by Herman Wouk
“Why? Why do you keep saying that? On paper you and the French still have the Germans badly licked. Don’t you realize that? Manpower, firepower, steel, oil, coal, industrial plant, any way you add it up. They’ve got a small temporary lead in the air, but they’ve also got the Soviet Union at their backs. It’s not the walkover it was last year and two years ago, but you still figure to win.”
“Alas, they’ve got the leadership.”
A strong hand clapped Henry’s shoulder, and a voice tinged with irony said, “Heil Hitler!” Ernst Grobke stood there in a worn, creased navy uniform; with it he had put on a severe face and an erect posture. “Well, gentlemen, here we are. Victor, in case I don’t see you again in the confusion, where do I get in touch with you? The embassy?”
“Sure. Office of the Naval Attaché.”
“Ah!” said Tudsbury. “Our little trip to Swinemünde! So glad you haven’t forgotten.”
“I’ll do my best to include you,” said Grobke coldly. He shook hands with both of them, bowing and clicking his heels, and he left.
“Come and say good-bye to Pamela,” Tudsbury said. “She’s below, packing.”
“I’ll do that.” Pug walked down the deck with the correspondent, who limped on a cane. “I have notions of matching her up with a son of mine.”
“Oh, have you?” Tudsbury gave him a waggish glance through his thick spectacles. “I warn you, she’s a handful.”
“What? Why, I’ve never met a gentler or pleasanter girl.”
“Still waters,” said Tudsbury. “I warn you.”
4
THE Henrys had only just arrived in Berlin when they were invited to meet Hitler. It was a rare piece of luck, the embassy people told them. Chancellery receptions big enough to include military attachés were none too common. The Führer was staying away from Berlin in order to damp down the war talk, but a visit of the Bulgarian prime minister had brought him back to the capital.
While Commander Henry studied the protocol of Nazi receptions in moments snatched from his piled-up office work, Rhoda flew into a two-day frenzy over her clothing, and over her hair, which she asserted had been ruined forever by the imbecile hairdresser of the Adlon Hotel (Pug thought the hair looked more or less the same as always). She had brought no dresses in the least suitable for a formal afternoon reception in the spring. Why hadn’t somebody warned her? Three hours before the event Rhoda was still whirling in an embassy car from one Berlin dress shop to another. She burst into their hotel room clad in a pink silk suit with gold buttons and a gold net blouse. “How’s this?” she barked. “Sally Forrest says Hitler likes pink.”
“Perfect!” Her husband thought the suit was terrible, and decidedly big on Rhoda, but it was no time for truth-telling. “Gad, where did you ever find it?”
Outside the hotel, long vertical red banners of almost transparent cheesecloth, with the black swastika in a white circle at their center, were swaying all along the breezy street, alternated with gaudy Bulgarian flags. The way to the chancellery was lined with more flags, a river of fluttering red, interspersed with dozens of Nazi standards in the style of Roman legion emblems—long poles topped by stylized gilt eagles perching on wreathed swastikas—and underneath, in place of the Roman SPQR, the letters NSDAP.
“What on earth does NSDAP stand for?” Rhoda said, peering out of the window of the embassy car at the multitudinous gilded poles.
“National Socialist German Workers Party,” said Pug.
“Is that the name of the Nazis? How funny. Sounds sort of Commie when you spell it all out.”
Pug said, “Sure. Hitler got in on a red-hot radical program.”
“Did he? I never knew that. I thought he was against all that stuff. Well, it couldn’t be more confusing, I mean European politics, but I do think all this is terribly exciting. Makes Washington seem dull and tame, doesn’t it?”
When Victor Henry first came into Hitler’s new chancellery, he was incongruously reminded of Radio City Music Hall in New York. The opulent stretch of carpet, the long line of waiting people, the high ceiling, the great expanses of shiny marble, the inordinate length and height of the huge space, the gaudily uniformed men ushering the guests along, all added up to much the same theatrical, vulgar, strained effort to be grand; but this was the seat of a major government, not a movie house. It seemed peculiar. An officer in blue took his name, and the slow-moving line carried the couple toward the Führer, far down the hall. The SS guards were alike as chorus boys with their black-and-silver uniforms, black boots, square shoulders, blond waved hair, white teeth, bronzed skin, and blue eyes. Some shepherded the guests with careful smiles, others stood along the walls, blank-faced and stiff.
Hitler was no taller than Henry himself; a small man with a prison haircut, leaning forward and bowing as he shook hands, his head to one side, hair falling on his forehead. This was Henry’s flash impression, as he caught his first full-length look at the Führer beside the burly much-medalled Bulgarian, but in another moment it changed. Hitler had a remarkable smile. His down-curved mouth was rigid and tense, his eyes sternly self-confident, but when he smiled this fanatic look vanished; the whole face brightened up, showing a strong hint of humor, and a curious, almost boyish, shyness. Sometimes he held a guest’s hand and conversed. When he was particularly amused he laughed and made an odd sudden move with his right knee: he lifted it and jerked it a little inward.
His greeting to the two American couples ahead of the Henrys was casual. He did not smile, and his restless eyes wandered away from them and back again as he shook hands.
A protocol officer in a sky-blue, gold-crusted foreign service uniform intoned in German:
“The naval attaché to the embassy of the United States of America, Commander Victor Henry!”
The hand of the Führer was dry, rough, and it seemed a bit swollen. The clasp was firm as he scanned Henry’s face. Seen this close the deep-sunk eyes were pale blue, puffy, and somewhat glassy. Hitler appeared fatigued; his pasty face had streaks of sunburn on his forehead, nose, and cheekbones, as though he had been persuaded to leave his desk in Berchtesgaden and come outside for a few hours. To be looking into this famous face with its hanging hair, thrusting nose, zealot’s remote eyes, and small moustache was the strangest sensation of Henry’s life.
Hitler said, “Willkommen in Deutschland,” and dropped his hand. Surprised that Hitler should be aware of his recent arrival, Pug stammered, “Danke, Herr Reichskanzler.”
“Frau Henry!”
Rhoda, her eyes gleaming, shook hands with Adolf Hitler. He said, in German, “I hope you are comfortable in Berlin.” His voice was low, almost folksy; another surprise to Henry, who had only heard him shouting hoarsely on the radio or in the newsreels.
“Well, Herr Reichskanzler, to tell the truth I’ve just begun looking for a house,” Rhoda said breathlessly, too overcome to make a polite reply and move on.
“You will have no difficulty.” Hitler’s eyes softened and warmed at her clear German speech. Evidently he found Rhoda pretty. He kept her hand, faintly smiling.
“But there are so many charming neighborhoods in Berlin that I’m bewildered. That’s the real problem.”
This pleased or amused Hitler. He laughed, kicked his knee inward, and turning to an aide behind him, said a few words. The aide bowed. Hitler held out his hand to the next guest. The Henrys moved on to the Bulgarian.
The reception did not last long. Colonel Forrest, the military attaché, a fat Army Air officer from Idaho who had been in Germany for two years, introduced the Henrys to foreign attachés and Nazi leaders, including Goebbels and Ribbentrop, who looked just like their newsreel pictures, but oddly diminished. These two, with their perfunctory fast handshakes, made Henry feel like the small fry he was; Hitler had not done that. Pug kept trying to watch Hitler. The Führer wore black trousers, a gray double-breasted coat with an eagle emblem on one arm, and a small Iron Cross on his left breast. By American styles the clothes were cut much
too full. This gave the leader of Germany the appearance of wearing second-hand, ill-fitting garments. Hitler from moment to moment looked restless, tired, or bored, or else he flashed into winning charm. He was seldom still. He shifted his feet, turned his head here and there, clasped his hands before him, folded them, gestured with them, spoke absently to most people and intensely to a few, and every so often did the little knee kick. Once Pug saw him eating small iced cakes from a plate, shoving them toward his mouth with snatching greedy fingers while he talked to a bemedalled visitor. Shortly thereafter he left, and the gathering started to disperse.
It was drizzling outside; the massed red flags were drooping, and from the helmets of the erect guards water ran unheeded down their faces. The women clustered in the entrance while Pug, Colonel Forrest, and the chargé d’affaires went out to hail the embassy cars. The chargé, a tall moustached man with a pale clever face full of wrinkles, and a weary air, ran the embassy. After the Crystal Night, President Roosevelt had recalled the ambassador, and had not yet sent him back. Everybody in the embassy disliked this policy. It cut the Americans off from some official channels, and hampered their ability to conduct business, even the business of interceding for Jews. The staff thought the President had made a political gesture toward the New York Jews that, in Germany, seemed ineffectual and laughable.
The chargé said to Henry, “Well, what did you think of the Führer?”.
“I was impressed. He knew I’d just arrived.”
“Really? Well, now you’ve seen German thoroughness. Somebody checked, and briefed him.”
“But he remembered. In that long line.”
The chargé smiled. “Politician’s memory.”
Colonel Forrest rubbed his broad flat nose, smashed years ago in a plane crash, and said to the chargé: “The Führer had quite a chat with Mrs. Henry. What was it about, Pug?”
“Nothing. Just a word or two about house-hunting.”
“You have a beautiful wife,” the chargé said. “Hitler likes pretty women. And that’s quite a striking suit she’s wearing. They say Hitler likes pink.”
Two days later, Henry was working at the embassy at a morning pile of mail, in an office not unlike his old cubicle in War Plans—small, crowded with steel files, and piled with technical books and reports. This one had a window, and the view of Hitler’s chancellery slightly jarred him each morning when he got there. His yeoman buzzed from a tiny anteroom smelling of mimeograph ink, cigarette smoke, and over-brewed coffee, like yeomen’s anterooms everywhere.
“Mrs. Henry, sir.”
It was early for Rhoda to be up. She said grumpily that a man named Knôdler, a renting agent for furnished homes, had sent his card to their hotel room, with a note saying he had been advised they were looking for a house. He was waiting in the lobby for an answer.
“Well, what can you lose?” Henry said. “Go and look at his houses.”
“It seems so odd. You don’t suppose Hitler sent him?”
Pug laughed. “Maybe his aide did.”
Rhoda called back at three-thirty in the afternoon. He had just returned from lunch. “Yes?” he yawned. “What now?” The long heavy wine-bibbing meal of the diplomats was still too much for him.
“There’s this wonderful house in the Grunewald section, right on a lake. It even has a tennis court! The price is ridiculously cheap, it doesn’t come to a hundred dollars a month. Can you come right away and look at it?”
Pug went. It was a heavily built gray stone mansion roofed in red tile, set amid tall old trees on a smooth lawn sloping to the water’s edge. The tennis court was in back, beside a formal garden with flower beds in bloom around a marble fountain swarming with large goldfish. Inside the house were Oriental carpets, large gilt-framed old paintings, a walnut dining table with sixteen blue silk-upholstered chairs, and a long living room cluttered with elegant French pieces. The place had five upstairs bedrooms and three marbled baths.
The agent, a plump matter-of-fact man of thirty or so, with straight brown hair and rimless glasses, might have been an American real estate broker. Indeed he said that his brother was a realtor in Chicago and that he had once worked in his office. Pug asked him why the price was so low. The agent cheerfully explained in good English that the owner, Herr Rosenthal, was a Jewish manufacturer, and that the house was vacant because of a new ruling affecting Jews. So he badly needed a tenant.
“What’s this new ruling?” Henry asked.
“I’m not too clear on it. Something related to their owning real estate.” Knôdler spoke in an entirely offhand tone, as though he were discussing a zoning regulation in Chicago.
“Does this man know you’re offering the house to us, and at what price?” Pug said.
“Naturally.”
“When can I meet him?”
“Any time you say.”
Next day Pug used his lunch hour for an appointment with the owner. After introducing them in the doorway of the house, the agent went and sat in his car. Herr Rosenthal, a gray-headed, paunchy, highly dignified individual, clad in a dark suit of excellent English cut, invited Henry inside.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Henry said in German.
Rosenthal glanced around with wistful affection, gestured to a chair, and sat down. “Thank you. We’re fond of it, and have spent a lot of time and money on it.”
“Mrs. Henry and I feel awkward about leasing the place.”
“Why?” The Jew looked surprised. “You’re desirable tenants. If a lower rent would help—”
“Good lord, no! It’s an incredibly low rent. But will you actually receive the money?”
“Of course. Who else? It’s my house.” Rosenthal spoke firmly and proudly. “With the agent’s commission deducted, and certain municipal fees, I’ll receive every penny.”
Pug pointed a thumb at the front door. “Knödler told me that some new ruling compels you to rent it.”
“That won’t affect you as tenant, I assure you. Are you thinking of a two-year lease? I myself would prefer that.”
“But what’s this ruling?”
Though they were alone in an unoccupied house, Rosenthal glanced over one shoulder and then the other, and dropped his voice. “Well—it’s an emergency decree, you understand; I am sure it will eventually be cancelled. In fact I have been assured of that by people in high places. Meantime this property can be placed under a trusteeship and sold at any time without my consent. However, if there’s a tenant in residence with diplomatic immunity, that can’t be done.” Rosenthal smiled. “Hence the modest rent, Herr Commandant! You see, I’m not hiding anything.”
“May I ask you a question? Why don’t you sell out and leave Germany?”
The Jew blinked. His face remained debonair and imposing. “My family has a business here more than one hundred years old. We refine sugar. My children are at school in England, but my wife and I are comfortable enough in Berlin. We are both native Berliners.” He sighed, looked around at the snug rosewood-panelled library in which they sat, and went on: “Things are not as bad as they were in 1938. That was the worst. If there is no war, they’ll improve quickly. I’ve been told this seriously by some high officials. Old friends of mine.” Rosenthal hesitated, and added, “The Führer has done remarkable things for the country. It would be foolish to deny that. I have lived through other bad times. I was shot through a lung in Belgium in 1914. A man goes through a lot in a lifetime.” He spread his hands in a graceful resigned gesture.
Victor Henry said, “Well, Mrs. Henry loves the house, but I don’t want to take advantage of anybody’s misfortune.”
“You’ll be doing just the opposite. You know that now. Two years?”
“How about one year, with an option to renew?”
At once Rosenthal stood and held out his hand. Henry rose and shook it. “We should have a drink on it perhaps,” said Rosenthal, “but we emptied the liquor closet when we left. Liquor doesn’t last long in a vacant house.”
It felt od
d the first night, sleeping in the Rosenthals’ broad soft bed with its exquisite French petit-point footboard and headboard. But within a few days, the Henrys were at home in the mansion and busy with a new life. From an employment agency suggested by the agent came a maid, a cook, and a houseman-chauffeur, all first-rate servants, and—Henry assumed—all planted informers. He checked the electric wiring of the house for listening devices. The German equipment and circuits were strange to him, and he found nothing. Still, he and Rhoda walked on the lawn to discuss touchy matters.
A whirling couple of weeks passed. They saw Hitler once more at an opera gala, this time at a distance, up in a crimson damask-lined box. His white tie and tails were again too big, emphasizing his Charlie Chaplin air of a dressed-up vagrant, despite his severe stiff saluting and the cheers and applause of beautiful women and important-looking men, all stretching their necks to stare worshipfully.
At two receptions arranged for the Henrys, one at the home of the chargé and one at Colonel Forrest’s house, they met many foreign diplomats and prominent German industrialists, artists, politicians, and military men. Rhoda made a quick hit. Notwithstanding her panic before the chancellery reception, she had brought a large costly wardrobe. She sparkled in her new clothes. Her German kept improving. She liked Berlin and its people. The Germans sensed this and warmed to her, though some embassy people who detested the regime were taken aback by her cordiality to Nazis. Pug was something of a bear at these parties, standing silent unless spoken to. But Rhoda’s success covered for him.