Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  “Anyway,” Canaris said, “Hitler admires brains. He likes arguments.”

  Oster poured more wine. “Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that he likes others to have arguments? So that he can play A against B, and C against both of them, and wind up doing what he wanted to do in the first place?”

  The restaurant owner came in with a cherry tart and some cheeses, and went away.

  Christian said, “It’s a great pity everyone can’t stop arguing and backbiting and just unite to get on with the job.”

  “No cream,” Canaris pointed out. “War is hell.”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that,” Oster told Christian. “First you must define the job.”

  Christian was surprised. “Well … winning the war, obviously, sir.”

  “Which war?” Canaris asked. He was serving the cherry tart. “And how do you define success?”

  “Perhaps I’m very stupid, sir, but there’s only one war that I can see.”

  “Come, come, old chap,” Oster said, “you don’t really believe that. Look: when we went into Poland, it was a completely different war from what we’re fighting now. Everything has changed since then. Everything. Utterly changed.”

  “Germany hasn’t changed,” Christian insisted. “We’re all fighting for the Reich.”

  Oster found a cherry-stone and used his tongue to work it on to the bowl of his spoon. “That’s an interesting idea,” he said. “We must talk more about it at some time.”

  “I would agree with you that the Reich must be defended,” Admiral Canaris said. “We in the Abwehr must be aware and alert. We owe it to …” he patted his lips with his napkin, “… to the German people.”

  “Did you know, for instance,” Oster said, “that a couple of months after we invaded Poland, we were that close”—he snapped his fingers—“to an army coup?” Christian’s mouth was full, which saved him from answering. “Some of our more old-fashioned generals, and a few marshals too, disliked what we were doing in Poland. Not so much the fact as the style. Poor taste, they thought. Not the way a gentleman behaves. Do what you like to soldiers, but women and children … The way some of our Action Groups behaved was pure self-indulgence. Were you there?”

  Christian swallowed. “No,” he said.

  “I was,” Canaris said. “Sordid.”

  “The army thought it was time for a change,” Oster said.

  “My God,” Christian said. “That was when the bomb went off in that beer cellar in Munich, wasn’t it?”

  “The Fuehrer left the meeting twenty minutes early. Quite unprecedented. Nobody could understand why. Of course the bomb was the work of the British Secret Service.”

  “Scoundrels,” Canaris said.

  “One wonders …” Oster gave a gently smiling, helpless, speculative gesture. “Just suppose: if the enemy had been less incompetent, what would have become of us?”

  Christian said, “I suppose—”

  “A rhetorical question, no doubt,” Canaris said. “We must all be grateful that our beloved Fuehrer survived to lead his people onwards to … um … to …” He tugged at an earlobe. “What’s next, Oster?”

  “Coffee, sir?” Oster suggested.

  “That’ll do,” Canaris said. “Coffee.”

  In his first month at Rackham Towers, Luis Cabrillo worked very hard. He behaved like a pig toward everyone, but he churned out a steady flood of good stuff for Madrid Abwehr. He had help: in London two researchers, sometimes three, serviced the Eldorado Network with raw material for both truth and lies—accurate information about the Allies’ war effort which it was considered worth giving away to the Abwehr, in order to sugar the important disinformation which it was hoped would seriously mislead the enemy. The Eldorado files grew thicker in the offices of Madrid Abwehr. Brigadier Wagner’s team worked long hours, analyzing and annotating, cross-referencing and extrapolating and projecting, so that they could encode their findings and radio them to Berlin, along with copies of the original Eldorado material. The radio operators were soon decoding Berlin’s acknowledgments, followed by Berlin’s comments and questionnaires, all to be referred to Eldorado without delay (thus forming the inspiration for much of his future reports). The Eldorado Network had always been big business. Now it was a small industry.

  And the products of the industry found a ready market in the German military leadership. Berlin Abwehr automatically sent summaries of the Eldorado reports to the OKW, the High Command of the Armed Forces. If a report was juicy enough it went straight to the Commander-in-Chief, the Fuehrer himself. Admiral Canaris knew that Hitler was impressed by this intelligence because Hitler sometimes congratulated him on it. Also because it changed Hitler’s thinking. Two months after Dieppe, Hitler had taken offense at some Allied misbehavior or other and had threatened to put in chains all prisoners-of-war captured in that raid. Churchill, naturally, had threatened to respond by putting German prisoners-of-war in chains. So far, fairly predictable. Then Hitler publicly ordered that all captured British Commandos should be executed. The British government protested, of course: a crude and barbaric breach of the Geneva Convention and all that. But it was Eldorado who discovered that a secret Anglo-American committee had recommended a wide variety of retaliations if Hitler’s orders were carried out. For every Commando executed, the British would hang a captured German general. When they ran out of generals they would work their way down the ranks. Alternatively (so Eldorado reported), for as long as Hitler’s order remained in force, the British would put five hundred German prisoners-of-war on board every freighter that crossed the Atlantic. That might give the U-boat commanders something to think about. Or … There were ten proposals in all, ending with the suggestion that an English town be re-named after each martyred Commando. Eldorado himself took credit for this piece of espionage but it was buttressed by the work of Seagull and Knickers. Knickers had overheard two Commando sergeants discussing, with approval, their CO’s idea that every man should fight to the death rather than surrender. Seagull’s contribution was the Russian view. He said the Russian leadership were pleased to hear that British troops were getting a taste of raw battle as Soviet soldiers had been fighting it since invasion by the Nazi murderers.

  “The Fuehrer isn’t going to like this, sir,” said Major Schwartz, the duty officer at Berlin Abwehr, when he showed the Eldorado report to Admiral Canaris.

  The Admiral read it, twice. “You’re mistaken, Major,” he said. “The Fuehrer won’t enjoy it but he will undoubtedly be glad he has seen it.’ Canaris was right.” Hitler thought again. He didn’t give a damn if the Allies hanged every captured German general twice over—he had total contempt for failure—but he didn’t want to bolster Soviet morale by executing British Commandos. He let the idea slide.

  When Brigadier Christian came across all this in the files of Berlin Abwehr, he felt a little surge of pride. He had taken an unknown, untrained, penniless, cocky young Spaniard off the streets of Madrid, groomed him and polished him and kept faith in him, and now his faith had paid off. Now Eldorado led one of the most important spy rings in Europe; perhaps the most important, with Eldorado signals landing on the Fuehrer’s desk! Actually, the truth was that Christian had not found Eldorado on the streets of Madrid; Eldorado had walked off the streets into the Madrid embassy and had used his initiative and persistence to find the Abwehr department. What’s more, far from keeping faith with him, Christian had had so little confidence in Eldorado that as soon as the agent was sent to England, Christian had begun to think of sacrificing him by ordering him to carry out some particularly reckless piece of sabotage. Still, that was all ancient history now. Christian looked on Eldorado as his baby, and he said as much to General Oster.

  “Of course you do, old man,” Oster said affably. “Of course he is, and personally I think you deserve to be carried shoulder-high down the Unter den Linden by bevies of big-breasted blond beauties.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, sir.”

  “If
the chance comes, take it. You get a perfect view down the fronts of their dresses.”

  Christian wasn’t sure how to react to that. Oster was handsome, almost too handsome for a soldier and certainly more elegant than any general Christian had met. What was even more unmilitary, he seemed ready to find a joke in everything. This was disconcerting at times. Christian played safe. “Anything to serve the interests of the Reich,” he said.

  They were drinking beer on the terrace of a café in the Tiergarten. It was a chill afternoon, with a sky as cold and hard as an upturned steel bowl. Somewhere out of sight, dead leaves were being burned and their scent tinged the air with a merciless nostalgia. Christian reveled in it. At last his beard had thickened enough for him to be allowed to go out in the streets. He was disguised in German naval officer’s uniform—the Abwehr had given him a new identity as Commodore Albert Meyer—and there was even a pfennig coin in his left shoe to remind him to limp. Nobody in the SD (or even in the Abwehr) was likely to recognize him now. So he enjoyed the comfort of concealment while he rediscovered the pleasures of Berlin, always his favorite city.

  Oster said, “The best way you can serve the Reich is by making sure the Eldorado channel is always open for traffic.”

  “No difficulty so far, sir. He uses the Spanish diplomatic bag, both ways.”

  “Yes.” Oster made rings on the table with his beer mug. “Which means the Spanish foreign ministry reads his reports before we do.”

  The same thought had occurred to Christian many times. “We can’t stop them looking, I suppose, although I must say the seals are always intact.”

  “Proves nothing.”

  “Agreed. But everything Eldorado sends is in code.”

  “So what? We knew the British Admiralty code for years.” Oster dipped his finger in his beer and made a Mickey Mouse face out of the rings on the table.

  “Even so, there’s nothing to worry about, is there, sir? Spain’s on our side. Last year Franco damn near let us take Gibraltar. The Admiral himself came down to plan the raid. I was all set to lead a sabotage unit.”

  “Oh, I know.” Oster gave Mickey a foolish smile and immediately rubbed it out. “Canaris had the time of his life. He’s always wanted to be a masterspy. I helped him pick out that ludicrous black hat he wore everywhere in Spain. Remember? For concealment, he said.”

  “It was somewhat on the generous side.”

  “No bigger than an elephant’s ear. British Intelligence loved him for it. They must have been quite disappointed when we didn’t have a go at Gib.”

  Christian was beginning to be irritated by Oster’s flippancy. “I still think the operation stood a damn good chance, sir,” he said.

  “Franco didn’t. Franco looked at the odds and like a good gambler he said to himself, ‘Sod it, I don’t have to bet yet, I’ll wait and see.’ Cunning bugger, Franco.”

  “He sent his Blue Division to fight with us in the east.”

  “Volunteers,” Oster said. “Part of the great and holy crusade against Bolshevism.”

  “It’s all one war,” Christian said.

  “Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong. It’s actually several wars.” Oster abandoned his finger-painting; at last he had found something serious. “Take North Africa. The Americans don’t really care about that. The British do. Suez matters to them. Take Greece. Does Greece matter to us Germans? Of course not. So why did we go there?”

  “To get Mussolini out of trouble.”

  “Right! Greece is Mussolini’s war. He wanted a bit of cheap glory, he fucked it up and we had to do the job for him. Take Poland.”

  “We already did,” Christian said.

  “Not all. We gave half to the Russians, remember? But England and France started this war because of Poland. Now they’re fighting alongside Russia and where’s bloody old Poland? Lost in the shuffle.”

  “Great wars are bound to be complex affairs,” Christian said. He was beginning to feel stiff and cold.

  “I bet you General Francisco Franco doesn’t find it complex. Francisco Franco looks around and says to himself: Does poor, battered, shattered Spain really want to fight the British Empire, the United States and the USSR all at once?”

  Christian drank some beer but it was flat so he threw the rest away. “You don’t paint a very optimistic picture, sir,” he said.

  “Depends what you mean by optimism,” Oster said briskly. “Come with me, Christian, and I’ll show you what this war is really all about.”

  Oster’s car took them across Berlin. A faint sunshine had broken through the steel-gray overcast and there was just enough breeze to move the huge swastika flags and pennants that hung from every large building. The display gave Christian a great sense of patriotic unity: of a calm and quiet determination; very sturdy, very German. He was about to comment on this and he glanced at Oster; but Oster’s head was half-hidden behind the raised collar of his greatcoat and his eyes were almost closed. Christian saved the thought for later.

  The car stopped at the Brandenburg Gate and the driver hurried to let them out. Oster waved his gloves at the massive pillars of the monument, topped by a giant Goddess of War with a chariot drawn by four horses as tall as elephants. “Ever been up there?” he asked. “I thought not. Stunning view. Come on.”

  They entered by a low steel door tucked away in a corner of the monument. It was a long, dark climb up a tightly spiraling staircase but Oster was right: the view was worth it. Christian found himself looking out at an apparently endless boulevard, straight and broad, cutting clean across the heart of Berlin. Of course he had seen it before—but always at ground level. Now he saw it as its designer must have imagined: emerging from infinity, testing the imagination. This was much more than a road. This was a statement. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Memorable is hardly the word.”

  “Oh, it’s just the beginning,” Oster said. “This runs east-west. Picture an even greater street crossing it, north-south. You’ve seen the Champs-Elysées?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Three hundred and thirty feet wide, so I’m told. Feeble, isn’t it? A miserable alley. Our north-south avenue is four hundred feet wide! And five miles long! The widest, longest avenue in the world. How big d’you think the Arc de Triomphe is?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve no idea, sir.”

  “Oh, it’s stunted, believe me. Tiny. No more than a hundred and sixty feet high. Makes you wonder what all the fuss is about, doesn’t it? Now, our Triumphal Arch is more than twice as high! Three hundred and eighty-six feet! You can fit their piddling little hoop in the opening of our Arch and still leave room for a squadron of Heinkels to fly through! See?” Oster pointed at an empty bit of landscape.

  “Um … no, sir,” Christian said.

  “Well, we haven’t built it yet. Have patience, Christian, have patience. Anyway, the piddling little French hoop, or ‘oop as they would say, has no place under our Triumphal Arch—which, incidentally, will bear the names of our glorious dead in the last war, all one million eight hundred thousand of them, carved in granite, which you must agree will make the glorious dead feel much better … Where was I?”

  “Under the ‘oop,” Christian said.

  “Ah yes. Now, on a clear day when you look through the arch you will see, three miles down the grand avenue, something really rather large, called the Great Hall. It’s next to the Reichstag. See the Reichstag?”

  “Yes, sir.” There was nothing large next to the Reichstag.

  “Well, you can fit the Reichstag into the gents’ cloakroom of the Great Hall. It’s got a dome shaped like St. Peter’s in Rome. You’ve seen St. Peter’s? Seen the Capitol in Washington?”

  “I have.” Christian was wondering if all this was some bizarre, long-winded, private joke of Oster’s.

  “You could get the Capitol and St. Peter’s under the dome of our Great Hall several times over. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “It must surely be the biggest in the world.”


  “Of course. That’s the whole point. Biggest and tallest. Crowned with a German eagle holding the swastika in its claws, nearly a thousand feet in the air.”

  Christian decided that enough was enough. “Evidently this is not a clear enough day, sir,” he said. “I see no such Great Hall.”

  Oster patted him on the shoulder. “Never mind. Look over there: Adolf Hitler Platz! Room for a million cheering people! On one side: the new Chancellery, Hitler’s palace, seventy times bigger than the present Chancellery! Twenty-two million square feet! That is where the Fuehrer receives foreign diplomats, Christian, provided their little legs are strong enough, because they’ll have to walk more than a quarter of a mile to reach his reception room … What else? To the right there’s the Soldiers Hall, I think that’s a sort of tomb for field-marshals, slightly smaller than the Jungfrau. Over here you see Goering’s new Air Ministry, eight hundred feet long. Over there the new Town Hall, fifteen hundred feet long … War Academy … Navy Building … about a dozen separate ministry buildings—Interior, Justice, Colonies.” Oster kept pointing to these phantom structures with apparent recognition. “Plus a couple of new railroad stations, a few ornamental lakes, aerodromes …” He was running down at last. “And a very big building for the Gestapo, and the Gestapo, and the Gestapo,” he said. “Not forgetting the Gestapo.”

  Nothing more was said until they were down on the street and in the car, heading for home. Oster sprawled in a corner of the back seat, head in hand, staring out of the window.

  Christian cleared his throat. “I have to say, sir, that I understood none of that.”

  “Join the club. Only two people understand it: Hitler and Speer. And now Speer tells me he’s not so sure.”

  “Reichminister Speer? Minister of Arms Production?”

  “And formerly Hitler’s architect.” Oster straightened up and turned to Christian. “We were on the same plane about a month ago, coming back from the eastern front. He’d been … Well, it doesn’t matter where he’d been. Or me. Anyway, the plane had to land in Poland. Bad weather. We were stuck in this godawful dump. Nothing to do but drink and talk. He told me about Hitler’s plans for a new Berlin. Speer designed nearly all of it. Great Hall, Triumphal Arch, Chancellery, all those colossal buildings. Perfectly feasible, he said. Might take billions and billions of marks, but …” Oster shrugged.