Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  Kemal knows that a war cannot be won without an army. It must retreat to a more secure line. He is appointed supreme commander, virtually dictator of Anatolia–although for three months only. If he can win the war in that time he will be a hero; if he loses, he will be disposed of. (Enver travels from Moscow to the Caucasus to be close by, swearing he will do nothing to undermine Kemal–but ready to step in should he fail.) Ammunition supplies are transported to the front on the backs of women and camels. The Turks dig in.

  NEW YORK: Garvey is back. He gives a boastful account of his trip to the Caribbean and beyond, forcibly extended by his difficulties in acquiring a new American visa.

  He glides over more embarrassing episodes of his odyssey, such as the time his ship set sail for America with Garvey registered as its purser (in the hope that crew members would be able to slip into the country more easily than passengers). An ill-starred voyage, that, with the vessel’s boiler constantly about to explode and the novice Garvey arguing with the captain as to what to do about it. The ship was forced to turn back for safety long before it could essay the unloading of the obstreperous purser on American soil.

  Garvey focuses on the positive. In Costa Rica, a special train was laid on, he says. In Panama, he was carried by enthusiastic crowds from train to automobile. Everywhere he went, Garvey tells his devotees, thousands of dollars of shares were sold. Even the poorest wanted to buy some. In Jamaica, the largest public building on the island was filled with the biggest crowd in its history: thousands had to be turned back. ‘We have already swept the world’, he exhorts the crowd. ‘All that is left for us to do is to conquer Africa.’ Four years ago, policemen did not know who he was, says Garvey. Now governments are spending hundreds of dollars a day on anxious diplomatic cables just to try and find out where he will go next. Such expenditures are a measure of how significant the UNIA has become: ‘You have become so powerful they cannot afford to ignore you’.

  He does not blame whites for looking out for their race interests. But he fiercely denounces ‘Negro traitors’ who have turned their backs on his projects. They should beware: for ‘when Marcus Garvey starts a fight he will not stop until he has finished completely’. One name in particular spells treachery amongst his supporters. William Du Bois is ‘the exponent of the reactionary class of men who have kept Negroes in serfdom and peonage’, Garvey says. They hide behind their university degrees and imagine themselves intellectuals. They proclaim the need for uplift of the black race–when what they actually mean to do is to keep themselves on top and everyone else below.

  Garvey invites his rival to debate him, as if challenging him to a duel: ‘at midnight, at noon time, or any time’. He has no doubts who will win. ‘I will make you look’, he tells Du Bois, ‘like a piece of cotton.’

  LONDON: Private grief intrudes on public life. Winston Churchill’s American-born mother dies suddenly one early summer’s day at the age of sixty-seven (her third husband is forty-four at the time). She trips on her high heels and falls down a staircase. A broken leg leads to infection and amputation below the knee. Amputation leads to haemorrhage. Letters of condolence pour in from his many friends.

  Several weeks later, in August, Clementine and Winston are struck with another tragedy. Clementine is at a house party at the Duke of Westminster’s northern pile near Chester. ‘I arrived here last night about 11.30 and found dancing in full swing’, she writes to Winston in London. The children are in the care of a French nanny by the sea in Kent.

  Their youngest daughter, Marigold, aged just under three years, has a sore throat that seems to be getting worse. An infection develops. There are no antibiotics. A specialist is called. Clementine rushes down to Kent. Winston is called from London. (He has been meeting a Palestinian delegation, defending British policy against what they see as the undermining of Arab rights by the migration of European Jews.)

  Both Winston and Clementine are by Marigold’s bedside when, one evening, the little girl finally gives up her tenuous hold on life. Her parents are struck by an ocean of grief. They mourn in silence.

  BERLIN–AUGSBURG–MUNICH: In between museum trips in the German capital, word reaches Adolf Hitler of conspiracy in Munich. Party chairman Drexler has been having merger discussions with other political groups. Hitler is alarmed to learn that, in his absence, the leader of one of these groups, a schoolteacher named Dickel, was invited to Munich to give a speech–Adolf’s job–and was considered a great success. The mangy field-runner begins to worry whether Drexler is trying to sideline him. Drexler is now reported to be heading to Augsburg to discuss matters directly with Dickel and other völkisch leaders. Adolf rushes to Augsburg himself. When he does not manage to break up the discussions, he storms back to Munich. He resigns from the party the next day.

  The struggle for the leadership of the NSDAP is now in the open. Adolf writes a six-page letter explaining his decision. He dislikes the idea of the party being diluted by others. He cites passages from one of Dickel’s books. ‘I leave it to the party leadership to check these quotes’, Adolf writes, ‘and these are only the most harmless.’ He lays down the conditions under which he would rejoin the party. He wants to be given dictatorial power over it. Munich must be made the party’s permanent headquarters ‘now and for ever more’. Negotiations with other groups must be broken off and a meeting with like-minded Austrians cancelled. The party needs ‘iron leadership’, Hitler writes. It is clear he has come to believe only he can provide it.

  There is civil war within the party. Adolf continues giving speeches at NSDAP events, proving himself the best draw the party has. Reality begins to sink in among the leadership: if its best speaker goes elsewhere, the NSDAP will disintegrate. Some members produce a pamphlet calling Hitler a traitor, accusing him of being an Austrian (which is undeniable) and a closet supporter of Charles Habsburg (which is more dubious). Hinting at anonymous, deep-pocketed supporters in the business world, the pamphlet asks where Adolf gets the money on which he lives and which he spends, they say, on a string of girlfriends. His manipulative methods are ‘frankly Jewish’. The anti-Adolf contingent warns he is just a common ‘demagogue’ who will lead the German people astray. Drexler, meanwhile, is an ‘oak’.

  But it is Drexler who gives in. He is offered the post of honorary party chairman for life, without any real power. In return, he condemns the pamphlet, blaming it on a couple of disgruntled party employees, and makes up with Adolf in public. Hitler gets exactly what he wants. The party is his now. No more democracy. Only the leader and his followers. Shortly after assuming his new role as the party’s dictator, Adolf decides to forms a party militia, his own private army. He replaces the editor of the Völkischer Beobachter with one of his own men.

  DOORN: The Kaiser seems to be making a remarkable recovery from his wife’s death. Summer is marked by a steady procession of female suitors beating their way to the door of Huis Doorn and so, they hope, into the affections of the imperial widower who resides within: two women from Hungary (described as ‘very lively’ by Wilhelm’s doctor), a couple of German aristocrats and a Finnish lady doctor (who, perhaps alerted to her quarry’s predilections, brings pine-tree cuttings as a gift).

  Occasionally a more political visitor drops by and has to endure the latest rant. (The Kaiser has just received the racist anti-Semite Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s latest book from Bayreuth, which seems to have made quite an impression.) To one of these visitors, the Kaiser makes a very special gift as he leaves: a silver brooch in the shape of a swastika. ‘Now you have been admitted to the order of the decent people’, he tells his guest.

  In August, one of the men who signed the 1918 armistice, the Catholic politician Matthias Erzberger–against whom Hitler has been fulminating in his speeches for months–is assassinated while out walking in the Black Forest. The murderers, part of a shady Freikorps organisation based in Bavaria known as Organisation Consul, flee to Hungary.

  ACROSS ANATOLIA: Far from the front line between the
Turkish nationalist forces and the Greek army, the civilian population of Anatolia is the real victim of this war.

  No one is safe. In the Black Sea region, Turkish nationalists deport Christians from their homes, chasing out communities older than Byzantium itself. In the west, native Turks flee Greek brigands. Shops are looted. Villages are burned to the ground. Door frames are removed to convey the message that there will be no going back for those who have been forced to leave their homes. Foreign observers accuse Greek authorities of being complicit in such ethnic cleansing, and of devising crude propaganda stunts to cover their tracks. There are rumours that they intend to exterminate the Turkish population around Smyrna.

  ‘The “subconscious” pre-human animal had come to life’, writes an eyewitness of these events shortly afterwards, a British professor of Greek and Byzantine history. It is as if a fount of suppressed violence has suddenly been released, exposing the violent depths of the human psyche. It is a metamorphosis of human into beast.

  LONDON–DEARBORN–MUNICH: An answer has come back from the British Museum. The book the journalist friend of Allen Dulles was offered in Istanbul, and which bears such a striking resemblance to the Protocols, is a political tract published in the 1860s in Geneva. It predates the meeting of the so-called Elders of Zion of which the Protocols purport to be an account by thirty years. The Protocols are clearly plagiarised from the earlier book. Only historians will be interested in it now, The Times assures its readers: ‘The legend can be allowed to pass into oblivion.’

  The Dearborn Independent continues its anti-Semitic campaign as usual. It is now selling several hundred thousand copies a week. Adolf Hitler, who days before the rebuttal had thanked The Times for bringing the Protocols to light, ignores the revelation that it is a forgery entirely.

  GORKI: ‘I am so tired that I am unable to do a thing’, Vladimir Lenin writes to Maxim Gorky.

  With Lenin’s permission, Gorky has set up an independent public body–the only such organisation in the Soviet Republic–to secure foreign aid. Remarkably, a former Tsarist minister and Tolstoy’s daughter are allowed to join its board. The Americans have responded positively–as long as the American Relief Administration (just winding up its operation in the rest of Europe) is given complete freedom of action in Soviet Russia. Vladimir worries that the ARA is a front for spies or, as he puts it, ‘disguised interventionists’. But to refuse help would look bad–and anyway, help is needed. Perhaps Trotsky should handle the whole thing. ‘He has a capacity for these things (both diplomatic experience and a military and political instinct)’, Vladimir explains.

  Gorky certainly has done quite enough. Vladimir now wants him to go abroad where he can cause no further embarrassment to the regime. Lenin suggests a sanatorium in Europe. ‘Over here you have neither treatment, nor work–nothing but hustle,’ he writes, ‘plain empty hustle.’ He urges Gorky not to be so stubborn.

  DUBLIN–LONDON: An exchange of letters and telegrams across the Irish Sea–fifteen in all–continues David Lloyd George and Éamon de Valera’s London discussions, now carried out with a wider audience in mind. Every word and phrase is weighed for hidden meaning. The British Prime Minister calls his cabinet to his Scottish holiday retreat to dissect de Valera’s latest letter. Eventually, a vague formula is agreed as a basis for a final negotiation to be held in London in the autumn. Not a settlement yet, but a starting point for one. The final compromises will be made later.

  And while all this goes on, the IRA swells with new recruits, eager to share in the glamour of Ireland’s freedom fighters. The British public grows used to the idea that Ireland will never be fully British again. In the north, Protestants and Catholics snipe at each other. In the South, the Irish savour a summer’s peace, and hope never to return to war. The Black and Tans take to the beaches and flirt with Irish girls. ‘With the exception of Belfast, the country remains in a peaceful and undisturbed condition’, reads the British cabinet report at the end of August. Hay-burning, cattle-stealing and the odd kidnapping replace outright murder and assassination as the chief issues of concern.

  Michael Collins moves into new offices in the Gresham. Officially, he is Ireland’s Finance Minister and Director of Intelligence, nominally subordinate to the Minister of Defence (a man who hates his guts). Unofficially, he is Ireland’s second in command, a man with a reputation and a following–and with ambition. He works long hours: twelve-, sixteen-, eighteen-hour days. He drives others as hard as he drives himself, heedless to the damage done by his bruising commentary on their failings. He has many rivals. ‘I find myself looking at friends as if they were enemies,’ he writes one day, ‘looking at them to make sure that they are really friends at all.’ Having snubbed him in July, Éamon now suggests Michael be one of those to go to London to negotiate the peace with Britain. He must remain at home, Éamon explains, to keep the symbol of the republic pure. Collins smells a rat. He resists, fearful that if he goes he will be made to bear the blame for any compromises made in the name of peace.

  The two men argue the matter late into the night. It is Michael’s sacred duty to go, Éamon insists. He will not be required to lead the Irish delegation, but simply to give it the weight of a military man’s authority. Finally, Collins succumbs. How can he refuse?

  HORTON BAY, MICHIGAN: Eventually the bride arrives, her hair still slightly damp from an afternoon swim in a nearby lake. Her husband-to-be, just back from a few days’ fishing, is already waiting at the church dressed smartly in white trousers, a dark jacket and a striped tie. He cannot kneel on account of his leg wounds. (‘The first American killed in Italy’, so his bride introduced him, by accident, at their engagement party earlier in the summer.) The church is strewn with flowers. The young couple, now Mr and Mrs Ernest Hemingway, make their getaway in a Ford automobile, and a rowing boat across the lake.

  Ernest takes his new wife to meet his bevvy of female admirers in Petoskey by way of a backhanded compliment. But wider horizons than Michigan are opening up for them both now. For Hadley: the chance to see the world. For Ernest: an opportunity to return to it.

  RIVER SAKARYA, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: For three weeks in late summer, the Greek and Turkish armies tussle around the river Sakarya. Mustafa Kemal is asked what he will do if the Greeks lunge for Ankara. ‘I will attack them in the rear and they will perish in the wilds’, he replies: ‘Bon voyage, messieurs.’

  Greek aircraft buzz in the sky, outnumbering Turkish planes twenty to one. But on the ground, the summer heat exhausts Greek soldiers. Their supply lines are overextended, harassed by Turkish cavalry. Their advances become more modest, until their offensive comes to a halt. Eventually they turn tail, retiring to positions they held several months before.

  Kemal’s prestige has never been higher. He is proclaimed Gazi–hero, warrior of Islam.

  NEW YORK–LONDON–BRUSSELS–PARIS–GENEVA: Two congresses take place in August, one on either side of the Atlantic. Both claim to represent the interests of the black peoples of the world. Both talk the language of empowerment. But it is not just the ocean which divides them. They represent two different philosophies of change and two different ideas of how the races must interact: one fighting, the other conciliatory; one hungry for immediate results, the other patient for incremental change; one predicting race war, the other advocating race cooperation; one seeking to bring about change by smashing the system, the other seeking compromise through diplomacy.

  In New York, Garvey’s annual convention is quieter than last year. There are still flourishes of the Garvey style, such as the composition of messages for various world leaders–Éamon de Valera, President Harding, the American Secretary of State, King George V, Mohandas Gandhi–containing words of support or warning from the four hundred million blacks the UNIA claims to represent. The Negro World acclaims the official court reception at the end of the convention–where shredded chicken and ice cream are served–as ‘the greatest state social event that has taken place among black people in the last
three hundred years’ and an evocation of ‘the splendour of Ethiopia in the days of the Queen of Sheba’. Garvey calls Du Bois’s rival meeting across the ocean in Europe, worked out with the cooperation of colonial governments, a congress of rats presided over by a cat. ‘I am surprised at the philosophy of Dr Du Bois’, he says. ‘Why, he is a disgrace to Harvard.’

  But the UNIA dream is under fire. The organisation’s Secretary-General has absconded with some of its funds. Wages are chopped in half. The Black Star Line stockholders’ meeting is adjourned pending clarification of the accounts. There are unanswered questions about its latest ship. Garvey has a dramatic run-in with the African Blood Brotherhood, the group accused of involvement in the Tulsa riot, denouncing it for its secretiveness. Not long after, the brotherhood derides Garvey for turning the UNIA into a ‘tinsel show’.

  There are no rallies or marches at William Du Bois’s Pan African Congress. Meetings take place, discreetly, at the edges of the great power centres of European colonialism, first in London, where Du Bois mixes with sympathetic British politicians, and then in Brussels, where Belgian colonial officials observe proceedings. The French Senegalese chair heads off any motions which might offend the hosts. (The horrors of King Leopold’s exploitation of the Congo are not mentioned.) Garvey’s scheme of Africa for the Africans is deemed ‘Bolshevik talk’ and its leader described as a black Lenin. In Paris, Du Bois is said to repudiate Garvey’s back-to-Africa ideas in his strongest language yet. ‘The colored American cannot withstand the African climate’, he reportedly says. ‘We cannot oust the Europeans and do not desire to do so.’ Later, he denies ever having spoken these words.