There was another silence and Conrad restrained himself from breaking it until the Admiral spoke again.
“I sympathize with you, Dehmel. This is a sad time for scholarship here. It’s a sad time for everything we value. However, your training may play a protective role until better times come. I can’t be confident that they’ll come, but one must hope.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“They know that scholars with your kind of training could be useful to them. There is a British epigraphist I have met.” He mentioned the man’s name. “He was born in Scotland but on his mother’s side he is a direct descendant of Marcus Niebuhr. Did you meet him in England?”
“I was introduced to him once in Oxford, but we had no conversation.”
“He’s still doing meticulous work in deciphering and reconstructing fragments of old Greek inscriptions. He has an incredible memory and an uncanny knack of finding missing links in the evidence. He is a very gentle person. Outside of his profession he appears as naive as a child.” The Admiral smiled ruefully. “Those English! In the last war this childlike man did us a great deal of damage. Well do I know it! For a time I was his opponent. He broke a vital Turkish code and this played its part in some of our disasters in the Middle Eastern theater. The French gave him a Legion of Honor. The English gave him nothing.” The Admiral looked at Conrad with a faint smile. “Well?”
Conrad thought carefully before saying anything. He remembered his father’s suggestion that he join the Intelligence Service and he did not like the idea at all. As though reading his thoughts, the Admiral spoke again.
“A place could certainly be found for you in my service, but not in the code department. Mathematicians are needed for most of the codes now in use. All great mathematicians tend to be eccentric. As one might expect, the English are by far the most eccentric of them all. For the Leader this could be very bad. However, our service employs all kinds of people and a place could be found for you in it. I don’t think you’d enjoy it. Our generals are excellent tacticians, but any kind of understanding of long-range strategy is beyond all of them except one. The Grand Admiral understands strategy well, but the navy here is minor compared to the army and the air force and if war comes he’ll be up against a navy four times larger.” The blue eyes fixed themselves on Conrad. “Does my candor disturb you?”
It not only disturbed Conrad, it frightened him.
“I was about to say, sir” – Conrad hesitated, then plunged – “you mentioned Intelligence. I don’t think I’d care to serve the military plans of this government. Even less its cultural policies.”
The Admiral made no comment.
“Is it true, sir, what I have been told, that all military preparations have been perfectly calculated? That a master plan exists and that everything is ready?”
The little admiral hunched forward as though the weight of his head had increased.
“In what major war has everything been successfully calculated in advance? Our Leader has some remarkable intuitions, but more than once he has said that he advances into the future with the sure step of a sleepwalker.” He shrugged. “There can be no question that he is a genius of a kind. However, though geniuses have won many campaigns, I can think of only three who have made and won great wars.”
The next silence lasted until Conrad broke it.
“My father has told me there are great plans for the navy.”
“Prodigious plans,” said the Admiral drily. “Now let’s talk of more congenial things.”
For the next half-hour they discussed various scholars of ancient and modern history and Conrad felt like a student undergoing an oral examination. Then the Admiral changed the subject again.
“I am acquainted with Major-General Helmuth Erlich,” he said. Conrad started slightly and the Admiral permitted himself a faint smile.
“An able man, but not so interesting as his brother, the psychiatrist.”
This was said so suddenly, yet so naturally, that for a moment Conrad suspected a trap. Again his instinct told him not to dissemble.
“Sir, is there anything you don’t know?”
“I know too little and too much. I also find myself in an uncomfortable position, but I am used to it. Occupying uncomfortable positions has been what our Leader would call my destiny.” He looked sideways out the window. “Have you ever thought, Dehmel – this is a serious moral question – have you ever thought how it is with men who believe that the only way they can defend honor is by being dishonest?”
Conrad had often thought of it; he was thinking of it now. He did not say anything.
“However, in such a situation I suppose one’s duty to one’s country’s welfare is the thread that most men cling to. It’s not enough, of course.” He changed the subject again. “I understand that you are engaged to Dr. Erlich’s daughter?”
“If I had my way I’d be married to her now.”
The Admiral nodded.
“Is her family safe here, sir?”
“For the time being, yes.”
“But in the future?”
“Who knows? Or perhaps I should ask you how much of the future you have in mind? As I foresee it – and I don’t foresee it clearly – the time will come when nobody will be safe in it.”
“If her family is in danger,” Conrad said, “Hanna told me she intends to return to Germany.”
The brilliant blue eyes looked directly into Conrad’s. “And so she will. I know your fiancée. Yes, she would do it.”
“What would you advise me to do now, sir?”
“For the time being – that’s what many of us say these days, for the time being – I’d advise you to accept the directorship. As Professor Rosenthal told you, you have little choice in the matter anyway. Later on, circumstances are sure to change. When they do, please feel free to come to me if you think it would be helpful.”
The Admiral rose, nodded gently; Conrad bowed as he shook hands and left the Tirpitzufer in a daze.
EIGHT
The next week Conrad took up his post as Director of the Grosser Kurfürst Institut. Three days after he had settled into his office and had had barely enough time to learn the names of the senior members of his staff, he was ordered to report to a department of the military bureaucracy. There he found waiting for him a straight-backed major-general in full uniform with a pale, coarse-featured face that looked as if it had been frozen stiff years ago. The general looked him over and said curtly that he had received assurances that he, Conrad Dehmel, was reliable.
“I have been told that you have a professor in your Institut who is an expert in the art and history of the Mongol peoples? Is this true?”
“That would be Professor Heidkamp.”
“Are you acquainted with his work?”
“Only with the general nature of it.”
“I am informed that this professor has made a detailed study of the political and military methods of Genghis Khan. You are to tell him that we require him to make a brief summary of Genghis’s military methods, especially his use of cavalry. Has your father ever discussed military matters with you?”
“Naval matters a little. He doesn’t profess to know much about the army.”
“But at least you understand that though strategic and tactical realities never change, weapons do. You understand that the last war was unsuccessful because machine guns and barbed wire neutralized the cavalry and made victory impossible. In the next war the role of the cavalry will be taken by tanks which can ignore machine guns and barbed wire. As Genghis was the greatest cavalry commander who ever lived, we require a precise analysis of his methods. I wish to have this analysis within a week.”
The general then dismissed Conrad as though he were a subordinate officer and Conrad returned to the Institut longing for somebody with whom he could safely laugh hysterically. He called Professor Heidkamp to his study, apologized for disturbing him, and told him what the general wanted.
Heidkamp was a stri
ngy, stoop-shouldered, bald-headed man, nearsighted, with a shuffling walk and a breath that Conrad could smell halfway across the room. When he heard what the general wanted, he burst into a cackle of ecstasy.
“So! So-o-o! It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. At last the importance of my work is recognized! And by the General Staff! What do I care now about dummkopf professors? The General Staff!” He thrust forward two thin hands and grasped Conrad’s. “Herr Direktor, Heil Hitler! Gott sei Dank, a German is my Director! Herr Direktor, thank you very much!”
Two days later, Heidkamp’s summary was on Conrad’s desk and he read it with disgust. He knew little about the Mongols except that their name had been a horror word for centuries among the peoples of eastern Europe. Now it appeared that their example was going to be used by Hitler’s Germany. He read and reread the summary With a feeling of increasing contempt for its author. This miserable little man was not only marinated in his subject, he was intoxicated by it.
Here it was, though, the old horror story. Brash treachery followed by raw terror. First spies, posing as ambassadors, appeared to look over the lay of the land. Then came merchants to open up trade and spread stories about the invincible ferocity of the Mongols. Then followed the armies. When they invested a city, many citizens were so paralyzed with terror that they killed their wives and daughters and committed suicide. If a walled city offered resistance, every single inhabitant was butchered. After a few such examples it was assumed that no cities would resist, but some of those that surrendered without a fight fared little better.
This part of the professor’s report Conrad read with scant interest, but soon he came to the specific tactics of the Mongol armies. Their cavalry probed the lines of the defenders until they found the weak point (the professor’s word for it was Schwerpunkt – the hard point – and for the victims this was exactly what it was). Massed archers saturated the hard point with a bombardment of arrows, then the cavalry charged through it in column like a battering ram, killing everyone in its narrow path. Once through, the cavalry columns fanned outwards and back again, swirled around and around until the enemy was encircled. The enemy was then destroyed by archers on horseback and dismounted riders who went in to finish them off with spears and swords. There were seldom any survivors.
The professor’s report ended with a slavering appeal: “I am only a poor scholar, but this has been my subject for years. For me, Herrn Generalen, your request for my help has justified a long life of lonely study. I have always yearned to serve my country, the greatest in the world. In profound humility and in the greatest hope, I can swear before God that against tactics like these no army has ever survived. If today, with tanks and total ruthlessness, these same tactics are followed, they will be as invincible as they were when the great Genghis invented them. Heil Hitler!”
So this miserable little man thinks he will become immortal as the architect of victory in the next war, Conrad thought. The entire episode worried him so much that he asked the Admiral for a few minutes of his time. Canaris glanced through Heidkamp’s summary and handed the papers back to Conrad with a mischievous smile.
“It occurred to me that something like this might be useful to you,” he said.
“To me?”
“You cooperated instantly, so this may relax their suspicions a little.”
“But if they suspected me, why did they insist that I be the Director?”
“You are not dealing with normal people, Dehmel. Among other elements in his make-up, the minister is a failed scholar even though he did make his doctorate at Heidelberg.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“The motive behind your appointment is obvious enough. Professor Rosenthal nominated you for a fellowship in the Institut and I have explained to you why Goebbels hates him. What could have wounded Rosenthal more than to have you – a beginner – immediately put into his place?” The Admiral held up his hand. “Rosenthal is far too big a man to hold this against you. As for this staff-general who ordered you to get that report written, he is a general only because he was one of the original party members. In the last war he was a sergeant. One stripe above our Leader, one might say. He wants to make himself important. It so happens that Genghis Khan’s tactics as described by your professor correspond pretty closely to those our generals intend to use anyway. This general knows this. He also knows that in the war plan Genghis’s name is not mentioned. Obviously he hopes to get the credit for having discovered it.”
This is one of the two incidents Conrad recorded of his activities as Director of the Institut. The other occurred in the summer before the war broke out, in the third year after he had left London. He was ordered to go to Paris to represent the Institut in some kind of international conference on culture and the arts. It was not a mission that he relished. In Paris he was treated with contempt by most of the French scholars he met because he was a German who obviously collaborated with the Nazis. One Frenchman, a communist, called him to his face a running dog of fascism.
But there was another scholar who was very friendly and seemed much superior to the rest. He was a tall, young-looking professor from Oxford whose name was familiar to Conrad. He twice invited Conrad to drinks and they discussed Conrad’s work in England. This man’s subject was Modern History, but he knew personally all the men with whom Conrad had worked in the British Museum. He also had a high opinion of Professor Rosenthal. Finally he told Conrad he would very much like to visit the Grosser Kurfürst Institut.
By this time Conrad’s antennae had become sensitive, and on his return to Berlin he reported his meeting with the Englishman to the Admiral.
“Invite him at once,” the Admiral said, “and let me know when he’s coming.”
A few weeks later the Englishman arrived and it turned out that he also had friends in the Berlin Rot-Weiss Tennis Club, for he was a doubles player with an international reputation. After a few days of talking with Conrad and his colleagues, he said good-bye and left the premises in a private car driven by a chauffeur. Conrad guessed that his next port of call would be the Admiral’s apartment. It was not until long after the war that Conrad discovered that this professor was one of the most efficient of all the operators in the British Secret Service.
The visit to Paris could have been Conrad’s opportunity to defect and go to Hanna in England, but if he did so, he knew there would be reprisals against his parents. He telephoned her from Paris and was told by the landlord of her old apartment that she had moved and had left no forwarding address. Then he called the office of the orchestra and asked if she was still attached to it. She was, but at the moment was on holiday somewhere in Scotland.
His frustration was total. He had written her several letters and he supposed she had received them because they were not returned. They had been very cautious letters. In nearly three years he had received no word at all from her and he was hurt and bewildered. He thought she might at least have arranged with her Uncle Karl in Switzerland to get a letter to him. The sudden thought occurred to him that Hanna might believe he had gone over to the Nazis, for this was a time when few people knew what to believe of anyone.
A few weeks after his return from Paris, he received a formal notice from a government department that his marriage with Eva Schmidt had been dissolved. Simply that. Again he was puzzled until he remembered his mother telling him that Eva had become the mistress of an important officer in the Gestapo.
Shortly after this, the war broke out and the trap closed on him. He had known all along that war was inevitable, yet when it came he admitted – like millions of others – that he had not been able to believe it in his emotions. He wondered if he would be called up for military service, but no call came.
The German armies won their first campaign in a few weeks and seemed invincible, but after the victory, Conrad’s father was glum and ill at ease. “Things are happening in Poland I did not believe possible,” he said, and refused to elaborate. He had no need to. Conrad also k
new that the Nazi police had begun a systematic massacre of the leading men of that country.
“Only then did I realize that they were sincere in their insane racial ideas,” he wrote in one of his diaries. “How hard it is to accept that an insane evil can be real.”
Gottfried Dehmel was finding it even harder to accept it. For more than twenty years it had been an article of faith with him that his navy was an honorable service which had been smirched by revolutionists and betrayed into surrender by the peace treaty. After a long and difficult career he was now a rear-admiral. He had become a consummate professional and in the first winter of the war he was given an independent command for the first time in his life. It was a small, fast, powerful squadron and his orders were to break out into the Atlantic and attack British convoys. He was also forbidden to engage if he encountered a convoy escorted by a British heavy ship. His task was to raid, not to fight, for if his ship were damaged in a fight it would be slowed down and unable to escape the concentrations the British would certainly send out to get it.
He led his squadron north through rain, heavy fogs, and finally through snowstorms until he was far north of the Arctic Circle. Then he steered west and finally south and began quartering the ocean for prey.
Two weeks passed during which he saw nothing but the cold gray waves of the North Atlantic. He refuelled from a pair of cruising supply ships and continued his search. The Atlantic remained wide and empty but he was sure he would find something and the next week he did. He shot up and sank on three successive days three lone merchant ships, in each case making sure the crews were taken off in boats and given enough blankets, food, and water for a chance of life. Then, just as he was turning for home, came a morning when a cloud of smoke five kilometers wide grew up into the sky over the western horizon, soon to be followed by the masts and hulls of more than forty ships.
This was the moment Gottfried Dehmel had been waiting for. He fanned out his squadron and was closing the convoy at full speed when he saw in the middle of it a massive battleship. He recognized her type instantly; he had seen her sister ship twenty-four years earlier when his squadron charged the British line at the Skaggerak. He knew her guns were heavier than his, but she was old and slow and her guns were probably old, too. He was sure he could sink her and was maneuvering to fire a broadside when his flag captain reminded him of the orders not to engage a ship of that power. He cursed. While one of his cruisers exchanged fire with an English destroyer, he signalled the squadron to break off and used his superior speed to run over the horizon for home. On his arrival at Wilhelmshaven he was met on the dock by the Grand Admiral, who pinned another decoration on his chest on the orders of the Leader. He was mortified.
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