Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  “We were naïve in those days,” remarked the dark Deputy; “we hoped that we wouldn’t have to kill many people.”

  Lanny thought: “The floor is cracking, and here are the flames and the smell of brimstone!”

  Hess told the story of that exciting day. At a crossroads he took the precaution to telephone to Munich and learned that the military attempt had failed. So he turned his captives loose and fled to the mountains, where he remained a fugitive for several weeks. But finally he gave himself up—and that was the most fortunate decision of his life, for they sent him to the fortress where he became a fellow-prisoner with Hitler. They were treated well—allowed liberty within the fortress, and all the books and papers they desired. Hess smiled and said: “No faction could be sure their turn might not come next day, so it was better to be polite to your opponents.” Adi smiled at everything his faithful follower said. These two addressed each other with the familiar “du,”—Hess being the only man who took that liberty with his Führer.

  Now had come this Franz, or his spirit, reminding the Deputy how frightened he had been when he realized that his opponents were still on top in Munich. At his trial Hess had declared that he never had any intention of killing the two ministers; but Franz knew otherwise, and in the séance joked with him about it. The whole thing had been amazingly convincing. The spirit had spoken with a good Bavarian accent, and Hess wanted to know, did Madame know any German? Lanny replied: “Only a few words that she has heard me use. The spirits use her vocal cords.” Ordinarily he would have added: “At least, that is the theory,”—but now he was taking the spirits at their own valuation.

  A remarkable sitting, indeed. There had come a World War comrade, one who called himself Hans, and had been with Hess in the trenches at Verdun, and been killed a few minutes after Hess had been shot through the lungs. Hess didn’t remember him, but then, there had been so many—fed into that year-long inferno like meat into a sausage grinder. This man had produced evidence, for he had quoted a line of a poem which Hess had written in the trenches. “He, Franzmann,” it began, which in English is about the same as: “Hey, Frenchie!” It told this Frenchie in simple language the brute facts about Lebensraum: the Frenchies had the land, but the Germans needed it in order that they, instead of the Frenchies, might survive.

  Lanny had never heard that Hess had written poetry, and said so. Hess answered modestly that it wasn’t really poetry, just doggerel—but Lanny knew better than to assent. It is in this way that the great are betrayed by their greatness; try as they will, they cannot but absorb some of the flattery which is a part of the atmosphere they have to breathe. Before Lanny got through with this soldier turned party chieftain, the latter had become convinced that his doggerel was a genuine expression of the German Geist. Lanny would have said more, only he knew that Hitler would be bored—he, too, having written doggerel, but never having summoned the courage to let it be published.

  IV

  The Führer agreed that this was a significant psychic demonstration, and he wanted to go at once to Madame’s room and make a test himself. But Lanny explained that this elderly woman was exhausted after a séance, and would hardly be able to produce results now; let her have a night’s sleep, and any time tomorrow would be all right. Adi preferred the evening; he wanted to sneak into her room and not have any of the servants know it. The presumptuous American grinned and remarked: “For the sake of your reputation, it’s a good thing she is so old!”

  Hitler always slept badly, therefore he went to bed late, and liked to have company in the evening. These three sat for a long while discussing the nature of the universe and the possible destiny of the human insects which swarmed upon one of its insignificant planets. Hitler did most of the talking—for what else does it mean to be great? The other two listened respectfully, and gave their opinions when asked. Rudi, doglike in his devotion, invariably agreed with every word his divinely ordained Führer spoke. Lanny might venture to disagree, but always in the form of a question, calculated to start Die Nummer Eins on another discourse.

  Adolf Hitler believed in God; not in the God of any of the established religions, and certainly not in the Hebrew God, or his Son the Christian God; but in the creative force, or spirit—yes, even personality, if you cared to say that—which worked behind the appearances of this mysterious universe. This spirit dwelt in us all, and could be used by us; to say that it answered prayers was merely another way of indicating this use. For a while Lanny might have thought that he was back in Bienvenu, listening to one of the New Thought discourses of Parsifal Dingle. Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet!

  But quickly it became apparent that there was a difference between the transcendentalism of Tennyson and the National-Socialist Mystik. Adi was a practical man, and had a world to conquer and to rule, and his God was approved and worshiped because He was willing to help with this job. No German tribal deity, the Führer hastened to explain, but a pragmatic One, to be judged by His works. That God had a purpose for the Aryan race to fulfill was proved by the fact that He had made them superior to all other races. The Führer said Aryan, for he included the Anglo-Saxons in his classification, and desired nothing so much as a union with the British and American peoples to carry out the great purposes which he envisioned. He didn’t say so, but Lanny observed in all his conversation the secret envy which he held for the English with their long-tested traditions of rulership. Men like Lord Halifax and the Marquess of Lothian inspired him with a sort of embittered awe. The last of the Kaisers had had that same feeling, and had aspired to nothing so much as to be an English gentleman; he had got into a war with them, half by accident and half because they had patronized him.

  God was a force, said the religious Adi, speaking here in the intimacy of friendship; God was the greatest of personal forces and likewise of social forces. Adi knew the former, because when he retired to his chamber he called upon this force to give him courage and vision, and it responded. Adi knew the latter, because he called upon this force in the hearts of the German people, and got his response in the form of national enthusiasm, will, and power. It was the duty of the seer, the mystic, to make that force real in his private life, and it was the duty of the statesman and the general to bring it into action in the masses. When you had those two personalities in one, then you had a really great leader, the man of destiny, the Führer of the Volk and the maker of history—“such as God has chosen me to be,” said Adi Schicklgruber, not vaingloriously, but humbly. He never quoted the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps had never read it; but Lanny knew it, and remembered the experience narrated by the prophet Isaiah:

  “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

  V

  This God-chosen man went on to discuss the other God-chosen men of history. There had been some who had failed, because they had had only spiritual force, and no way to make it effective; such had been Jesus, whose failure had been most abject—not merely had he been crucified, but his teachings had been perverted and the churches which operated in his name had no interest whatever in what he had believed and taught. The same was true of Buddha, whose doctrines had been even more perverted—his priests had had more time in which to forget him. On the other hand, there were great leaders like Alexander and Napoleon, who had built empires only to have them crumble, because they had relied upon the sword alone, and not upon the spirit, upon God. They had had nothing to teach mankind but materialism, the dog-eat-dog civilization of the moneychangers, the international Jews.

  Lanny shivered when he heard these words, fearing that his host would get off on that special private madness of his. But no, Adi was in a constructive mood; he was not fighting his enemies, but building new states, empires, worlds. Said he: “The greatest man who has lived before me is Mohammed.” Lanny was startled by this, for in thinking over the Führers of the past he had decided that Mohammed was the one whom this one
-time sub-corporal and painter of picture postcards most closely resembled; and of course when Adi called the Arabian prophet the greatest man who had lived so far, it was the same thing as saying that he bore the greatest resemblance to Adolf Hitler. The Nazi Führer explained his prototype: a self-made man who had found God, and had not been content merely to preach Him, but had laid down His law and seen that it was obeyed; in other words, a holy book in one hand and a sword in the other. The result was that the religion Mohammed founded had endured and still endured; his book was still read and his law was obeyed, precisely as he had set it forth. “Do you agree with me, Herr Budd?”

  “Indeed I do,” replied the guest. “It may interest you to know that I have had this same thought about you, ever since I first read your great book.”

  “Thirteen centuries have passed since Mohammed died, and the world has changed greatly. It needs a new set of laws, a new revelation. And believe me, I am not relying merely upon the sword, I am not merely forcing people to obey me. I am training their minds and inspiring their souls; I am founding a new religion, one that will last for a thousand years, perhaps ten thousand—until such a time as God may see fit to send a new prophet to supersede me. I am not giving this revelation all at once, but little by little, as God gives it to me, in His good time. I tell you about it, Herr Budd, because you are a man who sees and understands these inner forces and will respect my vision.”

  “I understand exactly what you mean, Excellency,” said the American, reverently.

  “The masses of the people cannot live without guidance; they cannot solve the problems of life for themselves, but have to be told what to do. Also they must have a reason for obedience; they must have a faith; they cannot live without God. Rudi has been telling about this fellow-countryman of yours, Buchman—by his name and his ideas I take it that he is of German descent, and it is evident that he understands the religion I am founding, and is preparing America and Britain to accept our National-Socialist crusade. Do you know his Moral Rearmament movement?”

  “I have attended some of its house-parties, and I had a talk with Lothian about it a week or two ago. I have had the good fortune to know Lothian—since my youth.” Lanny had been about to say: “Since the Peace Conference in Paris,” but he realized that this was another of Adi’s phobias, and the mention might set him off on a tirade that would last the rest of the night!

  VI

  Lanny had a hard time getting to sleep that night; he lay contemplating a world pushed back to the seventh century. Adolf Hitler’s world would have all modern improvements, such as telegraphs and telephones, radio and cinema and airplanes, but they would all be used for the more rapid subjection of mankind to the will of the new Prophet-Führer. Whereas the Mohammedan crusade on horseback had been stopped in Hungary in the east and in Spain in the west, the Nazi crusade by bombing planes and submarines might not be stopped by either the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean. Lanny composed in his mind a report to Gus Gennerich, to the effect that Adi Schicklgruber was the most dangerous man who had appeared in the modern world.

  There was a list of rules posted on the door of Lanny’s room, just as in a hotel. One of the rules was that guests were to appear for meals within two minutes of the ringing of the bell. Lanny hoped this didn’t mean that he had to appear for the seven o’clock breakfast; he took the liberty of waiting for the second, which the Germans call the “fork breakfast,” at nine, and for this he was not corrected. There the Führer took a glass of milk and a couple of rolls spread liberally with marmalade; also an apple. Then he retired to his study, and Lanny was told by others that he spent the morning going through state papers and giving orders to his adjutants. He had private telephone lines to Munich and Berlin, and mail came by plane night and morning.

  There was a large staff at his mountain retreat, part of it permanent, and part coming by motorcar or plane whenever the Führer’s weariness of office duties and state functions caused him to take flight from the cities. Lanny observed that without exception all these people were young, and he understood this as part of the psychology of a world rebuilder. The old and the middle-aged had been miseducated, they were cranky and set in the desire to have their own way. For almost two decades Adi had been training the young not to want their way, but to want his way, and these were the persons he liked to have about him. His military adjutants were a colonel, a commander, and two captains; the former pair under forty and the latter pair under thirty-five. There were three ordnance officers and two personal attendants, one a lieutenant and the other a sergeant; Lanny felt certain that all of these were under thirty and most of them under twenty-five. All were good-looking Aryans, and the same thing applied to the women secretaries and the maids, of whom the visitor must have seen eight or ten.

  The Führer’s personal physician, also young, took an interest in the guest from overseas. Possibly he had been told to do so; anyhow, he took Lanny in tow and showed him the art treasures of which the châlet was full, told him what he knew about them, and listened with interest to his comments. Later the young architect, who had carried out the new constructions under the Führer’s orders, invited the guest to inspect the work which had been done on the estate in the period since his previous visit. Beside the two wings there was the widening of the main terrace and the building of a summer house above it, a garage built into the side of the mountain, barracks for the SS guards, a residence for the staff, and a sumptuous new guest house for important official persons. Everything was of harmonious design, having the background of fir-clad mountains and a view over the tumbled and snow-covered Austrian Alps, including a valley with the lovely little city of Salzburg.

  All very splendid, a combination of nature and art; the fairy-story dream of a stepchild who had been neglected and thwarted, of a youth who had wanted to be an artist, but had never been able to get any training, except in the art of killing his fellowmen. He had known abject poverty, unemployment, and the life of a wastrel in a shelter for bums. In the trenches he had been forced to live in rain and mud, in freezing cold and summer’s dust and heat, to be bitten by lice, to be blasted and shot at, to suffer wounds and be filled with terrors; all this for year after year—and at the end defeat and humiliation.

  Such had been the training of Adi Schicklgruber, and it was hardly to be wondered at that he was a neurotic, and had to take drugs to put himself to sleep, and had moods of exaltation followed by others of suicidal depression; that he fled from his fellowmen in boredom and exasperation, and then fled back because he could not face the thoughts which haunted him alone. Ten thousand murders on his conscience; murders of his best friends, of men who had been his comrades on the battlefield and in the camps, of women who had given him love, or tried to. He believed in spirits, but hesitated to call them because the wrong ones might appear; he believed in God, but had to make Him into a God of war, because Adi himself had never been able to get what he wanted save by threats of war. He could not eat food without elaborate precautions against its being poisoned; he could not go for a drive in the streets of the cities he loved without the thought that at any moment a bomb might be dropped upon his head; he could not take a walk in his beloved forests without looking behind to make sure his sharpshooters were near, and that they were really his own sharpshooters and not his enemies!

  VII

  In the latter part of the afternoon the Führer had completed his day’s labors and went for his daily dose of fresh air and exercise. A “constitutional,” Lanny had heard it called by his great-uncle Eli Budd in Connecticut, and now he used this word and explained it, to his host’s amusement. There came bounding three beautiful shepherd dogs, also getting their constitutionals; they paid no attention to Lanny, for they were one-man dogs—something the Führer required of all creatures near him. They raced here and there in a pack, and Lanny guessed that it would have gone ill with any stranger venturing into this preserve. A keeper followed to give the dogs orders, and a little farther behind came two of th
e Death’s Head men. The customary automatics in their belts were not enough; each carried a rifle with a telescopic sight, and apparently the Führer had given information as to the route of his walk, for Lanny observed other armed men on the way.

  “I am going to show you something that I don’t show to many,” remarked the master. They started up a mountain path which made him puff not a little, and after a while they came to what was evidently a newly made road, a two-lane highway carved out of the steep mountainside. The snow had been scraped from it, and Lanny could see that it was paved, and also that there had been traffic on it recently. They walked upon it, climbing steadily, admiring view after view. “This is the work of my wonderful Todt, who has constructed all my Autobahnen. This time he was kind enough to build one for my private use.”

  Lanny recalled what he had heard from Hilde Donnerstein and others, that the Führer was building himself a secret retreat on a mountaintop called the Kehlstein, and that before this work could even be begun, it had been necessary to construct a road ascending more than half a mile higher than the Berghof itself. This labor had taken some two years; and now Lanny walked around one hairpin turn after another, and looked over the side of precipices a thousand feet deep. The road was beautifully balanced, tilted this way and that so that a fast-moving car would always be safe. Lanny remarked: “General Göring showed me his toy railroad, but you have the real thing.” That did not fail to please the host.