Berlin Games (40 page)

For Ribbentrop, a pockmarked lawn was a small price to pay for the ear of Sir Robert Vasnsittart. The two men met for lunch at the Hotel Kaiserhof, a meeting that Ribbentrop soon realised was going
to prove to be completely fruitless. His luncheon partner was totally unforthcoming and evaded all of Ribbentrop's openings for ‘a frank exchange of views'. ‘I felt from the start as if I were addressing a wall,' wrote Ribbentrop. ‘One thing was clear, an Anglo-German understanding with Vansittart in office was out of the question […] Vansittart, I felt, had completely made up his mind. I gained a firm impression that this man would never even attempt a
rapprochement
, and that any discussion with him would be in vain.'

Vansittart was similarly unimpressed with Ribbentrop. ‘With this gentleman we shall have more trouble,' Vansittart was to write. ‘He was most markedly unenthusiastic about his appointment to London.' Far from not responding to Ribbentrop's openings, Vansittart found that he was on the receiving end of ‘set-pieces'. ‘To him one has to listen without much chance of interruption.' The Briton was also perturbed by the threatening nature of Ribbentrop's ramblings. ‘Indeed he, and he alone, showed his hand, or perhaps I should say his teeth. He remarked on one occasion that “if England didn't give Germany the possibility to live,” there would eventually be war between them, and one of them would be annihilated.' Vansittart was somewhat understating matters when he warned the cabinet after the Games that ‘we shall not find the new Ambassador easy, because he will be uneasy himself'.

There were still plenty more parties to go to, however, not least a dinner thrown by Hitler for Vansittart at the Chancellery that evening. It was Vansittart's last night in Berlin, and the Fuehrer was eager to prove that Nazi Germany had not thrown off the grandness of a European court. The 160 guests found themselves being announced as they entered the room by a major-domo in black livery and sporting a court sword. The dining room, which measured some 100 feet long by 50 across, had been designed by Hitler himself. Rows of huge red marble pillars flanked each side of the room, drawing the eye up to the ceiling, which featured an elaborate mosaic in light blue and gold. Tall gold candlesticks were placed around the floor, and on one wall hung a huge Gobelin tapestry. The room soon filled with men and women whose dress matched its sumptuousness, although the only people who looked out of place were the Germans, who lacked the decorations worn by those such
as Vansittart. George Ward Price, the correspondent for the
Daily Mail
, noticed this when he saw Rudolf Hess and Vansittart in conversation. ‘There was a noticeable contrast between the glittering splendour of the star of the cordon of the Grand Cross of St Michael and St George worn by the one and the field-service-like simplicity of the khaki uniform of the other.'

Lady Vansittart was greeted by Hitler with a formal kiss on her hand, before the dictator took her by the arm and escorted her to the table. She noticed how Hitler's evening dress did not fit him well, the tailcoat slipping off his shoulders. His dietary requests also did not match the party, as he ordered spinach and a poached egg, an ascetic choice that Lady Vansittart copied in order to keep her host company. Over dinner, she caused the Fuehrer to laugh out loud when she enquired as to whether being a vegetarian teetotaller did not make for a rather dull life. Hitler's laugh caused Sir Robert to look up from his conversation with Emmy Goering, and he wondered what his wife had been saying to cause such a reaction. He was rather more perturbed when, after dinner, Hitler took his wife off to his study for half an hour, accompanied only by an interpreter.

‘You should come to Berlin more often,' the dictator told Lady Vansittart. ‘I can't talk to the British ambassador, but I can talk to your husband.' He then told her, sitting knee to knee, how he had watched
Lives of a Bengal Lancer
no less than five times in his bid to discover how Britain had gained her empire. As the film had only just been released, the Fuehrer must have been quite a fan of this Gary Cooper picture, which boasted the stirring tagline ‘1750 to 1! Always outnumbered! Never out-fought! These are the Bengal Lancers…heroes all…guarding each other's lives, sharing each other's tortures, fighting each other's battles…' No doubt Hitler particularly enjoyed the torture sequences, which featured bamboo being inserted under fingernails, and the great cliché of such scenes: ‘We have ways of making men talk'. The conversation then turned to the Games, and Hitler remarked of the athletes, ‘You saw all the young men in the stadium today–do you think I'd let them die in battle?' Lady Vansittart told him that it was always the youngest who died in wars, an observation that caused Hitler's mood to change, after which the two of them returned to the dining room.

The Vansittarts left Berlin the following morning, their visit judged to be a success by Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador to Berlin. That day, he wrote to Anthony Eden, telling him that Vansittart had many ‘long and most friendly meetings and conversations with the principal members of the German government'.

Nevertheless, not everything was rosy. Phipps warned Eden that the goal of peace was probably unattainable. Phipps had heard that Vansittart's request for a new conference had gone down badly, and that Hitler was not minded to sign a treaty, stating that neighbouring Poland was ‘more than satisfied' with her relationship with Germany, and that Czechoslovakia was welcome to negotiate an agreement with Germany at any time. Hitler was convinced, Phipps reported, that Britain and Germany ‘together constitute a stupendous force […] acting together they could safeguard civilisation and world peace more effectively than any League or any number of pacts'. Hitler was probably right, although the Chancellor's price for such an agreement would have been far too high. Besides, once he had got such an agreement, what would he want next?

 

There were still two big parties to go. The first, on the evening of Thursday, 13 August, was hosted by Goering, whose appetite for bacchanalia was seemingly endless. The second, two nights later, was held by Goebbels, and the two men did their best to outdo each other–and Ribbentrop–with the extravagance of their parties. Goering's party was held in the Ministerium in the centre of Berlin, and once again Henry Channon found himself entranced. By now he had given up going to the Games–‘we pretend to, and don't, as they are very
boring, except when Hitler arrives'–and was in Berlin only for the parties. Goering had excelled himself, and entertained the 800 guests to an evening of fine wine, food and ballet. Many of the guests agreed that ‘Goering had indeed eclipsed Ribbentrop', as Channon wrote, ‘which indeed we had been told had been his ambition'.

Not everyone, however, was so impressed. William Dodd, the US ambassador to Germany, found the evening cold and damp, with the electric heaters doing little to improve matters. ‘I saw that I would take cold,' Dodd wrote, ‘but my wife argued against my wearing my hat and overcoat which I had left in the palace as we entered. But as the air grew colder and colder, I got my hat and coat. I felt less conspicuous when I saw Lewald […] had his hat also, and Sir Eric Phipps was leaving because of the cold.' Dodd left the party at 10.15, a little less than two hours after he and his wife has sat down to eat. Goebbels was also not taken by the party. ‘So many people,' he wrote. ‘A little formal and cold.'

Dodd's reason for such an early departure may also have had something to do with his detestation of the Nazis. As André François-Poncet, the French ambassador to Berlin, described him, Dodd was a ‘rugged and uncompromising liberal, [who] entertained an aversion for National Socialism, which he made no effort to conceal'. A professor of American history, Dodd exuded a donnish, Ivy League air, which made him something of an outsider in the State Department. His opinions, however, were respected in the White House. That morning, Dodd had made a report to Roosevelt about the Nazi press, in which he had written about the SS newspaper,
Das Schwarze Korps
, which

Dodd had also been wary of the effect the Games would have on the regime. He had written to the State Department, warning it that
‘as the party bases its appeal very largely to the youth of the country, it was recognised at the outset what an instrument the Olympic Games could become in consolidating the position of the party'. In another report, he highlighted the plight of the Jews. ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the Jewish population awaits with fear and trembling the termination of the Olympic period which has vouchsafed them a certain respite against molestation.'

As well as damning the regime, Dodd was also highly critical of Lewald, who he had once held in high esteem. Dodd recounted to the State Department how he had once reproached Lewald for misleading the Americans about the extent of the discrimination against Jewish sportsmen. ‘He told me, with tears in his eyes, that he had replied that there was no discrimination,' Dodd wrote. ‘[He said] that I must know what the consequences would be to him if he had made any other reply. To this, I merely remarked that there were times, when, in order to maintain one's self-respect and the confidence of one's friends, one must accept the consequences which come from doing right.'

There was deceit everywhere in Berlin that fortnight, even among Dodd's family, for his twenty-eight-year-old daughter Martha was a Soviet spy. Martha, whom Richard Helms described as a ‘lively, intelligent and aggressive woman', had fallen in love with Boris Vinogradov, who was notionally the press secretary at the Soviet embassy in Berlin, but was in fact an officer of the NKVD–the forerunner to the KGB. Acting out of a love for both the Russians and communism, Dodd passed copies of her father's files to Vinogradov, even after he was transferred from Berlin to Bucharest in 1934 and subsequently to Warsaw. Martha described Vinogradov as the love of her life, a love that was undiminished even when he disappeared in Moscow in 1938. What Dodd was not to know was that her Russian lover and handler had been executed in one of Stalin's many purges of intelligence officers. Martha's father was never to discover his daughter's treachery, which was confirmed only in 1995, some five years after her death in Prague at the age of eighty-two.

Dodd's early departure from Goering's party meant that he missed the party's pièce de résistance, which was the sudden appearance at the end of the lawn of an entire fairground. ‘It was fantastic,' wrote
Channon, ‘roundabouts, cafés with beer and champagne, peasants dancing and “schuhplattling”, vast women carrying pretzels and beer, a ship, a beerhouse, crowds of gay, laughing people, animals, a mixture of Luna Park and White Horse Inn.' The guests walked around, mouths gaping, astonished by the sheer extravagance of the event. Goebbels and Ribbentrop were filled with jealousy. A fellow guest approached Channon and told him, ‘There has never been anything like this since the days of Louis Quatorze.' ‘ “Not since Nero,” I retorted, but actually it was more like the Fetes of Claudius, but with the cruelty left out […]'

If Goebbels could not match the style of Goering, then his party could at least trump him in terms of size. Some 2,700 guests were invited to his
Sommerfest
on the Peacock Island, a nature reserve in the middle of the Wannsee. ‘Everyone who has legs is there,' wrote Goebbels, who had been worrying about the rain for days. When the weather finally broke, he compared it to ‘a stone removed from inside my heart'. ‘Garden parties are so nerve-racking,' he observed, like the good bourgeois. For once, the athletes were invited, although only the female ones. Dorothy Odam recalled going across to the island on a pontoon bridge lined with armed soldiers standing to attention. ‘It really was fantastic,' she said, ‘all lit up and with huge butterfly lanterns glowing in the trees.' Paths snaked through the trees, each lined with more lanterns and young page girls in tights. Iris Cummings remembered how there were ‘tables out on the grass, and each one was laid with these scrumptious gorgeous meals'. In the middle of each table there was ‘every wine of Germany', as well as champagne. As it was the last day of the Games, Cummings started to drink, but the diver Marjorie Gestring was clearly some sort of spoilsport. ‘She didn't want to see any of these girls getting high on the champagne,' said Cummings, ‘and she took this gorgeous Rhine wine and stuff, and poured it straight on to the grass.'

The dignitaries, such as Henry Channon, ate separately from the athletes. Channon found Goebbels ‘slightly sinister', although William Dodd was far more repelled by having to greet the minister of propaganda.