Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  For Lanny Budd it was like finding out that Trudi was dead; he had been sure the news was coming, and still he was sick at heart over it. He shut off the radio and walked up and down his room for a while, swearing vigorously; then he reminded himself that he was a presidential agent, and called up Hess at the Berghof. He had already written a “bread and butter” letter to thank the Deputy for his hospitality. Now he said: “The Führer has achieved a great feat of diplomacy.” The reply was: “He is far from certain about it. Come and tell him.”

  So Lanny drove, on a warm sunshiny afternoon, with a soft haze over the mountains and no breath of air stirring the millions of fir-tree needles. By the time he arrived, he had thought out his program carefully, and was once more the suave courtier and admiring friend.

  The Führer was taking a bath, one of his aides explained; this was his practice whenever he was under nervous strain. Lanny agreed that warm water was relaxing, and didn’t ask whether it was true, as reported in Munich, that the Führer took three baths every day. A certain “nature-cure” Dr. Bummke of that city had prescribed the regimen, and the Führer followed it although he had quarreled with the elderly adviser. It was as hard to know what to believe in Munich as it had been in Vienna—two cities where a sense of humor seemed to prevail over strict concern for facts.

  In the great hall Lanny encountered a young woman wearing an English walking costume; a tall, straight blond with lovely regular features, the perfect embodiment of a Führer’s Aryan dream. Lanny had met her once at a race meet in England, but she didn’t recall him and he had to remind her of the occasion. She was one of the two daughters of Lord Redesdale, an ardent supporter of Nazism; her name was Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford, and her sister was twice married to Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, the second time in Germany, with the Führer serving as best man. Unity made Nazi speeches in Hyde Park, and had got herself celebrated in the newspapers as one of Adi’s infatuated admirers; she followed him everywhere he went, and gossip had it that she planned to marry him and thus bring about the union of the two countries. How far Adi went along with this program was uncertain, but it was well known that he liked to look at beautiful girls, and Unity was adapted to that purpose. She had golden curls hanging to her shoulders—at the age of twenty-four.

  Lanny politely assumed that she had come for the same purpose as himself, to congratulate a great man upon his diplomatic triumph. He tried to make himself agreeable, talking about the wonders they had witnessed at the Parteitag; but he noticed that the lady seemed restless, and kept looking in the direction of the stairs. Abruptly she excused herself and went up, and at the same time Lanny observed Rudolf Hess entering the room. Without especially lowering his voice, the Deputy remarked: “I wish somebody would kick that bitch all the way down.”

  So once more Lanny observed that these little Nazi children did not always obey the injunction to love one another.

  VIII

  The hydropathic regimen had apparently not been entirely effective in this crisis, for when Lanny was escorted to the Führer’s study he found him almost wild with nerves, pacing the floor, snapping his fingers, and manifesting a peculiar jerking movement of one leg. His face made Lanny think of those he had watched in the gambling casinos of the Riviera; faces of men and women who were staking everything they owned upon the turn of a card or the spinning of a wheel. Hitler was doing much the same, and a moralist might have observed that one does not achieve world power without paying for it.

  “Diese verdammten englischen Staatmänner!” he burst out. “Can anybody believe a word they say?”

  “I think you can believe what they say in this case, Exzellenz,” replied the visitor, mildly. “They have committed themselves before the world.”

  “Yes, but have you read the text of that statement?”

  “I have heard it over the radio, in both English and German.” This involved an admission, but Lanny didn’t mind making it, for he was accepted as a member of the Herrenrasse, and the Führer would hardly object to his listening to news from whatever source.

  “Do you see the tricks they have put into it? They mention a plebiscite, and the fact that the Czechs have objected to one; but they leave it as a possibility that the Czechs may change their minds.”

  “I thought the English were unusually shrewd, Herr Reichskanzler; they tell Prague that they are taking it at its word, and state clearly that they anticipate the method of direct transfer.”

  “But then they go on to talk about negotiations, provisions for adjustment of frontiers, and so on. I have never read so many weasel words in my life. They are making the greatest mistake if they think they can tie me up in red tape, and make me listen to the quibbling of what they call ‘some international body, including a Czech representative.’ I don’t want any Czech representative anywhere near me—ever again while I live!”

  “If you want my opinion, Exzellenz—”

  “Of course; I am asking it.”

  “Well, you followed a course of legality for many years inside Germany, and I heard some of your followers complain that you had a ‘legality complex.’ But you know that it paid you well in the long run, and I think it will pay you to deal on a basis of legality with the British also.”

  “Is that what they tell you to tell me?”

  Lanny didn’t have to pretend to be shocked. “Nobody in England is in a position to tell me anything, Herr Reichskanzler. I am an American, and my only interest is in having peace prevail in Europe. You cannot expect to have friends unless you can bring yourself to trust them.”

  “Ja, ja, Herr Budd, Sie haben recht. You must understand. I am under heavy strain. They have kept me dawdling about this matter for months; and I am by nature a man of action.”

  “Of course; but could any man wish to provoke war when by steady pressure and patience he can gain the same ends without war?”

  “You are right; I have to admit it. Tell me about this incredible Chamberlain. Can it be possible for any human being to deceive himself to such an extent as he appears to?”

  So Lanny delivered a discourse which might have come out of Emerson’s English Traits; he explained that peculiar combination of religiosity and sanctioned avarice which enabled a man to become Lord Mayor of Birmingham in the stage of capitalism’s approaching collapse. Elderly English Tories dreaded the future, dreaded every sort of change, and in this crisis couldn’t make up their minds whether to trust to their dreadnaughts or their prayers. Runciman had prayed publicly before setting out for Prague, Halifax prayed several times every day, and Chamberlain’s wife had been praying for him in Westminster Abbey while he was in flight to Munich. At the same time the forty British battleships had been parading in the North Sea.

  In answer to a direct question, Lanny said he had no doubt whatever that Chamberlain intended to see that the Czechs turned over to Germany those parts of the Sudetenland whose population was more than fifty per cent German. Any danger to the Führer’s plans came, not from the insincerity of British statesmen, but from the volatility of British public opinion; it was possible, but not probable, that such a storm might arise that the government would be overthrown and the deal canceled. “If that happens, it means war!” exclaimed Adi; and his visitor replied: “They know it, and that is why it is unlikely to happen.”

  IX

  It had been agreed that the next meeting of the two heads of government should be at a place nearer to England; Hitler had made the suggestion, so Chamberlain stated it, “to spare an old man another such long journey.” The spot selected was a summer resort on the Rhine near Cologne, where the river is inside Germany. The place was Godesberg, which is old German for Hill of the Gods; the old gods, of course, those deities of Blut und Eisen whom the Führer and his chief mystagogue, Rosenberg, were bringing back to life. Godesberg was a favorite resort of the health-seeking Adi, and the newspapers reported that he had visited the Hotel Dreesen no less than sixty-seven times. It was in this pla
ce, a little more than four years ago, that he had received urgent and terrifying phone calls from Göring, as a result of which he had taken Goebbels and flown to Munich to order the murder of one of his best friends, Ernst Röhm, and a thousand or more others; those dreadful days and nights of the Blood Purge which had come so close to ending the career of a presidential agent before it got started.

  Lanny might have hinted tactfully at the idea of being on hand for this new conference. He had thought of it but decided that it would not do. There would be a swarm of newspapermen on hand, and their presence was reason for him to be elsewhere. Many of the old-timers knew him from the days when he had been a “Pink,” and he didn’t want the job of explaining to them when and how he had changed his color. When any reporter sought to interview him he replied that his visits to the Berghof had to do with the sale of art works, on which the Führer was considered to be an authority.

  The Godesberg conference began on the 22nd. Hitler stayed at the Dreesen, and the Prime Minister at the Peterhof on the opposite side of the river. Chamberlain crossed by the ferry, and they held council all afternoon, after which Chamberlain issued an appeal for patience and order in the Sudetenland. That was enough to start reports that all was not going well. Next day the pair met again, and later the Prime Minister went back to his side of the river, and they took to sending notes back and forth, a procedure which justified still more alarming reports. Chamberlain came back, and they argued all evening, and at half past one next morning, when they parted, Chamberlain stated: “I cannot say it is hopeless,”—which was about as ominous as could be.

  Terror spread over all Europe. The French and British governments notified the Czechs that they could not “continue to take responsibility of advising them not to mobilize”—which was the same as telling them to prepare for war. The horrified Czechs proceeded in haste to obey, and the Goebbels newspapers went wild, reporting more outrages in every new edition. The Hungarians and the Poles put in demands for parts of Czech territory, and now the Russians warned the Poles that if they moved against Czechoslovakia the Russians would denounce their non-aggression pact with Poland. That was the way it was in unhappy old Europe; the nations were like a row of tin soldiers standing close together—you pushed the first one and down went the whole row. The French called up half a million troops, and in London gasmask stations were opened and swarms of people gathered to be fitted. Armies of men began piling sandbags around public buildings, and digging trenches in the parks so that people might hide from flying bomb fragments. The government organization known as Air Raid Precautions began issuing elaborate instructions over the radio and with loudspeakers in the streets.

  In short, it was war; and what did it all mean? Lanny could make a guess that Adi had voiced his strenuous objections to being “tied up in red tape” and forced to listen to “the quibbling of an international body, including a Czech representative.” He was demanding the right of military occupation of the Sudetenland at once, and a praying English gentleman was trying to restrain him, claiming that the Führer was increasing his demands over what had been agreed upon in Berchtesgaden. Chamberlain was a man of his word, while Hitler was a man of what he wanted, and that was the difference which had caused them to take to sending notes back and forth across a river.

  Of course they were trying to bluff each other; they both had shrewd bargainers with them, and were playing close to their chests, with the future of Europe as stakes. Both were afraid, Lanny could be sure, but he guessed that Adi had the advantage, because he was half mad and his rage would overcome his fear. Thinking the matter over, day and night, Lanny wondered whether this diplomatic duel was altogether sincere. Might not both parties have decided, perhaps without voicing it, that it was necessary to give the public another scare, to increase the demand for peace and reduce the protest of those elements in Britain and France which were denouncing the program of “appeasement”? Knowing what the diplomats had been discussing among themselves for the past several months, Lanny found it hard indeed to believe that anybody was seriously thinking of war over the issue of Czechoslovakia.

  X

  Munich had its share of the terror. The Czechs had an air force, less than a half-hour’s flight away. Suppose those treacherous sub-human creatures should decide to strike first, instead of waiting for the Herrenvolk to do it! Marshal Göring’s flyers at the Oberwiesenfeld warmed up their motors, and the young men of the city were put into uniforms, loaded into freight cars, and hauled away toward the frontier. The performances of the Führer’s favorite comic opera, The Merry Widow, which were given every night at the Theater am Gärtnerplatz, with a very young and lovely dancer, entirely nude, rising on a platform through the center of the stage—these performances lost nearly all of their dancing men, and the promotion of what the Nazis called “a healthy eroticism” received a sudden check.

  There was an annual event in Munich, the October Fair, beginning in the middle of September and running for a month. In the Theresienwiese, an enormous meadow below the Exhibition Park, was held a combination of all the various forms of public entertainment known to the Western world: Coney Island and Luna Park, Crystal Palace and Vauxhall Gardens, Mardi Gras, Barnum and Bailey, and the state fairs of the forty-eight United States of America. Anybody who wanted to be considered a good Münchner had to go and ride on roller coasters and merry-go-rounds, listen to the bands, throw coconuts at the heads of clowns, and learn to eat Bavarian horseradish along with pretzels and beer.

  Lanny and Zoltan went on Monday evening, two days after the Godesberg conference broke up. A quarter of a million South Germans had come to enjoy themselves in the open air, and two foreign visitors wanted to watch them at play. The visitors forgot that this was the night which the Führer of all Germany had chosen to make his report to his people, and what that would mean to the festival. All day, and until the middle of the evening, joy was unconfined; huge crowds milled here and there amid bright lights and lavish decorations; they burst into singing on the slightest occasion and danced with their Mädels wherever there was a smooth floor or turf underfoot. Music echoed everywhere, the barkers of sideshows orated, bells rang, roller coasters roared, and people yelled with laughter or with simulated fright.

  Then suddenly came the bellowing of loudspeakers; the Führer was about to address the world from the Sportpalast in Berlin. All other sounds died away as if by enchantment. Dancing stopped, talk stopped, and a quarter of a million men and women halted in their tracks. And it was the same with all other activity, everywhere in Germany; all work in factories, all showing of motion pictures, sales in shops, serving in restaurants, walking on the streets—everything halted, and seventy million people, excluding only the babies, listened to one monstrous Voice. To fail to listen or to walk away was a crime, and had landed many a person in a concentration camp. Said Adolf Hitler:

  “If I am now the spokesman of this German people, then I know: At this second the whole people in its millions agrees word for word with my words, confirms them, and makes them its own oath! Let other statesmen ask themselves whether that is also true in their case!”

  XI

  This Voice, roaring over the hundred acres of the Theresienwiese and over the air waves of the whole earth, told not merely what the German people were doing at this second, but what they had been doing for the past twenty years and what their great Führer had been doing for them. In the course of an address of some six thousand words, the Voice used the words I, me, my, and mine a total of one hundred and thirty-four times. Said this Voice: “I have offered disarmament as long as it was possible. But when that was rejected, I then formed, I admit, no halfhearted decision. I am a National Socialist and an old front-line German soldier. I have in fact armed in these five years. I have spent milliards on these armaments: that the German people must now know!”

  It was the policy of this supremely cunning statesman to deal with one enemy at a time. Therefore in this speech, an ultimatum to the Czech Republi
c, he set to work to eliminate methodically all other opposition. With Poland, he said, “permanent pacification” had been achieved. As to the English people, he hoped that “the peace-loving parts would gain the upper hand.” As to France, there were now “absolutely no differences outstanding between us.… We want nothing from France—positively nothing!” With Italy, under the “rare genius” of its Duce, there had been established “a true union of hearts.”

  All these matters having been disposed of, the Voice came to what it described as “the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe.” This problem, it said, existed because of “a single lie, and the father of this lie was named Beneš.” The lie was “that there was a Czechoslovak nation.” This lie had been told to the Versailles statesmen and they had believed it. The rest of the long speech was a recital of the duel of wills between this liar and his lie on the one hand and the Führer of the Germans and his truth on the other. This struggle had now come to its climax. Said the Führer: “I have demanded that now after twenty years Mr. Beneš should at last be compelled to come to terms with the truth.”

  On October 1, five days later, the hated Czech was required to turn over the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler. It was an ultimatum, and none of the rascal’s wrigglings and evasions would do him any good. “Mr. Beneš now places his hopes on the world! And he and his diplomats make no secret of the fact. They state: it is our hope that Chamberlain will be overthrown, that Daladier will be removed, that on every hand revolutions are on the way. They place their hope on Soviet Russia. He still thinks then that he will be able to evade the fulfillment of his obligations.