War and Remembrance

by Herman Wouk

  “Oh? Well then, there’s still number fifteen. Let’s get at that. It’s hard, you know, to split the herring down the BACKBONE, as you might say. There are some things Pug and I really share. One of us will have to end up without them. It can’t be helped. Pictures, mementos, that sort of thing. I’ve made a selection. Pug can have anything I’ve kept back. I’ll take anything he doesn’t want. Can’t be fairer than that, can I?” Rhoda gave her a bright smile.

  “Certainly not,” said Pamela, and to turn the conversation she added, “Look, something is bothering me. Did you say you’d never been here before?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, dear, before I married Hack I wouldn’t have DREAMED of coming to his bachelor lair. Caesar’s wife, and all that. And afterward, well —” Rhoda’s mouth twisted to one side, and she suddenly looked coarser, older, and very cynical — “I decided I really wanted no part of his memories here. Do I have to draw you a PICTURE?”

  At the brief uncomfortable meeting in a lawyer’s office for signing documents about the house and the apartment — which Pamela had attended at Pug’s lawyer’s request, and at which Rhoda had offered to help with this move — Rhoda’s face had flashed that look just once; when Peters had overridden a remark of hers in an offhand contemptuous way.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “All right. So let’s just dig into number fifteen, shall we? Look here.”

  Rhoda pulled out and showed her photograph albums of the children, of houses the Henrys had lived in, of picnics, dances, banquets, of ships in which Pug had served, where Rhoda posed with him in sunlight at a gun mount, or on a bridge, or walking the deck, or with the commanding officer. There were framed pictures of the couple — young, not so young, middle-aged, but always close, familiar, happy; Pug’s usual pose was a half-admiring, half-amused look at Rhoda, the look of a loving husband aware of his wife’s foibles and crazy about her. Pamela felt as never before that she herself was a young interloper at the tail end of Victor Henry’s life; that whomever he lived with and called his wife, his center of gravity was forever fixed in this woman.

  “Now take this, for instance,” Rhoda said, laying the leather-bound Warren album on top of a box and turning the pages. “I had a hard time deciding about THIS one, I can tell you. Naturally I never thought of making two of these. Maybe Pug finds it painful. I don’t know. I love it. I made it for him, but he never uttered a single word about it.” Rhoda glanced at Pamela with hard shiny eyes. “You’ll find him tough to figure out sometimes. Or have you already?” She carefully closed the album. “Well, there it is, anyway. Pug can have it if he wants it.”

  “Rhoda,” Pamela said with difficulty, “I don’t think he’d want you to give up such things, and —”

  “Oh, there’s more, plenty more. I’ve got my share. You accumulate LOTS in thirty years. You don’t have to tell me ANYTHING about what I’ve given up, honey. So let’s have a look around at Hack’s den of INIQUITY, shall we? And then I’ll be on my merry way. Do you have a decent kitchen?”

  “Immense,” Pamela said hurriedly. “It’s through here.”

  “I’ll bet you found it FILTHY.”

  “Well, I did have to scrape and scrub some.” Pamela nervously laughed. “Bachelors, you know.”

  “Men, dear. Still, there’s a difference between Army and Navy. I’ve found that out.” Showing Rhoda through the place, Pamela tried to slip past the closed door of the pink and gold room, but Rhoda opened it and walked in. “Oh, GAWD. Whorehouse modern.”

  “It is a bit giddy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s ABOMINABLE. Why didn’t you make Hack redecorate and refurnish it?”

  “Oh, it’s simpler just to close it off. I don’t need it.”

  One entire wall consisted of sliding mirrors that covered a long closet. The two women stood side by side, looking into the mirror, and addressing each other’s images: Rhoda smartly dressed for springtime, Pamela in a plain blouse and straight skirt. Pamela looked like her daughter.

  I don’t need it was a trivial remark, or Pamela meant it so. But Rhoda failed to answer. Their eyes met in the mirror. A silence lengthened. The words gained portentousness second by second, and tactlessness, too. In Pug’s room there was only a double bed. The innocent statement swelled into something like this, and true enough: I’ll sleep with Pug, and live in that room with him. There are closets enough for both of us. I dont want a separate room. I love him too much. I want to stay near him.

  Rhoda’s mouth twisted far to one side. The eyes of her image, cynical and sad, wandered from Pamela’s face to the garish room. “I guess you don’t. Hack and I are finding separate rooms pretty handy, but then I’m getting on, aren’t I? Well, what else is on the tour?”

  Back in the living room, she looked out of the window and said, “You face south. That’s cheerful. What a fine magnolia tree! These older apartment houses are the best. Isn’t that schoolyard noisy? Of course it’s after hours now.”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Why is their flag at half-mast, do you suppose?”

  “Is it? So it is. It wasn’t half an hour ago.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Wrinkling her brows, Rhoda said, “Something about the war, maybe.”

  Pamela said, “I’ll turn on the radio.”

  It warmed up gibbering a Lucky Strike commercial. Pamela turned the dial.

  “… and Chief Justice Stone is now on the way to the White House,” said an announcer’s smooth voice, in professional dramatic tones troubled with real emotion, “to administer the oath of office to Vice President Harry Truman. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is flying to Warm Springs, Georgia —”

  “God save us, it’s the PRESIDENT,” Rhoda exclaimed. She threw a hand to her forehead, knocking her hat askew.

  The news was scanty. He had suddenly died of a stroke at his vacation home in Georgia. That was all. The announcer talked on and on about reactions in Washington. Rhoda gestured at Pamela to shut it off. She dropped in an armchair, staring. “Franklin Roosevelt DEAD! Why, it’s like the end of the world.” She spoke very hoarsely. “I knew him. I sat beside him at dinner at the White House. What an utter CHARMER he was! Do you know what he said to me? I’ll never forget it as long as I live. He said, ’Not many men deserve a wife as beautiful as you, Rhoda, but Pug does.’ Those were his words. Just being NICE, you know. But he certainly looked at me as though he MEANT it. Dead! Roosevelt! What about the war? Truman’s a NOBODY. Oh, what a nightmare!”

  “It’s ghastly,” Pamela said, her mind racing across world strategy to discern whether this might delay Pug’s return to Washington.

  “Hack said he left some booze here,” Rhoda said.

  “There’s lots.”

  “Well, you know what? The hell with that tea. Give me a good drink of straight Scotch, will you, dear? Then I’ll just go home.”

  Pamela was pouring the drink in the kitchen when she heard sobs. She hurried back into the living room. Rhoda sat amid the empty boxes and crates and trunks, streaming tears, her hat crooked, with the Warren album open on her lap. “It’s the end of the world,” she moaned. “It’s the end.”

  * * *

  The Bitter End

  (from “Hitler as Military Leader” by Armin von Roon) Brief Joy

  On 12 April when the news of Roosevelt’s death came, I was out inspecting Berlin’s defenses, mainly to ascertain for Speer how far along the demolition preparations were. Returning to the bunker, I could hear the sounds of rejoicing echo up the long stairs. I walked in on a celebration complete with champagne, cakes, dancing, music, and happy toasts. Amidst all the joy and wassail Hitler sat smiling around in a dazed benign way, holding his left hand with his right to still the trembling. Goebbels himself deigned to greet me, hobbling up and waving a newspaper. “Only cheerful faces here tonight, my good General! It’s the big turnabout at last. The mad dog has croaked.”

  That was the tenor of the party. Here was the
break Germany was waiting for, the “miracle of the House of Brandenburg” all over again, the deliverance of Frederick the Great by the Russian empress’s death, 1945 version. This was quite a success for the astrologers. They had been predicting a grand deliverance in mid-April.

  Of course the Russians under Zhukov were massing along the Oder, at one point only thirty-five miles from the bunker; and Eisenhower was marching to the Elbe; and southward the Anglo-Americans were breaking apart our lines in Italy; and another great Russian force under Konev was grinding through the Balkans to race Zhukov and the Americans to Berlin; and the skies over the city were raining bombs day and night. Our war production had virtually ceased. Our forces everywhere were running out of ammunition and gasoline. Millions of refugees from east and west were clogging the roads, bringing Wehrmacht movements to a standstill. Trains were being shunted here and there by the SS, blocking up the railroad system. But in the atmosphere of the cement molehole under the Chancellery, what did all that matter? It had become a place of dreams and fantasies. Any excuse for optimism was inflated into a “big turnabout,” though nothing ever equalled the brief glee over Roosevelt’s death.

  Next day the Red Army secured Vienna, and that let some gas out of the balloon. Yet on that very day as Speer and I sat discussing the grave demolition problem in Berlin, the Nazi labor administrator Ley came bubbling up to announce that some German back yard genius had just invented “the Death Ray!” It was as simple and cheap to manufacture as a machine gun. Ley had seen the plans himself, and prominent scientists had analyzed the apparatus for him. This was the big turnabout, if Speer would only start mass-producing the thing at once. With a straight face Speer appointed Ley on the spot “Commissioner of Death Rays,” with full authority to commandeer all German industry in Speer’s name for production of the wonder weapon. Ley went off drivelling happily, and we got back to our painful discussion.

  This whole swindle of “wonder weapons” and “secret weapons” was a trial for Speer, and for me once I became his liaison to OKW. Generals, manufacturers, bigwig politicians, and ordinary people would approach me with a nudge and a wink. “Isn’t it about time the Führer unleashed the secret weapon? When will it happen?” My own wife, the daughter of a general and an army wife to the core, pathetically asked me this herself. So far had Goebbels spread this cruel delusion through “leaks” and whispering campaigns, just to keep the bloodshed going and the Nazi cancer flourishing.

  The Party Takes Over

  By 1945 that cancer had metastasized all through the Fatherland. Party fools and plug-uglies like Ley permeated the state and military structures. The Waffen SS had become a rival army, absorbing the best new troops and equipment. In January Hitler actually appointed Heinrich Himmler to command Army Group Vistula, facing the brunt of the Red Army breakthrough in the north. Of course the result was disaster. Himmler’s idea of generalship was to execute officers who failed to hold hopeless positions he had ordered held. Later he threatened to execute their families, too. The bridges and villages in his area were festooned with the hanging bodies of German soldiers, labelled cowards or deserters.

  Naturally, all this National Socialist “inspiration” only reduced further the waning capability of our forces. The Russians quickly broke through Himmler’s front to the Baltic, cutting off much of our German power in East Prussia and Latvia. Only Dönitz’s splendid evacuation by sea, a forgotten rescue much greater than Dunkirk, saved those forces and much of the civilian population. Himmler meanwhile, as has been subsequently revealed, was secretly making his own peace feelers through Sweden, and simultaneously conducting fantastic negotiations to release surviving Jews for a big ransom.

  At last, much too late, Hitler sent General Heinrici to relieve this incompetent brute. Meanwhile, however, Hitler too was showing his true Nazi colors. When the Americans in a brilliant dash captured the Remagen bridge, he flew into a tantrum and ordered four fine officers shot for failing to blow up the bridge in time. One of them, as it happened, was my own brother-in-law. In such circumstances one’s oath of loyalty was quite a burden.

  Speer versus Hitler

  As staff liaison to Speer, I found my loyalty tested to the limit, for I was caught squarely between him and Hitler in the matter of demolition. The Führer was decreeing a “scorched-earth policy” in the face of the advancing enemy, east and west. In Berlin, essential services were to be totally demolished by our own explosives. Everywhere the Wehrmacht in retreat was to blow up bridges, railroads, waterways, highways, and leave a “transportation desert”; we were to flood the coal mines of the Ruhr, dynamite the steel plants, the electric and gas works, the dams, and in effect render Germany uninhabitable for a hundred years. When Speer ventured to object, Hitler simply shouted that the Germans had shown themselves unfit to survive anyway, or some such obdurate and merciless nonsense.

  Speer was as dedicated a Nazi as any of them. There was something doglike about his squirming deference to Hitler that always disgusted me; nevertheless he was a master of modern technology, and responsibility for the nation’s war production had forced him to keep his sanity. He knew that the war was lost, and he risked his neck for months to foil Hitler’s demolition orders. Sometimes he wheedled his way out of them by arguing that we would soon need all those bridges and other facilities, to support the Führer’s brilliant plans for counterattacking and regaining the lost territory. At other times he fudged his orders, authorizing a bridge or two blown up and leaving the rest of an area intact.

  Unfortunately, this double-dealing backed up to me, because I had to handle the generals who received Hitler’s orders. My job was to induce delays in carrying them out. After the execution of the four Remagen officers, these generals became harder to convince. Then at the situation conferences I had to exaggerate the demolition that had been done, and prevaricate about the rest. I was risking my head, as Speer was. The Führer was so far gone, however, in his dream world, that with luck one could wriggle through each conference by answering a perfunctory question or two.

  Besides, I was not alone now in lying to him. These conferences in April had become war games on paper, with no relation to the frightening realities outside the bunker. Hitler pored over the maps, ordered phantom divisions moved about, commanded big counterattacks, argued over minor withdrawals, just as in the old days, but none of it was actually happening. We were all in a tacit conspiracy to humor him with soothing pretenses. Yet his person continued to command our unswerving loyalty. Jodl and Keitel issued streams of methodical realistic orders to deal with the collapsing situation into which German honor had led us. Of course it could not go on. Reality had to come crashing into the dreamland.

  The Blowup

  On the twentieth of April, during the lugubrious little birthday party for Hitler, Jodl told me that I was to leave at once and set up a skeleton OKW North in conjunction with Dönitz’s staff. Our land communications were about to be cut in two by the juncture at the Elbe of the Americans and the Russians. Our military orientation therefore had to shift at a right angle; instead of facing west and east, we would now have a northern and a southern “front”! Words cannot convey the gloomy eeriness of all this at the time. So I missed the historic blowup at the situation conference on the twenty-second, which led to Hitler’s decision to die in Berlin, instead of flying to Obersalzberg to carry on the war from the southern redoubt.

  In my operational analysis of the battle for Berlin, I describe in detail the events of the twenty-second, turning on the phantom “Steiner attack.” For once Hitler could not be put off with soothing lies, because Russian shells were falling on the Chancellery and shaking the bunker. He had ordered a big counterattack from the southern suburbs under SS General Steiner. The staff had assured him, with the usual wealth of mendacious detail, that the attack was on. Well, then, he demanded, where was Steiner? Why weren’t the Russians being driven back?

  When he was at last brought face to face with the truth that there was no Steiner a
ttack, Hitler threw a fit of rage so horrible that nobody present could write or talk coherently about it thereafter. It seems to have been the last eruption of a dying volcano; a frightening explosion that left the man a dull burned-out shell, as I myself later saw; a three-hour screaming fit about the betrayal, treachery, and incompetence all around him that had frustrated his genius, lost the war, and destroyed Germany. Then and there he made his decision for suicide. Nothing could alter it. The result was a big exodus next day from the bunker. Jodl and Keitel went northwest to meet up with Dönitz, and most of the Nazi entourage scuttled off westward into one hole or another. Sauve qui peut!

  My Last Talk with Hitler

  I saw Hitler once more, on the twenty-fourth. Things were becoming very confused in this period. I received a peremptory summons by telex from Bormann, the repulsive toad who was Hitler’s shadow and appointments secretary, to report to the Chancellery. The Russians had the city surrounded, the air was thick with their fighters, their artillery made rings of bright fire, but with luck one could still fly over their lines at night and land near the Chancellery on the East-West Axis boulevard, which had been marked with red lanterns. Not caring much what happened to me, I found a young Luftwaffe pilot who regarded the thing as a sporting challenge. He got hold of a small Stork reconnaissance plane, and flew me in there and out again. I will never forget coming in over the Brandenburg Tor in the green glare of Russian star shells. That pilot is now, incidentally, a well-known newspaper publisher in Munich.

  Hitler received me in his private chambers. He questioned me closely about Dönitz’s headquarters at Plön, the efficiency of his staff, the communications with the south, and the state of Dönitz’s spirits. Perhaps he was making up his mind about the succession. It was after one in the morning, and I was desperately weary, but he was wound up, and he talked on and on. His eyes were glazed, his face doughy white with purple streaks. He hunched down in an armchair, rolling a stubby pencil in his left hand.