Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  XI

  Such was the “Artists’ House”; and still more grandiose was another structure just completed in the Englischer Garten, called “The House of German Art.” It was, in a way, a monument to one of the most significant events in the life of Adi Schicklgruber, his rejection as an art student by a committee of judges in Vienna. All his youthful hopes had been centered upon such a career, and when he submitted his work and was coldly told that he had no talent, it had meant for him a sentence to sleep in the shelter for bums and to earn his bread by painting and selling postcards. When by his political genius he had made himself master of Germany, one of his burning desires had been to prove himself the Fatherland’s greatest critic and patron of the arts. So had come that colossal marble structure, built on swampy ground at tremendous cost—but nothing mattered in the cause of proving how great had been the error of the Vienna committee!

  After four years the work was done, and the wits of Munich had dubbed it the “Greek Railroad Station.” It was an unusual art museum, in that it was also a restaurant, a beerhall, and a night club. Had not the Nazi Party been born in a beerhall, and had not all the Führer’s early speeches been delivered in such places? The new order was pledged to the extermination of Christian-Jewish asceticism; eating, drinking, and making merry were the order of the new day, and all young Germans were told to build strong bodies and to bring new strong-bodied Aryans into the world as early and often as possible. Most Nazi temples provided an abundance of private rooms in which a beginning might be made at any hour of the day or night.

  Lanny Budd visited this temple of art, and found it not easy to keep his shudders from becoming visible. Not that there were no good paintings to be seen, for Munich had been a home of art for centuries, and not all the good painters were in concentration camps. When they painted landscapes the places were recognizable, and when they painted Bavarian peasants they frequently revealed sympathy. But when they painted a naked Aryan Leda in the embrace of the swan, it made one think of the “feelthy postcards” which were peddled all over the Mediterranean lands. When they painted Stormtroopers in uniform and Nazi implements of war, it seemed that the work belonged in the Department of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, presided over by a crippled little dwarf.

  The visitor stood before a large and extremely bad painting called The Spirit of the Stormtroopers, depicting a column of Nazi youths marching in the brave old days when they were engaged in making the streets free to the brown battalions. Concerning this work the gossip-monger of the old regime, Baron von Zinszollern, had told a most awful story, having to do with the festival called the “Day of German Art” in the previous July, when this and thousands of other new works had been revealed to the world. One of the curses of the Nazi regime had been homosexuality, and at the time of the Blood Purge Hitler had used this as his pretext for ordering the murder of Ernst Röhm and others of his oldest associates. It had been necessary to outlaw the practice, and the crime had been described in Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code. Since it has always been the practice of civilized man to find some subtle way of alluding to things that are not nice, it had come about in Germany that “hundertfünfundsiebzig” had become the German way of whispering a reference to this form of abnormality.

  And now, here came this magnificent art show, trumpeted to the world as evidence of Nazi love of the higher things of life. Several hundred thousand catalogues had been printed, intended to be sold for one mark, twenty-five pfennigs each; and was it the operation of blind chance or of some malicious trickster on the hanging committee that the number assigned to a painting entitled The Spirit of the Stormtroopers should be that much-whispered number? The discovery was made by an American correspondent, who reported it to the Gestapo, with the result that all the catalogues were destroyed, and if rumor could be believed, somebody high up in Munich art affairs lost his life. When the “Greek Railroad Station” opened, the marching Nazi heroes were found with a harmless number, while hundertfünfundsiebzig was assigned to a Vase of Flowers.

  XII

  Lanny Budd went to call on the Führer in his elegant Munich apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse. He found the great man as happy as the cat that has swallowed the canary and has not been spanked for it. He did not refer to the fact that a wise and understanding American had advised him how to proceed, and Lanny was, of course, too tactful to hint at it; he judged that the occasion called for a good stiff dose of flattery, and he told the greatest statesman of modern times that the world marveled at the diplomatic finesse he had displayed; above all the sense of timing, which had been the essence of this most difficult job. Such a humiliation for a British Prime Minister—and such pitiful efforts in Parliament to dignify himself! There had been nothing like it since King Henry had come to Canossa.

  The Führer behaved as cats do when they lie in front of a warm fire and have their fur stroked the right way. He appreciated the discernment of this sympathetic visitor, and presently when the visitor hinted that there might be a weakness in the Führer’s position, he asked at once what it was; when told that it was the guarantee against unprovoked aggression given to Czechoslovakia, he smiled slyly and said that this was a guarantee against the aggression of other states. See how he had reduced the demands of Poland and Hungary for Czech territory! But that was far from meaning that the Czech politicians were free to carry on their intrigues against Germany abroad, and if they kept it up they would soon find they had no guarantee against German discipline.

  “We Nazis have learned that diplomacy and war are two sides of the same shield,” declared the Führer. “Very surely we shall not allow anyone to make war on us unpunished.” He spoke of the fact that the Foreign Minister of Poland had just been to Rumania in an effort to make an agreement for mutual defense. Of course such an agreement could be aimed at no one but himself, declared Hitler, and proceeded to denounce the Poles as another subhuman tribe, victims of priestcraft and clerical intrigue. “The cross and the swastika cannot exist side by side,” declared Adi. “The Versailles Diktat has put the Poles in position to blockade Germany from East Prussia, and who but our enemies could imagine that I will permit such a thorn to go on festering in the body of the Reich?”

  “Aha!” thought the “P.A.”—another territorial claim in Europe! Said he: “That remark interests me for a personal reason, Exzellenz. May I talk about my own plans for a moment?”

  “I am always interested in my friends’ plans, Herr Budd.”

  “A few months ago I was passing through the Corridor, and chanced to see a little place that I thought I would love to own. You know how it is—you proved it here at the Berghof, if you start with a place already built you save a lot of time; you have the roads, and the beautiful trees that would take a lifetime to get, and a place to live while you plan improvements. I inquired about this little property and found that it is within my means. Only one thing deterred me—I could not bear to live under a reactionary Polish dictatorship. I thought: ‘I will wait and see what happens.’”

  “You won’t have to wait indefinitely, Herr Budd; that much I can tell you.”

  “I don’t want to commit an impropriety and put myself in the position of a real estate speculator. If I should make the purchase, it would be to have a home for the rest of my days; and one of my reasons would be that it is in convenient driving distance of Kurt Meissner, and of yourself, if I may make so bold as to count upon your friendship. I should probably wish to become a citizen of your Third Reich.”

  “You will be most welcome, I assure you. And certainly you can count upon the fact that all the impositions of Versailles are going to be wiped off the books of history. If the place you speak of is in a district in which the Germans are a majority, or in which they were a majority before they were driven out by Polish misgovernment, you can be sure that it will come under my protection very soon.”

  “Herzlichen Dank, Herr Reichskanzler! There is no reason why I should pay more than necessary, so I think I’l
l wait until your intentions have become manifest, and the Poles will be more disposed to sell.”

  Lanny said this with a smile, and the Führer broke into a grin. He had a sort of ghoulish humor when it was a question of his ability to outwit his opponents. “Wait about six months, Herr Budd, and I will promise to soften the price of your future home!”

  XIII

  The Führer had just ordered the new puppet government at Prague to break off its Russian alliance, and the order had been obeyed. He said now that he hoped soon to see the French people come to their senses and realize that dalliance with the monster of Bolshevism could do them nothing but harm. This dalliance represented the nadir of depravity to which venal politicians could descend; French newspapers and Cabinet members had been bought outright by Russian gold, and so long as such men held power there could be no friendship between France and Germany. That was what the Führer meant by the statement that diplomacy and war were two sides of the same shield; the Russian alliance was a perpetual act of aggression against his Regierung.

  Lanny remarked: “You are aware, of course, that many statesmen in both France and Britain are hoping that you will put down Bolshevism for them.”

  “While they sit and watch me bleed to death! Believe me, Herr Budd, I am nobody’s monkey and pull nobody’s chestnuts out of the fire. When the war on Bolshevism begins, they will help, and I’ll be certain they are all the way in before I put in one foot.”

  “Tell me,” said the visitor; “have you thought of the possibility that you might make a non-aggression pact with the Soviets? That would give Britain and France quite a jolt.”

  “Indeed it would; and be sure that I don’t overlook any cards in my hand. I am well aware that Britain and France have been doing their best to set the Bolsheviks against me, and it is no part of my program to let my enemies move first.”

  “When I go to London,” remarked the art expert, “Lord Wickthorpe is going to ask me as to your views. Shall I tell him that?”

  “Tell him anything that I have said to you. That is the advantage of my position; I tell them the whole truth, and it is as if I had said nothing, for they do not believe me.”

  “You are something unique in the history of Europe, Exzellenz, and they do not know what to make of you. I have never before called you ‘Mein Führer,’ but I think from now on I shall have to do so.”

  And after that, of course, a presidential agent was free to share in all the secrets of Nazi diplomacy!

  31

  Courage Mounteth with Occasion

  I

  Lanny had got the information he wanted, and was through in Munich. He had found a purchaser for another of Göring’s superfluous art works, and would drive to Berlin, pay for the painting, and take it out with him; he made it a rule never to ship anything from inside Naziland, dishonesty having become so rampant in the country that he was unwilling to trust even the German employees of the American Express Company. He would pay duty calls on several persons in Berlin such as Herr Thyssen and Dr. Schacht, who were free talkers; he would listen to General Emil Meissner tell about the newest technical achievements of the Reichswehr; also, he wouldn’t fail to collect a few tidbits of gossip from the Fürstin von Donnerstein.

  The day before he left the Bavarian capital a dreadful piece of news came over the radio. A Jewish youth in Paris, a refugee crazed by his personal sufferings and those of his people, had shot Eduard vom Rath, official of the Germany embassy whom Lanny had met in the Château de Belcour. The Nazi radio burst into a frenzy, blaming the crime upon the incitements of the British press, which had persisted in publishing stories about the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It happened that the day of the Paris shooting was the anniversary of the Beerhall Putsch, so all the Nazi leaders were in Munich. That night Adolf Wagner gave the order, and a wild pillaging of Jewish shops began; Lanny in his hotel room heard the crashing of glass and the yells of the Stormtroopers, and went out to watch the disciplined marauders smashing plate-glass windows and showcases with sticks and stones, filling their pockets with watches and jewelry, tying up bundles of furs, lingerie, silk stockings—whatever they thought might please their lady friends.

  That wholesale looting went on the whole night, and many of the Nazis in their greed got badly cut with flying splinters of glass or with the sharp edges in showcases. Lanny witnessed one of the strangest of sights, a battle royal between the Stormtroopers and the SS guards of Marshal Göring in front of the Bernheimer establishment which dealt in oriental rugs, antiques, and objets d’art. He supposed it was a brawl over the possession of these treasures, but later on he learned that Herr Bernheimer was an “honorary Aryan,” the only one in Munich; he had supplied the fat commander with all the furnishings of Karinhall, and thus was entitled to protection.

  Next morning when Lanny set out upon his drive, the street-cleaning department of the city was engaged in sweeping up the broken glass and loading it into trucks, and the looting was no longer an enterprise for the rank-and-file Nazis, but was being systematized in proper German fashion. Members of the city’s Kulturkammer had been commissioned to ransack Jewish homes and carry off to the museums all works of art of whatever character which might interest the Aryan public. All the male Jews of Munich were being rounded up by the Gestapo and carted off to Dachau; some who had learned what went on in that place of horror were shooting themselves or jumping out of windows.

  It was the same all over Germany; more than sixty thousand Jews were put into concentration camps in this dreadful “November Pogrom,” and the number who were murdered could never be guessed. Lanny, who had started late, stopped for lunch in Regensburg, home of one of Göring’s great airplane factories. He there observed an elderly bearded Jew sneaking along the street like a frightened animal, doubtless trying to get to his home or some other place of hiding. A gang of half a dozen of the Hitlerjugend, boys of no more than fourteen or fifteen, set upon him with clubs and with their “Daggers of Honor.” The poor man screamed for mercy, putting his head down and hunching his shoulders to protect himself from the blows. They beat him to the ground and then pounded and kicked him and slashed his clothing and his flesh with the daggers. They quit only when he was such a mess of blood that they could not touch him without ruining their brown uniforms. They went off singing the Horst Wessel song, leaving the motionless form lying in the gutter.

  There was nothing Lanny could do about it. He was safe because he was an Aryan and looked it, but he would have ruined his career forever if he had made any move to interfere with the German effort to protect their “racial purity.” Grief took away his appetite, and he got back into his car, depriving the busy city of Regensburg of the two or three marks he would have spent in one of its cafés.

  II

  The same scenes were taking place in all the towns along the Munich-Berlin Autobahn; looted shops gaped with broken windows and empty shelves, and trucks were loaded with wretched Jews, many of them having faces and clothing red with blood. Nowhere was the situation worse than in Berlin; organized brutality prevailed for a week, and turned the cold and proud capital into a charnelhouse for Lanny Budd. Impossible to have any sort of pleasure there; impossible to read a newspaper, to take part in social life, to enjoy rational conversation. Painting, poetry, drama, music, all had been poisoned by this systematized lunacy. You might say that you would go to a concert hall and hear great music out of the past; but Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms were mocked by modern Germany—their scherzos were like dancing on a grave, their adagios became the unbearable agony of a great and noble culture being dragged down and defiled.

  Two cultures, in fact, the German and the Jewish, equally worthy, and reciprocally dependent. Lanny had met many Jews in the Fatherland; all sorts, both good and bad, as was the case with Germans. He had observed that there were characteristic Jewish faults, as there were characteristic German faults, and he saw little to choose between them; he liked the domineering German just as little as he liked the devious
Jew. On the other hand he liked the ardent idealistic Jew as much as he liked the genial and warmhearted German, and he knew that these types supplemented each other; he knew that they got along well together, for he had seen it happening.

  The tragic events of the time were really a family quarrel, for the Jews had been in Germany for many centuries, and thought of themselves as Germans before they were Jews. They had prospered, and had their share in the country’s history and the building of its culture. They had been proud of themselves, and looked down upon the Jews of Poland and Russia as an inferior breed. Now the Nazis were beating them down to a level below the dogs of Germany—for that same Hitlerjugend who had murdered the old Jew in Regensburg would love and cherish their dogs.

  In Lanny Budd the souls of Heine and Toller, of Mendelssohn and Mahler, Marx and Lassalle, Ehrlich and Einstein and a hundred other great German Jews cried out against this horror. It was really not the German people who were perpetrating it, but a band of fanatics who had seized a nation and were perverting its youth and turning them into murderers and psychopaths. Germans would awaken some day as from a nightmare, and contemplate with loathing and dismay the crimes that had been committed in their name. They would do penance for centuries, having to read the pages of history on which these deeds were recorded; they would bow their heads and shed tears upon the pages, knowing that to the rest of mankind the name of German had become a byword and a hissing.