Curzio Malaparte: Naked Men

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Burning sauna, near Mikkeli, Finland: photo by Miraceti, 2006

We drove at full speed through the deserted Rovaniemi streets that were sunk in a white sky. It could have been ten o'clock at night, or six in the morning. A pale sun was swaying above the roofs; the houses were the color of frosted glass, the river glimmered sadly through the trees.

Soon we came to a village of military barracks that were built on the edge of a silvery birch forest just beyond the town. Here were the general headquarters of the Northern Front. An officer approached Dietl, said something to him, and Dietl turned toward us and said, laughing, "Himmler is in the sauna. Let's go and see him naked." His words were greeted by a burst of laughter. Dietl went almost on the run toward a fir-log barrack a little way off in the wood. He pushed open the door and we went inside.

Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Karl Wolff and unidentified assistant, at the Obersalzberg, May 1939: from the documentary The SS Heydrich: screenshot by CharlieRCD, 2009

The interior of the sauna, the Finnish steambath, was occupied by a large grate and a boiler from which the water, raising a cloud of steam, dripped onto white-hot stones that were piled on the scented fire of birchwood. On the benches, ranged on shelves along the walls of the sauna, were seated some ten naked men. They were so white, soft, flabby and defenseless, so extraordinarily naked that they seemed to have no skin. Their flesh looked like the flesh of lobsters, pale and rosy, exuding an acid crustacean smell. They had broad chests, their fat breasts were swollen and drooping. Their grim hard faces -- those German faces -- contrasted sharply with their white, flabby, naked limbs, and almost had the appearance of masks. Those naked men sat or lay on the benches like weary corpses. Now and then, laboriously and slowly, they raised their arms to wipe the sweat that dripped from their whitish limbs, sprinkled with yellow freckles that looked like shining scabs.

Generaloberst Eduard Dietl, commander of German forces in Norway and northern Finland and in Eastern Europe, with liaison staff Oiva Willamo, Rovaniemi, Lapland, northern Finland, September 1943: from Mikko Uola, Maa penteva pohjolan äärillä on; image by Florival, 2009

Naked Germans are wonderfully defenseless. They are bereft of secrecy. They are no longer frightening. The secret of their strength is not in their skin or in their bones, or in their blood; it is in their uniforms. Their real skin is their uniform. If the peoples of Europe were aware of the flabby, defenseless and dead nudity concealed by the Feldgrau of the German uniforms, the German Army could not frighten even the weakest and most defenseless people. A mere boy would dare to face an entire German battalion. To see them naked is to grasp the secret meaning of their national life, of their national history. They stood naked in front of us, like shy and shameful corpses. General Dietl raised his arm and shouted in a loud voice, "Heil Hitler!"

"Heil Hitler!" replied the naked men laboriously lifting their hands that held birch switches. These switches are used for flogging, that is a traditional part of the sauna, its most sacred rite. But even the motion of those hands, holding the switches, was soft and defenseless.

German soldiers, Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland, winter 1942: photo by Josef Schmelzer, 1942 (image by Denis Barthel, 2006)

I thought I recognized one of the naked men seated on the lowest shelf. Sweat was streaming down his high-cheekboned face, in which nearsighted eyes, stripped of their glasses, glittered with a whitish, soft light, that is seen in the eyes of fish. He carried his head high with an air of arrogant insolence; from time to time he threw his head back, at which sudden, brusque movement, sweat ran out of the hollows of his eyes and from his nostrils and ears, as if his head were filled with water. He sat with his hands resting on his knees like a punished schoolboy. Between his forearms protruded a little rosy swollen drooping belly, the navel strangely in relief, so that it stood out against that tender rosiness like a delicate rosebud -- a child's navel in an old man's belly.

I had never seen such a naked and rosy belly; it was so tender that one was tempted to probe it with a fork. Large drops of sweat flowing down his chest glided over the skin of that soft belly and gathered in the hair like dew on a bush. The man seemed to be dissolving in water before our eyes; he sweated so much that I feared that in a short time there would be only a mass of empty flabby skin left of him, even his bones seemed to be softening, melting and becoming glutinous. The man looked like ice cream sitting in an oven. In a twinkling of an eye only a pool of perspiration on the floor would be left of him.

Finnish vihta, made of birch, used in traditional sauna-bathing for massage and stimulation of the skin: photo by kaliema, 2010

When Dietl raised his arm and said "Heil Hitler!" the man rose, and I recognized him. He was the man I had met in the elevator -- it was Himmler. He stood before us, the big toes on his flat feet oddly thrust upward, his short arms dangling. Little streams of perspiration gushed like little fountains from the tips of his fingers. Around his flabby breasts grew two little circles of hair, two halos of blond hair; perspiration gushed like milk from his nipples.

He leaned against the wall so as not to slip upon the wet, slimy floor and as he turned, he exposed protruding rotundities on which the grain of the wooden bench was imprinted like a tattoo. At last he succeeded in recovering his balance, turned, raised his arm and opened his mouth, but the sweat, streaming down his face and filling his mouth, prevented him from saying, "Heil Hitler!" And his gesture was mistaken for the signal for flogging. The other men raised their birch switches and began hitting each other first; then, by common consent, with ever-increasing energy, they applied their switches to Himmler's shoulders and back.

The birch twigs left the white imprints of their leaves on the tender flesh that turned red at once, and then disappeared. A fleeting forest of birch leaves appeared and disappeared on Himmler's skin. The naked men raised and lowered their switches with raging energy; their breath came in short hisses from their swollen lips. At first Himmler tried to fend them off, shielding his face with his arms, and laughed, but it was forced laughter revealing rage and fear. Later, as the switches began biting his hips, he began twisting this way and that, covering his belly with his elbows, turning about on his toes and drawing his neck into his shoulders; he laughed with hysterical laughter while being whipped, as if he suffered more from tickling than from birching. Finally Himmler saw the door of the sauna open behind us, stretched out his arms to push his way through and ran out the door, pursued by the naked men who never ceasing to hit him, fled toward the river into which he dived.

Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland, burned by German forces during the Lapland War, 1944-1945: photo by Ensio Siilasvuo (image by Ppntori, 2007)

from Kaputt: Curzio Malaparte, 1944 (translated from the Italian by Cesare Foligno)