On a sunny Saturday morning, I slipped out of bed early. By the time Sabine awoke, I was back, emptying my bag on the table as Leo sniffed the contents. “Wine,” I announced. “Bread, sausage. Everything we need for a hike in the woods on a beautiful spring day.”
Sabine stretched and responded with a luminous smile. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.” She looked at Leo, who was watching us expectantly. “You’ll go, too.”
We caught a ride out of the city, ending up not far from the area I had taken my Hitler Youth groups. We made our way through fields covered with blossoming wildflowers, some of which I picked for Sabine, who put them in her hair, and then we entered the woods.
Leo bounded ahead of us most of the time, and it was when we were in an area of heavy foliage and older trees that I abruptly signaled Sabine to halt. “Leo, Leo,” I called out quietly.
“What’s the matter?” Sabine asked, mystified but keeping her voice low.
I pointed past Leo to a group of trees.
“I don’t see anything.” Then she looked again. “Oh, my God,” she added, dropping her voice and gripping my arm tightly. “I’ve never seen one before.”
Blending perfectly into its surroundings with its gray-brown colors, a wild boar was standing impassively, watching to see if Leo would approach.
I called Leo again in a soft but insistent voice. At first he ignored me, but then he backed off, giving the boar a wide berth. “Come on,” I said to Sabine. “Just keep walking.”
When we were clear of the animal, Sabine let out an audible sigh. “How dangerous are they?”
“Usually not dangerous at all. But if you run into a mother with a baby, forget it. And often you don’t see the baby. I’ve heard that a boar can throw a big dog—much bigger than Leo—right over her, breaking its back.”
Sabine let that sink in. “I’m glad I’m with you.”
We picked a spot for our picnic and settled onto our blanket. I poured the wine into two small glasses I had wrapped carefully in a rag before putting them into my knapsack. I reached for Sabine’s hand and kissed it. “To us,” I said, raising my glass.
She smiled and took a sip. “Yes, to us.”
It was after I had offered the bread and sausage and we had eaten our fill that she reached for my hand. Leo crouched nearby, waiting for the scraps he knew would come his way.
“Did you mean it?” she asked.
“What?”
“The toast.”
“Of course I did. Sabine, I love you. I really do.”
She met my gaze and squeezed my hand tighter. “And what about her?”
I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t get the words out.
“Who is she?” Sabine persisted.
“All right, but the question should be: Who was she?”
I didn’t give a name, and I didn’t tell anything like the whole story. But I admitted that I had flirted with a young girl who was related to one of the Nazi officials.
“Just flirted?”
“Yes, that’s it. I swear.”
“So it was nothing?”
I explained that it was no more than a brief infatuation when Sabine and I had been drifting apart.
“But you made love to her?”
“No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “What did I just say? It was nothing, no.”
Sabine dropped my hand, tucked her head down between her arms with her elbows propped on her knees, and didn’t respond. I tried to approach her, but she held up her hand. When she finally raised her head, she was biting her lower lip, but there was nothing indecisive in her voice. “Tell me this, and answer me honestly this time: Is it over for good?”
“Yes, absolutely. Whatever it was—and it wasn’t much—it’s over. I only want to be with you.”
This time when I reached out for her, she didn’t stop me.
—
Our peace lasted for several weeks, until I heard from Otto again. “The moment we talked about has arrived,” he wrote. “I need you in Berlin—as soon as possible.”
Sabine erupted when I told her that I was going on party business to Berlin, and that I didn’t know how long I’d be away. “It’s always your crazy politics that matters, your Hitler—not us, not me,” she told me. I tried to assure her that Otto was probably summoning me to prepare for the break with Hitler. She didn’t believe me. “You’ve said that so many times, but you’re still in the party, still wasting your life, still playing your games.”
“Fine. You know, I’m glad I’m leaving.”
“Good, just go,” she said. “Maybe you’re going with her, or to see her.”
“Sabine, stop it. This is about politics, nothing else, I swear.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
I was tossing a few belongings into my knapsack, and I didn’t reply, letting my self-pity wash over me.
“Karl . . . ” she murmured.
“What?” I snapped.
She looked at me carefully for a moment, evidently searching—but not finding—whatever she hoped to see there. “Nothing.”
I could see the tears in her eyes, but I ignored them. We slept in the same bed that night but perched uncomfortably at the opposite edges. The next morning I left without saying another word.
On the train ride up to Berlin, I felt angry and sorry for myself. Angry with all of them—Sabine, Geli, Hitler. Yes, I had tried to banish Geli from my thoughts, I had tried to prove to myself as much as to Sabine that I was forgetting her. But I wasn’t. Once Sabine had startled me by lighting a candle as we sat down for dinner. Instead of enjoying a romantic evening, I had withdrawn into myself.
Hitler had to have some hold over Geli, I reasoned, something that explained why she was still in his apartment, why she was attracted to others—Emil, me—and then cast them off. I realize now, as I look back, that my fight with Geli only made me more ready than ever to side with Otto in his looming showdown with Hitler. I didn’t have to think anymore about which side I’d be on.
The May afternoon was unusually warm as I began my trek from the railroad station to Otto’s place. I caught a tram and, through a window, saw a girl with short blond hair standing on one of the chairs of an outdoor café, cranking the awning shut. With her face flushed red, she wasn’t particularly beautiful, but something about her compact body, her sturdy legs and determined expression, reminded me of Geli. And triggered a momentary vision of our bodies intertwined, the girl hungrily taking me in. Enough, I told myself. But I kept looking back through the window until she disappeared from view.
Otto offered me a cot in the back of his small apartment for the first couple of nights, promising to arrange something better later. As always, his desk was awash in papers—manuscripts, leaflets and books. Almost as soon as I arrived, he picked up one sheet from the pile. “You know what this is?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“An order from the Reich Party executive signed by Hitler himself. It forbids—mind you, forbids—any party member from backing the strikes in Saxony. Not that it’s going to stop us. We’re continuing to support the strikes in our publications. But look what we’ve come to.”
He sat back, letting the sheet float back into the pile, and lit a cigarette. “I don’t like all this cabaret fare in Berlin,” he added. “It’s mostly degenerate and defeatist. But I have to tell you, I think Brecht is really on to something.”
He must have seen the blank look in my eyes. “Brecht, Bertolt Brecht,” he repeated. “The playwright. I forgot, you’re from Munich—maybe not everyone knows him there the way they do here. Anyway, he does have a gift for lyrics, the kind that capture a feeling, a moment. Listen to this: ‘Do everything tonight that is forbidden. When the hurricane comes, it’ll do exactly the same.’ ” He paused. “It does feel like a hurricane, but we have to make sure it blows in the right direction.”
He flicked his ashes in the general vicinity of the overflowing ashtray, oblivious to those that landed
on the desk among the papers. “Your timing is very good: We’ll know soon enough which way things are blowing. I’m about to see Hitler—to continue our friendly chat, I’m sure,” he said, chuckling sardonically. “He’s in Berlin, and right before you came, I was summoned for another meeting. It should be interesting.”
—
I wasn’t there when Otto had his final showdown with Hitler, but I felt I almost was. Hess had called Otto to set up the “urgent” meeting at the Hotel Sanssouci. Hitler hated the city, was always much more comfortable in Munich, but he admired grand old hotels like the Sanssouci and the Kaiserhof, holding court there for hours on end. In Otto’s case, it was for most of a day. I know what happened, or a lot of it, because Otto asked me to help write up a report on their meeting. He was determined to have his own version of events on record to counter the attacks he knew would come from Goebbels and others.
Hitler met Otto in the lounge of the hotel, offered him a seat and started off in a conciliatory tone. He was most impressed with the reports he had received about Otto’s publishing house, the Kampfverlag. So impressed that he was ready to pay 180,000 marks for it, enough to allow Otto to live very comfortably for a long time. Otto flatly turned it down.
Hitler immediately abandoned any pretense of civility. Otto’s publications, he charged, were “a public disgrace,” “an insult to the party program,” and they contained articles that “infringe the elementary laws of discipline.” “The Kampfverlag will go into voluntary liquidation,” he announced. “If you refuse your consent, I shall proceed against you with all the means in my power.”
“Herr Hitler,” Otto responded, “I am quite prepared to talk things over, but I refuse to accept an ultimatum.”
Hitler backtracked, claiming he didn’t want to lose a valuable party member like Otto and that it was simply a matter of discussing their disagreements. “Surely,” he said, “we can come to an accommodation—for the good of the party.” He tried flattery: Otto was a gifted young man, the kind the party needed. He could become press chief, he suggested—so long as they settled their differences.
The ensuing conversation touched on almost every possible subject, but Hitler kept steering it back to one theme: race. Even when the subject was art. Hitler insisted that Otto had no understanding of art. He argued that there was only one kind of art—Greco-Nordic art, he called it—and that nothing else could be considered art at all.
“How do Egyptian and Chinese art fit that theory?” asked Otto.
Hitler conceded that the Egyptians and Chinese had produced some masterpieces. “But that doesn’t prove there was such a thing as Egyptian or Chinese art, since they hadn’t been produced by a homogeneous race,” he lectured as if explaining the obvious. “Their bodies were those of inferior races. It was the Nordic heads on them that were responsible for all their masterpieces.”
It was race that explained everything, Hitler argued over and over as they meandered through philosophy, religion and other subjects. The guiding principle of Germany’s foreign policy, he said, should be the Nordic race’s right to dominate the world. When Otto objected that Germany must seek allies that served its interests, Hitler was appalled. “Never with Russia—a Slav-Tartar body with a Jewish head,” he insisted. Instead Germany would take over Europe, leaving the seas to England. And in Germany a “master class of men” would rule, knowing they were entitled because of their superiority over all others.
Otto warned Hitler that his ideas were “a flagrant contradiction of the great mission of national socialism,” and that they would destroy the German people if implemented. But Hitler was contemptuous of Otto’s “liberalism.” “All revolutions have been racial,” he said. “I know because I have studied them all.”
In an attempt to steer the discussion back to the economic issues he cared most about, Otto argued that he was opposed to both Marxism and capitalism, but he couldn’t see that Hitler was equally committed to the battle against capitalism.
“Tell me, what do you propose—nationalization?” Hitler scoffed.
“Exactly,” Otto replied. “Major industries must be nationalized, as we spelled out in the party program in Hanover.”
“The party immediately refuted that program,” Hitler reminded him. “That would be pure Bolshevism and would destroy the German economy. You’d destroy all human progress.”
Otto pointed out that Hitler’s own program contained a mention of nationalizing property, but Hitler made a dismissive gesture.
“What would you do about Krupp? Would you nationalize it or leave it alone?” Otto persisted.
“Of course I’d leave it alone,” Hitler responded without hesitation. To do anything else, he maintained, would trigger the destruction of Germany’s powerful industries. Without companies like Krupp, the country would never be able to rebuild its economic and military might. Only industries that didn’t serve the German nation would be nationalized. “Loyal German industries should have, and will have, nothing to fear from us.”
“How can you call yourself a socialist?” Otto protested.
“How can you call yourself a patriot when you want to destroy German industries to uphold Bolshevik ideas? Don’t you realize Strasserism is dead? Your brother realized this, although he, too, is a Strasser. He understands there can be only one führer. Why can’t you learn the same lesson?”
Both men fell silent. Hitler stood up and began pacing back and forth, lost in his thoughts. Then he stopped before Otto’s chair. “Party members don’t decide anything,” he said. “I won’t have anything to do with a debased form of democracy and all its cant about equality. The führer is the embodiment of our idea, he defines national socialism and he must be obeyed.” He looked straight down at Otto, who remained seated. “I must be obeyed. Do you, as a party member, swear to obey the führer?”
Otto drew himself up, and Hitler involuntarily took a half step back—but their faces were still only a small distance apart. “No, I do not,” Otto replied. “It’s up to each party member to decide whether the führer and the idea are one.”
Hitler sank back into his chair and rubbed his knees in a strange, almost frenetic circular motion. When he spoke, it was more like a public pronouncement than a conversation with Otto. “Discipline is everything in any organization, in any country, and your ideas would mean an end to all discipline. No crazy scribbler will destroy the party. Here you are, a man who could have become press chief for the whole Reich anytime you wanted, and instead you’ve decided to throw everything away.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Everything, absolutely everything.” Without saying anything more, he stood and walked out.
—
There was no public announcement about the confrontation between Hitler and Otto, and no immediate word from Hitler as to what the consequences might be. Otto and I half expected a swift attack on the publishing house, and he put me in charge of a group of guards who kept watch twenty-four hours a day. We had little to do at first, though Otto’s publications kept up their support for the strikers and lashed out at Hitler for his alliance with the industrialists.
But Hitler hadn’t forgotten his threats. Over the next few weeks, several of the contributors to Otto’s publications were expelled from the party. As usual, it was Goebbels who did the dirty work, allowing Hitler to keep his distance. “There’s only one way to deal with this: to confront Goebbels directly at a party meeting and win the others over to our side,” Otto told me. But when he tried to attend a meeting of Berlin party officials in early July to debate Goebbels, SS blackshirts blocked his entry. Inside, a few of his allies tried to speak, but each was cut off with a warning that they were the subjects of a party inquiry. Several of the delegates left the hall in protest.
“No more pretense, no more games,” Otto told me that evening. “I’m leaving the party. There’s no possibility of reaching any agreement with that man.”
I helped make copies of the telegram Otto sent Hitler in early July: “Herr Goeb
bels has expelled certain of my colleagues from the party. At yesterday’s meeting, on the flimsiest of pretexts, he deprived others of the right to speak. If these measures are not revoked within the next twenty-four hours, I shall consider myself and my friends to have broken with the party.”
I considered myself one of those friends. When Otto told me this meant splitting with his brother, who was staying in the party, I was disappointed in Gregor, not Otto. That feeling was reinforced when word got back to us that Gregor was calling Otto’s fight against Hitler “pure madness.”
“We’ll see who’s mad,” Otto declared.
“Who’s Caligari, right?”
He offered a wan smile. “So you’ve figured that out.”
When Hitler didn’t respond to his telegram, Otto and the rest of us formally broke ranks. The headline of our paper, which Otto wrote himself, announced on July 4, 1930: SOCIALISTS LEAVE THE NAZI PARTY.
There weren’t many of us. Otto valiantly proclaimed the formation of a fighting unit of “revolutionary national socialists” whom he named “the Black Front.” But many of the people he had counted on—the members of the Strasser faction—saw Gregor’s decision to stick with Hitler as justification for them to stay on as well. Besides, as Otto bitterly noted, Hitler was now rolling in money from his industrial backers. As a result, he had no problems paying his followers and the SA and SS troopers who also remained on his side.
In the September Reichstag elections, the Nazis abruptly emerged as the country’s second largest party. With 18 percent of the vote, they had garnered 107 seats—up from the mere 12 seats they won two years earlier. The party had clearly reaped the benefits of the worsening economic crisis. At the first session of the new Reichstag on October 13, the Nazi MPs marched in wearing brown shirts, and each answered the roll call with: “Present, Heil Hitler!” Gregor Strasser announced that the party was willing to abide by the rules of the Weimar Republic “as long as it suits us.” On the same day I saw SA troopers, out of uniform but several of whom I recognized, smashing the windows of Jewish shops.
Last Stop Vienna Page 23