The Weimar Triangle (21 page)

Q: What did he think of Wilhelm?

A: Not much. They had a number of conversations. He considered him grossly inadequate as a leader. However, he thought the role the Kaiser played corresponded closely to the role most Germans wanted him to play. He thought as a person the Kaiser was quite interesting and congenial. Rathenau considered the Prussian aristocracy, the class the Kaiser represented, an anachronism in the modern world and he was appalled that, in spite of the rapid industrialization of Germany in recent decades, it was still dominant in the military, in the public service and in society generally.

Q: Did he support the war in 1914?

A: This is hard to say. He certainly did not share the almost universal enthusiasm in August 1914. When the Americans entered the war in 1917 he predicted that Germany would be defeated. This was long before most other observers.

Q: After giving up the job organizing raw materials, what did he do for the rest of the war? Other than being chairman of the board of the A.E.G.?

A: He kept in close touch with top members of the government, sent them frequent memoranda and wrote articles for the press, urging greater efforts to mobilize the economy since he believed both the government and the public underestimated the efforts required to achieve victory. Since there was an acute shortage of labour he favoured transporting seven hundred thousand workers from occupied Belgium to be used in German factories, even if this lowered German prestige abroad. But he did not always take such a tough line. In 1916 he warned in vain against conducting unrestricted U-boat warfare, which he thought was likely to bring the Americans into the war.

As I said, by1917 he had given up hope for victory. He felt increasingly isolated and was concentrating on conditions after the war. By then he had established a personal relationship with Ludendorff, who exercised almost dictatorial powers and whom he considered extraordinarily able as a strategist, almost a genius, but devoid of any political sense. Ludendorff had been receptive to many of his ideas. Rathenau spent much time at the Schloss Freienwalde, an hour by car from Berlin, a forgotten and neglected architectural jewel built in the classical style at the end of the eighteenth century for the widow of Friedrich Wilhelm II, king of Prussia, the successor of Frederick the Great. He had bought the property in 1909 and had it fully restored.

Q: So when in November 1918 the Western Front collapsed, he wasn’t surprised?

A: No. But he was devastated by the way it happened. By the end of September 1918 the military situation was so disastrous that Ludendorff
—
until that moment a man of iron
—
suffered a nervous breakdown and demanded an end to hostilities and a restructuring of the government in Berlin. A formal request for a truce followed. Rathenau stated publicly in a newspaper that this move was premature, that Germany still had many means of resistance left, that there should be a
levée en masse,
a huge national uprising, in order to get better terms and avoid a
Diktat
by the Allies. A few notables agreed with him but the public at large, and the government, did not: the country was exhausted. Once Ludendorff recovered, he agreed with Rathenau and, without checking with Berlin, gave an order to resist. As a result, Ludendorff was discharged.

Q: And how did Rathenau behave during the revolution?

A: For the conservatives he was too revolutionary, for the revolutionaries too conservative. Few people listened to him. He became frustrated and embittered. However, he remained in the public eye in Berlin as a writer mainly on economic issues and as a founding member of the Democratic Party. This phase ended when he joined the Wirth cabinet in 1921 as minister of reconstruction. Later he became foreign minister.

Q: Now please let us return to the Leipzig trial,
Herr Doktor
Geisel. Are you saying there was a miscarriage of justice?

A: No. It would have been difficult to obstruct the course of justice openly in this case, in view of the state of public opinion. There was huge interest in the proceedings. The court room was always crowded and there was not a major newspaper in the country that did not send reporters to cover the trial. Two of the main perpetrators killed themselves while fleeing from the police. I should add that it was an impressive achievement of the police in Berlin to have identified and arrested more than a dozen participants in the crime in merely six weeks.

Q: But there was no doubt that there was a widespread conspiracy? That this was not the work of one or two fanatics?

A: None. One of the conspirators came from Kiel, another from Chemnitz, a third from Berlin, several from Frankfurt. A manufacturer in Freiberg in Saxony had provided the Mercedes the assassins used to shoot down Rathenau, who was being driven from his house in suburban Grunewald to the ministry in the Wilhelmstrasse in an open car.

Q: So what is your criticism of the trial?

A: My criticism is that the judges refrained from demonstrating the political dimensions of the conspiracy.

Q: Could they have done so?

A: Yes, if they had the integrity required of a truly independent, republican judiciary. Since they were what they were
—
namely, survivors from the previous régime
—
it would be unrealistic to expect them to behave differently.

Q: If you had sat on the bench, what would you have done?

A: I would have made sure the public understood that the murder of Walther Rathenau was a culminating act in a serious of murders and political actions designed to overthrow the government and undo the Weimar constitution and that this amounted to an attempted counter-revolution. I would have made sure that everybody understood that there was a connection between the conspirators and certain dubious elements of the
Reichswehr,
and that these dubious elements were tolerated if not actually supported by the government for its own reasons
—
and that it was the job of a truly independent judiciary, and of a responsible press, to expose this connection. I would have made sure that due attention was paid to the evidence presented in court that showed that ex-officers involved in the conspiracy had associated themselves with organizations that contained units that called themselves
Terror-Kommandos.

Q: And you believe that in due course this will be proved?

A: I have no doubt. Unless, of course, one of these days the counter-revolution succeeds and the memory of Walther Rathenau will be extinguished. At that moment we will all lose our freedom.

P
UTSCHING WITH
P
UTZI

Notes for an Operetta in Three Acts, written by an unknown composer-librettist, most probably inspired by the Johann Strauss Exhibits in Showcase 33.

Characters

SEPPL, Headwaiter, Café Luitpold, and Chief Prison Guard, Fortress Landsberg-am-Lech, bass

PUTZI Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s massive, piano-playing, half-American patron, baritone

RUDOLF, a handsome storm trooper, a nephew of Putzi Hanfstaengl, tenor

KAETCHEN, soprano, niece of Erich Ludendorff

FRAU HANFSTAENGL, Putzi’s mother, mezzo-soprano

Act 1, Scene 1

Café Luitpold in Munich, afternoon of November 8, 1923

SEPPL (in a solo recitative, points to a man immersed in a newspaper): Do you see this man? He comes here every afternoon. Very good tipper. His name is Alois and he talks to nobody except me. He likes me and I like him. He says we are on the brink of chaos. The world is in such a mess, he says, that nothing can save us but a return to the monarchy. True, the inflation is over, but the damage has been done and the famous German “republic” is falling apart. The French are still occupying the Ruhr, and the communists are taking over Saxony and Thuringia. They have both declared they won’t take any more orders from Berlin.

Nor will we. Alois says Chancellor Gustav Stresemann himself may not be a social democrat, but he has them in his cabinet, and that’s bound to lead to Bolshevism. And he has resumed paying reparations to the French! Yes, we want our Catholic
Wittelsbacher
back, Crown Prince Rupprecht, the son of our last king, Ludwig III, a great war hero, who commanded the sixth army in Lorraine. Also, through his mother, a direct descendent of King James II of England. The English call this the Jacobite succession. I think the crowns of Bavaria and England would go very well together, don’t you? He has no more use for the Prussians in Berlin than Alois and I do. They call us separatists and that’s what we are.

The National Socialists
—
Nazis, Alois call them
—
are
not
separatists. Never mind that nobody outside Bavaria has ever heard of them. They don’t want to separate; they want to dominate. Here in Munich, there is an armed Nazi brownshirt at every corner. Herr Gustav von Kahr doesn’t like them or their plebeian leader Adolf Hitler and his big mouth, and neither, of course, does our beloved crown prince. But on the other hand, they believe he can be useful to them, when the time is ripe. Which, for all you know, may be tonight. And to make things even more lively
—
there’s the greatest of all our legendary war heroes, Erich Ludendorff. He may well make a dramatic appearance, presumably in a trench coat and a fedora hat. He will work with anybody if that will can help him destroy the despised Republic. Even with Adolf, hoping no doubt that, if he succeeds, he will push Adolf aside and become dictator himself.

Tonight there is a meeting at the
Bürgerbraukeller
when State Commissioner Gustav von Kahr will speak to three thousand people on the fifth anniversary of the revolution. The Commander of the Seventh Division of the
Reichswehr
, General Otto von Lossow, will be there as well, and so will be the head of the Bavarian state police, Colonel Hans von Seisser. They are the Big Three. Is it true, Alois, that Adolf Hitler and his storm troopers will also make an appearance?

ALOIS: (nods).

SEPPL: There will be fireworks!

Act 1, Scene 2

PUTZI makes a grand entrance and is greeted by everybody. Walks straight to the piano. Solo aria, in the manner of Figaro’s
Largo al factotum della città
, complains of the trouble he has grooming Adolf to make him fit for High Society: basic table manners
—
his were too crude even for storm troopers
—
clean fingernails, no brown shoes with navy blue pants, kiss the hands of beautiful ladies, etc. But what talent! Knows all of Wagner by heart. Has seen
Tristan and Isolde
thirty times. No wonder Wagner’s daughter-in-law Winifred Wagner is crazy about him. Good thing she’s pure Aryan. You see, Adolf doesn’t like Jews. Winifred doesn’t care
—
this season Wotan is sung by a Jew. Oh, the trouble I went through with him: when he first arrived, not yet fully recovered from the time he spent in the military hospital following being blinded in a British air attack, and waking up only to find unbeaten Germany had been betrayed by Jews and socialists. Bowled over by mesmerizing speeches in beer halls. It’s amazing what it does for a man to find out that he has a hypnotizing effect on others.

Act 1, Scene 3

RUDOLF in S.A. uniform, and KAETCHEN wearing an alluring traditional Bavarian dirndl come in. They are in love. They sit down and sing a love duet. They want to elope as soon as possible. Uncle PUTZI is their ally. However, Uncle Erich (Ludendorff) is against their marriage, on the grounds that he doesn’t want a storm trooper in the family.

A loud barking voice offstage interrupts to summon RUDOLF to join his unit, for action.

Act 2, Scene 1

Later that day, in the drawing room of the Hanfstaengl family mansion.

Before going to bed, while putting out the lights, FRAU HANFSTAENGL, born in the United States, sings a melancholy aria vaguely reminiscent of the Countess’s
Porgi, amor
at the beginning of Act 2 of
The Marriage of Figaro.
She is profoundly impressed by Hitler, an extraordinary person, she thinks. She can fully understand Putzi’s attachment to him, even though there is a vast social and cultural gulf between them. After all, her grandfather was a Civil War general and Putzi’s classmates at Harvard were Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 1920, and the poet T.S. Eliot. But this man Hitler is so vehement! So uncouth! So unequipped for the real world! Surely he can’t pull off what he intends to do
—
seize power in Bavaria and then march on to Berlin, to topple the government, annul the constitution and take over? True, that’s not so different from what Mussolini did last October 29 when he marched on Rome. But is Hitler ready? Putzi is doing is best to groom him, but surely a lot more time is required to smooth out the extremely rough edges. She goes to bed. The lights go out.

Act 2, Scene 2

PUTZI comes in, together with RUDOLF, in high spirits. They perform a virtuoso duet, recounting vividly the high drama of the evening, with the refrain: “It all seemed to be going to well!”

Under the direction of Hermann Göring storm troopers had surrounded the beer hall. At eight thirty, while von Kahr is speaking, Hitler and his armed men stormed in and caused instant panic. Hitler fired a shot in the air with his Browning and yelled “Silence!” to the stunned crowd. Hitler and Göring forced their way to the podium. Kahr yielded. Hitler shouted: “The national revolution has begun. No one must leave the hall. Unless there is immediate quiet I shall have a machine gun mounted in the gallery. The Bavarian and Reich governments have been removed and provisional governments formed. The barracks of the
Reichswehr
and of the police are occupied. The army and police are marching on the city under the banner of the swastika.” Nobody in the hall could possibly have known that none of this was true.

Hitler then ordered Gustav von Kahr, Hans Seisser and Otto von Lossow
—
the Big Three
—
to go to a back room. There he informed them they were to join his revolution and would be part of his government. But to Hitler’s great surprise they just glared at him and said nothing. Hitler then pulled his pistol and said, “I have four bullets, three for you and one for myself.”