The Weimar Triangle (22 page)

Hitler left the room and jumped on the podium again and announced that the Reich president and the “November criminals”
—
meaning the government
—
had been removed. A provisional new national government would be named that day in Munich. A new German army would be formed immediately. It would be the task of the provisional government to organize a march on Berlin, sweep away the
Judenregierung
[Jew-government] and save the German people.

Everybody believed that the Big Three had given in. Then Ludendorff arrived. Hitler asked him to go to the backroom and persuade the Big Three to back him. Ludendorff ’s prestige was so high that he succeeded. They all came out, climbed up to the podium and declared they are loyal to Hitler. Hitler was euphoric.

That was the high point of the evening. Hitler will be the new leader of Germany.

The crowd sang “Deutschland Deutschland über Alles.”

Word came that
Reichswehr
soldiers in the barracks were resisting the storm troopers. Hitler left the hall to survey the field. The Big Three slipped out of the hall, after telling Ludendorff they were backing Hitler. And that’s where things stand at the moment.

Act 2, Scene 3

KAETCHEN rushes in, straight into RUDOLF’s arms. In a coloratura aria she tells him how proud she is of him. She has heard that Uncle Erich is the hero of the evening
—
it was he who had turned things round when he swayed the Big Three to back Hitler. Things are going so well that, thanks to Uncle Erich, Hitler and his men will now definitely represent the future of Germany. Uncle Erich is bound to give his blessing to their union.

Act 2, Scene 4

Early afternoon the following day, by which time it is clear the revolution has unravelled. Complete change of mood. PUTZI rushes in to announce that the Big Three have issued a statement saying that their declaration of loyalty to Hitler was invalid since it was extracted from them at gun point, that all the barracks
—
except the one at the War Ministry
—
resisted, that throughout the night bands of storm troopers were roaming the city, and that in the morning Erich Ludendorff suggested to the frantic Hitler he take over the city by marching from the centre at the Odeonsplatz on to the Feldherrnhalle with a cadre of armed storm troopers to force a showdown. So that’s what he tried to do at eleven that morning
—
with disastrous results. There was a bloody confrontation with about a hundred armed policemen. Several storm troopers and a few policemen were killed, in less than five minutes of gunfire. Göring was shot in the groin. Ludendorff was livid when Hitler ordered his men to surrender, which they did not do. Hitler suffered a dislocated shoulder when a man he had locked arms with was shot. He crawled along a sidewalk out of the line of fire and scoots away to a waiting car. Ludendorff, true to form, faced the bullets, confident, with good reason, that no one would dare to shoot him. He walked straight into the police ranks and is duly arrested. Hitler declared he would commit suicide.

A bell rings. PUTZI goes the door. There are confused noises
—
several men seem to be there. PUTZI says: “Yes, please bring him in. Just the shoulder? We’ll look after it. I’ll call a doctor”
—
when the curtain falls.

Act 3, Scene 1

The empty dining room of the Fortress Landsberg-am-Lech. Same musical style as in Act 1.

SEPPL
(reminiscent of
Frosch
in Act 3 of
Die Fledermaus
): Surprised to see me here? Three times the money I made in the Café Luitpold. They pay prison guards very well in Bavaria, and as their boss I get all kinds of perks as well, with frequent trips to Munich’s beer cellars and agreeable visits to the houses of joy nearby. And some of the prisoners are very generous. Especially our prize prisoner, Adolf. He is extravagantly appreciative for making life comfortable for him. He says I may be appointed
Gauleiter
when the time comes.

Do you see this table over there? Under the swastika banner? He sits at the head of the table, for lunch and dinner every day, with his entourage, brave men who were arrested and tried for high treason with him. Not breakfast. I allow him to sleep in. They have their breakfast, sausages and beer, without him.

I make sure his visitors feel at home here.

FRAU HANFSTAENGL: Putzi went to the trial every day but I only accompanied him a couple of times. I wish he wasn’t so involved, more than ever, but I continue to be hugely impressed by his friend’s amazing theatrical skills. Where did he acquire them? Surely not in the dreary asylums for the homeless in Vienna in which he spent his time. Political skills he still has to pick up. Ludendorff certainly won’t help him
—
he has none himself and anyway he will never speak to him again. He thinks Hitler is a coward who ran away when things got a little hot for him.

Hitler certainly made spectacular use of his trial for high treason in the former infantry school in the Blutenburgstrasse. According to one reporter he turned it into a political carnival. At one time Hitler appeared at a window of the courtroom to show himself to the cheering crowd.

He never denied any of the basic facts and grandly assumed full responsibility for everything that happened. But he vehemently denied committing high treason
—
such a thing was impossible against the men who themselves had betrayed their country in 1918. He was a German patriot, nothing else. He only desired what was best for the people, that was all. His oratory was so effective that very soon the roles of accuser and accused were reversed and the prosecution was on the defensive. The highly sympathetic presiding judge, who had acquitted Ludendorff, was so impressed that when eventually he sentenced Hitler to a mere five years in Landsberg, he quickly added that he would be eligible for parole long before the expiration of his sentence.

I certainly hope that when he is released Putzi will have turned a page and will be so involved in our art reproduction business that he will have lost his taste for this man’s seductive charms.

SEPPL (pointing to a table laden with flowers, food parcels, books, swastikas in all forms, and even a crucifix or two): These are the gifts that arrived today for my prize prisoner’s thirty-fifth birthday. No doubt they will be generously distributed to his friends, the governor, myself and the prison staff.

PUTZI: What a stroke of luck! For Adolf, November 8 and 9
—
since 1918 already historic dates
—
will now assume a double significance. They will be the days when the party received its baptism of fire and its first martyrs. The party was suddenly known all over Germany, no longer only in Bavaria, and so was he! And the things he learned! When he fell on the ground before the guns of the police, he learned that he could not achieve his ends through violent means. From now on he would only work within the law, peacefully, using only political means and propaganda. He would be a model citizen, just as he is now a model prisoner. He will represent law and order. He has learned that this is the way to win over the country’s dignitaries and institutions, including the
Reichswehr
and the police. No more romantic dreaming. From now on
— Realpolitik
.

SEPPL: Too bad I can’t introduce you to Frau Winifred Wagner, Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law. She has been a visitor several times. She is very fond of our man. Sometimes she brings the children. They call him Wolf. I don’t know why. Is there a wolf in one of the Wagner operas?

RUDOLF (wearing a suit): Without our
Führer
it’s pointless to be a storm trooper. At our meetings we fight each other and if we wear our uniform on the street people laugh at us. So I prefer to leave it in the cupboard. Its time will come again. Kaetchen thinks so, too. We eloped and got married two weeks ago. Kaetchen pretends not to mind that Uncle Erich is very upset, but I think she does mind and hopes he will come around after we have our first child.

KAETCHEN: I often walk in the garden with the
Führer
and listen to him. He is usually quite shy with women, especially with Frau Wagner, and I don’t think he really notices me, but I let him talk, and that’s what he wants to do. He says he finds this time invaluable
—
he can think things through and do a lot of reading. He likes philosophers and the memoirs of the war leaders, on our side and on the enemy’s side. He is getting a university education at the state’s expense, he says, and he has very good ideas of what he wants to do once he has power. He wants to build great highways throughout the country, which he will call
Autobahnen
and he wants to make sure everybody has a little car, which he calls
Volkswagen.

PUTZI: Did I mention that he’s writing a book? He’s not really writing it
—
he is dictating it to Rudolf Hess, a nice storm trooper who was born in Alexandria in Egypt, of all places, and some of Hitler’s men are typing it out, so if you hear the clutter of typewriters, that’s what they’re doing. I haven’t seen any of it, but from what they tell me, it’s extremely boring and longwinded. I am sure they’re right, and it will be forgotten the moment it comes out. If it comes out. He wants to call it “My Efforts,” or something like that.

T
HE
D
ECLINE OF THE
W
EST

The following is a typewritten note with no author indicated.

Among the Richard Wagner autographs assembled at the International Exhibition of Music were the first draft of the
Lohengrin
libretto, the proofs of the
Preislied
in the
Meistersinger
with Wagner’s corrections and an inscription of
Wotan’s Farewell
from the album of the Princess Carolyne of Sayn-Wittgenstein, Liszt’s mistress in Weimar, but nothing from the
Götterdämmerung
. This might have been a matter of regret for Hermann Geisel because such an exhibit would have pleasantly recalled his short and exhilarating romance with Ingrid P., the graduate law student and intern in his office, seven years earlier, in the spring of 1920.

Letter from Ingrid P.

Berlin, April 15, 1923

My dear Hermann,

Last week, at the end of the
Götterdämmerung
at the Staatsoper, I could not help thinking about you and Oswald Spengler. The Rhine maidens had just retrieved the ring and Walhalla was burning to the ground destroying the gods
—
the world
— that
world
—
had come to an end
—
but the music suggested a faint and highly enigmatic ray of hope for the future. It was your thoughts about Spengler that made me fall in love with you! Never before had a man like you paid attention to me, a man with a first-class legal mind, excited by big ideas and aware of their implications! No doubt you have since then swept many other impressionable young ladies off their feet and opened their eyes. The more, the better. They should be as grateful to you as I am. You are a one-man university and a great benefactor.

As you no doubt remember, the first volume of Spengler’s
Decline of the West
had come out just before the end of the war. (I have not read the second volume, which appeared recently.) For some years it was hugely successful and everybody talked about it. I recall you pacing the floor of your office in a state of high agitation deploring the way the public was misunderstanding its main message. Spengler had started writing the book in 1911, you said, and worked on it right through the war, convinced, like everybody else, that Germany would win. Still, he predicted the decline of the West of which victorious Germany was obviously going to be a part. It was doomed to decline in the long run, he said, just as had the Babylonian, Egyptian, Roman and all the other cultures. Since there was no need to get excited about the long run, people asked, why did that make him a pessimist in the short run, in our lifetime? And you said that question entirely missed the point, just as people would have missed the point if they had asked Richard Wagner whether he was a pessimist when he made Walhalla go up in flames. Just like Wagner, you said, Spengler had something to say about the state of the world and he had found a way to say it. Unlike the
Ring
, however, his meaning was crystal clear.

It was decadence, you said, that was in Spengler’s view the cause of the decline of all previous cultures, as it was going to be the decline of ours, decadence in our case in the form of liberalism, rationalism, materialism, egalitarianism, parliamentary institutions or their equivalent, and, above all, non-comprehension of the universal truth that war was essential for the survival of civilization. That message, you said, put him in the same camp as the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg, even if personally Spengler was a perfectly agreeable, harmless amateur scholar who would not hurt a fly.

Other people devoted countless hours and hundreds of pages trying to explain what you said with your usual crispness in a few sentences.

I miss you. You established the highest standards in every respect. No wonder my subsequent lovers have laboured hard, but in vain, to approach them.

Gratefully yours,

Ingrid

Draft Letter to Ingrid P.

Frankfurt, April 20,1923

Dear Ingrid,

It was lovely to hear from you. You flatter me too much. I don’t believe for a moment what you said about your “subsequent lovers.” If you introduce me to at least one or two of them next time I come to Berlin maybe I can give them a few tips.

Ah, Oswald Spengler. How amazing that his big book was such a huge success. I understand by now sales have reached a hundred thousand. Obviously the book touched a nerve, not only because of its politics. I am sure that if we had won the war we would have resisted the idea that we were ultimately doomed to decline anyway and the book would have been a flop. So Spengler is one of the many writers who benefited from the defeat. Some of the others are decadent pacifists like me and therefore his mortal enemies. I doubt very much whether many people read it from cover to cover. Yet they were awed by the erudition and impressed by the immense ambition of the book. Suddenly the boring lessons they learned at school about Sumerians and Hittites
—
not to mention the Carthaginians and Nubians
—
made sense! Almost without exception academics attacked it as the misguided work of a pretentious amateur but they would have said that about any outsider invading their turf. The public did not care.
Vox populi vox dei.