Also he asked if the Graf knew any Germans who might have paintings they would care to sell to Americans. The old man answered no; his aunt who had sold a painting through Herr Budd was long since dead, and the Graf did not know what had become of her art treasures. People in East Germany had had to flee for their lives and had seldom been able to carry such heavy objects with them. Lanny pointed out that old masters had frequently been cut out of their frames and rolled up and smuggled away. One of the Russian grand dukes had lived the rest of his life on the proceeds of his Rembrandts.
By then it was fitting for the visitor to bring up the subject which was most prominent in his mind. He told once more the story of the English pound note; and the Graf said yes, there was a tremendous lot of that going on. The Nazis had forged the money of all the countries they invaded and those they expected to invade. They had forged passports and other documents, reports and letters. ‘I don’t believe in that sort of warfare myself’, said the host.
Lanny waited to see if he would go on, but he didn’t. So Lanny tried again. ‘That could be very destructive; it is a way of robbing the public and of bringing on a slow inflation’.
‘Exactly. And I am afraid your government will have a hard time rooting it out’.
‘Do you suppose the Communists will take it up?’
‘I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t. I have been told that in East Germany they have been printing our own money secretly and are putting it into circulation’.
Lanny had been told that by Morrison. He would have been interested to know how the Graf knew it. He said, ‘I have been told there’s a regular black market in Berlin, and you can buy many kinds of irregular money at a part of its face value’.
‘I don’t doubt it’, was the Graf’s reply. ‘Your government will have to put its best intelligence people to work on the problem’. And that was all. Lanny could not afford to push the subject. The old nobleman would be suspicious of all Americans.
VII
When the ‘primitive Junker’ resumed it was to express his concern over the way the Americans were disbanding their armies and sending them home. ‘Stalin is not disbanding his’, he said, ‘and presently you will be at his mercy’.
‘I suppose it’s the way of democracies’, Lanny replied. ‘Our people don’t like war; they want to get rid of the very thought of it. The mothers are clamouring for their boys, and the boys are clamouring for their mothers or their girls’
‘What will you do if Stalin should suddenly decide to take the rest of Germany?’
‘I really don’t know. I suppose we’d get ready again, the way we did for Hitler and Hirohito. Meantime, no doubt, we are counting upon the atomic bomb’.
‘You mustn’t count upon it too long, for Stalin will surely get it in the end. He has some of our best scientists, as you doubtless know’.
‘It is a disturbing problem, lieber Graf—especially for a man who is conducting a radio programme on behalf of world peace. I grow less sure of my ground every day’.
‘If you will take your Bible, Herr Budd, and read old Jeremiah, you will find that he talks about “saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace”.’ Perhaps the day will come when you will repeat the experience of the old prophet. “Then said I, Ah, Lord God! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul”.’
When Lanny thought it over afterwards it seemed to him rather quaint to have heard a commander of Hitler’s Armed Forces quoting the ancient scriptures of the Jews. But he didn’t say that; instead he remarked, ‘I had the privilege of making purchases at one of our government stores. I know that a country diet grows monotonous, and I tried to think of something that might be especially good for your health. I brought along a sack of oranges’.
‘Oh, I cannot let you do that!’ exclaimed the proud old count. ‘Really—’
‘Just think, lieber Graf, how much of your hospitality I accepted in the happy old days. Think of the things you fed to me, the venison and pheasants, the hares and trout. Surely I have the right to make a return’.
‘Well, since you put it that way, Herr Budd—’
‘Let me help you on with your overcoat and come out and see what else I have in my rolling grocery’.
The old Junker stalked out; Lanny followed and opened the locked trunk of his little car. He held up a sack of oranges in one hand, and in the other the spectacle that had so thrilled the Fürstin Donnerstein. The count spoke the same words. ‘Ach, du lieber Gott! Ein Schinken!’ He started to protest again, but Lanny silenced him as before. The Graf let his visitor carry the ham into the house, while he carried the oranges. They shook hands, and Lanny promised to send the little Peace paper every week. The engine of the ‘coop’ started, and the little black box rolled down the slope and away.
VIII
The roads to Nürnberg were good, and after Lanny got out of the foothills he drove fast. He had not seen Emil Meissner since that fateful week two years ago when he had persuaded a high Wehrmacht officer to abandon the Hitler cause and give General Patton’s army help in the taking of the Metz fortress. Lanny could understand that Emil must have had a hard time since then, for he was a traitor, and such a man is loved neither by those he has deserted nor by those he has aided. Emil might have asked for a position with the AMG, and his offer could hardly have been declined. But he had gone off quietly and got himself a civilian job and was living like a hermit—a hermit in a boarding house, keeping his thoughts to himself.
Lanny had first met Emil Meissner when the latter had come home to Stubendorf for Christmas, a tall, magnificent young cadet. Emil had made his career by hard work and faithfulness. He had fought, first against the Russians and then against the Americans, and had been captured in one of Patton’s slashing advances. Lanny Budd, knowing him thoroughly, had been sent to work on him. Lanny hadn’t had to convince him that his Führer was at once a scoundrel and a madman, for he had already come to that conclusion. What Lanny did was to persuade him that the war could end only one way, and the quicker it was over the more lives, both American and German, would be saved. So Emil had consented to sit in at a session of American staff officers and tell them all he knew about the fortifications of Germany’s greatest stronghold. Later on Emil had been released on parole, and that was all Lanny knew.
Soon he found out the rest. Emil was living in an upstairs bedroom without any heat; he went to school in the morning and taught his classes, and then he walked home and spent the evenings correcting his students’ work. He was alone, his wife having died during the war, and his sons had no understanding of their father’s action. He discussed the subject with no one and kept himself aloof and serene. There came to Lanny’s mind an ode of the poet Horace, which he had learned as a student in Newcastle, Connecticut, telling of the man who is just and firm in his opinion, and whom neither the cruel tyrant nor the shouting mob can awe; if the whole earth should be shattered in fragments about him they would leave him undismayed. Impavidum ferient ruinae!
IX
Lanny picked the old man up and drove him into the city, that place of ruins and melancholy, full of memories for the secret agent of a democratic President. Here Lanny had attended what the Nazis called a Parteitag, or party day, though it lasted a week, in which something like a million howling fanatics poured into the town. They lived in tents on the outskirts and marched about, singing and yelling, and gathered in an immense open field to listen to their party orators through a hundred microphones. It had been the old city, the city of Hans Sachs and of Wagner’s Meistersinger. When Lanny had come back the last time all that ancient part had been blasted to dust and rubble, and it had become the city of the great international trial of the war criminals. To the outside world Nürnberg would always be that.
There was a café unblasted, and Lanny stood his old friend to a good meal. Meanwhile he explained that he was here looking for art treasures and was going to take the chan
ce to motor to Stubendorf and perhaps see Kurt and find out if it was not possible to patch up the differences between them. They had been the closest of friends, and now Kurt’s bitterness of spirit troubled Lanny. What did Kurt’s brother think about the prospect?
Emil replied that he really couldn’t guess; he had had no communication from Kurt for two years. He didn’t know when Kurt had been freed from the prisoner-of-war camp, and he had only learned by accident that Kurt was seeking to return to Stubendorf. As to the matter of Kurt’s bitterness against Lanny, it might be possible that time had done something toward the healing of the wound. Emil said that Kurt had staked his whole being upon the Hitler adventure; he had poured out the fervour of his genius in its service, and he had failed. Lanny Budd had helped to cause his failure, and Kurt could probably not forgive that.
‘What I am thinking’, said Lanny, ‘is that he doesn’t like the Poles, and by now he must have realised that something worse than Poles has got possession of Stubendorf. How is he going to bring up his children in a Communist land? He may try to make good Germans of them, but the Communists will teach them to spy upon their father and report him. How is he going to meet that?’
‘I don’t know’, Emil admitted. ‘It won’t be easy for him, whatever he does and whatever he believes. I happen to know that his oldest boy, Fritz, has reacted strongly against the Nazis. He is in an Oberschule in East Berlin, where a friend of mine teaches. Kurt may try ever so hard to control his children’s minds, but the environment may be too strong for him. For all I know, he may even have decided to turn Red himself—if only with the idea of punishing the Americans. Thousands of the Nazis have done that’.
‘Gott bewahre!’ exclaimed Lanny. ‘That would be a hard thing for me to imagine about Kurt’.
‘Many things have happened in this old Europe that we could not have imagined, and I am afraid there will be many more’. Thus spoke Emil Meissner, in a slow, sad voice. He was saying that he had given this old Europe up. He was only a little over fifty, but his face was careworn and his expression grim. His hair had been straw-coloured when he was young, but now it was grey; it was cut short in Prussian fashion, and Lanny might guess that he had done the job himself. He was wearing a black suit which might have been bought for his father’s funeral more than twenty years ago. It had been carefully brushed but was worn green at the elbows and in the trouser seat. Few indeed were the Germans who wore good clothes in this year of 1946.
X
Lanny brought up the subject of the Himmler money. ‘Why certainly’, said Emil, ‘there is a black market in that stuff here in Nürnberg. My pupils have told me about it. They have been approached and invited to help in passing such money. It is a temptation to German youths seeking education and finding it difficult to get enough to eat in the meantime’.
Lanny ventured to say that he had a friend in the American government who was interested in tracing down these tempters of youth. Could Emil think of any young person who had sufficient strength of character to be trusted in identifying such evil ones and bringing them to punishment? That might be an honourable way for students to earn their food. The retired general thought for a while and decided to give Lanny the names of a couple of his students. It wasn’t the purpose for which Lanny had come, but there was no harm in picking up what small change might be offered. The Christmas holidays were not far off, and it might be possible for such a youth to make a trip to Stubendorf. It might even happen that the ‘pushers’ he met would send him to Stubendorf.
Lanny was interested in Emil’s observations of the new generation of Germans. What was their attitude toward the present abnormal situation? Every one of them, of course, would be determined upon the reuniting of the severed Fatherland. Which way would they have it—for the East to join the West or the West to join the East? The general-become-teacher reported that they were confused and divided in their opinion; the Reds had behaved like Huns, but their propaganda was tireless and very clever.
‘You must understand’, he explained, ‘for a dozen years the German people heard almost no truth about the Western world. This generation which I am teaching has never known what it is to live in a free society, where all facts are reported and all arguments are invited. They hardly know what to make of the idea of hearing both sides; it contradicts the basic principle of their training—to believe that what they are told must be true. The Americans and British have the better case, but the Reds are more expert in presenting theirs. They are tireless propagandists; they have nothing else to do but to spread the faith. The Americans can’t even seem to get started’.
Lanny explained, ‘It is against our traditions for the government to make propaganda or even to spread news. We take it for granted that that is a job for private interests’.
‘They will have to change their ideas if they hope to save East Germany from being dyed completely red. They seem to be making a start now; they have a little radio which they call D.I.A.S—Drahtfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, I believe it is’.
‘I have been told about it’, Lanny said. ‘It is a wired-radio system, using telephone lines. But they now have a thousand-watt transmitter mounted on an army truck; it will be RIAS, R for Rundfunk’.
‘It is beamed toward East Germany’, said Emil, ‘but we get it here, and people listen to it with an interest you can hardly imagine. They cannot afford books or even magazines from America, but any little radio set will do, and they get facts. That is what they want above anything else in the world, facts about what is going on’.
They talked a while about Kurt and what were Lanny’s chances with him. Emil said that his brother had a choice to make, a veritable Herculean choice: whether to join the free world or to become a Communist. ‘You know the old-time saying, “Extremes meet.” It was never more true than at present. Kurt hates the British and the Americans; the Reds have the same hate, and so they are drawn together. I see it here among my young people’.
‘But Kurt is a mature man, Emil. Surely he cannot help seeing that the Reds do not act according to their propaganda’.
‘Neither do the Christians, many of them, yet they make converts. Kurt’s home is in Poland, and he can hardly live there and go on hating the Communists. On the other hand, if he yields to their wiles, or pretends to, he can no doubt have honour and fame again. They will invite him to Moscow and welcome him as a distinguished artist. His name would have propaganda value among the Germans. I feel uneasy when I pick up a newspaper, fearing that I may find such an item of news’.
Lanny promised to do his best to avert that calamity, and to let the elder brother know what success he had. He persuaded Emil to accept the rest of his supply of food, and in the morning he motored back to Berlin, to report and prepare for the second and more difficult stage of his enterprise.
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Acknowledgments
A historical novelist who was not at the scene is dependent upon records for his facts. The present writer gratefully acknowledges help from the following worth-while books: Lucky Forward, by Robert S. Allen (Vanguard); Reilly of the White House, by Michael F. Reilly and William J. Slocum (Simon & Schuster); Salt Mines and Castles, by Thomas C. Howe, Jr. (Bobbs-Merrill); Nuremberg Diary, by G. M. Gilbert (Farrar, Straus); Alsos, by Samuel A. Goudsmit (Shumann); Roosevelt and Hopkins, by Robert E. Sherwood (Harper).
Personal thanks are due to some of these authors for personal help. Dr. Goudsmit, an eminent atomic physicist, read and checked every word of this large manuscript; Dr. Howe, director of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the municipal art museum of San Francisco, read all those pages having to do with his adventures in Europe; Robert Sherwood read the chapter having to do with the death of Roosevelt; Dr. Gilbert read the two chapters having to do with the Nürnberg trials; Colonel Allen answered questions, as did a number of other Army officers who are named in the story, including General Leslie A. Groves, who read and checked the chapter having to do with the New Mexico bomb test.
In this, which I hope will be the last volume of the series, I owe tribute to friends who read every one of its more than three million words and helped me avoid errors. S. K. Ratcliffe, English journalist and lecturer in America, knows his native land and its language better than any other man I know. R. E. Engelsberg, onetime deputy finance minister of Austria and for years a refugee in Pasadena, knows Europe and its major languages. Martin Birnbaum, art expert, and my schoolmate and violin teacher, knows all the arts, and consented to play the role of Zoltan in these books. And Ben Huebsch, best publisher any author could have or wish for, read World’s End in forty-eight hours and accepted it by telegraph; since then he has read three hundred and twenty-one chapters, one by one, and kept up my spirits for ten years. Also, you will find him as a character—has any novelist hitherto used his publisher as a character? (If so, perhaps it was not with praise.)
Finally, no envoi would be complete without a tribute to my wife, Mary Craig Sinclair. Her health has not permitted her to read three million words; her job has been to keep her husband alive and to exercise supervision by watching the mail and the clippings. By temperament, she agrees with the critics; by love and prayer she has kept the Lanny Budd books in the paths of righteousness. She thinks the author makes too many excuses for his erring characters; but she admits that perhaps the readers require that. Our address is Monrovia, California, and you may write and tell her if the spirit moves you.
About the Author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize—winning Lanny Budd series.