Lycanthropos by Jeffrey Sackett

emotionally stable as any S.S. officer. With that in mind, I repeat my request. Please take the time to view the film ."
    Himmler gazed long and hard at the young officer and then, choosing perhaps to indulge him or choosing perhaps to trust his own initial instincts regarding this man, he nodded his head curtly. "Very well. Where is the film?"
    "My adjutant is waiting outside with it," Schlacht said, relieved to have surmounted the first of the obstacles which he knew he was to face this day. "I have taken the liberty of arranging for a projector and a screen as well, so that you will be able to see the film here in your office."
    Himmler sat back in his chair and folded his hands demurely in his lap. "Proceed," he said softly.
    The next few minutes seemed to Schlacht to stretch on for an eternity. His adjutant Vogel brought in the film and the equipment and began to set up the projector and the portable screen. Schlacht stood by nervously and fidgeted as Himmler sat motionless, his face impassive and unreadable.
    The room was darkened and the black and white image of Janos Kaldy moved about on the silver projection screen. The flickering images were reflected in the lenses of Himmler’s spectacles, and Schlacht sought in vain for any indication of his chief’s reaction to what he was seeing.
    It was all there, captured on celluloid from the first wrenching spasm of pain which caused Kaldy to double over to that moment when the werewolf threw itself against the bars of the cell, at which point the S.S. guard had stopped turning the crank of the camera. Then the screen was filled with flickering white light as the end of the film reel spun about and slapped against the top of the projector. Vogel turned on the lights in Himmler’s office, and Schlacht turned to the Reichsführer , awaiting his response.
    Himmler sat pensively, his thin fingers steepled before his lips. Then he said, "Again."
    Schlacht nodded to Vogel, who proceeded to rewind the film. When it had been shown for the second time, Himmler said, "Rewind it again. I wish to show it to Festhaller." He reached over to his intercom and instructed his secretary to ask Festhaller to come to his office as quickly as possible. Schlacht knew that this polite request from the chief of the S.S. and the Gestapo would result in an almost immediate compliance. He was correct in his assumption, for not five minutes had passed, five tense, silent minutes, before Festhaller entered the office.
    Joachim Rudolf Festhaller was head of the Race and Species Classifications Division of the Anthropology Department of the University of Berlin . It was he who, after the passage of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935, brought it to the attention of the Party that the principles of National Socialism were not being observed in the Anthropology curricula of the universities throughout the Reich, and it fell to him, a hitherto minor and not particularly well-educated instructor at a small private girls school in Hessen, to reform said curricula. He had found a mentor in Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s official philosopher, who shared with him an uncritical acceptance of all manner of pseudo-scientific speculations about race and biology. They had even begun to formulate racially correct positions on matters as far beyond their ken as nuclear physics and architecture.
    Festhaller had persuaded Hitler and Himmler that everyone living within the borders of Germany needed to be classified according to species and race. With the extension of German military power from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara desert, from the coast of France to the interior of Russia, Festhaller had kept himself quite busy classifying people all over Europe, so busy in fact that he found himself obligated to suspend his activities at the university and work full time at S.S. headquarters in Berlin.
    He regarded his solution to the problem of classifying Dr. Goebbels as his greatest moment. In stark