Look Who's Back (22 page)

I found him standing in front of the kiosk serving an extraordinarily large number of people, despite the cold, wet weather. A large sign hung above the sales window: “Buy
Bild
– today featuring me and the loony YouTube Hitler!”

“Great timing!” he called out when he saw me.

“I had come to apologise,” I called back. “But now I no longer know what for.”

“Me neither,” the newspaper seller laughed. “Grab a felt tip and get signing! That’s the least you can do for your drinking buddy.”

“Are you really him?” asked a labourer, thrusting his newspaper at me.

“Indeed I am,” I said, signing my name.

“When I saw it I ordered another batch of copies straight away,” the newspaper vendor told me, selling papers over
people’s heads. “Yes, by all means go over. Herr Hitler will be glad to sign for you.”

In truth I do not particularly like signing my name. You never know what people will do with a signature. You can sign a piece of paper in all innocence, but the next day someone else will paste a declaration above it, and suddenly you find you have given away Transylvania to some corrupt Balkan entity. Or surrendered unconditionally, even though your bunkers are still full of weapons of retaliation with which you could turn around the war whenever you fancied. In the end, however, my signature on a newspaper seemed harmless enough. I was delighted, moreover, that for the first time nobody was complaining that I wasn’t writing Herr Stromberger, or whoever, but my own name.

“There, please, across the photo!”

“Could you write ‘For Helga’?”

“Could you say something bad about the Kurds next time?”

“We should have gone to war together back then! We would have won!”

A small girl was pushed to the front with her newspaper, and I took deliberate care to sign it slowly. Let them photograph this; young people trust the Führer as much now as they did in the past. And not only the young. An ancient woman approached me with one of those modern walking frames on wheels and a twinkle in her eye. She held out her newspaper and said in a quivering voice, “Do you remember? 1935, in Nuremberg. I was in the window, watching you march by! I always thought you were looking at me. We were so proud of you! And now – well, you haven’t changed one bit!”

“Nor have you,” I gaily fibbed, shaking her hand. I felt touched. Not that I could remember this woman, obviously, but her sincere loyalty had a charm all of its own. At any event, when a nervous Sensenbrink telephoned me I was calmly able to allay his concerns by describing to him this demonstration of trust by the Volk, and could rebuff the demands that we make a legal response. Nor was I daunted the following day. Naturally, the paper had suppressed the photographs of the public’s affirmation; instead they printed the utterly irrelevant headline: “Loony YouTube Hitler: now Germany votes”. Beside this were several photographs from concentration camps, showing the unattractive, but alas necessary work of the S.S. This made me rather indignant.

A thorough investigation of major operations should never focus on those petty isolated instances where the overall plan has caused a minor inconvenience; such an analysis lacks all gravity. Wherever there is a large motorway enabling the transport of tonne after tonne of German goods, you will inevitably find a sweet little rabbit trembling by the roadside. Or you build a canal, thereby creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and of course you will encounter the occasional small farmer who sheds bitter tears because he has to relinquish his land. But for this I cannot, I must not ignore the future of the Volk. And when the need to eradicate millions of Jews – and there really were that many back then – has been recognised, you will always find the odd naïve, compassionate German who thinks, “Well, that Jew wasn’t so bad after all, surely we could have put up with this or that one for a few more years.” For this reason it is terribly easy for a newspaper to appeal to people’s
sentimental side. It is an old refrain – everybody agrees that the rats must be exterminated, but when it comes down to it, sympathy for the individual rat is huge. Only sympathy, mind you; there is no desire to keep the rat. The two must not be confused. But it was precisely this confusion which knowingly underpinned the paper’s questionnaire. The poll, which I doubted was going to be an honest and fair one, offered three choices, eliciting from me a grim smile. I could have dreamed this up myself. The options were:

1. Enough! Get the YouTube Hitler off our screens!
   
2. No, he’s not funny, and MyTV doesn’t think so either.
   
3. Never seen him. Not interested in that Nazi rubbish.
   

This was entirely to have been expected. Such claptrap is the slanderous bread and butter of the bourgeois gutter press, which quite clearly is still infected by the spirit of the Jews. It was something I would have to live with, particularly as the necessary facilities to accommodate these lying vermin were lacking. From a cursory piece of research I had been able to establish that only two barracks were still standing in Dachau. A scandalous state of affairs – the crematoria would have to be fired up again after the first wave of arrests.

Sensenbrink, of course, was in a high-velocity spin. It is always those “great strategists” whose nerves start to flutter first. “We’re toast,” he wailed repeatedly. “We’re toast. MyTV’ll be sweating bullets. We’ve got to give them an interview!” I signalled to Hotel Reserver Sawatzki that he should keep an eye on this loose cannon. By contrast, Madame Bellini was
positively blooming. Nobody since Ernst Hanfstaengel had managed so successfully to sweet-talk the important and not-so-important people on my behalf. And she was a damn sight better looking, too, a thoroughly attractive woman.

On the fourth day, however, I gave in.

Even now it is the only thing I reproach myself for. I ought to have shown unyielding steeliness, but perhaps I was somewhat out of practice. And yet, in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined what might happen.

They had published a large photograph showing me accompanying my respectable secretary, Fräulein Krömeier, to the door of the offices. The photograph, snapped in the bright light of early evening, had – as I was able to conclude thanks to long conversations with Heinrich Hoffmann back in the day – been wantonly and deliberately distorted. The image was unnecessarily blurred, as well as greatly enlarged, and it was presented as if the services of a highly experienced spy had been engaged to take the picture. Which was utter nonsense, of course. On the day in question I had decided to take a short walk and had gone with Fräulein Krömeier to the exit, from where she caught the bus. In the photograph I was holding open the door. Printed in bold above the image was the following:

“That is punishment by association,” I said coldly. “And poor Fräulein Krömeier is not even related to me!”

We were sitting in the conference room, Madame Bellini, Sensenbrink, Hotel Reserver Sawatzki and myself. Inevitably it was the great strategist Sensenbrink who asked, “Come on, open the kimono … is there anything going on between you and the Krömeier girl? Are you dipping your pen in company ink?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Madame Bellini cut in. “Herr Hitler has opened the door for me too on occasions. Do you intend to ask me the same question?”

“We just need to proceed carefully,” Sensenbrink said with a shrug.

“Proceed carefully?” Madame Bellini retorted. “With what? I’m not going to waste a moment’s thought on this distasteful business. Fräulein Krömeier can do as she pleases. Herr Hitler can do as he pleases. We’re not living in the Fifties.”

“Nonetheless he mustn’t be married,” Sensenbrink insisted.
“At least, not if there’s something cooking with Fräulein Krömeier.”

“You still haven’t understood,” Madame Bellini said, and then turned to me. “Well?
Are
you married?”

“Actually, I am,” I said.

“Great,” Sensenbrink moaned.

“Let me guess,” Bellini said. “Since 1945? April?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s extraordinary that the press release got out. At the time, you see, the city was teeming with Bolshevists, alas!”

“Without wishing to intrude on your personal life,” Hotel Reserver Sawatzki said, “I think Herr Hitler can rightly be considered a widower.” You can say what you like, but even under fire this Sawatzki fellow was quick witted, clear, reliable, pragmatic.

“I cannot be one hundred per cent sure,” I said, “but I’m assuming Herr Sawatzki is correct.”

“Well,” Madame Bellini said, turning to Sensenbrink. “Satisfied now?”

“It’s my job to throw curve balls,” Sensenbrink said stroppily.

“The question is: What are we going to do?” Bellini said.

“Do we have to do anything?” Sawatzki said in a sober voice.

“I agree with you, Herr Sawatzki,” I said. “Or I would agree if this was just about me. But if I do nothing those around me will be affected even more. It may not do Herr Sensenbrink any harm,” I said with a mocking glance, “but I cannot expect you and the company to put up with it.”

“I would always expect us as a company to put up with it,
but not our shareholders, not for five minutes,” Madame Bellini answered drily. “Which means no interview on our terms. But on their terms.”

“I will hold you responsible for ensuring that it does not turn out like that,” I said, and as I sensed that Madame Bellini was not as happy to take orders as Sawatzki, I added quickly, “But in this case you are absolutely right. We will grant them an interview. Tell them it will be in the Adlon. And they can pay.”

“Your ski-brain has gone totally off-piste,” Sensenbrink teased me. “In this situation we can hardly get them to agree to a fee.”

“It’s all about principle,” I said. “I refuse to squander the Volk’s money on this press scum. If they pay the bill I’ll be happy with that.”

“So when?”

“As soon as possible,” Madame Bellini said, quite correctly. “Let’s say tomorrow. Then they might leave us in peace for a day.”

I agreed. “In the meantime we ought to intensify our own propaganda efforts.”

“Which means?”

“We must not allow our political opponents to enjoy control over reporting. This must never happen to us again. We need to publish our own newspaper.”

“So … maybe the
Völkischer Beobachter
?” Sensenbrink sneered. “We’re a production company, not a newspaper publisher! Stir-fry that in your think-wok!”

“Guys, it doesn’t have to be a newspaper,” Hotel Reserver
Sawatzki interjected. “Herr Hitler’s strength is his on-screen appearance. We’ve already got the videos, so why don’t we post them on our own website?”

“All his appearances so far in H.D., which will offer more than the clips already up on YouTube,” Madame Bellini reflected. “And it will give us a platform if we want to put out any particular bits of information. Or our own view on things. Sounds good. Have the digital media department prepare a few designs.”

We concluded the conference. Noticing a light still burning in my office as I left the room, I went to turn it off. Until the Reich has converted fully to regenerative energies, one must be sparing with one’s resources. One seldom thinks of it at the time, but imagine the misery thirty years later when just outside El Alamein one’s tank lacks that very last drop of fuel to achieve the final victory. As I looked in I could see Fräulein Krömeier sitting absolutely still at her desk. It was only then that I realised I had not enquired how she was bearing up. Birthdays, bereavements, personal calls – these were all things which Traudl Junge used to remind me of, and more recently Fräulein Krömeier. But in this case, of course, it had not happened.

She was staring at the desktop in consternation. Then she looked up at me.

“Do you know what sort of e-mails I’m getting?” she said weakly.

I was deeply moved by the sight of this poor creature. “I’m terribly sorry, Fräulein Krömeier,” I said. “I can easily stomach this sort of thing; I’m used to enduring such hostility when
standing up for the future of Germany. I bear full responsibility – it is unforgivable when one’s political opponents choose to attack lesser employees.”

“But it’s got nothing to do with you,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just the usual
Bild
crap? You appear once in that shitty rag with tits plastered on every page and then everyone’s got it in for you. I’m getting like … photos of men’s dicks? I’m getting really nasty mail? People saying what they’d like to do to me? I stop reading after the first couple of words. I’ve been Vulcania17 for seven years, but now I can forget it. That name’s contaminated and now,” she said, sorrowfully pressing a key, “now it’s like … history.”

Being unable to make a decision is not a pleasant feeling. If Blondi had still been alive, at least I would have been able to stroke her; in such moments an animal, particularly a dog, is always good for relieving some of the tension.

“And it doesn’t stop with the Internet, either,” she said. She stared blankly into the distance. “At least on the Internet you can read what people are thinking? But you can’t do that on the street. You can only have a guess? And I’d rather not guess?” She snivelled.

“I ought to have warned you in advance,” I said after a moment’s silence. “But I underestimated the enemy. I am really very sorry that you are having to pay for my error. Nobody knows better than I do that sacrifices have to be made for the future of Germany.”

“Couldn’t you just put a sock in it for a couple of minutes?” Fräulein Krömeier said, looking rather exasperated. “F.Y.I., this is not about the future of Germany! This is real! This isn’t a
joke! It isn’t a performance, either! It’s my life these arseholes are messing up with their lies!”