Röhm himself could be seen had Dietrich but raised his eyes to that second-floor window; but this he didn’t do, for his mission was not with Röhm. Instead he scanned each well-known face till he came on a face which he didn’t know, and silently pointed at Lothar. His S.S. aide called the man out, and Lothar sprang forward saluting.
“Who are you?”
“Gruppenführer Kettner....”
“You’re not Kettner! Where is he?”
“He’s broken his leg, and he sent me....”
“I said, where is he?”
“In bed.”
“Where, dumb-bell?”
“At home, in Kammstadt.”
“Kettner: make a note of it,” Dietrich remarked aside to his aide: “Tell Hess where he is.”
The officer made his note, then inquired: “But this young man? Should he....” Sepp Dietrich however was moving on, and Lothar returned to the ranks.
“If only the Führer would come as they say he will,” thought Lothar, “and clear all this up!” For there must be some inexplicable misunderstanding—but no misunderstanding could baffle for long the Führer’s all-seeing eyes....
All day they had stood in the sun and not been allowed one drop of water to drink: Lothar picked up a pebble to suck but he couldn’t, it burned his tongue. “When the Führer comes he will let us all drink, and then set us free.”
Lothar glanced at the westering sun: for a moment it darkened into the Führer’s face, then blazed once more as a ball of fire. Yes, the Führer was more than mortal: the Führer was Fate incarnate, the power that predetermines all human lives. Therefore for some mysterious cause which it wasn’t for Man to try to fathom he must have willed even this misunderstanding, since nothing could happen he had not willed. But the light of his coming presence must just as surely dissolve it again by a further act of his will, for he loved his children....
Lothar had hoped for so much from that Wiessee meeting, but most of all for the chance of seeing the Führer face-to-face—even as once before he had seen him (years ago, during the Putsch) in that upper room at the Bürgerbraükeller with Göring and Ludendorff.... Then the strange coincidence struck him that here was a Lothar once again dressed up in borrowed plumes! Then he’d been accidentally wearing a General’s overcoat: now, this Standartenführer’s uniform equally didn’t belong to him....
Dietrich had backed to the end of the yard, and a sudden movement among the guards caught Lothar’s eye—ah, this must presage the Führer’s arrival at last! But then he looked up and saw Röhm, who had gripped the bars of his window and shook them with all his might. For that was the moment when Dietrich gave the signal, the firing-squads raised their sub-machine guns and started mowing them down; and Lothar at least was to die with a look of intense surprise on his face.
29
Late that same afternoon the Führer (and Göbbels, who stuck to his side like a leech) flew back to Berlin, leaving Hess in Munich to tidy things up—as per instructions.
Berlin had seen Göring and Himmler work to a somewhat wider brief, freely adjusting the “Plot” to fit desirable victims. Not that their hands were entirely free.... To take those three ex-Chancellors first, in common prudence Brüning should have been shot—but in common prudence Brüning had smelled his danger and taken himself abroad. Vice-Chancellor Papen also had got to survive (alas!), since Papen was Hindenburg’s pet and the Old Bull’s approval was needed to cover the whole affair: von Papen’s arrest indeed had been partly to guard against accidents. Still, he had to be given a fright: so two of his closest advisers were shot, his offices seized and ransacked.... Having been shot as it were by proxy, Franz von Papen would certainly take the hint: there’d be no more dangerous Marburg speeches from him!
But the third was ex-Chancellor Schleicher; and here no obstacles stood in the way. Soon after breakfast a friend had been chatting with Schleicher over the phone, and heard him turn to someone behind him saying: “Yes, I am General von Schleicher....” The friend then heard three shots ring out in the General’s house before the phone went dead.
Gregor Strasser was lunching with his wife and children at home when the Gestapo took him away, without saying why or where.... And so on—and so on. Karl Ernst, the Berlin S.A. Leader, didn’t get far on his honeymoon: bridegroom and bride were both arrested at Bremen, about to embark for Maderia. From there he had to be carted back alive to Berlin, for the “Plot” scenario said he’d been caught in the act of trying to seize the city on Röhm’s behalf....
Even Putzi Hanfstängl’s name had somehow got on to somebody’s list, but Putzi was luckier: Putzi was hitting it up with his old college chums at Harvard while all this was going on. So Putzi survived—which nobody minded much, he was nowadays hardly worth powder and shot so far as political influence went. Yet plenty of others worth even less were unluckier. “Luck” where these private enmities were concerned was mostly a matter of bargaining—rather like blackballs at London Clubs: “If my friend So-and-so stays on your list, then your friend What’s-his-name goes on mine—either neither, or both!”
Rumor of course was sizzling all through a frantic city where nobody knew whose turn would be next: “Röhm has committed suicide!” “So has Strasser!” “Schleicher....” The Foreign Press was avid for cast-iron news, and unwilling to wait. That Saturday afternoon, since Göbbels was not yet back from Munich (and Putzi, whose job was the Foreign Press, was abroad), Göring in person called for the correspondents, outlined his “Röhm-Strasser Plot” and gave them a potted lecture on S.A. corruption. “And Schleicher?” somebody asked, as Göring was turning to go.
“Schleicher too had been plotting against the State with a Foreign Power: he was foolish enough to resist arrest, and lost his life in the mêlée.”
So that was that.... But word had arrived that Hitler was shortly expected back, so Göring hadn’t got time to answer any more questions and left them—stunned.
*
Göring and Himmler were both on the tarmac to meet their master at Tempelhof Airfield. But Hitler’s plane was delayed; and before it a tiny Junkers landed from Bremen. Out of it stepped Karl Ernst.... That made the onlookers rub their eyes: Karl Ernst was arriving late for his own execution—announced three hours ago! This the prisoner didn’t know, of course: he took his arrest as some sort of nonsense of Göring’s which Röhm and Hitler between them would soon iron out.... Indeed he died convinced that this was the Rightist coup he’d foreseen—an Army coup, which Göring had joined (which is just what it was, in a way); and shouted “Heil Hitler!” straight in the teeth of the firing-squad.
So what had Ernst really been guilty of (no one believed the official line)? Had Göring, people wondered, wanted him silenced for knowing the truth of the Reichstag Fire?
“Heil Hitler!” At last the Chancellor’s plane was announced, and came in to land.
If Hitler had looked a bit under the weather in Munich, he now looked a great deal worse with his puffy and pallid features lit up by an almost Wagnerian blood-red sunset. To save his voice he greeted the group in silence, shaking their hands; and the only sound as the sun went down was the Guard of Honor clicking their heels.
Then Hitler started towards his car with Göring and Himmler, Göbbels limping behind with a terrible haunted face; and once out of earshot of lesser fry, Himmler pulled out his own list of names—most of them ticked already—a lengthy list, and thoroughly dog-earned by now. Hitler took it and ran his finger down it, asking them questions with Göring and Himmler each side excitedly whispering one in each ear. What about Papen, first? Göring smiled: he had tricked the tricky Vice-Chancellor nicely, luring him round to his private apartments while Himmler was seizing his office.... The fool had tried to pull the “Vice-Chancellor” over him, claiming command in the Chancellor’s absence—wanting to phone the President—wanting the Army called out! But Göring had soon put a stopper on that tommy-rot.... So where was he now? Papen was shut in his home surrounded by armed S.S., cut of
f from the world—unharmed, but equally harmless. Meanwhile Heydrich was having his office files gone through with a tooth-comb, looking for something juicy enough to hold over his head....
Hitler nodded approval. And Schleicher? Ah, the intriguing Field-gray Eminence now lay dead as a doornail, and so did his wife. Hitler nodded approval again. And Strasser? Now Himmler chipped in: his former patron was lodged under lock and key in Prinz Albrechtstrasse Jail, awaiting....
What! Strasser was still alive? From fifty yards off folk saw the Führer jerk back his head in a paroxysm of rage: though only Göring and Himmler himself knew why.
*
Strasser had first been lodged in the crowded jail with a group of others, then moved to a cell alone. Late that night, while Hitler was getting at last some well-earned sleep, his erstwhile Fisher of Men saw a gun-barrel poked through the grille in the door. He moved, and the first shot missed: so he dashed to a corner the gun couldn’t reach. But then the door opened, and Heydrich and Eicke themselves came in to finish the job.
A lowlier jailer followed with bucket and mop to clean up the mess, for Strasser had bled like a pig. But he wasn’t allowed: the blood must remain, a useful exhibit for showing the world what “GESTAPO” henceforth meant.
30
Sunday dawned. As yet the public at large knew little of any “Röhm-Strasser Plot,” nor how narrow the margin by which the Führer’s heroic action (and Göring’s) had saved the State; and Göbbels grew restless. Soon the whole propaganda machine must be thrown into gear, justifying the Purge by blackening Röhm and polishing Hitler’s (and Göring’s) haloes to shine like the noonday sun; and instinct urged him to go on the air at once. But Himmler’s Gestapo begged for the black-out of news to go on for a bit since the killing program had got behind schedule (some unmethodical victims who failed to be found where they ought to have been still had to be hunted down).
At noon the Führer at last got dressed and appeared. In the eyes of his Court he had played his essential part: he should now sit back and relax, leaving them to play theirs without any overwrought Führer under their feet; but that wasn’t to be. He was nervous and over-excited, as if working up to one of his dangerous crises-de-nerfs.
As Friedrich and Brückner knew, yesterday’s strong-arm stuff is only a tithe of a proper adjutant’s job: the rest is more like a kind of running psychiatry, reading and soothing the master-mind. So Brückner got busy arranging a Chancery Garden Party with tea, and ladies, and plenty of sweet sticky cakes; but this couldn’t come off till the afternoon, so the problem of how to avoid any Führer-explosion meanwhile devolved upon Friedrich.
Granite-faced Friedrich was not such a fool as his fine physique had made Ernst suppose, but even he found it hard to divine the cause of his Master’s near-hysterical state. Given the Führer’s solipsist Weltanschauung (whereby the rest of the universe human and otherwise equally ranked as inanimate “things”), yesterday’s slaughter of awkward old friends should have roused in him no more compunction than bulldozing buildings which stood in the way of development schemes; and yet he seemed strangely obsessed by his yesterday’s doings, retelling them over and over again. In somebody lesser—some mere Macbeth—you’d have thought it was Conscience; but Conscience was right out of character....
Something, however, had to be done about it at once; and Friedrich had often found it surprisingly easy to switch this solipsist mind from that artist’s material we distinguish as “men” to some other and rather less sentient form of clay. So he phoned the Führer’s young architect: “Speer—for God’s sake hurry and bring us round anything new you have in the way of models or drawings.”
At first the treatment seemed to succeed: Speer’s elevations and plans for an eighty-feet-high flight of steps, flanked by vast megalithic abutments and topped by a long colonnade, seemed to have a remarkably calming effect. But all of a sudden the Führer straightened his back, exclaiming: “Approved: start building at once.” And then he was off again, pouring the story of yesterday’s deeds into this new pair of ears—as if yesterday’s coup was a chef-d’œuvre in human relations surpassing anything Speer could devise in stone.
He began with his dawn arrival at Wagner’s Ministry: “There stood a group of the traitors, Speer, not even disarmed....” (Not a word about Banquo’s Ghost on the stairs, noted Friedrich, nor corpses laid out on the Minister’s floor.) “These men had plotted my murder—yet none of them dared raise a finger against me. I walked towards them unarmed and alone, and tore off their epaulets.” Next he described his descent on Wiessee, “with no means of knowing if Röhm had machine-guns trained on me through the windows. Everything rested on me, as alone and unarmed I rushed the swine before they could fire a shot.” Then he suddenly stopped, and turned his embarrassing clear blue glare on their blank uncomprehending faces.
What Friedrich read in those eyes was despair at their incomprehension: could none of these fools hoist in.... Then Friedrich at last understood: “Hoist in” that he might have been killed! For after all nothing on earth can equate with a solipsist losing his life, since that is the End of the World itself: so this was simply the after-effect of an eschatological class of fright unknown to mere mortals!
More than ten years had passed (reflected Friedrich) since Hitler had faced those unexpected Residenzstrasse bullets in Munich; and those had given the man his bellyful, judging by “Adolf Légalité” since! The solipsist’s role is to sit up aloft like a Caesar signaling life or death with a thumb, not plunge in the bloody arena himself.
Just before luncheon, disturbing news reached Himmler: the “suicide” Röhm was still alive. Well, if Röhm still refused to do the decent thing he would have to be helped; and Eicke was just the man, so he telephoned Eicke.... So long as Röhm lived the Führer might still revoke and use Röhm against them!
At luncheon itself the Führer was still on the subject of Wiessee; but now he dwelt on the nauseous orgies that bourgeois respectable inn had been forced to witness half Friday night (and even Friedrich was taken aback by his master’s inventive powers). “Those brawny transvestite dancers, those naked boys we saw kept locked in a scented room till needed to satisfy Röhm’s unnatural lusts”: he made it all sound like the late Fritz Krupp’s notorious orgies in Capri, rather than poor old Röhm’s rather shame-faced Consenting Adults—and anyway, why all this fuss? Half of the old Imperial High Command had been perverts (or pseudo-perverts) as part of their cult of manliness, like the Spartans. Early this century General Count von Hasler—the man who demanded “a mountain of corpses,” etc. on which to build a temple to German Kultur: it was dancing before his Kaiser in pink ballet-shirt and a wreath of roses that made him drop dead of a heart-attack....
Now Brückner chipped in, with shocking accounts of Röhm’s Standartenstrasse Berlin headquarters: the opulent tapestries, crystal mirrors and thick pile carpets reminding one more of a millionaire’s whorehouse than Army barracks. Menus the searchers had found of Lucullan banquets on frog-legs, shark-fins, nightingale-tongues and the finest vintage champagnes: the kinky cabaret-programs....
“There” cried Hitler “you have these ascetics who found my revolution too tame for their tastes, and were plotting to kill me and plunge our country in blood in the name of Social Equality!”
Hitler was still in full spate when Brückner’s welcome summons arrived to tea, and Society ladies, and sweet sticky cakes.
*
Tea, and chit-chat, and wonderful summer hats....
That garden-party was still in full swing in Berlin when Eicke reached Stadelheim jail, fresh from the killing of Strasser and anxious to score a double in twenty-four hours. Michael Lippert, also from Dachau, was with him.
They found Röhm stripped to the waist, for the heat in his cell was intense; and his barrel-like body glistened with sweat. “Protocol calls for distinguished heads to fall to distinguished headsmen,” said Eicke by way of explaining his mission. Röhm gave him a look of contempt such as even Eicke
would never forget, then stood to attention while Eicke and Lippert riddled his body with lead.
31
At the back of the Schloss in which Walther and Adèle lived, where high unscalable cliffs overhung the stripling Danube, the room which had once been Mitzi’s was now her mother’s boudoir. Directly beneath its windows projected an inaccessible ledge, where the rock was crowned by a stretch of ruinous rampart which Walther declared was original Roman. Once she took over the room, Adèle had steep wooden stairs built down from the window to reach it: then she had baskets of soil and afterwards vines and plants carried through the house, to make it her private garden—a miniature Eden grown in an eyrie. Enough of the ancient walls remained for protection from wind and to stop you falling over the edge; and for shade she had them re-roof a roofless watch-tower, turning it into a summerhouse.
That had been ten years ago; and for all these years an Adèle decked in yellow gardening-gloves had tended her plants like gems. But alas, she had made her lovely private garden too lovely and now it was private no longer. This Sunday morning—as often, in summer—the whole Kessen Clan was gathered in “Grossmutter’s Garden” for breakfast, trampling her rock-plants and even bringing their dogs. The whole of the Clan, because though nowadays Franz and his family lived on their own on the floor above his parents this was a Sunday, and Walther adored his grandchildren.
Tables were there already; but everything else must be carried down outside stairs that were narrow and steep as a fire-escape. Franz’s little Leo could manage alone, by crawling down backwards on hands and knees; but Ännchen had got to be carried, and so had the wriggling dachshunds. Then came the coffee-urn with its antique spirit-stove (for Walther insisted always on coffee at boiling-point): the basins of hard-boiled eggs, the ham, the numerous kinds of sausage, the crocks of butter straight from the icehouse, the long loaves of bread, the china and knives and forks, the sugar, the jugs of cream—and of course the Baron’s own Dundee Marmalade. Meanwhile, as Lies trapesed up and down those ladder-like steps with her loads like a giant spider climbing its thread, Leo and Ännchen stood at the bottom and peered unashamedly up her skirts. For those puppy-fat knees which had once caught Augustine’s eyes were now at least three times their former girth; they were thicker than Leo’s waist.
The Wooden Shepherdess Page 34
