by David Boyle
Of course, Xanthe knew he had hardly come to Berlin to retire. He had not come to get rich: she knew he had been on the verge of inheriting a tidy sum when his mother died. So what was he doing, apart from the fantasy he had portrayed to her about winning the war somehow single-handedly? Every day he was with Stumpf or at the Admiralty or the Propaganda Ministry. But then she was at the Propaganda Ministry herself most days, for press conferences or to talk to censors.
*
It was 19 July. The long-awaited party was due that evening.
“How are we going to be together?” Xanthe asked Ralph that lunchtime. It had been weighing on her mind and she asked him as soon as she reached his room.
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
She decided to control her response.
“What do you mean? I’ve been thinking about it the entire time. If you can’t go to England, maybe you could come with me to the States? At least we’re neutral.”
“Oh, we’ll be able to go to England and quite soon if my calculations are right. I said we had been asked to a party at the Rundfunk Building tonight. Because tonight, the Führer will make his peace offer to England.”
Things began to fall into place a little.
“You mean his speech tonight. Of course. But they’ll never accept it, will they?”
“They won’t to start with – but you are misunderstanding the politics in London. If I may say so…” Ralph was getting excited, but he calmed down, took a visible breath and reached into his briefcase, pulling out a strange circular metal contraption, about the size and shape of a bicycle gear.
“Now. Do you know what this is?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she laughed.
He waved it at her.
“What is it then?”
“It’s a rotor for a naval Enigma machine. There are a number of these in each set, and they go into the machines in different orders, according to the settings for the day.”
“Amazing. Show me.”
Xanthe held the rotor in her hand. It was heavier than she expected.
“It’s the pass that will get us into the party tonight. It’s a kind of joke really – and the Admiralty would be horrified – but I said we’d show one to get in. The only thing is, I can’t really put this great lump of metal in my pocket. It would stick out. Could you put it in your bag for me?”
“Yes, I’ll rescue your flawless lines,” she said with a grin. “But I’ve only got this.” She had brought a small pink canvas bag where she kept her keys and notebook and lipstick and most of her papers, but not much else. She stowed it away anyway.
“Now, please explain how this is going to end the war when Churchill will never accept Hitler’s peace offer.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face.
“Oh, he will do given time. You see there are so many people, in the government and his party who think the way I do. In the civil service, in parliament, in the Lords. Certainly in business. As soon as Hitler makes a reasonable offer of peace, they will make their feelings felt. Britain can’t carry on a war without an army, without equipment or an effective air force. Especially when the real enemy isn’t Germany at all, it’s Stalin and the Soviets.”
Xanthe stood silent, listening. It was the first time he had really explained his thinking to her in any depth. She had not realised what his priorities were before.
“Let me tell you what will happen after tonight. Hitler will make his offer. The British government will start to unravel as they debate it. People will call for peace. My messages will go out. I am expecting whole units, ships and squadrons, to declare themselves for peace. The British can’t survive and they know that all too well. The war effort, the war party, will unravel – and, yes, they’ll come to the conference table, you’ll see. Then you and I will be able to go home.”
She stared at him.
“Is that your plan then? Has that always been your plan?”
“Always,” he said.
“Yes, but… But you said you were helping the British crack the German codes?”
“Well, it will help them, but by then it won’t matter. Sense will have prevailed.”
It slowly began to dawn on her what this meant. “So – well, you are a traitor then. To your country.” She felt close to tears. “There are people, friends of yours, dying now because they’re standing up to Hitler.”
He went bright red, and was suddenly enraged.
“Don’t you dare tell me I’ve betrayed my country. Don’t you dare!” He waved his finger in her direction. “And don’t be so sentimental. Even Halifax has been talking quietly to the Italians. Is he a traitor? The Foreign Secretary? I’ll tell you who betrayed my country. It was those people who insisted on fighting a war when they were so unprepared, that was the real betrayal. Who listened to the Jews and financiers and your Jewish president when they wanted us to fight the one force in the modern world capable of resisting the Soviet menace. No, I’m on the side of my own country and on the side of history, dammit. And I am going to do my damnedest to stay on the side of history.”
She was weeping by now. She felt a fool, an idiot, a dupe. Partly because she felt betrayed herself, partly because she also still loved him.
“Now, for goodness sake let’s get dressed and go to this party. But first, I’m going to give you a surprise.”
*
“What are we going here for?” she asked him, struggling to keep up. She noticed he was in a double-breasted suit that made him look a little like a Chicago gangster.
“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” said a voice in her head, round and round and round.
She had been into the Reichstag before, of course. There were Nazi armbands everywhere they looked. Ralph swept in and showed a pass to a functionary, indicating that she was with him, and they were beckoned on to follow. They went quickly up some back stairs, which smelled of urine and paint, as the back stairs of public buildings tend to. “Just in time,” he said.
It was a few minutes before six o’clock as they came out at the top of the stairs above a huge array of people. There must have been a couple of thousand squeezed in there, many of them in uniform, the luminaries of the regime and those who wanted to be like them, all gathered in the well of the building in great black and red rows. It was a wonderful position they were in, way above the auditorium.
She could see the Nazi leaders on the platform, Goering, Keitel and poor old Field Marshal Halder, who Hitler was supposed to hate. Himmler, dressed in grey, was fussing in the background and muttering. Ralph pointed out Quisling, the new Norwegian leader.
“Who’s that?” she asked Ralph, nudging him towards a small man who appeared to be chewing gum on the edge of the platform.
“Ciano. Italian foreign minister. Can’t seem to sit still, can he?” Ciano kept on leaping up to salute. It was most disconcerting.
There was an electric atmosphere of expectation. It was the moment they had been waiting for after nearly a year of war. The room hushed and everybody rose in their seats, as Hitler himself marched in. She had only glimpsed him once before in the flesh. He was a small man, but there was an aura of power about him as he flashed his arm in a kind of half salute to acknowledge the cheers.
He marched quickly and seriously down the red carpet, which matched the red fabric draping all the walls. As Hitler stood quickly in front of the huge German eagle and swastika at the back of the hall, for a split second she saw the red drapes like blood. It seemed like a visionary flash. She wondered whose blood it represented.
The silence gathered. It was a peculiar feeling watching him in real time, not on a black-and-white newsreel, as if Mickey Mouse had come unexpectedly to life. He checked his notes as he stood before the audience, and Xanthe glanced quickly around them in the visitors’ gallery. There was Shirer, there was Sigrid. They glanced back at her.
Then he began.
“Deputies, men of the German Reichstag! In the midst of the
mighty struggle for the freedom and future of the German nation, I have called on you to gather for this session today.”
It was just a little Shakespearian, full of the kind of rhetorical vanities that would have been too much even for the Senate back home, but with none of the histrionics that they had come to expect of the man.
“The purposes for today are these. To give our people an insight into the historic uniqueness of the events we have lived through. To express our thanks to our deserving soldiers. And to direct, once again and for the last time, an appeal to general reason.”
It was a clever speech, humble at the right moments, demanding sometimes, and he gave the performance of a lifetime, ironically putting his head on one side – his timing was perfect. Then came the crescendo…
“In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not asking for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor. I am speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason which could force the continuation of this war. I regret the sacrifices it will demand. I would like to spare my people. I know the hearts of millions of men and boys aglow at the thought of finally being allowed to wage battle against an enemy who has, without reasonable cause, declared war on us a second time. But I also know of the women and mothers at home whose hearts, despite their willingness to sacrifice to the last, hang onto this with all their might…”
There was absolute silence in the hall. You could feel the weight of longing, willing the British to accept the offer.
“Come on!” Ralph was pulling Xanthe to her feet.
“Where are we going?” she whispered, aware the handful of other press representatives were also leaving.
“We’re going to the party. Didn’t I tell you?”
“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” said the voice in her head again. A feeling of misery, in a round ball, seemed to be growing in the pit of her stomach.
As they ran down the steps outside, she could hear behind her the shouts of “Sieg heil!” from a thousand throats in the audience inside. Hitler had reached his conclusion.
She saw Bill in front of them looking for the CBS car. “Can we join you?” asked Ralph.
“I’m going to broadcast.”
“The Rundfunk? That’s where we’re going too…”
“Ok, jump in.”
*
“And now it begins,” said Ralph as he led Xanthe upstairs past offices full of uniformed censors, discreetly pointing in her bag to the smiling officers on the doors. They grinned and clapped Ralph on the back. Clearly the joke was understood. She saw other people making similar gestures towards bulging pockets.
Bill had gone to a different entrance to do his own broadcast and they had braved the main one, with a soldier in a helmet guarding the door.
Then in they went to what looked like a wood-lined boardroom on the top floor, with a view of the city beyond, and – for the second time in the evening – she found herself in the strange world of the Nazi in-crowd, this time a melee of officials, broadcasters and a few foreign journalists. In the corner, she recognised some of the British contingent. There was Mildred Gellars, also from Ohio, as she had discovered recently, an American announcer on German radio. On the other side of the room were Lord and Lady Haw-Haw: she was talking to a young blond German man and they seemed deep in conversation. The radio was blaring away in English.
“It’s the only place people can listen to foreign broadcasts legally,” said Ralph.
“I suppose you’re enjoying all this,” she said, close to tears. “What have you led me into?” There were champagne bottles doing the rounds and canapés.
“Hello, Xanthe,” said Fred Kaltenbach. “Exciting, isn’t it? We’re going to be in at the end after all.”
“Are we?” she said. She was feeling sick.
“Radio London on in five minutes,” said a man who appeared to be acting as master of ceremonies.
“Right,” said Ralph. “This is the moment. I can’t imagine what the first British reaction is going to be. They are going to be thrown into an almighty funk by that speech. Churchill will be on the back foot. Halifax will be pushing hard for a negotiated peace; the whole establishment will be pushing hard. They will either negotiate or capitulate and I must say I’m going to enjoy the chaos while they try and battle it out. I can’t believe they will be able to accept quite this soon, though.”
“I want to go back home,” said Xanthe. “I really can’t stand this. You are enjoying your country’s discomfort. You’re enjoying it.”
“It isn’t your country. I don’t know why you’re so upset about it. I never made any secret about what I was going to do.”
She hissed back: “Yes, but I never thought you were going to enjoy it so much.”
There was hush as the volume of the wireless was put up and they could hear the BBC loudly and clearly and the familiar sound of Big Ben.
“This is London,” said the announcer. “This is the BBC German service. And this is Sefton Delmer speaking.”
There was a ripple of recognition and amusement around the room. “Big Sefton,” someone said with a giggle.
“Delmer was here for the Express for some time,” explained Ralph happily.
Sefton Delmer started his commentary as a direct reply to Hitler’s speech, which he must have listened to live on Berlin radio. He started deferentially, speaking directly to Hitler, who he had clearly met and conversed with. Then he built up towards a crescendo of rudeness.
“Herr Hitler, you have on occasion in the past consulted me as to the mood of the British public,” said Delmer. “So permit me to render your Excellency this little service once again tonight. Let me tell you what we here in Britain think of this appeal of yours to what you are pleased to call our reason and common sense. Herr Hitler and Reichkanzler, we hurl it right back at you, right in your evil-smelling teeth.”
This time, the silence was one of shock. Nobody spoke.
“I don’t believe it,” said Kaltenbach, standing next to Xanthe. “They can’t have decided yet. Delmer must have gone out on a limb.”
“How could he have?” said another one of his group. “They would never let him broadcast his own line on something as important as that. We know the most powerful people in Britain don’t want the war.”
Ralph still hadn’t spoken.
One of the German diplomats was suddenly shouting at Shirer. “Can you make it out? Can you understand these British fools? Turn down peace now? They’re crazy!”
Then Ralph exploded. Turning to the window, he smashed his fist down on the sill, knocking two champagne glasses into tiny shards of glass on the floor.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it! Those stupid fucking traitors!”
“Ralph…,” Xanthe said quietly to him, holding her hand out towards him. But he turned on her.
“Oh, don’t touch me. You’re as bad as the rest of them. Weak, weak, weak. Don’t you all understand the direction history is taking? Don’t you? What am I doing wasting my time with you and the Jews. Get away from me!”
He turned around, white with fury and stormed out of the room, upsetting a chair as he went.
By now the room was in uproar, with officials and journalists talking animatedly to each other, bitter disappointment all over their faces. Xanthe stared after Ralph, tears pouring down her face.
“Xanthe, are you ok? Can I get you a driver? I’d drive you home myself, but I’m on the air in five minutes.”
“No, no, thanks, Bill,” she said to him as she headed for the door. She stumbled into the street, ran across the road and sobbed against the balustrade. Not only had she fallen in love with a traitor and a fascist, she had fallen for one with such a temper that he could reject her so brutally in front of all her colleagues – who could take her heart and crush it into pieces. She had to get out of there, not just out of Berlin but out of German
y. She had to get away.
11
Berlin, July 1940
There was a knock on Xanthe’s bedroom door, abrupt and demanding. Her make-up was streaked with tears and she felt drained. She decided to ignore it.
She had flung herself on her bed when she had got back to her lodgings and, between bouts of uncontrollable misery, had been trying to work out what to do. The streets of Charlottenburg around the Rundfunk building had been full of people celebrating the peace that they imagined was now inevitable. Perhaps they had not heard the news from London that the peace offer had been spurned in such graphic terms. Once she had reached the street, she had breathed as deeply as she could. Then she stood up and tried to work out how far she was away from her room. Less than a mile, but it was suddenly a frightening walk and for a few minutes she felt unable to face it. But she had to and, anyway, she badly needed the air.
Across the street, three soldiers without their helmets were staring at her. She set herself in the other direction with determination and tried to put them out of her mind.
What was she to do? She had torpedoed her career in journalism, or so she assumed. She had let down Fleming and Turing and her employers in London. She had failed miserably to see clearly what Ralph was actually doing, purely because she had blinded herself to the truth. She had made what her friends in London used to call a complete pig’s breakfast of things, and everyone she knew in Berlin would soon know about it. But worst of all, she still loved him. Yes, she despised his opinions and she could not forgive him for what he said to her, nor the way he said it – humiliating her so publicly – but she could not quite expunge her original feelings. In fact, they added an extra layer of misery.
There was no doubt at all that she would have to leave and as quickly as possible. She could hardly go to the American embassy now. It would be shut and the reception desk closed. No, she would ask Sigrid what to do the next morning though, after her disappearance in the evening, she was not at all sure Sigrid would speak to her.
As she walked, she had thought back over the extraordinary events of the night. Was it possible that Sefton Delmer had taken it upon himself to reject Hitler’s peace offer, on his own authority? From the little that she knew of the inner workings of governments – mainly from talking to Ralph – it seemed extremely unlikely that he had been told what to say, one way or another. He would have needed to get instructions from the cabinet in less than an hour. It was a great weakness of authoritarian governments – she realised now – that, not only did they never dare to take a bold initiative like that, but they couldn’t imagine anyone else doing so either. Maybe Delmer had very cleverly forced Churchill’s hand, just by saying no all by himself – maybe Ralph had stormed out too early.
