Nuremberg
Page 1
NUREMBERG
The Reckoning
William F. Buckley Jr.
Copyright © William F. Buckley Jr. 2003
The right of William F. Buckley Jr. to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2003 by Harvest.
This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.
For my fellow author , sister , and godchild : Carol Buckley
Table of Contents
Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Book Two
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Book Three
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Book Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Book Five
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Acknowledgments
Book One
Chapter One
Hamburg , August 30, 1939
His eyes lingered longer than usual on the headlines as he walked by the corner newsstand, the summer leaves of the overhanging oak trees brushing down over the canvas awning that protected the papers and magazines and cigarettes of the little kiosk from summer rains. Today, no headline especially arrested his attention. There was nothing beyond the run of diplomatic crises he was now numb to — England denounces German threats to Poland ... Poland asserts its independence ... Great Britain and France pledge aid to Poland if attacked ... Moscow signs nonaggression pact with Berlin . Nothing new, nothing brand new — this last, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was already a week old. Axel tried to close it all out of his mind.
Past the stand, turning right on Abelstrasse, Axel Reinhard was only three blocks from his apartment. He gripped hard the handle of his briefcase and looked fleetingly at his watch.
Back at the office there had been a bon voyage party. Franz Heidi, the senior partner of the engineering firm, had invited a half-dozen colleagues of Heidl & Sons, and also Debra — always — the office manager, to the tenth floor partners’ meeting room. They had come to the boardroom at 1900, as bidden (“Please to be prompt!”) to have a brandy and wish Axel a happy holiday in America ( As you know , the invitation read, Axel is taking a month’s leave to accompany Annabelle and their son Sebastian to New York . Young Sebastian will be going to school in America .).
“Heinrich and Fritz Hassler — ” Herr Heidl called for silence, tapping lightly on the cognac bottle with the back of his fountain pen “ — phoned in their regrets. I don’t need to tell you, Axel, about the press of work at Heidl & Sons. Fritz sends his compliments and Debra, who couldn’t be with us, sends her...” he raised his brandy glass and paused for emphasis, “her love!” There was a murmur of appreciation (Debra, Hassler’s secretary, was seventy years old; Axel was not yet thirty-six). “Be sure and tell that to Annabelle when you get home tonight. She may refuse to sail with you!”
Axel, looking down on his short, bald boss, accepted the toast with a smile and a little bow of his head, his abundant dark hair insufficiently tended. “I’m surprised Debra didn’t send her love to my son. After all, Sebastian is almost fourteen.”
“Is he also a lady-killer?” Heidi’s leer was theatrically contrived, and the company laughed.
“What school in America are you sending him to?” Heinz Jutzeler, the youngest of the engineers in the room, wanted to know. Jutzeler had spent three years in Washington when his father served as cultural attaché for Chancellor Hindenburg, in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Though he had returned to Hamburg at age thirteen, Jutzeler fancied himself something of an expert on America.
“He will go to school in Phoenix. Phoenix — ” Axel assumed a professorial air and began with a word or two in an exaggerated British accent “ — iss the capital of Ahr - isohn - a .” He ended the imitation and, in his native, idiomatic German, told his colleagues and well-wishers (more properly, he reminded them: Like almost every German in the professional class, the engineers at Heidl & Sons were well-grounded in geography and history) that the state of Arizona had been incorporated into the United States in 1912, that Phoenix was the state’s capital, that to the south of it lay Mexico, to the east, New Mexico, to the west, California. “Why did you and Annabelle choose Arizona?”
“My mother-in-law — my generous mother-in-law — has property there and will superintend Sebastian’s education after Annabelle comes back here to us.”
The silence was considered, though nobody gave voice to the reason for it. Why would a thirteen-year-old with a U.S. passport hurry to return to Hamburg, Germany, in 1939?
Jutzeler broke the silence, harking back to the subject of Arizona. He liked to frame his remarks in the practical coin of his trade. “For the benefit of my colleagues, Phoenix, Arizona, would be, traveling west from New York, about the same distance as Moscow, traveling east, is from us here in Hamburg. Now that Herr von Ribbentrop has made a pact with Comrade Stalin, we must all expect, one day, to visit, as tourists, the Communist land we were taught so diligently to scorn — ”
“Heinz!” Axel’s face contorted with derisive pain. “No no no ! Moscow is much closer. From here to Moscow by train — two days, one night. To Phoenix from New York, three days, two nights.”
“You may be right. Just my impression...”
“You get back when, Axel?” Germaine, the heavyset archivist, her eyeglasses hanging below her neck, wanted to know.
“In one month,” Axel said. “Don’t let them muck up the Rohrplatz Tower while I’m gone.” There was laughter. Herr Heidl beamed with pride, taking a folder from a shelf alongside and opening it to exhibit an artist’s sketch of the Rohrplatz Center in Hamburg’s industrial zone, scheduled for completion in three months; perhaps, with the hectic construction schedule in Germany, in time for Christmas.
A quarter of an hour later, after downing a second brandy, Herr Heidl said that he couldn’t speak for everyone in the room but he, as s
enior partner in Heidl & Sons, had more to do, before finally going home, than merely drink brandy with his colleagues. “We all know that engineers are not exactly busy in America, never mind the vigorous economic policies of Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal,” he jibed. “But unemployment certainly isn’t a problem in the Third Reich. Lieber Axel, may God be with you.”
Axel shook Herr Heidi’s hand, and then the hands of the others, who had got the signal that the party was over. He kissed Germaine lightly on her ample forehead and returned to his office at the other end of the floor to pick up his meticulously packed briefcase. A raincoat over one arm, he stepped into the freshly painted hallway and rang for the elevator. At the desk in the entrance hall he initialed the register and wrote down the hour. The one-legged clerk nodded at him. “Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler,” Axel responded.
Chapter Two
August 30 , 1939
He passed through the wrought iron gate at 38 Hempelstrasse into the compound of the twin apartment buildings. In the stretch of carefully tended lawn, used as a children’s playground, he spotted Sebastian. The tall, determined boy was dressed in navy blue playing shorts and the red-and-white-striped soccer shirt of the Bismarck Gymnasium. His trim brown hair askew, he was manipulating the soccer ball with gangly yet deft legs, shunting it into the sturdy wooden standing board with the painted white markers that framed the prime target area. Spotting his father, Sebastian stooped to pick up the ball as it bounded back. “Papa, can I take this with me to America? It is a very special ball, not just like any other ball.”
“You are to speak to me in English,” Axel reminded his son. That was the household rule. At home, Annabelle would join in the convention, speaking in English, her native tongue. Axel, emigrating to America, would soon have continuing practice in English, the language he had learned during his four years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Sebastian, though speaking in German all day long at school in Hamburg, would maintain the English spoken to him by both his parents, since his birth in Hamburg just after New Year’s Day in 1926.
But that little correction was beside the point for Sebastian, the point being: Would he be permitted to take his beloved soccer ball with him on the SS Europa , on which, at midnight tomorrow, they’d set sail for New York?
“You can take it if it will deflate to absolutely flat.”
“I thought you said the Europa was a luxury liner?”
“It is. It and its sister ship, the Bremen . They are the transatlantic pride of the...Fatherland.”
“Are they better than the Queen Mary and the Normandie ?”
“The British make good ships and have a long tradition. And the French crossing with the Normandie last year — or was it the year before? — set a world record — “
“So ours are only the second best?”
Axel put his arm around the shoulder of his son as they walked together to the elevator.
“When you get to school in Arizona and you speak of ‘our’ ships, you will need to remember that you will be thought to be speaking of the America and the Manhattan .”
“But I am German.”
“Perhaps. That decision you’ll need to make — we’ll need to make — on January 3rd, 1944, when you become eighteen. At that point you can declare yourself an American or a German, as you will. Right now you share your mother’s U.S. passport, dating back to when you were born. One day, before long, you will have your own passport, and you can choose to be an American or a German.”
“Which would you prefer me to be, Papa?”
The elevator drew to a stop at the ninth floor. Without answering the question, Axel weighed his shoulder against the apartment door, swinging it open into a room with heavy wooden furniture, three standing lamps, a comfortable couch, two armchairs covered in blue corduroy, and a substantial library of books. There were sprightly prints at either end, and in the little dining area an oil painting of Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a snowfall.
Annabelle kissed her husband and got down to business. She addressed her son, already as tall as she. “They will be picking up our trunk at 1400 tomorrow, Sebastian, and you are to put the sports equipment we agreed on into it.”
“And my soccer ball?”
Axel nodded. “I told him yes, provided he got all the air out of it.”
Annabelle was flustered. She looked up covetously at the oil painting.
“You don’t think, maybe, Axel —”
“Annabelle!” In practiced tones, for the benefit of Sebastian, he said, “We are hardly going to empty an apartment I’ll be living in again in thirty days.”
“Yes yes. Yes.” To Sebastian: “We’ll be taking the suitcases later. They’ll come with us when we’re ready to board.”
“Yippee!” Sebastian had become reconciled, in the last fortnight, to the prospect of leaving Hamburg and going to school in Arizona. What he mostly relished was the idea of crossing the Atlantic Ocean. “What time exactly will we be boarding, Mama? I have a lot of friends I have to call on to say good-bye.”
“A car will pick us up here at eight.”
“I don’t think that gives me enough time.”
“Then you’d better shorten your list of friends.” Annabelle smiled to one side at Axel.
“I’m going to miss my friends,” Sebastian said gravely. “Especially Frederika and Beate. And Wilhelm and Gorky. And Pauline. Especially Pauline. I have promised to write to Pauline every day. Will they take the mail from us every day on the Europa ?”
“What are they supposed to do?” Axel said, thinking to deflate more than just the soccer ball. “Give your daily letters to a pigeon to deliver to Pauline?”
Sebastian, his expression serious, turned playful. “Maybe they can give my letters every day to a submarine, Papa? You know, we have a lot of submarines. The Fuehrer is crazy about submarines.”
Annabelle turned on her son. “Sebastian. Do not use that kind of language about the Fuehrer.”
“I was just joking.”
“Don’t joke about the Fuehrer.”
“In Arizona can we joke about President Roosevelt?”
Annabelle thought quickly of her imperious mother and almost smiled. “In America, in the presence of your grandmother, you can say anything you like about President Roosevelt, provided it’s unpleasant. She voted for Governor Landon. He was the Republican.”
“Why did grandmother go to live in America?”
“Because she fell in love. Grandmas first husband was American. Just like me, your mother, Kitten” — Annabelle sometimes called him that, Kitten , ever since at age three Sebastian announced that he would not go to bed without his kitten — “I’m an American and I fell in love with your father, a German.”
“Maybe it would be easier if Hitler just conquered America.”
His father turned sharply in surprise. Sebastian moved quickly: “ — Or if President Roosevelt just conquered Germany.”
*
They had supper. Sebastian, in high excitement over the great voyage in prospect, was in no mood to go to bed. Annabelle had anticipated his high spirits. But she and Axel had business to look after. Leaving Sebastian at home, they set out for the Olden.
They reached the restaurant-bar on Glacischaussee, convenient to the park. Strollers headed for the great Pflanzen und Blumen, or coming from it, passed by. Patrons could sit outdoors during the season, drinking their beer or coffee, until the October cold led them indoors. A dozen soldiers were there tonight, evidently in from maneuvers because their regimental language and manners were boisterous, self-satisfied, and declamatory. Zoti spotted Axel and Annabelle coming in from the sidewalk and motioned them to the table where they often sat. Zoti had lost an arm in the Great War, but managed adroitly to bring in the tray, putting it down on the table, and then off-loading the pilsner beer he was most often asked for.
He knew that the Reinhards were leaving the next day on their exciting visit to America. He addressed Axel. �
��Since you will be only one month away, would you bring me a souvenir from New York?”
“Anything in particular?”
Zoti asked them to wait. He returned with an envelope. Putting it down on the table, he held it in place with one elbow and withdrew a clipping with his good hand. The story, datelined Milwaukee, described the photograph of a postcard displayed at the bottom of the page. It was a photograph of the United States flag, a minipicture of Adolf Hitler occupying the space in the upper left-hand corner where the forty-eight stars conventionally appeared.
“If you find a postcard like this, would you buy it for me, Herr Reinhard? Buy me...two? It shows we have true friends in America, even if they aren’t running the government.”
Annabelle said hastily, “Of course, Zoti. We will look out for it.”
*
They sat back after Zoti went off to look after other customers.
“So this is it for Hamburg, Axel. We’ve had happy years here. I wonder if we will see it again.”
Nobody, by any measurement, sat within earshot, and it was inconceivable that the table they sat at was being bugged. Even so, Axel winced at what his wife said. He began to speak in slight tones. Teeth slightly gritted, he spoke matter-of-factly, as if addressing a partner in the firm. He recited their carefully framed lines.
“ I will of course see it again in one month. You will stay a month or two with Sebastian and your mother Henrietta and then rejoin me in Hamburg, and Sebastian will come to us for the summer vacation. Perhaps even we can bring him over for Christmas...
“ Have we forgotten anything ?” Her tone jolted him from the rehearsed lines.
“I can’t think what,” he said softly, too weary to keep up the charade. “I’ll wait in America about two weeks. Then I’ll write to Heidi, explain that they’ve offered me a good job in Phoenix and that we have regretfully decided to settle there, with your mother and Sebastian. You have an exact inventory of everything we’re leaving at Hempelstrasse. We can have what we want shipped to us, no problem there. What we don’t want to ship we can give away. 7’he St. Lucas church is always glad to have anything anybody gives them.”