3/3/23
Newsletter 264
The Crack of Dawn
In my first feature film, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except (1985), I “corrected” history. After the Manson family committed their murders, instead of being arrested, I had four war-hardened Marines who had just returned from Vietnam take them on and wipe them all out. In my version the Manson family got their just-comeuppance.
So, back in 1983, I decided to follow up on this idea. I had read that Adolf Hitler’s most dedicated follower, and ultimately the second-highest-ranked Nazi, Heinrich Himmler, head of the brutal SS, had died under strange circumstances. At the very end of World War II, when Hitler and his new bride committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin, Heinrich Himmler fled west to avoid the Russians coming from east because they had a take-no-prisoners policy. The western Allies, on the other hand, weren’t executing anyone, but were instead taking all German soldiers prisoner. A couple of days later Heinrich Himmler’s dead body was found in a British POW camp. He had shaved off his mustache and had “Hitzinger” on his uniform. He apparently, though not by no means certainly, poisoned himself. A plaster death mask was made and Himmler wore an expression of pure unadulterated horror.
That’s what we know, and at least to me, it doesn’t make sense. If Himmler was simply going to commit suicide, why not do it back in Berlin with his buddy, das Fuhrer? Why bother to flee west in disguise, using a fake name, just to get captured, then take poison in a prison camp? And why would he commit suicide with a poison that caused extreme pain? Himmler had access to any poison he could possibly desire.
In my story, Mann’s Revenge, Himmler gets his just-comeuppance. I tell two parallel stories: that of Heinrich Himmler, as well as his lifelong mortal enemy (over silly, childhood reasons), Karl Mann, both growing up in the small town of Landshut, outside Munich. Karl goes to medical school in Munich and becomes a doctor. Heinrich goes to college in Munich, gets a degree in agriculture, and joins the nascent Nazi Party soon after it formed in 1923.
When the Nazis take power in 1933, Himmler returns to Landshut a hero. Himmler sees his old nemesis, Karl Mann, who still lives in Landshut, and he and his father are the town’s doctors. Strictly because he now has the power to do it, Himmler has Karl and his father arrested, thus fulfilling his old grudge. Karl’s wife and son are left behind.
Karl, his father, and a number of other prisoners – the Nazi’s very first prisoners – are marched out into a vast empty field twelve miles outside Munich in a town called Dachau. A prison camp is built around them.
Twelve years goes by. Heinrich Himmler, as the leader of the SS, the secret police, is in charge of every awful thing the Nazis do, including rounding up all of the Jews and the undesirables, and having concentration camps built. He gets bids from companies that make big baking ovens with conveyor belts. Quickly realizing that it was not financially sound to waste bullets, Himmler has his medical staff explore all of the possibilities of poisons. One of the doctors is Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Experimenting on live prisoners, Mengele comes up with a nerve gas that is so deadly and painful that it causes your eyes to implode. The liquid is so volatile it’s kept in a steel tube.
In May, 1945, when the Allied forces are moving in on Berlin from every direction, Heinrich Himmler and his driver, Lt. Hitzinger, flee west on a motorcycle with a sidecar.
When Dr. Josef Mengele escapes Auschwitz, boarding a plane painted with Red Cross insignia, he mistakenly leaves his doctor’s bag behind.
Dachau is liberated by American forces. Although his father has died, Karl Mann has managed to live through twelve years of the worst living hell possible. He goes home to find his house deserted. He learns from his neighbor that his wife was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. His neighbor’s son and his son were both conscripted into the army, and no one has seen either of them since.
Karl’s borrows his neighbor’s 1938 Fiat 500 and drives across war-torn Germany searching for his wife and son. He goes from POW camp to POW camp searching, all the while trying heal the wounded with no medical supplies. Karl finally ends up at Auschwitz, where he finds out that this is where his wife died. Karl also finds Mengele’s doctor’s bag and takes it.
Karl continues driving across Germany searching for his son. Along the way he reads Mengele’s medical diary, detailing his monstrous experiments on live humans. Among the experiments is his work with the severely toxic nerve gas. There is a steel tube of it in the bag.
Karl arrives at a British POW camp, now carrying a doctor’s bag, and says he’s there to examine the prisoners. As he searches and questions the young soldiers, he finds his neighbor’s son. The boy tells Karl that his son was killed in battle. In a daze, Karl wanders across the prison camp and who should he encounter but his lifelong acquaintance, Heinrich Himmler, wearing a prison uniform that says, “Hitzinger.” Karl recognizes Himmler, but Himmler does not recognize Karl, who has lost a lot of weight and looks like hell. Karl calls Himmler over for an examination. As Karl fills a syringe from the steel tube, he reminds Heinrich of who he is, and Heinrich finally remembers. Karl injects Himmler, then explains what he just injected him with – from Josef Mengele’s bag.
As Heinrich Himmler goes through the death throes of the damned, and his eyes implode, Karl finds his neighbor’s son. As all of the British soldiers and the prisoners converge on the screaming, shrieking man, Karl and the neighbor’s son get into the little Fiat and drive away.
That’s my story.
Have yourself a good day.