Look Who's Back (26 page)

“Do you know what that is?”

He gave me a quizzical look.

“That is the amount of time needed to quit the League of Nations. ‘We dispute the legitimacy blah blah blah’ – what snivelling nonsense! Quit the League of Nations, arm yourself, then take what you need. And if you have a racially pure German Volk ready to fight with a fanatical will, then everything will come to you on this earth. So, let’s hear it again. Where do you stand on the racial question?”

“O.K. then. Having a German passport doesn’t make you a
German; you’re German by birth, that’s what it says in our—”

“A true German does not wriggle around in legal formulations; he talks straight! The racial idea is the fundament for the preservation of the German Volk. If this is not impressed on the Volk time and again, in fifty years we will no longer have an army, but a bunch of layabouts like the Habsburg Empire.” Shaking my head, I turned to the youth.

“Tell me, did you vote for this so-called democratic dumpling?”

The youth made an uncertain movement with his head.

“Was he
really
the best man available?”

The youth shrugged. I stood up in resignation. “Let’s go,” I said bitterly. “I’m not surprised this party doesn’t spread any terror.”

“What about Zwickau?” This was Bronner.

“What do you mean, ‘Zwickau’?” I said. “What has that got to do with terror? My, we knew how to bring terror to the streets back then! In 1933 we exploited it to enormous success. But there was a reason for that. The S.A. drove around in trucks, breaking bones and flourishing banners. Did you hear me? Banners!” I yelled so wildly at this doughball that he recoiled.

“Banners! The most important things of all! When a deluded Bolshevist nincompoop is sitting there in his wheel-chair he ought to know who knocked the stuffing out of him, and why! And what does that trio of idiots in Zwickau do? They kill one foreigner after another – without any banners. Everyone thinks these must be random attacks or the Mafia. So what is there to be frightened of? The only reason we know
these damp squibs existed at all is by the fact that two of the buffoons killed themselves.” I threw my arms skywards in dismay. “If I had got my hands on these gentlemen in time I would have rolled out a euthanasia programme just for them!”

In a rage I turned to the doughball. “Or I would have trained them for as long as it took for them to work effectively. Did you at least offer assistance to any of the three cretins?”

“I had nothing to do with the matter,” he said hesitantly.

“And I expect you’re proud of that!” I screamed. If the man had been wearing epaulettes I would have torn them from his jacket in front of the camera. I marched to the door in disgust and stormed outside.

Before me lay a sea of microphones.

“What have you been talking about?”

“Are you going to stand for the N.P.D.?”

“Are you a member?”

“A bunch of sissies,” I said disappointedly. “I’ll just say one thing: this is no place for an upstanding German.”

T
hat’s pure gold!” Madame Bellini said when, heavy-hearted, I showed her the report on the “National Democrats” alongside others we had filmed. “That’s quite special,” she gushed. “It’ll only need the lightest of edits. This will be the next step on the path to consolidating the Hitler brand! We’ll put it out at New Year! Or Epiphany, when everyone’s lounging around at home, desperate to find something to watch other than ‘Die Hard 64’, or the hundredth repeat of ‘Star Wars’.” This was our last meeting prior to what they called the Christmas break. For now there was nothing to do but wait for the broadcast dates, for the
Bild
interview to appear, and for this time of peace and goodwill to all men to pass.

I have never been a great advocate of Christmas. In the old days many Bavarians found this hard to understand; there they celebrate the run-up to it with what they call “Yuletide”. Had it been down to me, I would have eliminated the lot of it, including Advent and St Nicholas. Nor am I an advocate of this roast goose business, not on St Martin’s Day, not at Christmas and definitely not at Candlemas. In any case, during my first tenure as Führer I had no time to waste as I prepared for the final victory. In fact, I was willing to give Christmas a miss
altogether, but Goebbels always held me back and said we had to take the needs of the Volk into consideration. At least in the beginning.

Well, Goebbels was a family man. And I think it’s no bad thing to have at least one man in the party who is able to bury his antennae deep into the soul of the Volk; one shouldn’t ignore such currents of feeling. Although, in retrospect, perhaps the idea of using golden swastikas as tree decorations was a touch excessive. It is never a simple undertaking to put a new gloss on an old idea – one should rather offer up something entirely new, something of one’s own creation. Although I never checked, I don’t imagine that Goebbels used the swastika baubles himself; at most he may have hung up the odd one out of politeness or good manners. Himmler, on the other hand …

What I did cherish, however, were the possibilities Christmas afforded. All the books I was able to get through in that period. And the designs I managed to draw. Half of Germania came into existence! For this reason I did not mind spending the time around the turn of the year more or less alone in my hotel room. Hotel management had given me a small gift of a bottle of wine and a few chocolates. They couldn’t have known that I don’t much care for alcohol.

For me, the only unhappy aspect of the Christmas period has been the constant reminder that I was never blessed with my own family. Reorganising a Reich, cultivating the national movement amongst the Volk, ensuring my order not to surrender a centimetre in the East was carried out with due fanaticism and an iron will – these are not the sorts of matters one can
attend to with children, not even with a wife. It was difficult enough with Eva; a certain consideration of her needs was essential, but ultimately the increased or sometimes extreme demands on my time and person from party, politics and the Reich meant one could not rule out the possibility that in her distress she might once again try to …

I will concede, however, that on those days when in theory I had comparatively little to do, Eva’s company would have been most pleasant. Her happy disposition. Oh well: the strong man is mightiest alone. This also holds true at Christmas, especially so, in fact.

I looked at the bottle the hotel had given me. I would have preferred a sweet Beerenauslese.

Recently I had become accustomed to taking the occasional stroll to the kindergarten playground. I loved to watch the children romp around and squeal with excitement, and found it cleared my mind. But I discovered that the kindergarten was closed for Christmas. There are few gloomier sights than a deserted playground.

Then I took to the drawing board; after all, one never knows when one might find the time to sketch again. I drew a motorway network and a railway system – this time for the Lebensraum beyond the Urals – a few main train stations and a bridge over to England. They’ve dug a tunnel there now, but lately I’ve been more taken by solutions above ground. Perhaps I spent too much time in bunkers. Unsatisfied with my blueprint, I then designed two new opera houses for Berlin, each with 150,000 seats. But this task was executed more out of a sense of duty than any real desire – who would address these
matters if I didn’t take care of them? In the end I was delighted when I was able to resume work for the production company at the beginning of January.

I
had not expected anything different. In fact I was almost satisfied, for at least they had left Fräulein Krömeier alone this time. It was not, however, what one might call good journalism. On the other hand, I regard the term “good journalism” as an oxymoron. All the same, I had expected that my accommodating attitude towards the paper might have been better rewarded than with the headline:

“Are you
insane
?” Sensenbrink said, firing the newspaper onto the table. “If we go on like this we’ll end up in court in no time! Come on, guys, you were all here when Frau Bellini said that the Jews were no laughing matter!”

“That’s exactly what he told them,” Sawatzki interjected. “Literally. But they didn’t mention that.”

“Calm down,” Madame Bellini said. “I listened to the recording again. Everything Herr Hitler said he said as Adolf Hitler.”

“As I always do,” I added in astonishment, to emphasise just how ridiculous that comment was. Madame Bellini frowned at me briefly and then continued, “Er … yes, precisely. No-one can lay a finger on us legally. I want to stress once again that you’ve got to be careful when talking about the Jews. But I don’t see what’s false about the statement that Hitler was responsible for the death of six million Jews. Who else do you think was?”

“Don’t let Himmler hear you saying that,” I chuckled. I could see Reich Sceptic Sensenbrink’s hair stand on end, even if I couldn’t be sure why. I toyed with the idea that Himmler might also have woken up somewhere in Berlin, and that Sensenbrink was planning a television programme with him, too. But that was nonsense. Himmler did not have the face for
television, and he never received a single letter from an admirer, or at least not to my knowledge. A decent administrator when needed, but his expression always harboured a slyness – pure treachery in spectacles, as it ultimately turned out. Nobody wants to see that kind of thing on their television set. Even Madame Bellini looked annoyed for a moment, but then her face relaxed and she said, “I hardly like to say it, but you’re already an expert at this sort of thing. Other people would need at least half a year’s media training.”

“That’s just great,” Sensenbrink ranted. “But it’s not just a legal thing. If they keep firing from both barrels our ratings could go south. Rapido. And there’s nothing else they can do.”

“Oh yes there is,” I said. “But they choose not to.”

“No,” Sensenbrink bellowed. “There isn’t. This is the Axel Springer Verlag we’re talking about! Have you seen their mission statement? Point two: “To bring about reconciliation between Germans and Jews, including supporting the right of the Israeli people to exist.” This isn’t any old tittle-tattle, it comes from Springer himself. It’s their Bible; every editor is given a copy when they’re appointed and Springer’s widow makes a point of checking that these principles are being adhered to!”

“And you’re only telling me this now?” I asked acidly.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing if they give you no let-up,” Sawatzki butted in. “We could do with all the attention we can get.”

“Exactly,” Bellini said. “But we mustn’t let it go the wrong way. We must make sure that all our viewers know who the baddie is.”

“So who is the baddie, then?” Sensenbrink groaned. “Himmler?”

“
Bild
,” Madame Bellini and Hotel Reserver Sawatzki said in unison.

“I will clarify the situation in my next Führer address,” I promised. “It’s time that these parasites were named.”

“Do you really have to call them ‘parasites’?” Reich Sceptic Sensenbrink whimpered.

“We could accuse them of duplicity,” Sawatzki said, “if we had a little more in our budget. Have you looked at Hitler’s mobile?”

“Sure, he’s got the recording of the conversation,” Madame Bellini said.

“Not only that,” Sawatzki said. He bent forwards, picked up my telephone and fiddled about with it for a moment. Then he held the device in front of us so we had a good view of the screen. It showed a photograph.

This was the moment I first realised I no longer missed that genius Goebbels.

T
here are always advantages to having reached a certain time in one’s life. I am most pleased that I did not come to politics until I was thirty, an age when a man finds his peace physically and sexually, and thus can focus all his energies on his actual goals, without his time and steel forever being purloined by the impulses of physical love. It is also true that age determines the sorts of demands people will make of one. If the Volk elects a Führer who is twenty, let’s say, and he displays no interest in women, people will start talking right away. What a queer Führer, they’ll soon be saying, why doesn’t he take a wife? Has he no wish to? Isn’t he able? But if, like me, the Führer is forty-four and does not choose a wife immediately, the Volk will say, “Well, he doesn’t have to, maybe he’s got one already.” And, “How nice that he’s thinking only of us.” And so it continues. The older one becomes, the more one assumes the role of the wise man, without, incidentally, having to do anything oneself. Take Schmidt, that ancient “Federal Chancellor” from some years back. This man has no shame whatsoever; he goes on and on spouting utter rot. They sit him in a wheelchair, where he ceaselessly puffs on one cigarette after the other, and delivers the most cretinous platitudes in an intolerably monotonous
tone of voice. This man has understood nothing at all, and by consulting a few books I have discovered that his fame is based on two silly deeds. One: when a storm surge hit Hamburg he called out the army to help – you don’t need to be a genius to do that. Two: he let the communist criminals keep the kidnapped industrialist Schleyer, which surely was no great sacrifice for him; indeed he may even have been broadly sympathetic to the end result, as Schleyer was for many years in my S.S. and no doubt a thorn in the side of the Social Democrat Schmidt. And now, barely forty years later, this chimney on wheels is paraded about the country as an all-knowing oracle. You would think the Lord God himself had descended from the heavens.