by Herman Wouk
It occurred to Victor Henry, not for the first time, that his meeting with Grobke on the Bremen had probably not been accidental. “I guess we’d better get on to that reception,” he said.
Lieutenant Commander Prien looked surprised and interested when Byron’s turn came in the reception line of floridly uniformed attachés. “You are young,” he said in German, scrutinizing Byron’s face and well-cut dark suit as they shook hands. “Are you a submariner?”
“No. Maybe I should be.”
Prien said with a charming grin, and sudden wholehearted warmth, “Ach, it’s the only service. But you have to be tough.”
Blue-uniformed sailors lined up the chairs for a lecture. Pug Henry was flabbergasted by the candor of the U-boat captain’s talk. It was no revelation that Prien had gone in on the surface at slack water, in the dark of the moon. That could be surmised. But Prien had no business exhibiting the Luftwaffe’s aerial photographs of the entrances and analyzing the obstacles. It was handing the British their corrective measures on a silver platter. It also disclosed technical news about German reconnaissance photography—scary news, to be sure. This was urgent stuff for the next pouch.
Byron listened as intently as his father. What fascinated him was the living detail. Prien spoke a clear slow German. He could follow every word. He could see the northern lights shimmering in the black night, silhouetting the U-boat, reflecting in purple and green sparkles on the wet forecastle, and worrying the captain half to death. He was mentally dazzled by the automobile headlights on the shore that suddenly flashed out of the gloom and caught the captain square in the face. He saw the two dim gray battleships ahead, he heard the black chill waters of Scapa Flow lap on the U-boat hull as it slowed to fire four torpedoes. He almost shared the German’s disappointment when only one hit.
The most amazing and inspiring part of the tale came after that. Instead of fleeing, Prien had made a big slow circle on the surface, inside the Royal Navy’s main anchorage, to reload tubes; for the torpedo hit had failed to set off a general submarine alarm. It simply had not occurred to the British that there could be a U-boat inside Scapa Flow; on the Royal Oak they had taken the hit for an internal explosion. And so, by daring all, Prien had succeeded in shooting a second salvo of four torpedoes.
“We got three hits that time,” Prien said. “The rest you know. We blew up the magazines, and the Royal Oak went down almost at once.”
He did not gloat. Nor did he express regret over the nine hundred drowned British sailors. He had put his own life in hazard. The odds had been that he, and not they, would die in the night’s work—tangled in the nets, impaled on rocks, or blown to bits by a mine. So Byron thought. He had sailed out, done his duty, and come home. Here he was, a serious, clean-cut professional, alive to tell the tale. This was not Warsaw, and this was not strafing horses and children on country roads.
Pug Henry and his son drove slowly home through deserted streets in the blue-lit blackout. They did not talk. Byron said as the car turned into their street, “Dad, didn’t you ever consider submarines?”
The father shook his head. “They’re a strange breed, those fellows. And once you’re in the pigboats, you have a hell of a job ever getting out. This Prien’s a lot like our own Navy submariners. Now and then I almost forgot there that he was talking German.”
“Well, that’s what I’d have picked, I think,” Byron said, “if I’d gone in.”
The car drew up to the house. Pug Henry leaned an elbow on the wheel, and looked at his son with an acid grin in the faint glow of the dashboard. “You don’t get to sink a battleship every day.”
Byron scowled, and said with unusual sharpness, “Is that what you think appeals to me?”
“Look here,” Pug said, “the physical on submariners is a damn rigorous one, and they put you through a rough graduate school, but if you’re actually interested—”
“No thanks, Dad.” The young man laughed and tolerantly shook his head at his father’s persistence.
Victor Henry often tried to start the topic of submarines again, but never drew another glint of interest.
He spent a week with Byron touring shipyards and factories. The German attaché in the United States had asked for such a tour, so a return of the courtesy was automatic. Pug Henry enjoyed travelling with his son. Byron put up with inconvenience, he never got angry, he joked in annoying moments, and he rose to sudden emergencies: a plane over-booked, a train missed, luggage vanished, hotel reservations lost. Pug considered himself fast on his feet, but Byron, by using a certain easygoing charm, could get out of holes, track things down, and persuade desk clerks and ticket agents to exert themselves, better than his father. During lunches with factory owners, plant managers, and yard superintendents, Byron could sit for two hours looking pleasant without talking, and reply when spoken to with something short and apt.
“You seem to be enjoying this,” Pug remarked to Byron, as they drove back to the hotel in dark rain from a long tiring visit to the Krupp works in Essen.
“It’s interesting. Much more so than the cathedrals and the schlosses and the folk costumes,” Byron said. “This is the Germany to worry about.”
Pug nodded. “Right. The German industrial plant is the pistol Hitler is pointing at the world’s head. It bears study.”
“Pretty sizable pistol,” Byron said.
“Too sizable for comfort.”
“How does it compare to the Allies’, and to ours, Dad?”
A glass partition in the Krupp courtesy limousine separated them from the chauffeur, but Pug thought the man held his head at an attentive tilt.
“That’s the question. We’ve got the biggest industrial plant in the world, no doubt of that, but Hitler isn’t giving us a second thought right about now, because there’s no national will to use it as a pistol. Germany with her industrial setup can run the world, if nobody argues. The means and the will exist. Macedonia wasn’t very big when Alexander conquered the world. Brazil may be four times as big and have ten times the potential of Germany, but the payoff is on present capacity and will. On paper, as I keep insisting, the French and the British combined still have these people licked. But on paper Primo Camera had Joe Louis licked. Hitler’s gone to bat because he thinks he can take them. It’s the ultimate way to match industrial systems, but a bit chancy.”
“Then maybe this is what war is all about nowadays,” Byron said. “Industrial capacity.”
“Not entirely, but it’s vital.”
“Well, I’m certainly learning a lot.”
Pug smiled. Byron was spending his hotel evenings doggedly reading Hegel, usually falling asleep in an hour or so over the open book.
“How are you coming along on that Hegel fellow?”
“It’s just starting to clear up a bit. I can hardly believe it, but he seems crazier than Hitler. They taught me at Columbia that he’s a great philosopher.”
“Possibly he’s too deep for you.”
“Maybe so, but the trouble is, I think I understand him.”
The gray, dignified chauffeur gave Byron a hideous look as he opened the door for them at the hotel. Byron ran over in his mind what he had said, and decided to be more careful about calling Hitler crazy. He didn’t think the chauffeur was an offended Hegelian.
A letter arrived from Aaron Jastrow in a burst of airmail from the outside a few days after the British and French, to the great rage of the German radio, rejected the Führer’s outstretched hand. Mail to the embassy was supposed to be uncensored, but nobody believed that. The letters came in sudden sackfuls two or three weeks apart. The red and green Italian airmail envelope was rubber-stamped all over, purple and black and red. Dr. Jastrow was still typing with a worn-out ribbon, perhaps even the same one. He was too absentminded and, Byron suspected, too inept mechanically to change a ribbon, and unless someone did it for him he would use the old one until the words on the page looked like spirit typing. Byron had to put the letter under a strong light to make it o
ut.
October 5th
Dear Byron:
Natalie is not here. I’ve had one letter from her, written in London. She’ll try to come back to Siena, at least for a while. I’m selfishly glad of that, for I’m very much tied down without her.
Now about yourself. I can’t encourage you to come back. I didn’t discourage Natalie because I frankly need her. In her fashion she feels a responsibility for her bumbling uncle, which is a matter of blood ties, and very sweet and comforting. You have no such responsibility.
If you came here and I suddenly decided to leave, or were forced to go (and I must live with that possibility), think of all the useless motion and expense you’d have put yourself to! I would really like having you here, but I must husband my resources, so I couldn’t pay for your trip from Berlin. Of course if you happened to come to Italy, though I can’t think why you should, I would always be glad to see you and talk to you.
Meantime I must thank you for your inquiry. Just possibly it had some teeny connection with the other inquiry about Natalie’s whereabouts, but I’m grateful for it anyway. I must recommend that for your own sake you forget about Siena, Constantine, and the Jastrows.
Thank you for all you did for my niece. I gather from her letter—not from your far too modest and bare note—that you saved her from danger, perhaps from death. How glad I am that you went!
My warmest regards to your parents. I briefly talked with your father on the telephone. He sounded like a splendid man.
Faithfully yours,
Aaron Jastrow
When Byron got home that evening he took one look at his father, sitting in a lounge chair on the porch facing the garden, and backed away. Pug’s head was thrust forward and down, over a highball glass clenched in two hands. Byron went to his room and plugged at Hegel and his baffling “World Spirit” until dinner time.
Rhoda endured Victor Henry’s glowering silence at the table until the dessert came. “All right, Pug,” she said, digging into her ice cream, “what’s it all about?”
Pug gave her a heavy-lidded look. “Didn’t you read the letter?”
Byron thought his mother’s reaction was exceedingly peculiar. Her face stiffened, her eyes widened, her back straightened.
“Letter? What letter? From whom?”
“Get the letter on my dressing table for your mother, please,” Pug said to Byron.
“Well, goodness me,” Rhoda gasped, as she saw Byron trampling down the stairs with a pink envelope, “it’s only from Madeline.”
“Who did you think it was from?”
“Well, good lord, how was I to know? The Gestapo or somebody, from your manner. Honestly, Pug.” She scanned the letter. “So? What’s wrong with this? That’s quite a raise, twenty dollars a week.”
“Read the last page.”
“I am. Well! I see what you mean.”
“Nineteen years old,” Pug said. “An apartment of her own in New York! And I was the fusspot, about letting her leave school.”
“Pug, I merely said when you got here that the thing was done. She couldn’t have enrolled any more.”
“She damn well could have tried.”
“Anyway, Madeline will be all right. She’s a good girl. She’s as straitlaced as you.”
“It’s this war,” Pug said. “The world’s coming apart at the seams by the day. What can that girl do that’s worth fifty-five dollars a week? That’s what a senior grade lieutenant makes, after ten years in the service. It’s absurd.”
Rhoda said, “You’ve always babied Madeline. I think she’s showed you up, and that’s what really annoys you.”
“I wish I were back there. I’d have a damn good look around.”
Rhoda drummed the fingers of both hands on the table. “Do you want me to go home and be with her?”
“That would cost a fortune. It’s one thing when you travel on government allowance, but—” Pug turned to Byron. “You’ll be going back, won’t you? Maybe you could find a job in New York.”
“As a matter of fact, I wanted to talk about that. I got a letter too. From Dr. Jastrow. I’m going to Siena.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Who says so?”
“I do.”
Silence.
Rhoda said, “That’s something we should all discuss, isn’t it, Briny?”
“Is that girl there?” Pug said.
“No.”
“She’s gone back to the States?”
“No. She’s trying to get there from England.”
“How do you propose to go?”
“Train. They’re running regularly to Milan and Florence.”
“And what will you use for money?”
“I have enough to get there. I saved nearly all I made.”
“And you’ll do what? Literary research up in an Italian mountain town, with a war on?”
“If I get called to active duty, I’ll go.”
“That’s damned bighearted, seeing that if you didn’t, the Navy would track you down and put you in the brig for a few years. Well, I’m proud of you, Briny. Do as you please.” Victor Henry coughed, rolled up his napkin, and left the table. Byron sat with his head thrust down and forward, his face white, the muscles in his jaw working.
Rhoda saw that talking to her son would be useless. She went upstairs to her dressing room, took out a letter she had put in a drawer beneath her underwear, read it once, then tore it into very small pieces.
Sitzkrieg
(from WORLD EMPIRE LOST)
The “Phony” War
The quiescent half year between the fall of Warsaw and the Norway episode became known in the West as the “phony” war, a phrase attributed to an American senator. We called it the Sitzkrieg, or “sitting war,” a play on Blitzkrieg. On the British and French side the name was perhaps justified. During this lull they in fact did unbelievably little to improve their military posture, besides sit on their backsides and predict our collapse.
Early in this strange twilight period, the Führer delivered his “outstretched hand” peace speech to the Reichstag. Like most of his political moves, it was cleverly conceived. Had the Allies swallowed it, we might have achieved surprise in the west with a November attack, which Hitler had ordered when Warsaw fell, and which we were feverishly planning. But by now the Western statesmen had developed a certain wariness toward our Führer, and their response was disappointing. In the event this did not matter. A combination of bad weather and insoluble supply problems forced one postponement after another on the impatient Führer. The intent to attack France was never at issue, but the date and the strategy kept changing. In all, the attack day was postponed twenty-nine times. Meanwhile preparations went forward at an ever-mounting tempo.
Our staff’s favorite comic reading as we worked on Fall Gelb—“Case Yellow,” the attack on France—came to be the long, learned articles in French newspapers and military journals, proving that we were about to cave in under economic pressure. In point of fact, for the first time our economy was really getting moving. Life in Paris, we gathered, was gayer and more relaxed than before the war. The British Prime Minister Chamberlain epitomized the Western frame of mind by stating, “Hitler has missed the bus.” In this enforced half-year delay German industrial war production began to rise and—despite the never-ending confusion and interference in the Führer’s headquarters—a new and excellent strategy for the assault on France was at last hammered out.
Distraction in Finland
The sitzkrieg lull was temporarily enlivened when the Soviet Union attacked Finland.
Stalin’s unvarying policy after signing the Ribbentrop pact was to seize whatever territory he could, while we were at war with the democracies, to strengthen his position for an eventual showdown with us. Hitler had already given him huge concessions in the Baltic states and in Poland, to buy a free hand against the West. But like all Russian rulers, Czarist or Bolshevik, Stalin had a big appetite. This was his chance
to take over the Karelian Isthmus and dominate the Gulf of Finland. When his emissaries failed to get these concessions from the proud Finns by threats, Stalin set out to take them by force. The rights of Finland were, as a matter of course, to be trampled upon.
But to the world’s surprise, the Russian dictator got in trouble, for the attack went badly. The vaunted Red Army covered itself with disgrace, revealing itself in Finland as an ill-equipped, ill-trained, miserably led rabble, unable to crush a small well-drilled foe. Whether this was due to Stalin’s purges of his officer force in the late thirties, or to the traditional Russian inefficiency added to the depressant effect of Bolshevism, or to the use of inferior troops, remained unclear. But from November 1939 to March 1940, Finland did bravely fight off the Slav horde. Nor did the Russians ever really defeat them militarily. In the classic manner of Russian combat, the handful of Finnish defenders was finally drowned in a rain of artillery shells and a bath of Slav blood. Thus Stalin’s goal was achieved, at ruthless cost, of shaping up the Leningrad front by pushing back our Finnish friends on the Karelian Isthmus. This move, it must be confessed, probably saved Leningrad in 1941.
After the Finnish victory during Christmas—the classic battle of Suomussalmi in which nearly thirty thousand Russians were killed or frozen to death, at a cost of about nine hundred Finnish dead—it was impossible to regard the Soviet army as a competent modern adversary. Much later, Hermann Göring was to call the Finnish campaign “the greatest camouflage action in history,” implying that the Russians in Finland had pretended to be weak in order to mask their potential. This was just an absurd excuse for the failures of his Luftwaffe in the east. In point of fact, Stalin’s Russia in 1939 was militarily feeble. What happened between that time and our final debacle on the eastern front at Russian hands is the subject of a later section, but their performance in Finland certainly misled us in our planning.
