They looked at his car, they looked at his clothes and his Aryan face, and at the engraved card which he gave them. "Mr. Lanning Prescott Budd" might be somebody so important that he didn’t bother to put his titles and honors on his card, as was the German custom. They let him through the steel gates, and two Stormtroopers stood guard while a third took his card to the office. In front of him was a drill ground, and at one side a clatter of hammers; they were putting up new buildings, doubtless with the labor of prisoners. Stormtroopers were everywhere, all with their rubber truncheons and automatics; there were now half a million of these fighting men for whom jobs had to be provided.
XI
The Kommandant consented to see Herr Budd, and he was escorted to the private office of a tough young Süddeutscher with a scarred face and a round head with black hair close cropped. Having met Göring, Lanny thought he had no more to learn about toughness. He sat down and came straight to the point:
"Herr Kommandant, I am an American sympathizer who happens to be in Munich because I am interested in an art exhibition. You may have read about it, and possibly about me. I had the honor of spending a morning with the Führer at the Braune Haus a few days ago. I am a friend of Minister-Präsident General Göring, and had the pleasure of accompanying him on a shooting trip last month. I live in France and visit frequently in England and America, where I hear a great deal of propaganda against your Regierung—you no doubt know of the charges of cruelty and torturing which are being widely published. I thought it might be a good thing if I could say: I have visited one of the large concentration camps and seen conditions with my own eyes. I appreciate that this is a request you would hardly grant to a stranger; but it happens that I have some clippings from Munich newspapers which will show you who I am—and incidentally they contain pictures of myself, so that you can see I’m not anybody else."
The smiling visitor handed over the clippings; the tough Nazi studied them, and his toughness evaporated like early morning frost in sunshine. This elegant rich foreigner had actually enjoyed the highest privilege which any good Stormtrooper could imagine—of walking into the Führer’s private study and discussing art with him! "Certainly, Herr Budd; we are always pleased to show our camp to properly accredited persons. We have taken several foreign journalists through in the past month or two." The Kommandant arose, prepared to do the honors himself—perhaps he could find the secret of how to make friends with the Führer!
So Lanny strolled about and saw what was inside those concrete walls with heavily electrified barbed wire. The officer explained the routine of the camp, and led his visitor over to the corner where the barracks were situated, fenced off from the rest of the grounds with barbed-wire entanglements. They were dismal, unpainted, and half-rotted buildings which had been erected of flimsy materials in wartime and had been neglected ever since. There were numerous cracks in the board walls and some of the windows had missing glass. There were thirteen one-story buildings, each with five connecting rooms, and in each room were fifty or more berths, arranged in three tiers like shelves. The floors were of concrete, and the mattresses were straw sacks. There was one washstand in each room.
Many of the inmates were outside the camp, working on the roads under heavy guard. Others were in the workshops, or building the new barracks, or in the offices. The old and the sick were getting the advantage of the sunshine, the only gift of nature which was still free to them. They sat leaning against the sides of the buildings, or strolling slowly. Apparently they were forbidden to converse; at any rate they weren’t doing it. They looked dully at Lanny, and he was ashamed to meet their eyes. Fortunately he had no acquaintances among the Reds and Pinks of Bavaria, so he gave no soul-wounds.
A drab and distressing spectacle the prisoners presented. They had close-cropped heads. They wore the clothes in which they had been arrested; but that had been months ago, in many cases nearly a year, and doubtless they were sleeping in their clothes on these near-winter nights. The intellectuals of Bavaria had evidently not been fond of outdoor sports; some were lean and stoop-shouldered, others were paunched and flabby. Many had white hair, and might have been the grandfathers of their guards, but that earned them no consideration. Ill health and depression were written all over them. They did not know what they were here for, or how long they would have to stay—they who had been free men, free thinkers, the best of the land’s intellectuals. They had dreamed of a happier and more ordered world, and this was the punishment which fitted their crime. "We are not running a health resort," remarked the Kommandant.
Lanny kept walking, as long as there was anything to be seen: sixty-five bunk-rooms, several mess-halls, a dozen workshops, and various outdoor constructions. Everywhere he scanned the faces, looking for that of his brother-in-law’s brother or that of Trudi Schultz’s husband. He saw neither; and after he had covered all the ground he could find out about, he ventured the question: "Don’t you have any Jews?"
"Oh, yes," replied the host, "about forty; but we keep them apart, out of consideration for the others."
"They work, I suppose?"
"They work good and hard, you may be sure."
"Could I see them?"
"That, I am sorry to say, is contrary to the regulations."
The man volunteered no more; and Lanny, having asked as many questions as he dared, let himself be led back to his car. "I thank you, Herr Kommandant," he said. "I will be able to tell newspaper reporters that I didn’t see any bruised or bloody inmates, or any wire whips or rubber hose for beatings."
"You might have looked still farther and not seen any," replied the tough Nazi. The remark was open to more than one interpretation, and Lanny thought: "Maybe he is like me, and prefers not to lie if he can help it!"
XII
The amateur investigator drove back to the city, wondering how Freddi was standing it. Freddi himself had wondered, did he have the needed courage, could he find in himself the spiritual resources?
Lanny, being of an imaginative temperament, asked the same questions of himself; he lived in those dingy and squalid sheds and felt on his back the lash of those whips which he had not seen.
Then his busy mind began inventing a little story. He went to see the tough Nazi Kommandant, and invited him to see the show, and after that to take a ride. When they were well out in the country Lanny addressed him as follows:
"Herr Kommandant, one of the Jews whom you are providing with plenty of hard work happens to be a sort of relative of mine. He is a harmless young fellow, and if I should take him to my home in France he would be content to play the clarinet for the rest of his life and never do any harm to your glorious movement. It happens that I have just sold some paintings and have cash in a Munich bank. Suppose I were to pay you, say twenty-five thousand marks, in any form and by any method you direct, and you in turn would find some way to let me pick up that prisoner in my car and whisk him up into the mountains and across the Austrian border-would that appeal to you as a good night’s work?"
Lanny’s fancy created several denouements for that story. He knew that the Nazi machine was pretty well riddled with graft; Johannes Robin had told many tales of pure Aryan business men who were getting what they wanted by such methods, old as the first despotism. On the other hand, this particular toughie might be a sincere fanatic—it was impossible to tell them apart. Lanny was sure that if Hugo Behr had been in charge of the camp, he would have taken the money; on the other hand, Heinrich Jung would probably have reported him to the grim Gestapo.