by Thynne, Jane
‘You joined the Party?’
‘Of course. I knew that was going to be essential if I was to progress. I was lucky with my first embassy – I was posted as an attaché to Budapest – but I served in a couple of less salubrious places before I landed Paris. I can’t deny I was very fortunate to get the French Embassy. 78, Rue de Lille is the address of Foreign Service dreams.
‘Anyhow, my heavy exposure to opera, as you so acutely noticed, must have rubbed off. Himmler takes me as a cultural connoisseur of the highest order. I’ve had to bone up because whenever I see him he asks about Wagner. It would be enough to terrify a lesser man, but as it is I have a gift for bluffing. It’s probably my greatest talent. Perhaps my only one.’
Casually, he added, ‘He was so pleased with me he’s awarded me an honorary rank in the SS. I’ve had to change uniforms.’
‘I noticed.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I preferred the other one.’
The roads had emptied out now and they had passed into the Bavarian countryside. The air was fresh and clean. Pockets of forest were intersected with fields of intense, luminous green, and here and there white-faced houses with green shutters and red slanting roofs stood, bursts of crimson geraniums frothing at their windows. Cows gazed indifferently at a gate. It was a landscape of idyllic calm, but it was not enough to soothe the anxiety thrumming through Clara’s body.
Affecting a nonchalance she did not feel, she said, ‘Do you have any idea who will be at this lunch?’
‘Hardly anyone.’ He paused. ‘The Bormanns. Himmler, obviously.’
‘And Heydrich?’ she asked, before she could stop herself.
He gave her a quick, curious glance, as if assessing her interest, and said,
‘Perhaps. If he’s not detained by other business in Munich.’
Clara quailed. The thought of Heydrich’s eyes, as grey and pitiless as a frozen North Sea, meeting hers across the lunch table, terrified her. Fear narrowed her throat, making it hard to speak.
‘Heydrich intrigues you, doesn’t he? I can understand why. He’s an interesting figure. He’s a very talented violinist,’ said Brandt musingly. ‘He plays in a quartet with Frau Canaris, the wife of the Abwehr chief. Strange to imagine, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’ Actually, she could just about imagine Heydrich submitting to the discipline of practice, applying himself to a piece day after day with military rigour until he had mastered every note of it precisely. But imagining a soul inside that cadaverous frame, thrilling to the beauty of Strauss or Beethoven, would take a greater imagination than hers.
‘He’s a surprising figure all round. When Himmler first interviewed Heydrich he was impressed by how much he knew about intelligence affairs. He never discovered that Heydrich’s grounding in espionage matters came entirely from reading British spy novels. John Buchan, Erskine Childers and so on. Heydrich always wanted to be a spy. They say he was obsessed with spy fiction even while he was still in the Navy. He signs his internal documents with “C” because he’s read that’s what the head of the British Secret Service likes to do. Whether he does or not, I wouldn’t know.’
Clara gave an obligatory laugh. She did know, but Brandt must never discover that.
‘Heydrich knows all the secrets of the Third Reich. He knows where all the bodies are buried. He even dug up and interviewed the residents of the Viennese flophouse where Hitler lived in 1910. Can you imagine that? Extraordinary efficiency.’
Seeing her face he added, ‘Don’t worry. With any luck you won’t need to talk to the men. You can gossip with the ladies. I’m sure that’s the kind of intelligence-gathering you prefer.’
The road was winding upwards now, and the landscape was becoming mountainous. Ahead, the crags of the Bavarian Alps were silhouetted against the morning sky, lilac and grey, towering into a light net of mist. Snow lay in the folds of their peaks, and in their valleys, deep silver lakes were captured. Despite her apprehension, Clara was awestruck. These mountains had inspired so many artists, from Caspar David Friedrich to Wagner. They encapsulated the sublime and lent themselves to the wildest flights of fantasy. King Ludwig had built his fairy-tale castle, Neuschwanstein, amongst their southern foothills, determined to recreate the Germanic legends of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and Hitler was merely the latest leader to be transported by their romantic grandeur. This was a landscape that tugged at the heart of the German soul, though the feelings it aroused were not to be trusted. Something lay deep within these daunting cliffs, something as sharp and unforgiving as the crags themselves, which dwarfed ordinary human beings and made them seem utterly insignificant.
After a while the road narrowed and they passed into a pretty little town, with a sign announcing itself as Berchtesgaden. Brandt gestured to a freshly built station, furnished with grand pillars in monumental Third Reich style, which looked freakishly out of place in the quiet Alpine surroundings.
‘The Führer’s architectural tastes always tend towards the grandiose. His offices look like railway stations and his railway stations look like churches.’
‘What do his churches look like?’
‘Heaps of rubble, if our leader has anything to do with it. He doesn’t like churches at all. He prefers rally grounds to cathedrals.’
Past Berchtesgaden the road began to wind upwards, beneath a banner stretched across the road which read, Führer, wir danken Dir!, and out towards more fields. Occasional walkers alongside the road waved and gave the Hitler salute, peering avidly through the windows of the gleaming car on the lookout for celebrities. The men were dressed in traditional leather jackets and Bavarian hats, with knee breeches and socks, the women in starched dirndls, aprons and white, knitted socks and hobnailed boots. Some of them carried baskets of flowers.
‘They’re hoping for a sight of the Führer. He always comes out when he’s here. Sometimes the women tear open their blouses as he passes.’ Brandt grimaced. ‘It’s extremely unbecoming.’
‘I take it the Führer averts his eyes.’
‘I’m sure he does. Unfortunately, the passions he provokes can prove more dangerous. It’s been known for girls to throw themselves at his car in the hope of being injured and then comforted by him.’
Eva Braun’s pallid face came again into Clara’s mind. Once it might have seemed astonishing to her that women would risk physical injury for their leader, let alone their lives, yet this man carried death around him wherever he went. Suddenly, the thought of where they were headed caused fear like a surge of nausea to catch in her throat and she wound down the window to gulp the fresh air. It was as sharp as diamonds. The bright alpine sun made everything shimmer with iridescence.
‘The air’s extraordinary here, isn’t it?’ Brandt commented. ‘It’s to do with the salt deposits in the mountains, apparently. The Führer says it makes him feel well again. Ah, here we are.’
They had come to a ten-foot, double layer of barbed wire surrounding a roped-off area of the mountainside. The car crunched over the gravel to a stone guardhouse where the guards stiffened to attention. One ducked his head in and Clara and Brandt showed their identity cards. Further on she glimpsed more guards, patrolling with dogs.
‘Security here is second to none. A few years ago an SA man named Kraus was granted permission to present a petition personally to the Führer and he fired at him. He was killed by the guards of course, and reprisals were taken immediately, but ordinary people can be just as much trouble. They like to collect the gravel on which the Führer has set foot and take home parcels of it in muslin bags. It annoys the SS immensely.’
They passed a barracks and several parking lots until the road wound round and the house itself came into view.
The Berghof might once have been a charming country home, a white-faced chalet-style construction set into the slope of the hillside, yet now the simple mountain house had been extended to form the hub of an entire Nazi complex, a gated community for the National Socialist élite. Al
l villagers who had lived within sight of the house had been forcibly removed, and their chalets and farmhouses transformed into luxury homes for Goering, Goebbels, Hess and Speer, or, if they were too humble, into barracks for soldiers. The entire compound was ringed with anti-aircraft guns and deep underground bomb- and gas-proof bunkers had been built.
The entrance to the house itself was preceded by a steep flight of wide steps, the same steps that just a few days ago Neville Chamberlain himself had mounted.
For a moment, as Brandt pulled the Horch to a stop, Clara froze. Being here, in the jaws of the Third Reich, had never seemed so real or so intimidating. There was no escape here or refuge from scrutiny. She wasn’t in the middle of a city, where she could turn tail and disappear, or in a film studio, surrounded by people who cared only for their work. She was not among friends, but at the beating heart of the Nazi regime, with officers who were apt to look on strangers with particular scrutiny. The only person she could trust was Max Brandt, whom she knew she must not trust. Fear moored her to the seat, turning her limbs weak and immovable. She wanted to beg Brandt to turn the car around and drive back fast the way they had come. Then two SS guards leapt forward, in black jackets with swastika armbands attached, opened the doors and gave the Hitler salute. Brandt raised his right hand, turned to Clara and said softly,
‘Ready?’
‘I’m not sure.’
His expression was strange, unreadable.
‘Relax. You of all people know how to put on a good show.’ He led her up the steps, then another flight, and there, in front of them, was the most famous view in Germany.
Every citizen of the Reich was familiar with the vista from the terrace of the Berghof. Every cinema-goer had seen newsreel film of the Führer, strolling with Himmler or Albert Speer, playing with the flaxen-haired children of his aides, sitting beneath a striped parasol with his loyal dog at his heels while beyond him lay the panoramic vista of the Untersberg mountain with Salzburg Castle in the distance. Some way away was the Eagle’s Nest, the Kehlsteinhaus, commissioned by Bormann and formally presented to Hitler on his birthday that year. Immediately beneath the terrace, meadows rolled into distant forest, above which soared the mountains, veined with snow like a garland of blossom at their peaks. In that mountain range across from the Berghof Charlemagne was said to sleep, waiting to restore the glory of the German empire. This craggy romantic landscape could not be less like the military geography of Berlin, with its squares of stone and steel and its ranks of marching soldiers. Yet in different ways they both expressed the indomitable ethic of the Nazi soul.
The terrace, which wrapped itself around three sides of the house, was furnished with cane sun loungers, white wooden chairs and tables. The pale stone shimmered in the sharp Alpine air, and lounging against the wall on the far side was a group of men, some in SS uniform, others in field grey and a couple in suits, chatting to women over pre-lunch drinks. Two little girls in perfectly smocked dresses and plaits like chunks of woven corn played with an Alsatian, hanging garlands of daisies around its neck as the dog patiently endured the little fingers digging into his fur. As she watched the knot of people chatting and laughing, Clara’s only consolation was that all the women were wearing dirndls. What luck that in her blind panic that morning she had chosen the dress with puffed sleeves and dirndl neckline to wear. And her silver necklace with the picture of her mother inside. Her clothing, at least, would not give her away.
Brandt strode confidently towards the group and clicked his heels before dipping his head to hand-kiss the female guests, and then gestured to Clara.
‘Fräulein Clara Vine, you may know, from the Ufa studios,’ he said, with a tone that implied that even if they had not heard of her, they should have. He introduced the entire group, the men giving Clara a curt bow and clicking heels, the women a handshake. He ended with a buxom blonde.
‘And this is Frau Mimi Kubisch.’
Kubisch. Clara recognized the name immediately. She knew, as Brandt did, that this was Hitler’s first girlfriend, the one who had been Mimi Reiter, yet Clara also knew that this woman had visited Hitler at his apartment just days ago and if Eva was to be believed had been told by Hitler that his relationship was ending. Like the others, Mimi wore rustic, Bavarian fashion, which on her translated as a tip-tilted red hat, a puffed-sleeve blouse beneath a red bodice, thick white socks and brown lace-up brogues. She gave Clara a broad smile.
‘Have you been here before, Fräulein Vine?’
‘Only in the Ufa Tonwoche,’ said Clara lightly.
‘Then you’ll be longing to see around! Would you like a tour while the men talk?’
The Berghof might have been inspired by Hitler’s passion for Wagner, but there was nothing Wagnerian about the interior, unless Lohengrin had a penchant for flocked wallpaper or Tannhäuser liked to relax in a chintz armchair. Everywhere stolid bourgeois taste prevailed, with fretted wood, fringed lampshades and slightly threadbare sofas piled high with embroidered cushions. Mimi followed her gaze.
‘There must be fifty cushions with Ich liebe Sie and Heil mein Führer! stitched on them. He won’t throw a single one away. He says each gift is precious to him but I say why can’t people think of something more original than Heil mein Führer!’
Mimi led the way through a vaulted corridor into a vast room, fit for a mediaeval banquet, with a gigantic window to one side giving a panoramic view of the mountains. It was grander here. The walls were covered in Gobelin tapestries and the floor laid with red velvet and Persian carpets. Portraits of nude women hung over the fireplace and a gigantic eagle crouched over the bronze clock. At one end a grand piano was clustered with silver-framed photographs of foreign royalty, including a shot of the Duchess of Windsor, smiling up at Hitler as he took her hand on the steps of the Berghof the previous year. Like so much of Third Reich architecture, the main function of the room was not comfort or convenience, so much as making everyone feel small.
‘This entire place was rebuilt a couple of years ago. He’s terribly proud of it. All the swastika tiles on the floor are hand-painted and every evening that tapestry over there lifts up to make way for the screen. They show films every evening; several, usually,’ she smiled merrily. ‘Nothing’s allowed to get in the way of the Führer’s screenings. When Mr Chamberlain came here recently, the Führer cut the meeting short so he could watch an Ingrid Bergman movie!’
‘I heard he liked The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.’
‘Liked it? He’s seen it ten times! He’s made it compulsory viewing for the SS because it shows how Britain gained her empire. And every night when the movie’s finished, he gives his opinion to an adjutant who wires it over to the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin.’
‘That sounds amazingly efficient.’
‘It’s terribly important, the Führer says. He’s been watching a lot of American films recently – Tarzan, Mickey Mouse, Laurel and Hardy and so on, because he wants to learn about American culture. He loved Laurel and Hardy. Gave them a standing ovation, actually. Oh, here they come . . .’
The door opened at the far end of the room and a group of men entered, deep in conversation. Their German was harsh and guttural and Clara was only able to catch the occasional word and phrase. ‘Rabble’ was one and ‘essential preparations’ was another.
Clara shivered.
‘Cold, isn’t it?’ said Mimi. ‘It’s always freezing here. He actually bought the house because it’s orientated to the north. He doesn’t like the sun, you see, but it does mean the house is constantly in shadow and it always feels like winter. You need to bring a fur coat, even in the warmest weather.’
The group at the end of the room erupted in laughter and Clara nodded at them casually.
‘What are they talking about, do you suppose?’
Mimi shrugged. ‘What do you think? They say Adolf Hitler is the guest at every party. Even when he’s not here. Want to go back outside? I’m dying for a cigarette and no one’s allowed to smoke anywhere i
ndoors. You won’t find a single ashtray in this entire place, not even in the bedrooms. He has them inspected regularly to check.’
They lit up and leant over the balustrade. In the driveway below Clara could see a soldier polishing Brandt’s gleaming Horch, buffing its sleek lines as meticulously as if it had been one of his own jackboots. Further on, the little girls were throwing the Alsatian’s ball into the flowerbeds and watching the animal trample the flowers while a guard, rifle slung over his shoulder, tried ineffectually to prevent them.
‘What do you think of the view? It’s tremendous, isn’t it? You never get tired of a view like this.’
‘It’s breathtaking.’
‘We have Bormann to thank for it.’
She pointed behind her to a squat man with no neck and clothes that hung on him like flabby skin.
‘Bormann ravaged this place,’ said Mimi more softly. ‘Fifty houses were taken down, and a sanitarium. He burned down a farm to make way for a place big enough to accommodate his ten children. It was pretty hard for the families who lived here. My own family knew a lot of them, but even if they’d been here for generations, Bormann wouldn’t let them stay. Security reasons.’
She turned round and rested her elbows on the terrace ledge as she surveyed the group of men in the hall, pointing at them with the tip of her cigarette.
‘I don’t suppose you know many of these people. That one’s Julius Schaub, the Führer’s valet.’ She indicated a man with bulging eyes and a pronounced limp. ‘He limps because several of his toes were amputated for frostbite in the war.’
