Midnight in Berlin (9 page)

“This is a brutal regime; we never doubt nor deny it. Our job is to stop that regime starting a conflict that will drag Britain and France into a second great war. The treatment of Jews, Gypsies and what the government deem social misfits is regrettable, but it is none of our business.”

Macrae wanted to ask what Queen Victoria's favourite prime minister, the great Benjamin Disraeli, would have made of such a policy. But he didn't, and no one else in the
meeting seemed to find anything untoward in the ambassador's statement.

Shirer was waving a hand in front of his face.

“Hey, come back. I've lost you.”

Macrae smiled and apologised. He wondered briefly if Shirer had ever heard of Disraeli, the first Jewish prime minister of Britain and indeed of any supposedly civilised country. He thought not. They turned to the army purge. Macrae quickly realised that Shirer had not invited him in the hope of eliciting useful information. He wanted to make sure Macrae was aware of his views. And Macrae wanted to hear them. Like most western diplomats he steered clear of the press corps in Berlin, but Shirer was an exception. He was well informed.

“I knew your predecessor,” he said. “Watson. Nice guy, but hopeless. They wined and dined him and he swallowed everything they told him. He even believed the bullshit about the creation of a greater Germany being in accord with Woodrow Wilson's doctrine of self-determination for all peoples.”

Shirer paused, allowing Macrae the opportunity to defend his predecessor. Macrae said nothing.

“You know the trouble with you Brits?”

“No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me.”

“You left your balls in the trenches.”

“We lost almost a million young men,” said Macrae softly.

“I know, but it's not the issue, is it? If you don't wake up, he's going to walk all over you – and the rest of Europe.”

Across the room, a group of officers were settling in around a table. One seemed familiar. Macrae recognised Koenig in his colonel's uniform. He was looking serious, as were his companions.

“Know someone over there?” asked Shirer.

Dining with a journalist was exhausting, thought Macrae. When they weren't asking for information, they were giving you their world views, and in between they watched every move you made.

“No, thought I recognised someone.”

The main course arrived and, as the waitress bent over the table, Macrae glanced at Koenig. He was raising his glass in a toast to his fellow officers, all of whom were of the rank of colonel or above.

“So you guys have worked out what this is all about?” Shirer was speaking through a mouthful of duck.

“If you mean the army purge, yes I think so.”

“So what do you make of it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Hitler takes over the army, becomes his own war minister, fires all those ambassadors that had got too close to the guest governments. It means war, doesn't it?”

“This is off the record, right?”

“Sure,” said Shirer. He grunted in pain, sat back suddenly, fished in his mouth with a finger and brought out a sizeable pellet of shot.

“Would you believe it? They used number two shot on a duck. Must have been hoping for a goose.”

Macrae wasn't listening. Across the room, on a table adjacent to Koenig's party, a party of well-dressed ladies were taking their seats. Primrose was among them, looking pretty in a dark blue dress with a silver bow that caught the light. He recognised other wives from the embassy. He could just hear their English voices, a pitch higher than the guttural German accents around him. Shirer had summoned the waitress and was discussing the size of the shot he had found.

Macrae waited for what he knew would happen next. Colonel Florian Koenig rose from his seat, bowed before
Primrose and extended his arm in the Nazi salute. The ladies at the table giggled. Primrose rose, offering her hand, which Koenig took and raised lightly to his lips, holding it there for a second while his eyes held hers. Primrose turned and said something to the ladies and then appeared to introduce them, since each raised a hand in greeting. Koenig clicked his heels and bowed at every name. He gestured Primrose to sit down and pulled her chair back, moving it gently forward as she did so.

“Hey! You've gone again!”

Macrae turned back to Shirer, who was looking across the restaurant, trying to see what had attracted his attention. Shirer leant forward confidentially.

“Look, if you like those waitresses, I can take you to a place where the girls are much prettier and very, very discreet.”

“No thanks,” said Macrae. He felt like a voyeur. He could not go over to Primrose. It would be awkward with Koenig at the next table, and especially now they had exchanged such a greeting. It would be embarrassing. Shirer was talking again in a low urgent voice.

“I am going to give you a jump on my next broadcast. It's Austria next. They are going to go in with troops, tanks, the lot, and take the place. Annex it. Soon, very soon.”

Macrae turned his attention back to the American correspondent. Shirer was well sourced and often given high-level information. Austria next, he had said – annexation with troops and tanks. Another violation of the Versailles peace treaty signed by President Woodrow Wilson, among others. Another big step on the road to a wider European war. Was that what Goebbels wanted the American people to hear?

“They say a majority of the Austrian population will support them. Question is, what will HMG do when the tanks roll across the border?”

Macrae put a slice of the breaded veal into his mouth, playing for time. He knew exactly what HMG would do: nothing. The government would say very little beyond trying to persuade parliament and the press that Hitler had merely moved once again into his own back yard and reunited territory that had historically belonged to Germany anyway. If that would salve the German wounds over Versailles, then so be it.

Macrae put his napkin on the table.

“We have not fully evaluated the meaning behind the army purges. As for Austria …”

“You have not fully evaluated that possibility either …?”

Shirer laughed and Macrae joined him.

“I'm sorry, I'm not much use to you,” Macrae said. “And I have to go.”

“You need to find your balls – that's the message you should take back to that ambassador of yours.”

The resignation two weeks later of the British foreign secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, was greeted with jubilation by the German press. Goebbels's ministry summoned correspondents to Wilhelmstrasse to brief them that not just an enemy of Germany but an enemy of peace had been rightly removed by the prime minister.

Neville Chamberlain was praised for having come to his senses, although the praise was tempered by a stern warning that Germany would not tolerate third-party interference in central European affairs. That evening, Hitler himself drummed home the point with an aggressive speech to the Reichstag parliament, now sitting in an old theatre, declaring that the separation from Germany of ten million Germans now living in Austria and Czechoslovakia because of an unfairly imposed peace treaty was unbearable.

The next day, Macrae met Halliday in the corridor on the way to the staff meeting and was beckoned into his office. Halliday carefully closed the door.

“What are you hearing?” he asked.

“Same as you,” Macrae said. “He's got away with it. Now he's winding himself up for a move into Austria. The new generals quite like the idea. You don't have to be a Nazi in the army to appreciate the chance to test your new tanks.”

“The Austrians won't fight – they'll just walk in.”

“And we'll do nothing?”

“Nothing we can do, old boy,” said Halliday. “Now that Eden's gone, that's the end of it. But I want to ask a small favour.”

“Which is?”

“If you have any good contacts in the army, ask them what they will do if Czechoslovakia really is next after Austria. I hear the army may not be up for that.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just asking for a little help. Now, let's go and hear what the oracle has for us.”

Sir Nevile spoke for thirty minutes and never once mentioned the resignation of the foreign secretary. His greater concern was a meeting he was to have with Herr Hitler the following week. He would make it clear, in a conventionally diplomatic and thus discreet way, that any move into Austria would not meet with an aggressive diplomatic response from Britain.

David Buckland raised his hand. “Could we not at least prepare a very strong condemnation and ask for an emergency meeting of the League of Nations? After all, it's not as if Austrians have been asked if they want to be annexed.”

Sir Nevile cast a cold eye on his political attaché. Buckland had obviously been spending too much time with those troublemakers Halliday and Macrae.

“It is part of my job to understand the thinking of the National Socialist government and to represent that thinking to HMG. One can hardly argue with an ambition to unify German-speaking people into one nation from which they were separated by an unequal treaty. The question HMG poses is: will Herr Hitler stop there? The answer is, I do not know, but I do know I would not be doing my job if I believed the worst of Hitler, because that can only lead to the worst happening.”

Macrae had asked William Shirer and his wife, Theresa, to dinner at home. It was Primrose's idea. She had heard much about the famed American correspondent and wanted to meet his Austrian wife, who worked as a fashion photographer in Vienna.

The Shirers arrived promptly at six thirty. Theresa was well wrapped up in a long black fur coat, from which a pretty face emerged below a woollen bonnet. Macrae helped her out of the coat. She seemed shy and shook hands without looking at him. She was much younger than her husband; Macrae guessed she was about thirty.

It was hard to tell how old Shirer was. He was one of those men who achieve middle age early in life. His hair had receded to reveal a gleaming bald pate. The moustache was carefully trimmed into a thin line above the lip and the waistline was that of a man who preferred to take a cab a couple of blocks for breakfast of a coffee and a Danish rather than walk.

Theresa appeared relieved to be invited to accompany Primrose into the kitchen.

“I am going to make you an Old-Fashioned cocktail. We'll join the men again when they have stopped being so boring,” Primrose said, taking her by the arm.

Shirer opened the window and stepped onto the balcony. The evening sky had lightened in the first days of March and the sun had yet to set. Green buds on the branches of the trees in the Tiergarten promised the coming of spring.

“Nice view you've got. You're lucky,” he said.

“Where are you staying?” asked Macrae, guiding his guest back inside and closing the window against the cold.

“We're renting a serviced apartment. Can't complain. CBS pays, but … ermm.”

“You have a third person in your life there?”

Shirer laughed. “Yeah, it's all bugged. Comes with the territory, I guess.”

Macrae poured both of them generous whiskies. They sat down and Shirer began to ask about the abdication of King Edward VIII two years previously. Every American Macrae had ever met wanted to talk about the affair between Wallis Simpson and King Edward, as if it was of any importance. The monarch had abdicated and in his place the nervous, stuttering, chain-smoking George VI had ascended the throne. No American could ever understand why the king had felt the need to step down just because he was denied the right to marry his mistress. It had cheated them of an American First Lady living in Buckingham Palace.

“Folks back where I come from sure would have liked to see Mrs Simpson on the throne,” said Shirer.

“It happened two years ago. It's history.”

“That's not history,” said Shirer. “That's just nice fat juicy gossip, and we love it. Out there is history.” He pointed to the window. “You Brits are going to have to put your tin hats on soon. That's history.”

“And you Americans?”

Shirer laughed, choked on his drink and laughed some more. Macrae faintly heard Primrose from the kitchen urging Theresa to have another cocktail and telling her it stopped the men being boring.

“We are going to sit this one out. You're on your own this time. Isn't that right, honey?”

The ladies had returned holding drinks. Theresa looked a little flushed.

“What are you laughing about?” she said.

“He's just told me a war is coming and the Americans are going to stay on their side of the Atlantic,” said Macrae.

“War, war, war – that's all you talk about,” said Theresa.

She seemed irritated and sat down heavily next to her husband, spilling some of her drink.

“What do you want to talk about, sweetheart?” he said, putting his arm around her.

“I want to know if I should join the Nazi Party.”

They all laughed.

“It's not funny,” she said. “If you're Austrian, it might be a good idea.”

Shirer suddenly looked at Primrose and slapped his knee.

“Hey! It's just come to me! Weren't you in the Drei Schwestern the other night?”

“Yes, we were,” said Primrose, looking surprised. “Don't tell me you were there?”

“Yes, we were both there, in one of the alcoves.”

“
You
were there?” said Primrose, looking at her husband.

“I didn't want to break up your hen party. Besides, we were being very boring, talking shop. Did you have a nice time?”

“We had a lovely time. And guess who I met – Florian.”

“Oh! That was who was bowing and scraping around you, was it?”

Primrose flashed him a glance, then turned to Theresa.

“Florian is a friend of ours, a colonel in something or other. German colonels are frightfully smart, with all those medals and shiny boots. You've got to hand it to the Nazis, they do know how to dress up.”