Perhaps the quickest tempers were to be found in the lengthening queues for tobacco. The ration was just three Johnnies a day, but when you were extravagant enough actually to smoke one it was easier to understand why Hitler didn’t smoke himself: they tasted like burnt toast. Sometimes people smoked tea, that is when you could get any tea, but if you could, it was always better to pour boiling water on the stuff and drink it.

Around police headquarters at Alexanderplatz – this area also happened to be the centre of Berlin’s black market, which, despite the very serious penalties that were inflicted on those who got caught, was about the only thing in the city that could have been described as thriving – the scarcity of petrol hit us almost as hard as the tobacco and alcohol shortages. We took trains and buses to our crime scenes and when these weren’t running we walked, often through the blackout, which was not without hazard. Almost one third of all accidental deaths in Berlin were a result of the blackout. Not that any of my colleagues in Kripo were interested in attending crime scenes or in solving anything other than the enduring problem of where to find a new source of sausage, beer and cigarettes. Sometimes we joked that crime was decreasing: no one was stealing money for the simple reason that there wasn’t anything in the shops to spend it on. Like most jokes in Berlin in the autumn of 1941, that one was funnier because it was also true.

Of course, there was still plenty of theft about: coupons, laundry, petrol, furniture – thieves used it for firewood – curtains (people used them to make clothes), the rabbits and guinea pigs that people kept on their balconies for fresh meat; you name it, Berliners stole it. And with the blackout there was real crime, violent crime, if you were interested in looking for it. The blackout was great if you were a rapist.