“A healthy mind, my dear Armbrecht, cannot subsist in an unhealthy body. It would be like expecting a luminous painting to spring from a dirty palette. In the same way, no state can evolve to true greatness as long as its people are deprived of cultural nourishment. When I instructed Papen in 1933 to sign the concordat with the Vatican, I thereby guaranteed the Catholic Church in Germany the right to freedom of worship and the regulation of its own affairs. I did so not solely as a gesture to the twenty-two million Germans then embracing this religion —there are now, in the Third Reich, something like forty-five million—but because I believed then, and still do, that organized religion fulfills a basic social need and, provided that it permits itself to keep step with man’s evolution, can play a useful role in the state, not least by its stabilizing influence on the broad mass of its adherents.
“Needless to say, I did not expect the Catholic Church in Germany to throw off, overnight, its encrusted, centuries-old shell of dogma and leap joyfully into our National Socialist bed. We had our early troubles, of course, but it was a source of some gratification to me when Pope Pius XII—the same Eugenio Pacelli who, as Papal Secretary of State, signed the concordat with Papen—declined to condemn us for invading Catholic Poland, despite the great pressures brought to bear on him by the democracies and their nationalist cardinals.
“Similarly, Pope Pius XII maintained a correct attitude of neutrality when the time came for me to settle our military accounts with Britain and Western Europe. And to this date— apart from his mild intervention on behalf of the Palestine Jews —he has steadfastly withheld any censure of our military conquests in the Balkans and the Middle East. All this, Armbrecht, I put to his credit. But neutrality is not enough when I, as Fuehrer of the Greater Reich, embark on a crusade which, however military and political its basic thrust, has as one of its supreme motivations the extermination of the Holy Roman Church’s most implacable and most dangerous spiritual enemies! I refer, of course, to the death struggle we have waged and won against the monstrous tyranny of atheistic Bolshevism. From the very outset of this titanic struggle we tried to persuade the Vatican to publicly confirm what every Catholic in the world gratefully recognizes—that the blood so copiously spent by our brave soldiers and airmen in Russia has been a sacred sacrifice to the perpetuation of Christianity. We failed. I am told, and I am willing to believe it, that Eugenio Pacelli was personally overjoyed by the Wehrmacht’s victories in the East, but that his lips were sealed for fear of offending such strange bedfellows of Stalin’s as Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt! If I am asked to sympathize with this attitude, I can only reply, ‘Since when have either of these gentlemen shown the slightest concern for the Vatican’s interests?’
“But this is now water under the bridge. It is when we turn to the Church’s present attitude to our racial-hygiene program in the conquered territories that I begin to have grave misgivings as to our future relationship with the Vatican. Second only to the Bolsheviks in their hatred of Christian civilization are the Jews, a cancerous virus I have already expelled from the bloodstream of our Aryan culture and am in the process of eradicating, for all time, from the rest of Europe and our eastern empire. And what thanks do I get from a Church founded on the martyrdom of the Israelite’s most innocent victim? Slanderous incitement of our own German bishops by Pacelli himself! Reichsleiter Bormann will let you have a copy of a private letter we intercepted from the Pope to the Bishop of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing, a few months ago. ‘Day after day,’ the Pontiff writes, ‘we hear of inhuman acts which have nothing to do with the real necessities of war, and they fill us with stupefaction and bitterness.’ I put it to you, Armbrecht—what possible claim can Pacelli have to understanding the necessities of war? And how, may I ask, does one commit ‘inhuman’ acts against subhuman trash? I tell you, there is a limit to my patience with these gentlemen of the cloth, and they have already pushed me beyond it.
“Well, I am about to teach these priests something they will not find in the New Testament—that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune.’ I am giving them notice—Protestants and Catholics alike—that 1943 will be the last year they receive their billions of marks in state subsidies unless they include in their Yuletide services a prayer for the triumph of National Socialism over its enemies, both spiritual and temporal. The prayer has been composed by Bormann, and I can tell you it’s going to be a hard pill for some of these gentry to swallow! But obedience to this directive must be complete, throughout the greater Reich. There will be an SS or SD man in every place of worship, from the gaudiest cathedral down to the humblest village chapel, and if only one of these pious ministers ‘forgets’ his prayer, the whole lot of them will have to manage from there on on what they can get out of their offertories, which amounts to a paltry fraction—I forget how much, for the moment—of what they’ve been milking from the State.”
Kurt said, glancing up from his notetaking, “About three percent, my Fuehrer.”
“I was merely testing you,” Hitler beamed. “You may have five minutes for questions before we go down to lunch.”
It seemed hardly credible, but it was all too true. Not counting his private session with the Fuehrer, Kurt had now been nearly four hours in the company of the world’s most powerful man, and his jaws were beginning to ache from the effort of suppressing yawns.
The luncheon party could hardly have gotten off to a more promising start. First, there had been the thrill of being introduced for the first time to Reichsmarschall Goering within a few moments of Kurt’s descent to the anteroom where the guests had gathered to await their host. Kurt had seen Germany’s senior Feldmarschall in the flesh maybe a dozen times since joining the Fuehrer’s staff, but never on an equal social footing as it were, fellow guests at an informal house party away from the rigid protocol and stifling security practices of the Berlin Chancellery.
Herman Goering’s prestige as Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe had now been almost completely restored to the pinnacle it had reached with his devastating pounding of Warsaw in September 1939. Almost forgotten was his Luftwaffe’s poor showing against the British Expeditionary Force evacuating France in June 1940 and its failure to blitz Britain into surrender. It was Waldheim’s contention, seriously advanced to Kurt during one of their drinking sessions together, that the personality of Germany’s most illustrious and surviving World War I pilot had taken root in Hitler’s subconscious as a kind of Other Ego. He was everything, Waldheim argued, the Fuehrer could not bring himself to be—an indolent, flamboyant and swashbuckling hedonist, but a proven warrior withal, twice married, and each time to spouses superbly endowed with those fleshly cushions so indispensable to a warrior’s repose. Furthermore, it was notorious that Goering was relishing every fruit of his immense power and using it, quite shamelessly, to amass for himself the greatest private fortune in art treasures and industrial kickbacks in the Reich. No other theory but that of the cosseted Other Ego, said Waldheim, could persuasively enough explain Hitler’s indulgence of this self-styled Renaissancemensch, whose whole way of life was in such complete contrast to that of the Fuehrer’s.
This joie de vivre was radiating from the Reichsmarschall now' as he held the attention of the larger of the two groups into which the waiting guests had separated, the smaller one—doing sober homage to Goering’s least-favorite colleague, Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop—being made up of Speer and his wife, Otto Dietrich, Feldmarschall Keitel and Julius Schaub. As Kurt paused on the threshold, momentarily frozen by the sight of the
Reichsmarschall, resplendent in his Lord of the Luftwaffe uniform, he caught Goering’s scanning eye and, seconds later, was being ushered to the presence by Peter Waldheim.
“May I present Captain Kurt Armbrecht, Herr Reichsmarschall.” A heel click from Waldheim and Kurt was suddenly very much alone, stiffly at attention as the broad and expressive features of the President of the Reichstag, Minister President of Prussia and top-ranking officer of the Reich, took hi
m in. He was aware, as through clouded water, of the smiling faces of the men and women who had broadened their half-circle to make way for the introduction: Martin Bormann, SS Oberfuehrer Rattenhuber, Heinrich and Frau Hoffman, Frau Keitel, Fräulein Eppler and—surprisingly—the blond and pleasant-faced Eva Braun herself. He also had to force himself not to glance at the Junoesque golden-haired woman standing closest to Goering, the former actress Emmy Sonnemann whom he had married in 1935. But now Goering was helping him out.
“I should explain, my dear,” he said, turning his great head to her, “that the Captain has been assisting our Fuehrer in a literary capacity. Indeed, I understand his services go somewhat beyond the mere surveillance of the Fuehrer’s notoriously erratic spelling.”
As he joined nervously in the gust of laughter that greeted Goering’s remark, it occurred to Kurt that this kind of irreverent but harmless crack at Hitler’s expense was almost a therapeutic necessity, opening for a brief but heady moment a tight safety valve in one’s overheated uncritical loyalty to the Fuehrer. Three hours later, he was to find himself almost wishing someone in the company would dare to create a precedent by mildly debunking Hitler to his face.
Everything else about the luncheon party seemed to promise an agreeably informal event. There was no Wehrmacht top brass, excepting Keitel, a dull-witted and fawning acolyte who held no terrors for Kurt. All three young adjutants were present, and the company was an exceptionally mixed one, as to rank and vocation. They followed Hitler, after he had finished kissing the hands of the seven women guests, into the larchwood-paneled dining room, the Fuehrer escorting Frau Goering, followed by Goering with Frau Ribbentrop on his arm and Bormann squiring Eva Braun. As Hitler, with Austrian ceremony, settled Emmy Goering and his young mistress into their red leather chairs to either side of his own seat in the center of the long table facing the window, the SS orderlies guided the rest of the guests to their places. Kurt was not surprised at Gerda Bormann’s absence from the party. Good Hausfrau that she was, she would be looking after the huge Bormann brood in their nearby villa. But he was amused to note that Professor Morell had been directed to the smaller table set up for Goering’s aide de camp, Colonel Berndt von Brauchswitz, the blond and vivacious Frau Gerda Christian (another of the Fuehrer’s secretaries), and a new notetaker for the Bormann Vermerke whom Kurt had not vet met.
There followed perhaps five minutes of general, rather stilted, conversation while the soup was being served, during which Hitler carried on a low-toned dialogue with Frau Goering. But it seemed to Kurt that everyone was marking time, trading platitudes while their eyes and ears stayed alerted for the moment when the Fuehrer would decide to take the stage. They were not kept waiting long. As the orderlies removed the soup plates, Hitler dabbed a napkin to his lips, leaned toward Goering and in a raised voice that instantly silenced the rest of the table, declared his conviction that the Reichsmarschall was putting on weight— “if such a personal remark is permitted.” The delighted chuckles released by these words, from a person who had legally taken to himself absolute personal power of life and death over every citizen in Germany, were noticeably louder at Kurt’s end of the table than where Ribbentrop held court, a conceited smile barely curling his thin lips.
Patting his belt and smiling broadly back at his host, Goering said, “I plead guilty, my Fuehrer. But, come the hunting season—” He made a pantomime of hollowing his cheeks and retracting his stomach, but the tentative ripple of genteel laughter ended abruptly as Hitler threw up his hands in disgust.
“Hunting! We shall never see eye-to-eye about this. What conceivable pleasure can a bunch of grown-up men find in waging war on a deer with a dozen repeating rifles and an army of beaters? I don’t mind admitting—” his twinkling blue eyes made a quick scan of the table—“that in regard to this so-called sport I find myself on the side of the prey. Tell us, Herr Reichsjaegermeister, have you ever found yourself on the receiving end of a stag’s antlers?”
“Not yet, my Fuehrer, I’m glad to say. But I make a practice of stalking only the most loyal and best-disciplined of German stags. I find they are marvelous respecters of my person.”
All eyes were on Hitler, the guests craning slightly forward to check his reaction. The laughter broke out only as he rolled his eyes ceilingward and snapped, “More fools, they! And with such a gargantuan target!”
It was the high spot, in terms of conviviality, of the luncheon. From there on a creeping tedium set in as Hitler, with a curious insensitiveness to the strained and silent intentness of his audience, launched into a monologue that started with a childhood encounter with a stoat-slaughtered rabbit, went on to a prolonged and superficial examination of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and progressed to a routine discourse on his own racial Weltanschauung, winding up as he rose two hours later to lead his strenuously smiling guests out of the dining room with a promise to regale them, as soon as they were all reassembled, with an account of how Julius Streicher had once been tricked into believing that Alfred Rosenberg was a Jew.
The Fuehrer’s temporary disappearance upstairs to his private quarters was the signal for a spirited outbreak of bonhomie as one group of guests made for the toilets off the small hallway and the rest drifted into the salon, where the orderlies were already setting up to serve tea and coffee. Kurt, who had held back at the threshold of the huge room to allow the others to pass on through, found Peter Waldheim waiting for him just inside. The young adjutant drew him toward the great fireplace, faced with green faïence, and the two of them talked quietly together while the others milled about at the far end of the room sixty feet away, before the most enormous picture window Kurt had ever seen, uttering little cries of delight at the broad panorama that took in the Berchtesgaden valley, and beyond it the Untersberg and Salzberg.
“Listen to them, Kurt. The same squeals of ecstasy, the same banal comments, every time they come here. Makes one feel like heaving that bust of Wagner right through the window!”
“What’s the drill from here on, Peter?” It was the first time either of them had used the other’s Christian name, as if the ordeal of lunch had drawn them closer together.
“You can see the way this crazy room’s arranged, with this part up here and the sunken part down there. The Chief will probably park himself here by the fireplace, with most of the ladies lined up on that sofa—plus Bormann and Keitel, of course, and either our foxy Foreign Minister or the Reichsmarschall, depending on who gets in first. I would advise you, unless you’re panting for more of the Chief’s reminiscences, to start studying that Gobelin tapestry over there in a few minutes’ time. That way, you can move in on the second team, who’ll be taking their coffee down there on the lower level. The conversation won’t be brilliant, but at least you’ll be able to get a comment in, if you wish.”
“How about Fräulein Braun?” Kurt chose his words carefully. “I thought Geissler said she was kept out of sight when the top people’s wives were around.”
Waldheim shrugged. “It’s about time the Chief gave her a break. The wives have all known about her for years. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what the bourgeoisie think about it. A military genius can get away with murder.” There was a second or two as the two men exchanged glances, followed by an explosive guffaw, quickly damped as heads turned toward them from the far end of the room. “I claim copyright to that one,” Waldheim muttered, battling to keep a straight face.
“Too bad. It would make a great subtitle for the Chief's book.”
Ribbentrop and his wife were already installed by the fireplace when the Fuehrer rejoined the party, smiling and kneading his fingers as he crossed the room—the eager raconteur, all too conscious of his duty to keep the audience entertained. After lingering before the big Gobelin tapestry for a decent interval, Kurt found a seat on the perimeter of the group gathered about Goering, who had installed himself at the circular table near the window and was holding forth—but keeping his voice down— on his favorite subj
ect.
“My art dealer in Holland has just come across another Rembrandt self-portrait, property of a Jew diamond merchant who ‘made a gift of it,’ if you please, to his non-Yid stockbroker just before he was given a free train ride by the Gestapo to Auschwitz. The stockbroker, for reasons that baffle me, considers this masterpiece to be better housed under a pile of sacks in his attic than in my art galleries at Karinhall. If that isn’t Philistinism, I’d like to know what is!”
When Rattenhuber intervened to ask, straight-faced, if the Reichsmarschall could think of no way to persuade the stockbroker to adopt a less antisocial attitude, Goering’s shoulders began to shake with controlled merriment. “Naturally, one is under an obligation to make such people see the light,” he chortled. “I’ve instructed someone from the Rosenberg Organization to invite the Dutch stockbroker to make a trip to Auschwitz himself, to discuss the finer points of the situation with his Jewish benefactor. I expect to find the Rembrandt waiting for me at Karinhall, on my return.”
For what seemed another eternity to Kurt, but was in fact a little short of an hour, the Reichsmarschall’s group competed among themselves, under Goering’s smug encouragement and patronage, in describing the various art treasures that had come their way over the past year or two, for all the world like a group of newly rich Texas oilmen, gloating in the smoking room of a transatlantic liner. Not once did the conversation rise above the theme of material gain and commercial values, not even when Goering maneuvered it around to the subject of his van Gogh self-portrait.
“I’ve insured it, on the advice of my French dealer, for half a million marks, though of course no amount of money would compensate me for its loss. However, as I told Emmy at the time, ‘If we have to cry, let it be into only the finest of lawn handkerchiefs.’ He was grinning around at his circle, but their attention had been diverted. An SS officer had let himself quietly into the room and caught the eye of Waldheim, and the two men were now in close conversation by the door. In his turn, Waldheim, noticeably agitated, turned to catch the ever-watchful eye of Martin Bormann, who hurried across to join the two officers. As Waldheim spoke to him, his thick back stiffened and he glanced quickly around toward the fireplace. Whatever Bormann’s intentions, the initiative was now taken by Hitler, who, aware of a distraction, glanced irritably over his shoulder, took in the situation, and pushed himself out of the armchair. Bormann met him halfway toward the door, and their heads came together. Seconds later, the Fuehrer’s voice, harsh and strident with anger, froze everyone in the room.
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