O Shepherd, Speak!

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “Sure thing. I’ll give you a note to Major General Dahlquist, who commands our 36th Division. It’s a great feather in his cap to have captured the Number Two.”

  “Poor old hulk!” said Lanny. “He ceased to be Number Anything some time ago and was terribly humiliated about it. Will you mark the note ‘personal’ and instruct one of your men to deliver it? There is bound to be a swarm of newspapermen at the place, and my specialty has been operating on the q.t.”

  “Sure thing,” said Major Jennings again.

  X

  Lanny delayed only long enough to get his overcoat and a few other belongings, including a box of rations which he would eat while being driven in the car. Major Jennings had obtained permission to go along, which would facilitate matters greatly. It was late afternoon, but the days were long, and the sun had not yet disappeared behind the mountains.

  Kitzbühel is a winter resort to the southwest of Berchtesgaden, well inside the Austrian border. They traveled by secondary roads, winding up valleys and through mountain passes for three hours. Meantime Lanny talked about this extraordinary man he was going to meet, the man who had interested him most of any of the Nazis, not even excepting Hitler—for he had a better mind than Hitler and a far better education. Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a combination of vile qualities and great capacities; a first-class brain and a perverted soul. He was a slave to greed and lust for power; he was an exhibitionist, a bundle of vanities; but at the same time he had a sense of humor and could laugh at jokes about what he was doing to the German people.

  He had been brought up in a school of military cynicism and as a young flight officer had known the bitterness of defeat; he had become a drug addict and had suffered the loss of the woman he adored. Then had come Hitler, a master hypnotist, a mass hypnotist; Göring had seen success and glory there, and had climbed into Hitler’s war chariot, and lent this man of demonic fury the use of his organizing brain. He had climbed to the height of what was called greatness in Germany; he had devised for himself a whole wardrobe of fancy uniforms and had covered his expansive chest with medals and decorations; he had taken unto himself so many offices and titles no man could remember them all. Lanny amused his traveling companion by seeing how many he could call to mind:

  Marshal of Greater Germany, Field Marshal General, Supreme War Economic Authority, President of the Reichstag, Chairman of the Council for Defense of the Reich, Commissioner in Control of Transportation, Chairman of the Wartime Ministerial Council, Chief Hunter, Governor of Prussia, Chief of Prussian Secret Police, Infantry General of the Reichswehr, Minister of the Forests, Minister of Aviation, Premier of Prussia, Nazi Minister without Portfolio, Member of the Secret Cabinet Council, Director of State Theaters and Operas …

  From all that he had become a prisoner at Hitler’s order, barely escaping execution by the SS; and now he was a prisoner of his enemies, those who, he had said, would never be able to set foot on German soil or even drop a bomb thereon. Now he knew that he had brought destruction to the Reich’s great cities and death to the flower of its young manhood. He knew that his armies were shattered, his titles emptied of content, his medals turned to junk. He had reached the depths of humiliation; and how would he take it? Lanny said, “I am guessing he will have a new role and have found a way to bluff it through.”

  XI

  The command car arrived long after dark, and Lanny sat back in his seat, waiting while Major Jennings went into headquarters and talked with the officers. He came back saying “OK,” and the car was driven around to a rear entrance of the commandeered Grand Hotel. There was Göring’s own car, a sixteen-cylinder Maibach, with steel plates two inches thick and glass twice as thick as that. There would, no doubt, be newspaper correspondents in the hotel lobby, but Lanny didn’t see them and they didn’t see him.

  He was escorted to a room and introduced to Major General Dahlquist, commander of this division, whom he had met before when the Army had come ashore on the Riviera; also to Brigadier General Stack, the officer who had gone up into the mountains to accept the surrender of this VGDIP. They inspected an ex-P.A.’s credentials and put questions to make sure that he really did know the Nummer Zwei Nazi. He gave them his pledge to report everything of importance that Göring might say; they assented to his idea that he should talk with the prisoner alone and that he should fraternize. So far, nobody had shaken hands with “Unser Hermann,” but Lanny would do so, and perhaps even pat him on the back. “He will probably cry,” said the art expert.

  And, sure enough, he did! He had been all alone in the hands of his enemies for nearly twenty-four hours; he had been stripped of his medals, his weapons, and his jeweled baton of authority. His field-gray coat was unpressed and dingy looking, and his features flabby and ashen gray. To be sure, he had had a good dinner of chicken with peas and potatoes, and that meant a lot to him; but what food for his mind and soul? Not a particle!

  “Lanny Budd!” he exclaimed as the visitor walked into his suite. His face showed surprise and a flash of pleasure.

  Lanny said, “Lieber Hermann!” Then, seeing a shadow darken the other’s face, he spoke quickly, “Don’t tell me, alter Freund, that you have been believing false reports about me!”

  “You are wearing an American uniform!” replied the other; and Lanny began his routine explanation, that he was only an assimilated officer, bearing no arms and concerned solely with the protection of art works. That was a humane occupation, and surely not one that his German friends could take ill.

  “Hören Sie, Hermann,” he went on, speaking German as they always did. “I came to you the moment I heard you were here, for you are the friend whose good opinion I most value. Hear my story with an open mind. I am sure you will not take the word of Heinrich Himmler against mine.”

  The ex-P.A. had perfected his alibi by careful study and had tried it out on Heinrich Jung and Günther Furtwängler. It was a story cut to fit the Reichsmarschall, who hated Himmler beyond any other Nazi, as the man who had supplanted him in the Führer’s favor and had kept him out in the cold for a couple of years. Only a few days ago this odious usurper had publicly tried to sell out his Führer to the Allies, and it was easy to believe that he had been cherishing this idea for some time. Lanny told how he had been waiting in the New Chancellery Building for the Führer to return from the front when the former poultry grower had come in and put him through a shrewd cross-questioning, designed to find out his attitude to the Führer and to the war, and leading up to the question of the Allies’ attitude to the peace, and what that attitude would be if they no longer had Hitler to deal with.

  “It froze my very bones, Hermann,” declared the art expert. “I had heard rumors of plots to kill the Führer and had warned him about them; and here was this most dangerous man in Germany trying to draw me into them. I couldn’t be sure whether he was in such a plot himself or whether he would just permit them to succeed and take advantage of the event. What he was trying to find out from me was what the attitude of the Allies would be toward a German regime headed by a dependable non-political person such as Heinrich Himmler.”

  “What did you tell him?” inquired Der Dicke. He fixed his small, hard blue eyes upon his visitor—and this was unusual for him, for his eyes had a way of darting here and there while listening.

  “I told him that I was a non-political person, like himself, and I didn’t know the answer to his question. I realized that from that moment my life was in danger. I had come into Germany because the Führer had asked me to, and I was anxious to help him; but what could I do now? Could I imagine the Führer taking the word of an alien enemy against that of the man whom he most trusted, the man upon whom he depended for the protection of his life?”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “What right did I have to put such a burden upon any friend? I knew that if you took my side it might be your life against Himmler’s; and you yourself had told me that you had lost favor at court. I took it that the kindest thing I c
ould do was to keep out of your way.”

  “How did you get out of Germany?”

  “I had a friend from the old days, an entirely non-political person. I went to him, and he let me stay with him for a week or two and then sent me to Italy as his business representative. What troubled me most was that I knew false rumors would be spread about me and that my friends would believe them. You know how many people were jealous of my position as the Führer’s friend and were eager to see me ousted.”

  XII

  Would Göring swallow this tale? Lanny knew that he was nobody’s fool; but he couldn’t be certain that the tale was false, and anyhow it might please him to pretend to believe it. After all, what did it matter now? He was lonely, and Lanny had always been good company; especially so at present, because he came from the outside world. If he had been a rascal he had been a shrewd one, and that didn’t make him any the less interesting to talk to.

  The prisoner wanted very much to know what was going to happen to him. He had the idea that he was to be taken to General Eisenhower; he thought his military rank entitled him to that, and Lanny promised to support his petition. Then he wanted to know, should he carry his baton, and should he wear a pistol? Lanny said that these were questions for a military man, not for a mere Monument. This was protocol, and he took it gravely; in his own mind he doubted very much whether Hermann Wilhelm Göring would ever see General Ike and whether he would ever again wear a pistol in this life.

  Kindness and joviality had been the fat man’s role ever since Lanny had known him, and he played it exactly as in old days. He had had a rare adventure, being rescued in Berchtesgaden and fleeing up into the snow-covered heights, surrounded by a company of his own trusted officers and men. He told about it with zest, admitting that he had a bad scare—for that belonged in his role of frankness. He was furious against Hitler. Ungrateful wretch! After all that Hermann had done for him! The last time Göring had seen him, April 22, with the Russians pounding at the gates of Berlin, his behavior had indicated a cracked mind. Later on, over the telephone, he had screamed like a maniac.

  “You know, he often raved at people, but he always knew what he was doing and stopped when he was through. But now he couldn’t control himself; his disappointment was too terrible. He issued orders to divisions and corps that no longer existed; he jumped them about as if they were chessmen, ignoring the fact that they could not travel the roads by day on account of your airmen. When I told him that the few planes we had left were grounded for lack of fuel, he shouted at me, ‘I order them to fly!’ Of course, one does not get planes off the ground just by words.”

  “Do you think he is dead, Hermann?”

  “I do not doubt it. He had told me many times that he would never be taken alive.”

  “But might he not have escaped?”

  “He couldn’t bring himself to face the thought of defeat, and when at last the idea was forced upon him, it was too late. The Russians broke through suddenly, and it was the same here in the south; we had planned to set up a Redoubt and make a last-ditch stand, but your General Patton cut the country in half.”

  Lanny thought it good tactics to remark, “I think I ought to tell you, Hermann; in order to get permission to come here and see you, I had to promise that I would tell our officers everything you said.”

  Der Dicke shrugged his heavy shoulders. “What difference does it make now? Alles ist kaput. You will have all our records; we Germans are great keepers of records, you know, and here, too, the speed of your armies governs the situation. There has been no time to burn very much.”

  XIII

  This was the occasion for a Monuments man to explain the special purpose for which he was here. To talk about art was the best way to cheer up an old-style robber baron, threatened with melancholia; to appeal to him as a fellow esthete was the way to gain his heart. To be sure, it took a lot of persuading to get him to believe that the American government had gone to the trouble and expense of picking out a large staff of experts and sending them over to Germany in order to return art works to their former owners whether these owners happened to be French or Dutch or Polish or even Jews. Hermann had had a vision of his vast collection being shipped to New York and Washington and other American cities; he had been sure that would happen to the treasures of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of Berlin, the Gemäldegallerie in Dresden, and the other priceless public collections. Lanny had to swear upon his honor as an art lover and a friend that this was not so, that all such collections were considered to be the property of the German people, upon whom the Americans had never been waging war.

  You couldn’t expect Hermann Wilhelm Göring to have any honor as a politician or a man; but, oddly enough, he still dreamed of perpetuating his name as a connoisseur of art. Once Lanny had convinced him on that level, he agreed that the wisest thing he could do was to entrust his priceless possessions to the care of this well-informed member of the conquering nation. He pointed out how conscientiously he himself had guarded the treasures, even in the confusion of defeat. The railway cars in which he had shipped the Karinhall collection had all been air-conditioned, and never once had they been kept in any building that was not fireproof. “It was my intention to present Karinhall as a museum to the German people on my sixtieth birthday, in 1953,” said Der Dicke; and no fat face could have looked more mournful when he said, “Now I wonder where I will be on that date!”

  Lanny exclaimed, “Nur Mut, Hermann! Eight years is a long time these days, and I cannot prophesy; but I can tell you that several springs hotels in Virginia and North Carolina have been set aside as dwelling places for the higher German officers, and since most of the rooms have private baths, they are far more comfortable to live in than any German castle.”

  The ex-P.A. asked permission to make notes. He jotted down the fact that the Karinhall collection had first been transported to Göring’s castle of Beldenstein on the Pegnitz River in Northern Bavaria. When Patton had got too near to that, it had been removed to Berchtesgaden. Lanny could give the assurance that it would be taken to the Führerbau in Munich, and that the same thing would be done with the Vienna and other collections now in the Alt Aussee salt mines. Lanny told how the treasures of the Kaiser Friedrich were safe in the vaults of the Reichsbank in Frankfurt; his wife had been there and inspected them. Thus encouraged, Göring imparted the fact that the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire had been taken to Nürnberg and walled up under the Paniers-Platz; these included the crown of Charlemagne, which the Pope had placed upon that emperor’s head in the year 800. The Prussian crown jewels had been placed in a sort of shrine, along with the bones of Frederick the Great and of Frederick William the Great Elector, and buried deep in a salt mine in Central Germany.

  And that wasn’t all. There were those Nazi rascals who had dared to try to have collections rivaling the Reichsmarschall’s. That scoundrel Ribbentrop, and that upstart and nobody Martin Bormann, who had managed to worm himself into the Führer’s graces—imagine such men setting up as art authorities! And Himmler, if you please; and that deranged mentality Rosenberg—“He got his name on the organization, but I got the best of the stuff—ha, ha, ha!” said Hermann. He was alluding to the ERR, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which had been set up to handle the art plundering in foreign lands. Göring told where each of these collectors had kept his treasures; he told where they would probably be hidden; and when he didn’t know he told the names of subordinates and advisers who would tell if they were well frightened.

  Evidently the Third Reich was breaking up not merely militarily but morally. Der Dicke didn’t have a good word to say for a single one of the men with whom he had been co-operating for almost a quarter of a century. Not even for his Führer! Göring was free now to say what he really thought, and he pointed out that Hitler had never traveled and was both narrow and ignorant; that was why he had let himself be lured into the frightful blunder of a two-front war—that turned into a multiple-front war before it finished
. Imagine attacking Russia, and then six months later declaring war on the United States—and just to oblige Japan! “As if Japan would be able to give us any help!”

  “Did you know the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming?” asked Lanny; and the answer was, “We were as much surprised as you. I was still in the Führer’s confidence in those days, and I am sure he would have told me if he had known. I suppose the Japs were afraid to trust us.”

  The prisoner of war went on to recall how bitterly he had opposed the attack upon Russia. “You can bear witness to that, Lanny,” and Lanny could and did. “I think that my fall from grace began at that time. The more I turned out to be right, the more it annoyed the Führer, until he could no longer bear to confront me. You see, in the early days he acted against the advice of his generals and was proved right so many times that he came to think of himself as infallible, and he had to prove it, even if it meant the ruin of all Germany. The evidence of his rightness was the territory he had taken, and he couldn’t bear to give up a single foot of it—at Stalingrad, or in France, or the Rhineland, or the Ruhr.”

  “A terrible set of calamities,” Lanny agreed—to keep him going.

  “What beat us was your country’s industrial power. I warned the Führer about it, but even I had only a slight idea of what you could do. Your father must have a colossal plant by now.”

  “He has indeed; but I haven’t seen it for some time.”

  “From the beginning I pleaded with the Führer to recognize that this war would be won by air power and to concentrate on that. But I suppose he thought I was just trying to get glory for my own branch of the services. He spent our energies on rockets, when it should have been engines for planes. And meantime you built bombers, bigger and bigger. I knew you would do it, but I must admit I never thought you’d be able to get a fighter-bomber that could fly to Berlin and back.”