A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  And then they inched into view—the lame, the blind, the damaged, dismembered, demented, and disfigured tatterdemalions of two wars: The few remaining veterans of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—stooped, wizened figures in their seventies and eighties who had besieged Paris and proclaimed Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles—were leading the far larger body of pathetic survivors from the disastrous Great War, the War to End All Wars, the valiant men whose defeated leaders five years ago had abjectly agreed to impossible reparations in that same Hall of Mirrors.

  Karl watched aghast as a young man with one arm passed within a few meters of him dragging a wheeled platform on which lay a limbless man, hardly more than a head with a torso. Neither was much older than he. The Grand Guignol parade was full of these fractions of men and their blind, deaf, limping, stumbling, hopping, staggering companions. Karl knew he might well be among them had he been born a year or two earlier.

  Some carried signs begging, pleading, demanding higher pensions and disability allowances; they all looked worn and defeated, but mostly hungry. Here were the most pitiful victims of the runaway inflation.

  Karl fell into line with them and pulled Ernst along.

  “Really,” Ernst said, “this is hardly my idea of an entertaining afternoon.”

  “We need to show them that they’re not alone, that we haven’t forgotten them. We need to show the government that we support them.”

  “It will do no good,” Ernst said, grudgingly falling into step beside him. “It takes time for the government to authorize a pension increase. And even if it is approved, by the time it goes into effect, the increase will be meaningless.”

  “This can’t go on! Someone has got to do something about this chaos!”

  Ernst pointed ahead with his black cane. “There’s a suggestion.”

  At the corner stood two brown-shirted men in paramilitary gear and caps. On their left upper arms were red bands emblazoned with a strange black twisted cross inside a white circle. Between them they held a banner:

  COME TO US, COMRADES!

  ADOLF HITLER WILL HELP YOU!

  “Hitler,” Karl said slowly. “You mentioned him before, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. The Austrian Gefreiter. He’ll be at that big fascist rally in Nuremberg tomorrow to commemorate something or other. I hope to get to hear him again. Marvelous speaker. Want to come along?”

  Karl had heard about the rally—so had all the rest of Germany. Upward of two hundred thousand veterans and members of every right-wing volkisch paramilitary group in the country were expected in the Bavarian town to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t like big crowds. Especially a big crowd of fascists.”

  “Some other time, then. I’ll call you when he’s going to address one of the beer hall meetings in Munich. He does that a lot. That way you’ll get the full impact of his speaking voice. Most entertaining.”

  Adolf Hitler, Karl thought as he passed the brown-shirted men with the strange armbands. Could he be the man to save Germany?

  “Yes, Ernst. Do call me. I wish to hear this man.”

  * * * *

  Today it takes 200 billion marks to buy a single US dollar.

  —Volkischer Beobachter, October 22, 1923

  “It’s like entering another country,” Karl murmured as he stood on the platform of the Munich train station.

  Ernst stood beside him as they waited for a porter to take his bags.

  “Not another country at all. Merely an armed camp filled with people as German as the rest of us. Perhaps more so.”

  “People in love with uniforms.”

  “And what could be more German than that?”

  Ernst had sent him a message last week, scrawled in his reverse-slanted script on the blank back of a 100-million-mark note. Even with all its overworked presses running at full speed, the Reichsbank found itself limited to printing the new marks on only one side in order to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for currency. Ernst seemed to find it amusing to use the blank sides of the smaller denominations as stationery. And this note had invited Karl south to hear Herr Hitler.

  Karl now wished he’d ignored the invitation. A chill had come over him as the train crossed into Bavaria; it began in the pit of his stomach, then encircled his chest and crept up his spine to his neck where it now insinuated icy fingers around his throat. Uniforms . . . military uniforms everywhere, lolling about the train station, marching in the streets, standing on the corners, and none of them sporting the comfortably familiar field gray of regular Reichswehr troops. Young men, middle-aged men, dressed in brown, black, blue, and green, all with watchful, suspicious eyes and tight, hostile faces.

  Something sinister was growing here in the south, something unclean, something dangerous.

  It’s the times, he told himself. Just another facet of the chaotic zeitgeist.

  No surprise that Bavaria was like an armed camp. Less than three weeks ago its cabinet, aghast at what it saw as Berlin’s cowardly submission to the continuing Franco-Belgian presence in the Ruhr Valley, had declared a state of emergency and suspended the Weimar Constitution within its borders. Gustav von Kahr had been declared Generalstaatskommissar of Bavaria with dictatorial powers. Berlin had blustered threats but so far had made no move against the belligerent southern state, preferring diplomatic avenues for the moment.

  But how long would that last? The communists in the north were trying to ignite a revolution in Saxony, calling for a “German October,” and the more radical Bavarians here in the south were calling for a march on Berlin because of the government’s impotence in foreign and domestic affairs, especially in finance and currency.

  Currency . . . when the mark had sunk to five billion to the dollar two weeks ago, Karl had paid off the mortgage on the estate plus the loans against his mother’s jewelry with a US ten-cent piece—what the Americans called a “dime.”

  Something had to happen. The charges were set, the fuse was lit. Where would the explosion occur? And when?

  “Think of them as human birds,” Ernst said, pointing to their left at two groups in different uniforms. “You can tell who’s who by their plumage. The gray are soldaten . . . regular Reichswehr soldiers, of course. The green are Bavarian State Police. And as we move through Munich you’ll see the city’s regular police force, dressed in blue.”

  “Gray, green, blue,” Karl murmured.

  “Right. Those are the official colors. The unofficial colors are brown and black. They belong in varying mixes to the Nazi SA—their so-called storm troopers—and the Reichskriegsflagge and Bund Oberland units.”

  “So confusing.”

  “It is. Bavaria has been a hotbed of fascism since the war, but mostly it was a fragmented thing—more feisty little paramilitary groups than you could count. But things are different these days. The groups have been coalescing, and now the three major factions have allied themselves into something called the Kampfbund.”

  “The ‘Battle Group’?”

  “Precisely. And they’re quite ready for battle. There are more caches of rifles and machine guns and grenades hidden in cellars or buried in and around Munich than Berlin could imagine in its worst nightmares. Hitler’s Nazis are the leading faction of the Kampfbund, and right now he and the Bavarian government are at odds. Hitler wants to march on Berlin, General Commissioner Kahr does not. At the moment, Kahr has the upper hand. He’s got the Green Police, the Blue Police, and the Reichswehr regulars to keep the Kampfbund in line. The question is, how long can he hold their loyalty when the hearts of many of his troops are in the Nazi camp, and Hitler’s speeches stir more and more to the Nazi cause?”

  Karl felt the chill tighten around his throat. He wished Ernst hadn’t invited him to Munich. He wished he hadn’t accepted.

  “Maybe now is not a good time to be here.”

  “Nonsense! It’s the best time! C
an’t you feel the excitement in the air? Don’t you sense the huge forces at work around us? Stop and listen and you’ll hear the teeth of cosmic gears grinding into motion. The clouds have gathered and are storing their charges. The lightning of history is about to strike and we are near the ground point. I know it as surely as I know my name.”

  “Lightning can be deadly.”

  Ernst smiled. “Which makes it all the more entertaining.”

  “Why a beer hall?” Karl asked as they sat in the huge main room of the Burgerbraukeller.

  A buxom waitress set a fresh pair of liter steins of lager on the rough planked table before them.

  Ernst waved a hand around. “Because Munich is the heart of beer-drinking country. If you want to reach these people, you speak to them where they drink their beer.”

  The Burgerbraukeller was huge, squatting on a sizable plot of land on the east side of the Isar River that cut the city in two. After the Zirkus Krone, it was the largest meeting place in Munich. Scattered inside its vast complex were numerous separate bars and dining halls, but the centerpiece was the main hall. All its 3,000 seats were filled tonight, with latecomers standing in the aisles and crowded at the rear.

  Karl quaffed a few ounces of lager to wash down a mouthful of sausage. All around him were men in black and various shades of brown, all impatient for the arrival of their Führer. He saw some in business suits, and even a few in traditional Bavarian lederhosen and Tyrolean hats. Karl and Ernst had made instant friends with their table neighbors by sharing the huge platter of cheese, bread, and sausage they had ordered from the bustling kitchen. Even though they were not in uniform, not aligned with any Kampfbund organization, and wore no armbands, the two Berlin newcomers were now considered komraden by the locals who shared their long table. They were even more welcome when Ernst mentioned that Karl was the son of Colonel Stehr who’d fought and died at Argonne.

  Far better to be welcomed here as comrades, Karl thought, than the opposite. He’d been listening to the table talk, the repeated references to Adolf Hitler in reverent tones as the man who would rescue Germany from all its enemies, both within and without, and lead the Fatherland back to the glory it deserved. Karl sensed that even the power of God might not be enough to save a man in this crowd who had something to say against Herr Hitler.

  The hazy air was ripe with the effluvia of any beer hall: spilled hops and malt, tobacco smoke, the garlicky tang of steaming sausage, sharp cheese, sweaty bodies, and restless anticipation. Karl was finishing off his latest stein when he heard a stir run through the crowd. Someone with a scarred face had arrived at the rostrum on the bandstand. He spoke a few words into the increasing noise and ended by introducing Herr Adolf Hitler.

  With a thunderous roar the crowd was on its feet and shouting “Heil! Heil!” as a thin man, about five-nine or so, who could have been anywhere from mid-thirties to mid-forties in age, ascended the steps to the rostrum. He was dressed in a brown wool jacket, a white shirt with a stiff collar, a narrow tie, with brown knickers and stockings on his short, bandy legs. Straight brown hair parted on the right and combed across his upper forehead; sallow complexion, almost yellow; thin lips under a narrow brush of a mustache. He walked stooped slightly forward with his head canted to the left and his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

  Karl could hardly believe his eyes.

  This is the man they call Führer? He looks like a shopkeeper, or a government clerk. This is the man they think is going to save Germany? Are they all mad or drunk . . . or both?

  Hitler reached the rostrum and gazed out over the cheering audience, and it was then that Karl had his first glimpse of the man’s unforgettable eyes. They shone like beacons from their sockets, piercing the room, staggering Karl with their startling pale blue fire. Flashing, hypnotic, gleaming with fanaticism, they ranged the room, quieting it, challenging another voice to interrupt his.

  And then he began to speak, his surprisingly rich baritone rising and falling like a Wagnerian opus, hurling sudden gutturals through the air for emphasis like fist-sized cobblestones.

  For the first ten minutes he spoke evenly and stood stiffly with his hands trapped in his jacket pockets. But as his voice rose and his passion grew, his hands broke free, fine, graceful, long-fingered hands that fluttered like pigeons and swooped like hawks, then knotted into fists to pound the top of the rostrum with sledgehammer blows.

  The minutes flew, gathering into one hour, then two. At first Karl had managed to remain aloof, picking apart Hitler’s words, separating the carefully selected truths from the half truths and the outright fictions. Then, in spite of himself, he began to fall under the man’s spell. This Adolf Hitler was such a passionate speaker, so caught up in his own words that one had to go along with him; whatever the untruths and specious logic in his oratory, no one could doubt that this man believed unequivocally every word that he spoke, and somehow transferred that fervent conviction to his audience so that they too became unalterably convinced of the truth of what he was saying.

  He was never more powerful than when he called on all loyal Germans to come to the aid of a sick and failing Germany, one not merely financially and economically ill, but a Germany on its intellectual and moral deathbed. No question that Germany was sick, struck down by a disease that poultices and salves and cathartics could not cure. Germany needed radical surgery: The sick and gangrenous parts that were poisoning the rest of the system had to be cut away and burned before the healing could begin. Karl listened and became entranced, transfixed, unmindful of the time, a prisoner of that voice, those eyes.

  And then this man, this Adolf Hitler, was standing in front of the rostrum, bathed in sweat, his hair hanging over his forehead, waving his arms, calling for all loyal Germans who truly cared for their Fatherland to rally around the Nazi Party and call for a march on Berlin where they would extract a promise from the feeble Weimar republicans to banish the Jews and the communists from all positions of power and drive the French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr Valley and once again make the Fatherland’s borders inviolate, or by God, there would be a new government in power in Berlin, one that would bring Germany to the greatness that was her destiny. German misery must be broken by German iron. Our day is here! Our time is now!

  The main hall went mad as Hitler stepped back and let the frenzied cheering of more than three thousand voices rattle the walls and rafters around him. Even Karl was on his feet, ready to shake his fist in the air and shout at the top of his lungs. Suddenly he caught himself.

  What am I doing?

  “Well, what did you think of the Gefreiter?” Ernst said. “Our strutting lance corporal?”

  They were out on Rosenheimerstrasse, making their way back to the hotel, and Karl’s ears had finally stopped ringing. Ahead of them in the darkness, mist rising from the Isar River sparkled in the glow of the lights lining the Ludwig Bridge.

  “I think he’s the most magnetic, powerful, mesmerizing speaker I’ve ever heard. Frighteningly so.”

  “Well, he’s obviously mad—a complete loon. A master of hyperbolic sophistry, but hardly frightening.”

  “He’s so . . . so . . . so anti-Semitic.”

  Ernst shrugged. “They all are. It’s just rhetoric. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Ernst stopped and stood staring at Karl. “Wait. You don’t mean to tell me you’re . . .?”

  Karl turned and nodded silently in the darkness.

  “But Colonel Stehr wasn’t—”

  “His wife was.”

  “Good heavens, man! I had no idea!”

  “Well, what’s so unusual? What’s wrong with a German officer marrying a woman who happens to be Jewish?”

  “Nothing, of course. It’s just that one becomes so used to these military types and their—”

  “Do you know that General von Seeckt, commander of the entire German army, has a Jewish wife? So does Chancellor Stresemann.”

  “Of course.
The Nazis point that out at every opportunity.”

  “Right! We’re everywhere!” Karl calmed himself with an effort. “Sorry, Ernst. I don’t know why I got so excited. I don’t even consider myself a Jew. I’m a human being. Period.”

  “Perhaps, but by Jewish law, if the mother is Jewish, then so are the children.”

  Karl stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that. But that doesn’t matter. The locals we’ve met know you as Colonel Stehr’s son. That’s what will count here in the next week or so.”

  “Next week or so? Aren’t we returning to Berlin?”

  Ernst gripped his arm. “No, Karl. We’re staying. Things are coming to a head. The next few days promise to be most entertaining.”

  “I shouldn’t—”

  “Come back to the hotel. I’ll fix you an absinthe. You look like you could use one.”

  Karl remembered the bitter taste, then realized he could probably do with a bit of oblivion tonight.

  “All right. But just one.”

  “Excellent! Absinthe tonight, and we’ll plan our next steps in the morning.”

  * * * *

  Today it takes 4 trillion marks to buy a single US dollar.

  —Volkischer Beobachter, November 8, 1923

  “Herr Hitler’s speaking in Freising tonight,” Ernst said.

  They strolled through the bright, crisp morning air, past onion-cupolaed churches and pastel house fronts that would have looked more at home along the Tiber than the Isar.

  “How far is that?”

  “About twenty miles north. But I have a better idea. Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria’s honorable dictator, is speaking at the Burgerbraukeller tonight.”

  “I’d rather hear Hitler.”

  It was already more than a week into November and Karl was still in Munich. He’d expected to be home long ago but he’d found himself too captivated by Adolf Hitler to leave. It was a strange attraction, equal parts fascination and revulsion. Here was a man who might pull together Germany’s warring factions and make them one, yet then might wreak havoc upon the freedoms of the Weimar Constitution. But where would the Constitution be by year’s end with old mark notes now being over-printed with EINE BILLION?