Munich’s atmosphere promised happier more hopeful days. Her people knew how to relish their pleasures. The huge green and brown Hofbräuhaus, with its massive wooden galleries and stairways, was a mighty machine for beer drinking. Tier upon tier, bench upon bench of men in lederhosen and huntsmen’s homespun, women with floral embroidered aprons and great plaited bunches of blonde hair, hundreds of red or black swastikas on brawny Brownshirt arms. Oktoberfest being at its height, the beer hall also sheltered the cheerful peasants I had seen in the market, by now a little the worse for drink, taking full advantage of their womenfolk remaining at home for at least a few more days. The hall was noticeably pro-Hitler with Nazi advertising and flags everywhere. Doctor Strasser admired the posters’ style. He said that the Nazis and the Commies had tremendous aesthetic sense. Their artwork was created by the best graphic artists in Germany. Some beer halls played both sides or were clearly anti-Nazi, but here Hitler was the local boy made good.
Otto Strasser waved his arms at the surrounding campaign posters. ‘Have you noticed how phallic the best Nazi propaganda is now? I’m sure it’s deliberate!’ Again he giggled. ‘It started with our steel helmets, eh? Do you think it’s some sort of compensation? All those stiff arms going up and down? All those stiff legs pumping? Has it ever struck you how Mussolini’s pictures do their best to make him look like a gigantic prick? Clearly all that sort of thing works, wouldn’t you say? But do we really want to give the world to people who would rather follow a penis than a principle?’
He made me laugh spontaneously for the first time in ages. His irreverence helped me recover my mental stability. Soon I was my old self again, and the whole incident at Tegernsee a fading nightmare. I had, after all, put worse behind me. Though scarcely one of Hitler’s closest friends, Strasser knew the man better than most and had little reverence for him. I enjoyed his comments.
‘He is amorphous, eh? Whatever we desire or feel? Did you ever see that film about the Jewish monster, The Golem? Isn’t Hitler a golem? The amalgam of everything a Jew has nightmares about, yes?’ As usual, he responded enthusiastically to his own somewhat repetitive humour.
Given that these opinions were offered in one of Hitler’s strongholds, the very beer hall from which he had organised the famous 1923 putsch attempt, I thought Doctor Strasser rather brave. But he had forgotten where he was. As a passing hard-faced Brownshirt carrying a tray scowled at him, Strasser paused. His quick tongue had got him into trouble but now it saved him. ‘And that is why the Führer is our best shield against the aliens!” he added loudly.
In a murmur, he continued, ‘How can you trust anyone now? Aren’t they all to some degree corrupted? Even my brother Gregor. He couldn’t live on a Reichstag representative’s salary. Can you credit that? Don’t they all have their Big Business patrons now? Even Röhm?’
I shook my head in thorough disbelief. ‘Röhm agrees with everything you say. His money comes entirely from contributions by party members.’
‘Then he’s the only one, no? Thyssen and Hugenberg back Hitler, Farben backs Gregor and Röhm. The Stabschef isn’t building that ludicrous house on his party pay. And if Hugenberg’s in, then so, of course, is Krupp. When Krupp joins, surely the Americans, French and British will all start covering their bets and backing the National Socialists, too? Ford, IBM, Hearst already back Hitler, knowing he will bring stability. They don’t care about the nature of our leadership as long as it guarantees their investments. So Hitler’s already getting promises of American backing! Success breeds success. Soon he’ll have Scandinavian, Dutch and Italian money, too. A snowball, my dear Peters. Or a concrete ball, maybe . . . ?’
I wondered if my new acquaintance were not a little jealous of his ex-comrades, so I changed the subject, saying how sorry I felt at Hitler’s loss. He seemed to have cared a great deal for his niece. But this was a strategic mistake! I set Strasser off again. He became heated, conspiratorial, and began drinking rather recklessly.
‘She told me things.’ Doctor Strasser offered me a significant leer. ‘She told Goebbels things, when he was still in our office. And Hanfstaengl knows about Father Stempfle, Schwartz and the pornographic pictures. Schwartz was working there at Corneliusstrasse when he was asked to get the money together to pay off the blackmailer. Hitler came in one morning. He was desperate. I don’t know how they raised the money. The party was broke then. The blackmailer was, I’m convinced, the old hermit Stempfle himself, an Hieronymite by calling but much else besides. He insisted the money was owed to him. He’s always hated Hitler. He wrote most of Mein Kampf, and Hitler simply took it over. Until Max Amann asked Stempfle to look at it, Hitler’s original was unpublishable. It was repetitive and illogical. Hitler copied Stempfle’s articles out of the Munich papers and used them as his own speeches! Have you heard that hysterical old priest on the subject? You’d never guess he was a man of the cloth! Though he probably only joined to suffer the little children to come unto him . . .’
‘Fräulein Raubal, some say, had an unnatural relationship with her uncle?’ Back in that room for a moment, I was already sailing closer to the black wind than was prudent. Without the mitigating balance of cocaine I had not willingly drunk so much alcohol in a long time, and my head was beginning to swim again.
Doctor Strasser was nodding his round head rapidly even before I had finished speaking. ‘She told Goebbels things,’ he repeated gravely. ‘And Goebbels isn’t easily shocked, eh? He’s seen and done everything. With women, anyway, what? Nasty little dwarf. He thought she had to be lying. Didn’t want to believe those things of Hitler, hmm? He guessed that Hitler or someone, maybe his driver Emil, who used to flirt with her, showed her magazines, or she’d come across them for herself. You don’t have to be a sicko to find it, that’s true. The stuff’s everywhere. Half the Kinos in Berlin show worse. She could have gone to see anything — animals, golden showers, boys with boys — in one of those clubs. Some of them are live. Women are always trying to get you to take them to that sort of place, aren’t they? But Fräulein Raubal talked to me. She told me she was terrified of what was happening. Her words to me. She said he was a monster. But that’s all she said. Hitler took firmer control of her after that. She became a prisoner, I think. Don’t you?’
He stopped suddenly. Three straight-backed burly Storm Troopers had turned on their bench and, steins in hand, were staring at him.
Strasser had now been recognised. I must admit it did not suit me to be seen with someone identified as a critic of the leadership or, worse, a traitor. When my new friend decided it was prudent to leave, I was only too glad to stand up. Without much incident, we made our way back to Corneliusstrasse and a poorly lit local beer cellar which had sparse custom that night. Only a few old peasant men sat drunk in a corner and sang the same obscure dialect song over and over again.
We found a heavy table under a murky arch, and I drew a sigh of relief, very happy to be clear of that dangerous limelight. Strasser himself was alert again, evidently capable of sudden recovery. His constantly moving eyes now surveyed the place even as he signalled for service.
A big dough-faced girl in a dirty apron, with pigtails that looked as if they had been wiping up Schmalz, arrived to take our orders. Strasser demanded I try a particularly strong brand of beer. Again I pointed out that I had no money, but he was insistent. He’d had a windfall, he said. So we drank the beer, and I told him of my childhood in Kiev and Odessa as the son of an American dentist, of my service with the White Army, my flying experience against the Reds and my invention of the Violet Ray which Petlyura had used to stop the Bolsheviks as they swept upon Kiev, and which would have succeeded if the city’s power supply had been more certain. How I had gone to France and made my fortune in airship construction, only to lose it, the victim of typically French political chicanery, then become a political speaker in the US, developed a steam-car and later worked as a film star. He was fascinated by my accounts of flying in the service of the Caid of Marrakech. I did not
tell him about Egypt any more than about Hitler. Some things should never be exposed to the common air or the light of day and should certainly never be passed on to another human being. It is the same as knowingly passing on a disease. Some burdens you can only share with a priest or a psychiatrist.
Doctor Strasser thought at first that I was lying. ‘You’ve had more adventures than Münchhausen, no?’
I explained that my situation was the same as that of many Russian members of the aristocratic intelligentsia driven from their homeland by the Reds. People found it difficult to imagine the fate of the dispossessed intellectual, as he must understand. We were forced to earn our livings as jacks of all trades! The Revolution set Russia back a thousand years. But for Lenin I would even now be pursuing the career of inventor and engineer in Moscow or St Petersburg.
Convinced (for he had himself had a taste of exile), my new acquaintance asked a few more questions and relaxed again. Like Captain Röhm, Doctor Strasser was particularly interested in my Russian experiences, though from a different point of view. He wanted to know how effective Makhno’s anarchist communes had been, how efficient the commissar system was, how popular the Red ideologues had been with the common people and so on. I could only tell him of my own adventures, but for these he was avid. I tried to explain the complicated comings and goings of the various forces in the Ukraine during my time there. The Red organisers were primarily Jewish intellectuals, some of them from Germany. Their organisational skills made the Reds successful in the end.
Doctor Strasser had met the great Krassnoff in Berlin. He had read the General’s moving multi-volume memoir From the Two-Headed Eagle to the Red Flag. The book had convinced him that the Russian model was nothing worth following. Yet an alliance between a united Germany and the Soviet Union would form a solid and natural power block, with Poland under shared dominion.
He was retailing the old German dream, but turned into socialist politics! I said nothing. I valued my new friend too highly to offend him. He had met Skorapadsky, who had settled in Munich. The Hetman claimed now that he would have kept our common Tsar if he had retained his power in Ukraine. None doubted Skorapadsky’s Ukrainian patriotism, but this was the first I had heard of his Russian loyalties! It was true he had been driven from the Ukraine by the Reds. Like many Ukrainians, he was a good friend to Germany, but had no other allies.
I put it to Doctor Strasser that we, not the German Army, were the ones who were truly betrayed, for we were betrayed by our own allies. Why did the Americans not step in at the right time and save our Tsar? They had the means. They had agents there, like the British. They knew everything that was going on. In the end, even the British and French let us down, but the Americans, as usual, did enough to make a mess but not enough to clear it up. What was the matter with Americans? Ice had crept into their hearts. Surely they had no reason to hate Germany?
He said that the Americans did not understand altruism. And as with everything else they didn’t understand, they rejected, hated or sentimentalised it so that it became something else. I agreed. Germany could never rely on America for long-term help. I had not considered before that the culture actually mitigated against altruism just as it mitigated against intellectualism, in both cases because of the vast numbers of Protestants and Jews in America. Together they were lethal! Nothing in Protestant folk stories and moral tales suggested that virtue was its own reward. As in Victorian England, virtue in America is always thoroughly rewarded. Indeed, the reward is always promised. When it cannot be redeemed, it becomes heaven’s responsibility. A sentimentalised culture was actually inimicable to genuine altruism. Their charitable organisations always expected something in return for their help. At the very least they demanded pious thanks. Even the Catholics. The whole culture demanded you act like a character in a melodrama. At the moment, therefore, presented by Weimar with an image of decadence, Americans believed Germany beyond salvation.
Doctor Strasser took a polite interest in what I had to say. So it was with Catholics everywhere, he added vaguely. A question of vested interests, and the oldest vested interest in the world was the Vatican. But he parroted this without any real passion, like most Roman Catholics who had escaped the tyranny of their parents’ religion. From me he chiefly wanted to know what California and Hollywood were like. Had I met any of the famous stars?
So somehow the rest of the evening became devoted to trivial reminiscence. Doctor Strasser relayed juicy Nazi gossip, and I relayed equally juicy Hollywood gossip. As my spirits began to improve, I realised I was quite enjoying myself. I offered stories about famous stars now completely out of fashion. Otto Strasser’s tales were probably equally out of date since he had been so long from the centres of NSDAP power.
That night Strasser took over my couch. He was too drunk, he said, to return to his little pension. Unfortunately Schirach had neglected to leave any bedlinen so I slept on the mattress fully clothed, and Strasser slept similarly on the couch. The beer made sleep easier but waking rather harder.
Next morning we freshened ourselves as best we could and stumbled down the uncarpeted stairs into the cobbled street to get some cheap coffee. On the corner a cheerful Brownshirt boy called out the latest headlines while holding the handlebar of a bin-on-wheels, a kind of converted perambulator or sandwich cart, advertising in vivid scarlet against a black background the Völkischer Beobachter. Doctor Strasser reached in, flashed a lapel badge, and pulled a paper from the bin while the lad looked on, not sure what to do.
As we left the speechless vendor behind, Strasser handed me the paper. ‘This was always a rag. Now it’s a rag telling nothing but lies, what?’ He stopped rather ostentatiously at the Münchener Post kiosk and bought the paper that had most consistently attacked Hitler and raised questions about Fräulein Raubal’s death.
Taking me into the nearest tiny coffee shop, Doctor Strasser ordered us some croissants and buried himself in the newspaper. He relished every word of scandal about Hitler. Meanwhile, I read of Nazi triumph and Hitler’s heroism in the face of attacks from every side. The fact that the Führer was able to shrug off all such filthy propaganda was a further sign of his superhuman discipline.
Doctor Strasser ate rapidly. Ordering more coffee, he devoured the croissants and read me the wildest of the allegations.
Admittedly, and rather disturbingly, the paper touched on the truth, at least as I understood it. Its publisher had some vendetta against the Nazi leader and no doubt a left-wing agenda of his own. Though the stories were sensational and unlikely, Strasser seemed happy to believe them, at least for the moment, as one might enjoy a cheap novel. He ate another croissant as he grinned and chuckled, rustling the pages and retailing every fresh detail. Röhm’s mythological orgies were not left out of the account. Ever since his touching letters had been intercepted and published, the papers had had a field day with his sexuality. Of course, they did not dare use a word like ‘queer’, though the inference was clear.
Röhm was described as Hitler’s closest intimate. Hitler was described as ‘unmarried’ and a ‘confirmed bachelor’ while at the same time being his niece’s ‘protector’, as if to make sure of blackening his name on as many counts as possible. Here was a man who was both rapist, impotent, feminine, masochist, sadist, heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, had boyfriends and kept a mistress, while at the same time rushing from one end of the country to the other giving political speeches. No wonder people hailed him as a superman!
And now Hitler could also be a savage murderer. The police were suggesting Geli had been beaten up (by inference Hitler had done it) because she refused some particularly perverse advance. I really had no interest in this nonsense, particularly since I knew far too much of the truth.
‘Surely none of this scandal will do Röhm any good with the Reichswehr,’ I said. ‘They’re notoriously homophobic!’
‘That isn’t the character Röhm presents to the army, of course. With them he is the efficient, sensible officer, the comra
de-in-arms, the war veteran. They find him perfectly charming and are happy to believe him when he tells them that the scandals are simply the invention of his enemies, that his famous love letters are mere forgeries. No doubt he lets them think he’s a widower with two children he’s raising himself. Captain Röhm’s a nice middle-class boy, like me. Well educated. Well brought up. Good at deferring to his betters, or at least appearing to. In Germany you are trained to present the face people want to see. Face is of primary importance. What you do, you do. If you are caught, you suffer. Isn’t it like that in America?’
‘So Röhm is right and will ultimately have control of the army?’
Doctor Strasser took this seriously, folding his paper and lighting a fresh cigarette, thinking for a moment. ’Not likely. The Reichswehr is still the strongest single force in Germany and has tried to stay out of direct politics, though it has a fair amount of influence. The Reichswehr controls Germany. Röhm doesn’t. Hitler could sacrifice Röhm to appease the Reichswehr. Or there could be civil war with the regular army on one side and the various Freikorps, especially the Storm Troopers, on the other. It would be horrifying, like the Hundred Years War all over again, with no side staying the same, and more and more foreign interests drawn in and ultimately simply annexing parts of Germany for themselves. The Jews have even fewer local loyalties than the Catholics and will take advantage of such a situation. So everyone knows we should avoid it developing. I think the Reichswehr will find a formula, a way of saving face, to incorporate the SA. The army commands Germany, but the army needs a commander. If Hitler shirks the issue and demands command of the army, Röhm will turn against him.’