Look Who’s Back

by Timur Vermes

  “Nonetheless he mustn’t be married,” Sensenbrink insisted. “At least, not if there’s something cooking with Fräulein Krömeier.”

  “You still haven’t understood,” Madame Bellini said, and then turned to me. “Well? Are you married?”

  “Actually, I am,” I said.

  “Great,” Sensenbrink moaned.

  “Let me guess,” Bellini said. “Since 1945? April?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s extraordinary that the press release got out. At the time, you see, the city was teeming with Bolshevists, alas!”

  “Without wishing to intrude on your personal life,” Hotel Reserver Sawatzki said, “I think Herr Hitler can rightly be considered a widower.” You can say what you like, but even under fire this Sawatzki fellow was quick witted, clear, reliable, pragmatic.

  “I cannot be one hundred per cent sure,” I said, “but I’m assuming Herr Sawatzki is correct.”

  “Well,” Madame Bellini said, turning to Sensenbrink. “Satisfied now?”

  “It’s my job to throw curve balls,” Sensenbrink said stroppily.

  “The question is: What are we going to do?” Bellini said.

  “Do we have to do anything?” Sawatzki said in a sober voice.

  “I agree with you, Herr Sawatzki,” I said. “Or I would agree if this was just about me. But if I do nothing those around me will be affected even more. It may not do Herr Sensenbrink any harm,” I said with a mocking glance, “but I cannot expect you and the company to put up with it.”

  “I would always expect us as a company to put up with it, but not our shareholders, not for five minutes,” Madame Bellini answered drily. “Which means no interview on our terms. But on their terms.”

  “I will hold you responsible for ensuring that it does not turn out like that,” I said, and as I sensed that Madame Bellini was not as happy to take orders as Sawatzki, I added quickly, “But in this case you are absolutely right. We will grant them an interview. Tell them it will be in the Adlon. And they can pay.”

  “Your ski-brain has gone totally off-piste,” Sensenbrink teased me. “In this situation we can hardly get them to agree to a fee.”

  “It’s all about principle,” I said. “I refuse to squander the Volk’s money on this press scum. If they pay the bill I’ll be happy with that.”

  “So when?”

  “As soon as possible,” Madame Bellini said, quite correctly. “Let’s say tomorrow. Then they might leave us in peace for a day.”

  I agreed. “In the meantime we ought to intensify our own propaganda efforts.”

  “Which means?”

  “We must not allow our political opponents to enjoy control over reporting. This must never happen to us again. We need to publish our own newspaper.”

  “So … maybe the Völkischer Beobachter?” Sensenbrink sneered. “We’re a production company, not a newspaper publisher! Stir-fry that in your think-wok!”

  “Guys, it doesn’t have to be a newspaper,” Hotel Reserver Sawatzki interjected. “Herr Hitler’s strength is his on-screen appearance. We’ve already got the videos, so why don’t we post them on our own website?”

  “All his appearances so far in H.D., which will offer more than the clips already up on YouTube,” Madame Bellini reflected. “And it will give us a platform if we want to put out any particular bits of information. Or our own view on things. Sounds good. Have the digital media department prepare a few designs.”

  We concluded the conference. Noticing a light still burning in my office as I left the room, I went to turn it off. Until the Reich has converted fully to regenerative energies, one must be sparing with one’s resources. One seldom thinks of it at the time, but imagine the misery thirty years later when just outside El Alamein one’s tank lacks that very last drop of fuel to achieve the final victory. As I looked in I could see Fräulein Krömeier sitting absolutely still at her desk. It was only then that I realised I had not enquired how she was bearing up. Birthdays, bereavements, personal calls – these were all things which Traudl Junge used to remind me of, and more recently Fräulein Krömeier. But in this case, of course, it had not happened.

  She was staring at the desktop in consternation. Then she looked up at me.

  “Do you know what sort of e-mails I’m getting?” she said weakly.

  I was deeply moved by the sight of this poor creature. “I’m terribly sorry, Fräulein Krömeier,” I said. “I can easily stomach this sort of thing; I’m used to enduring such hostility when standing up for the future of Germany. I bear full responsibility – it is unforgivable when one’s political opponents choose to attack lesser employees.”

  “But it’s got nothing to do with you,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just the usual Bild crap? You appear once in that shitty rag with tits plastered on every page and then everyone’s got it in for you. I’m getting like … photos of men’s dicks? I’m getting really nasty mail? People saying what they’d like to do to me? I stop reading after the first couple of words. I’ve been Vulcania17 for seven years, but now I can forget it. That name’s contaminated and now,” she said, sorrowfully pressing a key, “now it’s like … history.”

  Being unable to make a decision is not a pleasant feeling. If Blondi had still been alive, at least I would have been able to stroke her; in such moments an animal, particularly a dog, is always good for relieving some of the tension.

  “And it doesn’t stop with the Internet, either,” she said. She stared blankly into the distance. “At least on the Internet you can read what people are thinking? But you can’t do that on the street. You can only have a guess? And I’d rather not guess?” She snivelled.

  “I ought to have warned you in advance,” I said after a moment’s silence. “But I underestimated the enemy. I am really very sorry that you are having to pay for my error. Nobody knows better than I do that sacrifices have to be made for the future of Germany.”

  “Couldn’t you just put a sock in it for a couple of minutes?” Fräulein Krömeier said, looking rather exasperated. “F.Y.I., this is not about the future of Germany! This is real! This isn’t a joke! It isn’t a performance, either! It’s my life these arseholes are messing up with their lies!”

  I sat on the chair facing her desk.

  “I cannot stop for a couple of minutes,” I said seriously. “Nor do I wish to stop for a couple of minutes. I will defend to the very last what I believe to be right. Providence put me in this post, and here will I stand for Germany until the last round is fired. You might well say, ‘All the same, can’t Herr Hitler let up for a couple of minutes, just for once?’ In peacetime I would be prepared to, for your sake, dear Fräulein Krömeier! But I do not wish to. I will tell you why. And then I’m sure you will no longer wish me to, either!”

  She gave me a quizzical look.

  “The very moment I start making concessions, I am not making them for your sake; ultimately I am doing it because this lying rag is forcing me to. Is that what you want? Do you want me to do what this newspaper demands of me?”

  She shook her head, slowly at first, then in defiance.

  “I am proud of you,” I said. “And yet there is a difference between you and me. What I demand of myself, I cannot demand of everyone. Fräulein Krömeier, I would perfectly understand if you were to cease working for me. I am certain that Flashlight would accommodate you somewhere else, where you would not be confronted with such unpleasantness.

  Fräulein Krömeier sniffed again. Then she sat up straight and said with determination, “Like hell I will, mein Führer!”

  xxi

  The first thing I saw was large lettering in the Gothic script. The word on the screen was “Heimatseite”. At once I picked up the telephone and called Sawatzki.

  “So … you seen it yet?” he asked. And without waiting for an answer he said gleefully, “Come out well, hasn’t it?”

  “Heimatseite?” I asked. “What’s that supposed to mean? What Heimat are we talking about?”
/>   “Well, we can’t exactly put ‘Homepage’ on your website, can we?”

  “Really?” I said. “Why ever not?”

  “But the Führer doesn’t know foreign words …”

  I shook my head energetically. “Sawatzki, Sawatzki, what do you know about the Führer? This uptight Germanness is the worst attitude one can have. You must not confuse racial purity with cultural isolation. Don’t be ridiculous; a homepage is a homepage! One doesn’t call R.A.D.A.R. Funkortung undabstandsmessung just because the English invented it.”

  “O.K.,” Sawatzki said. “‘Homepage’ is fine. I’ll sort it. How do you like it otherwise?”

  “I haven’t really had time to look,” I said, inquisitively pushing the mouse device across the table. On the other end of the line, Sawatzki was tapping away at his keyboard. Suddenly, a large “Homepage” appeared on my screen. “Hmm,” he said. “That doesn’t really make sense anymore. Why should ‘Homepage’ be in that old font?”

  “Why must you make everything so complicated?” I upbraided him. “Just make it into ‘Führer Headquarters’.”

  “Aren’t you always saying that you’re not commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht just at the moment?” Sawatzki said with a hint of irony.

  “Top marks for paying attention,” I praised him. “But this is symbolic. As with my e-mail address. After all, I’m not the New Reich Chancellery, either.” I hung up and set about exploring my site.

  Right across the screen ran a bar, via which one could pay a visit to specific departments by manoeuvring the mouse. One was “Latest Dispatches”, where we were planning to announce items of news, but which as yet contained little to read. Then came “Film Reel”, where a small window showed visitors my previous appearances. Then a short biography of me, in which it said that during the period from 1945 to my return I had been “On Extended Leave”. This had been Sawatzki’s suggestion, and I had chuckled to myself at the thought that I had slept through the intervening years beneath the Kyffhäuser hills, like the great Kaiser before me. On the other hand, given that I was unable to provide any better or more detailed information on the time that had elapsed, I agreed to this formulation. Another department was “Ask the Führer!” – this was to serve as a channel of communication between me and my followers. Out of curiosity I checked to see whether anybody had asked a question yet. And one gentleman had indeed sent me a communiqué:

  Dear Herr Hitler,

  I read with interest your theory about the relative values of different races. I have been breeding dogs for many years and now I’m worried that I might be breeding an inferior strain. So my question is: Which is the best breed of dogs and which is the worst? And what is the Jew of the dog world?

  Yours,

  Helmut Bertzel, Offenburg

  I was delighted. A good question, and an interesting one, too! Especially as I had been posed so many military questions of late – I had almost had enough of them. Moreover, military topics have limited entertainment value if one only ever receives bad news. In the early years of the war we would often have stimulating discussions around the table on the most diverse of subjects. Latterly I had really started to miss these. The dog-related question reminded me of this wonderful time! Eager to give the man an answer, I reached for my miracle telephone right away and searched for the somewhat complicated dictation function.

  “Dear Herr Bertzel,” I began. “Dog breeding has in fact advanced further than the reproduction and development of human beings.” I paused briefly to consider whether I should provide Herr Bertzel with a succinct answer, but my enthusiasm took over and I decided to approach the subject with a thoroughness becoming the Führer of the German Reich. I would treat the question at length and produce a comprehensive, definitive response. But where to begin?

  “There are dogs which are so intelligent that it is alarming,” I spoke into the machine, in a measured way at first, then with increasing fluency. “Dog breeding is thus an interesting example of where human beings could already be. It also shows us, however, where unrestrained racial mixing leads, for if they are left unattended, dogs will mate indiscriminately. The consequences of this are to be seen predominantly in southern Europe, where mangy and feral mongrels roam and maraud, each more degenerate than the last. But where the hand of order intervenes, pure breeds develop, each one progressing towards perfection. Around the world there are – and I cannot help but put it as bluntly as this – more elite dogs than elite humans, a deficit which might have been eliminated by now had the German Volk shown greater perseverance in the mid-Forties of the previous century.”

  I paused, wondering whether I was not being excessively harsh on my fellow Germans, but then again my comments had only been aimed at those who were by now quite old. The younger Germans, on the other hand, should have an inkling of the demands which would be made of them at a later date.

  “Naturally, the reproduction and development of dogs are not subject to the same laws as those of human beings. Dogs are under the authority of humans, humans control their nutrition and reproduction, which means that dogs will never have a problem with Lebensraum. For this reason the aims of breeding are not always oriented towards a future battle for world domination. Consequently, the question of what dogs might look like had they been fighting for global supremacy over millions of years must remain pure speculation. What goes without saying is that they would have larger teeth. And better weaponry. I consider it more than a mere possibility that dogs such as these would be able to use simple devices today, such as clubs, catapults, possibly even bows and arrows.”

  I paused again. Would these superior master dogs indeed have primitive firearms by now? No, I concluded, that would be unlikely.

  “Nevertheless, the racial differences are not so dissimilar to those of human beings. Which justifies the question as to whether the canine world has its own Jew, the Jewhound, so to speak. The answer is: Of course there is a Jewhound.”

  I could already imagine what the hundreds of thousands of readers would be thinking at this stage, and thus I needed to pre-empt them: “But this is not, as many might suspect, the fox. A fox can never be a dog, nor can a dog ever be a fox, so it follows that the fox cannot be a Jewhound. If anything, foxes have their own identifiable Jewfox, to my mind most readily seen in the fennec, which in typical Jewish fashion even denies its foxiness in its name.”

  I had dictated myself into a mild rage. “Fennec,” I muttered darkly. “What impudence!” Then I said quickly, “Fräulein Krömeier, please cross out ‘fennec’ and ‘what impudence’. This was one thing I did not like about my miracle telephone. There must be an eraser function, but I could not work out how to use it.

  “We must conclude, therefore,” I continued, “that the Jewhound is to be sought amongst dogs. How to proceed here is quite clear. We must look for a grovelling dog, one which ingratiates and salivates, yet is poised to perform a cowardly ambush at any moment. It can be none other than the dachshund. Yes, I can hear many dog owners, especially those from Munich, protesting, ‘How can this be? Isn’t the dachshund the most German of all dogs?’

  “The answer is: no.

  “The most German of all dogs is the Alsatian, followed in descending order by the Great Dane, the Dobermann, the Swiss mountain dog (but only those from German-speaking Switzerland), the Rottweiler, all schnauzers, Münsterländers and – why not? – the spitz, which even finds a mention in Wilhelm Busch. Un-German dogs, on the other hand – apart from those foreign introductions such as terriers, bassets and other canine riffraff – are the Weimaraner (nomen est omen!), the vain spaniel, the unsporty pug, as well as all types of degenerate ornamental dogs.”

  I switched off and then back on again at once: “And those scrawny greyhounds!”

  I pondered whether I had forgotten something important, but nothing came to mind. Excellent. I was eager for the next question, but unfortunately none had been submitted. I pushed the mouse contraption along to the final department: “Obersalzbe
rg – be the Führer’s guest”. Its function was similar to a hotel guest book, and it had already attracted a fair few messages. Even if not all were comprehensible.

  The serious comments were not a problem. I read: “All respect to you for your straight talking” or “I watch every programme. At last, here’s someone prepared to dismantle the fossilised structures.” This seemed to be a pressing concern of the German Volk; several people had mentioned the existence of such fossilised structures, or the dismantling of them. One fellow – a farmer, I presumed – spoke of “tructors”; another seemed to imagine these structures were as entangled as embroidery thread when he referred to them as “flossilised”. In the end it became clear what they were trying to say. And there are more essential skills in which a German should be proficient than orthography, which has a tedious tendency towards bureaucratic hair-splitting.

  Equally pleasing was the message “Führer rulez”. This implied that I now had followers in France too, unless this was a typographical error, for I also saw the comment “Fuehrer RULZ!” but maybe a certain Herr Rulz was trying to achieve prominence at my expense. Several well-wishers exhorted me to “Keep at it!” or demanded “Führer for President”. I was about to terminate my visit, when further down the list I caught sight of half a dozen absolutely identical entries, sent by someone who signed himself “blood&honour”.

  To my surprise the message was rather critical: “Stop yor lyes, you Jewturk!”

  Shaking my head I called Sawatzki to have someone remove this nonsense. Jewturk – what was that supposed to be? He promised to sort it out and said I should make my way to the first page again. Across the screen were the words “Führer Headquarters”.

  It looked splendid.

  xxii

  Press work is a tiresome affair when the newspapers have not been “brought into line”. Not only for politicians like me, whose mission it is to save the German Volk – no, I find it absolutely incomprehensible that such a thing should be foisted on the people. Let us take business reports as an example. Every day another “expert” tells us what needs to be done, then the following day a different, even more expert “expert” explains why this is wholly wrong and why the contradictory solution is the correct one. This is a classic case of that Jewish strategy – albeit these days largely without the involvement of Jews – the sole purpose of which is to disseminate the greatest possible chaos, which is why people in search of the truth have to buy even more newspapers and watch even more television broadcasts. In the past no-one paid the slightest interest to the business sections, but now everybody feels obliged to devour them, only to be alarmed all the more by this financial terrorism. Buy shares, sell shares, now gold, now bonds, then property. The simple man is pressed into a secondary occupation as a financial expert; what this boils down to is that he is driven to gamble using his own carefully saved money as a stake. How preposterous! The simple man should work honestly and pay his taxes; in return a responsible state should take away his financial worries! That is the very least it should do. Especially as this government, for preposterous reasons (no atomic weapons of their own and a host of similar excuses), doggedly refuses to let the people have free farmland on the Russian Plain.