The visitor’s heart sank at this, for he had had the idea that Göring’s purpose might be to send him to the Führer, as had happened prior to “Munich.” But not again! The air commander declared: “I have to admit that the British have disgusted me, and I am not interested to hang Sir Nevile’s Lady Patience on my dining-room walls. The Poles are stark mad, but a good part of that madness has been deliberately created by cunning British intrigue. They promise aid, but what aid can they mean to send?”
“It would be more proper for me to ask you, Hermann; for you are a military man, while I am only an art expert.”
“Will they send a fleet through our mine fields in the Skagerrak? Or will they sacrifice part of their inadequate air force? Can they imagine getting an army ashore on the Continent in time to save Poland?”
“They have been told that the Führer desires never to face a two-front war,” returned Lanny, mildly.
“It is not a two-front war when one enemy is destroyed before the other can take the field. Poland, from a military point of view, is like one of those sets which the motion-picture people build, all front, and behind it nothing. When the British realize that, they will consider seriously whether they desire to fight a long and exhausting war to no purpose.”
“Then you won’t bomb London or Paris at the outset?”—a bold question to ask of an air-force commander, only a few days before his planes were scheduled to fly.
But Göring believed that he had all the cards in his hands and didn’t mind laying them on the table. “Of course not,” he said. “We don’t want war; we only want to find out what others want. Tell the British for me that we shall give them plenty of time to think it over, and to realize what they are getting themselves in for.”
“I think they know it already, Hermann. Some two months ago I was shown in London a bulletin of an organization which calls itself ‘The Friends of Europe Information Service.’ You know about them, doubtless.”
“We do not overlook anything that our enemies are doing.”
“Well, this bulletin outlined the procedure which Germany intended to follow, and it was just about what you have told me.” Lanny didn’t say that it was Rick who had shown him this bulletin, or that Rick had had a lot to do with the compiling of it—using Lanny’s information in part.
“The Führer’s policy has always been open and aboveboard,” declared the Führer’s man of war. “All we want is to have our own returned to us. We should prefer to receive it as a gift, an act of justice; but if we have to take it, well and good. Let our foes do what they please, and we will meet them. No one will be able to say that Germany has sought war, or has ever committed an act of aggression.”
Lanny would have liked to say: “Tell that to the Czechs!” But he understood that you shouldn’t make jokes when you know that the other fellow has a guilty conscience.
XII
On Monday morning Lanny was returned to his hotel. He called the office of Rudolf Hess, and learned that the boss of the NSDAP was still at Berchtesgaden. Lanny had written him a note to that place and had been hoping to find a reply in his mail; but there was only silence, and Lanny realized that he was in the doghouse, along with all other fellow-citizens and subjects of Franklin Delano Rosenfeld, Dutch-Jewish, democratic-plutocratic-communistic dictator.
This was the fourteenth of August, and according to Monck, the date of the attack on Poland was eleven days off. Lanny had time enough for a trip to Switzerland to send an airmail letter to Washington. But he had already written from Paris that war was no more than a month off; and as to the exact date, he had known Adi Schicklgruber to change his mind suddenly, and he had hopes that it might happen again. If only an American psychologist could figure out some way to get hold of him and apply his arts!
Lanny called the office of Heinrich Jung, who was one of the few men able to say that he had visited the aforesaid Adi while Adi was in prison fifteen years ago. Such persons always had access to the Führer—that is, unless they were in the position of Ernst Röhm and some of his cronies, killed in the Blood Purge. Lanny was out of luck again, for Heinrich had been ordered to Nuremberg to arrange for the Youth part of the week’s celebration known as the Parteitag, which took place the beginning of every September. Special attention was to be given this year to the enlightenment and inspiration of the Hitlerjugend, so Heinrich’s secretary informed Heinrich’s American friend; she must have telegraphed or telephoned her boss, for a couple of hours later there came a wire from Nuremberg begging Lanny to attend the magnificent series of events as Hitler’s guest. If Monck’s information was correct, that magnificent series wasn’t going to occur; but of course the Nazis would go on making preparations, as a matter of camouflage.
Lanny bethought himself of Otto Abetz, who had come to Berlin, and now was pleased to accept an invitation to lunch at the Adlon. This agreeable conversationalist passed a couple of hours with the American playboy—for Lanny could still play playboy whenever he wanted to. Herr Abetz revealed that he was deeply grieved by the failure of his mission to France, but his love for that country was still undiminished. It didn’t take Lanny long to unveil the fact that his love was confined to those French who agreed with him, and that he bitterly hated those who had invited him to pack up his valuable papers and depart from his wife’s native land to his own.
Herr Abetz took his personal sorrow philosophically; he saw what had happened sub specie æternitatis, so he said. It was the fate of France which had been determined, and the tragedy lay in the fact that the wrong side had won. The Jewish-Bolshevik politicians had succeeded in holding the country to the policy of trying to encircle Germany, and the consequences of that were to be painful indeed for poor Marianne. Herr Abetz didn’t set a date for the falling of the ax, but he said that meteorological factors on the eastern front would attend to that. Lanny ascertained that the unofficial ambassador had not had an opportunity to report directly to the Führer, but only to Herr von Ribbentrop. After that Lanny diverted the conversation to Paris; he said that in an amateur and voluntary way he would do what he could to take Herr Abetz’s place. He named persons whom he believed to be the best friends of Germany in France, and made mental notes of what Abetz had to say about all of them, their honesty, their competence, and their associations. It was like calling the roll of the Comité France-Allemagne, and also of the Comité des Forges.
XIII
In the evening, the appointment with Monck. Having got his fellow-conspirator safely into his car, Lanny opened up: “I met Göring, and he didn’t set a date, but he confirms your statement that Hitler’s mind is closed. Göring declares that he isn’t going to stick his neck out. I haven’t heard from Hess, so evidently he is taking care of his anatomy, too.”
“I have had further word,” replied the German. “The date stands, as regards Poland, and the agreement with Russia will be announced within the week.”
Monck, of course, wanted to hear the whole story of what had happened at Karinhall, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t. A fascinating experience for him, to be taken into the den of that old-style robber baron, that bloody-handed bandit who had built the Gestapo and strangled the labor and Social-Democratic movements which Monck had spent his life helping to build. Now Der Dicke had relinquished that special job to Heinrich Himmler, who was even more scientifically and coldly murderous; but Monck hadn’t yet got off with the old hate and on with the new. “Some day our time will come,” he said; “and I’ll be the one to get into Karinhall by the back door and empty that bastard’s guts onto the marble floor of his dining hall.”
But this holiday, by all the signs, was a long time off, and meantime Monck had another tale to tell. “I had a meeting with the lady from Baltimore,” he said. “We spent a couple of hours in the Tiergarten, I think without attracting any special attention. We had what I could call the oddest conversation I ever heard of.”
“What is she doing now?”
“She is thinking about you; she told me
all about you, and asked my advice. She has taken up the notion that you must be some sort of secret agent in the pay of the Nazis, and wanted to know whether it might not be her duty to report you to the F.B.I, or somebody.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Lanny.
“On my honor as a comrade! She has been listening attentively to everything you have said to her, and applying her keen mind to it. She told me a lot of things about you—things I was interested to learn.”
“You didn’t give her any hint that you knew me, I hope!”
“Surely not. All I admitted was that I had heard of the Budd-Erling plane. At first, she said, she had decided that you came to Germany on your father’s business with Göring, which she considers infamous. But then she noted your sudden disappearance and tried to find out what you were doing in France and England. She has become convinced that the picture business is a blind, and likewise your devotion to music, literature, and art. She is certain that you are an ardent and active Fascist.”
“By heck!” said Lanny. “I am a good actor!”
“You bet—none better! She has been leading you on to talk, and has noted the fact that when you go to Paris you don’t meet painters, you meet public men—and the same in England. She has read about Otto Abetz being expelled from France, and she thinks you are another of that sort.”
“I had lunch with him today, and he thinks so too! But go on.”
“What worries her most is that you go to America, and she is sure that you meet important public men there and bring back reports to Göring and Hitler. She wanted to know if that wouldn’t be against the law, and I did the best I could, not knowing your law. I said it would be if you brought military information, but not if you confined yourself to political and business conditions, the state of public opinion and such matters. Is that correct?”
“I am afraid it is,” replied Lanny. “Our country is overrun with all sorts of foreign agents.”
“I think I was able to dissuade her from taking any action,” said Monck. “I told her that many businessmen came and went, and collected all sorts of information and passed it on; there was nothing we common people could do about it. The funniest thing of all, Budd—she thinks your efforts to frighten her out of Germany are suspicious.”
“What would I be doing that for?”
“You are trying to protect the Nazi movement, by keeping her from finding out too much about it and putting it in a bad light before the American public. She says you made up a cock-and-bull story about her maternal grandmother having sent her a message from the spirit world.”
“Oh! She thinks I made that up?”
“She says you are as clever as the devil. At first the story seemed plausible and she believed you. It was only after she went off and thought it over that she realized—you had had every opportunity to find out about her from her relatives. You went out of the way to tell her you had never told her relatives about meeting her, and she thinks that is very unlikely. Did you ever mention her?”
“I really did not; but I didn’t tell her the reason—I have an idea the Baltimore girl wants to marry me, and I didn’t want to set the two cousins in each other’s hair.”
“Well,” said the ex-Capitán, with a laugh, something he did rarely, “I had the idea this girl might fall in love with you; but now she wants to land you in jail.”
“The two states of mind are not so far apart as you might think,” replied the experienced ex-playboy. Then, after a pause: “What should I do about all this?”
“I have thought it over,” declared the other. “I think you should call Miss Creston on the phone at once and tell her that you overlooked to suggest that if she leaves Germany she should let you know her future address.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“At present she thinks she ought to stay in Berlin and find out more about you. If she thinks you will get in touch with her in Paris or London, that will relieve her mind, and she’ll probably go.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” said the son of Budd-Erling.
BOOK FIVE
Ancestral Voices Prophesying War
17
Oh, What a Tangled Web!
I
Everybody in Berlin was talking war. The poor, the “common” people, talked about it with fear and dismay. “1st es möglich, mein Herr?” or “Was will England eigentlich?” They all knew that England was to blame, that England was bent on surrounding Germany, depriving her of Lebensraum, of the right to grow which England herself had enjoyed for centuries. The well-to-do, the influential and important persons with whom Lanny talked, discussed it as a sporting proposition, as people on the Riviera discussed various systems to beat the roulette wheel. The wheel of diplomacy was the most complicated and uncertain in the world.
Europe might be compared to a kaleidoscope, into which you peered and saw a pattern, then you jiggled it and looked again and there was a new pattern. The Great Jiggler, who lived in a retreat on the Obersalzberg, had made up his mind to make another shift in the pattern—so the insiders declared. He had decided that Britain was arming against him, and that the longer he delayed the worse his position would be. He had decided that the “Colonels” who governed Poland were madmen—mad with their own conceit, hunger for glory, hatred of the Herrenvolk. He was going to put them in their place, close that absurd Corridor, and reunite East Prussia with the rest of the Fatherland. All that had been decided; but then, he was a man of moods, and who could tell what the next might be? So whispered various ladies and gentlemen to Lanny Budd, looking now and then over their shoulders.
Affairs with Poland had reached a position of stalemate; all negotiations had come to an end. Poland was in possession, and it was up to Germany to make the next move. The Nazis had an assortment of moves which they had tried out in several other countries. SA men and arms were being smuggled into Danzig, which was supposed to be under the protection of the League of Nations, but whose government was now Nazi. “Incidents” would occur—and who was to place the blame for them, who was to know or tell the truth? The Nazis wanted to claim Danzig as a German city, but at the same time to deny Poland the right to charge duty on goods imported from Danzig into Poland. A Nazi fishing fleet went out and caught herring, and were they to go into Poland duty free? A British concern in Danzig, using Dutch capital, made margarine, and if the Poles charged an import duty on that, it became an international “incident.”
Diplomats running from one capital to the next, exchanging visits, delivering memoranda. The British ambassador came back to Berlin, and had an interview with Ribbentrop’s assistant, and quarreled with him, as English diplomats were not supposed to do. Shudders ran through Berlin society, and reached a presidential agent. Sir Nevile had solemnly warned that Britain meant to back Poland; he was unimpressed by the argument that the Polish Cabinet was made up of lunatics, and that this released Britain from her treaty obligations. So, then, it was to be war! Or was it? “Was glauben Sie, Herr Budd?”
II
Hilde, Fürstin Donnerstein, flew to Berlin from her summer châlet. Lanny had written her a note, and now she called him. “Do please come to see me, I am in such trouble!” Helping fashionable ladies in trouble had been Lanny’s specialty since the age of three or four; so he went, and this nervous, high-strung wife of an elderly Prussian nobleman poured out her unhappy soul to the former husband of her friend Irma Barnes. Her eldest son, a sub-lieutenant just out of military school, had been ordered to join his regiment at twenty-four hours’ notice. Hilde had rushed here to see him off and hadn’t yet succeeded in drying the tears of parting.
“A German mother!” she exclaimed. “That is what we are made for—to part, then to wait, then to mourn!” Before the Fürstin did any more of it she got up and went to the door of her drawing-room and peered out. Then she put the “tea-cosy” over the telephone, because of her belief, true or false, that the Gestapo had a way of listening even when the receiver was on the hook. “Now, Lanny,” she sa
id, “tell me the truth and don’t spare me! Is there going to be war?”
“Liebe Freundin,” replied the American, “it is from such signs as your son’s orders that we have to make our guesses. Where have they sent him?”
“It is the most sacred of secrets; I had to swear——”
“Well, then, of course——”
“Aber—with you it is all right. To Kreuzburg, in Upper Silesia.”
“I know where it is. That is one of the districts from which a march into Poland will begin.”
“We shall not be content to take the Corridor and Danzig?”
“Surely not, my dear. In war it is necessary to defeat your enemy’s army, and not just to take a strip of territory.”
The Fürstin began mopping her eyes again, and begging her guest’s pardon. “I have fought so hard against believing this, and now it is like the end of the world. My other son will soon be of military age. Will it be a long war, Lanny—like the last?”
Most Germans were sure that the Führer’s magic would work this time as it had worked over a period of six years; and it would have been very bad form indeed for Lanny to hold any other opinion. He could rely upon authorities such as Oberst Furtwaengler and General Meissner; Hilde in return would tell him what her husband said, and various diplomats and soldiers in her circle. All of them agreed upon one thing, Germany must never again get into a two-front war. The only argument that could justify the move now impending was that Poland was so weak, she was not really a front.
That brought up the question of Russia. “Have you heard,” whispered Hilde, and Lanny whispered back that he had heard, and what did she think about it? The noble lady got up and opened the door again before she answered; then she said: “I really believe it. I expect the announcement will be made soon.”
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