The Man Who Walked Backward

by Ben Montgomery

  By the time the backward ambassador from Abilene arrived in Berlin, men in brown uniforms were hanging posters on city walls, advertising a speech for the following week at the Sportpalast by the leader of the National Socialist Party, or the Fascists, the group Joseph Goebbels was referring to in his Christmas column.

  The charismatic party chief was growing more popular by the day, riding a tide of unhappy people who seemed to enjoy being told that they were unhappy. In 1929, his political party had fewer than half a dozen members on the national legislative body, the Reichstag. By 1930, it had won an astonishing 107 seats. By September 1931, the party had garnered six million votes in national polling to emerge as the second-largest political party in Germany.

  They viewed their leader as a martyr. Years before, he had tried to take over the government by force in Munich. The coup attempt started in a beer hall, and it failed. He went to prison for nine months, but this served to bring attention to his cause and give him time to write a book called My Fight.

  He was chauvinist. He was fascist. He was nationalist. People loved him. Those who didn’t were scared of those who did. Those who did came by the thousands to see him, packing halls and waiting, waiting, for he was perpetually late. They did not mind waiting. The stadiums and arenas where he was to deliver speeches felt festive, like carnivals. The observers stood because there were always more bodies than seats. It was next to impossible to leave because the crowds were so thick they blocked the exits. And when he emerged to shouts of “Heil! Heil!” it was as though the people were in bondage to him, would do anything he asked.

  The establishment treated him like a joke at first, an outlier and extremist, until their laughter was stifled by the sheer number of people who believed the things he said. He tailored his speeches to his audiences. Before businessmen, he talked about economic policy. But when he spoke before the masses of disenfranchised citizens, his speeches were all blood and thunder and racist rhetoric. He frightened them and comforted them.

  He promised an assortment of government reforms, but chief among them, at the top of his list, was the jingoistic and immeasurable vow that he would make Germany great again.

  And swift was his rise. He claimed now that he represented 15 million voters, and his party viewed 1932 as the “year of decisions,” moving its headquarters from Munich to Berlin. German president Paul von Hindenburg issued an emergency decree in December 1931, imposing a stoppage on political activities during the holidays. That expired on January 3, 1932. The American press was calling the upcoming season “one of the most dramatic periods in the history of the German republic.” Democracy hung in the balance.

  In the early months of 1932, everyone was talking about whether Hindenburg would run for president again. He was eighty-five years old, and another election cycle might negatively impact the old field marshal’s health. German chancellor Heinrich Brüning was toying with the idea of asking the parliament, the Reichstag, to extend Hindenburg’s term in office. That meant changing the constitution, and changing the constitution meant convincing the National Socialist Party to get on board with the idea. So Brüning sent his defense and interior minister to meet with the National Socialist party leader, to see if he’d support the idea. “A likeable impression, modest, orderly man who wants the best,” was Minister Wilhelm Groener’s take on Adolf Hitler. “External appearance of an ambitious autodidact. Hitler’s intentions and goals are good but he’s an enthusiast, glowing and multifaceted.”

  A week later, Hitler rejected the offer, hypocritically citing constitutional concerns when everyone knew that the first thing he’d do if he took power was gut the constitution. A week after that, Hitler’s publicity man first proposed the idea of him running for president against Hindenburg. “Hitler has to become Reich president,” Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary. “That’s the only way. That’s our slogan. He hasn’t decided yet. I’ll continue to drill away.”

  The problem was that Hindenburg was very popular among right-wingers, and if Hitler ran, he stood a good chance of losing, and losing might shatter the image he was trying to create, of an invincible savior who could not be defeated.

  “Hitler is waiting too long,” Goebbels wrote on January 28.

  “When will Hitler decide?” he wrote on January 30. “Does he not have the nerve?”

  The elections were six weeks away. Hitler talked to the press at Weimar, then traveled to Munich, then returned to Berlin to deliver a speech at the Sportpalast, the days ticking by with no word about whether he would run. He was trying to wait out Hindenburg. If the prodemocracy camp threw its support behind Hindenburg, whom they’d vigorously opposed in 1925, Hitler was better situated to get all the support of the nationalist right wing.

  “Machiavelli,” Joseph Goebbels wrote. “But correct.”

  On February 15, 1932, before the Night of Broken Glass and the Night of the Long Knives, before the burning of the Reichstag and disposal of the Treaty of Versailles, and before an ethnic genocide the world would never forget, Paul von Hindenburg announced he was again running for president, to save the Weimar Republic, and his announcement paved the way for the nationalist newcomer Adolf Hitler to begin preparing an unprecedented presidential campaign, gushing, “Now the battle has been declared.”

  And a man from Texas, wearing a pressed and mended suit because he wanted to look his best, walked backward into Berlin.

  * * *

  “Misery and poverty are guests in the farmhouses,” Joseph Goebbels had written in his Christmas column. Plennie Wingo was a guest in the farmhouses too, and he found poverty but no misery to speak of. The folks he met in the German countryside between Hamburg and Berlin were nothing but kind and gracious, giving freely of their food and inviting him to spend the night in their homes. He was a curiosity, a walking carnival. His story in the Hamburg newspaper helped explain what he was doing to those who spoke no English. The American cigarettes helped break any ice. Many were curious about his scrapbook, and he was surprised at the number of Germans who understood who Jimmy Walker was and wanted to see his autograph.

  He realized early on that he would have to rely on friendship to get him through, since public inns or motels were difficult to find. This meant fewer daily miles. What had been short roadside conversations in America took more time here and involved a more universal form of discourse, like pantomime or charades. He was glad for the sacrifice because he was just as interested in the daily lives of the citizenry as they were in him.

  He spent one night with a doctor on a feather bed in the guest room, and one at a mission, shivering in a barn in a pile of hay. He stopped at a lunch counter and tried to order a bowl of stew. The waitress couldn’t understand him, so he said, “Moo?” She shook her head and said, “Baa.” Late one evening, he walked up to a swanky resort-type establishment, sat at the bar, and ordered a glass of beer. The bartender mistook him for a vagrant and called security, and security called the city police, and the police took his passport and put him in a one-room jail cell, where he slept on a wooden bench. They turned him loose in the morning and he was on his way.

  Postcard sales had fallen off, until he met an English-speaking German who told him he was charging too high a price. A German mark—what he’d been asking—was roughly equal to a US dollar. From then forward he charged only what those interested could afford. Sales spiked immediately and depleted his supply, but by the time he arrived in Berlin he had thirty marks in his pocket and two weeks of mostly rewarding experiences.

  On the outskirts of Berlin he reached a traffic circle connecting a half dozen roads. One signal, perched atop a concrete base, appeared to be servicing all lanes, and several police officers were directing traffic. When Plennie was utterly confused, one of the officers came to his aid, but he only spoke German. The two tried in vain to communicate until finally the officer grabbed Plennie’s elbow to move him across the lanes of traffic. He seemed terribly confused when Plennie began to walk backward. Once they had made it
to the safety of the raised island, the flabbergasted officer released Plennie and looked him over. Plennie raised one finger, then fished the Hamburg newspaper clipping out of his journal. The officer read the clip and finally understood, and he helped Plennie the rest of the way, pointing down a cobblestone road toward downtown.

  * * *

  He checked the building number twice against the piece of paper. This was it. Paramount Pictures Corporation. He walked inside, introduced himself, and reported that he was looking to speak with Guss Schaefer, cousin of Louis Schaefer, manager of the Strand Theater in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. When Guss emerged, Plennie handed him a handwritten note.

  My dear Guss:

  This will introduce to you, Mr. Plennie L. Wingo, who is walking around the world backwards.

  I used Mr. Wingo for a stunt here in connection with the opening of our new vaudeville policy, and he turned out a very effective job. If he gets into your neck of the woods, you may be able to give him the right kind of a steer.

  With all good wishes from all the family, to you and Clara.

  Your cousin,

  Louis J. Schaefer

  The next morning, a Paramount Pictures sound truck pulled up outside the YMCA where Plennie had spent the night. The men drove him around Berlin for two days, filming as he backed past the famous historic structures. People lined the streets to watch the American and struggled to get into the newsreel. They filmed Plennie scooting in reverse near the Brandenburg Gate, not far from Hotel Kaiserhof, where Hitler was staying. He scooted past the Reichstag building, across Alexanderplatz, and in front of the thirteenth-century Marienkirche, which contained on its walls 362 ancient verses, the oldest evidence of poetic creativity in Berlin. The poem explained the dance of death, that we all die and it’s best to be humble.

  * * *

  Tempo

  Backwards around the world

  Berlin, 16 February 1932

  I am no longer able to move forward, thought Mr. Plennie L. Wingo, when he took off last season from Texas, in order to walk around the world backwards. Yes, people today really have the craziest ideas. Here we have this good fellow, owning a well-going bar, and he really doesn’t have to worry about anything or anybody in the world.

  He lives satisfied and his needs are met, until one day, he suddenly has the odd idea to wander these great roads of the world backwards, and then write a book about it. He practiced for six months with a special trainer in his hometown of Abilene. Then he had himself built a special pair of glasses which allowed him to see from backwards, forwards. James Walker, the mayor of New York, gave him a letter of recommendation and of congratulation, and all American newspapers dedicated column upon column to him, walking backwards, showing his back to new parts of the globe.

  Currently he is in Berlin and he still wants to make it through all parts of Europe, and wants to be back at the beginning of 1933 at the world’s fair in Chicago. Good luck on your return trip.

  Hitler had plenty of critics before everyone on the planet knew his name.

  “If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism,” said Social Democratic Party deputy Kurt Schumacher as Hitler was preparing to run for president, “it’s the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilization of human stupidity.”

  “Hitler in place of Hindenburg means chaos and panic in Germany and the whole of Europe, an extreme worsening of the economic crisis and of unemployment, and the most acute danger of bloodshed within our own people and abroad,” the Social Democratic Party leadership wrote in the party newspaper.

  But Hitler and the National Socialists were launching a massive campaign as Plennie wrapped up his stay in Berlin. The party plastered posters on walls around the city, strong and shrill propaganda with slogans like “Down with the system! Power to the National Socialists!” Joseph Goebbels distributed fifty thousand gramophone records of a campaign speech, and the party produced a ten-minute sound film, meant for broadcast in city squares, that depicted Hitler as the coming savior of the German people. Hitler’s campaign stops grew into massive spectacles as he bounced from city to city, telling his swarming fans to prepare for the “gigantic battle ahead.”

  “The people were beside themselves,” Joseph Goebbels noted. “An hour of euphoria. Hitler is a true man. I love him.”

  Plennie packed his bag and stopped by the American consulate, where he got two more cartons of cigarettes and a letter from his mother addressed to “the man who walks backwards.” He said goodbye to Guss Schaefer at Paramount Pictures.

  “We don’t usually make a practice of paying for newsreels,” Schaefer told him, “but I feel your case is different.”

  He handed Plennie a hundred-mark bill.

  “You’ve made my visit here the happiest of my trip,” Plennie said.

  With that, he backed south out of Berlin and away from the gray, dull, suffering army that would soon go to the polls and vote for the man they believed would change their lives.

  23.

  Hinterlands

  The snow began to fall before he reached Dresden, 120 miles south of Berlin, an astonishing and sometimes painful thing for a man from the desert, so Plennie ducked into a roadside tavern, kicked the ice off his shoes, and sat at a table near the fireplace. It didn’t take long for the proprietor, Weiber Hirsch, who spoke a little English, to grow interested in Plennie. Between waiting on others in the tavern, he paused at Plennie’s table to ask questions, before finally inviting him to stay the night in a cabin out back. The snow fell heavy outside the window. Plennie accepted the man’s kind offer, and Hirsch showed him to his room and quickly built a fire to warm Plennie up.

  When dinner rolled around, Plennie’s suit still had not dried and he was embarrassed by his appearance. He apologized to Hirsch for how he looked.

  “You know, me and some of the fellows have been discussing that very problem,” Hirsch said. “We wondered if it would embarrass you if we were to pitch in and fit you out with some of our clothes that we could spare.”

  “I think that’s wonderful,” Plennie said, and soon Hirsch and three other men came to him bearing clothes that looked brand-new: suits, shoes, fresh shirts, socks, heavy underwear. They even brought a short all-weather coat and a gray felt hat that fit perfectly over his considerable ears.

  Germans were proving to be the kindest people he’d met.

  * * *

  The hotel in Dresden looked beautiful from the outside. Plennie had a little money to spare and the slog from Berlin had worn him out, so he walked into the lobby and gave his name and passport to the clerk, who spoke no English. He was waiting to pay, wondering how much he owed, when the clerk took his arm and directed him into another room lined with rows of individual lockers. The fellow who seemed to be in charge handed Plennie a key and pointed to one of the lockers. He made some odd noises and pantomimed taking his clothes off, then pointed to Plennie, who did not much like what was happening. The man, however, was insistent. Plennie began to disrobe, the man hovering nearby, now indicating for Plennie to remove his undergarments and put those in the locker too.

  Plennie was a funny-looking man with clothes on. Nude, his appearance was downright comical, with his thin chest and narrow shoulders and his oddly muscled legs from backpedaling what now was more than 2,300 miles. He stood there naked as the German looked him over, walked around to his backside, and gave him a hard shove forward toward a heavy door. Plennie nearly fell into the next room, where the ceiling was lined with rows of long perforated pipes spraying warm water. It felt like walking into a warm summer rainstorm, but for the fact that other naked men were standing around the room.

  The German grabbed a mop, plunged the head into a five-gallon bucket of liquid soap, then walked behind the men, bringing the mop down on the top of each man’s head. He barked instructions for them to wash. When he was satisfied, he shoved them into another room, tossed them towels and nightgowns, then showed them to a fourth r
oom, filled with rows of long tables and benches where stoop-shouldered men and boys were eating hard bread and bowls of soup.

  When everyone was finished eating, a chaplain of some sort led them in group singing and said what Plennie took to be a heartfelt prayer. This was not the First Baptist Church of Abilene, but it wasn’t all bad. The men and boys filed into yet another room filled with rows of cots, each with a pillow and single bedsheet.

  Some hotel.

  The room was warm, thank goodness, but Plennie had trouble sleeping. Some kind of chemical odor, maybe a fumigant, hung heavy in the air. He lay there well past midnight, wondering what he’d gotten himself into. Whatever the case, it was better than a hayloft or a jail cell, and the way he looked at it, he was a shower ahead in the deal.

  The grits and weak coffee the next morning weren’t satisfying, so after Plennie dressed and picked up his passport, he went in search of a proper meal along the River Elbe, which divided the newer part of town from a cluster of breathtaking old buildings and stone streets. He was digging into breakfast at a restaurant when the man behind the cash register asked in good English about his sign.

  “Does that mean what it says?”

  “It sure does,” Plennie said.

  The man smiled and shook Plennie’s hand warmly. He had read the story in Tempo.

  Plennie had been longing to meet an English-speaking local so he could ask about the hotel in which he’d spent the night. As he described the place, the man got tickled, then started belly-laughing.