Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  The P.A. knew exactly what to expect. He knew that last January Adi had lost more than half a million of his best troops by slaughter or surrender at Stalingrad, and that in May he had lost three or four hundred thousand more in Tunisia. Adi must know that the attack on Sicily could be only a matter of weeks, and that when Sicily had fallen, Italy would be only a few miles away, and Southern Italy had airfields from which his native land of Austria and his adopted land of Bavaria might be bombed day and night. F.D.R. had told his agent that America had turned out more than seven thousand airplanes in the month of May, and would raise that to eight or nine thousand during the summer; Adi might not have those figures, but would know exactly how much damage was being done to his airplane plants, his synthetic oil plants, his coal mines and steel mills and other means of war production. He would learn about them from reports which were specially prepared for him in large type, so that he could read them without revealing the fact that he was nearsighted.

  He was a man being driven beyond endurance and sustained by a fantastic variety of drugs administered by a quack doctor of venereal diseases. He was subject to wild fits of rage and might drive himself into one in which he was impelled to punish the one American whom he happened to have at hand. Knowing this, Lanny had prepared a series of communications so intriguing that the Führer’s attention would be held by them. Had he not himself laid down the dictum in Mein Kampf that the bigger the lie the easier to get it believed? People would say that nobody would have the nerve to say such things if they were not true. Had he not appointed the Prince of Lies as his propaganda minister, the crooked little Herr Doktor Goebbels, who had persuaded the German people to swallow more absurdities than had ever been thought up by a statesman in modern times? Lanny hadn’t come here to tell Hitler any truth that was avoidable; he had come to try out a set of inventions which he hoped might be better than Hitler’s and Goebbels’ combined.

  III

  Die Nummer Eins, the Germans’ number one hero and Lanny’s number one foe, was a man of medium height, wearing “the simple soldier’s tunic” which he had put on at the beginning of the war and had promised the German people never to remove until victory was won. That, of course, was a symbolical statement; it didn’t mean that he would never take a bath, but merely that after the bath he would put on the same kind of costume.

  He had grown stouter, and it showed unpleasantly in his cheeks and nose. His flesh was flabby and his complexion pale. He wore a harassed look, and the cordiality which had been in his manner in days of peace was lacking. He could not forget that it was Lanny’s countrymen whose crude material power was threatening the foundations of his noble thousand-year Reich. The last time he had launched into a tirade on the subject, and Lanny now wanted to keep that from being repeated. He clasped the Führer’s moist white hand and exclaimed, “This time I have brought you really good news!”

  The Führer needed news of that sort; so he said, “Wirklich, Herr Budd? By all means, let me have it. Setzen Sie sich.”

  It had been the P.A.’s intention, before taking this trip, to motor or fly across the United States and pay a call upon half a dozen of the most powerful opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He would visit San Simeon again, and let Mr. Hearst pour out his embittered soul, and see how near a powerful publisher could be brought to a program of action in defense of the “free enterprise” system. He would make the acquaintance of Colonel McCormick, who controlled the thinking of several million Americans in the Middle West, and who during the last presidential election had counted the days left to “save America” from the calamity of a third term. He would call on Mr. Du Pont and Mr. Pew and Mr. Gannett, wealthy gentlemen who put up the campaign funds for the reactionary wing of the Republican party. He would lead them to vent their fury, and then would take it to the Führer and multiply it by ten.

  Circumstances having blocked that program, Lanny had to fall back upon the evening and part of a morning he had spent at Friendship House, meeting a dozen of the most bitter anti-New Dealers and Nazi appeasers in the United States. He had had a talk with Mr. Harrison Dengue, the super-industrialist with a scheme to kidnap the President. Mr. Dengue had introduced him to General Gullion, Provost-Marshal of the United States, who had control of home defenses and of the Army in the New York military district in which the President’s Hyde Park home was situated. Also, Lanny had renewed his acquaintance with Senator Reynolds, who was Mrs. McLean’s son-in-law and published a paper and headed a movement with nearly all the ideas and trappings he had picked up in Naziland. Lanny had listened to the wild talk of Cissie Patterson, Colonel McCormick’s cousin and publisher of a bitterly reactionary newspaper in the national capital. And, of course, there had been the hostess, with the biggest diamond in the world on her bosom and a mule-skinner’s angry language pouring from her lips.

  A large group of the friends of Friendship House held the conviction that the present war was playing into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and if fought to a finish would leave them in control of all Europe. These friends believed that F.D.R. knew this and didn’t care, because he was no better than a Bolshevik himself, only he was too shrewd to put the label on. What he had done was to promote income taxes that were confiscatory, and a whole set of other measures calculated to lift the poor up and pull the rich down. The Friendship rich loathed him and had no hesitation in calling him names and suggesting that “somebody” ought to kill him. That was as far as they would go in public; what they would whisper in private Lanny took the liberty of imagining, and when he poured it out to Adolf Hitler he gave that chief of counterrevolution the happiest hour he had spent in many a month.

  It was all a pipe dream, of course; but Adi was living on drugs these days, and he swallowed dose after dose and called for more. Evidently he was watching American affairs closely; he had an extraordinary memory for both friends and foes, and had heard of every person his visitor named. He wanted the details regarding each one’s wealth and position and activities, and even his or her personal appearance. Lanny was careful not to name anyone he couldn’t describe; having reinforced his own knowledge with that of Jim Stotzlmann, a walking encyclopedia of social gossip, he was able to pour out a flood of “really good news.” Never in the fifteen years that he had been dealing with this genius-madman had he enjoyed such a sense of making a hit.

  IV

  What was to be done? The Führer had his program, and the only problem was to get the masters of America to understand it. There must be immediate peace between Germany and Italy on the one hand and America and Britain and France on the other. All three of the so-called democratic nations would be left with everything they had, and the smaller nations, Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Norway, would be set free. America would be at liberty to conquer the Japanese and to take the whole Pacific, and South America too if she wanted it. All that Hitler wanted was a chance to go at Russia. He wouldn’t ask help from anybody; he would put the Reds out of business and keep them out for a thousand years, and what more could any American capitalist or man of great affairs desire?

  It was all so obvious to the Führer, he could not understand how anyone could fail to see it, and he wanted Lanny to tell him how and why they did fail. The experienced P.A. knew better than to try; he said they were coming to understand the situation now. The class lines were forming rapidly in America, you could almost see it happening.

  “But there is no time to spare,” insisted Hitler; “the issue will be decided this summer!” He didn’t say that his armies might not be able to hold the Russians, but Lanny knew well what was behind the desperate urgency in his voice. Lanny had been in Berlin in February, when the Reichswehr and the Nazi party had been combing countryside and city slums for new manpower; they had taken the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, the fifty-five-year-olds, the once- and the twice-wounded, the tubercular and the syphilitic. All these were now in the lines, and how long would they be able to hold?

  “It is the most perilous crisis in t
he history of the world, Herr Budd. And you Americans are making it, compelling me to send seventeen divisions to stiffen the backbone of the Italians.” Lanny did not fail to take note of the figure; it was the same that his Boss had given him a few days previously. The Führer’s lack of discretion was the despair of his generals; but perhaps he was indiscreet only as Lanny was, by forethought, telling those things which he could be sure the other person already knew.

  Lanny followed this technique and told his chief enemy what he had observed of Allied preparations in Algiers and Bizerte. There could be no question that a landing in Sicily was being prepared, and it was hardly to be imagined that the joint armies would resist the temptation to cross the narrow strait to the Italian mainland, where they would find so many airfields, easy to repair. Lanny had obtained Roosevelt’s permission to say this, not merely to Hitler, but to the Italians he might meet. The island of Pantelleria had just been bombed into surrender, and all the airfields of Sicily and the tip of the boot were being bombed day and night; this pattern of gaining air control before attempting a landing had become standard, and no military man would fail to recognize it. Of course it was possible to bomb two areas and thus create uncertainty as to which was to be invaded; but in this case the Allies were not bothering with any such device. Their every move spoke Sicily.

  V

  The Führer wanted to know by what route his messenger had come, and Lanny narrated how he had hired a fisherman to sail him in a boat from a small place on the Tunisian coast, La Calle. You could do anything with the Americans if you were willing to spend money, and the same was true of the Italians. This led, by Lanny’s intention, to the subject of Hitler’s exhausted and reluctant ally. Lanny didn’t say that the Italians had been dragged into the war against their will; he said they were now frightened and sick, when they realized that they were scheduled to be blasted, first with bombs and then with artillery. The Italians in New York were as busy as bees, trying to figure out a way to prevent this, and they had evolved the idea that Italy might make a separate peace on condition that the Allies would not use the peninsula as a base from which to attack Germany or German-held territory.

  “You must tell me what would be your attitude to such a proposal, mein Führer,” said the respectful agent; and Hitler replied that he might be willing to consider it, but he doubted if the Allies would consent, or would keep their word if they gave it. “You know well that it is Churchill’s program to attack through the soft ‘underbelly’ of Europe.”

  Lanny answered, “Yes, but supposing my friends should succeed in putting Roosevelt out of the way—it is not likely that Churchill could hold out very long.”

  “In that case, of course, it would be a different matter; we should negotiate a peace as quickly as possible—with every country except. Russia. Meantime I should say that the idea of peace between Italy and the Allies, on the basis of the inviolability of Italian territory, might make an excellent talking point, especially among Italians.”

  “You would be willing for me to tell them it is your idea?.”

  “Surely. It will tend to convince them that we are reasonable, while it is the Judeo-democracies which plan to destroy the treasures of Italian art and culture in the vain effort to break through our southern defense wall.”

  VI

  This was an important point the P.A. had gained. It would enable him to pose as Hitler’s representative in Rome, and to have something definite to propose and to ask questions about. One more thing he wanted, and that was for Hitler to want him to go. Then he would be safe against all enemies—save only Hitler’s enemies. He began, “I must not fail to warn you, mein Führer, that there are many Italians, and some of them high-placed, who have treason in their hearts; fair-weather friends who got fame and wealth by espousing your cause, but who now are getting ready to desert what they believe to be a sinking ship.”

  “I am not unaware of that situation, Herr Budd, and am taking steps to protect our sacred cause. Any information you can give me will be carefully noted.”

  “Unfortunately, mein Führer, all that I know is secondhand. I had only a few hours in Italy. I went straight to Marshal Kesselring, because I wished to take no risk of falling into the hands of the Italian police with an American passport in my pocket.”

  “You were wise in that. What do you intend to do now?”

  “I promised Signor Pope, one of my influential Italian friends in New York, that I would meet some of his friends in Rome and find out how the land lies there. I have been told that the Duce’s own son-in-law has begun to weaken, and that is the reason Il Duce removed him as foreign secretary and sent him to the Vatican, where intrigues are indigenous and do no harm.”

  “I have a whole dossier on Ciano on my desk now, Herr Budd, and you may assure your friends that their suspicions are fully justified.”

  “I have heard also that Dino Grandi has begun to listen to the song of the sirens.”

  “That too is no idle rumor.”

  “And General Badoglio, the old dotard, of course hates Il Duce, because Il Duce made him carry the blame for the collapse of his armies in the Greek war.”

  “Stimmt auch!”

  “There are other names I might mention; but, as you know, I have never been accustomed to deal in secondhand information. Since there is nothing more I can do in the States at the moment, it has occurred to me that I might spend some time in Rome and see what information I can pick up for you. It happens by a fortunate circumstance that I can get access to the right circles because of the fact that one of my oldest friends in France has a niece who is married to a member of the Roman nobility. My French friend is Denis de Bruyne, the wealthy industrialist who helped to finance the Cagoule. He was arrested by the French police at the time their plans were exposed, some six years ago. He is a man to be trusted.”

  “I know of him by reputation, Herr Budd. I do not forget the friends of our cause. If he could have had his way, it would not have been necessary for me to invade and conquer France.”

  “His niece is the Marchesa di Caporini, and if the son of Budd-Erling Aircraft were to show up in Rome, with plenty of money in his pockets and confidential messages from important Italians in New York, he would have no trouble in reaching the right persons and gaining their confidence.”

  “May I have the pleasure of furnishing the money, Herr Budd?”

  “No, mein Führer, I want to be listed as one of those persons who really believes in your cause and thinks no more about personal gain than yourself. I am still able to carry on my profession of art expert. Would you believe it, with the help of Reichsmarschall Göring’s staff I was able to purchase a couple of paintings from a Jew in Berlin and to store them in Sweden; when I got to New York I was able by paying a sum to the right party to get permission to bring them into the country, and I made enough to pay for the trip.”

  “Herrlich, Herr Budd!” For the first time that day the Führer permitted himself a chuckle. “Do you expect to do that sort of thing in Rome?”

  “That is part of my camouflage, Exzellenz. Every Italian will understand the desire to make money, and all take it for granted that American millionaires do not care what they pay for anything.”

  “Then there is nothing I can do for you?”

  “Yes; you will have to give me a letter to your Marshal, telling him that I am all right; and it might be a good idea to drop a hint to Il Duce, so that his police will let me alone.”

  “Kesselring will attend to the Italians for you. Mussolini is a difficult man to deal with, and he is in a contrary mood at present. I am going to have to have a talk with him soon and put him in his place.”

  The P.A.’s face wore an understanding smile. “A lower place than he feels entitled to, I am sure. Il Duce would not remember me, but when I was young I had two encounters with him. One was at the San Remo Conference, just after World War I. I saw him in a violent dispute with some of his comrades who resented his too sudden change of front. A yea
r or two later at Cannes I was present when a friend of mine interviewed him for an English newspaper. You know, mein Führer, in those days we young fellows imagined we were Socialists.”

  “I am still a Socialist, Herr Budd.”

  “Of course; but I refer to the international variety. It was you who taught me the difference between sound National Socialism and the bogus Marxian kind, and for that I owe you an eternal debt of gratitude. For a while, if you remember, I held myself aloof; I didn’t want to admit that you were right, but events forced me to do so. I think it was the riots I saw in Paris that made up my mind. Heinrich Jung and Kurt Meissner helped to make your ideas clear to me.”

  “Kurt came to see me not long ago,” put in the Führer. “I was saddened to see him crippled by wounds, but his spirit is undaunted, and it strengthened mine.”

  This gave the visitor a chance to pour out a mouthful of words about the strength of the Führer’s spirit, and how it stood like the Brandenburg Gate, a monument to war which so far the war had not touched. Such remarks went down as well with Adi as with all dictators and despots through the ages; his ability to absorb compliments increased with the years, and it had become less and less possible for him to tolerate the presence of persons who disagreed with him. The fact that this gracious and elegant Kunstsachverständiger came from abroad lent weight to his praise; his voice represented what the judgment of the Anglo-Saxon world would be when it had come to its senses and realized that Adolf Hitler had been from the outset the staunch defender of Western culture against the advancing hordes of the East. Lanny was in all probability the only American whom the Führer had met in a long time, and it was balm to a tormented soul to be told that the powerful nation was preparing to switch from the side of incarnate evil to that of incarnate righteousness.