A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany

by Joseph T Major

  The radio host and journalist's promise on the air had finally come to pass. He had come to Germany to record a show. Their words were taken down on wax, to be played back in America when Woollcott returned. Presumably there would also be articles, speeches, commentaries . . . Manfred needed no consultant to realize this opportunity to speak directly to the Americans.

  He reiterated his comments about being able to predominate in Germany and went on, "The British had proposed that we be allowed to have an army as large as the French! This was most generous of them, and in my opinion most realistic, also. My advisors and I were willing to deal on that basis. We realize the French have the defense of their colonies to consider, and in return for their acceptance, pledged to not build up to that size unless the situation warranted it."

  "What about your general relations with France? Aren't there a lot of stresses there, over the Rhineland, over Alsace and Lorraine?"

  "Considering other French matters -- if the people of Elsass and Lotharingen wish to rejoin the Reich, I for one will welcome them. As long as they choose to be French, we Germans have no grounds for complaint in the matter. We all hope they will see our side of the argument, but my government will abide by the relevant treaties and agreements.

  "The Rhineland, too. In many cases the French have not acted in the best tradition of their history during the occupation there, and you can understand that I deplored this, as did many other patriotic Germans. We do recall that the Americans acted more respectfully. Nevertheless, Germany has rejoined the ranks of democratic, respectable nations, and we will abide by our word, as we abide by the right to strive to amend the situation peaceably."

  Hugenberg, or some of his people, might not be pleased with that. Either annoy the Nationalists, break the coalition, and let the Nazis in, or annoy the French, be toppled like Brüning, and let the Nazis in. He had let himself in for that. The dark gray sound-absorbing cloth of the Deutsche Rundfunk studio had no political alignment; Goebbels might speak today, Münzenberg tomorrow, all the same.

  "Hasn't Germany begun to recover in the past few months? President Roosevelt himself praised your system of public works, and just in my few days here I have seen them building up your country -- the roads, the parks, the levees," Woollcott said now. "Your ingenuity is noteworthy, and the president has plans to establish a similar service."

  Manfred explained about Schleicher's secret plans, without mentioning that Schleicher had originated them, and went on to say, "I have to give credit to my ministers for so ably executing the plan." There, that should please Hugenberg.

  He managed to survive the rest of the interview, which broke off at intervals to change a record or pause for a commercial, without potentially offending any other cabinet member. It was well that Woollcott had not asked about Papen. The Ambassador to America had sent Manfred a bundle of American newspaper clippings where editorialists had disapproved of the Notorious Saboteur Papen remaining in the German government. In any case, Papen was off to Rome . . .

  "Thank you, Baron von Richthofen," Woollcott said, waited for the recording supervisor to signal him, and then said, "I'll tell the President about your aims, the next time I go see Eleanor." At his look of incomprehension the talk-show host went on, smiling proudly, "My dear fellow! I thought you knew. The first lady and I are like two peas in a pod. I can assure you that they will listen very favorably to reports from Woollcott. You could not have chosen a better source for passing along your communications."

  Manfred decided to change the subject. "Where is Arthur?" he said. "I thought he was the one that you were with like two peas in a pod."

  "He's filming a new movie with his brothers. A masterpiece, as is to be expected. The President has hinted that Harpo will be sent to Russia to entertain them when he opens diplomatic relations with them later this year, and I expect that you will see him well housed during his stopoff here along the way . . ."

  "That Herr Voollckott is impossible!" Viktoria cried. "He commands the staff -- he gave me orders! The maids are threatening to quit! And the bills! There are telephone calls across the Atlantic! Hundreds of telegrams! Meals, even the hot water! The costs will be enormous!"

  Woollcott had not yet come down, so the brothers and Bolko's wife had begun eating their evening meal. Manfred looked at his sister-in-law and said, "It could be worse. He could injure himself and have to stay here."

  Fortunately for international peace, Woollcott's comprehension of spoken German was not quite as good as (say) Arthur's, and the man did not understand what had gone on just before he came to dinner.

  The principal topic was more art than other things, but at the end, Manfred said casually, "We are undertaking a very significant negotiation which I believe will be of interest to many of your listeners. Now this will be confidential until the papers are signed, but we are . . ." Woollcott could not have looked more like an owl as he sat there, eyes wide in rapt attention.

  CHAPTER 11

  Reichskanzlei, Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany, Thursday, July 20, 1933

  "Finally, affairs are taking a turn for the better," Papen said as he looked out the window, seeing the guards salute the departing Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli. "First we win a victory in Bavaria, and now this."

  The newspapers (except for the Münzenberg papers and the Goebbels/Streicher rags) had covered intensively the signing of the Concordat. Papen had spent most of the previous month and the first part of this in Italy, negotiating with the Pope and the Secretary of State over the details, which in the end turned out to be just what the Bavarian government had obtained. Pope Pius had originally insisted that the signing be in the Vatican, but when reminded of the Government of National Concentration's position as the only bulwark between Rome and a Red Germany (that was the opinion of Cardinal Pacelli, something Papen had been quite happy to let pass), agreed to give the government a boost by letting the signatures be in Berlin. This concession would look good with the Catholics, in Bavaria, in Westphalia (Papen's constituents), in Silesia, and so on.

  So Manfred and Papen had looked on, smiling, as Cardinal Pacelli had signed for the Vatican, and Neurath for the Reich. Flash bulbs had flashed, a cameraman had recorded the signatures for the newsreels, and even radio broadcasters (which was why it had been important to get Woollcott on their side, so to speak, in order to influence the American Catholic vote, and through that, the American government) had heralded the "reconciliation between the German Reich and the Catholic Church." He couldn't afford a new Kulturkampf; they had enough enemies as it was.

  Manfred had been looking at the Cardinal's departure from another window; now he went back to his desk, turned over some papers, and said, "Bavaria. It's not quite as much as we could have done. The Nazi factions got about twenty percent of the vote, and the Bolsheviks held most of their former share. We have a majority there now, but . . . I'm afraid that 'orange' comment that Goebbels had made will stick."

  Papen had seen the Cardinal Secretary of State get into the car and be driven back to the archbishop's palace; now he turned and said, "Is that such a bad thing? I think it's highly flattering. You are the man keeping Germany together, not just the government; you are the peel that holds together our fracticious political orange slices."

  "Perhaps .. . As for the other matter, now that we have the signatures to the Concordat, I have to go report to the Reichspräsident about the accomplishment. When I talked to Bolko before the signing he told me he was having a good day this morning, but I think Hindenburg really wants to go to Neudeck," Manfred said, and got to his feet.

  One of the provisions of their new Concordat forbade the clergy from taking part in secular politics, and so the Center Party held an election that weekend to choose a leader to replace Herr Monsignor Kaas. There were many qualified candidates for them to choose from; Herr Joos, Kaas's deputy, might be said to have had the inside track.

  The distinguished Ministers, Herr Wirth, or Herr von Guéraud, might do well, having act
ual position as well as party support. Or they might have turned to distinguished former ministers -- even Herr Brüning, who was popular abroad. (Of course Herr Brüning was abroad at the moment himself, but there are such things as the telegraph.)

  Or, they might reach down into the lower ranks, find a younger man, a fresh new face, to usher in a new era of leadership. The Oberbürgermeister of Köln, Herr Adenauer, came to mind among those so speculating.

  On Sunday, having made their choice, the assembled party members went to a Mass conducted by the distinguished Monsignor himself. Also present, as a special guest, even though he professed a heresy, was the distinguished Herr Reichskanzler. Manfred sat and watched, sizing up his followers of the moment, as they accepted communion.

  Last of all, of course, was the new Party Chairman, who returned to his seat by the distinguished guest and Reichskanzler. The service went on, with special prayers for those in authority. Manfred had been slow in school and the Latin went over his head.

  Then the service came to an end, Kaas blessed the congregation, and they got up to leave.

  "I appreciate it," Papen said.

  "What? My coming?"

  "Well, that too. But if it hadn't been for your support, I never would have been elected. Ach! Half a year, thrown away, and all for petty jealousy!"

  Manfred suspected that Papen's victory in the election had been very narrow, and based mostly on the hope that the Zentrum would thereby have a leader who had the chancellor's ear. But they made a respectable pair as they walked out of the church and to their official cars, as cameras flashed recording the first official day of the outcast become leader.

  "The Herr Reichspräsident expects you at our service at the Garnisonkirche next Sunday," Manfred said. "All the other ministers will be there." What did the English say, turnabout was fair play? That service would be the joint communion of the German people against foreign doctrines, before the tombs of the founders of the nation, Friedrich der Grosse and his father, Friedrich Wilhelm, the great Prussian monarchs, with their lesser heir, the former Kronprinz Wilhelm, sitting behind the Reichspräsident, while the Reichskanzler and the cabinet prayed together.

  The uninvited guests were behind police lines now, as they would be next week; brown shirts and black clustered in knots, waving various placards. It was hard to characterize a Catholic service as Jewish, but the Herr Doktor Goebbels could twist words, and Herr Röhm just said what he pleased.

  Monday was not a good day. In spite of everything, the Nazis remained in power in Lippe, of course, and also in Oldenberg, Anhalt, and Thuringia. Oldenberg had gone over to Strasser, but Thuringia and Anhalt remained loyal to Herr Hitler and his flunkey Herr Frank. The Nazi government in Mecklenburg had fallen with the split but still had members of the Röhm and Strasser factions in its governing coalition.

  This did not make for good interstate relations. Official government documents issued from Erfurt denouncing the "Reds in Berlin and their Orange flunkey" did tend to cause discontent among the Beamter receiving them. And so on up to meetings of the Landespräsidenten being disrupted by Nazi slogans.

  He could have suspended those state governments. There was a precedent, sitting in the cabinet even. By comparison, Papen had been utterly unprovoked last year when in his turn he had suspended the government of Prussia. Which was why he couldn't do it . . . yet. Perhaps when national affairs were more stable. Some of the responses the government could make were petty, such as putting the Nazi states last on the list for Labor Service projects.

  That now was something to be glad about. "The Communist vote is the unemployed vote," Noske had once observed, and reducing the Communist vote was something the members of the disparate coalition could agree on. At least he had been able to forbid any political training in the camps! No one could agree on what could be taught, and so it was better to forbid everything. The Zentrum was pleased there would be no Social Democracy, the Social Democrats pleased there would be no Nationalist propaganda, the Nationalists pleased there would be no corrupt liberalism from the State or People, and . . . They had already arrested several Bolshevik agents trying to turn the Labor Service into a Worker's and Peasant's Service.

  But all the while Herr Hitler's black-shirted legions marched through the streets in Thuringia, while Röhm's disarrayed ranks reorganized under the ambit of the government of Mecklenburg. Their representatives shouted imprecations from the state-representatives' seats in the Reichstag, and likewise disrupted sessions of the Reichrat.

  Those third-hand reports . . . confidential friends were telling Papen in confidence that they had heard that Herr Hitler was meeting secretly with Thyssen and Gustaf Krupp, promising big arms orders and a new labor order once he came to power. To believe that or not? Nazi credit would be rather low these days, or such was his opinion, but the credulity of some of his fellow industrialists was higher, as if in compensation.

  The newspapers were not particularly pleasing either. While the mainstream papers from the Ullsteins' Vössische Zeitung to Hugenberg's Lokalanzeiger gave the Concordat respectful coverage, and of course Papen's Germania made it out to be wonderful, this morning's Angriff was quite a different matter. The Doktor was practically hydrophobic this morning: "Germany Sold Into Clerical Slavery!!!" the front-page editorial said. When he had seen that, with the photograph of the Cardinal Secretary of State leaving the Reichskanzlei labeled "Papal Tyrant Pacelli With Germany's Chains In His Hands", he had thought one couldn't get lower, unless . . .

  Der Stürmer didn't disappoint him. Streicher let loose with everything he had. Obscene (even for him) drawings of naked nuns copulating on altars, priests keeping and using harems of altar boys, grossly bloated bishops sitting on piles of secrets . . . could it be, now that Röhm was no longer a force to be reckoned with in their faction of the party, that Streicher and Herr Hitler felt free to indulge in that sort of baiting?

  The coalition was having its strains. Braun was back in power again in Prussia, but the Social Democrats did not forget Papen's usurpation. At the same time, in a spectacular act of ingratitude, Hugenberg did not care for Papen any longer -- because he had reversed himself!

  When Papen had apologized for any trouble the takeover of the Prussian government had caused -- "Matters such as the murders at Potempa made it look as if the authorities had lost control, but now it appears that that impression may have been misleading, or that it represented a temporary state of affairs, which is now over," he had said -- Hugenberg had denounced him as erratic, inconsistent, untrustworthy, and worse: "Tricky pig-dog!" and even less flattering comments. There was little love lost between the Nationalists and the Social Democrats, for that matter.

  The three main parties of the coalition could make it come apart at any moment. Manfred imagined flying along in a Dreidecker and seeing all three wings start to come off. The mental image served well at keeping him from sleeping overmuch.

  All in all he felt like last week's Simplissimus cartoon showing Ebert the centaur looking down from Heaven on a very familiar-looking pegasus-centaur, with the wild-eyed Bolshevik and Nazi riders beating him up, and saying, "Ach, the more things change the more they stay the same."

  With such thoughts rolling through his burdened mind, Manfred sat at his desk, wishing desperately for the good old days of October 1918, when all he had to worry about were Allied fliers, the disintegrating economy, the impossible demands of the High Command, and constant headaches.

  "Good morning, Herr Reichskanzler," said Papen, as he entered. "You may find this information I have uncovered to be interesting. A newspaper reporter from Leipzig interviewed Herr Hitler a couple of years ago, and he had some very interesting observations on the facilities at their party headquarters. I wonder what an examination of the National Socialists' financial records would bring . . ."

  That investigation took up most of August, and produced some scandalous headlines in the "moderate" papers, but nothing more. Münzenberg certainly couldn't say anything about sha
dy Nazi finances; his papers were even more questionable in that regard. At least the money financing the Nazis came from within the country.

  After reading the commentary in the newspapers, the confidential reports by the Preussichepolitischpolizei, and the minutes of the various state ministries of justice, Manfred summoned the Reichs justice minister, Herr Joël. Who informed him that there was nothing to be done.

  At least in the military field he could get something done, and he resolved to start off September with at least some sort of military show.

  General Lutz was so proud he could almost burst. "Heinz, have them see the guest book! We are honored! The first Reichskanzler since Bismarck himself to visit here!" he said.

  Before Guderian could be set to work -- or really, to relay the order, Manfred said, "I believe you! But you know how I feel!"

  Noske coughed. "I want to talk to the mechanics."

  All around the four of them, motor vehicles were kicking up dust. Some were armored troop carriers, trucks with heavy metal sides and the like. Others were automobiles with cloth frames over them, made to look like tanks. And there were one or two actual armored combat vehicles, reconnaissance cars with real cannon and machine guns.

  Putting into action Brüning's plans for expanding the Reichswehr, as modified in the light of Oberst Guderian's proposals, would serve to hamper the Nazis and keep the Bolsheviks down. Or so they hoped. But Manfred had to see the new weapons and new methods for himself, to satisfy his curiosity about the gadgetry, and so did Noske, to reassure himself about the doctrine (in more than one sense). So it was that the Reichskanzler and the Reichswehr Minister were visiting the army's proving ground in Brandenburg.

  "You've been working on this for a while," Manfred said. Schleicher's reticence had actually proven useful in this case, in that no one outside the country had been bothered much by this infringement on the terms of the Dictated Treaty.