The Night of the Generals

The news about Colonel Russell Williams, the seemingly blameless commander of Canada’s largest air force base who has been charged with murdering two young women and with other sex-connected crimes, evoked the film The Night of the Generals, in which the sex-murderer of a prostitute was a German general in WWII. Williams’s situation, if he is convicted, and the content of the film have absolutely nothing in common except the puzzle at the centre – what makes a man commit such crimes? The film does not answer the question and it is highly unlikely that the trial of Colonel Williams, once it takes place, will do so either. The human soul – this is a quote from Wozzek – is a bottomless pit.

But the film, made in 1967, is remarkable even if it doesn’t answer the question. One reason: Field Marshall Rommel is played by Christopher Plummer – alas, a minor role. He is on the screen for only a few minutes.

The film is based on a novel by Hans Helmut Kirst, the eminently successful John le Carré of Germany. Kirst had been an officer in the German Army during World War II, and had at first doubted accounts of Nazi atrocities. “One did not really know one was in a club of murderers,” he said eventually. His novels, many of them dealing with the events of the war, reflect his acceptance of Germany’s guilt.

There is a line in the film when someone questioned the possibility of a general, of all people, being capable of murdering a prostitute. “Well, killing is what generals are trained to do,” was the reply.

The high-principled detective in the film is Major – later Colonel – Grau. an army intelligence officer who is played by Omar Sharif. In the middle of the slaughter he is obsessed with one single murder unrelated to the war There are three suspects – all generals. Even in Paris, on the fateful July 20, 1944, when several leading figures among the German occupiers were involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler, Major Grau’s primary pre-occupation was to trap a suspected general.

The film opens in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942. A prostitute is murdered in her apartment and Major Grau is called in to investigate the crime. The only clue is that the murderer wore grey pants with a red stripe. He realizes that only high ranking German generals wear grey pants with a red stripe. Before he can complete his investigation, Major Grau is promoted to Colonel and posted to Paris.

Two years after the first murder, another prostitute is murdered, this time in Paris. There are similarities and Major Grau again takes charge of the investigation. The three main suspects from the previous investigation, coincidentally, all happen to be present in the city at the time of the murder. He puts the clues together and is about to apprehend the killer but, in the confusion of the events connected with the failed plot against Hitler, he is killed before the investigation is completed.

The war ends. Years pass. It is 1965. Fragments of the Nazi party still hang on. In Germany a third prostitute is murdered, again, in similar circumstances. A Parisian detective, played by Philippe Noiret, involved in the 1944 investigation and now a member of Interpol, investigates. He realizes that the murderer is the same man who committed the two previous murders years earlier. He revisits the surviving witnesses from Major Grau’s original investigations and finally confronts the killer at a reunion banquet held in the killer’s honour.

The killer? General Tanz, played by Peter O’Toole – waxen-faced, glazed-eyed, unsmiling, sadistic. A control freak. He rebukes his orderly in Paris for not making sure that the water in his morning bath is the required thirty-two degrees. But the two raw eggs and the glass of brandy for breakfast are as ordered, thank you.

The topic for this posting was suggested by Peter Rehak.