The Winds of War

fatherly admonitions. But of course I am giving my life for the renascence of my people, and I cannot help seeing everything from that limited point of view.”

Victor Henry did his best to translate, his heart pounding, his mouth dry.

Hitler now began reminiscing garrulously about the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He spoke at length and seemed to be enjoying himself, slowly waving his hands and using relaxed tones. The justifications were familiar stuff. He grew briefly loud and acid only over the British guarantee to Poland, which, he said, had encouraged a cruel reactionary regime to engage in atrocious measures against its German minority, in the illusion that it had become safe to do so. That was how the war had started. Since then England and France had over and over spurned his offers of a peace settlement and disarmament.

What more could he do, as a responsible head of state, than arm his country to defend itself against these two great military empires, who between them controlled three-fifths of the habitable surface of the earth and almost half its population?

German political aims were simple, open, moderate and unchanging, he went on. Five centuries before Columbus discovered America, there had been a German empire at the heart of Europe, its boundaries roughly fixed by geography and the reproductive vigor of the people. War had come over and over to this European heartland through the attempts of many powers to fragment the German folk. These attempts had often had temporary success. But the German nation, with its strong instinct for survival and growth, had time and again rallied and thrown off foreign encirclements and yokes. In this part of his talk Hitler made references to Bismarck, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Thirty Years’ War, which were beyond Victor Henry. He translated them word for word as best he could.

The Versailles Treaty, said the Fuhrer, had simply been the latest of these foreign efforts to mutilate the German heartland. Because it had been historically unsound and unjust it was now dead. The Rhineland was German. So was Austria. So was the Sudetenland. So were Danzig and the Corridor. The manufactured monstrosity of Czechoslovakia, thrust like a spear into Germany’s vitals, had now become once again the traditional Bohemian protectorate of the Reich. This restoration of normal Germany was now complete. He had done it almost without bloodshed. But for the absurd British guarantee, it would have all been finished in peace; the question of Danzig and the Corridor had been practically settled in July. Even now nothing substantial stood in the way of lasting peace. The other side simply had to recognize this restored normality in central Europe, and return to Germany her colonial territories. For the Reich, like other great modern states, had natural right to the raw materials of the underdeveloped continents.

Victor Henry was deeply struck by Hitler’s steady manner, by his apparent moral conviction, by his identification of himself with the German nation — “… and so I restored the Rhineland to the Reich… and so I brought back Austria to its historical origins… and so I normalized the Bohemian plateau…” — and by his broad visions of history. The ranting demagogue of the Party rallies was obviously nothing but a public image, such as the Germans, in Hitler’s estimate, wanted. He radiated the personal force that Captain Henry had seen in only two or three admirals. As for the journalistic picture — the carpet-chewing hysterical Charlie Chaplin politician — Pug now felt that it was a distortion of small minds which had led the world into disaster.

“I share the President’s desire for peace,” Hitler was saying. He was starting to gesture now as in his speeches, though less broadly. His eyes had brightened astonishingly; Henry thought it must be an illusion, but they seemed to glow. “I hunger and yearn for peace. I was a simple soldier in the front lines for four years while he, as a rich and well-born man, had the privilege of serving as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy in a Washington office. I know war. I was born to create, not to destroy, and who can say how many years of life are left to me to fulfill my tasks of construction? But the British and French leaders call for the destruction of ‘Hitlerism’ “ — he brought out the foreign term with contempt-filled sarcasm — as their price for peace. I can almost understand their hatred for me. I have made Germany strong again, and that did not suit them. But this hate, if persisted in, will doom Europe, because I and the German people cannot be separated. We are one. This is a simple truth, though I fear the English will need a test of fire to prove it. I believe Germany has the strength to emerge victorious. If not, we will all go down together, and historical Europe as we know it will cease to exist.”

He paused, his face tightened and changed, and the pitch of his voice all at once began to rise. “How can they be so blind to realities? I achieved air parity in 1937. Since then I have never stopped building planes, planes, planes, U-boats, U-boats, U-boats!” He was screaming now, clenching his fists and waving his stiff outstretched arms. “I have piled bombs, bombs, bombs, tanks, tanks, tanks, to the sky! It has been a wasteful, staggering burden on my people, but what other language have great states ever understood? It is out of a sense of strength that I have offered peace. I have been rejected and scorned, and as the price of peace they have asked for my head. The German people only laugh at such pathetic nonsense!”

On the shouted litany of “planes… bombs… U-boats” he swept both fists down again and again to strike the floor, bending far over so that the famous black lock of hair tumbled in his face, giving him his more usual newsreel look of the street agitator; and the red face and screeching tones had indeed something of the carpet-chewer, after all. Suddenly, dramatically, as at a podium, he dropped into quiet controlled tones. “Let the test of fire come. I have done my utmost, and my conscience is clear before the bar of history.”

Hitler fell silent, then stood with an air of dismissal, his eyes burning and distant, his mouth a down-curved line.

“Mein Fuhrer,” Goring said, lumbering to his feet, his boots creaking, “after this wonderfully clear presentation of the realities you offer no objection to this visit of Herr Sumner Welles, I take it, if the President persists.”

Hitler hesitated, appeared perplexed and gave an impatient shrug. “I have no wish to return discourtesy for discourtesy, and petty treatment for petty treatment. I would do anything for peace. But until the British will to destroy me is itself destroyed, the only road to peace is through German victory. Anything else is irrelevant. I will continue to hope with all my heart for a last-minute signal of sanity from the other side, before the holocaust explodes.”

In a worked-up manner, with no gesture of farewell, he strode out through the carved double door. Victor Henry glanced at his wristwatch. The Fuhrer had spent an hour and ten minutes with them, and so far as Henry knew, President Roosevelt’s question remained unanswered. He could see on Gianelli’s pale, baffled face the same impression.

Goring and Ribbentrop looked at each other. The fat man said, “President Roosevelt has his reply. The Fuhrer sees no hope in the Welles mission, but in his unending quest for a just peace he will not reject it.”

“That was not my understanding,” said Ribbentrop in a quick, strained voice. “He called the mission irrelevant.”

“If you want to press the Fuhrer for clarification,” Goring said satirically to him, gesturing at the double doors, “go ahead. I understood him very well, and I think I know him.” He turned again to the banker and his voice moderated. “In informing your President of this meeting, tell him that I said the Fuhrer will not refuse to receive Welles, but sees no hope in it — and neither do I — unless the British and the French drop their war aim of removing the Fuhrer. That is no more possible than it is to move Mont Blanc. If they persist in it, the result will be a frightful battle in the West, ending in a total German victory after the death of millions.”

“That will be the result in any case,” said Ribbentrop, “and the die will be cast before Mr. Sumner Welles can arrange his papers and pack his belongings.”

Goring took each of the two Americans by an elbow and said with a total change to geniality that brought to Victor Henry’s mind the waiter at Wannsee, “Well, I hope you are not leaving so soon? We will have dancing a little later, and a bite of supper, and then some fine entertainers from Prague, artistic dancers.” He rolled his eyes in jocose suggestiveness.

“Your Excellency is marvellously hospitable,” Gianelli replied. “But a plane is waiting in Berlin to take me to Lisbon and connect with the Clipper.”

“Then I must let you go, but only if you promise to come to Karinhall again. I will walk out with you.”

Ribbentrop stood with his back to them, looking at the fire. When the banker hesitantly spoke a word of farewell, he grunted and hitched a shoulder. Arm in arm with Goring, the Americans walked down the corridors of Karinhall. The air minister smelled of some strong bath oil. His hand lightly tapped Victor Henry’s forearm. “Well,