Free Not I by Joachim Fest

committed to memory many episodes in the lives of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Verrocchio, and Alexander VI, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and Julius II, Guicciardini, Botticelli, and the unforgotten “great Caravaggio.” Driffel got hold of a bloodthirsty, inventive potboiler about Lucrezia Borgia for me. It was called Love, Power and Daggers: All Red as Blood and the name of its author has disappeared from the world, as it has from my memory. Finally, with the help of this muddled and colorful material, which I spread out on my desk at headquarters when I was on night duty, I tried to write an essay.
    Although I was aware of the gaps in my knowledge, I got so much pleasure from a subject that was in every sense human and splendid that I soon began to write a biographical sketch about the Luccan condottiere Castruccio Castracani. For weeks I had searched for biographical data about this contemporary of Machiavelli’s but given our conditions at the time, I had been able to gather only a few haphazard references. As a result, I did not know much more about him than his origin as a foundling, which, possibly for propaganda reasons, was surrounded by mystery, as well as the notable connections which, with astonishing farsightedness, he had already made as a young man.
    Nevertheless, I did find out something about Castracani’s intentions: above all, that in his early twenties he had wanted to conquer Tuscany and after that to subjugate province after province until all Italy wasin his hands. His senator’s toga bore the inscription: He is the one whom God wants . Beyond that (according to my sources at the time), he dreamed the dream of every powerful man of the period: an alliance with the papacy or (should that fail) its subjection. As, in his unbounded ambition, he was setting out to do just that, he died a pitiful death from influenza. My piece was eventually forty pages long, and I sometimes thought it was probably this “banal” end, after so many mighty projects—the Thomas Mann punch line, so to speak—that had attracted me. More or less the only thing I still have of this first effort as a writer is the title: “The Hour of Castruccio.” When Werner Schreiber, who dropped by from time to time for English conversation, objected, “Not a title! Too weak!,” I retorted that it was better for a provisional title to be too weak than to announce itself with a “roll of thunder.”
    In spring 1946 we were alarmed by rumors that very soon the Laon camp was to be transferred to French control. We also heard about a formal agreement with Washington, concluded shortly before the end of the war, to provide the French with a million prisoners for forced labor. This talk, particularly as it grew more dismaying by the day, gave rise to increasing disquiet. Many prisoners thought that the French, as the great losers among the Allies, wanted a bigger piece of the victory bonus than was due to them, and in the camp some radical groups, which also existed, even discussed the possibility of a violent uprising. The prisoners who worked at headquarters were almost every day bombarded with demands to use theirinfluence with Captain Donaldson to prevent these plans from happening. But when I, too, pestered him, the camp commandant merely shook his head—“Sorry!”—and said that such decisions did not fall within his area of responsibility. “I would like to help you. But it’s impossible.” A few days later I resolved to escape.
    The number of breakout attempts had already increased after the first rumors of a handover to the French. Technically, it was comparatively easy to contrive an escape, because the guards were rather negligent and every week at least one goods train went from Laon to the American Zone of occupation in Germany. 4 Those in charge of the camp were therefore forced to tighten control. Lieutenant Dillon, together with the command staff in Rheims, urged greater restrictions, while Captain Donaldson