Part III, of the World's End series that begins with the end of the first world war and goes with eleven volumes into the cold war, is the title Dragon's Teeth. Most of the series - especially beginning with this, and most of the series from this one on - is about German part of the history of those years, and Europe is the centre stage with US a major but distant player.
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On the world stage, this is where beginning of third Reich, and Lanny getting close to key people via a chain of acquaintances beginning with Kurt, happens. In his private life, there is a match with an heiress from U.S., Irma Barnes, introduced by circle of friends of Beauty, and his life As a husband and a father to his baby daughter, in U.S. and in Europe. Connecting the two, his personal development of work and career, to begin with as an art expert, and more, comes in.
Dragon's Teeth begins with birth of Lanny's firstborn in Cannes in spring of 1930. It's a daughter, named Frances Barnes Budd. Robin family invites them for a yacht trip, and they travel along coast to Greece. At one point early on, even as Lanny is telling the young set about Ezra Hackabury, Madame Zyszynski has a message from him, and lanny sends him a letter mailed in Genoa. This dabbling in spirit and questioning if it's only telepathy is indulged in by author until something definitive kicks in, later.
Also during this trip begins emergence of differences in the marriage that was based on love but not a meeting of minds or personae - Irma belongs to set of friends of Beauty, rather than those of Lanny.
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Lanny is talking late at night with Johannes Robin or rather hearing him.
"Jascha Rabinowich had changed his name but had remained a Jew; which meant that he was race-conscious; he was kept that way by contempt and persecution. Part of the time he blustered and part of the time he cringed, but he tried to hide both moods. What he wanted was to be a man like other men, and to be judged according to his merits. But he had had to flee from a pogrom in Russia, and he lived in Germany knowing that great numbers of people despised and hated him; he knew that even in America, which he considered the most enlightened of countries, the people in the slums would call him a “sheeny” and a Christ-killer, while the “best” people would exclude him from their country clubs.
"He talked about all this with Lanny, who had fought hard for his sister’s right to marry Hansi. People accused the Jews of loving money abnormally. “We are traders,” said Johannes. “We have been traders for a couple of thousand years, because we have been driven from our land. We have had to hide in whatever holes we could find in one of these Mediterranean ports, and subsist by buying something at a low price and selling it at a higher price. The penalty of failure being death has sharpened our wits. In a port it often happens that we buy from a person we shall never see again, and sell to some other person under the same conditions; they do not worry much about our welfare, nor we about theirs. That may be a limitation in our morality, but it is easy to understand.”
"Lanny admitted that he understood it, and his host continued:
"“My ancestors were master-traders all the way from Smyrna to Gibraltar while yours were barbarians in the dark northern forests, killing the aurochs with clubs and spears. Naturally our view of life was different from yours. But when you take to commerce, the differences disappear quickly. I have heard that in your ancestral state of Connecticut the Yankee does not have his feelings hurt when you call him slick. You have heard, perhaps, of David Harum, who traded horses.”
"“I have heard also of Potash and Perlmutter,” said Lanny, with a smile.
"“It is the same here, all around the shores of this ancient sea which once was the civilized world. The Greeks are considered skillful traders; take Zaharoff, for example. The Turks are not easy to deceive, and I am told that the Armenians can get the better of any race in the world. Always, of course, I am referring to the professional traders, those who live or die by it. The peasant is a different proposition; the primary producer is the predestined victim, whether he is in Connecticut buying wooden nutmegs or in Anatolia receiving coins made of base metal which he will not be clever enough to pass on.”"
"To the Jewish couple out of the ghetto the marriage of Hansi to Robbie Budd’s daughter had appeared a great triumph, but in the course of time they had discovered there was a cloud to this silver lining. Bess had caught the Red contagion from Hansi, and brought to the ancient Jewish idealism a practicality which Johannes recognized as Yankee, a sternness derived from her ancestral Puritanism. Bess was the reddest of them all, and the most uncompromising. Her expression would be full of pity and tenderness, but it was all for those whom she chose to regard as the victims of social injustice. For those others who held them down and garnered the fruits of their toil she had a dedicated antagonism; when she talked about capitalism and its crimes her face became set, and you knew her for the daughter of one of Cromwell’s Ironsides."
Robbie was in Paris as the yacht returned to Cannes, and lanny went to meet him, promising to fly to Lisbon as the yacht arrived. He shared Robbie's suite and they talked.
"Having had long talks with the financier on board the yacht, Lanny could tell what was in his mind. He considered that Germany was approaching the end of her rope; she couldn’t make any more reparations payments, even if she wished. Taxation had about reached its limits, foreign credit was drying up, and Johannes couldn’t see any chance of Germany’s escaping another bout of inflation. The government was incompetent, also very costly to deal with; that, of course, was a money-man’s polite way of intimating that it was corrupt and that he was helping to keep it so. Elections were scheduled for the end of the summer, and there would be a bitter campaign; sooner or later the various factions would fall to fighting, and that wouldn’t help the financial situation any. Johannes was trimming his sails and getting ready for rough weather. He was taking some of his investments out of the country. Those he kept in Germany were mostly in industries which produced goods for export."
They met Zaharoff For Robbie's business, and Lanny told him that his late wife had appeared in a seance of Madame Zyszynski and mentioned specific tulips she had shown Lanny, which affected Zaharoff and he asked for a meeting as soon as possible. Lanny met his uncle Jesse Blackless.
"Lanny had come upon a quotation of Karl Marx, admitting that a gradual change might be brought about in the Anglo-Saxon countries, which had had parliamentary institutions for a long time. Most Reds didn’t know that their master had said that, and wouldn’t believe it when you told them; it seemed to give the whole Bolshevik case away. Jesse said that quoting Marx was like quoting the Bible: you could find anything you wanted."
Lanny visited De Bruyne family, and talked with the widower, Denis.
"Denis de Bruyne was worried about the state of his country, which was in a bad way financially, having counted upon German reparations and been cheated out of most of her expectations. A French Nationalist blamed the British business men and statesmen; Britain was no true ally of France, but a rival; Britain used Germany to keep France from growing strong. Why did American business men further this policy, helping Germany to get on her feet, which meant making her a danger to France? Foreign investors had lent Germany close to five billion dollars since the end of the war: why did they take such risks?
"Lanny replied: “Well, if they hadn’t, how would Germany have paid France any reparations at all?”
"“She would have paid if she had been made to,” replied Denis. He didn’t say how, and Lanny knew better than to pin him down. The men who governed France hadn’t learned much by their invasion of the Ruhr and its failure; they still thought that you could produce goods by force, that you could get money with bayonets. It was useless to argue with them; their fear of Germany was an obsession. And maybe they were right—how could Lanny be sure? Certainly there were plenty of men in Germany who believed in force and meant to use it if they could get enough of it. Lanny had met them also."
The family respected his marrying an heiress.
"The French, along with most other Europeans, were fond of saying that the Americans worshiped the dollar; a remark upon which Zoltan Kertezsi had commented in a pithy sentence: “The Americans worship the dollar and the French worship the sou.”"
Lanny joined the cruise and invited Rick with family after they had arrived at Cowes. Alfy and Marceline were very different, trying to work out the match made by families when they were born.
"Rick had talked with editors and journalists in London, with statesmen, writers, and all sorts of people in his father’s home. He knew about the upsurge of the Nazi movement in the harassed Fatherland. Not long ago he had had a letter from Kurt, who was always hoping to explain his country to the outside world; he sent newspaper clippings and pamphlets. The Germans, frantic with a sense of persecution, were tireless propagandists, and would preach to whoever might be persuaded to listen. But you rarely heard one of them set forth both sides of the case or admit the slightest wrong on his country’s side."
Zaharoff finally had an anonymous session with Madame Zyszynski in a small hotel in Dieppe, with sensational results.
"Zaharoff had attended the Armistice Day ceremonies and laid a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He had thought about that soldier, and now Lanny knew what he had thought! Had he guessed that the national hero of France might be a Jew? Or was it that the national hero really had been a Jew? Was Zaharoff himself a Jew, or part Jew? Lanny didn’t know, and wasn’t especially interested. There were few people in Europe who didn’t have Jewish blood, even those who despised the outcast race. For two thousand years the Jews had been scattered over the old Continent like thistledown in the wind; and the most carefully tended family trees don’t always show what pollen has fallen upon them."
At Bremerhaven Johannes Robin and Freddi joined the cruise. Freddi now had a doctorate in economics.
"He lacked Hansi’s drive—he was never going to be a famous man, only an earnest student and teacher, a devoted husband and father. Not so Red as Hansi and Bess, but nearer to Lanny’s shade; he still had hopes of the German Social-Democrats, in spite of the timidity and lack of competence they were displaying. Freddi had said that he was studying bourgeois economics in order to be able to teach the workers what was wrong with it. Already he and a couple of his young friends had set up a night school along the lines of Lanny’s project in the Midi. A non-party affair, both the Socialists and the Communists took potshots at it, greatly to Freddi’s disappointment. The workers were being lined up for class war, and there was no room for stragglers between the trenches."
Lanny had written to Rick to check a detail or two from seance with Zaharoff, and got mail from Rick.
"Included was a letter from Rick to Lanny, as follows:
"With regard to your request concerning the Old Bailey, these records are not available, so I had a search made of the criminal reports in the Times. Under the date of January 13, 1873, appears an entry numbered 61: “Zacharoff, Zacharia Basilius, agent pledging goods intrusted to him for sale.” In the Times of January 17 appears a column headed “Criminal Court,” beginning as follows: “Zacharia Basilius Zacharoff, 22, was indicted for that he, being an agent intrusted by one Manuel Hiphentides of Constantinople, merchant, for the purpose of sale with possession, among other goods, 25 cases of gum and 169 sacks of gall of the value together of £1000, did unlawfully and without any authority from his principal, for his own use make a deposit of the said goods as and by way of pledge.” Rick’s letter gave a summary of the entire account, including the statement: “Subsequently, by advice of his counsel, the prisoner withdrew his plea of ‘Not Guilty’ and entered a plea of ‘Guilty.’”
"Rick added: “This is interesting, and I am wondering what use you intend making of it. Let me add: Why don’t your spirits give you things like this? If they would do so, I would begin to take them seriously!”"
They visited the Robins in Berlin.
"The great city of Berlin, capital of the shattered Prussian dream. Triumphal arches, huge marble statues of Hohenzollern heroes, palaces of old-time princes and new-time money-lords; sumptuous hotels, banks that were temples of Mammon, department stores filled with every sort of luxury goods—and wandering about the streets, hiding in stone caves and cellars, or camping out in tents in vacant spaces, uncounted hordes of hungry, ill-clothed, fear-driven, and hate-crazed human beings. Out of a population of four million it might be doubted if there were half a million really contented. There was no street where you could escape the sight of pinched and haggard faces; none without beggars, in spite of the law; none where a well-dressed man could avoid the importunities of women and half-grown children, male or female, seeking to sell their bodies for the price of a meal.
"Shut your eyes to these sights and your mind to these thoughts. The city was proud and splendid, lighted at night like the Great White Way in New York. The shop windows were filled with displays of elegance, and there were swarms of people gazing, and some buying. Tell yourself that the stories of distress were exaggerated; that the flesh of boys and girls had been for sale in Nineveh and Baghdad, and was now for sale in London and New York, though perhaps they used a bit more Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy. Prostitution has been the curse of great cities ever since they began; swarms of people come piling into them, lured by the hope of easy wealth, or driven from the land by economic forces which men have never learned to control.
"This was something about which Freddi Robin should have been able to speak, he being now a duly certified Herr Doktor in the science of economics. He reported that the great university had left it still a mystery to students. The proper academic procedure was to accumulate masses of facts, but to consider explanations only historically. You learned that the three-stage pattern of primitive economic progress as taught by Friedrich List had been abandoned after the criticisms of anthropologists, and that Roscher’s theory of national economics as a historical category had been replaced by the new historical school of Schmoller. It was all right for you to know that in ancient Rome the great estates, the latifundia, had been worked with slave labor, thus driving independent farmers to the city and herding them into ramshackle five-story tenements which often burned down. But if in the class you pointed out that similar tendencies were apparent in Berlin, you would be looked at askance by a professor whose future depended upon his avoidance of political controversy.
"To be sure, they were supposed to enjoy academic freedom in Germany, and you might listen to a Catholic professor in one lecture hall and to a Socialist in the next; but when it came to promotions, somebody had to decide, and you could hardly expect the authorities to give preference to men whose teachings fostered that proletarian discontent which was threatening to rend the country apart. At any rate, that is the way Freddi Robin reported the situation in the great University of Berlin.
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Lanny visited various political events in Berlin, communists, socialist democrats, and through Heinrich Jung, nsdap, or in english, "National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party.".
"This Hitler movement was a revolt of the lower middle classes, whose savings had been wiped out by the inflation and who saw themselves being reduced to the status of proletarians.
"To Irma they seemed much nicer-looking people than those she had seen at the other two meetings. The black-and-silver uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, who acted as ushers and guards, were new and quite elegant; these young men showed alertness and efficiency. Twenty or thirty thousand people singing with fervor were impressive, and Irma didn’t know that the songs were full of hatred for Frenchmen and Poles. She knew that the Nazis hated the Jews, and this she deplored. She had learned to be very fond of one Jewish family, but she feared there must be something wrong with the others—so many people said it. In any case, the Germans had to decide about their own country."
The author describes, accurately, the atmosphere and the speech and effect now familiar to the world through documentary footage. They aren't yet in power, but getting there, and hence the title of this third volume. The elections change the balance this time.
"Lanny became sure that the cautious, phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring of shades.
"The results astounded them all—save possibly Heinrich Jung and his party comrades. The Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and Communists four and a half.
"The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930, had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for the inside of Germany; while for the outside, the Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war, if need be, in order to set her free from the “Jewish-dominated plutocracies” of France, Britain, and America!"
"The campaign orators of Berlin had been promising the rabble “confiscation without compensation” of the great estates of the Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Junkers by pointing to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be “socially necessary.” And how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn’t come within that category!
"But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London, and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press began to cry that these “traitor plutocrats” should be punished by the death penalty."
Johannes Robin gave a party for the Budd visitors, and Graf Stubendorf invited Lanny to visit the Schloss Stubendorf instead of his friend Kurt. Irma was pleased.
"The results of the election had set Heinrich Jung in a seat of authority. He called Lanny on the telephone and poured out his exultation. There was no party but the N.S.D.A.P., and Heinrich was its prophet! Therefore, would Lanny come to his home some evening and meet his wife and one of his friends? Lanny said he would be happy to do so; he had just received a letter from Rick, saying that the German vote had made a great impression in England, and if Lanny would send a bunch of literature and some of his own notes as to the state of mind of the country, Rick could write an article for one of the weeklies. Lanny wanted to help his friend, and thought the English people ought to understand what the new movement signified. This, of course, was right down Heinrich’s alley; he volunteered to assemble a load of literature—and even to have the article written and save Rick the bother!"
Lanny visited Heinrich Jung and saw the blue eyed, blond family.
"There was a peculiarity of the Nazi doctrine which Lanny had observed already among the Italian Fascists. Out of one side of their mouths they said that the nation had to expand in order to have room for its growing population, while out of the other side they said that their population must be increased in order that they might be able to expand."
"There was a joke going the rounds among Berlin’s smart intellectuals that the ideal “Aryan” was required to be as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, as slender as Göring, and so on, as far as your malicious memory would carry you."
Lanny met Emil Meissner after the trial of some army officers for conducting Nazi propaganda in the military.
"Emil Meissner had been on the old field marshal’s staff during part of the war, and knew his present plight; but Emil was reserved in the presence of a foreigner, especially one who consorted with Jews and had a sister and a brother-in-law whose redness was notorious. On the other hand, an officer of the Reichswehr owed no love to Adolf Hitler, and reported that the President refused to recognize this upstart even as an Austrian, but persisted in referring to him as “the Bohemian corporal,” and using the name of his father, which was Schicklgruber, a plebeian and humiliating name. Der alte Herr had steadily refused to meet Corporal Schicklgruber, because he talked too much, and in the army it was customary for a non-commissioned officer to wait for his superior to speak first.
"Emil expressed his ideas concerning the disorders which prevailed in the cities of the Republic, amounting to a civil war between the two sets of extremists. The Reds had begun it, without doubt, and the Brownshirts were the answer they had got; but Emil called it an atrocious thing that anybody should be permitted to organize a private army as Hitler had done. Hardly a night passed that the rival groups didn’t clash in the streets, and Emil longed for a courageous Chancellor who would order the Reichswehr to disarm both sides. The Nazi Führer pretended to deplore what his followers did, but of course that was nonsense; every speech he made was an incitement to more violence—like that insane talk about heads rolling in the sand.
"So far two cultivated and modern men could agree over their coffee-cups. But Emil went on to reveal that he was a German like the others. He said that fundamentally the situation was due to the Allies and their monstrous treaty of Versailles; Germany had been stripped of everything by the reparations demands, deprived of her ships, colonies, and trade—and no people ever would starve gladly. Lanny had done his share of protesting against Versailles, and had argued for helping Germany to get on her feet again; but somehow, when he listened to Germans, he found himself shifting to the other side and wishing to remind them that they had lost the war. After all, it hadn’t been a game of ping-pong, and somebody had to pay for it. Also, Germany had had her program of what she meant to do if she had won; she had revealed it clearly in the terms she had forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk. Also, there had been a Franco-Prussian War, and Germany had taken Alsace-Lorraine; there had been Frederick the Great and the partition of Poland; there had been a whole string of Prussian conquests—but you had better not mention them if you wanted to have friends in the Fatherland!"
Visiting the workers school with Freddi and Rahel,
"Lanny discovered that the disciplined and orderly working people of Germany were not so different from the independent and free-spoken bunch in the Midi. The same problems vexed them, the same splits turned every discussion into a miniature war."
"Nobody talked more about co-operating than the Communists, but when you tried it you found that what they meant was undermining your organization and poisoning the minds of your followers, the process known as “boring from within.” Any Socialist you talked to was ready with a score of illustrations—and also with citations from Lenin, to prove that it was no accident, but a policy.
"Members of the Social-Democratic party went even further; they charged that the Communists were co-operating with the Nazis against the coalition government in which the Social-Democrats were participating. That too was a policy; the Bolsheviks believed in making chaos, because they hoped to profit from it; chaos had given them their chance to seize power in Russia, and the fact that it hadn’t in Italy did not cause them to revise the theory. It was easy for them to co-operate with Nazis, because both believed in force, in dictatorship; the one great danger that the friends of peaceful change confronted was a deal, more or less open, between the second and third largest parties of Germany."
"Lanny decided that every Berlin intellectual was a new political party, and every two Berlin intellectuals were a political conflict. Some of them wore long hair because it looked picturesque, and others because they didn’t own a pair of scissors. Some came because they wanted an audience, and others because it was a chance to get a meal. But whatever their reason, nothing could keep them quiet, and nothing could get them to agree. Lanny had always thought that loud voices and vehement gestures marked the Latin races, but now he decided that it wasn’t a matter of race at all, but of economic determinism. The nearer a country came to a crisis, the more noise its intellectuals made in drawing-rooms!"
"The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong, because her dividends were beginning to fall off. ... There came a letter from Irma’s uncle Joseph, one of the trustees who managed her estate. He warned her about what was happening, and explained matters as well as he could; during the past year her blue-chip stocks had lost another thirty points, below the lowest mark of the great panic when she had been in New York. It appeared to be a vicious circle: the slump caused fear, and fear caused another slump. The elections in Germany had had a bad reaction in Wall Street; everybody decided there wouldn’t be any more reparations payments. Mr. Joseph Barnes added that there hadn’t really been any for a long time, and perhaps never had been, since the Germans first borrowed in Wall Street whatever they wished to pay. Irma didn’t understand this very well, but gave the letter to Lanny, who explained it to her—of course from his Pink point of view.
"One thing Uncle Joseph made plain: Irma must be careful how she spent money! Her answer was obvious: she had been living on the Robins for half a year, and when she went back to Bienvenu they would resume that ridiculously simple life. You just couldn’t spend money when you lived in a small villa; you had no place to put things, and no way to entertain on a large scale. Lanny and his mother had lived on thirteen hundred dollars a month, whereas Irma had been accustomed to spend fifty times that. So she had no trouble in assuring her conscientious uncle that she would give heed to his advice. Her mother had decided not to come to Europe that winter; she was busy cutting down the expenses of the Long Island estate. Lanny read the letter and experienced the normal feelings of a man who learns that his mother-in-law is not coming to visit him."
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Lanny met Hitler through Heinrich Jung who was personally close to him, and thus begins the crucial part of this whole series, Lanny's association with nazis and their top leaders. "“It’s all right if you just listen. He is very kind about explaining his ideas to people.”"
"The Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P., lived in one of those elegant apartment houses having a uniformed doorkeeper. The Führer was a vegetarian, and an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but not an ascetic as to interior decoration; on the contrary, he thought himself an artist and enjoyed fixing up his surroundings. With the money of Fritz Thyssen and other magnates he had bought a palace in Munich and made it over into a showplace, the Nazi Braune Haus; also for the apartment in Berlin he had got modernistic furniture of the utmost elegance. He lived with a married couple to take care of him, South Germans and friends of his earlier days. They had two children, and Adi was playing some sort of parlor game with them when the visitors were brought in. He kept the little ones for a while, talking to them and about them part of the time; his fondness for children was his better side, and Lanny would have been pleased if he had not had to see any other.
"The Führer wore a plain business suit, and presented the aspect of a simple, unassuming person. He shook hands with his Franco-American guest, patted Heinrich on the back, and called for fruit juice and cookies for all of them. He asked Lanny about his boyhood on the Riviera, and the children listened with open eyes to stories about hauling the seine and bringing in cuttlefish and small sharks; about digging in one’s garden and finding ancient Roman coins; about the “little Septentrion child” who had danced and pleased in the arena of Antibes a couple of thousand years ago. Adi Schicklgruber’s own childhood had been unhappy and he didn’t talk about it.
"Presently he asked where Lanny had met Kurt Meissner, and the visitor told about the Dalcroze school at Hellerau. His host took this as a manifestation of German culture, and Lanny forbore to mention that Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss of French descent. It was true that the school had been built and endowed by a German patron. Said Hitler: “That kind of thing will be the glory of our National Socialist administration; there will be such an outburst of artistic and musical genius as will astound the world.” Lanny noted that in all the conversation he took it for granted that the N.S.D.A.P. would soon be in control of Germany; he never said “if,” he said “when”—and this was one of the subjects on which the visitor was surely not going to contradict him.
"They talked about Kurt and his music, which was pure “Aryan,” so the Führer declared; nothing meretricious, no corrupt foreign influences; life in France for so many years had apparently not affected the composer in the slightest. Lanny explained that Kurt had kept almost entirely to himself, and had seldom gone out unless one dragged him. He told about his life at Bienvenu, and the Führer agreed that it was the ideal way for an artist. “It is the sort of life I would have chosen; but, alas, I was born under a different star.” Lanny had heard that he believed in astrology, and hoped he wouldn’t get onto that subject.
"What the Führer of all the Nazis planned was for this elegant and extremely wealthy young foreigner to go out to the world as a convert to the National Socialist ideas. To that end he laid himself out to be charming, for which he had no small endowment. He had evidently inquired as to Lanny’s point of view, for everything he said was subtly directed to meeting that. Lanny was a Socialist, and Hitler, too, was a Socialist, the only true, practical kind of Socialist. Out of the chaos of competitive capitalism a new order was about to arise; an order that would endure, because it would be founded upon real understanding and guided by scientists. Not the evil, degenerate Socialism of the Marxists, which repudiated all that was most precious in human beings; not a Socialism poisoned with the delusion of internationalism, but one founded upon recognition of the great racial qualities which alone made such a task conceivable.
"Patiently and kindly the Führer explained that his ideas of race were not German in the narrow sense. Lanny, too, was an “Aryan,” and so were the cultured classes in America; theirs was a truly “Aryan” civilization, and so was the British. “I want nothing in the world so much as understanding and peace between my country and Britain, and I think there has been no tragedy in modern times so great as the war they fought. Why can we not understand one another and get together in friendship for our common task? The world is big enough, and it is full of mongrel tribes whom we dare not permit to gain power, because they are incapable of making any intelligent use of it.”
"Hitler talked for a while about these mongrels. He felt quite safe in telling a young Franco-American what he thought about the Japanese, a sort of hairless yellow monkeys. Then he came to the Russians, who were by nature lazy, incompetent, and bloodthirsty, and had fallen into the hands of gutter-rats and degenerates. He talked about the French, and was careful of what he said; he wanted no enmity between France and Germany; they could make a treaty of peace that would last for a thousand years, if only the French would give up their imbecile idea of encircling Germany and keeping her ringed with foes. “It is the Polish alliance and the Little Entente which keep enmity between our peoples; for we do not intend to let those peoples go on ruling Germans, and we have an iron determination to right the wrongs which were committed at Versailles. You must know something about that, Mr. Budd, for you have been to Stubendorf, and doubtless have seen with your own eyes what it means for Germans to be governed by Poles.”
"Lanny answered: “I was one of many Americans at the Peace Conference who pleaded against that mistake.”
"So the Führer warmed to his visitor. “The shallow-minded call my attitude imperialism; but that is an abuse of language. It is not imperialism to recognize the plain evidence of history that certain peoples have the capacity to build a culture while others are lacking in it entirely. It is not imperialism to say that a vigorous and great-souled people like the Germans shall not be surrounded and penned in by jealous and greedy rivals. It is not imperialism to say that these little children shall not suffer all their lives the deprivations which they have suffered so far.”
"The speaker was running his hand over the closely cropped blond head of the little boy. “This Bübchen was born in the year of the great shame, that wicked Versailles Diktat. You can see that he is thin and undersized, because of the starvation blockade. But I have told him that his children will be as sturdy as his father was, because I intend to deliver the Fatherland from the possibility of blockades—and I shall not worry if my enemies call me an imperialist. I have written that every man becomes an imperialist when he begets a child, for he obligates himself to see to it that that child has the means of life provided.”
"Lanny, a Socialist not untainted with internationalism, could have thought of many things to answer; but he had no desire to spoil this most amiable of interviews. So long as a tiger was willing to purr, Lanny was pleased to study tigers. He might have been influenced by the many gracious words which had been spoken to him, if it had not been for having read Mein Kampf. How could the author of that book imagine that he could claim, for example, to have no enmity against France? Or had he changed his mind in five years? Apparently not, for he had formed a publishing-house which was selling his bible to all the loyal followers of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, and at the price of twelve marks per copy somebody was making a fortune."
"The Führer retold the wrongs which had been done to his country; and as he went on he became more and more aroused, his voice swelled and he became the orator. Lanny remembered having read somewhere of Queen Victoria’s complaining about her audiences with Gladstone: “He treats me as if I were a public meeting.” Lanny found it somewhat embarrassing to be shouted at from a distance of six feet. He thought: “Good Lord, with this much energy the man could address all Germany!” But apparently Adolf Hitler had enough energy for all Germany and for a foreign visitor also; it was for him to decide how much to expend, and for the visitor to sit and gaze at him like a fascinated rabbit at a hissing snake."
Gregor Stressed entered, and was taken aback at the abusive tirade he was treated to.
"Here in North Germany many of the Nazis took the “Socialist” part of their label seriously; they insisted upon talking about the communizing of department stores, the confiscation of landed estates, the ending of interest slavery, common wealth before private wealth, and so on. It had caused a regular civil war in the party earlier in the year. The two Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, had fought for the old program and had been beaten. Gregor had submitted, but Otto had quit the party and organized a revolutionary group of his own, which the Hitlerites called the “Black Front” and which they were fighting with bludgeons and revolvers, just as they fought the Communists. Later on, immediately before the elections, there had been another attempt at internal revolution; the rebels had seized the offices of the Berlin party paper, Der Angriff, holding it by force of arms and publishing the paper for three days. A tremendous scandal, and one which the enemies of the movement had not failed to exploit.
"So here was Gregor Strasser, Reich Organization Leader Number 1. A lieutenant in the World War, he had become an apothecary, but had given up his business in order to oppose the Reds and then to help Adi prepare for the Beerhall Putsch. He was perhaps the most competent organizer the party had, and had come to Berlin and built the Sturmabteilung by his efforts. Hitler, distrusting him as too far to the left, had formed a new personal guard, the Schutzstaffel, or S.S. So there were two rival armies inside the Nazi party of all Germany; which was going to prevail? Lanny wondered, had Hitler really lost his temper or was this merely a policy? Was this the way Germans enforced obedience—the drill-sergeant technique? Apparently it was working, for the big man’s bull voice dropped low; he stood meekly and took his licking like a schoolboy ordered to let down his pants.
"Lanny wondered also: why did the Führer permit a foreigner to witness such a demonstration? Did he think it would impress an American? Did he love power so much that it pleased him to exhibit it in the presence of strangers? Or did he feel so secure in his mastery that he didn’t care what anybody thought of him? This last appeared to be in character with his procedure of putting his whole defiant program into a book and selling it to anybody in the world who had twelve marks."
"So Lanny received a demonstration of what it meant to be a master of men. Perhaps that was what the Führer intended; for not until he had received the submission of his Reich Organization Leader Number 1 and had dismissed him did he turn again to his guest. “Well, Mr. Budd,” he said, “you see what it takes to put people to work for a cause. Wouldn’t you like to come and help me?”
"Said Lanny: “I am afraid I am without any competence for such a task.” If there was a trace of dryness in his tone the Führer missed it, for he smiled amiably, and seemed to be of the opinion that he had done a very good afternoon’s work.
"Long afterward Lanny learned from Kurt Meissner what the Führer thought about that meeting. He said that young Mr. Budd was a perfect type of the American privileged classes: good-looking, easy-going, and perfectly worthless. It would be a very simple task to cause that nation to split itself to pieces, and the National Socialist movement would take it in charge."
................................................................................................
"The General Graf Stubendorf’s invitation to Lanny and Irma had been renewed, and Kurt had written that they should by all means accept; not only would it be more pleasant for Irma at the Schloss, but it would advantage the Meissners to have an old friend return as a guest of Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny noted this with interest and explained it to his wife; what would have been snobbery in America was loyalty in Silesia. The armies of Napoleon having never reached that land, the feudal system still prevailed and rank was a reality.
"Stubendorf being in Poland, the train had to stop, and luggage and passports to be examined. The village itself was German, and only the poorer part of the peasantry was Polish. This made a situation full of tension, and no German thought of it as anything but a truce. What the Poles thought, Lanny didn’t know, for he couldn’t talk with them. In Berlin he had shown his wife a comic paper and a cartoon portraying Poland as an enormous fat hog, being ridden by a French army officer who was twisting the creature’s tail to make it gallop and waving a saber to show why he was in a hurry. Not exactly the Christmas spirit!"
"Among the guests they had met at the Schloss was an uncle of their host, the Graf Oldenburg of Vienna." They were invited to visit, with hints of art treasures. Lanny picked one for an heiress in Long Island, friend of Irma who had wanted him to do so.
They returned to Juan Les-Pins.
"At least an hour every day Mr. Dingle spent with Madame Zyszynski, and often Beauty was with him. The spirits possessed the minds of this pair, and the influence of the other world spread through the little community. Beauty began asking the spirits’ advice, and taking it in all sorts of matters. They told her that these were dangerous times, and to be careful of her money. The spirit of Marcel told her this, and so did the spirit of the Reverend Blackless—so he referred to himself. Beauty had never taken his advice while he was living, but assumed he would be ultra-wise in the beyond. As economy was what Lanny wanted her to practice, he felt indebted to the shades. Being a talkative person, Beauty told her friends about her “guides,” and Bienvenu acquired a queerer reputation than it had ever had, even when it was a haunt of painters, munitions buyers, and extra-marital couples."
Zaharoff visited, anonymously, for another session with Madame Zyszynski, and was impressed. Duqesa came through.
They took a steamer to N.Y..
"Among the conveniences on board this movable city was a broker’s office where you could get quotations and gamble in your favorite stocks; also a daily newspaper which reported what was happening in Wall Street and the rest of the world. Shortly before the vessel reached New York it was learned that the troubles in Vienna had come to a climax; there was a failure of the Creditanstalt, biggest bank in the city. Next day the panic was spreading to Germany. Lanny heard people say: “All right. It’s time they had some troubles.” But others understood that if Germany couldn’t pay reparations, Britain and France would soon be unable to pay their debts to the United States. These financial difficulties traveled like waves of sound; they met some obstruction and came rolling back. The world had become a vast sounding-board, filled with clashing echoes hurled this way and that. Impossible to guess what was coming next!"
Lanny and Irma back at Shore Acres, Long Island.
"Life at Shore Acres was taken up where it had been left off. The question of Baby Frances was settled quickly, for the head nurse came to Irma, who had employed her; she didn’t say that Irma had been raised wrong, or that grandmothers were passées, but simply that modern science had made new discoveries and that she had been trained to put them into practice. Irma couldn’t dream of losing that most conscientious of persons, so she laid down the law to her mother, who took it with surprising meekness. Likewise, Uncle Horace made only the feeblest of tentatives in the direction of Wall Street. Lanny perceived that they had had family consultations; the haughty Fanny was going to be the ideal mother-in-law, her brother was going to make himself agreeable at all costs, and everybody in the house was to do the same—in the hope that a prince consort might be persuaded to settle down in his palace and enjoy that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him.
"All that Lanny and his royal spouse had to do was to be happy, and they had the most expensive toys in the world to play with. The estate had been created for that purpose, and thousands of skilled workers had applied their labor and hundreds of technicians had applied their brains to its perfection. If the young couple wanted to ride there were horses, if they wanted to drive there were cars, if they wanted to go out on the water there were sailboats and launches. There were two swimming-pools, one indoors and one out, besides the whole Atlantic Ocean. There were servants to wait upon them and clean up after them; there were pensioners and courtiers to flatter and entertain them. The world had been so contrived that it was extremely difficult for the pair to do any sort of useful thing.
"Playmates came in swarms: boys and girls of Irma’s set who were “lousy with money”—their own phrase. Irma had romped and danced with them from childhood, and now they were in their twenties, but lived and felt and thought as if still in their teens. The depression had hit many of them, and a few had had to drop out, but most were still keeping up the pace. They drove fast cars, and thought nothing of dining in one place and dancing fifty miles away; they would come racing home at dawn—one of them would be assigned to drive and would make it a point of honor not to get drunk. The boys had been to college and the girls to finishing-schools, where they had acquired fashionable manners, but no ideas that troubled them. Their conversation was that of a secret society: they had their own slang and private jokes, so that if you didn’t “belong,” you had to ask what they were talking about.
"It was evident to all that Irma had picked up an odd fish, but they were willing enough to adopt him; all he had to do was to take them as they were, do what they did, and not try to force any ideas upon them. He found it interesting for a while; the country was at its springtime best, the estates of Long Island were elaborate and some of them elegant, and anybody who is young and healthy enjoys tennis and swimming and eating good food. But Lanny would pick up the newspaper and read about troubles all over the world; he would go into the swarming city where millions had no chance to play and not even enough to eat; he would look at the apple-sellers, and the breadlines of haggard, fear-driven men—many with clothes still retaining traces of decency. Millions wandering over the land seeking in vain for work; families being driven from their farms because they couldn’t pay the taxes. Lanny wasn’t content to read the regular newspapers, but had to seek out the Pink and Red ones, and then tell his wealthy friends what he had found there. Not many would believe him, and not one had any idea what to do about it.
"Nobody seemed to have such ideas. The ruling classes of the various nations watched the breakdown of their economy like spectators in the neighborhood of a volcano, seeing fiery lava pour out of the crater and dense clouds of ashes roll down the slopes, engulfing vineyards and fields and cottages. So it had been when the younger Pliny had stood near Mt. Vesuvius some nineteen hundred years back, and had written to the historian Tacitus about his experience:
"“I looked behind me; gross darkness pressed upon our rear, and came rolling over the land after us like a torrent. We had scarce sat down, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a moonless or cloudy night, but of a room when it is shut up, and the lamp put out. You could hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children, and the shouts of men; some were seeking their children, others their parents, others their wives or husbands, and only distinguishing them by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some praying to die, from the very fear of dying; many lifting their hands to the gods; but the great part imagining that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the last and eternal night was come upon the world.”
"By way of the automobile ferry from Long Island to New London, Connecticut, Lanny drove his wife to his father’s home, and they spent a week with the family. The town of Newcastle had been hard hit by the depression: the arms plant was shut down entirely; the hardware and elevator and other plants were running only three days a week. The workers were living on their savings if they had any; they were mortgaging their homes, and losing their cars and radio sets because they couldn’t meet installment payments. There were a couple of thousand families entirely destitute, and most of them were Budd workers, so it was a strain upon the consciences and pocketbooks of all members of the ruling family. Esther was working harder than even during the World War; she was chairman of the finance committee of the town’s soup kitchens and children’s aid, and went about among the women’s clubs and churches telling harrowing stories and making the women weep, so that private charity might not break down entirely.
"That was a crucial issue, as her husband told her. If America was forced to adopt the British system of the dole, it would be the end of individual initiative and private enterprise. Robbie seemed to his son like the anchor-man of a tug-of-war team, his heels dug into the ground, his teeth set, the veins standing out purple in his forehead with the effort he was making to keep his country from moving the wrong way. Robbie had been down to Washington to see President Hoover, his hero and the captain of his team. The Great Engineer was literally besieged; all the forces of disorder and destruction—so he considered them and so did Robbie—were trying to pry him from his stand that the budget must be balanced, the value of the dollar maintained, and business allowed to “come back” in due and regular course.
"Esther, of course, had to believe her husband; she told all the club ladies and church ladies that they were saving civilization, and they put in their dimes or their dollars, and gathered together and knitted sweaters or cooked and served hot soup. But every slump in Wall Street threw more men out of work in Newcastle, and the ladies were at their wit’s end. When Irma wrote a check for five thousand dollars for the children, tears of gratitude ran down the cheeks of Lanny’s stepmother. He had given her great sorrow in years past, but now his credit rating was triple-A. Even his Pinkness had been made respectable by the crimson hues of Bess, concerning whom the mother inquired with deepest anxiety.
"The Newcastle Country Club was giving a costume dance for charity. You paid twenty-five dollars for a ticket, and if you weren’t there you were nobody. Irma and Lanny had to drive to a near-by city, since everybody who knew how to sew in Newcastle was already at work on costumes. But it was all right, for that city likewise had its smokeless factory chimneys. Several women worked day and night, and as a result the visiting pair appeared as a very grand Beatrice and Benedick in red-and-purple velvet with gold linings. A delightful occasion, and when it was over, Irma and Lanny presented the costumes to the country club’s dramatics committee, for Irma said that if you folded them and carried them in the car they’d be full of creases and not fit to use again.
"The business situation in Germany went from bad to worse. Robbie received a letter from Johannes, saying that it looked like the end of everything. Foreign loans were no more, and Germany couldn’t go on without them. Johannes was taking more money out of the country, and asking Robbie’s help in investing it. Robbie told his son in strict confidence—not even Irma was allowed to know—that President Hoover had prepared a declaration of a moratorium on international debts; he was still hesitating about this grave step; would it help or would it cause more alarm? The French, who had not been consulted, would probably be furious.
"The declaration was issued soon after the young couple had returned to Shore Acres, and the French were furious, but the Germans were not much helped. In the middle of July the great Danat Bank failed in Berlin, and there was terror such as Lanny had witnessed in New York. Chancellor Brüning went to Paris to beg for help, and Premier Laval refused it; France was now the strongest European power financially, and was sitting on her heap of gold, lending it only for the arming of Poland and her other eastern allies—which were blackmailing her without mercy. Britain had made the mistake of trying to buttress German finances, and now her own were shaky as a result. “We’re not that sort of fools,” wrote young Denis de Bruyne to Lanny, who replied: “If you let the German Republic fall and you get Hitler, will that help you?” Young Denis did not reply.
"Such were the problems faced by the statesmen while two darlings of fortune were having fun all over the northeastern states. Invitations would come, and they would order their bags packed, step into their car in the morning, drive several hours or perhaps all day, and step out onto an estate in Bar Harbor or Newport, the Berkshires or the Ramapo Hills, the Adirondacks or the Thousand Islands. Wherever it was, there would be a palace—even though it was called a “cottage” or a “camp.” The way you knew a “camp” was that it was built of “slabs,” and you wore sport clothes and didn’t dress for dinner; but the meal would be just as elaborate, for nobody stayed anywhere without sending a staff of servants ahead and having all modern conveniences, including a dependable bootlegger. Radios and phonographs provided music for dancing, and if you didn’t have the right number for games, you called people on the long-distance telephone and they motored a hundred miles or more, and when they arrived they bragged about their speed. Once more Lanny thought of the English poet Clough, and his song attributed to the devil in one of his many incarnations: “How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money!”
"These young people still had it, though the streams were drying up. The worst of the embarrassments of a depression, as it presented itself to the daughter of J. Paramount Barnes, was that so many of her friends kept getting into trouble and telling her about it. A truly excruciating situation: in the midst of a bridge game at Tuxedo Park the hostess received a telephone call from her broker in New York, and came in white-faced, saying that unless she could raise fifty thousand dollars in cash by next morning she was “sunk.” Not everybody had that much money in the bank, and especially not in times when rumors were spreading about this bank and that. Irma saw the eyes of the hostess fixed upon her, and was most uncomfortable, because she couldn’t remedy the depression all by herself and had to draw the line somewhere.
"The first of July was a time for dividends, and many of the biggest and most important corporations “passed” them. This gave a shock to Wall Street, and to those who lived by it; Irma’s income was cut still more, and the shrinkage seemed likely to continue. The news from abroad was as bad as possible. Rick, who knew what was going on behind the scenes, wrote it to his friend. The German Chancellor was in London, begging for funds, but nobody dared help him any further; France was obdurate, because the Germans had committed the crime of attempting to set up a customs union with Austria. But how could either of these countries survive if they couldn’t trade?
"All Lanny’s life it had been his habit to sit and listen to older people talking about the state of the world. Now he knew more about it than most of the people he met, even the older ones. While Irma played bridge, or table tennis with her young friends who had acquired amazing skill at that fast game, Lanny would be telling the president of one of the great Wall Street banks just why he had blundered in advising his clients to purchase the bonds of Fascist Italy, or trying to convince one of the richest old ladies of America that she wasn’t really helping to fight Bolshevism when she gave money for the activities of the Nazis in the United States. Such a charming, cultivated young German had been introduced to her, and had explained this holy crusade to preserve Western civilization from the menace of Asiatic barbarism!
"It was a highly complicated world for a devout Episcopalian and member of the D.A.R. to be groping about in. A great banking fortune gave her enormous power, and she desired earnestly to use it wisely. Lanny told her the various radical planks of the Nazi program, and the old lady was struck with dismay. He told her how Hitler had been dropping these planks one by one, and she took heart again. But he assured her that Hitler didn’t mean the dropping any more than he had meant the planks; what he wanted was to get power, and then he would do whatever was necessary to keep it and increase it. Lanny found it impossible to make this attitude real to gentle, well-bred, conscientious American ladies; it was just too awful. When you persisted in talking about it, you only succeeded in persuading them that there must be something wrong with your cynical self."
Lanny's mother in law adapted.
"For Lanny as a prince consort there was really quite a lot to be said. His manners were distinguished and his conversation even more so. He didn’t get drunk, and he had to be urged to spend his wife’s money. The uncertainty about his mother’s marriage ceremony hadn’t broken into the newspapers, and he was received by his father’s very old family. So the large and majestic Queen Mother of Shore Acres set out to butter him with flattery and get from him the two things she ardently desired: first, that he should help Irma to produce a grandson to be named Vandringham; and second, that they should leave Baby Frances at Shore Acres to be reared in the Vandringham tradition."
Rick wrote to Lanny.
"The echoes of calamity came rolling from Germany to England. Trade was falling off, factories closing, unemployment increasing; doubts were spreading as to the soundness of the pound sterling, for a century the standard of value for all the world; investors were taking refuge in the dollar, the Dutch florin, the Swiss franc. Rick told about the situation in his country; boldness was needed, he said—a capital levy, a move to socialize credit; but no political party had the courage or the vision. The Tories clamored to balance the budget at any cost, to cut the dole, and the pay of the schoolteachers, even of the navy. It was the same story as Hoover with his “rugged individualism.” Anything to save the gold standard and the power of the creditor class.
"At the beginning of September the labor government fell. An amazing series of events—the labor Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and several of his colleagues in the old Cabinet went over to the Tories and formed what he called a “National” government to carry out the anti-labor program. It had happened before in Socialist history, but never quite so dramatically, so openly; Rick, writing about it for one of the leftist papers, said that those who betrayed the hopes of the toiling masses usually managed to veil their sell-out with decorous phrases, they didn’t come out on the public highway to strip themselves of their old work-clothes and put on the livery of their masters.
"Rick was a philosopher, and tried to understand the actions of men. He said that the ruling classes couldn’t supply their own quota of ability, but were forced continually to invade the other classes for brains. It had become the function of the Socialist movement to train and equip lightning-change artists of politics, men who understood the workers and how to fool them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders. In Italy it had been Mussolini, who had learned his trade editing the principal Socialist paper of the country. In France no fewer than four premiers had begun their careers as ardent revolutionaries; the newest of them was Pierre Laval, an innkeeper’s son who had driven a one-horse omnibus for his father, and while driving had read Socialist literature and learned how to get himself elected mayor of his town.
"Rick mailed this letter; but before the steamer reached New York, the cables brought word that the prisoner of the Tories had failed. Britain was off the gold standard, and the pound sterling had lost about twenty per cent of its value! It happened to be the twenty-first of September, a notable day in Wall Street history, for it marked two years from the high point of the big bull market. In those two years American securities had lost sixty per cent of their value; and now came this staggering news, causing another drop! “Look where steel is now!” said Lanny Budd to his father over the telephone."
Laval traveled with Aristide Briand to meet Hindenburg, with little effect.
"Briand meeting with Hindenburg! The washerwoman’s child and the East Prussian aristocrat; old-time enemies, now both nearing their graves; each thinking about his country’s safety, and helpless to secure it. Der alte Herr talking about the menace of revolution in Germany; not the respectable kind which would put the Kaiser’s sons on the throne, but a dangerous gutter-revolution, an upsurge of the Lumpenproletariat, led by the one-time odd-job man, the painter of picture postcards, the “Bohemian corporal” named Schicklgruber. Briand demanding the dropping of the Austro-German customs-union project, while Hindenburg pleaded for a chance for his country to sell goods. Briand denouncing the Stahlhelm and the new pocket-battleships, while Hindenburg complained that France was not keeping her promise to disarm. Hindenburg begging for loans, while Briand explained that France had to keep her gold reserve as the last bulwark of financial security in Europe. No, there wasn’t much chance of their getting together; the only one who could hope to profit by the visit was the aforesaid “Bohemian corporal,” whose papers were raving alike at the French visitors and at the German politicians who licked their boots to no purpose.
"Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber wouldn’t attack Hindenburg, for Hindenburg was a monument, a tradition, a living legend. The Nazi press would concentrate its venom upon the Chancellor, a Catholic and leader of the Center party, guilty of the crime of signing the Young Plan which sought to keep Germany in slavery until the year 1988. Now Hoover had granted a moratorium, but there was no moratorium for Brüning, no let-up in the furious Nazi campaign.
Lanny Budd knew about it, because Heinrich Jung had got his address, presumably from Kurt, and continued to keep him supplied with literature. There was no one at Shore Acres who could read it but Lanny himself; however, one didn’t need to know German, one had only to look at the headlines to know that it was sensational, and at the cartoons to know that it was a propaganda of cruel and murderous hate. Cartoons of Jews as monsters with swollen noses and bellies, of John Bull as a fat banker sucking the blood of German children, of Marianne as a devouring harpy, of the Russian bear with a knife in his teeth and a bomb in each paw, of Uncle Sam as a lean and sneering Shylock. Better to throw such stuff into the trash-basket without taking off the wrappers.
"But that wouldn’t keep the evil flood from engulfing Germany, it wouldn’t keep millions of young people from absorbing a psychopath’s view of the world. Lanny Budd, approaching his thirty-second birthday, wondered if the time hadn’t come to stop playing and find some job to do. But he kept putting it off, because jobs were so scarce, and if you took one, you deprived somebody else of it—someone who needed it much more than you!"
Lanny and Irma took a German steamer back to Marseille.
"You might not like Germans, but if you wanted to cross the ocean, you liked a new and shiny boat with officers and stewards in new uniforms, and the cleanest and best table-service. They were so polite, and at the same time so determined; Lanny was interested in talking with them and speculating as to what made them so admirable as individuals and so dangerous as a race.
"Right now, of course, they were in trouble, like everybody else. They had the industrial plant, but couldn’t find customers; they had the steamships, but it was hard to get passengers! The other peoples blamed fate or Providence, economic law, the capitalist system, the gold standard, the war, the Reds—but Germans everywhere blamed but one thing, the Versailles Diktat and the reparations it had imposed. Every German was firmly set in the conviction that the Allies were deliberately keeping the Fatherland from getting on its feet again, and that all their trouble was a direct consequence of this. Lanny would point out that now there was a moratorium on all their debts, not only reparations but post-war borrowings, so it ought to be possible for them to recover soon. But he never knew that argument to have the slightest effect; there was a national persecution complex which operated subconsciously, as in an individual.
"Irma couldn’t understand Lanny’s being interested to talk to such people, and for so long a time. He explained that it was a sociological inquiry; if Rick had been along he would have written an article: “The Floating Fatherland.” It was a question of the whole future of Germany. How deeply was the propaganda of Dr. Joseph Goebbels taking effect? What were the oilers thinking? What did the scullerymen talk about before they dropped into their bunks? There were dyed-in-the-wool Reds, of course, who followed the Moscow line and were not to be swerved; but others had become convinced that Hitler was a genuine friend of the people and would help them to get shorter hours and a living wage. Arguments were going on day and night, an unceasing war of words all over the ship. Which way was the balance swinging?"
Back home at Bienvenu.
"When Irma and Beauty Budd emerged from the hands of modistes and friseurs, all ready for a party, they were very fancy showpieces; Lanny was proud to escort them and to see the attention they attracted. He kept himself clad according to their standards, did the honors as he had been taught, and for a while was happy as a young man à la mode. His wife was deeply impressed by Emily Chattersworth, that serene and gracious hostess, and was taking her as a model. Irma would remark: “If we had a larger house, we could entertain as Emily does.” She would try experiments, inviting this eminent person and that, and when they came she would say to her husband: “I believe you and I could have a salon if we went about it seriously.”
"Lanny came to recognize that she was considering this as a career. Emily was growing feeble, and couldn’t go on forever; there would have to be someone to take her place, to bring the fashionable French and the fashionable Americans together and let them meet intellectuals, writers and musicians and statesmen who had made names for themselves in the proper dignified way. As a rule such persons didn’t have the money or time to entertain, nor were their wives up to it; if you rendered that free service, it made you “somebody” in your own right.
"Each of the great men had his “line,” something he did better than anybody else. Lanny assumed that you had to read his book, listen to his speeches, or whatever it was; but Irma made up her mind that this was her husband’s naïveté. He would have had to, but a woman didn’t. A woman observed that a man wanted to talk about himself, and a woman who was good at listening to that was good enough for anything. She had to express admiration, but not too extravagantly; that was a mistake the gushy woman made, and the man decided that she was a fool. But the still, deep woman, the Mona Lisa woman, the one who said in a dignified way: “I have wanted very much to know about that—please tell me more,” she was the one who warmed a celebrity’s heart.
"The problem, Irma decided, was not to get them to talk, but to get them to stop! The function of a salonnière was to apportion the time, to watch the audience and perceive when it wanted a change and bring about the change so tactfully that nobody noticed it. Irma watched the technique of her hostess, and began asking questions; and this was by no means displeasing to Emily, for she too was not above being flattered and liked the idea of taking on an understudy. She showed Irma her address-book, full of secret marks which only her confidential secretary understood. Some meant good things and some bad."
Rick wrote a political play and Lanny along with Irma and friends of Beauty funded it, with Gracyn playing a part. They stopped at Paris on the way to England, where Jesse Blackless won an election and was now a member of the chamber, the French parliament. Hansi and Bess were there, and in conversations in cafe Hansi spoke about Nazi violence in Germany. Irma spoke with Emily about Lanny, and decided to encourage his art career, and learn. They visited Zaharoff and another palace, and Irma decided to rent the latter for a year so they could live there and combine the lifestyles of the couple, he would conduct art career while she would learn from Emily Chattersworth about being a salonniere. She hired Jerry Pendleton to manage the place and they moved in. Beauty, Emily and Frances, all came to help.
"The election results had given a tremendous jolt to the conservative elements in France. The party of Jesse Blackless had gained only two seats, but the party of Léon Blum had gained seventeen, while the “Radicals” had gained forty-eight. To be sure that word didn’t mean what it meant in the United States; it was the party of the peasants and the small business men, but it was expected to combine with the Socialists, and France would have a government of the left, badly tainted with pacifism, and likely to make dangerous concessions to the Germans. The groups which had been governing France, the representatives of big industry and finance capital, popularly known as the mur d’argent, the “wall of money,” were in a state of great alarm."
Lanny invited De Bruyne family,
"Said the proprietor of a great fleet of taxicabs, speaking with some hesitation to a hostess from overseas: “I am afraid that the people of your country do not have a clear realization of the position in which they have placed my country.”
"“Do feel at liberty to speak freely, Monsieur,” replied Irma, in her most formal French.
"“There is a natural barrier which alone can preserve this land from the invasion of barbarians, and that is the River Rhein. It was our intention to hold and fortify it, but your President Veelson”—so they called him, ending with their sharp nasal “n”—“your President Veelson forced us back from that boundary, onto ground which is almost indefensible, no matter how hard we may try with our Maginot line. We made that concession because of your President’s pledge of a protective agreement against Germany; but your Congress ignored that agreement, and so today we stand well-nigh defenseless. Now your President Oovay has declared a moratorium on reparations, so that chapter is at an end—and we have received almost nothing.”"
"“When one says Germany today, Madame, one means Prussia; and to these people good faith is a word of mockery. For such men as Thyssen and Hugenberg, and for the Jewish money-lenders, the name ‘Republic’ is a form of camouflage. I speak frankly, because it is all in the family, as it were.”
"“Assuredly,” said the hostess.
"“Every concession that we make is met by further demands. We have withdrawn from the Rheinland, and no longer have any hold upon them, so they smile up their sleeves and go on with their rearming. They waited, as you have seen, until after our elections, so as not to alarm us; then, seeing the victory of the left, they overthrow their Catholic Chancellor, and we see a Cabinet of the Barons, as it is so well named. If there is a less trustworthy man in all Europe than Franz von Papen, I would not know where to seek him.”"
"Charlot, the young engineer, had joined the Croix de Feu, one of the patriotic organizations which did not propose to surrender la patrie either to the Reds or to the Prussians. The Croix de Feu used the technique of banners and uniforms and marching and singing as did the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany; but Lanny said: “I’m afraid, Charlot, you won’t get so far, because you don’t make so many promises to the workers.”
"“They tell the people falsehoods,” said the young Frenchman, haughtily; “but we are men of honor.”
"“Ah, yes,” sighed his old friend; “but how far does that go in politics?”
"“In this corrupt republic, no distance at all; but we have set out to make France a home for men who mean what they say.”
"Lanny spoke no more. It made him sad to see his two foster sons—they were supposed to be something like that—going the road of Fascism; but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew that their mother had shared these tendencies. They were French patriots, and he couldn’t make them internationalists, or what he called “good Europeans.”"
Lanny wanted to go visit Leon Blum and Irma asked him to invite him home.
"After all, Leon Blum was the leader of the second largest political party in France; he was a scholar and a poet, and had once had a fortune. In the old days, as a young aesthete, he had been a frequenter of Emily’s salon; now he had exchanged Marcel Proust for Karl Marx, but he remained a gentleman and a brilliant mind. Surely one might invite him to lunch, and even to dinner—if the company was carefully chosen. Emily herself would come; and Lanny knew from this that the matter had been discussed."
"The Socialist leader sat in the same chair which Denis de Bruyne had filled, and maybe he felt some evil vibrations, for he spoke very sadly. In the midst of infinite corruption he was trying to believe in honesty; in the midst of wholesale cruelty he was trying to believe in kindness. The profit system, the blind competitive struggle for raw materials and markets, was wrecking civilization. No one nation could change this by itself; all must help, but someone must begin, and the voice of truth must be heard everywhere. Léon Blum spoke tirelessly in the Chamber, he wrote daily editorials for Le Populaire, he traveled here and there, pleading and explaining. He would do it at the luncheon table of a friend, and then stop and apologize, smiling and saying that politics ruined one’s manners as well as one’s character.
"He was a tall slender man with the long slim hands of an artist; a thin, sensitive face, an abundant mustache which made him a joy to the caricaturists of the French press. He had been through campaigns of incredible bitterness; for to the partisans of the French right it was adding insult to injury when their foes put up a Jew as their spokesman. It made the whole movement of the workers a part of the international Jewish conspiracy, and lent venom to all Fascist attacks upon France. “Perhaps, after all, it is a mistake that I try to serve the cause,” said the statesman.
"He was ill content with the showing which his party had made at the polls. A gain of seventeen was not enough to save the day. He said that immediate and bold action was required if Europe was to be spared the horrors of another war. He said that the German Republic could not survive without generous help from France. He said that the “Cabinet of the Barons” was a natural answer to the cabinet of the bigot, Poincaré, and to that of the cheat, Laval. Blum was standing for real disarmament of all the nations, including France, and he had been willing to split his party rather than to yield on that issue. Said Irma, after the luncheon: “We won’t ever invite him and the de Bruynes at the same time!”"
Irma gave her first soiree for house warming, managed everything, and was a success, and happy. Hansi and Bess gave a recital, after which Rahel, Freddi and Lanny did.
"Lanny, thirty-two and world weary, thought: “How hard they all try to keep up a front and to be what they pretend!” He thought: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”—these being among the first words of Shakespeare he had learned.
"He knew much more about these players than his wife did. He had been hearing stories from his father and his business friends, from his mother and her smart friends, from his Red uncle, from Blum and Longuet and other Pinks. This lawyer for the Comité des Forges who had all the secrets of la haute finance hidden in his skull; this financier, paymaster for the big banks, who had half the members of the Radical party on his list; this publisher who had taken the Tsar’s gold before the war and now was a director of Skoda and Schneider-Creusot!"
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Lindbergh tragedy happened.
"It happened that this ghastly discovery fell in the same week that the President of the French republic was shot down by an assassin who called himself a “Russian Fascist.” The papers were full of the details and pictures of both these tragedies. A violent and dreadful world to be living in, and the rich and mighty ones shuddered and lost their sleep."
"Fanny wanted to take her tiny namesake to Shore Acres and keep her in a fifth-story room, beyond reach of any ladders. But Beauty said: “What about fire?” The two grandmothers were close to their first quarrel.
"Lanny cabled his father, inquiring about Bub Smith, most dependable of bodyguards and confidential agents. He was working for the company in Newcastle, but could be spared, and Robbie sent him by the first steamer. So every night the grounds of Bienvenu would be patrolled by an ex-cowboy from Texas who could throw a silver dollar into the air and hit it with a Budd automatic. Bub had been all over France, doing one or another kind of secret work for the head salesman of Budd Gunmakers, so he knew the language of the people. He hired a couple of ex-poilus to serve as daytime guards, and from that time on the precious mite of life which was to inherit the Barnes fortune was seldom out of sight of an armed man. Lanny wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, for of course all the Cap knew what these men were there for, and it served as much to advertise the baby as to protect her. But no use telling that to the ladies!"
Bub told Lanny he'd become a socialist, and attended classes of Raoul Palma, it took Lanny a year to find out that was Robbie's way of finding out about the left.
"Also Bub told about conditions in Newcastle, where some kind of social change seemed impossible to postpone. There wasn’t enough activity in those great mills to pay for the taxes and upkeep, and there was actual hunger among the workers. The people had mortgaged their homes, sold their cars, pawned their belongings; families had moved together to save rent; half a dozen people lived on the earnings of a single employed person. So many New Englanders were proud and wouldn’t ask for charity; they just withdrew into a corner and starved. Impossible not to be moved by such distress, or to realize that something must be done to get that great manufacturing plant to work again."
They drove to Bienvenu to see baby Frances and then to see Rick's play in London.
"The house divided horizontally; from the stalls came frozen silence and from the galleries storms of applause. The critics divided in the same way; those with a pinkish tinge hailed the play as an authentic picture of the part which fashionable society was playing in politics, an indictment of that variety of corruption peculiar to Britain, where privileges which would have to be paid for in cash in France or with office in America, go as a matter of hereditary right or of social prestige. In any case it was power adding to itself, “strength aiding still the strong.”
Lanny and his friends helped, and
"In one way or another they kept the play going. Gracyn, to whom it gave such a “fat” part, offered to postpone taking her salary for two weeks. Lanny wrote articles for the labor papers, pointing out what the production meant to the workers, and so they continued to attend and cheer. The affair grew into a scandal, which forced the privileged classes to talk about it, and then to want to know what they were talking about. In the end it turned out that Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson had a “hit”—something he had been aiming at for more than ten years. He insisted on paying back all his friends, and after that he paid off some of the mortgages of “the Pater,” who had been staking him for a long time. The main thing was that Rick had managed to say something to the British people, and had won a name so that he would be able to say more."
They drove to Berlin to visit the Robins, via Lausanne where Pietro Corsatti was attending the next conference, and were told next would be Paris, so Irma looked forward to her home being where all the important personages met. Meanwhile,
"Lanny observed his wife “falling for” the British ruling class. Many Americans did this; it was a definite disease, known as “Anglomania.” Upper-class Englishmen were tall and good-looking, quiet and soft-spoken, cordial to their friends and reserved to others; Irma thought that was the right way to be. There was Lord Wickthorpe, whom Lanny had once met on a tally-ho coach driving to Ascot; they had both been youngsters, but now Wickthorpe was a grave diplomat, carrying a brief-case full of responsibility—or so he looked, and so Irma imagined him, though Lanny, who had been behind many scenes, assured her that the sons of great families didn’t as a rule do much hard work. Wickthorpe was divinely handsome, with a tiny light brown mustache, and Irma said: “How do you suppose such a man could remain a bachelor?”
"“I don’t know,” said the husband. “Margy can probably tell you. Maybe he couldn’t get the girl he wanted.”
"“I should think any girl would have a hard time refusing what he has.”"
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They stopped on the way in Stuttgart at night and Lanny wanted to hear Gregor Strasser speak at supposedly a huge rally to be.
"During those twenty months a Franco-American playboy had been skipping over the world with the agility conferred by railroads and motor-cars, airplanes, steamships, and private yachts. He had been over most of western Europe, England, and New England. ....
"But meantime the people of Germany had been living an utterly different life; doing hard and monotonous labor for long hours at low wages; finding the cost of necessities creeping upward and insecurity increasing, so that no man could be sure that he and his family were going to have their next day’s bread. The causes of this state of affairs were complex and hopelessly obscure to the average man, but there was a group which undertook to make them simple and plain to the dullest. During the aforementioned twenty months the customs official’s son from Austria, Adi Schicklgruber, had been skipping about even more than Lanny Budd, using the same facilities of railroad trains and motor-cars and airplanes. But he hadn’t been seeking pleasure; he had been living the life of an ascetic, vegetarian, and teetotaler, devoting his fanatical energies to the task of convincing the German masses that their troubles were due to the Versailles Diktat, to the envious foreigners who were strangling the Fatherland, to the filthy and degraded Jews, and to their allies the international bankers and international Reds.
"Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry—that was Adolf Hitler’s technique. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God’s truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes history. The Jews kill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual! You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called “ritual murder.” The Jews are in a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit den Juden!"
Funny, how relevant it is almost a century later, when a so called young leader descended half from axis lineage, from both mafia Sicilian and fascist, and nazi, ends of the axis, applies that technique of blatant huge lies to not only people of poorer families who haven't deposited stolen money banked in Swiss accounts, stolen from a poor nation, but abuses and lies to and about the very people, culture, and country he claims a right to rule due to the other half of his lineage of bushes of their country. Will this ancient culture prove smarter than Germany of a century ago, despite appearances to the contrary? Which did happen to his grandma's great shock, within two years of a dictatorship when she was assured nobody would vote against her if she went to polls. If the people are still that smart, this scion shall be kept out from now on, and his other half axis DNA clan too.
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The author perhaps here provides a key to the unexpected success of nazis.
"... loudspeakers, a wonderful device whereby one small figure on a platform could have the voice of a score of giants, while a dissenter became a pigmy, uttering a squeak like a mouse. The radio was a still more marvelous invention; that feeble little “crystal set” with earphones which Robbie Budd had brought to Bienvenu ten years ago had become the most dominating of psychological forces, whereby one man could indoctrinate a hundred million. Learned technicians of the mind had evolved methods of awakening curiosity, so that the millions would listen; and no matter how much anyone disagreed, he was powerless to answer back. The dream of every dictator was to get exclusive control of that colossal instrument, so that never again in all history would it be possible to answer back. Then what you said would become the truth and the only truth—no matter how false it might have been previously! He who could get and hold the radio became God."
And the confusion of political spectrum then in Germany
"It was a political campaign of frenzied hate, close to civil war. Troops of armed men marched, glaring at other troops when they passed, and ready to fly at the others’ throats; in the working class districts they did so, and bystanders had to flee for their lives. The conservatives, who called themselves Democrats and Nationalists, had their Stahlhelm and their Kampfring, the Nazis had their S.S.’s and S.A.’s, the Sozis had their Reichsbanner, and the Communists their Rotfront, although the last named were forbidden to wear uniforms. The posters and cartoons, the flags and banners, all had symbols and slogans expressive of hatred of other people, whether Germans of the wrong class, or Russians, French, Czechs, Poles, or Jews. Impossible to understand so many kinds of hatreds or the reasons for them. Irma said: “It’s horrible, Lanny. Let’s not have any more to do with it.”"
Johannes Robin gave a party in honour of their visit.
"The new Chancellor came; tall and thin-faced, the smartest of diplomats and most elegant of Catholic aristocrats, he lived entangled in a net of intrigue of his own weaving. A son of the Russian ghetto might have been overwhelmed by the honor of such a presence, but Johannes took it as the payment of a debt. The gentlemen of the fashionable Herren Klub hadn’t been able to raise enough money to save their party, so the Chancellor had had to come to the Jew for help.
"Irma found him charming, and told her husband, who remarked: “There is no greater rascal in all Europe. Franz von Papen was put out of the United States before we entered the war because he was financing explosions in munitions plants.”
"“Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. “You say such horrid things! You can’t really know that!”
"Said the young Pink: “He didn’t have sense enough to burn his check-stubs, and the British captured his ship on the way home and published all the data.”"
They went on a week-long cruise with the Robins, whose political differences within family were strong.
"Neither couple was going to give way—any more than Lanny himself was going to give up his conviction that it was the program of the Communists which had caused the development of Fascism and Nazism—or at any rate had made possible its spread in Italy and Germany. Only in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon lands, where democratic institutions were firmly rooted, had neither Reds nor anti-Reds been able to make headway."
"A presidential election was due in November, and the political parties had held their conventions and made their nominations; the Republicans had endorsed the Great Engineer and all that he had done, while the Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt by name."
"Johannes judged it certain that the Nazis would make heavy gains at the coming elections, but he refused to worry about this. He had several of them on his payroll, but what he counted upon most was the fact that Hitler had gone to Düsseldorf and had a long session with Thyssen and other magnates of the Ruhr. They wanted the Red labor unions put down, and Hitler had satisfied them that he was ready to do the job."
Back in Berlin, Lanny visited the worker's school Freddi and Rahel worked for.
"There was a teacher of art at the school, by name Trudi Schultz, very young, herself a student at an art school, but two or three evenings a week she came to impart what she knew to the workers, most of them older than herself. She was married to a young commercial artist who worked on a small salary for an advertising concern and hated it. Both Trudi and Ludi Schultz were that perfect Aryan type which Adolf Hitler lauded but conspicuously was not; the girl had wavy fair hair, clear blue candid eyes, and sensitive features which gave an impression of frankness and sincerity. Lanny watched her making sketches on a blackboard for her class, and it seemed to him that she had an extraordinary gift of line; she drew something, then wiped it out casually, and he hated to see it go."
Trudi invited Lanny to see her work, and he drove Freddi and Rahel to her home. He found her work worthy of publication, and her conversation interesting and congenial.
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The German elections at end of July brought enough nazis to power that there could only be a non Nazi government if the left factions cooperated, which they wouldn't; Hindenburg refused to give chancellorship to Hitler and the offered vice-chancellorship wasn't accepted.
"There began a new wave of terrorism; attacks upon Reds of all shades by the Nazi Stormtroopers in and out of uniform. Irma heard about it and began begging Lanny to cease his visits among these people; she tried to enlist Robbie’s help, and when that failed she wanted to leave Berlin. What was this obscure tropism which drove her husband to the companionship of persons who at the least wanted to get his money from him, and frequently were conspiring to involve him in dangerous intrigues? What had they ever done for him? What could he possibly owe them?
"Lanny insisted that he had to hear all sides. He invited Emil Meissner to lunch—not in the Robin home, for Emil wouldn’t come there. Kurt’s oldest brother was now a colonel, and Lanny wanted to know what a Prussian officer thought about the political deadlock. Emil said it was deplorable, and agreed with Lanny that the Nazis were wholly unfitted to govern Germany. He said that if von Papen had been a really strong man he would never have permitted that election to be held; if the Field Marshal had been the man of the old days he would have taken the reins in his hands and governed the country until the economic crisis had passed and the people could settle into a normal state of mind.
"“But wouldn’t that mean the end of the Republic?” asked Lanny.
"“Republics come and go, but nations endure,” said Oberst Meissner.""
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"Kurt had written, begging Irma and Lanny to come for a visit. Lanny had never been to Stubendorf except at Christmas time, and he thought it would be pleasant to see the country in midsummer. They drove with a speed greater than the wind over the splendid level roads of Prussia, past fields where gangs of Polish immigrant women labored on the potato crops. The roads were lined with well-tended fruit trees, and Irma said: “We couldn’t do that in America. People would steal all the fruit.” She had never seen vast fields so perfectly cultivated: every inch of ground put to use, no such thing as a weed existing, and forests with trees planted in rows like orchards. She renewed her admiration for the German Volk."
"Just now there was wrangling over religious questions; the old problem of the relations of church and state was being fought over with bitterness inherited through six centuries or more. There were Polish Lutherans and German Lutherans who couldn’t and wouldn’t say the Lord’s prayer together. There were Polish Catholics trying to polonize German Catholics. There was the Volhynian Russian church, and the Uniat church which was half-way between Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic—they accepted the Pope, but their priests married and had large families. Superimposed upon all this was a new Polish ecclesiastical system, which subjected all the churches to the government. Herr Meissner, soon to depart from this earth, found the making of a proper exit as complicated a problem as had ever confronted him while staying on.
"Lanny had been looking forward to having a frank talk with his old chum. He wanted to tell Kurt what he had learned about the Nazi political machine, and make one last effort to get him out of it. But he realized that it would be a waste of effort. Kurt was in a state of exultation over the election results, for which he had been hoping for ten years and working for five. He considered that Germany was being redeemed, and he was composing a Victory March to end all marches. Lanny decided sadly that it was better to play piano duets and consider politics as beneath the notice of inspired musicians."
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In U.S.
"The ex-service men who had gone overseas to fight for their country had come back to find the jobs and the money in the hands of others. Now they were unemployed, many of them starving, and they gathered in Washington demanding relief; some brought their destitute families and swarmed upon the steps of the Capitol or camped in vacant lots beside the Potomac. The Great Engineer fell into a panic and could think of nothing to do but turn the army loose on them, kill four, and burn the tents and pitiful belongings of all. The “bonus men” were driven out, a helpless rabble, no one caring where they went, so long as they stopped bothering politicians occupied with getting re-elected."
Lanny and Irma spent autumn in Paris with family and friends, and Irma was a success as a hostess, even Graf Stubendorf accepted their return invitation and came. After Xmas with family at Bienvenu
"Back in Paris during the month of January Lanny would receive every morning a copy of the Berlin Vorwärts, twenty-four hours late; he would find on the front page details of the political situation, displayed under scare headlines and accompanied by editorial exhortations. All from the Socialist point of view, of course; but Lanny could check it by taking a stroll up the Butte de Montmartre and hearing the comments of his deputy-uncle, based on the reading of L’Humanité, the paper which Jaurès had founded but which now was in the hands of the Communists."
"“But suppose there aren’t any more elections, Uncle Jesse. Suppose Hitler takes power!”"
"“Well, if necessary we’ll go underground. It has happened before, and you may be sure that we have made plans—in France as well as in Germany.”
"Any time he was in doubt about what was really happening in Germany he had only to write to Johannes Robin. A letter from the Jewish money-master was like a gust of wind blowing away a fog and revealing the landscape. It disclosed the German nation traveling upon a perilous path, with yawning abysses on every side, earthquakes shaking the rocks loose and volcanoes hurling out clouds of fiery ashes. Assuredly neither of the Plinys, uncle or nephew, had confronted more terrifying natural phenomena than did the Weimar Republic at the beginning of this year 1933.
"The ceaselessly aggressive Nazis were waging daily and nightly battles with the Communists all over the country."
"“Papen has had a meeting with Hitler at the home of Thyssen’s friend, Baron von Schroeder,” wrote Johannes, and Lanny didn’t need to ask what that meant. “I am told that Papen and Hugenberg have got together;”—that, too, was not obscure. Hugenberg, the “silver fox,” had come to one of the Robin soirées; a big man with a walrus mustache, brutal but clever; leader of the Pan-German group and owner of the most powerful propaganda machine in the world, practically all of the big capitalist newspapers of Germany, plus U.F.A., the film monopoly. “Papen is raising funds for Hitler among the industrialists,” wrote Johannes. “I hear that the Führer has more than two million marks in notes which he cannot meet. It is a question whether he will go crazy before he becomes chancellor!”"
"On the thirtieth of January the news went out to a startled world that President von Hindenburg had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of the German Republic. Even the Nazis were taken by surprise; they hadn’t been invited to the intrigues, and couldn’t imagine by what magic it had been brought about that their Führer’s enemies suddenly put him into office. Franz von Papen was Vice-Chancellor, and Hugenberg was in the Cabinet; in all there were nine reactionaries against three Nazis, and what could that mean? The newspapers outside Germany were certain that it meant the surrender of Hitler; he was going to be controlled, he was going to be another Ramsay MacDonald. They chose not to heed the proclamation which the Führer himself issued, telling his followers that the struggle was only beginning. But the Stormtroopers heeded, and turned out, exultant, parading with torchlights through Unter den Linden; seven hundred thousand persons marched past the Chancellery, with Hindenburg greeting them from one window and Hitler from another. The Communist call for a general strike went unheeded.
"So it had come: the thing which Lanny had been fearing for the past three or four years. The Nazis had got Germany! Most of his friends had thought it unlikely; and now that it had happened, they preferred to believe that it hadn’t. Hitler wasn’t really in power, they said, and could last but a week or two. The German people had too much sense, the governing classes were too able and well trained; they would tone the fanatic down, and the soup would be eaten cool.
"But Adolf Hitler had got, and Adolf Hitler would keep, the power which was most important to him—that of propaganda. He was executive head of the German government, and whatever manifesto he chose to issue took the front page of all the newspapers. Hermann Göring was Prussian Minister of the Interior and could say to the world over the radio: “Bread and work for our countrymen, freedom and honor for the nation!” Dwarfish little Jupp Goebbels, President of the Propaganda Committee of the Party, found himself Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment of the German Republic. The Nazi movement had been made out of propaganda, and now it would cover Germany like an explosion.
"Hitler refused to make any concessions to the other parties, and thus forced Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and order a new election. This meant that for a month the country would be in the turmoil of a campaign. But what a different campaign! No trouble about lack of funds, because Hitler had the funds of the nation, and his tirades were state documents. Goebbels could say anything he pleased about his enemies and suppress their replies. Göring, having control of the Berlin police, could throw his political opponents into jail and nobody could even find out where they were. These were the things of which Adi Schicklgruber had been dreaming ever since the end of the World War; and where else but in the Arabian Nights had it happened that a man awoke and found such dreams come true?"
From here on, the story of the world events is known, and how the author weaves it beautifully into the lives of his protagonist and the family, friends et al is the delight of those readers that know the bigger story in the background. For those not as aware of history it's a wonderful way to find out, akin to a safe cruise rather than a journey involving travails, as it was for me four decades ago. One doesn't escape knowledge of the travails, horrors, and too the heartbreaks the world went through, but it's from a point of view that's the safe cocoon of Lanny Budd's world and persona. And yet, the horrors aren't distant, they involve several characters close.
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Lanny was worried about the Robin family, especially about Hansi and Bess. He managed to arrange a concert in Paris for him. Hansi finally agreed.
"“I’m scheduled to give a concert at Cologne, and that is half way.”
"Lanny said: “For God’s sake, keep off the streets at night, and don’t go out alone!”"
"Lanny missed his inside news about Germany, because the government forbade the publication of Vorwärts for three days, as a punishment for having published a campaign appeal of the Social-Democratic Party. Communist meetings were forbidden throughout the whole nation, and many Communist and Socialist papers were permanently suspended. “In ten years there will be no Marxism in Germany,” proclaimed the Führer. All over Prussia Göring was replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized. Next, all meetings of the Centrists, the Catholic party, were banned; the Catholic paper, Germania, of which Papen was the principal stockholder, was suppressed, and then Rote Fahne, the Communist paper of Berlin. These events were reported in L’Humanité under the biggest of headlines, and Uncle Jesse denounced them furiously in the Chamber of Deputies; but that didn’t appear to have much effect upon Hitler.
"What the Nazis were determined to do was to win those elections on the fifth of March. If they could get a majority in the Reichstag, they would be masters of the country; the Nationalists and aristocrats would be expelled from the cabinet and the revolution would be complete. Papen, Hugenberg, and their backers knew it well, and were in a state of distress, according to Johannes’s reports. A curious state of affairs—the gentlemen of the Herren Klub defending the Reds, because they knew that Hitler was using the Red bogy to frighten the people into voting for him! Goebbels was demanding the head of the Berlin police chief because he wouldn’t produce evidence of treasonable actions on the part of the Communists. “The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama,” wrote the Jewish financier. “In times to come people will refuse to believe it.”
"He was now beginning to be worried about the possibility of attacks upon his boys; those gentle, idealistic boys who had been playing with fire without realizing how hot it could get. Being now twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively, they ought to have had some sense. Johannes didn’t say it was Lanny’s half-sister who led them into the worst extremes, but Lanny knew the father thought this, and not without reason. Anyhow, he had got a trusted bodyguard in the palace—a well-established and indubitable Aryan bodyguard. Freddi’s school had been closed; such a simple operation—a group of Stormtroopers appeared one evening and ordered the people out. Nothing you could do, for they had arms and appeared eager to use them. Everybody went, not even being allowed to get their hats and coats in February. The building was closed, and all the papers had been carted away in a truck.
"The Nazis wouldn’t find any treason in those documents; only receipted bills, and examination papers in Marxist theory. But maybe that was treason now! Or maybe the Nazis would prepare other documents and put them into the files. Orders to the students to blow up Nazi headquarters, or perhaps the Chancellery? Such forgeries had been prepared more than once, and not alone in Germany. Hadn’t an election been won in Britain on the basis of an alleged “Zinoviev letter”?"
"The thing that worried Lanny was the possibility that some Nazi agent might produce letters proving that Hansi Robin had been carrying dynamite in his violin case, or Freddi in his clarinet case. They must have had spies in the school, and known everything that both boys had been doing and saying. Lanny said: “Johannes, why don’t you and the whole family come visit us for a while?”
"“Maybe we’ll all take a yachting trip,” replied the man of money, with a chuckle. “When the weather gets a little better.”
"“The weather is going to get worse,” insisted the Paris end of the line."
Lanny proposed to Irma that they drive to Cologne and bring out hansi and Bess.
"Among the music-lovers Hansi would be all right, for these were “good Europeans,” who for a couple of centuries had been building up a tradition of internationalism. A large percentage of Europe’s favorite musicians had been Jews, and there would have been gaps in concert programs if their works had been omitted.
"Was the audience trying to say this by the storms of applause with which they greeted the performance of Mendelssohn’s gracious concerto by a young Jewish virtuoso? Did Hansi have such a message in his mind when he played Bruch’s Kol Nidrei as one of his encores? When the audience leaped to its feet and shouted, “Bravo!” were they really meaning to say: “We are not Nazis! We shall never be Nazis!” Lanny chose to believe this, and was heartened; he was sure that many of the adoring Rheinlanders had a purpose in waiting at the stage door and escorting the four young people to their car. But out in the dark street, with a cold rain falling, doubts began to assail him, and he wondered if the amiable Rhinelanders had guns for their protection.
"However, no Nazi cars followed, and no Stormtroopers were waiting at the Hotel Monopol. Next morning they drove to the border, and nobody searched Hansi’s two violin cases for dynamite. They went through the routine performance of declaring what money they were taking out of the country, and were then passed over to the Belgian customs men. Lanny remembered the day when he had been ordered out of Italy, and with what relief he had seen French uniforms and heard French voices. Eight years had passed, and Benito, the “Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon,” was still haughtily declaring that his successor had not yet been born. Now his feat was being duplicated in another and far more powerful land, and rumors had it that he was giving advice. In how many more countries would Lanny Budd see that pattern followed? How many more transformations would it undergo? Would the Japanese conquerors of Manchuria adopt some new-colored shirts or kimonos? Or would it be the Croix de Feu in France? Or Mosley’s group in England? And if so, to what part of the world would the lovers of freedom move?"
The Paris concert description is beautiful.
"Hansi always wanted to be taken straight home after a performance; he was exhausted, and didn’t care for sitting around in cafés. He entered the palace and was about to go to his room, when the telephone rang; Berlin calling, and Hansi said: “That will be Papa, wanting to know how the concert went.”
"He was right, and told his father that everything had gone well. Johannes didn’t ask for particulars; instead he had tidings to impart. “The Reichstag building is burning.”
"What happened in the Reichstag building on that night of February 27 would be a subject of controversy inside and outside of Germany for years to come; but there could be no doubt about what happened elsewhere. Even while the four young people were talking in Paris, the leader of the Berlin S.A., Count Helldorf, was giving orders for the arrest of prominent Communists and Socialists. The list of victims had been prepared in advance, and warrants, each with a photograph of the victim in question. The Count knew that the Marxists were the criminals, he said; and Göring announced that the demented Dutchman who was found in the building with matches and fire-lighters had a Communist party membership card on him. The statement turned out to be untrue, but it served for the moment.
"Next day Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree “for the safeguarding of the state from the Communist menace,” and after that the Nazis had everything their own way. The prisons were filled with suspects, and the setting up of concentration camps began with a rush. The Prussian government, of which Göring was the head, issued a statement concerning the documents found in the raid on Karl Liebknecht Haus three days before the fire. The Communists had been plotting to burn down public buildings throughout Germany, and to start civil war and revolution on the Russian model; looting had been planned to begin right after the fire and terrorist acts were to be committed against persons and property. The publication of these documents was promised, but no one ever saw them, and the story was dropped as soon as it had served its purpose—which was to justify the abolishing of civil liberties throughout what had been the German Republic."
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Lanny and Irma took Hansi and Bess back to Bienvenu with them, and everyone was worried about the Robin family and others in Berlin, in Germany, while Lanny worried about more. Lanny and Irma returned to Paris, and Rick came over to stay for a visit.
"Irma decided more and more that she liked the English attitude to life. Englishmen felt intensely, as you soon found out, but they were content to state their position quietly, and even to understate it; they didn’t raise their voices like so many Americans, or gesticulate like the French, or bluster like the Germans. They had been in the business of governing for a long time, and rather took it for granted; but at the same time they were willing to consider the other fellow’s point of view, and to work out some sort of compromise. Especially did that seem to be the case with continental affairs, where they were trying so hard to mediate between the French and the Germans. Denis de Bruyne said: “Vraiment, how generous they can be when they are disposing of French interests!”
"There was a lot of private conferring between the British and the French, and British officials were continually coming and going in Paris. Rick brought several of them to the palace for tea and for dancing, and this was the sort of thing for which Irma had wanted the palace; she felt that she was getting her money’s worth—though of course she didn’t use any such crude phrase. Among those who came was that Lord Wickthorpe whom she had met in Geneva last year. He had a post of some responsibility, and talked among insiders, as he counted Rick and the Budds. Irma listened attentively, because, as a hostess, she had to say something and wanted it to be right. Afterward she talked with Lanny, getting him to explain what she hadn’t understood. Incidentally she remarked: “I wish you could take a balanced view of things, the way Wickthorpe does.”
"“Darling,” he answered, “Wickthorpe is a member of the British aristocracy, and is here to fight for the Empire. He’s got pretty much of everything he wants, so naturally he can take things easy.”
"“But, Lanny, you heard him say: ‘We’re all Socialists now.’”
"“I know, dear; it’s a formula. But they write their definition of the word, and it means that Wickthorpe will do the governing, and decide what the workers are to get. The slum-dwellers in the East End will go on paying tribute to the landlords, and the ryots in India and the niggers in South Africa will be sweated to make luxury for British bondholders.”
"“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the would-be salonnière. “Who will want to come to see us if you talk like that?”"
Lanny spoke to Wickthorpe.
"It seems to me that Stalin and Hitler are self-made men, and might be able to understand each other. Suppose one day Stalin should say to Hitler, or Hitler to Stalin: ‘See here, old top, the British have got it fixed up for us to ruin ourselves fighting. Why should we oblige them?’”
"The Nazi program of repression of the Jews was being carried out step by step, which was going to be the Nazi fashion. Civil servants of Jewish blood were being turned out of their jobs and good Aryans of the right party affiliations put in their place. Jewish lawyers were forbidden to practice in the courts. “Jew signs” were being pasted or painted on places of business which belonged to the despised race. Beatings and terrorism were being secretly encouraged, for the purpose of driving the Jews out and depriving them of jobs and property. When such incidents were mentioned in the press they would be blamed upon “persons unknown masquerading as Stormtroopers.”
"But refugees escaping to the outside world would report the truth, and there was a ferment of indignation among the Jews of all countries; they and their sympathizers held meetings of protest, and a movement was started to boycott trade with Germany. The reaction in the Fatherland was immediate, and Johannes wrote about it—very significantly he wrote only to Lanny, never to his son, and mailed the letters unsigned and with no mark to identify them. It had been made a prison offense to give information to foreigners, and in his letters Johannes addressed Lanny as a German, and warned him not to tell anyone in Paris! The boycott was worrying the business men of the country, and at the same time enraging the party leaders, and it was a question which point of view would prevail. Jupp Goebbels was calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany, and the result was a panic on the stock exchange—for some of the principal enterprises of the Fatherland were Jewish-owned, including the big department stores of Berlin. These were the concerns which the original party program had promised to “socialize,” and now the ardent young S.A.’s and S.S.’s were on tiptoe to go in and do the job."
They decided on a one day eight hour long session against Jewish businesses.
"The day was made into a Nazi holiday. The Jews stayed at home, and the Brownshirts marched through all the cities and towns of the Fatherland, singing their song to the effect that Jewish blood must spurt from the knife. They posted “Jew signs” wherever there was a merchant who couldn’t prove that he had four Aryan grandparents. They did the same for doctors and hospitals, using a poster consisting of a circular blob of yellow on a black background, the recognized sign of quarantine throughout Europe; thus they told the world that a Jewish doctor was as bad as the smallpox or scarlet fever, typhus or leprosy he attempted to cure.
"These orders were followed pretty well in the fashionable districts, but in poorer neighborhoods and the smaller towns the ardent Stormtroopers pasted signs on the foreheads of shoppers in Jewish stores, and they stripped and beat a woman who insisted on entering. That evening there was a giant meeting in the Tempelhof Airdrome, and Goebbels exulted in the demonstration which had been given to the world. The insolent foreigners would be awed and brought to their knees, he declared; and since most of the newspapers had by now been confiscated, the people could either believe that or believe nothing. The foreigners, of course, laughed; they knew that they weren’t awed, and the mass meetings and distribution of boycott leaflets went on. But the Nazi leaders chose to declare otherwise, and next day there was a washing of windows throughout Germany, and “business as usual” became the motto for both Aryans and non-Aryans."
Lanny kept trying to persuade the Robins in Berlin to come for a holiday.
"The Nazis had learned a lesson from the boycott, even though they would never admit it. The brass band stage of persecution was at an end, and they set to work to achieve their purpose quietly. The weeding out of Jews, and of those married to Jews, went on rapidly. No Jew could teach in any school or university in Germany; no Jewish lawyer could practice; no Jew could hold any official post, down to the smallest clerkship. This meant tens of thousands of positions for the rank and file Nazis, and was a way of keeping promises to them, much easier than socializing industry or breaking up the great landed estates.
"The unemployed intellectuals found work carrying on genealogical researches for the millions of persons who desired to establish their ancestry. An extraordinary development—there were persons who had an Aryan mother and a Jewish father, or an Aryan grandmother and a Jewish grandfather, who instituted researches as to the morals of their female ancestors, and established themselves as Aryans by proving themselves to be bastards! Before long the Nazis discovered that there were some Jews who were useful, so there was officially established a caste of “honorary Aryans.” Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad; but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own condition, and only make him madder by trying.
"By one means or another it was conveyed to leading Jews that they had better resign from directorships of corporations, and from executive positions which were desired by the nephews or cousins of some Nazi official. Frequently the methods used were such that the Jew committed suicide; and while these events were not reported in the press, word about them spread by underground channels. That was the way with the terror; people disappeared, and rumors started, and sometimes the rumors became worse than the reality. Old prisons and state institutions, old army barracks which had stood empty since the Versailles treaty, were turned into concentration camps and rapidly filled with men and women; motor trucks brought new loads daily, until the total came near to a hundred thousand.
"Lanny wrote again to say what a mistake his friends were making not to come and witness Hansi’s musical and Irma’s social triumphs. This time Johannes’s reply was that his business cares were beginning to wear on him, and that his physicians advised a sea trip. He was getting the Bessie Budd ready for another cruise, this time a real one; he wanted Hansi and Bess to meet him at one of the northern French ports, and he hoped that the Budds would come along—the whole family, Lanny and Irma, Mr. and Mrs. Dingle, Marceline and Baby Frances, with as many governesses and nurses as they pleased. As before, the cruise would be to whatever part of the world the Budd family preferred; Johannes suggested crossing the Atlantic again and visiting Newcastle and Long Island; then, in the autumn, they might go down to the West Indies, and perhaps through the Panama Canal to California, and if they wished, to Honolulu and Japan, Bali, Java, India, Persia—all the romantic and scenic and historic places they could think of. A university under Diesel power!"
"The young couple ran down to Juan, and Irma and Beauty held a sort of mothers’ conference on the problems of their future. Beauty was keen on yachting trips; she found them a distinguished mode of travel; she had learned her geography and history that way, and Irma might do the same. But the important thing was the safety they afforded. Beauty didn’t care how much Red and Pink talk her young people indulged in, provided that outside Reds and Pinks couldn’t get at them ...
"Irma was persuaded, and they sat down and composed between them a letter to Nina, tactfully contrived to be read by Rick without giving him offense. There wasn’t any danger in England—at least, none that Rick would admit—and the word “escapist” was one of his strongest terms of contempt. To Rick the cruise was presented as an ideal opportunity to concentrate upon the writing of a new play. On Nina’s part it would be an act of friendship to come and make a fourth hand at bridge. To Alfy it would offer lessons in geography and history, plus a chance to fight out his temperamental differences with Marceline. If the parents didn’t want to take the youngster from school so early, he could cross to New York by steamer and spend the summer with the party."
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Upton Sinclair discusses the nature of world conquistadores, from Alexander and Chingis Khan to Napoleon, and the common factors, in a chapter titled "Root of All Evil". He's one of the few who gets it!
"The singular advantage enjoyed by Adolf Hitler was that his own people believed what he said, while other peoples couldn’t and wouldn’t. The attitude of the outside world to him was that of the farmer who stared at a giraffe in the circus and exclaimed: “There ain’t no sich animal!” The more Adolf told the world what he was and what he meant to do, the more the world smiled incredulously. There were men like that in every lunatic asylum; the type was so familiar that any psychiatrist could diagnose it from a single paragraph of a speech or a single page of a book. Sensible men said: “Nut!” and went on about their affairs, leaving Adolf to conquer the world. Here and there a man of social insight cried out warnings of what was going on; but these, too, were a well-known type and the psychiatrists had names for them.
"Adolf Hitler got the mastery of the National Socialist Party because of his combination of qualities; because he was the most fanatical, the most determined, the most tireless, and at the same time the shrewdest, the most unscrupulous, the most deadly. From the beginning men had revolted against his authority, and while he was weak he had wheedled and cajoled them and when he became strong he had crushed them. There had been split after split in his movement, and he had gone after the leaders of the factions without ruth; even before he had got the authority of government in his hands, his fanatical Stormtroopers had been beating and sometimes murdering the opponents of this new dark religion of Blut und Boden, blood and soil. Work with Adolf Hitler and you would rise to power in the world; oppose him, and your brains would be spattered on the pavement, or you would be shot in the back and left unburied in a dark wood."
While several followers couldn't stand one another,
"But the Führer needed Hermann as a master executive and Jupp as a master propagandist, and he put them into harness and drove them as a team. The same thing was true of hundreds of men in that party of madness and hate: World War victims, depression victims, psychopaths, drug addicts, perverts, criminals—they all needed Adolf a little more than Adolf needed them, and he welded them into something more powerful than themselves. Hardly one who wasn’t sure that he was a greater man than Adolf, and better fitted to lead the party; in the old days many had patronized him, and in their hearts they still did so; but he had won out over them, because of the combination of qualities. He was the one who had persuaded the masses to trust him, and he was the one who could lead the N.S.D.A.P. and all its members and officials upon the road to conquest."
"Adolf Hitler had watched Lenin, he now was watching Stalin and Mussolini, and had learned from them all. In June of the year 1924, when Lanny Budd had been in Rome, Benito Mussolini had been Premier of Italy for more than twenty months, but the Socialists were still publishing papers with several times as many readers as Mussolini’s papers, and there was still freedom of speech in the Italian parliament and elsewhere; there was still an opposition party, there were labor unions and co-operatives and other means of resistance to the will of the Fascists. It had taken the murderer of Matteotti another year and more to accomplish his purpose of crushing opposition and making himself master of the Italian nation.
"But Adolf’s time-table was different from that. Adolf had a job to do in the outside world, and had no idea of dawdling for three years before beginning it. He knew how to wait, but would never wait an hour longer than necessary, and would be his own judge of the timing; he would startle the world, and even his own followers, by the suddenness and speed of his moves.
"First, always first, the psychological preparation. Was he going to wipe out the rights of German labor, to destroy a movement which the workers had been patiently building for nearly a century? Obviously, then, the first step was to come to labor with outstretched hands, to enfold it in a brotherly clasp while it was stabbed in the back; to set it upon a throne where it could be safely and surely riddled with machine gun bullets.
"Europe’s labor day was the First of May, and everywhere over the continent the workers paraded, they held enormous meetings, picnics and sports, they sang songs and listened to speeches from their leaders, they heartened and inspired themselves for the three hundred and sixty-four hard days. So now, several weeks in advance, it was announced that the Hitler government was going to take over the First of May and make it the “Day of National Labor.”"
Heinrich Jung invited Lanny to watch the celebrations.
"Lanny wrote, acknowledging the letter and expressing his regrets. It cost nothing to keep in touch with this ardent young official, and the literature he sent might some day be useful to Rick. Lanny was quite sure that he wouldn’t care to enter Germany so long as Adolf Hitler remained its Chancellor."
The celebrations were grand enough to impress the foreign journalists.
"At any rate, on the following morning the labor unions of Germany, representing four million workers and having annual incomes of nearly two hundred million marks, were wiped out at one single stroke. The agents of the job were so-called “action committees” of the Shop-Cell Organization, the Nazi group which had carried on their propaganda in the unions. Armed gangs appeared at the headquarters of all the unions, arrested officials and threw them into concentration camps. Their funds were confiscated, their newspapers suppressed, their editors jailed, their banks closed; and there was no resistance. The Socialists had insisted upon waiting until the Nazis did something “illegal”; and here it was.”
"“What can we do?” wrote Freddi to Lanny, in an unsigned letter written on a typewriter—for such a letter might well have cost him his life. “Our friends hold little meetings in their homes, but they have no arms, and the rank and file are demoralized by the cowardice of their leaders. The rumor is that the co-operatives are to be confiscated also. There is to be a new organization called the ‘German Labor Front,’ to be directed by Robert Ley, the drunken braggart who ordered these raids. I suppose the papers in Paris will have published his manifesto, in which he says: ‘No, workers, your institutions are sacred and inviolable to us National Socialists.’ Can anyone imagine such hypocrisy? Have words lost all meaning?
"“Do not answer this letter and write us nothing but harmless things, for our mail is pretty certain to be watched. We have to ask our relatives abroad not to attend any political meetings for the present. The reason for this is clear.”
"An agonizing thing to Hansi and Bess, to have to sit with folded hands while this horror was going on. But the Nazis had made plain that they were going to revive the ancient barbarian custom of punishing innocent members of a family in order to intimidate the guilty ones. A man doesn’t make quite such a good anti-Nazi fighter when he knows that he may be causing his wife and children, his parents, his brothers and sisters, to be thrown into concentration camps and tortured. Hansi had no choice but to cancel engagements he had made to play at concerts for the benefit of refugees."
"Adolf Hitler was the man who was having his own way, more than any who had lived in modern times. He was going ahead to get the mastery of everything in Germany, government, institutions, even cultural and social life. Every organization which stood in his way he proceeded to break, one after another, with such speed and ruthlessness that it left the opposition dizzy. The Nationalist party, which had fondly imagined it could control him, found itself helpless. Papen, Vice-Chancellor, was reduced to a figurehead; Göring took his place in control of the Prussian state. Hugenberg had several of his papers suppressed, and when he threatened to resign from the Cabinet, no one appeared to care. One by one the Nationalist members were forced out and Nazis replaced them. Subordinates were arrested, charged with defalcation or what not—the Minister of Information was in position to charge anybody with anything, and it was dangerous to answer.
"On the tenth day of May there were ceremonies throughout Germany which riveted the attention of the civilized world. Quantities of books were collected from the great library of Berlin University, including most of the worthwhile books which had been written during the past hundred years: everything that touched even remotely upon political, social, or sexual problems. Some forty thousand volumes were heaped into a pile in the square between the University and the Opera House and drenched with gasoline. The students paraded, wearing their bright society caps and singing patriotic and Nazi songs. They solemnly lighted the pyre and a crowd stood in a drizzling rain to watch it burn. Thus modern thought was symbolically destroyed in the Fatherland, and a nation which had stood at the forefront of the intellectual life would learn to do its thinking with its “blood.”
"On that same tenth of May the schools of Germany were ordered to begin teaching the Nazi doctrines of “race.” On that day the government confiscated all the funds belonging to the Socialist party and turned them over to the new Nazi-controlled unions. On that day Chancellor Hitler spoke to a Labor Congress, telling it that his own humble origin and upbringing fitted him to understand the needs of the workers and attend to them. On that day the correspondent of the New York Times was forbidden to cable news of the suicide of the daughter of Scheidemann, the Socialist leader, and of a woman tennis champion who had brought honor to Germany but who objected to the process of “co-ordinating” German sport with Nazi propaganda. Finally, on that day there was a parade of a hundred thousand persons down Broadway in New York, protesting against the treatment of German Jews."
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The Budd, Robin, Dingle and Detaze entourage arrived and waited at Calais for the yacht carrying the rest of Robin family, until night. Lanny called the yacht, and the Robin palace in Berlin, with the same result - nazis were in control of both with information forbidden. He decided he should go and try to save them, bring them out, and asked Irma.
"She didn’t know what to say; she could only sit staring at him. She had never thought that life could play such a trick upon her and her chosen playmate. It was outrageous, insane! Lanny saw her lips trembling; he had never seen her that way before, and perhaps she had never been that way before."
She consented to accompany him instead of taking the baby to a safer home, but wasn't pleased she and Lanny were obliged to endanger themselves. Lanny arranged for the Mercedes to be brought from Paris.
"Lanny sent cables to his father and to Rick, telling them what had happened. He guessed that in times such as these a foreign journalist might prove a powerful person, more so than an industrialist or an heiress. Lanny saw himself in a campaign to arouse the civilized world on behalf of a Jewish Schieber and his family. His head was boiling with letters and telegrams, manifestoes and appeals. Robbie would arouse the businessmen, Uncle Jesse the Communists, Longuet and Blum the Socialists, Hansi and Bess the musical world, Zoltan the art lovers, Parsifal the religious, Beauty and Emily and Sophie and Margy the fashionable, Rick the English press, Corsatti the American—what a clamor there would be when they all got going!
"Taking a leaf from his father’s notebook, Lanny arranged a code so that he could communicate with his mother confidentially. His letters and telegrams would be addressed to Mrs. Dingle, that being an inconspicuous name. Papa Robin would be “money” and Mama “corsets”—she wore them. Freddi would be “clarinet,” and Rahel “mezzo.” Lanny said it was to be assumed that all letters and telegrams addressed to him might be read by the Nazis, and all phone calls listened to; later he might arrange a secret way of communication, but nothing of the sort could come to the Hotel Adlon. If he had anything private to impart, he would type it on his little portable machine and mail it without signature in some out-of-the-way part of Berlin. Beauty would open all mail that came addressed to Lanny, and forward nothing that was compromising. All signed letters, both going and coming, would contain phrases expressing admiration for the achievements of National Socialism.
"“Don’t be surprised if you hear that they have converted me,” said the playboy turned serious.
"“Don’t go too far,” warned his mother. “You could never fool Kurt, and he’s bound to hear about it.”
"“I can let him convert me, little by little.”
"Beauty shook her lovely blond head. She had done no little deceiving in her own time, and had no faith in Lanny’s ability along that line. “Kurt will know exactly what you’re there for,” she declared. “Your best chance is to put it to him frankly. You saved his life in Paris, and you have a right to ask his help now.”
"“Kurt is a Nazi,” said Lanny. “He will help no one but his party.”
"Irma listened to this conversation, and thought: “This can’t be real; this is a melodrama!” She was frightened, but at the same time began to experience strange thrills. She wondered: “Could I pretend to be a Nazi? Could I fool them?” Her mind went on even bolder flights. “Could I be a vamp, like those I’ve seen on the screen? How would I set about it? And what would I find out?”"
In the morning they found a letter from Mrs. Robin addressed to Lanny.
"“Oh, Lanny, the Nazis have seized the boat. They have arrested Papa. They would not tell us a word what they will do. They will arrest us if we go near them, but they will not arrest you. We are going to Berlin. We will try to stay there and wait for you. Come to the Adlon, and put it in the papers, we will watch there. We are so frightened. Dear Lanny, do not fail poor Papa. What will they do to him? I am alone. I made the children go. They must not find us all together. God help us all. Mama.”"
They were most affected.
"Somebody had to take command of that situation, and Lanny thought it was up to him. “At least we know the worst,” he said, “and we have something to act on. As soon as the car comes, Irma and I will drive to Berlin, not stopping for anything.”
"“Don’t you think you ought to fly?” broke in Bess.
"“It will make only a few hours’ difference, and we shall need the car; it’s the right sort, and will impress the Nazis. This job is not going to be one of a few hours, I’m afraid.”
"...he has a great many friends at home and abroad, and the Nazis know it, and I don’t believe they want any needless scandals. It’s up to Irma and me to serve as mediators, as friends to both sides; to meet the right people and find out what it’s going to cost.”
"“You’ll be exhausted when you arrive,” objected Beauty, struggling with tears. She wanted him to take the chauffeur.
"“No,” said Lanny. “We’ll take turns sleeping on the back seat, and all we’ll need when we get there is a bath, a shave for me and some make-up for Irma. If we drive ourselves we can talk freely, without fear of spies, and I wouldn’t want to trust any servant, whether German or French. That goes for all the time we’re in Naziland.”"
"There was a phone call for Lanny: Jerry Pendleton calling from Paris, to report that a letter from Germany had arrived. It bore no sender’s name, but Jerry had guessed that it might have some bearing on the situation. Lanny told him to open and read it. It proved to be an unsigned letter from Freddi, who had reached Berlin. He wrote in English, telling the same news, but adding that he and his wife were in hiding; they were not free to give the address, and were not sure how long they could stay. If Lanny would come to the Adlon, they would hear of it and arrange to meet him.
"To Jerry, Lanny said: “My family is coming to Paris at once. Do what you can to help them. I am telling them to trust you completely. You are to trust nobody but them.”
"“I get you.”
"“You are still Contrôleur-Général, and your salary goes on. Whatever expenses you incur will be refunded.""
"Lanny reported all this to the family, and his mother said: “You ought to get some sleep before you start driving.”
"“I have too many things on my mind,” he replied. “You go and sleep, Irma, and you can do the first spell of driving.”
"Irma liked this new husband who seemed to know exactly what to do and spoke with so much decisiveness. She had once had a father like that. Incidentally, she was extremely tired, and glad to get away from demonstrative Jewish grief. Lanny said “Sleep,” and she was a healthy young animal, to whom it came easily. She had been half-hypnotized watching Parsifal Dingle, who would sit for a long time in a chair with his eyes closed; if you didn’t know him well you would think he was asleep, but he was meditating. Was he asking God to save Johannes Robin? Was he asking God to soften the hearts of the Nazis? God could do such things, no doubt; but it was hard to think out the problem, because, why had God made the Nazis in the beginning? If you said that the devil had made them, why had God made the devil?
"Meanwhile Hansi and Bess and Lanny discussed the best way of getting Papa’s misfortune made known to the outside world. That would be an important means of help—perhaps the most important of all. Lanny’s first impulse was to call up the office of Le Populaire; but he checked himself, realizing that if he was going to turn into a Nazi sympathizer, he oughtn’t to be furnishing explosive news items to a Socialist paper. Besides, this was not a Socialist or Communist story; it had to do with a leading financier and belonged in the bourgeois press; it ought to come from the victim’s son, a distinguished person in his own right. Hansi and his wife should go to the Hotel Crillon, and there summon the newspaper men, both French and foreign, and tell them the news, and appeal for world sympathy. Lanny had met several of the American correspondents in Paris, and now he gave Hansi their names.
"“The Nazis lie freely,” said the budding intriguer, “and they compel you to do the same. Don’t mention the rest of your family, and if the reporters ask, say that you have not heard from them and have no idea where they are. Say that you got your information by telephoning to the yacht and to the palace. Put the burden of responsibility off on Reichsbetriebszellenabteilung Gruppenführerstellvertreter Pressmann, and let his Hauptgruppenführer take him down into the cellar and shoot him for it. Don’t ever drop a hint that you are getting information from your family, or from Irma or me. Make that clear to Jerry also. We must learn to watch our step from this moment on, because the Nazis want one thing and we want another, and if they win, we lose!”"
................................................................................................
Lanny and Irma arrived at Adlon in Berlin.
"Tourist traffic, so vital to the German economy, had fallen off to a mere trickle as a result of the Jew-baiting, and the insulting of foreigners who had failed to give the Nazi salute on the proper occasions. The papers must make the most of what few visitors came to them."
They got a call, and drove around, picking up Freddi. Rest were with servants and family, hiding.
"“I slept in the Tiergarten last night.”
"“Oh, Freddi!” It was Irma’s cry of dismay.
"“It was all right—not cold.”
"“You don’t know anyone who would shelter you?”
"“Plenty of people—but I might get them into trouble as well as myself. The fact that a Jew appears in a new place may suggest that he’s wanted—and you can’t imagine the way it is, there are spies everywhere—servants, house-wardens, all sorts of people seeking to curry favor with the Nazis. I couldn’t afford to let them catch me before I had a talk with you.”
"“Nor afterward,” said Lanny. “We’re going to get all of you out of the country. It might be wiser for you and the others to go at once—because it’s plain that you can’t do anything to help Papa.”
"“We couldn’t go even if we were willing,” replied the unhappy young man. “Papa had our exit permits, and now the Nazis have them.”
"He told briefly what had happened. The family with several servants had gone to Bremerhaven by the night train and to the yacht by taxis. Just as they reached the dock a group of Brown-shirts stopped them and told Papa that he was under arrest. Papa asked, very politely, if he might know why, and the leader of the troop spat directly in his face and called him a Jew-pig. They pushed him into a car and took him away, leaving the others standing aghast. They didn’t dare go on board the yacht, but wandered along the docks, carrying their bags. They talked it over and decided that they could do no good to Papa by getting themselves arrested. Both Freddi and Rahel were liable to be sent to concentration camps on account of their Socialist activities; so they decided to travel separately to Berlin and stay in hiding until they could get word to their friends."
................................................................................................
Having by this time read over a dozen memoirs and other historical, biographical works on the holocaust era, plunging into this series again after a gap of over forty years is, first and foremost, an indulgence of a need for respite, and one goes back into the mindset and being that one was then, while still retaining the interim decades and essence thereof, so one looks at it in a different way, with several points of view and telescopes and binoculars of varying powers from various angles, so to speak.
It's a marvel how the author manages to create various characters centre stage so as to interact with characters and dive into events that are historic. Lanny is the rare angel that one would like oneself and ones near and dear to be, although it's his wife Irma who is named angel, but is all too human.
Most of all though, the wonder that seizes one is just how well Upton Sinclair managed to bring the horrors and tragedy of holocaust victims suffering through a handful of centre stage characters, chiefly the Robin family and the Shultz couple, and Lanny thereby since he is close.
Reading of other books on the era, seeing films, fills in details, always bringing home more that one was not quite aware of. And yet, this series had then with the few strokes given the whole picture as far as the horror, the suffering, the tragedies, and much more, went. ................................................................................................
Heinrich Jung called and was invited to dine with the couple at Adlon, thus establishing credentials and more. Lanny opened his campaign of inquiry and attempt to save Robin family and bring them out, using Heinrich's connections, and phrasing it in terms of avoiding unpleasant publicity outside Germany.
"Lanny called for his car, and while he drove to the Reichstagplatz, Heinrich told them about the beauty, the charm, the warmth of heart of the lady they were soon to meet. One point which should be in their favor, she had been the adopted child of a Jewish family. She had been married to Herr Quandt, one of the richest men in Germany, much older than herself; she had divorced him and now had a comfortable alimony—while the man who paid it stayed in a concentration camp! She had become a convert to National Socialism and had gone to work for the party; a short time ago she had become the bride of Dr. Goebbels, with Hitler as best man, a great event in the Nazi world. Now she was “Frau Reichsminister,” and ran a sort of salon—for it appeared that men cannot get along without feminine influence, even while they preach the doctrine of Küche, Kinder, Kirche to the masses."
They visited her at home and talked with her, and then later with her husband. The temptation to quote the whole conversation, if indulged, would then give free rein to much more quoting of similar encounters galore, but one wonders how this author did it. Was he Lanny? Or knew one?
They began to get results - an assurance from office of Goebbels, the reichsminister, and an SS officer with a car from that of Göring to bring Lanny to him personally. Irma had been invited by a friend, the Fürstin Donnerstein, for lunch, and Lannythought it was better she accepted, so society angle of reaction to disappearance of Johannes Robin might be understood.
"A short drive up Unter den Linden and through the Brandenburger Tor to the Minister-Präsident’s official residence, just across the way from the Reichstag building with its burned-out dome. Lanny had heard no end of discussion of the three-hundred-foot tunnel which ran under the street, through which the S.A. men were said to have come on the night when they filled the building with incendiary materials and touched them off with torches. All the non-Nazi world believed that Hermann Wilhelm Göring had ordered and directed that job. Certainly no one could question that it was he who had ordered and directed the hunting down and killing, the jailing and torturing, of tens of thousands of Communists and Socialists, democrats and pacifists, during the past three and a half months. In his capacity of Minister without Portfolio of the German Reich he had issued an official decree instructing the police to co-operate with the Nazi forces, and in a speech at Dortmund he had defended his decree:
"“In future there will be only one man who will wield power and bear responsibility in Prussia—that is myself. A bullet fired from the barrel of a police pistol is my bullet. If you say that is murder, then I am a murderer. I know only two sorts of law because I know only two sorts of men: those who are with us and those who are against us.”
"With such a host anything was possible, and it was futile for Lanny to try to guess what was coming. How much would the Commandant of the Prussian Police and founder of the “Gestapo,” the Secret State Police, have been able to find out about a Franco-American Pink in the course of a few hours? Lanny had been so indiscreet as to mention to Goebbels that he had met Mussolini. Would they have phoned to Rome and learned how the son of Budd’s had been expelled from that city for trying to spread news of the killing of Giacomo Matteotti? Would they have phoned to Cannes and found out about the labor school? To Paris and learned about the Red uncle, and the campaign contributions of Irma Barnes which had made him a Deputy of France? Lanny could pose as a Nazi sympathizer before Heinrich Jung—but hardly before the Führer’s head triggerman!
"It was all mystifying in the extreme. Lanny thought: “Has Goebbels turned the matter over to Göring, or has Göring grabbed it away from Goebbels?” Everybody knew that the pair were the bitterest of rivals; but since they had become Cabinet Ministers their two offices must be compelled to collaborate on all sorts of matters. Did they have jurisdictional disputes? Would they come to a fight over the possession of a wealthy Jew and the ransom which might be extorted from him? Göring gave orders to the Berlin police, while Goebbels, as Gauleiter of Berlin, commanded the party machinery, and presumably the Brownshirts. Would the cowering Johannes Robin become a cause of civil war?
"And then, still more curious speculations: How had Göring managed to get wind of the Johannes Robin affair? Did he have a spy in the Goebbels household? Or in the Goebbels office? Or had Goebbels made the mistake of calling upon one of Göring’s many departments for information? Lanny imagined a spiderweb of intrigue being spun about the Robin case. It doesn’t take long, when the spinning is done with telephone wires."
He met Göring.
"“It happens that this matter was started by other persons, but now I have taken charge of it. Whatever you have heard to the contrary you are to disregard. Johannes Robin is my prisoner, and I am willing to turn him loose on certain terms. They are Nazi terms, and you won’t like them, and certainly he won’t. You may take them to him, and advise him to accept them or not. I put no pressure upon you, and make only the condition I have specified: the matter will be under the seal of confidence. You will agree never to reveal the facts to anyone, and Johannes will make the same agreement.”
"“Suppose that Johannes does not wish to accept your terms, Exzellenz?”
"“You will be bound by your pledge whether he accepts or rejects. He will be bound if he accepts. If he rejects, it won’t matter, because he will never speak to anyone again.”
"“That is clear enough, so far as regards him. But I don’t understand why you have brought me in.”
"“You are in Berlin, and you know about the case. I am offering you an opportunity to save your friend from the worst fate which you or he can imagine. A part of the price is your silence as well as his. If you reject the offer, you will be free to go out to the world and say what you please, but you will be condemning your Jew to a death which I will make as painful as possible.”"
He made his demands clear.
"“I intend to go about these matters with all proper formality,” said Göring, still with the twinkle. “Our Führer is a stickler for legality. The papers will be prepared by our Staatsanwalt, and the Schieber will sign them before a notary. For the sum of one mark his yacht, for another his palace, and for yet other marks his shares in our leading industrial enterprises and banks. In payment for my services in the above matters, he will give me checks for the amount of his bank deposits—and be sure that I shall cash them before he gets away.”"
"“Each business transaction shall be for the sum of one mark, and those marks will be his inalienable personal property. For the rest—naked came he into Germany, and naked will he go out.”
"“Pardon me if I correct you, sir. I happen to know that Johannes was a rich man when he came into Germany. He and my father had been business associates for several years, so I know pretty well what he had.”
"“He made his money trading with the German government, I am informed.”
"“In part, yes. He sold things which the government was glad to have in wartime; magnetos which you doubtless used in the planes in which you performed such astounding feats of gallantry.”
"“You are a shrewd young man, Mr. Budd, and after this deal is over, you and I may be good friends and perhaps do a profitable business. But for the moment you are the devil’s advocate, predestined to lose your case. I could never understand why our magnetos so often failed at the critical moment, but now I know that they were sold to us by filthy Jewish swine who probably sabotaged them so that we would have to buy more.” The great man said this with a broad grin; he was a large and powerful cat playing with a lively but entirely helpless mouse. On the rug in front of his chair lay a half-grown lion-cub, which yawned and then licked his chops as he watched his master preparing for a kill. Lanny thought: “I am back among the Assyrians!”
"The head of the Prussian government continued: “I observe that you avoid mentioning the money which this Schieber has already shipped out and hidden in other countries. If you know the history of Europe you know that every now and then some monarch in need of funds would send one of the richest of his Hebrews to a dungeon and have him tortured until he revealed the hiding-places of his gold and jewels.”
"“I have read history, Exzellenz.”
"“Fortunately nothing of the sort will be needed here. We have all this scoundrel’s bank statements, deposit slips, and what not. We have photostat copies of documents he thought were safe from all eyes. We will present checks for him to sign, so that those funds may be turned over to me; when my agents have collected the last dollar and pound and franc, then your Jew relative will have become to me a piece of rotten pork of which I dislike the smell. I will be glad to have you cart him away.”
"“And his family, Exzellenz?”
"“They, too, will stink in our nostrils. We will take them to the border and give each of them a kick in the tail, to make certain they get across with no delay.”
"Lanny wanted to say: “That will be agreeable to them”; but he was afraid it might sound like irony, so he just kept smiling. The great man did the same, for he enjoyed the exercise of power; he had been fighting all his life to get it, and had succeeded beyond anything he could have dared expect. His lion-cub yawned and stretched his legs. It was time to go hunting.
"“Finally,” said Göring, “let me make plain what will happen to this Dreck-Jude if he ventures to defy my will. You know that German science has won high rank in the world. We have experts in every department of knowledge, and for years we have had them at work devising means of breaking the will of those who stand in our path. We know all about the human body, the human mind, and what you are pleased to call the human soul; we know how to handle each. We will put this pig-carcass in a specially constructed cell, of such size and shape that it will be impossible for him to stand or sit or lie without acute discomfort. A bright light will glare into his eyes day and night, and a guard will watch him and prod him if he falls asleep. The temperature of the cell will be at exactly the right degree of coldness, so that he will not die, but will become mentally a lump of putty in our hands. He will not be permitted to commit suicide. If he does not break quickly enough we will put camphor in his Harnröhre—you understand our medical terms?”
"“I can guess, Exzellenz.”
"“He will writhe and scream in pain all day and night. He will wish a million times to die, but he will not even have a mark on him. There are many other methods which I will not reveal to you, because they are our secrets, gained during the past thirteen years while we were supposed to be lying helpless, having the blood drained out of our veins by filthy, stinking Jewish-Bolshevik vampires. The German people are going to get free, Mr. Budd, and the money of these parasites will help us. Are there any other questions you wish to ask me?” “I just want to be sure that I understand you correctly. If Johannes accepts your terms and signs the papers which you put before him, you will permit me to take him and his family out of Germany without further delay?”
"“That is the bargain. You, for your part agree that neither you nor the Jew nor any member of his family will say anything to anybody about this interview, or about the terms of his leaving.”
"“I understand, Exzellenz. I shall advise Johannes that in my opinion he has no alternative but to comply with your demands.”
"“Tell him this, as my last word: if you, or he, or any member of his family breaks the agreement, I shall compile a list of a hundred of his Jewish relatives and friends, seize them all and make them pay the price for him. Is that clear?”
"“Quite so.”
"“My enemies in Germany are making the discovery that I am the master, and I break those who get in my way. When this affair has been settled and I have a little more leisure, come and see me again, and I will show you how you can make your fortune and have an amusing life.”
"“Thank you, sir. As it happens, what I like to do is to play the works of Beethoven on the piano.”
"“Come and play them for the Führer,” said the second in command, with a loud laugh which somewhat startled his visitor. Lanny wondered: Did the eagle-man take a patronizing attitude toward his Führer’s fondness for music? Was he perchance watching for the time when he could take control of affairs out of the hands of a sentimentalist and Schwärmer, an orator with a gift for rabble-rousing but no capacity to govern? Had the Minister-Präsident’s Gestapo reported to him that Lanny had once had tea with the Führer? Or that he had spent part of the previous evening in the Führer’s favorite haunt?
"When Lanny rose to leave, the lion-cub stretched himself and growled. The great man remarked: “He is getting too big, and everybody but me is afraid of him.”"
Lanny saw Johannes Robin and gave him clear information; he had suddenly aged in four days, and charged falsely.
"Irma and I will wait here, and take you and the others out with us.”
"“I will never be able to express my gratitude, Lanny.”
"“Don’t waste any energy on that. All we want is to have the family with us on the Riviera. We can have a good time without so much money. Are you being treated reasonably well?”
"“I have no complaint.”
"“Is there anything I could send you—assuming I can get permission?”
"“I have everything I need—everything unless perhaps some red ink.”
"Johannes said this without the flicker of an eyelash; and Lanny answered, without change of tone or expression: “I will see if it is possible to get some.”
"Rote Tinte! “Oh, the clever rascal!” Lanny thought. “His mind works like greased lightning.” Johannes could sit there in the presence of a Schutzstaffel officer and two privates, and with all this pressure of terror and grief upon him—in the midst of having to make the most fateful decision of his life—he could think up a way to tell Lanny what he wished him to know, and without the slightest chance of his enemies’ guessing what he had said!
"For fifteen years Lanny and his old friend had been watching the experiment in the Soviet Union and arguing about it. Johannes, taking the negative, had delighted himself by collecting ironical stories, to be repeated to the credulous Lanny, and over Lanny’s shoulder to Johannes’s two misguided sons. One such story had to do with two German business men, one of whom was going to make a trip into the proletarian paradise, and promised his friend to write a full account of what he found there. “But,” objected the friend, “you won’t dare to write the truth if it’s unfavorable.” The other replied: “We’ll fix it this way. I’ll write you everything is fine, and if I write it in black ink it’s true, and if in red ink the opposite is true.” So he went, and in due course his friend received a letter in black ink, detailing the wonders of the proletarian paradise. “Everybody is happy, everybody is free, the markets are full of food, the shops well stocked with goods—in fact there is only one thing I cannot find, and that is red ink.”
"While Lanny and the Oberleutnant were driving to the hotel, the latter inquired: “What does he want red ink for?”
"Lanny, who wasn’t slow-minded himself, explained: “He keeps a diary, and writes it in red ink to keep it separate from his other papers.”
"The officer replied: “One cannot keep a diary in prison. They will surely take it away from him.”"
Having sent short cables to Robbie,Beauty and Rick, Lanny told Irma as he took her on a drive after she returned from her lunch. She was horrified.
"“What perfect agony it must be to Johannes to turn all that money loose! My father would have died first!”
"“Your father wouldn’t have got into this position. Johannes was too trusting. He thought he could handle matters by diplomacy; but these fellows have knocked over the conference table. They have the advantage that nobody can realize how bad they are. If you and I were to go to Paris or London tomorrow and tell this story, the Nazis would call us liars and nine people out of ten would believe them.”"
They met Emil Meissner for lunch, and were invited by Graf Stubendorf for dinner, with similar talks. But they were worried, for Freddi had been expected to call and hadn't. They attended the function, and had a disagreement on the way back - Irma couldn't believe nazis were bad, they were so well behaved. Lanny agonised over Freddi, finally went to look for the Shultz couple and they were not to be found. They heard from Mama Robin, and met her.
"The good soul, usually so sensible, so well adjusted to her routine of caring for those she loved, was now in a state of near distraction; her mind was as if in a nightmare, obsessed by all the horror stories which were being whispered among the Jews in the holes where they were hiding, apart from the rest of Germany. Stories of bodies found every day in the woods or dragged out of the lakes and canals of Berlin; suicides or murdered people whose fates would never be known, whose names were not mentioned in the press. Stories of the abandoned factory in the Friedrichstrasse which the Nazis had taken over, and where they now brought their victims to beat and torture them. The walls inside that building were soaked with human blood; you could walk by it and hear the screams—but you had best walk quickly! Stories of the concentration camps, where Jews, Communists, and Socialists were being made to dig their own graves in preparation for pretended executions; where they underwent every form of degradation which brutes and degenerates were able to devise—forced to roll about in the mud, to stick their faces into their own excrement, to lash and beat one another insensible, thus saving labor for the guards. “Oi, oi!” wailed the poor mother, and begged the Herrgott to let her son be dead."
................................................................................................
Lanny got a letter from Beauty about a message in a seance.
"Tecumseh said: ‘There is a man who speaks German. Does anyone know German?’ Sir Basil said: ‘I know a little,’ and the control said: ‘Clarinet ist verstimmt.’ That was all. Madame began to moan, and when she came out of the trance she was greatly depressed and could do no more that day. I didn’t get the idea for a while. Now I wonder, can there be anything the matter with your Clarinet? I shall say nothing to anybody else until I hear from you.”"
He had agreed with Mama Robin it was best not telling people about Freddi, so he wrote vaguely and decided to try a seance in Berlin.
"Like Paris and London, Berlin was full of mediums and fortune tellers of all varieties; it was reported that the Führer himself consulted an astrologer—oddly enough, a Jew. Here was Lanny, obliged to sit around indefinitely, and with no heart for social life, for music or books. Why not take a chance, and see if he could get any further hints from that underworld which had surprised him so many times?
"Irma was interested, and they agreed to go separately to different mediums, thus doubling their chances. Maybe not all the spirits had been Nazified, and the young couple could get ahead of Göring in that shadowy realm!"
He went to one and had Samuel Budd come through, admonishing about sin of birth control. Irma got the other half of bible quote from one of the mediums she went to, and
" ..a day or two later came a letter from Robbie, telling what the old gentleman would do if they obeyed him. He had established in his will a trust fund for Frances Barnes Budd to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and had provided the same amount for any other child or children Irma Barnes Budd might bear within two years after his death. The old realist had taken no chances, but added: “Lanny Budd being the father.”"
Hugo Behr visited and talked about ideological struggle of socialists in the party,
" ... he added he did not approve the persecution of individual Jews who had broken no law, and he thought the recent one-day boycott had been silly. It represented an effort on the part of reactionary elements in the party to keep the people from remembering the radical promises which had been made to them. “It’s a lot cheaper and easier to beat up a few poor Jews than to oust some of the great Junker landlords.”"
Lanny was able to persuade him to find out information about Freddi, keeping his part secret.
"Minister-Präsident Hermann Wilhelm Göring flew to Rome unexpectedly. He had been there once before and hadn’t got along very well with his mentor, the Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon; they were quarreling bitterly over the question of which was to control Austria. But they patched it up somehow, and the newspapers of the world blazed forth a momentous event: the four great European nations had signed a peace pact, agreeing that for a period of ten years they would refrain from aggressive action against one another and would settle all problems by negotiation. Mussolini signed for Italy, Göring for Germany, and the British and French ambassadors to Vienna signed for their governments. Such a relief to the war-weary peoples of the Continent! Göring came home in triumph; and Irma said: “You see, things aren’t nearly as bad as you’ve been thinking.”
"The couple went to a reception at the home of the Frau Reichsminister Goebbels, where they met many of the Nazi great ones. Lanny, who had read history, remembered the Visigoths, who had conquered ancient Rome with astonishing ease, and wandered about the splendid city, dazed by the discovery of what they had at their disposal; he remembered Clive, who had been similarly stunned by the treasures of Bengal, and had said afterward that when he considered what his opportunities had been, he was astonished at his own moderation."
Robbie wrote about the struggle between brothers at Budd and Irma decided to invest herself.
"A letter from Kurt, begging them to drive to Stubendorf in this very lovely season of the year. Kurt had no car, and couldn’t afford the luxury of hopping about; but Seine Hochgeboren had told him that any time Irma and Lanny would come, the Schloss was at their disposal."
They were discussing, but phone rang and Furtwaengler informed Lanny they were releasing Johannes Robin. He knew nothing about Freddi, and said they will release him if they had him, Lanny didn't have to return unless he wished. Lanny called Rahel and asked her to come with Mama Robin and her baby, and collected Johannes, telling him about Freddi on the way. They assumed he was being held hostage.
"It wasn’t exactly a fashionable autoload which departed from under the marquee of the Adlon Hotel. The magnificent uniformed personage who opened the car doors was used to seeing independent young Americans driving themselves, but rarely had he seen three dark-eyed Jews and a child crowded into the back seat of a Mercédès limousine about to depart for foreign lands. Both Lanny and Irma were determined to finish this job, and not let their periled friends out of sight until they were safe. In the breast pocket of Lanny’s tan linen suit were stowed not merely the passports of himself and wife, but a packet of documents which had been delivered by messenger from the headquarters of Minister-Präsident Göring, including four passports and four exit permits, each with a photograph of the person concerned. Lanny realized that the government had had possession of all the papers in the Robin yacht and palace. He remembered Göring’s promise of a “kick in the tail,” but hoped it was just the barrack-room exuberance of a Hauptmann of the German Air Force.
"Irma and Lanny meant to go as they had come, straight through. Lanny would buy food ready prepared and they would eat it in the car while driving; they would take no chance of entering a restaurant, and having some Brownshirt peddling Nazi literature stop in front of them and exhibit a copy of Der Stürmer with an obscene cartoon showing a Jew as a hog with a bulbous nose; if they declined to purchase it, likely as not the ruffian would spit into their food and walk away jeering. Such things had happened in Berlin, and much worse; for until a few days ago these peddlers of literature had gone armed with the regulation automatic revolver and hard rubber club, and in one café where Jewish merchants had been accustomed to eat, a crowd of the S.A. men had fallen upon them and forced them to run the gantlet, kicking and clubbing them insensible."
................................................................................................
They drove out to Belgium via Hanover and Cologne, and went on to Bienvenu, where Robin family was established in the lodge. Johannes returned with Lanny and Irma and they visited England where Beauty was a guest of Lady Caillard with Zaharoff and Madame Zyszynski. Lanny and Irma visited The Reaches where Marceline was visiting, and Lanny spoke to Rick out in the woods.
"“Listen, Rick,” he said; “there have to be spies in every war, don’t there?”
"“I suppose so.”
"“What if I were to go into Germany and become a friend of those higher-ups, and get all the dope and send it out to you?”
"“They would soon get onto it, Lanny.”
"“Mightn’t it be possible to be as clever as they?”
"“A darned disagreeable job, I should think.”
"“I know; but Kurt did it in Paris, and got away with it.”
"“You’re a very different man from Kurt. For one thing, you’d have to fool him; and do you think you could?”
"“Beauty insists that I couldn’t; but I believe that if I took enough time, and put my mind to it, I could at least keep him uncertain. I’d have to let him argue with me and convince me. You know I have a rare good excuse for going; I’m an art expert, and Germany has a lot to sell. That makes it easy for me to meet all sorts of people. I could collect evidence as to Nazi outrages, and you could make it into a book.” “That’s already been done, you’ll be glad to hear.”
"Rick revealed that a group of liberal Englishmen had been busy assembling the data, and a work called The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror was now in press and shortly to be published. It gave the details of two or three hundred murders of prominent intellectuals and political opponents of the Nazi Regierung.
"Lanny said: “There’ll be other things worth reporting. If I go back to Germany on account of Freddi, I’ll get what facts I can and it’ll be up to you to figure out what use to make of them.”"
Thus the course of the centre stage is set for the series, weaving in the historic characters and events here on.
................................................................................................Lanny got a letter from Beauty about a message in a seance.
"Tecumseh said: ‘There is a man who speaks German. Does anyone know German?’ Sir Basil said: ‘I know a little,’ and the control said: ‘Clarinet ist verstimmt.’ That was all. Madame began to moan, and when she came out of the trance she was greatly depressed and could do no more that day. I didn’t get the idea for a while. Now I wonder, can there be anything the matter with your Clarinet? I shall say nothing to anybody else until I hear from you.”"
He had agreed with Mama Robin it was best not telling people about Freddi, so he wrote vaguely and decided to try a seance in Berlin.
"Like Paris and London, Berlin was full of mediums and fortune tellers of all varieties; it was reported that the Führer himself consulted an astrologer—oddly enough, a Jew. Here was Lanny, obliged to sit around indefinitely, and with no heart for social life, for music or books. Why not take a chance, and see if he could get any further hints from that underworld which had surprised him so many times?
"Irma was interested, and they agreed to go separately to different mediums, thus doubling their chances. Maybe not all the spirits had been Nazified, and the young couple could get ahead of Göring in that shadowy realm!"
He went to one and had Samuel Budd come through, admonishing about sin of birth control. Irma got the other half of bible quote from one of the mediums she went to, and
" ..a day or two later came a letter from Robbie, telling what the old gentleman would do if they obeyed him. He had established in his will a trust fund for Frances Barnes Budd to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and had provided the same amount for any other child or children Irma Barnes Budd might bear within two years after his death. The old realist had taken no chances, but added: “Lanny Budd being the father.”"
Hugo Behr visited and talked about ideological struggle of socialists in the party,
" ... he added he did not approve the persecution of individual Jews who had broken no law, and he thought the recent one-day boycott had been silly. It represented an effort on the part of reactionary elements in the party to keep the people from remembering the radical promises which had been made to them. “It’s a lot cheaper and easier to beat up a few poor Jews than to oust some of the great Junker landlords.”"
Lanny was able to persuade him to find out information about Freddi, keeping his part secret.
"Minister-Präsident Hermann Wilhelm Göring flew to Rome unexpectedly. He had been there once before and hadn’t got along very well with his mentor, the Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon; they were quarreling bitterly over the question of which was to control Austria. But they patched it up somehow, and the newspapers of the world blazed forth a momentous event: the four great European nations had signed a peace pact, agreeing that for a period of ten years they would refrain from aggressive action against one another and would settle all problems by negotiation. Mussolini signed for Italy, Göring for Germany, and the British and French ambassadors to Vienna signed for their governments. Such a relief to the war-weary peoples of the Continent! Göring came home in triumph; and Irma said: “You see, things aren’t nearly as bad as you’ve been thinking.”
"The couple went to a reception at the home of the Frau Reichsminister Goebbels, where they met many of the Nazi great ones. Lanny, who had read history, remembered the Visigoths, who had conquered ancient Rome with astonishing ease, and wandered about the splendid city, dazed by the discovery of what they had at their disposal; he remembered Clive, who had been similarly stunned by the treasures of Bengal, and had said afterward that when he considered what his opportunities had been, he was astonished at his own moderation."
Robbie wrote about the struggle between brothers at Budd and Irma decided to invest herself.
"A letter from Kurt, begging them to drive to Stubendorf in this very lovely season of the year. Kurt had no car, and couldn’t afford the luxury of hopping about; but Seine Hochgeboren had told him that any time Irma and Lanny would come, the Schloss was at their disposal."
They were discussing, but phone rang and Furtwaengler informed Lanny they were releasing Johannes Robin. He knew nothing about Freddi, and said they will release him if they had him, Lanny didn't have to return unless he wished. Lanny called Rahel and asked her to come with Mama Robin and her baby, and collected Johannes, telling him about Freddi on the way. They assumed he was being held hostage.
"It wasn’t exactly a fashionable autoload which departed from under the marquee of the Adlon Hotel. The magnificent uniformed personage who opened the car doors was used to seeing independent young Americans driving themselves, but rarely had he seen three dark-eyed Jews and a child crowded into the back seat of a Mercédès limousine about to depart for foreign lands. Both Lanny and Irma were determined to finish this job, and not let their periled friends out of sight until they were safe. In the breast pocket of Lanny’s tan linen suit were stowed not merely the passports of himself and wife, but a packet of documents which had been delivered by messenger from the headquarters of Minister-Präsident Göring, including four passports and four exit permits, each with a photograph of the person concerned. Lanny realized that the government had had possession of all the papers in the Robin yacht and palace. He remembered Göring’s promise of a “kick in the tail,” but hoped it was just the barrack-room exuberance of a Hauptmann of the German Air Force.
"Irma and Lanny meant to go as they had come, straight through. Lanny would buy food ready prepared and they would eat it in the car while driving; they would take no chance of entering a restaurant, and having some Brownshirt peddling Nazi literature stop in front of them and exhibit a copy of Der Stürmer with an obscene cartoon showing a Jew as a hog with a bulbous nose; if they declined to purchase it, likely as not the ruffian would spit into their food and walk away jeering. Such things had happened in Berlin, and much worse; for until a few days ago these peddlers of literature had gone armed with the regulation automatic revolver and hard rubber club, and in one café where Jewish merchants had been accustomed to eat, a crowd of the S.A. men had fallen upon them and forced them to run the gantlet, kicking and clubbing them insensible."
................................................................................................
They drove out to Belgium via Hanover and Cologne, and went on to Bienvenu, where Robin family was established in the lodge. Johannes returned with Lanny and Irma and they visited England where Beauty was a guest of Lady Caillard with Zaharoff and Madame Zyszynski. Lanny and Irma visited The Reaches where Marceline was visiting, and Lanny spoke to Rick out in the woods.
"“Listen, Rick,” he said; “there have to be spies in every war, don’t there?”
"“I suppose so.”
"“What if I were to go into Germany and become a friend of those higher-ups, and get all the dope and send it out to you?”
"“They would soon get onto it, Lanny.”
"“Mightn’t it be possible to be as clever as they?”
"“A darned disagreeable job, I should think.”
"“I know; but Kurt did it in Paris, and got away with it.”
"“You’re a very different man from Kurt. For one thing, you’d have to fool him; and do you think you could?”
"“Beauty insists that I couldn’t; but I believe that if I took enough time, and put my mind to it, I could at least keep him uncertain. I’d have to let him argue with me and convince me. You know I have a rare good excuse for going; I’m an art expert, and Germany has a lot to sell. That makes it easy for me to meet all sorts of people. I could collect evidence as to Nazi outrages, and you could make it into a book.” “That’s already been done, you’ll be glad to hear.”
"Rick revealed that a group of liberal Englishmen had been busy assembling the data, and a work called The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror was now in press and shortly to be published. It gave the details of two or three hundred murders of prominent intellectuals and political opponents of the Nazi Regierung.
"Lanny said: “There’ll be other things worth reporting. If I go back to Germany on account of Freddi, I’ll get what facts I can and it’ll be up to you to figure out what use to make of them.”"
Thus the course of the centre stage is set for the series, weaving in the historic characters and events here on.
Lanny and Irma were invited by Lord Wickthorpe and visited his castle.
"The Dowager Lady Wickthorpe kept house for her bachelor son. There was a younger brother whom Lanny had met at Rick’s, and he had married an American girl whom Irma had known in café society; so it was like a family party, easy and informal, yet dignified and impressive. It was much easier to run an estate and a household in England, where everything was like a grandfather’s clock which you wound up and it ran, not for eight days but for eight years or eight decades. There was no such thing as a servant problem, for your attendants were born, not made; the oldest son of your shepherd learned to tend your sheep and the oldest son of your butler learned to buttle. All masters were kind and all servants devoted and respectful; at least, that was how it was supposed to be, and if anything was short of perfection it was carefully hidden."
And yet they perpetrate the fraud of identifying the very word "caste" with the very colony they looted so much it was The Jewel In The Crown.
"Irma thought it was marvelous—until she discovered that she was expected to bathe her priceless self in a painted tin tub which was brought in by one maid, followed by two others bearing large pitchers of hot and cold water.
"After the completion of this ceremony, she inquired: “Lanny, what do you suppose it would cost to put modern plumbing into a place like this?”
"He answered with a grin: “In the style of Shore Acres?”—referring to his own bathroom with solid silver fixtures, and to Irma’s of solid gold. “I mean just ordinary Park Avenue.”
"“Are you thinking of buying this castle?” Irma countered with another question.
"“Do you suppose you would be happy in England?”
"“I’m afraid you couldn’t get it, darling,” he evaded in turn. “It’s bound to be entailed.” He assured her with a grave face that everything had to be handed down intact—not merely towers and oaks and lawns, but servants and sheep and bathing facilities."
"Neighbors dropped in from time to time, and Lanny listened to upper-class Englishmen discussing the problems of their world and his. They were not to be persuaded to take Adolf Hitler and his party too seriously; in spite of his triumph he was still the clown, the pasty-faced, hysterical tub-thumper, such as you could hear in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon; “a jumped-up house-painter,” one of the country squires called him. They were not sorry to have some effective opposition to France on the continent, for it irked them greatly to see that rather shoddy republic of politicians riding on the gold standard while Britain had been ignominiously thrown off. They were interested in Lanny’s account of Adolf, but even more interested in Göring, who was a kind of man they could understand. In his capacity as Reichsminister, he had come to Geneva and laid down the law as to Germany’s claim to arms equality. Wickthorpe had been impressed by his forceful personality, and now was amused to hear about the lion cub from the Berlin zoo and the new gold velvet curtains in the reception room of the Minister-Präsident’s official residence.
"Lanny said: “The important thing for you gentlemen to remember is that Göring is an air commander, and that rearmament for him is going to mean fleets of planes. They will all be new and of perfected models.” Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, ex-aviator, had laid great stress upon this, but Lanny found it impossible to interest a representative of the British Foreign Office. To him airplanes were like Adolf Hitler; that is to say, something “jumped-up,” something cheap, presumptuous, and altogether bad form. Britannia ruled the waves, and did it with dignified and solid “ships of the line,” weighing thirty-five thousand tons each and costing ten or twenty million pounds. An American admiral had written about the influence of sea power upon history, and the British Admiralty had read it, one of the few compliments they had ever paid to their jumped-up cousins across the seas. Now their world strategy was based upon it, and when anyone tried to argue with them it was as if they all burst into song: “Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep!”"
Beauty warned Lanny when she discovered Irma was more in agreement with the Wickthorpe set.
................................................................................................
Lanny, Irma and Johannes Robin went to U.S.; Irma proceeded to invest in Budd so Robbie could win, and Robbie intended to have Johannes be the European sales representative if so. Lanny avoided meeting leftists and Irma was happier with her playmates.
"It worked for nearly a month; until one morning in Shore Acres, just as they were getting ready for a motor-trip to a “camp” in the Thousand Islands, Lanny was called to the telephone to receive a cablegram from Cannes, signed Hansi, and reading: “Unsigned unidentifiable letter postmarked Berlin text Freddi ist in Dachau.”"
"“Do you suppose that letter is from Hugo?”
"“I had a clear understanding with him that he was to sign the name Boecklin. I think the letter must be from one of Freddi’s comrades, some one who has learned that we helped Johannes. Or perhaps some one who has got out of Dachau.”
"“You don’t think it might be a hoax?”
"“Who would waste a stamp to play such a trick upon us?”
"She couldn’t think of any answer. “You’re still convinced that Freddi is Göring’s prisoner?”
"“Certainly, if he’s in the concentration camp, Göring knows he’s there, and he knew it when he had Furtwaengler tell me that he couldn’t find him. He had him sent a long way from Berlin, so as to make it harder for us to find out.”
"“Do you think you can get him away from Göring if Göring doesn’t want to let him go?”
"“What I think is, there may be a thousand things to think of before we can be sure of the best course of action.”
"“It’s an awfully nasty job to take on, Lanny.”
"“I know, darling—but what else can we do? We can’t go and enjoy ourselves, play around, and refuse to think about our friend. Dachau is a place of horror—I doubt if there’s any so dreadful in the world today, unless it’s some other of the Nazi camps. It’s an old dilapidated barracks, utterly unfit for habitation, and they’ve got two or three thousand men jammed in there. They’re not just holding them prisoners—they’re doing what Göring told me with his own mouth, applying modern science to destroying them, body, mind, and soul. They’re the best brains and the finest spirits in Germany, and they’re going to be so broken that they can never do anything against the Nazi regime.”
"“You really believe that, Lanny?”
"“I am as certain of it as I am of anything in human affairs. I’ve been studying Hitler and his movement for twelve years, and I really do know something about it.” “There’s such an awful lot of lying, Lanny. People go into politics, and they hate their enemies, and exaggerate and invent things.”
"“I didn’t invent Mein Kampf, nor the Brownshirts, nor the murders they are committing night after night. They break into people’s homes and stab them or shoot them in their beds, before the eyes of their wives and children; or they drag them off to their barracks and beat them insensible.”
"“I’ve heard those stories until I’ve been made sick. But there are just as many violent men of the other side, and there have been provocations over the years. The Reds did the same thing in Russia, and they tried to do it in Germany—”
"“It’s not only the Communists who are being tortured, darling; it’s pacifists and liberals, even church people; it’s gentle idealists, like Freddi—and surely you know that Freddi wouldn’t have harmed any living creature.”"
................................................................................................
Irma had been getting used to wielding power since the stock market crash, and while she knew she didn't have power other than love over Lanny, she decided to put her foot down. They had a talk, she was veering right for the simple reason she had money and wanted it protected from reds, and fascists and nazis were so far not seeming dangerous to her, they were even charming.
The discussion in this scene is important, not only because it has consequences in the relationship and marriage of Lanny with Irma, and just as much of echoing reverberations in the story, but also that its the discussion of dilemmas in human history.
"She began: “You might as well take the time to understand me, Lanny. If you intend to plunge into a thing like this, you ought to know how your wife feels about it.”
"“Of course, dear,” he answered, gently. He could pretty well guess what was coming.
"“Sit down.” And when he obeyed she turned to face him.
"“Freddi’s an idealist, and you’re an idealist. It’s a word you’re fond of, a very nice word, and you’re both lovely fellows, and you wouldn’t hurt anybody or anything on earth. You believe what you want to believe about the world—which is that other people are like you, good and kind and unselfish—idealists, in short. But they’re not that; they’re full of jealousy and hatred and greed and longing for revenge. They want to overthrow the people who own property, and punish them for the crime of having had life too easy. That’s what’s in their hearts, and they’re looking for chances to carry out their schemes, and when they come on you idealists, they say: ‘Here’s my meat!’ They get round you and play you for suckers, they take your money to build what they call their ‘movement.’ You serve them by helping to undermine and destroy what you call capitalism. They call you comrades for as long as they can use you, but the first day you dared to stand in their way or interfere with their plans, they’d turn on you like wolves. Don’t you know that’s true, Lanny?”
"“It’s true of many, I’ve no doubt.”
"“It would be true of every last one, when it came to a showdown. You’re their ‘front,’ their stalking horse. You tell me what you heard from Göring’s mouth—and I tell you what I’ve heard from Uncle Jesse’s mouth. Not once but a hundred times! He says it jokingly, but he means it—it’s his program. The Socialists will make their peaceable revolution, and then the Communists will rise up and take it away from them. It’ll be easy because the Socialists are so gentle and so kind—they’re idealists! You saw it happen in Russia, and then in Hungary—didn’t I hear Károlyi tell you about it?”
"“Yes, dear—”
"“With his own mouth he told you! But it didn’t mean much to you, because it isn’t what you want to believe. Károlyi is a gentleman, a noble soul—I’m not mocking—I had a long talk with him, and I’m sure he’s one of the most high-minded men who ever lived. He was a nobleman and he had estates, and when he saw the ruin and misery after the war he gave them to the government. No man could do more. He became the Socialist Premier of Hungary, and tried to bring a peaceful change, and the Communists rose up against his government—and what did he do? He said to me in these very words: ‘I couldn’t shoot the workers.’ So he let the Communist-led mob seize the government, and there was the dreadful bloody regime of that Jew—what was his name?”
"“Béla Kun. Too bad he had to be a Jew!”
"“Yes, I admit it’s too bad. You just told me that you didn’t invent Mein Kampf and you didn’t invent the Brownshirts. Well, I didn’t invent Béla Kun and I didn’t invent Liebknecht and that Red Rosa Jewess who tried to do the same thing in Germany, nor Eisner who did it in Bavaria, nor Trotsky who helped to do it in Russia. I suppose the Jews have an extra hard time and that makes them revolutionary; they haven’t any country and that keeps them from being patriotic. I’m not blaming them, I’m just facing the facts, as you’re all the time urging me to do.”
"“I’ve long ago faced the fact that you dislike the Jews, Irma.”
"“I dislike some of them intensely, and I dislike some things about them all. But I love Freddi, and I’m fond of all the Robins, even though I am repelled by Hansi’s ideas. I’ve met other Jews that I like—”
"“In short,” put in Lanny, “you have accepted what Hitler calls ‘honorary Aryans.’” He was surprised by his own bitterness.
"“That’s a mean crack, Lanny, and I think we ought to talk kindly about this problem. It isn’t a simple one.”
"“I want very much to,” he replied. “But one of the facts we have to face is that the things you have been saying to me are all in Mein Kampf, and the arguments you have been using are the foundation stones upon which the Nazi movement is built. Hitler also likes some Jews, but he dislikes most of them because he says they are revolutionary and not patriotic. Hitler also is forced to put down the idealists and the liberals because they serve as a ‘front’ for the Reds."
Irma reminded him of his obligations to his wife and daughter, and decided to accompany him with her rights to disagree and express it, understood.
................................................................................................
Lanny and Irma met Johannes and Robbie in N.Y. and discussed. They decided hat whereabouts of Freddi must have been known to authorities, and it might be hostage situation, knowing Irma's fortune.
"“I have a business,” replied Lanny. “My idea is to work at it seriously and use it as a cover. I’ll cable Zoltan and find out if he’d be interested to give a Detaze show in Berlin this autumn. That would make a lot of publicity, and enable me to meet people; also it would tip off Freddi’s friends as to where and how to get in touch with me. All this will take time, but it’s the only way I can think of to work in Hitler Germany.”"
Lanny contacted clients in U.S. and they visited them in Berkshire and so on. They set forth via England so Lanny could meet Rick, and they could collect the car. They drove to Bienvenu first. They went driving via Vienna where Lanny managed some business, which impressed Irma, and then Stubendorf where Irma convinced Kurt to convert Lanny out of his leftist sympathy.
"On the day that Irma and Lanny arrived at the Hotel Adlon, another guest, an elderly American, was severely beaten by a group of Brownshirts because he failed to notice that a parade was passing and to give the Nazi salute. When he went to the Polizeiwache to complain about it, the police offered to show him how to give the Nazi salute. Episodes such as this, frequently repeated, had had the effect of causing the trickle of tourists to stop; and this was fortunate for an art expert and his wife, because it made them important, and caused space to be given to Detaze and his work."
Lanny met Magda Goebbels and showed her some of Marcel's work; she suggested a show for the top leader. He met Furtwaengler who denied any possibility that they had Freddi, and Heinrich Jung who waxed poetic about the Nuremberg rally. He met Hugo Behr who said that he had tried but found no evidence they had Freddi. Lanny suggested Dachau, saying it had been a voice telling him so, after telling him about the time he saw Rick appear at dawn. Hugo said he'd try; he said the second revolution must come, and looked to Ernest Röhm to do so. Lanny had not such good opinion of this leader but hoped to find someone useful.
"Their conference was a long one, and their drive took them into the country; beautiful level country, every square foot of it tended like somebody’s parlor. No room for a weed in the whole of the Fatherland, and the forests planted in rows like orchards and tended the same way."
Germany is still exactly like that. Beautiful when one sees it, and one falls in love with the beauty, but then if one is there for any length the regimen and its lack of natural quality makes escaping across border not merely delightful but necessary for breathing, and when the border is Swiss the beauty across isn't trivial, nor is cleanliness or convenience or order, but the forests aren't tended like a shop's front window.
"Another way in which Hugo resembled the Social-Democrats rather than the Nazis—he hated militarism. He said: “There are two ways the Führer can solve the problem of unemployment; one is to put the idle to work and make plenty for all, including themselves; the other is to turn them over to the army, to be drilled and sent out to take the land and resources of other peoples. That is the question which is being decided in the inner circles right now.”
"“Too bad you can’t be there!” remarked Lanny; and his young friend revealed what was in the depths of his mind. “Maybe I will be some day.”"
"Seine Exzellenz, Minister-Präsident General Göring, was pleased to invite Mr. and Mrs. Lanny Budd to lunch at his official residence. ... Commander of the German Air Force was having his own art made to his own order—a nude statue of his deceased wife, made from photographs and cast in solid gold!
"At least that was what the Fürstin Donnerstein had told Irma. There was no stopping the tongues of these fashionable ladies; the Fürstin had poured out the “dirt,” and Irma had collected it and brought it home. The good-looking blond aviator named Göring, after being wounded in the Beerhall Putsch, had fled abroad and married a Swedish baroness; the lady was an epileptic and her spouse a morphia addict. There could be no doubt about either of these facts, for they had been proved in court when the baroness was refused custody of her son by a former marriage. Later on, the lady had died of tuberculosis, and Göring, returning to Germany, had chosen Thyssen and the former Crown Prince for his cronies, and the steel king’s sister for his “secretary”; the quotation marks were indicated by the Fürstin’s tone as she said the last word. It had been assumed that he would marry this Anita Thyssen, but it hadn’t come off; perhaps he had become too great—or too fat! At the moment Anita was “out,” and the “in” was Emmy Sonnemann, a blond Nordic Valkyrie who acted at the State Theater and could have any role she chose. “But that doesn’t exclude other Damen,” added the serpent’s tongue of Fürstin Donnerstein. “Vorsicht, Frau Budd!”
"So Irma learned a new German word."
................................................................................................
"Herr Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels was so gracious as to indicate his opinion that the work of Marcel Detaze was suitable for showing in Germany; quite harmless, although not especially distinguished. Lanny understood that he could expect no more for a painter from a nation which the Führer had described as “Negroid.” It was enough, and he wired Zoltan to come to Berlin."
Lanny agreed to pay for the publicity services offered by an agent who came, and the show was a success.
"The Detaze show coincided in time with one of the strangest public spectacles ever staged in history. The Nazis had laid the attempt to burn the Reichstag upon the Communists, while the enemies of Nazism were charging that the fire had been a plot of the Hitlerites to enable them to seize power. The controversy was brought to a head by the publication in London of the Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, which charged that the Nazi Chief of Police of Breslau, one of the worst of their terrorists, had led a group of S.A. men through the tunnel from Göring’s residence into the Reichstag building; they had scattered loads of incendiary materials all over the place, while another group had brought a half-witted Dutch tramp into the building by a window and put him to work starting fires with a domestic gas-lighter. This was what the whole world was coming to believe, and the Nazis couldn’t very well dodge the issue. For six or seven months they had been preparing evidence, and in September they began a great public trial. They charged the Dutchman with the crime, and three Bulgarian Communists and a German with being his accessories. The issue thus became a three-months’ propaganda battle, not merely in Germany but wherever news was read and public questions discussed. Ten thousand pages of testimony were taken, and seven thousand electrical transcriptions made of portions of the testimony for broadcasting.
"The trial body was the Fourth Criminal Senate of the German Supreme Court in Leipzig; oddly enough, the same tribunal before which, three years previously, Adolf Hitler had proclaimed that “heads will roll in the sand.” Now he was going to make good his threat. Unfortunately he had neglected to “co-ordinate” all five of the court judges; perhaps he didn’t dare, because of world opinion. There was some conformity to established legal procedure, and the result was such a fiasco that the Nazis learned a lesson, and never again would political suspects have a chance to appear in public and cross-question their accusers.
"In October and November the court came to Berlin, and it was a free show for persons who had leisure; particularly for those who in their secret hearts were pleased to see the Nazis humiliated. The five defendants had been kept in chains for seven months and wore chains in the courtroom during the entire trial. The tragedy of the show was provided by the Dutchman, van der Lubbe, half-blind as well as half-witted; mucus drooled from his mouth and nose, he giggled and grinned, made vague answers, sat in a stupor when let alone. The melodrama was supplied by the Bulgarian Dimitroff, who “stole the show”; a scholar as well as a man of the world, witty, alert, and with the courage of a lion, he turned the trial into anti-Nazi propaganda; defying his persecutors, mocking them, driving them into frenzies of rage. Three times they put him out of the room, but they had to bring him back, and again there was sarcasm, defiance, and exposition of revolutionary aims.
"It soon became clear that neither Dimitroff nor the other defendants had ever known van der Lubbe or had anything to do with the Reichstag fire. The mistake had arisen because there was a parliamentary archivist in the Reichstag building who happened to resemble the half-witted Dutchman, and it was with him that the Communist Torgler had been seen in conversation. The proceedings gradually turned into a trial of the Brown Book, with the unseen British committee as prosecutors and the Nazis as defendants. Goebbels appeared and denounced the volume, and Dimitroff mocked him and made him into a spectacle. Then came the corpulent head of the Prussian state; it was a serious matter for him, because the incendiaries had operated from his residence and it was difficult indeed to imagine that he hadn’t known what was going on. Under the Bulgarian’s stinging accusations Göring lost his temper completely and had to be saved by the presiding judge, who ordered Dimitroff dragged out, while Göring screamed after him: “I am not afraid of you, you scoundrel. I am not here to be questioned by you … You crook, you belong to the gallows! You’ll be sorry yet, if I catch you when you come out of prison!” Not very dignified conduct for a Minister-Präsident of Prussia and Reichsminister of all Germany!"
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Lanny got two communications, one from Robbie to say his brother had brought in Wall Street to avoid Robbie heading Budd.
"he other communication was very different; a letter addressed to Lanny in his own handwriting, and his heart gave a thump when he saw it, for he had given that envelope to Hugo Behr. It was postmarked Munich and Lanny tore it open quickly, and saw that Hugo had cut six letters out of a newspaper and pasted them onto a sheet of paper—a method of avoiding identification well known to kidnapers and other conspirators. “Jawohl” can be one word or two. With space after the first two letters, as Hugo had pasted them, it told Lanny that Freddi Robin was in Dachau and that he was well."
Hugo returned and told about a friend who worked at Dachau.
"Hugo added: “We might be able to trust that fellow, because I had a long talk with him and he feels about events pretty much as I do. He’s sick of his job, which isn’t at all what he bargained for. He says there are plenty of others who feel the same, though they don’t always talk. You know, Lanny, the Germans aren’t naturally a cruel people, and they don’t like having the most brutal and rowdyish fellows among them picked out and put in charge.”
"“Did he say that?” inquired Lanny.
"“He said even more. He said he’d like to see every Jew put out of Germany, but he didn’t see any sense in locking them up and kicking them around, just for being what they were born. I told him my idea that the party is being led astray and that it’s up to the rank and file to set it straight. He was interested, and maybe we’ll have an organized group in Dachau.”
"“That’s fine,” commented the American; “and I’m ever so much obliged to you. I’m going to Munich pretty soon and perhaps you can come again, and I’ll have some other message for your friend.” At the same time he took a little roll of hundred-mark notes out of his pocket and slipped them into his friend’s—a matter of only a few inches as they sat side by side in the car."
Lanny told Irma about possibility of getting Freddi out of Dachau without telling Göring, but meanwhile Furtwaengler arrived to convey an invitation from Göring for a stag affair, and he accepted. After the shooting, he made clear his intentions to recruit Lanny.
"“I am sure you understand that we Nazis are playing for no small stakes. You are one of the few who possess imagination enough to know that if you become my friend you will be able to have anything you care to ask for. I am going to become one of the richest men in the world—not because I am greedy for money, but because I have a job to do, and that is one of the tools. We are going to build a colossal industry, which will become the heritage of the future, and most certainly we are not going to leave it in the hands of Jews or other. Bolshevist agencies. Sooner or later we shall take over the industry of Russia and bring it into line with modern practices. For all that we need brains and ability. I personally need men who see eye to eye with me, and I am prepared to pay on a royal scale. There is no limit to what I would do for a man who would be a real associate and partner.”
"“No German can do what I am suggesting to you—an American, who is assumed to be above the battle. You can go into France or England and meet anybody you wish, and execute commissions of the most delicate sort without waste of time or sacrifice of your own or your wife’s enjoyment. Be assured that I would never ask you to do anything dishonorable, or to betray any trust. If, for example, you were to meet certain persons in those countries and talk politics with them, and report on their true attitudes, so that I could know which of them really want to have the Reds put down and which would rather see those devils entrench themselves than to see Germany get upon her feet—that would be information almost priceless to me, and believe me, you would have to do no more than hint your desires. If you would come now and then on an art-buying expedition to Berlin and visit me in some quiet retreat like this, the information would be used without any label upon it, and I would pledge you my word never to name you to anyone.”"
Lanny expressed appreciation of of the honour but declined any rewards or remuneration of any size in any form, insisting he'd prefer freedom. When Göring insisted on asking what he wanted, he understood, and asked about Freddi.
"“All right,” said the Minister-Präsident; “if that is your heart’s desire, I will try to grant it. But remember, it may be beyond my power. I cannot bring back the dead.”"
Lanny told Irma after his return taking her on a drive, and she questioned if Freddi wasn't guilty of a serious crime against the government such as criminal conspiracy.
"“The Nazis don’t have to have any excuses, Irma; they arrest people wholesale.”
"“I’m talking about the possibility that there might be some real guilt, or at any rate a charge against Freddi. Some reason why Göring would consider him dangerous and hold onto him.”
"“The people who are in the concentration camps aren’t those against whom they have criminal charges. The latter are in the prisons, and the Nazis torture them to make them betray their associates; then they shoot them in the back of the neck and cremate them. The men who are in Dachau are Socialist politicians and editors and labor leaders—intellectuals of all the groups that stand for freedom and justice and peace.”
"“You mean they’re there without any charge against them?”
"“Exactly that. They’ve had no trial, and they don’t know what they’re there for or how long they’re going to stay. Two or three thousand of the finest persons in Bavaria—and my guess is that Freddi has done no more than any of the others.”
"Irma didn’t say any more, and her husband knew the reason—she couldn’t believe what he said. It was too terrible to be true. All over the world people were saying that, and would go on saying it, to Lanny’s great exasperation.
"Rahel had given him addresses, and in his spare hours he had dropped in at place after place, always taking the precaution to park his car some distance away and to make sure that he was not followed. In no single case had he been able to find the persons, or to find anyone who would admit knowing their whereabouts. In most cases people wouldn’t even admit having heard of them. They had vanished off the face of the Fatherland. Was he to assume that they were all in prisons or concentration camps? Or had some of them “gone underground”? Once more he debated how he might find his way to that nether region—always being able to get back to the Hotel Adlon in time to receive a message from the second in command of the Nazi government! ... Ludwig and Gertrude Schultz ...He could be fairly sure they would be living among the workers; for they had never had much money, and without jobs would probably be dependent upon worker comrades."
Lanny found her, by asking a child in her building and waiting. She was wary and denied knowing him until he told about Freddi being in Dachau, and told him Ludi and Freddi had been taken together. He said he'd try to find Ludi, and gave money before parting.
"The period of the Detaze show in Berlin corresponded with an election campaign throughout the German Reich; assuredly the strangest election campaign since that contrivance had been born of the human brain. Hitler had wiped out all other political parties and all the legislative bodies of the twenty-two German states; by his methods of murder and imprisonment he had destroyed democracy and representative government, religious toleration and all civil rights; but being still the victim of a “legality complex,” he insisted upon having the German people endorse what he had done. A vote to say that votes had no meaning! A Reichstag to declare that a Reichstag was without power! ... there wasn’t a single German from whom he could hear a sane word. Even Hugo Behr and his friends who were planning the “Second Revolution” were all loyal Hitlerites, co-operating in what they considered a sublime demonstration of patriotic fervor. Even the members of smart society dared give no greater sign of rationality than a slight smile, or the flicker of an eyelash so faint that you couldn’t be sure if you had seen it. The danger was real, even to important persons. Only a few days later they would see Herzog Philip Albert of Württemberg imprisoned for failing to cast his vote in this sublime national referendum.
"In addition, there was to be a new Reichstag election, with only one slate of candidates, 686 of them, all selected by the Führer, and headed by the leading Nazis: Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Röhm, and so on. One party, one list—and one circle in which you could mark your cross to indicate “yes.” There was no place for you to vote “no,” and blank ballots were declared invalid."
Irma was impressed with the show and record voting.
"When she read that the internees of Dachau had voted twenty to one for the man who had shut them up there, she said: “That seems to show that things can’t he so very bad.”"
................................................................................................
"A pleasant thing to leave the flat windy plain of Prussia at the beginning of winter and motor into the forests and snug valleys of South Germany. Pleasant to arrive in a beautiful and comparatively modern city and to find a warm welcome awaiting you in an establishment called the “Four Seasons of the Year” so as to let you know that it was always ready. Munich was a “Four Seasons of the Year” city; its life was a series of festivals, and the drinking of beer out of Masskrügen was a civic duty.
"The devoted Zoltan had come in advance and made all arrangements for the show. The Herr Privatdozent Doktor der Philosophie Aloysius Winckler zu Sturmschatten had applied his arts, and the intellectuals of Munich were informed as to the merits of the new school of representational painting; also the social brilliance of the young couple who were conferring this bounty upon them.
"In the morning came the reporters by appointment. They had been provided with extracts from what the Berlin press had said about Detaze, and with information as to the Barnes fortune and the importance of Budd Gunmakers; also the fact that Lanny had been on a shooting trip with General Göring and had once had tea with the Führer. The young couple exhibited that affability which is expected from the land of cowboys and movies. Lanny said yes, he knew Munich very well; he had purchased several old masters here—he named them, and told in what new world collections they had found havens. He had happened to be in the city on a certain historic day ten years ago and had witnessed scenes which would make the name of Munich forever famous. Flashlight bulbs went off while he talked, reminding him of those scenes on the Marienplatz when the Nazi martyrs had been shot down.
"The interviews appeared in due course, and when the exhibition opened on the following afternoon the crowds came. An old story now, but the people were new, and those who love greatness and glory never tire of meeting Herzog und Herzogin Überall und Prinz und Prinzessin Undsoweiter. A great thing for art when ladies of the highest social position take their stand in a public gallery to pay tribute to genius, even though dead. While Parsifal Dingle went off to ask the spirit of the dead painter if he was pleased with the show, and while Lanny went to inspect older masters and dicker over prices, Beauty Budd and her incomparable daughter-in-law were introduced to important personages, accepted invitations to lunches and dinners, and collected anecdotes which they would retail to their spouses and later to their relatives and friends.
"There was only one thing wrong between this pair; the fact that Marcel Detaze had died when Irma was a child and had never had an opportunity to paint a picture of her. Thus Beauty got more than her proper share of glory, and there was no way to redistribute it. The mother-in-law would be humble, and try not to talk about herself and her portraits while Irma was standing by; but others would insist upon doing so, and it was a dangerous situation. Beauty said to her son: “Who is the best portrait painter living?”
“Why?” he asked, surprised.
"“Because, you ought to have him do Irma right away. It would be a sensation, and help to keep her interested in art.”
"“Too bad that Sargent is gone!” chuckled Lanny.
"“Don’t make a joke of it,” insisted the mother. “It’s quite inexcusable that the crowds should come and look at pictures of a faded old woman who doesn’t matter, instead of one in the prime of her beauty.”
"“Art is long and complexions are fleeting,” said the incorrigible one."
................................................................................................
"A far greater event than the Detaze exhibition came to Munich, causing the city to break out with flags. The Reichskanzler, the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., had been motoring and flying all over his land making campaign speeches. After his overwhelming triumph he had sought his mountain retreat, to brood and ponder new policies; and now, refreshed and reinspired, he came to his favorite city, the one in which his movement had been built and his crown of martyrdom won. Here he had been a poor Schlawiner, as they called a man whose means of subsistence they did not know, a Wand- und Landstreicher, who made wild, half-crazy speeches, and people went to hear him because it was a Gaudi, or what you would call in English a “lark.” Munich had seen him wandering about town looking very depressed, uncouth in his rusty worn raincoat, carrying an oversize dogwhip because of his fear of enemies, who, however, paid no attention to him. But now he had triumphed over them all.
"Now he was the master of Germany, and Munich celebrated his arrival with banners. Here in the Braune Haus he had the main headquarters of the party; a splendid building which Adolf himself had remodeled and decorated according to his own taste. He, the frustrated architect, had made something so fine that his followers were exalted when they entered the place, and took fresh vows of loyalty to their leader and his all-conquering dream.
"Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, had done some conquering in her time, and was still capable of dreams. “Oh, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “Do you suppose you could get him to come to the exhibition? It would be worth a million dollars to us!”
"“It’s certainly worth thinking about,” conceded the son.
"“Don’t delay! Telephone Heinrich Jung and ask him to come. Pay him whatever he wants, and we’ll all stand our share.”
"“He won’t want much. He’s not a greedy person.”
"The young Nazi official was staggered by the proposal. He feared it was something far, far beyond his powers. But Lanny urged him to rise to a great occasion. He had worked hard through the electoral campaign and surely was entitled to a few days’ vacation. What better way to spend it than to pay his compliments to his Führer, and take him to see some paintings of the special sort which he approved?
"“You can bring them to him if he prefers,” said Lanny. “We’ll close the show for a day and pick out the best and take them wherever he wishes.” He spoke with eagerness, having another scheme up his sleeve; he wasn’t thinking merely about enhancing the prices of his family property. “If you can get off right away, take a plane. There’s no time to be lost.”
"“Herrgott!” exclaimed the ex-forester. He was in heaven.
"Then Lanny put in a long distance call to Kurt Meissner in Stubendorf. Kurt had refused an invitation to Berlin because he couldn’t afford the luxury and wasn’t willing to be put under obligations. But now Lanny could say: “This is a business matter. You will be doing us a service, and also one for the Führer. You can play your new compositions for him, and that will surely be important for your career. Heinrich is coming, and we’ll paint the town brown.” He supposed that was the proper National Socialist formula!
"Irma took the phone and added: “Come on, Kurt. It will be so good for Lanny. I want him to understand your movement and learn to behave himself.” Impossible for an apostle and propagandist to resist such a call. Irma added: “Take a plane from Breslau if that’s quicker. We’ll have a room reserved for you.”"
Irma spoke privately to Kurt asking him to impress Lanny about not mentioning Freddi to Hitler, which he did, and thus it became Kurt's job to do so. They were called, and went for the appointment, with a hotel employee assigned to carry the portrait of Beauty by Marcel. He remembered Lanny .
"Looking at him, Lanny thought once more that here was the world’s greatest mystery. You might have searched all Europe and not found a more commonplace-appearing man; this Führer of the Fatherland had everything it took to make mediocrity. He was smaller than any of his three guests, and as he was now in a plain business suit with a white collar and black tie, he might have been a grocery assistant or traveling salesman for a hair tonic. He took no exercise, and his figure was soft, his shoulders narrow and hips wide like a woman’s. The exponent of Aryan purity was a mongrel if ever there was one; he had straight thick dark hair and wore one lock of it long, as Lanny had done when a boy. Apparently the only thing he tended carefully was that absurd little Charlie Chaplin mustache."
He noticed the painting and inspected it.
"A Frenchman, you say? You may be sure that he had German forefathers. Who is the woman?”"
Lanny explained it was his mother, and there was more diatribe about race.
""Here in this room we have three of the world’s great nationalities represented: the German, the French, the American. What a gain if these nations would unite to guard their Aryan purity and guarantee the reign of law throughout the world! Do you see any hope for that in our time?”
"“It is a goal to aim at, Herr Reichskanzler. Each must do what he can.”
"“You may be sure that I will, Herr Budd. Tell it to everyone you know.”"
Kurt took the opportunity to introduce the topic of Freddi, which turned into a full fledged racist rant hurled at them, from telling Lanny they must get Bess divorced to explicit description about her defilement by such marriage - all material stated in his autobiography, sans reference to Bess, of course.
"The master of all Germany had got started on one of his two favorite topics, the other being Bolshevism. Again Lanny observed the phenomenon that an audience of three was as good as three million. The sleepy look went out of the speaker’s eyes and they became fixed upon the unfortunate transgressor in a hypnotic stare. The quiet voice rose to a shrill falsetto. Something new appeared in the man, demonic and truly terrifying; the thrust-out finger struck as it were hammer blows upon Lanny’s mind. A young American playboy must be made to realize the monstrous nature of the treason he was committing in condoning his sister’s defilement of the sacred Aryan blood. Somehow, at once, the evil must be averted; the man who had been commissioned by destiny to save the world must prove his power here and now, by bringing this strayed sheep back into the Nordic fold. “Gift!” cried the Führer of the Nazis. “Poison! Poison!”
"Back in New England, Lanny’s Great-Great-Uncle Eli Budd had told him the story of the witch-hunt in early Massachusetts. “Fanaticism is a destroyer of mind,” he had said. Here it was in another form—the terrors, the fantasies born of soul torment, the vision of supernatural evil powers plotting the downfall of all that was good and fair in human life. Adi really loved the Germans: their Gemütlichkeit, their Treue und Ehre, their beautiful songs and noble symphonies, their science and art, their culture in its thousand forms. But here was this satanic power, plotting, scheming day and night to destroy it all. Die Juden sind schuld!
"Yes, literally, the Jews were to blame for everything; Hitler called the roll of their crimes for the ten thousandth time. They had taught revolt to Germany, they had undermined her patriotism and discipline, and in her hour of greatest peril they had stabbed her in the back. The Jews had helped to shackle her by the cruel Diktat of Versailles, and then had proceeded to rivet the chains of poverty upon her limbs. They had made the inflation, they had contrived the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, the systems of interest and reparations slavery; the Jewish bankers in alliance with the Jewish Bolsheviks! They had seduced all German culture—theater, literature, music, journalism. They had sneaked into the professions, the sciences, the schools, and universities—and, as always, they had defiled and degraded whatever they touched. Die Juden sind unser Unglück!
"This went on for at least half an hour; and never once did anybody else get in a word. The man’s tirade poured out so fast that his sentences stumbled over one another; he forgot to finish them, he forgot his grammar, he forgot common decency and used the words of the gutters of Vienna, where he had picked up his ideas. The perspiration stood out on his forehead and his clean white collar began to wilt. In short, he gave the same performance which Lanny had witnessed in the Bürgerbräukeller of Munich more than a decade ago. But that had been a huge beerhall with two or three thousand people, while here it was like being shut up in a small chamber with a hundred-piece orchestra including eight trombones and four bass tubas playing the overture to The Flying Dutchman.
"Suddenly the orator stopped. He didn’t say: “Have I convinced you?” That would have been expressing a doubt, which no heaven-sent evangelist ever admits. He said: “Now, Herr Budd, go and do your duty. Make one simple rule that I have maintained ever since I founded this movement—never to speak to a Jew, even over the telephone.” Then, abruptly: “I have other engagements and have to be excused.”"
"When he was back in the hotel with his wife and mother, he exclaimed: “Well, I know now why Göring is keeping Freddi.”
"“Why?” they asked, with much excitement.
"Lanny answered, in a cold fury: “He is going to breed him with a female ape!”"
Lanny drove to Dachau and asked to see the commander, introducing himself as a sympathetic foreigner who wished to tell the world they were misinformed. His newspaper clippings helped.
"A drab and distressing spectacle the prisoners presented. They had close-cropped heads. They wore the clothes in which they had been arrested; but that had been months ago, in many cases nearly a year, and doubtless they were sleeping in their clothes on these near-winter nights. The intellectuals of Bavaria had evidently not been fond of outdoor sports; some were lean and stoop-shouldered, others were paunched and flabby. Many had white hair, and might have been the grandfathers of their guards, but that earned them no consideration. Ill health and depression were written all over them. They did not know what they were here for, or how long they would have to stay—they who had been free men, free thinkers, the best of the land’s intellectuals. They had dreamed of a happier and more ordered world, and this was the punishment which fitted their crime. “We are not running a health resort,” remarked the Kommandant."
But he didn't see Freddi, Jews were kept separate.
................................................................................................
Dresden museum wished to keep Detaze show for a while,and Zoltan Kertezsi would keep track; Beauty and Parsifal Dingle were invited by Lady Caillard, staying in Germany was accomplishing nothing, and Irma and Lanny must see baby for Xmas.
"The museum in Dresden was attending to the pictures, so Jerry Pendleton was free. Irma and Lanny took him with them through a pass in those snow-covered mountains which make for Munich a setting like a drop curtain. They crossed the narrow belt which the Versailles Diktat had left to Austria, and through the Brenner pass which had been included in Italy’s share of the loot. There Mussolini’s Blackshirts were busily engaged in making Aryans into Mediterraneans by the agency of rubber truncheons and dogwhips. It made bad blood between Fascismo and its newborn offspring in the north. Dr. Goebbels’s well-subsidized agitators were working everywhere in Austria, and not a few of them were in Italian dungeons. Optimistic young Pinks looked forward to seeing the Fascists and the Nazis devour each other like the two Kilkenny cats."
They came home to Bienvenu and were thrilled to see their four year old.
"Hansi and Bess are in the Middle West, giving concerts several times every week. They have cabled money after the first concert, so Mama and Rahel no longer have to use Irma’s money to buy their food. They have offered to rent a little place for themselves, but Beauty has said No, why should they—it would be very unkind. Irma says the same; but in her heart she cannot stifle the thought that she would like it better if they did. She feels a thunder-cloud hanging over the place, and wants so much to get Lanny from under it. She is worried about what is going on in his mind, and doesn’t see why she should give up all social life because of a tragedy they are powerless to avert. Irma wants to give parties, real parties, of the sort which make a social impression; she will put up the money and Beauty and Feathers will do the work—both of them happy to do so, because they believe in parties, because parties are what set you apart from the common herd which cannot give them, at least not with elegance and chic.
"Then, too, there is the question of two little tots. They are together nearly all the time, and this cannot be prevented; they clamor for it, take it for granted, and the science of child study is on their side. Impossible to bring up any child properly alone, because the child is a gregarious creature; so the textbooks agree. If little Johannes were not available it would be necessary to go out and get some fisherboy, Provençal, or Ligurian or what not. There isn’t the slightest fault that Irma can find with the tiny Robin; he is a dream of brunette loveliness, he is gentle and sweet like his father, but he is a Jew, and Irma cannot be reconciled to the idea that her darling Frances should be more interested in him than in any other human being, not excepting herself. Of course, they are such tiny things, it seems absurd to worry; but the books and the experts agree that this is the age when indelible impressions are made, and is it wise to let an Aryan girl-child get fixed in her mind that the Semitic type is the most romantic, the most fascinating in the world? Irma imagines some blind and tragic compulsion developing out of that, later on in life."
"With the proceeds of their dramatic success Nina and Rick had got a small car. Rick couldn’t drive, on account of his knee, but his wife drove, and now they brought the Dingles to the Riviera, and stayed for a while as guests in the villa. Rick used Kurt’s old studio to work on an anti-Nazi play, based on the Brown Book, the stories Lanny had told him, and the literature Kurt and Heinrich had been sending him through the years. It would be called a melodrama, Rick said—because the average Englishman refused to believe that there could be such people as the Nazis, or that such things could be happening in Europe in the beginning of the year 1934. Rick said furthermore that when the play was produced, Lanny would no longer be able to pose as a fellow-traveler of the Hitlerites, for they would certainly find out where the play had been written."
Lanny was thinking of offering all his own money in exchange for Freddi, and Rick spoke against it, to him and to the Robin women.
"The Nazis want foreign exchange so they can buy weapons and the means to make weapons. They want it so they can pay their agents and carry on their propaganda in foreign lands. And in the end it adds up to more power for Nazism, and more suffering for Jews and Socialists. These Hitlerites aren’t through; they never can be through so long as they live, because theirs is a predatory system; it thrives on violence, and would perish otherwise. It has to have more and more victims, and if it gets money from you it uses the money to get more money from the next lot. So whatever resources we have or can get, have to go to fighting them, to making other people understand what Nazism is, what a menace it represents to everything that you and I and Freddi stand for.”"
Robbie came, and they drove to Crillon to see him.
"One thing Robbie said he was unable to understand: the fact that they had never received a single line of writing from Freddi in more than eight months. Surely any prisoner would be permitted to communicate with his relatives at some time! Lanny told what he had learned from the Kommandant of Dachau, that the inmates were permitted to write a few lines once a week to their nearest relatives; but this privilege was withheld in certain cases. Robbie said: “Even so, there are ways of smuggling out letters; and certainly there must be prisoners released now and then. You’d think some one of them would have your address, and drop a note to report the situation. It suggests to me that Freddi may be dead; but I don’t say it to the Robins.”"
"It was the “Stavisky case,” centering about a swindler of Russian-Jewish descent. “Too bad he had to be a Jew!” said Irma, and Lanny wasn’t sure whether she was being sympathetic or sarcastic. ... Stavisky had gone into hiding with his mistress, and when the police came for him he shot himself; at least, so the police said, but evidence began to indicate that the police had hushed him up.
"Lanny couldn’t afford to visit his Red uncle, but he invited Denis de Bruyne to dinner, and the three Budds listened to the story from the point of view of a French Nationalist.
"Denis belonged to a respectable law-and-order party, and was distressed because his younger son had joined the Croix de Feu, most active of the French Fascist groups. ... Lanny observed that the individuals who awakened the anger and disgust of Denis de Bruyne were the climbers, those struggling for wealth and power to which they had no valid claim. He rarely had any serious fault to find with the mur d’argent, the members of the “two hundred families” who had had wealth and power for a long time. They had to pay large sums of money in these evil days, and the basis of Denis’s complaint was not the corruption but the increasing cost."
Lanny and Irma met Olivie Hellstein whose father was about to get into business with Robbie. She consulted Lanny about a family concern, her uncle Solomon had been arrested in Germany where he was a banker. Lanny tried to see Charlot, but it wasn't possible, there was to be a demonstration, they watched it from the hotel balcony. The Place de la Concorde had a crowd over a hundred thousand strong, police barricading them from the bridge leading to deputies chamber. The fascists used stones they tore from pavement, railings torn from garden of Tuilleries, and walking sticks fitted with razor blades, wounding police and horses. Shooting began, and they retreated from balconies. "Bloody Tuesday" became worse next day, and they went home. But this was spreading and midi wasn't immune.
Austria was jailing hitlerites but had its own fascists, Dollfuss had Heimwehr fire on worker's apartments in Vienna killing a thousand including women and children, razing the workers' homes.
................................................................................................
Lanny and Irma chose to summer in England due to Irma's fear of kidnappers since Lindbergh, and Wickthorpe was able to let them rent a house of his aunt, near his castle. The Bienvenu family was to join them in London at home of Margy, Dowager Lady Eversham-Watson, for the season. But Lanny got a letter from Freddi from Dachau forwarded by Rahel, which brought Irma and Lanny into another argument, both serious about their differences. Lanny had to try and help Freddi, and Irma thought it was irresponsible behaviour to do so instead of taking care of his wife and child.
Lanny set out driving via Metz and Strasbourg and arrived in Munich, staying in a small hotel and conducting some art business, and invited Hugo Behr. Hugo was unhappy about the party going reactionary. Lanny made arrangements with him to get Freddi out, and had Jerry Pendleton arrive from Cannes for help, but as he was picking Hugo up, three SS men stopped Hugo and shot him in face, and took Lanny to Stradelheim. He was there over three to four nights, incommunicado and in foul conditions, and it was only when being driven out that a fellow prisoner told him in Morse code "“Röhm shot"! Also in Morse code, he was told "Heines, followed again by the dread word “erschossen.” Lanny knew that this was the police chief of Breslau, who had led the gang which had burned the Reichstag; he was one of the most notorious of the Nazi killers, ... And then the name of Strasser! Lanny put his hand on top of the little Jew’s and spelled the name “Otto”; but the other wiggled away and spelled “Gr—” so Lanny understood that it was Gregor Strasser".
In Munich it was regular prison with cellmates - who were either manufacturing tycoons being forced to give up to nazis or Hungarian counts who were inconvenient members of a marriage for a nazi - and exercise time in yard, and possibilities of paying for a shave etc. Information flowed despite strictures, and Lanny learned about the "Blood Purge", despite official lies. After ten days he was driven in handcuffs in his own car to be imprisoned in Berlin, again single. After a few days he was brought to the torture cell and witnessed what brutal torture was inflicted on others, including Simon Hellstein. Lanny spoke, enraged, telling them they were dirty dogs and shame to humanity, and he was returned to the cell.
Next, Furtwaengler came and took him out with apologies. He was taken, after half an hour at Adlon to make himself presentable, to residence of Göring, who tried to make a joke of it, but it was clear to Lanny that Göring had known about his imprisonment all along and had done it deliberately. Göring had an offer, Freddi would be freed as soon as Lanny told the world, and Hellstein family, about what he saw. Göring wanted Hellstein money.
"Lanny wanted to wake up Europe to the meaning of this moral insanity which had broken out in its midst."
Lanny drove through to Belgium and talked with Jerry, having already cabled family. He asked Irma to come to Paris and met her in Crillon. She insisted he pledge to never do anything like this, never go into Germany, and was very upset he made an appointment with Hellstein family without taking her along. She wanted to know how he could know about Solomon Hellstein, and Lanny couldn't tell her about what he'd gone through. She'd made up her mind, and he had to make up his, quickly.
Lanny told Hellstein family everything, sparing nothing, about what he'd witnessed, and what nazis wanted. He found their grief cathartic, and had tears streaming down. Olivie thanked him profusely with tears, and said he was the kindest, the bravest man she knew. Lanny was tempted to wish his wife had witnessed it, but thought better of it. Nothing would help in his marriage except his behaving like a man of fashion, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to play that role.
................................................................................................
Furtwaengler called and said he'd bring Freddi when and where Lanny said, so Lanny decided ten next morning at the bridge over Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg, and called Jerry to bring Rahel. Lanny drove to Strasbourg, and at ten a car drove up.
Freddi couldn't stand, had to be carried, and said they'd kicked his kidneys loose. Lanny drove back with him laid in the rear seat, and hotel helped lay him in bed. His hands were broken with iron bars.
Jerry arrived with Rahel, who nearly fainted to see Freddi turned old and broken in a year. Lanny encouraged her, he was planning to have an ambulance drive him to Paris where Marcel had been treated.
Presently he sat alone, in tears streaming down. Tears for Freddi, for the family, for Jews of Europe, for "German people who were being led into a deadly trap and would pay with frightful suffering. Tears for this unhappy continent on which he'd been born and lived all his life. He'd traveled here and there over its surface, and everywhere seen men plough the earth and sow dragon's teeth from which, as the old legend has it, armed men would someday spring."
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