The Faithful Spy: Chapter 6–Epilogue

At night, surrounded by the cries of his fellow prisoners, any semblance of sleep was near impossible.

After a few grueling sessions of questioning with Roeder, Dietrich sensed the Gestapo was grasping at straws.

They also offered him larger portions of food, but Dietrich always refused in protest, rebuking the guards for not treating all the prisoners with equal care.

If he hadn’t known any better, the spartan quarters could have been his room at Finkenwalde.

He would spend time counseling inmates in his cell, bringing comfort to those on the edge of despair. Ever since childhood, Dietrich had shown the heart of a shepherd. Now he was caring for the wayward sheep in his midst.

The guards began to trust him enough to appoint him as an orderly in the prison infirmary.

His observations about the severity of prison life were some of the most poignant. He longed for simple things, like hearing laughter again.

Joy is a thing that we want very badly in this solemn building, where one never hears a laugh.

Moving throughout the din, he would pray with grown men awash in tears, as the blasts echoed around them for hours.

Dietrich never revealed his turmoil of faith and doubt in the letters he sent to his parents, but in the private words he could send to Eberhard through Knobloch, he could finally bare his soul.

My grim experiences often pursue me into the night and...I can shake them off only by reciting one hymn after another, and...I’m apt to wake with a sigh rather than a hymn of praise.

His quiet routine of prison life was occasionally broken by a surprising interlude of grace.

But the problem with any kind of assumption about the Nazi hierarchy was understimating their rampant paranoia.

Their suspicions were arbitrary and unpredictable.

Hitler’s mood was abysmal.

He cursed the insubordinate pilots!

The explosion killed four in the meeting, but Hitler escaped with only singed hair, tattered pants, and burst eardrums.

General Fellgiebel's initial word of the blast had been garbled over the radio, and the Berlin conspirators delayed starting the takeover in confusion.

Up until this point, the risks that came with a flight from Nazi capture were just too great, especially if the downfall of the Reich was imminent.

"The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is going to live."

The calculated restraint from his new interrogators was gone.

I do not think that death can take us by surprise now. After what we have been through during the war, we hardly dare admit that we should like death to come to us, not accidentally and suddenly through some trivial cause, but in the fulness [sic] of life and with everything at stake.

His time at Tegel had often felt like he was walking through a dried-up ocean. But now the parched earth had been filled with a heavenly rain. He filled his cup to the brim and let it overflow in the heavenly waters.

It seemed their captors might even just run away and leave the prisoners to fend for themselves.

Dietrich woke early, the Sunday after Easter, in the provincial schoolhouse alongside his fellow prisoners.

Hitler, ever acting the spiteful and petty victim, had even sent Admiral Canaris's journal down to Flossenbürg to serve as evidence in the "trial."

Hitler, ever acting the spiteful and petty victim, had even sent Admiral Canaris's journal down to Flossenbürg to serve as evidence in the "trial."

He swam upward through the salty water. It saturated his lungs, but the water felt like air.

Suddenly, a strong hand plunged through the watery roiling veil and held his arm fast.

April 30, 1945. Adolf Hitler, along with his mistress, Eva Braun, killed themselves in their bunker. Their bodies were burned in a nondescript shell crater outside the bunker.