people and the Aryan race. There will be a planetarium at the crown of the North Tower and a crypt for Reich leadership in its cellar. Reichsfuhrer Himmler sees across centuries, Raeder. He’s a prophet.”
“It is our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, who is the prophet.”
The correction was mild, professorial, but spoken with authority. They snapped to attention and wheeled. There was Himmler studying his own creation, dressed in military greatcoat, jodhpurs, and boots. He stood very straight. Since the interview in Berlin, Raeder had read about his superior. At Hitler’s failed 1923 putsch, Himmler had carried the staff of the Imperial Eagle as proudly as a schoolboy.
“And I am the mystic scholar, the Merlin, of my brotherhood of knights,” Himmler went on. “Our Fuhrer does not share all my intellectual interests; he is a politician, a man who must wrestle with the practical and immediate. But he allows me the indulgence, the luxury, of exploring the distant past and possible future. I’m fortunate to have such a patron, am I not, Professor Raeder?”
“As are we all, Reichsfuhrer.”
Himmler nodded. “We live in the presence of a great man. A very great man.” The spectacles caught the dim light so that Raeder once again couldn’t see the Reichsfuhrer ’s eyes, but only hear his tone of worship. The fervor, of one powerful man for another, surprised him. He’d expect more jealousy, more doubt, but no. The zoologist was silent, not knowing what to say.
“Well,” Himmler finally went on. “Thank you for visiting me in my castle.”
“The honor is of course mine.”
“I do not invite everyone-this is a quiet place, a secret place, until I finish it-but I’m intrigued by Tibet, Untersturmfuhrer. Intrigued by what such a mysterious country might tell us. Will you join me in my study?”
“Reichsfuhrer, I am bewildered by your hospitality.”
Himmler smiled at the confession. “I look for men who can serve. Men who have a need to serve.” Once more his gaze was intense, and Raeder felt it probing the recesses of his soul. The zoologist hoped his life was about to be given meaning. And, with it, salvation.
“Halder, thank you for bringing my guest. They are expecting you in the dining room.” The dismissal of the pilot was plain. Halder betrayed a flicker of disappointment, clicked his heels, and left.
Then the Reichsfuhrer became a temporary tour guide as he led the way, explaining how a wreck of a castle was being transformed into a showcase of German craftsmanship. “There’s been a fort on this outcrop for eons, but the present castle was built between 1603 and 1609. It was bombarded in the Thirty Years War.”
“And witches in the cellar?”
“Ah, your pilot shared the folklore. Don’t worry, they don’t haunt the place. No more than any other vermin that is eradicated.”
There was an exquisite spiral staircase, a reference library, dining rooms and canteens, and carvings that included runes and swastika-centered sun wheels, all of it a display of Teutonic carpentry. “The North Tower will have a shamanic sun wheel inlaid into its floor, and a roundtable for the twelve primary leaders of our order,” the Reichsfuhrer said. “My architects joke with me about King Arthur, but I am not joking. I think the modern world would benefit from some of the ceremonies of the past. In the East they believe in reincarnation, do they not, Raeder?”
“Most certainly, Reichsfuhrer. Life in Tibet revolves around the next life.”
“I believe it, too. I believe I’m the reincarnation of King Henry the Fowler, who fought the invading Magyars from the East a thousand years ago. Does that strike you as odd?”
“It would not surprise a Buddhist.”
Himmler gave a glance to show he’d not missed that Raeder had swerved from the question. “But I believe in focusing on this life. We’re reincarnated to fulfill a purpose. Come to my study where we can speak alone.”
That room was in the West Tower and thus circular, and had a stone fireplace, bearskin rug, and wooden furniture. The walls were mostly bare, showing the same austerity that had been present in Himmler’s office in Berlin. Despite his rehearsed warmth and nostalgic architecture, there was a vacuum to the man’s surroundings. Lending the only color was a bowl of fruit.
The Reichsfuhrer invited his guest to sit and took a chair opposite. Both seats were high-backed, straight, and rather uncomfortable. SS lightning bolts had been stamped into the leather.
“Now, Raeder, you’re familiar with the Ahnenerbe?”
“The SS research division.”
“I’m sending missions all over the globe to investigate intriguing theories about the origins of our race. Iceland. Peru. National Socialism believes in drawing logical conclusions from modern science, as I told you-even if the conclusions are uncomfortable. We do not fear the truth. But we believe the German people are descended from a root, master race and that these Aryans-us, Raeder-represent the best hope of the future evolution of humankind. Do you agree?”
“So teaches the SS.”
“So teaches common sense. Do you know where mankind went wrong, Untersturmfuhrer?”
Raeder was laboring again not to say the wrong thing. “Well, the Bible suggests Eve’s apple.” He meant it as a joke.
But Himmler remained deadly serious. He took from his belt an SS dagger, gleaming in the candlelight. The edge was feathered from repeated sharpening, and it glinted in the light. The Reichsfuhrer took an apple from the bowl of fruit and sliced it neatly in two, but instead of cutting from top to bottom, he cut horizontally. When the apple was opened, each face had a pattern around the core that made a star. “Yes, the apple. Do you know what it represents?”
Raeder was silent, baffled by what he was supposed to see.
“It’s the five-pointed Aryan star, the pentagram, Lucifer’s star that traces the path of Venus. Not the six- pointed star of Jewish corruption. And so the apple represents knowledge. The secret powers that unify the universe. Here we see the celestial in lowly fruit. All is one.” His head bobbed to confirm his own statement. “The Jews don’t want us to know. That’s why they wrote that fairy story about Eden.”
“Know what?”
“It wasn’t Eve who led us astray, Raeder. It was, and is, the Jew. They invented a monstrous idea that goes against all natural law and reason. Do you know how they confused the world and distorted civilization?”
Raeder tried to remember if SS lectures had covered this. “By usury?”
“They invented meekness!” Himmler’s voice crackled with scorn. “Here is Moses coming down from the mountain, and what does he proclaim? Thou shalt not kill? Raeder, killing is the most fundamental truth of our planet! Everything kills everything, to survive, as the strong get stronger. Struggle, ceaseless struggle. Thou shalt not steal? Nonsense. So the weak can hold on to resources they make no use of? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife? Bah. So the strong are limited in how they breed? The Jew invented a coda to weaken our species. And then the worst Jew, Jesus, took it a step further and preached that the meek shall inherit the earth. What a perversion of everyday experience. Why is this, Raeder? Why would the Jew tell such lies?”
“To preserve order?”
“No!” Himmler’s palm slammed down on the fruit table, the apple halves jumping. “To weaken everyone who believed them. To weaken us, the Aryan, so that Jewry can control the world. Lies to blind and bind us, Raeder. Lies to make us forget the power that our Aryan ancestors once had. But now we are awakening from our long sleep. Now we are shaking off the Jewish hypnosis. We are remembering that strength by right should triumph, and that our ancestors had powers we can scarcely dream. What if such powers could be discovered? What if they have been buried in the most secret place in the world?”
“You mean Tibet.”
“When a race becomes diluted, when it becomes polluted with miscegenation with the Jew or the Negro or the Asiatic or the feebleminded or the crippled, it weakens and devolves. It begins to slip into primitivism. But when the Aryan becomes purified, when the very best of the best breed with each other… well. Evolution goes in the other direction, led by what Nietzsche called the Superman. That is what Nazism is all about, Raeder. This will be our gift to our descendants. It is this, not war and monuments, that will make us immortal to history.”
“But how, Reichsfuhrer?”
“By expelling the Jew, of course. By sterilizing the feeble. By annihilating the deviants. By segregating the races. By encouraging the best stock to bear children. By seizing what the strong deserve, be it land or women. It’s no different from weeding and breeding on the farm.”
