While that argument was going on, with the party leaders clustered around the Reichskanzler, Noske had taken the time to talk to Hammerstein and the new Truppenamt chief, General Beck. While the strategists worked out how, should the damned diplomats finally mess it up again, to keep matters from being a rerun of last time, the damned diplomats and pestilent politicians settled the matter of memorializing that last time.
Even on such an event as this, more symbolic than significant, the parties continued their bickering. They were quarreling in a burning house, while outside, Nazis and Bolsheviks were piling on the fuel.
Finally, Papen ended up between Schwerin von Krosigk and Schacht. Ach, such a mess the grown-up Kinder made! By comparison, his own Kinder were orderly and decent.
"Uncle Manfred! Make him stop laughing at me!" Carmen cried.
"Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . . ." young Lothar cackled. "The Shadow knowsss."
"Children, children, be silent! Silent and respectful!" Manfred said, firmly.
Behind them, the divergent groups were waving the new flag, or the old one, and was that one of the Nazis' rags there? That was all they needed!
People like Woollcott and Norway were helping him. There was a list of people whose letters to the Herr Reichskanzler should go straight to his very own desk, instead of to the clerk under Bodenschatz who would sign the letter saying "The Herr Reichskanzler von Richthofen is interested in the content of your plea . . ." Herr Gernsback in New York was on that list, too. It wasn't perhaps surprising that the Herren Churchills, old and young, were there, or Eddie Rickenbacker. Indeed, had the list somehow got out, the most surprising omission among the flyers of the world would be Herr Lindbergh! "Not that he would write," Manfred had observed in a note to Eddie. "I doubt he is overly interested in anything else right now."
Understandably he was more pleased by his special correspondents than the normal run of affairs, which he had to review that morning. Monday had been nothing more than the usual news; Herr Doktor Goebbels calling for auxiliary police along the borders to prevent "undesirable elements" (read "Polish Jews") from entering the country, a riot in Anhalt between Röhm supporters and the Führertreu state government, Thälmann speaking in Mitte -- right here in Berlin, practically under his nose! -- and calling for increased revolutionary socialist vigilance against Trotskyists and other enemies of the people, and even regular politics.
The Zeppelin Company wanted to build another airship, one designed and best suited to use helium. Manfred remembered well being blown upwards by the last balloon that had fallen to Frank Luke's guns; he made a note to add an official endorsement to their request to the American government for the gas. (He chuckled at the thought of being able to build a Zeppelin that contained vacuum; it would have been perfect in the lift department, lighter than air indeed and never going to blow up. There just wasn't any metal that would be both light enough and hold up under the strain. Even though Herr Burroughs had given him such a glowing endorsement in that story: "Baron von Richthofen himself was full of praise for the mission. 'So your pilot is my Lieutenant Erich von Horst,' the great flyer said. 'One of my best pilots, one of my best men. You have chosen well, Lord Greystoke, and I wish you and your people good luck.'")
The first stretch of the new road system would be dedicated next week, and he would have to cut the ribbon. It ran, of course, from Berlin to Leipzig. Hugenberg had said, "We will build the road to Breslau first," and Manfred had said "Fine, I can inspect it twice a week as I fly over." So they built the road to Leipzig instead.
Eventually there would be ring roads around all the great cities of Germany as well as roads connecting them. New airports would be further connected by rail and road to the cities. This new zeppelin Doktor Eckener was building could fly from Berlin to New York and back, and unload a cargo of Americans wanting to see the future. Gernsback had already said he would come next summer, in a realization of one of his dreams. In the Graf Zeppelin, naturally.
Perhaps he had had a point there. The Bolshevik vote was the unemployed vote. Men working in the Labor Service would reject the blandishments of Stalin's mouthpiece Thälmann, they would vote Social Democratic or Nationalist, depending. The men who built the roads today would have experience, be used to getting up in the morning and going to work, and have money in their pockets with which to buy things, all which would mean they would have the habits and preparation to work for a private firm tomorrow. Junkers, Focke-Wulf, or Heinkel, for example. "This is the impetus which will justify a small expansion of the money supply," Schacht said. Those Gernsbackian projects, fanciful though they might be, created in the real world the turn away from Bolshevism.
Manfred sighed, looking at the balance sheet. Roads had to be built with steel in the concrete, bridges needed steel beams, even the giant amphitheater they were building for the forthcoming Olympics would need steel reinforcements. Steel meant "Krupp" and "Thyssen". This in turn meant that for every Mark going to build the roads there were a few pfennig somewhere along the line dropping into Herr Hitler's pockets. Worse yet, Papen was hearing that Thyssen was funding Röhm. "Laying off his bets," Bolko had said when that issue came up. SA men collecting for the Winterhilfe in Baden blocked the entrances to his gaming parlors, so he didn't care much for Röhm.
There was a letter from Herr Schmitt the Landespräsident of Baden to Herr Schäfer the Minister for Interstate Relations, copy to the Reichskanzler, about matters relating to the election there. Maybe next year there could be normal politics. The election in Baden, for example, where the electoral truce was, barely, holding up. If only Prince Max hadn't died in '29. (Or been sick back in '18, come to think of it.) Now there would have been the man to stand against the Red and Brown enemies! If only, if only, if only . . .
If only Schleicher would shut the hell up! There he was, on the front page of today's Vössische Zeitung, at the Black Front Totensontag rally in Oldenburg, with Strasser, speaking about how "the sacrifices of our men at the Front broke the path for the organic unity of the German Volk that is to come." (They deplored it, but they reported it.) At least Brüning was off in America whining about how "the Kaiserist method is resurgent in today's authoritarian anti-democratic Germany," and not here obstructing politics. Who had started this course of ruling by decree, anyhow? Why, Brüning himself. At least Manfred could get some things approved by the Reichstag, as Brüning had become unable to do. And now all they needed was a foreign policy crisis to really divide the nation. No one would be so kind as to attack the country and unify it, even if that did unify the country, which Manfred had begun to doubt. Or perhaps it would unify the country, under an occupation.
Manfred looked around the fusty office and dreamed of flying away. Maturity reasserted itself and he looked at it another way. That Totensonntag service might have had his name on the list of the honored dead, and where would the Reich be now? Or Hindenburg?
CHAPTER 13
Reichskanzlei, Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany, Tuesday, February 13, 1934
"Are you still holding out?" Noske said.
The connection from Vienna was poor, but he understood the man to say so. "Send help! Send guns and money!"
General von Hammerstein scowled. "Herr Reichwehr Minister, the Army has neither the equipment nor the authority to relieve the Schurzbund."
For a moment Manfred held his breath, fearing an explosion over insubordinate generals. Then Noske said, "The Chancellor has not ordered such an action, and he is the one with the authority to do so. Herr Richthofen?"
The atmosphere in the room was thick; not only were several of the people there smoking, but their concern was even more stifling. Not long after Manfred's accession to power, the Austrian Chancellor Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss had suspended their parliament and started ruling by decree. Manfred had said nothing about it at the time, being more concerned with keeping the German government from coming apart. Besides, as so much of his own government's work was then done through Presidential decrees, he felt
he could not be taken seriously were he to object.
He could understand that Dollfuss might have some reason to be so autocratic; as Germany had the Rotfront and the SA, so Austria had the Schurzbund and the Heimwehr, the militias of their Socialist Party and their Christian Socialist Party. And Nazis.
Dollfuss had been provoked often enough by the Austrian Nazis, and no one in the government had protested when they were banned back last March. Not even Strasser; the Austrian Nazis were mostly pro-Hitler.
But now, Dollfuss had decided to crack down on the Socialists. From the reports from Vienna and from Linz, the Schurzbund was resisting even more furiously than the SA had done there, and being repressed far more furiously. It seemed like 1919 down there, artillery blowing apart buildings, blood in the streets.
All the faces in the room were turned to him; Noske and Hammerstein, Papen and Neurath, and their subordinates. He would have to decide.
"We have neither the ability nor the authority to intervene," he said. "Noske, can you defend a two-front war?"
"Two-front -- oh, the French!" Noske said.
"No, we can't," Hammerstein said. "They may be having their own version of this little set-to, but their Army isn't going to be bothered by that gang."
"If we come in against Dollfuss, Mussolini comes in against us," Papen said. "He was already in the Italians' corner, and since the Herr Major Fey became Vicechancellor the Fascists are even more influential down there. The French, too, and they would have an additional interest; a foreign conflict -- the need to smack down the eternal Boche, invading their neighbors again -- that would put the Croix de Feu firmly behind the government, and stabilize their internal situation, keep the government from falling."
"You will recall that Herr Brüning's government fell when the French objected to our essay at a customs treaty with them," Neurath added. "The recent loan to the Austrian government was contingent on their not entering into such an agreement for a period of twenty years. The British government is also concerned about the problems of a union."
"Very well, you all see my point," Manfred said. "Now we need to impress it on the rest of our coalition."
For a change the marchers down the Wilhelmstrasse were of no National Socialist faction. Workers, students, women, pensioners, all wearing armbands with SPD on them in huge block letters marched in front of the Reichskanzlei. Their banners and placards were variations on a theme:
BREAK THE FASCIST FIST IN VIENNA
DOLLFUSS = MUSSOLINI = HITLER
ENGELBERT THERE IS BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS
And so on. Noske had come from the Bendlerstrasse for some reason; he looked out the window at his own party comrades and said, ruefully, "If it were the Nazis they would want us to send him aid."
Manfred was ignoring the procession, sitting with his back to the window; he said, "This had better not go any further."
"The Schurzbund is still holding out, even though they're shelling the Karl Marx Haus and the rest of the area."
"Just remember what you said about the French. If you want to inflame anyone here, have them imagine the Senegalese and Tonkinese taking over everybody's kitchens. The French could use a good distracting foreign war about now."
Noske sounded definitely annoyed. He said, "They want to have the government stop this atrocity, but don't want the government to have the resources to stop the atrocity."
"Stop this atrocity!"
The Reichstag chamber was full of shouts from the government parties this time. The Bolsheviks had turned out in full, for a change, and Nazis were trickling in. (Most of them had been using their railway passes to go to Munich, Dessau, or Rostock to drink amid their party comrades.)
Social Democrats were taking the lead in calling for intervention. Above, the cynical smile of the Reichstagspräsident reflected his dreams. All those Austrian Nazis, loyal to One of Their Own . . . Göring had left his mansion to come down for the session; he was a happy man.
The first man he had substituted for was less so. Manfred sat with the Cabinet at their table, listening to the cries for justice and worrying that the government was tearing itself apart as surely, if with fewer guns, than the Austrian government was.
Social Democrat after Social Democrat mounted the rostrum, or spoke extemporaneously from the floor, denouncing the wicked tyranny of Blood-Drinker Dollfuss, the Poison Dwarf of the Danube, grinding freedom and the free society under the black boots of the Heimwehr. Manfred thought it was ironic that when Dollfuss was using the tactics of the Nazis against the Nazis, these people were quite happy.
Papen handed him a note, "Remind him who speaks next," it said. Göring might well call on Herr Doktor Goebbels to deliver a long rant about how good it was that World Jewry was tearing itself apart, so . . . "Herr Reichstagspräsident! I rise to a point of order! The distinguished Reichswehr Minister is to speak next!"
Boos from the Bolsheviks greeted Noske's arrival at the podium, and he swept the chamber with an angry look. Being in power had revived his spirits, it seemed, and being able to control the army had given him security. But now he would speak to his own associates:
"The Herren and Damen members," he began, "will recall that the previous government of which I was a part, after the end of the War, had urged the creation of a more substantial Army. It was not my fault that it was not allowed to retain the strength needed to defend the Reich properly.
"I have been criticized for allowing some of the less democratic factions that remained under arms after the War to enter the army. Herren democrats, where were you? If you were so concerned about defending the Reich in arms, why didn't you? Why do you call for force, but not for the means to enforce it?
"Herren and Damen members, it ill suits us to denounce such gross criminality as is going on this very minute in Vienna, to our comrades of the SDAP, and not summon up either the will or the means to make our words more than vain wind! For the past year, the party has shown a modicum of good judgment and common sense, unlike previous times. Previous times where the parties of democracy fiddled while the Reichstag burnt.
"For this past year, the party has supported our Grand Coalition Government, the union of the parties of democracy and lawful government against the factions of oppression and tyranny. Now we are faced with a challenge to our beliefs, a challenge on our border. We must not respond to it by lowering ourselves to the abysmal levels of the Herren Dollfuss, Fey, and Starhemburg
"We will rebuke the black boots of the Fatherland Front by our example, by our words, by our actions! We will offer safety to the harried victims of Dollfuss's tyranny, to speak for a free Austria as we here speak for a free Germany!
"For now, we can only use moral force against this wickedness! But let us all know that the free people of Germany will not stand for resolving politics with artillery!"
"No, they use Mausers," Papen said.
Manfred turned and glared at him; below, the extraordinary sight of the Nationalists applauding a November Traitor enacted itself. Indeed, all the government parties were approving Noske -- except his own, the Social Democrats. Ignoring this outpouring of enthusiasm, Manfred concentrated on its source. "You mean having Luxemburg and Liebknecht taken out? Nasty business, that."
"They would have done the same to him and us if they had the chance, and everything was uprooted then anyhow. It saved us from an even worse time."
"Now if only someone had just done that to -- Lenin."
He had been wanting to say a different name, but others could hear.
After letting everyone have his (or her) say, the Reichstag adjourned, and Manfred rushed off to Tempelhof, bound for Neudeck. It looked like another round of rules by decree for a while, with the party children sent off to sulk in their own playpens for a month.
Berlin had men marching down the streets weekly. So far, they were not like the Croix de Feu; Herr Hitler still maintained hopes of being elected. The Herr Doktor Goebbels had ranted in the pages of Der Angriff about "this unnatural,
doomed coalescence of Jew-slime" which would be swept out of power by the virile young National Socialists who were portrayed in its pages, and in those of the Völkischer Beobachter until it looked like Röhm's lonely-hearts column. Herr Röhm himself amused himself with fantasies of a Volksarmee freed of the old ways. Perhaps he should make a deal with Herr Trotsky.
Breischeid had told him that Herr Seitz, the Oberburgermeister of Vienna, had escaped the siege and was coming to Berlin for an interview with him. A week or so for the immediate fury to abate should avert a furious split in the government. The man had a good cause; but the world would not stand for its salvation just yet.
There were problems, and he could see them all the better now that he was in charge. The crisis in Austria, just over the border, had brought them into the light again. And other matters.
One day last winter he had sat down with the text of the Constitution and began striking out, annotating, and revising. It began well: "The German people, united in its tribes and inspired with the will to renew and strengthen its Reich in liberty and justice, to serve peace inwardly and outwardly, and to promote social progress, has adopted this constitution." Very moving, that preamble. But the constitution it introduced had been born amid the blood and iron of Noske's freikorps smashing the heads of Bolsheviks, had struggled beneath the weight of the Krupps and Kapps wishing for their own people in charge, been maimed by the Nazis, abandoned by the Brünings and Papens playing political cow-trading while the Reichstag burned down around them, and now was being flown to its demise by a thick-skulled pilot.
Some of the clauses were so petty. Article 109, for example. Joël had deserved well by the government for his clever plan to cut the sinews of the SA, but he could not reward the Justice Minister with anything more tangible than a chocolate bar! "The state will nevermore bestow awards and medals," it said. And what if they got into a war? Eddie Rickenbacker had walked a little taller when he received their Medal of Honor, and no pilot deserved such recognition more. Lindbergh, Byrd . . . the Americans, for all their talk of "equality", seemed determined to embellish their heroes with medals. The British had it a lot better. Everyone knew that Sir Arthur Whitten-Brown was a man of importance, Lord Trenchard a man of authority, and Billy Bishop, V.C., richly endowed with bravery. Even the gloomy little Duke of Marlborough, Churchill's cousin, was a living reminder that Britain, with Prussia's invaluable aid, had beaten back the French and curbed the ambitions of Louis XIV.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 22