The Vengeance of Rome

THIRTY-FIVE

Otto Strasser was a man of complex charm and quick intellect. Very open, he told me much about himself. An academic doctor, a literary writer, a naturally sociable and sardonic companion, he had his degree in anthropology and through the persuasions of his chemist brother had only reluctantly been drawn into politics.

While rejecting the Russian model, Doctor Strasser was a convinced and serious socialist, a German nationalist to the marrow. He was horrified by Hitler’s willingness to seek the financiers’ aid rather than seize power through revolution. Matters came to a head in 1930, and Strasser left to form the Black Front. The party was relatively small, its leader scarcely a threat to anyone, but Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich and Himmler still pursued Strasser relentlessly, attempting to ruin and intimidate him. Regretfully, Gregor Strasser had failed to help in any serious way.

‘I know I should give it all up. Write some popular books about pygmies and peasant attitudes, but I can’t. I’m an embarrassment. While I allowed myself to be guided by Hitler, I was a hero, he said. Then I began to see flaws in his arguments. I am regarded as an enemy by Big Business as well as by Bolshevik Jewry. Gregor’s instincts are to build bridges between all factions. He’s an optimist! He’s a more typical, good-natured, easygoing Bavarian than I am. He believes everyone unconsciously wants to get along together. I have warned him not to trust Hitler. Hitler uses people and then discards them. Hitler will ruin him. What else can I say or do?’

I had every respect for Otto Strasser even if I did not share his left-wing views. He knew I believed socialism to be a disease which attacks the soul, an infection carried on the air by word of mouth. He eventually came to accept that when he returned to Germany after the Second War. Finding shelter with the Canadians, Doctor Strasser was one of the few true National Socialists to survive the Second World War.

He wrote me a letter a few years ago. Posted from Munich. ‘They have restored my citizenship,’ he told me. Hitler knew the meaning of denying German citizenship to a nationalist like Otto Strasser. But this still did not make me comfortable with his socialism, though we were certainly in complete agreement on the Jewish Question.

He demonstrated the difference between us, say, and Hitler. What so few people now understand. There is a considerable difference between a rational interpretation of a problem and a visceral reaction against an entire people. Both Doctor Strasser and myself agreed on the rational approach. The easiest way to rid oneself of Jewish influence was to make it difficult for Jews to disguise themselves.

By this, of course, we did not mean a return to the ludicrous medieval approach of making Jews wear some kind of yellow badge. We saw no reason to permit Jews or Catholics full nationality while both paid homage to foreign leadership. Attacking their dignity and self-respect was cruel. We simply wanted to change their political status, requiring an oath that they were loyal to Germany first and that their interests were German interests. A tax structure could be introduced which made it more attractive to be a true German and accept the responsibilities as well as the benefits of full citizenship, which should not be denied to any decently qualified person, no matter what their racial origin. Until then you would be treated as a respected guest worker in the country, always welcome while you pulled your weight. After a period of qualification, you would swear loyalty to Germany as new immigrants in America must swear loyalty to the United States, forsaking all others. Indeed, all schoolchildren in America are required to take the oath of loyalty every morning. He suspected other countries would soon see the sense of it.

Doctor Strasser did not, like me, feel a strong call of blood. I had no animosity towards Jews. I simply knew Jews would be happier in a homeland better suited to their natures. Their vibrant, volatile blood yearned for a Mediterranean climate. Those exotic hearts came to full flower in the bazaar and the oasis, where gold has an almost supernatural value. Those abstract, intellectual minds could sit and argue to their hearts’ content. Artists could plan their canvases and plays. No action would ever be required of them. They would be home. They would be happy. They could study and talk as all Jews would rather do while the waters of Palestine were theirs to drink and the fruits of Israel theirs to eat. They deserved a homeland.

Isn’t it what we all desire most? In the thirties I became a convinced Zionist and remain one to this day. I am deeply philo-Semitic. I do share with many Jews, however, the conviction that intermarriage is a mistake.

Otto Strasser believed Hitler’s approach to the problem was psychological rather than political, which Strasser thought made Hitler unfit to lead. Germany had almost been destroyed by its sentimental liberalism, attempting to eat its cream cake and share it. The opposite side of that coin was conservative bigotry and blustering militarism. We had to look at realities and offer the people a genuine alternative to Soviet tyranny and Big Business manipulation. Strasser’s Third Way would steer a prudent course between the two, taking the best from both systems. He spoke bitterly of his Kampfverlag, which once dominated Nazi publishing in Prussia. First Gregor had sold his third to Hitler, for some mysterious favour, then Hinkel, the other partner, had sold his third share to Hitler, lured by the offer of a Reichstag seat. The other third, Otto’s, was of course valueless. He was a revolutionary. He had no desire to be elected. He knew the compromises one had to make. As a result Hitler had begun a smear campaign against him, calling him a ‘parlour-Bolshevik’ and worse.

I didn’t take this as seriously as Strasser. Slanging matches were a familiar feature of modern German public life. Those with standards tended to stand back from them. Yet that evening I learned far more from Strasser than I could easily absorb of German politics and internal NSDAP rivalries. He filled in the specifics, although I have never been much interested in minor details. As a Russian visionary the larger issues have been all-important. It is for others, of a more ordinary temperament, to concern themselves with the fine print. Like Hitler, I am a prophet rather than practical politician, and I suspect this was also true of Otto Strasser.

Gregor was instead somewhat narrowly pragmatic. His temperament would be the end of him. He would be shot in a concrete prison room, disbelievingly running from corner to corner as Heydrich’s bullets sought him through the cell window. A ricochet finished him. A clumsy death for a compromised soul. How I mourn for those poor creatures! How I wish I could go back in time and alert them. If only they had been warned, they might have fled the country. But they believed they could win their case through argument and reason. They never learned the lessons of the trenches, when a bullet not a ballot decided the fate of an unpopular officer.

Everyone close to the Führer understood he was an inspirational symbol rather than a practical leader. It did not disturb them that he had human traits. Röhm and Gregor Strasser were party to his most disgusting secrets yet remained loyal to Hitler. Their own interest was bound to his. What he represented was more important than what he was. The Crown once represented the spirit of Germany. Now Hitler represented it. He was not merely the head of a political party, he was what the young these days call a ‘guru’. None of his intimates ever expected him to take the daily reins of power. If his followers accepted the power, they had to accept the responsibility. ‘But they’re afraid of the responsibility, most of them.’ Otto had shaken his head. He felt the calibre of the Nazis wasn’t what it should be. Apart from Göring, Hitler’s men were not greatly interested in publicity. Power was what obsessed them. It was what they engaged with inside the party. It suited them to have the public worship Hitler. They knew that public worship could turn to public rage and already had plans in place to take over from him. A few years later Mussolini would learn exactly that lesson. He died as the emperors of old had died when they had fallen out of favour, bloodily and without dignity. In the end neither of these men rose to full potential. Otto could see this better than I. The dictators remain to this day a great disappointment to me. They failed to bear the burden they had sworn to carry. They promised Glory and brought only Shame. To the last they did all they could to put their responsibility on to other shoulders. Only Franco survived, and in many ways he was the least of them. More a reactionary than a progressive visionary.

Hitler, shivering in his bunker, Eva Braun comforting him, her eyes bright with excitement at the prospect of their marriage, heard of Mussolini’s horrible end and knew he and she would suffer no better at the hands of the Red Army. Hitler understood only too well what torments and disgusting horrors awaited him. A Catholic, he faced the knowledge that the hell he had made on earth was nothing to the hell he would suffer in death. Yet he was prepared to meet Satan rather than be subject to the punishments of Stalin. He was by no means the only one. That is how seriously he took the Red Menace. But some cursed him for his suicide. They believed he had failed his people in their final hours.

Was this Austrian fecklessness of Hitler’s really the nub of the falling-out in 1929—30? Otto demanded Hitler take responsibility, not pass it back or shrug it off. The younger Strasser was not interested in power either. Ultimately I suspect he was also unwilling to accept responsibility. He was someone who blossomed best in opposition.

Political disagreements aside, Doctor Otto Strasser was stimulating company. Indeed, in the absence of Röhm, he became almost my only substantial company. We dined together the next night, as he was staying at a small hotel nearby. After a simple supper in a local bistro, we took the tram back into central Munich to the famous Hofbräuhaus. The city at night was full of festive light. The blaze of the trams in the warm autumn air, the sound of a distant brass band, the happy laughter of the people all took me again to my past in Odessa, to those golden days before a few alien financiers and their stooges determined we were too happy, enjoying too much progress and therefore not making them enough money. Munich was like Odessa at her best, not the city of marching mobs and street violence, wretched poverty and cruelty which the documentaries always show to explain Hitler. I saw a few starving children, a few beggars, some ex-servicemen working as street traders and the occasional whore - only what you expected in any large city.

Munich’s atmosphere promised happier more hopeful days. Her people knew how to relish their pleasures. The huge green and brown Hofbräuhaus, with its massive wooden galleries and stairways, was a mighty machine for beer drinking. Tier upon tier, bench upon bench of men in lederhosen and huntsmen’s homespun, women with floral embroidered aprons and great plaited bunches of blonde hair, hundreds of red or black swastikas on brawny Brownshirt arms. Oktoberfest being at its height, the beer hall also sheltered the cheerful peasants I had seen in the market, by now a little the worse for drink, taking full advantage of their womenfolk remaining at home for at least a few more days. The hall was noticeably pro-Hitler with Nazi advertising and flags everywhere. Doctor Strasser admired the posters’ style. He said that the Nazis and the Commies had tremendous aesthetic sense. Their artwork was created by the best graphic artists in Germany. Some beer halls played both sides or were clearly anti-Nazi, but here Hitler was the local boy made good.

Otto Strasser waved his arms at the surrounding campaign posters. ‘Have you noticed how phallic the best Nazi propaganda is now? I’m sure it’s deliberate!’ Again he giggled. ‘It started with our steel helmets, eh? Do you think it’s some sort of compensation? All those stiff arms going up and down? All those stiff legs pumping? Has it ever struck you how Mussolini’s pictures do their best to make him look like a gigantic prick? Clearly all that sort of thing works, wouldn’t you say? But do we really want to give the world to people who would rather follow a penis than a principle?’

He made me laugh spontaneously for the first time in ages. His irreverence helped me recover my mental stability. Soon I was my old self again, and the whole incident at Tegernsee a fading nightmare. I had, after all, put worse behind me. Though scarcely one of Hitler’s closest friends, Strasser knew the man better than most and had little reverence for him. I enjoyed his comments.

‘He is amorphous, eh? Whatever we desire or feel? Did you ever see that film about the Jewish monster, The Golem? Isn’t Hitler a golem? The amalgam of everything a Jew has nightmares about, yes?’ As usual, he responded enthusiastically to his own somewhat repetitive humour.

Given that these opinions were offered in one of Hitler’s strongholds, the very beer hall from which he had organised the famous 1923 putsch attempt, I thought Doctor Strasser rather brave. But he had forgotten where he was. As a passing hard-faced Brownshirt carrying a tray scowled at him, Strasser paused. His quick tongue had got him into trouble but now it saved him. ‘And that is why the Führer is our best shield against the aliens!” he added loudly.

In a murmur, he continued, ‘How can you trust anyone now? Aren’t they all to some degree corrupted? Even my brother Gregor. He couldn’t live on a Reichstag representative’s salary. Can you credit that? Don’t they all have their Big Business patrons now? Even Röhm?’

I shook my head in thorough disbelief. ‘Röhm agrees with everything you say. His money comes entirely from contributions by party members.’

‘Then he’s the only one, no? Thyssen and Hugenberg back Hitler, Farben backs Gregor and Röhm. The Stabschef isn’t building that ludicrous house on his party pay. And if Hugenberg’s in, then so, of course, is Krupp. When Krupp joins, surely the Americans, French and British will all start covering their bets and backing the National Socialists, too? Ford, IBM, Hearst already back Hitler, knowing he will bring stability. They don’t care about the nature of our leadership as long as it guarantees their investments. So Hitler’s already getting promises of American backing! Success breeds success. Soon he’ll have Scandinavian, Dutch and Italian money, too. A snowball, my dear Peters. Or a concrete ball, maybe . . . ?’

I wondered if my new acquaintance were not a little jealous of his ex-comrades, so I changed the subject, saying how sorry I felt at Hitler’s loss. He seemed to have cared a great deal for his niece. But this was a strategic mistake! I set Strasser off again. He became heated, conspiratorial, and began drinking rather recklessly.

‘She told me things.’ Doctor Strasser offered me a significant leer. ‘She told Goebbels things, when he was still in our office. And Hanfstaengl knows about Father Stempfle, Schwartz and the pornographic pictures. Schwartz was working there at Corneliusstrasse when he was asked to get the money together to pay off the blackmailer. Hitler came in one morning. He was desperate. I don’t know how they raised the money. The party was broke then. The blackmailer was, I’m convinced, the old hermit Stempfle himself, an Hieronymite by calling but much else besides. He insisted the money was owed to him. He’s always hated Hitler. He wrote most of Mein Kampf, and Hitler simply took it over. Until Max Amann asked Stempfle to look at it, Hitler’s original was unpublishable. It was repetitive and illogical. Hitler copied Stempfle’s articles out of the Munich papers and used them as his own speeches! Have you heard that hysterical old priest on the subject? You’d never guess he was a man of the cloth! Though he probably only joined to suffer the little children to come unto him . . .’

‘Fräulein Raubal, some say, had an unnatural relationship with her uncle?’ Back in that room for a moment, I was already sailing closer to the black wind than was prudent. Without the mitigating balance of cocaine I had not willingly drunk so much alcohol in a long time, and my head was beginning to swim again.

Doctor Strasser was nodding his round head rapidly even before I had finished speaking. ‘She told Goebbels things,’ he repeated gravely. ‘And Goebbels isn’t easily shocked, eh? He’s seen and done everything. With women, anyway, what? Nasty little dwarf. He thought she had to be lying. Didn’t want to believe those things of Hitler, hmm? He guessed that Hitler or someone, maybe his driver Emil, who used to flirt with her, showed her magazines, or she’d come across them for herself. You don’t have to be a sicko to find it, that’s true. The stuff’s everywhere. Half the Kinos in Berlin show worse. She could have gone to see anything — animals, golden showers, boys with boys — in one of those clubs. Some of them are live. Women are always trying to get you to take them to that sort of place, aren’t they? But Fräulein Raubal talked to me. She told me she was terrified of what was happening. Her words to me. She said he was a monster. But that’s all she said. Hitler took firmer control of her after that. She became a prisoner, I think. Don’t you?’

He stopped suddenly. Three straight-backed burly Storm Troopers had turned on their bench and, steins in hand, were staring at him.

Strasser had now been recognised. I must admit it did not suit me to be seen with someone identified as a critic of the leadership or, worse, a traitor. When my new friend decided it was prudent to leave, I was only too glad to stand up. Without much incident, we made our way back to Corneliusstrasse and a poorly lit local beer cellar which had sparse custom that night. Only a few old peasant men sat drunk in a corner and sang the same obscure dialect song over and over again.

We found a heavy table under a murky arch, and I drew a sigh of relief, very happy to be clear of that dangerous limelight. Strasser himself was alert again, evidently capable of sudden recovery. His constantly moving eyes now surveyed the place even as he signalled for service.

A big dough-faced girl in a dirty apron, with pigtails that looked as if they had been wiping up Schmalz, arrived to take our orders. Strasser demanded I try a particularly strong brand of beer. Again I pointed out that I had no money, but he was insistent. He’d had a windfall, he said. So we drank the beer, and I told him of my childhood in Kiev and Odessa as the son of an American dentist, of my service with the White Army, my flying experience against the Reds and my invention of the Violet Ray which Petlyura had used to stop the Bolsheviks as they swept upon Kiev, and which would have succeeded if the city’s power supply had been more certain. How I had gone to France and made my fortune in airship construction, only to lose it, the victim of typically French political chicanery, then become a political speaker in the US, developed a steam-car and later worked as a film star. He was fascinated by my accounts of flying in the service of the Caid of Marrakech. I did not tell him about Egypt any more than about Hitler. Some things should never be exposed to the common air or the light of day and should certainly never be passed on to another human being. It is the same as knowingly passing on a disease. Some burdens you can only share with a priest or a psychiatrist.

Doctor Strasser thought at first that I was lying. ‘You’ve had more adventures than Münchhausen, no?’

I explained that my situation was the same as that of many Russian members of the aristocratic intelligentsia driven from their homeland by the Reds. People found it difficult to imagine the fate of the dispossessed intellectual, as he must understand. We were forced to earn our livings as jacks of all trades! The Revolution set Russia back a thousand years. But for Lenin I would even now be pursuing the career of inventor and engineer in Moscow or St Petersburg.

Convinced (for he had himself had a taste of exile), my new acquaintance asked a few more questions and relaxed again. Like Captain Röhm, Doctor Strasser was particularly interested in my Russian experiences, though from a different point of view. He wanted to know how effective Makhno’s anarchist communes had been, how efficient the commissar system was, how popular the Red ideologues had been with the common people and so on. I could only tell him of my own adventures, but for these he was avid. I tried to explain the complicated comings and goings of the various forces in the Ukraine during my time there. The Red organisers were primarily Jewish intellectuals, some of them from Germany. Their organisational skills made the Reds successful in the end.

Doctor Strasser had met the great Krassnoff in Berlin. He had read the General’s moving multi-volume memoir From the Two-Headed Eagle to the Red Flag. The book had convinced him that the Russian model was nothing worth following. Yet an alliance between a united Germany and the Soviet Union would form a solid and natural power block, with Poland under shared dominion.

He was retailing the old German dream, but turned into socialist politics! I said nothing. I valued my new friend too highly to offend him. He had met Skorapadsky, who had settled in Munich. The Hetman claimed now that he would have kept our common Tsar if he had retained his power in Ukraine. None doubted Skorapadsky’s Ukrainian patriotism, but this was the first I had heard of his Russian loyalties! It was true he had been driven from the Ukraine by the Reds. Like many Ukrainians, he was a good friend to Germany, but had no other allies.

I put it to Doctor Strasser that we, not the German Army, were the ones who were truly betrayed, for we were betrayed by our own allies. Why did the Americans not step in at the right time and save our Tsar? They had the means. They had agents there, like the British. They knew everything that was going on. In the end, even the British and French let us down, but the Americans, as usual, did enough to make a mess but not enough to clear it up. What was the matter with Americans? Ice had crept into their hearts. Surely they had no reason to hate Germany?

He said that the Americans did not understand altruism. And as with everything else they didn’t understand, they rejected, hated or sentimentalised it so that it became something else. I agreed. Germany could never rely on America for long-term help. I had not considered before that the culture actually mitigated against altruism just as it mitigated against intellectualism, in both cases because of the vast numbers of Protestants and Jews in America. Together they were lethal! Nothing in Protestant folk stories and moral tales suggested that virtue was its own reward. As in Victorian England, virtue in America is always thoroughly rewarded. Indeed, the reward is always promised. When it cannot be redeemed, it becomes heaven’s responsibility. A sentimentalised culture was actually inimicable to genuine altruism. Their charitable organisations always expected something in return for their help. At the very least they demanded pious thanks. Even the Catholics. The whole culture demanded you act like a character in a melodrama. At the moment, therefore, presented by Weimar with an image of decadence, Americans believed Germany beyond salvation.

Doctor Strasser took a polite interest in what I had to say. So it was with Catholics everywhere, he added vaguely. A question of vested interests, and the oldest vested interest in the world was the Vatican. But he parroted this without any real passion, like most Roman Catholics who had escaped the tyranny of their parents’ religion. From me he chiefly wanted to know what California and Hollywood were like. Had I met any of the famous stars?

So somehow the rest of the evening became devoted to trivial reminiscence. Doctor Strasser relayed juicy Nazi gossip, and I relayed equally juicy Hollywood gossip. As my spirits began to improve, I realised I was quite enjoying myself. I offered stories about famous stars now completely out of fashion. Otto Strasser’s tales were probably equally out of date since he had been so long from the centres of NSDAP power.

That night Strasser took over my couch. He was too drunk, he said, to return to his little pension. Unfortunately Schirach had neglected to leave any bedlinen so I slept on the mattress fully clothed, and Strasser slept similarly on the couch. The beer made sleep easier but waking rather harder.

Next morning we freshened ourselves as best we could and stumbled down the uncarpeted stairs into the cobbled street to get some cheap coffee. On the corner a cheerful Brownshirt boy called out the latest headlines while holding the handlebar of a bin-on-wheels, a kind of converted perambulator or sandwich cart, advertising in vivid scarlet against a black background the Völkischer Beobachter. Doctor Strasser reached in, flashed a lapel badge, and pulled a paper from the bin while the lad looked on, not sure what to do.

As we left the speechless vendor behind, Strasser handed me the paper. ‘This was always a rag. Now it’s a rag telling nothing but lies, what?’ He stopped rather ostentatiously at the Münchener Post kiosk and bought the paper that had most consistently attacked Hitler and raised questions about Fräulein Raubal’s death.

Taking me into the nearest tiny coffee shop, Doctor Strasser ordered us some croissants and buried himself in the newspaper. He relished every word of scandal about Hitler. Meanwhile, I read of Nazi triumph and Hitler’s heroism in the face of attacks from every side. The fact that the Führer was able to shrug off all such filthy propaganda was a further sign of his superhuman discipline.

Doctor Strasser ate rapidly. Ordering more coffee, he devoured the croissants and read me the wildest of the allegations.

Admittedly, and rather disturbingly, the paper touched on the truth, at least as I understood it. Its publisher had some vendetta against the Nazi leader and no doubt a left-wing agenda of his own. Though the stories were sensational and unlikely, Strasser seemed happy to believe them, at least for the moment, as one might enjoy a cheap novel. He ate another croissant as he grinned and chuckled, rustling the pages and retailing every fresh detail. Röhm’s mythological orgies were not left out of the account. Ever since his touching letters had been intercepted and published, the papers had had a field day with his sexuality. Of course, they did not dare use a word like ‘queer’, though the inference was clear.

Röhm was described as Hitler’s closest intimate. Hitler was described as ‘unmarried’ and a ‘confirmed bachelor’ while at the same time being his niece’s ‘protector’, as if to make sure of blackening his name on as many counts as possible. Here was a man who was both rapist, impotent, feminine, masochist, sadist, heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, had boyfriends and kept a mistress, while at the same time rushing from one end of the country to the other giving political speeches. No wonder people hailed him as a superman!

And now Hitler could also be a savage murderer. The police were suggesting Geli had been beaten up (by inference Hitler had done it) because she refused some particularly perverse advance. I really had no interest in this nonsense, particularly since I knew far too much of the truth.

‘Surely none of this scandal will do Röhm any good with the Reichswehr,’ I said. ‘They’re notoriously homophobic!’

‘That isn’t the character Röhm presents to the army, of course. With them he is the efficient, sensible officer, the comrade-in-arms, the war veteran. They find him perfectly charming and are happy to believe him when he tells them that the scandals are simply the invention of his enemies, that his famous love letters are mere forgeries. No doubt he lets them think he’s a widower with two children he’s raising himself. Captain Röhm’s a nice middle-class boy, like me. Well educated. Well brought up. Good at deferring to his betters, or at least appearing to. In Germany you are trained to present the face people want to see. Face is of primary importance. What you do, you do. If you are caught, you suffer. Isn’t it like that in America?’

‘So Röhm is right and will ultimately have control of the army?’

Doctor Strasser took this seriously, folding his paper and lighting a fresh cigarette, thinking for a moment. ’Not likely. The Reichswehr is still the strongest single force in Germany and has tried to stay out of direct politics, though it has a fair amount of influence. The Reichswehr controls Germany. Röhm doesn’t. Hitler could sacrifice Röhm to appease the Reichswehr. Or there could be civil war with the regular army on one side and the various Freikorps, especially the Storm Troopers, on the other. It would be horrifying, like the Hundred Years War all over again, with no side staying the same, and more and more foreign interests drawn in and ultimately simply annexing parts of Germany for themselves. The Jews have even fewer local loyalties than the Catholics and will take advantage of such a situation. So everyone knows we should avoid it developing. I think the Reichswehr will find a formula, a way of saving face, to incorporate the SA. The army commands Germany, but the army needs a commander. If Hitler shirks the issue and demands command of the army, Röhm will turn against him.’

‘And so there’ll be civil war?’

‘Röhm can threaten it and sometimes does, but he knows as well as Hitler that it would be a bloody massacre, eh?’

‘Of the army?’

‘Of the SA. Of us. Röhm has the leadership of at least a hundred thousand soldiers. Doesn’t he claim four million? He has stockpiles of machine guns and rifles and plenty of them cached all over Germany to be called upon at any time. But it’s much harder to stockpile tanks, planes and heavy artillery, no? Isn’t he, after all, the one who says that tanks will determine the wars of the future the way cavalry determined the wars of the past? Surely he has only infantry? The French would come in on Hitler’s side, and Röhm would be dogmeat, what?’ Doctor Strasser remained a realist. He laughed. ‘Röhm will have to go back to Bolivia. Or rejoin the Bolshies!’

I knew this to be unlikely.

Suddenly Otto Strasser put down his newspaper, walked to the glass door of the little cafe and opening it put his hand out in the Nazi salute. He laughed loudly as a man on the other side of the road, who had been loitering there since we had entered the place, turned on his heel and walked up the street, where he pretended to be interested in a shop’s display of surgical appliances.

‘Himmler’s man, almost certainly,’ explained Strasser, smiling and shaking his head. ‘Von Schirach must have said something when he got to Berlin. A telephone call and here we are.’

I began to make plans to leave Munich as soon as possible. I had more than enough problems with Bolsheviks like Brodmann on my trail! I had somehow angered Il Duce and compromised Hitler. While Röhm could still be my way through to the important political figures of the day, I could not afford to be seen either in his company or in the company of his disgraced ex-colleague. My only hope was that the plain-clothes SS man had no interest in me. Surely Doctor Strasser was the villain? Von Schirach himself had known the truth of the situation and doubtless complained that Strasser had attached himself to me.

After breakfast we returned to Corneliusstrasse. I had thought of going on up to the market, but Doctor Strasser was by now very sleepy and asked if he could stretch out on the bed for an hour or two. This reminded me that I needed to procure some sheets. He impetuously handed me some new marks and told me of a good ‘seconds’ linen shop in the area. For a man of such slender means, lie was generous with the money he possessed. My own was hidden, and I had no intention of touching it until I really needed it.

Doctor Strasser’s instructions proved rather vague, and it took me some time to find the shop. I had a sense that I was being followed but could see nobody. The shop was big and filled to bursting with feather quilts and bedclothes. After some bargaining I was able to buy the sheets together with a heavy quilt and a pillow for a good price. The linen did not cost much to begin with, but I bargained the proprietor into giving me a price for the entire bundle. I was proud of myself. I even had some change left over.

The linen shop was on a busy main street on the far side of the Viktualienmarkt. I could just see over my parcels. The old woman who owned the place came to open the door for me. As I was leaving, I glanced almost instinctively into the street. Some traffic had stopped suddenly as a policeman directed a horse-drawn delivery van which needed to back out of an alley. When an expensive Mercedes tourer paused I admired the sweep of its dark green lines until I heard a faint shriek.

‘Ivan!’

In the back of the car, glamour personified, sat Mrs Cornelius, her hair a glittering platinum helm. She was waving animatedly for me to come to the car. Her companion, who sat up front with the driver, seemed agitated by the attention. She was tapping the chauffeur on the shoulder, trying to get him to pull over, but her companion was reluctant. I recognised him as her ‘Baron Huggy Bear’, Herr Hugenberg, the media magnate, with his hairbrush head and massive grey moustaches. He did not respond to my bow. As the policeman waved the traffic forward, he gave the chauffeur a signal to move on. Mrs Cornelius was left half standing in the Mercedes, calling out something I could not hear. Pursuing the car was impossible since I was carrying so much, and I was furious at my lost opportunity. I could only hope she was in Munich for some time and that our paths would cross again.

My bedlinen in my arms, I watched helplessly as the huge machine sped into the distance. Then I began the plod back to Corneliusstrasse, reflecting on the even deeper irony of the address.

In some depression I returned with my purchases, expecting Strasser to be impressed with what I had managed to get for the money. As I approached the house, however, I was alarmed to see the street door standing ajar. I knew I had drawn it shut behind me, and I had the key in my pocket. Afraid that Himmler’s men had taken action, I entered carefully and listened. No sounds came from overhead.

Bit by bit, I advanced up the stairs, my sheets, quilt and pillow in my arms, until I reached the top floor and carefully pushed open the apartment door with my foot. Still silent as the grave.

Nervously I entered the flat.

It was empty.

Doctor Otto Strasser had gone. He had left no note, but everything of his had vanished as if he had never been here.

The Himmler man had scared him off. Strasser had used me to lure him away! My sense of being followed to the linen shop was based on fact. Returning downstairs, I saw he had taken his publications with him. Still no note. His wariness, I would learn, was well placed. Himmler’s men had more than likely followed his trail to wherever he had next fled. I could now settle safely into my flat and try to think through my position.

But the truth is I did little thinking that week. I made some attempt to contact Mrs Cornelius. She was not registered in any Munich hotel under her own name. She had probably returned to Berlin with Hugenberg.

I also became a little obsessed with ‘Zoyea the Gypsy’, for the exotic minx had not appeared again in the market, and there was no sign of the organ-grinder or her brother, not even a distant, mechanical note from the barrel organ. The market traders all told me that ‘the Italian’, as they called him, was working the more lucrative parts of Oktoberfest. You could make a small fortune during this period if you were prepared to go where the money was. He would, I was assured, be back in late October.

I now had a telephone and could talk to Röhm, who would ring to let me know when he had time to pay me a short visit. They were scarcely ever more than that these days. He was always very careful not to be seen and rarely wore his uniform without covering it with a civilian coat.

These were momentous times, he said. The National Socialists had taken Hamburg — a notorious Red stronghold! The vote had been overwhelming. Hitler’s policies promised to unify all sides — and how the German soul yearned for unity!

Röhm was amused when I told him how Otto Strasser had suddenly vanished without warning. ‘I’d heard he’d been here. He pinched the petty cash, I gather. They’d been keeping it handy for emergencies. And our dear Otto turned up. Always an emergency!’

Röhm told me later that Strasser had the survival instincts of a rat. The man could slip away at the first sign of danger. A sixth sense Röhm respected. People like that had survived in the trenches. He was frankly admiring. ‘As the Titanic left Liverpool, Doctor Otto Strasser would have been seen tiptoeing quietly down the last mooring cable back to dry land. If I had any sense at all, I would keep Strasser around and use him as a barometer. If Strasser smells trouble, then you should be ready for trouble.’

One of the saddest ironies of my long life is that my friend Röhm left it too late to take his own advice.

He was gone again soon enough, back to Berlin where the action was, with all kinds of preparations to be arranged before May. Even now they were making a play for power and had to seize every opportunity presented during the next weeks. Our ’therapy’, he said, had worked well. Alf, thank God, was more or less functioning again, though his old fire was slow to rekindle. He should be in good enough shape by Christmas to do what he had to do. Only Hitler, croaking, screaming, weeping, imploring and going through a silent-film actor’s entire range of emotions, could infuse the party members and the electorate with that same sense of mission, of marching together for the glory of a greater, better Germany. A German Germany, said Röhm, pulling on his boots. A Germany for the Germans, he added, fastening his belt. Strong, masculine, progressive. Something good could still come out of all this.

As he was leaving, I asked him point-blank if there was any truth in the rumour I had heard that he was being backed by I. G. Farben. He was wearing his full dress uniform, on the way to a function. One gloved hand was on the hilt of his sword. He had disguised his scars, and in that half-light he looked as he must have before the War, arrogant and handsome. He paused, frowning to himself, then turned to look me full in the eyes. ‘He thinks I’m working for him, but he’s working for me. I’m happy to take the money he’s offered whenever a meeting has been organised. But his head will roll with the rest when the time comes, little Mashi, never fear.’ He spoke with quiet conviction.

With the beginning of October came a soft, light rain. It brought a melancholy air to the city as the memories of the festival faded and Munich returned to normal, already beginning to plan for Christmas. Röhm had lent me some money so I was able to buy an umbrella, under which I made my daily walk to the market. I was by now known to the traders who behaved towards me with good-humoured insolence. They called me ‘Professor Popoff’ for some reason of their own, but they were not bad people and treated everyone pretty much the same. I loved the powerful smells of fresh vegetables and newly slaughtered meat. I so strongly associate these smells with my little Zoyea that even nowadays, when out in the Portobello Road and passing one of those elaborately stacked stalls with its ornate gold and green lettering, I am instantly reminded of her. I can still see her little bare brown legs and feet twinkling across the asphalt as she dances with her tambourine, innocently striking all the poses of the harlot and drowning me in her eyes. I became totally absorbed in her.

She is an animal. A wonderful cat. Her curiosity is never still, fixing on you for just a moment, long enough for you to yearn for her to look at you again. Her attention is forever on the next thing, the next person, the next scene. She is greedy for everything life offers as if she knows her time on earth will be short.

She is a flirt but she flirts without knowing what it is she promises. I do not let those glances mislead me. It is my heart that longs for her again, not my loins. I have lived with such disgusting allegations for most of my adult life. If a man cannot love the innocence and sweetness of little girls, he has no soul, no feeling. Of course I would have wanted a wife, children of my own. She said she had found my mother. Esmé betrayed me. She took my children. Her companions were the ghosts of the unborn. How their voices fill the high, stone arches, mingling with the roiling smoke, the heavy scents, and I can see something again of the heaven I lost when I was driven from my native land. White, green and gold. Sharp. From within it slices gently into the lining of my stomach. Slices a long scar on the inside of my belly. A piece of metal swings in my stomach like a pendulum, and I wonder if I am not entirely artificial now, kin to the mechanical woman of Metropolis.

I saw that film and several others at the same time in a very good cinema not far from the Viktualienmarkt. While it showed new films during the week, the theatre had a bill of older, silent films for Sundays. They offered a single price in the afternoons, so it presented the best bargain. To be honest, I was in a mood for musicals and comedies rather than the gloomy fare I received via Messrs Murnau, Lang and Pabst. I slept through most of the second part of Doctor Mabuse, though I had enjoyed the original stories. They lacked the texture of the best Sexton Blake adventures and were far more fantastic, but they passed the time. Blake’s exploits are based, of course, on the real life of the famous military spy and counter-espionage agent Sir Seaton Begg, for so long in command of the now disbanded MI7. For a while he was my friend Major Nye’s immediate boss, though he never directly admitted it!

Lilian Harvey became a great favourite of mine. The English actress was Germany’s biggest popular star. Her performance in the rather whimsical Three from a Filling Station was not quite as good as in Der Kongress tanzt. But her talkies were a little more expensive. Leni Riefenstahl was an athletic actress who appeared at her best in fur against a background of snow. I saw her in several of these ski and climbing epics, shallow things, depending mostly on the German audience’s appetite for endless snow and ice. Perhaps the German race really did long for its distant Teutonic homeland? Die Weisse Hölle von Piz-Palü was one of her last. A white hell indeed. These pictures were chiefly interesting when they concentrated on the aeroplane-rescue sequences. While they were hugely popular in countries with Alpine areas, they were virtually unknown elsewhere, a very specific genre, like the English Carry On film, where a deep knowledge of the culture is required to understand the nuances which are the true stories underlying apparently superficial nonsense. Having been starved for so long of the popular cinema, I must admit I became something of an addict. I still did not feel very secure on the street. In the darkness of the afternoon Kino, I was safe.

I went to the cinema almost every day, making sure I left and returned via the Viktualienmarkt. I longed for a companion, someone delicate and tender, to care for.

They came back as the traders had predicted. The entire little troupe looked rested and alert, as if they had been on holiday somewhere. They had probably been eating rather better than usual. A few coins in the boy’s clattering box and I was soon chatting with Signor Frau, who came originally from Genoa and was a great enthusiast for Mussolini. Rather than return to Genoa, Signor Frau had eventually decided it made more sense to rent a little house in one of the older parts of the city, near what he called ‘the sheds’, where a number of barrel organs were stored, rather like taxis, and rented to individuals who found it irksome or expensive to maintain their own instruments. He had prospered during the festival. That money would be put aside for the lean months. His barrel organ was beginning to fail him, and the old bastard of a mechanic would charge him a fortune for repairing it. Things were going badly for him as just the other day his monkey had caught cold. He feared it might die.

The monkey recovered. A rapport developed between Frau and myself. He cultivated the moustache and rather long hair, the bright shirts, the hat, jacket and knickerbockers of his calling, which, he explained, the Germans expected of him. At home, however, he wore the same clothes as everyone else. As far as I could tell, he had lived in Munich so long his German was without accent. He admitted, laughing, that most of his Italian was now in his singing. He scarcely even spoke it at home. His wife was German but had been killed in an explosion at the fireworks factory where she worked. Flares. Three days before the armistice, he said. Their baby had just been born, and his boy was two. His wife’s sister had looked after them. Then she got married and moved back to Hanover. Heckie, the girl, was old enough to look after the house. He patted her shoulder. ‘She’s been my little wife.’

They were good children, he said, and a great support to him. They were his consolation. He had never remarried. To be honest there was less strain. He didn’t think he could marry another German woman. They were kind-hearted and treated you like a king but were a bit too neat and tidy for his taste. Heckie was a proper little woman. She ran the household and a good deal of the business. I can smell her warm skin, her soft brown neck, her curls, her strong little body straining and squirming under the first intimations of her sexuality.

That mixture of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices was for me the smell of wealth and comfort, of certainty. Of romance. And also the smell of dawning lust. I can hear the cheerful staccato of the barrel organ, snatches of song, excited chitter of the monkey jumping on the singer’s shoulder, a sour-faced boy moving through the crowd with his box, her delicate brown limbs flashing in shafts of sunlight falling through the dusty glass above. The cheap lace of her costume flaps and bounces on her perfect little body. Those flounces are a vulgar and unnecessary augmentation to her grace and natural elegance. Her lips curve again in a sweet red smile. She promises me so much. She promises me a return to my past, to a time when I was happy.

How she twirled and skipped as her surly older brother moved among the crowd, while her father, his grin apparently as spontaneous as ever, stroked his happy little monkey, turning the handle of the barrel organ, singing along with the machine in a rich baritone. ‘Fa la la la! Fa la la la! ’ In his tall-crowned felt hat, short green jacket trimmed with gold, brown corduroy knickerbockers, green stockings and bright red shoes, his broad, flashing grin, his earrings, which could be removed at night, he was everything he was supposed to be. The costume was scarcely any different to that worn by peasants in most of this region, from northern Italy through Austria to southern Germany, yet the Italian still found himself called a gypsy when he went out into the smaller provincial towns. Heckie would get touched for luck. She hated it. When not performing, she was a grave child who took her domestic responsibilities as seriously as her professional ones. Her only abiding enthusiasm she kept to herself.

Soon I took to arriving at the market towards the end of the afternoon, so that I could watch Zoyea/Heckie dance, pop a coin into the boy’s aggressive box and chat to Signor Frau as he drew the canvas cover over his barrel organ, rewarded his monkey and prepared to push the instrument back through the side streets to the mews where all the organs were stored in common.

By the first week of November Röhm had been almost entirely in Berlin. I remained at a loose end. A few SA men came and went from the Corneliusstrasse premises. They were not sure what I was doing there, and were frankly unfriendly. It was becoming obvious I must discover a new patron or take some sort of job. Common sense said I should have left for Berlin by now, except I felt safer for the moment in Munich. I was definitely safer than I would have been in Rome, unless Il Duce’s mood had changed. My enemies probably still had his ear. If I returned I was sure to find myself under arrest, with another false list of crimes added to my name. Yet in Munich I was, to some degree, Röhm’s prisoner. He remained very kind and sentimental, but during most of his visits his mind was chiefly on the political struggle. He found it impossible to relax completely. He would ‘lend’ me whatever money he had in his pocket, yet if I was to become my own man again I must find employment. Naturally my first thought was of my patents. I needed to get the ear of a German industrialist, and the only way to do that was through Mrs Cornelius, who more than likely was not even in the country any longer!

Meanwhile, I was in love and the world was coming alive for me again. Zoyea and I had discovered a common interest.