Munich
In the middle of the carriage was a table of SS officers at which Himmler was holding court. Sauer was among them. They were drinking mineral water. From his position Hartmann could see only the back of the Reichsführer’s shaven neck and his protuberant, rather delicate small pink ears. Plainly he was in excellent spirits. Eruptions of laughter punctuated his monologue. Sauer smiled mechanically with the others but always his gaze reverted to Hartmann.
Schmidt puffed on his pipe. ‘Mussolini, I must say, is very easy to translate – nothing abstract about him: a down-to-earth practical politician. The same is true of Chamberlain.’
‘The Führer I would imagine is somewhat different.’
Schmidt hesitated, then leaned across the table. ‘A monologue of twenty minutes is not uncommon. Sometimes even an hour. And then I have to read it all back in another language. If he’s in that mood in Munich, we’ll be there for days.’
‘Perhaps the others won’t put up with it.’
‘Chamberlain certainly gets impatient. He’s the only man I ever saw interrupt the Führer. This was at their first meeting, at Berchtesgaden. He said, “If you are so determined to proceed against Czechoslovakia, why did you let me come to Germany in the first place?” Imagine that! The Führer was speechless. There’s no love lost there, I tell you.’
Behind him the SS men roared with laughter. Schmidt winced, glanced over his shoulder and settled back in his seat. In a louder voice he said, ‘It’s such a relief to have you with me, Hartmann. Obviously, I’ll translate for the Führer and the other leaders, but if you can be on hand to help deal with the rest, that will ease my burden greatly. What languages do you have, apart from English?’
‘French. Italian. Some Russian.’
‘Russian! You won’t be requiring that!’
‘Nor Czech.’
Schmidt raised his eyebrows. ‘Quite.’
The adjutant re-entered the carriage and this time he stopped at their table. ‘Dr Schmidt, General Keitel is about to make some technical explanations to the Duce, and the Führer wants you to be present.’
‘Of course.’ Schmidt quickly knocked the contents of his pipe into the ashtray. In his anxiety he spilled ash across the table. ‘Sorry, Hartmann.’ He stood and buttoned his double-breasted jacket and tugged it down over his broad stomach. He jammed the pipe into his pocket. ‘Do I smell of smoke?’ he asked the adjutant. To Hartmann he said, ‘If he smells smoke, he’ll send you out of the room.’ He pulled out a tin of peppermints and popped a couple into his mouth. ‘I’ll see you later.’
After he had gone, Hartmann felt suddenly vulnerable, like a boy who had escaped being bullied only because he had stayed close to his teacher. He rose and made his way towards the front of the carriage. As he passed the SS table, Sauer called out, ‘Hartmann! Aren’t you going to salute the Reichsführer?’
Hartmann was aware of a sudden silence. He stopped, turned, clicked his heels and raised his arm. ‘Heil Hitler!’
Himmler’s watery eyes peered up at him from behind his rimless spectacles. The top half of his face was very smooth and pale, but around his lips and his weak chin there was already a five-o’clock shadow. He raised his arm slowly. He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it, my dear fellow.’ He flicked his fingers dismissively and lowered his arm.
As Hartmann reached the end of the dining car he heard another outbreak of laughter behind him. He guessed he must be the object of some joke. He felt his face begin to burn with shame. How much he loathed them! He pulled the door open violently and strode through the sleeper carriage. When he reached the front coach he tried the handle of the toilet door. Locked. He put his ear to it and listened but he could hear nothing. He lowered the nearby window and leaned out to get some air. The landscape was flat and monotonous, the fields brown and bare after the harvest. He turned his head into the onrushing air. The cold wind steadied his nerve. In the distance he could see factory chimneys. He guessed they must be nearing Munich.
The toilet door opened. One of the Wehrmacht signals officers emerged. They exchanged nods. Hartmann went inside and drew the bolt. The cubicle stank of human waste. Sodden yellow-stained paper was strewn across the floor. The smell seemed to catch in the back of his throat. He bent over the toilet bowl and retched. His face in the mirror when he stared into it was cadaverous, hollow-eyed. He splashed himself with water, then lowered himself on to his haunches and pulled away the panelling beneath the basin. His fingers felt around the pipework, the wall, the underside of the sink. Someone tried the toilet door. He couldn’t find the gun. He panicked. He reached in further, touched it and pulled it out. Now the door handle was being rattled vigorously.
‘All right,’ he called, ‘I’m finished.’
He slipped the Walther into his inside pocket. To cover the sound he made pushing the panel back into position he flushed the toilet again.
He half-expected to find Sauer in the corridor waiting to arrest him. Instead it was one of the Italian delegation in a pale grey fascist uniform. Hartmann returned his salute and lurched off down the passage. Inside his compartment he slid the door shut and hauled down his suitcase. He sat on the edge of the bottom bunk, rested it on his knees and opened it. The document was still inside. He hung his head in relief. He felt his body sway sideways. There was a scrape of metal, a slight shuddering beneath his feet. He looked up. Sunshine was glinting on the backs of houses and apartment buildings. Swastikas hung from some of the windows.
They were coming into Munich.
It was the time of the Oktoberfest, the annual funfair and folk festival, celebrated in these days of national unity under the official slogan Proud City, Cheerful Country. And now – behold! – there was another reason to be joyful. With only a few hours’ notice, the Party was calling on everyone to welcome the Führer and his distinguished foreign guests.
Citizens of Munich – Get out on to the streets! Starting 10.30 a.m.!
Schools had been closed and workers had been given time off. In the station, posters announced the various hotels where the delegations would be staying and the routes along which the leaders would travel: Bahnhof – Bayerstrasse – Karlsplatz – (Lenbachplatz – Hotel Regina, Hotel Continental) – Neuhauser Strasse – Kaufingerstrasse – Marienplatz – Dienerstrasse …
The moment he stepped off the train Hartmann could hear the crowd outside the station and the sound of a band playing. Göring was waiting on the platform wearing some elaborate black uniform, presumably of his own design, with broad white piping on the trouser legs and diamond-shaped lapels. Hartmann inwardly cringed at the vulgarity. He waited until the dictators and their entourages had descended from the train and passed him – Mussolini’s broad face lit up by a smile, like a child’s drawing of a sun – then he followed them across the station concourse.
When they emerged into the cobbled square of Bahnhof Platz the ovation was deafening. It was a hot day, sticky with humidity. People were lining the pavements and cramming the windows of the neighbouring post office building. Hundreds of young children were waving swastika flags. An SS honour guard in white gloves and black coal-scuttle helmets shouldered their rifles. A military band struck up the Italian national anthem. And yet what riveted Hartmann’s attention most was the grimness of Hitler’s expression. He stood through the anthems and inspected the troops as if this flummery was the very last thing he wanted. Only when two little girls in white dresses were allowed to pass through the line of police and present him and the Duce with flowers did he manage a smile. But as soon as he had given his bouquet to an aide and climbed into his open-topped Mercedes his expression darkened. Mussolini, still grinning, settled down beside him while Göring, Himmler, Keitel, Ciano and the other bigwigs piled into the cars behind. The convoy pulled away into Bayerstrasse. From the street came the sound of more cheering.
The crowd began to disperse. Hartmann looked around.
Beneath the colonnades of the station, a harassed official of the Foreign Ministry was explaining the
day’s protocol to those who had been left behind. The Führer and the Duce, he announced, reading from a sheet of paper, were presently on their way to the Prinz-Carl-Palais, where the Italians would be staying. The British and the French would be landing in less than an hour: the British would be put up at the Regina Palast Hotel, the French at the Vier Jahreszeiten. While the Duce refreshed himself, the Führer would return by motorcade to the Führerbau to prepare for the conference. The rest of the German delegation should make their way there immediately. For those who desired transport, cars were waiting; otherwise, it was only a short walk. Someone asked where they would be spending the night. The official looked up from his paper and shrugged: he did not know as yet. Perhaps the Bayerischer Hof. Hotel rooms were hard to come by during the Oktoberfest. The whole thing seemed slightly chaotic.
Hartmann chose to walk.
He had always been careful over the past few years to avoid this part of Munich. It was only a ten-minute stroll from the station, along a pleasant tree-lined street – past the Old Botanical Gardens, a girls’ school, some academic buildings – to the huge open space of Königsplatz. In his mind he had preferred to preserve it as he remembered it from that summer: a red-and-grey checked blanket spread beneath the trees, Leyna in a white dress with brown bare ankles, a picnic, Hugh reading, the scent of fresh-cut grass drying in the sun …
All gone!
The immensity of the vista stopped him in his tracks. He set down his suitcase in shock. It was worse than he had anticipated, worse even than in the newsreels. The park had been eradicated to provide a vast parade ground to stage the spectacles of the Third Reich. In place of the grass were tens of thousands of granite slabs. The trees had become metal flagpoles; from two hung swastikas more than 40 metres high. On either side of him was a Temple of Honour, supported by pillars of yellow limestone, each containing eight bronze sarcophagi where the martyrs of the Beer Hall Putsch were now interred. Eternal flames flickered in the hot sunshine, guarded by a pair of SS men standing inhumanly still, their faces sheened with sweat. Beyond the temple to his left was the hideous brutalist facade of the Nazi Party administration building, beyond the temple to his right its near-identical twin, the Führerbau. All was functional white and grey and black, straight lines and sharp edges; even the neoclassical columns of the temples were square.
Outside the Führerbau he could see activity: cars drawing up, guards, flashbulbs, milling crowds. Hartmann saluted the martyred dead as one was obliged by law to do – it was dangerous to disobey: one never knew who might be watching – picked up his suitcase and walked towards the conference.
4
The Prime Minister had worked throughout the flight and now he was finished. He closed a census report listing every county of the Czech Republic and the exact proportion of its population that was German-speaking and replaced it in his dispatch case. He screwed the cap back on to his fountain pen and returned it to his inside pocket. Then he lifted the red box from his knees and handed it to Legat who was waiting in the aisle.
‘Thank you, Hugh.’
‘Prime Minister.’
He carried the dispatch box to the back of the plane, locked it and stowed it in the luggage rack, then fastened his seat belt. From the pressure in his ears he guessed they must be descending. All conversation in the cabin had ceased. Each man was peering out of his window, alone with his thoughts. The plane jolted and shuddered in the clouds.
For a long time, they seemed to be diving towards the bottom of a rough sea. It was easy to imagine the vibrations tearing off an engine or a wing. But at last they dropped out of the base of the cloud, the shaking stopped, and a drab olive-green landscape appeared beneath them, scored by the clear white line of an autobahn running as straight as a Roman road between conifer forests and across hills and plains. Legat pressed his face to the glass. It was the first time he had seen Germany in six years. For his Foreign Office entrance examination, he had been required to translate Hauff into English and J. S. Mill into German. He had accomplished both tasks with time to spare. Yet the country itself remained a mystery to him.
They were losing height fast. He had to pinch his nose and swallow hard. The plane banked. In the distance he saw the factory chimneys and church spires of what he presumed must be Munich. They straightened, flew on for a minute or two, passed low above a field dotted with brown cattle. A hedge flashed past, there was a rush of grass, and then – once, twice, three times – they bounced along the ground and braked so hard he felt he was pitched forwards against the seat in front. The Lockheed skittered over the airfield, past terminal buildings that looked bigger than at Heston – two or three storeys, with crowds of people packed along the terraces and on the roof. Swastika banners hung from the parapet and fluttered from flagpoles alongside the Union Jack and the French tricolour. Legat thought of Wigram and was glad he was not alive to see it.
The Prime Minister’s plane came to a stop at Oberweisenfeld airport at 11.35 a.m. The engines whined and died. Inside the cabin, after three hours of flight the silence was a noise in itself. Commander Robinson emerged from the cockpit, bent to have a word with the Prime Minister and Wilson, then walked past Legat to the back of the plane, unlocked the door and lowered the steps. Legat felt a blast of warm air, heard German voices. Wilson rose from his seat. ‘Gentlemen, we should let the Prime Minister disembark first.’ He helped Chamberlain on with his overcoat and gave him his hat. The Prime Minister came down the slope of the aisle grabbing the headrests of the seats to steady himself. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw jutting, fixed, as if he were biting down on something. Wilson followed him and waited beside Legat while the Prime Minister descended to the concrete apron. He bent to peer out of the window. ‘My spies tell me you went to see Sir Alexander Cadogan last night.’ He said it quietly, without turning round. ‘Oh, God,’ he added quickly, ‘there’s Ribbentrop.’
He ducked through the door after Chamberlain. Behind him, Strang, Malkin, Ashton-Gwatkin and Dunglass were lining up to disembark. Legat waited until they had passed. Wilson’s remark had unsettled him. What did it mean? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps Cleverly had said something to him. He stood and put on his coat and hat, reached up to the rack and took down the Prime Minister’s red boxes. As he emerged from the plane a military band started playing ‘God Save the King’ and he had to stand awkwardly to attention on the steps. When they had finished that, and just as he was about to move, they embarked on ‘Deutschland über alles’. His gaze wandered across the crowded airfield in search of Hartmann – past the newsreel cameramen and the photographers, the official reception, the SS honour guard, the dozen big Mercedes limousines with swastika pennants drawn up side by side. He couldn’t see him. He wondered if he had changed much. The music ended to loud applause from the crowds in the terminal. A chant of ‘Cham-ber-lain! Cham-ber-lain!’ drifted over the concrete. Ribbentrop gestured to the Prime Minister and the two men walked across the apron to inspect the line of soldiers.
At the foot of the steps, an SS officer with a clipboard asked Legat for his name. He scanned the list. ‘Ah, yes, you have replaced Herr Syers.’ He placed a small tick beside it. ‘You are assigned to the fourth car,’ he said in German, ‘with Herr Ashton-Gwatkin. Your luggage will be taken to the hotel. Please.’ He tried to take the red boxes.
‘No, thank you. I need to keep these.’
There was a brief tug of war until finally the German let go.
The Mercedes was open-topped. Ashton-Gwatkin was already seated in the back. He wore a heavy overcoat with an astrakhan collar. He was perspiring profusely in the heat. ‘What an absolute beast,’ he murmured as the SS man moved away. He turned his hooded eyes on Legat. Legat knew him by reputation only – the most brilliant classicist of his year at Oxford even though he had left without taking a degree, a Japanese scholar, the husband of a ballerina, childless, a poet, a novelist whose lurid bestseller, Kimono, had caused such resentment in Tokyo he had had to be recalled – and now an expe
rt on the economy of the Sudetenland!
Legat said, ‘The PM is hating every minute of this.’
Chamberlain was hurrying through his review of the SS formation. He barely bothered to glance at the young men in their black uniforms. He also ignored Ribbentrop, whom he detested. When he realised he was supposed to share the lead car with the German Foreign Minister, he looked around helplessly for Wilson. But there was no escape. The two men settled into the open Mercedes and the cortège moved off, slowly passing along the length of the airport terminal in order that the crowds could cheer Chamberlain, who politely raised his hat in acknowledgement. At the airport gate they turned south towards Munich.
Hartmann had booked their tickets during Hilary term 1932. They had just been to the Cotswolds to visit Legat’s mother in her cottage in Stow-on-the-Wold. She hated all Huns on principle; Paul she had adored. When they got back to Balliol that Sunday night, Hartmann had said, ‘My dear Hugh, as soon as finals are over, allow me to show you some proper countryside for a change – something that is not merely “pretty”.’ He had a girlfriend who lived in Bavaria: they could meet up with her.
It had never occurred to either of them that while life went on in Oxford in the same old way, Hindenburg might dissolve the Reichstag and provoke a general election. They had arrived in Munich on the same summer’s day that Hitler had addressed a giant rally outside the city, and however much they had tried to ignore politics and get on with their vacation, there had been no escape, not even in the smallest town. Legat remembered a blur of marches and counter-marches, the Storm Battalion versus the Iron Front, demonstrations outside buildings and arguments in cafés, Nazi posters – ‘Hitler over Germany!’ ‘Germany Awake!’ – that were put up by the Brownshirts during the day and torn down by the leftists overnight, a meeting in a park that had ended in a cavalry charge by mounted police. When Leyna had insisted that they go and stand outside Hitler’s apartment, and had shouted abuse when he appeared, they had been lucky not to be beaten up themselves. It was a long way from Hauff and J. S. Mill.