"Well, you had better give it back. This serial they are running now, The Legion of Space . . . but you must come to dinner some time, I don't think the others want to hear us discussing trashy stories about shooting off rockets."
"No, they want to see us shoot off rockets. Now if you will step this way, Herren, we have the 300-kilogram thrust engine mounted on the test stand and it should fire and not blow up . . ."
Afterwards Noske had spoken for him. "This is one case where Herr Schleicher's secretiveness did us well. Herr Braun, your associate Herr Oberth put it very well when he said, 'There will be need for rockets which carry a thousand pounds of dynamite over five hundred kilometers.' The men who dictated the Treaty did not think of that. How much do you want?"
That December, von Braun fired off the first two rockets. But they would need a permanent base, one couldn't toss explosives around Berlin and not have people notice. The French, for example . . . von Braun's mother, of all people, helped them find a place. She was a von Quistorp from Anklam and knew of a stretch of coast along the Baltic near there that seemed to be good. The future site of German rocketry was inspected and approved by her son, then by now-Oberst Dornberger, and finally by Manfred himself, who flew along the coast and got the rocket's eye view. (He would have taken Noske, but he had quietly demurred.)
They built simply for now, but later on more complicated buildings and structures would come. In spite of Noske's expansiveness, there was only so much they could put in the budget. Schwerin von Krosigk could hide things well enough, but someone might always track back.
But he wasn't the only one in the family who liked rockets. Cousin Wolfram had taken some time off from his squadron duties, by request of Noske, and had been enthusiastic about what he had seen on his temporary assignment. "Why didn't you tell me? This is magnificent! I want to fly to the Moon!"
Naturally, the special inspector had to report, and it made for a nice en famille dinner. Or afterwards, once they could get off alone.
"We may be too old by then," Manfred had said.
"Fly to the Moon?" Bolko had said. "Don't be so negative! We'll go as passengers, on our own, what do they say in those trashy magazines you and the boys read, our own space line. Think positively. Tourists -- entertainment, travel, with a name you can trust, Richthofen Rockets."
"Do you always think in advertising?" They all groaned.
Now the wiring that had been chewed through by mice was repaired or spliced. They all squatted inside the log blockhouse. "The Wrights didn't have anything more complex than this, you know," Wernher told him. "In fifteen years -- that you know better than I."
The Aggregat-3 rocket sat there on the pad, ready to go. Wernher looked through a telescope at the tail and said, "Good -- now let's light this candle. Countdown resumed at T minus three minutes, mark!"
The count ran backwards down to zero, uninterrupted by anyone save the one aeronaut who said, "You got it from watching 'The Girl in the Moon', right?"
Someone rhetorically told Manfred, "Who do you think were Lang's technical advisors?"
"Three, two, one, zero . . ." As if in response to the count, flame billowed around the foot of the rocket, it lifted from the pad, slowly, ascending on a cloud of smoke and flame.
"Today we're shooting for eight kilometers," Wernher said. "We've been getting that high consistently but it would be nice for our demonstration to work right."
Manfred watched the rocket dwindle in the distance. The high winds were beginning to twist the long trail of smoke in different directions, it became a giant zigzag. "We can't sit on this forever," he said. "When Herr Gernsback was here for the Olympics, he asked me, 'Where are all your rocket people? Ley, Nebel, Oberth? What has happened to the Society for Space Travel?'"
Dornberger, who had been watching the launch with as much pleasure, turned his head to look at them and grunted. "So that's who he was. Came by the old Raketenflugplatz and looked around, but we'd moved most of the equipment to Kummersdorf or here. Said he was a friend of yours. If he hadn't I'd have turned him over to the police. Told him the Society had run out of money and most of the people were off working somewhere else."
"There was an editorial in Wonder Stories back in April decrying the problems with rocket societies in general," Wernher said. "Gernsback hinted that we ought to be doing more."
"I know," Manfred said and sighed. "Soon enough, we can tell the world. It'll be some time before we can put anything in orbit -- but then, from the Wrights to Slim crossing the Atlantic was twenty-four years."
They straightened up and walked out into the cool winter afternoon, as above them the contrail blew away. Manfred looked up into the sky and mused, "When flight was just getting started -- the Wrights, Santos-Dumont, Curtiss, those people -- merely taking off was a splendid achievement and the idea was to land in as close an approximation to one piece as you could. The Herr Professor Langley -- you remember him? The professor the American government museum sponsored, and they said his airplane was first to fly? Herr Wright is so angry about it he won't let their first plane be exhibited in their country until the museum apologizes. Well, he was optimistic, Langley was, or so I heard. His airplane's pilot had a map of the Potomac river and a compass, so he would know where he was. They were launching it from a catapult on a boat on the river. The plane flew twice, a total of eight and a half meters -- each time, twenty-five centimeters off the catapult and four meters to the river's surface.
"For everyone else, it was that the plane would go up, and who cared where it came down, as long as it did so in one piece and took longer than anyone else to do so. Now, for now the rockets go up and who cares where they come down . . ."
"That's not my department, except in the most general sense; the control equipment is being developed by a team under Herr Tessmann. Three-plane gyroscope control and two accelerometers -- when it works," Wernher said. He went on to explain the design of the Aggregat-3. The rocket would land in the Baltic, be recovered, reconditioned, and probably launched again -- Wernher was quite enthusiastic about the sturdiness of the basic design.
They had even bigger, better, and more grandiose plans for the future. The Aggregat-4, it seemed, would be considerably bigger, with a vertical range of 260 kilometers and a payload of a thousand kilograms. "And then we can get into some serious work -- spaceflight!" Dornberger said, and Wernher smiled. They knew how to influence this Authority, anyhow.
"All the same, alas, we have problems with guidance," Wernher admitted. "Sometimes it works the way we want, but you understand there are so many stresses, it's hard enough getting a gyroscope to work but when you add the stress of launch -- we'll have it fixed by time we get the Aggregat-4 launched."
"You had better! Schwerin von Krosigk holds his head and groans every time Noske or I mention you people. If one of those came down in a town and left a lot of widows and cripples, I hate to think of what the added cost in pensions would be -- he wouldn't be grateful, that's for sure, in fact he'd be out of his mind . . ."
The vacation on the shores of the Baltic had been refreshing, spiritually and morally. Indeed, for the next few days, Manfred was feeling totally benevolent towards humanity, even the poor earthbound folks who never knew the joys of flight, or could look forward to piercing the atmosphere all the way out. Right before Christmas, though, he was painfully reminded that such dreams were not exclusively his, or exclusively good. Not all his Christmas presents were happy ones.
"Hugenberg is out of his mind!" Manfred said, and scowled at the book sitting on his desk.
"Come now, it's just a book," was Bolko's soothing reply. He had stopped by, while Viktoria was shepherding the younger generation down to the station for the train to Schweidnitz that would leave after noon. Except of course, for young Manfred, who would sit in the co-pilot's seat of his father's red plane when they flew down that afternoon. (Since the boy couldn't become a pilot himself -- his brother and cousins tended to buzz the Schweidnitz airport in their Storch
planes on weekends, keeping up with the name, and young Manfred deserved his own air time.)
"It's not just a book," Manfred repeated, more heated. He had to stay at the Reichskanzlei a while longer, but the air should have taken his wrath away. Nevertheless, like a busy businessman here he was stuck in the office while everyone else was preparing for the holiday. And now he had to deal with this book that Hugenberg -- supposedly his subordinate, still Vizekanzler and still overseeing the economy -- had had his publishing house bring out for Christmas. Worse yet, it was selling well, or so he heard.
"It's just like all those magazines you and the boys read. What's this new one -- 'G-8 and His Battle Aces'? Wolf-Manfred was telling me about it. 'Herr G-8 and his wingmates are bold pilots, but they don't dare take on Father and Uncle Manfred,' he said. Just stories, and not even ones that could happen someday."
"It's not new, the man started writing them in thirty-three," Manfred said. "I gave up reading it after the one with the cave-men. At least Herr Hogan had his villain Doktor Krüger say I was too honorable to involve in his fiendish plans. This is worse. 'A Novel of Adolf Hitler's Rule,' it says. Talk about mad doctors! This is madness itself, a work of Nazi propaganda, done by the Doktor himself."
Then he reached out and flipped the cover open, hiding the lurid Nazi power-pornography of blood-red swastikas, improbable tanks and airplanes, and other symbols of death and destruction. His stare turned ice-cold when he saw what was written on the title page. Then he read aloud, heavily, "'To One Who Has, from Josef Goebbels.' What nerve."
Bolko made a quick grab. "Maybe I'd better have something to read on the train," he said, and darted out the door.
Manfred sat down again, and began to review next year's budget figures for one last time. It was just as well that Papen had gone off to Westphalia, so bad news would not come down before Christmas.
"Papen gets it. 'Take these reeking bags of garbage out and have them shot!' Hitler says after the cabinet grants him executive power by decree," Bolko said.
"Bolko," Manfred replied.
Christmas Day had been quiet. Carmen couldn't cause trouble asking for flying lessons this time because she had already had them, and far from killing her enthusiasm, it had redoubled it. So she was racing young Manfred across the Silesian fields this morning after on horseback, her brother and his brother trailing behind, and Bolko had come down to the main house to seemingly torment his own brother with the news.
"Why should you be mad? He never mentions you at all. Something about the War, I suppose."
"Bolko," Manfred said again, and he felt a burning in his head wound. He looked across the table at his brother, who seemed to have taken up the burden of bringing the bad news.
"But you're right, it is extravagant in a sick sort of way. He changed all the names, of course, but you can tell who is who."
"I'm not surprised. Herr Wells -- not our Wels, but the Englishman with the Martians -- did a novel where some magical tyrant takes over England, and he did something of the sort with the names of English politicians. Randolph explained to me who the people were supposed to be."
Bolko looked bemused. "So it isn't original? So much for that. Anyhow --" and much to his brother's disgust he proceeded to recount the plot of Herr Doktor Goebbels's lurid tale of the autocracy of Herr Hitler. After achieving total power, it seemed, and purging the Reich of unfit elements, the glorious leader proceeded to mobilize the country for war, to expunge the last traces of the Dictated Treaty. Under his glorious leadership (and paying particular attention to the supreme command of the Armed Forces Commander Herr Marshal of the Reich Göring, not to mention the invaluable Minister of Public Enlightenment) the invincible armies of the revitalized Reich swept across Europe. Poland fell in a month, France in another. Then, the fleets of Europe filled the English Channel and the German Army crawled like sealions up the English beaches, crushing the English plutocrats like lice.
After this glorious victory there came the ultimate test, the conquest of Russia, the heart and center of the conspiracy against the Aryan Race. Shining bright super-armies of tanks and airplanes (Manfred wondered if Herr Guderian could bring a case for plagiarism) rumbled across the Russian steppes, while chaotic, hapless Russian hordes fouled themselves in the vain struggle to escape. The dramatic scene at the climax where Herr Hitler himself led a team of heroes into the tunnels under the Kremlin to track down and kill Stalin . . . "Well, I though that part was a bit overblown," Bolko said. "Field commanders don't take point -- I learned that much at cadet school."
"He probably had Doktor Krüger's aid," Manfred said sarcastically.
"You have been reading those stories!"
"You look so downhearted. Why? You had a good year, didn't you, Manfred?"
Mother had seated herself in her sitting room and was getting herself comfortable. Physically comfortable, as opposed to mentally so. Manfred looked around and saw that the place was looking better; the furniture was clean and polished, the room was lit; the long stringencies of the early impoverished Richthofen marriage, then the War, then the inflation and the depression . . . but now Baroness Kunigunde was mistress of a well-to-do household.
"Not entirely, Mother," he said, feeling almost apologetic. "That horse in America won the big races, and we should be able to breed some decent mounts from him. Heinkel has a new airplane I like. You have seen how the children are doing in school."
"And Carmen is being like Frau Putnam. She was practically in mourning when the news came out about her being lost, and then when the Americans found her, she just danced for joy. Now she flies that little airplane the way a little girl rides a pony, up, down, in, out. I wonder how she will ever make a good marriage acting like that."
"I wouldn't worry about her, Mother. There are many fine young men in the flying game who would admire her.
"No, it's the politicians that weigh on me so. I never set out to be chancellor. I can't say I didn't want the job, but I didn't go looking for it.
"Four years ago -- more like five, come to think of it, five years ago it was that or ruin. I understand what Noske did back in '19 better now."
"Herr Noske? He came by here this summer. I should have told you but you were preoccupied just them. There was a new Kaserne opening up and he made some sort of speech. He was so hard, so fierce. I said, 'I see why my son admires you. So did his father.' He seemed to like the comment."
"Father liked Noske?"
"Admired him. I remember when he heard the news from Berlin, he said, 'For a Socialist, that Noske knows what to do to Reds.'"
Manfred sighed. "If it weren't for him, I couldn't keep the Social Democrats in line. They had all this experience in being the opposition, under the old Kaiser, under the Republic -- yes, they were the government party and they still opposed the government -- and I think too many of them got used to thinking that way. The unions want everything for themselves and don't care for anyone else, and a lot of the parliamentarians think they should have free love and wild life, the twenties as a way of life.
"The other side isn't much better. Hugenberg is a patriot, but not the best one. Every so often he breaks into a rant about who isn't a German and he seems to exclude most of the Reich in his definitions. The country could use a decent conservative party as balance, so much has changed so fast during and after the war, but Hugenberg is just too thick-headed to make that balance. Some of the industrialists and Junkers who back him are worse, wishing for the good old days before the Great Elector came along to stir up trouble.
"And Papen. I never saw such a self-centered, self-absorbed, selfish man. Looking out for Number One, he is. Did you know he was the one trying to bring the Nazis into the government back five years ago? Decided at the last minute he needed someone to balance them and called me in. It was only that he had crossed up the leaders of the Center Party then that had them on the outs with him, too many of them want to bring back the good old days themselves, have the priest tell them every Sunday what the
Holy Father wants and on Monday put it into operation.
"Not that the liberals are any better. The last leader they had -- the last leader the Reich had, I think sometimes -- was Stresemann, and when he died . . . so many died so early, died too soon. Stresemann, Prince Max, Ebert, never mind the ones they killed outright. I could be . . ." his voice trailed off and he looked down at the floor.
Then he looked up again. "I'm not being entirely fair. The Social Democrats do work for the interests of their constituency, and we should be concerned about the workers. Hugenberg does love the idea of the country, and if we don't love the country we will be in a mess. I shouldn't slam Papen so hard, he tried to organize a government when no one else even wanted to, and he does follow me. There are some young people in the National Liberals who look like they can lead."
"You've always been a clever boy, Manfred," Mother said. "You can do anything you put your mind to. I was proud of you during the War and now, now, I hardly have the words to say how I feel."
Manfred stood up and looked around the room. "I wish Father could have seen this. And Lothar. And . . ." Overcome, he fell silent for a moment, then heard a sound.
"Excuse me, Uncle," Carmen had knocked, and came in. She went on, "There are some personal items in the mail, a letter for you from Herr Putnam, and a wire from Randolph, er Herr Churchill, the younger one."
Manfred held out his hand for the correspondence. "Thank you for bringing them to me, Carmen. How much flying have you been getting in?"
CHAPTER 27
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, Wednesday, February 2, 1938
Such matters as the crushing of Spain, the drunkard's walk of Italian policy, the Soviet solicitation of peace, and the assertion of Germany all troubled M. Camille Chautemps, President of the Council of Ministers of the French Republic. But at least he could do something about it. Messages had gone forth to the representatives of the Republic in Londres et Berlin, to be delivered to the elected leaders of those two countries, containing heads of proposals for them to ponder over, and on this winter day there was a grand conference of state on neutral territory.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 41