“Since my time in America, I have seen that many Americans call themselves artists as if the act of calling themselves an artist makes them an artist. This is most common in California where I was writing screenplays. Truth is these are talentless empty vessels—they are nothing more than very loud empty vessels of shit. In contrast, the true artist demurely says, ‘read my book.’ ”
For two hours, the novelist from New York kept up her monologue. It was clear to her that she had Albert’s complete attention—he interjected the occasional question or comment. His interest, bordering on fascination, aroused her like few other men could. His power in his country, his good looks and his gentlemanly manners—all combined to make her want him. And she did not just want him, she wanted him to dominate her, to take her spirit and do whatever he wanted, however he wanted. There would be no boundaries, no limits, no petty bourgeoisie niceties. She wanted it rough—very, very rough. She was one of those women that love the slow, teasing increase in intensity, so that pain and pleasure combined as one.
She kept teasing Albert with her speeches about “false premises.” The wine helped. As the day lengthened and shadows entered the room, she ineluctably opened her legs, so slowly it was like ice melting on a pond on an early bright spring day. Her dress obliged and rode up her legs. For the duration of the monologue, Albert had been sitting in one of the two large armchairs opposite the sofa.
“Come and sit next to me, Albert, I have a secret to impart,” she commanded in the language of a bad novel.
Albert obliged.
He took his right hand and put it up her dress. She was naked under her dress.
“I want you to completely dominate me. Do whatever you like. I want to feel pain. My premise is that pain is often a sexual concept. I want to worship you, Albert. Dominate me and do whatever you want to my body. I want it now. And I want you to slowly pain me so the pain is overwhelming and I feel nothing but heat and I want to feel pain.”
Truth be told, Albert had never felt a woman so soaking wet. It reminded him of one night years ago in his university years when he had drawn the shortest straw of three at a whore house, and had to patiently wait his turn. But even then, the girl that night was not as wet as the Russian novelist.
Expecting this outcome, Albert had taken the earlier precaution of buying the understanding of the hotel’s staff about “some possible disturbances.” The concierge politely smiled and said, “I shouldn’t worry, sir—the hotel is mostly empty this time of the year.”
Nevertheless, the two young whores in the lobby shook their heads in disbelief as the novelist’s increasingly insistent demands and moans were heard down the central open stair case; how could such a meek German be capable of generating such noises from this woman, or from any woman; what in God’s name was he doing to her? The next evening the two gaudy young beauties found out for themselves, and neither of them was disappointed.
14: Isaiah’s Message
Washington
Sunday, 21 September 1941
The third Sunday in september was a blustery one in Washington with the police reporting five trees uprooted in the District. The Police issued a flash radio bulletin just after The Red Skelton Show.
In the Oval Office, the President was discussing with Harry Hopkins the previous week’s fireside chat. Hopkins was Roosevelt’s closest adviser and the President was aware how Hopkins was key to the President’s New Deal.
So it was odd when Hopkins suggested that the President meet Louis Brandeis.
“Brandeis, Old Isaiah, that cunt—are you out of your mind—he and his fucking cunt buddies on the Supreme Court almost killed my ND?” (By this stage, Roosevelt had developed an addiction to abbreviations—‘my alphabet opium’ he called it, forgetting how his grandfather had made his fortune destroying millions of innocent people with the selfsame drug.)
“That cunt and his buddies on the Supreme Court killed my NIRA.”
It was true that the center piece of Roosevelt’s New Deal was his National Industrial Recovery Act or NIRA. Roosevelt had designed the NIRA to give him almost unlimited powers to dictate how American industry would be organized. And Brandeis had infuriated the President by telling one of Roosevelt’s aides, “go tell your boss that the world already has more than enough dictators—we don’t need another one, and certainly not in America.” The balls on this sick old man.
“That cunt, that fucking cunt!”
On and on went the President.
Hopkins put his hands up, as though a trainer in a boxing ring training a promising fighter with pad work, “He’s outside.”
“Outside, outside where, outside here you mean?” the President asked, a little startled.
“Yes, I think you need to speak to him.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now, and I think you will find what he says very interesting.”
Roosevelt sighed.
“Alright, bring the cunt in.”
While Hopkins went to the door, Roosevelt wheeled himself over to the low table in middle of the room. On either side of the table was a long sofa upholstered in yellow damask; the pattern was a Greek bull wildly but ineffectively tossing its horns at the heavens.
“Louis, so wonderful to see you, how are you?”
Hopkins’s manner was impassive—he’d seen Roosevelt pull this volte-face hundreds of times—wailing in private then all smiles in public.
“Mr. President, I am sorry to bother you on such a stormy night, but I wanted to show you and Mr. Hopkins a document.”
“OK, but what is so important? And why can’t it wait until Monday?” asked the President, who was known for his very short attention span, short even by politicians’ standards.
The President was sitting in a magnificent maple and birch wheelchair, with polished stainless steel spokes and hard-polished solid brass handles. In his hand he held a cigar from Havana (attached to the wheelchair was a glass ashtray that could quickly be removed for his “official duties” and for photographs).
Like many skilled politicians, Roosevelt’s public persona was very carefully manipulated to project a down-home image, a “man of the people,” just as the Duce was photographed bare-chested “bringing in the harvest,” whereas in reality the short, rotund Italian had never cut a sheaf of wheat in his life.
“Please, have a seat, Louis, and let’s see what you have.”
“Say, would you like a drink?”
“No thank you, Mr. President, my doctor tells me at my age my drinking days are over.”
Roosevelt noticed that Brandeis’s lips were an unhealthy crimson.
“This document comes from a very close friend in the Swiss army who is the ADC of General Guisan, the head of the Swiss Army. Just to give you a little background, in July 1940, Guisan spoke to the entire Swiss officer corp where he outlined a plan of defense against a possible German invasion. As part of this, the Swiss have infiltrated the German and Italian high commands. They have had extremely limited success with the Germans—all too professional and too closed-mouthed, but with the Italians it is the exactly the opposite. As you know, the Swiss cantons speak French and German, as well as Italian.”
By the look on Roosevelt’s face, it was clear to Hopkins that this was the first the President had learned of this.
“Is that a fact? I must admit I did not know that.”
“Yes, Mr. President, so infiltrating the Italian military was very simple and the big weakness of the Germans is that they are forced to share at least some of their intelligence with the Italians, and the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, is Mussolini’s son-in-law, so the Germans are forced to tell Ciano more than discretion suggests is wise. So, the weak link is the Italians.”
“Fucking Wops, and they almost cost me Chicago,” the President muttered a little too loudly.
Brandeis was startled, but continued.
“So, here is a three-page summary that I got today from the Swiss embassy, it was in the diplomatic p
ouch. I have briefed Mr. Hopkins on the contents earlier this afternoon.”
“OK, so what is it?” the President said, becoming irritated at the clear but lawyerly description.
“I have translated the document from German for you; as you know Mr. Hopkins reads and speaks fluent German and I went to school in Germany.”
Hopkins spoke,
“Essentially, Mr. President, this document, if true—and like Mr. Brandeis, I believe the veracity of this document—this document makes three points.”
“First, that the burning of the synagogues on the so-called Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass was seen by the late German leader as a huge mistake—a public relations disaster; he correctly predicted the world’s reaction. Dr. Goebbels was almost dismissed. Second, that Hess’s flight was very carefully planned by Hess, Hitler and Goebbels. And third, relating to the second point, the Germans are eager for peace with England, and the Germans have no professed interest in the British Empire, the Royal Navy, or the British Isles themselves.”
Roosevelt leant back and puffed his cigar, “Fuck,” was all he said.
“Mr. President, you can see why I thought I should bother you and Mr. Hopkins on such a vile night.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“But I don’t get it—if the Hess flight was not the ‘madman-in-a-Messerschmitt,’ why portray it as such? Why not simply come out and state it?”
Hopkins fielded this loose ball, “Well, the Germans are in a bind—they had to come up with this pipe dream for precisely the reason why it has been rejected by the British—they would seem weak even before their June invasion of the Soviet Union.”
“OK, but if this is the case, why the hell don’t the British settle?”
Brandeis and Hopkins looked at each other; neither spoke. Then Hopkins said one word, “Churchill.”
Until now, Roosevelt had kept his professional politician’s masque on, but the brandy was starting to work its effect.
“That pompous asshole thinks his shit doesn’t stink.”
Brandeis ignored this and went on, “In the Jewish community, there are two opposing views of how to deal with the current situation: the majority view is that the Germans need be defeated and actually destroyed—that Germany needs to be turned into farmland. The minority view is that the re-creation of a Jewish state is a better idea. As you know (all lawyers say this when the listener does not know), this is called Zionism. I am an adamant proponent of the second view. Actually, I am prominent in the American Zionist movement, and I believe this to be a better solution because it requires less bloodshed and frankly central Europe is Germany’s backyard, and the crazy and brittle monstrosities of Versailles, such as Czecho-Slovakia, made no sense in the real world. These checkerboard so-called countries only exist solely to hem in the Germans.”
Roosevelt professionally hated Brandeis as the main opponent to the glories of Roosevelt’s New Deal, but at a personal level Brandeis was impossible not to like: modest, polite, well-educated and intelligent.
Although addicted to lucky numbers, and lucky shoes, and lucky hats, Roosevelt was not unintelligent. He thanked the elderly Justice.
Brandeis slowly rose and left the room.
Roosevelt looked at Hopkins and said, “Interesting.”
15: Milch’s Boffins
Haus Wachenfeld
Saturday, 15 November 1941
As the light snow fell silently on the stone terrace of Haus Wachenfeld, Jodl explained to the assembled group how the new Brest-Litovsk-Kiev-Crimea line was succeeding better than expected. To create a complete break with the Berlin brawlers and thugs, Milch had rather wisely suggested that the late Chancellor’s mountain house made an ideal command post,
“With today’s advanced wireless telephony, this is the ideal place, or would you prefer the mosquitos of Rastenburg in summer and the 20 degrees of frost of winter?”
Jodl had simply smiled at this question, remembering the marshy, malaria-infested hell hole in East Prussia.
To the group of Field Marshals, Jodl explained,
“I can tell you the mercury is reading 20 degrees of frost in Leningrad according to our Finnish friends. But, it is actually very hot in Moscow.”
Gerd von Rundstedt looked up, surprised.
“Yes, it is a sweltering 17 degrees of frost in Moscow.”
The room exploded in laughter.
Rundstedt said, “Terrible shame about the September crash.”
It looked like Kurt Student was going to choke to death laughing.
Loeb said, “Careful, Rundstedt, you’re going to kill Student if you’re not careful.”
Jodl smiled and said, “Time for dinner gentlemen, and I understand it is wild turkey and pig’s trotters. Well, it should be, as I ordered the dinner for this evening.”
Since the events of the 1st of September, Jodl had implemented Milch’s suggestion, installing the centralized command of the wide-spread front at the mountain house. And he had ensured all vestiges of the former owner were removed: the complete staff was replaced; Eva had moved back in with her sister, and her room had been repainted; and the vegetarian’s greenhouse had been replaced with a concrete pad for howitzers (and thus, Fatso’s bones were permanently interred, or as Jodl once joked ‘interned’). Cigar smoke wafted through the mountain house and meats of all kinds were the standing order for all meals.
Standing alone in front of the fire, Albert absentmindedly gazed at the orange of the flames. He now realized how the country was so lucky to have men like Jodl and Milch in charge: sober, modest, and above all, professional. He wondered were the past few years just a horrible cruel nightmare? And the elimination of the bitter, hateful Austrian bile that all Austrians seemed to be poisoned with—the blind malevolence they spat was as bad as the Slavs’ centuries of pogroms and the Soviets’ mass execution of millions of their citizens.
As Albert thought about Jodl and Milch, his thoughts turned to Professor Stein and Stein’s comments about Germany, and how its strength—its backbone—was its private companies, based on Stein’s emphatic statistics of a professional economist: how German companies averaged 140 employees, while southern Europe’s average was just ten employees, and Stein’s always-prescient insight of how this radically affected the calibration of the political order of the day—the stable, professional and educated middle class versus the hard-scrabble petty prejudices of marginal corner shop owners.
Then Albert recalled Julius’s initially odd comment about German private companies’ fear of debt. Albert had checked for himself and found his mentor to be completely and entirely correct—it was true that private German companies disliked—almost feared—debt. And how this caused them to lose three percent in growth each year, but, at the same time, these modest private German companies were the most stable in the world, and many were over one hundred years old.
As Albert pondered this, he could finally see how Germany would—in one form or another—survive a thousand years. And slowly, with the patience of a true German craftsman standing at his work bench, Germany would expand throughout Europe like a flower blossoming in spring—slowly, imperceptibly, but with unstoppable inevitability. And the superiority of Germany’s education and training system and its ethic of work would dominate the world far more effectively than anything that could have been done by the strutting, chaotic and flatulent Austrian with chronically bad stomach, rotting teeth and blind hatreds.
After dinner, the leaders of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe chatted contentedly over cigars and brandy.
Jodl said,
“With the immediate executions of Koch, Greiser, and Himmler, the Reich is starting to be purged of the poisonous elements. Also, executing Rosenberg was quite useful—the man was like a mad Nietzsche.”
All listened in silence, then Rundstedt explained how the Ukrainians were shaping up well,
“As we discussed in early September, German NCOs have been promoted and have been promised small lots to farm after we ga
in an Armistice. They have been instructed to show the Ukrainians how we Germans are their friends against the Russians, who they all hate to a man. Of course, we did have a few rotten apples, as all armies do, but we removed them—men who have drank a little too much from the poisoned chalice of Übermensch. But, all in all, extremely good progress. And the same goes for the Baltics. We only have to look to the Roman Empire and how it expanded by having the Roman NCOs marry the local girls to increase the breeding stock. Worked for them, no reason to believe it will not work for us. Just as the Romans made Latin the lingua franca of the time, we can today do the same with German.”
Jodl continued,
“Romania is in a very strong position now with the addition of the German troops freed from the madness of trying to take Leningrad and Moscow in the North in the middle of the fucking winter; there was never any reason to repeat the little Corsican’s disaster of 1812. And in the south, Paulus and his Sixth Army are doing very well—it’s hard for the Russian tanks to attack us when they have no fuel. Our own fuel ferries across the northern Black Sea are working well—we moved to the Black Sea all the Kriegsmarine submarines operating in the Mediterranean and half of the Atlantic wolf packs attacking the American convoys to Britain. Our U-boats are sinking any Russian surface raiders in the Black Sea—in the last convoy, not one German oiler was lost. Field Marshal Milch’s Condors are providing excellent intelligence for our U-boat commanders in the Black Sea.”
At this last comment Milch beamed and added,
“Next week we intend to start attacking rail links from the Baku oil fields directly from our forward bases in Maykop. We have specially modified the Ju-88 with extra fuel tanks and we’ve removed all the armor and armaments. As there are little or no Russian aircraft, this seems a reasonable approach, and they will be accompanied by flights of 190s. And this will stop all oil to the Russians, while preserving the oil for our aircraft and tanks when we reach Baku.”
The Goddess Of Fortune Page 17