It was Lanny’s duty to report to the three organizations with which he was to co-operate. He found a letter from Laurel, telling him that she was at Frankfurt; a wonderful thing, they had brought all the art works of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum which had been found in the Merkers mine in Thuringia; they had been two thousand feet underground, in galleries half a mile long. The place was dripping wet, so there was a lot of repairs to be done. Laurel was studying the art works and writing an article about them. “Your cousin Peggy is supervising the inventory,” she wrote, and added, “I hope you got my cablegram. I knew you would be heartbroken. I cried a whole night. I doubt if there is a person on our staff who didn’t shed tears.”
Laurel explained that she was going back to Heidelberg and make that her headquarters because she had a comfortable place in which to write. Lanny joined her, and it was a sad meeting. Stopping only to ask about Baby Lanny, Laurel wanted to hear about Roosevelt’s death, and what this change of leadership was going to do to America and the world. Later, of course, she asked about the families and friends he had met; Hansi and Bess, Rick and Nina, Robbie and Frances. And then back to that extraordinary project of a trip to Stalin, and what he would have said and perhaps accomplished if he had taken it!
Laurel told of the sights she had been enjoying in the Reichsbank building in Frankfurt. Imagine, if you could, several hundred of the world’s greatest paintings lined up against the wall of one immense room; a polite GI had set them up, one after another, for her examination. Others were boxed and had to be opened for inventory. Leather-bound cases contained the most marvelous etchings she had ever seen. In other rooms were all the Egyptian treasures. Upstairs, in a vault, were priceless gold and silver church vessels looted from Poland.
The old masters from Berlin had brought back poignant memories to Laurel, for she had visited the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin in the company of a competent art expert who had given her the benefit of his learning. That had been some eight years ago, and she had found the gentleman fully as interesting as the paintings; but she had never thought of the idea of marrying him—or had she? Pinned down, she admitted with a touch of mischief that it was barely possible the idea might have crossed her mind once or twice; but she had thought that he was much too well satisfied with himself. Under her tuition he had greatly improved.
She had foreseen the mood of heartsickness against which he would be struggling. She tried to awaken his interest in an art cache which had just been discovered in the neighborhood of Heidelberg; it included Holbeins, a treasure indeed. An expert had been flown from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to inspect them, and the next day Lanny would meet this gentleman. Later on husband and wife would arrange for a trip farther into Germany—the Army brass had decided that it was safe for ladies now.
VIII
Such were the plans; but plans of mice or men didn’t always work out in wartime. Next morning came a call from an Alsos team; they had been informed that Mr. Budd was on the way, and could he make it convenient to come over to their depot and hear about a project of importance? They would send a car if he wished. But Lanny didn’t mind walking in the upper town of Heidelberg, with its lovely views of the Neckar valley and hills covered with early spring foliage. He had met this Alsos bunch and liked them; he couldn’t deny the argument that their projects came first. Objets d’art could be locked up in a Reichsbank and studied later, but German weapons and techniques could be flown to Washington and put to immediate use. Always one had to bear in mind that whatever the Germans had the Japanese might have also, and the Allies had better get ready to counter them.
This time it was a metallurgist from the laboratories of Westing-house in Pittsburgh. Dr. Allan Bates was his name, and he had just got word that a research man from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Metallurgical Research in Stuttgart had sought refuge in a small village in the Swabian Alps and was believed to have with him priceless records. Dr. Bates wanted some competent man to go with him. Just now the teams were spread all over Western Germany—more than half the land had suddenly been opened up, and everybody was called to several places at once.
Lanny said, “What I don’t know about metallurgy would fill all the records in the Stuttgart Institute.” But they answered that Dr. Bates had the special knowledge; what Mr. Budd would supply was a knowledge of Germans and how to deal with them. “Please come. It is really a top matter.”
Lanny couldn’t say no to such a request. So they put him into a jeep and ran him up the winding river valley to Stuttgart, one of the worst-smashed cities he had yet visited. The bombers had been working on it for a couple of years, for it had key industries; their procedure was to smash them, give the Germans time to get them in repair, and then smash again, until the time came when the Germans no longer had either labor or materials for another job. French colonial troops, Algerians and Moroccans, had taken the city.
The scientist proved to be an agreeable companion. He was very short and broad, with a close-cropped black mustache; he had been an acrobat and tumbler, and although he was Lanny’s age, he was still ready to take on any youngster who fancied himself as a wrestler. He was waiting with a little Opel car, all packed and ready; a GI was to drive them. Other escort was not thought necessary; the Heinies here in the southwest area knew they were licked, and besides, they had been the least nazified of all the tribe. The unarmed scientists in uniform went where they pleased and were treated as the lords of creation.
A delightful trip up the valley of the Neckar River. Lanny had traveled it once before, in the company of Laurel Creston before their marriage; he had been helping her to escape from the Gestapo, which had seized her trunk in her Berlin pension and surely couldn’t have been pleased with her opinions of them and their regime. The art expert had been under great strain then, but now he was having a holiday, or so he thought. He had pleasant company. The scientists of America were no longer locked up in their narrow specialties but had been rudely forced out into the world; they were thinking hard about politics and economics. Dr. Bates expressed ideas about the future of Germany and how mankind might prevent another cataclysm like this.
IX
The road signs were down, but they had a good map. For some reason the population of this part of Württemberg had chosen to have their towns end in “ingen”; Reutlingen, Ergenzingen, Eutingen, Bieringen, Kietingen, Derendingen, Tübingen, Wurmlingen, Metzingen, Neckartenlingen, Neckartailfingen—the woods were full of them. They came to a small tributary river, the Erms, now running at full flood; they turned southward, into densely wooded mountains. The stream wound and the road wound, up and up. Auf die Berge will ich steigen! They came to the summer-resort town called Urach, with its very old Gothic church, and its two hotels on the market place, just as you would have found them in the southern part of the United States. There was the inevitable Schloss, and this you wouldn’t have found anywhere on the North American continent, which had escaped the age of feudalism.
Even before they got to the center of the town they saw that something was wrong. Groups of men were entering the houses, and there were screams from inside; men came out carrying food and other articles, and at the market place there were crowds and some fighting with sticks and stones. An old, old story of war—pillage and rape. And here suddenly arrived two godlike personages, symbolically clad in power; one tall, one short, but both in spick-and-span uniforms, gazing in stern disapproval at the tumult. This could only be the American Army, come to the rescue. Gott sei Dank!
Germans came running, Germans terrified, breathless, with staring eyes. They didn’t wait to be asked, but poured out their story. “Die Arbeiter vom Lager! Sie sind frei!” The foreign laborers, Russian, Polish, and Czech, who had been brought here as semi-slaves, had broken loose and were pillaging. “Beschützen Sie uns, General!” The humble townspeople were sure the strangers must be generals at least, and might be field marshals—who could say?
Lanny said to his companion, “You won’t be able to d
o much work with this going on. They might burn the town.”
“It must be stopped,” declared the other, and ordered the petitioners, “Bring us one of the officials of your town.”
They ran off and presently came back with a stoutish, middle-aged, and evidently educated man. With Germans you didn’t argue or persuade; you gave orders. Dr. Bates said, “Go pick out twenty men you know and can trust and bring them to us.”
The official hurried away, and Lanny set out to find an educated Frenchman—for apparently the French workers had also been misbehaving. One was brought, and Lanny spoke in his language. With him, too, Americans had authority. Were they not allies and liberators of la patrie—two-time liberators? And had not the great General Eisenhower and le grand Charlie both demanded order and good behavior? “Go find me twenty Frenchmen who have self-respect and decency.”
Presently came the two squads. “Haben Sie Waffen?” demanded Bates of the Germans. Ja, ja, they had weapons hidden in the Town Hall. “Vorwärts, marsch!” commanded the general, field marshal, or maybe admiral. The ex-gymnast commanded the Germans and the art expert commanded the French, and just marching and keeping step made them all a military body, disciplined and obedient to commands. Into the Town Hall and past the Goldne Saal which was the town’s pride, then upstairs and up a ladder to the attic. Guns and ammunition were passed down, just enough. “Germans will not fight Frenchmen and Frenchmen will not fight Germans,” commanded the metallurgist, as sternly as any Feldwebel. “Wir wollen Ordnung in diesem Dorf.” The son of Budd-Erling echoed, “Nous voulons de l’ordre dans cette ville.”
Order in this town! The word was magic. It went everywhere. Lanny marched one way at the head of the French, and Dr. Bates marched another way at the head of the Germans. As a rule commands were sufficient; one or two who replied with insolence felt the physical force of a trained gymnast, and others who had stolen liquor and got drunk were ordered to the Gefängniss. In half an hour the rioting was over—and two assimilated officers were in command of a German town, and, oddly enough, a French town also.
X
The two commanders called a town meeting of the Germans and addressed them with paternal authority. This town must have a responsible government, adapted to the new conditions, and excluding all Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. The result was a clamor, and Dr. Bates was unanimously elected Bürgermeister of Urach. With stern mien he commanded that all former Nazis should be hinausgeworfen, and he appointed new officials who were declared to have been non-political in the evil days that were past.
Lanny acquired the title of Bürgermeisterstellvertreter (deputy), and went off to a town meeting in the compound of the easterners. Poor devils, they had been kidnaped outright or lured here by promises of fine treatment—promises which had been shamelessly broken. They had been in effect slaves, and their emaciated condition showed that they had been on short rations for a long time. With the help of translators the American explained that they could not be returned to their homes because no transportation was available until the war was won. In order that this might happen quickly, they must govern themselves and not make it necessary for Lanny to summon American soldiers to keep order. He appointed educated and trustworthy deputies of the various nationalities to run the camp.
Next came the job of bringing all the leaders together and helping them to understand one another. Let all the laborers go back to work in the town’s small factories, and let food be collected and fairly divided among them. Let there be a committee to consult and decide such matters; and let both sides pledge their good faith, so that it would not be necessary to call American troops away from their duties in order to preserve order in the Emsthal.
Yes indeed, Lanny Budd was a busy man during those days that he spent in the Swabian Alps! He had no time to visit the Urach Wasserfall, or to take more than a glance at the Goldne Saal or at the Gothic fountain in the market place. Dr. Bates soon found his scientist, and was busy interviewing him and getting the precious records locked up in the trunk of the car. Lanny discovered an anti-Nazi worker who informed him of a large cache of arms hidden in near-by farm buildings, and these were confiscated and put under guard. After that, the ex-P.A. was occupied in arbitrating and adjudicating, fixing the price of potatoes and bacon, getting multilingual proclamations printed, deciding whether German girls should be allowed to marry foreign laborers—in short, engaging in all the activities which AMG, American Military Government, would be performing in Württemberg for years to come. He hoped he was getting them off to a good start and not establishing too many bad precedents. Certainly he managed to please the population, for when the time for departure came they presented their deliverers with two swords which had been captured from Napoleon’s armies and had been among the town’s cherished relics for almost a century and a half.
XI
Dr. Bates reported that he had got material of great importance, and he didn’t want to take it through Stuttgart, because the French held that city, and the Americans were keeping scientific secrets for themselves. Lanny thought that French colonials would be more interested in pigs and chickens than in metallurgy; but he assented to what the scientist thought safest. They headed west, toward the Rhine, and when they came into Strasbourg they turned the papers over to the Alsos people there, with instructions to ship them at once by air to the OSRD—Office of Scientific Research and Development—in Washington.
In this town they encountered a so-called T-force of Alsos, under the command of Colonel Boris Pash, the capable officer who had charge of guiding and guarding scientists. The force consisted of two armored cars, a dozen or so jeeps, and several covered trucks with supplies. It would not plunge in haphazardly as the Bates-Budd force had done, but would proceed with military caution, telephoning ahead to each town and village to demand its surrender. The scientists would come along half a day or so later; Sam Goudsmit, who enjoyed a sense of humor, said this wasn’t to protect them from bombs and shells, but to make sure the Nazis didn’t get a chance to wring atomic secrets out of them.
The ultimate destination of this T-force was Munich, and Lanny Budd could think of half a dozen reasons for wishing to travel there. Next to Berlin, Munich was Germany’s greatest art center; also it was close to Berchtesgaden, and to Dachau, and to that Alpine Redoubt about which G-2 had been getting so many secret reports. Lanny wanted to see that show if it came off, so he bade good-by to Dr. Bates and waited for the Goudsmit party to come along.
He had taken a shine to this Jewish professor and was welcomed cordially. They could make room for an extra man and one suitcase, and they promised him an interesting time. They were heading back into that “ingen” country from which he had just come, their destination being a town called Hechingen, in which they were told that the great Werner Heisenberg had his secret atomic laboratory. Goudsmit was sure he hadn’t got very far with his project, but whatever it was the orders were to go in and get it.
On the way they told him what had been happening in Europe while he had been Deputy Bürgermeister of Urach. Russian troops had reached the center of Berlin and were fighting to capture Gestapo headquarters. British planes had dropped six-ton bombs on the Berghof, Hitler’s Berchtesgaden chalet—no doubt on the chance that he might have fled there. British troops had reached the River Po in Italy. Most interesting of all, Heinrich Himmler had made an offer to surrender Germany to the Western Allies alone—which offer the Allies were ignoring. VE Day couldn’t be very far off!
They turned off at another of the swift streams which flow down into the Neckar. This one was the Starzel; tall, steep mountains on both sides, and a winding road suffering from lack of upkeep—like everything else in Germany now. Hechingen had been the eyrie of the Hohenzollerns—the high toll-takers—that dynasty which had got control, first of Prussia and then of the Fatherland, and had led both to their doom.
No trouble this time! When you had a real T-force with armored cars the population of the town came out waving bedsheets
on poles. There was no delay in finding the Heisenberg laboratory; part of it was in one wing of a textile plant and another part in an old brewery. Several miles away was a small underground cave containing the uranium pile. The Army had got to the cave and removed all the apparatus and blown it up. No more scientific hocus-pocus there!
XII
The great Heisenberg had skipped the town, or, rather, had rolled out of it on a bicycle. He had left half a dozen of his colleagues, including Otto Hahn, the discoverer of uranium fission; also that Professor von Weizsäcker, the Prussian aristocrat who had lent his services to the Nazis and had skipped out of Strasbourg before Alsos had got there. Another of the group was Professor Plötzen, whom Lanny had met at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Posing as a friend and secret agent of Hitler, Lanny had gone to spend an evening at Plötzen’s home, and there to his consternation had discovered Bernhardt Monck, who had managed to get a job as the wealthy gentleman’s butler and was having his papers secretly photographed at night.
So Alsos did not fail in its promise to provide the art expert with an interesting time. He spent hours with this worldly and genial physicist, who was a member of the Herrenklub as well as of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Did he accept Lanny’s story that he had remained a friend of Germany until Himmler had tried to draw him into a conspiracy to get rid of Hitler? The story was no longer so fantastic, since all the world had been told over the radio that the Reichsminister and head of SS and Gestapo had deserted his Führer in an effort to save his own skin.
What Plötzen said was, all that was water over the dam; what he was interested in was trying to save scientific knowledge. He thought it was silly of Heisenberg to run off to hide in the Alpine Redoubt, because that stronghold wouldn’t be able to hold out more than a week or two. Plötzen didn’t mind saying that this famed colleague—of whom he was perhaps somewhat jealous—had gone to join his family at their summer home in the town of Urfeld, on the Walchensee, south of Munich. Confidentially he was willing to tell his friend Budd where Heisenberg had had the materials of the laboratory buried. The cache was dug up: a ton and a half of uranium, a ton and a half of heavy water, and ten tons of carbon. The first item was of tremendous value and would be transported to a secret place in New Mexico as quickly as it could be loaded into a flying boxcar. The heavy water had been produced at great expense in Rjukan, Norway, a place whose name Lanny had obtained a couple of years ago at the expense of a great deal of his nervous energy.
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 25