I presented my calling card to several guards at the various portals one had to pass to approach the office of the Reichsminister. Finally, I reached the outer office, my diplomatic patience wearing thin. After all I had the dignity of Eire-Ireland to protect.
Ribbentrop was a former whiskey salesman whose foreign experience had consisted of sales trips around Europe and Canada. Like so many of the people around Hitler, he was grossly incompetent.
“The Reichsminister is very busy today, Herr Ridgewood,” his secretary, doubtless a veteran of Wagnerian opera, said, looking down her nose at me. “I’m afraid that he will be unable to see you. These are glorious days for Germany, you know.”
I turned on my Celtic charm.
“I understand perfectly. I merely wanted to present my card so that he would know I was serving in the Irish Embassy.”
Her expression was that of a farmer at an Irish country fair facing a notorious gombeen man.
“I will give the card to the Reichsminister.”
“Thank you.” I bowed.
“Heil Hitler.”
I nodded.
I had already left the outer office when she caught up with me breathless.
“The Reichsminister will see you briefly, Herr Ridgewood.”
Von Ribbentrop (the von was fake) looked for all the world like the Protestant cleric near Castle Ridgeland—tall, skinny, pinched face, thick glasses, little hair.
“Heil Hitler.”
“Good morning, Herr Reichsminister. I am sorry to have disturbed you. I merely wanted to leave my calling card as a courtesy.”
I had sworn a solemn oath the day before never once to say Heil Hitler during my term in Berlin, less as a matter of principle than as a matter of Gaelic stubbornness.
“Not at all, Herr Ridgewood,” he said, standing up and extending his hand. “I commend you on your excellent command of the German language, a Swabian accent, I believe. Do sit down please.”
“I studied at Heidelberg, sir. German history and literature. I am writing a dissertation at Trinity College in Dublin on the long history of cooperation between England and the German states, which I assume is why the Ministry for External Affairs has sent me here.”
No point in telling him that it had begun as a paper at Oxford.
He was intrigued. Blarney works with these folk, I told myself.
“It is most unfortunate”—he removed his spectacles and began to polish them—“that England chose to unite itself with France in this century. Now it finds itself defenseless against the military genius of the greatest leader in human history.”
“There can be no denying that the Reich has won a series of victories unparalleled since Alexander the Great or Bonaparte.”
Over weak enemies, I did not add.
“England’s army was destroyed in France. Its air force barely exists. The Führer has ordered Operation Sea Lion to send an occupying force into England. We will, of course, recognize the neutrality of Ireland.”
The hell you say.
“It need not be that way,” he went on. “The Führer has great admiration for England and its people; after all we are of very similar racial backgrounds, are we not?”
“And very similar languages.”
“The Führer’s final ambition is to eliminate Bolshevism and thus introduce a thousand-year Reich of peace and prosperity free of Jewish control. With a proper government in London and a treaty of nonaggression between our two countries, there would be no need for more than a thousand of our officials in London …”
The dummy was dreaming of the Ribbentrop-Eden treaty. I thought Anthony Eden was a handsome neurotic without much ability (because that’s what the Old Fella thought). However, the image of him sitting down at a table across from this fool was high comedy.
“An interesting idea, Herr Reichsminister.”
“I presume the Irish government has a sense of how things are in England.”
“Ireland is totally and absolutely neutral, Herr Reichsminister,” I lied.
“I understand, I understand. Yet you must have some sense of the morale of the English people? Presumably the aristocrats, led by Churchill, want the war to continue and the ordinary people hope for peace.”
“I can offer only my impression, Herr Reichsminister. But it is rather the opposite. The aristos want peace and the people are typically stubborn Brits whom Churchill has rallied in favour of the war. The real aristos don’t consider Winston to be one of their number at all.”
My Old Fella certainly didn’t, but he admired him.
“Interesting. Interesting.”
“However I will, with your permission, pass on your reflections to my government. They have certain liaisons with the British Foreign Office.”
“Excellent! Excellent! Churchill has to go, of course, but the English can keep their fleet and their colonies so long as there is no blockade of Germany.”
“I will mention that to my superiors at the Ministry for External Affairs.”
I did not laugh in his face, behaviour which demonstrated that I might still have some future as a diplomat.
However, I did laugh as I recited our dialogue that afternoon to Claus at the Café Linden, where we sipped tea under the shade of the trees and under a clear blue sky. He laughed with me.
“I assume, Claus, that he is one of the less competent of your Führer’s ministers.”
“Quite the contrary, Timmy, he is one of the more competent. They are a group of trash, criminals reveling in power that they do not know how to use. Goebbels is superb at propaganda but he is quite mad with anti-Semitism. Goering is a pervert and drug addict. We must sweep them away.”
We had already discussed his family. He and Nina had three children and perhaps a fourth on the way. Nina was flourishing, more beautiful than ever. It was necessary that Annalise marry. She had no family and in the present days, she needed a protector. Paul was harmless and adored her, though he was still living the Flying Circus experience. She was working at the Luft Ministry in a senior staff position. She was very efficient and respected by everyone. She did not seem unhappy.
I told myself that my heart was not breaking.
“You will present your credentials to the Führer the day after tomorrow at his annual reception for diplomats?”
“Your contacts are very good, Claus.”
He waved the compliment away with his usual self-deprecating smile.
“The Führer will speak about England. He will denounce their treachery, but then he will in effect offer them peace, not unlike what the Reichsminister proposed to you. How will the English react?”
“They will laugh at him. Will they really attempt an invasion?”
“That is why I am in Berlin instead of with the Sixth Panzer on the coast of Normandy. The OKW—the General Staff—is formulating plans. Since I am considered an expert on the problem of logistics, it is my task to point out the many obstacles. In general the OKW has grave reservations. Von Rundstedt, Hitler’s favourite after our victory in France, will command Sea Lion. He has very grave reservations. Personally he does not like the Nazis—at the proper time he might well be with us. He also sees that an invasion could easily end in disaster.”
“Why is that?”
“Your impressions here will go back to your government?”
“At a very general level, no one will be identified.”
“Very good … They will share them with the English?”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“Good. Gerd—von Rundstedt—knows that our success is the work of our Panzers. He wonders how you can put one of them, say from my division, on a barge, tow the barge across the Channel and then put it on the shore in England when you have no experience with amphibious landings. I estimate that the chance of any given Panzer landing in England less than one in ten. For that matter, I’m not sure how many of our men we can put ashore. Those who favour the invasion dream of our paratroops seizing a port, Southam
pton perhaps, and bringing the Panzers ashore from something bigger than a barge. Gerd says that England is not Norway. Finally, and most seriously, Gerd insists that he will never lead an invasion unless the Royal Air Force has been destroyed.”
“The first battle of Britain will be fought in the air!”
“The Reichsmarschal—Goering is the only one with that title—says his Luftwaffe will destroy the RAF in four days.”
“I rather doubt that.”
“The Luftwaffe has yet to face a moderately effective enemy. It has had considerable success in supporting ground troops and terrifying a retreating foe. But it has only one truly modern aircraft—the Me-109—and that can spend ten minutes over England before it runs out of fuel. Goering is mad.”
“And dangerously so, it would seem.”
“Moreover the Abwehr, our intelligence group, warns us that the English already have three lines of defense prepared that are ready to slaughter advancing troops which have little or no Panzer support.”
“I doubt that, Claus.”
“So do I. Yet Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, has had a long history of providing Hitler with false information. He may approach you at the reception. He is to be trusted.”
“One of yours?”
He looked around to make sure no on was close to us and nodded silently.
The chief of intelligence was on Claus’s side. Ja, ja, interesting.
“Germany rearmed very quickly,” he continued. “We concentrated on Panzer forces. That’s why we won. We have not made much progress in other matters. The Stuka is an old plane with gull wings, struts, and fixed landing gears. The noise they make in their dive terrorizes ground troops, but they do not carry heavy bombs and their gunner is in the rear seat, firing in open air as they go down. Moreover, they often break apart at the end of their dives. We have a thousand of them in our Stuka wing. The RAF has new fighter planes about which Goering does not seem to know … If they are any good, the Luftwaffe will be repulsed.”
“They are called the Hurricane and the Spitfire. My Old Fella’s friends in the airline industry in Northern Ireland tell him that they are very good indeed.”
“Paul”—he shook his head sadly—“thinks that it’s 1918 and the Stukas are Fokkers. Like everyone else he thinks that we are military geniuses and invincible. So far we have been lucky.”
“Do you want an invasion, Claus?”
“I want the Führer to lose just once so his reputation for invincibility will be shattered. Better in the English Channel than in the snows of Russia. Yet I don’t want to see my own men drowned. But I don’t want to see them frozen to death either.”
“You can hardly launch a coup when he’s riding high.”
“Our chances would be small. Even though many in the Wehrmacht hate him, it is hard to argue with repeated victories. The Antichrist is clever, Timmy. We knew that.”
“Yet your group is intact?”
“Loosely organized but in place. Powerful and important men.”
“The Secret Germany?”
“Many of them.”
I sent off a minute to Dublin which suggested that there was considerable debate in Germany about invading England and that the principle issue was the Royal Air Force. Everyone was quoting Goering that the Luftwaffe would dispose of the RAF in four days and England would then be at Hitler’s mercy.
We had not talked much about Annalise. Perhaps Claus was upset with me for not saving her six years earlier. Or maybe he considered the matter closed. She had a husband and that was that. The husband, however, would be flying an obsolete bomber against the best fighter planes in the world, a point which Claus had emphasized in his discussion.
I was a good enough Christian not to hope that General Major Paul von Richthofen would die. Yet if that should happen …
I banished that thought as best I could. I didn’t deserve a second chance.
The diplomatic reception at Hitler’s brand-new Chancellery was like a grotesque version of Gilbert and Sullivan—men in a wide variety of uniforms, all very Germanic, which did not quite fit them. Most grotesque of all was the Reichsmarschal, corseted into a buff Luftwaffe dress uniform, wearing makeup and laughing constantly, like a man who had too much to drink or too many drugs. They were all drunk, in fact, with the intoxicant of victory.
The wives of many of the guests were there too, in long and modest gowns. Their makeup was exhaustive. Only a few of them would attract a second glance from a young celibate male like me.
Frau von Richthofen, as I tried to think of her now, was certainly not present. She would be dangerous in such a group.
The Führer himself, in gray battle dress, might have been an innocuous waiter serving refreshments. He was a strange-looking little man with his funny mustache and his slick hair draped over his forehead. There was no hint of the charisma he was supposed to exude and which presumably generated the awe and the reverence of those who spoke to him.
The greatest Reich ever, stretching from the North Cape to Africa and from the Bay of Biscay to the Vistula. Rome eat your heart out. Yet somehow I thought that Rome had more style, more class. Perhaps even the Hapsburgs did too. Triumph, if Claus were to be believed, because of luck and the war weariness of the others.
How durable this triumph? There was still Russia. And the United States.
Determined not to be ignored in the midst of the splendour I expected, I wore my green linen cummerbund AND my tricolour lapel pin. The Irish are here, folks!
The new diplomats would present their credentials to the Führer, then he would give his talk. I was the last of the four, not because Ireland was unimportant in the room (though it surely was) but because I was the most recent arrival.
When the Fuhrer accepted my credentials, I caught just a slight hint of the charisma, a flash of light in his eyes, a hint of a smile on his face. He was not Michael Collins surely, but I had the sense that men and women might worship for this smile. The smile of the Antichrist? Maybe.
“Ja, green for Irish,” he said, “brave people.”
“Thank you, my Führer,” I whispered.
His performance during his talk, a manuscript in front of him on the podium but rarely consulted, was quite different. He spoke proudly and confidently about his new Reich which would last a thousand years at least. It would ennoble and purify the continent and protect it from any onslaught from future barbarian hordes. He thanked the brave armed forces of the Reich, for their quick and efficient victories. He hailed the prospect of peace for all of Europe. The only nation that had not gratefully accepted the peace and purity of the new Reich was England. Then the tone of his voice changed and the volume rose. We were at Nuremberg and the hysteria of the Führer spread to everyone present. His indictment of the English as weak, cruel, oppressive was one with which it was difficult for an Irishman like me to disagree. I might even have been able to overlook the anti-Semitism of his assault on the International Zionist conspiracy. Yet the virulence of his call for the destruction of England scared me. As a mick, I might want to see perfidious Albion cut down to size. Yet I thought the world would be a worse place if its respect for the rule of law and human rights (though not in Ireland) were crushed by this visceral hatred.
The tension and fury in the room as he screamed about the offenses of our neighbours across the Irish Sea was orgiastic. England must be destroyed. It would be destroyed. Its army no longer existed. Its air force had never existed. The British Empire would be obliterated forever. It would collapse before the onslaught of German vengeance. Salt would be poured on its fields as it had been poured on the fields of Carthage.
I wondered how this speech would play on the BBC that evening. I had a feeling that it would have no impact on English listeners. In Dublin people would laugh.
Then his voice became calm and reasonable. He proposed something like the solution of the Reichsminister. A permanent armistice, a friendly government which would accept the victory of the Reich, a resto
ration of German colonies, free trade on the high seas—there would be no need for an invasion of England if a friendly government would agree to accept the triumph of the Reich honestly and humbly.
Would the pro-peace party within Churchill’s war cabinet eagerly accept such terms? Would Lord Halifax insist again that Mussolini or perhaps the Pope be asked to act as an intermediary?
In my minute that night I expressed the opinion that the glove under the iron fist would only reveal a steel hand. The talk was not such to persuade the English people to overthrow Churchill and the other aristocrats as to spill venom on England. Perhaps his words would frighten the English but I didn’t think it likely.
A handsome, white-haired man in the uniform of the Kriegsmarine, the War Navy, approached me. He was wearing a considerable number of decorations, including the highest grade of the Iron Cross.
“Canaris,” he said almost unnecessarily.
“Ridgewood.”
“Should I say Viscount Ridgewood?” He smiled.
“Not when I’m in the diplomatic service of Eire,” I replied, with my own smile.
“Do you credit our Glorious Fuhrer’s view of the present strength of England, especially of the Royal Air Force?”
We both accepted champagne glasses from a tray.
My heart was beating rapidly. This handsome admiral with the seductive smile, the smooth voice, and twinkling eyes might be setting a trap for me. I had better be careful.
“I agree,” I replied dodging the question that he had asked, “that operation Sea Lion will not succeed unless the RAF is taken out of the equation. If it survives, the Royal Navy is only two days away from the Channel.”
We sipped cautiously from our glasses as the conversation continued and simultaneously made faces of displeasure.
“Is there great fear in Castle Ridgeland about the future of the House of Lords?”
“Castle Ridgeland is not a place that is easily frightened.”
“And Lord Ridgeland has great confidence in his friend Winston?”
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