Conrad listened to this, watched the pride in his father’s face, and felt despair.
“How long will it take to produce this navy?” he asked finally.
“Six or seven years.”
“The way Hitler’s going, do you seriously believe you’re going to have those six or seven years?”
“Get into the habit of calling him the Führer and don’t judge him by some of his favorites like Goering and Goebbels. He made that promise to the Grand Admiral. No matter what the provocation, the Führer will keep out of a major war until the fleet is ready.”
“Did the Grand Admiral believe him?”
“Why do you persist in asking questions like that?”
“I have been trained to ask questions, Father. Now I’ll ask you another. Do you think the English will do nothing while all this is going on?”
Gottfried Dehmel made a gesture of impatience. “How many times do people have to be told that the last thing we want is a war with England? And the last thing England wants is a war with us.”
“Then why in God’s name all this preparation?”
His father surveyed him with the quiet smile of an unsubtle man who thinks he is being farsighted.
“For centuries the English have been the most aggressive nation on earth. But what is England now? A tired, divided country. Their socialists hate us, naturally. But their aristocrats hate their socialists worse than they hate anyone else. I don’t mean the English like us. They have never liked any foreign country. But they’re shrewd enough to know that Germany is their only shield against Bolshevism. They don’t want to see us stronger than themselves, but they have no choice in the matter. Therefore” – Gottfried Dehmel smiled triumphantly – “if we have a strong navy and profess friendship, the English ruling classes will insist on remaining neutral. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if they became our ally against the East.”
Conrad said nothing and thought, Oh my God what a people we are! Will we ever understand what we do to ourselves?
His father rose to his feet. “Come,” he said, “I have permission to show you something.”
He opened a door in the rear of his study and switched on a light, and Conrad followed him into a small room where he saw what looked like a miniature navy.
“Models of the ships we intend to build,” Gottfried Dehmel said. “Some of them are built already.”
Each miniature ship-model was mounted on a wooden stand with its name engraved beneath it. Looking at the names, Conrad remarked that at least six ships bearing the same names had been sunk in the last war. Then he noticed that most of the cruisers and battleships had identical outlines and asked his father why this was so.
“So you noticed that!” His father was pleased but shy about it. “It was my own idea that their outlines should be identical. Any gunnery officer would see the point of it. In wartime conditions at sea, it is almost impossible to estimate the size of a ship merely by looking at it. At ten thousand meters a heavy cruiser can easily be mistaken for a capital ship and vice versa if their outlines are similar. I’ll give you an example. At the Skaggerak my ship destroyed the British Invincible. Her guns were as heavy as ours but we knew she had no protective armor. If we hit her, we knew our shells would penetrate and explode inside her. We also knew she was attached to their main battle fleet. Now if this ship had carried two funnels instead of three, we would have known she was a stronger ship than ours and have sheered off. But we recognized her immediately, we engaged at close range, and we blew her up with a single salvo. So you see the value of this idea. When I proposed it some years ago to our present Grand Admiral he saw it, too. But staff officers are always conservative and we had a long struggle before the idea was accepted.”
This was a long speech for Gottfried Dehmel and Conrad listened to it unhappily. His father passed his hand lovingly over the outline of one of the giant ships.
“The keels of two ships of this class have already been laid. Isn’t she beautiful? Fully loaded she’ll be forty-eight thousand tons. She’ll have a complement of about twenty-five hundred officers and men. Ships even larger are on the drawing boards.”
The very image of compact, massive, brutal power, Conrad thought as he looked at this model. Yet she was graceful because of her flared bows and perfect symmetry. He turned away, his father snapped off the light and closed the door, and they returned to his office and sat down again.
“Are you planning to serve at sea again, Father?”
“If the war comes soon enough – yes, I’m sure they’ll give me a command.”
“So the plan is to fight England again?”
Sitting behind his desk, Gottfried Dehmel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You’ve just returned from England, so tell me. Do they want another war with us?”
Conrad wondered what was the use of saying anything, but he tried.
“Of course the English want no war. But if anything’s calculated to make them fight, it’s this great navy you’re planning. Nobody wants war but Germany.”
His father replied irritably: “Don’t you even read the newspapers? We have a naval treaty with England.”
“Which Hitler will break the moment it suits him.”
“The Führer.” His father became more irritable. “We build this navy as a guarantee of peace with England, which means peace with western Europe. You’re a scholar. You know what the Romans said. If you want peace, prepare war.”
“The English have also studied Roman history, Father.”
“Conrad,” Gottfried Dehmel said earnestly, “I wish us to agree with one another. Germany wants no war with Europe. Russia is the ultimate enemy of Europe. It has always been our destiny to defend Europe against those barbarians. It’s so long since we’ve talked together I don’t understand you. You seem to forget that my family came from North Germany. For centuries we Prussians kept the barbarians out. All Germany demands is that our position should be accepted. All Europe understands this. Even the French understand it. Hasn’t the Führer obtained everything he demanded without firing a shot? What he has demanded, and will demand, is nothing more than Germany has earned and what Europe needs. Did you meet any Englishmen except professors?”
“Some, but their professors aren’t like our professors.”
Gottfried Dehmel frowned. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But still, they’re only professors.” His chin jerked up. “I ask you – who is there who can frustrate Germany’s destiny now?”
“God, perhaps.”
“I have already told you that in the navy we are religious men and I can’t understand what you mean by that statement.”
“It was hopeless,” Conrad wrote that night in his diary. “My father was beyond recall. I had known it ever since our last night in Freiburg, just as I had known that he was totally honorable. Being myself a German I understood him in his emotions. But being his son, I was devastated.”
Conrad said quietly, “This is all very logical, Father. Before I came home I might have argued logically as you have been doing. It didn’t take me long to know that logic is helpless in this country now.” He looked his father in the eyes. “How do you reconcile your honor with what this man is doing to the Jews?”
As though an electrode had been touched to a different part of his brain, Gottfried Dehmel’s expression changed. He sat down and again toyed with his pencil.
“The role of anyone who has been trained to serve his country as a soldier or a sailor is very difficult. The Jews? Yes, the Führer’s opinion of them is not a secret.”
Conrad said nothing.
“But within our service we can be responsible only to the service and the nation. There are some excellent Jewish officers in the navy and the Grand Admiral has no intention of dismissing them.”
“In that case will not Hitler dismiss the Grand Admiral?”
“The Führer.” Gottfried Dehmel frowned and shook his head. “He is a genius and Germany is his life. Because he is a genius, we accept that he
has certain peculiarities. Also, because he is a genius, we know that he needs the navy. The Nazis are not religious. I don’t deny that. But as I told you, we in the navy are religious men and divine service is held in all our ships. We have our own traditions, which to some extent are shared with the army, but still they are different, and between the two of us, I wish the Grand Admiral was in charge of the nation’s strategy.” He paused. “Now let me tell you this. When the Führer inspected our newest ship, we received him with the traditional naval salute, not with the Nazi salute, and he accepted it. So! Does that answer your question?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand your attitude at all.”
“It grieves me, Father, that you don’t. But I’m afraid you never will.”
Gottfried Dehmel looked at his wristwatch and rose. “Now, Conrad, it is time for us to meet the Admiral.”
Conrad also rose and in a quick explosion of lonely affection, the father put his arm about his son’s shoulder.
“I wish you to understand that I’m proud of you, Conrad. It’s a scholar’s duty to ask difficult questions. The admiral we’re going to meet is familiar with your work and that has made me proud. It was he, not I, who requested this meeting. How splendid it will be, Conrad, if you and I can work together, you in your métier, I in mine!”
The austere man’s voice broke and tears filled his eyes. “My son, I loved you before you were born.”
In his diary Conrad was to write later, “One of the most horrible of all human tragedies is surely this, that an honorable man’s devotion to his profession can lay his life and honor wide open to a scoundrel. At last I understood how right Hanna had been when she said that a terrible time was coming. It was already here. My father in opposition to Hitler? The Grand Admiral in opposition? The gods were laughing at them as they swallowed the bait whole.
“But immediately after this thought came to me, I met a man who had swallowed no bait.”
SEVEN
The rear-admiral who was the chief of the Intelligence Service of the nation was a year younger than Gottfried Dehmel, but in comparison to him his father seemed to Conrad like a schoolboy. The Admiral was short and bowed in the shoulders, yet seemed sturdy and enduring, even though Conrad sensed that when younger he had suffered from ill health. His thin silver hair was brushed flat across the top of a high forehead and the sensitive lobes of his long ears fitted closely to his skull. The eyes made a mystery of his face. Most of the time they were veiled, but at moments they could flash open unnervingly bright blue. When he bade his guests welcome he spoke with a slight lisp.
While he and Gottfried Dehmel exchanged commonplaces, Conrad was silent and observed his host. He felt drawn to him instantly and did not understand why. The Admiral’s study, for that was what he called it, was more like the room of an absent-minded professor than like that of a man of power and mystery. Its shelves were littered with papers, there was a camp cot in a corner, and on his desk was a model of an obsolete light cruiser. Conrad supposed it was the Admiral’s old ship, the famous Dresden.
Suddenly Conrad was aware that the Admiral’s eyes had opened wide and were concentrated on himself. For an instant he had the sensation that his entire personality was being filtered through those eyes into an exceedingly subtle and calculating brain behind them. Then the Admiral smiled and his eyes became a turtle’s.
“I have much looked forward to meeting you, Herr Doktor,” he said.
Conrad felt instantly at ease with him. “Thank you, sir. I’m as flattered as I’m surprised.”
The Admiral rose and turned to Conrad’s father. “I suggest we go to lunch now, Dehmel. As I told you, I’m interested in your son’s scholarly work and I understand he’s just returned from England. One is interested in intelligent people who have just returned from England.”
They left the room, went downstairs, and passed through a gauntlet of salutes to a staff car waiting at the door with two small naval flags mounted on its front fenders. A warrant officer with his hand at the salute opened and closed the door for them and they drove off. When they reached their restaurant the maître d’hôtel greeted them obsequiously and showed them to a table in the rear far corner. The tables near them were empty.
The Admiral said drily, “Lately some of our friends have been planting deaf-mutes in places like this to read people’s lips.” They took their seats and he changed the subject. “I hope you care for asparagus. I confess to a lifelong weakness for it.”
So they started with golden asparagus au gratin, passed on through Vichyssoise to Heligoland lobster and then to fruit. During the luncheon the Admiral encouraged both Conrad and his father to talk, but spoke so little himself that Conrad wondered whether he was listening to a word they said. It was not until the fruit that he emerged.
“Herr Doktor,” he said as he peeled an apple, looking at the apple while he spoke, “did you like the English?”
“Most of the ones I worked with I liked.”
“You were fortunate. I have liked few English I have met, but this may have been because of my profession. I have always wished to like them because I admire them. Their philosophers are not up in the clouds as so many of ours are. They are instinctively Aristotelian. They understand that the highest morality is to consult one’s own interests and this leads them to examine with shrewdness what their interests really are. The best of them know that this way of living requires intelligence and immense mental discipline.” He paused, smiled faintly, and went on, “I am always disappointed when an Englishman behaves like a scoundrel. I have known some who have done that. But generally speaking, one must respect them. They eat lightly at lunch. We and the French eat far too much in the middle of the day.”
Clearly the Admiral never ate too much at any time of the day. He had ordered a bottle of exceptional Moselle, but took only a single glass of it. The Dehmels followed his example and when lunch was over and they rose from the table, the bottle was more than half full. They were driven back to the Tirpitzufer and when they arrived the Admiral turned to Conrad’s father.
“Could you spare me your son for a short time? I’d like to talk with him.”
“Certainly, my dear Canaris.” Gottfried Dehmel smiled happily and to Conrad he said, “I forgot to tell you that the Herr Admiral is also an exceptional scholar.”
“A very weak scholar. An amateur merely. A student – yes, I would admit that.”
Alone in the untidy office with this strange character who seemed so un-German and un-military, Conrad wondered what all this was about. He was offered a cigar and said he preferred a pipe. The Admiral lit a most fragrant cigar and contemplated Conrad through a thin veil of smoke.
“You know, Dehmel, I have always thought of myself as a European. Have you?”
Conrad smiled and felt at home. “Yes, sir, I also.”
“Three centuries ago my family was not German, but of course there was no Germany then. Apart from the English and the Scandinavians, we were all Europeans then.”
“My grandfather used to tell me the same thing, sir, when I was a child. He was born in Strassburg when it was under the French, but he did his professional work in Freiburg-im-Breisgau.”
“So I understand.”
The Admiral contemplated his cigar and said that he had read some of Conrad’s publications and had found them interesting. He asked how much further his work had gone in England and Conrad spoke of it for several minutes. He even ended by saying a few words about his Grand Design.
Canaris looked at him almost affectionately. He smiled and said, “Yes, of course. It is excellent to aim for the sky when one is young. Then perhaps one may acquire the energy to do a few small things of value.” He smiled again. “You know, Dehmel, I find epigraphy and papyrology very satisfying just in themselves. That’s where you find the human raw stuff that never changes and saves the world from its geniuses. Those inscriptions that old megalomaniac Mommsen collected! They’re windows on centuries of domest
ic scenes. You know them all, I’m sure. That one on the tombstone of the Roman soldier: ‘Here I lie, Marcus Manlius of the 22nd Legion. I ate a lot, I drank a lot, I loved a lot of women. Nobody can take this away from me.’ Those Roman tombstone formulas to dead wives from widowers: ‘With whom I lived for so many years without a single quarrel – sine ulla querella.’ A record of the real world, Dehmel. A record of the undefeatable human being who has had to live under governments.” In what seemed to be an afterthought, but wasn’t, he added, “What was done to Professor Rosenthal was a scandal.”
Conrad hesitated, then blurted out, “Sir, can you help me? You seem to know all about this situation at the Institut. What should I do now?”
“About accepting the directorship?”
“That was the last thing I ever dreamed of, but I was told I may have no choice.”
“Did Professor Rosenthal tell you that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He told you correctly. The minister in charge is a very venomous man.”
“Did you know Professor Rosenthal personally, sir?”
“Intimately, and for many years. It was through him that I learned about your work.”
Conrad had not realized that Rosenthal had thought so highly of him and flushed slightly.
“I suppose,” the Admiral said, “you are wondering why I could not save Rosenthal. There was no chance of that. He prevented Goebbels from looting a priceless manuscript that belonged to the Vatican and nobody could preserve his position after that. The best I could do was to make it possible for him to leave the country with his life.”
Voices in Time Page 30
