"I can get free."
Heinrich called again, saying that the appointment was for four o’clock, and he would be waiting for Lanny in front of the headquarters at three-thirty. When he was in the car and had given the address, he began, with some signs of hesitation: "You know, American manners are not quite the same as German. The Führer, of course, understands that you are an American—"
"I hope he won’t expect me to say 'Heil Hitler!"
"Oh, no, of course not. You will shake hands with him."
"Shall I address him as Er?" Lanny had read a recent announcement of the introduction of this custom, previously reserved for royalty. It meant speaking in the third person.
"That will not be expected of a foreigner. But it is better if one doesn’t contradict him. You know that he is under heavy pressure these days—"
"I understand." From many sources Lanny had heard that Adi was a highly excitable person; some even called him psychopathic.
"I don’t mean that you have to agree with him," the other hastened to add. "It’s all right if you just listen. He is very kind about explaining his ideas to people."
"Sure thing." Lanny kept a perfectly straight face. "I have read Mein Kampf, and this will be a sort of postscript. Five years have passed, and a lot has happened."
"Isn’t it marvelous how much has come true!" exclaimed the faithful young "Aryan."
VII
The Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P., lived in one of those elegant apartment houses having a uniformed doorkeeper. The Führer was a vegetarian, and an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but not an ascetic as to interior decoration; on the contrary, he thought himself an artist and enjoyed fixing up his surroundings. With the money of Fritz Thyssen and other magnates he had bought a palace in Munich and made it over into a showplace, the Nazi Braune Haus; also for the apartment in Berlin he had got modernistic furniture of the utmost elegance. He lived with a married couple to take care of him, South Germans and friends of his earlier days. They had two children, and Adi was playing some sort of parlor game with them when the visitors were brought in. He kept the little ones for a while, talking to them and about them part of the time; his fondness for children was his better side, and Lanny would have been pleased if he had not had to see any other.
The Führer wore a plain business suit, and presented the aspect of a simple, unassuming person. He shook hands with his Franco-American guest, patted Heinrich on the back, and called for fruit juice and cookies for all of them. He asked Lanny about his boyhood on the Riviera, and the children listened with open eyes to stories about hauling the seine and bringing in cuttlefish and small sharks; about digging in one’s garden and finding ancient Roman coins; about the "little Septentrion child" who had danced and pleased in the arena of Antibes a couple of thousand years ago. Adi Schicklgruber’s own childhood had been unhappy and he didn’t talk about it.
Presently he asked where Lanny had met Kurt Meissner, and the visitor told about the Dalcroze school at Hellerau. His host took this as a manifestation of German culture, and Lanny forbore to mention that Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss of French descent. It was true that the school had been built and endowed by a German patron. Said Hitler: "That kind of thing will be the glory of our National Socialist administration; there will be such an outburst of artistic and musical genius as will astound the world." Lanny noted that in all the conversation he took it for granted that the N.S.D.A.P. would soon be in control of Germany; he never said "if," he said "when"—and this was one of the subjects on which the visitor was surely not going to contradict him.
They talked about Kurt and his music, which was pure "Aryan," so the Führer declared; nothing meretricious, no corrupt foreign influences; life in France for so many years had apparently not affected the composer in the slightest. Lanny explained that Kurt had kept almost entirely to himself, and had seldom gone out unless one dragged him. He told about his life at Bienvenu, and the Führer agreed that it was the ideal way for an artist. "It is the sort of life I would have chosen; but, alas, I was born under a different star." Lanny had heard that he believed in astrology, and hoped he wouldn’t get onto that subject.
VIII
What the Führer of all the Nazis planned was for this elegant and extremely wealthy young foreigner to go out to the world as a convert to the National Socialist ideas. To that end he laid himself out to be charming, for which he had no small endowment. He had evidently inquired as to Lanny’s point of view, for everything he said was subtly directed to meeting that. Lanny was a Socialist, and Hitler, too, was a Socialist, the only true, practical kind of Socialist. Out of the chaos of competitive capitalism a new order was about to arise; an order that would endure, because it would be founded upon real understanding and guided by scientists. Not the evil, degenerate Socialism of the Marxists, which repudiated all that was most precious in human beings; not a Socialism poisoned with the delusion of internationalism, but one founded upon recognition of the great racial qualities which alone made such a task conceivable.
Patiently and kindly the Führer explained that his ideas of race were not German in the narrow sense. Lanny, too, was an "Aryan," and so were the cultured classes in America; theirs was a truly "Aryan" civilization, and so was the British. "I want nothing in the world so much as understanding and peace between my country and Britain, and I think there has been no tragedy in modern times so great as the war they fought. Why can we not understand one another and get together in friendship for our common task? The world is big enough, and it is full of mongrel tribes whom we dare not permit to gain power, because they are incapable of making any intelligent use of it."
Hitler talked for a while about these mongrels. He felt quite safe in telling a young Franco-American what he thought about the Japanese, a sort of hairless yellow monkeys. Then he came to the Russians, who were by nature lazy, incompetent, and bloodthirsty, and had fallen into the hands of gutter-rats and degenerates. He talked about the French, and was careful of what he said; he wanted no enmity between France and Germany; they could make a treaty of peace that would last for a thousand years, if only the French would give up their imbecile idea of encircling Germany and keeping her ringed with foes. "It is the Polish alliance and the Little Entente which keep enmity between our peoples; for we do not intend to let those peoples go on ruling Germans, and we have an iron determination to right the wrongs which were committed at Versailles. You must know something about that, Mr. Budd, for you have been to Stubendorf, and doubtless have seen with your own eyes what it means for Germans to be governed by Poles."
Lanny answered: "I was one of many Americans at the Peace Conference who pleaded against that mistake."
So the Führer warmed to his visitor. "The shallow-minded call my attitude imperialism; but that is an abuse of language. It is not imperialism to recognize the plain evidence of history that certain peoples have the capacity to build a culture while others are lacking in it entirely. It is not imperialism to say that a vigorous and great-souled people like the Germans shall not be surrounded and penned in by jealous and greedy rivals. It is not imperialism to say that these little children shall not suffer all their lives the deprivations which they have suffered so far."
The speaker was running his hand over the closely cropped blond head of the little boy. "This Bübchen was born in the year of the great shame, that wicked Versailles Diktat. You can see that he is thin and undersized, because of the starvation blockade. But I have told him that his children will be as sturdy as his father was, because I intend to deliver the Fatherland from the possibility of blockades—and I shall not worry if my enemies call me an imperialist. I have written that every man becomes an imperialist when he begets a child, for he obligates himself to see to it that that child has the means of life provided."