Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  Adolf is delighted. The Kampfbund can call on thousands of members, many of them with war experience. It is a far cry from the few hundred SA heavies in Austrian ski-hats training outside Munich at the beginning of the year, or the loose nationalist alliance of May. Though not under his sole command, Hitler now has the beginnings of a real army. The question now is, what to do with it?

  MONZA–ROME: There is another German besides Freud who shows up in Italy during the glorious late summer of 1923. Former jailbird Kurt Lüdecke bears a slip of paper signed by Hitler which declares him to be the Nazi Party’s official representative on the Italian side of the Alps.

  Benito is in Monza for the start of the European Grand Prix, where he is photographed talking seriously–as one daredevil to another–to the racing-car drivers. He later gives an interview to the influential British Daily Mail, a newspaper quite sympathetic to the virile blackshirts. Lüdecke (arriving in Italy via meetings with anti-Versailles groups in Budapest) tries to catch up with Mussolini in Milan. He accosts him on the steps of the offices of Il Popolo d’Italia. When that fails to produce much more than a vague nod of the head from Benito–who is that man?–the German follows him on to Rome, hoping for an audience there. It seems much harder to meet Benito now that he is premier.

  Mussolini is wary. ‘The fall of the Empire has left a void in the German mind’, he writes in the preface to a new book about Germany that September. The political consequences of this upheaval will not be decided by whether there are machine guns hidden in forest caves, ‘but the mood of the new German generation’. The current situation is hard to read. Benito will always have time for emulators and admirers from abroad, but is too savvy to get himself mixed up too deeply in their intrigues. Germany has never been a country he has had much fondness for. In its current state he views it as dangerous and unpredictable. Why meet with a Munich emissary who, not being in power, can make no concrete promises in the way of territorial concessions, but whose mere presence in Italy will raise question marks about Benito’s diplomacy?

  Premier Mussolini has more immediate matters to think about: whether France and Britain will back him on Corfu or let the League of Nations become involved.

  MADRID, SPAIN–DOORN: A coup d’état in the Spanish capital brings a right-wing military government to power. General Primo de Rivera proclaims himself dictator. The King of Spain offers his support. (A nationalist army officer serving in Morocco–Francisco Franco–is doubtful of the new man.) On the day of his coup Primo de Rivera composes a message to be sent over the Mediterranean. ‘Please convey to His Majesty the King of Italy, to Mussolini, and to the Italian navy my sympathy for the example they have set to all the peoples who know how to save and redeem themselves’.

  Clare Sheridan races to Madrid to add Europe’s latest strongman to her tally. She is not impressed. Primo de Rivera is no Trotsky, Mussolini or Kemal. He seems a copy rather than a true original. But if he is something of a low-grade dictator, imagine what this says about the King of Spain who has called on him to rule the country. Madrileños call the King ‘Secondo de Rivera’ now. He responds by calling his general-dictator ‘mon petit Mussolini’.

  In Doorn, the latest right-wing coup convinces the Kaiser that his time is finally coming. After the false dawn of 1920, he now pins his hopes on 1923. Italy and Spain are blazing a trail for Germany. Democracy is played out. What the world needs now is an iron hand in a velvet glove, military might and monarchy. Wilhelm expects the call from Berlin at any moment. Hermine is less sure: she finds herself cold-shouldered on a trip home. The Kaiser’s son is the more popular monarchist choice now.

  MUNICH: Adolf asks his secretary to get in touch with the author of several recent articles about Mustafa Kemal. He wants advice. ‘What you have witnessed in Turkey’, his secretary writes on Hitler’s behalf, ‘is what we will have to do in the future as well in order to liberate ourselves.’

  Hitler now has a series of takeover models to choose from. There is the Ankara model: secure a minor city as your base and then use populist appeal and a national army to take over the rest of the country. There is the Rome model: a theatrical march on the capital backed up by paramilitary force and completed with co-option of the existing order. Now there is the Madrid model: military coup d’état sanctified by royal blessing. He seems to be edging towards the Ankara template. First Bavaria, then Germany–then the world.

  AUTUMN

  HOF, GERMANY–BERLIN–MUNICH: Adolf holds another German Day gathering, this time in the north Bavarian town of Hof. Seventy thousand members of southern Germany’s nationalist groups march through town. The Nazi leader arrives in a shiny new red Mercedes-Benz.

  Immediately afterwards, Hitler is driven in secret to fundraising meetings in Berlin, travelling through Saxony with handguns drawn, in case of a repeat of the incident earlier in the year. They reach the capital around two in the morning and tour the city. Hitler points out the royal palace and the Reichstag to his driver. ‘When we have our swastika flying over those two beautiful buildings,’ Adolf shouts over the automobile engine, ‘I will be the Führer of the entire nation.’

  In Berlin, it is now clear that passive resistance against the occupation of the Ruhr has failed. The Chancellor tries a last roll of the diplomatic dice, offering all kinds of temptations to Paris and Brussels to get them to negotiate, from a long-term security deal to a share of German businesses. A French diplomat worries about the impact on international public opinion should France refuse to even discuss matters. But in Paris, the reasoning which applied in the autumn of 1918 remains strong: if the enemy is about to crack, stand firm to secure total victory. French support for Italy over Corfu is answered by Italian support for France over the Ruhr.

  At the end of September, the Germans break. One Monday around midday the German Chancellor meets a delegation of one hundred and fifty representatives from the Ruhr. They are unanimous that the situation is untenable. On Wednesday, Berlin bows to the inevitable: ‘To secure the life of our people, we are today required, out of bitter necessity, to interrupt this fight.’ It is as if the country has been defeated a second time: first on the battlefield, now on the field of high politics and high finance. War, peace–what is the difference?

  Back in Bavaria, Berlin’s decision to call off passive resistance brings matters to a head. After feeding the black crocodile of Germany’s radical right for so many years in an attempt to try and tame it, the authorities fear the beast may be about to bite them. They hoped that by allowing Munich to become the capital of Germany’s far right they would inoculate Bavaria against communism. They turned a blind eye to far-right infiltration of local army units, thinking this would buy the troops’ loyalty to the government in Munich. They allowed paramilitaries to acquire semi-official status as a last line of defence against the Communists. They allowed plotting against Berlin to take place under their noses. They coddled the black crocodile, they let it live. Now the beast is fat, and strong, and angry.

  In the wake of the decision to abandon passive resistance in the Ruhr, Hitler is made political leader of the Kampfbund. A new raft of Nazi rallies are announced. Speculation mounts that they might be cover for a putsch attempt. In an act of desperation, the Bavarian establishment decide to pre-empt this by installing their own dictator. A hard-line, self-confident, anti-Semitic conservative named Gustav von Kahr is handed executive power by the authorities with a mandate to secure law and order. Troublemakers are to be deported. All political meetings are made subject to a stringent new system of approval, intended to prevent Nazis, Communists and even Bavarian nationalists from whipping things up.

  The decision in Munich fractures relations with Berlin. But the situation demands action. The counter-coup seems to be working. Kahr suppresses the left and tries to woo the more traditional elements of the nationalist right. There are signs the Kampfbund may split.

  CORFU, GREECE: After several weeks of diplomatic crisis played out between Rome, Paris, London, Athens
and Geneva, the Italians consent to leave Corfu on terms agreed amongst the major powers. The League of Nations is sidelined.

  As the date for Italian withdrawal nears, no one is the wiser about who actually murdered the general whose death caused the invasion in the first place. A commission comprising British, French, Italian and Japanese delegates is sent to investigate. Whether on his own initiative or on instructions from Rome, the Italian representative goes out of his way to disrupt anything which might portray the Greek response to the killing in a positive light. He imperiously takes charge of questioning the Greek officer who found the bodies, as if cross-examining him for murder. When the investigators visit the site of the attack he constantly interrupts proceedings to cast doubt on Greek honesty. There is only time to interview a few witnesses: a border guard, the local telephone operator, a shepherd and some goatherds.

  The commission of inquiry makes a preliminary report to the major powers with some light criticism of Greek police work. The Italians–working on terms of reference that state that Greek culpability will be assumed unless proven otherwise–insist this is enough for Greece to be forced to pay fifty million lire, as demanded in Italy’s original ultimatum. The French back up the Italians. The British are unhappy with the Italian insistence, but accept it. The Greeks have no choice but to give in. This is not the high-minded embrace of international political principles that Woodrow had in mind when the League of Nations was founded. It is the acceptance of power as the true determinant of affairs, dressed up to look like ethical diplomacy. The British Ambassador in Paris is disgusted. Given the grubby reality of international affairs, it is only natural that the United States ‘enveloped in her white robe of virtue does not wish to soil it by rubbing shoulders with such an unclean crowd’, he writes.

  Athens gives instructions to the Swiss National Bank to transfer fifty million lire to the Bank of Italy in Rome. Benito Mussolini claims victory. The hero of Fiume has been eclipsed by the hero of Corfu.

  DOORN: Wilhelm is excited by the visit of a German cultural anthropologist, just returned from Africa. Under his spell, the Kaiser becomes an enthusiastic convert to the idea that Germany’s true destiny is not, as he had previously thought, to be the bulwark of the West against the various racial and political perils from the east, but to be natural leader of the Orient.

  It is as if the scales have been lifted from his eyes, the Kaiser says. The British and the French, he has now realised, are not even white. They are ‘negroes and berbers’ masquerading as whites. Meanwhile, it is Germany’s purity of race which will make a natural leader of those other eastern nations who respect that kind of thing. It all clicks into place. So taken is the Kaiser by this latest visitor (and his latest theories) that he decides to give him a signed photograph the next day, scrawling grandly on it that ‘while the West may go under, Germany never will’. Germany’s true enemy is not the Bolsheviks. It is the same as it ever was–England!

  BONN, GERMANY: ‘The Lower Rhine is wonderful despite the gloomy sky, the threatening level of the dollar, and the occupation’, Einstein writes to his new secretary, Betty, twenty years his junior. He has fallen in love with her. He writes her poems. Perhaps it is all part of Albert’s mid-life crisis, alongside the search for a perfect unified theory. To his wife, Albert writes in rather darker tones. He tells Elsa to hide the silver, in case the unstable situation in Germany leads to a fresh revolution, and advises her to use up a little Czech money they have at the bank.

  MUNICH: Adolf gives an expansive interview to an American journalist explaining that while Germany could once have shared the world with England, those days are gone. ‘Now, we can stretch our cramped limbs only towards the east’, he says. ‘The Baltic is necessarily a German lake.’

  He talks freely about his racial policies. ‘The fact that a man is decent is no reason why we should not eliminate him’, Hitler says, reminding his interviewer that hand grenades and artillery shells during the war made no moral distinction between the pure and the impure.

  He advocates patriotic ruthlessness. Syphilitics and alcoholics must not be allowed to reproduce. ‘The preservation of a nation is more important than the preservation of its unfortunates’, Adolf declares. ‘That, to me, is the essence of humanity.’

  VIENNA: An Austrian surgeon, known for his ground-breaking work on the war wounded, writes up his case notes. ‘Operation at the Sanatorium Auersperg. Assistants: Dr Hofer and Dr Bleichsteiner’, he begins. ‘Cut through the middle of the upper lip, then around the nose till half height’, he scrawls, ‘after that broad cut around the buccal mucous membrane.’ Like a geologist, the surgeon records cutting through bone and chiselling teeth before he can get at what he needs to remove: ‘finally pulling forward the tumour and severing the nervus pterygoideus internus’, a nerve at the very back of the mouth, where the jaw meets the skull. Where the cancer has been cut out, a prosthesis is fitted. There is relatively little bleeding. The patient’s pulse is recorded as good: sixty-four. He must be fed through his nose. He is given injections of camphor for the pain.

  It is a week before the patient writes a letter to his mother explaining his absence and warning that she may not see him for some time. When he returns home three weeks after his operation he admits to feeling ‘broken and enfeebled’. Not more than a month later, he must submit to the surgeon’s scalpel a second time. And then a third, this time to undergo a fashionable operation believed to boost his chances of recovery: the severing of his spermatic duct.

  Freud avoids his friends. He cannot work. His speech recovers slowly, and when at last it does come back it sounds different, with the air whistling past his ill-fitting prosthesis as if between two reeds. His hearing is impaired. Is he half alive or is he half dead? Sometimes he does not know.

  BAYREUTH, GERMANY: Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the well-known racist, Wagner family member and sometime correspondent of the Kaiser, is delighted that Bavaria’s nationalists have chosen Bayreuth, once home of Richard Wagner, as a site for one of their famous rallies. ‘Preparations for the German Day bring the house to life’, he writes in his diary: ‘wheel-chair ride through the flag-strewn town gave me a good deal of pleasure.’ Red, white and black flags of the empire are flown rather than the black, red and yellow of the republic. The purpose, a local newspaper explains, ‘is to show un-German elements that the time of hiding German patriotism in one’s heart, and not showing the German blood that runs in German veins, is over’.

  Adolf arrives at a quarter past eleven on Saturday evening to be greeted with the rolling of drums and the sounding of trumpets. The following morning, festivities begin at six-thirty: ‘much activity from dawn till dusk’, Chamberlain notes. An open-air religious service evokes the spirit of 1914, followed by a march-past of the SA and other nationalist militias (estimates of the numbers involved vary wildly). Police patrol the event with rubber truncheons, on the lookout for left-wing protesters. Someone who shouts ‘Heil Moscow!’ is quickly bundled away. Cosima Wagner, the great composer’s widow, watches the procession from the terrace of the Wagner residence, Wahnfried.

  That evening Adolf speaks at an indoor riding-arena. He is one of several nationalist speakers addressing the crowds around the city. The Bavarian authorities have warned them to avoid political controversy by criticising Kahr. They decide to court controversy instead. That night, Adolf visits Chamberlain, the idol of his youth. The old racist and young Nazi are both moved by their encounter. For Hitler, the meeting amounts to holy unction.

  The next morning at ten-thirty, Chamberlain waits in his wheelchair outside Wahnfried to give Adolf a tour of the house and introduce him to the Wagner family: Cosima, her son Siegfried, and Winifred, Siegfried’s English-born wife. Adolf shows up in short Bavarian leather trousers, a check shirt and thick woollen socks. Cosima is unimpressed (she has seen more dramatic figures in her time). Siegfried, a composer like his father, is much keener on the visitor. Winifred, originally from the English coastal town of Hastings,
is keenest of all. Adolf weeps at Wagner’s grave. He was twelve when he saw his first Wagner opera, Lohengrin, he remembers. The press are informed about Adolf’s meeting with the Wagners. It is another step in the creation of the Hitler myth, a symbolic fusing of Nazism with the traditions of high German Romanticism. It gives Nazism a cultural pedigree.

  A week later, the emotion has still not worn off for Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Meeting you, he writes to Adolf, was like feeling the spirit of August 1914 all over again: ‘You have transformed the state of my soul’. ‘That Germany can produce a Hitler in its moment of direst need, is proof that it still lives.’ The letter feeds Adolf’s sense of himself as a national Messiah. Germany must be saved and he is its saviour.

  DÜSSELDORF: The same day that the Nazis march through Bayreuth, a quite different sort of demonstration takes place in Düsseldorf, in the French zone of the occupied Rhineland.

  Hundreds of green, white and red flags–the colours of those who want an independent Rhineland–flutter in the air. Thousands of activists gather to hear their political leaders. French observers watch proceedings at a discreet distance, not wanting the rally to look too much like a front for their own interests.

  A little before four in the afternoon, having heard the rumour that the separatists are about to formally declare an independent Rhenish republic, members of the local German police sally forth to break things up, swords flashing, guns out. The demonstrators race into nearby alleyways to take cover. The Rheinlandschutz, a pro-separatist militia, fires at the police. A battle develops near the railway station. French troops restore order. The German police are disarmed. Three hundred protestors are locked up. There are numerous casualties on all sides: two hundred have been wounded, a dozen killed.