The Wooden Shepherdess

  “Dungeons, and chains....” What a sorry let-down for the child it was when instead of all that a kindly blue-coat—blessed with a wonder-mustache like bicycle-handlebars—led them along to a bright, well-furnished and almost cheerful room overlooking the Marsplatz and filled with the lovely sound of trains! For there stood Uncle Dolf—and there wasn’t a chain in sight.... But the child soon forgot his first disappointment, entranced once more by his darling “Uncle’s” lively affectionate eyes and the man-to-man way he spoke to you, using his hands when he spoke and rocking heel-and-toe with his head on one side when he listened. But most of all was the child enslaved by that magical voice: there were notes which set the table itself vibrating, and tingled the tiny fingers which touched the wood. Then Uncle climbed on a chair to fish about on the wardrobe-top for his secret box of sugar-cakes, afterwards setting the child on his knee to share them and talking to Putzi over the little boy’s head. As for his coming trial, he simply pooh-poohed it: he’d only to tell from the dock just a few of the truths he knew about General Lossow and all his plots to blow the whole prosecution sky-high.

  This Putzi passed over in silence but inwardly didn’t believe it. Whatever he’d said in the tram his political hopes were shattered: High Treason was hardly a charge you could just laugh off! Let this optimist cut all the capers he liked in court, conviction was certain; and long before Hitler came out of jail they’d all be forgotten. This was their own fault of course for banking too much on any one man: without him, it all falls to pieces.... The future looked irredeemably black. It was nice to find his friend so cheerful, but even euphoria can’t do away with facts.

  *

  Meanwhile the date of the trial was drawing near.

  Visiting Otto in hospital, one day Franz brought with him Reinhold Steuckel (his friend the Eminent Jurist), laden with fruit and copies of Simplicissimus. Reinhold indeed had insisted on coming. Franz had brought him with some reluctance, for surely the ultra-intellectual Reinhold and Otto the simple soldier couldn’t have much in common—but only to find them hitting it off together at once. For during the War they had served in the same part of the line; and Franz was amazed to discover how much his illustrious elder civilian acquaintance seemed to know about up-to-date Army politics, Army gossip.

  Presently Reinhold spoke of the coming trial. Otto would only be fit for discharge two days before it began, and certainly couldn’t endure long hours in court; but Reinhold insisted that Franz at least stopped on for the fireworks, and promised to get him a seat. Ludendorff: after Hindenburg, surely the greatest name that the War had produced, though admittedly somewhat blown-upon since.... Half the journalists in the world, said Reinhold, were coming to Munich to see the great General Ludendorff tried for High Treason. “But don’t you bother your head about Generals! No, the fellow to watch is the late Lance-Corporal: how will he play his cards? Will he shift all the blame on to Ludendorff—shoulders broad enough surely to bear it—in which case the worst he faces is deportation? Ah, but that means taking a very back-seat—and back-seats, somehow, aren’t in character. Even suppose it meant facing a firing squad he’s the sort who couldn’t help sticking his neck out....” “But surely, Justice-Minister Gürtner....” Franz struggled to interrupt, while Reinhold raised a hand to show him he wasn’t allowed: “ ... which it couldn’t of course, for he isn’t that dangerous.—Yes: you were going to say, my friend: ‘An Ajax defying the lightning, but knowing that Mr. Jupiter-Gürtner won’t let Ajax really get hurt.’”

  “I wouldn’t go, even if I were fit,” said the practical Otto: “For what can his antics matter? Whatever he says or does at the trial, Hitler has now no political future: he’s finished—and Gott sei Dank!” Otto had scant respect for his former dispatch-rider, knowing a little too much about him (things he kept locked in his breast, since other names were involved); and little as Otto liked Ludendorff either, it didn’t seem decent to witness the General’s shame.

  But Franz was persuaded: since everyone seemed so sure that Hitler would be deported, it seemed a bit silly to miss a German’s very last chance of hearing his speak. He would stop on at least for the first few days, to see how the trial went....

  Even then he might never have stayed if he hadn’t run into some friends his own age who could talk about nothing else: for one of these friends was Lothar Scheidemann, Wolff’s younger brother—that Wolff who had gone off his head and hanged himself in the Lorienburg attics, the Wolff who had been Franz’s hero....

  Not since their schooldays had Franz seen Lothar until the day when they buried Wolff; but ever since then he had tried to keep up with him. Lothar was all he had left of the glorious Wolff.

  11

  So Otto went home alone that Sunday. On Tuesday the trial began, and it lasted a whole five weeks; but Franz and his friends didn’t miss a single public hearing, and even the Eminent Jurist looked in whenever he could.

  Reinhold of course was among the glittering throng on that final gala occasion of Tuesday, April the First 1924, that All Fools Day when the sentences were pronounced. Men in the court were in full-dress uniform: ladies wore red-black-and-white cockades of the old Imperial Colors, and loaded the nine convicted men in the dock with flowers as if they were prima-donnas (for only nine were convicted though ten were accused: the angry Ludendorff had to endure the shameful eclipse of the only acquittal).

  Hitler’s performance at least had deserved the bouquets. Reinhold had hardly guessed a quarter of Hitler’s audacity, not only not taking shelter behind the Old War-Lord but stealing the limelight from Ludendorff right at the start; and once he was in it, he never let anyone shoulder him out of it. Journalists come from the whole wide world to see the great Ludendorff tried stayed on to listen entranced to this unknown man who was putting the whole Prosecution itself on trial. He spoke to the Press direct with hardly a glance at his judges, and made the headlines every day all over Germany. As for the Foreign Press.... You had got to admit this was honest and forthright stuff, these days, from the hypocritical Boche; and the foreign papers duly admitted it.

  Even in England Gilbert had glanced at brief reports before March was out; and even the English papers by now had learned to spell “Hitler” properly.

  Hitler made no pretense that he hadn’t intended to topple the Weimar Republic, and boasted he’d do it yet. But was that “Treason?” For who were these traitors of 1918 to prate about Treason? His only regret was his failure—so far.... His scathing indictment against the chief Prosecution witnesses (Kahr and Seisser and General Lossow) was first and foremost that they’d been the cause of his failure; and second, that they—with their Monarchist plots for a Wittelsbach restoration and taking Bavaria out of the Reich—were fully as guilty of treason against the Reich as he was.... On which Prosecution Counsel rose to object, and the wooden-faced judges looked even more wooden—for more than one had been present himself on Kahr’s invitation that night in the Bürgerbäukeller, and knew very well what he’d come for....

  “The place for all three,” said Hitler, “is here in the dock!”

  But Hitler reserved his bitterest taunts for General Lossow, the turncoat whose “officer’s honor” allowed him to turn his coat not once but twice in a single night: the scabrous Army Commander who’d called out the Army against the Holy Cause of raising Germany out of the mire.... One day the Army would recognize their mistake of November the Ninth: one day, the Army and he would march shoulder-to-shoulder—and Heaven help anyone then who tried to stand in their way! Thank God that the bullets which felled the Residenzstrasse Martyrs were fired by mere civilian police, and the Army’s honor was clean of that infamous massacre....

  Oh, the fire and the force of the man—as if all Germany spoke with his voice.... And oh, that ferocious magnificent voice! Deep and sonorous: harsh, or strong, and resonant: sometimes it sounded soft and warm, but only the better a moment later to freeze your spine. Franz was carried away by it clean off his feet, like almost everyone there. r />
  Out of the miscreant three, it was only Lossow himself who even attempted to put in his place this jumped-up Corporal daring to criticize Generals: “When I first heard that famous tongue I was quite impressed; but then each time I heard it again it impressed me less and less.” For he soon discovered, said General Lossow, that this was merely an ignorant dreamer: someone whose golden tongue outstripped a less-than-average brain, with scarcely a single idea he could call his own and no practical judgement at all. No wonder in Army days he had never risen above Lance-Corporal’s rank—it was all he was fit for. “And yet,” said General Lossow with withering scorn, “this nincompoop now has the nerve to imagine himself a Gambetta—or even as Germany’s Mussolini!”

  But then the tables were turned: for the General had to submit to a cross-examination by Hitler, and Hitler contrived to pierce even Lossow’s patrician hide till—turning a vivid purple—the General thumped the floor with his scabbard and stumped from the court for fear a blood-vessel broke.

  Last Thursday had been the day of Hitler’s final peroration. So! People accused him of taking too much on himself.... Must the man whose conscience drives him to save his country modestly wait to be asked to? Or is the Worker “taking too much on himself” when he puts every ounce of his strength in his task? Does the Thinker “wait to be asked” before burning the midnight oil to achieve some discovery? Never! And neither must someone whose Destiny calls him to lead a nation. He too must wait for the call of no other will than his own: he must flog himself up the lonely peaks of power, not “wait to be asked.” “For make no mistake!” he thundered: “I want no mere ‘Mr. Minister Hitler’ carved on my tomb, but ‘Here lies the Final Destroyer of Marxism’!”

  Lothar was nearly turned out for applauding; and so were dozens of others.

  “As for this Court,” said Hitler, turning his eyes full on to his judges for once: “I don’t give a fig for its verdict! The only acquittal I care for will come from the smiling Goddess of History: come when I and the German Army finally reconciled stand side-by-side before that eternal Last Court of Judgement, the High Court of God.”

  Then Hitler sat down.

  *

  Once you cooled off, it was all just a little absurd; and General Lossow was probably right that the man had no practical sense, no sense of proportion. But still, it did seem a pity the Government had to deport such an ace-entertainer: Politics hadn’t got many his like.

  Deportation of course would have spelled the end (thought Reinhold), as well the prisoner knew; but by proving his own guilt up to the hilt he had played his cards in a way which had made deporting him just what his enemies couldn’t do. Or at any rate, couldn’t do yet: for the mildest sentence the Code provided for proven Treason was five years’ fortress-confinement.

  But five years’ total eclipse for Hitler, like Toni rotting forgotten? The Code did also provide that the prisoner could be released on parole after serving a bare six months; and with Justice-Minister Gürtner tipping the scales of Justice, a little bird said....

  12

  So Hitler returned to Landsberg, shattering finally Toni’s peace: for instead of the former handful of Nazis with him, the fruits of this main and one or two minor trials had now brought their numbers to forty—including Willi, still limping a bit from the wound he got in the Putsch. With Hitler allowed all the visits he cared to receive, this formerly quiet retreat was a bedlam indeed in Toni’s eyes.

  Few of these visitors came empty-handed. On Hitler’s thirty-fifth birthday (bedazzled warders informed the Count) the flowers and parcels had filled some three or four rooms; and for Willi, like all the rest of the starveling rank and file, life had never before been so easy. They’d all the fine food they could eat, sent in by those outside admirers; and when they had eaten too much, a private gymnasium where they could work it off afterwards.

  Hitler himself could never take part in their sports, for a Leader must never risk his charisma by being defeated—not even at dominoes. Thus he began to show signs of putting on weight on his prison diet of prime Westphalia hams and the like washed down with occasional brandies. His cheeks began to fill out, and he seemed more relaxed: his mind still ran like a mill-race, but nervously more relaxed. At first his harangues to the Inner Circle had never ceased; but no one on holiday wants to hear nothing but shop, so presently some bright lad remarked to the Führer that all this ought to go in a book—and it worked. Thereafter Hitler spent most of his time in his private study, writing Mein Kampf. The rays of the midsummer sun shone in on the rosy cheeks of an almost contented Hitler, dictating to Hess by the hour what Hess took down on a battered old Remington. That left everyone else pretty free to enjoy his own form of fun: which in Willi’s case mostly was reading Westerns, and practicing on the flute.

  In short, they had nothing to fear but release.

  *

  It was not till July (that July of 1924 which had seen Augustine already ensconced in the New England woods) that Franz paid at last his belated visit to Toni. They talked about anything rather than Hitler. The passing effect on Franz of those trial speeches had long worn off—and anyway, wasn’t the man in jail for the next five years and his bolt incontestably shot? For Franz (like most other folk) took “finish” for granted.

  But two days after this Landsberg visit Franz and Reinhold met by chance in the Marienplatz and Reinhold carried his young friend off for a drink. The Eminent Jurist didn’t seem nearly so sure: “‘Five years,’ say you? But that prison sentence was only a farce, for Berlin’s benefit. Redwitz thinks he’ll be out by August; and once he rids himself of Rosenberg’s crazy racist ideas the man could go far.... But look! That’s Carl over there, with his tongue hanging out: he’s a bird-witted scamp but one of the intimates. Let’s call him over, and hear the latest.” Reinhold cupped his hands to his mouth: “Carl, my treasure!” he called like hailing a cab: then he whispered to Franz as the man approached, “I can’t ever help teasing Carl: if I go too far you must kick me under the table.”

  Franz recognized “Carl” at once. Two days ago they had found themselves sharing the pleasant walk from Landsberg Fortress back to the railway station. Both had remarked on the singular baroque charm of that little town set on the wooded banks of the Lech; and both had joined in deploring Sir Hubert Herkomer’s infamous “Mutter-Turm.” But once in the train this fellow had talked about nothing but Hitler: how he and Hitler were close as two peas on a pod, and how Hitler prized his advice. By Kaufering Junction Franz had had more than enough, and had got in a separate carriage.

  But Carl at first was a bit hard to draw. “There is no Nazi Party: you know very well that the Courts have dissolved it,” he said morosely, and sat there biting his nails.

  “True. But this new ‘Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Freiheits-Bewegung’ which did so well at the spring elections: don’t we see all the same names? The old Nazi nucleus, bound man to man by the bonds which Adversity forges?”

  This touched Carl on the raw: “‘Bound together’ my foot!” he exclaimed: “They’re fighting like cats.” Then he added, defensively: “That’s betraying no secrets: they do it in public, worse luck!”

  “I did hear that Rosenberg threatens to prosecute Streicher and Esser for Defamation,” said Reinhold. “In all this fun-and-games, whose side are you on?”

  Carl drew in his chin a bit primly: “It isn’t so much any question of sides as of levels. Rosenberg ranks as a lofty Thinker: with Strasser and Röhm he stands for our highest Nazi ideals. But Streicher and Esser are Calibans: sub-human brutes, who must both be kicked out of our Movement—and kicked so hard that it hurts, it’s the only language they understand.”

  Carl drained his glass with a flourish, while Reinhold murmured to Franz: “But Streicher and Esser.... Observe that they too wear metal-toed boots.” Then Reinhold continued aloud, to Carl: “It must be horrid for decent chaps like your-self and Rosenberg, both of you intellectuals, forced to consort with such Canaille as Streicher and Es
ser.... But by the way,” he added off-hand: “They tell me that poor old Göring’s been kicked out already? Why’s that—except that Göring’s knocked out by his martyr’s wound, and recovering somewhere abroad?” (“Unlike Esser and Streicher,” he left unsaid, “so very much here on the spot.”) “But what has Glamour-Boy done?”

  “I know, I know.... But you see, Röhm needs a completely free hand rebuilding the Militant Arm and Göring might try to take over again if he could.”

  Reinhold’s knowing look was downright embarrassing: catching his eye the poor Carl wriggled, and looked confused.... “But what has he got to say of all this—the Leader himself, God bless him?” asked Reinhold, erecting his finger as if in a miniature Fascist salute. “Doubtless you visit him often?”

  “Of course—I am closeted with him weekly.” Carl’s raddled face broke into satisfied smiles: he was never the man to stay solemn too long, and his smile was the key to his charm. “I must put him wise, or—shut up in Landsberg with idiots like Hess—how else could he know what went on?”

  “So you are his eyes and ears? Dear boy that must help him no end, with your balanced searching intelligence.” Much as Reinhold enjoyed this teasing, he let that fact not appear at all in his flattering voice. “And doubtless the Leader opens his mind to you too, so there’s much you can tell us. For instance: I take it his noble soul is wholly delighted at Röhm’s astounding success resurrecting the Storm Troops?—Although some less altruistic spirit, perhaps, might fear that the stronger they grow the more Prime Minister Held gets alarmed and postpones his release....”