Nazi Noir
Berlin, Germany is a singularly amazing place to take a long walk. Sprawling but still distinctly European, the city is a little too big to explore entirely on foot.
Though packed with history, a boom in (re)construction post-1945 gives Berlin a little more of a modern feel than other German cities. There’s a certain comparison that can be made to made to Brooklyn in aesthetic, layout, and architecture (in parts).
Contemplating the history of Berlin leads to some obvious places. The Wall, the utter insanity of the Nazi regime, how doner kebap became a German staple. Even during some of the tumultuous periods of Berlin’s history, it can be easy to forget that life largely went on. People loved and lived. They ate and worked. And during one ten month period during the height of World War Two, they were also brutally murdered.
Systematic murder is one of Nazism’s lasting legacies, of course. But considering Hitler’s reign was known to be intolerant of any lawbreaking, being a serial killer in Nazi Germany demonstrates the compulsion driving such individuals. Especially since there were other “outlets” available to German serial killers.
This Berlin is immaculately detailed in the first two novels of Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets and The Pale Criminal. The series’ protagonist, Bernhard Günther, is an ex-cop and private eye that finds himself dealing with corrupt Nazis, war, and dark secrets in a dangerous totalitarian state. They’re interesting reads, for the most part, and offer a new angle on Nazis and hardboiled crime fiction. The series continues after Berlin Noir but it gets a little strange. Even the third book, A German Requiem, seems off the rails.
Despite this, the books are a good context to understand the state of affairs in which Paul Orgozow operated. A German railroad worker and member of the Nazi Party, Orgozow murdered eight women in Berlin from October 1940 to July 1941. Home life with Paul was said to have been difficult and abusive though he was often seen playing with his children.
Orgozow started by raping the housewives of men who had been called into service in the German military. These crimes involved a fair amount of violence but his early attempts to murder his victims failed, many surviving to later testify against him. Gertrude Ditter was the first victim to be killed. Orgozow benefited from wartime conditions, blackouts routinely gave him the opportunity to attack his victims under cover of dark. Heavy censorship of news meant that few women were even aware of the danger. The government response included having rail workers, including Orgozow, accompany solitary female passengers.
Authorities finally arrested Orgozow in July after he was identified by coworkers as a possible suspect. He confessed his crimes and attempted to blame his actions on a mixture of alcoholism and gonorrhea that was improperly treated by a Jewish doctor. Orgozow was executed by guillotine just twelve days after his arrest.
Slowly, Germany is moving past its World War Two history. Some of the violence was lost in the static of one of the largest acts of murder in history. In the eyes of the Nazi government, Orgozow’s biggest crime may not have been rape and murder but damaging the morale of the German people. At least Orgozow’s surviving victims got the benefit of swift justice.
If I’m reading Kerr correctly that’s about as much as anyone could have hoped for in 1940s Berlin.
Andrew Egan is writer and editor of Crimes In Progress. His work has appeared in Forbes Magazine, ABC News, Atlas Obscura, Tedium, and more. You can read his article, “Any Which Way but Down or A Fair Amount of Male Nudity in the American West” in the December 2016 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. His novel, Nothing Too Original, is available now for Kindle and paperback.
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