The Vengeance of Rome

  She and I cross the road and continue down Blenheim Crescent. Half the houses on the other side are boarded up. I hear there is some plan to build a new luxury complex. Who will occupy it? The gypsies? The blacks? The old council houses are no longer good enough for their tenants! It makes me sick. Those people would still be grubbing in the dirt for insects to eat if it were not for the 10 per cent or so of us who are remotely civilised. And they say they have a right to better living conditions! What qualifications have they for these rights? That they were born? In that case the rats and mice have rights. They, too, were born. Let us make sure they are housed in five-star hotels.

  ‘Well, look ‘oo it isn’t,’ says Mrs Cornelius.

  The frail, thin figure of Major Nye is making its way up Blenheim Crescent towards us accompanied by another, slightly bulkier figure. Both wear khaki raincoats belted at the waist. They have bowler hats and umbrellas, pinstriped trousers and well-polished black shoes and wear the same regimental tie. It is all they have left of an empire they once defended with all their finest idealism, courage and discipline.

  They raise their hats when they see Mrs Cornelius.

  ‘Hello, old boy,’ says Major Nye to me. ‘We were rather hoping we might bump into you when we didn’t find Mrs C at home. We knew we were a bit late for the pub. We’ve been having fish and chips in Ladbroke Grove.’ His skin is so thinly stretched over his almost fleshless head that it seems transparent, marking the veins and bones, tracing the progress of his blood. His pale grey eyes are as amiable and as baffled as they have been since Suez, when his entire understanding of his responsibilities changed. Beside him, a little browner, just a touch plumper, but otherwise almost a twin, is his old regimental colonel, Jim Pym. They have been enjoying their monthly reunion. Both men are so fragile these days that I cannot see them continuing this pleasant ceremony for much longer. They will have to speak by telephone, I suppose. And then one will die and the other will die. Their wives are already dead. Their children, I gather, have mostly emigrated. The best they can look forward to is being accepted by the Chelsea Pensioners. At least it will give them the chance to wear a uniform again.

  Like myself, Major Nye has been on the sidelines of some monumental events, but I do not believe he ever played the same kind of crucial role as I played in the rising dominance of the Nazi Party. I personally will be very sorry when I can no longer chat with him. We are of a similar age and have had many similar experiences around the world. Also, of course, we were both in love with the same woman. That is why he still comes to Ladbroke Grove.

  We return to her basement for tea.

  Major Nye always called Hitler ‘that grubby little agitator’. He had no time for Röhm, sadly, or most of the others. ’Göring seemed jolly enough on the surface, but frankly I never had patience for any of them.’ He believed that the best in Germany had been wiped out by the War. Only the cripples, the walking wounded, the exiles were left. The business people were almost as bad. ‘They possessed a very low standard of intelligence,’ he says. ‘The brains had either been killed or had enough sense to stay out of the limelight. German government was in the hands of a few survivors. It wasn’t fair to punish them the way the French did. France just wanted the rest of the Allies to hold the poor bastard down while she kicked him a few times. She’s never recovered from being beaten so often by Bismarck. In French history, Napoleon was a fluke. Not that he and Hitler didn’t make precisely the same mistakes. Men of destiny always do, don’t they, old boy? At least,’ he added, ‘Napoleon had had the sense not to let businessmen or the army make political decisions. They were the absolute worst people at that. Any time business or the army dominate politics, that’s when you might as well pack your bags and leave. The one thing the British Army understands,’ he says, ‘is to stay out of the brawl. Getting into it was the German Army’s greatest mistake. They should have held aloof. But I suppose they were too afraid of Röhm.’

  He and Colonel Pym often discuss matters of strategy.

  Mrs Cornelius takes down her best teaset. She balances the teapot on a pile of magazines while she clears a space on her coffee table. ‘Sorry about ther smell,’ she says. ‘I think it’s ther cat.’

  ‘Well, it’s always been a mystery to me,’ says Colonel Pym, ‘why any decent army officer should not have taken one look at Herr Hitler and seen at once what a little turd he was.’

  “E was vulnerable,’ says Mrs Cornelius, searching for her biscuits. ‘That’s orlways a plus in a politician. It’s ther same with them pop stars, innit? Women recognise it. Men c’n sense it, but they never know wot it is. ‘Itler could’ve been knocked art at any time, but they all looked after ‘im. Why d’yer fink them rich old ladies loved to mother ther little bugger? They thought ‘e was a sensitive artiste. ‘E was the Liberace of ‘is day.’

  We are silent. Not one of us can think of a response.

  During the following weeks Röhm had certain rooms in his villa set aside for meetings. He made me stay away from them. People would be driven up to one particular door and admitted. They never saw the rest of the place. Their impression was of an austere military base.

  Röhm said the meetings would have bored me. He admitted that most of the time he himself was bored. ‘But if we’re to defeat the Antichrist,’ he said jokingly, ’we must make friends even with swine. At least for the moment.’ He was clear-headed about his political ambitions. I did not agree with all his views, but there was no doubting his integrity.

  Röhm shared this with Strasser, whom I met at last. The greathearted chemist came to dinner with two or three of his people. After the others had left, I joined the two friends for drinks. Strasser was charming. He smelled of the most expensive cologne. His clothes were of excellent English cut. Strasser made me feel very comfortable. He had seen my films. He did not, as some of the SA chiefs did, take me for Röhm’s fancy boy. We discussed literature. I told him about the English fiction I read. I mentioned G. H. Teed and Anthony Skene. He himself was a great fan of Schiller. ’He is humane,’ he said, ‘in a way that Goethe is not.’

  Strasser was the greatest gentleman who ever led a political party. His terrible mistake was to remain true to his ideals. That, I fear, could be the sad epitaph for many of us.

  I will not forget those evenings of camaraderie during the late summer of 1931 when it was still possible to plan for a golden future, to dream, as they say, the impossible dream. I feel I was privileged. The threat of the Baroness laid to rest, the mystery of Mussolini’s behaviour at least partially explained, I felt able to relax.

  The talk that evening soon returned to Hitler. Among these people, Hitler’s ups and downs were a constant subject of debate.

  ‘He’s a bloody Austrian,’ said Röhm. ‘What do you expect? He’s sloppy and easygoing most of the time. He just happens to have this charm, this gift. We can’t switch it on and off whenever we feel like it. We can’t twist the public round our little fingers. And so we’re annoyed! We’re jealous.’

  ‘I’m annoyed,’ said Strasser, passing a big hand across his head, ‘because he’s compromising every principle we ever stood for. That’s why I’m annoyed, Röhm.’

  ‘He’s pretending to compromise.’ Röhm poured champagne for us. ‘You know him. He’ll soon bite the hands that feed him. You worry too much about that. After all, you’re prepared to sort out an arrangement with Farben.’

  ‘That’s to do with my business. And none of us argued against the strategy of taking money, if offered, and doing precisely what we want to do with it. I just wonder what cattle trading Hitler is doing on my behalf!’

  ‘I don’t mind him putting his tongue up a few arseholes,’ said Röhm. ‘It’s what’s going on in Prinzregentenstrasse that I’m bothered by. Apparently there was another row recently. All the neighbours heard it. Her mother was involved at some stage. She’s on Hitler’s side. She’d have to be. The scandal would be even worse for her, wouldn’t it - Hitler’s sister helping him bonk her
own daughter, his niece. And what bonking! She wants him to pay for singing lessons in Vienna. He wants to keep her with him, though he’s never there. He suspects something - and he’s right. He can’t let her go. He’s terrified she’ll tell someone else about their private lives. Geli knows her power all right. She’s already threatening to send his letters to his “new friends”, people who are on the brink of giving us millions. If they see some of the mildest of the pictures I’ve seen, they might offer to buy a few for their own collections, but I don’t think they’ll be the supporters Hitler needs. She’s already picked up the phone and rung Thyssen. He didn’t know who the hell she was, luckily, and put the receiver down on her. That’s what I heard from Hess. Of course, Hess doesn’t take any of it very seriously. He sees everything as a kind of play going on in front of his eyes. He’s a perpetual audience! He never criticises. That’s why Alf loves him so much.’

  Strasser found this amusing. ‘Adolf’s in love, Ernst. Give the man a break. Lovers’ tiffs. You’re radiating jealousy! You can’t stand it because he’s taken up with females! You think he’s a pervert, don’t you?’

  Röhm took this in good part. He chuckled. ‘I won’t be the only one who thinks it, if she’s as good as her word. Look, I have a very clear idea of what’s going on.’

  ‘You’ve been hiding under their bed, Ernst!’

  ‘The bed’s probably the only safe place in that apartment. Believe me, I know precisely what happens. She’s already told half her girlfriends. And I know what she thinks about it. It doesn’t even suit her. I also know what she thinks she’s going to do about it.’

  ‘You’ve got hold of some of those Soviet microphones and put them in the flower vases. You’ve got a two-way mirror and a film camera. God in heaven, Ernst, these are the spy fantasies of people like Himmler! Are you buggering the SS chauffeur? Is that how you’re finding all this stuff out?’

  Again Röhm could not help grinning broadly. He shook his head. ‘Oh, better than that, Strass,’ he said. ‘I’m buggering her confessor.’

  Strasser said something about preferring to see his Schiller onstage, but it was clear Röhm had made an impression.

  The mood of the evening became almost sombre. Röhm suggested I retire. He said that there were important party matters he and Strasser had to discuss, and I shouldn’t be burdened with them.

  Major Nye was in Berlin while I was in retreat at Röhmannsvilla. He said that he had never known a city not at war in quite such a dither; it was as if there was nothing to do and everything to do. Political strategies had grown so complex there wasn’t a single individual who could be sure of anything. The best they could hope for was a wiping out of the war debt, a chance to start again. Daily the Communists and Socialists introduced increasingly radical bills into the Reichstag, which Hitler would immediately quash. Strasser, working within the system, consistently attempted, sometimes with Communist connivance, to put his socialistic ideas into law. Röhm was behind him. They were now at constant odds with Frick, Göring and Goebbels. Hitler, as usual, was in the middle, unable to make up his mind whom to support. He seemed incapable of uniting his disparate elements. Nye believed Hitler deliberately fostered this bickering between his lieutenants, but I am inclined to agree with Röhm: Hitler hated making decisions. He asked everyone’s advice and then could not reconcile the opposing ideas. So he did nothing. When he was not standing in some remote forest clearing reassuring one of the captains of industry, he was utterly involved with Geli Raubal. Nye had heard this from both Strasser and Himmler. Neither man was happy with the situation.

  ‘Strasser was the only one I could talk to. Radical as he was, he was sane and fundamentally decent. Of course, he was obsessed with the Jewish Question, like all of them. I told him there wouldn’t be a Jewish Question if there were not a German Question. That was precisely my view about Ireland and England. I mean, you can’t just chuck people out after they’ve stopped being useful to you, can you? No decent firm would do that, let alone a nation. Well, Strasser saw what I meant, and I think he pretty much agreed with me. He didn’t hate anyone, that man. He just wanted to see a bit of decent justice. I think he’d have been perfectly happy with a constitutional monarchy. Chancellor Brüning was trying for that, you know, before General von Schleicher took over.’

  Major Nye shakes his head. ‘Now there was an army man I simply could not get on with. Wrong sort altogether. Dabbled in civilian issues. It just isn’t done. The German Army knew that as well as the British or the Americans. But, like the Americans, the Germans always think a man who can run an army or a corporation can run a country. They are precisely the last people to run a country! Well, almost the last. Most of the Nazis were the sorts of people you find in the Blenheim Arms these days. The dropouts and seedy misfits. Imagine them suddenly put in charge of Britain.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ says Colonel Pym.

  ‘But not the blacks and Jews,’ I say.

  ‘Oi!’ calls Mrs Cornelius from her kitchenette. ’Are yer still talkin’ abart ther War?’

  ‘Just the causes, Mrs C.’ Major Nye is apologetic. He winks at us, but it is her approval he desires most.

  ‘Their allies thought anti-Semitism was an engine they could discard once it had driven them to power,’ says Colonel Pym. ‘They didn’t realise it was the movement’s raison d’être. What? I think the War was incidental to that.’

  I have a soft spot for these old English eccentrics.

  Röhm admired the English. They were good soldiers, he said, and about as honourable as you could get in the real world, South Africa aside. The best Englishman, he always said, was what the best German aspired to be. He did not by this intend to denigrate his own people. He was a dedicated patriot. He meant that the English were Germans who had had certain historical and geographical advantages. Needless to say, Cromwell was his great hero. I have noticed how all the Continental radicals admire Cromwell (presumably for his stand against the Catholics) while the British show virtually no interest in him at all. To them the Roundheads and Cavaliers are the stuff of Romance alone. ‘The English are self-disciplined in a way which we must educate the Germans to be,’ Röhm said. ‘But what became second nature to John Bull over the course of centuries must be drummed into our honest Michael in a decade. That’s the only way to get real lasting social change. The Russians have made a mess of the whole thing. They are hysterical. It is their weakness.’

  He was a little vague as to the precise means of force-marching an entire nation through five hundred years of social change. The joke used to be that the Nazis got rid of the class system by getting rid of the classes. But it was only after 1931 that the killings began in earnest. And after 1934 Stabschef Ernst Röhm, Father of the SA, patriot and friend, had no further interest in the world.

  I often reflect on the irony of a people who so consistently punish the best and advance the worst.

  Major Nye has to get back to Kent. Colonel Pym needs to catch a bus to Fulham. They rise and put on their identical raincoats, buttoning and belting in precise, familiar ways, as if they only truly come to life when they are adjusting their uniforms.

  * * * *

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I was never a prisoner at the Villa Röhm. I had simply become nervous of leaving. When transport was available I would go into Munich, perhaps to see the latest films. Röhm never kept much cash, but he would give me enough for my simple pleasures. I no longer felt vulnerable to Frau Oberhauser’s threats. The problem with Mussolini could easily be cleared up once the international situation had settled down. I must admit I had become rather lazy, even euphoric. I had never rested for so long and not had to rely on my own wits. I luxuriated in my situation. I could not return Röhm’s affections in the same measure, but one cannot help feeling warm towards a person who calls you his ‘Latin angel’, his ‘dark-eyed ideal’ and offers you the world if you will stay just a few more days, a few more weeks.

  I had the impression that I was to some e
xtent hiding in the lion’s cage. Röhmannsvilla was probably the safest place in Germany at that time. My patron was without question his country’s single most powerful man. I considered it a tribute to his modesty and dedication that he hardly realised it. Even when he boasted of the numbers he commanded, I don’t think he really believed them. Five million is an almost impossible figure to contemplate. The only problem was the isolation. Röhm’s radio did not get good signals because of the surrounding trees.

  Unable to find a Völkischer Beobachter on any news-stand I finally had to make do with a Telegramm Zeitung. There, on an inside page, I read of a tragedy which had taken place at an apartment house in Prinzregentenstrasse. A young woman who lived with her mother had shot herself. She had not left a note. The young woman was the eldest daughter of Frau Angela Raubal, a housekeeper.

  I did not, even for a second, believe the story.

  Geli Raubal had made her last threat, engineered her last scene, attempted her last blackmail. Someone, either Hitler or a friend, had finished off the ‘yowling alley cat’ at last. The Führer was free.

  I hold no brief for murder. There are few excuses for taking another human life. The Lutherans and the Catholics were wholly agreed on that. In times of war or during certain national crises the taking of life could be condoned, said the pastors and the priests. Well, whoever killed Geli Raubal might claim those precise reasons. My own view was that it would not have mattered had she lived or died. The important thing would have been to find any incriminating papers and get rid of them. Her word was worthless without some kind of proof.