The Sunday Gentleman (64 page)

Clearly, despite a certain amount of antagonism toward him by a variety of Swedish citizens I had met, Dr. Sven Hedin was not to be counted out. My curiosity about Dr. Hedin mounted. I wondered what had happened to a member of that unclassified species, the neutral-nation Nazi, after the war was over. To satisfy my curiosity, I sent Dr. Hedin a note. Promptly, he replied to it with an invitation to tea.

The two modern apartments which he kept, one above the other, were located on the Norr Mälarstrand, overlooking the quiet canal waters and white ferryboats of the Mälaren. Dr. Hedin met me at his door, a quick, shrewd-eyed gnome of a man, wearing thick spectacles, gray scrub mustache, stiff winged collar, and pin-striped suit. He grasped my hand in both of his. How good to see me! Ah, he had not been to America since 1932, when he had supervised construction of a replica of Jehol’s Golden Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. An electric land, America. He had lunched with Henry Ford. Good man. Ford, even though Ford had refused to back a Hedin expedition into China, and was interested only ,in new roads for American automobiles in Russia. Did I know that Dr. Hedin had a letter from the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Oh yes, yes indeed.

Talking steadily. Dr. Hedin guided me into a narrow room, with built-in files on both sides, the files jammed with the correspondence of sixty years. He began opening files. The Roosevelt letter, the letter, ah, here, from the White House, Washington, D.C., 1933, a polite thank-you for some Chinese stamps and an invitation to drop in sometime.

We went into the parlor for tea. Dr. Hedin introduced me to his elderly sister, Alma, a tall, wary, watery woman in blue. She collected stamps, had founded the Flower Fund (“It’s barbaric to waste flowers on the dead at funerals, so I make our people spend the same money on apartment houses for old folks”), and was now writing her autobiography. She had published one book,
My Brother Sven
, and it had been brought out in Germany recently.

Next, Dr. Hedin introduced me to his niece, Ann Maria Wetterlind, a compact blonde who spoke British English. She had been traveling these last years as Uncle Sven’s secretary, and she had adored Berlin most of all. Those good times in Berlin, those parties, those wonderful people Emmy and Hermann, and Adolf’s marvelous anecdotes. They were all such gentlemen, except Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Front, he alone repelled her.

Ann Maria was now occupied taking care of eighteen refugees from Poland and Estonia. There were 98,000 refugees in all, in Sweden, and many were very ill. They had suffered horribly in concentration camps. Mentioning the last, Ann Maria did not hide her confusion. These refugees claimed Emmy and Hermann and Adolf had put them there, in those camps, and yet Arm Maria had met Emmy and Hermann and Adolf and found them charming. Where was the lie?

We sat around a large, low coffee table, and with the first ceremonious pouring of tea. Dr. Sven Hedin took over. He seemed faintly concerned that I did not know enough about his importance in Sweden. Did I know that he was a Nobel Prize judge, and the only judge to vote annually on three of the four categories that Sweden controlled? I had not known, and was impressed, and showed it.

Feeling surer now. Dr. Hedin proceeded to elaborate upon his Nobel Prize connections. He had, he said, been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science since 1905, and every year since then had voted for the laureates in physics and chemistry. In fact, in 1924, because of seniority, he had been president of the Academy of Science. During his membership, Dr. Albert Michelson, Dr. Guglielmo Marconi, Dr. Max Planck (“Five years ago, when he was eighty-five, he wrote me he had climbed the Jungfrau, up and down, in a single day”). Dr. Albert Einstein had been honored in physics, and Dr. Ernest Rutherford, Dr. Marie Curie, Dr. Irving Langmuir, Dr. Otto Hahn had been honored in chemistry.

Back in 1913, Dr. Hedin continued, he had been elected to fill a vacancy among the eighteen who composed the Swedish Academy, and thus, as one of the august eighteen, he had also become a judge to vote on the annual Nobel Prize for literature. Today, he was one of the three eldest of the eighteen. Oh, he went back a long way. He had personally known Alfred Nobel himself. “Knew him quite well. A nice man, and kind, but not like other men. An eccentric. Very definite in his ideas and opinions. His famous last will was scratched out on a half sheet of paper, because he had torn off the blank bottom half to save for other writing. He backed an early expedition of mine.”

Dr. Hedin discussed some of the Nobel literary awards for which he had been, at least in part, responsible. Since he had become a literary judge, Romain Rolland, Knut Hamsun, Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Eugene O’Neill had all received the prize. Dr. Hedin explained that he and Selma Lagerlöf had been jointly responsible for swinging the Nobel award to America’s Pearl Buck in 1938. Oh yes, it was a fact. He had admired Pearl Buck’s work, her interest in China, and he and Selma had opposed and overcome the resistance of their fellow judges. “Pearl Buck and her husband published my last book, a biography of Chiang Kai-shek. They gave me too little money for it, and to think how I got her the Nobel Prize!” Not many days before, Dr. Hedin had heard from Pearl Buck’s husband, who published under the John Day imprint, recommending Lin Yutang, one of his authors, for the next Nobel Prize. Dr. Hedin was doubtful about Lin Yutang (“His work is not broad enough”), but he would read more of his books and reconsider.

I asked Dr. Hedin how a relatively unknown writer, like Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet, who had won the Nobel Prize the year before, had gained a majority vote. “Well, that was interesting,” said Dr. Hedin. “One of our judges, Hjalmar Gullberg, a very great poet here, had read Miss Mistral’s poetry in the original Spanish and was enthusiastic. He nominated her, as did someone from South America. She had never been translated into Swedish or English, so none of us knew her work. To convince us. Professor Gullberg went to work translating Miss Mistral’s best verse into Swedish. He had it published, and sent all of the judges a copy. It was a beautiful translation, and we voted her to be the laureate for 1945. But do not have the wrong impression. There are no politics in the awards.”

I asked Dr. Hedin why certain prominent authors had not been honored. I named names, and Dr. Hedin had an explanation for each rejection. Maxim Gorki had died too soon. “His name came in second several times, and he would have got the prize eventually.” H. G. Wells had been considered. “Too minor and journalistic.” W. Somerset Maugham had also been considered. “Too popular and undistinguished.” And James Joyce? Dr. Hedin seemed puzzled. “Who is he?”

By now, confident of my interest in him, Dr. Hedin turned to what he regarded as a more important topic of conversation—world politics. Germany was in a terrible condition, he said. Germans had no place to live. Their homes had been destroyed by American bombers. Germans were starving. They would die in droves this postwar winter. Field Marshall Milch’s wife had written him a pathetic letter begging for food packages. Dr. Hedin regarded me hopefully. Surely, I would tell America of this. Surely, America would help. After all, in the next war, a democratic United States of Germany would be America’s best ally. The German people were one people, and no artificial zones could ever divide them. Had not Walter Lippmann written that today the Germans were the strongest people in Europe? Did I not think William Bullitt was America’s most intelligent man?

Dr. Hedin told me that he had studied in Germany in 1889. It had always been his second homeland. He had been recognized there, feted, fussed over. The Kaiser and von Hindenburg had been his dearest friends. (Of course, he added, Pope Pius XI, King George V, Czar Nicholas, Emperor Meiji, Theodore Roosevelt had also been his friends.) And his books had always sold better in Germany than in the United States or Great Britain.

In 1927, Dr. Hedin went on. Dr. Junkers, the German airplane manufacturer, had sent him to Central Asia to see about establishing an air route from Berlin to Peking. The Chinese government had refused permission for such an airline. The expedition had then been refinanced and redirected by Dr. Hedin’s friend. King Gustav of Sweden, with a strictly scientific objective. When Hedin’s Swedish funds had run out, the Chinese took over his project and converted it into a pioneer highway-mapping enterprise. Dr. Hedin’s explorations in Central Asia had consumed eight years. On returning to Sweden, Dr. Hedin had undertaken to produce an encyclopedic series of books on his findings in Central Asia. Thirty-one volumes had already been published in Stockholm, and Dr. Hedin was in the midst of collaborating on the twenty-five remaining books in the series. He expected this would leave him little time for any more exploring in the future.

He had also written, he added proudly, about 500 manuscript pages of another book, one that had nothing to do with his exploring. “I will call it ‘Germany’s Last Years,’” he said. Instantly, his sister protested. “They were not Germany’s last years. Germany is not dead, Sven.” Dr. Hedin blinked behind his thick lenses. “Alma, I mean it will tell about Germany’s recent years.” It would relate the entire story, he said, of his countless visits with the Nazi leaders. Although himself one-quarter Jewish, Dr. Hedin had been extremely friendly with Hitler and Goebbels, and whenever he dined and chatted with them, he would, upon leaving their presence, scurry back to his suite in the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin and transcribe every word he had heard. He felt that his position, as an unbiased listener from a neutral country, had been unique, and he had been then, even as now, possessed of an acute sense of history.

I wondered exactly how friendly he had been with Adolf Hitler. In reply. Dr. Hedin nodded to his sister, who rose, disappeared, and then returned with a large red velvet box. She opened it with care. “We keep it hidden now,” she said softly. Deep inside the box, embedded in solid silver, the silver etched around with miniature swastikas, reposed a full-length picture of Hitler, a photograph affectionately autographed to Dr. Hedin.

After removing the framed picture, sister, Alma, extracted an oversized envelope. Dr. Hedin opened the envelope, pulled out a letter, typewritten, three pages long, dated “Oct. 27, 1942,” signed by Hitler. There was a story about this letter. Dr. Hedin had published, in Leipzig, a book entitled
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente
. Hitler, who rarely had time to read books himself, retained a man to read books for him, and then recount them in oral synopsis to him at bedtime. Yet, Hitler had found the time and been impelled to pick up Dr. Hedin’s book one evening at nine o’clock, and read straight through it until three o’clock in the morning. He had then dictated this affectionate letter to the author, discussing the book, and passing along the tidbit that he had attacked the Soviet Union only because he had learned the Bolsheviks were making secret preparations against him.

I asked Dr. Hedin about the others in Hitler’s inner circle. Dr. Hedin recalled that he had attended Goering’s fiftieth birthday stag party, and enjoyed it. He considered Goering a sweet, overgrown child. He reminded me that Goering’s first wife had been Swedish, and that had she lived, she would never have permitted him the outrageous vanity of flaunting all those medals. Dr. Hedin said that Himmler had been a kind, inoffensive person. Once, Dr. Hedin had got into a violent political argument with Himmler. To conclude it, Himmler had remarked, “Sven, your Sweden is no problem for us. A nation that has had no war for a hundred and thirty years is weak.” Dr. Hedin remembered how this had infuriated him, and how he had snapped at Himmler, “We are not weak but civilized. We have in our museums more flags and standards taken from other nations in victorious battle than you have in all Germany and Austria. We have four thousand captured trophies in one museum alone!” The argument ended, said Dr. Hedin, when he quoted the Fuehrer’s statement that Germany’s aim and goal was peace, something that Sweden had already achieved. After that, Himmler had fallen into silence.

Dr. Hedin’s only real grievance was against Walther Funk. It appeared that in 1936, Dr. Hedin had delivered a series of 150 lectures, during which he traveled the length and breadth of Germany, and then he had returned to Stockholm to write a book about the Third Reich. He had been promised that 260 German organizations would buy copies of his book and publicize it. “I would have made a fortune,” said Dr. Hedin. “As a matter of routine, I sent the manuscript in advance of publication to Funk, who was to approve the contents. He liked the book, but he insisted that five of the three hundred pages I had written must come out. These five pages were critical of the Nazi policy toward the Jews. I refused to cut out the five pages. Then there ensued a vehement correspondence between Funk and myself on Germany’s Jewish policy. He wrote me eight letters in all. I have them here. But the book was never published.”

Dr. Hedin said that he had last heard from Adolf Hitler two months before Berlin fell and the Fuehrer disappeared.

This communication had arrived on Dr. Hedin’s eightieth birthday. Hitler had sent a long telegram of congratulations, as had Keitel, Schacht, Raeder, von Ribbentrop, and Rosenberg. “I suppose Hitler is dead,” said Dr. Hedin, “but I would not bet my head on it.”

I made some oblique reference to Dr. Hedin’s awkward position in Sweden today. Before he could comment, his niece spoke up. She said that at the start of the Second World War half of the Swedish people were for Germany, and half against. During the war. Hitler’s invasion of neighboring Norway had made the majority of Swedes anti-German. Dr. Hedin interrupted his niece. “Today, it is changing back, so that more and more of our people are again sympathetic toward Germany. Right now, I am in disrepute here, but that will change, too.” He stared at me. “I am perhaps also a black sheep in the United States now, no?” I did not reply.

Our genteel tea had taken four hours, and outside it was dark. I came to my feet, and thanked the three of them for their hospitality. When I moved toward the door, Dr. Hedin almost trotted beside me. In a rapid monologue, he told me that he was working night and day to save General von Falkenhorst, who had been sentenced to death by the British. After assuring me that von Falkenhorst had been “a humane man,” Dr. Hedin added that he was enlisting the aid of the Swedish royal family in an effort to save the general.