Hitler almost screamed wild laughter. He wanted war, yes. But to have the leaders of the democracies ready to fight him because they were sure he'd done something of which he was entirely innocent…If that wasn't irony, what was?
"I must tell you, you are making a dreadful mistake," he said. "That Czech, that Stribny, murdered Herr Henlein on his own. I had nothing to do with it. Germany had nothing to do with it. Henlein left Czechoslovakia and entered the Reich because he feared for his own safety. And now we see he had reason to fear. If anyone inspired Stribny, it was the wicked Slavs in Prague, just as the wicked Slavs in Belgrade inspired Gavrilo Princip a generation ago."
Every single word of that was the gospel truth. But it fell on deaf ears. He could tell as much even while Dr. Schmidt was translating. Chamberlain and Daladier had made up their minds. If he told them the sun was shining outside, they would call him a liar.
Chamberlain murmured something in English. "What did he say?" Hitler asked sharply.
"He said, 'And then you wake up,' mein Fuhrer," Schmidt replied.
"What does that mean?"
"It's slang, sir. It means he doesn't believe you."
"Donnerwetter!" Hitler could see the Allies' propaganda mill spewing out endless lies. They would shout that he was a murderer, that he'd got rid of his own henchman to start a war. They would make him look bad to all the neutrals in Europe and Asia and the Americas. The Allies had trounced Germany and Austria-Hungary in the propaganda war during the World War. Now they had a great chance to do it again.
"If you are truly innocent of this crime, then do not assume the guilt of plunging the world into battle because of it," Daladier said.
"This is madness!" Hitler cried. "If I had ordered Henlein killed, maybe a guilty conscience would keep me from taking advantage of it. But my conscience is clean." Of this, anyhow he added, but only to himself. He got angrier by the word as he went on, "Konrad Henlein must have vengeance. The Sudeten Germans must have vengeance. Germany, to which they were about to return, must have vengeance. Czechoslovakia must be punished. If you want to line up behind a pack of skulking, cowardly assassins, go ahead-and be damned to you!"
"Mein Fuhrer-" Goring began.
"No!" Hitler roared. He was in full spate now. Nothing could stop him, or even slow him down. "They want war? They can have war! They will have war! War!…War! War! War!"
He threw open the doors to his office. "Is everything all right, mein Fuhrer?" one of the guards asked. "We could hear you shouting…"
So even the thick oak doors hadn't muffled him? Well, too bad! "It is war!" he bellowed. "Colonel Hossbach!"
"Ja, mein Fuhrer?" his adjutant said.
"Begin Case Green. Immediately! War with Czechoslovakia! Now!" Yes, Hitler had what he most wanted, handed to him by, of all people, a Czech. GUNS THUNDERED ON BOTH SIDES of the Ebro. General Sanjurjo's Fascists had modern German and Italian pieces, guns that could put a shell on an outspread blanket five miles away. The Republic had a few Russian howitzers that weren't bad. The rest were the artillery pieces the Republicans had started the fight with. After more than two years of civil war, they kept only vestiges of their original rifling-and they weren't such hot stuff back when they were new.
Crouching in a foxhole west of the Ebro, Chaim Weinberg decided he feared his own side's guns more than the Fascists'. When the enemy Spaniards or their German advisers opened up, at least you had a good notion of what they were shooting at. If it wasn't you, you could relax.
But when the Republican artillery started shooting, you always needed to be on the jump. Those shells might come down on the Fascists' head…or they might come down on yours. You never could tell. Neither could the poor, sorry bastards firing the guns.
"Aren't you glad we came from the States?" asked Mike Carroll, another volunteer from the Lincoln Battalion.
Before Chaim could answer, somebody's shell burst much too close. Shrapnel and shards of shattered stone screamed through the air. He listened for shrieks, but didn't hear any. Luck. Nothing but dumb frigging luck.
"Aren't you?" Carroll persisted.
"Chinga tu madre," Chaim told him. He wouldn't have said anything like that even in English before he sailed to Spain. Well, he was a new man now. That new man needed a shave (at the moment, he also needed a razor). He was scrawny and hungry. He was filthy. He was lousy. But damned if he wasn't new.
He'd never fired a rifle before he got to Spain. Hell, he'd never even handled a rifle. He could field-strip his Mauser blindfolded now. He'd started out with a crappy French piece, and got this much better German one off a dead Nationalist soldier. Keeping it in cartridges was a bitch. But keeping the French rifle in ammo would have been a bitch, too. Logistics was only a bitter joke to the Republicans.
The shelling went on, but none of the other rounds burst close enough to make him pucker. He lit a cigarette. The tobacco was allegedly French. It smelled like horseshit. It tasted the way he imagined smoldering horseshit would taste, too.
"No pasaran," Mike said, and then, "Gimme one of those."
"Here." Chaim handed him the pack.
Mike took a smoke from it. He leaned close to Chaim to get it going. After his first drag, he made a face. "Boy, that's rotten."
"Uh-huh." Chaim held out his hand, palm up. Reluctantly, his buddy returned the cigarettes. Chaim stuck them back in the breast pocket of his ragged khaki tunic. "Only thing worse than rotten tobacco's no tobacco at all."
"No kidding," Mike said.
Chaim took a cautious look out of the trench. Nothing special was going on in the Nationalist lines a few hundred yards away-everybody here talked about meters, but they seemed like play money to him. The shelling was just…shelling. A few people on both sides would get maimed or killed, and it wouldn't move the war any closer to the end, not even a nickel's worth.
"No pasaran," Chaim echoed. "They'd fucking better not pass, not here, or we're butcher's meat." He sucked in more smoke. "Hell, we're dead meat anyway, sooner or later. I still hope it's later, though."
"Yeah, me, too." Mike Carroll sounded like Boston. Before he came to Spain, he'd worked in a steel mill somewhere in Massachusetts. That was what he said, anyway. A lot of guys had stories that didn't add up. Chaim didn't get all hot and bothered about it. He didn't tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about himself, either. The only thing that really mattered was that you hated Fascism enough to hop on a boat and try to do something about it.
"Amazing thing is, the Republic's still in there kicking," Chaim said. Mike nodded. General Sanjurjo and his pack of reactionary bastards must have thought their foes would fall apart in nothing flat. Who could have blamed them? They had the trained troops, and they had Mussolini and Hitler-which meant Italian and German materiel and soldiers-on their side.
But it didn't pan out that way. The brutal farce of noninterference kept the Republicans from getting munitions and reinforcements. Like the rest of the men in the Lincoln Battalion, Chaim and Mike had to sneak over the border from France, dodging patrols every step of the way. Russia sent arms and advisers, though not enough to offset what the Fascists fed Sanjurjo.
And the Republicans squabbled among themselves. Did they ever! Anarchists and Trotskyists didn't like admitting that, since Stalin was paying the piper, he could call the tune. They also complained that Communist units got the best weapons. Chaim was a Party member, even if he'd left his card in New York City when he sailed. Most (though not all) of the foreign volunteers-men from every corner of the Earth-were. But the Spaniards themselves did the bulk of the fighting and dying.