The Winds of War

  But once on dry land, after a decent meal or two with good wine, and a long luxurious night’s sleep in a large soft hotel bed, she wondered at her own panic. Neither in Naples nor in Rome was there much sign that Italy was at war. The summer flowers spilled purple and red over stucco walls in bright sunshine, and in crowded streets the Italians went their lively ways as usual. Jocular, sunburned young soldiers had always abounded in Italian trains and cafés. They appeared as unbuttoned and placid as ever.

  After the long, hot, filthy train ride to Siena, her first distant glimpse of the old town, rising out of the vine-covered round hills, gave her a stifled bored feeling, almost as Miami streets did. “God, who ever thought I’d come back here?” she said to herself. The hills outside the town already showed the veiled dusty green of midsummer. In Siena nothing had changed. The after-lunch deadness lay on the town; scarcely a dog moved in the empty red streets in the sun. It took her half an hour to find a working taxicab.

  Aaron, in his broad-brimmed white hat and yellow Palm Beach summer suit, sat in his old place in the shade of the big elm, reading a book. Beyond him, over the ravine, the black-and-white cathedral towered above the red-roofed town. “Natalie! You made it! Splendid.” He came stumping toward her on a cane, with one foot in a metal-framed cast. “I called and called for a taxicab, but when it was time for my nap none had come. I did have a wonderful nap.—Come inside, my dear, you’ll want some refreshment. Giuseppe will see to your things.”

  The house looked the same, though the heavy foyer furniture now wore its green chintz slipcovers. In his study the pile of manuscript, the pile of notes, the array of reference books, were all in the same places. His writing board lay on the desk, with the yellow pages of his day’s work clipped to it, awaiting morning revision.

  “Why, Aaron, you haven’t even begun to pack!”

  “We’ll talk about it over tea,” he said, with an embarrassed smile. “I suppose you’d like to have a wash first?”

  “But what’s the situation, Uncle Aaron? Haven’t you heard from Rome? Didn’t word come from Washington?”

  “Word came from Washington. That was fine of Leslie.” He sank into a chair. “I really can’t stand on this ankle yet for more than a few minutes. I stupidly fell again when it was almost healed. What a nuisance I am! But anyway, I reached page 967 today, and I do think it’s goodish. Now go and have a wash, Natalie, you look positively boiled, and you’re caked with dust.”

  The young consul in Florence received her affably, rising from behind a heavy carved black desk to escort her to a chair. The room reeked of the rum-flavored tobacco he was smoking in a curved rough briar pipe. The Sherlock Holmes prop looked odd in his small hand. He had a pink-and-white face, gentle bright blue eyes, and a childish thin mouth with the lower lip pulled in as though at some permanent grievance. His blond hair was thick, short, and straight. His gray silk suit, pinned white collar, and blue tie were elegant and neat. His desk name-plate read AUGUST VAN WINAKER II.

  He said in a quavering voice, clearing it of hoarseness as he talked, “Well! The eminent author’s niece, eh? What a pleasure. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you this morning, but I was just up to my ears.”

  “Perfectly all right,” Natalie said.

  He waved his little hand loosely. “People have been scurrying home in droves, you see, and just dumping everything on the consulate. There’s an awful lot of commerce still going on, and I’m stuck with the paperwork. I’m becoming a sort of broker and business agent for any number of American companies—unpaid, of course. I was in the most unbelievable snarl this morning over—of all things—a truckload of insecticide! Can you bear it? And, of course, there still are Americans in Florence. The screwier they are, the longer they stay.” He giggled and rubbed his back hair. “The trouble I’ve been having with these two girls, room-mates, from California! I can’t mention names, but one of them is from a rich Pasadena oil family. Well! She’s gotten herself engaged to this slick little Florentine sheik, who calls himself an actor but actually is nothing but an overgrown grocery boy. Well, this oily charmer has gone and gotten her room-mate pregnant, my dear! The three of them have been having all-night brawls, the police have been in, and—oh, well. You don’t get rich in this work, but there’s never a dull moment.” He poured water from a tall bottle into a heavy cut-glass goblet, and drank. “Excuse me. Would you like some Évian water?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I have to drink an awful lot of it. Some stupid kidney thing. Somehow it gets worse in the spring. I actually think Italian weather leaves a lot to be desired, don’t you? Well!” His inquiring bland look seemed to add—“What can I do for you?”

  Natalie told him about the new wrinkle in Jastrow’s situation. The day Italy had entered the war, a man from the Italian security police had visited Jastrow and warned him that, as a stateless person of Polish origin, he was confined to Siena until further notice. She mentioned, as cordially as she could, that the OVRA undoubtedly knew this fact from intercepting Van Winaker’s letter.

  “Oh, my God, how perfectly awful,” gasped the consul. “Is that what’s happened? You’re quite right, I didn’t have my thinking cap on when I wrote that letter. Frankly, Natalie—if I may call you that—I was floored when your name came in today. I figured you’d have come and gone by now and taken your troublesome uncle home. He has been a trial, you know. Well! This is a pretty kettle of fish. I thought the visa solved everything and that I’d seen the last of the Jastrow case.”

  “What do we do now?” Natalie said.

  “I’m blessed if I know, just offhand,” said Van Winaker, running his fingers through his hair upward from the back of his neck.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Natalie spoke softly and sweetly. “Just renew his passport, Mr. Van Winaker. That would stop the statelessness business. They couldn’t hold him back then.”

  Van Winaker drank more Évian water. “Oh, Natalie, that’s so easy to say! People don’t see the screaming directives we get, warning us against abuse of the passport system. People don’t see departmental circulars about consuls who’ve been recalled and whose careers have gone poof! because they were loose about these things. Congress makes the immigration laws, Natalie. The Consular Service doesn’t. We’re simply sworn to uphold them.”

  “Mr. Van Winaker, the Secretary of State himself wants Aaron cleared. You know that.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight.” Van Winaker held up a stiff finger, his round blue eyes gone sober. He puffed his pipe and waved it at her. “I have had no instructions from the Secretary. I’m extremely glad we’re doing this face to face, Natalie, instead of on paper. He couldn’t go on record as intervening for one individual against another in matters involving equal treatment under law.” The eyes relaxed in a sly twinkle. “I did hear from Rome, between you and me, that his office asked us to expedite your uncle’s departure. I was stretching way over backwards, honestly, issuing that visa, jumping him to the head of a list of hundreds and hundreds of names.” Van Winaker knocked his pipe into a thick copper tray, and went on in a different, gossipy tone. “Actually, I think time will solve your uncle’s problem. The French are already asking for an armistice. The British won’t fight on very long. They’d be mad to try. If they do, the Luftwaffe will pound them to a jelly in short order. No, I fear me this round goes to Fritz. No doubt they’ll have another go twenty years hence, when I devoutly hope to be out to pasture.”

  “But we can’t count on the war ending,” Natalie expostulated.

  “Oh, I think you can. I expect peace by July first, if not sooner, Natalie. Then these wartime exit regulations will lapse and your uncle can just pick up and go home. Actually, this gives him the leisure to sort and crate his books. He seemed so concerned about his books.”

  “I want to take Uncle Aaron home tomorrow, and abandon books and everything. Please give him the passport.”

  “My dear, the contradiction in dates is right there in your uncle’
s expired book. It’s incredible how those things used to slip through, but I’ve seen a hundred such cases if I’ve seen one. People used to be mighty careless! Now that it’s been detected and made a matter of record, he has no more claim to American citizenship, technically speaking, than Hitler does. I couldn’t be sorrier, but it’s my duty to tell you the law.”

  This man was getting on Natalie’s nerves. The use of Hitler’s name disgusted her. “It strikes me that your duty is to help us, and that you’re not really doing it.”

  He opened his eyes very wide, blinked, drank more Évian, and slowly stuffed his pipe, staring at the tobacco. “I have a suggestion. It’s off the record, but I think it’ll work.”

  “Tell me, by all means.”

  He pushed his hair straight up. “Just go.”

  She stared at him.

  “I mean that! He’s got his visa. You’ve got your passport. Hop a bus or train, or hire a car, and scoot to Naples. Ignore the confinement to Siena. The Italians are so sloppy! Get on the first boat and just leave. You won’t be stopped. Nobody’s watching your uncle.”

  “But won’t they ask for an exit permit?”

  “It’s a trivial formality, dear. Say you lost it! Fumbling for it, you happen to take out a few thousand lire and put it on the table.” He blinked humorously. “Customs of the country, you know.”

  Natalie felt her self-control giving way. Now the man was advising them to bribe an official, to risk arrest and imprisonment in a Fascist country. Her voice rose to shrillness. “I think I’d rather go to Rome and tell the Consul General that you’re thwarting the desire of the Secretary of State.”

  The consul drew himself up, smoothed his hair with both hands, put them on the table, and said slowly and primly, “That is certainly your privilege. I’m prepared to take the consequences of that, but not of breaking the law. As it happens, I’m exceptionally busy, several other people are waiting, so—”

  Natalie understood now how her uncle had fallen foul of this man. With a quick change to a placating smile, she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been travelling for two straight weeks, I’ve just lost my father, and I’m not in the best of shape. My uncle’s disabled and I’m very troubled about him.”

  At once the consul responded to the new manner. “I entirely understand, Natalie. Tell you what, I’ll comb his file again. Maybe I’ll come up with something. Believe me, I’d like nothing better than to see him go.

  “You will try to find a way to give him a passport?”

  “Or to get him out. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll give it my serious attention. That’s a promise. Come back in a week.”

  Eagle and Sea Lion

  (from WORLD EMPIRE LOST)

  The False Legend

  The British have always been brilliant at war propaganda. Their portrayal of the so-called Battle of Britain was their supreme triumph of words. For uninformed people, their propaganda has hardened into history. A serious military discussion has to start by clearing away the fairy tales.

  After the fall of France, Germany was incomparably stronger than England on the ground, about equally matched in the air, and gravely inferior at sea. Our surface navy was weak and meager; only the U-boat arm had real weight. The whole problem in the summer of 1940 was to force a decision across a sea barrier. In a set-piece invasion campaign, therefore, the British held the crucial advantage.

  I have already stated, in my outline of Case Yellow, my belief that had we improvised a surprise crossing in June, when the disarmed British land forces were reeling home from Dunkirk, and their fleet was on far-flung stations, we might have conquered England in a short fierce campaign. But Hitler had passed up that chance. The resilient English had caught their breaths, instituted drastic anti-invasion measures, and marshalled their powerful navy to block a channel crossing. At that point, Germany could only attack in the air, either to force a decision or to blast a path for invasion.

  At the start one must compare the opposed air forces. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people, including Germans, still believe that a vast and powerful Luftwaffe was defeated by a valorous handful of Thermopylae defenders in RAF uniforms—or, in the words of the great phrasemaker, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” In fact, both Germany and England had about a thousand fighter planes when the contest began. Germany’s bomber command was larger than England’s, but the English bombers, at least the newer ones, were heavier, longer-ranged, and more powerfully armed.

  Hitler and Göring, of course, voiced the most extravagant boasts about the Luftwaffe, to induce the British to make peace. Churchill, on the other hand, played up the fact that England was outnumbered and alone, so as to pull the United States into the war. As a result, the contest took on a false aspect of David against Goliath.

  British Advantages

  Not only is the conventional picture distorted on the comparison of forces; it takes no account of the handicaps under which the Luftwaffe operated.

  Most of the battle was fought over the British air bases. Every German pilot shot down over land was lost, either dead or a prisoner. But a downed British pilot, if he were unharmed, could soon take another plane into the skies. The German pilot had only a few minutes of flying time in which to do battle, for our fighters had a fuel limit of ninety minutes or so, most of which was consumed simply in getting to the scene and returning to base. The British pilot, as soon as he had climbed to combat altitude, could fight until he ran out of bullets or gas.

  Because of our fighter planes’ short range, we could reach only the southeast corner of England. The Luftwaffe was like a tethered falcon, with London at the far end of the tether. The rest of the United Kingdom was fairly safe from air attack, because unescorted bombers ran a high risk of annihilation. The Royal Air Force could retire beyond range at will for rest and repair; and far beyond the firing line could keep fresh reserves and could rush the building of new planes.

  Our fighters were further handicapped by orders to fly in close formation with the bombers, like destroyers screening battleships. No doubt this gave the bomber pilots a sense of security, but it hobbled the fighters. In air combat, “seek out and destroy” is the rule of rules. Fighter pilot teams should be free to roam the air space, spot the enemy, and strike first. Göring could never grasp this elementary point, though his fighter aces kept urging it on him. As our bomber losses climbed, he insisted more and more violently that the fighters should nursemaid the bombers, almost wingtip to wingtip. This seriously depressed pilot morale, already strained by prolonged combat and the death of many comrades.

  Finally, the British in 1940 had one lucky scientific edge. They were first in the field with battleworthy radar and the fighter control it made possible. They could follow our incoming flights and speed their fighters straight at us. No fuel was wasted in patrol, nor were forces dispersed in search. If not for this factor alone, the Luftwaffe fighter command might have won a quick knockout victory. For in the end the Luftwaffe did all but shoot the Royal Air Force out of the skies. Churchill himself—and he is not interested in praising the German effort—states that in September the battle tilted against his fighter command.

  Our attack at that point shifted to strategic bombing of London. Churchill asserts that it was Göring’s fatal mistake. In truth, given the onset of bad weather, the provocative terror-bombing of our cities which required stern immediate retaliation, and the fact that invasion had to be tried before October 1 or not at all, the shift was almost mandatory. I discuss this point in detail in my day-by-day analysis of the campaign.

  The Purpose of “Eagle Attack”

  Adlerangriff, the Luftwaffe’s “Eagle Attack” on England in the summer of 1940, was essentially a peacemaking gesture. It was a limited effort, intended to convince the British that to prolong the war would serve no purpose. The effort had to be made before the attack on Russia, to protect our rear to the westward. Th
at it failed was of course a tragedy for Germany, since we were condemned to carry on this climactic world battle on two fronts. Historians are curiously slow to realize that it was more tragic for England.

  Germany, after all, entered the war with little to lose, but in 1939 England was the world’s first power. As a result of the war, though a supposed victor, she lost her world-girdling empire and shrank to the size of her home islands. Had the Adlerangriff induced her to make peace with Germany in 1940, that empire would almost surely still be hers, so it is hard to understand why the so-called Battle of Britain was her “finest hour.” Her pilots performed with dash and valor, like their German racial cousins. But England threw away her last chance to prolong her world role, linked to a vigorous rising continental power; after that, she allied herself with Bolshevism to crush that power, Europe’s last bastion against barbaric Asia; and she became as a result a weak withered satellite of the United States.

  This debacle was all the work of the visionary adventurer Churchill, to whom the people had never before given supreme office. Churchill cast himself in the role of St. George saving the world from the horrible German dragon. He had the pen and the tongue to push this legend. He himself always believed it. The English believed it long enough to lose their empire, before becoming disillusioned and voting him out.