by Herman Wouk
“I have to return to Berlin, General. I can’t express my gratitude, but—”
Up went the glove. “Please. To talk to an American, a professional military man, who shows some understanding of our situation, is literally good for my health.”
Messerschmitts were landing in the rain when Jagow turned Victor Henry over to his lieutenant at the entrance to the headquarters building.
“If we can be of further service in the matter of Flight Lieutenant Gallard, let us know,” Jagow said, stripping off a glove to offer a damp cold hand. “Auf Wiedersehen, Captain Henry. If I have been of any small service, all I ask is this. Wherever duty takes you, remember there are two sides to the war, and that on both sides there are men of honor.”
The ornately molded and carved ceilings in Wolf Stöller’s bank seemed forty feet high. It was after hours. A few clerks worked silently behind the grilles. The footsteps of the two men on the red marble floor echoed and re-echoed under the high vault, like the tramp of a platoon. “It is a little gloomy here now,” said Stöller, “but very private. This way, Victor.”
They passed through a sizable conference room into a small richly furnished office, with a blaze of paintings crowding the walls; little though he knew, Henry recognized two Picassos and a Renoir.
“So, you go so soon,” Stöller said, gesturing to a heavy maroon leather couch. “Did you expect this?”
“Well, I thought my relief would be along in a couple of weeks. But when I got back from Lille, here he was, waiting.”
“Of course you are anxious to be reunited with your very beautiful wife.”
Victor Henry said, with a glance at the larger Picasso, a gruesomely distorted woman in flaring colors, “I thought modern art was frowned on in the Third Reich.”
Stöller smiled. “It has not gone down in value. The field marshal has one of the great collections of the world. He is a very civilized man. He knows these things will change.”
“They will?”
“Most assuredly, once the war is over. We are a nation under siege, Victor. Nerves get frayed, a mood of extremism prevails. That will die away. Europe will be a wonderful place to live. Germany will be the pleasantest place of all. What do you say to a glass of sherry?”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks.”
Stöller poured from a heavy crystal decanter. “What do we drink to? I daresay you won’t drink to the victory of Germany.”
With a tart grin Pug said, “We’re neutral, you know.”
“Ah, yes. Ah, Victor, if only you were! How gladly we would settle for that! Well, to an honorable peace?”
“Sure. To an honorable peace.”
They drank.
“Passable?”
“Fine. I’m no expert on wines.”
“It’s supposed to be the best sherry in Europe.”
“It’s certainly very good.”
The banker settled in an armchair and lit a long cigar. In the light of the floor lamp his scalp glistened pink through his thin flat hair. “Your little trip to Lille was a success, hm?”
“Yes, I’m obliged to you and the general.”
“Please. By the ordinary rules, such a thing would be not only unusual but utterly impossible. Among men of honor, there are special rules.” Stöller heaved an audible sigh. “Well, Victor, I didn’t ask you to give me some time just to offer you sherry.”
“I didn’t suppose so.”
“You’re a military man. There are special conversations that sometimes have to be forgotten, obliterated without a trace. In German we have a special phrase for these most delicate matters. ‘Under four eyes.’”
“I’ve heard the phrase.”
“What transpires next is under four eyes.”
Victor Henry, intensely curious at this point, felt there was nothing to do but let the banker talk on. What might be coming next, he could not imagine; his best guess was a wispy peace feeler at second hand from Göring, to convey to the President.
“You had a conversation with Gregor Jagow about the course of the war. About the tragic absurdity of this fratricidal conflict between Germany and England.”
Pug nodded.
“Did his ideas make sense to you?”
“Frankly, we don’t study geopolitics in the Navy. At least we don’t call it that. So I’m not up on Spengler and so forth.”
“You’re an American pragmatist,” said Stöller with a smile.
“I’m a gunnery expert misplaced in diplomacy, and hoping the hell to get out of it.”
“I believe you. The man of honor wants to serve in the field.”
“I’d like to do what I’m trained for.”
“You do agree that American help, and expectation of far greater help, is what is keeping England in the war?”
“Partly. They just don’t feel like quitting. They think they’ll win.”
“With American help.”
“Well, they think they’ll get it.”
“Then what stands between the whole Western world and an honorable peace—which you and I just drank to—is Churchill’s reliance on help from Roosevelt.”
Pug took a few moments to answer. “Maybe, but what’s an honorable peace? Churchill would want to depose Hitler. Hitler would want to depose Churchill. Both those gentlemen are equally firmly in the saddle, and both really represent the national will. So there you are.”
“You are going back to serve as naval aide to President Roosevelt.” Stöller said this with a slight interrogative note.
Pug’s face registered no surprise. “I’m going back to the Bureau of Personnel for reassignment.”
The banker’s smile was tolerant and assured. “Well, our intelligence usually gets these things right. Now, Victor, let me have my say, and don’t break in until I’ve finished. That’s all I ask. All right?”
“All right.”
The banker puffed twice at his cigar. “Men of honor talk among themselves, Victor, in a special language. I’m addressing you now in that vocabulary. These are matters of incredible delicacy. In the end, beneath the words there must be a spiritual kinship. With you, Gregor Jagow and I have felt that kinship. You have been impeccably correct, but unlike so many people at the American embassy, you don’t regard Germans as cannibals. You have treated us as human beings like yourself. So did your delightful and beautiful wife. It has been noticed, I assure you. That you sympathize with England is only natural. I do myself. I love England. I spent two years at Oxford.
“Now, you heard what Gregor said about the Jewish influence around your President. I know you have to deny it, but it is a very serious fact of this war. We must live with it and do what we can about it.”
Pug tried to speak. Stöller held up a rigid palm. “You said you would hear me out, Victor. In the circumstances, we need friends in Washington. Not to use undue influence, as the Jews do so shamelessly. Simply to present the other side. Roosevelt is a man of very broad vision. He can be made to see that American interest requires a swift honorable peace in the West. For one thing, only such a development can free him to handle Japan. Do you suppose we give a damn about Japan? That new pact is all a comedy to keep the Russians worried and quiet.
“Now, Victor—and remember this is under four eyes—we do have such friends. Not many. A few. Patriotic Americans, who see the realities of the war instead of the propaganda of the Jews—and of Churchill, who is just an adventurous megalomaniac and has never been anything else. We hope you’ll be another such friend.”
Victor Henry regretted that he had drunk up the glass of sherry rather fast. The conversation was taking a turn which needed sharp handling. He leaned forward.
“Let me go on,” said the banker, waving the cigar at him. “You know of my connection with Hermann Göring. To me he is a great figure of European history. His practical grasp of affairs and his energy still astound me. The Führer—well, the Führer is different, he operates on a plane above all of us, a plane of prophecy, of grand dreams. The engineer at
the throttle is Göring. Nothing in Germany escapes him. Nothing happens that he does not approve and know about. You Americans with your Puritan bias think him a bit of a sultan. But we Germans love opera and opulence. It’s a weakness. The field marshal knows that and plays to it. Of course, he thoroughly enjoys himself, too. Why not? His zest for life is Faustian, Rabelaisian.
“Victor, Hermann Göring has established in Switzerland some anonymous, untraceable bank accounts. His resources are enormous. These bank accounts, after the war, will be the rewards of Germany’s honorable friends, who have said the right word in the right place for her when it mattered. It is nothing like espionage, where you pay some sneaking wretch for papers or information he hands over. This is simple gratitude among men of honor, a sharing of benefits in the day of victory. If our friends want the accounts, they will be there. If they don’t—” Stöller shrugged and sat back. “I’ve said my piece, Victor. And after you’ve said yours, this conversation will be as if it never existed.”
It was one of the few occasions in Victor Henry’s life when he was taken totally by surprise.
“That’s interesting,” he said. “Extremely interesting.” After a measurable pause he went on, “Well! First, please tell me, if you can, what made you, or General Jagow, or Field Marshal Göring, think that I might be receptive to this approach. That’s highly important to me, and to this whole matter, I assure you.”
“My dear chap, the Washington picture is vital, and you’re en route to Washington. The day American supplies to England are shut off, we’ve won the war. We’ve got it won now, really, but England is just hanging on, hoping for she doesn’t know what. She’ll be flat broke in three or four months, and if your Neutrality Act holds, that’s the end. Now Victor, the field marshal remembers your interesting visit with the banker Gianelli. His purpose now is exactly what Roosevelt’s was then, to avoid further useless bloodshed. He thinks you can help, and General Jagow is confident that you will.” Stöller gave Pug his most ingratiating smile, crinkling his eyes almost shut. “As for me, I know your exquisite wife is a very sympathetic and friendly woman. My guess is that she has always reflected your real feelings, more than your correct words. I trust I’m right.”
Victor Henry nodded. “I see. That’s a clear answer, Herr Stöller. Here’s mine, under four eyes. Please tell Field Marshal Göring, for me, to stick his Swiss bank account up his fat ass.”
Blue smoke wreathed around Stöller’s shocked face. His eyes went wide and glassy, his face became dark red from his striped collar to his hair, and his scalp reddened too. His teeth showed in an ugly smile. “I remind you, Captain Henry,” he said in a new slow singsong tone, “that you have not left the Third Reich yet. You are still in Berlin. Field Marshal Hermann Göring is second here only to the Führer.”
“I’m an officer in the United States Navy. Unless I misunderstood you, or you want to withdraw it”—Victor Henry’s voice hardened almost to a bark—“you’ve asked me, in his name, to commit treason for money.”
The banker’s nasty smile faded. In a placating tone, with a soft look, spreading out his hands, he said, “My dear Victor, how can you take it in that way? I beg you, think! The highest officers in the American armed forces blatantly and openly advocate help for England all the time. What I asked of you was just to present both sides, when the occasion arose, for the sake of American security and for peace.”
“Yes, as a man of honor. I heard you. I really believe you meant it. General Jagow said you Germans were a difficult people to understand. That is the truth. I’m giving up. My assignment here is over.” Victor Henry knew he had hit too hard, but he had reacted as he did in a ball game, on instinct and impulse. He stood, and the banker got to his feet too.
“See here, old top,” Stöller said gently, “we Germans are at war, surrounded by foes. If the United States is ever in such a situation—and history takes strange turns—you may one day make an approach like this to a man you respect, and find it as difficult as I have. I think your response has been naïve and wrong. Your phrasing was coarse. Still, the spiritual quality was there. It was an honorable reaction. I have absolutely no hard feelings. I trust you have none. I place a high value on your goodwill, Victor. And we did have good times at Abendruh, didn’t we?”
Smiling, Stöller held out his smooth thin clean hand. Pug turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Out of the loudly echoing bank he walked, nodding at the door attendant’s deep bow. In the warm sunlit Berlin evening, on the sidewalk outside, beautiful German children surrounded a one-legged man on a crutch, who was selling pink paper dolls that danced on strings. Victor Henry walked several blocks at a pace that made his heart pound. The first new thought that came to him was that, with his grossly insulting words and acts, he might have murdered Ted Gallard.
The Garden Rose
(from WORLD EMPIRE LOST)
The Falling Crown
The winter and spring between the Battle of Britain and our attack on the Soviet Union stand in popular history as a breathing spell. Actually, in these eight months the axis of the war changed, for the British Empire as a reality left the stage of history.
In 1939, this momentous event lay shrouded in the future. A proper name for this war might well be “The War of the British Succession,” for the real question that was fought out was this: after the collapse of the British Empire, which would drag with it all European colonialism, what shape was the new world order to take, and under whose rule?
This historic turn, and this momentous issue, Adolf Hitler foresaw. He inspired and mobilized Germany to rise and dare all to seize the falling crown. The feats that our nation performed against odds will someday be justly treated in history, when passions die and the stain of certain minor excesses can be seen in perspective. Meantime historians write as though only the struggles of the Allies were heroic, as though we Germans were a species of metal monster incapable of bleeding, freezing, or hungering, and therefore deserving of no credit for our vast victories. As Hitler said, the winning side writes the history. Yet, in their praise of their own arduous successes, the Allies despite themselves honor us, the nation that almost won the British succession, against a combination of all the industrial nations in the world except feeble Italy and far-off impoverished Japan.
For all of Hitler’s military mistakes, and they were many and serious, my professional judgment remains that the German armed forces would have won the war, and world empire, but for one historical accident. His real opponent, produced by fate at this point in time, was an even craftier and more ruthless political genius, with more sober military judgment and greater material means for industrialized warfare: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The nation this man led was in no way comparable to the German people in military valor, as test after test in the field eventually showed. But that did not matter. This great manipulator so managed the war that other nations bled themselves almost to death, so as to hand his country the rule of the earth on a silver platter.
The United States of America, today the troubled master of the world, lost fewer men in the entire war than Germany expended in any one of half a dozen campaigns. Almost twenty million soldiers, sailors, and airmen perished in the Second World War. Of these, America in four years of global war lost about three hundred thousand on all fronts including her war with Japan! For this almost bloodless conquest of the earth, which has no parallel in all history, the American people can thank that enigmatic, still shrouded figure, the Augustus of the industrial age, the Dutch-descended millionaire cripple, Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s world conquest still goes unrecognized. In the present historical writings on the war, he is granted nothing like the stature he will one day have. There is little doubt that he wanted it that way. The Augustan ruler, a recurring figure in history, seizes the realities of power under a mask of the humble, benign, humanitarian citizen. Nobody since the emperor Augustus ever managed this as Franklin Roosevelt did. Even Augustus was
not as sanctimonious, for in those days the Christian vocabulary of humility and humaneness was not in vogue to lend such depths to hypocrisy.
Roosevelt’s Feat
In his successful waging of the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt made no major military mistakes. That is a record not matched by any world conqueror since Julius Caesar. His slogan of “unconditional surrender” was widely called a blunder, by commentators as diverse as Goebbels and Eisenhower. I do not agree, and in its place, I will take up that stricture and challenge it.
Our propaganda office called him a tool of the Jews, but of course that was the silliest bosh. Roosevelt did nothing to save the Jews. He knew that any such action would annoy Congress and interfere with winning the war. Under his clever façade of a Christian humanitarian liberal, he was one of the coldest, most ruthless calculators in history. He sensed that the Americans liked the Jews no more than we did; and they amply confirmed this all through the war in their immigration policies, and at the Évian and Bermuda conferences, where they simply abandoned the Jews to their fate.
This author is no admirer of Roosevelt as a person, but the aim of my work is to set down the facts as military history should view them. On such a valuation, Franklin Roosevelt was the mastermind of the war. Even such a powerful, energetic, and brilliant figure as Adolf Hitler was in the end no more than a foil for him. Adventuristic conquerors often pave the way, in this fashion, for the dominion of their enemies. The adventurer sees the opportunity, and with meager means tries to capture it. He does the destroying and the bulldozing. His ice-blooded successor then crushes him and builds on the ruins. Napoleon in the last analysis merely put Wellington’s England in the saddle for a century. Charles XII hardly has a place in history, except as a foil for Peter the Great. And the German people under Adolf Hitler accomplished nothing in the long run except to hand the British succession to the United States under Roosevelt.
