“Leider, mein Herr.”
Lanny had learned that with subordinates in the Fatherland you take a high tone; they expect it and also respect it. “That is ridiculous,” he said; “it is contrary to good sense.”
“Leider, Herr Budd. Es ist der Befehl.”
“Well, in that case, the visit is off. Wir gehen nicht hinein. What road do we take to Salzburg?”
Horror revealed itself on the countenance of the officer and of the bystanding S.S. men. To have an appointment with the Fuhrer and refuse to keep it on account of anything on earth! Undenkbar! Echt Amerikanisch!
Lanny started to back the car and to turn. “Bitte, Herr Budd, einen Augenblick!” exclaimed the officer. “I will telephone.” A man might be demoted—a man might be decapitated—for permitting such a calamity as this!
“Speak to the Fuhrer’s secretary,” commanded the haughty one. “Tell him to tell the Fuhrer that Frau Budd has her maid with her, and wishes to go out by way of Salzburg after the visit, and naturally does not wish to drive eight miles back and then make a detour to get to the border.”
“Zu Befehl, Herr Budd!”
The officer hastened into the guard-house, and Lanny waited. He hoped that Trudi hadn’t fainted from the shock of that torch in her face. He didn’t turn round to see.
The officer came out again. “Ihnen ist’s gestattet,” he said, with relief in his voice. “It must be understood that the maid shall remain in the car during the visit.”
“Of course,” was the reply. “Why should she wish to get out?” The barrier was raised and the car sped on.
VI
The road wound along the side of the Obersalzberg; it had been cut out of solid rock and was quite an engineering job. Lanny drove fast but with vigilance, sounding his horn on all the blind turns. The streaming lights of his car moved swiftly over the sides of the mountain, clothed with pine trees and cut with small streams, each of which had been bridged. There was no better engineer in the world than that General Todt whom the Fuhrer had set to constructing his military highways.
Lanny knew the story of this mountain chalet which had been the Fuhrer’s retreat for more than ten years. Originally it had been called Haus Wachenfels, or Watch Rock, and had belonged to a Munich merchant. Hitler had rented it immediately after his release from the brief and amiable term of imprisonment he had served after the Beerhall Putsch. Here he had written, or had had Rudolf Hess write for him, the second part of Mein Kampf, and later he had purchased the place and changed its name to Der Berghof—Berg meaning mountain and Hof meaning yard, farm, manor, mansion, court, or hotel, whichever you chose! The Furstin Donnerstein had reported that a lot of improvements were being made. Adi Schicklgruber, down-and-out painter of picture postcards, had yearned all his youth to be an architect, and now he had Germany for a building site and the budget of the Third Reich for expenses. He was remaking Munich and planning to remake Berlin, and here in these remote mountains he was listening to the music of the Waldweben and the Feuerzauber, and building a hideout for himself and the wild witch Berchta.
Approaching the house they came upon another barrier and another guard-building with S.S. men. Lanny stopped, they saluted, and he returned the salute and gave his name. They asked: “Who is with you?” and he replied: “My wife and my wife’s maid.” They peered in with torches and then told him to proceed.
Lanny had always made it a matter of prestige to arrive on time for an appointment; in spite of delays it lacked three minutes of twenty-two o’clock when his car came in sight of the chalet. The drive widened, and there was plenty of space, so he parked discreetly a short distance away. Trudi was resting in the back seat, and he had told her to keep her eyes closed, sleep if she could and in any case pretend to. Strange things must have been going on in the soul of a Social Democratic outlaw, transported to the very door of the man whom she considered as Satan incarnate. But this was no time to ask her thoughts.
There was a sentry with a high-powered rifle pacing up and down the drive, and in front of the house a machine gun on a tripod, with two. S.S. men sitting beside it. The house was of whitewashed stucco, and in the dim twilight, reinforced by the moon, Lanny could see signs of new construction but could not make out the details. When he and Irma neared the building one of the guards switched on a floodlight which shone blindingly in their faces; apparently the inspection was satisfactory, for the light disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and before they had a chance to knock or to ring a bell the door was opened by a man in livery.
The inside of the chalet was modest. The woodwork was stained dark brown, and the furniture was of the modern, tubular metal sort. There was a spacious drawing-room, with wide windows looking over the mountains, significantly toward Austria, only two miles away. There was a grand piano in the room, and a radio cabinet, and in the center a sort of council table with a dozen or so chairs around it. Here the destinies of Germany were debated and decided; Lanny knew that if Adi could have his way, it would some day be true for the destinies of Europe.
The master of the chalet came forward, wearing the smile which made him attractive in his good moods. He had grown rather stouter, Lanny thought; presumably he was getting plenty of those vegetable plates with butter and a poached egg on top. But his cheeks still had their pasty color, and the little dark mustache seemed stuck on, like that of the comedian who had set the fashion. “Willkommen, Herr Budd!” he said, greeting the man first, according to the continental custom. Then he welcomed the wife and held her hand a few seconds too long—he was fond of ladies’ hands, it was rumored. “I was wondering if you had allowed yourself time enough,” he added; when Lanny told him the hour at which they had left Berlin, he exclaimed: “Ach, Ihr Amerikaner! I should put you in jail for an outlaw!”
Lanny said: “If you would keep me in a place like this, I wouldn’t mind.” That pleased the host, and without heeding the other persons in the room he led his guests to the front window and let them see the moonlight on the mountains and valleys. “I am going to build something wonderful here!” he declared. “I mean to have the biggest window in all the world, and in a second story, so that you can see everything. The statesmen will come from all over to admire this view.”
“My guess is the statesmen will be coming for something else,” remarked Lanny, and this brought a chuckle. Having read the Fuhrer’s book, and many of his speeches over a period of years, Lanny knew his mind and could play upon it, just as he could have played upon the piano which stood invitingly open.
VII
Present in the room were a general, two colonels, and a major; Lanny assumed that a military conference must have been held, but it turned out that they were permanent members of the household. Also two professors, though he did not learn what they professed; he was sure it included the doctrines of National Socialism and the glory of a one-time “Bohemian corporal.” In addition-there was a dour grim fellow only slightly older than Lanny, with bushy black hair and eyebrows, a square stern jaw and silent manner. Having heard him speak at a Versammlung, Lanny knew him for Reichsminister Hess, the Fuhrer’s deputy in charge of party affairs and one of two or three Nazis who addressed the great man as “du.”
Had this company assembled out of curiosity concerning a New York “glamour girl”? It seemed most unlikely. Their Fuhrer in introducing them did not refer to Irma’s wealth, but said: “Herr Budd is a boyhood friend of our Kurt Meissner, and Kurt tells me that if it had not been for the Budd family, his musical career might not have been possible.”
“Kurt is too generous, Exzellenz,” replied Lanny. “A man of genius does not give up so easily. Our family was many times repaid by what he taught us, not merely of German music, but of German Charakterstarke und Seelengrosse.”
The visitor meant to continue along this line, but was interrupted by the entrance of a woman known to both him and Irma; the Frau Reichsminister Goebbels, wearing a low-cut gown of pale-blue Chinese silk crepe, seeming to accentuate the paleness
of her delicate features, also the fact that she had lost weight in the two years since they had met her. Lanny and Irma waited for her to recognize them, and she apparently waited upon the Fuhrer. “Magda tells me you are old acquaintances,” he said; and Lanny answered, quickly: “The Frau Reichsminister was kind enough to take an interest in our exhibition of Detaze paintings.” He didn’t want her to mention that he had asked her help in rescuing a Jewish family from prison, for he knew that if that topic was broached their host might spend the rest of the evening denouncing the accursed race.
Magda greeted them cordially, and then seated herself and listened in silence. The Fuhrer had noted the name of Detaze, and remarked: “I remember the portrait you brought me at the Braune Haus; a notable piece of work.”
“Your critics both in Munich and Berlin were kind to the exhibition,” replied Lanny. “Marcel Detaze is the sort of painter to whom you have given approval.”
“I would be glad to have a specimen of his work here in this house when I have completed the rebuilding. I understand that his work is mostly landscapes, nicht wahr?”
“Land and sea, Exzellenz.”
“Well, suppose the next time you come you bring me what you consider a representative work, and charge me what you consider a fair price.”
“I would be embarrassed to charge you for it, Herr Reichskanzler.”
“Nanu, what talk is that? If the works are for sale, why not to me? I will give out the fact that I have made the purchase, and it will not merely promote the reputation of a worthy artist, but will be a step toward the reconciliation of Germany and France, which is one of my cherished dreams.”
“If you put it that way, I cannot resist.”
The word Fuhrer means leader, and means that, among other things, he is privileged to lead a conversation; so Lanny waited. “You still make your home in France, Herr Budd?”
“Most of the time.”
“Perhaps you can help me by telling me about the French people: what is it they desire of me, and how can I persuade them of my good intentions toward them?”
“That is not an easy undertaking, Exzellenz. The French are less homogeneous than the Germans—especially as you have made them. You have to think of the French as several different factions, very much at odds with one another.”
“And yet, they would all unite against my Regierung, would they not?”
“Most of them hope very earnestly that they will not have to. The French desire peace above everything else.”
“Then why can I not persuade them to come to reasonable arrangements with me, who also desire peace first of all? You may have read my speech of last May to my Reichstag—”
“I studied it carefully, and so did all my friends in France and England.”
“In that I made a special effort to explain myself to both countries, point by point. Yet it would appear that I have not had much success. Can you tell me any reasons?”
“Do you wish me to answer frankly, Herr Reichskanzler?”
“Vollstandig offen!”
“Also! It happens unfortunately that you have written in Mein Kampf that the annihilation of France is one of Germany’s aims.”
“Ach, der Unsinn! We are not talking about literature, but about politics.”
“The French note that the book is still being sold, and that you have never repudiated it.”
“Aber—that book was written while I was in prison, and very bitter in soul. If I had the time, I would rewrite it; but now I am in the midst of events—I am not longer ein verhungerter Schriftsteller, but a man of affairs, and I reveal my ideas in action. If I make a just and enduring treaty with the French, is not that what really counts?”
Lanny could have made reply to this statement; “Herr Reichskanzler, I am embarrassed to know your literary work better than yourself. It happens that the statement about the Vernichtung of France appears in the second part of Mein Kampf, which was written, not in prison, but in this very chalet where we now sit, and after you had had a year to recuperate from your eight months’ incarceration—for which, in any case, the Germans and not the French were responsible.” But where in the world was the head of a government to whom one could speak like that? Lanny well knew that to Adolf Hitler facts had no meaning except as they served his purpose. You might as well try to put a large and lively eel into your coat pocket as to hold him to any reality which didn’t happen to fit in with his purposes and desires.
VIII
Lanny didn’t have to make any further comments, and neither did anyone else; for the Fuhrer had got started at his fuhring. He didn’t want to learn anything, he wanted to tell things; and Lanny knew from experience both public and private that once he had got started nothing could stop him, and that an audience of two was as good as one of two thousand in the Burgerbraukeller of Munich, or twenty thousand in the Sportpalast of Berlin, or a million on the Zeppelin field during the Partyday at Nurnberg—due now in a couple of weeks. Lanny had heard Adi speak for two hours and a half, and he knew there were speeches of five hours on the record.
Here was an audience of eleven: four military men, two professors, and a party chieftain; the wife of the Reichsminister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda; a Franco-American Kunstsachverstandiger; an heiress member of international cafe society; and last but not least, the Reichskanzler and Fuhrer of the Third German Reich. He was the one who most enjoyed the oratory and was most deeply moved by it; the longer he spoke, the greater became his earnestness and fervor, the harder he struck with his fists, the louder he raised his voice, and the more alarming became his aspect.
He informed this small select company what would be the verdict of posterity: that in concluding a compact with Bolshevik Russia, the statesmen of France had committed one of the major crimes as well as one of the major blunders of history. He said that this alliance with bloody-handed class war could have only one effect and one meaning, as all the world must know; it was directed against Germany, and was an alliance for aggression, since National Socialist Germany had no power to attack France and no idea of doing so. National Socialist Germany desired only to build up its own economy and to solve the dreadful problem of unemployment, as its Fuhrer had pledged himself to his people to do; but here was a barbarian despotism on the Fatherland’s eastern border, ruthless and cruel Asiatic hordes actuated by diabolical Jewish-Marxist theories—
So it went. When Adi added the prefix Juden to any good thing it immediately became bad, and when he added the prefix to something bad it became a thousand times worse. Look at the spectacle they were now offering in Moscow! Could any man in his senses doubt that the Juden-Roten planned to conquer not merely Germany, but the whole civilized world? They gathered their agents from the four quarters of the globe and set them up on a public platform to boast of the crimes they meant to commit. They were using all the border states of Germany as centers of intrigue and secret warfare against the National Socialist Reich; they printed literature advocating sabotage and terrorism, and smuggled it wholesale into Germany; they had hundreds of agents, both native and foreign, working inside the Fatherland to undermine and destroy it. “There can be no safety for any man or woman in our country against the conspiracies and intrigues of these diabolical foes!” shouted the Fuhrer, and Lanny felt shivers running up and down his spine, thinking how at any moment one of the S.S. men might appear in the doorway and announce: “Mein Fuhrer, we have discovered a Social-Democratic underground conspirator hiding in the car of your American guests!”
IX
“We are the implacable opponents of this cannibal band,” proclaimed the master of all Germany. “And we call upon decent people of all lands to help us hold them down. We and we alone have the means—I do not mean the material weapons, for in that we have been rendered helpless by the wicked Versailles Diktat. The Juden-Bolschewisten have fleets of tanks enormously outweighing ours, and they have the greatest armada of planes in the world, ready to pounce upon our cities and destroy them with
out warning. Against all that, we Germans have the pattern of the new society, and we have the courage and the faith in our own destiny. It is one of the falsehoods of history that the Germans were overcome by arms in the last war—our defeat was due solely to the fact that our moral forces failed us, we fell victims to the stab in the back from these Jewish-Bolshevik vipers we had nourished in our midst.”
It took Adi a full hour to run through the gamut of his ideas. He exposed the treachery of France and Britain in failing to disarm—in accordance with the legend which he himself had originated, that they had promised at Versailles to do this. He repeated his assertion that National Socialist Germany was the one truly democratic land, and that he was a deputy elected by thirty-eight million votes. He repudiated every war to subjugate alien peoples, declaring that Germany wanted only Germans, and for this reason her defense forces were the world’s best guarantee of peace. “Friede und Freiheit fur alle, das ist National Sozialismus!” proclaimed the world’s champion endurance orator.
Lanny Budd, who had learned all this by heart many years ago, permitted his eyes to stray to the faces of the audience. The military men sat rigidly at attention, that being the discipline they had learned. The professors, now turned pupils, displayed that respect in which German pupils are never known to fail. Black-browed Rudolf Hess, most devoted of disciples, sat like a statue of adoration, his lips slightly parted, as if he were drinking in wisdom by mouth as well as by ear. But most interesting to Lanny was the face of Magda Goebbels; her rather sweet features had worn a melancholy expression two years ago, and now he thought: “Here is the saddest of women!” He knew that her crooked little husband had all the beautiful young actresses of the Third Reich at his command, and the uses he was making of them might well cause his wife to wear an expression of martyrdom. Lanny wondered, what was she doing here? He knew that before her marriage she had been a devoted party worker and contributor to the campaign chest. Had she now taken up some duties which brought her here for conferences? And was she the only woman in this haunt of more than dubious men? No information was offered and of course neither Lanny nor his wife would ask.
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 28