The secret agent packed his belongings, paid his bill, and set out. Not wishing to attract attention to himself, he drove down the Rhine on the French side and crossed into Germany by the first ferry. To Munich was a couple of hundred miles, a pleasant day’s drive, with time off for a leisurely lunch, and stops to look at the Black Forest and admire the snow-clad Alps from their foothills. In between these pleasures the traveler meditated upon the state of the world, and now and then turned on the radio to hear “spot news” of Europe’s impending crisis.
The ex-bankclerk Henlein had decided to settle the problem by direct action. His followers had been plundering Jewish shops, and the Czech government had declared martial law. That Wednesday morning Henlein issued an ultimatum, demanding the withdrawal of Czech troops and police from the Sudetenland; when the government paid no attention to this challenge, his Stormtroopers attempted to seize barracks and public buildings, using hand grenades, machine guns, and even tanks which they had brought in from the Fatherland. Fighting went on all that day, and one or two hundred men were killed on each side; but the Czech government stood firm. By supper-time, when Lanny reached Munich, even the Nazi radios had to admit that the Putsch had failed. The Henleinists were everywhere in flight into Germany, where the Nazis hailed them as heroes and martyrs, and denounced the Czechs as terrorists and murderers.
Lanny didn’t have any uncertainty as to the meaning of such a series of events. He could be sure that Henlein, and his Deputy, the well-chastened Dr. Franck, had not attempted a private revolution, nor was Juppchen Goebbels celebrating martyrs for any purpose of his own. Adi was getting ready to move; or at any rate he was telling the world that he was doing so—and it came to the same thing, since he couldn’t afford to let his bluff be called a second time as he had done in May. He had discussed that episode in his Nuremberg speech, saying in substance that he had let it happen because he hadn’t been ready; but now he had got ready, and the world was on notice. How long would he wait? Lanny guessed that he wouldn’t wait more than a day or two, perhaps not more than an hour or two.
The traveler put up at the Regina Palast and got a light supper, with an evening paper to keep him company. When he went to his room he turned on a new gadget which had come on the market, a portable radio set which didn’t have to be plugged in to a light socket or the generator of a car. With this he listened to an official statement from the British Foreign Office, given by the Munich radio both in English and German. Prime Minister Chamberlain had sent through his Ambassador in Berlin a message stating that he proposed to fly at once to Germany to consult with the Führer in an effort to find a peaceful solution to the existing crisis. He had asked the Führer to name a place for a meeting, and the Führer had replied accepting the proposal. “The Prime Minister is, accordingly, leaving for Germany by air tomorrow.”
III
It was to be doubted if there was any person in the city of Munich to whom that news meant more, or who was in better position to interpret it. The presidential agent could transport himself in mind to Wickthorpe Castle and listen to Ceddy and Gerald planning the move—in all probability one of them had suggested it. They were in a state of bewilderment, almost of despair. It was hard for them to conceive of a man like Adolf Hitler holding power in a European country; they didn’t know how to deal with him, and had even been reduced to the hope that an American art expert might be able to smooth him down and temper his rages. Sir Nevile Henderson, their ambassador, had been powerless to do it; Lord Runciman of Doxford was failing abjectly; the Marquess of Londonderry, the Marquess of Lothian, the Earl of Perth, Sir Alexander Cadogan, Viscount Halifax—a string of the noblest and most plausible of English gentlemen had been running to Berlin and Berchtesgaden over a period of years, with no results worth mentioning. And now plain Mr. Neville Chamberlain, a commoner who manufactured small arms in Birmingham, was going to make one last try.
Lanny had met this statesman only casually, but had watched him closely at public and social affairs. He was tall and lean, with thin sallow face, prominent nose, and long neck with conspicuous Adam’s apple. He dressed in black, wore an old-fashioned wing collar, and might have been taken for an undertaker. Since he lived in a land where rain comes frequently, he never went out without a proper black umbrella, tightly rolled; the cartoonists, on the lookout for oddities, took this up eagerly, and before long the world had accepted a black umbrella as the symbol of a political point of view.
This attitude Neville himself called “practical,” but more properly it might have been called “commercial”—of course on a large scale. He was a businessman, which meant that he bought things and sold them for more than they had cost; he believed in this procedure—of course on a large scale—and thought that if it was continued long enough and over the whole world, everything would work itself out and all problems would solve themselves. He came from an old family of trade aristocrats; he had been Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and so had his father and five uncles and a cousin. Personally, Neville was a dry and unimaginative old man, interested in birds and fishes more than in human beings. He was a pacifist who made instruments of killing; he thought he could go on making them on a large scale without having them used, and it had apparently never occurred to him that if his customers did not intend to use them, they would stop buying them.
IV
Lanny learned from the newspapers that the Führer was at the Berghof, and it was a safe guess that the conference would take place there. He might have called up Hess and got himself invited; but what good would it have done? He surely wouldn’t be asked to act as interpreter at this supremely important affair, and he could be sure there wouldn’t be any yelling in the house. Adi had great respect for the British ruling classes and desired most earnestly to have them consent to what he was determined to do. He had always been polite in dealing with them, and on this occasion would try his best to behave like a Birmingham undertaker.
Lanny could foresee what was going to happen almost as well as if he had been on the scene. This meeting, over which the whole world was agog, was in fact a sort of stageplay, of which Lanny had attended the rehearsals. The details of the settlement had been worked out by Gerald Albany in Berlin and by Wiedemann at Wickthorpe and Cliveden. Adi had made his demands and they had been granted. The present dramatic journey of the head of the British government had to do, not with the what, but rather with the how and the when. Could not Seine Exzellenz be persuaded to display better table manners and not grab suddenly with both hands and thus risk upsetting the soup tureen? Could he not persuade the Sudeten Germans to endure a few days longer, while Mr. Chamberlain and his friends made clear to the French that they must repudiate their engagements with Czechoslovakia, and to the Czechs that they had not a friend in Europe and had no choice but to surrender?
That was what this dramatic flight would be for, and when the Führer conceded a few more days it would be a triumph for British diplomacy, heralded to the world with radio trumpets. The facts about it, hammered out on Lanny’s typewriter in a London hotel, had been on President Roosevelt’s desk for several weeks, and all that Lanny could get now was the melancholy satisfaction of saying: “I told you so.” This being true, he would refuse to get excited over anybody’s oratory, but would have his sleep, and in the morning would not suggest taking Zoltan to the airport to join the throngs who would cheer the Prime Minister’s arrival. Rather the pair would go to view paintings, and would talk about prices and customers, just as if Europe were not supposed to be hanging on the verge of a second World War.
Zoltan’s own mind was in a confused state. He was a man of peace, a man of international mind, a good European who had no quarrel with anybody on the ground of race, creed, or political ideology. He met people on the pleasant sunlit fields of art. His occupation, which was at once a business and a delight, took him all over the Western world, and he had learned to listen politely to what other people said, and, if they tried to draw him into controversy, to tell the
m that an art lover had to live above all battles. Now it seemed to him that the world was going mad, that civilization was committing suicide. He accepted at its face value the stageplay which came to be known as “Munich.” Chamberlain was really trying to save the peace of Europe, and Zoltan awaited the outcome in painful suspense. Such was the mood of the average uninformed man all over the world, and Lanny had to join with millions of others in saying: “God help him!”
V
The man with the black umbrella landed at the Munich airport and was taken at once to the Führer’s armored train, which carried him on to Berchtesgaden. Cheered everywhere by crowds, he was motored to the Berghof, and the Nazi radios told how the Führer had come out bareheaded in the rain to welcome him. For three hours the two statesmen sat in Hitler’s study, with only an interpreter present, and afterwards the official communiqué announced that they had had “a comprehensive and frank exchange of opinions.” Later on, telling the House of Commons about it, the Prime Minister said that he had there got the impression that “the Chancellor was contemplating an immediate invasion of Czechoslovakia.”
Chamberlain went on to record: “In courteous but perfectly definite terms, Herr Hitler made it plain that he had made up his mind the Sudeten Germans must have the right of self-determination and of returning, if they wished, to the Reich.” In these last words the Prime Minister was repeating one of Herr Hitler’s favorite lies, and it was hard to believe that he was doing it naïvely; for certainly Gerald or Ceddy or some other of his permanent Foreign Office men must have informed him that the Sudeten Germans had never belonged to the Reich, not since they had left Germany nine hundred years previously. And as for “self-determination,” those Germans had never been consulted; the Nazi agents and agitators had done the “determining,” and among their determinations was that a fair plebiscite should never be held in that region.
Here was the author of Mein Kampf, demonstrating his thesis that the bigger the lie the easier to get it believed, and that all you have to do is to keep on saying a thing often enough and you can make it the truth. Adi had made it the truth that he was master of Germany, and he was going to make it the truth that he was master of all the lands where any number of Germans lived. Such was the Blut und Boden doctrine. Adi had moved two-thirds of his army to the borders of Czechoslovakia; and would he have dared to take that risk unless British statesmen had “made it plain” that they were not going to defend the threatened country? Chamberlain expected the Commons to believe that he would, and presumably they did so, for they let him continue in his role of the statesman who was saving Europe from a devastating war.
The Prime Minister had obtained a promise that the German armies would not move until he had time to return to London and consult with his Cabinet, and also with the French. These consultations began, and continued day and night. Premier Daladier and his Foreign Minister, Bonnet, came to London, and there was endless speculation over the radio about what they were deciding. In Germany there were heavy penalties for listening to foreign broadcasts, but Lanny could lock the door of his hotel room and turn on a whisper and listen in safety; the gravity of the offense began when you told other persons what you had heard, and this he had no wish to do.
As a matter of fact there wasn’t much to choose between Nazi and British radios in this crisis, so far as moral character was concerned; it was all “propaganda,” serving the purposes of governments which didn’t want their publics to realize what they were up to. Lanny knew the pale, flabby, and tricky politician who had become Premier of France, and likewise his Foreign Minister who was in his heart a Fascist and whose wife chose German agents for her intimates. Chamberlain wouldn’t be having to spend a day and a night persuading such men to indorse a treacherous bargain. No, they would be talking as “practical” men. Just what promises could they get from Hitler that would make their surrender appear less abject? Just how should they present it to make the dose less bitter to the world? Such would be the subjects debated at No. 10 Downing Street, and it wouldn’t be worth Lanny’s while to fly to London for the details of such a conference.
VI
Tired of listening to lies, the “P.A.” put on his rainproof coat and went for a walk. He had promised to look up the Rumanian astrologer, and this was an hour for consulting the stars, if ever. He found the rooms empty and the Pförtnerin not especially communicative; Herr Reminescu had moved out, and the young lady also, and had left no address; no, the police had not come, the tenants had just moved and said nothing. So that was that, and Lanny thought: “I will get a letter some day at Juan.” But he never did get a letter, and never heard a word from or about the young mystagogue. That was one of the unpleasant aspects of dictatorship as Lanny had observed it in operation for a decade and a half. People disappeared, and that was the end of them so far as relatives, friends, clients, customers, and everybody else was concerned; it might be dangerous to ask about them, and unless it was someone especially dear to you, you decided that discretion was the better part of curiosity.
So, look at old masters and get prices on them, call in a stenographer and write letters and cablegrams to your clients and await their replies. There is no law against taking art works out of Germany, for the Nazis need foreign money to buy oil and tin and rubber and the other raw materials of war which the Fatherland lacks because other nations got there first and grabbed the desirable colonies. All that is going to be changed soon, and meanwhile we let the art-loving Ausländer come in, and we serve them politely and pretend that we like them; but Der Tag will come—it is not so far off now—and then we will take back what we have lost, with interest at rates which we shall fix ourselves.
There was good music to be heard in Munich, there were dramas to be seen, and paintings to be looked at; also charming people to be met—people who did not greet you with the Hitler salute and did not talk nonsense about blood and soil, blood and race, blood and iron, blood and guts. There was Baron von Zinszollern, from whom Lanny had bought a painting years ago while trying to get Freddi out of Dachau. The Baron’s fine home was mortgaged, so he was glad to see an art expert again, and still gladder to see two. Since they were socially acceptable persons, he not merely showed them his collection and talked prices, but invited them to stay to lunch and spent most of the afternoon in conversation.
He was a typical Bavarian, with round head, dark hair and eyes, and plump features; genial but skeptical and worldly. He got pleasure out of life as he went along, and after he had made certain that he was dealing with two good Europeans, he told amusing stories about the kaleidoscope of history in which he and his fellow Münchner had been living for the past half century. A monarchy with mad rulers, a World War, a Socialist republic and a Communist revolution, a democratic republic and a Nationalist revolution—the Baron smilingly declared that he couldn’t keep track of them all, and didn’t remember the name of the particular kind which they had at this moment.
He was out of politics, but never out of humor, apparently. When he learned that Lanny was an investigator of occult matters he asked if he had met Fräulein Elvira Lust, a little old lady who lived on Nymphenburgerstrasse here in Munich; you would find her in the telephone book as a “graphologist,” since astrology was forbidden. She was all tied up in knots with arthritis, but the Führer sent a car for her every now and again and had her brought to the Berghof. It was said that she was used by high-up Nazis to give him advice which he would take from the stars but not from mere humans.
Lanny didn’t say that he had been a guest at the Berghof, for that might have stopped the flow of urbane gossip. He inquired concerning a young Rumanian astrologer whom Hess was reported to have patronized, but the Baron had never heard of that one. He declared that the best known of the Regierung’s occult advisers went by the one name of “Elsa,” and lived just across the street from the Führer’s Munich apartment; she was toothless, and used a pack of black rubber cards without markings so far as anyone could observe. A friend of
the Baron’s had consulted her a few days ago, and had paid her ten marks to shuffle the cards and tell him that he had come to consult her about the chances of war—a safe guess about anybody at the moment. Her answer had contained only five Words: “Kein Krieg in diesem Jahr.” The skeptical nobleman was not impressed, for he said that Hess and other members of the Führer’s staff consulted Elsa frequently, and she quite certainly had information about his purposes.
So talked Baron von Zinszollern, and others of the well-to-do folk whom Lanny met during his stay in this capital of good beer and Gemütlichkeit. The Nazis had been able to abolish many of the liberties of the Münchner, but not their liberty to be amused. And yet, strange as it might seem, this pleasure-loving gentleman referred quite casually to Germany’s need of colonies and her right to expand. Indeed it had been years since Lanny had met in Germany a single man or woman who didn’t think that Germany had to expand. He had decided that the last of such persons must have got caught and been either beheaded or shut up in a concentration camp.
VII
On the morning of Monday, the 19th of September, the radios of Europe blared forth in a babel of languages the result of the deliberations of the British and French heads of government in London. It was an ultimatum which had been presented in Prague. With hypocrisy not often matched even in the diplomatic world, the two great governments informed a small and helpless government that it was to be torn into fragments in the cause of “the maintenance of peace and the safety of Czechoslovakia’s vital interests.” The small nation was required to turn over to the Reich “the districts mainly inhabited by the Sudeten Deutsch.” A reply was called for “at the earliest possible moment,” on the ground that “the Prime Minister must resume conversations with Herr Hitler not later than Wednesday, and earlier if possible.” The ultimatum didn’t say what would be done to the Prague government in the event of refusal to comply; presumably Herr Hitler would attend to that part of the procedure.
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