Swastika Night

by Katharine Burdekin

  “Alfred, E.W. 10762, English technician on pilgrimage to the Holy Places in Germany,” said Alfred, holding himself a little more stiffly before this Nazi in authority, but still in a far from soldierly manner.

  “Ach, Englander,” said the Nazi, nodding in a sort of disgusted comprehension. “Let’s see your pass, then,” he added, in a milder manner.

  Alfred showed it.

  “All right. Remember now you’re in Germany that when it says ‘Keep off the Grass’, that exactly is what it means. The grass round our churches wasn’t put there for herds of Englishmen to gallop over. Verstehen?”

  “Ja, Herr Unter-offizier.”

  “Heil Hitler!” said the Nazi, and saluted.

  This time Alfred saluted in return.

  “Let me see, you must be twenty-five now, Hermann,” he went on as if there had been no interruption.

  Hermann did not answer. So many memories were half painfully filling his mind—Alfred was so exactly the same—his curly short hair which would not grow even to touch his shoulders, his quiet level grey eyes, his nonchalant manner—all things Hermann had never really expected to see again, though they had sometimes joked about Alfred coming on pilgrimage—and there had never been any German to take Alfred’s place. Hermann frowned savagely and bit his lip. Alfred glanced at him and took his arm.

  “All you Germans are so emotional,” he murmured.

  And Hermann, who had just heard the Knight declaim the Laws of Society, which put him, Hermann, as far above Alfred as a man is above a woman, muttered in broken German, “I never thought I should—see you again. It’s only now I realise how lonely I’ve been—since.”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” suggested Alfred. “Or have you got to go back to work? I’d forgotten the name of your village and your number, and couldn’t remember anything but the district, Hohenlinden. But I should have dug you up somewhere.”

  “I needn’t go back till this evening,” said Hermann, recovering himself. “Have you got any food with you?”

  “Yes, in my sack. I left it by the wall over there.”

  “Is there enough for me, too? You ought to have taken your sack into the porch.”

  They were talking now as they used to, each in his own language, understanding, but not straining themselves to form foreign words.

  “What, in Germany?” asked Alfred, raising his eyebrows. “Common thieves in a German church enclosure?”

  “Ach, boys, you know. It’s there all right.”

  “But, Hermann, are you very hungry? Shall we go back to your farm and get some more for you? Your government, though paternal, and I’ve nothing to complain of, doesn’t allow for luxuries, or more than one man’s food.”

  “If you don’t mind, ‘nearly nowt’ is enough for me,” said Hermann, laughing delightedly as he put the sack on his own broad shoulders. “Do you remember the man you called the Tyke? Everything was nearly nowt. And why was he called the Tyke ? What is Tyke ? I’ve forgotten everything.”

  “A generic name for Yorkshiremen. Well now, Hermann, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my generic name. I shall be upset.”

  “Ach, nein, nein!” cried Hermann. “Du bist der Moonraecher !”

  “That’s right, the man who rakes der Mond out of die Pond. But why? But why, I don’t know. That’s one of the things I’d like to know. Those old names. Hermann, let’s go and bathe. It’s very hot.”

  “We’ll go in the woods. I know a lovely pool. I’ve been there sometimes at night, Alfred, and if any Wiltshire men had been there they’d have set to raking as fast as we do in the Knight’s garden when he’s in a hurry for something to be sown and has given us no notice. It’s all open, the pool. The moon shines right in. But I was always by myself. Alfred, are you really glad to see me?” Hermann said uncertainly, a little wistfully.

  “Very glad,” said Alfred seriously. But still Hermann felt something reserved in Alfred’s manner, and on their walk to the woods he was silent and withdrawn.

  “A queer people,” the young German thought, after he had given up trying to make Alfred talk. “No one really understands them, and yet plenty of Germans like them.” He knew that of all the numerous foreign stations where the Knights had to put in administrative and religious service, the English ones were the most generally popular. A Knight was only supposed to be absent from Germany for seven years. After that he governed a German district for two or three years, then he might be sent abroad again. There were plenty of Knights who having served once in England would pull all possible wires to get sent there again. This Anglophile feeling was not encouraged, but nothing seemed to damp it down. Of course some Germans hated the English, and never forgot that to them belonged the disgrace of being the last rebels against the might and holiness of the German Empire. There had been, a hundred years before, an English, Scottish and Welsh rebellion, a hopeless affair, sporadic and unorganised and very easily crushed by the Knights and the army of occupation. After it, by order from Berlin, one-tenth of the male population had been coldly executed. The permanent army of occupation had been enlarged (though the former one had proved amply big enough to deal with men who had no artillery and no aeroplanes) and the number of Knights had been increased, giving each Knight a smaller district. Since then there had been no trouble. But the English had remained just as queer as ever, sloppy and casual and yet likeable. He had once overheard a Knight say that they were fundamentally irreligious, and that that was what was the matter. They were conventional enough in their treatment of women and Christians; their women (and probably their Christians) were exactly like any others. But —Hermann suddenly caught himself wishing that Alfred was a German. Not because he would or might then be able to see more of him. His emotions had received a clarification owing to the shock of suddenly meeting his friend, and he now knew what he certainly never had known before, that he admired Alfred more than any other man in the world. “I look up to him,” he thought uncomfortably, “as if he were a Knight. I do. I can’t help it. I ought to be able to help it. Because he’s not even a Nazi, not even my equal, only an Englishman. So I’m as high above him as a man’s above a woman. That is absurd. Yes, yes, it is utterly absurd. It’s not true !” At this first wholly conscious break in his racial-superiority feeling Hermann was shocked and at the same time excited. There was a thrill in the mental acceptance of what he had always felt, that Alfred was not only older and more experienced than himself, but a higher type of man. That his Englishness made no difference. Of course, Hermann thought, trying to excuse his treachery to Germany, Alfred is a special Englishman. They’re not all like him. But he knew this was no excuse at all. You couldn’t admit exceptions in the divine doctrine of race and class superiority. It must be in the Holy Blood. The blood of Germans or of Knights. If all Knights, all the numerous descendants of the original three thousand Teutonic Knights consecrated by Hitler, were not superior by birth—if there could be exceptions among Nazis, raising one here, one there, to a level with the Knights, why then a Knight as a Knight might not be superior at all. And he must be, all must be, or Society would crack. Hermann had pondered so deeply and with such painful unaccustomed logic that he felt a whirling in his head. He turned to watch Alfred walking, grave and aloof, at his side. They never could walk in step. Alfred was so much shorter. Sometimes Hermann would deliberately shorten his stride for a little way until it got too tiring, but Alfred would never try to lengthen his by a quarter of an inch. He didn’t mind being out of step. It was a typical English untidiness. Hermann was overcome by a wave of emotion in which love, irritation, fear and a wild sort of spiritual excitement all mingled. He felt as if anything might happen at any moment. He had forgotten the interesting chorister as if he had never existed. And Alfred, apparently, had forgotten him.

  “Alfred !” Hermann suddenly yelled in his ear, “if you don’t take some notice of me I’ll knock you down !”

  Alfred started slightly.

  “Ja, Herr Nazi,” he said disagreeabl
y.

  Hermann turned and left him, making away back down the path along which they had come. Alfred ran after him, grinning, and caught him by the arm.

  “Come, come,” he said, “I will talk presently. Don’t be angry. But you are a Nazi, you know.”

  “It’s the way you say things,” grumbled Hermann, still flushed with anger. But he allowed himself to be turned round.

  “Germans shouting at me always has some kind of bad effect,” said Alfred apologetically. “Either my leg muscles go wrong and won’t act or I let things drop.”

  “And what happens when an Englishman shouts at you ?” asked Hermann.

  “I blow him away. Hermann, have you any sons?”

  This was such an unexpected question that Hermann gaped. Then he said, “No.”

  “I have three now,” Alfred said. “I had two when you were in England. Now I have another. But they’re very young. One’s older. One is seventeen. Why haven’t you got any? Have you had bad luck and had girls ?”

  “No. I can’t stick women.”

  “But as you are a Nazi, if you haven’t had any children at all by the time you’re thirty you’ll be punished. It’s only the subject races who are allowed to omit begetting children if they like.”

  “I’ve got five years yet.”

  “But you ought to have come round to a normal attitude towards women at twenty-five. Don’t leave it too long, Hermann. You may find yourself in difficulties.”

  “I can’t stand them !” said Hermann violently. “Oh, for Hitler’s sake don’t let’s talk about women!”

  “All right. But I’m glad I’m a normal man. I’ve got a use for my sons. Women are neither here nor there.”

  “They’re too much there,” said Hermann, misunderstanding the English idiom.

  “Oh, well, never mind,” said Alfred, and he fell silent again.

  But when they had bathed and frugally fed, and were lying in delicious ease in the shade of a huge tree listening to the sound of water falling, Alfred suddenly said, “Hermann, I am going to destroy your Empire.”

  Hermann chuckled sleepily. A stupid thoroughly English joke in Alfred’s quiet rather deep voice was better than anything really funny from anyone else.

  “How?”

  “The way the acorn made this big oak.”

  “It was probably planted as a sapling. All this piece of the forest was planted.”

  “Well, like one of the oaks in the Holy Forest, the German Forest, the nameless one.”

  “Have you been there yet?”

  “As far as I was allowed to go in, being only an Englishman. It’s a lovely place. So hushed and silent. A man could think there.”

  “A man is supposed not to think, but to feel there. I suppose you’ll be thinking when you see the Sacred Aeroplane. Or have you already been to Munich?”

  “Not yet. Can’t you get leave for a day and come with me?”

  “I might. I’ll try, anyhow. Our Knight, the Knight of Hohenlinden, is our own Knight.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s our own family Knight, von Hess. He owns all the land and villages and towns for miles round and he lives in our village.”

  “Oh. That sounds hopeful for leave. Well, I shall still be thinking when I see the Aeroplane, partly technically no doubt, though I’m acquainted with the design of the thing from the Little Models, and as far as I can make out there’s been no real change in aeroplanes at all. But I shall be thinking partly about the destruction of the German Empire. Of course I am only the acorn, you understand. The oak will grow out of me. I myself shall be dead.”

  Hermann grew faintly uneasy. He must be joking—and yet—“You’ll be dead very soon if you blaspheme in public.”

  “You needn’t wait for that. You can report my blasphemy.”

  Hermann rose on his elbow.

  “Alfred—you—you aren’t at ali serious, are you?”

  “Deadly.”

  Hermann knew it was so.

  “But then you’ve gone mad.”

  “Well, have I? Look at me, Hermann. Am I mad?”

  “No, you’re not. But then—all this—why do you tell me about it ?”

  “You’d never betray me, surely?”

  Hermann said earnestly, “I could, Alfred. You’re making a mistake. I might kill myself afterwards, but I can see even you killed, for Germany.”

  “Well, that’s very right and proper, but actually it doesn’t matter. You can go and say I’ve said such and such, but even though I’m an Englishman you’d have to produce a wee bit of proof to have me killed. I should only perhaps have my pilgrimage cut short and be sent out of the country. I’m going to tell you all about it.”

  “But why?”

  “The time has come for me to know how the thing strikes a decent ordinary lad of a Nazi. Do you, first of all, understand why an Englishman should want to destroy this Empire?”

  “Not if he believes in Hitler. There’s no reason at all.”

  “Perhaps some Englishmen don’t believe in Hitler.”

  “Alfred! Don’t you—you can’t mean you don’t believe Hitler is God?”

  “Lots of us don’t,” said Alfred calmly.

  “Then the Knight was right,” muttered Hermann.

  “What Knight?”

  “Von Eckhardt. He said Englishmen were fundamentally irreligious. He didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Perhaps he knew it didn’t matter—from his point of view. Von Eckhardt was always more on the administrative than the religious side, wasn’t he ? Armed rebellion against Germany will always fail.”

  “I’m glad you realise that,” said Hermann with some relief.

  “Because,” Alfred went on, “the Germans are the greatest exponents of violence the world has ever seen—except, of course, the Japanese. They are the greatest soldiers—except, of course, the Japanese.”

  “We’re just as good as the Japanese !”

  “Then why don’t you go and eat them up and convert the last heathen by force? The peace between the German Empire and the Japanese Empire has deafened everyone for more than seventy years.”

  “We’re still getting ready.”

  “Well, I won’t tease you. I don’t want to have to fight the Japanese myself, because I’ve got something better to do, and I hope if there is another war that Germany will win.”

  “You are loyal to a certain extent, then?”

  “My calculations are based on German character, not Japanese character. I don’t know what that is—though it’s probably got the same rotten spot!”

  “Rotten spot!”

  “Rotten spot, I said. Now, Hermann, are you interested, or are you just going to be violent? If you want to fight me, say so ; if you want to listen, be quiet.”

  “I ought to fight you. Beat you, rather. You can’t fight me, you’re too small. Oh, all right, go on.”

  “It seems to me it must have been like this,” Alfred said, turning over on his back again. “After the Twenty Years War, when Germany finally came out on top of everyone, the beaten nations must have been all damned tired. They’d tried to meet force with force and had failed, and were ashamed of themselves and humiliated, but worst of all completely exhausted. So, as it is a much better thing to be beaten by God than by a company of men, however large and well armed, they all started to believe in Hitler, the divine representation of victorious force. It was suggestion working on exhaustion. Here and there, as the nations started to recover a little, there were rebellions, armed rebellions (or quarter-armed rebellions), always failures, but the nations went on being Hitlerians. They were rebelling against their Knights or the army of occupation (most of them), not against the German idea. They were too tired still to do without religion, and they still wanted the appeasement of being beaten by God, not only by men.”

  “But you weren’t civilised then,” said Hermann. “You were only savage tribes, you and the French and the Russians and everyone. There is no shame in being beaten
by civilised men.”

  “Well, there is a great darkness about our origins,” Alfred admitted. “It’s true we don’t know quite what we were, say a hundred years before Hitler. But I believe we once had a great Empire ourselves.”

  “Nonsense. How could savages have had a great Empire? You didn’t know how to build ships or anything.”

  “Why do so many of the Japanese subject races speak English? The Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, and some of your subject races too, the South Africans?”

  “They were just English tribes, but all disconnected.”

  “I’m not sure of that, and I’ve got reasons for doubting other things you tell us, too. But never mind that. It’s what I am now that matters, not what they were then. I am a man who knows that while armed rebellion against Germany must fail, there is another rebellion that must succeed.”

  “What?” asked Hermann breathlessly.

  “The rebellion of disbelief. Your Empire is held together on the mind side of it by Hitlerism. If that goes, if people no longer believe Hitler is God, you have nothing left but armed force. And that can do nothing but kill people. You can’t make them re-believe if they don’t. And in the end, however many people you kill, so long as there are some to carry on, the scepticism will grow. And you can’t ever kill all the unbelievers, because, though you can search a man’s pockets or his house, you can’t search his mind. You can never spot all the unbelievers. The scepticism will grow because it’s a lively thing, full of growth, like an acorn. It will attack Germany in the end, Germans themselves will get sceptical about Hitler, and then your Empire will rot from within.”

  “It couldn’t,” said Hermann, under his breath.

  “If Hitler is not God, there is no reason why Germany should rule Europe and Africa and part of Asia for ever. And if Hitler is God, why can’t you beat the Japanese?”

  “We shall. There’s plenty of time.”

  “You’ve wasted your time. You had about five hundred years or so to beat the Japanese in, and all you’ve done is to have a series of completely indecisive wars. Air raids, and pinching bits of Russia away from each other and then losing them again. You’ve never looked like really beating the Japanese. And now you’ve hardly any time left at all. When I say no time, I mean you’ve only got about another seventy years. And you’ve had seventy years of peace.”