considerations aside, the vulgar edifice disappointed because Goring was supposed to stem from an aristocratic family. Even the admiring comments of Luigi Gianelli had a strong tinge of irony.
The Luftwaffe officer wearing the diamond cross caught up with them and whispered to Stoller.
“Ah, what a pity, now you must go,” said the German banker. “And you haven’t begun to see the wonders of Karinhall. Captain Henry, my office will make all the arrangements to bring you and your dear wife on Friday to Abendruh, though I fear it will look rather pitiful after this. We will telephone you tomorrow.”
Stoller accompanied the two Americans through more rooms and corridors, stopped at double doors of dark wood heavily carved with hunting scenes, and opened them on a timbered room with log-and-plaster walls, hung with antlers, stuffed heads, and animal hides. The dusty smell of the dead creatures was strong in the air. On either side of a roaring fire sat Ribbentrop and Goring. Hitler was not in the room. A long, crudely made wooden table and two low benches took up most of the floor space. Pug thought at once that this must be the main room of the old hunting lodge, around which the field marshal had constructed the banal palace. Here was the heart of Karinhall. Except for the glow from the fire, the room was dank, dark, and cold.
Goring lolled on a settee with one thick white leather-booted leg off the floor, sipping coffee from a gold demitasse — part of a gold service on a low inlaid marble table. He nodded and smiled familiarly at Gianelli. Diamond rings bulged on three of the fingers that held the cup. Ribbentrop stared at the ceiling, hands interlaced across his stomach. The German banker introduced Victor Henry, backed out of the room, and closed the door.
“You will have exactly seven minutes of the Fuhrer’s time to state your business,” said Ribbentrop in German.
Gianelli stammered, “Excellency, permit me to reply in English. I am here in a private capacity, and I regard that much time as an extraordinary courtesy to my country and my President.”
Ribbentrop sat with a blank face, looking at the ceiling, so Victor Henry ventured to translate. The foreign minister cut him off with a snapped sentence in perfect Oxford accents, “I understand English.”
Goring said to Gianelli, “You are welcome to Karinhall, Luigi. I have tried to invite you more than once. But this time you have come a long way for a short interview.”
“May I say, Field Marshal,” the banker answered in broken German, “that I have seen millions of money made and lost in a conference lasting a few minutes, and that world peace is worth any effort however unpromising.”
“I am in complete agreement with that.” Goring motioned them to chairs placed near him.
Ribbentrop, seizing the arms of his chair and closing his eyes, burst out in high rapid tones, in German, “This visitation is another studied insult by your President to the German head of state. Whoever heard of sending a private citizen as an emissary in such matters? Between civilized countries the diplomatic structure is used. Germany did not withdraw its ambassador in Washington by choice. The United States first made the hostile gesture. The United States has allowed within its borders a boycott of German products and a campaign of hate propaganda against the German people. The United States has its so-called Neutrality Act in blatant favor of the aggressors in this conflict. Germany did not declare war on England and France. They declared war on Germany.”
The foreign minister stopped talking and sat with his eyes closed, the long-jawed haggard face immobile, some strands of the graying blond hair falling over his face. The California banker looked first at Goring, then at Victor Henry, clearly shaken. Goring poured himself more coffee.
Concentrating with all his might, Victor Henry translated the foreign minister’s tirade. Ribbentrop did not correct or interrupt him.
Gianelli started to talk, but Ribbentrop burst out again: “What purpose can be served by this maladroit approach, other than a further deliberate provocation, one more expression of your President’s highly dangerous contempt for the leader of a powerful nation of eighty million people?”
With a trembling wave of his hand at Henry to indicate that he understood, Gianelli said, “May I respectfully reply that—”
The bright blue eyes of Ribbentrop opened, closed again, and he said in still louder tones, “The willingness of the Fuhrer to give you a hearing in these circumstances is a testimony to his desire for peace that history will someday record. This is the sole value this peculiar interview possesses.”
Goring said to the banker in a milder, but no more friendly tone, “What is your purpose here, Luigi?”
“Field Marshal, I am an informal messenger of my President to your Fuhrer, and I have a single question to put to him, by my President’s instructions. To ask it, and to answer it, should take very little time. But by God’s grace it can lead to lasting historical results.” Victor Henry put this into German.
“What is the question?” Goring said.
The banker’s face was going yellow. “Field Marshal, by my President’s order, the question is for the Fuhrer,” he said hoarsely in German.
“It is for the Fuhrer to answer,” Goring said, “but obviously we are going to hear it anyway. What is the question?” He raised his voice, fixing his gaze on the banker.”
Gianelli turned away from Goring’s eyes, which were lazily hard, licked his lips, and said to Henry, “Captain, I beg you to confirm my instructions to the great field marshal.”
Victor Henry was rapidly calculating the situation, including the trace of physical danger which had shadowed his mind since passing through the outer fences of Karinhall. Goring, for all his gross jolly facade, was a tough and ugly brute. If this monstrously fat German, with the rouge-red face, thin scarlet lips, and small jewelled hands, wanted to harm them, diplomatic immunity was a frail shield here. But Pug judged that his talk was cat-and-mouse fooling to kill time. He translated the banker’s answer under the straight stare of Goring, and added, “I confirm that the instructions are to put the question directly to the Fuhrer, as Herr Gianelli already has done to his good friend Il Duce in Italy, where in my presence Il Duce gave him a favorable response.”
“We know all that,” Ribbentrop said. “We know the question, too.” Goring blinked at Henry and the tension broke. The banker brushed his fingers across his brow. The silence lasted for perhaps a minute. Adolf Hitler, pulling a lock of hair across his forehead, came into the room through a side door hung with a tiger skin.
As quickly as the Americans, Goring and Ribbentrop rose, assuming very much the lackey look. Goring moved away from the comfortable settee to a chair, and Hitler took his place, gesturing to the others to sit. He did not shake hands. Seen at this close range the Fuhrer looked healthy and calm, though too fat and puffy-eyed. His dark hair was clipped to the bone at the sides like a common soldier’s. Except for the famed moustache he had an ordinary face, the face of any small man of fifty or so walking by on a German city street. Compared to this man of the people, the other two Nazis seemed bedizened grotesques. His gray coat with the single Iron Cross over his left breast contrasted remarkably with Ribbentrop’s gold-braided dark blue uniform and the air marshal’s extravaganza of colors, gems, and medals.
Folding one hand over the other in his lap, he took in the Americans with a grave glance.
“Luigi Gianelli, American banker. Captain Victor Henry, United States naval attache in Berlin,” said Ribbentrop, in a sarcastic tone emphasizing the unimportance of the visitors. “Extraordinary informal emissaries,
The banker cleared his throat, attempted an expression of gratitude for the interview in German, made a flustered apology, and shifted to English. The Fuhrer, his gaze steady on the banker while Henry translated, kept shifting in his chair and crossing and un-crossing his ankles. With the same prologue on world peace that he had addressed to Mussolini, Gianelli put to the Fuhrer the question about Sumner Welles. As it came out in English, a contemptuous smile appeared on Ribbentrop’s face. Upon Henry’s translation Hitler and Goring looked at each other, the Fuhrer impassive, Goring hoisting his shoulders, waving his thick-gemmed hands, and shaking his head, as though to say, “That’s really it. Unbelievable!”
Hitler meditated. The glance of his sunken, pallid blue eyes was straight ahead and far away. A bitter little smile moved his moustache and his small mouth. He began to speak in quiet, very clear, Bavarian-accented German, “Your esteemed President, Herr Gianelli, seems to feel a remarkable sense of responsibility for the whole present of world history. It is all the more remarkable in that only the United States, among the great powers, failed to join the League of Nations, and in that your Congress and your people have repeatedly indicated that they want no foreign entanglements.
“In my speech of April twenty-ninth, mainly addressed to your President, I acknowledged that your country has more than twice the population of our little land, more than fifteen times the living space, and infinitely more mineral resources. Perhaps therefore your President feels that he must approach me from time to time with stern
