The Vengeance of Rome (39 page)

My new friends had many questions. How was financial stability maintained, for instance. I became a proselytiser for Il Duce. I contrasted the sense of well-being and optimism in my adopted country. At a period when even the United States was descending into communism, the Italian example was the only light burning in Europe. This, of course, inspired them. They knew they must one day come to power in a bloodless revolution as Mussolini had done. The size and strength of the SA inspired other young hotheads, however, to speak of ‘bloody revolution', of taking over the state by force: this was another subject of noisy debate between Nazis in those days. Today's youth sees only comic-strip images, stereotypes of swaggering SS officers and a demented Führer lusting to rule the world. They do not realise that most Nazis were people like themselves, just old enough to vote and anxious to throw out the old professional politicians who had led them into disaster through compromise and vacillation. They did not want war. Most of them were not even particularly anti-Jewish. They just wanted a change. They wanted something done. The Nazis promised to do something.

Millions voted for Hitler because he was the young head of a young party which disdained the old-fashioned
Junkers
style, which spoke and acted in modern terms. During elections cinema films of Hitler were made by Goebbels to show in every village and town in Germany. The Nazis used radio effectively for the first time, as well as the press. The politician who controlled the airwaves also ultimately controlled the masses. Other politicians wrote articles or addressed town hall meetings. Hitler flew in a modern aircraft to speak personally to all seventeen states of the federation. This, of course, took money, and it was the source of that money which gave certain Nazi idealists pause. In private they were assured that the industrialists would be used to bring themselves down. But in public Hitler, if not Strasser, reassured the traditional German powers of landed aristocracy, industry, Church and Army, that he worked only to ensure their endurance.

I heard Hitler speak for the first time over the radio in the Pohlnerkeller in Wilhelmstrasse. We were all gathered in silence, yet slowly, as the man spoke, his voice rising and falling, coaxing us to tears as well as to rage, a low roaring noise filled the cellar until, as the speech ended, every man and woman was on their feet, raising their arm in salute and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!'

A moment that stirred my soul.

Then I realised fully the oratorical power of the ‘German Mussolini' and understood why, with all their reservations, the Nazis had made him their spokesman and their leader.

Meanwhile, I still had met no OVRA officer. Had the German secret police recognised and arrested him? There still existed a strong antipathy to
fascisti
in old leftist Weimar circles. Naturally I could not contact my Chief directly. I had been warned to do nothing that would connect me directly with my adopted nation.

Time dragged on. Every second week I picked up a registered envelope at the central post office. It contained only money, in new German notes. Because I was not ‘earning my keep', I felt I was here under false pretences. So far no one, apart from Hanfstaengl and Röhm, had shown the slightest interest in me. Perhaps they knew I was a spy.

A couple of weeks after I arrived Göring sent me an apology via an intermediary. He still wanted to talk aircraft with me, he said, and hoped to see me soon. I had not understood that he wanted to talk about aircraft at all! He had until recently represented a Swedish aircraft company. I made allowances for him. Everyone said how the poor man was utterly distracted and had gone into retreat with his ailing wife, scarcely taking any interest in the outside world.

Aimlessly I wrote some further reports. I still had nowhere to send them. I could not risk telephoning. I decided that if I did not hear anything by the end of the month I would find an excuse for visiting either the Italian Consulate or the papal nuncio. I would leave my reports with them. And if they refused me, I would tear them up and return to Rome. I had the impression that the great machine of state had lost track of me! But I still had money and all other necessities of modern life, so I continued to behave as usual. I must admit I did not have an arduous time. I had become something of a minor celebrity in Munich. I occasionally ate at the Brown House, when Putzi or some other major official could sign me in, but it became increasingly crowded and the food got worse. Only party members were allowed entrance unaccompanied. And I grew tired of being addressed as ‘Herr Signor'. So I found a pleasant restaurant in central Munich where I would take my lunch almost every day. It was called simply enough the Bratwurstglockl.

The place was frequented by higher ranking SA and SS officers. There I met several men who would become famous later, including Himmler, who seemed a colourless creature, and Christian Weber, a bluff, hearty fellow of the old school. Generally I found the SA fellows more agreeable. Almost all good-natured Bavarians, they were men with regular army experience. With an honest, down-to-earth quality, they would do anything for you.

I was constantly amused that these Nazis were forever assuring me that I did not look Jewish, that I was evidently Spanish. It could be so hard
to identify some Americans as Jews or Aryans, because of our Indian blood. I think they associated my style of dress with Jewish vulgarity rather than Italian chic. I did not blame them. They were unsophisticated lads, forever apologising. Their famous unruliness was entirely to do with bad local leadership. Röhm would often say, ‘There are no bad Brownshirts—just bad officers.' We were to discover that in 1933, when any scum jumped on the Nazi bandwagon.

I spent more and more time with Stabschef Ernst Röhm. He enjoyed speaking Spanish with me. He was at heart, he admitted, a monarchist, but he was also a realist. He had picked up many ideas about guerrilla warfare and revolutionary tactics in South America and was delighted to learn I had fought against the Bolsheviks in Russia.

‘I envy you that,' he said. ‘What wouldn't I give to have a crack at an entire division of the bastards.' He loved war as much as he loved life. He was a man of his time and yet oddly out of his time. A man of ruthless hardness, if necessary, but of extraordinary tenderness, too.

That tenderness of Röhm's is what you find in his writings, especially those scandalous letters which he wrote from Bolivia and whose publication was intended to destroy him. He made no secret that he was the author. Only Hitler, he said, insisted they were lies. ‘All that hypocrisy will be swept away when we're in power,' said Röhm. ‘We'll proclaim our sexual orientation the way the Greeks did—proudly and aggressively.' He believed in the old Platonic ideal. As far as he was concerned, women had only one function, which was to give birth to healthy soldiers. ‘I don't believe in treating them badly. But it's as pointless to place a woman in a position of power as it is to put a soldier in the kitchen.' I did not hold his absolutist views, but my blood was stirred by his vision.

I think we were in the Bratwurstglockl, tucking in to sausages, vast Wiener schnitzels and spaghetti, when we first saw Hitler's mistress. I had heard only the vaguest of rumours about Miss Raubal and was a little embarrassed. I had no interest in the private lives of our great men. Their public world is all that should concern us. Lloyd George, sometimes called the English Mussolini, was a terrible womaniser, yet he brought his country into the twentieth century and prepared it for the twenty-first.

When Geli Raubal came into the restaurant, Röhm noticed her over my shoulder and pointed her out. She seemed a typical, silly Bavarian girl with a broad, pretty face and light brown hair. Surprisingly for the summer, she wore a blouse buttoned at the neck and wrists and carried a shawl. She was escorted by a young SS officer, a man so blond as to be, like my friend
Kolya, almost an albino. I forget his name. She was very friendly with everyone, almost flirtatious, but there was a heated, unwholesome quality about her eyes I could not define, though I recognised it well enough. Suffice to say that Hitler was not the only man, or perhaps even woman, she would present with her favours.

Röhm confirmed my impression. ‘She's a slut.' Röhm did not drop his voice. She knew him and was aware of his dislike. She pretended she had not seen us. ‘She's going to get young Alf into trouble one day. And if you think
I'm
indiscreet—well, he beats everything. Did Hanfstaengl tell you about the sketches and the photos Schwartz had to fork out for? Or that damned letter? The stuff they found of mine and published was in comparison the work of a little old lady writing to the pastor. The drawings alone would have brought him down if anyone had seen them. That's what I mean about him. He needs someone to keep a hand on his tiller.'

Chuckling affectionately in that warm way of his, Röhm leaned back in his chair. ‘You wouldn't think it, would you? He's always been the same. I rescued him from a Red firing squad, you know. Just after the War when I was still with the Reichswehr, before we got disbanded by those Berlin wankers.' All the time he spoke he was popping little white sausages into his mouth. ‘He thought he was a goner, poor bugger. Scared silly. Literally wet his pants. Great courier during the War. Blind brave, we used to say. He'd go into this trance and trust to his luck. I've seen men do that. They become fearless. He knows what it is to be scared for your life—what you'll do to stay alive. People recognise that in him. They have experience in common. He knows their real grievances, how they think. He's a brave little bastard sometimes. Under orders, anyway. He was like my pet dog after I saved his life, and he started working for me. A great Number Two. Would follow any orders. Faithful as they come. He kept getting caught, too. The communists caught him. Then we caught him, thinking he was a commie. Almost shot him, too! He's always been a lucky bastard.'

I was rather astonished at Röhm's confidences, especially offered in his ordinary voice in a large restaurant, but he was not a close-mouthed man at the best of times. When he took some schnapps or ‘coked' he was even less tactful. We had hit it off famously. When he was in Munich, he often sought me out. We had a rapport I had only known previously with my beloved Kolya, similar to that which still existed between myself and Mussolini.

In spite of Mrs Cornelius being my best friend, she has always called me ‘a bloke's bloke', by which she means I have a certain affinity with other
men of action and intellect. While I have enjoyed wonderful relations with women of all ages and classes, I will admit a particular understanding between manly equals translating to the most extraordinary levels of human feeling. Life is lived on the highest possible plane at an unprecedented level of intensity. Not understanding that herself, Mrs Cornelius is inclined to belittle it. She believes all our idealism, all our visionary yearnings, are to do with sex. She has been infected by one of the very people she claims to despise. I speak of that member of the Unholy Triumvirate, the arch-Jew Freud, who set out to undermine the cornerstones of Christian idealism and very nearly succeeded. Yet let them make a few disparaging remarks about the Lutheran Church, and the Nazis are characterised as atheists and devil-worshippers! Most Nazis were in fundamental agreement with Martin Luther. Whatever their other failings, both knew the danger to society of the tribe which calls the world its nation.

Mrs Cornelius sighs for me. She says I was a fool not to marry.

A fool not to marry you again, I say.

The days in Munich dragged on. I became bored, anxious for some action. I considered telegraphing Mrs Cornelius at St Crim and risking a visit there. When my boredom grew uncomfortable, I decided to take myself up to Berlin, but then I received a telephone message from the Stabschef's adjutant, which was to alter everything I understood about myself and the world! Röhm would be in town late that afternoon and would be delighted if I would dine with him at the Bratwurstglockl. He named an hour. I said I would be there.

Although this was not the first time I had dined with the Stabschef, it was the first time he had made this kind of formal appointment. It gave me an extremely pleasant sense of anticipation. Evidently I was about to be accepted into the Nazi inner circle.

Believe me vain, but I am a firm believer in destiny. Some events are meant to take place, just as some people are meant to meet. Fate or coincidence does not bring us together, but a special kind of destiny. How often has the average person met someone famous and influential? Very rarely. Yet how often do influential people meet? All the time. One has only to pick up a political biography to understand this. In those dark days after the World War, with civil strife erupting on all sides, a few men had the vision, the character and the ruthless will to justice to take control of events. There exists an instant mutual recognition between great men and women. Röhm was one such man. I was another.

‘It is as simple as that,' I tell Mrs Cornelius.

She shrugs. ‘Brown shirts or brown ‘atters—it all comes down to exercising Mister Willie,' she insists. ‘Or rather ‘im exercisin'
you
.' Sadly, she has seen too much of the coarser side of men. She was never greatly attracted to romance, only to power.

Röhm was already at the restaurant when I arrived. He was standing beside a table, his feet planted wide, his hands folded behind his back, enjoying a joke with his lieutenants. They sprawled in a comradely heap across the big padded benches and, though a little drunk, continued to treat him with respect. He was one of them and understood them. The essence of all the Nazi leadership's authority was based on protocols which were the antithesis of Bismarck's. These were men of the people. Men of action. Men of practical common sense. Men who looked after their own. Young men with blood in their veins. Men who had known all the terrors of war, who had been baptised in fire.