The strain upon Kurt of having to hold his tongue, of not giving away even by a grimace the disgust such rubbish aroused in him was beginning to get him down. He wanted to let loose, tell Helga she was a stupid bitch and pour scorn on Hitler’s absurd pretensions. But too much was at stake. Giovanni Donati was not what he appeared to be, and whatever he was and whatever his game, Sophie was now a part of it, and he himself had been allotted an as yet undefined role. It was like walking a tightrope in pitch darkness. At the same time—and for the first time since his tour of the abominable New Order with Werner Voegler—he no longer felt oppressed by impotence and alienation. Something was moving, out there in the darkness—lurking, perhaps, like an iceberg across the course set by this mad mariner, Hitler. Kurt couldn’t even see the tip of it yet, but it was there and it would grow closer, and after it struck, though the impact on Germany would be frightful, his country would survive.
He said now, as Helga snatched up her handbag and glared at him from across the room, “Don’t make difficulties. Just wait at home for my call—all right?”
She left without another word, slamming the door behind her.
Giovanni Donati came in without knocking, closed the door carefully behind him and gave Kurt a surprisingly smart military salute as he made his way to Helga’s vacant chair.
“Good evening, Major Armbrecht!”
“The rank is Captain, Monsignor.”
“Not any more. I was with the Fuehrer when he signed the order for your promotion, half an hour ago.”
“I’m very flattered. I mean, that at a time like this—”
“—the Fuehrer can be bothered with such trifles?” Donati filled in, smiling. “Proof of his greatness, wouldn’t you say?” He waved his hand, forestalling a reply. “He agrees with Colonel Schmund—if you’re going to tour the military headquarters, a little more rank will not come amiss.”
“Surprise upon surprise! I haven’t even yet asked the Fuehrer’s permission.”
“Schmund did it for you. The Fuehrer is all for it. He had been unhappy about having to suspend his literary sessions with you.”
“Sophie gave me your message,” Kurt said, looking hard into Donati’s dark eyes. “Since then, I’ve heard nothing from her, and neither has her mother.”
“Your sister is well, and at this moment in Lisbon, attending to my personal affairs most efficiently. You appreciate, of course, that Portugal and Spain are full of enemy agents—” Donati’s eyes rolled as he blessed himself swiftly—“and that for reasons of security I cannot disclose her various addresses. However, I spoke to her on the telephone yesterday and she sends her fondest love to you and your mother.”
“When shall we see her, Monsignor?”
“Not before the storm has passed.” Donati’s voice had become almost inaudible. “And you, Kurt—will you ride the storm with me?”
His heart pounding, Kurt nodded.
“The Fuehrer and I,” Donati went on in his normal voice, “go to the Berghof shortly and then up to the Eagle’s Nest, where we shall be totally absorbed in theological matters. This will be a most convenient time for you to make your tour, and I wanted to say goodbye to you now and to give you my blessing.” As he spoke he drew an envelope from inside his soutane and stood up to lay it on Kurt’s desk. Kurt walked around to face him, then went down on one knee as the Italian archbishop’s hand rose for the benediction.
At the door Giovanni Donati turned to look back at Kurt.
“God goes with you, my son.”
There was no inscription on the envelope. He slit it open and took out the sheaf of folded, handwritten pages. Across the top of the first page, in large block letters, underlined, were the words: TO BE READ IN STRICTEST PRIVACY AND IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. He put the letter in his pocket, locked up his desk and set off for the men’s lavatory.
Donati’s instructions were set out in a legible forward-slanting handwriting.
You will be visiting most of the command centers of the Army and the Luftwaffe in the Reich, as well as the headquarters of Military Governors in German-occupied countries, with the exception of the Soviet Union. I have listed on a separate sheet the names of certain commanders who must be included in your itinerary, and you will note that with the exception of the last person on the list—to whom I shall return—all those named are Catholics and nonmembers of the Nazi Party. Let us call them Category A. Category B will comprise all other commanders visited, apart from those listed here. Your discussions with this latter group will be confined to matters of morale, recruitment, logistics and so on. To those in Category A you will reveal that you are a practicing Catholic by questioning them about the facilities for Catholic worship inside their command. Almost certainly you will be asked, as a member of Hitler’s personal staff, if you have any inside information as to the real purpose of Hitler’s visit to the Holy Father and the reason for the apparent failure of his mission in Rome. At this point, I beg of you to tread very carefully. Tell them, as one Catholic to another, what you know, but tell it dispassionately. If they should ask you about me, as they almost certainly will, you have my prior forgiveness for anything scathing and derogatory you care to say. Make a careful note of each commander’s reactions and comments. Judge, if you can, the degree of outrage produced by your confidential information and, in particular, their reactions when you tell them that Hitler now sees himself as the Lord’s appointed one on this earth. Arrange your tour so as to finish it at the Paris headquarters of General Karl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel, the Military Governor of France. To this general you will divulge everything you have learned about the responses of the individual Catholic commanders to the news you gave them. Speak freely to Stuelpnagel. He is one, among others, who will ride the storm with us.
May the blessings of Almighty God and the Holy Virgin Mary comfort and sustain you until we meet again—G.D.†
Having read, reread and committed to memory the names listed on the last sheet of paper, Kurt reduced the letter to small fragments and flushed them down the lavatory.
Hitler’s departure for the Berghof was delayed by the news from Rome that the Vatican had now signed the defense treaty with the United States and had rejected an edict from Mussolini’s Grand Council proscribing any such pact.
A Fuehrer Conference was immediately convened in the Berlin Chancellery, where, for the first time in the Third Reich’s eleven-year-old history, Goering, Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler and Ribbentrop found themselves sitting around the long table in the rarely used Cabinet Room together with Feldmarschall Keitel, General Halder, Chief of the General Staff, Feldmarschall Jodi, Chief of the Operations Staff, Luftwaffe Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring and Grand Admiral Doenitz, Commander in Chief of the Navy. Incongruously planted among this spectacular assembly of Party and Wehrmacht executive power was the tubby sacerdotal figure of Archbishop Giovanni Donati, occupying the seat immediately to Hitler’s right.
The Fuehrer, speaking with conspicuous calmness, began by recalling his historic and “predestined” meeting with Donati in Madrid and went on to describe the earnest efforts he himself had made, in person, to win the Pope’s collaboration.
“I went to Rome,” he declared, his pale eyes misty with emotion, “to offer the Church a glorious escape from the moral and material dilemmas brought on by its own regressive and absurdly outmoded philosophies. I brought to Pacelli the message given to me up there on the Kehlstein, the clear message from the Almighty that, just as He had taken human form two thousand years ago to show all mankind the way to redemption, so I, Adolf Hitler, had been charged with leading his Church out of the medieval darkness and into the sunlight of our National Socialist New Order.
“Inconceivably, this man, with his papal claim to infallibility, not only rejected the hand extended to him but has now had the effrontery to form a ridiculous alliance with that puppet of international Jewry, Franklin D. Roosevelt—an alliance clearly directed against the Greater Reich. I ask you, gentlemen, how am I expect
ed to respond to this act of blatant provocation?”
The question was almost certainly rhetorical; but Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, catching Hitler’s eye at that moment, took it as an invitation to speak up.
“The treaty is nothing but a bluff, my Fuehrer. It will never be put into effect, whatever countermeasures you decide upon. It assumes that a hundred and thirty-two million Americans are willing to take on the military might of Germany to preserve the doctrinal purity of twenty-four million fellow-countrymen. An arrant piece of nonsense!”
Hitler had been nodding his agreement as Ribbentrop spoke. Now, as he was about to resume his discourse, he caught sight of Goebbels, who was shaking his head slowly.
“The Doctor has some comment to make?”
“We should not forget, my Fuehrer,” Goebbels said nervously, “that there is a Trojan horse already within our fortress. I speak of course of the Catholic presence inside the Greater Reich—forty-three percent of the population—and in countries like Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Poland. The Vatican’s writ runs large throughout Europe. It’s the one reason, for example, why Reichsfuehrer Himmler, quite rightly, won’t permit a Lithuanian national formation inside his Waffen SS.” The Doctor turned to Himmler for confirmation, receiving instead a look of cold contempt.
“Speak up, Himmler!” Hitler shouted. “Let’s have your answer to that!”
The Reichsfuehrer’s thin and colorless lips moved like a marionette’s as he flatly intoned his solution. “The moment you give the word, my Fuehrer, every Catholic Church in Europe will be closed down, every priest put into a concentration camp, every pfennig of Church funds impounded, every Catholic in our armed forces required to renounce his loyalty to the Pope or be marched off to face an SS firing squad.” He made a dismissive gesture with one of his small, well-manicured hands. “We’ll make firewood of this so-called Trojan horse!”
As Hitler, chuckling softly, glanced sideways at Giovanni Donati, the prelate let go of his filigree gilded cross and brought his hands up to grasp the edge of the conference table.
“It would be better, in my opinion,” he said, “if Reichsfuehrer Himmler’s remarks were stricken from the record of this meeting. It has never been the Fuehrer’s intention to destroy the Church of Rome or to antagonize its vast flock. On the contrary, he is offering it not only survival but the promise of increased vitality and dignity through a realistic program of reforms, which I and many of my coreligionists believe to be long overdue. It grieves me that the Holy Father seems to have set himself so stubbornly against such reforms. But it is my opinion that if the Fuehrer stands firm in his divinely inspired resolution, the cardinals in the Curia will prevail upon the Pope to seek an accommodation with him.”
“Let’s hope you’re right, Monsignor,” Hermann Goering grunted. “But what happens if they refuse to budge?”
“I shall march into the Vatican!” Hitler shouted. “I shall whip the whoremongers and moneychangers from the temple of God!” His expression, as he raised his right fist and brought it flashing down, was almost beatific. Of the military chiefs sitting at the table, only Keitel and Jodi nodded approvingly. Halder and Kesselring exchanged quick glances, and Karl Doenitz closed his eyes for a full seven seconds.
Kesselring said, “It will mean civil war in Italy, my Fuehrer, and revolt by large sections of the Italian armed forces—possibly also the police.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right,” Hitler retorted briskly. “That’s precisely why I asked you here and why our adjutants are now standing by in the map room. But before we go into that, gentlemen, I would like to have your comments on my revised version of the Sermon on the Mount, which I shall now ask Monsignor Donati to read aloud to you.”
III
THE TEAHOUSE, half-an-hour’s walk from the Berghof, afforded a superb panoramic view over the Berchtesgaden valley. Two days after the Fuehrer Conference in Berlin, Giovanni Donati was sitting on a bench outside the little round pavilion, when a pretty blonde in her early thirties came walking toward him up the pathway from the direction of the parking lot. At the sound of her footsteps he turned his head, then nodded a smiling greeting.
“We haven’t been introduced, Monsignor—” Her blue eyes, normally one of her most attractive features, were distinctly puffy and red-rimmed. “—but I’m Eva Braun. Perhaps you have heard of me?”
“Indeed I have, Fräulein Braun.” The priest moved along the seat, making room for her. “And I’m very glad to meet you at last.”
She sat in silence for a while, tugging nervously at the hem of her skirt. Then she blurted out: “I followed you here deliberately! I want you to tell me what I’ve done to deserve this treatment from the Fuehrer!”
“What treatment do you refer to, my child?”
“You know perfectly well, Monsignor. Everyone knows! For more than three months now—ever since you arrived and went up to the Eagle’s Nest with him—-I’ve been banished! First, my things were moved from the Berghof into my sister Gretl’s quarters without a word of explanation from the Fuehrer—” The tears were flowing now, copiously. “—and now I hear he’s given you my room, here and in the Chancellery! After all these years, how can he be so—”
“My child, listen to me—”
“—so cruel! He won’t even answer my letters! What have I done?”
“Listen to me, Fräulein Braun. Here.” Donati fumbled in his cassock and brought out a handkerchief. “It’s perfectly clean and it has miraculous powers of drying young ladies’ tears. There! Give it a good blow and I’ll try to explain something to you.” When she was quiet, he took one of her hands and spoke to her gently.
“The Fuehrer needs your understanding and your help more than at any other time in the years you have known him. He cannot even allow himself to think about you, much less to have you close to him, while he is grappling with this monumental spiritual challenge.”
“I don’t ask that! All I ask is—”
“Shush, my child! Tell me this: How much love do you really have for Adolf Hitler?”
“Enough to die for him, of course. But—”
“Then you must prove it by continuing to die a little, as you are now, for a while longer. Tremendous issues are at stake, my dear, not only for the Fuehrer and Germany but for the entire world. You must believe me when I tell you that the greatest service you can do for the man you love is to deny him, even if he were to seek it, those womanly comforts and allurements that could so fatally distract him from this, the last and greatest mission of his career.”
The empty-headed blonde was drinking in every word. The agony was over. She was a Bavarian Jean Harlow, nobly sacrificing her own happiness for a Clark Gable locked in combat with nameless enemies. She drew a deep breath.
“How long, Father, must I sacrifice—-that is, when do you think we can be together again?”
“The end of his mission is near, my child. But you must be patient, and strong in your love. Tomorrow, the Fuehrer and I go into retreat up there in the Eagle’s Nest. When we come down, you may start to count the days. Meantime, remember us both in your prayers.”
“I will, Father. Would it be—I mean, could I ask you to give him just one little message from me?”
Donati nodded.
“Just tell him that his Tschapperl is praying for him, night and day.”
Hitler’s instructions to Martin Bormann were brief and precise. He and Donati were not to be disturbed during their second “retreat” on the Kehlstein summit except for matters of the utmost importance and urgency, such as a communication from Pope Pius XII. The telephones in the Eagle’s Nest were to be disconnected from the Berghof switchboard and a simple oneway communication system was to be installed to enable Hitler to summon his orderlies up to the peak whenever they were required. The sealed trunk that had arrived from Munich for the papal legate was to be taken up to the Eagle’s Nest at once.
Bormann kept his notebook out, waiting for further instructions. But there were
n’t any. He said, “And the approximate duration of your retreat, my Fuehrer?”
“That’s not in my hands. I shall send a message when we are ready to descend.” Hitler nodded briskly and returned his attention to the missal lying open on his desk. But as Bormann was halfway to the door of the study, the Fuehrer’s voice brought him around on his heel.
“I was almost forgetting . . . Instruct SD headquarters in Munich to place Cardinal Faulhaber under house arrest immediately. No visitors allowed until further notice.”
“The charges against him, my Fuehrer?”
“You’ll think of something. Wait a minute—hasn’t he been kicking up a stench over the closing down of Catholic publishing houses in Bavaria? That will do.”
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