"Herr Reichskanzler --" Wernher began and he silenced the chief designer with an uplifted hand.
"They call this 'testing' for a reason," he said, his ears still ringing a little from the blast. "This isn't unexpected." He sighed. "I'm glad we didn't go ahead for now with the Heinkel rocket-engined airplane."
They looked around at the parts that scattered the ground. "What do you hear from America?" Manfred said. "All I've seen is a newspaper report, and it said that Herr Doktor Goddard had had an explosion at that one test."
Wernher interrupted his examination of what looked like a chunk of combustion chamber. "You're no better off than the rest of us," he said as he straightened up, grunting. "Herr Goddard is entirely uncooperative. He has accused us of stealing his ideas; he refused Herr Oberth admission, that one time last year he went to America. Is it true that he is an associate of Herr Lindbergh?"
"I believe Slim helped him get funding." And Manfred thought, that's one thing we can't hold against him.
"I could not present our proposals regarding the Corridor," Neurath said, as he sat in the Chancellor's office, hands folded impassively in his lap. "Colonel Beck was most dismissive, and I never was presented to the Polish president."
Outside Berlin bustled with a busy Monday's business, a normal week's work beginning. The capital was preparing for the municipal elections, which would likely return a Social Democratic government again. A reporter for their paper Vorwärts named Frahm would interview Manfred this afternoon and he would make some general statements about democracy.
"That is unfortunate," Manfred said.
"The Nationalists will be encouraged in demanding the Corridor back and concessions in Posen," Papen said. "It is to be regretted that we cannot have good relations with Poland; it is a disadvantage in the international field, but at home it does help the government."
"Colonel Beck was practically vehement," Neurath went on. "He said, 'We will lose our honor, our nation's very body will be prey, if we treat with this revived Reich.'"
"Not a very capable foreign minister, then," Papen said. "One should always keep an option open."
Manfred sat back. "I hope, Herren, that you will keep your options open. I will be leaving this to your capable hands next year, when I finally go back to flying."
"However," Papen said, "I do believe that we have a little more breathing room, more time to make the Poles see reason. Stalin has made another great discovery. His High Command has been plotting to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union, and three of the Marshals, including their top man Tukhachewskiy, have been unmasked as traitors, confessed their errors, and been shot. Just about all their generals as well, even the air force ones."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Herr Reichskanzler!" they both said.
Manfred looked down at his desk. "Yes, I know they were Reds -- but they were fliers."
"It's not as if they had anyone to command," Papen went on. "Our sources -- such as they are -- indicate that the entire Red Army is in a turmoil, every officer denouncing his superior. The Army has finally been purged. If they were all conspiring to overthrow the government -- I wonder what our Herr Noske will say.
"He can rest assured that there won't be any Bolshevik challenge. Yes, I believe we can make the Poles see reason soon."
Soon. Soon, there would be peace within and without. As soon as the Italians settled down.
BOOK SIX
THE SECOND RUSSO-POLISH WAR
INTERLUDE
From the Archives, 1940
"Coming off the heels of their latest success, The Producers, based on John Murray and Allen Boretz's Broadway play Room Service, the new MGM/UFA co-production, Go West, will team up the Marx Brothers with Universal's comedy duo Abbott and Costello. Lou Costello will play Governor Ptomaine, the dim-witted administrator of a western territory. His cunning assistant, Hedley Lamar, played by Bud Abbott, is behind the building of a railroad across the territory. To avoid buying out the people of the small town of Rockridge, he appoints Giuseppe Panello, an Italian immigrant (Chico) as marshal of the town, intending to provoke a riot, after which he will seize the people's property and build the railroad there. His conniving is undermined by Mayor Quayle (Groucho) and the town loafer, Rusty (Harpo). Shooting will begin in February here in the States, and be repeated in Germany during the summer, for release during the Fourth of July weekend here and Christmas in Germany.
"Variety asked the Marxes if this high-power schedule was worth the high income it gained them. Groucho replied for the group: 'Apparently you are under the impression that the only thing that matters in this world is money. This is perfectly true.'"
-- Variety, January 1940
"During the war, as my more loyal readers are well aware, I contributed to The Stars and Stripes, our soldiers' newspaper. On my latest trip to Germany, I broached a proposal for a similar publication to my new acquaintances in their army. From the Army minister himself, Gustav Noske, a politician in the Franklin Roosevelt mold, to the 'Uncle of the Army', the old Kaiser's son and new Kaiser's uncle, front-line veteran Prince Eitel-Friedrich of Prussia, all seemed interested, but one and all said I should investigate their 'Soldiers' Councils.'
"Soldiers like to grumble. It is one of the few releases permitted to them. In Germany, since the War, they have organized grumbling! I was surprised to learn that the speakers in the Soldiers' Councils are protected from retaliation for anything they say. The sergeant who conducted me to the meeting said, 'It gives us a safety-valve.'
"Minister Noske explained to me how the councils had begun in the breakdown of authority after the end of the War. 'Too many of them were Bolshevik,' he said, 'but now we have taken care of that. The German soldier is a citizen of a democratic state, and as the governors of that state, we are obligated to have its people understand the nature of a democratic government. Bolshevism and Nazism have no place in our armed forces.'
"I had found, much to my amazement, that the German army, that mindless Hunnish horde, was now more democratic than ours. The leopard can change his spots. I hope the President takes note."
-- "Visit to Germany" by Alexander H. Woollcott, Look, February 1940
"German Air Force commander 'Fast Ernie' Udet blazed through town last week on his way to the foggy delights of Seattle. Always appearing with one or two starlets on his arm, while making a tour of Hollywood hot spots, the Ace of Hearts disdained any current thoughts of a Hollywood career. 'I have another engagement at the moment,' he said. In spite of his denials, it is the talk of the town that he is negotiating with Howard Hughes for a remake of Hell's Angels that will focus on both sides of the conflict; the casting of an actor to play the Red Baron, Chancellor Manfred von Richthofen, is a high-priority item on every agent's calendar."
-- "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood", March 1940
"The commencement speaker this year will be our very own Amelia Earhart, who will speak on 'The Future of Women in America'. The famed aviatrix, as is less widely known than it should be, is an adjunct professor here at Purdue and has made studies in fields as diverse as aerial design and social history. Miss Earhart's international reputation has been a decided boon to the University, and it is with great pride that we honor one of our own."
-- Press Release, Purdue University, April, 1940
"Glen Riddle Farms partner Bolko von Richthofen, brother and agent of Germany's Chancellor Manfred von Richthofen, the 'Red Baron', was at Churchill Downs as a guest of partner Samuel Riddle to see Roy Waldron's Gallahadion romp home to win this year's Kentucky Derby. Afterward, he was photographed with Charles Howard, owner of the famous Seabiscuit, victor of the match race over Glen Riddle's War Admiral. Howard said, 'Your brother's a good loser,' to which the Baron replied, 'Best two out of three?'"
-- The Blood-Horse. May 1940
"Cap'n Eddie Rickenbacker addressed the assembled delegates and made a plea for a better air force. 'Not just more money, but more focused money,' the Ace of Aces said. 'We hav
e spent millions of dollars on airplanes, but are still defenseless in the air. We need an Air Academy, on an equal basis with West Point and Annapolis. We need a unified armed force -- one where airplanes, ground troops, surface ships, and submarines all work as a team. We need to understand that this is becoming a more dangerous world, and pretending it can't come to us, it can't happen here, won't make it so.'
"His reception was mixed. This is unfortunate, for as not only the hero of our flyboys, but as a businessman with international contacts, Captain Eddie is far better informed and more experienced than most of us."
-- Legion Magazine, June 1940
"In response to Admiral Richard E. Byrd's U.S. Antarctic Service's expedition, which includes a base on British territory at Stonington Island, the Government have begun plans for an expanded Antarctic presence. Last week, I interviewed Edward Shackleton, son of the famous Antarctic explorer and himself a veteran of the frozen Arctic. Mr Shackleton will be named base commander of the new Falklands Islands Dependencies Service, which will operate from South Georgia, where his father is buried. I asked Mr Shackleton if he planned to employ aeroplanes. His reply was, 'Of course. Most people don't know this, but my father was going to take one on his last expedition . . .'"
-- "In the Footsteps of Captain Scott" by Randolph S. Churchill, Sunday Telegraph, July 1940
"And finally, around the end of the year, there will be an article on the German rocket program by the man in the know -- the Red Baron himself, Manfred von Richthofen, who will give us a peep behind that curtain that has been drawn over the VfR!"
-- "Things to Come", Astounding Science Fiction, August 1940
CHAPTER 33
Helsinki, Suomi (Helsingfors, Finland), Saturday, July 28, 1940
"I declare these Helsinki Olympic Games, the Twelfth of the Modern Series, to be open!"
The translation of President Kallio's speech boomed out over the crowded stadium. The honored foreign guest and his honored guests sat in a box near the Presidential one.
"Now Manfred, don't get all teary-eyed, or if you do, I have a spare handkerchief somewhere," Earhart said, rummaging in the pockets of her jacket.
"I'm surprised you're here, Manfred," Putnam added. "Don't you have an election going on?":
"Yes, and I want to keep from influencing it," Manfred said. Above them the pale blue sky made for a cheerful day, below the Olympic Stadium was packed. No Television cameras to bother them today, Finland had thus far been spared the invention.
Manfred went on, "I want this to be a normal election. Normal means no -- how did you put it? -- 'Big Daddy' -- to take charge. So I'll be here until next week, but I have to go home briefly and vote, a week from next Sunday. And no, I will not say who or what list, Randolph there will shout it to the world."
Randolph laughed sharply. "Only after the election."
"I'm surprised you're here at all." Manfred said, "Didn't you join the Army or something?"
"Territorials."
"Oh, Landwehr. I see."
But by now Randolph didn't see, he was looking at Carmen, sitting on the other side of the box and trying to pretend that the Englishman wasn't looking at her with that look in his eyes. Manfred turned back to look and see who would carry in the torch, as if he already didn't know.
A wave of applause ran through the stadium as the local hero, the great runner Paavo Nurmi, appeared at the far end, flame upraised above him. It had come along a route initially similar to the one that the torch four years ago had taken. Instead of winding up in Berlin, this torch had gone on to Denmark, across the Belt to Sweden, up and around the chilly Baltic Sea (paralleling, some part of Manfred's mind reminded him ominously, the route that Lenin's Sealed Train had taken to the Finland Station), and south again to the Finnish capital.
Nurmi's trademark speed slowed somewhat with age (another similarity, he himself wasn't quiet as hot a flier as he had been) but not much, the Finnish speed demon dashed not directly to the torch, but made a lap around the track, dipping the torch briefly in salute as he passed each national delegation of athletes. Only when he was back again in front of the bowl did he ascend to the stand, where he posed, briefly, dramatically, like a statue from the original Olympia, before plunging the torch into the great bowl where it kindled in a spectacular brilliant flame.
They all cheered.
"I think it's a pity Owens isn't running again," Earhart said at the party that evening. "What did he do to that Mr. Brundage to deserve being kicked off the team?"
"Probably disagreed with him," Randolph said. "I was interviewing our Harold Abrahams last week and he said that Owens was the greatest runner he'd ever seen, even including himself. Now Brundage . . . that's a man who doesn't like being contradicted."
The reception at Prime Minister Ryti's was sparsely attended. The bright Finnish white night meant that a party could go on late and still have time for everyone to get home before sunset.
Randolph then changed the subject. "Do you want to publish my father's new book?" he asked Putnam.
"What's he writing, a sequel to The World Crisis? This history of England I hear about? We wanted to get the biography of Marlborough, but got outbid."
"Nothing like that, it's what they call a historical romance. You know, like those scientific romances H. G. Wells writes? Do you want to know why he did it? Max Beaverbrook got into a quarrel with Rothermere. The Daily Mail was running that novel Dr. Goebbels wrote about Hitler coming to power.
"Max wanted something to oppose it. Father said, 'I wrote an essay like that myself,' and what does the Beaver do but whip out a chequebook and say, 'Make it a novel, Winston.'
"It came out just in time, now that the Mail is doing his new one, The Thousand Year Rule, about the World Reich sending men to conquer the stars. Father's book has been running in the Express all month, If Lee Had Not Won at Gettysburg -- it has all the historians in an uproar. Some of them didn't get the point! Father likes the controversy, and the brass too."
Manfred remembered Randolph telling him about the essay, and said, "So your father has a career in reserve."
"His first novel," Putnam said. "That should be big news."
Randolph looked shamefaced, "Actually it isn't, he wrote one when he was young. Waiter! Another drink, please!"
Manfred said to the waiter, "I'll have what the ladies are having, I'm flying in the morning."
Earhart raised her glass of mineral water and smiled. "Flying too."
"Actually, co-piloting. Focke and Wulf want to show off the new Kondor, so I have a little demonstration in mind to show how easy it is to fly."
"And George and I want to see some of these lakes. The fishing, he tells me . . ."
Putnam had been adding his own sort of concern to the atmosphere. "We were told to be sure and not fly near the Soviet border," he said, gravely.
"No, I don't do air spying," his wife interjected.
"Didn't you tend to that? The Soviet Union, I mean? The treaty with Finland and all that?"
"I hope so." When President Kallio and Prime Minister Ryti had come to Berlin back in January, they had brought along their own Distinguished Veteran, Field Marshal Mannerheim, and he had reminisced about the War with their Field Marshal von Mackensen, Prince Eitel-Friedrich, and the former Kronprinz.
He went on, "I know the Bolsheviks and their friends want to make it look as if we are hostile to them, but we aren't. Really. The Reich and the Bolsheviks even cooperated back in the twenties, and I would like to see that happen again on a more peaceable basis."
"After Stalin shoots the last Bolshevik, I guess," Randolph said. "I had a talk with one of the secretaries from our Embassy there, chap named MacLean. Christ, what a bloody cock-up! Sorry, ladies."
"I've heard nasty language before, Randolph," Earhart said. "I'm not a little girl."
Randolph gulped down the rest of his drink before going on. "Those purge trials! They have shot all the top blokes, now it's getting down in among the ordinary chap
s. Ivan Ivanovich Bloggsov, factory worker, hauled up and shot for sabotage, wrecking, and being an agent of Trotsky, Pater, and Manfred here. Or if he's really unlucky, twenty-five years in the salt mines. Fitzroy told me a black joke he heard: 'They don't sentence you to life in prison because they don't like to make promises they can't keep.'"
"It can't be that bad," Putnam said. "The Hearst papers -- "
"It's worse," Manfred said, and repeated the information he had about the purge of the Air Force commanders. There was one thing he was sitting on: Chkalow the polar flier had not crashed last year on a test flight in the White Sea as the Soviets had claimed, preparing for a solo flight across the Pole. He had landed at a Luftstreitkräfte base in East Prussia, claimed asylum, and was living in a house in Spandau still pouring out details of hideous atrocities to Oster's people.
He had prepared a speech welcoming the Soviet aviator but Papen had said, "We'd better keep this under wraps for a while."
"What do you mean! This is just what we need! Soviet Hero chooses Freedom -- isn't that the sound bite you would use?"
"Do we want the Poles to think we helped him get through their air defenses?"
Papen had been to Warsaw a dozen times -- it almost seemed that he and Neurath were living there. But every time, something came up and the Poles had declined to sign on. Not to mention the insults; at one point Papen had had to sit in his train for all of a long hot day on a siding in some marshy place in Polish Silesia, O, O something, and watch the empty track. "Important train movements," he had been blandly told.
Perhaps that thunderous "victory parade" had made them doubt. The blackshirt marches were no longer what they had been, but after the Nationalists had achieved victory in Spain, Heydrich had led a triumphant march down the Unter den Linden. Combat veterans, many wearing Spanish medals . . . Röhm was reviewing his troopers in Munich, otherwise he would have hurled them at the splitters.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 49