The doubt that troubled him that morning had been forming in his mind for several weeks. It was like an uninvited guest at a party who would not leave when politely asked to do so. It approached him at inconvenient moments of the day, when shaving in the morning or during that quiet moment after lunch when he would do the Times crossword.
Try as he might, Sir Nevile could not dismiss the small cloud that had formed in an otherwise clear blue sky of rational policy and logical diplomacy. Was the British government right about Hitler? Was it sensible to treat the German leader as a sane and rational politician who wanted merely to redeem the national shame of an unjust peace treaty and create a nation embracing all German-speaking peoples in central Europe? Or was there a deeper and more menacing ambition hidden behind that cowlick hairstyle and silly moustache? Was the man bent on a return to war, of which he had had personal experience in the trenches of Flanders Fields?
Nevile Henderson disliked the term “appeasement”. It smacked too much of deference, even surrender. They were, after all, dealing with a man who had come to power through the tactical use of violence and intimidation. And it was tactical, was it not? The murderous coup against Röhm and the old SS had left hundreds dead and thousands more in prison camps. That had happened one blood-letting night back in 1934. But this was a young country finding its feet in a Europe hostile to its history and culture. Hitler had been forced to consolidate his power with brutal means that would have been familiar to the Tudors in England.
Sir Nevile took a seat in the sunshine and looked along the avenue to the Brandenburg Gate. Napoleon had walked through that triumphal arch as a hero, and he remained so in France to this day. Yet look at the record and one will find many a dark deed on his path to power. Was Hitler any different?
The Frenchman had launched his coup d’état against the ruling Directoire in Paris with a band of musketeers. Hitler had crept up on power like a tiger, flattening himself in the long grass while he stalked his prey, always waiting for the right moment to pounce. If anything, the new leader of Germany was the better tactician, using genuine anger over the Versailles treaty terms to mask his real ambitions. You had to admire that, thought Sir Nevile. Hitler had taken his party from two per cent of the national vote in the parliamentary election of 1928 to a majority and supreme power in 1933. That was little short of political genius.
A certain respect was due a leader of such calibre. There was a thuggish aspect to the Nazis’ rise to power, of course; one had to admit that. Then there was the Jewish thing, which seemed to obsess Hitler and his inner circle, although Sir Nevile had been told that ordinary members of the Nazi Party, especially women, were not inclined to racial hatred, despite the propaganda of Goebbels and his crew.
Anti-Semitism was not pretty and although the ambassador was privately appalled by the excesses that followed the Anschluss in Austria, it was clear to him that Hitler had not known, still less approved, of the errant behaviour of the SS in Vienna that spring. In any case, Sir Nevile had made it a personal and political priority not to let the problems of the Jews get in the way of his diplomatic mission. He was comforted in this thought by the fact that the prime minister entirely agreed with him. Both men knew that the key to the future of Europe lay in the character of a man they believed to have been widely misunderstood and thus misjudged.
Sir Nevile had learnt to appreciate the personal qualities in Hitler that few others saw. He felt it gave him an important advantage over other heads of mission in Berlin. Hitler could be both charming and very persuasive, especially when he expressed what the ambassador felt was a genuine desire to forge a relationship with Britain that would benefit both countries.
He knew there were those on his staff who saw nothing but evil in the man, disliked the appeasement policy and favoured the more aggressive diplomacy preached by Winston Churchill. But Churchill was an egoistical old bore who was often inebriated after lunch in the Commons and was always indisposed after dinner. Frankly, it flattered the old man to call him, as some did, an old elephant trumpeting past glories from the fringe of the herd. He was more like a war veteran warming himself by a winter fire on memories of distant battles and cheap brandy.
Sir Nevile turned away from the Brandenburg Gate and walked quickly back to the embassy. The world was suddenly a better place. His doubts had been banished. He raised his hat occasionally to ladies as he passed, leaving them in his wake looking surprised at such old-fashioned gallantry. His confidence had been restored. He walked with vigour and looked forward to the day ahead. He told himself that he had, like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, conquered his doubts. Had not Christ fallen to his knees as his attackers closed in and pleaded with his father, saying, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me?” Then he had risen and faced the men who would crucify him.
The ambassador summoned his senior staff to the delayed morning meeting the moment he returned. He watched them take their places. This would be a quick meeting to make up lost time, a canter around the course to familiarise everyone with the jumps, as he liked to say. That was the one thing he really disliked about his job in Berlin. There was never time to ride his horse. Sir Nevile looked at the agenda and saw that as usual David Buckland was to give a summary.
Buckland spoke briefly. He said that behind the drumbeat of propaganda and hysteria one hard political fact had emerged. The German leadership had collectively decided to invade Czechoslovakia in six weeks. The German army had been given orders to move into the Sudetenland region in July.
“I am sorry to say that it seems the time for talking is over. Supremely confident after the lack of any international condemnation of his Austrian Anschluss, Hitler will now move against his eastern neighbour.”
Buckland sat down. Sir Nevile sighed. The day was not going to go quite as planned. He had been rebuked by inference by a senior member of his own staff. Of course neither he nor the government had condemned the Austrian takeover. In fact, the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, had virtually congratulated Hitler on the move. But what was the point of an empty condemnation when one had no military force within five hundred miles to back it up? He looked up. Halliday had raised his hand at the far end of the table.
“Just to confirm, Ambassador. The code name for the assault on Czechoslovakia is Case Green. Hitler has personally signed the operational document issued to his commanders using the following words as a preamble. I quote this verbatim: ‘It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the foreseeable future.’”
“Do the Czechs know this?” It was all Sir Nevile could do. Keep calm, ask a question, persuade those anxious faces around the table that he was in control, that he had known this was coming and that he had already weighed the diplomatic response.
“Yes,” said Halliday. “They are mobilising their army as we speak.”
“Macrae?” snapped the ambassador.
“I can confirm what we have just heard,” said Macrae.
“And the German High Command is going along with this?”
“It rather depends whether the aim of the operation is annexation of the Sudetenland region or a wider assault to take the whole country,” said Macrae.
“Well, which is it, man – you are supposed to be the military attaché, aren’t you?”
Macrae picked up a sheaf of papers and flipped through them as if trying to find the answer to the question. He was enjoying the ambassador’s anger. The frightening reality of the apocalypse that was about to descend on Europe might just be brought home to a man convinced by class and privilege that he knew best.
“I am not privy to the secret strategy behind Case Green, and I suspect the generals are not either. The one man who knows the answer is the Führer himself, and may I suggest that on your next meeting with Herr Hitler you demand an answer to the question.”
There was silence as those around the table awaited the ambassador’s response. He had never been challenged in such a manner before; i
ndeed, every minute of the brief meeting so far had been quite extraordinary.
Sir Nevile Henderson had been staring at the table, his face pale and creased with lines. He raised his head.
“I will thank you not to tell me how to do my job, Colonel Macrae. Yours is to find out the true German intentions towards Czechoslovakia and report back.”
He had risen halfway through his retort and was at the door when he stopped and looked at Macrae.
“We have no time to lose, do you hear?”
When he got back to his office, Macrae saw a folded note on his desk. Written in the school handwriting of his secretary, it said that a William Shirer had called three times that morning asking for “a private word”.
Halliday popped his head round the door, grinning.
“I have a feeling you’ve just dropped off the ambassador’s Christmas card list,” he said.
“I don’t think you’ll be getting one either. Come in.”
Halliday perched on his desk.
“It won’t make any difference,” he said. “It will only increase their desire to do a deal.” He picked up the note from the desk. “So Shirer has been calling you too, has he?”
Macrae took the note from him.
“Mind your own business, Roger.”
He scrunched the note into a ball and flicked it into the wastepaper basket.
“Don’t get touchy. I only asked because he wants to meet up with me at some smart restaurant tonight. Why not come along – one bird with two stones?”
“Where?”
“Smart place, very exclusive. Sort of club. Bit different. You’ll like it. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
The Salon was full when Halliday and Macrae walked in. The woman on the door had seemed to know Halliday and waved them in. Through the smoky haze they had trouble finding Shirer. The woman maître d’ did not recognise his name on her reservation list. Finally they saw him tucked away at a corner table next to the small bandstand. There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and three glasses.
The American correspondent rose to greet them.
“Welcome,” he said. “You know this place, Colonel Macrae?”
“No,” said Macrae, looking around at the mirrored décor in what appeared to be a restaurant, nightclub and bar combined. “What’s it called?”
“The Salon,” said Shirer. “Good observation post, wouldn’t you say, Mr Halliday?”
Macrae tried to remember where he had come across the name before. Halliday laughed, raised a glass of champagne and looked around the room. The Italian journalists were in again and he recognised a senior commander in the Luftwaffe in civilian clothes dining with three young men in evening dress. Halliday guessed them to be part of Göring’s Reich Air Ministry, which controlled all Luftwaffe operations. On the far side the French chargé d’affaires was hosting dinner for what looked like a group of French businessmen. At the bar every seat was taken by suited drinkers. Everywhere the waitresses wearing the usual grey close-cut dresses threaded their way through tables with trays of drinks and food.
From a purely operational point of view, Halliday took his hat off to Reinhard Heydrich. He had developed the Gestapo into an efficient machine for creating terror, thus suppressing dissent, and gathering intelligence. And he had turned a broken-down Berlin brothel into a small but lethal reflection of the wider strategy.
The Salon was a keyhole through which you could catch a glimpse of privileged Berliners at play in a city where pleasure had been publicly forbidden, and entertainment only licensed if it promoted the goals of the National Socialist government. The cinema and theatre had not entirely been suborned to the demands of Goebbels and his Propaganda Ministry. Harmless vaudeville entertainment and imported American films were allowed, as long as they did not transgress the censorship rules.
Here in the Salon the rules were different. Under the watchful eye of Kitty, the Nazi elite and those who did business with them could eat sumptuous food, drink fine wines and indulge in the carnal delights to be found behind the fanlight door.
And it gave Heydrich and his goons both power and intelligence. They listened to and watched everything that was said and done in the Salon. What they did not realise was that the Salon also provided very useful information to those like himself who did not share the interests of the National Socialist Party. Halliday tried to work out who in the club that night had come for those pleasures that were not on the menu. The Italian journalists, for sure. They were always here.
“This is rather expensive, isn’t it?” said Macrae, looking at the menu, wondering who was going to pay for the dinner, if dinner was what they were here for. He wasn’t entirely sure. Primrose was out again that night but had said she would not be home late. He wanted to talk to her, hear her news, tell her something of the job he was trying to do. He had hardly seen his wife for days now. She seemed to spend endless evenings with other embassy wives. They passed like distant ships at sea, semaphoring the occasional signal as a courtesy rather than to communicate anything of importance.
“It’s a very exclusive place; that’s why,” said Shirer. “Look around. You’ll see senior members of the Nazi hierarchy, the civil service, foreign diplomats, big names in entertainment circles. They’re all here.”
“You had better explain a little further,” said Halliday with a smile, and Macrae realised they had a secret and that he had been brought to the Salon that night to share it.
“Fine food, best in Berlin, incomparable wines, and you get some very decent songs, not just all the old German lieder they sing in the beer halls.”
Shirer was smiling as he gestured around the club. Macrae was becoming irritated with the game the two men were playing.
“I’ve never heard of the place,” he said.
“Of course not; it keeps itself to itself, never advertises, and there is a strict door policy.”
“You’re making it sound very secretive.”
“It has to be. It’s exclusive. So are the waitresses …”
Shirer gestured at a young woman passing with a tureen of soup.
“They’re very pretty,” agreed Macrae.
Shirer leant forward, pouring more champagne into their glasses. “That’s the whole point,” he said.
“What is?” said Macrae, feeling even more irritated.
“Because this is a brothel,” whispered Shirer. He sat back, laughed and slapped the table to make the point.
“Welcome to the Salon, Colonel.”
Macrae looked around the room. He was sitting in an exclusive and very expensive Berlin restaurant, not a brothel. Shirer was kidding him. The American was making a strange and rather tasteless joke, a further reminder that, whatever else crossed the Atlantic with the good ship Mayflower, it certainly wasn’t an English sense of humour.
“What, all these waitresses …?”
“Well, not these,” said Halliday, “because they have to work tonight, but behind that fanlight door there are plenty more.”
Macrae looked around the room. “These women are all …?”
“Available? Yes,” said Halliday, getting to his feet. “I have to go; you two have things to talk about. But remember: ‘look don’t touch’ is our rule here. And watch that door and see who goes through it – could be useful.”
For the next half hour Macrae and Shirer jousted as they ate their steaks, using nuggets of information to tempt the other into indiscretion.
“What I want to know is what we all want to know,” said Shirer finally.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Every hack and dip in this city.”
“What do we all want to know?” said Macrae.
“Cards on the table: I want information from you and you from me. Deal? OK. You know about Case Green?”
“Possibly.”
“And you have heard that Hitler has actually put in writing – writing, mind you – his order to his generals to smash Czechoslovakia, those very words.”
“And you would like to know the reaction in the High Command to that order?”
“That would be interesting.”
“In which case, you might like to know what I want to know,” said Shirer.
Macrae slid a cuff back trying to take a discreet look at his watch. Shirer reached over the table and placed a hand on his wrist.
“We have time,” he said. “This is important.”
“I can’t stay too late. What do you want to know?”
“Simple. What will HMG do when it learns that Case Green is about invading Czechoslovakia, all of it, and opening the way for further aggression against Poland? What will that do to the appeasement policy?”
“A very good question,” said Macrae, and he looked across the room, hoping to see someone he knew, so that he could end the conversation. He wished Halliday had not left so early.
And there she was at the bar, smoking a cigarette in a holder. Ruth the restaurant manager. Except she wasn’t the restaurant manager. And her name probably wasn’t Ruth. She was wearing a red dress rather than the dove-grey uniform of the Salon’s waitresses.
“Well?” said Shirer.
Macrae turned back.
“It’s impossible to say, but if you want my private and candid opinion, only if the government falls in a confidence vote in the House of Commons will there be a change in the current policy towards Germany. The prime minister has staked his career and his future reputation on the belief that Hitler will listen to reason, that a deal can be done, that in the final analysis the Führer will not provoke a wider war. Chamberlain has his party and the country behind him on this.”
“What I thought,” said Shirer. “OK, fair enough. All right, my turn.”
Macrae turned to scan the room again. Ruth, or whatever her name was, was talking to a man at the bar. She seemed bored and blew a smoke ring into the air. The man offered her a drink, snapping his fingers at the woman behind the bar. She shook her head.
Midnight in Berlin Page 13
