that you even reported him in the first place! The SS needs more men like you!" So, yeah, Hesse is beyond confused by all this, but work is work, so he settles in. Eva Heidenreich appears at some point as the seemingly good, dutiful wife of the colonel. The two are the envy of the rest of the Schutzstaffel and many of the other citizens as well; both of them are tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired, fit, stereotypical Aryans, the model couple everyone would like to emulate. Adelina Dobermann, especially, when she first meets Eva, is in awe of how beautiful and graceful she is. The Heidenreichs live in a great estate similar to the Dobermanns' except even bigger and better maintained, since Heidenreich makes good money in his position; his family has bred prized horses for generations, they have a nice large help staff, there's good hunting in the woods and fields surrounding. All that nice nifty stuff that comes with being a good wealthy Nazi, I guess. Addy Dobermann is quite a sheltered sort, and she finds the SS terribly glamorous and Eva with her storm blue eyes and long golden braid especially so, so when several of them get invited to a gathering at the Heidenreich estate, she's ecstatic. Lt. Senta Werner (an odd character I really need to get around to someday, she was created before I realized the Third Reich didn't like female soldiers, so her character needs some explaining) and Addy are invited by Eva herself to go on a "girls' outing" to shoot clay pigeons; Senta's not too thrilled but she goes along since gun go pow-pow and if something gives her an excuse to show off, she'll do it. Then Private Konrad Helmstadt, who's definitely not a girl, goes along because somebody has to keep an eye on Addy (to her chagrin). Addy's never used a gun before, so Eva shows her how, and they take turns shooting the pigeons. Eva and Senta do excellently, of course. After a while Eva gets to talking to Addy, remarking that she looks nothing like her father, but almost exactly like photos she's seen of her (presumably deceased) mother. "Her long raven hair, her burning chestnut eyes," she says, running a lock of Addy's hair through her fingers. "Very un-Aryan." By now Addy feels a bit nervous about this odd attention, when Eva says, "I once met another woman who looked much like your mother." "Once?" Addy says. "What happened to her?" "I wasn't there to see it for myself," Eva replies, "but from what I was told, they cut off her long raven hair..." twirling Addy's hair between her fingers again, her voice dropping nearly to a whisper, a glint coming to her eyes "...and shoved her in the gas chamber." O_O; That's basically Addy's reaction. Senta then cuts in with, "You know you talk too much, rickety witch?" Eva turns her attention to her: "So you have an opinion on the matter?--girl who plays soldier like a boy?" When Senta says, "I'm not scared of you, you old hag," Eva smiles and quietly replies, "Really?...you should be." Then Helmstadt, who was a bit off to the side and presumably didn't hear any of this exchange, announces it's time for them to head back home, and they return to Heidenreich's manor. Back in everyone else's company, Eva is all sunshine and pleasantness again and she tells Addy she had a good time, they should get together again soon. Addy nervously says sure, that'd be nice. As she walks quickly away Helmstadt mutters, "You're not serious, are you?" to which Addy responds, "Nein." So here, Eva Heidenreich's carefully cultivated kindly exterior (intentionally) slips just enough for even the naive Addy to get a glimpse of what truly lies beneath. She doesn't know it yet, but there's an additional aspect of threat in the older woman's words: Addy's mother, Inga, was actually Jewish, a fact of which most of the characters are so far unaware, though Eva obviously suspects. Later, when Col. Heidenreich stops by the Dobermann estate to talk with Hesse, he offers Addy an apology on behalf of his wife: "She has an...odd sense of humor," he explains. He speaks in the exact same saccharine manner and has the exact same fakey-fake smile Eva had, so Addy takes the "apology" with a big grain of salt; she's starting to learn that when it comes to the SS, at least, all the glamor and chivalry just helps to cover up the true ugliness underneath. (Addy confronts Hesse not long after the incident with Eva, demanding to know, "Do Mama and I look like Jews?" Hesse nearly drops what he's doing and exclaims, "Why would you ask that??" Uh, dude, you practically raised her, so, YOU'RE the reason she asks that. This is one of the rare occasions Hesse gets to see the effect his own beliefs have had on the impressionable Addy, and it dismays him; he really hadn't intended his ugly thoughts to rub off on her.) Anyway, as this incident makes clear, Eva isn't quite the soft, kind, obedient SS wife she presents herself as in public. She and her husband Rupprecht are actually two peas in a pod when it comes to malice and spite...and ironically, this is one of the reasons their marriage isn't quite the fairytale it appears to be, either. When they get along, they really get along...but most of the time, they freaking hate each other. It didn't start out entirely like that; Eva's history with Rupprecht has started abruptly spilling out with an adult scene I'm writing, and at least in the beginning, she did love him...sorta. Eva's mother was quite practical, and advised her, when she was still a teen, that you don't marry for love, you marry for influence, and to get your voice heard. As a woman in the Third Reich, Eva knows if she ever wants to have any power, she'll need to ride the coattails of a powerful man, and the powerful man she chooses is Col. Heidenreich, the chief of intelligence for the Allgemeine-SS. After a whirlwind courtship, the SS approves their marriage. Good SS wives are expected to bear as many children as possible, at least four...but after a miscarriage, Eva quickly learns this isn't a possibility for her. It's a crushing blow, and she offers Heidenreich the option of divorce; he scoffs at this, asking why would he toss away their marriage over one little thing? (Eva's mother had once given her similar advice, only presumably in regards to being cheated on.) Eva inquires then what exactly it is he's looking for in a wife, and he replies, "Someone who makes me look good." Eva realizes the two of them are on the same page, and she won't have to ride her husband's coattails when she can just walk beside him. Being on the same page, however, doesn't mean love, and doesn't mean perfect accord. In fact, their similar natures are often the cause of conflict. Another thing Eva quickly learns is that Heidenreich didn't marry for love, either--I mean he even outright admitted it--but it still stings when she comes across direct proof that her husband is being unfaithful with their help staff (one of the maids gets pregnant). She forces herself to cool her head, then confronts him, saying she'd prefer if they're honest with each other. He admits to it--obviously unashamed. Eva reasons that at least this is an arrangement that was ongoing before she arrived so it's not like it's anything personal; plus, as he tells her, SHE'S the one he married, not their maid. You don't marry for love, after all; you marry for influence, and that's exactly what Eva has gotten out of the deal. Other members of the SS, and their wives, look up to her with admiration, envy, and fear, and her husband even seeks her advice on certain matters, something not typically done. Some of his decisions and actions, including those undertaken in his role as SS chief of intelligence, are heavily influenced by her input; for Eva is just as cold blooded and ruthless as he is, maybe even more so, and has no qualms regarding genocide and mass murder. She looks kind and gentle yet is anything but. One incident that illustrates this was inspired by a story I read recently about the wife of an SS officer who encountered a couple of escaped boy prisoners, weak and famished; she took them in and comforted and fed them...then lined them up and shot them. Said that they didn't even attempt to escape as she did so since they were so exhausted; they just whimpered. In my version of events, while hunting, Eva encounters a young escaped boy on their property, and brings him back to the house, cooing and comforting him and offering him stew and bread. As he sits at the table and gratefully scarfs down the food, Eva points a gun at the back of his head. Heidenreich returns home to find a dead boy and asks what happened. His wife replies that she found him trespassing on their property, harking back to Heidenreich's own comments when the two of them decided to be honest with each other--Eva had asked if he were engaged in any scandalous behavior, such as an affair with any Jewish staff, at which he'd angrily retorted that if any Jews set foot on his land, they'd be shot. The calculated murder of this boy proves that Eva can play just as dirty as her husband does, and she wants him to know it. These two might be sadistic peas in a pod...but two sadists can easily cancel each other out. Over time, despite Eva's mother's advice and her own best intentions not to take things personally, Heidenreich's actions start to wear on her, and she gradually grows resentful. I have yet to determine what exactly begins this process or what is the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it might be Mitzi. Mitzi (no last name yet, if ever) is a singer and hostess at the Mesmer Club, the same nightclub where Lt. Hesse's mistress, Sophie Sommer, works; Sophie and Mitzi are good friends. The Mesmer Club is a well-known gathering place for SS officers, and they frequently take advantage of the hostesses' good graces. Sophie eventually drops her various involvements to remain faithful to Hesse, but Mitzi has no such close connection, and still plays the field, so to speak, in the hopes of one day finding her own "knight in black armor." (Sophie's and Mitzi's romantic ideals are a direct counterpoint to Eva's much more practical, transactional view of relationships.) Col. Heidenreich is one of the few SS characters who DON'T frequent the club that often (too busy, I guess), but when he does pay it a visit, Mitzi promptly catches his eye. This is a bit odd, as Sophie is usually the one to draw attention, taller, blue-eyed, blond-haired, Aryan Sophie; not the shorter, brown-eyed, brown-haired, decidedly un-Aryan Mitzi. Mitzi is usually the hostess the men pay attention to AFTER they realize Sophie's now off limits. She's not ugly, but she's definitely not the typical Germanic beauty that Sophie is. Still, she's the one Heidenreich focuses on. He flirts with her when she stops by his table, and, knowing the perks that could come with being friendly with a colonel, she flirts back. After the night's entertainment is over, she invites him back to her room, and he accepts. Before they can get very far, she decides to inform him she's "Mischling"--half Jewish. "If that sort of thing bothers you," she says. "Bother?" Heidenreich replies. "That makes it more exciting." So, nope--Heidenreich might want to shoot any Jews who step on his property, but he has no problem with this particular pastime. Eva, of course, finds out. And (if this is in fact the precipitating incident) she boils over with rage. No, she doesn't throw a screaming fit, doesn't even confront her husband--her mother taught her better. She willingly overlooked her husband's numerous affairs with the staff and his secretaries and possibly with other SS members' wives, but this, this is unforgivable, especially for the chief of SS intelligence. She starts having affairs of her own. She isn't subtle about it, either, hoping to elicit a response, to embarrass him, anything; but they're two peas in a pod. Heidenreich isn't terribly thrilled by this turn of events, but he recognizes he isn't in any real position to be jealous or angry, plus, that's just not his style. He'd rather she were more discreet but aside from that he doesn't care too much. Realizing that plan failed, Eva steps up her game, and begins targeting SS officials, especially influential ones, and those her husband knows. To her chagrin, many of them refuse to reciprocate, mostly out of fear of her husband. (General Immerwahr turns her down for a completely different reason.) She attempts to seduce Lt. Hesse, whom Heidenreich has praised for his loyalty to SS ideals, and of course he rejects her, because unlike the Heidenreichs, he actually believes in love and honor and all that jazz. "You look afraid," Eva says after he turns her down. "You think I'll blackmail you?" She gives a small bitter laugh and says, "Don't worry, Herr Hesse, that isn't my thing. Besides, you did nothing wrong. I think you're the one who could blackmail me." "That isn't my thing," Hesse replies, and leaves it at that. Eva tells him the SS could use more men like him--echoes of her husband's own words when Hesse first joined the Allgemeine-SS--and moves on to greener pastures. (For his part, Hesse just feels even more disillusioned. Good thing he's one of the few people who don't know Mitzi is half Jewish.) The Heidenreichs attend a swanky gathering at Immerwahr's place. Eva gets tired of hanging on her husband's arm and tells him she's going to step out on the balcony for a bit; he kisses her cheek and she goes. She shoves the doors open abruptly and sweeps out onto the balcony, grasping onto the railing and taking several deep breaths to steady herself; she's been simmering with hatred all day since the previous night was an unpleasant one. (Let's just say Heidenreich didn't take no for an answer.) Then she just kind of slumps there, defeated. And then stiffens when she hears the sound of liquid pouring. Turning, she sees that she isn't alone--a Waffen-SS officer is seated just beside the doors (thus why she didn't see him when she stormed out), pouring a glass of wine from a bottle. When he starts filling a second glass, she approaches; he holds it up to her, saying, "You look like you need it." Eva accepts the glass and sits down to join him. This is how she meets Dr. Erich Arzt. (Remember Dr. Arzt? The SS captain who helped Hesse get his job in the Allgemeine-SS after he was wounded? "Doctor Doctor"? Yep, that Dr. Arzt. Small world.) Surprise surprise, Arzt is also cold blooded, ruthless, and sadistic--two peas in a pod. The two chat a little bit, about nothing serious; after a while Arzt says she should get going back inside before her husband misses her, at which Eva smiles bitterly, takes a swig of wine, and claims he won't miss her at all. After a moment or so of silence, Arzt mentions that Immerwahr has a decent collection of ancient art, and he keeps it locked away in a nice secluded room elsewhere in the mansion. The key is under a vase near the door. Eva peers at him before venturing, "I think I'd like to see that." Arzt gives her directions to the room, then resumes sipping on his drink. Eva returns to the party, tells her husband she's going to go take a look at Immerwahr's collection, tells him he doesn't need to come along since she knows he's not interested in such things, and excuses herself. "Enjoy yourself," Heidenreich calls out as she leaves, hinting that he knows what she's up to, but she doesn't let it deter her. She finds the room and lets herself in, browsing around the art collection until Arzt shows up. And yep, exactly the expected thing happens. A bit later Eva returns to the party and heads home with hubby, in a better mood than before, since now she has her opening, a means to achieve what she's looking for. Eva carries on with Arzt for a while, managing to meet with him here and there. They both know it's nothing serious and that's fine. One day she finally says to him, "I wish my husband were dead." Arzt spends a few moments making sure she means what she says and isn't just expressing a passing feeling, but she's damn sure of it by now; she loved him once, she thinks, but not anymore, not for quite a while. Arzt then makes sure she realizes how much she has to lose with him gone, and by now, she doesn't care about that, either: "I go to sleep beside him at night, I wake up beside him in the morning, and all I can think is how much I want him gone. None of this is worth it anymore." She asks Arzt if, being a doctor, he knows anything about poisons. He does, but he says that's not what she wants to do--"That'll be the first thing they look for." He suggests an explosive device instead, made to look like it was sent by the Diamond Network, an underground resistance movement led by Josef Diamant, an escaped prisoner who uses his jeweler's skills to design intricate clockwork bombs he sends to various Nazi/SS gathering places. The Diamond Network is the perfect scapegoat, being already considered a terrorist organization by the SS, which will take all the focus off Eva. They have to carefully coordinate their efforts to pull it off convincingly, though, and he advises her to take a bit of time to get used to the idea. In the meantime, he'll get started on the bomb. Eva returns to her husband again and coaxes him into taking her on a long weekend trip to a place they visited earlier in their marriage when things were better. Heidenreich is puzzled by her change in mood, but he agrees, and for the weekend it's almost like old times. It doesn't even occur to him that this will be their last outing together. One day, a package arrives at the Heidenreich estate. The guards are fully aware of the Diamond Network's activities, and they take a few moments to carefully open and inspect the package. It's reminiscent of the sort of gadgets the Network sends out, but nothing happens when they look it over, handling it and looking inside it and everything. No motion-activated device, no apparent timer. It's either not a bomb after all, or it's a dud. Eva stands by and watches, anxiously asking a few times if they're sure it's harmless; they assure her it is, so she takes the package to her husband's personal office and hands it off to him, then leaves to go do something else. Heidenreich opens the box and within finds a statue of a horse with clockwork innards. Delighted, he looks it over, turning it this way and that, before popping open the clear door housing the gears within, to see what it might do. What it does is immediately start ticking--Heidenreich has enough time to widen his eyes in understanding before his entire office explodes. Lt. Hesse receives a call at his office about an incident at his boss's estate, and hurries out to see what's going on. Eva is wailing uncontrollably while several officers try to calm her down; another warns Hesse about the state of Heidenreich's office. Hesse looks inside...at what remains of the desk...then the walls...then the ceiling. Then steps out, face pale, and instructs the others to rope off the office and let nobody enter it until they're ready to collect evidence. He goes to Eva, who's quieted down somewhat by now; she describes the package, and angrily mentions that the guards had insisted it was safe. The guards stick to their story and are just as confused as anyone why the bomb didn't activate while they were handling it. Hesse says he'll lead the investigation and find out who was responsible; Eva gets a strange wistful look, asking if he means it, and he promises. News of Col. Heidenreich's assassination spreads quickly, and since it looks like the Diamond Network is to blame, the SS doubles down on their efforts to flush out members. Observing all this is Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt, a Wehrmacht officer who's been staying with the Dobermanns...but he's not who anyone thinks he is. He's actually Jewish, and American, and a spy. And in touch with the Diamond Network. He contacts Josef Diamant to ask about the assassination, but Diamant is adamant that his group had nothing to do with it--they don't target personal residences for bombings, and in fact when they do send bombs, they try to minimize the loss of human life. Not only was there far too much risk to innocent parties in sending a bomb to Heidenreich's estate, but Heidenreich himself is such a high-profile target that Diamant would never approve an attempt on his life, knowing what the consequences would be. (Google what happened after Reinhard Heydrich's death. Here my version of things is very tame.) He tells Gerhardt to get him information on what was used to make the bomb, and he can prove it wasn't him. This is easier said than done, but Gerhardt manages; he's also in contact with Hesse, who often stays at the Dobermann estate, and so is able to get an idea of the makeup of the device. Diamant admits it was obviously constructed to resemble his work, but was bigger and more clumsily made compared to his skills--whoever made it wasn't a jeweler or watchmaker. The most perplexing thing is how it was activated--it had been inspected, with no evidence of any motion-detecting trigger or timer. Diamant says the only explanation is that somebody rigged it to be activated AFTER the guards dealt with it. Gerhardt presents this information to Hesse (as if it's his own theory); Hesse rejects it at first, as the only person who handled the bomb after the guards was Heidenreich himself. He attempts to confirm this, only for one of the guards to remember that he actually handed the package off to Eva, and she was the one who took it to Heidenreich's office. His heart sinking, Hesse gathers a team of officers and goes to see Eva. When he arrives, she gets that wistful look again and says, "Well...you do keep your promises." She's brought to SS headquarters for questioning, where she isn't terribly cooperative at first, until Hesse makes it clear they know she's responsible, but that she couldn't have acted alone. She refuses to implicate anyone else, claiming full responsibility and frustrating Hesse. He wants to know why she did it. Eva grows more and more bitter as she explains how hard she had to work to get where she is, depending on her husband's good graces the entire way, yet how little all that work meant in the end, when he couldn't simply respect her. "You could have divorced him," Hesse says, confused. "And give up everything?" Eva snaps. "Everything I worked for! Everything I sacrificed for, while he had everything handed to him, just because he's a man. Maybe you don't know but this is just how it is for us, Herr Hesse, we do all this work to get so far and it can disappear in an instant because some man simply decided so. He doesn't need a reason. Why do I need a reason? He was an a**hole, and I hated him. There's your reason." She softens long enough to tell Hesse that her husband was right about one thing, at least--he was wise in placing so much trust in Hesse to try rooting out the corruption rampant within the SS, even if Heidenreich himself was part of it. "He respected you highly," she says; "if only he'd respected me just a fraction as much." Eva waives her right to a trial--"Be judged, by a bunch of men? You and I both know the outcome"--and of course the punishment is death. When further questioning results in no more information, the time and date are set, and a gallows is set up out front the gate of the labor camp, the words ARBEIT MACHT FREI visible over and behind Eva's head. A great crowd, including many members of the SS, gathers to watch. The noose is placed around Eva's neck and she's asked whether she has anything she'd like to say. Eva casts a look at the crowd and says, "My husband..." before her voice cracks and her eyes glisten with tears; everyone waits, silent. Eva blinks, the tears disappear, and a hard look comes to her face; "My husband was an a**hole," she says, "and anyone here would have done the exact same." The crowd ripples with dismay. Eva snaps, "Leave it!" when they attempt to place the hood over her head; "I want everyone to see." And she casts a pointed look at Lt. Hesse, standing before the gallows. The trapdoor is released and Eva drops, kicking a few times before falling still. (Some members of the Dobermann household are present; Addy abruptly turns away, and her father instructs one of their Wehrmacht guards to take her home.) An SS officer asks what's to be done with Eva's body. "Shove her in the oven for all I care," snaps the head of the SS (very sour that it's a jilted SS wife, and not the Diamond Network, behind all this drama). The Totenkopfverbände guards standing outside the camp gate cast each other uneasy looks. They really don't want to shove Eva in their crematorium. (There's another small bit of irony in the spectacle of Eva's death. Recall that she'd once questioned whether her husband was engaged in any overly scandalous behavior that might come back to haunt them. He was (after he got involved with Mitzi), but in the end, Eva's own behavior was what caused one of the most horrific scandals the SS had known.) The Allgemeine-SS is left without an intelligence chief. Hesse is offered the position, along with a promotion; Eva herself had recommended him for the role. He turns it down, surprised to find himself finally growing weary of the job and the organization he'd once placed so much faith in. He does agree to temporarily head the Allgemeine-SS office as lieutenant until a suitable replacement is found. This includes wrapping up the investigation into Col. Heidenreich's murder, as he's positive Eva didn't act alone, but he has no idea who could have helped her. Another SS officer assisting in the case (this guy, a lieutenant, will likely be getting a name and becoming yet another important new character soon, for obvious reasons) comes to him with further information regarding the evidence collected at the crime scene; watch gears were used in the bomb, and a fragment of one has been traced back to a custom pocket watch of which only one was ever made, according to the watchmaker's records. That watch was personalized for a member of the Waffen-SS. Hesse looks at the report and says in dismay, "I know him." He and his team head to Gen. Immerwahr's estate. Here they find Immerwahr relaxing and having drinks and smokes with a couple of friends, fellow Waffen-SS officers Capt. Oskar Ettlinger and Dr. Erich Arzt. Immerwahr is surprised by Hesse's visit since he doesn't fraternize much; Hesse replies he's there for work-related business, and says they've tracked down another party involved in Heidenreich's death. Everyone just looks at him quizzically. As soon as he mentions the unique personalized watch, however, Dr. Arzt pushes back his chair and stands, presenting his wrists. (Earlier in the story when someone had asked the time, Arzt had mentioned "misplacing" his pocket watch some time before.) Immerwahr and Ettlinger appear genuinely shocked; when the increasingly cynical Hesse says, "You honestly didn't know?" Immerwahr quietly replies, "I had no idea." Arzt freely confesses, explaining that Heidenreich had mistreated his wife, but the disrespect was the worst of it; she'd sought his help, and he'd provided it. No one else was involved. As they take him into custody, he mentions Trudi, the young woman who lives with him, requesting that they not "molest" her while searching his house since she wasn't involved, and giving them the combination to his safe. They head out to the car to go to his house, but along the way, Arzt starts choking and seizing; they pull off the road and place him on the ground, now bleeding and foaming at the mouth. "Cyanide," the other lieutenant theorizes. All they can do is watch helplessly until his breath rattles and he falls still. Hesse, enraged, throws an uncharacteristic fit, cursing and even kicking Arzt before having him placed back in the car. There's nothing more to be done than to search his house as planned. Gertraud "Trudi" Detzer, a young woman Arzt previously claimed is staying with him while he treats her for a "medical condition," lets the SS officers into Arzt's house. (In actuality, Trudi is trans, and lesbian. She was born male but is intersex and can pass as female, which she prefers. Arzt discovered this and agreed to keep her secret, meaning keeping her safe from the rest of the SS, if she stayed with him as a sort of "experiment." The entire thing is quite skeezy and only borderline consensual but Trudi decided to go along with it. And oh yeah, unknown to him, she's been working as a sort of double agent for the Diamond Network. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) She's quietly stunned to learn of his death, but leads them to his personal office, with the safe, when asked. Opening it, Hesse finds Arzt's will: He's left his house and his legal possessions to Trudi. She's even more stunned by this: "But--why? We weren't lovers. We weren't even friends. Why would he leave it to me?" Hesse doesn't know, all he knows is that after searching Arzt's residence, it's exactly as he claimed, there's no evidence anyone but Eva Heidenreich and himself were involved in the murder plot. The Diamond Network is cleared (though as a terrorist organization, that means little), and the case is closed. The SS moves on. Well, the sign over the labor camp gate, above and behind Eva at her execution, was true at least this once. All that hard work she did set her free. [Eva Heidenreich 2022 [Friday, July 8, 2022, 5:28:19 AM]] |