Captain Henry, you have been to Swinemunde and seen our U-boat setup. What is your opinion of our U-boat program?”
“Your industrial standards are as high as any in the world, Your Excellency. And with officers like Grobke and Prien you’re in good shape. The U-boats are already making quite a record in the Atlantic.”
“It’s only the beginning,” Goring said. “U-boats are coming off the ways now like sausages. I doubt that all of them will even see action. The air will decide this war fast. I hope your attache for air, Colonel Powell, has been reporting the Luftwaffe’s strength accurately to your president. We have been very open with Powell, on my orders.”
“Indeed he has made reports. He’s very impressed.”
Goring looked pleased. “We have learned a lot from America. Curtis in particular has brilliant designers. Your Navy dive-bombing was carefully studied by us and the Stuka was the result.” He turned to the banker and speaking in slow, simple German, asked him questions about South American mining companies. They were walking through an empty ballroom with huge crystal-and-gilt chandeliers, and their clicking steps on the parquet floor echoed hollowly. The banker replied in easy German, which he had not displayed under pressure, and they talked finance all the way to the front doors. Guests walking in the halls stared at the sight of Goring between the two Americans. The banker’s man-of-the-world smile reappeared and color returned to his face.
It was snowing outside, and Goring stopped in the doorway to shake hands. Gianelli had so far recovered that he came out with something Victor Henry considered absolutely vital. Henry was trying to think of a way to hint it to him, when the banker said, shaking hands with the air minister in a light whirl of snow, “Excellency, I will have to tell the President that your foreign minister does not welcome the Welles mission and has stated the Fuhrer does not.
Goring’s face toughened. “If Welles comes the Fuhrer will see him. That is official.” Goring glanced up at the sky and walked through the snow with the two Americans to their car, as a Luftwaffe officer drove it up to the entrance. “Remember this. Germany is like all countries. Not everybody here wants peace. But I do.”
Victor Henry sat up most of the night writing his report, so it could go back to the President in the banker’s hands. It was a longhand account, poured out pell-mell. After a tale of the facts up to Goring’s last words in the snow, Victor Henry wrote:
The key question is, of course, whether or not a peace mission by Sumner Welles is now expected in the Third Reich. It seems inconceivable that in an interview with Hitler, Goring, and Ribbentrop, your emissary got no clear-cut answer. I believe that Sumner Welles will be received by Hitler. But I don’t think the mission will achieve anything, unless the Allies want to change their minds and accept some version of the “outstretched hand” formula.
None of the three men seemed to take the interview very seriously. They have bigger matters on their minds. We were a pair of nobodies. I would guess that Goring wanted it to take place, and that Hitler, being there in Karinhall anyway, didn’t mind. I got the feeling that he enjoyed sounding off to a pair of Americans who would report directly to you. All three men acted as though the offensive in the west is ready to roll. I don’t think they give a damn whether Welles comes or not. If the British are really as set on their terms as Hitler is on his, you’ll have all-out war in the spring. The parties are too far apart. Goring, it seems to me, is playing a side game by his peace talk. This man is the biggest thug in the Third Reich. He looks like a circus freak — the man is really disgustingly fat and dolled up — but he is the supreme realist in that crowd, and the unchallenged number two man. He has made a good thing out of Nazism, much more than the others. Mr. Gianelli will no doubt describe Karinhall to you. It’s vulgar but stupendous. Goring may be smart enough, even though he’s riding high, to figure that no string of luck lasts forever. If the offensive should happen to go sour, then the man who always wanted peace will be right there, weeping tears over the fallen Fuhrer and happy to take on the job.
Ribbentrop can only be described — if you will forgive me, Mr. President — as the classic German son of a bitch. He is right out of the books with his arrogance, bad manners, obtuseness, obstinacy, and self-righteousness. I think this is his nature but I also believe he echoes how Hitler feels. This is just the old Navy business of the commanding officer being the impressive “old man,” while the exec is the mean crab doing his dirty work. Hitler unquestionably hates your guts and feels you’ve interfered and crossed him up far too much. He also feels fairly safe defying the USA because he knows how public opinion is divided.” All this Ribbentrop expressed for him in no uncertain terms, leaving the boss free to be the magnanimous German Napoleon and the savior of Europe.
Driving away from Karinhall I had a reaction like coming out of a trance. I began to remember things about Hitler that I really forgot while I was listening to him and translating his words: the ravings in
He never sounded more confident than when he said that he and the Germans are one. He simply knows this to be the truth. Take away his moustache, and he sort of looks like all the Germans rolled into one. He isn’t an aristocrat or a businessman, or an intellectual, or anything whatever except the German man in the street, somehow inspired.
It’s vital to understand this relationship between Hitler and the German people. The present aim of the Allies seems to be to pry the two apart. I have become convinced that it can’t be done. For better or worse, the Allies still have the choice of knuckling under to Hitler or beating the Germans. They had the same choice in 1936, when beating the Germans would have been a cinch. Nothing has changed, except that the Germans may now be invincible.
The glimpse of cross-purposes at the top may have showed a weakness of the Nazi structure, but if so it’s all internal politics, it has nothing to do with Hitler’s hold on the Germans. That includes Goring and Ribbentrop. When he entered the room they stood and cringed.
If Hitler were the half-crazy, half-comical gangster we’ve been reading about, this war would be a pushover, because running a war takes brains, steadiness, strategic vision, and skill. Unfortunately for the Allies, he is a very able man.
Chapter 22
Rhoda hugged and kissed Pug when he told her about the weekend. He didn’t mention Stoller’s part in what Fred Fearing called robbing the Jews. It wasn’t precisely that; it was a sort of legalized expropriation, and damned unsavory, but that was life in Nazi Germany. There was no point in making Rhoda share his uneasy feelings, when one reason for accepting Stoller’s hospitality was to give her a good time.
The chauffeur sent by Stoller drove past the colonnaded entrance to Abendruh and dropped them at a back door, where a maid conducted them two flights up narrow servants’ stairs. Pug wondered whether this was a calculated German insult. But the spacious, richly furnished bedroom and sitting room looked out on a fine snowy vista of lawn, firs, winding river, and thatched outbuildings; two servants came to help them dress; and the mystery of the back stairs cleared up when they went to dinner. The curving main staircase of Abendruh, two stories high, balustraded in red marble, had been entirely covered with a polished wooden slide. Guests in dinner clothes stood on the brink, the men laughing, the ladies giggling and shrieking. Down below other guests stood with the Stollers, watching an elegantly dressed couple sliding down, the woman hysterical with laughter as her green silk dress pulled away from her gartered thighs.
“Oh my gawd, Pug, I’ll DIE!” chortled Rhoda. “I can’t POSSIBLY! I’ve practically NOTHING on underneath. Why don’t they WARN a girl!” But of course she made the slide, screaming with embarrassed delight, exposing her legs — which were very shapely — clear up to her lacy underwear. She arrived at the bottom scarlet-faced and convulsed, amid cheers and congratulations, to be welcomed by the hosts and introduced to fellow weekenders. It was a sure icebreaker, Victor Henry thought, if a trifle gross. The Germans certainly had the touch for these things.
