Winds of War (12 page)

Henry picked up his cue from the German’s smile. “Look, let’s not stand on ceremony. If I can come aboard, I’ll come and Tudsbury won’t.”

“Good God, yes” said the Englishman. “I’ve no business here anyway.”

The U-boat commander spread his hands. “I don’t want to drive a wedge in Anglo-American friendship.”

A whistle blasted as they spoke, and workmen came trooping off the boats and docks, and out of the sheds. The road to the gate was soon thronged with them. They came boiling out of the U-boat, up the gangway. “The old navy yard hazard,” Henry said. “Run for your life at five o’clock, or they’ll trample you to death.”

Grobke laughed. “All civilians are the same.”

Tudsbury said, “Well, in my next broadcast I’ll have to say that the U-boat command is humming like damn all. I hope they’ll take notice in London.”

“Just tell them what you saw.” Grobke shook his hand through the car window. “We want to be friends. We know you have the greatest navy in the world. These silly little boats can do a lot of damage for their size, that’s all. One of my officers will drive you to your hotel.”

Since workmen were jamming the gangway, Grobke grinned at Henry, and pointed a thumb toward the plank on the other side of the dock. Pug nodded. The German with a gesture invited him to go first. It was a very long drop, something like seventy feet, to the greasy puddles in the concrete dock. Pug made his way around the rim and walked down the shaky paint-spotted plank, trying to look easier than he felt. Stolid eyes of side boys in white watched from below. As he set foot on deck, they snapped to attention. Grobke stepped off the rattling plank with a laugh. “Well done, for two old blokes.”

U-46 looked much like an American submarine, but the cleanliness, polish, and order were unusual. A United States ship in dry dock, with civilian workmen aboard, soon became squalid and dirty. No doubt Grobke had ordered a cleanup for the American visitor, which Pug appreciated, being himself a spit-and-polish tyrant. Even so, he had to admire the German display. The diesels looked as though they had never turned over, their red paint and brass fittings were unsullied by a grease spot, and the batteries seemed fresh from the factory. The sailors were starched pretty fellows, almost a crew for a nautical musical comedy. As for the U-boat design, when you took the essential spaces and machines of a war vessel and stuffed them into the sausage casing of one long tube, the result was the same in any country: change the instrument legends to English, move the captain’s cabin from port to starboard, add two feet to the wardroom, alter a few valve installations, and you were in the
Grayling
.

“Smells pretty good,” he said, as they passed the tiny galley, where cooks in white were preparing dinner and somehow managing to perspire neatly.

Grobke looked at him over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t care to eat aboard? It’s awfully cramped, but these chaps don’t eat too badly.’

Pug had a dinner appointment with the Tudsburys, but he said at once, “I’d be delighted.”

So he dined elbow to elbow with the captain and officers of the U-boat in the narrow wardroom. He enjoyed it. He was more at home here than in his silk-walled dining room in Berlin. The four young officers were thin-lipped, ruddy, blond, shy; like Americans in their features, but with a different look around the eyes, more intense and wary. They sat silent at first, but soon warmed to the American’s compliments about the boat, and the joking of Grobke, who got into an excellent mood over the food and wine, Stories passed about the stupidity and laziness of navy yard workmen. One of Pug’s best yarns, an incident of crossed-up toilet plumbing on the West Virginia brought uproarious laughter. He had noticed before the German taste for bathroom humor. The officers told tales which they considered comic, of their early training: first about the cleaning of latrines, then of electric shocks to which they had had to submit without flinching while their reactions were filmed; exposure to cold and heat past the point of collapse; knee bends until they dropped; the “Valley of Death” cross-country run up and down hillsides, wearing seventy-pound loads and gas masks. An officer emerged the better, they said, from such ordeals. Only Grobke disagreed. That Prussian sadism was old-fashioned, he asserted. In war at sea, initiative was more important than the blind submission that the ordeals implanted. “The Americans have the right idea,” he said, either because he sensed that Pug was shocked, or out of maverick conviction. They feasted on cabbage soup, boiled fresh salmon, roast pork, potato dumplings, and gooseberry
torten
. Obviously Grobke had ordered up this banquet on the chance that Pug might stay.

Streaks of red sunset showed through the black rain when Henry and Grobke left the submarine. On the dock some crewmen, naked except for trunks, were wrestling inside a cheering circle, on gray mats laid over the crane tracks. Henry had seen everywhere this love of young Germans for hard horseplay. They were like healthy pups, and these U-boat men looked stronger and healthier than American sailors.

“So, Henry, I suppose you join your English friend now?”

“Not if you have any better ideas.”

The German slapped him on the shoulder. “Good! Come along.”

They drove out through the gate. “Damn quiet after five o’clock,” said Pug.

“Oh, yes. Dead. Always.”

Pug lit a cigarette. “I understand the British are working two and three shifts now in their yards.”

Grobke gave him an odd look. “I guess they make up for lost time.”

A couple of miles from the base, amid green fields near the water, they drove into rows of wooden cottages. “Here’s where my daughter lives,” Grobke said, ringing a doorbell. A fresh-faced young blonde woman opened the door. Three children, recognizing Grobke’s ring, ran and pounced on the paper-wrapped hard candies he handed out. The husband was at sea on maneuvers. On an upright piano in the tiny parlor stood his picture: young, long-jawed, blond, stern. “It’s good Paul is at sea,” Grobke said. “He thinks I spoil the kids,” and he proceeded to toss them and romp with them until they lost their bashfulness in the presence of the American, and ran around laughing and shrieking. The mother tried to press coffee and cake on the guests, but Grobke stopped her.

“The commander is busy. I just wanted to see the children. Now we go.”

As they got into the car, looking back at a window where three little faces peered out at him, he said: It’s not much of a house. Not like your mansion in the Grunewald! It’s just a cracker box. The German pay scale isn’t like the American. I thought you’d be interested to see how they live. He’s a good U-boat officer and they’re happy. He’ll have a command in two years. Right away if there’s war. But there won’t be war. Not now.”

“I hope not.”

“I
know
. There is
not
going to be war over Poland. So? Back to Swinemünde?”

“I guess so.”

As they drove into the small coastal town, Pug said, “Say, I could stand a beer. How about you? Is there a good place?”

“
Now
you’re talking! There’s nothing fancy, not in this boring town, but I can take you where the officers hang out. Isn’t Tudsbury expecting you?”

“He’ll survive.”

“Yes. Englishmen are good at that.” Grobke laughed with transparent pleasure at keeping the American naval attaché from the famous correspondent.

Young men in turtleneck sweaters and rough jackets sat at long tables in the dark, smoky, timbered cellar, bellowing a song to concertina accompaniment played by a strolling fat man in a leather apron. “Jesus Christ, I have drunk a lot of beer in this place, Henry,” said Grobke. They sat at a small side table under an amber lamp. Pug showed him pictures of Warren, Byron, and Madeline. After a couple of beers, he told of his worry over Warren’s involvement with an older woman. Grobke chuckled. “Well, things I did when I was a young buck! The main this is, he’ll be an aviator. Not as good as a submariner, but the next best thing, ha ha! He looks like a smart lad. He’ll settle down.”

Pug joined in a song he recognized. He had no ear and sang badly off-key. This struck Grobke as hilarious. “I swear to God, Victor,” he said, wiping his eyes after a fit of laughter, “could anything be crazier than all this talk of war? I tell you, if you left it to the navy fellows on both sides it could never happen. We’re all decent fellows, we understand each other, we all want the same things out of life. It’s the politicians. Hitler is a great man and Roosevelt is a great man, but they’ve both been getting some damn lousy advice. But there’s one good thing. Adolf Hitler is smarter than all the politicians. There’s not going to be any war over Poland.” He drained his thick glass stein and banged it to attract a passing barmaid. “
Geben Sie gut Acht auf den Osten
,” he said, winking and dropping his voice. “Watch the east! There’s something doing in the east.”

The barmaid clacked on the table two foaming steins from clusters in her hands. Grobke drank and passed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Suppose I tell you that I heard the Führer
himself
address the senior U-boat command and tell them there would be no war? You want to report that back to Washington? Go ahead, it happens to be true. You think he’ll start a war against England with seventy-four operational U-boats? When we have three hundred, that’ll be a different story, and then England will think twice about making trouble. And in eighteen months, that’s exactly what we’ll have. Meantime
watch the east
.”

“
Watch the east
?” Victor Henry said in a wondering tone.

“Aha, you’re a little curious? I have a brother in the foreign ministry.
Watch the east
! We’re not going to be fighting, Henry, not this year, I promise you. So what the hell? We live one year at a time, no? Come on, I have a tin ear like you, but we’ll sing!”

* * *

Victor Henry sat with his old portable typewriter on his knees, in the rosewood-panelled library. The magnificent antique desk was too high for comfortable typing; and anyway, the machine scratched the red leather top. It was not yet four in the morning, but the stars were gone, blue day showed in the garden, and birds sang. White paper, yellow paper, and carbons lay raggedly around him. The room was cloudy with smoke. He had been typing since midnight. He stopped, yawning. In the kitchen he found a cold chicken breast, which he ate with a glass of milk while he heated a third pot of coffee. He returned to the library, gathered up the top pages of his report to the Office of Naval Intelligence, and began reading.

COMBAT READINESS OF NAZI GERMANY

An Appraisal

Nazi Germany is a very peculiar country. The contradictions strike the observer as soon as he arrives. The old Germany is still here, the medieval buildings, the quaint country costumes, the clean big cities, the order, the good nature, the neatness, the “thoroughness,” the beautiful scenery, the fine-looking people, especially the children. However, there is an extra layer of something new and different: the Nazi regime. It’s all over the face of this old country like a rash. How deep it goes is a serious question. The Nazis have certainly put up a highly patriotic, colorful, and warlike façade. The swastika flags, new buildings, marching battalions, Hitler Youth, torchlight parades and such are all very striking. But what is behind the façade? Is there a strong potential for war-making, or is it mainly political propaganda and bluff?

This report gives the first impressions of an officer who has been in Germany four weeks, and has been digging for facts.

It is common knowledge that since 1933 Germany has been frankly and even boastfully rearming. Even before the Hitler regime, however, the army surreptitiously armed and trained in violation of the Versailles Treaty, with Bolshevik help. Once the Nazis took power, though the Russian contact was dropped the rearming speeded up and became open. Nevertheless, twenty years ago this nation was disarmed. Seven years ago it was still helpless compared to the Allies. The question is, to what extent has that gap been closed by Hitler? Building a modern combat force is a big-scale industrial process. It takes material, manpower, and time, no matter what vaunting claims political leaders make.

Two preliminary and interesting conclusions emerge from the facts this observer has been able to gather.

(1) Nazi Germany has not closed the gap sufficiently to embark on a war with England and France.

(2) The regime is not making an all-out effort to close the gap.

The next five pages contained ten-year figures - contradicting many intelligence reports he had read - of German factory production, of the expansion of industry, and of the output of machines and materials. He drew heavily on his own reading and inquiries. He presented comparisons of French, British, and German gross national products and of strength on land, sea, and in the air, during this decade. These numbers indicated - as he marshalled them - that Germany remained inferior in every aspect of war-making, except for her air force; and that she was not pushing her industrial plant very hard to catch up. Contrary to popular opinion all over the world, there was no feverish piling of arms. This emerged by a comparison of plant capacity and output figures. He described in passing the desolate peace that fell over the Swinemünde navy yard at the usual quitting time. There was not even a second shift for constructing U-boats, the key to German sea warfare. He argued that the edge in the air would rapidly melt away with the present British speedup in making airplanes and buying them from the United States. As to land war, the swarming uniforms in the city streets were quite a show; but the figures proved that France alone could put a larger, longer trained, and better equipped army in the field.

On a U-boat, passing through the squadron’s tiny flag office, he had seen scrawled on the outside of a mimeographed report some figures and abbreviations that he thought meant: operational, 51 - at sea, 6; in port, 40; overhaul, 5. These figures met the intelligence evaluations of the British and the French. Grobke had claimed seventy-four operational boats, a predictable overestimate when talking big to a foreign intelligence officer. But even exaggerating, Grobke had not gone as high as a hundred. Fifty U-boats were almost certainly the undersea strength of Nazi Germany, give or take five, with perhaps only thirteen under construction. In 1918 alone Germany had lost more than a hundred U-boats.