A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany

by Joseph T Major

  The curious case was that of Ulmanis of Latvia; no longer President and Premier, but only Premier. "We have not only strengthened our ties with Germany, Herr von Richthofen," he had said when they met in Washington last week, "We have also eased your Kaiser's family situation." Nevertheless, the Grand Duke Vilhelms II of Latvia and the distinguished Hereditary Prince Vilhelms, with his Iron Cross earned in the Regiment Garde zu Fuss, presented with pleasure by his younger brother, just might excite suspicion in certain foreign chancelleries. The American Secretary of State had been quite snippish yesterday. "Baron von Richthofen, I must make it clear that the American government deplores this extension of German control into the Baltic states," Hull had told him, quite sternly, as if a schoolmaster chiding an erring student. "We do not 'do' monarchy, and the disreputable life of the former Crown Prince is a further impediment to this decision. We have already fought one war to halt the spread of German imperialism, and do not wish to see the prospects of a second."

  Before he could say anything Papen had saved him the bother. "Mr. Hull, the government of the Reich had nothing to do with the decision of the Latvians. The former Kronprinz asked his father, the former Kaiser, not his son, the current Kaiser. The Latvian people had asked for ties to the Reich during the War, and the Kaiser had been proclaimed their Grand Duke in a personal union, as King George is King of Canada, in a personal union. Now that there is a more general appreciation of our position, they have repeated the request, and it has been resolved in a fashion more generally satisfactorily."

  For all that the Soviet Union possessed a President and a Premier, neither would come, but then neither had any real power. Their foreign minister, Lwitnow, would sign for the Bolsheviks, and then, Manfred suspected, go home to face charges of treason, conspiracy, and deviationism.

  While the bosses watched, the foreign ministers would sign, inscribing the Treaty of Norfolk that ended the Second Russo-Polish War, on this day after the anniversary of the day the War had ended. The heads of government or state, these influential spectators, were seated behind a very long table, in what would be left to right order, with Hull first and then the combatant nations alphabetically, by English spelling: Schuschnigg of Austria, Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, Laval of France, Papen, Munters of Latvia, Urbsys of Lithuania, Beck of Poland, Eden of Britain, and then finally Lwitnow.

  The others had already arrived and been shown to their seats; only the hosts, President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull, had not yet arrived. The man next to Manfred leaned over and said, "I fear we are not signing a peace treaty, but only a truce."

  "Wasn't that what you said, Winston, after they signed the Dic-- er, the Treaty of Versailles?"

  "There was great fear of a German recrudescence then," the British prime minister went on. "You must undershtand, for five years we had heard of nothing but Hun atrocities and Hun cruelty, the striving to establish a German-controlled 'European Community'. Yet it seems that a worse plague was loosened upon the world in the aftermath of that peace. The Cabinet did then as Cromwell had done in his time, thinking overmuch of the current enemy and overlooking the rise of a new one, as he fought Spain and let France rise to power.

  "I have spoken with the American President about this matter, and he has agreed to meet with the leaders of the great powers later this week, at the White House. This will be yourself, M. Chautemps, and myself. We shall undertake a new combination to further the preservation of peace."

  Then a band outside struck up a tune. An officer entered and cried, "Distinguished guests, the President of the United States!"

  "I must admit he has a certain cleverness," Papen said that evening. "That deception operation to discredit the opposition."

  Manfred looked around the sitting room that the Embassy had offered them. It was rather crowded with the Herr Reichskanzler and the Herr Foreign Minister, not to mention their entourages, occupying the place, but it was all for the best. Outside, Washington City slumbered in an autumn evening.

  "Opposition?" Manfred said. "Isn't there still a Republican party?"

  "Oh, yes, but I mean the group of industrialists! Rather like our Herr Hugenberg's friends. They had more sense than Hugenberg, but then the national socialists here are even more to the fringe. What Herr Roosevelt did was to stage a plot, to have this General Butler describe how he had been approached to lead their own Kapp Putsch! Most clever! The President's men picked a man who had clear Bolshevik sympathies, so he would obviously go to the press and the Congress."

  Manfred said, "If this alleged group of plotters had been serious they would have picked Slim -- Lindbergh."

  There was a rapping on the door. "They still aren't ready," Bolko said, opening the door. "The American police -- the local ones, I mean -- are still not ready with security."

  "Why will we need security?" Manfred asked.

  His brother took a seat before replying. "Because it's the reception at the Polish embassy! There's a whole gaggle of protestors flocking outside their doors. When did you become a vampire? The police showed me one of their signs with you got up like Herr Lugosi, cape, teeth, and so on."

  "That is an insult to the Reich," Papen said, annoyed.

  "At least the insults will be of a different degree once we get inside. You know, Franz, you really tricked me. You had me handling the cultural end of things and I had to go to that play put on by this 'Polish-American Cultural Society' and their embassy. 'Polonia Crucified!', they called it. All about a thousand years of foreign evil, everybody lined up to bash the poor Poles. At least it was an equal-opportunity blame festival, the Swedes and the Turks got theirs too."

  "Turks? Do the Poles think they're Armenians?" Papen said.

  "Vienna, Papen, the siege of Vienna," Manfred said.

  "After the play was over, the Ambassador brought out this Konrad Szwarc who had written it and congratulated him on his moving portrayal of the suffering of Poland. He really had it in for the Teutonic Knights. When did we become Teutonic Knights? One of the wicked Teutonic Knights they had slaughtering poor innocent Polish people wore all red armor."

  "Insolence!" Papen sniffed. "They should shut their mouths. Better still, be full of admiration for all the heroism of Germans on the Eastern Front, saving them from the Reds.

  "And these new nations they have founded. I venture to say that these 'mandates' in White Russia and Ukraine will 'request' to be absorbed into Poland, as soon as the Soviet supervisory period expires. You will recall that they had done something of the sort with Vilnia, after occupying it, and now they are complaining that Lithuania has received it back. When we gave the Poles their own nation, during the War, it seems that it was a violation of international law, setting up a new country in the territory of another, but now, thanks to their going through the formalities with the League of Nations, these 'mandates' are perfectly legal and even admirable." Papen then snorted in a derisory tone.

  "Perhaps I should go see them myself, then," Manfred said. "If they think they're being watched, they might be less inclined to trickery."

  "I also saw a documentary they had made about the war," Bolko went on. "I had to bite my lips at one point when they showed a formation of Emils -- our own Bf-109s -- flying overhead and the announcer went on about the magnificent achievements of the Polish Air Force against the Reds.

  "They did show some Germans. Deserters."

  "I think you've said enough, Papen," Manfred said very quickly, as the Foreign Minister began to wind up for another denunciation of Polish arrogance.

  Bolko changed the subject slightly. "Not only that," he said, "you won't be the most bemedalled man there."

  "Why? Is their Sergeant York coming? I know about Eddie, and even Slim," Manfred said.

  His brother smiled. "There's a head of state coming who hadn't been involved in the war, but he wants to congratulate the victors. President Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, in fact. Just came back from a tour of Spain and Italy, where Franco and Mussolini hung orders on him. And he
has a whole cluster of his own medals, with even some American ones. No, you'll definitely be second best."

  "Eddie told me about some meeting President Roosevelt had with the South American leaders. Said he addressed them as 'fellow democrats'. Didn't even crack a smile."

  There was a knocking at the door. "We seem to be becoming increasingly mountebankish," Papen said. "I take it the Herren Marx won't be there, so I can go without having my face slapped."

  They got up to go.

  He had a reputation to live up to. On the other hand, the Washington railroad system seemed to be a bit constrained. Therefore, one special official train would carry the distinguished Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the gallant Reichskanzler of the German Reich north to their several destinations. Winston would be driven in convoy to the naval base in Philadelphia, where the battleship Warspite would ferry him home, while Manfred would be driven in convoy to Lakehurst, where the Graf Zeppelin II was being held to carry him back across the ocean. For now they sat in the parlor car and waited for the train to get moving.

  "I must admit, President Roosevelt's initiative was most innovative," Winston said. "An alliance of the North Atlantic powers -- the British Empire, the United States, Germany, and France -- sufficient to deter any aggression from the less democratic nations of Europe."

  Manfred looked into his glass. "I would not disapprove of such a combination, but you must recall, I am only a caretaker. My successor would not necessarily feel bound by any informal commitment I had made, and I do not think it right to negotiate such a formal alliance."

  Winston snorted. "As if any government of Germany would go against the opinion of its hero."

  Manfred thought of the great stacks of the English translation of Goebbels's books he had seen. "A Nazi government . . ." he said, tenatively.

  "Oh yes, that gang of adventurers. The thought of such bandits at the levers of power is terrifying to contemplate. You performed a great service for not only your own country but all the world in your opposition to them."

  Manfred didn't want to think about that dreadful choice any further. He opined, "I fear, in any case, that this affection the Americans have for the French is not returned. Moreover, M. Chautemps is already tottering, I am afraid, and he may not return home to find himself in power.

  "You should know Americans, too, your mother and all that. There's a lot of opinion that they can just put up walls and forget the rest of the world."

  Winston lit one of his cigars. "Until the rest of the world comes knocking down those walls. You yourself better than anyone knows how frail they are. When that dire day comes, they will find that they have built on a foundation of sand."

  "If the President wants an alliance of the North Atlantic powers, it could start here," Manfred said. The thought of the Reich becoming a "normal" power . . .

  CHAPTER 40

  Borisov, Belarus Mandate (formerly Belorussian S.S.R.), Friday, November 22, 1940

  The sun had gone down and the dusk was crisp with the Russian cold. Amid the devastation of war, a large tent-city had sprung up on the bank of the Beresina. As Manfred and his party approached it, they could hear strange chants.

  "The Herr Field-Marshal von Fritsch was less than eager to admit them," Oberst von Stauffenberg said.

  Manfred stopped and looked up at his former aide, towering above him in the evening gloom. "He made trouble?"

  "He said they were Bolsheviks. Hoepner said to let them in, and Guderian did not say no, so we did, but it had to be kept hidden from the Herr Reichsheerkommandant."

  Manfred looked at the tents which contained the horde of refugees, tents which now resounded with fervent, if not exactly German, prayer. "There may be some infiltrators, Claus, but if my experience is any guide, they'll be the most ferocious anti-Bolsheviks around. Herr Treviranus should be dancing with joy at the prospect of these recruits. They certainly won't be joining the Zentrum! Besides, they say that if you have two Jews, you have three opinions. And they even speak German, sort of. Just as good as some of the Plattdeutsch from Pomerania.

  "The Poles certainly don't want them. I have a report estimating that over two hundred thousand Soviet Jews have crossed the Beresina into Belarus. It looks like a good bit of all this will end up getting dumped in our own laps."

  A fire flickered amid the tents, and now a different sound arose to counterpoint the chanted prayer. Laughing young men and women danced in a ring around the fire, singing some bouncy tune. Stauffenberg looked at the dance. "I thought they were all planning to go to Palestine," he said. "There's one bunch that is, I think. Isn't that dance what they do there?"

  Their boots crunched on the cold soil as they walked in the direction of the fire. "We'll have to disappoint them," Manfred said. "Winston was quite regretful about that. 'I cannot yet challenge the entrenched armies of the Foreign Office,' he said. They can't admit many to Palestine, their foreign office is all for the Arabs."

  Then he thought. "I wonder . . . I must put it to His Majesty. Yes, a state visit, to see his Grandfather's churches there in Jerusalem. Then they can lay before him their plea."

  He looked at the dancers, who had stopped at the sight of the tall officer and his shorter companion. "I wonder if any of them fly," Manfred said, absently. "There's some Bolshevik aviation club they have . . ."

  Manfred had returned to Berlin last week, with the peace treaty in hand. How strange it felt to be coming to Berlin with such a victory! One had to think back all the way to 1871. Sure enough, someone had mustered a few fantastically aged veterans of that war to deliver the gratitude of the German People to the Reichskanzler, as from those who had known.

  He couldn't rest on his laurels; Belarus and Ukraine were on the agenda. The Poles couldn't even make a fuss about his party flying over their country; the "right of inspection" didn't just apply to the Bolsheviks, and the Poles couldn't prevent him from exercising it personally. The Focke-Wulf Kondor transport painted red made a striking sight as it passed near Warsaw, then again when Manfred landed in Minsk. But from there it would be driving, south and north through the vast eastern territories that had been Soviet.

  The convoy of official cars, still dusty with the dust of Belarus, pulled up to the wooden gate of the camp in the marshes. A mixed guard of German, Austrian, and Czech troops presented arms as the lead passenger disembarked and their general stepped forward to greet him. "We won't be rotting in the Pripet much longer," said General Rommel as he snapped off a crisp salute. "Back to the mountains for us. You're just in time for the entertainment."

  Manfred looked around the camp. The marshes were now frozen, but the land was still not the most stable. Soon enough, Polish troops and local constabulary would move into this camp, and Generalleutnant Rommel's Gebirgskorps would separate to its three several countries of origin. They had taken the time to put up a decent base nonetheless.

  "Entertainment?" Manfred repeated.

  "Herr Dollfuss has sent a singing act here. They have won awards for their music in Austria, and Freiherr Georg tells me they will be booked for a tour of Bavaria next year."

  They fell into step as they headed for the headquarters compound, Stauffenberg trailing behind with Rommel's operations officer, a Major Bayerlein. The sun was setting over the chilly swamp, and beneath the rimed fens the mosquitos hibernated in peace, undisturbed by the mere human conflict.

  "Georg? Georg? Should I know him?" Manfred said.

  "I believe you met in Vienna," Rommel said, cryptically.

  "It was twelve, almost thirteen years ago now that Maria came," Georg von Trapp, Austria's great U-Boat ace of the War, and now an entertainer, said. He had one arm around his wife's shoulders and a broad grin beneath his moustache as he spoke to the German chancellor. "She drove us, she snapped me out of my black choler. Now we have a new career. Can you imagine it?"

  Frau von Trapp blushed, bowed her head, and crossed herself before speaking. Convent ways do that to a woman. "It was the children. They wer
e -- well, I had to do something."

  "I would recommend you to my brother," Manfred said, "but, however, I don't think our establishment in Baden-Baden is up to the strain." The family was large and about as quiet as such a mob could be expected to be.

  "Good family values," von Trapp said. "You should consider -- no matter. Herr Richthofen, you can't imagine how much we at home appreciate your support of a free Austria!"

  Manfred thought about some of the descriptions his subordinates had applied to Dollfuss and demurred, then changed the subject. "Frau Maria, you were a postulant before you married Herr von Trapp, you said? Did you ever hear the story about the postulant at one of our German convents? Well, she had my picture on the wall until Mother Superior said that a postulant couldn't have a picture of a man, even a great Hero. So she . . ."

  The Trapps thought the story quite a droll one, and Frau von Trapp said, "I'd like a copy of that picture."

  Manfred was a bit nonplused. He had one of his own pictures, inscribed "To my counterpart beneath the seas", to give to Captain von Trapp, but this request . . . "I'll see what I can do," he said. "Or you can come to Schweidnitz and see the original."

  "I liked the song you did about the Edelweiss," Rommel said. "Somehow it made me think of the days when I was first learning to ski. All the flowers around, and of course it was the unit insignia. The men used to pick them and put them in their hats. They tried to embarrass the new Kommandant -- you know how people will be towards a new boy. I did my best, but those falls." He put a hand on his back. "I may still have a few deep bruises."

  They all laughed again.

  Manfred had a question, "I know you play the guitar, Frau Maria, but that piano player -- the one with the bust on his piano -- is he one of the family? Or just an accompanist?"

  Herr von Trapp sighed, "Ach, he is an old friend. Glad to come with us out here in the middle of the swamps. His girlfriend pesters him no end, always wanting him to give up the piano and work in her father's firm. She comes around when we sing and sits at the end of the piano, staring at him . . ."