Then he stepped down further into the well of the chamber, and began shaking hands with the ordinary members. This went well until he ran into one of the more recently-joined Nationalist members. It had been a while since he had been close to the man, and though it had been in this place it had been under highly different circumstances, when the man had lorded it over the Reichstag, letting his comrades -- his former comrades now, how he was running through sets of friends -- sneer at government. At least Göring had the decency to flinch back.
Guderian had spoken of a grand parade down the Wilhelmstrasse, or even down the Unter den Linden. It wasn't modesty -- well, wasn't just modesty -- that had led him to veto that. The town would be tied up, shoppers would be disrupted, and what if it snowed? So he would be driven down to Tempelhof, get in his Ju-160, and fly down to Schweidnitz.
Assuming he was up to flying after all. He had made the mistake of mentioning something at dinner, and Bodenschatz had babbled about it to all and sundry. If the front page of Münzenberg's Berlin am Morgen was filled with a picture of Stalin, Hugenberg's (Freiherr von Hugenberg's, and wasn't he proud of that!) Lokalanzeiger had the old picture from the War of him in uniform, solemn look on his face, and a quote:
I have erected me a memorial --
Immortal as stone and bronze --
Namely in the hearts of the people.
That sort of admiration -- admiration? Adulation was more like it! -- was to be expected from Hugenberg. During the War, accepting that had been one of his duties, almost as draining as flying every day in spite of his health. At least as Reichskanzler he could plead burdensome official duties, and that excuse was even somewhat true. Now he could go home for Christmas and then . . .
However, what surprised him was seeing the Ullsteins' Vössische Zeitung use the picture of his first taking office, reading out the cabinet members as the Nazis and Bolsheviks loudly left the chamber -- with the same poem! He couldn't describe how that affected him.
This was no time to be woolgathering, not with that voice in his ears: "Herr von Richthofen, you are cleared for takeoff."
No, this was definitely no time for woolgathering. He looked down the runway, put power to the engine, and felt the roar as the plane rolled down the runway, fighting to take to the air.
Christmas was jolly. Holly adorned the fireplace, a great tree filled the main room, red candles burned in every corner, and the smell of cinnamon filled the air. Carolers went from house to house along the street. Manfred looked out across the street to the park, where there was some sort of exhibition. "Did they have to rename it 'Manfred von Richthofen Street'?" he said, a bit querulously.
Bolko was sitting at the desk, sorting through bills. "It could have been worse," he said. "Hm, more grocery bills. Mother is conscripting all the women into serving in this holiday soup kitchen. They could have renamed the entire town."
Manfred shuddered. "Stalin," he said, a chill running down his spine. "Lenin before him, and . . . can you imagine cities named 'Thälmannstadt', 'Thälmannburg', 'Thälmanndorf' . . ."
"Bodenschatz has you two booked on the Graf Zeppelin II and then by airliner down to Jamaica," Bolko went on, cheerily, uncaring of the prospects of a Red Germany. "We won't be coming along until late spring. Louisville, of course, then I want to see this place in Nevada, next Denver, and finally California. You know, people think you're deserting."
Manfred turned away from the window and stared at his brother. "They are?"
"Not Herr Leuschner. He said he was glad that he could be Reichskanzler without people always making the comparison. Now Papen -- that makes a different sort of comparison. Will he be here for New Year's?"
"I don't know yet." Manfred went to a chair and sat down, heavily. "Calling it desertion! God knows I need a rest! I was going to take off anyway, back in September, but this damned war! And maybe young Manfred will recuperate better under the sun."
"Everybody else's leaving the country. Mother is unhappy about Carmen. And the other boys, why are they leaving the Luftstreitkräfte, after all the trouble it was to get them into it? What the devil is this Deutschefreiwilligegeschwader? They aren't joining the SS, are they?"
"Ask Udet. He'll be here Friday."
But Christmas dinner was very good, and the greatest gift of all was when young Manfred came down on his own. Slowly, heavily, on a cane, but walking by himself. And eating solid food. His father worried that he might find it too much of a stress, but . . .
Mother had decided on a reminder of their losses. The empty chair at the head of the table was a memorial to all those who would not be with them. That wonderful day back in 1917 when Father had sat there, presiding over his two eagles and their siblings . . . Doris and Ilse were also unpaired, though their little eagles were themselves present. He would lay wreaths on Father's grave and on Lothar's before he went, and Major von Reibnitz's too. The empty chair, perhaps, should have been beside him . . .
"Because we are thankful for all the special gifts we have received this year, and that we have survived eight years of peril, I think we should sing a hymn of thanksgiving. All together now," Mother said, "'We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing . . .'"
The younger generation chimed in, Carmen and Wolf-Manfred, young Manfred and his brother Lothar, Ilse's Manfred (his siblings Anna and Nicol were at the children's table with Viktoria's and Bolko's two boys) all singing in wonderful clear voices.
"He hastens and chastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning:
Thou, Lord, wast at our side: all glory be thine!
We all do extol thee, thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our Defender wilt be. . ."
How he wished for the next line to be so ever true:
"Let Thy congregation escape tribulation. . ."
Carmen was smiling, cryptically, as she sang,
"Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!"
They were of one heart and one mind.
"Amen."
He was the senior male, the Head of the Family; he looked around the cheery room, remembering the good times and the bad. All he could say was, "Let us pray."
If Christmas had been solemn, this was a joyous party. The clock ticked down towards midnight, and the Field Marshal of the Flying Arm stood under one window at the Richthofen house, his arms around two of the scions of that family. "China," Udet said. "You were so worried about China, now somebody's doing something about it."
"Herr von Rabe himself came to a meeting of the Deutschefreiwilligegeschwader last week, and he spoke at some length on the horrors of Nanking," young Lothar said, enthusiastic at the prospect of going to war as a mercenary.
"A why we fight session?" his father said.
"Oh yes, all the pilots were there, Herr Mölders among them. He had a briefing on the Japanese airplanes. They have a new fighter that is said to be very good. But the Japanese pilots --"
"Have the most exacting and grueling training in the world," Manfred said. "They take very few, only the best of the best, and flunk out anyone who makes even the slightest of slipups. You could be assured that neither Ernst nor I would even have been admitted to their training."
"Their loss!" Udet said. "Seems to me that if they have so few pilots, they won't have any staying power. And that, my boys, is one of the things you will have to bear in mind."
Lothar's son said, "As for their planes, Herr Soong, from China, also sent a man who talked about this new Japanese plane. They are very light, he said, without armor. Very maneuverable, but one good burst and they're done for, highly-trained pilot and all. We have been practicing a maneuver in the Storchs that may deal with that." And Wolf-Manfred smiled, prospects of fi
ghting for a cause in his eyes.
"It seems like we've all become mercenaries. Daddy Mölders in Spain and now China. And he's taking it seems like half our Kanone," Manfred said, half-irascibly. But he had listened to Rabe and to Randolph, who had talked to some American sailors whose ship had been sunk, as well as to dozens of ordinary Chinese.
"Which reminds me, Father, we have a request to make," his younger son chimed in.
"What?"
"To paint our Emils red."
Manfred looked from son to nephew and back again. "Do you want them to think I am there?"
"It wouldn't hurt."
"The Chinese air force might object. And what will Herr Mölders say?"
Udet said, bumptuously, "He said, 'Go for it boys!' I was there."
Manfred threw up his hands in surrender.
The bartender had orders not to serve Herr Churchill more than one drink a half-hour. Manfred was afraid that by now Randolph was up to sometime around January 20 of the coming year, but his glass was half filled and he did not bother to drink from it. They were discussing what would happen on that date, anyhow: "Look, tell your mother that everything will be perfectly acceptable. We have booked different rooms on different floors all over. And you can imagine how hard that was to arrange that for the President's inauguration," the British Prime Minister's son said.
"Surely you're not going to Washington right away," Manfred said.
Randolph looked into his glass, then looked up and said, "Business before, well, business. I'm going to the Bahamas first, then afterwards join you in Jamaica. The English Speaking Union in Atlanta has me booked for the eighteenth before the inauguration. Then on to Washington . . ."
Randolph was interrupted by a gentle kiss on the cheek. "The airplane rental firm in Kingston is being very obstructionistic," Carmen then said. "Uncle, you may have to get us a Douglas liner. Or are the people at Junkers going to send that Ju-160 down for exhibition? I am not going to fly a Storch over water, and the Ju-90 is just too much plane for me to handle alone."
"I'll threaten them. Carmen, tell Randolph what that bit of jewelry you have is."
Randolph looked down at his pilot's dress. Or looked down his pilot's dress. Better hope her grandmother didn't notice. "What the devil is that!?" he said.
Carmen smiled. "Father's pilot's badge. Wolfchen said he had earned his own, so he gave it to me."
"Didn't keep . . . There he is. I'd rather deal with Papen any day of the week than with Hugenberg, come along dear and let's talk about selling articles." Randolph drank down his drink, put the glass on the bar, and crossed the floor to discuss matters with the part-owner of Germania. After a moment, Carmen smiled, then followed with a sardonic comment, "That'll make them think he is in our pocket." Over in England, the Guardian had published a series on "New Hun Atrocities in Occupied Russia" which had implied that their Prime Minister was keeping silent on the matter for some advantage with the Reich. It seemed that some of their material had been lifted straight from Welt am Abend but as a good Communist, Münzenberg was not supposed to worry about such bourgeois concepts as copyright, except he was, and threats of lawsuits for infringement would issue forth from his offices.
"You let yourself be misled by their semblance of patriotism," the outgoing Reichswehr Minister said to his successor. "Their loyalty was not to the Reich, but to the ideal of their Führer. Hitler would have destroyed the entire Reich had it failed to live up to his dreams. His only allegiance was to himself."
Noske and Beck had ensconced themselves in a corner of the room, where they would set the path for the development of the Reichswehr in the years to come. Such were the informal habits of the most formal army around.
Beck noticed their host. "Good evening, Herr von Richthofen," he said. "Herr Noske and I have been discussing history. Herr Noske, I agree that the Nazis appeared patriotic at the time. You are right, I admit that I myself had been misled by this deceptive semblance. That was their political appeal, that they presented themselves as the vanguard of a national revival, being all things to all people. You yourself more than anyone should remember how deadlocked -- irrelevant, even -- the political landscape appeared then. No one wished to actually govern, save for a few rascals like the one out there."
Involuntarily Manfred looked in the direction in which Beck was jerking his head, and saw Papen and his wife, the proud Gräfin Martha, talking to their hostess, Frau Kunigunde Fürstin von Richthofen (how amazed she had been when Meissner came down to Schweidnitz with the request. "From the Kaiser? In memory of my dear Albrecht? He would have been far too honored!"). The Herr Fürst himself looked back at Beck and said, "He may be a rascal but he has an astonishing talent for getting into things."
"That would describe him well enough. He was attempting to bring them into the government, wasn't he?"
Manfred grimaced at the memory, and said, "He had originally thought they would be containable. After their unruliness in February, he seems to have given up that idea. Instead, like Herr von Schleicher -- about the only thing they had in common -- he believed that it would be possible to divide the nationalistic, patriotic elements from the Jew-hating gutter scum."
"Though I hate to give him any credit, that was pretty much what happened," Noske said. "Some of their voters even came over to our Party. More to Herr Treviranus, or that rascal's party, and of course there is Herr Strasser's grouping, which, if I may tell you in confidence, is talking merger."
"So you will have Schleicher in the r-- the Social Democrats!" Beck said. "Now won't that put a strain on the coalition. He won't take to being under the same tent with the Herr Foreign Minister."
No, Schleicher, having ousted Papen and then been ousted by Papen, all in back-room deals, would not take kindly to being an ordinary Member of the Reichstag in a coalition that included Papen. Manfred congratulated himself on being well out of such things.
"The 'Duke of Albany'?" Prince Eitel-Friedrich said. He looked unwell, and his handsome young aide looked very concerned. They would have to drive to Breslau that night after the party broke up. "It sounds familiar, I've heard the title before. An Englishman? Living in Germany? Manfred, what is going on?"
"Randolph explained it to me but -- How convenient! Carl, His Royal Highness here was asking about someone," Manfred said to the man who joined them.
His old Saxe-Coburg friend chortled. "Didn't get to your new honor."
"In time, in time, he asked about the other first."
"All right. You know my father was one of Victoria's sons -- one of those who had the bleeding disease, you know. Grandmother had four sons, Uncle Albert Edward became king, and Uncle Arthur is a general in their army. When Great-Uncle Ernst died they made Uncle Alfred the new Duke of Saxe-Coburg. But then he died, and I inherited.
"Then there came the War. There was all that suspicion about foreigners all over. Remember all the frothing in Russia about how Tsarina Alexandra was in our pay?"
"In America they totally destroyed all their German-American societies," Manfred said, and thought ruefully of how the Teutonia Society had filled that void, giving Goebbels a good foothold abroad.
"And, if I may say so, we too had a few exaggerations. But I was talking about England. Cousin George went through this meaningless ritual of saying 'I am not a Hun, I have no Hun titles.' If David ever comes to Coburg I may call him 'Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha' instead of 'Duke of Windsor' and see how he reacts.
"It worked both ways, their Parliament passed a law depriving us evil Huns of our British titles."
Then his mood shifted, he spoke very light-heartedly. "You know what? After that little affair near Grodno, back in September, they found they had made a mistake. Nasty old Hun Carl really wasn't a nasty old Hun, and what what, there was a mistake. They'd accidentally put him on the bad list. Their mistake."
"I don't understand," Eitel-Friedrich said.
Carl braced himself up. "Two weeks ago, Herren, I went to London, and there, under
the eyes of the Herr Lord Maugham and the rest of the House of Lords, I signed the roll, took my seat, and listened dutifully to a debate on a fisheries bill. You must understand, we Royal Dukes do not ordinarily speak in the House."
"Now I see. So you are this 'Duke of Albany' I have heard of," Eitel-Friedrich said, shaking his head as he said the title in the English form. "Whatever. Now what is it about this English honor Manfred here, or perhaps I should say, the Herr Fürst von Richthofen, has received?"
Manfred nodded. "His Royal Highness here was pleased to grant me the Ducal House Order during the War for having saved him from an annoying bombing. Our allies also competed in hanging medals upon the Red Battle-Flyer. Now we have another war and a different set of allies, but some things never change."
"Oh go ahead and say it," Carl said. "The Order of the Bath is Britain's military honor! Nelson and Wellington had it! And now you, too."
Manfred sighed and said, "Before I can go on my vacation, I have to go to London to be invested. Next week, with Guderian, Rundstedt, and Fritsch. Manfred Fürst von Richthofen, G.C.B., at your service, your Royal Highness." He said the last in English, clicked his heels, and bowed to Carl -- or, in this context, the Duke of Albany.
"And none better deserving to join such a distinguished company," Carl said.
"World turned upside down again," Eitel-Friedrich snorted.
The clock ticked, and Bolko tapped his brother on the shoulder. "It's almost midnight," he said.
"Right."
Manfred pushed his way through the crowd to the spot before the fireplace. When he got there, he eyed the clock on the wall and raised his voice. "HERREN UND DAMEN!" They fell silent, almost.
A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany Page 61