America Über Alles

by Jack Fernley

  In truth, there were times when he did go on just a little bit too long. Times when she found it difficult to stifle a yawn, as Werner embarked on yet another explanation of Lebensraum, or the virtues of the Aryan people. She didn’t quite understand these issues around Jews. She was pretty certain she had never met a Jew. She knew many different kinds of Christians outside of her Catholic family, had come across some Puritans, there were plenty of those in New Jersey and a right pain in the arse they were, but Jews, no, she wasn’t aware of having met any. Apparently, though, if you went to New York or Philadelphia, they would overwhelm you. They lent money to both the Colonists and the British. ‘There is only one people who benefit from both sides in a war: the Jews,’ Werner had told her. ‘They sit at home, count their money and back both sides,’ and she saw no reason to disagree. She had been to New York, retreated with the army through Manhattan, remembered those large houses, their candles burning brightly through clear glass windows, well-fed faces staring out at them as they shuffled past, hungry, cold, clothed in no more than blankets, their shoes falling apart on them as they marched out of the city. She supposed those were the Jews he spoke of.

  And, of course, it wasn’t just his mind she enjoyed. He was beautiful to look at, his body honed by the daily exercise routine he insisted on. The scars he had collected from battles in France and Russia (he had travelled so far, seen so much, she felt so small, so insignificant compared to him), purple and proud on his legs and back, added to his allure. And she had seen them. Seen them that first afternoon on a blanket on the ground, in the meadow where he and she had first enjoyed each other, an event that now occurred almost daily.

  In the evenings, Conze would leave her. He had two major occupations then: either what he described as a ‘conference’ with von Steuben, Reitsch and the other Hessians or his educational sessions with the Colonists.

  Sarah had occasion to attend one or two of these meetings, but after a time, she realised she did not need this extra tuition in philosophy and history when she could enjoy her own individual tutorship. If she had had a girlfriend to confide in, she would have admitted to her that they were just a little dull.

  Conze’s lectures, however, were becoming much talked about at the camp. They began with the Philadelphian Riflemen, but soon he was delivering them to all the northern regiments and began to collect a group of acolytes around him, chief among them being Patrick O’Leary.

  The lectures were always voluntary. Conze often said he had no wish to bore anyone who did not wish to expand his mind. Their subject matter was philosophy and history and word began to travel among the enlisted men. In truth, a sitting army is a bored army and since the excitement of Trenton and Princeton, the army had been doing just that, sitting at Lowantica Brook, waiting for spring to break. Numbers were reduced, as some men had returned to their families for the winter, but there were still 7,000 men in camp and of those four hundred had become regular attendees at Conze’s lectures. And with each talk, their numbers increased. By the start of March, close to a thousand would be listening to him on the parade ground, with Conze standing on a raised crate, the men standing or sitting in a large semicircle, straining to hear his words.

  He was an engaging speaker. He talked for up to an hour, without any notes, often coming down from the crate, walking among them as he spoke. He would stop and directly address an individual. He constructed the lectures so that there was always a simple message that he would touch upon several times before returning to it at the end. The men often left with their heads buzzing with new concepts.

  As word spread around the camp, different regiments would send word for Conze to come and address them, which he would do, eagerly. Until finally came the invitation he was looking for, to address the North Carolina regiments who had only joined the main army in February. It was to be a fateful meeting, held in the open air on a warm March afternoon after parade.

  Its subject was ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’, and in it Conze discussed what kind of America they wanted to build after the war had been won. There was no doubt in his mind that the war would be won, so the issue was to win the peace afterwards and to create a nation that would enable the American people to fulfil their potential.

  ‘What kind of people do we want here in the Americas?’ he asked. ‘Do we want a nation populated by the scum and filth of Europe? Make no mistake, the princes of Europe will be looking to empty their prisons and send their worst criminals here. Do we want a nation built of thieves, murderers, rapists? A land where our children, our women will not feel safe?’

  There was only one response to that question and the cry from the 400 men echoed around the parade ground, ‘No!’

  To which Conze added: ‘Or do we want a nation of the pure, the wise and the best?’

  Which brought a large cheer of ‘Yes!’

  Emboldened, Conze moved on to the real meat of his argument: ‘So to whom do we open the doors of this great country? If we are not going to accept just anyone, who should we accept? We want only the most noble and the pure to build this nation. It is part of that nature that some races are superior to others, the Anglo-Saxon races, those who have made Western Europe the home of civilisation, are undoubtedly the most advanced, superior to all others. This nation has been established by people from Britain, Germany, Scandinavia; it is they, our forefathers, who have torn down the forests, turned the land into pasture, started great industries and businesses, made this a land fit for civilisation. They are linked not by the false claims of nations, of loyalty to kings and queens, but to a pure bloodline. We Anglo-Saxons, we Aryans, share a common heritage that has been masked by the false boundaries of nations. Here in America, should we revel in our common blood heritage and work to improve the human race – or should we allow our blood to be polluted by those who have weakened the great Anglo-Saxon countries?

  ‘Our task in America is simple: to improve mankind and create a race of superhumans, to make the most of the new openings that science is about to present to us. Nature has an iron law: each beast mates only with a companion from its own species. Why would human beings be any different? All the ills of old Europe spring from this one betrayal of nature’s law, from races breeding with different races. It spreads disease, it creates the feeble-minded, it weakens the human race. In America, we can overcome this weakness. We can insist upon racial purity and in doing so, we will overcome the perils that afflict Europe. We can create a master race, endowed with superior minds, physique, health, the natural, rightful lords of mankind, who will ensure the potential of the human race.’

  Conze stabbed his fingers out to his audience to emphasise points, screaming the most important words, creating a hypnotic spell that had the audience, men from the Carolinas, cheering along with him.

  ‘So what does this mean for the new America? It means we have to resist those races that are inferior. We have to stop them coming here and breeding with us Teutonic peoples. Already, in New York and Philadelphia and Boston, in the growing cities, you can see the first signs of these people coming and the havoc they wreak. Especially the Jews. They are the worst of all races, rootless, materialistic, unclean. If you read the history of the Jew, you will know it is a history of betrayal, from Jesus Christ onwards. If the Jews were the only people in the world, they would be wallowing in filth and mire, would exploit one another and then exterminate one another in a bitter struggle. There would be no human race. They cannot help themselves. It is their nature. We must ensure they cannot be allowed to do the same here in the Americas: they must be resisted. We need to control the immigration of people into this land. We must have at all our ports, the ability to stop the Jew, the Slav, the Chinaman, the Arab from entering. If we can stop the British bringing their tea into this country, we can stop these people!’

  There was a cheer at this stage and a general muttering of agreement. Warming to his theme, Conze now pushed it further, raising a subject he had never dared mention to the northern units, who include
d among their number many free slaves.

  ‘And what of those inferior races who are already here? The Indians and the Negroes that serve on the plantations of the south? They have been provided by providence, by God, if you will, like the forests, river and wild animals of this continent, as a natural resource for the Anglo-Saxon people. They are simple people and they can fulfil a function. They can work the land for their superiors. We will offer them the paternalism of the superior; we will provide them plantations or ghettos in which they can exist among their own kind, breeding with their own races, in return for their providing the raw power we need to conquer this land. But there can never be any mixed breeding between our people and those races who are closer to the beast in the field than the Anglo-Saxon. Mixed breeding must, if we are to protect the bloodline, be punished by death!’

  As he reached this point, there was a loud shout from the midst of the crowd, ‘Shame! Shame on you!’

  The men turned to one character: a Rifleman from Fort Watson named David Sloman, a twenty-eight-year-old Methodist preacher. He was perhaps the most educated man in the crowd, his family having sent him back to England, to be schooled at Cambridge, where he had fallen in with the Wesleyans. Sloman had become a supporter of the abolitionist cause, playing a role in the court victory of James Somerset, an escaped slave judged to have been unlawfully imprisoned by his owner. Returning to North Carolina and the family plantation, Sloman soon found himself ostracised by his family and he had volunteered for the rebel forces. As he stood up, there was some hissing from the edges of the crowd, but the man was unbowed.

  ‘You are a disgrace, sir! The Negro is not an inferior race. He is our brother. Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”’

  ‘Preacher, you quote the Bible at me, to defend the Jews?’

  ‘I do. Enough of this filth, there is no place for such hatred in these colonies. Away with you.’

  ‘You quote one verse, but what of the rest of the Christian New Testament? Did not Jesus call the Jewish leaders a “brood of vipers”? When he was taken before Pilate, what did all the Jews say? “Let him be crucified.” Christ killers. You defend the Christ killers!’

  There was some murmuring and then a distinct shout of ‘Christ killers!’ that quickly became a chant, echoing around the square. Then, from somewhere, something was thrown, a rock perhaps, and it struck Sloman on the side of the head. He fell and for a moment there was quiet. And then suddenly, explosively, three or four men rushed to him and assaulted him as he lay on the ground, giving one terrible shriek.

  They kicked him as he lay curled on the ground. Others joined in as well, until there were at least twenty of them. And then, they pulled away, leaving the bloodied corpse of Sloman, still on the ground, a pulpy mass of blood and flesh.

  Towards the edge of the group, a number of men, offended and terrified by what had occurred, slunk away, but the greater number stood still and then, perhaps most frightening of all, let loose a loud cheer. Conze had a new and hugely appreciative audience.

  Hand pulled off the swastika armband. He had never wanted it to be part of their uniform, to him it was the symbol of a foreign army. It was his men who had overruled him. They wanted to be closer to the Germans. They saw them not as foreign mercenaries, but rather an ideal to aspire to. They were amateurs, they knew that, but the Stormtroopers, they were professionals, and the Riflemen liked that. They wanted to be part of something better; they wanted what these Germans had. So he had agreed that they would wear the red band with the black swastika and embroidered below the word ‘Pennsylvania’.

  He was sat in his hut that evening, exhausted emotionally, mentally and physically, reflecting on the blistering row he had just had with Pat O’Leary. It was an argument that had been brewing for weeks, but finally it had all come out into the open. As he stared at his boots, he knew he had lost not just Pat but all his boys.

  Back in December, when things were beyond unbearable, they were his men, these Riflemen. They had been together for the best part of eighteen months; they had grown together through the pain of defeat and the endless retreat, through hunger, injury and death. But they had never waivered in their belief in him as their leader, they were proud to be called ‘Eddie Hand’s lads’, and they had sung a song with that title.

  All that was gradually changing. Slowly, but surely, he could feel his hold over them draining, hour by hour, day by day.

  And he understood what was happening. In the eyes of his men – and he heard the same from other field commanders, even from those who came into the camp from the towns and villages of the colonies – the reversal of fortune was down to one thing: the Germans. The victories at Trenton and Princeton, the capture of the baggage trains at New Brunswick, all these were directly caused by the arrival of the Germans. They still loved Old George, but really, had he any victories before the baron and his men arrived?

  Then there was the change in the camp.

  At first there were complaints about the endless drills, about the barking of the German sergeants in their broken English. The first few weeks had left most of them exhausted, collapsing in their new tents at the end of the day, unable to rise for grog even. A few, quite a few, said they had had enough, took off back to their wives and families, saying they had no stomach for it. But those that stayed behind, by the end of March were transformed.

  They were transformed physically. There was regular food now, properly cooked in the kitchens Reitsch had established. No one went hungry. And the drills, the forced marches, the strange outdoor gymnastic routines, had honed their bodies. And suddenly they began to wash on a regular basis, there was even regular changing of clothes. Not only did they look different, they smelled different. The men were taking a pride in themselves and their appearance that was at odds with the bedraggled, miserable men who had crossed the Delaware last Christmas Day.

  And all this they attributed to the Germans.

  They worshipped von Steuben, ‘The Baron’, and they adored Hanna Reitsch, the Angel of the Camp, beautiful, always with a joke and a word for any man, no matter how young or inexperienced. And then there was Conze, who encouraged them to think differently about the world, think in a way they never had before. And the regular men, the Stormtroopers, quickly they came to see them as comrades in arms, until for all intents and purposes there were no Riflemen. They were all Stormtroopers now. All were wearing variations of the swastikas, the symbol that was said to strike fear into the hearts of the British.

  They still had respect for Edward Hand, he knew that. He was still ‘The Boss Man’, but there was a weakening of the bond. He saw that with every man under his command and he especially saw that with Pat O’Leary.

  Pat had been his protégé for years.

  They had first met when Hand served as a surgeon’s mate in the British Army’s 18th Foot Regiment. The barely teenage O’Leary had travelled with the regiment from Cobh in 1767. He had suffered terrible seasickness on what was a wretched crossing and Hand had taken him under his wing. For seven years, they remained close and when Hand resigned his commission in 1774 to start a medical practice, O’Leary joined him with the aim of setting himself up as a gunsmith. There was ten years’ difference in age between them and it was clear to all that Hand served as a proxy father for O’Leary, who had been an orphan from the age of seven, running the narrow streets of Cobh, uneducated, half-naked and starving most of the time.

  Hand had taught the lad to read, worn off the roughest of the edges, encouraged him to think differently about his future, to think that he could have a future. And as the colonies moved towards rebellion, so Hand had furthered the boy’s education, introduced him to Tom Paine and his Common Sense. But now the pupil appeared to have outgrown the master and had found a new tutor; now he had a new man to listen to: Werner Conze.

  At first, Hand had enjoyed Conze and his taste for debate. But
over time, he had found him tiresome. He was like one of those Methodists you hear about, forever preaching, banging on about how the world should be better, how he alone had the answer. He started to avoid his company, but it was quite difficult as they were joint commanders-in-chief of the Riflemen. And it was even more difficult when his best charge started to parrot some of the German’s phrases. Hand had finally broken one day when Pat had started on about ‘blood and iron’ and the need for ‘a people’s iron will to be established’.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean, Pat?’

  ‘Wha? What d’yer mean, Ed?’

  ‘What does all this stuff about blood and iron and sacrifice actually mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s about sacrifices, the sacrifices we will all have to make for the greater good, for the new Reich we’re going to start.’

  ‘New Reich? What’s that?’

  ‘Ah, it’s a German word, it means, ah, it means, country, for sure. We will build this country on the blood of our enemies, on our own blood, the blood we will spill to see our enemies defeated.’

  ‘That’s bollocks, Pat. Absolute bollocks. How bloody stupid are you to fall for this? I thought I had educated you better than this.’

  And then the mist descended across O’Leary and in that moment, Hand saw years of resentment that he had not been remotely aware of. It came gushing out in a torrent of abuse. ‘That’s yer fucking problem, Ed Hand. You think you’re better than everyone else, because you went to Trinity and got some fancy education. What you can’t bear is me having my own opinions, fella. It’s all right if I’m your parrot, but God forbid me showing any thoughts meself. You’re jealous you are, jealous of Werner and all the German lads. Well, fuck you, Ed. I’m me own man, not your fucking puppet.’