The murder of Wilhelm Stuckart is presented as a deliberately concealed killing, linked to the death of Josef Buhler and obscured by official control of the investigation. Xavier March’s reconstruction of the apartment attack and his subsequent arrest place the case at the intersection of police procedure and a wider effort to prevent the truth from emerging.

Background and Official Handling

After Stuckart’s death, Gestapo inquiries concluded that his case and Josef Buhler’s were connected. The matter was transferred to the Gestapo, and the Reichsführer was informed. Yet March and Max Jaeger pursued their own inquiries at Stuckart’s apartment, despite March having no authorization to enter the deceased’s home. The official account therefore casts the detectives’ investigation itself as an irregularity, even as it acknowledges the connection between the two deaths.

March’s Reconstruction

March tells Artur Nebe that he believes Stuckart’s murder was carried out by three people: two inside the apartment and a third in the foyer, pretending to repair the elevator. In his reconstruction, the sound of the electric drill was meant to cover the gunshot and give the killers time to leave before the body was discovered. This account explains the supposed repair work as part of the attack’s concealment, not an incidental detail. March also questions the suicide note, allowing that it may have been forged or written under duress rather than accepting it as proof of suicide.

Arrest at the Apartment

Karl Krebs’s statement fixes March and Jaeger’s apprehension at 12:12 a.m. on April 16, at Stuckart’s apartment. Krebs says they agreed to accompany him to Gestapo Headquarters while the matter awaited clarification at a higher level. In the same official account, the repeated transfer of the linked death inquiries to the Gestapo sits alongside the arrest of the investigators who conducted their own search. The case thus turns not only on how Stuckart died, but on who was permitted to investigate his death.

Significance in the Wider Narrative

The book places Stuckart’s murder within a pattern of missing or dead witnesses connected to the Wannsee Conference: thirteen of the fourteen attendees are dead, while Martin Luther is missing. Against that pattern, March’s suspicion that the suicide was staged makes the apartment’s apparent explanation part of the mystery rather than its resolution. The larger danger is expressed through the state’s management of public knowledge: propaganda teaches citizens not to open a parcel without knowing what it contains, while the narrative turns that caution into a warning against asking questions whose answers the authorities control. The murder investigation consequently bears on the novel’s central conflict over whether evidence and testimony can survive a regime determined to dictate the past.