The Vengeance of Rome

TWENTY-THREE

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 leaders 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.

Used as I was to the company of great leaders, I was utterly overawed by this man. His photographs did not do him credit. I knew little of German politics, but even in Italian circles Röhm was discussed. He was the army captain who put down the communist uprisings in Munich. With his Freikorps he resisted the Red Flood, stockpiling huge amounts of arms and military equipment all over southern Germany. A close friend of Hitler since those days, he was the only man the Führer still called ‘du’ and he responded in kind. A deep, old bond of blood existed between the two men. Röhm had created the SA to defend Hitler against physical threat from his political enemies. Driven from the country after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, he sought asylum in the Bolivian Army. Then, with the SA in open revolt, he had been recalled by Hitler. Within months Röhm had turned the SA into a disciplined Spartan army of five hundred thousand men. It would soon become almost five million. They said that Röhm, who still insisted on keeping his old army rank of Captain, held the key to Germany’s fate. If he desired civil war, he would have it. And if there was civil war, Röhm would emerge as the victor. They called him ‘the kingmaker’ - the modern Simon de Montfort. It was lucky for Hitler that Röhm was a loyal friend, content to be his first General, his Stabschef, rather than Chancellor.

I already knew of Röhm as a dedicated visionary. He foresaw a well-ordered state run on army principles and with army discipline, slave neither to labour nor capital. This vision made him join Hitler to found the National Socialist movement. He loved politics. But he loved justice more. He loved justice the way another man loves drink. He was prepared to make any sacrifice and take any action to achieve it.

With the unforced charm of the true German professional soldier, this legendary ‘alte Kämpfer’, this ‘old fighter’, bowed and clicked his heels. He spoke softly, almost shyly, with great charm and courtesy. I was reminded of Erich von Stroheim in his more avuncular moments. He would be delighted, he said, to get together, perhaps some evening? He was a great admirer of Mussolini and a student of Italian history. He felt it a privilege to meet one so close to Il Duce. His searching eyes continued to meet mine. I said that I would be honoured. His fame had reached Rome.

‘Oh, dear,’ he said, turning away, ‘I hope I’ll have at least a little mystery left for you! Grüss Gott, Mr Peters. I will keep an eye out for one of your films! I am something of a cinema connoisseur.’

Putzi snorted quite suddenly and told Röhm to ‘stop that at once!’ Chuckling he walked with him back to his office to deal with whatever problem had arisen. Again it was obvious that Hanfstaengl was something more than an occasional journalist of wealthy background. There could be few men who were able to joke on an equal footing with the great Ernst Röhm!

I had been highly impressed by the ‘Father of the Storm Troopers’. In Italy they believed he must be a brute. His pictures suggested it. But now that I had met him it was very easy to see how he was able to keep control of such a vast militia and why every single one of his men would have died for him as, I suspect, they would never have died for Hitler.

When Hanfstaengl came back he was smiling. ‘You made an enormous impression on our dashing “people’s soldier”. He wanted to hear all about you.’

‘Men of action have a certain affinity,’ I said, ‘which transcends national boundaries. I had exactly the same experience with Mussolini. I, too, was also favourably impressed.’

‘I’ll let him know,’ said Putzi.

Even then I already had a sense of the historic significance of that brief meeting At the time I was simply elated to have met another equal. How rare it is to find a peer to whom one has to explain nothing. Our meeting was destined.

And yet, for all my intimations, I could not have imagined the fantastic consequences that would result from my bumping into Röhm at the Brown House on that early-June afternoon. They were consequences whose resolution would do nothing less than decide the future of Germany, change the course of history, determine the nature of the century, and perhaps give us a fresh perspective on the complex nature of Man.

Ernst Röhm was not the only famous personality I met in that first week. A constant coming and going of party people went on, chiefly between Munich and Berlin. Most were too busy to play host to a visitor like myself. I did not blame them. I decided to seek out some female entertainment, a girl who could also show me the city. I was not, however, immediately lucky. I had failed to reckon with the conservative Bavarian’s disapproval of my summer suits! Some of the Nazis I met were downright rude. It became impossible to introduce oneself to girls of the better type. But I persevered.

Putzi remained only long enough to take me to his opulent house and introduce me to his slender, pale gold wife. He was engaged on some business with various American and English newspapers wanting interviews in Berlin with the Führer. Frau Hanfstaengl, although very welcoming, was rarely at home but made charity visits, chiefly to wounded SA veterans. I heard that Seryozha (‘Captain Hoch’) was on ‘permanent alert’ along with many other SA officers. I was reassured that I would not bump into him unexpectedly. I now realised I had been unduly alarmed about meeting the Baroness. She would not know my new name or where I was staying. She had enough malice in her to scheme my downfall, but I would be back in Italy before she had the slightest chance of tracking me down.

I had hoped to see more of Captain Göring. I now learned he scarcely ever took his place in the Reichstag. He was being required more and more to choose between his Führer and his sick wife. The other Nazi deputies were equally wrapped up in the dynamic concerns of the day. I never met Goebbels, who rarely left Berlin. The ‘Dwarf with a Devil’s Brain’, as his enemies called him, was thoroughly absorbed in the complex strategy of national politics.

While I visited Munich’s many fine galleries and churches, such things cannot hold a restless mind like mine for long. The up-to-date kinema houses allowed me to see what the German movie world was doing. The films were mostly affairs of sickening violence or cloying comedy.

Surprisingly, I had not yet heard from Mussolini or any representative of his. The Italian secret service seemed unduly cautious. Was I wasting my time? I am the kind of man who feels uneasy if not tackling some important problem. I would have liked to speak to some of the other Nazi leaders. They were never available. The Italians had made a mistake to send me to Munich first. It was a ‘heart’ town of the Nazi Party, where much of their history had taken place, but political business was still done in Berlin.

Whenever Hitler or Strasser were in town they were always closeted with their closest colleagues. They had no time for a stranger, albeit a sympathetic one. At first there had been some talk of my being Jewish, although mostly in fun, and I had been very quick to correct that error! Soon everyone took me for Italian. In these days the public was first becoming truly aware of the depths of the ‘supranational’ conspiracy and were understandably angry with the Jews. Everyone now knew me as Max Peters, even if the Völkischer Beobachter described me as ‘Hollywood’s new Latin American adventure star’ and seemed to think I was from the Argentine. I was, they said, of Spanish, Italian and German origin. An Aryan through and through. A strange thing for a pure-blooded Slav to be living such a lie!

Because of some modish jazz dance, South America was all the rage in films that year. Even as I wrote my first reports back to my Duce, I enjoyed a small renaissance. I became a popular figure locally. I made no secret that I was a keen supporter of Mussolini and a friend of Young Germany. I spoke of a common European destiny, of a Union of States which would one day be as great as the USA. I gave a number of interviews in the press, warning of the perils facing modern society. My films began to be shown again, chiefly in the cinemas not wholly given over to sound, and even the Brownshirts treated me with cheerful familiarity now they recognised me. Of course there continued to be incidents. Clashes between Reds and Browns were fairly common. It was wise to avoid the backstreets.

After a month or so I began to feel like an old Municher and was soon able to talk expertly and heatedly on matters of sausages and beer! I did not follow the extraordinary ups and downs of the Reichstag as reported in the German press but instead heard the opinions of Putzi and his circle. Everyone was extremely excited. Their mood infected me. I began to take an interest in some of the personalities. I was surprised that so much healthy controversy existed between party members. This could only be to the good. Hitler’s mistake was to favour only one aspect of National Socialism over so many others. Variety, as Mrs Cornelius insists, is the spice of life.

The party was divided into two basic wings: the left, which still clung to its anti-capitalist socialist programmes, and the right, which favoured a system similar to the corporate state founded by Mussolini where private capital continued to flourish but under the firm control of government. Because of its sudden need for election money, the party had been forced to negotiate with powerful interests. The Army, the Church and Big Business were given certain reassurances. Since the onset of the Great Slump, which they blamed on America, the firm of I. G. Farben had been funding Röhm and Strasser, while Thyssen was openly backing Hitler and Göring. Others in the movement refused to take ‘capitalist gold’. They clamoured for an immediate uprising against the bosses and moribund social institutions. Hitler had already split with Gregor Strasser’s brother, Otto, over questions of race and aesthetics. Fiorello’s friend, Otto had left to form the so-called ‘Black Front’ and was now in Austria. Yet the party was growing. It had now almost a million members with thousands more ‘fellow-travellers’. The economic disasters which the masses and the middle classes had suffered had radicalised many Germans. They were considering voting for the Nazis, but barriers of class and tradition remained. Professional politicians looked down on the rowdy National Socialists as anarchist street fighters and little else. Hindenburg loathed the notion of a civilian commoner taking over his office. With a great deal of work to do and much at stake, most of the Nazis were agreed that everything hinged on the powers of Adolf Hitler to convince Hindenburg.

‘The trouble is,’ said Ernst Röhm one day at a lunch Putzi had been unable to attend, ‘Alf’s so fucking unreliable. You never know from one day to the next how he’ll go. Sometimes he can hold the whole of Germany in his palm; sometimes he’s too nervous to ask a waiter for a glass of milk. That slut has turned his bowels to water. He’s too involved with her.’ Röhm was one of the few people I had ever heard call the Führer by his family nickname. He had come into the beer cellar looking for one of his ‘boys’, as he called his adjutants, and seeing me, decided he had time for a cup of coffee. I was sitting with the Sternholders, a pleasant couple of Hitler sympathisers I had met at Putzi’s a few days before. They lived not far from the Brown House in the same exclusive district and were a little overwhelmed by the presence of the Stabschef.

Röhm put his hand on my shoulder, fixing me again with that honest, direct stare. ‘Why haven’t we seen you at Röhmannsvilla?’ The Sternholders were embarrassed to hear such direct talk. Röhm, who lived his entire life in rough male company, occasionally forgot himself. He apologised. ‘I’m a wicked, uncouth man, and sometimes I lose control of my nature. Forgive me.’ Bowing, he made his farewells. I promised to visit him at his new villa in what he called ‘the Bavarian heartland’. I could see how he had gained his reputation for brusqueness. He had no time for play-acting, he said, but he still valued good manners. The Sternholders thought he was ‘too proud for his own buttons’ and found him coarse. They were unconvinced by my defence. The judgement of people like them would prove Röhm’s undoing. By characterising him as a brute, something less than human, his enemies would later murder him with impunity and have the- German people sigh with relief at their salvation. How many years will it take until they realise Röhm was the Caesar they deserved, not the Triumvirate they were finally awarded? And yet, of course, I must take some blame for it all. It is extraordinary how we all appear to have connived in our own destruction! And from the noblest of motives.

A minor drama was taking place concerning my baggage. Everything the young men had packed had turned up at my hotel, the Königshof, near the cathedral. The only thing missing was a case of spare drawings. These were not the duplicate plans and photographs I had put in the large envelope before I left Italy. They were some miscellaneous pieces I had had lying around. I could not remember the case being loaded on to the train. I was fairly certain it had been stolen or confiscated. Most of the work would be useless to a foreign power, but it was irritating to know that I was receiving unwanted attention. My personal sets of documents were thoroughly hidden in linings and spines. I continued to pursue the lost luggage, however, but with little success. The Germans were inclined to blame the Austrians. The Austrians blamed the Italians. And so on.

The world news was increasingly disturbing. Everyone became rapidly abstracted as the financial situation worsened, and Germany once again seemed about to slide into anarchy. For a few days the whole country was unnaturally still, waiting and listening, as a frightened animal waits and listens.

During those first Munich days, as I continued to explore the city, admiring her wonderfully Baroque architecture and nostalgic for more civilised times, I saw by coincidence quite a lot of Ernst Röhm. He recommended restaurants to me, as well as concerts and parks. I had fallen in with a group of young people, many of them members of the movement, whose idealism was as powerful as mine. Eager to hear my impressions of modern Italy, they had been proud to show me their city.

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 Triumverate, 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.

When Röhm saw me he grinned with pleasure. His men knew me by now. We were all regulars. Some whistled greetings. Some had friendly nicknames for me, which I took in good part. They called me ‘the Spanish onion’ or ‘Cowboy Joe’. I waved and gave the Fascist salute. Röhm strode over to me and caught me by the arm, steering me towards his usual table, a dark, secluded archway set on the far side of the cellar and offering a view of its length.

I ordered us both large steins of the dark, rich bock beer he enjoyed here, and before we decided on our food he suggested that after we had dined we drive out to see his new house. I could stay overnight and be back in Munich by the next day. I might find it enjoyable. There were a few people he wanted me to meet.

I had earlier suspected that I was again being invited to join an inner circle. I had said little of my intimacy with Mussolini or some of the other leaders of world affairs, but his instinct recognised me. Of course I accepted.

We ate a large and leisurely dinner. Then Röhm’s handsome young chauffeur arrived to tell us our car was ready. The Stabschef was already a little tipsy. He sang some sentimental Spanish song he had learned in Bolivia. He opened his window so he could breathe in the rich, scented air of the Bavarian capital. ’Ah! One has to acknowledge the pleasures of peace. But they are only won through the hardships of war.’

We stopped at my hotel where I packed a small bag containing a change of clothes, a box of cocaine and some papers I preferred to keep with me. Then we were off, driving through the haze of twilight into what seemed to me at that moment an infinitely rosy future.

I was glad of the chance to see a little of the surrounding countryside. The neat, well-ordered Bavarian fields were a symbol of the best of Germany. The German’s natural sense of harmony is only occasionally perverted by experiments in social democracy. It is expressed most finely in his music and his mathematics. They are masterly bookkeepers. They exemplify so many of our Christian virtues. They are the Yankees of Europe. Sometimes, of course, they can exercise those virtues a little too fully, as with their generosity towards the Turks.

Röhm, as usual, was stimulating company. He continued to drink a little more than he should, but the stress of his responsibilities was tremendous. The only expression of his insobriety was a somewhat looser and coarser tongue. He loved to relax in manly company, to forget for a few hours the ‘Prussian manners’ he was forced to cultivate as an officer, a member of the Reichstag and a senior senator in the Bavarian parliament. He spoke of his frustrations with the bloodless, feeble self-abusers he was forced to keep company with, of the protocol he had to observe so as not to let Hitler down. He would do nothing, he said, to damage Hitler’s chances of becoming Chancellor.

Feeling a little abandoned by Il Duce and wondering about my future, I was quietly pleased to have Röhm’s friendship. While never wielding power for himself, only for the common people for whom he held it in trust, he was the most powerful man in Germany. Without him, Hitler and Strasser could not move. Without his troops, Hindenburg and the old guard could outlast and, if necessary, outfight Hitler. It crossed my mind more than once that I was becoming close friends with the future Duce of Germany, but at that time I had no intimation of Röhm’s real secret.

I relaxed beside him in the staff car’s huge back seat while he discussed the work of German painters he admired and asked if they had their American equivalents. I said that the ‘folkish’ movement had taken odd forms in America. The favoured art form these days was the cinema. Even great artists worked for Hollywood, designing sets and drawing storyboards. He had visited Los Angeles on his way back from Bolivia and had been impressed by the palm trees and the lovely houses. How surprising things were there! How German! With a touch of North Africa. A friend of his was over there. Did I know Ludecke? He was a good Nazi. I had to tell him that my own political links in America were with the Ku Klux Klan. Sadly, I added, the Klan had been taken over by opportunists, its original ideals forgotten.

Röhm was sympathetic. The National Socialist movement was threatened with the same kind of takeover. He was uneasy with this searching out of businessmen for bedfellows. If the party needed funds, Hitler should send a bunch of Hitler Youth boys out whoring. ‘There must be plenty of takers for those beautiful, rounded little arses.’ It would be a quicker, more honest and no doubt more lucrative way of raising the money they needed. ’But Hitler hardly cracked a smile at my suggestion. Alf’s getting very serious these days. Very straight.’

The Stabschef had a hamper for the journey. As it grew dark and the car rushed on through quaint little villages and rolling fields, he took out a bottle of champagne and popped the cork. His strange, battered face had an almost melancholy quality to it, and I saw a hint of sadness in his eyes which he tried to disguise. I did not know what had happened to put him in this mood. He was doing his best to rid himself of it. I wanted to tell him he did not need to pretend anything, that he was with an equal, one who would respect all his secrets.

When he laid a large line of cocaine upon his beefy wrist and took it like snuff I knew for certain that I had found a kindred soul. I accepted his line, holding his wrist with my fingertips as I bent my nose to some of the purest South American snow I had enjoyed in years. In Bolivia the Stabschef had developed a refined taste.

At my prompting Röhm spoke of his youth, of his exile to Bolivia after the Munich putsch. He laughed. ‘Before I arrived in Bolivia, buggery was unknown there!’ He had met only one ‘schitzy’ to his taste, just towards the end of his stay. He had admired those ‘dark-eyed Latin beauties’ from afar, had groaned for them, far preferring them to blonds. Yet no one understood. He would rather have been in prison. He had exercised great discipline, he confessed. As a lieutenant colonel with considerable responsibilities, he could probably have ordered one of those luscious creatures into his bed. And now, he added almost under his breath, here he was, tête-à-tête with just such a beauty!

He was a little slurred in his speech. I was not entirely following his thickly accented Bavarian. He switched off the interior lamps. We travelled in complete darkness, with no light save the reflection of our own glaring headlamps. I, too, had known the pain of exile and the terrors of captivity. In sympathy I reached towards his arm.

A little to my surprise, he turned on the light to look at me briefly. His eyes filled with tears. I murmured a question. There came a pause, a silence as the car’s great engine continued to pound and the wheels carried us deep into the German heartland. Then, suddenly, that noblest of all Nazis doused the light once more and seized my hand in his. His deep, thrilling whisper declared his most profound passion for me.

That love, he said, was the purest he had ever known. It was driving him mad.