The Vengeance of Rome

by Michael Moorcock

  With the unforced charm of the true German professional soldier, this legendary ‘alte Kämpfer’, this ‘old fighter’, bowed and clicked his heels. He spoke softly, almost shyly, with great charm and courtesy. I was reminded of Erich von Stroheim in his more avuncular moments. He would be delighted, he said, to get together, perhaps some evening? He was a great admirer of Mussolini and a student of Italian history. He felt it a privilege to meet one so close to Il Duce. His searching eyes continued to meet mine. I said that I would be honoured. His fame had reached Rome.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, turning away, ‘I hope I’ll have at least a little mystery left for you! Grüss Gott, Mr Peters. I will keep an eye out for one of your films! I am something of a cinema connoisseur.’

  Putzi snorted quite suddenly and told Röhm to ‘stop that at once!’ Chuckling he walked with him back to his office to deal with whatever problem had arisen. Again it was obvious that Hanfstaengl was something more than an occasional journalist of wealthy background. There could be few men who were able to joke on an equal footing with the great Ernst Röhm!

  I had been highly impressed by the ‘Father of the Storm Troopers’. In Italy they believed he must be a brute. His pictures suggested it. But now that I had met him it was very easy to see how he was able to keep control of such a vast militia and why every single one of his men would have died for him as, I suspect, they would never have died for Hitler.

  When Hanfstaengl came back he was smiling. ‘You made an enormous impression on our dashing “people’s soldier”. He wanted to hear all about you.’

  ‘Men of action have a certain affinity,’ I said, ‘which transcends national boundaries. I had exactly the same experience with Mussolini. I, too, was also favourably impressed.’

  ‘I’ll let him know,’ said Putzi.

  Even then I already had a sense of the historic significance of that brief meeting At the time I was simply elated to have met another equal. How rare it is to find a peer to whom one has to explain nothing. Our meeting was destined.

  And yet, for all my intimations, I could not have imagined the fantastic consequences that would result from my bumping into Röhm at the Brown House on that early-June afternoon. They were consequences whose resolution would do nothing less than decide the future of Germany, change the course of history, determine the nature of the century, and perhaps give us a fresh perspective on the complex nature of Man.

  Ernst Röhm was not the only famous personality I met in that first week. A constant coming and going of party people went on, chiefly between Munich and Berlin. Most were too busy to play host to a visitor like myself. I did not blame them. I decided to seek out some female entertainment, a girl who could also show me the city. I was not, however, immediately lucky. I had failed to reckon with the conservative Bavarian’s disapproval of my summer suits! Some of the Nazis I met were downright rude. It became impossible to introduce oneself to girls of the better type. But I persevered.

  Putzi remained only long enough to take me to his opulent house and introduce me to his slender, pale gold wife. He was engaged on some business with various American and English newspapers wanting interviews in Berlin with the Führer. Frau Hanfstaengl, although very welcoming, was rarely at home but made charity visits, chiefly to wounded SA veterans. I heard that Seryozha (‘Captain Hoch’) was on ‘permanent alert’ along with many other SA officers. I was reassured that I would not bump into him unexpectedly. I now realised I had been unduly alarmed about meeting the Baroness. She would not know my new name or where I was staying. She had enough malice in her to scheme my downfall, but I would be back in Italy before she had the slightest chance of tracking me down.

  I had hoped to see more of Captain Göring. I now learned he scarcely ever took his place in the Reichstag. He was being required more and more to choose between his Führer and his sick wife. The other Nazi deputies were equally wrapped up in the dynamic concerns of the day. I never met Goebbels, who rarely left Berlin. The ‘Dwarf with a Devil’s Brain’, as his enemies called him, was thoroughly absorbed in the complex strategy of national politics.

  While I visited Munich’s many fine galleries and churches, such things cannot hold a restless mind like mine for long. The up-to-date kinema houses allowed me to see what the German movie world was doing. The films were mostly affairs of sickening violence or cloying comedy.

  Surprisingly, I had not yet heard from Mussolini or any representative of his. The Italian secret service seemed unduly cautious. Was I wasting my time? I am the kind of man who feels uneasy if not tackling some important problem. I would have liked to speak to some of the other Nazi leaders. They were never available. The Italians had made a mistake to send me to Munich first. It was a ‘heart’ town of the Nazi Party, where much of their history had taken place, but political business was still done in Berlin.

  Whenever Hitler or Strasser were in town they were always closeted with their closest colleagues. They had no time for a stranger, albeit a sympathetic one. At first there had been some talk of my being Jewish, although mostly in fun, and I had been very quick to correct that error! Soon everyone took me for Italian. In these days the public was first becoming truly aware of the depths of the ‘supranational’ conspiracy and were understandably angry with the Jews. Everyone now knew me as Max Peters, even if the Völkischer Beobachter described me as ‘Hollywood’s new Latin American adventure star’ and seemed to think I was from the Argentine. I was, they said, of Spanish, Italian and German origin. An Aryan through and through. A strange thing for a pure-blooded Slav to be living such a lie!

  Because of some modish jazz dance, South America was all the rage in films that year. Even as I wrote my first reports back to my Duce, I enjoyed a small renaissance. I became a popular figure locally. I made no secret that I was a keen supporter of Mussolini and a friend of Young Germany. I spoke of a common European destiny, of a Union of States which would one day be as great as the USA. I gave a number of interviews in the press, warning of the perils facing modern society. My films began to be shown again, chiefly in the cinemas not wholly given over to sound, and even the Brownshirts treated me with cheerful familiarity now they recognised me. Of course there continued to be incidents. Clashes between Reds and Browns were fairly common. It was wise to avoid the backstreets.

  After a month or so I began to feel like an old Municher and was soon able to talk expertly and heatedly on matters of sausages and beer! I did not follow the extraordinary ups and downs of the Reichstag as reported in the German press but instead heard the opinions of Putzi and his circle. Everyone was extremely excited. Their mood infected me. I began to take an interest in some of the personalities. I was surprised that so much healthy controversy existed between party members. This could only be to the good. Hitler’s mistake was to favour only one aspect of National Socialism over so many others. Variety, as Mrs Cornelius insists, is the spice of life.

  The party was divided into two basic wings: the left, which still clung to its anti-capitalist socialist programmes, and the right, which favoured a system similar to the corporate state founded by Mussolini where private capital continued to flourish but under the firm control of government. Because of its sudden need for election money, the party had been forced to negotiate with powerful interests. The Army, the Church and Big Business were given certain reassurances. Since the onset of the Great Slump, which they blamed on America, the firm of I. G. Farben had been funding Röhm and Strasser, while Thyssen was openly backing Hitler and Göring. Others in the movement refused to take ‘capitalist gold’. They clamoured for an immediate uprising against the bosses and moribund social institutions. Hitler had already split with Gregor Strasser’s brother, Otto, over questions of race and aesthetics. Fiorello’s friend, Otto had left to form the so-called ‘Black Front’ and was now in Austria. Yet the party was growing. It had now almost a million members with thousands more ‘fellow-travellers’. The economic disasters which the masses and the middle classes had suffere
d had radicalised many Germans. They were considering voting for the Nazis, but barriers of class and tradition remained. Professional politicians looked down on the rowdy National Socialists as anarchist street fighters and little else. Hindenburg loathed the notion of a civilian commoner taking over his office. With a great deal of work to do and much at stake, most of the Nazis were agreed that everything hinged on the powers of Adolf Hitler to convince Hindenburg.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Ernst Röhm one day at a lunch Putzi had been unable to attend, ‘Alf’s so fucking unreliable. You never know from one day to the next how he’ll go. Sometimes he can hold the whole of Germany in his palm; sometimes he’s too nervous to ask a waiter for a glass of milk. That slut has turned his bowels to water. He’s too involved with her.’ Röhm was one of the few people I had ever heard call the Führer by his family nickname. He had come into the beer cellar looking for one of his ‘boys’, as he called his adjutants, and seeing me, decided he had time for a cup of coffee. I was sitting with the Sternholders, a pleasant couple of Hitler sympathisers I had met at Putzi’s a few days before. They lived not far from the Brown House in the same exclusive district and were a little overwhelmed by the presence of the Stabschef.

  Röhm put his hand on my shoulder, fixing me again with that honest, direct stare. ‘Why haven’t we seen you at Röhmannsvilla?’ The Sternholders were embarrassed to hear such direct talk. Röhm, who lived his entire life in rough male company, occasionally forgot himself. He apologised. ‘I’m a wicked, uncouth man, and sometimes I lose control of my nature. Forgive me.’ Bowing, he made his farewells. I promised to visit him at his new villa in what he called ‘the Bavarian heartland’. I could see how he had gained his reputation for brusqueness. He had no time for play-acting, he said, but he still valued good manners. The Sternholders thought he was ‘too proud for his own buttons’ and found him coarse. They were unconvinced by my defence. The judgement of people like them would prove Röhm’s undoing. By characterising him as a brute, something less than human, his enemies would later murder him with impunity and have the- German people sigh with relief at their salvation. How many years will it take until they realise Röhm was the Caesar they deserved, not the Triumvirate they were finally awarded? And yet, of course, I must take some blame for it all. It is extraordinary how we all appear to have connived in our own destruction! And from the noblest of motives.

  A minor drama was taking place concerning my baggage. Everything the young men had packed had turned up at my hotel, the Königshof, near the cathedral. The only thing missing was a case of spare drawings. These were not the duplicate plans and photographs I had put in the large envelope before I left Italy. They were some miscellaneous pieces I had had lying around. I could not remember the case being loaded on to the train. I was fairly certain it had been stolen or confiscated. Most of the work would be useless to a foreign power, but it was irritating to know that I was receiving unwanted attention. My personal sets of documents were thoroughly hidden in linings and spines. I continued to pursue the lost luggage, however, but with little success. The Germans were inclined to blame the Austrians. The Austrians blamed the Italians. And so on.

  The world news was increasingly disturbing. Everyone became rapidly abstracted as the financial situation worsened, and Germany once again seemed about to slide into anarchy. For a few days the whole country was unnaturally still, waiting and listening, as a frightened animal waits and listens.

  During those first Munich days, as I continued to explore the city, admiring her wonderfully Baroque architecture and nostalgic for more civilised times, I saw by coincidence quite a lot of Ernst Röhm. He recommended restaurants to me, as well as concerts and parks. I had fallen in with a group of young people, many of them members of the movement, whose idealism was as powerful as mine. Eager to hear my impressions of modern Italy, they had been proud to show me their city.

  My new friends had many questions. How was financial stability maintained, for instance. I became a proselytiser for Il Duce. I contrasted the sense of well-being and optimism in my adopted country. At a period when even the United States was descending into communism, the Italian example was the only light burning in Europe. This, of course, inspired them. They knew they must one day come to power in a bloodless revolution as Mussolini had done.

  The size and strength of the SA inspired other young hotheads, however, to speak of ’bloody revolution’, of taking over the state by force: this was another subject of noisy debate between Nazis in those days. Today’s youth sees only comic-strip images, stereotypes of swaggering SS officers and a demented Führer lusting to rule the world. They do not realise that most Nazis were people like themselves, just old enough to vote and anxious to throw out the old professional politicians who had led them into disaster through compromise and vacillation. They did not want war. Most of them were not even particularly anti-Jewish. They just wanted a change. They wanted something done. The Nazis promised to do something.

  Millions voted for Hitler because he was the young head of a young party which disdained the old-fashioned Junkers style, which spoke and acted in modern terms. During elections cinema films of Hitler were made by Goebbels to show in every village and town in Germany. The Nazis used radio effectively for the first time, as well as the press. The politician who controlled the airwaves also ultimately controlled the masses. Other politicians wrote articles or addressed town hall meetings. Hitler flew in a modern aircraft to speak personally to all seventeen states of the federation. This, of course, took money, and it was the source of that money which gave certain Nazi idealists pause. In private they were assured that the industrialists would be used to bring themselves down. But in public Hitler, if not Strasser, reassured the traditional German powers of landed aristocracy, industry, Church and Army, that he worked only to ensure their endurance.

  I heard Hitler speak for the first time over the radio in the Pohlnerkeller in Wilhelmstrasse. We were all gathered in silence, yet slowly, as the man spoke, his voice rising and falling, coaxing us to tears as well as to rage, a low roaring noise filled the cellar until, as the speech ended, every man and woman was on their feet, raising their arm in salute and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’

  A moment that stirred my soul.

  Then I realised fully the oratorical power of the ‘German Mussolini’ and understood why, with all their reservations, the Nazis had made him their spokesman and their leader.

  Meanwhile, I still had met no OVRA officer. Had the German secret police recognised and arrested him? There still existed a strong antipathy to fascisti in old leftist Weimar circles. Naturally I could not contact my Chief directly. I had been warned to do nothing that would connect me directly with my adopted nation.

  Time dragged on. Every second week I picked up a registered envelope at the central post office. It contained only money, in new German notes. Because I was not ‘earning my keep’, I felt I was here under false pretences. So far no one, apart from Hanfstaengl and Röhm, had shown the slightest interest in me. Perhaps they knew I was a spy.

  A couple of weeks after I arrived Göring sent me an apology via an intermediary. He still wanted to talk aircraft with me, he said, and hoped to see me soon. I had not understood that he wanted to talk about aircraft at all! He had until recently represented a Swedish aircraft company. I made allowances for him. Everyone said how the poor man was utterly distracted and had gone into retreat with his ailing wife, scarcely taking any interest in the outside world.

  Aimlessly I wrote some further reports. I still had nowhere to send them. I could not risk telephoning. I decided that if I did not hear anything by the end of the month I would find an excuse for visiting either the Italian Consulate or the papal nuncio. I would leave my reports with them. And if they refused me, I would tear them up and return to Rome. I had the impression that the great machine of state had lost track of me! But I still had money and all other necessities of modern life, so I continued to behave as usual. I must admit I did
not have an arduous time. I had become something of a minor celebrity in Munich. I occasionally ate at the Brown House, when Putzi or some other major official could sign me in, but it became increasingly crowded and the food got worse. Only party members were allowed entrance unaccompanied. And I grew tired of being addressed as ‘Herr Signor’. So I found a pleasant restaurant in central Munich where I would take my lunch almost every day. It was called simply enough the Bratwurstglockl.

  The place was frequented by higher ranking SA and SS officers. There I met several men who would become famous later, including Himmler, who seemed a colourless creature, and Christian Weber, a bluff, hearty fellow of the old school. Generally I found the SA fellows more agreeable. Almost all good-natured Bavarians, they were men with regular army experience. With an honest, down-to-earth quality, they would do anything for you.

  I was constantly amused that these Nazis were forever assuring me that I did not look Jewish, that I was evidently Spanish. It could be so hard to identify some Americans as Jews or Aryans, because of our Indian blood. I think they associated my style of dress with Jewish vulgarity rather than Italian chic. I did not blame them. They were unsophisticated lads, forever apologising. Their famous unruliness was entirely to do with bad local leadership. Röhm would often say, ‘There are no bad Brownshirts - just bad officers.’ We were to discover that in 1933, when any scum jumped on the Nazi bandwagon.