The Vengeance of Rome (37 page)

At last the cab pulled up outside an imposing four-storeyed house built on classic eighteenth-century lines which would not have been out of place in Washington, save for its colour. It had been erected in a rich, buttery-brown local stone and the woodwork painted in cream with a chocolate trim. Over the huge ground-floor windows and wide mahogany doors the balcony of the floor above formed a kind of porch, set off with elegant wrought iron. On the roof of the building flew a huge ‘Hakenkreuz' flag in the old imperial colours of red, white and black.

Our cab had trouble pulling in. Cars were coming and going from this building all the time. The glittering white steps vibrated to the polished boots of brown-shirted NSDAP members who possessed a slightly rougher, wilder look than the modern Italian
squadristi
. They resembled some of the earlier pictures of the
fascisti
who planned the March on Rome. Clearly our audacious Italian revolutionaries were the model for these men. All wore the same swastika armbands. Many had obviously been sewn on by amateurs. Their kepis strongly resembled ski caps. The NSDAP was still a party of the masses, a huge popular expression of a people's deepest needs and dreams.

Putzi apologised for not inviting me in. He said he would be a few minutes. I watched him disappear through the door. The guards not only recognised him, they showed him considerable respect.

From the window of the cab I watched the Brownshirts busy as bees coming and going from their hive. They had expressions of grim optimism, and there was quick, energetic purpose in their step. I was privileged to witness a movement on the very brink of political success, when the theories and the rhetoric could become realities at last.

One unpleasant moment occurred, however, when a scowling SA armed with a club and a dog whip ordered the cab to move on. I made a gesture to show that I was waiting for someone inside. The SA man came towards me as if I had threatened him. I wound up and locked the window. He grabbed for the cabby who remonstrated with him trying to let him know we were waiting for Doctor Hanfstaengl. Eventually the driver had little
choice but to obey. He was about to set his machine in motion when Putzi came bouncing back down the steps shouting at the trooper.

The Brownshirt slunk off grumbling, and Hanfstaengl opened the door. ‘I'm going to be longer than I thought,' he told me. ‘You'd better come inside. It's a nightmare at the moment.'

I took the catcalls of the Brownshirt lads in good part as I accompanied my new friend up the steps of party HQ. My ivory and lilac summer suit, my wide-brimmed panama and my malacca cane seemed unexceptional in the Roman sunshine but were great entertainment for those simple working-class boys. As fervent a revolutionary as themselves, I was seen by them as a dilettante. They could not quite understand what I had to do with the triumph of the masses.

A couple of cool words from Putzi Hanfstaengl, however, and they turned their grinning attention back to their work. Saluting ‘Storm Troopers' sprang to open the massive bronze doors. He showed them his party book, but they knew him, treating him with the utmost respect, lifting their arms in the Mussolini salute, clicking their heels and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!' It was quietly obvious that Doctor Hanfstaengl was more than a minor member of the new Nazi hierarchy. I was reminded of a scene in
Ben-Hur
when the great Roman general mounts the steps of the senate, saluted by his adoring men.

Thus, with only restrained ceremony, we entered the nerve centre of the movement, not the few shabby rooms of a revolutionary rabble, but the modern appointments of a party ready for the responsibility of government. Decorated in the very latest fashion, they were the epitome of solid, clean, no-nonsense modernity. The finest materials had been used. With over a hundred party members now in parliament, every Nazi knew he was on the brink of destiny. If high morale and boundless optimism could give the Nazis the majority they needed, they already had it with some to spare.

I had not expected anything so impressive. The teak panelling below and the cream walls gave an impression of old-fashioned solidity and of modern airy space. In years to come this style would be copied all over Europe and America.

‘Well,' said Putzi cheerfully, ‘it certainly beats Corneliusstrasse.' I gathered he referred to their earlier offices. I was delighted by the coincidence.

At all points the guards recognised Putzi, and most offered him the formal salute. My civilian clothes drew some disapproving looks and murmurs from the more conservative officers, but as Putzi's guest I was secure. He introduced me as one of Mussolini's men. This brought an apology from a staff member. They had not realised I was Italian. Putzi was in a hurry, so there was little time to study the appointments, though I was able to use the WC. I did pause to admire the vast entrance lobby, festooned with swastika flags on walls and ceiling, a symphony in red, black and white. Although I was struck by the similarities of style, I was polite enough not to make comparisons with the Palazzo Venezia. Clearly Hitler and Strasser, the movement's two main political leaders, aspired to Mussolini's position, but the Brown House could not match the grandeur of Il Duce's surroundings.

In one respect there was a marked difference. Compared to the almost churchlike calm of the Palazzo Venezia, this place was cacophony. The halls and stairs were busy with stamping feet and curt exchanges. Telephones rang perpetually. Mechanical noises shrilled or muttered from mysterious sources. With shouts, curses, and a rather copious use of strong language, the energetic young Brownshirts were everywhere. The place stank of their sweat, their masculinity. I could see how, as a party of youth and vigour, untouched by the corruptions of modern politics, the Nazis were gaining so many votes.

As well as the not unattractive odours of busy people, I determined other, less acceptable scents, of human urine and excrement. I remarked on this in surprise. Putzi apologised. ‘Rather too much attention to making an impression and not quite enough to plumbing. An old Austrian failing. But that's the Chief.' I was to hear this affectionate phrase many times from Hitler's closest associates, who never called him ‘Führer' among themselves. The best Nazis never demanded perfection in human beings and were always tolerant of a friend's failings. An efficient organiser of others, Hitler paid little attention to detail. His occasional sloppiness of dress and intellect were put down by the Germans as signs of a typical lazy Viennese style.

Quickened by these fresh sensations, my blood leapt in my veins. I absorbed the electric atmosphere, the bustle, the sense of purpose. Only in Italy had I experienced such a distinctive frisson. Even there, because Mussolini had long since brought a new order to civic life and restored the rule of law, you did not experience this immediacy of purpose and expectation. While having reservations about their discipline, I could not help feel comradeship with these men. Years of poverty, of imprisonment, of
suffering the insults and blows of Jews and communists, of living as social outcasts, of being branded as brutes and slandered in the most aggressive terms, were about to be redeemed. A little more effort and faith—and they would have their hour!

Putzi led me up the wide ceremonial staircase to the second floor. Black, white and dark red were the predominant colours against the lustre of the wood and cream paint. The furnishings were simple, rich and heavy. Everything was designed in that folkish contemporary style which looks to the simplicity of the Middle Ages for its inspiration, adding to an impression of strength, power and clean, healthy modernity. Hitler and most of the top people were nowadays chiefly in Berlin engaged with politics, so in spite of his haste Hanfstaengl was able to slip into the
Senatorensaal
, the senate chamber, almost as if to show off his own house. Some fifty huge chairs in dark red leather and massive brass-bound oak were grouped in a horseshoe to face the raised dais with the leader's own seat. Here the party leaders met for their most important conferences. Modelled on the Fascist Grand Council Hall, it had enough places for the entire NSDAP elite. Outside Doctor Hanfstaengl pointed to a plaque honouring their dead. ‘And people say we're hard on the Sozis!' He greeted a couple of young lady secretaries. They responded with a sort of shy leer as if they had not yet quite learned tough modern ways.

‘Hitler insisted on only the finest materials. They say he got the idea from a film. It cost Thyssen a fortune.' He spoke of the well-known industrialist who had publicly joined the party a couple of years earlier. ‘Though the party membership chipped in about three-quarters of a million.' The opulence seemed a little at odds with the populist rhetoric of the Nazis, but I admired the solidity of the setting. Dramatic scenery against which even more dramatic affairs would soon be played! Putzi could not let me into Hitler's own corner office, of course, but he said it was very impressive with a wonderful view, a life-size portrait of Frederick the Great and a magnificent bronze bust of Benito Mussolini.

‘I don't know where we're going to get the money for all this,' he added, almost to himself. ‘We're up to our necks in debt!' He pointed through the windows to show me construction work still taking place at the back. The party had been so successful in the last elections that they were already having to build extensions. ‘But if we don't consolidate soon we'll be bankrupt.'

I saw offices everywhere. Some of them were occupied by smart SS men, whose black and silver uniforms and death's-head badges were closely
modelled on those of Mussolini's Special Guard. And like Mussolini's guard, Putzi told me, they were drawn from their nation's finest families, as were all the girls who worked here. ‘It's been a while since we were barred from every respectable
Bierkeller
in Munich!' He let out a sudden, braying laugh. ‘Even my mother in America has come round.' He saluted acquaintances as they went by and finally stopped outside one of the office doors. ‘Here we are.' He let me in ahead of him.

The place was furnished in the same style as the rest of the Brown House, with heavy maroon leather upholstery, cream ceilings and dark, polished wood. The lamps were in the ‘folkic' style popularised in America by Stickley. All brass and copper. On the wall was a picture of Hindenburg, then President of Germany, surrounded by other, more intimate pictures of Doctor Hanfstaengl and various party friends in the Tyrol. They all wore lederhosen. I recognised Hitler from his ‘Menjou' moustache and untidy hair. Göring was the only other familiar face. With more important things on my mind, I had not paid as much attention to the German newspapers as I should have done. Putzi Hanfstaengl had obviously been on close personal terms with the Nazi hierarchy for years.

In contrast to the sense of order everywhere in the building, Putzi's office was awash with papers and opened books, files scattered, telephones buried. He was apologetic. ‘I won't let anyone come in here to tidy up. It's my own fault. And I'm so horribly disorganised. Almost as bad as Hitler. But I don't have a dozen girls running behind me with dustpans …'

At the sound of his voice a door opened and in came a pale, thin young woman with an iron bun and a Nazi armband on her grey cardigan. She spoke in that tight, accusing tone only secretaries can affect. Putzi began to apologise to her, his arms waving wildly, his huge hands running through his untidy hair, his strange features twisting in an agony of remorse to the point where both she and I began to smile.

He subsided and asked me to sit down. If I was hungry I could visit a restaurant in the basement, though they were a bit busy at the moment. The food was good, plain South German food, but excellent. The cook was a man named Kannenberg, Hitler's personal chef. Was I a vegetarian? Did I like sausages? They had several regional varieties. Of course, these days Hitler was a vegan.

His secretary assured him that I would be properly looked after. But it was really very urgent that he see Chief of Staff Röhm, who required a simple answer to his questions but was growing very impatient for it.

‘Very impatient indeed …' The accent was cultured Bavarian with that
slightly brutal intonation many these days affected. The voice was quiet, pleasant, a little sardonic. In the frame of the connecting door, his military cap pushed back on a massive, close-shaven head so scarred and patched that every battle of the twentieth century might have been fought across it, his unbuttoned jacket casually revealing an Iron Cross ribbon, stood a high-ranking officer. He had a powerful presence, though he was by no means handsome. A bullet had taken away part of his nose, shrapnel had scarred his face, yet I detected something indefinably noble in the man. He reminded me of a character I had myself played in
The Prisoner of Zenda
, the devil-may-care Fritz von Talenheim, a soldier who dedicated life, soul and honour to his nation's well-being. In his beautifully cut
Sturmabteilung
uniform, this officer had some of the same quality I had observed among even the most brutal Cossacks—the instinctive grace of a man of action. A true contemporary
condottiere
!

He did not salute but put his hand towards me in an almost balletic gesture, meeting my steady gaze with his own. I wished him
Guten Tag
. In his typical Bavarian style, he answered, ‘
Grüss Gott
.' A sardonic twist to his smile was belied by the warmth of his eyes. I sensed the coiled, casually checked energy of a man used to taking decisive action, a natural commander. While some of his colleagues might need confirmation of their power and surround themselves with the symbols of their authority, this man was absolutely self-assured, without artifice of any kind, save his good manners. Bringing his heels together with a click, he took my hand, almost as if to kiss it, then shook it firmly. ‘Röhm,' he said. His fingers were strong but felt like satin. A spark of pure electricity passed between us. Mutual respect. Doctor Hanfstaengl made some unheard introduction explaining I was in Il Duce's confidence.