As my reader may imagine, I followed the Davis Cup tie between the United States and Germany which started at Wimbledon three days later with the keenest interest. The newspapers were effusive on Cramm’s play in his first game, where he beat the American number two, Bryan Grant, in straight sets. They also commented that his play was slow on his own serve as he checked the balls carefully before choosing which to use in play - a consequence of the tactic that Holmes had suggested which I had not considered.
Cramm was less successful in the doubles, but other results in the tie meant that, just as Cramm had predicted, the result of the contest came down to the final match between him and Donald Budge.
The events of the match that followed may be known to my reader, but they bear retelling and to do so, I can do no better than to give my reader some edited extracts of the report in The Times:
Cramm had actually appeared on court for the match and was warming up when an attendant spoke to him briefly and he immediately darted back into the changing room, from which he reappeared a few minutes later. It was subsequently suggested that the German had been summoned to take a call from his country’s leader, Herr Adolf Hitler. In any event, when play began, Cramm played as though his life depended on it and was soon in a two-sets-to-love lead.
His serve is so often the weakest part of Cramm’s game but, maybe due to his careful selection of what ball to use and his use of the slice, he held it easily and was dominant at the net. Such focus could not, perhaps, be sustained forever and Budge easily won the third and fourth sets before Cramm went into a 4–1 lead in the fifth set. Budge staged a recovery, but the German had a match point on his serve at 5–4.
It is here that an incident occurred that will be remembered long after the other details of this great match are forgotten.
Budge struck a forehand shot as Cramm approached the net and it seemed to go long. Cramm indicated that he had got a touch on Budge’s shot which no one else had seen and conceded the point. Budge recovered to win the last set 8–6 and the United States will be this country’s opponent in the final on Saturday.
After the match Cramm said, “It did not occur me to do anything else other than concede the point. Sport is like life. There is no point to it without fair play. I am thrilled to have played in such an exciting match and my only regret is that it did not go on longer. I congratulate my opponent on his victory.”
Budge commented, “My opponent’s gesture is one that will live on the lips of men for generations. I shall never forget his generosity and chivalry.”
After the match at Wimbledon, Cramm and a group of other leading German tennis players boarded a ship and went on a seven-month world tour playing in Japan, Indonesia, Australia and the United States. We read reports of his doings in the British press. He was reported to be making speeches calling for understanding between nations and not mentioning his country’s government.
“Dangerous,” said Holmes. “If he has a distaste for his government, he should be saying nothing that could be construed as showing it.”
My friend’s remarks were as farsighted as ever. Wanzer had been arrested as part of an investigation into an entirely independent matter and under interrogation, he disclosed Cramm’s name to procure his own release.
Holmes translated to me an account of Cramm’s arrest from the Völkischer Beobachter which, as the newspaper of the National Socialist party, took a predictable line:
Two officers called on the house of the wealthy Cramm on the evening after his return from his sporting tour. They knocked on the door and said that they wanted to congratulate him on his success during his tour. Once inside Cramm’s property, they arrested him for crimes of extreme depravity to which he has already confessed. Popular justice will soon exact a suitable punishment.
Interest in the story was not confined to the German press. In America, Donald Budge collected signatures from tennis players around the world in an appeal for clemency and sent it to Cramm’s mother to deliver it to the authorities. It may not surprise my reader that Madame von Cramm then petitioned my friend to perform the actual handing over the letter.
“My dear Herr Holmes,” she wrote. “Your name is so well known as a symbol of all that is fair and good. I have arranged an appointment for you to see the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Göring, who is, as you may remember, a non-playing member of my son’s club, Rot-Weiβ Berlin. You must and surely will persuade him to let my son go free.”
In spite of his age, my friend’s desire for clemency to prevail seemed to be as robust as the sportsman’s mother. Accordingly, April 1938 saw us once again in the German capital, as we had been in early 1930 for the matter I have reported under the title The German Interpreter. We again stayed at the Athlon Hotel and on the morning after our arrival we were shown into the grandiose office of Hermann Göring on the top floor of the Air Ministry.
Göring had been a noted air-ace during the Great War, but his rotund figure and red, puffy face made it very clear why he was not an active player at Rot-Weiβ Berlin.
“I have come,” said Holmes, “to present to you a letter from all the world’s best tennis players asking for leniency in the case of Gottfried von Cramm.”
“I know your name, Mr Holmes, from the works of your friend here,” replied Göring in heavily accented but fluent English. “And I know Cramm personally. I have tried repeatedly to persuade him to join our party. He needs money to play his sport and so he is in debt. I have offered to tear up the mortgages held by various Jewish banks on his properties if he joins. And I have also threatened to prohibit him from travelling overseas to tournaments. Yet neither promises nor threats have persuaded him to join our party. He is a very difficult man.”
“I am not here to discuss Cramm’s membership of your party, Herr Reichsmarschall. I am here to ask you to intervene in the legal process being brought against him. Herr von Cramm is a model sportsman and a credit to his nation.”
“A credit to his nation!” snorted Göring contemptuously. “The nation is nothing. It is the race that matters. We Germans,” he continued in a more measured tone, “regard the sexual acts to which Cramm has admitted as perverted and repugnant. They will prevent the propagation of our race. And the English have a similar opinion of them. Then there is the additional matter of him sending his inherited money overseas. If he has too much, it should be used for the benefit of German mothers and children rather than being frittered away on enabling the flight of some low-life Jew.”
“But surely, Herr Reichsmarschall,” pleaded Holmes, “Whatever the rights and wrongs of the acts Herr von Cramm has committed, they have been more than amply punished by his arrest and by their revelation to the prurient public. There is no need to go through with a trial and possible custodial sentence.”
“On the contrary, Herr Holmes,” retorted Göring. “Imprisonment of a popular sporting figure such as Cramm will show that no one is above the law of this land. We want to be seen as harsh but fair in the operation of our laws.”
“But the offences described occurred several years ago in private between consenting adults. Surely, bringing them up now serves no purpose.”
“Bringing them up now has the very desirable effect of focusing the minds of those who might consider opposing us. And, as Cramm is of noble origin, it will also show any opponents of ours who remain at liberty that even an aristocrat is not beyond the power of our people’s court. People focus on the nationalist part of my party’s name but my party’s full name is National Socialist and that means that we represent the interests of German workers. I don’t imagine the German workers are terribly sympathetic to an aristocratic tennis player like Cramm and his male Jewish lover.”
He paused for thought and then picked up an object from his desk which he thrust into the hands of my friend with such force that he nearly dropped it.
“Do you know what this is, Mr Hol
mes?”
“It looks like a sceptre.”
“It is a baton, Mr Holmes. This baton is the baton of the marshal of the Reich and symbol of my power. It is made of white elephant ivory. The end caps are of platinum and include over six hundred small diamonds.”
“It sounds somewhat extravagant.”
“Extravagant, Mr Holmes! This is made by the finest German craftsmen as a token of their desire that we perform a sacred duty for our race. And I regard as my sacred duty to see that our form of justice is done.”
“So what is to be your attitude towards von Cramm?”
“You know, Mr Holmes,” continued Göring, as though he had not heard Holmes’s intercession. He started to stride to and fro across the expanse of his office. “I am not even sure that we need to go through the nonsense of a trial in this case. In 1934, we had some storm troopers who did some of the sort of things that Cramm got up to. Do you know what we did?”
He paused, awaiting a response from Holmes, but my friend looked straight ahead.
“We had them arrested and executed without trial,” exulted Göring. “We gave some of them the opportunity to terminate their own lives. And do you know what we did after that?”
Holmes continued to look straight ahead.
“We put through legislation after the event to make what my party had done legal. My party wants to see to it that the will of the people for justice is met and to make sure that we live in a country governed by the rule.”
Holmes made to put the baton back on Göring’s desk, but fumbled it so that it fell onto the floor with a crash. I picked it up and replaced it on the desk, but not before Göring had issued a bellow to show his displeasure. Mercifully, the baton appeared undamaged.
“Am I to take it then,” said Holmes, “that Cramm should expect a heavy punishment? The eyes of the world are on this case as Cramm is a popular representative of this country. Surely your regime does not want to attract international odium by meting out a punishment disproportionate to the offence.”
Göring seized Holmes’s arm and almost dragged him to the window of the office. We looked down over the rooftops of Berlin, which stretched as far as the eye could see. “Look down there, Mr Holmes,” he exclaimed, pointing down. “That is the real world. What do I care about sport? Sport’s trials are only a feeble reflection of the existential struggle of the people. In this country, our focus is on building our weapons so we can win that struggle.”
He paused and looked into the distance.
“I am prepared,” he eventually continued, “to accept the destruction of all we can see before us to achieve that. And I am building a fleet of aeroplanes the like of which the world has never before seen. We will defend what we have and we will mete out revenge on other countries for our past humiliations. What is hitting air-filled, fluff-covered balls across a net compared to that?”
“Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?”
“Mr Holmes, if I may say so, it is rather amusing to see you trying to play a hand with such poor cards. You have come to Germany and you have offered me nothing, apart from a letter from people I despise. I am a renowned collector of art, a noted gourmet, and an eager huntsman. Yet you have done nothing to make me favourably disposed to your petition. Unless you have something more persuasive to say, I fear we must bring this interview to an end.”
Frau von Cramm and her son had travelled to Berlin to hear the outcome of our talk with Göring, and we sat with them over coffee at our hotel. Holmes was only able to give them the gloomiest view of the likely turn of events.
It was the young tennis player who appeared most confident about the outcome. “I have faith in the righteousness of my case and in the justice that the court will dispense.” I could see by the looks on the faces of both Holmes and Frau von Cramm that this was not a view that they shared.
There seemed nothing more for Holmes and me to do. We returned to England with the gloomiest foreboding. But, to our surprise, Cramm’s confidence proved not to be entirely unfounded. When his case went to court shortly afterwards, the sentence he received of a year was unexpectedly lenient and, indeed, broadly in line with what he would have got had the case been tried in a British court. Even more to our surprise, we later learnt that he had been released for good behaviour after serving only six months of his sentence.
I confess that I thought that that was the end of the matter, but there was a twist to the tale which might be of interest to my reader, even though my disclosure of it will preclude publication of this work for many years to come.
Writing as I am in late 1942, with battles raging around the world, it is hard to imagine that the first eight months of 1939 were much the same as any other year. This comment also applied to the sequence of sporting events that are so much a part of the English summer: the Boat Race, the Grand National steeplechase, the FA Cup Final and, of course, the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
Cramm was in England in this last summer before the War. He again made Surbiton his practice base, and he sent an invitation to Holmes and me to observe him at a session.
“I still use the method you suggested to mix up my serves, Mr Holmes, as long as it does not hold up play,” he said as he practised with a basket of balls. “Why not go down to the far end of the court to see how my opponent sees it.” Cramm sent down two successive sliced serves. One of these reared off the turf to pass the baseline at head-height while the other swerved sharply and late to skid past the baseline below the height of the waist. There was no difference in the serving action and no visible difference in the trajectory or speed of the ball as it came down from the player’s racquet. I could easily see what a formidable weapon this serve would be in the hands of Cramm.
“You must come and see me at the tournament at Queen’s in Earl’s Court,” said the blond German. “I am playing there next week.”
So it was, that Holmes and I found ourselves in the stand watching Cramm as he faced the American Bobby Riggs in the semi-final of the Queen’s Club tournament. Sitting next to us was the sportsman’s mother. Frau von Cramm looked every bit as glamourous as she had two years previously.
“How do you find my son?” she asked.
“He looks well, and both his play and his demeanour seem unaffected by his ordeal,” said Holmes. “I confess,” he went on, “that I was surprised that his sentence was not harsher and pleased that common sense seems to have resulted in his early release.”
Frau von Cramm looked straight ahead.
“I felt,” continued Holmes, “that my interview with your Reichsmarschall had not been a success, though I assume it was Göring who chose the judge for the trial and who briefed him on what sentence to pass.”
Frau von Cramm paused to applaud some brilliant play by her son, who was already serving for the first set.
“I think in the circumstances,” said Holmes, “I must consider that my involvement in the case was something of a triumph, contrary to what I felt at the time.”
“If you felt,” said Frau von Cramm at length, “that your involvement was not a success, maybe it was because evaluating a matter from feelings rather than from fact-based evidence is not something that lends itself to a forensic mind as formidable as yours.”
Soon after this, Cramm came off court, having beaten Riggs 6–0, 6–1 to go through to the final against the Indian, Ghaus Mohammed Khan. The two Cramms, Holmes and I went for some light dinner and proceeded to talk at greater length about the passage of events.
“After you had left Berlin, Herr Holmes,” said the younger Cramm, “my mother went to see the Reichsmarschall and I think the persuasive powers of the two of you may have had some effect.”
“You did not say, Frau von Cramm,” said my friend, looking slightly taken aback by this new disclosure, “that you had also been to see Göring?”
�
��It was a small matter and, in any case, there is nothing I would not do for my son,” said Frau von Cramm. Conversation moved onto other matters but, as a convivial evening drew to a close, she added, “And when the Reichsmarschall thrust his baton at me, I am pleased to say I did not let it fall.”
We walked to the Underground station together and travelled on the Circle Line before our paths divided. Holmes and I descended at Victoria while the Cramms were continuing to the Embankment for they were again staying at the Savoy. As we finally parted, the last thing I heard Frau von Cramm say was, “Good night, Mr Sherlock Holmes,” in a high clear voice.
“I have heard that voice saying those precise words before,” said Holmes looking puzzled as we sat down in our Underground train carriage. He had become quieter and quieter and more and more introspective as the evening had progressed, and on the journey back to Sussex he declined to talk to me at all.
The next day he sat in our living room, going through his archives. Every heavy folder was pulled out from the shelves and he went through them page by page before replacing each one on the shelves. Evidently unable to find what he was looking for, he took to spending almost no time at our quarters and occasionally I saw him rambling round the village. Once I saw him board the bus to Eastbourne, from where I speculated he might be taking the train to London, and another time I saw him emerge from the village’s public library.
I filled the time by following the march of global events with increasing horror and, to escape from the enveloping gloom, the world of sport. I was amused when Bobby Riggs won Wimbledon, obviously benefiting from the absence of Cramm, who did not play in the tournament. Depending on what sources one read, Cramm had been excluded from Wimbledon because of his criminal conviction, or because he had failed to submit an entry.
Observing Holmes, I could see that his search was unavailing. “It is no good,” he said late one evening in mid-August, “I cannot find out anything more about Cramm and his antecedents and yet my memory tells me I have dealt with someone of that name before. Do you recall any encounters from someone in our past with the name Cramm?”
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4 Page 2