by Henry Landau
CHAPTER 23
PASSPORT CONTROL IN GERMANY
THE LIQUIDATION OVER, I determined to relax for a time. I spent a delightful week with some friends at their chateau in Belgian Luxembourg, hunting and fishing, and then I received the eagerly awaited communication from C informing me that I had been transferred to the staff of Lord Kilmarnock, attaché and private secretary to the British ambassador in Berlin. I was to report in London immediately for instructions.
In London I was informed by the chief that in recognition of my services, he had awarded me the best of his appointments abroad in the post-war re-arrangement of the secret service. I was to open an office in Berlin, and in addition to the duties which he would give me to perform, but which would develop after I had got settled, I was to direct and organise the passport control there. For this purpose, I would be attached to Lord Kilmarnock’s staff as chief passport control officer for Germany, with branch offices in Hamburg and Munich. Although Lord Kilmarnock would not be taking up his post for several weeks, I was to proceed to Berlin immediately, where I was to report to General Malcolm, the head of the British mission. Finally, the chief directed me to get full instructions from the Home Office concerning the granting of visas.
At the Home Office I was told that no visa, under any circumstances, should be granted to any German who could possibly try to get work in England, and that as regarded other applicants, I should weed them out as strictly as possible, forwarding to the Home Office for final consideration and sanction, only those applications coming from people whose good faith I had thoroughly investigated. I was shown a multitude of forms and rubber stamps, whose use was explained to me, with the assurance that a supply of them was waiting for me at the British mission. With a light heart and full of expectation, I set out for Berlin, knowing that a new field had been opened up for me. I was all excitement. I visualised the old days of Rotterdam all over again, though, of course, with new objectives and new methods. There would be the same pioneering work to be done, but it would be even more interesting. I was more experienced. I was going forward fully prepared for the battle of wits which the secret service always calls for.
Arrived in Berlin, I drove immediately to the Hotel Bristol, where I had stopped in pre-war days, but found it impossible to get a room. All the good hotels were filled, and each had a long waiting list. I secured the temporary use of a room for a few hours, and after a proper breakfast I made my way to the Moltkestrasse, the headquarters of the British mission. My interview with General Malcolm lasted but a few minutes; it was merely a courtesy call to place myself under his protection. He was a busy man, for not only had he been directing the return of several hundred thousand British prisoners of war to England, but in the absence of a diplomatic representative he was also handling all communications between the British and German governments. He was beset with a continual stream of callers, both from the other Allied missions and from the various German ministries.
He put me in touch with two of his officers – Captain Breen and Count de Salis, the son of the British envoy at the Vatican. With these two I spent the rest of the day looking around, and being shown the ropes. Breen was especially useful to me; he was thoroughly conversant with the German political situation, and, in fact, was one of General Malcolm’s right-hand men.
When I broached the subject of quarters, I found that I should have to get a requisition from the Foreign Office before I could get a room in one of the hotels, for Berlin was crowded not only with Allied officers of the various military missions and control commission, but with Germans from the provinces. It was too late after my arrival to secure this necessary inch of red tape; so I spent the night on a camp bed at the British embassy in the Wilhelmstrasse, where I found the Dutch representatives, who had occupied the embassy during the war, preparing to move out before Lord Kilmarnock’s arrival. The chancellery presented a scene of bustle as packing-cases were filled with Dutch official records, but the rest of the embassy was wrapped in silence and darkness; shutters were drawn, furniture was covered, the servants had already been dismissed. That night Breen and I were the sole occupants. On the next day, thanks to my requisition, I found myself located at the Hotel Esplanade on the Potsdamerplatz, one of the newest and best of the Berlin hotels.
For a few days I looked around in order to orientate myself. Officers of the Allied armies were to be seen everywhere, especially in the fashionable places. I felt quite strange walking around Berlin in a uniform, when a year ago I was sending spies into Germany employing every form of secrecy. For the moment I was glad to have it on, for it seemed a protection; the people appeared sullen. I soon realised, however, that they were not aggressive; they were too cowed. Their sullenness was due to their resentment of the presence of the Allied officers, and the foreign uniforms probably had an irritating effect.
The city was filled with men still wearing their field grey soldier’s uniform. Several million men had been demobilised, but vast numbers of them had not yet obtained work, nor had they the price of a new suit of clothes. My thoughts went back to Belgium, to those few days after the Armistice when I had seen these same men file past me, an efficient military machine. Then, even though dirty and tired, they looked as if they had life in them, and still could fight. Now they seemed to be derelicts, completely demoralised and in despair, more like human scarecrows than soldiers; often they wore only part uniform and part ragged civilian attire, a pair of trousers or a coat from the remnants of a pre-war wardrobe. Starvation conditions, disappointment with the situation at home, and misery in their families had done more damage to their morale in a few months than the enemy fire during the course of the whole war. The German authorities could do nothing for them, except dish out potatoes to them at the communal kitchens; the unfortunate creatures could only wait listlessly and hopelessly until such time as the German industries had picked up sufficiently for them to be absorbed.
At the big hotels, and in the better restaurants, where prices reckoned in German marks were enormously high, one could get absolutely everything, but in the ordinary establishments the food was wretched. Ersatz, or substitution products, were used for numerous foodstuffs: ground acorns went under the name of coffee, weak coffee under the name of Moka, and coffee such as we know it received the rating of double Moka; the difference in price between coffee and double Moka was staggering.
If the mass of the people in Berlin were poverty stricken, there were quite a number who had enriched themselves through graft or speculation. Some were war profiteers; others were fattening on the people’s miseries by cornering foodstuffs and other necessities of life, or had made scandalous profits out of the sale of left-over war supplies which, through graft, had come into their hands for a mere song. These grafters, speculators, and war profiteers were collectively called ‘Schiebers’, a term of insult which was hurled at them on every occasion by the rest of the German people. It did not worry them in the least, however. Richly clad in furs and other finery they openly paraded themselves along the Unter den Linden and on the Kurfürstendamm; they filled the large hotels, and spent their money on a lavish scale. They were responsible also for the spectacular night life of Berlin which was such a direct contrast to the misery of the poorer people. All this gave me the impression of a huge corpse preyed on by a number of vultures.
Such conditions in any other country would undoubtedly have proved a fertile breeding-ground for communism, but although I heard a great deal of talk of it, this came rather from the people who feared it than from those who should have been actively sponsoring it. There were certain sectors of Berlin, such as that of Wedding, which were entirely Red, but for the moment the communists were inactive. Noske, the Minister of War, had the situation well in hand; the flare-up of communism at the outbreak of the revolution had been firmly crushed by the Republican forces, and the mass of the German people, even those who were in abject want, were still hoping that the present government in the course of time would steer them thro
ugh their difficulties. For a few months still those who filled the potato lines waited; later many were to join the ranks of the communists.
Two or three days after my arrival, having got my bearings, I started out to find an office, assisted by Breen. After looking at several houses, we finally decided on a large villa in a street facing the Thiergarten. Breen transformed the top floor into an apartment for himself; the passport control office and waiting-rooms were installed on the floor below; the British consulate eventually took over the ground floor – I believe it is still housed there.
Armed with my forms and my rubber stamps, I waited for the visa applicants to arrive. There was quite a rush at first from the many Germans who had worked in England before the war, but as soon as word got around that applicants in this category were not being considered, the numbers dwindled greatly. From time to time, after due investigation, I forwarded visa applications to London for the approval of the Home Office, but soon found that very few were being granted. I felt sorry for some of those turned down, disappointment was so plainly written on their faces; getting to England seemed to mean such a lot to them. Poor devils! Some of them had had good jobs in England before the war, and in some cases had spent almost a lifetime over there. Now they were walking the streets of Berlin. The British authorities could not be blamed, of course; they had their own demobilised men and unemployed to look after, for men were walking the streets in London too.
When the passport office seemed to be functioning smoothly, I proceeded to examine the secret service field. I discovered immediately that exactly the same conditions were prevailing here which had existed in Holland – in fact, it was infinitely worse, for here there was even more competition and overlapping. Every member of the various Allied missions was making reports, with a general sense that everybody was encroaching on important work that everybody else was doing. Yet there was no real need of competition or real cause for irritation: no finesse was needed in getting information – one simply walked in and demanded it. I experienced this myself in the course of several interviews which I had with high ranking members of the German Foreign Office. They felt helpless, defenceless, and humiliated to the point where all secrecy or even reserve was abandoned.
This condition, and the inactivity at the passport office, was so different from the picture which I had visualised on leaving London that it produced in me a severe reaction. Had I been patient the situation would probably have cleared itself, for later I was to find the chief calling me back to do urgent work for him in Germany. Disappointment, inactivity, and my old restlessness, however, got the better of me. Even though I knew that at my request the chief would have transferred me to another country, I started to search for a new field. I weighed the facts. I was now twenty-eight years old, six precious years of my life had been spent in the service of my country, and I had never intended to remain permanently in the secret service. Surely, it was time to get back to civilian life.
Had I been older, and as experienced in the art of self-advancement as I was in matters pertaining to secret service, I should have waited until I had secured a definite post, or, at any rate, had decided on what I was going to make of my future. I was brimful of confidence, however; I felt sure that with my intimate knowledge of Europe, my many foreign connections, my army and university records, and my knowledge of engineering and other sciences, there would be no difficulty in building up a civilian career in connection with one of the big engineering, business, or financial concerns in Europe. So, having made up my mind that my activities in Berlin did not offer a sufficiently active field for me, I sent in my resignation – true to form, on the moment’s impulse – and asked for demobilisation.
The chief was surprised, expressed regret, paid me the compliment of asking me to find a suitable man to take my place, and requested me to remain on a week or two until Lord Kilmarnock had taken his post. I promptly departed for Cologne to interview some of my friends in the intelligence corps, any of whom I knew would jump at the Berlin post. Eventually I proposed Captain F.; he was accepted, and probably today is still carrying out the functions of passport control officer for Germany – at least, he was there a few years ago. His duties were confined to passport control; someone else whom I highly recommended relieved me of my secret service work.
With a feeling of relief at my escape from Berlin, and anxiously looking forward to the new career which I intended developing as soon as I got back to England, I took my leave of Lord Kilmarnock, of Seeds, the first secretary, and of Thelwall, the commercial attaché. Six years of responsibility and service in the army had come to an end. I felt as if I were walking on air. I was free, and once more a civilian.
CHAPTER 24
YVONNE — AN INTERLUDE
WHAT WAS MORE natural than that I should stop off at Brussels on my way back to London?
I was crossing the Place de la Monnaie when I met her. Yvonne. Months before, Mlle L., a friend of mine who was a star in the corps de ballet at the Brussels opera, had introduced me to her. ‘This is Yvonne,’ she had said, ‘my charming little understudy.’ And then later, when we were all dining together at the Chapon Fin, she had whispered: ‘Don’t look at her so intently. You haven’t got a dog’s chance; she’s Z’s protégée.’ I had opened my eyes wide in astonishment, for Z was one of the great men in Belgium, one of her most prominent statesmen, a man whose name was a household word throughout Europe. I was astonished that he should be the captive of this small vivacious bloom of loveliness.
Now here she was. This time there was no one to sidetrack me. I looked at her and smiled. ‘You don’t remember me, I am sure,’ I said, as I stood facing her, hat in hand.
‘Yes, I do, mon capitaine,’ she sparkled amiably. ‘I met you at the Chapon Fin. You are a friend of L.’ Thus encouraged, I suggested an apéritif at a neighbouring bodega.
It was all very well for L. to have told me not to look at her. I couldn’t help it. Her lustrous violet eyes, which languished and glowed beneath her long lashes, her strikingly beautiful head, crowned with smooth waves of soft gold hair, her delicate subtle grace and her happy contagious smile, overwhelmed me. I actually trembled as I sat opposite her. It was the coup de foudre. I knew that I was blindly in love with her, and intuitively I sensed that she reciprocated my feeling. Gone were my thoughts of London; my uncompleted ticket remained in my pocket. I met her every day for a week.
She was twenty-one, fresh and unaffected, renowned for her beauty, already an acclaimed artist. Her sparkling wit and laughter had charmed not only Z, but also some of the leading people in Europe, whom she had met through him. She had dined with a Lord Mayor of London, the Shah of Persia had awarded her a decoration, she wore the Palmes Académiques, presented by a premier of France, and she had danced at special request before royalty. And Z, her patron, was one of the most powerful men in Belgium, who could assist her in furthering a brilliant career at the opera.
Both her father and her mother objected strongly to our infatuation. He was a maître de ballet, and she a dancer who had had many a triumph in her day at the opera at Paris. They knew what the cost of our idyll would be, since both of them were steeped in the unromantic traditions of advancement in the European theatre. They called on me at my hotel. ‘You must leave her alone. We have trained her since she was four years old. She needs Z; he wouldn’t do anything for her, if you were in the picture. No artist in France or Belgium can arrive without someone backing her. You will ruin her career.’ How often was I to hear that word career during the next four years?
We were both foolish; we both had our careers to consider and each of us was inimical to the welfare of the other. Yet we were in love, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
I was wrong. I should have packed my bags and gone on my way. It would have been better, both for her and for me. I was the older and more intelligent; I should have done the thinking for both of us. But loneliness had eaten into my heart. From my boyhood days up, I really had had no
home. I stood alone in Europe, with no relatives and no intimate friends. I had worked intensively both at the university, and during the last six years in the army, without encouragement. And here was all the tenderness, all the love, companionship and beauty in life that I had missed. Besides, there was the setting of the ballet which had always exerted on me a romantic appeal. Pavlova, Karsavina, Lopokova, Nijinsky, Mordkin, and the many members of Diaghileff’s troupe, I had seen over and over again. Apart from the technique of their art, I loved their imagery; who has seen Le Spectre de la Rose, or La Boutique Fantasque and not gone away charmed? Most potent influence of all, I was just at that time like a diver who had come too quickly to the surface; at one stroke I had released myself from the tremendous tension of my war and post-war responsibilities, and the effect was heady.
I promised Yvonne’s parents to think things over, but as I sat and watched her dance with exquisite grace and execution, in the Walpurgis scene in the last act of Faust, I realised that here was something stronger than I. I could not give her up. Surely I could solve the problem, as I had solved the many other problems of my life. I would remain on in Brussels and work out a scheme of things which would permit us to hold on to this great happiness which we had found. I had numbers of influential friends. I would build up a career here. Why not?
For the next two years my life was a feverish struggle to find my footing in the hurly-burly of post-war commerce and finance. Financially I was often very successful, but my chief reward was the snatches of weeks or hours in the company of the loveliest and kindest creature I have ever known. Her engagements dictated my arrangements, her friends were my friends, her life my life.
