The Wooden Shepherdess (38 page)

Patriotism was a keynote stirring answering chords in every Kammstadter breast. Herr Krebelmann's clients were most of them ultra-conservative “Blacks” who despised the hooligan Nazis, and Krebelmann counted as “Black” himself; but even so he could not fail to observe that these Lothars (and Fritzes and Heinzes) were young and starry-eyed, a phalanx of youth dedicated to sweeping away the Augean mess which the old men had made. For if no one else knew what “they” were up to “out there” these Nazis were certain they knew, and were ready to pay their pennies and lay down their lives to stop it....

Still, when Ernst decided to join the Hitler Youth he deemed it wiser to keep this dark from his father as long as he could.

Ernst was an overgrown, rather flabby thirteen in that winter of 1929: too young to join by the rules, but Ernst was his father's son and in Kammstadt the “Deutsches Jungfolk”—the proper organization for kids—still didn't exist. So they sent him to be enrolled at Party Headquarters (a roll-top desk in the back of a saddler's shop, where his first Heil Hitler salute brought down a whole shelf of neat's-foot oil). He hadn't the foggiest notion of politics: all he desired was the heady coagulation of boy with boy which his grammar school failed to provide: the worthwhile boy-scout games, and the summer camping—but most of all, that “belonging” feeling.

Weekly meetings were held in a country inn. No one except the Gefolgschaftführer—a humorless eighteen-year-old—wore uniform: all that the other boys wore “on duty” were badges and swastika armbands. Ernst was so much the youngest he tended at first to be somewhat despised by these working-class fifteen-to eighteen-year-olds; and his first night began with a lecture on street-fighting tactics where Ernst was utterly out of his depth (except for the little boys' job of standing on roof-tops and dropping flowerpots). After the lecture, however, a sing-song began, and Ernst's accordion-playing won him a bit more respect.

Almost everything done indoors with the other boys that winter was fun; but the long formation-marches through snow and slush had even the hardiest beefing—in spite of their Leader telling them all how lucky they were to be out in the open where “men” belonged, instead of crouching over a stove like pot-bellied bourgeois. Then came the summer months, with nothing to beef about excepting the heat of the sun; and as soon as electioneering began for the autumn elections the group had plenty to do delivering hand-bills, shaking collecting-boxes, and secretly daubing slogans and swastika signs on walls. This last was what proved Ernst's undoing, for Father caught him paint-pot in hand and had the whole story out of him. Father's reaction at first seemed mild, merely deploring the waste of time which he ought to give to his homework; but then, as if as an afterthought, Father added he'd flog the skin off his back unless he resigned (it wasn't till two years later that Father himself saw the light, and encouraged him to rejoin).

Meanwhile his elders were busy electioneering too. Nazis and Stahlhelm and Reichsbanner marched and counter-marched on each others' routes, each Laocoon-band wreathed in its boa-constricting brass and attempting to deafen the rival band with its thundering drums and its stertorous trombone work. Noses were bloodied and eyes were blacked, beer-mugs were broken, scandalous broad-sheets appeared and libel-actions were filed, “mammoth” meetings became a daily occurrence—meetings where nobody heckled twice, for Kettner's men saw to that. The Nazi climax came with a mammoth meeting indeed, for which they had taken the Circus Hall where the human odor of sweating crowds mixed well with the lingering angry and terrorized smell of performing beasts; and the principal speaker was billed as a leading Nazi Reichstag Deputy—Hermann Göring.

Lothar was torn in two whether or not to be there. In his adolescence, the brave young Hermann Göring—that “Nonpareil among Birdmen”—had been his hero: he longed to see him again and perhaps even shake his hand, yet he feared to be disillusioned.

Göring had reappeared in Berlin three years ago, but less of the dashing birdman now than the canny commercial gent grown sybaritishly paunchy, dealing in aircraft equipment and spares on behalf of a Swedish firm. Hitler at first would have nothing to do with him. Party Funds, however, were short at the time; and Göring had plutocratic and aristocratic and even royal contacts which Hitler hankered after—if only to counterbalance Strasser's pull with the Plebs; and once he'd a foot in the door Göring would not be denied—for he hadn't become a traveling salesman for nothing.

A Reichstag Deputy's income and perquisites suited his fading-film-star's tastes much better than chancy commissions on parachute sales. He had even paraded the scars he got in the Munich Putsch to blackmail his way to a place high up in the Nazi candidates-list.

The elections of 1928 had seen Göring take his seat as one of those “Gadfly Twelve.” But return to a niche in the Nazi inner circle would not be so easy to bring about: by now it was jealously closed, and Göring could hardly expect to see a Göbbels (so newly installed himself) willingly making room for a newcomer.

Even after those 1930 elections were finished and Hitler decided to change the S.A. Command, Göring—although in earlier days the Storm Troops had been his creation—was never even considered. Instead a letter went off to South America, summoning home his former supplanter Röhm; and home Röhm forgivingly came to be reinstated, notwithstanding that five years ago Hitler had flung him out on his ear. Thus Röhm at a single stroke was back at Hitler's right hand, making secret high-level contacts on Hitler's behalf in Berlin and soon to be back in command of his faithful S.A. But Göring would have to wait quite a while for the smallest chance himself of returning to Hitler's personal favor.

For one thing, Göring's Reichstag duties kept him more or less tied to the City; but Hitler himself was spending as little time as he could in Berlin, where he knew that nobody liked him much: it was better to keep out of sight—and anyway, Hitler adored the Bavarian Alps. For a while he passed whole seasons in various mountain inns, biding his time (as aforesaid) and writing the second part of
Mein Kampf
. But at length he acquired a modest mountain retreat of his own above Berchtesgaden; and then the obvious thing had been to send for the Raubals to housekeep for him, that indigent sister and niece of Adolf's whom Putzi had taken such pains to run to earth in Vienna.

Geli was twenty years old when her mother came to take charge of her uncle's house; and she certainly had not lost her good looks. So there the Führer spent many contented and even blissful months, enjoying his sister's homely Austrian cooking and doing his best to thaw those frost-bitten loins of his in his niece's intimate heat.

Incest (or quasi-incest at least) seems perhaps the obvious theoretical answer in cases of psychological blockage which stem from an overweening solipsism, like Hitler's. This sexy young niece was blood of his blood, so could perhaps in his solipsist mind be envisaged as merely a female organ budding on “him”—as forming with him a single hermaphrodite “Hitler,” a two-sexed entity able to couple within itself like the garden snail.... At least that sounds all right in theory: practice however had proved less simple, and Geli had found that she had to do curious things for her uncle. She once told a friend “You'd never believe the things which this monster makes me do”; but whatever they were, in time he became so hooked on these deft little things she did that he came to look on his growing addiction as “love”—and even the outside world was soon to mistake it for love, when he started behaving towards her in public like any romantical juvenile moonstruck lover who worships his virginal lady afar. Yet surely (thought those in the know) this moping and mooning contrasted oddly with all those salacious
billets-doux
he kept sending her, letters adorned with pornographic drawings—depicting her own private parts, and patently drawn from the life!

These keepsakes of course had little attraction for Geli. Often she carelessly left them lying about; but Father Stempfle, or maybe Party-Treasurer Schwarz (for this happened more than once), had found them such very expensive things to retrieve from blackmailing hands that in future they had to be taken from her as soon as she got them, and locked in a Brown House safe where the artist could brood on them—Hitler flatly refusing to hear of his Valentines being destroyed.

So things had gone on for a year or two, with Hitler making most God-awful rows if Geli so much as winked at another man—let alone if she jumped in an alien bed for somewhat robuster forms of fun. But in 1931 she dropped a bombshell: she begged to go back to Vienna. “For singing lessons” was what she said; but rightly or wrongly her mother believed she had lately been got with child by an Austrian Jew from Linz, that she funked the row-to-end-all-rows this revelation must mean and was hoping to meet the man in Vienna and marry him there.... Be that as it may, her uncle by now could not possibly do without her and flatly refused to let her leave him on any excuse.

Whereupon he lost her for good. One September morning, she locked herself in her room at her uncle's imposing Prinz Regentplatz apartment in Munich, and shot herself dead with her uncle's pistol.

So ended the sole “romance” in Adolf Hitler's life. Or so the hermaphrodite snail was sundered, the cynic might say, the addict cut off from his dope; but even so, it is tempting to call the withdrawal-symptoms “natural human grief”—as one would with some lesser man who was able to love—when the news of her suicide sent him nearly out of his mind. Schreck drove him back to Munich at breakneck speed; and the Führer seemed so distraught that the faithful Strasser feared he might do himself a mischief and never once left his side, nor closed an eye, for a couple of days and nights.

But one thing Strasser refused to do for his stricken friend: he refused to be party to trying to kid the world that—whatever the coroner said or the papers printed—this death had been accidental. Then Göring at last saw his chance! He too had rushed to his Führer's side, and in breaking voice assured him that he at least was convinced this was all a tragic mischance, all came of playing with guns.... Whereupon Hitler turned from the obstinate Strasser to weep upon Göring's neck: “This shows which one of you two is my real friend!” he sobbed.

Perhaps this is just what the incident did do; but still it ensured that Göring was back in the Führer's personal favor, and Strasser had one more black mark against his name.

Moreover Reinhold's forecast was right: next summer's elections saw Hermann Göring installed—as leading the largest single group—in the Reichstag President's Palace: a national figure at last as well as a leading Party one.

*

Three weeks after Geli's death in September 1931, Hitler and Hindenburg met for the very first time; and withdrawal-symptoms were still so acute that the President more-or-less wrote Hitler off as a serious factor henceforth in German politics.

Seeing him as he was then, the old man would find it hard to believe that fifteen months later he'd find himself sending for Hitler to make him Chancellor—even with highly-experienced politicians (ex-Chancellor Papen and Co.) in his cabinet holding his hand and pledged to see he behaved.

In December 1932 came Chancellor General Schleicher's bid to secure a working majority of the Left, with Socialist help, by detaching Strasser and sixty Nazi deputies with him. But Strasser refused to play: if anyone joined the Cabinet that must be Hitler himself—which Göring and Göbbels strongly opposed.

The fracas was such that the Party seemed to be splitting. All Hitler did to heal the breach was a suicide-threat; and all Strasser got for his loyalty to his Chief was a tongue-lashing row with Hitler. Thereupon Strasser resigned—not to switch his allegiance to Schleicher, but simply to disappear into private life rather than tear the Party in half.

Thus Hitler was once more safely on top. Then Papen the arch-intriguer got busy intriguing with Hitler, with Schröder the banker.... With Göring.... With Oskar the President's son, and Meissner the President's chief official adviser.... And Hitler himself got busy on Oskar with certain private promises and/or threats, until the web was woven so tight that Hindenburg saw no other way out.

On Sunday the thirtieth day of January 1933, the Hitler-Papen-Hugenberg-Blomberg Cabinet duly came into being. That “Coalition” Cabinet only contained three Nazis—but three were to prove quite enough, with the aid of Göring and Reichstag Fires and Enabling Acts and everything else which followed.

The nest with only
one
cuckoo-chick in it soon sees all the legitimate nestlings tumbled out.

In England, the post-War “Geddes Axe” had rendered promotion slow for a civil servant who joined in the twenties: allowing for normal retirements and people above him moving up higher, Jeremy knew he'd be lucky to get his first rise in status to “Principal” roughly in 1938 (as if some Army subaltern had to wait thirteen years for his second pip). Thereafter promotion—if any—depended on merit; and meanwhile, to give him a proper grounding, they moved him about from branch to branch. He had started in “M”: from there he was sent to the Registry, filing papers and learning who properly dealt with what: then to “C.E.,” handling internal questions of organization and cutting down everyone else's staff; and then to Finance, another unpopular branch whose principal job was apparently finding out what Little Tommy is doing and telling him not to.... But 1934 found him back in “M,” a branch on almost affectionate terms with the Naval Staff: which led to a curious, quite unofficial assignment for Jeremy.

Two years ago the “Ten Year Rule” (the directive year after year handed down from On High that there wouldn't be war for another decade) had been rescinded, and nothing put in its place. But navies must plan ten years ahead at least the fleets they are likely to need. For even when Parliament voted the money, before any warship began to be built its requisite speed and endurance and armament had to be argued out by the Naval Staff (with the First Sea Lord knocking their heads together, if argument lasted too long): then sketches and models must be submitted and argued further about and decided upon before the detailed designing could even begin—and a battleship's working drawings took two or three years to prepare, after which she was five to seven years in the building....