The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  ‘I have thought of it, and that is one of the reasons I am working so hard to try to get my degree’.

  ‘I don’t know’, Lanny said, ‘whether a degree from a Red-controlled school will carry much weight in American- or British-controlled districts’. He observed the look of concern upon his sensitive young face.

  IX

  Lanny had given careful thought to the approach to a most difficult subject. ‘You must know, Fritz’, he began, ‘you are not alone in facing this problem. It confronts people all over the world; it is the thing that makes civil wars so terrible. We had one in the United States nearly a century ago, and the people in the border states split wide apart; some members of a family would go north and some would go south. There would be fathers on one side and sons on the other, or perhaps brothers, and then they would meet in battle; or behaps one would be a spy and the other would have to arrest him, or try him, or even execute him’.

  ‘I know, Herr Budd. In my school reader there was a short story about it by a man named Ambrose Bierce’.

  ‘Your problem touches me deeply because I have the same sort of thing in my own life. I have a half-sister named Bess. I have known her since she was a child; a lovely child, sweet and intelligent and full of fine feelings. Through me she met a friend, the violinist Hansi Robin. You have heard of him no doubt. They were married, and she became his accompanist, and for many years they were inseparable and very happy; but now Bess has become a Communist, a party member. She is bitter, aggressive, and determined. I have argued and pleaded with her, and so has Hansi, but it does no good. She is using our freedom to destroy freedom; she is using her rights under our Constitution to take those rights away from everybody else. So far she is just a propagandist; but now things are growing more tense; the Soviets are on the move. They call themselves internationalists, of course, but every trace of internationalism has gone out of their actions. They are just the old Tsarist imperialists, taking what they can get. It is a cold war, and it is growing hot. I ask myself: Suppose the time comes when I know that Bess is taking action against our people; that she is harbouring spies or perhaps helping to steal documents or military secrets—what would I do about it? Would I betray my own sister to the government and have her put in jail or even before a firing squad? What would you do, Fritz?’

  ‘I don’t know, Herr Budd. It would be a terrible decision to make. I suppose if it was my duty I would do it’.

  ‘Of course Bess doesn’t tell me what she is doing; she takes good care to keep me from knowing. But someday I might decide that it was my duty to find out what she was doing, and then there would be an end to my peace of mind. I can’t get the idea out of my head’.

  Lanny paused and then resumed, ‘I will tell you of another case, a father and son. For many years I had a friend in New York, a German named Forrest Quadratt. In the First World War he was an agent for the Kaiser in New York; after that he became a Hitler propagandist, and during the war he was sent to jail for several years. It happened that he had a son who took the same attitude that you are taking now. The son was a young poet and college teacher and had to take a public stand for freedom and against his father. I don’t know that he had anything to do with sending his father to jail, but it must have cost him a terrible heart struggle. I am telling you this so that you may see your problem is not unique. You have to think it out and make up your own mind’.

  ‘I have already thought it out, Herr Budd. I believe in the free world, and I am going to take my stand in it, regardless of what it costs. I have seen Hitler’s fanaticism cost the lives of millions of Germans, not to mention the Jews. I know that Stalin’s fanaticism has cost the lives of millions of Russians, and of the peoples of the border states. I know he has millions of people in concentration camps and in his slave mines. I am not going to stand for that sort of thing, and if it is necessary to give my life to end it I am willing’.

  Lanny gazed into those clear blue eyes and thought he was reading the soul behind them. ‘And suppose it hurt members of your own family, Fritz?’

  ‘I can’t help it, Herr Budd. If men set out to destroy all the progress that humanity has so far made they have to be prepared to face the consequences. I have made up my mind that the Communists have betrayed the social revolution, and they are destroying every trace of idealism in it’.

  ‘That is exactly the way I see it’, replied Lanny. ‘It has been a hard decision for me to make because I had given it so much of my faith and my hope. You are more fortunate than I in that you don’t have to go through a long process of disillusion—almost thirty years of it’.

  X

  These two looked at each other with a steady gaze, and Lanny said, ‘Now, Fritz, I am going to trust you. I offer to tell you some things that may determine the whole rest of your life. But first you have to give me your word of honour as a German and as a friend that what I tell you will never be breathed by you to any human soul without my consent. May I have that promise?’

  ‘You have it, Herr Budd—my word of honour’.

  ‘I know things about your father which will pain you. You don’t have to know them unless you ask to know them. It is for you to decide’.

  ‘I want to know everything I can about my father. I have to live with him, or else I have to break with him, and surely I must have the truth in order to make an intelligent decision’.

  ‘All right, you ask for it, and I give it to you. I was with your father yesterday. I told him I had come because I was troubled in spirit and wanted to make up our quarrel. He was polite to me but cold. He consented at the end to agree that we would not cherish hard feelings against each other. That, of course, was politic for him, it can do him no harm’.

  ‘I am surprised that he would even talk to you, Herr Budd’.

  ‘Your father has changed his tactics, and I fear he has changed his nature; he is no longer the man I knew and loved. I got some information concerning him, which I feel quite certain is correct. Your father is not a Communist and does not intend to become a Communist; that is only camouflage. He remains a Nazi fanatic. He is the leading spirit of a group of conspirators after the fashion of the old Vehmgericht; you know about that no doubt’.

  Fritz nodded.

  ‘It is an organisation of desperate men pledged to secrecy under penalty of death. They call themselves the Völkischerbund. Have you by any chance heard of it?’

  ‘No, Herr Budd. But I am not surprised by the news’.

  ‘This is something that may surprise you. The money upon which this group is operating is the so-called Himmler money that was printed by the Nazis—English pound notes which they intended to use when they conquered England, and American notes which they used in the portions of the world taken by the American Army, beginning with North Africa. Your father’s friends got away with a large quantity of it, we don’t know how much. They may be printing more—it is easy to print it if you have the plates and the right paper. They sell the stuff to so-called pushers at a part of its face value, and these men go out into the Western world and get rid of it as best they can. In that way they rob and defraud a great many entirely innocent people. The long-run effect of the procedure is, of course, to dilute the currency and create inflation. Everybody in the Western world is robbed of a portion of his earnings and his wealth.’

  Sober indeed was the face of this pink-cheeked German lad. ‘So this is where my allowance has been coming from!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can no longer take it, Herr Budd!’

  ‘If you refuse to take it’, Lanny said, ‘you will be practically telling your father that you have discovered what he is doing. You must understand that he has become a very suspicious man. He knows that you are living among the enemy—all sorts of enemies—exposed to what he would call contagion. He will be watching every word you speak, every gesture, every expression on your face’.

  ‘It seems as if he were no longer my father!’

  ‘That is the way I felt’, Lanny told him. ‘I came away saying,
the Kurt Meissner I knew is no more; this is a strange man, and a most dangerous one. He is a blind fanatic, a Samson who would pull down the pillars of the temple upon himself in order to punish those whom he hates. Nationalism is the great enemy, in this day when we are trying to build an international order. Surely there is no possibility of bringing the old Hitler nationalism back to life—any more than there is the possibility of bringing Hitler back. What will happen is this: Your father will put on Red communism as a camouflage. He will repeat the phrases, he will tie himself up in the nets of their intrigue. He will become more and more cynical, and more and more convinced that they offer him the only means to power. He will be doing what they do, or what they tell him to do. What real difference does it make whether he becomes a Communist or merely a stooge, a dummy, a puppet obeying when they pull the strings?’

  ‘No difference, Herr Budd. I agree’.

  ‘He is heading for certain tragedy; for the Reds will be suspicious of him, they will watch him and never really trust him. If the time comes that he makes the tiniest move on behalf of his secret creed—if ever he acts as a German nationalist instead of a Stalin nationalist—they will take him and shoot him in the back of the neck. They are perfectly ruthless in stamping out every trace of independence in subject peoples. They took millions of what they called “kulaks”—peasants who had worked hard and saved enough to buy a cow and a horse—and shipped them off to Siberia to become slaves in labour camps. They are starting the same thing now with Poles and Czechs and Hungarians—yes, and Germans’.

  ‘I know it, Herr Budd, I know it! I have often said to myself that my father is mad’.

  XI

  So Lanny decided that it was safe to put the proposition he had in mind. He explained the grave opposition of the American Army to the idea of setting a son to reporting upon his father; but in this case the object of the Army’s enquiry was a gang of counterfeiters, and if it could find a way to break them up it would be quite willing to grant immunity to Kurt—to let him escape if by any chance it might happen to get him in its power. ‘You wouldn’t have to feel that you were spying upon your father’, Lanny said. ‘You might feel that you were doing him a favour in getting him separated from those so-called Neo-Nazis. He wouldn’t thank you for it now, but he might live to do so when he comes to his senses’.

  Lanny had made up his mind that he would put no pressure on this youth and that the decision must be the youth’s own. Now, very carefully, he said, ‘Get this clear, Fritz. I am not asking you to take the burden upon yourself; I am just putting the situation before you. I tried to think of someone who might stay in Wendefurth and uncover that conspiracy and possibly find out where the fraudulent money is hidden, and the plates. I myself could not hope to do it, because Kurt knows me too well. You, on the other hand, could go to him and tell him you had been listening to the clash of opinions in your school, you have been hearing the arguments of all sides and have made up your mind to stand by the sacred principles of the Third Reich—“Wir werden weiter marschieren”, and all the rest. You could convince him quickly; but how much he would be willing to tell you I do not know.

  ‘You must, of course, never mention that you have met me. I could put you in touch with someone here in the American sector who would guide you and to whom you might report. I doubt if your father himself has ever committed any crime—but you may find that he is the brain and soul of the conspiracy. He would probably start all over again, and that we wouldn’t mind, because we know that these little conspiracies are going on in many beer cellars. The point is to get the stock of counterfeit money and the plates’.

  ‘Would the American authorities keep their word with you, Herr Budd?’

  ‘That I can guarantee absolutely. What I cannot guarantee is how you yourself would stand the strain of such an undertaking. I did it myself for about ten years, and I know how difficult it is, and how trying. It was something utterly contrary to my nature, and I often wondered whether I was becoming corrupted; I hope I wasn’t. I lied and cheated and stole, all in the interest of the Allied world in which I believed. Franklin Roosevelt was my chief, and I knew that he believed in freedom and democracy and would stand by those principles to the death. I know the same thing about President Truman, and I can give you that same guarantee. I know that he will do everything in his power to bring about an intact, free, and democratic republic in Germany. That is what you want, or ought to want’.

  ‘That is what I do want, Herr Budd, with all my heart and soul’.

  ‘If you undertake this service you will lead a lonely life. You will have to go among your enemies and put on their camouflage and do what they tell you. You will have to watch every step you take, every word you speak, every expression of your face. You will have to imagine yourself a different man, and you will have to become that man, and live the life of that man, except in one small corner of your soul where you remain your true self. You will be lonely because your true friends will despise you, and the new friends you make will be persons with whom no real friendship is possible; they will be evil men whom you despise. It was easier for me because I lived on two continents, and at home in America I had several old friends who guessed what I was doing and very tactfully did not mention their guesses. Also, I had a wife who helped me. You won’t have any of those things because in the confused state of people’s minds here in Germany you won’t be able to trust anyone.

  ‘I’m not asking you to make a decision now. I’m going to spend a few days here in Berlin asking questions of people who know about the situation. If you want to see me again you can do so. Go away and think it over—and don’t feel under any compulsion except that of your own conscience, your sense of social duty. If you are not sure you can do it, don’t try. If you think you know of any way you can render more service to the cause of human freedom and solidarity, that is the task for you to work at. The decision is yours and yours alone; but once you start, you must go through with it. Also, if you decide against it you must never forget that you are bound by your promise to me and will never give the slightest hint of what I have told you to any person in this world’.

  ‘I agree’, said the lad.

  After this interview Lanny had only one thing more to do. He went to see Monck and told him the story. If Fritz decided to take the job, Monck would be both his go-between and his instructor. Lanny had been a spy on his own, but Monck had been the director of many spies; he had been the head of the Office of Strategic Services in Sweden during the last year or two of the war. Monck was a German and a Socialist; he spoke the boy’s language—and not merely in the literal sense, but in the wider, symbolical sense of the phrase. They would make a team.

  6 A TIME TO BREAK DOWN

  I

  Lanny went to call on the family of Johann Seidl, the old watchmaker who had helped to keep him hidden when the Gestapo was seeking him in Berlin. Johann lived in the Moabit district, a working-class quarter of the city. The upper storeys of the tenement had been bombed, and what was left of the occupants had moved down into the lower storeys; there were two families, seven persons living in an apartment consisting of a kitchen and two small bedrooms. The bomb damage had been repaired, at least enough to keep out the rain.

  The families considered this elegant American gentleman the most wonderful person who had ever come into their lives; again he came with a bundle of food under his arm, containing things not otherwise available to the working classes of Berlin. What he wanted was to sit and ask questions about their lives and their ideas. He had been commissioned, he told them, by the semi-divine President Truman to find out what the common people of Germany were thinking and planning and hoping. This remarkable President did actually care about the common people and wanted to do for the Germans what would help them to become independent and truly democratic.

  He was, alas, no longer all-powerful, for that day there had come over the cables and the wireless a report of returns from the November 1946 elections. It appeared
that the Republican party had gained a majority of the House of Representatives, which meant that President Truman’s opponents would control legislation. Lanny had to explain to these Germans this peculiar situation; the Republicans weren’t really opposed to the German workers, they were only opposed to President Truman and might do the opposite of whatever he asked them to do.

  Johann Seidl did most of the talking, he being a self-educated man, an old-time Social-Democratic party member—Genosse he was called, the word for comrade. He reported that the Socialists in Germany were in the uncomfortable situation of being in no-man’s land between two warring groups: the Communists in the East and the great cartel-masters in the West, the owners of steel and chemicals and electrical industries. The Social Democrats were all life-and-death opponents of the Communists; but the rank and file of the party would waver, tempted by the promises and the skilled propaganda of the so-called Soviets.

  American propaganda, alas, was not so skilled, and every time the American government did something to help the cartel-masters the Communists shrieked and put it on the front page of their papers, and some Germans wobbled toward the East. But so long as President Truman was really working for a democratic Germany he could count upon the support of all true Socialists. That, alas, might mean the separation of Germany into two parts for a long time; it was hard indeed to believe that the Soviets would ever permit really free elections—at least until they had managed to raise up a new generation, trained so that it could be counted upon to vote Red.

  Lanny took seriously his promise to President Truman. He talked with some of the cartel-masters also—he had met many of them in the old days. Knowing that he was the son of Budd-Erling Aircraft, they talked to him freely about their problems. The trouble with Germany as they saw it, was the determination of the workers to vote Socialist. That was how Hitler had got into power—they didn’t mention that it had been with their money and arms. The problem was to get the German workers to vote for democracy as it was understood in America: that was to say, capitalism in industry and democracy only in government. How did the Americans manage to do it? Lanny said it was partly by education and partly by paying high wages. ‘But’, said the cartel-masters, ‘we cannot afford to pay what you pay; we haven’t the huge domestic market, and we have the competition of England, France, Italy, even of India, and soon of Japan’. But they all agreed that democracy had to be tried, if only because America was in control. If America withdrew her support now, millions of Germans would starve to death and the rest would go over to Stalin.