A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany

by Joseph T Major

  Below them, the riders formed up to begin the first race of the Three-Day Event. Ach, to have been there . . .

  The torch flickered, its light dying. The great bowl of the Olympic Stadium was silent, awed.

  The Imperial Box was full. The Kaiser had to host the monarchs and princes, and even a President (Beneš of Czechoslovakia), who had attended the Olympics (where, for its final week, President Beneš had personally cheered on every Czech and Slovak competitor), so his Chancellor was banished to a lesser box, which was also full with his guests, family, and Ministers. The Lindberghs had returned from their trip and Manfred supposed he would soon be hearing about that; the Papens were there, too.

  And now it was the end of the Olympics, on August fifteenth, after two weeks of international sport and cooperation. The eyes of the world had been on Germany for all this time, from the joyous opening ceremonies to tonights solemn closing ceremonies. This was a religious service, virtually; worship of the religion of sports. To speak charitably of its aspirations, that faith had hopes for international amity. Spain was proving how well that worked just now.

  For now they all just sat and watched. The fire that had come from Olympia to Berlin was dying, dimming. Then it went out. With its extinguishing, the great cathedral of light that overtopped the Olympic Stadium, the searchlight beams arcing into the sky, flashed off, leaving only the summer night.

  The great bell outside the stadium, the one that had pealed so long ago -- two weeks -- to welcome the marching contingents of the nations' athletes, now tolled in the darkness. A majestic voice reverberated through the great stadium, calling, commanding:

  "I summon the youth of the world to Tokyo."

  In four years -- in four years, Manfred thought, he would be free to go there, perhaps as patron of the German equestrian team. He had heard some interesting things about Japanese planes and wanted very much to see what they could do.

  The solemn hush remained for a moment; then a more normal hubbub began as the spectators took their leave. Manfred knew that he had a special exit reserved but would have to hurry. "Come on, we have to get going!" he said as he fitted his actions to his words.

  "For services to world aviation, His Imperial Majesty Louis-Ferdinand, German Emperor and King of Prussia, is graciously pleased to award the Civil Service Cross of the Hohenzollern House Order to Frau Amelia Mary Earhart Putnam!" Meissner said.

  The throne room in the Imperial Palace was lit up, packed with spectators. The American Ambassador, Herr Dodd, was there with his daughter, overseeing this granting of foreign medals to good citizens of a Republic. Woollcott was off speaking to the Prince, Gernsback getting an exhaustive tour of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, and the Brothers Marx were clowning in a casino in Baden-Baden owned by the Richthofen-Richthofen brothers. (Julius had made a crack about it, of course: "Do you think you are the first brothers? Well, there were the Brothers Grimm, and they were a pretty grim pair . . ." Bolko and Viktoria had front-row seats and laughed prodigiously.)

  Earhart stepped forward and allowed the Kaiser to pin the star of the order to her jacket. He smiled at her and said, "America has sent us their finest woman. She is an example for us men, too!"

  "I'll hold you to that, Your Majesty," Earhart cracked back, and behind her Putnam could be observed to visibly beam. Then she stepped backwards, carefully, to stand beside her husband.

  Meissner raised his head again to address the viewers. "For services to world aviation, His Imperial Majesty Louis-Ferdinand, German Emperor and King of Prussia, is graciously pleased to award the Civil Service Cross of the Hohenzollern House Order to Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh!"

  Lindbergh stepped forward, his own jacket ablaze with all the other foreign awards, and the golden star of his country's Medal of Honor about his neck on its starry ribbon. Before the ceremony, Manfred had taken a look at the paper Meissner was now reading from and had grabbed a pen to mark out something. "For God's sake, don't remind him of that!" he had said, startling the Imperial Chamberlain by his vehemence. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. was dead at German hands; no need to rub salt in the wound that had made in his father by reminding him that there had been a junior to his senior.

  That night at dinner, one of the more renowned knights of the Hohenzollern House Order (ever since November of 1916, two years to the day before . . . well, he too had his days he'd rather not think about) entertained his two newest companions, even if only honorary ones, at dinner.

  To no one's surprise, it was mostly about flying. Herr Milch, the Air Minister, asked about the prospects of airplane service in South America, where the Lindberghs had been flying. They were quite frank about the market there, but Slim warned them that he hoped to get Trans World Airlines in there first.

  Udet seemed very interested in Earhart's upcoming round the world flight. "I know who to talk to in Hollywood!" he said. "The movie rights alone will make up your costs!"

  Earhart had been modest. "I don't think I could sit there and watch myself being played by someone else on the screen. Eddie Rickenbacker told me he felt the same way, and so did you, Manfred. Ernst, someone would have to play you, now. Could you take it?"

  "I'd give myself leave!" Udet said, beaming.

  "Why Earhart, don't you recognize Major Udet, the star of Storm over Mont Blanc!?" Manfred said, joshingly. "The heroic pilot who rescued the fair lady? You must have seen his lovely co-star, our Fraulein Leni Riefenstahl, dashing from pillar to post filming everything at the Olympics."

  "Including you," she said.

  "Well, I can't imagine who could play me in the movies," Lindbergh said. "They'd have to find a real pilot. Ernst, sorry, you just don't have the height."

  "I'm glad you could talk privately," Lindbergh said. The Putnams had gone to bed, pleading the need for an early rest, and the others had departed their several ways. Anne too was resting up, which left her husband free to talk alone to his colleague.

  Manfred was sitting looking into an empty fireplace, it being too warm to really have a fire. Outside the last revelry of the post-Olympic parties was dying down. In the morning the crimes of the Nazi and Bolshevik rioters would begin working through the courts, and no doubt Herr Hitler and Herr Thälmann, not to mention Herr Röhm, would be explaining the deeds of their followers, there and in the press.

  Lindbergh was pacing in front of the fireplace, too keyed up to rest. Manfred had quit swinging his head back and forth -- it would make it ache again. He said, "Slim, I'm always available to you. Sit down -- how do you Americans say it, 'Take a load off your feet.'? Sit down, calm down, and gather up your thoughts."

  Available in person, not that he ever writes, Manfred thought, irritated. Papen would be proud of his growing skill at political mendacity, which was a different sort of distaste.

  "I'm worried," Lindbergh said, still pacing, still tense.

  Manfred continued to look ahead. Let him make the next move.

  Lindbergh stopped and looked down at him. "You should be too."

  "The riot? Yes, it was an embarrassment. We were lucky there were enough soldiers here to see the Games, here to keep order. I wrote Count Baillet-Latour and the International Olympic Committee and apologized for the disturbance."

  "Yes it was. You have to do something -- do something about the Communists." Lindbergh said, trembling on the brink of concern. Then his calm slipped away and he burst out. "They're going to tear down the country! You said they even sit in your Congress, the Reichstag. Why?"

  "They were elected. Slim, desperate men do desperate things, and the Bolsheviks promised jobs. 'Everyone in the Soviet Union has a guaranteed right to a job,' they said, and unemployed men voted for them. The ones who work saw through them, they voted for the Social Democrats. Now that unemployment is down, the Bolsheviks will lose those voters to the Social Democrats. We will have a normal government, and I can go back to my own life, go flying for pleasure again. How would you like to go flying together? Maybe we can be in Hawaii to welco
me Earhart, at the end of her flight." Anything to change the subject.

  "They're corrupting the government. They're corrupting the nation. You need -- we need -- to get people like that out of our society.

  "Alexis, Alexis Carrell, the doctor I'm working with, and his friends, they're looking at our gene pool. It's declining! Look at it! Stupid people, corrupt people, defective people, breeding like, like animals! We have to do something about it!"

  Something inside him sickened at those words -- they were the words of the Nazis. Or was it just them? Woollcott had mentioned, dismissively, something about that birth-control woman, more socialist than Noske or Wels or Breitscheid, but sounding like that. He struggled with his own composure while Lindbergh rambled on about the defilement of the breeding pool.

  ". . . and you need to do something about it, get someone in who can do something about it."

  Manfred realized that Lindbergh had finished an argument and was waiting for an answer. He decided to be noncommittal. "Who?"

  Lindbergh bent forward and looked serious. "Your people have been very friendly. Anne and I have been seeing everyone -- Mr. Strasser, Captain Göring, General von Schleicher, and their friends. Very patriotic people, very devoted to the betterment of the human race."

  "Göring?" Manfred said, bewildered. Göring had used his discretionary fund, and it seemed some other funds advanced him by his backers from the Ruhr, to hold a grossly overblown Olympic Party. He had rented the Kroll Opera House and set up a mock peasant village, with fancy shops containing improbably fancy "peasant" goods. Then he, as genial Bürgermeister of this village, his new wife Emmy on his arm, had presided over this vastly expensive entertainment.

  The man who had reported it to him had not been Papen or Diels, but Schwerin von Krosigk. The finance minister had been politely apoplectic; after describing the wretched excesses of the entertainment he summed it up by saying, "The Herr Reichstagspräsident has severely exceeded the financial allotment allocated to him in his discretionary fund and his entertainment fund.".

  "What shall we do, cut off his allowance?" Manfred had said.

  But Dr. Goebbels, Dr. Frick, and Herr Heydrich had been among the ornaments of the entertainment. At least Herr Hitler had had the decency to absent himself. From time to time Manfred had entertained thoughts of having the man's naturalization revoked on the grounds of fraud, then deporting him to Austria. The thought of Dollfuss invading in retaliation for such an unwelcome present, along with Nazi reunification riots, brought him back to his senses.

  But now it looked like Göring was trying to buy his way into decent society. So "Göring?" Manfred said, again, wondering what Lindbergh was getting at.

  "He said he would gladly help expel the Communists. Isn't he your speaker of the house, whatever? You really ought to work with him more. You could really get things done. And I met your predecessor General von Schleicher last week. Now there's a patriot, and a veteran. He said he was ready to bear any burden for the country, pay any price for its safety. President Roosevelt is mean-spirited enough to snub President Hoover, but surely you're bigger than that."

  Now there was an explosive combination. Was Lindbergh unaware of the political history the two had? He temporized again. "The government works with Herr Göring -- he is, after all, what we call 'President of the Reichstag' -- and with Herr Schleicher. But there are issues."

  Alone then, he sat and stared into the fireplace, burned out by dealing with Lindbergh's arguments. It was all so absurd. The Nazis frothed at the mouth over "niggers" and yet the Indian hockey team, just as dark-skinned, was praised as Fellow Aryan Warriors.

  Perhaps he expected too much himself. The Indian team captain, Herr Dhyan Chand, had been among the sports stars presented to the Kaiser and his chancellor, and he had asked the man if he had ever met Captain Indra Roy. "Who?" was the answer. "What team does he play for?"

  It was his perspective. If Captain Roy the Indian Ace had been European . . . ten victories in fourteen days in 1918, the man would have been another Frank Luke. But not even his own countrymen knew about him. Manfred was closer to him than many of his own people were.

  Next year it would all be the other fellow's business, anyway . . .

  BOOK FIVE

  CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT

  INTERLUDE

  Bürgerbraukeller, Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Sunday, November 8, 1936

  Hermann had excused himself to go to the loo. While his bulk enabled him to keep up with the lads who really knocked back the beer, it enacted its revenge once the beer was processed. The Führer tolerated his absences to give way to the weaknesses of flesh; it was those meetings he arranged with Thyssen and Krupp that kept the Party going, breaking the heads of Jews and Communists in the Ruhr to keep the mills rolling.

  Getting there had meant brushing past the knees of Himmler and Hess. Rudolf, now, he was the Führer's loyal chela, willing at a moment's notice, in the middle of the night, to go to Rome, London, or wherever, on order. Heinrich, now that was a different matter. More loyal than anyone else, but given to those odd enthusiasms . . .

  The Führer had been in good form; how long had he been speaking, an hour? Extempore, too. It drew crowds whenever he spoke, wherever he spoke. Ach, he would have made a good Chancellor. If only . . . If only some Englishman had been lucky!

  Say that in front of any other pilot, just about, and it would earn him a trip out an airplane door at two thousand meters up. Hermann realized that the Rittmeister was morally unassailable, at least among airmen. Among Germans, even.

  It had been a bad four years, almost four. Back in thirty-three, when the prize was in their grasp -- that pig-dog with his smiling face, explaining how the Rittmeister would work with them. And then, that day in the Reichstag chamber, that glare the Rittmeister had given him, given him and said those damming, dooming words . . .

  "Herren and Damen Members. In view of the urgency of the crisis I will be brief. This weekend the Herr Reichspräsident summoned me to meet with him, to discuss possible solutions to our current national peril.

  "I have at his request accepted the position of Reichskanzler and have formed a grand coalition government of national unity to deal with the current perilous state of the Reich and government. . . ."

  The Führer had been sitting on the edge of his chair, dressed up in the formal clothes he despised, waiting for the summons to the Presidential presence, make official what they had already agreed to. Hermann hadn't of course been there when he was told, but he had learned of the rage and venom that the Führer had let loose at his new and expanded corps of enemies. They had seriously talked about killing the Rittmeister. God be thanked no one could be found to do it. Even attacking the Chief would make him a martyr and them the arch-villains, lower than the low.

  After that everything had gone downhill. First Strasser comes back from Italy and waltzes off with a chunk of the Party. Then Röhm takes the Storm Troopers and leaves us naked to the world, or the Reds anyhow. Money drying up, losing elections . . . What could happen next?

  He undid his fly and stood in front of the urinal . . .

  "Herr Göring! Herr Göring! Are you all right!"

  He was lying there on the floor, wet and dazed, with a ringing in his ears, and there was a blank spot in his memory. What had happened?

  "There's been a bomb!" the fireman said, shouting, trying to overwhelm the ringing in his ears. That had been an explosion and he must have been thrown against the wall.

  He put up a hand and felt the blood on his face. "I . . . I think I am all right."

  The fireman standing above him, in the smoky and dark restroom, stood up and called out. "There's a live one in here. Bring in the litter. It's the fat one, so make it six men."

  They held the funeral a week later, just across the border from Braunau. Goebbels was in fine form, he spoke movingly of the Aryan Warrior, fallen in the fight. "Adolf Hitler!" he cried, "Arise to Valhalla! Sieg Heil!"

  For all that Goebbels
had been writing a lot lately, he hadn't been producing much. Hermann had asked him about that and he had only given one of his twisted smiles. "You'll see," he had said. "All Germany will see!"

  That Heydrich. Back from Spain, he was, bragging of his aerial victories. Hermann appreciated a good story as much as the next fellow (well maybe not, the next fellow was Ley, less drunk than usual on account of the occasion) but when he talked about the hot Castilian señoritas Emmy got all offended.

  The sky was gray, and the red flags whipped in the wind; more red flags covered the urns on the withered ground. The holes were already dug, and the pallbearers -- vigorous young men from the SS -- would soon bring the ashes of the Führer and his comrades in life and death to their eternal rest. At that crematorium in Munich they had made a fuss, the place must have been owned by Jews. But turnabout, someday, some way . . .

  "The Heroes of the Aryan Struggle will live on in our memories!" Heydrich was saying. "I will specially honor my fallen leader, our late Reichsführer-SS, and herewith dedicate my next five aerial kills to his glorious memory! Sieg Heil!"

  The next party conference had to be in Anhalt, where they controlled the police anyhow. Double ranks of policemen, and inside them a triple rank of SS, surrounded the hall. There was only one choice, though, that could be made.

  "I cannot take the place of our fallen Führer," Hermann said, thinking of the shrunken masses of Party loyalists who would ratify his decision. "I can only follow in his steps, take the course he would have taken. My fellow National Socialists, I am not worthy of his post, but no man is worthy. No man can replace our Adolf Hitler."

  Not that he was going to be so foolish. He looked around the small but packed room, a small room for a small party cadre. The air was a little more breathable, which was a good thing, since his lungs didn't seem to be quite working the way they had. He had had to give up smoking -- God, what if it had been liquor, or even his pills. . .